"Writing on Dance" workshop students selected

I've accepted nine outstanding students for my Writing on Dance series this spring at New York Live Arts. Can't wait!

On the avenue. Second Avenue...

Second Avenue Dance Company--resident dance troupe of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts--is showing off a whole lotta training and no small measure of pizzazz in several works presented this week in its annual spring season.

Above and below: Second Avenue Dance Company in Aszure Barton's Rookery
(Photos: Tony Dougherty)
 

Two programs interweave work by student dancemakers Matthew Flatley, Mariel Lugosch-Ecker, Allison Schieler and Austin Tyler with world premieres by Sydney Skybetter, Aszure Barton, Seán Curran and Kate Weare. I saw Program A last night.

Barton's got the edge on edge in Rookery, and the NYU students seem to have a handle on her style's striking blend of wired mania and stretchiness and odd locomotion. Skybetter catches them on the other end of things with the clean, cool, continuous reconfigurations of Little Boy. They look great in Mark Koss's costumes and Skybetter's exquisite choreography. Lucky, lucky, lucky students to have such exciting mentors as they set off into the professional sphere.

Above and below: Second Avenue Dance Company in Sydney Skybetter's Little Boy (Photos: Tony Dougherty)

I can't help it: Curran's Oh sleep, why dost thou leave me prompts the answer, "Dude, because you've got all those people dancing around you!" And Weare's Pura Vida makes me long to see Weare's own marvelous dancers get a crack at it.

Performances run through April 2, all at 8pm. For reservations and information, call 212-998-1982 (Monday-Friday, 1-5pm only).

NYU Tisch School of the Arts
111 Second Avenue, 5th Floor
(directions)

Dance moves on: new ADF and MoMA plans

American Dance Festival Unveils New Executive Director's First Lineup
by Julie Bloom, The New York Times, March 28, 2012

Dance Comes to MoMA
by Julie Bloom, The New York Times, March 28, 2012

Adrienne Rich, 82 [UPDATE]

Adrienne Rich
(Photo: Robert Giard/Norton)

Poet Adrienne Rich, 82, has died
Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2012

A Poet of Unswerving Vision at the Forefront of Feminism
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 28, 2012

Dance Italia's scholarship for Summer 2012

The Robert Kipness Scholarship Fund(in loving memory of Robert who loved to dance)

DANCE ITALIA is pleased to offer scholarships for advanced level dance students in need of financial aid for summer 2012: 
One Full Scholarship (worth $2950)

Partial Scholarships (worth a mimimum $1000 each) 
Primary consideration will be given to students ages of 17-24. Minority students are encouraged to apply. Eligible candidates must be Advanced Level dancers with at least 5 years of training.

Application and supporting materials are due April 30. Successful candidates will be notified by May 15. 
For more information on Dance Italia, click here.

The Bronx Museum? Thonx!

Bronx Museum to Be Free to Visitors
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, March 27, 2012

Interviewing Marya Warshaw for the NYPL [UPDATE]

Eva with Marya Warshaw of BAX
at New York Public Libary for the Performing Arts
(photo: Susan L. Kraft)

It was a tremendous honor to conduct an oral history interview with Marya Warshaw, Executive Director/Artistic Director of BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) and Bessie Award-winner, over the past two weeks.

Warshaw and I were invited by Susan L. Kraft, Oral History Project Coordinator at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. All of that's a mouthful, I know, but what you really need to know about Kraft is that she's one of the most organized, considerate and gracious people around. So it was a joy to work with her and with assistant archivist Cassie Mey (better known as one of New York's fantastic dancers) in planning and achieving this important project. Kraft and Mey took excellent care of us, and we were given everything we needed to be comfortable and make a recording with fine sound quality.

Warshaw, herself, made it all very easy. I was amazed by her complete presence and openness as, for close to four hours over two recording sessions, she traced milestones of her personal and professional journey in the context of significant changes in our society, city neighborhoods and arts communities. I got a very clear sense of the life influences, values and strengths that make her an essential leader in Brooklyn and for our entire city.

It's critically important that the contributions of our artists and arts leaders be remembered and be accessible to future artists, scholars and the public. Now you will be able to listen to Marya Warshaw as I did and, I hope, be similarly inspired.

For more information about using the archives of the NYPL's Jerome Robbins Dance Division, click here.

UPDATE: To read Susan L. Kraft's NYPL blog post about this project, click here.

Arts funding in booming Brazil

Brazil’s Leading Arts Financing Group Shares the Wealth
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 27, 2012

NYLA dance writing workshop deadline extended

We still have a few more places available in my Writing on Dance workshop for New York Live Arts, starting May 2. So head over to NYLA's site and scroll down for details. Get your applications in. 

New application deadline: Thursday, March 29.

Financial crisis hits Europe's arts

The Euro Crisis Is Hurting Cultural Groups
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 24, 2012

Marina Warner's ‘Stranger Magic’

Gardens of Unearthly Delights: ‘Stranger Magic’ by Marina Warner
by Harold Bloom, The New York Times, March 23, 2012

Dakshina and Sakshi at Ailey tonight

This weekend, Nandini Sikand (Sakshi Productions) and DC-based Daniel Phoenix Singh (Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company) gracefully interweave their companies, cultural traditions and modern visions in a shared program, Prana/Breath, that concludes tonight at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. Both troupes uphold the exacting discipline and charismatic dazzle of Indian dance traditions--Daksina's Bharata Natyam; Sakshi's Odissi--while venturing contemporary ideas of movement and narrative.

Both artistic paths--old and new--are on offer in a show including ten pieces and, with an intermission, running well past two hours. But it is in the latter area--the infusion of contemporary choreography--where Prana/Breath sometimes weakens, putting forth movement that swirls and expands, less like breath than like ink dripped into water, leaving no clear or lasting mark. Carrie Rohman's Beyond Muscle, Beyond Bone--a 2006 duet made in homage to the late choreographer Cheryl Wallace and danced by Rohman and Kristin Lyndal Garbarino of Sakshi--might have subtle, spiritual connections to the evening's already elusive theme of prana. (What form of dancing is not, in its very foundation, about breath?) However, without the program notes' reference to Wallace, Beyond Muscle, Beyond Bone's vague, pleasant airiness would ultimately speak of nothing but itself.

Singh's love duet Since You've Asked (2009), danced with Jamal Ari Black and set to music by Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel, rests so much on the obvious physical similarity and unison of these two slender, lyrical guys that it does not afford the men the individuality and individual textures--sourced from within, not applied externally--that could make this piece resonate in our own human hearts. A few tender touches come a little late to have what was possibly the intended, empathic effect.

In that respect, the evening's crown belongs to Symbiosis--a palpably tender, occasionally playful duet in the sensuous Odissi tradition and shared by Sikand and Singh. This piece displays the union of opposites so often depicted in South Asian imagery as male and female deities in romantic or erotic coupling that can represent a host of potential blendings of being and energy, even within one person or thing. Om shanti, shanti, shanti. Symbiosis was made and is danced by two beautiful masters who, in their clearly loving attention to detail and nuance in movement, reward our witness.

Dakshina's Natalia Mesa Higuera was also fascinating as a clearly troubled figure, struggling and failing to hold herself together, in Darla Stanley's contemporary solo, In Sleep She Migrates Home (2012).

For information and tickets for tonight's 8pm performance, click here.

Ailey Citigroup Theater

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
The Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th Street (at 9th Avenue), Manhattan
directions/map

Marshall's cabaret: Siobhan Burke peeks inside the tent

Susan Marshall's Cerebral Cabaret
by Siobhan Burke, Dance Magazine, March 21, 2012

Jillian Peña: "Dance is the language I speak."

I am a dancer, but I do not dance. Dance is the language I speak. It is inside me and all over me. -- Jillian Peña

She has said YES to transformation and magic and make-believe. She has been inspired by psychoanalysis, queer theory, pop media and spirituality. And next month, the fascinating Jillian Peña--BAX Artist-in-Residence 2011/12--opens her new show, The Guiding Light.

The Guiding Light is a sci-fi religious ballet. It explores religiosity in the balletic body, the desire to believe in something, and the complex relationship of the individual within the group. This work was created alongside the dancers: Cassie Mey, Lea Fulton, Alexandra Albrecht, Evvie Allison, and Andrew Champlin.

We want to believe. -- Jillian Peña

April 27-29
Friday and Saturday, 8pm
Sunday 6pm

Information here
Tickets here

BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange)
421 Fifth Avenue (at 8th Street), Park Slope, Brooklyn
map/directions

Spring in your step: Join a tap class

What's new?

Tap classes with Chikako Iwahori
at Steps on Broadway

Starting Wednesday, March 28

Wednesdays 7:45pm-9:15pm

Fridays 10:00am-11:30am

Both classes are Advanced Beginner level.

Steps on Broadway
2121 Broadway (at 74th Street), Manhattan
map/directions
(212) 874-2410

Jones: Arts criticism has changed.

How I learned to look – and listen
by Jonathan Jones, guardian.co.uk, March 21, 2012

• • 
    

    • • dian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 March 2012 14.31 EDT

The age of the art critic as an unassailable voice of authority is long gone. Jonathan Jones recalls his rude awakening to the force of digital debate, and the era of readers biting back.

Read more here.

"Missing" opens tonight at WOW

MISSING, a new music theater production written by Hanifah Walidah and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, is a magical-realist journey through music as experienced and created by women. Our story begins aboard the slave ship Trouvadore, which mysteriously went missing in 1795. Aboard the ship, three women devise a plan to escape via the magic of their music. Through music, they and the ship are transported into the future, in search of home.





From the ringshouts of the 1790s to the battle rhymes of the 1990s, we ask what is missing when we think about music and the often unrecognized influence of women in creating cultural magic.

Directed by Dumeha Thompson
Original music by Hanifah Walidah and La Bande Magnetique

March 22-31 at WOW Cafe Theater. For information and tickets, click here.

WOW Café Theater
59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Floor, Manhattan
between Bowery and 2nd Avenue
(directions)

Meetup group hosts panel on arts blogging

State of Art Blogging Panel - Arts, Culture and Technology (New York, NY) - Meetup

Thursday, March 29, 7pm

This month ArtsTech is proud to welcome Hrag Vartanian of Hyperallergic.com as co-organizer and moderator of a panel examining the current state of art blogging. Together we've assembled a diverse group representing today's top art bloggers — ranging from the scrappy, indie blog to institutional and news sites. They'll discuss the current landscape of contemporary art criticism on the Internet and the challenges and opportunities art bloggers face today.

Learn more here.

Erasing Borders: Indian and contemporary dance

Indo-American Arts Council and Trinayan Dance Theater 

present

Erasing Borders: DanceFEST INDIA-2012

April 9-April 15

In a dance celebration of the vibrancy of spring, the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) and Trinayan Dance Theater collaborate to present a seven-day festival showcasing the exquisite dance styles of India and featuring internationally renowned performers. Presented at various venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the festival includes three evening concerts (April 9th, 10th and 14th) by eminent artists from India and New York, a family-friendly performance, workshops and a panel discussion. 

The performances feature internationally renowned artists based in India: Sujata Mohapatra (Odissi), Priyadarshini Govind (Bharatanatyam), Rukmini Vijaykumar (Bharatanatyam); and NYC-based dancers/dance companies:  Prashant Shah (Kathak), Preeti Vasudevan/Thresh Dance (Contemporary Dance Theater), and Trinayan Dance Theater (Odissi).

For more information, visit:

Indo-American Arts Council

Trinayan Dance Theater 

Cunningham lives...in his dances

A spokeswoman said they would not be paid, and that no performances are scheduled, although they have not been ruled out. "It’s sort of like an educational experience," said the spokeswoman, Leah Sandals.-- Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times

You know, after a while, you might have to say--Cunningham's wishes aside--maybe they should have just kept the company going. Could this be a subtle sign of regret?

Read more: Former Merce Cunningham Dancers to Teach Choreographer's Works by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, March 20, 2012

Fists, heels and songs

Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group performed TheRevisitation last week at New York Live Arts. To read my Dance Magazine review, click here.

Collective for Dance Writing and New Media forms Executive Committee

Collective for Dance Writing and New Media has formed an Executive Committee:

Aaron Mattocks
Cory Nakasue 
Eva Yaa Asantewaa

See their profiles on the CDWNM Web site, and keep in touch with us. We have some great things coming up!

Queer/Art/Film

Queer/Art/Film Series at IFC Center Continues Gay Film Legacy
by Erik Piepenburg, The New York Times, March 17, 2012

A very different St. Patrick's Day story

An Irish Tradition With an Only-in-America Star
by Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, March 17, 2012

Far "Deep"

I love this sound!

Adele's Rolling in The Deep on a GuZheng (Chinese Zither)

BRIC House residency proposals sought

BRIC House Fireworks Residency Program open call for proposals
by Maxwell Cramer, Culturebot, March 15, 2012

The disappearing Francesca Woodman

‘Francesca Woodman’ at Guggenheim Museum
by Ken Johnson, The New York Times, March 15, 2012

Art critics award best shows of 2011

Art Critics’ Association Announces Awards for Best Shows of 2011
by The New York Times, March 15, 2012

This news makes me tappy!

Good things come to those who tap!

Subway Tap Dancer Gets Help With College
The New York Times, March 15, 2012

k.d. lang summers in New Jersey!

Swoon!!!

Be advised: Tickets go on sale at 11am tomorrow, March 16, for k.d. lang's August gig at Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey. From what I can tell, that's the closest she's coming to New York City.

k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang
Tuesday, August 21 (8pm)

Get info

Prepare for "Le Grand Continental"

This just in from Andy Horwitz, curator, River to River Festival:

Dear Colleagues,

As you probably know, I curate and produce the River To River Festival, Lower Manhattan’s largest, free, multidisciplinary summer arts festival. This summer the River To River Festival, together with The Joyce Theater, will be presenting the U.S. premiere of Le Grand Continental by Montréal-based choreographer Sylvain Émard at the South Street Seaport. This exciting performance brings together 200+ participants of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds – dancers and non-dancers alike – to perform a contemporary re-imagining of a traditional festive line dance. The piece has been performed in Montreal and Mexico City, and in each case the dancers have formed a community unto themselves. We look forward to bringing together a diverse and dynamic group of New Yorkers from all five boroughs to show off what makes our city so great! And we need your help.

We want our call for participants to reach as far and wide as possible and we’d be thrilled if you could help us spread the word. We are looking for people of all ages, ethnicities, orientations and backgrounds, with or without formal dance training – all they need to have is a creative spirit and a sense of fun and adventure! We will be holding information and recruitment sessions on April 4th and 5th. Rehearsals will be two nights a week from April 25th–June 19th with performances June 22-24 on Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport.  Attached is a PDF with all info which we'd love for you to forward to your friends, family, audiences, email lists, Facebook pages, Twitter, etc.–whatever and wherever you feel comfortable–we’d really appreciate it. This is going to be a fun and fantastic project and we look forward to bringing together a great group of people.

Get the info session sign-up form here.

Visit our Facebook event page here.

View videos:

from Montreal
http://www.fta.qc.ca/en/shows/2011/le-continental-xl

http://www.sylvainemard.com/en/creations/le-grand-continental/

from Mexico
http://www.festival.org.mx/fmx/evento.php?i=120

http://fmx-festivaldemexico.blogspot.com/2011/03/el-gran-continental-el-poder-social-de.html

If you have questions, please feel free to email Production Assistant Santino Lo at slo@lmcc.net.

Thanks and all best,
Andy Horwitz

Ethel Winter, 87 [UPDATE]

Ethel Winter in Martha Graham's Seraphic Dialogue

(Photo by Noyes)

Ethel Winter, former dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Juilliard teacher, passed away on March 10th. Born June 18, 1924 in Wrentham, Massachusetts, Ethel Winter earned a BA and MA from Bennington College under the direction of Martha Hill, who was her first contemporary dance teacher and lifelong mentor. Ms. Winter was a soloist with the Sophie Maslow Company, appeared in summerstock, TV, Broadway productions, and directed and choreographed for her own company. She guest taught in colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and abroad, and was a founder of the London School of Contemporary Dance in Britain and the Batsheva School in Israel. Ms. Winter was a permanent faculty member of The Martha Graham School from 1946 to 2006, and at The Juilliard School from 1953 to 2003.

UPDATE

The New York Times obituary, March 17, 2012

Jamison and Fagan in conversation

How long have I been at this?

Well, look at it this way: I've been here long enough to remember seeing Judith Jamison, herself, dance Cry, the signature solo that Alvin Ailey crafted for her and brought to the stage in 1971.

I've also been here long enough to remember when Garth Fagan's acclaimed Rochester, NY troupe, Garth Fagan Dance, was still called--with far more cheek than justification--Bottom of the Bucket BUT...Dance Theatre. I recall asking Fagan about the mischief in that name which, like my own at the time, has long since been buried.

So, it was hard to keep from grinning like a fool all through 651 Arts' Live & Outspoken conversation between Jamison (interviewer) and Fagan (interviewee) last evening at the Mark Morris Dance Center. Two solid gold titans of dance, originals unlike anyone else in their field, multiple award winners, paying tribute to each other as professionals and as friends, trading gentle humor and wisdom: It was pure heaven.

As if that were not enough, another dance superstar--Arthur Mitchell--was in the house, looking remarkably youthful and handsome.

I started thinking about dignified attitude and discipline--which all three of these people have in abundance--as cornerstones of durability.

Introducing her guests, 651 Arts' managing director Anna Glass put things in perspective: "Kodak's leaving [Rochester], but the Fagan company's still there!"

Fagan and company are not only still there but still making news. Robert Battle has acquired Fagan's From Before (1978) for the Alvin Ailey troupe, a development that makes the choreographer quite proud.

"Alvin Ailey supported me, from Day One, with advice, with money," Fagan says of Jamison's and Battle's great predecessor. "He helped me and nourished me."

Still, the Jamaica-born dance artist is never one to stifle an opinion, and he's not shy about setting conditions.

"Make sure the women are not floozies," he said he admonished Battle. "Please don't work the audience with that. I've seen enough of that tawdry stuff.

"We have tawdry women in our race, but that's in the mi-nor-it-TEE. It's important that the women have elegance and sophistication."

Of his vision for his own troupe, formed nearly 40 years ago, Fagan says, "I wanted to see a company of people dancing--a nice melange on stage of human bodies and body types, not six maids all in a row."

Fagan dancers--originals, like their leader, who excel at his challenging technique and off-kilter movement ideas--have to bring more than brawn and tricks. They must have intelligence and spirit.

He also loves to work with trusted, topnotch collaborators, which leads me to the next bit of news: Wynton Marsalis, who teamed up with his longtime buddy Fagan for the 1991 Griot New York, a triumph for both men, will score a new piece for Fagan's September 2012 season at BAM. Fagan fully expects to get the music at the last minute. ("That's how musicians do it," he says, "And they think that's how dancers can do it.") Visual artist Alison Saar, whose paintings and sculpture incorporate spiritual culture of the African diaspora, will design the set.

It wouldn't be Live & Outspoken without samples of the guest's creative work, and Fagan brought two offerings that had Jamison and audience nearly swooning. Haiti-born Vitolio Jeune (who, a few years back, competed on So You Think You Can Dance) showed off the extraordinary strength, limberness and timing required of a Fagan dancer in Talking Drums, a piece inspired by the sound of the storytelling/news-carrying drums of Burundi. Company veterans Norwood Pennewell and Nicolette Depass danced an excerpt from Griot New York--the deliciously slow, sultry "Spring Yaounde" duet, an unmistakable image of sexual coupling that unmistakably honors this act. Nothing "tawdry" about it.

Near the end of the audience Q&A, Fagan returned to the theme of negative depiction of Black people in the media. In the US, he said, African-American people seem to only get attention in the news when they are sought or arrested for crime.  Meanwhile Jamaican news outlets, Fagan said, borrowing an expression from his friend Alex Haley, "find the good and praise it."

As with all Live & Outspoken events that I've attended, the focus here was on all the inspirational good that could be found and praised. For more, see the Garth Fagan Dance Web site here.

And visit 651 Arts' Live & Outspoken page here for complete details about upcoming events:

Playwright Esther Armah interviewing A Streetcar Named Desire stars Carmen de Lavallade and Blair Underwood tomorrow, March 15, at Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts (free)

Musicians June Millington and Toshi Reagon on April 26 at the Mark Morris Dance Center ($20/$15)

Tom Murrin (1939-2012) [UPDATED]

UPDATE: New York Times obituary: 

Tom Murrin, Alien Comic Performance Artist, Dies at 73
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, March 14, 2012

***
Tom Murrin: 1939-2012

by Papermag, March 12, 2012

Tom Murrin: Artist, Playwright And 'The Alien Comic' Passes Away From Cancer

The Huffington Post, March 13, 2012

Remembering Tom Murrin, Legendary Performance Art Pioneer

by Robin Schatell, The Lo-Down, March 13, 2012

Filmmaker France tells the history of ACT UP [UPDATE]

How To Survive A Plague
USA 2012; 110 min.
directed by David France
A Sundance Selects release

Peter Staley in action. Photo: William Lucas Walker

That's Peter Staley--former Wall Street bond trader; later, ACT UP's rock-star activist--who not only talked the eloquent talk but walked the kickass walk along with many comrades, putting the media, pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers and politicians on notice that a community terrorized by AIDS was not going to sit quietly, simply hoping for attention and help. It was going to get in people's faces and demand the research and treatments it needed to survive.

David France's exhilarating and moving How to Survive A Plague relates the boisterous history of ACT UP--all the triumphs and missteps--with a personalizing focus on several of its leading activists. These include Staley and Mark Harrington as well as the late Bob Rafsky who died from AIDS complications in 1993. Rafsky will be remembered by most for his confrontation with presidential-hopeful Bill Clinton that led to the famous "I feel your pain" non-answer.

That scene, from a Clinton fundraiser, is highlighted in France's documentary along with many others that retell the progression of HIV/AIDS in New York's gay male community and that community's dramatic, intelligent responses. Although a sprinkling of women and people of color are shown or interviewed, France has concentrated on assembling footage and gathering oral history that reflect ACT UP as an initiative emerging from well-educated gay white men with an inherent sense of empowerment commensurate with their rage and compassion. Along the way, we do get to see and hear from female advocates and activists--media-savvy Ann Northrop, future journalist Garance Franke-Ruta and pharmaceutical chemist Iris Long, PhD, among a few others.

Essential history can easily be lost. In a climate of right-wing backlash, it can get twisted. New generations of social activists working on marriage equality, transgender rights, immigrant rights and many other progressive issues today need to learn about these shoulders upon which they stand. And we all need a blade of truth to disrupt the nasty fog of culture war that has arisen once again in our country.

[Update: Frank Bruni writes about this documentary in the March 17 New York Times--The Living After the Dying.]

See a screening of How to Survive A Plague at the 2012 New Directors/New Films Festival at the following locations:

Saturday, March 24, 9pm
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Monday, March 26, 6pm
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53r Street (between 5th And 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

How to Survive A Plague Web site

How to Survive A Plague Facebook page

Information on New Directors/New Films

Swinston hopes for Cunningham troupe in France

Cunningham Legacy to Continue in France?
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, March 13, 2012

Congratulations to Camille A. Brown

Big news today for New York choreographer Camille A. Brown. Brown has been hired for the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Emily Mann, scored by Terence Blanchard and starring Blair Underwood (Stanley), Nicole Ari Parker (Blanche), Wood Harris (Mitch), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Stella), and Carmen de Lavallade, opening on April 3 at The Broadhurst Theater. A Streetcar Named Desire is scheduled to run for 16 weeks only. For more information and ticketing, click here.

Melnick: "the center of the stage"

Jodi Melnick is a dancer's dancer...and a critic's dancer, too. I didn't get to see her New York Live Arts show, but I enjoyed this review.

From the Everyday, the Extraordinary: Jodi Melnick at New York Live Arts
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, March 9, 2012

Ralph Lemon exhibition to open at SMH

Studio Museum in Harlem presents

Ralph Lemon

1856 Cessna Road

March 29-May 27 

Drawing from an eight-year project by New York-based movement artist Ralph Lemon (b. 1952) in conjunction with Little Yazoo, Mississippi resident Walter Carter (1907–2010), 1856 Cessna Road explores a friendship that evolved into a close collaboration and features digital animation, large-scale color photographs and a film installation.

Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Eight NY artists speak for themselves

"Speaking for Myself" Trailer from Bert Shapiro on Vimeo.

NewFilmmakers New York presents

Speaking For Myself

A new film directed by Bert Shapiro

Tuesday, March 13, 6pm

Against a background of “unseen” Manhattan, Speaking for Myself tells the inspiring story of eight contemporary artists living in New York City. The film pulls back the curtain to reveal the world through the artists’ eyes, their passions, inspirations, hard work and persistence. Featuring a dancer, a concert pianist, an actress, a Noh performer, a multi-instrumentalist, a tabla virtuoso, an organist and a singing poet, this very personal film is a uniquely fascinating and motivating journey, focusing on the work and passions of these varied performing artists.

Directed by award winning filmmaker, Bert Shapiro, with music by Elliott Sharp, it has attracted critical praise from audiences and film professionals.

Artists from the film, as well as the film’s director will be on hand to answer questions.

The artists

Jenny Lin, pianist
Toshinori Hamada, Kabuki actor
Irma Sandrey, actress
Carlos Fittante, choreographer
Renee Anne Louprette, organist
Elliott Sharp, composer
Samir Chatterjee, tabla virtuoso
Tracie Morris, poet

Tickets: $6
 
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Alyssa Alpine on Michelson's "Devotion"

Devotion Study #1--The American Dancer
by Alyssa Alpine, Culturebot, March 9, 2012

Deadline reminder: "Writing on Dance" workshops

[photo (c)Deborah Feller]

Once again, I'm delighted to be facilitating the Writing on Dance workshop series at New York Live Arts. We'll be meeting this Spring on eight Wednesdays, from May 2 through June 20, 5-7pm.

This season, I hope to welcome not only prospective professional dance writers but also anyone who might enjoy playing with creative approaches to getting closer to dance, understanding and enjoying it more. This workshop welcomes anyone open to disrupting habits of perception, thought and written response.

Please check out all the details and application directions (deadline: March 26, 5pm EST) on NYLA's workshop page here.

Kindly link to this announcement and help me spread the word.

I'm looking forward to exploring dance with you!

Stefanie Nelson's "Prolegomena II" premieres

Stefanie Nelson's new evening-length piece, Prolegomena II, running now at Joyce SoHo, beckons you to plunge in. Anywhere. Really. But when you do, you will have to make your own way. Don't expect help.

As it opens, fog and radically intermittent lighting create dramatic mystery. A woman's body stretches and undulates in the mist, then appears to float, tread air and even disappear through clever theatrics I will not reveal. A solo violin sings of loneliness and mourning.

This is a roughly hour-long work--abstract in form yet informed by a patchwork of personal narratives and meanings. Created by a big collaborative team, it comes massively multi-layered in poetry, music, animations and the performance of Nelson's large and excellent ensemble, more sprawling and unruly than a linear 55 minutes can account for. It's fair to say that Prolegomena II deserves more than a single look, not just for the wonder of the performances but also the chance to dig into its deep pockets. You never know what you might find.

Samples of Nelson's Proximity Spiral
(Joyce SoHo, 2010)

Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup continues tonight at 7:30pm and tomorrow, Sunday, at 2pm at Joyce SoHo. Tonight's program includes a post-performance discussion. For information and tickets, click here.


Joyce SoHo

155 Mercer Street (one block south of Houston, one block west of Broadway)

(directions)

National Association of Latino Independent Producers

ArtsFwd presents

National Association of Latino Independent Producers

Audio Postcard 

(3:31)

A new project providing professional mentoring to New York Latino/a and Native writers, producers and directors of narrative and documentary projects to create and advance new films

This audio postcard is part of a series of 16 about the 2011 NYC Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund grantees as they embark on their innovative projects.

What's in Susan Marshall's big tent?

Susan Marshall & Company in Sawdust Palace (Photo: Rosalie O'Connor)

Since forming in 1985, Susan Marshall & Company has garnered a whopping ten Bessie Awards. Marshall herself, a much sought-after dance maker on the US and international scene, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000. So, fair to say, if you're given a chance to gain insight into this artist's creative process, that's a pretty good deal, right? 92Y's Harkness Dance Festival has a pretty good deal for you, coming up next weekend.

Invited by 2012 curator Doug Varone, Marshall immediately took to the festival's theme, "Stripped/Dressed," which refers to a two-part program. The first part gives the audience an interesting peek behind the choreographic curtain; the second presents fully-produced work.

"I'm approaching this as an opportunity to bring the process out into the open," says Marshall. "We'll dissect a couple of the sections that we'll present later."

She also hopes to show a work-in-progress--"fresh off the presses," she says, although conceptualized several years ago. "Since I'm in the middle of making it, I can remember what I was thinking!"

And it's quite something to remember, as the choreographer explains. "It involves an apparatus, a structure, that would allow the performer to--and this is the strange part--make her breasts move up and down."

She continues, chuckling, "I've become interested in the way the object takes a passive part of the body and gives it agency, and how it's very disorienting to actually see this part of the body dancing of its own volition!"

"I intend the work to be subversive," Marshall says, "And yet it's very hard to approach this sexual, female body in any way that hasn't already been exploited, in a way that doesn't fall into a trope of what's already out there--victim or seductress. It's like walking in a mine field.

"The sexuality is undermined by the humor and even by the ugly bizarreness of it--which I think might be a way forward. I'm very much looking forward to the audience response. I may not succeed, and I think feels like a very comfortable and safe place to have that discussion, to hear what the audience's response is to the work at this stage."

Susan Marshall and Dancers in Sawdust Palace (Photos: Rosalie O'Connor)

In 2007, she premiered Sawdust Palace, a Bard College commission in celebration of British composer Edward Elgar. The piece was created for a Spiegeltent, a portable dance hall. Marshall will revive Sawdust Palace for 92Y's Buttenweiser Hall.

"Elgar crossed the line between low and high art and created music for the dance hall. This caused problems for him in his own lifetime in terms of respectability, being taken seriously. In its time, the 19th Century, a Spiegeltent was used as a dance hall. Now, it's used for intimate circuses or Party Central for festivals or club space. So it has all these connotations, and we just went for it and decided to embrace them all.

"In the Spiegeltent, you have a bar, you have cabaret tables, and that sort of thing. The piece would not work as a stage work; that would be the wrong frame. So, we are transforming Buttenweiser Hall into a very informal theater-in-the- round."

"We have scarf dances. We have burlesque. We have specialty acts that I will leave to the imagination," Marshall says with another chuckle.

Not left to the imagination is anything having to do with creative collaboration. Marshall enjoys sharing what she has learned in years of working closely with her dancers. She's currently preparing for her annual SUMAC program--a play on the company's name and the anagram for Systems for Understanding Movement and Choreography--which will be held at Barnard College, June 11-16.

"It's built off a lot of the systems that we use as a company, but we incorporate
other approaches that we've learned from other choreographers. Many dance artists now work collaboratively and expect that kind of creative exchange with their dancers. We wanted to make sure that dancers have a place to practice that and have the tools and feel empowered to face the demands they may encounter. We wanted to help choreographers use the minds and bodies in the room more fully, and to help them to break out of their stuck places.

"We don't make it open to the public. It's a vulnerable space, and it's a very safe space."

Click here for application information for Marshall's Summer 2012 SUMAC program. (deadline: April 1)

See Susan Marshall & Company at 92Y's Harkness Dance Festival--Friday and Saturday, March 16-17 at 8pm and Sunday, March 18 at 3pm. For ticket information and purchase, click here or call 212-415-5500.

92Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (92nd Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Left, right...and dance

Wendy Osserman Dance Company in Compromised
LIZ MAGIC LASER © 2012

Wendy Osserman, whose recent commissions include works for the Baryshnikov Arts Center, La MaMa and 92Y, plans a new quartet for her Spring season. Compromised is inspired by the inflamed political discourse of the moment, seen through the eyes of this keen and often humorous artist.

Compromised reflects the polarization we are witnessing on the political stage, the extremism of the conflicting truths voiced by Left and Right.  Can they both be right? Are they both wrong? The movement is fueled by the contradictions we find between and within us. 

Dancers Lauren Ferguson, Cori Kresge, Cara Heerdt and Milan Misko collaborate with Osserman in this evening length piece.

The Company’s last New York season, presented in association with Joyce SoHo, featured more is more is more or less inspired by Gertrude Stein’s novel, Ida: “more engages and flows from the beginning. It’s light, humorous and eccentric, with moments of mild cacophony, delighting and providing, as Stein did in her own day, unexpected pleasure.” (David St.-Lascaux, Voice of Dance).

See Compromised, Wednesday-Saturday, April 11-14, 8pm at the Hudson Guild Theatre. Tickets are available at BrownPaperTickets.com or 1-800-838-3006.

Hudson Guild Theatre
441 West 26th Street (between 9th and 10th Streets), Manhattan
(directions)

Your next read: Jeanette Winterson

This book sounds fantastic!

Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’
by Dwight Garner, The New York Times, March 8, 2012

Arts America: new resource for arts lovers

Here's a new Web site that bills itself as the go-to authority on arts and culture across the US:

Arts America gives you the inside story on 2,000+ museums and performing arts organizations in 99 American cities as well as major SummerArts festivals throughout the country. Plus lots of general advice for enjoying the arts, both where you live and when you’re traveling. Arts America provides all the important details for hundreds of arts organizations, including websites, public-transportation options, handicapped access, hours, and admission fees, along with potent strategies for saving money via free days, discounted performances, subscriptions and memberships, and myriad half-price opportunities.

Just click Arts America.

Jimmy Ellis, 74

RIP, Jimmy Ellis.


Jimmy Ellis Dies at 74; Lead Singer in Dance Band Trammps
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, March 8, 2012

Stephen Petronio Company at The Joyce [UPDATE]

Barrington Hinds in The Architecture of Loss
Stephen Petronio Company
(Photo: Steven Schreiber)

My guest and I spent entirely too much time scheming how one or the other of us would take possession of Stephen Petronio's shiny copper shoes by any means necessary. Then again, we had lots of time to dwell on this because Petronio was doing this queer-New Yorker-in-London spin on Steve Paxton's Intravenous Lecture (1970). Petronio turned Paxton's tale of censorship of nudity into an epic of wearing the wrong shirt at the wrong time in front of the wrong bobby and winding up in jail. Petronio talked to us while a male nurse hooked up to an IV drip and later drifted around the stage, dancing and gesticulating, as an assistant wheeled the IV pole just so and quietly gazed at him. Dancing Petronio--the Rubberband Man--was as amazing as his story's pacing and tone. And it turned out to be possible to stop coveting those shoes long enough to think how great it would be to force Rick Santorum to watch this man work.

Gia Kourlas writes an interesting assessment of Petronio's season in "Explorations of Loss, the Personal and the Public" (The New York Times, March 7), although I certainly don't agree with her preference for practice clothes over wearable art. It just wouldn't be Petronio without the sartorial drama. What's more, the new piece--The Architecture of Loss, scored by Valgeir Sigurdsson--presents the perfect integration of movement, scenic design and costuming. Even more than City of Twist (2002), The Architecture of Loss speaks to me of the atmosphere of 9/11. By that, I don't mean just the images of smoke smudging, and later billowing, across the three background panels, but also the strained, shredding and torn costumes (by Gudrun & Gudrun), as fragile as cobwebs, tinted in ash and charcoal, and the movement that seems to be all incessant, risky transition, even when one or another dancer does not move. This dance embodies insecurity. Nothing looks safe. Everything looks violated. And every action exacts more and more of a price.

In the Ethersketch I solo from Underland (2003), guest artist Wendy Whelan--in gleaming gold fringe and necklace and a crotch-high black skirt--seems to be colliding centuries in her costuming. As for her dancing, the sound equivalent of it would be a trumpet's blast--alarming, exciting and over way before you can ever settle down and get used to it.

UPDATE: Petronio has added three more performances of Ethersketch I--one tomorrow and two on Sunday.


Stephen Petronio and Company continues at The Joyce Theater through Sunday, March 11. Click here for schedule and ticket information.

The Joyce Theater
Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Baca's mission? Ballet

Local Soldier's Iraq Trek, From Bullets to Ballet
by Pia Catton, The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2012

Zip the snark

To snark or not to snark? Why is that still the question?

I must respectfully disagree with my colleague, dance critic Robert Johnson, whose recent article--see "Shall we dance: in defense of 'snarky' reviews", NJ.com, March 2--seems to dignify the terms snark and snarky, as appropriate and helpful modes of critique, while sometimes sealing them away in quote marks of inconsistent ambivalence.

Johnson wrote:

In my opinion, snark is an especially appropriate gift for the High-and-mighty. It’s the pin-prick that makes over-inflated reputations shrivel and sputter. Dance is the most wonderful thing, ever, but let’s be clear about this: dances that are boring, derivative, tasteless, badly rehearsed, pretentious and/or willfully opaque do nothing to strengthen the dance community. They do not enhance its reputation, or win converts for the art form. If we say everything is good then nothing is good, depriving truly brilliant artists of the honor they deserve. Great dancers and choreographers, and not critics, set the standards; and without pruning, mediocrity will rise up to choke us.

Snark is not a dance critic's defense against mediocrity in choreography and performance; it is the weapon of the petulant.

If a critic sees something that displeases, he or she can say something without indulging the temptation to lash out and throttle.

Yes, part of the critic's role is to be a smart and reliable Consumer Reporter, especially if the critic is writing for the mainstream press and the general reader. But effective questioning--or even outright negative critique--rarely, if ever, requires snark. And deliberate snark in dance writing does nothing to correct the marginalization and underclass status of dance and dancers in American society. Nor does it further communication between artists and dance journalists to treat artists as if they are nothing more than hypersensitive children pleading for special protection from reality.

Johnson's article derived from a thread of discussion at the recent Dance/NYC State of Dance symposium where a panel--including Johnson, Dance Magazine Editor-in-Chief Wendy Perron, New York Times critic Brian Seibert and dancer-choreographer-critic/blogger Gus Solomons jr--took up the topic, among others. "Among others" becomes necessary here because, as far as I can tell, talk of snark and its worth was the only splash that created a ripple of continued discussion beyond that panel. That happened, probably, because whenever the dance community talks about mainstream dance critics, the Curse of Snark is the primary focus of complaint.

So, I want to know, at this late date, don't we all have something better to talk about? If talk about why snark is good is the only way to give sizzle to a panel on dance criticism--and that might still be the case--we all have huge amount of work to do.

Haring mural restored at LGBT center

A Joyful Mural, Born in a Time of Shame and Fear
by David W. Dunlap, The New York Times, March 6, 2012

We could all use a table like Zicree's

The Table (2011)
a documentary film by Ana Barredo
71 minutes

The Table is a group of writers, directors, actors, producers, editors and anyone else working or hoping to work in the entertainment industry. The group has been meeting every Thursday for almost 20 years to discuss their strategies on breaking into the exclusive club known as Hollywood. The Table's founder is Marc Scott Zicree, best known for The Twilight Zone Companion book. In 2010, part-time indie filmmaker Ana Barredo was invited to attend a Table meeting. Taken just after the first meeting, she decided to pick up her camera and follow the group for a year. The result is a heartwarming story about how these eclectic individuals provide support and inspiration for each other through the heartbreaks and triumphs of making it in Hollywood. -- synopsis, The Table

Couldn't we all use a table like Zicree's, a place where each each person could speak up and say, Here's who I am, here's what I have to offer you, here's what I'm working on, and here's what I need?

When I first learned about Ana Barredo's film--set for a NewFilmmakers screening a couple of weeks ago--I was immediately intrigued. I couldn't get to that event, so I requested a screener. But before I even sat down to watch it, I started thinking about what's lacking in my own area of the arts in New York, the precarious world of dance writing and dance journalism.

Where is our table, our space where we can put aside ego and ambition --and, yes, discouragement--long enough to offer support and practical aid to one another?

I also checked any underlying attitude about Hollywood people. As Zicree says in the film, the Hollywood he knows, through his relationships with his table mates for 20 years, is not the stereotypical one of backstabbers, the super-famous and the shallow.

Barredo, an indie filmmaker, uses a gentle curiosity about people to highlight the ordinary, and often sweet, humanity in the wide range of the thousands of people Zicree has brought together under the shadow of the Hollywood sign. Some of these folks you will recognize--such as Star Trek's Mr. Sulu, and now an out-and-proud LGBT rights advocate, George Takei. Others you will never have heard of, but they are part of the sensitive web of exchange that has made the entertainment industry a little less formidable for talented people gathering each Thursday night in the backroom of a restaurant.

The Table is also a lovely, amusing portrait of Zicree and his wife, Elaine--a couple of people who clearly believe that there's enough good stuff in this world that we can spread it around. It's all about giving.

See this film and think about the possibilities.

Web site for The Table

Tapping his way through college

On the Train, Tap Dancing to Pay for College
by Kristofer Ríos, The New York Times, March 4, 2012

Tobi Tobias sees Mark Morris

Tobi Tobias has been SEEING THINGS, and this time it's Mark Morris. Nice appreciation of the delightful Michelle Yard in Four Saints in Three Acts. It is worrisome to hear that Yard injured herself (torn calf muscle) in the Friday performance. We wish her well.

Fantasias
by Tobi Tobias, SEEING THINGS, ArtsJournal.com, March 3, 2012

Naharin's ‘Hora’

Ohad Naharin and Batsheva Come to BAM With ‘Hora’
by Brian Schaefer, The New York Times, March 2 2012

What's wrong with writing about architecture?

Why Don't We Read About Architecture?
by Allison Arieff, The New York Times, March 2, 2012

A tale of Tanaquil Le Clercq

Dancing Around the Truth
by Holly Brubach, The New York Times, February 15, 2012

Those roots-working Carolina Chocolate Drops

If I live to be 100, I'll never forget the show I saw last night at Schimmel Center for the Arts (Pace University). And if I do live to be 100, it will be, in part, thanks to the joy I get from the Grammy-winning Black roots music group Carolina Chocolate Drops.

On tour to promote their brand new CD for Nonesuch, Leaving Eden, the Drops offered up two hours of astonishing talent, skill, charisma and generosity. If you've only heard them on recording, you really need to get in the same room with them.

Late last month, the Drops lost their mentor, Joe Thompson, a master of the old-time Black string band tradition of the Carolinas, who died at the age of 93. Co-founder Rhiannon Giddens acknowledged the loss, but it became clear that the Drops have one guiding philosophy: Get on with it. The exuberance of their concert performance was all the tribute Thompson would ever need.

Besides Giddens (fiddles, minstrel banjo, kazoo and vocals), the other remaining Drops veteran is co-founder Dom Flemons (banjo, guitar, bones, jug, harmonica and vocals). Former bandmate Justin Robinson departed for other projects. But there are some newcomers: Leyla McCalla, a wonderful cellist, and Hubby Jenkins (guitar, banjo, mandolin, bones and vocals). Everybody's go-to human beatbox guy Adam Matta also appears on the new CD and joined the Drops for a few numbers last evening.

Flemons and colleagues have focused on a pre-blues melange of sounds from southern Black string band traditions that easily find welcome with today's fans of folk, country and Celtic music. They're also lighting out for blues territory now, too--a place that will be particularly fertile for Giddens. "West End Blues"--an homage to North Carolina blues guitarist/singer Etta Baker, who influenced the likes of Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal--showcased not only the rich fluidity of Giddens' opera-trained soprano but its expressive, affecting power. I think her finger-popping "Country Girl" on Leaving Eden, is going to do for the Drops what her sassy rendition of Blu Cantrell's revenge tune, "Hit 'Em Up Style," did for their Grammy-winning Genuine Negro Jig. Much as I hope the beautiful, self-assured Giddens will be Carolina Chocolate Dropping well into her distinguished 90s, I think some smart movie folks should write her a few acting projects worthy of her talents.

Here she is, in 2010, singing a Scottish song...

...and dueting with her sister, Lalenja Giddens Harrington...

...and leading her original bandmates--Flemons with banjo; Robinson doing beatbox at the mic--at Mass MoCa in 2010:

But then, all the Drops are radiant. You easily see that Flemons, in particular, lives to entertain. This man will find every last way to do it--crack the jokes, flip the guitar, break into dance. He loves performing and is impossible to resist. ("If you give to us, we can give it back," he said, needlessly, to the already-smitten, willing audience. "We can make this happen.") But it's also clear that Flemons' consummate facility with instruments and his eagerness to please get their drive from rigorous research and grounding in tradition. Jenkins, who hails from Brooklyn, is also a find--as fast and flashy-of-hand as any Drop, as personable and bearing a voice of substance and authority.

So, ladies...and gentlemen, if the Drops are headed your way--Hello, New England! You're next!--don't hesitate. Get a ticket. In the meantime, hit 'em up for the new CD.

Carolina Chocolate Drops Web site

Leaving Eden on Nonesuch Records

Carolina Chocolate Drops Facebook page

Erwin Frankel, 76

Erwin Frankel Dies at 76; Brought World Music to U.S.
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, March 1, 2012

Sometimes you do need a weatherman

Former Merce Cunningham dancers Silas Riener and Rashaun Mitchell on developing a new piece, post-Cunningham, on Fortnight Journal.

Beautiful dancers. Beautiful.

weathervane (4:31)

dancer bios (6:46)

Streb, Dalva, Morris

She left this phosphorescent contrail of energy behind her

, said Nancy, remembering Elizabeth, young and dancing.

I have an interest in doing only real moves

, Elizabeth had said.

What's an unreal move?

, Nancy remembers asking.

Today, I know the answer to this question.
It only took me three decades, but I got here!

says Nancy.

I read her book as we would read the Tao Te Ching
--as a book of philosophy

, says Nancy.

When I was about two years old,
I trapped a fly in a mason jar

, says Elizabeth.

Smudgy, wiggly, dirty things leaving smudges on the end of the jar. 
I identified with that.

17, dance class, SUNY Brockport:

I was obsessed with extreme action, 
which is what I thought that fly was doing.

Easy Rider. Off to San Francisco, motorcycle.

What content does movement hold that nothing else contains?

, Elizabeth asked herself.

Dangerous?

A condition that establishes a forcefield...,
says the motion anthropologist, as she calls herself,  
searching for what is true about action, 
what everyone could respond to, 
not just dance people.

I think dancers are holy people.

My dancers...they're spatial artists,
people who can take a hit.

It was important that you heard the sounds we made.

I'm looking for what is the rhythm of action.

In the dance world, we have not developed
a vocabulary for movement; 
we've borrowed from the music world.

Space is not lateral or vertical. 
It's incomprehensible, really.

Starting with questions like...
(and here, Trisha Brown is briefly invoked,
her and her dances from Atlantis).


Looking at dancers,
I wondered why
their base of support was always the soles of their feet, 
why they were always upright

, says the action scientist.

There is some talk of dancers throwing up in the wings,
wiping their mouths,
coming back onstage for more.

In dance, they conceal the exaction of every moment

, says the writer.

Elizabeth reveals what this art form exacts.

What STREB does is really action, 
not dance

, says the action hero.

I believe in virtuosity...
to do something that no one else has been able to do.

Excerpts from a conversation between dance critic Nancy Dalva and action architect Elizabeth Streb of Brooklyn's STREB Extreme Action Company on Leap Year Day, appropriately, at Barnard College

*** 

Nancy Dalva is amusing to listen to, an interviewer who brings her own irrepressible dramatics to the proceedings. As a result, you learn as much about her, really, as about the interviewee, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Watching Dalva and Streb work together--Streb staying very rooted and crystal clear--was quite interesting. I'd say they made an instructive team.

After the talk, I greeted and chatted with Dalva briefly, and she reminded me that passion is what keeps us all committed to this art. "If your heart isn't in it, you might as well pack it in," she said. If you heart isn't in it, there's nothing, we both agreed. And Streb, an exemplar, clearly has never backed down from giving her heart what it most wants.

I thought about Nancy's words again last night when I watched Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM Opera House. MMDG made its audience not just applaud but roar. They roarrr! for Four Saints in Three Acts (2000), Morris' vision of the Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein confection and for the singers and the dancers, his fantastic technicians, like perfect porcelain figurines come to life, deployed with precision, surprising intricacy and buoyancy. And there's Maira Kalman's warm, merry set design that would make anyone--saintly or otherwise--break into dance. 

They roarrr! again at the end of A Choral Fantasy, where Morris applies his sharp ear and wily craft to Beethoven's Fantasia in C minor for Piano, Chorus and Ochestra, Op.80. There were moments in A Choral Fantasy that made me want to say, Wait. What exactly just happened? Can I see that again, please? There's that whirlpool, for instance, that suddenly forms in the middle of streaming lateral lines of dancing, disappears, then manifests again. I drew a rough sketch of this in my notebook, perhaps to be able to convince myself later that it actually did exist. The zippy slipperiness of Morris' arrangements and interactions of dancers can dazzle.

I have to admit, though--at risk of bringing wrath down upon my head--that I've yet to feel personally drawn to Morris' work. That's a matter of the heart, and I seem not to be able to do anything about it. Perhaps there are others who would not connect to the dance and performance that make my heart pound.

Mark Morris Dance Group continues tonight and tomorrow night with 7:30pm performances, likely sold out. Get information here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn

(map/directions)