"Making Work" with Miguel Gutierrez

MAKING WORK
Workshop with Miguel Gutierrez

Miguel Gutierrez (Photo by Ves Pitts)

Monday-Friday, December 17-21

10am to 2pm

New York City Center

$200

In this workshop we will focus on the creative process in making body/movement based performance. Participants will spend the week making short pieces, mostly solos. I first offered this workshop in 2003, and have enjoyed its various permutations throughout the years. This is the first time I lead it in NYC in over three years.

Originally my reason for creating this workshop was that I wanted to find out if it was possible to create the conditions to teach something that can’t actually be learned – how to make work. I discovered that through unequal parts making, discussing, improvising and watching the work of other workshop participants, you can uncover and deepen your individual interests, your process and your work.

My interest is in creating a space where inherited notions of dance and performance are critiqued, absorbed or discarded in the service of creating performance that comes from a vital, necessary place and that speaks to a contemporary context. There is no one way to make work.

My teaching is influenced by: years of teaching this workshop, years of seeing shows and talking with various artists about them, my experiences working with many extraordinary performance makers, my experience in making my own work in various scales and in a host of places/conditions, my pseudo-Zen/Feldenkrais belief system that tells me you can’t force anyone to change but can create the conditions for spontaneous learning, and my belief that everyone is a creative artist of potential brilliance and that “genius is as common as dirt.” (John Taylor Gatto)

This workshop is useful for artists who are anywhere in their trajectories as performance makers.

Workshop participation is limited and by selection only. If you are interested please send an email/doc, one page max (500 words or so), with some information about yourself and why you interested in joining the workshop to Miguel@miguelgutierrez.org.

Please explain if you have any schedule conflicts. Priority will be given to those who can attend all of the days and times.

Margaret Morrison's "Home in Her Heart"

Margaret Morrison and Ericka L. Hart in Home in Her Heart

Home in Her Heart, a new play by Margaret Morrison--better known for her sharp and personable tap dancing--deals with the complexities of race and queer identity in a particularly fraught time for the world. It is 1939. Hitler's shadow looms over Great Britain, and two popular American entertainers based in London--a singing, tap dancing male-impersonator and her gifted pianist--face a wrenching decision. They must evacuate. Still, as difficult as it will be to leave secure careers, that may be the least of their problems.

Both women, they are deeply in love and, quite clearly, in lust. One is white and Jewish (Morrison), the other, Black and Christian (Ericka L. Hart). The dilemma of returning together, openly, as a couple to their segregated homeland and, in the case of the pianist, a potentially homophobic family, cause the lovers to painfully confront assumptions they have made about their individual lives and choices, their treasured, private relationship and how they relate to the outside world.

Someone told me that, since its initial showing in April at the 2012 Left Out Festival (created by the play's director Cheryl King), Home in Her Heart has been reworked to beef up the characterizations. After all, a two-character play--and one addressing issues of this magnitude and consequence--really needs to have characters with depth and plausibility. This enhancement, with more backstory for each character, occasionally makes the evening feel protracted. Luckily, the two actresses make it work.

Morrison brings her fine-tuned physical expressiveness and sincerity to every single moment, even if her personality sometimes projects a bit too much for King's tiny Stage Left Studio. Hart with her more understated gleam, her blend of gentleness and contained pride, seems better suited to the closeness of the studio's space. Claire Hicks (Hart's character) is a formerly straight, proper, church-going widow who likes to insist that the dynamic, devoted Jimmie LeRoy (Morrison) seduced her. The pair's erotic chemistry is frank and believable.

If all that's not enough, throw in a few brief tap routines for Morrison in a man-tailored stripe-suit, for which the great Brenda Bufalino was choreography consultant.

Cynthia Hilts contributed the soundtrack of piano solos.

Home in Her Heart continues at Stage Left Studio on November 2, 10, 13 and 27, December 4, 11 and 17 at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Stage Left Studio
214 West 30th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), 6th Floor, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Seeing Valda Setterfield

Valda
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com, October 24, 2012

CollectiveDWNM launches "Write Open" series

Collective for Dance Writing and New Media

presents

Write Open

an ongoing series of workshops and open mics 

covering the spectrum of writing about dance in the digital age

Our first workshop, Embodied Text, will be facilitated by dance writer Cory Nakasue and co-sponsored by Columbia University’s CoLab organization. Ms. Nakasue, associate editor at The Dance Enthusiast, offers movement and theater improvisation exercises for people interested in writing about dance.

Wednesday, November 28 (6pm-8pm)

Barnard Hall, Room 404
Barnard College

Broadway at 117th Street, Manhattan

(#1 to 116th Street)

Enter the gate on the west side of Broadway at 117th Street. Barnard Hall is straight ahead.

Limited to 20 participants
RSVP required: collectivedwnm@gmail.com

Admission: by donation but free to registered members of CollectiveDWNM

Future Write Open workshops will be offered by David Parker, Eva Yaa Asantewaa and other facilitators. And watch for Write Open open mic events, coming in 2013!

Cory Nakasue is an associate editor at The Dance Enthusiast, and former reporter for Dance Channel TV. She has contributed writing to Buzzine and The Dance Theater Workshop blog, and has served as an advisor, adjudicator, and moderator for Dancenow/NYC, Murray Spalding, London Arts Board, and London Contemporary Dance Center. She has spent over 10 years dancing professionally in Los Angeles and London, England, working with artists that include Rebecca Bobele, Stephanie Gilliland, and Mark Murphy. She choreographs for film, video, live arts events and installations and is the co-artistic director of SPINE, an art collective based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She owns and operates Body Intelligence, a service that provides movement education and therapy for groups and individuals. As a part of this service she offers community classes in Pilates, yoga, and dance conditioning in her Brooklyn studio. Her live projects and dance films have been screened and produced internationally. She completed her postgraduate studies in theater, choreography, and contemporary performance practices at California Institute of the Arts and Middlesex University.

This American Dance: Monica Bill Barnes & Company at Skirball

This is sort of a follow-up to Yeah. What Ira Said. So, read that first. Then hurry back....

Okay, welcome back!

So, as I left NYU's Skirball Center last night, Ira Glass had just retaken the stage after the concert and was asking the audience how many of them had been dance fans before tonight, how many dance shows they had attended in the last year, and the like. I'd wondered about that, too, since it looked more like an NPR audience--his NPR audience--and it probably was.

In any case, it's well known that Glass and his audience now love Monica Bill Barnes & Company since Glass welcomed Barnes and troupe into a This American Life event shown in "more than 600 movie theatres across the US, Canada and Australia." Barnes & Co. did so well with that audience, that what was originally planned as a one-shot appearance--and a kind of victory lap-- at Skirball has been extended: If you can still get a ticket (try here), you can see MBB & Co. with Ira Glass today at 3pm.

If you do get to go, I hope you like glitter, because you'll see lots of it glinting from Kelly Hanson's costumes and gusts of it flying through the air. So much that Glass--unexpectedly, because he'd missed a crucial email--had to get on stage and vamp for four minutes--with a nifty balloon trick and one awkward story--while stage hands cleaned up half the stage.

I happen to love glitter and soul music and perfectly calibrated physical comedy. So, when it comes to Barnes, all good. Give up your leisurely Sunday if you agree.

Anna Bass and Monica Bill Barnes dance Luster (photo by Christopher Duggan)

There's something about Anna Bass, Barnes's partner in crime, that reminds me of Carol Burnett; both have genius. Barnes, I can't quite describe. She is a performer unto herself. Barnes and Bass often dance side by side, at great length, in related though not identical movement. I just realized last night that I must choose. I can just go ahhhh and settle into enjoying the talented Bass or I can stay on high alert for all the rapidfire, formidable changes Barnes goes through and try to figure her out. I can switch, but I can't watch both.

The nearly two-hour program includes two lively Barnes/Bass duets--Luster (a New York City premiere) and I Feel Like--you know, the one with the James Brown sex machine song? It also features Mostly Fanfare (a 2010 trio with Christina Robson and chairs gorgeously held aloft in the dancers' jaws) and Everything Is Getting Better All The Time (a 2011 quartet including Robson and an adorable Giulia Carotenuto). Because, for Barnes, the glamor of the stage and its performers is clearly something to be celebrated even while she's poking affectionate fun at it all, lighting designer Jane Cox makes a fantastic team player. 

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place, Manhattan
(between Washington Square South and West 3rd Street)
(map/directions)

Get ready for Reker at New York Live Arts

 

Above and below: Steven Reker wrecks his own scenery (photos by Ian Douglas)

 

When it comes to stretching a note, Steven Reker--shown above with a ripped-up floor panel from his new work, Specific Ocean--really, really knows how. The rock musician/dancer/choreographer and his band of dancing musicians and musician/dancers, People Get Ready, are tearing it up at New York Live Arts this weekend. Reker's driving indie rock has a heady intensity, and his choreography, an uncomplicated playfulness and gusto. I wish I could have made out all of the lyrics (or had a lyric sheet), but that's not an insurmountable problem: Just go with it. I'm thinking the sound/movement stuff with the floor panels (like the swinging of corded mics in a previous Reker work) doesn't actually add much though, as you can see from the terrific Ian Douglas photos above, it can be picturesque).

Above: Aaron Mattocks's pas de deux with guitar. Below: Some of the 7-member People Get Ready crew (photos by Ian Douglas)

The band's first album is now available from Brassland Records at Bandcamp! Click here. The show is available at New York Live Arts tonight at 7:30pm, tomorrow at 9:30pm. Info here. If there are tickets to be had, you can get them here.

New York Live Arts

219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan

(directions)

Legends, then and now: Graham and Bausch

What becomes a legend most...when she's gone?

For Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, what becomes her legendary mentor now is a mix of classic repertory works and new commissions designed to take a fresh approach to Graham themes. In seasons past, these themes have explored "Political Dance" and psychological "Inner Landscapes." For its 2013 program at The Joyce Theater (February 20-March 3), the company will offer "Myth & Transformation." This collection will include Phaedra--unseen for a decade--and other Graham works inspired by Greek myths and legends plus the New York premiere of Doug Varone's Lamentation Variation and a restaging of Richard Move's The Show (Achilles Heels), originally created for Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project. In addition, along with a new piece by Nacho Duato, the troupe will bring Graham's Rite of Spring to Carolina Performing Arts (Chapel Hill, NC) as part of a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the Stravinsky piece.

From the original cast of The Show (Achilles Heels). Rasta Thomas (l) and Miguel Anaya (r)
photo by ©JulietaCervante

Yesterday afternoon, the troupe previewed samples from "Myth & Transformation" in its new home--the former, and legendary, Merce Cunningham studio at Westbeth. Varone's quartet for men--part of the company's commission of interpretations of Graham's iconic solo, Lamentation--evokes a sense of the early HIV/AIDS crisis, of dynamic interconnections, interdependence, loss, readjustment and healing within a community at a time when change is the only constant. The Show (Achilles Heels), with its snappy, game-show setting and androgynously-sexy protagonist (played now by Lloyd Mayor, a breakout talent hailing from the Isle of Man), will give freer play to its young dancers' expressive capabilities and seems pitched to draw younger audiences.

[And look what I found! Here's Lloyd Mayor in a video interview, a year or so ago, talking about life at the Rambert School and mentioning his dream of getting into the Graham company.]

BAM drew a decidedly mature, largely upscale crowd of fans of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch for last night's sold-out US premiere of Bausch's final work of surrealist absurdity and romance. "...como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si..." unfolds across a stage floor glowing with cool, white light like a  lightbox or a polar ice sheet, which makes its imagery (and designer Marion Cito's elegant, sensuous gowns) absolutely pop.

With one intermission, the evening runs a giddy 2 hours and 40 minutes--a pretty steep commitment--but the Bausch ensemble rewards attention with alternately gorgeous, tender, clever and amusing scenarios and performances. The begowned women--and Bausch's movement for them as individuals--have always impressed me more than the guys darting around them in their serviceable black shirts and slacks; the luminous female standouts here in "...como el musguito" include Morena Nascimento and Ditta Miranda Jasjfi. But Fernando Suels Mendoza has a wonderful bit as a flirtatious fellow effusively greeting the ladies as they approach and pass. Once you watch him perform this segment, you continue to follow and welcome everything he does.

Mind the cracks, though--those "Antarctic ice" cracks opening up in that glowing white floor. Beneath all of that color and movement and beauty and fun and abandon lie completely ignored hints of disaster in the making.

The company premiered this work just a few weeks before Bausch's cancer diagnosis and shocking, sudden death. With 20/20 hindsight, it appears prescient, a farewell and a gift of mad, extravagant love to her dancers and her audience.

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch continues at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House tonight and October 20, 23, 24, 26, 27 at 7:30pm and October 21 at 3pm. Tickets are sold out but, for information, click here.

Yeah. What Ira said.

Monica Bill Barnes & Company in Thank You and Good Night (photo by Steven Schreiber)

The utterly charming Monica Bill Barnes & Company will be at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts with This American Life host Ira Glass tomorrow and Sunday (but this is not an announcement--because you already know that, right? And, if not, you can find out more here.)

I'm bringing this up because Glass said something about his experience of seeing Barnes' troupe for the first time that I'd like to share. I'll explain why later. Here's his quote:

NPR's Ira Glass

I was inspired to make our recent cinema event after seeing MBB & CO. in June 2011. I'll be honest, I don't go to a lot of dance, but her show was the most charmingly alive dance performance I've ever seen. Literally, while it was going on, all I could think was, ‘I want to see this again. How do I see this again? How do I bring everyone I've ever met to this?’ So I created that cinema event in May 2012 where we performed an episode of our show onstage at Skirball and beamed it into movie theaters, with dances by MBB & CO. Afterwards, the most common question I was asked was 'Who were those dancers?' People kept coming up to me saying 'I don't like dance. I don't go to dance. I want to see them again.' Which, yes, is a weird thing to say about an entire art form, but the point is, they won a lot of fans that night and I think when people see a full MBB & CO. show, they'll be even more wowed.

As it turns out, I feel this way about a lot of the dance and movement-based performance I see--I want to "bring everyone I've ever met to this." I want a lot of what I see to not fade away so fast--like after a night or a few nights or, if the artists are lucky, a couple of weekends. I want it to be seen by more than the usual suspects. And I want it to be pondered and processed and taken to heart and argued about and remembered. I want it to influence things beyond dance, beyond the arts. I want it on the American breakfast table and at the water cooler and on the supermarket queue and in the neighborhood bar and in the board room and in the war room.

Good going to Barnes for getting Glass's attention and his joyful response. Her efforts are good for her, of course, and possibly good for us all. What do you think, maybe in 2013 and going forward more of us can step up our magic(k) creativity and raise the outside world's awareness about what's doing in these excellent, essential little villages we call the dance communit(ies)? Let's work on ways to bring everyone we meet to this.

Surveying Manila's contemporary art scene

Works from Bastards of Misrepresentation

TOPAZ ARTS will participate in presenting Bastards of Misrepresentation: New York Edition, curated by artist Manuel Ocampo, featuring 20 leading contemporary artists from Manila. In addition to the Woodside-based TOPAZ ARTS, hosts for this multi-venue exhibit, on view October 27 to December 30, include:

Queens Museum of Art/Partnership Gallery
Crossing Art in Queens
NYU Asian/Pacific/American Institute
Tyler Rollins Fine Art

Bastards of Misrepresentation is a show about the cultural scene happening in the Philippines yet is not a definitive show about Philippine art. The 20 artists included represent the “now” of contemporary art in Manila whose works entice and challenge perceptions. Many of the artists have been recognized by the country’s most prestigious awards from the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Artist Awards and the Ateneo Art Awards, and are establishing reputations in Europe, Australia, and Asia, while locally others are highly visible as performers in the underground art, performance and music scene. With an Asian Cultural Council award for the exhibition, TOPAZ ARTS has invited three of the artists from Manila — Yason Banal, Lena Cobangbang and Maria Jeona Zoleta — to participate as Artists-in-Residence, creating new works, site-specific installations and performances.

Artists

Poklong Anading, Yason Banal, Bea Camacho, Valeria Cavestany, Lena Cobangbang, Maria Cruz, Gaston Damag, Dex Fernandez, Arvin Flores, Dina Gadia, David Griggs, Robert Langenegger, Romeo Lee, Pow Martinez, Jayson Oliveria, Carlo Ricafort, Timo Roter, Gerry Tan, MM Yu, Maria Jeona Zoleta

For complete exhibition details, including artist information and a schedule for each venue, click here.

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and guests discuss "Life and Movement"

The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation of NYPSI 

presents

Life and Movement

Friday, October 26 (7pm-9pm)
Free and open to the public
Information

How does the study of evolution, coordination dynamics, sports, social interactions, and aesthetics help us understand movement and life? In this roundtable, we will explore: movement and objects as distinctively different "things" to study; coordination dynamics and intrinsic dynamics and tendencies; kinesthesia; the evolution of social coordination; how, in the living company of others, we are both challenged and supported; the value of nurturing and pursuing a moving life with all its risks and challenges.

Moderator: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Panel: Linnda Caporael, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, and J. A. Scott Kelso
 
Participant bios:

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (moderator) is a philosopher whose first life was as a dancer/choreographer, professor of dance/dance scholar. She has an ongoing Courtesy Professor appointment in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon where she taught periodically in the 1990s. She has published numerous articles in humanities, science, and art journals. Her books include The Phenomenology of Dance; The Roots of Thinking; The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies; The Roots of Morality; The Primacy of Movement; The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader. She received an M.A. in Dance and a Ph.D. in Dance and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin where she also studied for but did not complete a second doctorate in evolutionary biology.

Linnda R. Caporael is a professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her research concerns biology from a cultural perspective and culture from a biological perspective. She has written on a variety of topics including cooperation, group coordination, social identity, and the attribution of human characteristics to animals and machines. She is an associate editor for Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution, and Cognition, on the editorial board of Psychological Review, and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences (APS). Her published work has appeared in numerous journals and edited books including Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles (2nd ed.). She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Linfield College (Oregon), received the 2011-2012 Samuel H. Graf Faculty Achievement Award and was the 2008-2009 Allen & Pat Kelley Faculty Scholar. Currently he serves as conference chair for the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport. He is the co-editor with M. Austin of Cycling-Philosophy for Everyone. He has published articles in journals such as Sports, Ethics, and Philosophy and Proteus, and written chapters for both scholarly and popular imprint anthologies on sports and risk, the Olympic Games, soccer, hunting, sailing, martial arts, childhood and sports, and literature. Pedalling and swimming are his favored ways of moving about in life.

J.A. Scott Kelso grew up in Derry, N. Ireland and was educated at universities in Belfast, Calgary and Wisconsin. He was senior research scientist at Yale's Haskins Laboratories for 7 years before moving to Florida Atlantic University in 1985 to take up the Glenwood and Martha Creech Chair in Science and found The Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. He is also Visiting Professor of Computational Neuroscience at The University of Ulster's Intelligent Systems Research Centre (Magee Campus, Derry). Kelso's research uses a combination of non-invasive brain imaging techniques, measures of real-time behavior and the concepts, methods and tools of coordination dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains)-individually and together-coordinate behavior on multiple levels, from cells to cognition and social behavior. Kelso is a Fellow of AAAS, APA, APS and SEP. In 2007 he was named Pierre de Fermat Laureate and in 2011 was the recipient of the Bernstein Prize. He serves or has served on the Editorial Board of 12 scientific journals and monographs, and is Founding Editor of the Springer Series Understanding Complex Systems.

Helix Center (Marianne & Nicholas Young Auditorium)
247 East 82nd Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

CollectiveDWNM at the Bessies: Photos!

Thanks to CollectiveDWNM Leadership Circle interns Hayley Muth (who coordinated our live-tweeting project), Donna Mason, Dale Amanda O'Reilly and Garnet Henderson for your work at the 2012 Bessie Awards at The Apollo! Check out a couple of Donna's great photos of some of us on our site here.

Honoring dance critic Jill Johnston

The New Museum

in conjunction with

Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater Fifty Years Later: Movement Research in Residence

presents

“Talking about my generation”: 

Jill Johnston and the Critic as Subject

Critical Correspondence co-editors Aaron Mattocks and Marissa Perel honor the celebrated writer and critic Jill Johnston, whose experimental and personal voice communicated the culture of the interdisciplinary 1960s art scene. In light of Johnston’s innovative contributions to the form, this conversation considers contemporary criticism and the writer as subject. Speakers include David Velasco (critic for Artforum) and Claudia La Rocco (critic for the New York Times). The event culminates as Movement Research artists perform readings of reviews on dance and performance.

Readers:

Thom Donovan
Ariel Goldberg
Cassie Petersen
Christine Shan Shan Hou

Sunday, November 4 (3pm)
Admission: $8 (general public) $6 (museum members)
1/2 gallery admission with same-day event ticket purchase

Information

New Museum
235 Bowery Street, Manhattan
(map/directions/visitors information)

Who won Bessies?

2012 New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies)

presented at The Apollo Theater

and hosted by Elizabeth Streb

October 15, 2012

Outstanding Production ("in large capacity venues--over 400 seats")

Event by Merce Cunningham
Park Avenue Armory

Outstanding Performer ("in large capacity venues--over 400 seats")

Silas Riener in Split Sides by Merce Cunningham
Brooklyn Academy of Music

Outstanding Production ("stretching the boundaries of a culturally specific form")

La Edad de Oro by Israel Galván
The Joyce Theater

Outstanding Performer ("stretching the boundaries of a culturally specific form")

Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards "for sustained achievement in performance and her work with Jason Samuels Smith at The Joyce Theater"

Outstanding Production ("performed in a small capacity theater--under 400 seats")

Antigone Sr./Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church by Trajal Harrell
New York Live Arts

Outstanding Performer ("performed in a small capacity theater--under 400 seats")

Omagbitse Omagbemi "for sustained achievement in the woks of Keely Garfield, Ralph Lemon, David Gordon, Urban Bush Women, and many others"

Outstanding Production ("in the context of the expanding field of contemporary arts, dance, and performance practice")

The Thank-you Bar by Emily Johnson
New York Live Arts

Outstanding Performer ("in the context of the expanding field of contemporary arts, dance, and performance practice")

Nicolle Mannarino in Devotion Study #1 by Sarah Michelson
The Whitney Museum

Outstanding Revived Work

The Shining by Yvonne Meier, presented by New York Live Arts
The Invisible Dog Art Center

Outstanding Visual Design

Doris Dziersk, set design for Blessed by Meg Stuart
New York Live Arts

Outstanding Sound Design or Composition

Flamme Kapaya and band for more more more...future by Faustin Linkyekula, The French Institute's Crossing the Line Festival
The Kitchen

Outstanding Emerging Choreographer

Rashaun Mitchell for NOX
Danspace Project

2012 Juried Bessie Award recipient

Souleymane Badolo
Awarded by 2012 Jury: Lar Lubovitch, Yvonne Rainer and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

2012 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance

Paul Taylor

2012 Bessie Award for Service to the Field of Dance

Alice Tierstein

***

Become a member of the New York Dance and Performance League. Email the bessies@gmail.com to find out how.

Unite against violence.

Eva for Gibney Dance Center's Domestic Violence Awareness Month photo project, 2012

For information on Gibney Dance Center's Domestic Violence Awareness Month activities and how you can participate, see my September 29 post here.

CollectiveDWNM tweets The Bessies!

Going to the Bessies Awards at The Apollo on Monday?

Look for Collective for Dance Writing and New Media's tables at the exits. Come by and say hi--and more! We're live tweeting and you can, too.

Please help us share this news!

Official Bessies hashtag: #TheBessies

For complete Bessies information, click here.

For more fun like this, join CollectiveDWNM as a member or intern! We're at collectivedwnm.com.

We hope to celebrate, but even if...

Toshi Reagon

Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely

invite you to a

Post Election Show 

No Matter What!

Friday, November 9 (9:30pm)

@Joes Pub

featuring Judith Casselberry, Marcelle Davies Lashley, Stephanie McKay, Fred Cash, Adam Widoff, Bobby Burke

Tickets and info here

About Toshi Reagon and BigLovely

Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette Street, near Astor Place (Manhattan)

Somewhere with Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay

Have you seen Ava DuVernay's dazzling film I Will Follow? If you haven't, that's your weekend assignment. Netflix stands ready to help. Watch it, not only instantly but right this instant.

For the rest of us, there's something new from DuVernay, as the Times' film critic Manohla Dargas explains below.

Small Pleasures, Scattered Amid Struggles
‘Middle of Nowhere,’ Directed by Ava DuVernay
by Manohla Dargis, The New York Times,  October 11, 2012

Judson When?: Trajal Harrell at Danspace Project

Yeah, I love Bryan, too.

Yes. 

If I have to come home with an earworm, 

I want it to be this song. 

Every day and all days. 

So, thank you, Trajal Harrell.

So...on to Danspace Project's PLATFORM 2012: Judson Now:

Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure)/Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (M2M)

This mouthful of a title--crafted by dancer-choreographer Trajal Harrell--tells me a few things: Harrell is a man with much on his mind, much of it overlapping, much that does not get thrown away. The Judson Church pioneers are in there, somewhere, and the theater of ancient Greece and the voguing balls and all of the variously-sized (XS, S, M, jr., L, XL) manifestations of his preoccupation with the concept of a collision between queer Harlem and the glory days of downtown postmodern dance. There's also an inclination to play with our heads: I'm going to tell you something or show you something "in all sincerity" and then I'm going to pull it out from under you. You know that thing that just happened? It wasn't what you thought it was. You know that thing I just said? Forget it.

This last trait is slightly annoying but has its place. Harrell seems, simultaneously, to want to seduce and to ward off intimacy. In hallowed St. Mark's Church, which already bears its own extensive arts history, he has overlapped ancient theater, Judson Memorial Church--home of early postmodern dance titans, and the ballrooms of Harlem. With this unlikely theatrical mélange for a moody setting, he performs the (forced) marriage of ironic distancing to emoting, virtuosity, passion and potential catharsis. 

He will just sit there, looking pained, along with dancer Thibault Lac, looking blank, while we simply listen to the entirety--the entirety!--of Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain." When was the last time that happened in a dance show? Audacious spliced with irritating (and I like Adele; I like Harrell, too).

It makes me think of my own youthful musical obsessions, not too far from this (and some of them I still claim) and how they fired creativity. And then I think I get a little more about Harrell.

It's all a bit much. Interjections of words--impassioned, yet kind of silly. Some dancing--ecstatic, yet trailing into the ordinary. The blues sitting there like the smug papa of all of the other music Harrell has gathered around it. Lengthy, lulling passages of things like Ondrej Vidlar intoning this command--"Don't stop"--stretching those words and playing with the inflection and tone (muttered, gentle, insistent, menacing) while a pained-looking Harrell sits and squirms. Harrell's unexpected, confident singing is too much--luscious and indulgent in equal measure. At times, he reminds me of Antony; at others, a holy-roller getting that (really, really) old-time religion.

I've grooved to Harrell's succulent dancing more in other works than here. In this piece, Thibault Lac, nearly walks off with everything. Though impossibly gawky in appearance, he transforms himself into a voguing superstar with slippery back, crazy legs, arms moving like whips, batons, propellers that blaze into near invisibility. (Don't think! WERK!!! WERK!!! Don't think!) Yes, please. More Lac.

The three men, draped in filmy, flowing black "vestments" (by Complexgeometries) could be ancient ritual celebrants or high-fashion models in little black frocks. These roles crash and clash. I'm waiting for these strutting priests/priestesses to "take us there"--to that place of catharsis--but it's not happening because the models, of course, are making us hold back and just look, sit back and just watch.

Oh...one more great earworm from Judson Church is Ringing. Love it.

Trajal Harrell at Danspace Project tonight and tomorrow, 8pm. Sold out, but there's a wait list. Click here for information.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Body and Soul podcast: Review of Raimund Hoghe at BAC

The latest Body and Soul podcast episode features my audio review of German choreographer Raimund Hoghe's Pas de deux at Baryshnikov Arts Center, with a beautiful performance by Takashi Ueno.

Download the mp3 or subscribe (please do!) here.

Pas de deux continues tonight and tomorrow at 7:30, at Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Howard Gilman Performance Space, 450 West 37th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. For information and tickets, click here.

Thanks for listening to Body and Soul!

Clear your calendar: Latin American Cultural Week is November 9-19

There's lots to enjoy--music, dance, film, theater, literature, visual and performing arts from or influenced by the diverse cultures of Latin America. Presenting organizations and venues include the World Music Institute, Sotheby's, Christie's, Instituto Cervantes, Praxis International Art, Brazilian Endowment for the Arts, Museo del Barrio, Americas Society, Centro Civico Cultural Dominicano, Repertorio Español and GlamourTango.

• Music & Dance
  
click here

• Theater
  
click here

• Visual Arts
  
click here

• Art Fair
  
click here

• Literature & Conferences
  
click here

• Film
  
click here

• Auctions
  
click here

Get a complete schedule of events and venues at Latin American Cultural Week.

The Kronos Quartet invites young composers

Click here to read about The Kronos Quartet's Under 30 Project, a commissioning program designed to support the creation of new music by young artists.

The deadline is November 16. Grab an application and guidelines here.

Art made for a participating audience of one

A Waking Dream Made Just for You
by Chris Colin, The New York Times, October 4, 2012

Dance New Amsterdam update

Get an update on the situation at Dance New Amsterdam at a special town hall meeting this Friday at 4:30pm, just announced:

We know you all have had questions, comments and concerns. So here is your opportunity to talk about it. Come join us to ask your questions and get some answers regarding DNA's progress in our fundraising and our turnaround plans. For more information, please contact Mari Meade Montoya at mmontoya@dnadance.org

Dance New Amsterdam
280 Broadway (entrance at 53 Chambers St.), Manhattan
(map/directions)
 

Following Ava DuVernay

She’s a Graduate of an Unusual Film School
Ava DuVernay and ‘Middle of Nowhere’
by Carrie Rickey, The New York Times, October 5, 2012

This road is officially opened: Paseo

This road is officially opened...

There is no road to nowhere, only to what is still here. 

-- La Bruja

Bobby Sanabria

"As this has never been done before, we have no idea what we're doing today," Joanna Haigood half-joked at the launch of Paseo, less a walking tour than a movable, danceable feast, a peripatetic block party that, for one delightful hour, would twist through the South Bronx neighborhoods of Hunts Point and Longwood. Haigood, a site-specific choreographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, had teamed up with musical director Bobby Sanabria (multiple Grammy winner) and Dancing in the Streets executive and artistic director Aviva Davidson to create this public celebration.

La Bruja (photo by Rosalia Rivera)

With hip hop poet La Bruja's blessings, the procession stepped off from Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education on Simpson Street. Threatening clouds hung low, but spirits flew as we followed the lead of the ebullient Sanabria and his musicians, passing dancers on fire escapes and brownstone stoops. Cries of "Que vivo, Puerto Rico" went up as we passed balconies flying the island's flag.

Haigood had warned of the temptation to stop along the way: "Paseo is best enjoyed as a stroll, a promenade," she said. Indeed, it was hard not to linger with the guitarists and dancing couple in front of Nico Laundromat, or the curbside conga players, or the four doo wop singers, or the chorus in their smart white suits and skirts or even to stop to comfort a couple of unnerved cats who scampered away from our surging procession.

Yes, my lower back and feet talked to me long after I returned home, but still....

Rumbas in the park till past midnight in the canyons of da’ projects in the summer. 

Couldn’t sleep? Who cares, you didn’t want to.

--Bobby Sanabria

To read an excerpt from Bobby Sanabria's Nuyorican Memories, about his youth in the historic, still vibrant South Bronx, click here.

Hmmm....an Idea Party! Good idea!

Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) announces...

In partnership with OurGoods, we have launched Connect the Blocks, an initiative to help dance makers and artists learn to share and barter resources in an increasingly competitive economic climate. The notion is that, by finding ways to share resources, we can accomplish more together than we would by staying in continued competition for scarce resources. 

Upcoming Connect the Blocks Idea Parties--Wednesday, October 10 (6:30pm) and Thursday, October 25 (6:30pm)--will be facilitated meetups where participants brainstorm practical solutions to artistic and production challenges.

Location: Downtown Art, 59-61 East 4th Street, 7th Floor, Manhattan

RSVP: rsvp@fabnyc.org
Get more information on these two idea parties on Facebook here.

Help the cause. Tweet this message today:

Get practical solutions to artistic & production challenges at Idea Party http://ow.ly/eg2l6 @FourthArtsBlock @OurGoods #connecttheblocks

Body and Soul podcast: Listen.: JoAnna Mendl Shaw

JoAnna Mendl Shaw

Subscribe to Body and Soul podcast* and listen to JoAnna Mendl Shaw, choreographer and artistic director of The Equus Projects, as she talks about how an Arabian horse named Hamlet influenced her creative process.

The Equus Projects

JoAnna Mendl Shaw bio

*Subscribe to Body and Soul podcast (free!) here:

http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

My review of Philadanco at The Joyce Theater

Here's my review of Philadelphia's great dance troupe, Philadanco, just posted on DanceMagazine.com: Click here.

Just you and I, forever and a day: Rob List's "Play By Ear"

As the audience arrived, Rob List--slender, bearded, professorial-looking,  American ex-pat based in Amsterdam--stood quietly just inside the door to The Chocolate Factory's performance space in silent welcome. He was dressed more like some of us and could have been one of us, just in off the street. He did not look like a man set to perform something called Play By Ear for the next 70 minutes.

When we had settled in, he casually strolled over to say, "So, welcome. Thanks for coming...." I don't remember if he said anything more before dropping into a crouch and, with pieces of charcoal in each hand, drawing delicate black squiggles on the white floor. A shape--clearly, a head--emerged, and then shoulders, as he worked in near silence. The only sound came from the squeak of the charcoal and his shoes as he made way for the elegantly rendered, now tapering image. I was struck by List's gentleness and drawn in by his total concentration and the minimalist dance of hands and charcoal.

At last, he stood, gazed at his drawing and turned his back on it. The space has another doorway into what must be a small greenroom, and a woman appeared, flipping a switch to throw the space into darkness. A second later, the light came back on, and List crouched again, this time facing away from us. Although his body cast its own, natural shadow, the drawing looked like a constructed, static shadow as he made minor rearrangements in his crouch--shifting a knee, a foreleg; slightly wriggling his upperback--and let his fingers dip down or take brief "walks" along the floor, making a "shusshing" sound as they dragged. Poised over one flexed foot and one kneecap, his upperbody sloshing side to side, List seemed profoundly human and un-dancey, yet strangely mesmerizing. He brought us into each moment with him. I thought I heard a morsel of music in the air, coming from some far source, or perhaps I imagined it.

It was a long passage. By the time the audience got the sense of knowing that man's back quite well, List threw us a surprise box of loud, colorful weirdness by way of Tian Rotteveel (who dances and also designed the nightmarishly cinematic sound score) and the thoroughly engaging dancing of Constance Neuenschwander. What he didn't count on was an unexpected finale from a cricket who somehow--I feel, appropriately--found its way into the space.

Last week, Brian Rogers, The Chocolate Factory's artistic director, urged me to check out what List had to offer. In turn, I am urging you. I can't promise you a cricket, but you never know.

Rob List's Play By Ear continues tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. Information and tickets here and 212-352-3101.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions)

Neil Gaiman's rules of the road--for writers

Neil Gaiman's 8 Rules for Writing
by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, September 28, 2012

When dance and the art world dance close

Performance at the Beginning of the 21st Century
by Aaron Mattocks, The Performance Club, October 2, 2012

Body and Soul: Listen.: Camille A. Brown

Camille A. Brown (photo by Christopher Duggan)

Dance artists who happen to be both female and Black often find it tough to forge a viable, sustainable career, says Camille A. Brown, the well-regarded choreographer and Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers. They need role models. Subscribe to Body and Soul podcast*, and listen as this inspiring artist shares her experience of taking nourishment from talking with young dance students of color.

Camille A. Brown bio

Company site

*Subscribe to Body and Soul podcast (free!) here:

http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Louis Armstrong House and Museum gets a curator

Louis Armstrong House in New York hires first curator
by Chris Barton, Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2012

How to subscribe to "Body and Soul" podcast

On occasion, you might have found a broken link for the subscription page for Body and Soul podcast. That has been fixed. If you'd like to subscribe and get all the latest segments, try this link now by clicking or copying:

http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml

Thanks for your support of InfiniteBody blog and Body and Soul podcast!

Body and Soul: Listen.: Steven Reker

Steven Reker (photo by Liliana Dirks-Goodman/New York Live Arts), above and in a video clip from WNYC's SoundCheck

                  
Click here to subscribe to Body and Soul podcast in iTunes and listen to the multitalented Steven Reker (dancer, choreographer, musician, songwriter) talk about "creating sonic landscapes" with his band of musicians and dancers, People Get Ready.

People Get Ready/Steven Reker will present the world premiere of Specific Ocean at New York Live Arts (October 18-20). Prior to the October 18th show, there will be a conversation about 'Where Contemporary Dance and Pop Music Intersect in NYC Today" at 6:30pm, moderated by Michael Azerrad. Information and tickets are available here.

Steven Reker bio

People Get Ready Web site

People Get Ready artist page on Brassland

To subscribe to Body and Soul podcast, click here.

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Body and Soul: Listen.: Todd Shalom

Todd Shalom

Click here to subscribe to Body and Soul podcast in iTunes and listen as Elastic City's director/founder Todd Shalom takes us on an improvised walk to his local post office.

And click here for information on Catastrophe!, the final "way" of the Elastic City season, with Spanish artist Xavier Acarin--tomorrow, Tuesday, October 2, 7pm, on the Lower East Side.

Todd Shalom

Elastic City

To subscribe to Body and Soul podcast, click here.

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

The Met's art through the eyes of Kalup Linzy

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art 

presents

Artists on Artworks with Kalup Linzy
Friday, October 19, 6:30–7:30pm

See the Met's collections through the eyes of Kalup Linzy, a Brooklyn-based performance artist.

Tickets—free, but required—will be distributed 30 minutes prior to the talk.


About Kalup Linzy:
Artspace interview
New York Times feature

Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, Manhattan

(directions)