Women choreographers in Britain describe gender inequality

Sexism in dance: where are all the female choreographers?
Want to be a ballerina? No problem. But any girl dreaming of a career in choreography had better mind the glass ceiling…
by Luke Jennings, The Guardian, April 27, 2013

Shhhh! You're trying to read!

If you're following the renovation-displaced Performance Space 122 around in its various peregrinations these days, you know there's no telling where it or you will end up next. And that's a good thing. Breaking free of the legendary East Village nest, this resilient presenting organization now feels free to drop art down just about anywhere--a good model for the rest of us.

Unless you're a New York University student or faculty member, you probably haven't set foot in the upper reaches of NYU's Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. Up until yesterday afternoon, I certainly had not. But a PS 122 event, a new collaboration with the ongoing PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, drew me into an upstairs reading room lined with tables filled with students gazing at laptops.

I was issued a mini iPod and headphones along with a simple, essential sheet of preliminary instructions in the use of old technology--a stack of three novels topped by a thin, spiral-bound notebook. Another visitor, paired with me, sat beside me before an arrangement of the identical reading materials.

And, yes, we were there for a performance. With a twist.

The performance happens, largely, between your ears. Conceived and directed by multimedia/autoteatro artists Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells, The Quiet Volume makes collaborators of its "audience"--two people at a time, sitting at a table in an active library. Each listener follows the instructions, remarks and reading passages whispered through his or her headphones, taking any indicated actions (pick up the Kazuo Ishiguro book; turn to page number X; follow the text with your finger as you hear it; visualize something on this blank page in the notebook, and so forth).

But there's more. The written and spoken text also messes with your sense of time. It effortlessly lifts you right out of your immediate location into awareness of the space and your reading partner and the students around you. It stimulates mental imagery. Eventually, the collided and collaged text creates tension and disorientation. It grows nearly impossible to read or comprehend under the shifting directions and the occasional sound effects, which sound both intimate (in the headphones) and distant (coming from somewhere in the surrounding room).

The Quiet Volume runs at NYU's Bobst Library through May 5, in reserved slots between noon and 8pm daily (1pm to 8pm on May 5).

It is also hosted by The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture through May 4 between noon and 8pm daily (10am to 6pm, May 3 and May 4).

Hampton's Cue China (Elsewhere, Offshore) will also run at NYU's Bobst Library, May 1-5, noon to 8pm (1pm to 8pm, Sunday).

Tickets can be purchased indivually or in pairs. For further information or to reserve a slot for performances in either of these two locations, click here.

The Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
New York University
70 Washington Square South, Manhattan
(map/directions)

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Alone and not so: Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, Taisha Paggett

Dance Magazine has just posted my review of Solos & Solitudes: Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, Taisha Paggett at Danspace Project--although, they've misspelled Taisha's last name. Perhaps that will be fixed by the time you see it. Click here to have a look!

Rikers Island program for young filmmakers

Young Inmates Find a Voice Through Short Films
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, April 28, 2013

Allison Orr: from trash to treasure

Trash Dance, a luminous and fun film by Andrew Garrison, follows choreographer Allison Orr's progress as she befriends Black and Latino sanitation workers in Austin, Texas, and--in her gutsy, hands-on way--learns about the diversity and intricate details of their labor. Her project? To guide these men and women as they turn equipment and everyday actions into the stuff of art. How can you take a garbage truck, something that we commonly see--and, yet, don't really see--and make it expressive? Orr--who, as Artistic Director of Forklift Danceworks, has crafted projects with Austin firefighters and the gondoliers of Venice--steps up to this fresh challenge with surprising and moving results.

Meet Orr and Garrison this Wednesday, May 1 (7:30) for a special screening of the multiple award-winning Trash Dance, with moderator Aviva Davidson (Executive and Artistic Director, Dancing in the Streets), or catch the last New York screening on May 2.

1FP reRun GastropubTheater
147 Front Street, Brooklyn (DUMBO)
(map/directions)

For tickets, click here.

For information on other screenings of Trash Dance, click here

International Dance Day 2013: Message from Lin Hwai-min

Lin Hwai-min (photo ©LIU Chen-hsiang)

It is said in the Great Preface of "The Book of Songs,"

an anthology of Chinese poems dating from the 10th to the 7th century BC:

"The emotions are stirred and take form in words.

If words are not enough, we speak in sighs.

If sighs are not enough, we sing them.

If singing is not enough, then unconsciously

our hands dance them and our feet tap them."

Dance is a powerful expression. 

It speaks to earth and heaven.

It speaks of our joy, our fear and our wishes.

Dance speaks of the intangible, yet reveals the state of mind of a person and 

the temperaments and characters of a people.

Like many cultures in the world, the indigenous people in Taiwan dance in circle. 

Their ancestors believed that evils would be kept out of the circle. 

With hands linked, they share the warmth of each other and move in communal pulses. 

Dance brings people together. 

And dance happens at the vanishing point.

Movements disappear as they occur. 

Dance exists only in that fleeting instant. 

It is precious. It is a metaphor of life itself.

In this digital age, images of movements take millions of forms. 

They are fascinating.

But, they can never replace dance because images do not breathe. 

Dance is a celebration of life.

Come, turn off your television, switch off your computer, and come to dance. 

Express yourself through that divine and dignified instrument, which is our body.

Come to dance and join people in the waves of pulses. 

Seize that precious and fleeting moment.

Come to celebrate life with dance.

Lin Hwai-min,
Artistic Director, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan and Cloud Gate 2

The International Theatre Institute (ITI) is pleased to announce that the celebration of International Dance Day 2013 will take place Monday April 29th, 2013 at Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, starting at 8 pm. The Taiwanese choregrapher Lin Hwai-min, author of this year's message, and his company Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taïwan are the guests of the 2013 edition of International Dance Day. They will perform extracts from their works at the occasion. In 1982 the Dance Committee of the ITI founded International Dance Day to be celebrated every year on 29 April, anniversary of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), the creator of modern ballet. The intention of the International Dance Day Message is to celebrate Dance, to revel in the universality of this art form, to cross all political, cultural and ethnic barriers and bring people together with a common language – Dance.

Every year, a prominent choregrapher and/or dancer is selected to write a message about Dance and its importance in our societies. Translated in more than twenty languages, the message is circulated through the ITI network (more than 90 national Centres and cooperating members) and performing arts organizations, starting from April. Time magazine talks of Lin Hwai-min as one of "Asia's heroes". Founder of the companies  Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taïwan and Cloud Gate 2, the choregrapher's work has been internationaly acclaimed.

No walk on the beach: "Summer's Different"

Tamar Rogoff's new work, Summer's Different--which I was invited to see at one point in its late development and talked about in a previous post--has formally opened at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, competently shaped by focused performances all around and well-served by Joe Levasseur's lighting. The story of a family suddenly challenged by the revelation of a father's enjoyment of women's clothing, it still spends too much time establishing the beach-iness of its setting and not enough time delving into the lightning-struck core relationship at the crossroads--husband (Brandin Steffensen) and wife (the superb Emily Pope-Blackman). What's there in the interaction between these two sensitive, intelligent and gutsy performers, though, remains a compelling nugget of a story. Forgive me if, even within the finished piece, the extended family context--kids, grandparents--continues to interest me far less. I'm a shark drawn to the meat and heat of real drama.

For more information on Summer's Different, click here. For information on Rogoff's La MaMa season and to purchase tickets, click here.

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

Joe Gilford remembers an American witchhunt

Blacklisted, From a Child’s View
by Joe Gilford, The New York Times, April 24, 2013

George Jones, 81

His Life Was a Country Song
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, April 26, 2013

Souleymane Badolo and Cynthia Oliver at New York Live Arts

I've always found that I like the encounter with a new or a developing dance to surprise me. I'm neither a prospective presenter nor a funder nor even a prospective ticket-buyer with an unsparing budget. I don't write for the paper of record. Basically, I can go and have fun at these things. So I don't require having things spelled out to me. All of that can be interesting but confounding, too, when you find yourself searching high and low for the specific things you read about. Which is not to say that what you read about isn't there, somewhere, but that sometimes the advance warning gets in the way of live experience, introducing a sense of passive expectation or distracting anticipation. Maybe not knowing is, in the long run, the better path to knowing.

Cynthia Oliver (left) and Leslie Cuyjet in BOOM! (photo by Ian Douglas)

Souleymane Badolo in Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO (photo by Ian Douglas)

This is by way of saying that I'm not sure that I saw the Boom! duet, a seed work choreographed, written and directed by Cynthia Oliver for herself and Leslie Cuyjet, as advertised: "negotiating and renegotiating the rules of personhood, fate and consequence...." and "simultaneously reveals, resists and submits to the structures and shape of a performance."

The fault might be entirely my own, I will admit. But I will also admit to being captivated from the moment I heard an upstairs door bang and the darkened theater's left aisle fill with the bubbling voices of two women as half-bright blotches (the near-invisible dancers wearing over-sized white shirts) descended through the dark towards New York Live Arts' bare space. Once in place, side by side, the women took up that space--expansive in action, splayed off-kilter, owning the land and air rights and, when grounded, gazing sideways like don't-mess-with lions at rest. Hereafter, Oliver and Cuyjet will be "Tried Patience" and "Unwavering Fortitude."

In motion, their confident gestures and phrases seemed like some kind of Black diasporan Tai Chi--an enigmatic but resonant long form I longed to learn. The genius and appeal of these two dancers grew from their musicality and sure-of-themselves radiance. And the surprise--for anyone who had not seen the previous version of Boom! offered during Danspace Project's great Parallels series--came from the fierce spoken word conclusion of the duet which, I think, intended to uncover who these two entities might be. They might remind each of us, in unique ways, of specific people or types or even groups. Who in your life has the power to raise you up at one moment and strike you down in the next? You should leave Boom! feeling a little shaken, a little stirred, even if you're not immediately sure why.

The English equivalent for the Gurunsi word barack is, roughly, "gratitude." With Barack, dancer-choreographer Souleymane Badolo pays tribute to those who helped him along the path from dance training in his native Burkina Faso to celebrity on the US contemporary dance scene. Edith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" is such a strong, recurring color on the dancemaker's florid palette for this solo--a work that displays external and internal struggle--that we can't help but imagine that that passage has been marked by profound difficulty. Nothing regretted, though, neither the bad nor the good. But perhaps we're not looking at "Solo" (this dancer's nickname) so much as glimpsing an embodiment of African experience, a capacious grail within the capacious memory palace of the human body--in this case, a body with massive, heavy wings that unfurl awkwardly as its feet struggle against slippery or unstable ground. An eagle touched down on a river-washed, floating log. Or on smoldering ash. Badolo is some kind of eagle, though. He keeps a wonderful balance. It's like a game with delicate calibrations of the shift of weight for functional as well as visual effect and an outburst of puckish joy to the music of the Congolese singer-musician Tabu Ley Rochere.

I wish I could attend Badolo's Shared Practice event tomorrow afternoon at New York Live Arts but--in a breathtaking example of synchronicity--I, too, will be sharing and teaching a form of divination at the same time. Mine is called Tarot, but Solo's, from his Gurunsi heritage, is called bagger. This practice divines by interpreting thrown cowrie shells, and Badolo uses it to build the structure of his dances. (To understand this, think Cage/Cunningham/I Ching--but just for a moment.) In his impressive new solo, Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO, he uses the operations of bagger to invoke not just any hazy future but, rather, the powerful through-line connecting him to his male ancestors in the long-ago and to his son in the rich, multidimensional present.

Souleymane Badolo and Cynthia Oliver's shared program continues this evening and tomorrow with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

So you've always wanted to tap...

Absolute Beginner Workshop

a 6-week course

with

Michela Marino-Lerman

Mondays, April 29-June 10 

(no class May 27)

7:30pm to 8:30pm

at American Tap Dance Foundation

Designed especially to give new students a chance to learn the basic steps and vocabulary of tap dance, this class is a great way to learn the FUNdamental skills or "brush up the basics."

Fee: $78. To register, call 646-230-9564, or arrive 15-20 minutes early to register on the first day.

Michela Marino-Lerman first appeared on Sesame Street at the age of 5. In February 2002 she was showcased on the cover of Dance Teacher magazine with Gregory Hines. In 2005, she was named by Dance Spirit magazine as one of the 20 hottest tap dancers under 20 and in 2008, Dancemagazine named her as the only female tap dancer in its “25 to Watch in 2008.” Michela has appeared in both the Tap Extravaganza and Tap City numerous times over the past ten years. She won first prize in the Harlem Jazz Dance Festival’s, “Hoofer’s Challenge” in both 2002 and 2003. In 2002, Michela performed with Jennifer Holliday on Broadway in Nothing Like A Dame and also in 21 Below at Town Hall. In 2003, she was inducted into the famed Copasetics as their first and only female lifetime honorary member. In 2004-2006, Michela toured Spain and Japan with Rafael Amargo’s Enramblao. In the fall of 2005, her choreography was featured in the tap section of the opening number for the Bermuda Music Festival with UDP, starring Al Green, Angie Stone, and Patti LaBelle. At the age of 19, she was commissioned by Dixon Place to create and direct her own show, entitled AM+bu$h+ED. 2007 saw Michela tour Europe for 3 months as a lead dancer in the hit show Magic of the Dance and also appear in Sarah Savelli and Ayodele Casel’s Tappy Holidays. In 2008-2009, she was featured in the show hit Wonderland, an all tap show set to Stevie Wonder’s music and also in Chris Scott’s show W-L-U-V. In 2008 she appeared on CBS’s Secret Talents of the Stars with Grammy award singer Mya, performing the choreography of Emmy award winner Jason Samuels Smith. Since 2007, Michela has been a featured performer at NYC’s hottest nightclub, The Box. She recently danced with the Roy Hargrove at the Jazz Gallery and the Village Vanguard. She has also been commissioned by the American Tap Dance Foundation and HarlemStage to show her new work entitled Tapsploitation. Recently she has been co-creator in forming the tap dance company The Tap Messengers who have performed at the CareFusion Jazz Festival with Talib Kweli and Nicholas Payton in the Revive Da Live Big Band, Joe’s Pub, and HarlemStage opening for Marcus Strickland. Michela is grateful for the mentoring and guidance given to her by Buster Brown, Gregory Hines, and Leroy Myers. She has also studied with Jason Samuels Smith, Henry LeTang, Baakari Wilder, Ayodele Casel, Derek Grant, Dianne Walker, and many other gifted teachers. She has taught in numerous schools, studios, programs, and festivals throughout the world. As a performer, teacher, director, and choreographer Michela is dedicated to spreading the art of tap around the world.

American Tap Dance Foundation
154 Christopher Street, #2B (near Washington Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Wikipedia fail: What's happening to women novelists

Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists
by Amanda Filipacchi, The New York Times, April 24, 2013

By example: Great Black women writers inspire writing retreats

Finding Poems: A Creative Writing Retreat Series by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
The Feminist Wire, April 20, 2013

Freedom to MOVE: Dance and Alexander Technique

Freedom to MOVE: 2013

A conference on Dance and the Alexander Technique

developed by Ann Rodiger

presented by Balance Arts Center

May 17-19

***

Presenters:

Joan Arnold

Tom Baird

Rebecca Brooks

Nada Diachenko

Daria Fain

Emily Faulkner

Eva Karczag

Juliette Mapp

Katherine Mitchell

Rebecca Nettl-Fiol

Cynthia Reynolds

Ann Rodiger

Shelley Senter

Jennifer Sielicki

Erin Thompson

Luc Vanier

Deborah Weitzman

                             

Come join us for the third Freedom to Move Dance and Alexander Technique conference.

We will continue to explore how the Alexander Technique supports and complements dance technique and performance.

Movement freedom, ease, and coordination can be enhanced and taught through concepts and principles of Alexander Technique.  The conference provides experiences and exploration of many ways the Alexander Technique can be applied to dance – from tango to composition to research to performance.

You will also have time to share and exchange ideas as we work together.

All the conference presenters have had extensive experience both in teaching the Alexander Technique and in dance. The Alexander Technique has greatly influenced their thinking and approach to movement, how they teach, and how they create work. The variety of workshops speaks to the fundamental all-encompassing nature of the Alexander Technique and how the concepts are permeating many corners of the dance world.
Come join us and explore!

Pearl Studios
500 8th Avenue, 12th Floor (between 35th and 36th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Full conference schedule HERE
Register HERE
Registration by May 1st: $225
Registration after May 1st $250
Student rates and Single sessions available

National heritage sites threatened in Afghanistan

OP-DOCS: ‘A Chinese Threat to Afghan Buddhas’
by Brent E. Huffman, The New York Times, April 23, 2013

Edward de Grazia, anti-censorship lawyer, 86

Edward de Grazia, Lawyer Who Fought Censorship of Books, Is Dead at 86
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 23, 2013

Moving with ancestral spirits: Dr. Marta Moreno Vega at NJPAC

Meet

Dr. Marta Moreno Vega

Saturday, May 4 (3-5pm)

Chase Room, New Jersey Performing Arts Center

screening of 

Let the Spirit Move You!  Espiritismo in Puerto Rico

Advance screening of Dr. Marta Moreno Vega's new film and research regarding ancestral Kongo-based sacred tradition of Espiritismo in Puerto Rico. Dr. Vega explores the divine knowledge of traditional elders and practitioners and expresses the concern that the tradition will not be passed on / transferred to younger generations because traditional practices are in danger of not continuing.

Also, learn more about Dr. Vega's life-long legacy and work in the following clips, including an excerpt from the HBO documentary: Latino List.

Baraka Sele

guest curator / moderator

information and tickets

NJPAC directions

    Latino List - Marta Moreno Vega Interview on Vimeo

    Latina Spotlight: Dr. Marta Moreno Vega on New Latina

Allan Arbus, 95

Allan Arbus, Acerbic Psychiatrist on ‘M*A*S*H,’ Dies at 95
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, April 23, 2013

Richie Havens, 72 [UPDATE]

Richie Havens, Folk Singer Who Riveted Woodstock, Dies at 72
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 22

Richie Havens (in memoriam) Jan 21, 1941-April 22, 2013
The Roots Agency

Folk legend Richie Havens has passed away
JamBase, April 22, 2013

New arts residencies announced by Park Avenue Armory

Park Avenue Armory Names Artists in Residence
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, April 19, 2013

Dance New Amsterdam has some bright ideas for you

IDEAS CITY explores the future of cities around the globe with the belief that arts and culture are essential to the vitality of urban centers, making them better places to live, work, and play. Founded by the New Museum in 2011, IDEAS CITY is a major collaborative initiative between hundreds of arts, education, and community organizations. This year’s theme is Untapped Capital, with participants focused on resources that are under-recognized or underutilized in our cities.

Quite appropriately, then, Dance New Amsterdam (DNA) will partner with IDEAS CITY 2013 for a full day of performance, engagement and fun. Learn more here and get involved!

For complete program and schedule information for IDEAS CITY, click here.

"Dining" with Rosie Herrera...and Bausch

Making up my mind about Rosie Herrera--who offered the New York premiere of Dining Alone this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center--turns out to be a work in progress. This morning, I'm still at it. Welcome to my process.

Herrera is shrewd enough to color a corner of her ensemble piece with a jazz instrumental of the Jimi Hendrix's slow-simmering "Hey Joe"--sounds like Robert Glasper at the piano, but I'm not sure--so that it slips a hook into you, warmly percolating, just a sliver above subliminal. There's a moment of "Oh, wait...I know that song." Then you remember the disturbing lyrics of the original tune ("...where you goin' with that gun in your hand? I'm goin' down to shoot my old lady, you know I caught her messin' 'round with another man...."). Well played. There are other smart, fresh moves in Dining Alone--for one, its opening gambit places the suave Octavio Campos, steadily if inaudibly holding forth, at the head of a long dining table lined by cardboard-cutouts guests--but I'm not sure it's all quite enough.

Herrera hails from what she calls the "Cuban ghetto" of Hialeah in Miami. For her vivid dance theater in Dining Alone, she chooses to mine that world and popular culture for its passionate preoccupations and cheesy excesses. Love seems a delicious danger, a delirious indulgence and a fundamental necessity all at once. No narrow, post-modern bed, this: It's roomy. Straight-up Rachmaninoff and Eric Carmen's power-ballad changes on Rachmaninoff are both welcome, because Herrera's got to keep slipping you that one something more. Of course. White dinner plates, when not creating transitory pathways for moonstruck sonamubulists, spin on edge and clatter, clatter, clatter to novel visual and aural effect. The episodic Dining Alone "reads" like magical realism, like a fever dream amid bouts of red-eyed tossing and turning.

And I like this about it. I just wish the ghost of Pina Bausch would lift away and leave Herrera to devise her own ways of doing things. I'm looking at Dining Alone and thinking way too much about Bausch: Would or wouldn't Pina do this or that? And, if so, would she do it in this way? So, after watching Dining Alone, I was startled to pick up a Dance Magazine profile in which Herrera described herself as follows: "If Pina Bausch and Michael Jackson had had a baby...."

Okay, one thing I know: I'm eager to see Herrera step out and test the strengths of her own vision, push the choreographic and visual design elements much further.

With performances by Campos, Ivonne Batanero, Leah Verier-Dunn, Liony Garcia, Katie Stirman, Raymond Storms, Melissa Toogood and Fernando Landeros. Lighting by David Ferri.

Closed April 19.

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Where ideas live and move

Dr. Oliver Sacks (left) in conversation with Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director, New York Live Arts (photo by Ian Douglas). Jones says of the dance community, "I wish we were more curious in the big discussion."

New York Live Arts is where thinking and movement meet the future. -- Bill T. Jones

For a healthy, viable future for the art of dance in American society, that art must meet its potential public--a public that is increasingly diverse; a public continuously plugged into numerous and growing sources of information and entertainment; a public caught up, ready or not, by issues of climate change, malfunctioning government, ruthless abuse of children and women, the devaluation of labor, the rise and risks of cyber-technology and more real world concerns and disasters.

New York Live Arts' visionary festival--launched this season as Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks, in celebration of the 80th birthday of the great neurologist and author--establishes a toehold for this turbulent world-at-large in one of our city's historic, beloved venues for innovative, contemporary dance. I salute this integration of the outside with the inside and, personally, it tickles me to enjoy the possibility of taking in so much of what has always moved my life--from artistic research to scientific inquiry, from informed citizenship to activism--in one convenient location. The mix--which is not strictly new but is newly presented here at the famously former Dance Theater Workshop--excites me and offers hope.

Some of it is just plain fun: Watching a video of NASA astronauts playfully demonstrating how the absence of gravity radically alters execution of everyday movements, while their very funny colleague, Marsha Ivins, shares her own experiences (panel on Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioception) or waiting for steam and F-bombs to shoot from artist Miguel Gutierrez while a philosopher torturously labors to define what dance supposedly is and is not (panel on Minding the Dancing Body). Gutierrez  knows that, when it comes to research in consciousness, dance--a mode of perception, as he defines it--has been excelling at this work for a long time now.

Marsha Ivins, retired veteran of five NASA Space Shuttle missions

Imagine spinning and never getting dizzy. 

Or moving a 700lb object with just a touch of your fingers. 

For more fun with zero g, check this out.

Dance artists have information, strategies and even wisdom that the rest of us could benefit from. Jones seems bent on getting this word out to society as well as making some beneficial connections for the dance field. At times, the dialogue seems a little stilted, a little awkward and even prickly, but as long as the various parties are in the same room, talking, who knows what good might come of it?

On the Minding the Dancing Body panel, choreographer RoseAnne Spradlin spoke of making dances as a way to help people see what is usually hard to see, a purpose that Alva Noë and Colin McGinn--the philosophers on hand--readily identified as the goal of their discipline, too. Later that evening, Donna Uchizono's new dance--presented along with her 1999 trio, State of Heads--illustrated this mission.

Donna Uchizono in Out of Frame (photo by Ian Douglas)

Out of Frame, commissioned for the Live Ideas fest, takes as its inspiration the young Dr. Sacks' observations in 1969 of eighty people who survived the 1920s worldwide occurrence of a brain inflammation called encephalitis lethargica. Working from Sacks' accounts of these "recovered" patients in his renowned book, Awakenings, Uchizono distills the characteristic lingering distortions of body, personality and perception of time and space, even persistent immobility, into a solo performed on a tall ladder in the middle of a bare stage. On its own, this staging says so much--the rarity of the condition, the isolation of those who cannot look or function according to the norm, the extremity and precariousness of their situation even under medication, the mystery of a disease whose cause and prospects for resurgence remain unknown.

The solo is strangely beautiful and bizarre and fascinating; one of Uchizono's initial images presents her hand as if it were the clenched bulb of a carnivorous flower or a slowly rippling sea creature. The piece traps memory and heightened sensations within an altered state in which the body might not be perceived as a stable or singular entity...or even one's own. Josh Higgason's video layers an image of the dancer's body onto her flesh, helping us see what it's like to feel that something is very much, well, off.

Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks continues through Sunday evening, April 21. For information on all remaining events--including the encore of Donna Uchizono's dance program on Saturday at 4pm--click here.

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

Would that be Professor Jomama Jones?

Theater Professor Explores Boundaries of Identity

Daniel Alexander Jones strives, through his performance art, bring elements of theater into the concert realm and to build bridges between his audience members.

by Patrick Verel, Inside Fordham, April 2013

Thank gods, it's Friday and hula is alive!

92nd Street Y's 

Friday's at Noon program 

presents

HULA IS LIFE

Curated by John-Mario Sevilla and Halawai

Friday, May 3 (12 pm)

Hula honors nature, gods, royalty, significant geographical sites, historical events and meaningful relationships. This program explores the diversity of hula and presents both ancient (kahiko) and contemporary (auana) styles of dance. The groups performing include Pua Ali’i ‘Ilima ‘O Niuoka, Na Lehua Melemele, Halai Hula O Na Mele ‘Aina ‘O Hawaii and The Gracious Ladies. Live music will be performed by Claudia Goddard, Chris Davis, Kristabelle Muson, Jason Poole, Tommy Cheng and Andy Wang. Plus, guest artist Kaina Quenga.

Please note: Tickets are now required for all Fridays at Noon performances. You can pick up a ticket at the box office downstairs. Pay what you can or come for free – but you need a ticket either way.

For tickets and information, click here.

92nd Street Y (Buttenweiser Hall)
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 91-92nd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Daniel Reich, 39

Daniel Reich, 39, Resourceful Art Dealer, Dies
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, April 14, 2013

Jonathan Winters, 87

Jonathan Winters, Funny Man and Comedic Inspiration, Dies at 87
by William Grimes, The New York Times, April 12, 2013

Maria Tallchief, 88 [UPDATE]

Maria Tallchief, Chicago dance legend, dead at 88
by Jon Anderson and Sid Smith, The Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2013

Maria Tallchief, a Dazzling Ballerina and Muse for Balanchine, Dies at 88
by Jack Anderson, The New York Times, April 12, 2013

And click here to see a New York Times roundup of video clips of Ms. Tallchief's performances.

Celebrating the work of gay Black writers

"in the life" 

a reading of works by gay Black men from the 1980s and '90s

at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Sunday, April 14, 2pm

(doors opening 1:30pm)

For “in the life,” artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz will host readings from the literary work of gay, male, African American poets and writers, who chronicled sexuality, illness, and death during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s. Many of the writers are now dead, and their works have been collected in anthologies, such as "in the life", edited by Joseph Beam. Bordowitz will be joined by a diverse group of readers including former Q/A/M mentor Pamela Sneed, to pay tribute to artists such as Donald Woods, Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs and many more.

Free with museum admission

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave (at 75th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Witnesses relocated to La MaMa

Javier Perez and Saori Tsukada in Eterniday (Photo by Adele Bossard)

Let me tell you: Watching Witness Relocation theater troupe while dealing with the last but tenacious dregs of jet lag is a very weird thing. The wacky disjointedness gets even more disjointed, and if something isn't making clear sense--I don't know: something about clouds, something about love, something about traffic circles, something about Don Quixote, and I can't even read my notes at this point--well, who's fault is that? If jet lag is all the ultimate trouble of drinking without any of the fun, Witness Relocation's frothy, boisterous Eterniday--running now at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre through April 21--provides the fun part. When New Agey metaphysicians talk about how material things are, in essence, energy, they're talking about Witness Relocation, and the prevailing energies here, at La MaMa, are luminous, airily poetic, un-ironically romantic and playfully sexy.

While the usual suspects--Mike Mikos and Sean Donovan--are capable and charming beyond measure, I think you'll especially enjoy Saori Tsukada's star turn (how vibrantly she embodies the Witness Relocation dance/acting nexus) as well as the plummy intonations of Carey Harrison (son of Rex) whose larger-than-life image comes to us by way of video.

Members of Witness Relocation in Eterniday's strobe light segment (photo by Jonathan Slaff)

Written by Chuck Mee. Directed and choreographed by Dan Safer. Co-created and performed by Nikki Calonge, Sean Donovan, Vanessa Koppel, Kate Lee, Mike Mikos, Javier Perez, Saori Tsukada and Carey Harrison.

See Eterniday now through April 21. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan

(map/directions) 

Rogoff on the beach

Choreographer Tamar Rogoff and her team introduce their new project, Summer's Different.

Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects always promises something different. And, in that, Rogoff can deliver--setting a performance at mass graves in a Belarus forest to address the loss of her family members during the Holocaust; turning rooftops and community gardens of the Lower East Side into ancient and mythic Greece; engaging a surgeon and an actor with cerebral palsy to join the cast of another show. Now she's in the final stages of developing Summer's Different, a dance highlighting personal transformation and freedom through an increasingly turbulent beach idyll that features a cross-dressing dad, his wife and their loving, initially bewildered family.

The work opens at the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa on April 25, running through May 12, with an evocative sound score by Beo Morales, lighting by Joe Lavasseur and a multi-generational cast. The audience will be arranged so as to intimately share a sense of sun and sand with Brandin Steffenson and Emily Pope-Blackman (as the central couple), Deborah Gladstein and Peter Schmitz (as the wife's parents), and Emma Lee and Annabel Sexton-Daldry (as the couple's youngsters).

Last evening, Rogoff hosted a showing at Baryshnikov Arts Center, visions of fun-in-the-sun contrasting strangely, perhaps meaningfully with a creeping gloom and the frequent flash of thunderstorms seen through the studio's large windows. (She really should consider adding a stormy video as a surreal backdrop for this piece.) After the hour-long dance, the choreographer drew her small audience--friends, family and board members--into a focus group, taking notes on what elements worked well and perhaps not so well. The group seemed equally intrigued, troubled and moved, especially by Steffenson and Pope-Blackman's interactions and evolution. Both dancers deeply invest physical strength and risk, infusing these central roles with full-dimensional human presence and mystery. As I see it, the other performers, at least at this stage, provide scenic context and atmosphere, maybe a plot point or two. Meanwhile Steffenson and Pope-Blackman--individually and together--are the essential and excellent drivers of this work, giving it its reason for being.

For more information on Summer's Different, click here. For information on Rogoff's La MaMa season and to purchase tickets, click here.

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

Michelle Dorrance to be honored at the 2013 Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

Michelle Dorrance (left) with Brenda Bufalino at Writing on Tap forum in 2012 (photo by Eva Yaa Asantewaa) 

New York's Michelle Dorrance--a Bessie Award winner, acclaimed for her fresh, innovative approach to tap dance choreography and performance--is the winner of the 2013 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award. The award--to be presented by Jacob's Pillow Executive and Artistic Director Ella Baff at the festival's opening gala on Saturday, June 15--comes with a $25,000 prize with no strings attached. She is the first tap artist to receive this award.

Baff comments, “With this year’s Award, we recognize a hugely talented young artist who is experimenting with new ideas and moving the art of tap forward.  We are also honoring the great American art form of tap, which has created some of the best dance and music-making ever.”

Dorrance will perform at the Gala with singer Aaron Marcellus. Her ensemble, Dorrance Dance, will perform at this summer’s festival, July 24-28, in the Doris Duke Theatre, accompanied by award-winning singer, musician and composer Toshi Reagon and band. Past recipients of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award include Crystal Pite, Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones.

Read more about the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award here.

For complete information about the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, click here.

The quest to save Aramaic

How to Save a Dying Language
Geoffrey Khan is racing to document Aramaic, the language of Jesus, before its native speakers vanish
by Ariel Sabar, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013

Grammar: Think you're doing it right? Think again.

Most of What You Think You Know About Grammar Is Wrong
And ending sentences with a preposition is nothing worth worrying about
by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013

Treehugging Judith Z. Miller makes wearable art

Meet Judith Z. Miller, the artist behind the primal, nature-based Sticks & Stones Wearable Art. Click here for information about her one-of-a-kind craft and a video interview by Donna Drake.

Your brain on art

How Does the Brain Process Art?
New imaging techniques are mapping the locations of our aesthetic response
by Abigail Tucker, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2012

The history of dance...through shoes?

Melissa West (photo by Anjola Toro)

What's going on with artists on Staten Island?

Dancer Melissa West (another one of my former Writing on Dance students) certainly seems to know--about that and about the history of dance through shoes and stuff. Listen to Melissa being interviewed on Vin Forte's podcast, That Time of the Month, here.

MWest and Company

The Curiosity Project

Staten Island Dance Jam (meets on Saturdays, 2-4pm, at the Forest Haven Center for Dance and Music)

Two great losses for the arts and humanity--Achebe and McKiver

I wanted to acknowledge two great gentlemen who passed while I was away on vacation. Even though late, this blog should not go without mention of their lives and legacy. Here are their New York Times obituaries.

Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82
by Jonathan Kandell, The New York Times, March 22, 2013

Lawrence McKiver, a Singer in Long Tradition, Dies at 97
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 1, 2013

In support of writers' rights

The Slow Death of the American Author
by Scott Turow, The New York Times, April 7, 2013

Where in the world is Eva Yaa Asantewaa?

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo by Deborah Feller)

Well, back home in New York City, for one thing!

But also look for me at...

This. Witness Relocation's Eterniday at La MaMa. Info/tickets here.

Bebe Miller Company: A History--co-presented by 651 Arts and New York Live Arts at Brooklyn's Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at LIU. I'll be moderating a "Stay Late" post-performance sit-down with Bebe and collaborators this Friday, April 12. For program and ticket information, click here and here.

I hope to attend Deirdre Towers' film screening and salute to the producers, artists and educators of the US flamenco community. Monday, April 15, 6pm, at Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. ​For information on this free event and the library's exhibit, 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, click here.

My project-driven Writing on Dance 2013 takes off at New York Live Arts next Wednesday afternoon with a full house of new students. Also, I'll pretty much be living at New York Live Arts on Wednesday for the opening of that visionary series, Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks ("A five-day festival of arts and ideas exploring the mind-body connection through the works of the acclaimed neurologist"). My first WOD session will be sandwiched between the panel on "Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioperception" and the evening keynote with two of my heroes--Dr. Sacks and Bill T. Jones. And the following day, I cannot afford to miss "Minding the Dancing Body" with Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë and Gwen Welliver, followed by the performance of RE: Awakenings by Donna Uchizono Company. While that's probably all I'll get to, that's not all that's happening. For details on the full series of special events here.

Speaking of Writing on Dance: Last year, I was delighted to have the accomplished, Argentinian dance artist and educator Anabella Lenzu in my workshop, and she will be returning for this year's series. Anabella has just self-published a book about her life and career--Unveiling Motion and Emotion--which includes her forthright thoughts on dance education, dance community and more (as well as some striking photography by her husband, Todd Carroll). So, you'll also find me dipping into this, now and then. Presented in English and in Spanish, her writing is just like her: warm and sincere with an underlying tenacity born of a drive to become the best she can be, as artist and as communicator, in the service of dance and dancers. For information on her book, click here.

I look forward to Miami-based choreographer Rosie Herrera's New York premiere of Dining Alone at Baryshnikov Arts Center (a surreal work of "immersive dance theater," somehow involving food and an opera singer...hmmm). It's running April 18-19, and a new show has been added. Find out more here.

My Image and Psyche workshops on Tarot and psychic development continue at our wonderful East Village location. On Saturday, April 27 (Image and Psyche, Part 2), we'll experiment with dynamic layouts and the intriguingly varied, Trickster-ish reversed cards. On Saturday, May 4, I plan to repeat Part 1. For complete information and to register for a place in these fun and enlightening workshops, see my listings on Facebook for April 27 and May 4.

On May 21, artists Larissa Velez-Jackson, iele paloumpis, Katy Pyle and others at Lobby Talks (New York Live Arts--in the lobby, natch) for "Identity Matters: Persona and Politics," curated by Marissa L. Perel.  ("Choreographers, directors, and critics discuss contemporary issues in identity politics, and how these issues shape perceptions of persona and embodiment.") Free. Just show up for the 7:30 start time and grab a chair.

Oh, there's bound to be more. But--whew!--that's enough news for now. See you around town!

US enters controversy over sale of Hopi cultural artifacts

U.S. Diplomat Asks Auction House to Delay Sale of Hopi Items
by Tom Mashberg, The New York Times, April 8, 2013

They're making it right HERE.

New York Performing Artists Share Inspiration on ‘Made Here’
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, March 13, 2013

This show should make you tappy!

Tap is an exuberant part of the New York City dance mix and, appropriately, you'll find it in all its glory at the 27th Performance Mix Festival. On Sunday, April 14th, join host and longtime tap wiz/producer/historian Jane Goldberg for an afternoon of RHYTHM´N SCHMOOZE.

Roxane Butterfly (photo by Leslie  Lyons)

The program features performances by dancers Michela Marino Lerman, Roxane Butterfly and Cheryl Johnson.

3pm

The Flea Theater
41 White Street (Tribeca)
(map/directions)

For programming and ticket information for Goldberg's RHYTHM 'N SCHMOOZE and all things Performance Mix, just click here.

Ground Zero arts center to be multidisciplinary, not just for dance

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Arts Hub for All May Work for None
by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, April 2, 2013

A.O. Scott on Roger Ebert

AN APPRAISAL
Ebert Was a Critic Whose Sting Was Salved by Caring

by A. O. Scott, The New York Times, April 5, 2013

When God is queer

Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer
(with Carlos Motta)

Fri., April 12, 7pm-11pm

James Memorial Chapel at Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway (at 121st Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Free admission: RSVP Online

Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer is a performative symposium convened by artist Carlos Motta and minister Jared Gilbert featuring performative lectures and performances by a group of academics, activists, artists and theologians to explore the intersections of queer politics, spirituality and social justice.

Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer explores queerness as a constant force of disruption in theology and sexual politics. The participants speak of a "queerness" in theology that is particular and explicit of the queer body, a "queerness" that represents a constant pursuit of new social and spiritual revelations through deviant, subversive and indecent affirmations that will continue to challenge repressive notions of morality and respectability.

For complete information, click here.

And still, she rises!

Educate girls and change the world!

Directed by Academy Award nominee Richard E. Robbins (Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience), the feature film Girl Rising--described by one audience member as "incredible, inspiring, gorgeous, perfect"--celebrates the power of education through the stories of nine youngsters from around the world. What could be more timely?

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Liam Neeson, Kerry Washington, Cate Blanchett, Priyanka Chopra, Salma Hayek, Chloë Grace Moretz, Selena Gomez, Freida Pinto and Alicia Keys.

One-week exclusive release: April 19-25. 

Locate a screening or find out how you can bring one to a theater near you! Click here for more information. Or...

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Presenting flamenco in New York

FLAMENCO IN NEW YORK: A BOW TO AMERICAN PRODUCERS, ARTISTS, AND EDUCATORS

a free, celebratory video retrospective compiled, edited and presented by Deirdre Towers

Special Guests: Helene and Robert Browning, Maria Benitez, Jorge Navarro, Arturo Martinez and Clara Aich

Monday, April 15, 6pm

       Free admission with RSVP (deirdretowers@aol.com)

Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center (Amsterdam Ave entrance between 64th and 65th Street), Manhattan

This presentation, developed in conjunction with the exhibit "100 Years of Flamenco in New York," was woven with stills and videos assembled from the New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Collection archives, from producer/dancers Maria Benitez and Carlota Santana, producer/guitarist Arturo Martinez, producer/dancer Jorge Navarro, filmmakers Clara Aich, Paulina Camarena, and Sholeh Dalai, and photographers Angelica Escoto, Elaine Norman, Luis Pons, Antonio Gamboa, and Jack Vartoogian.

Dance artist Max Pollak creates international march against violence

Led by some of the greatest musicians, dancers and artists from all over the world, MAGNOLIA MARCH a traditional New Orleans – style funeral processional will organize on April 27th, 2013 in big cities and small towns throughout the US, Canada, Asia, Australia and Europe demonstrating peaceful solidarity against acts of violence.

Too often we are witnesses to violent acts that cost lives, and that have deep impact on us, and our loved ones.  Too often excessive violence is shown repeatedly through our media, and too often we are silent in fear, dismay and helplessness.

The MAGNOLIA MARCH is a chance for all of us to take a peaceful stand by marching in the streets of our cities and towns.  With a Second Line Parade, we can drown out the violence with music for sympathy, compassion and community.

The Inspiration

Outraged by the recent Sandy Hook shooting, NYC based tap dancer/percussionist Max Pollak felt compelled to create MAGNOLIA MARCH in order to provide the public, specifically families, children and artists, with an opportunity to mourn and come together to express their feelings and pay respect to those who have lost loved ones in recent acts of violence.

Details

MAGNOLIA MARCH will honor the memory of victims lost to recent violence throughout the United States and other places all over the world.

On April 27, 2013 MAGNOLIA MARCH funeral processionals will take place at approximately the same time, in multiple cities, streamed live via www.MagnoliaMarch.com.

Those who wish to organize a MAGNOLIA MARCH in a city other than NYC, or would like to participate, please visit www.MagnoliaMarch.com for additional event information.

Facebook: Magnolia March
Twitter: @MagnoliaMarch
Email: magnoliamarchevent@gmail.com