Leaning in too far: TV's view of strong women goes bonkers

TV’s New Wave of Women: Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane
by Heather Havrilesky, The New York Times, March 12, 2013

Love brings surprises: "The White Piece" by John Scott Dance at La MaMa

Members of John Scott Dance in The White Piece (Photos by Chris Nash)

top photo: Philip Connaughton and Rebecca Reilly; bottom photo: John Scott and Haile Takabo

Dancer-choreographer John Scott--who has offered dance workshops for Dublin's Centre for Care for Survivors of Torture and also dealt with his performers' knotty, desperate immigration asylum cases--does not make art that speaks directly to the pain he has witnessed and internalized. With a field of trained dancers as well as survivors of injustice whose bodies carry concealed stories, he makes bighearted, absurd rituals of healing. The White Piece--its title referencing the symbolic color of purification, sanctity and, for some cultures, mourning--is one such work. Presented at La MaMa now through March 24, in association with the Irish Arts Center, The White Piece can have a curious effect on audiences, daring to be deceptively uncool in its methods and borderline corny in its optimistic appeal to humanity.

Before the audience can even settle in, Scott subjects everyone to a cacophony of voices as thirteen racially- and culturally-diverse performers mill about and speak, each man or woman on his or her own trajectory or sometimes pairing off to trail and mirror a momentary partner. I would imagine those voices and bodies represent the situation Scott found himself in with so many people--from Eastern Europe, from African nations--and so many troubling histories thrown his way. But pretty soon the mess shifts to a follow-the-leader game of word-and-movement phrases, and the talk is all about love. "Love is a piece of paper written but left unread," one dancer says, tossing a sheet of paper over her shoulder. The others follow suit. "Love is an escape from self," says another, burying his head in the arm of a partner. The rest repeat these words and actions. "Love brings surprises" leads to the initial surprise of one man grabbing a partner by the foot and dragging him halfway around the floor. This love talk goes on for quite a while, through many variations, during which some actual dancey-dance breaks out only to be cheekily undercut by the Broadway razzmatazz its dancers momentarily give it. Scott and company seem to be aware of the inherent disruptive weirdness of mixing privileged dance and theater specialists with folks new to the pleasure and power of movement as a means of artistic expression. They pack the self-consciousness of all of this into the piece, and they don't care if some of the raggedy ends of that hang outside the luggage. It's more fun (and more disruptive) that way.

There's nothing new about "breaking the fourth wall"--and certainly not at La MaMa--but it's cute how John Scott Dance does it in The White Piece where your footwear might get removed to become a flamboyantly admired prop. And not just one time. Then again, if you're fortunate enough to actually be the great Sara Rudner--a Scott colleague--the choreographer might trot over to you and say, "Thank you for coming. I'm giving the rest of this performance for you, and if you need anything, let me know."

But you probably don't have to be Sara Rudner to receive the gift of The White Piece, if willing. After the company's post-show Q&A, guided by La MaMa curator Nicky Paraiso, I left the theater feeling a touch giddy and with a noticeable pep in my step. It's true that, in most times, I am a lighthearted soul and that most dance nourishes me. Even so, this was an unexpected sensation.


The White Piece--performed by Joanna Banks, Ashley Chen, Philip Connaughton, Crinela, James Hosty, Kiribu, Sarah Patience, Florence Welalo Poudima, Rebecca Reilly, John Scott, Daniel Squire, Cheryl Therrien and Mufutau (Junior) Kehinde Yusuf--runs through Sunday, March 24. For schedule and ticket details, click here.

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (2nd Floor), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Amir Dixon's "Friend of Essex" inspired by poet Essex Hemphill

Poet Essex Hemphill Inspires New Documentary
by David Mattar, Lambda Literary, March 15, 2013

Flamenco tourism, flamenco export

Flamenco's Foreign Saviors
by Raphael Minder, The New York Times, March 16, 2013

See video here.

Bolshoi's Filin speaks of hope for recovery

Bolshoi Director Is Upbeat About His Recovery
by Melissa Eddy and Sophia Kishkovsky, The New York Times, March 15, 2013

"Interface" -- Rashaun Mitchell puts a face to that emotion

The cast of Interface: l-r, Silas Riener, Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell and Melissa Toogood (Photo by Stephanie Berger)

I was pretty sure I didn't need to see dancers behaving like artists' posable mannequins--even fabulous, razor-sharp ones like choreographer Rashaun Mitchell and his colleagues, Silas Riener, Melissa Toogood and Cori Kresge. I was fairly sure I'd seen this idea played out any number of times in dance. Thomas Arsenault (Mas Ysa)'s music for Mitchell's quartet Interface--given its world premiere last night at Baryshnikov Arts Center--sounded like the protracted, labored breathing of an android. Then, suddenly, dancers' tongues began to press hard against the inside of their cheeks. Later, crude expressions would bulge out the skin of formerly placid faces from Cunningham-land, distorting the message of their bodies' clean assertions. Interesting.

Interface at Baryshnikov Arts Center (Photo by Stephanie Berger)

This happened within and around a large, white square of empty space and within the Howard Gilman Performance Space that, famously, looks out on the the lights and architecture of Hudson Yards, the theater's generous windows now interspersed with striking visual designs in black and white. (Of the four performers, only Riener--his usually lush, dark hair here tamed into a tight topknot--breaks the monochrome by wearing a childish-looking yellow romper.) Some of those windows come alive by video, so that movement may happen by chance--say, a passing jet streaking across the sky--or by design.

For me, this integration of handsome urban vista with an innerscape arranged by Mitchell and his collaborators proved more enchanting than the dance alone might have been.

Black/white, inside/outside, mechanical/animal, constrained and not so constrained, functional and (perhaps) not so functional, apart and together: Interface exists in a dynamic state of between, of flux, of uncomfortable becoming. Which is Mitchell's condition as a burgeoning dancemaker suddenly set loose in the world, is it not?

With visual design by Fraser Taylor, Davison Scandrett and Mitchell; video by Nicholas O'Brien; lighting design by Scandrett; textiles and prints by Taylor; and costumes by Mary Jo Mecca

Rashaun Mitchell's Interface concludes with two performances tonight: 7:30pm and 9:30pm. Click here for details and tickets.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/direction)

Young Soon Kim replies to Matthew Westerby's open letter

Reply from Young Soon Kim 
(Artistic Director, WHITE WAVE)

to Matthew Westerby's OPEN LETTER TO THE DANCE COMMUNITY 

(See March 2, 2013 post here.)

Dear Matthew,

Your Open Letter was brought to our attention. Although we emailed, offered to meet, or speak on our studio and cell phones, you declined. There is was only one actual attempt at contacting us in your alleged “numerous attempts,” indicated in the Open Letter and your email dated February 28th. We emailed you November 3rd to coordinate a costume pick-up, which you made and retrieved in December. The white shirts used as props in your piece My Heart is Breaking had been shifted in our preparative measures for Hurricane Sandy, and we were not able to locate them in the midst of the disaster and construction. As soon as we found the black bag containing the shirts once renovations were completed, we immediately informed you. It was disappointing to see your false claims.

As you know from picking up the costumes yourself and eye-witnessing the water-damaged basement, molded walls and destroyed furniture, the storm hit us hard. We were devastated with being forced to cancel eight WAVE RISING SERIES performances (and several workshops/classes), including your final performance the day Sandy made landfall. With our basement six feet under water, we had no choice.

Regarding your performance agreement, a contract signed June 5, 2012, the Wednesday Preview Night is separate from the box office. Per paragraph 7 of the agreement, “Net proceeds of box office revenue (receipts from ticket sales minus payments to tech personnel) for Thursday through Sunday performances will be distributed among participating companies.”

Our total budget for producing the SERIES exceeds $80,000. We were thrilled our outreach efforts led to the SERIES being featured in The New York Times Dance Listing and a video episode of PBS-NYC/Arts. We also made best efforts to collaborate on marketing the production and raise ticket sales together, as the performance agreement also states. We spent a Saturday providing a marketing workshop on how to promote shows, gave your company a spotlight on our website and sent several emails leading up to Preview Night, suggesting numerous tips to lift sales.

As we communicated on various occasions, ticket sales were down. This year’s WAVE RISING SERIES (Programs A-D plus the special show on Sunday, November 4th) generated $3,136.72 in total revenue, a 63% decrease from the six-year average sales total. Program C’s entire ticket sales amounted to $698.72. Per the performance agreement, actual production costs for tech personnel are deducted. The production cost for four tech personnel including a lighting designer, stage manager and backstage managers was $1,325 in Week 2, which was divided between Programs C and D ($662.50 each). Net proceeds for Program C, the split bill with Matthew Westerby Company, Alexandra Elliott, Jessica DiMauro/DiMauro Dance and Flexicurve, totaled $36.22 and Matthew Westerby Company’s share of the box office is $9.05.

Despite our staff’s dedication, we regret that last year’s ticket sales fell short of expectations. We’re sorry that a natural disaster forced the cancellation of shows and created a loss in revenue of approximately $10,000 – both to our organization and the artists whom we serve.

In WHITE WAVE’s role as a resource to the dance community, when a past program in the WAVE RISING SERIES makes less than $100 as determined by the contract, we gave artists a small honorarium from our available operating funds. As a choreographer myself, I wish I had such an honorarium for you today. Sadly, we do not. Ticket sales for Week 2 Preview Night, for instance, were only $172.08. Several hundred dollars went towards preparing food and drinks for you, your dancers, other performers and audience members that evening, and came at my company’s expense.

We have exhausted every avenue for emergency relief – we have rebuilt our walls, we have replaced our floors, we have restored our dressing room and warm-up areas for our artists. However, there is one more avenue of emergency assistance we are pursuing, and we would gladly consider allocating awarded funds to you and fellow 2012 participants. While emergency funding to-date has been designed for structural damage, debris and other direct costs, a loan from the Small Business Administration (SBA) is the only program of its kind available to cover economic losses from the storm – in our case the cancellation of eight WAVE RISING SERIES performances. The application is extremely involved, and we are in the final stages of the process. The status of any disbursements will be made public, and we are expecting an SBA loan determination within 2-3 months. We will be in contact with choreographers affected by the storm at that time.

Our hearts go out to all communities, and our dance community especially, who’ve suffered as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Our commitment to these communities remains, and as a presenter of thousands of international dancemakers, we sincerely strive to create an environment that supports these remarkable, emerging and established artists.

Best Regards, 

Young Soon Kim, Artistic Director (WHITE WAVE)

Note and spark: Elizabeth Spiers on why note-keeping matters

On Keeping a Notebook in the Digital Age
by Elizabeth Spiers, Medium, March 6, 2013

Also, for some great note-taking tool inspiration, see the comments following this essay's reposting at this link on Lifehacker.

Meet Sidiki Conde, star of "You Don't Need Feet to Dance"

Sidiki Conde shares skills and hope with kids (Photo by Alan Govenar)

On Friday, March 22, meet the director and star of

You Don't Need Feet to Dance,

a documentary by Alan Govenar (The Beat Hotel)

on the life and work of drummer-dancer Sidiki Conde.

Conde and Govenar will be in attendance
at the opening night screening

at New York's Quad Cinema.

Showtimes for the week of March 22-28: 1pm and 7:30 pm

An intimate documentary about a man who overcomes his disability one day at a time in New York City, Alan Govenar's new film reveals the extraordinary life of African immigrant Sidiki Conde.

Sidiki was born in 1961, in Guinea, West Africa. At age fourteen, polio left him almost completely paralyzed. Sent to live with his grandfather in a village deep in the forest, Sidiki learned to manage his disability, building his upper-body strength so that he could walk on his hands. When faced with the dilemma of dancing in a coming of age ceremony, he reconstructed the traditional steps by dancing on his hands instead of his feet.

In time Sidiki ran away to Conakry, Guinea’s capital city, where he and his friends organized an orchestra of artists with disabilities recruited from the city’s streets. They toured the country, striving to change the perception of the disabled. In 1987, he became a member of the renowned dance company Merveilles D'Afrique, founded by Mohamed Komoko Sano. Sidiki became a soloist and served as rehearsal master, composing and directing the company’s repertoire. He also worked as a musician and arranger with Youssou N’Dour, Salifa Keita, Baba Maal and other popular musicians.

In 1998, Conde’s music brought him to the United States, and he founded the Tokounou All-Abilities Dance and Music Ensemble. In the United States, he has continued to perform and teach, instructing people of all abilities in schools, hospitals and universities, and served as artist in residence at a Bronx public school for children with multiple disabilities.

In You Don’t Need Feet to Dance, Sidiki balances his career as a performing artist with the almost insurmountable obstacles of life in New York City, from his fifth-floor walk-up apartment in the East village, down the stairs with his hands and navigating in his wheelchair through Manhattan onto buses and into the subway. Despite the challenges, Sidiki teaches workshops for disabled kids, busks on the street, rehearses with his musical group, bicycles with his hands, and prepares for a baby naming ceremony, where he plays djembe drums, sings, and dances on his hands.

Advance ticket sales: 777-FILM #636 or at movietickets.com.

Quad Cinema
34 West 13th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Does your work deserve to be seen at La MaMa?

Come to the next

LA MAMA MEET UP

Wednesday, March 20 (3-6pm)

Meet a La MaMa program curator at the next Meet Up event and get an opportunity to speak with the La MaMa staffer in charge of programming for your area of interest.

Bring your portfolio and/or resume with supporting materials.Tell us why you want to work at La MaMa, and show us who you are!

Sign up for a time slot by clicking on the relevant link below:

Theater and Dance

Puppetry

Play-writing

Poetry

Visual Arts

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street, 2nd floor (between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

The passionate Isabel Allende on equality

Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, the definition of feminism -- and, of course, passion -- in this talk.

"Dance is the air I breathe": Janine Williams

Choreographer Janine Williams, profiled in the 1998 documentary, 

"Positive Addiction: The Artists' Passion"

Director: Andrew Guidone

Sybil Christopher, 83

Sybil Christopher, a Theater Producer, Dies at 83
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, March 11, 2013

Love NYC? Love theater? You'll love this free festival!

Free Festival to Offer Plays With New York Themes
by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, March 11, 2013

Ai will, Ai will rock you!

Ai Weiwei Is Making a Rock Album
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, March 11, 2013

Jean Butler premieres "hurry"

Jean Butler (photo by Ian Douglas)

Jean Butler--it should come as no surprise--has a great sense of presentation and self-presentation. In fact, she most reminds me of penmanship--the exacting kind I learned in Catholic grammar school and which inevitably loosened and drained away with time. A tall switch of a woman, Butler does not so much dance as write and etch her way across the floor and space, making the existence of thought and will starkly visible.

Her body as well as her intense focus define having everything in its place, and it's hard to look at her and forget her world-famous career in traditional Irish dance. As a recent sojourner in the world of New York's contemporary dance, she herself wants to forget none of this but, rather, burrow into it and see where grounded tradition and identity can lead her. With her new solo hurry, directed by Jon Kinzel, she's on her way, and that, for now, must be enough.

What can be done with rigidity and precision? Arms once constrained to this dancer's sides now jut and lock in place at a sharp angle as she cocks and twists one foot against the floor. Or they form an elegant wingspan which, after all, would have to be held taut as a bird takes to a thermal. When she scoops her torso or allows hips to wriggle and knees to be spongy, she measures out each move so nothing's ever wasted. She acknowledges gravity, and the body's core, never once losing the look of one invisibly suspended from above.

Her palpable self-consciousness keeps us from slipping into the trance of watching a body dance. We're watching a mind dance--not to be forgotten. There's instruction in this, even if it is a tad distancing (like the similarly alienating sound score with its overt and covert disturbances, friction and haunting reverb). Perhaps it's good to be held, for a time, in this place of wanting but not being able to just let go. There's something to be learned here.

As Butler addresses the space at St. Mark's--treading, sometimes just nearly tripping along a loop of infinity--Michael O'Connor's lighting, melancholy in its glow, emphasizes the exposure and the loneliness of her position.

The solo's title, hurry, derives from an Irish ballad, but there's only one tiny, ethereal suggestion of Irish music--courtesy of Ivan Goff on uilleann pipes--late in the score. Nor does hurry seem particularly hurried. Although it lasts just 35 minutes, it appears to exist in a place of memory and contemplation removed from the rush of time.

Near hurry's end, the barefoot Butler, turned away from us and toward a far corner of the church, suddenly channels the old Irish steps. How strange--and, at last, emotionally engaging--to gaze at this star from behind as she appears to dance into the lights of a familiar stage. For the viewer, it skews the perspective, raising questions: Who could see Butler from behind except another dancer? That would mean you're also dancing on that stage, would it not? If so, how does it feel to face those lights?

Music by Jim Dawson. Sound design by Jim Dawson and Jon Kinzel. Costume by Sylvia Grieser.

hurry continues at Danspace Project tonight or Saturday at 8pm. Click here for program information and here for tickets.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Related: Jean Butler prepares a new solo for Danspace Project

Helping Pratt's art students get back to work

Inside Pratt Institute’s Supplies Dispensary
by Peter Moskowitz, The Local, March 7, 2013

Students selected for "Writing on Dance 2013"

The application period for my upcoming, eight-week Writing on Dance workshop series at New York Live Arts has officially closed. Thanks to everyone who applied this year!

I could not be more delighted to accept a group of eleven super-talented, accomplished students from diverse backgrounds. We're going to have lots of fun sharing what we know, what we love and, I believe, making great strides in the effort to document and represent this art through in-depth profiles of many of its remarkable performers.

If you did not get in on Writing on Dance this time, please keep watch for future opportunities to get involved with our work!

DC Comics anthology artist quits in protest

Artist Quits Superman Project After Outcry Over Writer’s Marriage Views
by George Gene Gustines, The New York Times, March 6, 2013

"People, Hell and Angels": The last of Jimi Hendrix

Exhuming the Last of Hendrix’s Studio Sessions
‘People, Hell and Angels,’ the Last of Hendrix
by James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times, March 6, 2013

If you can do THIS, you can call it the Harlem Shake. Otherwise...

The dream of a New Orleans home for tap

Thanks to New York's Laraine Goodman for alerting me to a beautiful 2011 profile of dance educator Janet Edwards, dedicated and visionary founder of the New Orleans Dance Collective. Read and enjoy it here.

New York's love affair with flamenco

The New York Public Library 
for the Performing Arts

presents

Flamenco:

100 Years of Flamenco in New York 

March 13 through August 3

The multi-media exhibition is an integral part of collaboration between The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. Photographs, costumes and performance regalia, film, oral histories, and the sound of castanets and taconeo will entertain and educate the visitor. Performances, film screenings, panels, and educational programs will continue through the spring and summer in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium.

Free admission

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, Manhattan

(map/directions)

Bronx art museum continues free admission program

In the Bronx, Where Art Is Still Free
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, March 6, 2013

Poets as activists, activists as poets

POETRY+ACTIVISM+IDENTITY, OH MY!!

A celebration, discussion and reading with 

Susan Sherman and Kathy Engel

Wednesday, March 27 (7pm)

at Bluestockings

Sharing personal experience and their own work, these two poet/activists will examine the fulfilling but often problematic relationship of poetry/identity and activism, as well as celebrate the NYC launch of Susan Sherman's new collection of poetry, The Light that Puts an End to Dreams (Wings Press).

For over thirty years, Kathy Engel has been a cultural worker, writer, educator, producer and consultant in the meeting place of imagination and social justice/change. Her books include Ruth's Skirts (IKON, 2007) and We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, co-edited with Kamal Boullata. (Interlink Publishing, 2007). In 2012, she was Featured Poet at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, and a fellow at the Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat.

Poet, playwright, co-founder of IKON magazine, Susan Sherman, has published five collections of poetry, and a memoir, America's Child: A Women's Journey through the Radical Sixties (Curbstone, 2007). Intense political poems, intimate love poems and provocative reflections characterize her new collection, the journey of one woman intimately involved with "many of the most important events of our time, including feminism and gay liberation, anti-war activism, and the movements in Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Free admission

Bluestockings
172 Allen Street (between Stanton and Rivington Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)
212-777-6028

Stanley Snadowsky, co-founder of The Bottom Line, 70

Stanley Snadowsky, Nightclub Founder, Dies at 70
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, March 2, 2013

Matthew Westerby: Open Letter to the Dance Community [UPDATE]

An Open Letter to the Dance Community

by Matthew Westerby

(posted to Facebook on Monday, February 25, 2013 at 11:50pm

In the summer of 2012, I was selected to bring my dance company, Matthew Westerby Company, to The Wave Rising Series at the John Ryan Theatre in Brooklyn. The festival was hosted by Whitewave, a dance organization headed by Young Soon Kim, a choreographer who has worked for a number of years in the New York community.

According to its’ website, Whitewave strives to create an environment that supports emerging and established artists in the creation of new work. It offers public programming and serves as a resource to New York’s dance community.

With specific regard to The Wave Rising Series, WHITE WAVE’s Artistic Director Young Soon Kim founded the WAVE RISING SERIES in 2006 as a platform for companies who may not have the resources to stage full productions of new dance works. Tightly curated by Ms. Kim and an eight-person panel of prominent dance figures, this is one of the only series of its kind in New York City, offering rising choreographers the opportunity to present their work on a large scale, often for the first time, alongside a group of invited companies from among the most visionary names in contemporary dance. The WAVE RISING SERIES, which started by presenting local companies, now features innovative dance makers from around the world.

The Company was to be presented at Whitewave’s Theatre in DUMBO during October 2012, and a contract was signed that set out the financial arrangements for our appearances at the festival. We were to pay a $400 production fee that covered all necessary expenses, and we were to receive an honorarium from box office takings that would be split between all companies that were presented. The contract stated that MWC was responsible for promoting the show, as well as Whitewave providing marketing and promotional support. To promote our Whitewave appearances, we printed and distributed over 1,000 postcards to dance venues across the city, as well as sending numerous promotional emails to our mailing list and utilizing social media to attract audience.

We were contracted for four performances, including a “preview night.” Whitewave was very excited by this new concept, offering a preview night of all of the artists showing work during the week of our performances. It was later communicated that this preview was actually a benefit for Whitewave, and therefore would not be included in our ticket sales honorarium. Having already spent time promoting this date along with our other shows, I felt as if we had been fooled into performing for free for one performance when patrons of MWC would be attending thinking that their purchases would be helping us financially.

After the festival was finished, as per the contract, we were expecting by the end of November 2012 a box office report stating ticket sales, and a check for our portion of ticket sales.
We have, to this date, not received anything from Young Soon Kim or from Whitewave. Despite numerous attempts at contact - the last threatening legal action - we have still received no response. Realistically, we cannot afford to hire a lawyer, but had hoped that the threat of this would at least provoke a response.

Taking part in the Wave Rising Series cost Matthew Westerby Company approximately $1,600 in dancers performance fees, rehearsal space and postcard printing. As our last show was canceled due to Hurricane Sandy, we left costumes at the theatre - when I returned to collect them, they had been lost and no attempt has been made by Whitewave to replace them.

Matthew Westerby Company, formed in 2009, operates on the generosity of individual supporters and donors, and while every attempt is made to secure grant-funding, as a fledgling dance company working in the highly competitive New York dance scene, survival is top priority. Our 2012 annual fundraiser event raised almost the same amount that taking part in The Wave Rising Series cost us – therefore, 2013 is a year that has begun with us scaling back already-made plans for projects that are now out of reach, and with budget shortfalls that I have inevitably had to be personally responsible for.

I have spent time contacting the institutional funders of Whitewave (NYSCA, the DCA, the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Sheafer Trust and the Brooklyn Arts Council) and of the festivals they present to let them know of our experiences, and although I do not expect that we will ever be compensated as we should have been, I feel that it is my duty as an active member of the New York dance scene to openly talk about these injustices and hope that others will learn from our experience.

I also think that this brings several important questions to mind – as a small dance company, when and for how long are you prepared to offer your art for free? When is it not ok to accept experiences such as these just to “get your work out there”?  In the non-unionized modern dance world, who is out there to protect us when these things happen? And last, who will hold an unscrupulous presenter accountable when emerging artists are knowingly taken for a financial and artistic ride?

UPDATE: On March 14, Young Soon Kim submitted a reply and requested that it be posted on this blog. To read it, click here.

Reflections from Lieutenant Uhura

Makers: Women Who Make America: Nichelle Nichols 

Meet the actress and singer who, as Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura played, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “the first non-stereotypical role portrayed by a black woman in television history."

And did you know also had a background in dance? Or that she became a recruiter for NASA? So cool!

Let's talk about women and power!

Happy Women's History Month--though, looking around this country and world, it's clear that we sure have a huge amount of work ahead of us.

I was greatly honored to be selected by my legendary colleague Theresa Reed (The Tarot Lady) for her brand new interview series on women, power and empowerment! I invite you to check out my answers here!

Strolling with Faïn and Kocik and "E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E"

Somehow I never before considered that a preamble could be visualized--embodied, really--as an actual milling about of performers before a show begins. Such is the pre-ambulating perambulation at New York Live Arts this week where, after the historic Hurricane Sandy postponement, Commons Choir/Daria Faïn & Robert Kocik finally got a chance to open E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E.

As the audience enters the theater, the aisles seem clogged with extra bodies just standing there at the entrances to rows of seating. It turns out that they're members of choreographer Faïn and poet/librettist Kocik's Commons Choir hovering over you and casting pleasant gazes at you and one another, maybe going up or down a few steps. A little unnerving, irritating even--although, as time and the piece goes on, this gets more normalized and is nothing compared to their startling reactive outbursts of movement in at least one row that I could see (reserved for a few of these choir members) in the middle of the piece.

E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E spills up from a stage filled with people of notable racial and ethnic diversity into the audience because--as I understand it, and I'm not saying I've got it right--it is meant to grab all of us up in its experiment. It is about us--the human race--and how we got to be as we are, where we might have taken a particular unfortunate turn and how, if we retraced our steps and looked at the origin of language, breaking it down into its component bits and sounds, we might want to start fresh, we might deconstruct and construct new structures, we might do things very differently. Program notes describe this work as "an epic, town hall musical that calls upon a panoply of reparative tones, tunes and intentions to plead the case for a more compassionate economy, proposing, with Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King, money as everyone's." A hybrid of continuous movement and vocalization, the ensemble work is, the creators say, performed in the idiom of "Re-English," since English might be "an inherently commercial, mercenary, discursive, duplicitous tongue," one that they have cleverly attempted to "re-tune, detox and de-delude."

I don't pretend to understand the demarcation, differentiation and meaning of the line up of four acts (here identified as "amulets") and their so-called "(intermission)"--which happened exactly when?, since we went straight through the work's too-lengthy-feeling 90+ minutes--or who represented the characters named in the notes--"Uzume," "Souffleur," "Perineum, "Thrasymachus," et al. But Faïn and Kocik's imagination, particularly with words, charms the hell out of me. The work breathes like one organism formed of many individual ones that rise and fall in levels of intensity, organize themselves alone or in the company of others, remain stationary or move, perform clear, if enigmatic, seed sounds and simple gestures, sometimes orchestrated into seamless rhythmic sense and harmony.

Although everyone--and this is a big cast, including Faïn and Kocik--figures into E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, the work contains singular moments of transcendent boldness. Larissa Velez-Jackson, who incessantly wields then breaks her wooden saber, triggers shrieks of laughter from the crowd, but then you sense that she is skillfully drawing this harsh music out of them like a conductor or, perhaps, a shaman. Levi Gonzalez hangs onto monologues with heroic earnestness while shrinking and scrunching his body in various punishing ways. Faïn goes right up to Peter Jacobs, a self-contained and self-assured Ayn Rand type, with forthright, gentle and, always, precisely applied movement remedies.

A vague memory from the 60's of anti-war poster showing a a rifle-bearing soldier being offered a flower stays with me. There's a whiff of this innocence in E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, and something of the (for worse or for better) foolhardiness of it. But to watch Faïn with Jacobs, just in those moments, is to let go and fall in love with her entire project.

Faïn and Kocik's performers demonstrate palpable unity and commitment. In addition to Velez-Jackson, Gonzalez and Jacobs, they are Christina Andrea, Maximilian Balduzzi, CC Chang, Hazuki Homma, Whitney Hunter, Aram Jibilian, Dora Koimtzi, Mina Nishimura, Jaime Ortega, Peter Sciscioli, Kensaku Shinohara, Samita Sinha, Emily Skillings, Ben Spatz, Despina Stamos, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Julie Ulehia, Saúl Ulerio and Katherine A. Young who also composed the instrumental music performed by Jen Baker (trombone) and Sam Sowyrda (percussion). Lighting is by Carrie Wood.

E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E has two remaining performances--tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

There will be a post-performance Stay Late Discussion this evening, moderated by Carla Peterson, Artistic Director of New York Live Arts.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
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