2009 Bay Area tragedy inspires Black director's feature film debut

A Man’s Death, a Career’s Birth
A Bay Area Killing Inspires ‘Fruitvale Station’
by Joe Rhodes, The New York Times, June 28, 2013

The Apothetae offers a new view of people with disabilities

Shaking Up the Stage
The Apothetae Aims to Merge Disabilities Into the Theatrical Mainstream
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, June 29, 2013

NEA names new Jazz Masters

National Endowment for the Arts Names New Class of Jazz Masters
by Nate Chinen, The New York Times, June 27, 2013

"Lavender Review" e-zine plans issue on lesbians in dance

Mary Meriam edits Lavender Review, an international, biannual e-zine dedicated to poetry and art by, about, and for lesbians, whatever might appeal to a lesbian readership. For the December 2013, she plans to publish poems and images about lesbians in dance.  

She's asking: "Are there lesbian dancers? Are there lesbian poets who write about dance? Lesbians who make art about dance? Lesbian dancers who write poems?" 

If you're interested in contributing to this issue of Lavender Review--or know lesbian dancers or poets who should be included--please reach out to Mary at lavender.review@gmail.com.

Because it's the...Dancer's Turn!

Let me now introduce you to something brand new in dance writing and to my colleagues at Dancer's Turn--the group blog devoted to long-form profiles of dance artists. Check it out here, and subscribe so you'll never miss a post!

***

Writers are welcome to submit queries and proposals. Click for the Dancer's Turn Call for Submissions.

Walk proud!

HAPPY PRIDE WEEKEND!

Have a wonderful LGBTQ Pride Weekend, everyone! 

While we still have much work to do here and around the world, we can take this moment to savor a sweet victory. 

Be safe, strong, united, joyful!

Bring a camera and just add water

The Amazing Grace of Underwater Portraits
Photographer Henrik Sorensen takes a fluid approach to the body in motion
by Paul Bisceglio, Smithsonian Magazine, June 2013

Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers present "Neverland"

Of all the places to present a dance work that, from start to finish, features performers cavorting naked: A little theater in El Museo del Barrio, its walls sweetly decorated with scenes out of fairy tales!

Neverland--the result of Antonio Ramos's year-long residency at the museum--also seems, as a title, packed with provocation. Peter Pan and Michael Jackson zip through the mind.

Ramos's dancers--sometimes wearing wigs of glistening, fluttering Mylar or other minor trinkets and accessories--repeatedly, and repetitively, spill through the aisles or over the equally-bare stage, pumping and prancing around to lengthy dance tunes. Neverland has that certain in-your-face quality--literally: eventually, you do find yourself mooned by a quartet of dancers for what seems like hours--and a feeling of an outrageous and inescapable drug-trip version of a Broadway show. And unlike some nudity in contemporary dance, there's absolutely no attempt to tamp down the sexiness of the human body. Here, sexiness is often the point (and to that I would add, just sheer beauty and style and, sometimes in Ramos himself, a kind of ancient classical heroism). 

This work is clever as hell. Inspired by a magazine story about a homeless lesbian finding hardship and community in New York City--and, by extension, Ramos's own story of moving to this city without a job or a friend--Neverland's tawdriness easily and irreversibly slides into glamour, ritual elevation and radical badass-itude. It reminds us that dancers are the artists who profoundly unnerve and rock the system by putting their bodies front and center all the time, even when fully clothed. So, when they're unclothed (and foregrounding sexuality) in a society with serious issues about the body and embodiment, they're making revolution. 

"Let your whole body talk," sings RuPaul in a song on Neverland's soundtrack.
These dancers demonstrate that, no matter the context or circumstances, we can express ourselves with creative energy and pride.

So, hats off--if nothing else, for the moment--to Ramos and Joey Kipp, Adele Loux-Turner, Saúl Ulerio and Rebecca Wender--for braving this hour+ work and to Amanda K. Ringger for gloriously lighting it. And, while I'm at it, a tip of the hat to Charles Rice-Gonzalez for giving us, for once, the clearest, most helpful answer to that perennial question: "Okay, so, what the heck does a dancemaker's dramaturge do?" This one has done a very good job.

For more information on El Museo del Barrio's exhibitions and programs, click here.

Storm alters the picture for the Whitney

One Eye on Art, the Other on Water
Whitney Revamps New Museum After Hurricane Sandy
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, June 26, 2013

New funds enable Bronx Museum to enhance its collection

Bronx Museum Raises $1 Million to Acquire Art
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, June 26, 2013

Angélique Kidjo: "The heat is killing you guys, and I'm having fun!"

Grammy-winning recording artist Angélique Kidjo at Rockefeller Park
(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Ah, yes, the heat.

It's summer. That means it's River to River Festival time. And that means it's Kid-joy time when that bighearted Angélique Kidjo, performer and philanthropist, once again holds court at Manhattan's Rockefeller Park, singing, dancing, playfully making us get up from our chairs to join in the great, transformative work of being completely alive.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Despite this June's tropical clime--or, perhaps, because of it--last evening set the mood for joy as the Benin-born superstar and her band rolled through a 90-minute set of songs. As always, Kidjo brought us the world as she hears and loves it, drawing from the sounds of West, North and South Africa, Brazil, Bollywood, funk--that last represented by her encore, the beloved 1991 tune "Batonga"--and more. Her enthralling voice pierces the air, hooks everyone within earshot and rings us like bells.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Beautiful child, you are so poor

But you dance like a princess and you do as you please

The rich people in the village are furious

"What on earth is going on ?"

Because you dance like a princess and you do as you please

--from "Batonga"

Recalling her father's dedication to providing education for all of his ten children--especially his daughters--Kidjo addressed the youngsters in the audience, saying "You can make choices for yourself....You are part of this moving world." As she does so often, she spoke out against female genital mutilation and violence against women. Her most rousing message, though, came via Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" which, in her voice, becomes an optimistic and unifying call to communal action. She wears it well.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Every audience I've seen totally adores Kidjo, who shows no hesitation to get down off a stage and boogie her way through a thicket of admirers with smartphone cameras, or to bring as many of them up on stage as can safely fit. If you missed her this year, don't do that again. Just don't do it. If  you do, both of us will be mighty mad at you.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Keep up with Angélique Kidjo here.

For more River to River summer fun, click here.

Kate McGarrigle remembered in documentary

A Lifetime of Songwriting, as Sung by Her Children
‘Sing Me the Songs,’ a Tribute to Kate McGarrigle
by A. O. Scott, The New York Times, June 25, 2013

Free outdoor dance classes for all with the Limón company

Join the Limón Dance Company and Limón Dance Institute for free dance classes, with live music, on the lawn at Bryant Park, every Saturday from 10-11am through September 7.

Wear comfortable clothes and dancing shoes or go barefoot. Open to all levels and ages, no previous dance training necessary, just a love of movement.

The Lawn at Bryant Park
42nd Street and 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Call 212-777-3353 or click here for information.

Questlove: the man and his music

The Big Man Under the Afro, and His Music

Questlove Publishes His Memoir, ‘Mo’ Meta Blues’

by Dwight Garner, The New York Times, June 25, 2013

Scholar examines Hollywood complicity with Nazis

Scholar Asserts That Hollywood Avidly Aided Nazis
by Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times, June 25, 2013

A world on tap

Cartier Williams at "Tap It Out" (c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Get ready to get tap happy when, once again, New York City becomes Tony Waag's Tap City (July 6-13).

My favorite part of American Tap Dance Foundation's legendary summer extravaganza has always been TAP INTERNATIONALS, an evening that luxuriates in the worldwide, cross-cultural phenomenon that tap dance has become. Enjoy the latest edition on Thursday, July 11 (7:30pm) at Symphony Space:

A global community of artists that  include international soloists, contemporary tap ensembles, raw talent and leading tap masters, will combine tap dance with world music, body percussion, gumboot, funk, swing, step dance, vocals, film, and storytelling.

Brenda Bufalino (US)
Flavia Costa (Brazil)
Felipe Galganni (Brazil)
Corey Hutchins (US)
Chikako Iwahori (Japan)
Ryan Johnson (US)
Kazu Kumagai (Japan)
Lisa La Touche (Canada)
Winston Morrison (Australia)
Claudia Rahardjanoto (Germany/Indonesia)
Rumba Tap (Cuba)
Lynn Schwab (US)
Tap City Youth Ensemble (Africa/US)
Nicholas Young (US)

Get complete information and tickets for Tap Internationals here.

For comprehensive information on the 2013 Tap City festival, click here.

Peter J. Sharp Theatre
Symphony Space
Broadway at 95th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Poetry matters: NPR talks with Nikky Finney

"And I have this - I have a friend Dorianne Laux - lives in North Carolina. And she's married to poet. And she tell me this great story at the Dodge Poetry Festival this year. She said they bought one of those real estate boxes that the agents put outside the house with the information about the house inside.

"So they put it outside their house. Their house was not for sale but they stuffed poems inside the box. And so people would stop and they thought they were taking out, you know, information that would give them the square footage about the house. And they would unfrill the paper and it would be, you know, the square footage of the human heart instead. And they would stand at the window, she said, and watch people reading the poems slowly and how slowly the car might take off. That's what we do as poets."

          --Nikky Finney

Nikky Finney Ponders Possibilities Of The Poetry Profession

Neal Conan, Talk of The Nation, NPR, June 20, 2013

Makeda Thomas celebrates her 10th anniversary season

You'll find my review of dance artist Makeda Thomas's recent 10th Anniversary season at New York Live Arts here on DanceMagazine.com.

Bobby (Blue) Bland, 83

Bobby (Blue) Bland, Soul and Blues Balladeer, Dies at 83

by Bill Friskics-Warren, The New York Times, June 24, 2013

Chet Flippo, 69

Chet Flippo, Journalist Who Championed Country Music, Dies at 69
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, June 23, 2013

Life means change: Ryan P. Casey taps it all out

Tap dancer Ryan P. Casey (photo by Chelsea Hack) 

Ryan P. Casey--perhaps best known for his work in Michelle Dorrance's Dorrance Dance--presents "Transitions”: An Evening of Tap Dance, his first full evening of original tap choreography on Saturday, July 6 (8pm) at The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater at the West Side YMCA. The show includes solo, duet, trio and ensemble work set to a variety of music, from Blossom Dearie and Harry Connick, Jr. to Dinah Washington and Shel Silverstein.

He also promises "poetry, humor and hip hop," and the show's title, says the 22-year-old and famously tall Casey, refers to some major personal and professional changes.

“Some of it was inspired by my pilgrimage to New York City; some of it explores how I overcame the hindrances and self-consciousness caused by my unique body type; and the show overall represents a shift into my newfound roles as choreographer and director.”

Casey and  dancers (photo by Maya Reardon)

Ryan P. Casey bio

Casey, 22, studied at The Dance Inn of Lexington and Arlington for 13 years, honing his
tap skills under the tutelage of Director Thelma Goldberg and Kelly Kaleta while also training in other styles. During his time with the studio’s Legacy Dance Company, he  performed at venues like Tap City: The New York City Tap Festival, the Boston Center for the Arts, and the annual Boston Dance Alliance gala. Additionally, the 6’8” hoofer was the recipient of a YoungArts award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, appeared on an episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” and was a student of the inaugural tap program at The School at Jacob’s Pillow. Now on faculty with the Legacy Dancers, he continues to work both as a soloist and choreographer while also dancing for Bessie-award winner Michelle Dorrance in her New York City-based company, Dorrance Dance. In May, he graduated from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a self-designed B.A. in “The Sociology and Morality of Literature” and had the honor of performing at Lincoln Center.

For more information, click here.
For tickets, click here.

The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater
at the West Side YMCA
10 West 64th Street (between Broadway and Central Park West)
(map/directions)

Shake/Walk with Kathy Westwater: free workshop, June 29

(photo by Anja Hitzenberger)

 "PARK Scores #2" (2012) by Kathy Westwater

with dancers Hilary Chapman and Jeremy Pheiffer 

Movement Research at First Street Green invites you to take the free Shake/Walk Workshop with Kathy Westwater on Saturday, June 29 (Noon to 1pm):

Taking two everyday forms of movement, we will allow these forms to disorganize within, and to be disorganizing of, our bodies. The sensations that arise within this unstable and unbound matrix range from relaxing to energizing, from disorienting to freeing. Speculating on physical and perceptual states that occur amidst the contingencies of environmental trauma and the precarities of economic collapse, this workshop iteration explores locating this improvisational practice in an outdoor urban environment, beyond the four walls of the studio. Open to movers of all backgrounds; wear comfortable street or dance clothes.

For complete information, click here.

irst Street Green
33 East 1st Steet, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Associate Press to drop coverage of dance, opera and Off-Broadway

To Be, Or Not To Be (Covered By The AP)
by Howard Sherman, NPR, June 20, 2013

James Gandolfini, 51

James Gandolfini, ‘Sopranos’ Star, Dies at 51

by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, June 19, 2013

A video tribute to dance artist Jennifer Monson

Jennifer Monson Tribute Video, Movement Research Gala 2013 from movement research on Vimeo.
2013 Movement Research Honoree Jennifer Monson

Audio interviews: DD Dorvillier, Pooh Kaye, Alejandra Martorell, Cathy Weis, Jeremy Nelson

Written Quote: Yvonne Meier

Photos by Tom Brazil and Henry Hills; and courtesy of Pooh Kaye, Jennifer Monson and Jeremy Nelson

Video footage: "Zeena Parkins and Jennifer Monson at the Clocktower, July 2011" with videography by Ryutaro Ishikane and courtesy of Jennifer Monson and iLAND - interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance; "Jennifer Solo - Cape Cod" from Live Dancing Archive and "14 Street Migration" (2001 and 2002) from the BIRD BRAIN project, courtesy of Robin Vachal; "Trash Can Study" (1983) courtesy of Pooh Kaye; "Mad Heidi" (2005) courtesy of Yvonne Meier; "String of Lies" (1995) courtesy of Cathy Weis; and "RMW(a)" (2007) and "Yvonne Meier and Jennifer Monson" (2010) courtesy of Movement Research

Music: Zeena Parkins, Orra

Video Production: Catherine Galasso and Rosalie Elkinton

Brooklyn's first festival of Indian classical dance to open June 25

DanceFest India!, opening on June 25, will feature a special performance evening, classes and master classes in Indian classical dance forms. Presented by Trinayan Dance Theater, the six-day celebration represents Brooklyn's first festival of Indian dance.

Events include:

--"Sacred Vision," a performance evening at Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at Long Island University on Saturday, June 29, 7:30pm

--Kathak and Odissi dance master classes hosted by The School at Mark Morris Dance Group

--a children's program of live dance and more at the Brooklyn's Children Museum

About "Sacred Vision"

“Sacred Vision” features world-renowned dancers Sujata  Mohapatra (Odissi) extolling the  classic work of Padmabhibhushan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra , Savitha Sastry (Bharata Natyam) with the New York premiere of Soul Cages, Ayona  Bhaduri (Odissi) former  touring dancer with the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble making her NYC solo debut, and a special Kathak duet by Prashant Shah and Ammr Vandal featuring classic work from legendary Kathak Guru Padmasree Kumudini Lakhia. "Sacred  Vision” also features a special collaboration with Brooklyn-based photographer, Manjari Sharma's Project Darshan.  

DanceFest India! runs through June 30. For complete schedule and ticketing details, click here.

Another ticket discount offer for "The Painted Bird" -- but hurry!

From Pavel Zuštiak's The Painted Bird (photo: David Kumerman)

A NEW SPECIAL OFFER!

On  Thursday, June 20 (from midnight to midnight),
you can purchase tickets to the entire trilogy for only $35!

Note: Discount applies to performances on 
Saturday, June 22 and Sunday, June 23 only.

When ordering your tickets, 

enter the promotional code: 

JAY

To purchase tickets, 

click here. 

Again, this is a limited time offer. Don't miss it!

The acclaimed dance trilogy, The Painted Bird, will be shown in New York in its entirety (four hours with two intermissions) for the first time as a highlight of the 2013 La MaMa Moves! Festival!.

A presentation of Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo Company, the work addresses themes of "displacement, otherness and transformation," taking its impetus from the 1965 controversial novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Previously, New Yorkers have seen individual sections--Bastard, Amidst and Strange Cargo--at various venues as the piece developed. La MaMa will offer tickets for the complete trilogy or for individual sections.

This should prove to be a hot ticket. Put it on your calendar now (June 21-30). For a schedule and complete ticketing details, click here.

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

Review of Rebecca Lazier's "Coming Together/Attica"

Click here to read my DanceMagazine.com review of Rebecca Lazier's presentation of Coming Together/Attica at The Invisible Dog Art Center.

Behind the scenes with LMCC and Enrico D. Wey

Great new art doesn't just auto-magically appear during Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's popular River to River Festival (various sites, June 15-July 14). It has to be made, and making it takes space and a fair amount of time. LMCC provides both to artists like Enrico D. Wey, now working on a dance project with a company of four in LMCC's Process Space residency at 125 Maiden Lane. Yesterday afternoon, a small group of visitors got a chance to look under the hood and see how Wey works.

Wey's work-in-progress, targeted for premiere later this year or in 2014, is conceived to be responsive and adjustable to multiple outdoor and traditional indoor venues. In his sample showing, each dancer twisted, slouched and seamlessly flowed through a connected sequence of moves of his or her own or adopted his colleagues' moves. Wey continuously shuffled and recombined dancers and number of moves--"Jeremy, can you learn Mary's 20," "Simon, go to your 75." In a later passage, dancers executed patterns of bending and swaying that, like gazing out at a wind-rustled meadow, made my breath slow down. All of this seemed an ideal way to hook audiences on the notion that contemporary dance can be welcoming and even fun.

To find more opportunities to visit Open Studio showings, and for complete information on River to River's "over 150 events in 30 days at 28 sites," click here.

Dance with Aszure Barton & Artists

The acclaimed Aszure Barton & Artists troupe seeks new dancers:

Dear friends,

We are expanding our dancing family for future projects!

We would love for you to submit the following to auditions@aszurebarton.com
so that we can get to know more about you:

- a brief bio (250 words max)
- photograph (max 2GB, JPG only)
- a video link (1min in length)
- citizenship / working status in the United States

Please submit by July 6th, 2013

For further information on Barton and her company, click here.

Stuart Comer appointed MoMA's Chief Curator of media and performance art

Stuart Comer (photo by Daniel Terna/Light Industry)

Stuart Comer has been appointed Chief Curator of the Department of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art, announced by MoMA Director Glenn D. Lowry. 

Comer, who has served as Curator of Film at Tate Modern, London, since 2004, will oversee the department’s program of special exhibitions, installations from the collection, and acquisitions.  He will begin his new position at MoMA on September 23.

"Artists working across time-based media—from performance to the moving image and all of the many permutations in between—continue to push and reshape artistic practice in fundamentally challenging and exciting ways," said Comer. "I look forward to exploring this dynamic field and its rich history by continuing the development and exhibition of MoMA's distinguished collection. MoMA has become a leading institution redefining the role of media and performance in the museum, and this will be an exciting opportunity to further develop its programs in collaboration with artists, audiences, and colleagues."

Comer is a co-curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art 2014 Biennial, and will be working with both institutions concurrently until next March.

Discovering the art of Louisiana's Clementine Hunter

Looking for Clementine Hunter’s Louisiana
by Jennifer Moses, The New York Times, June 14, 2013

Holland Cotter on Museo del Barrio's "Bienal 2013"

A Constellation of Identities, Winking and Shifting
Museo del Barrio’s ‘Bienal 2013’ Explores Self and Origins
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, June 13, 2013

Queer courage in Uganda

Where Being Gay Is a Life-and-Death Struggle
Fighting Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill in ‘Call Me Kuchu’
by Stephen Holden, The New York Times, June 13, 2013

Music for peace: Davide Martello plays in Turkey's Taksim Square

Music in Istanbul Is Intermission for a Protest
The Pianist Davide Martello Calms Istanbul Tensions
by Sebnem Arsu, The New York Times, June 14, 2013

A New York poet survives...and wins

Struggles Behind Him, a Poet of El Barrio Embraces Life
by David Gonzalez, The New York Times, June 14, 2013

Detroit cannot sell its art treasures

Michigan Attorney General Says Detroit Museum Could Not Sell Art
by Graham Bowley, The New York Times, June 14, 2013

Joan H. Parker, 80

Joan H. Parker, Inspiration for Heroine of Spenser Mysteries, Dies at 80
by Joyce Wadler, The New York Times, June 13, 2013

New York Times obituary for Harold J.Cromer

Harold J. Cromer, Vaudeville Duo’s Stumpy, Is Dead
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, June 13, 2013

Three dancemakers say, Music is our muse!

Laura Mead and Justin Flores
Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance

Of the three artists contributing work to last evening's opening of Musa! A Dance Festival, Cherylyn Lavagnino did the most to convince me of her passion for music. For both of her works, live musicians perched downstage, so close to their audience--almost in the laps of those of us in the first few rows on one side--that we could catch each one's momentary sideways glance or intake of breath and gathering of energy. The musician's bodies, alive to the wonderful music as they channeled it, formed an integral, conscious part of our experience of each work. How perfect a way to elevate music as the choreographer's Muse, underscoring the entire mission of this series at Baruch Performing Arts Center which runs through June 22.

Lavagnino's Compadre duet--set to an Astor Piazzola tango, performed with easygoing charm by JP Jofre on bandoneon and Evelyn Ulex on piano--serves contemporary ballet with nuevo tango flavor and snap. Or, maybe it's the reverse. When Justin Flores takes Ramona Kelley to the air in various lifts and tangles, it's hard to tell where one dance technique ends and the other begins. They are, in a way, made for each other. Watch for Kelley again in Lavagnino's sweeping, Schubert-powered ensemble work Treize en Jeu, where this dancer combines radiant self-possession with irrepressible joy as one of the stylishly strutting ladies who, with minimal but telling gestures, suggest centuries of yore and acknowledge how glamorous they are in our eyes. Do try to attend one of the show with live music performed by Jane Chung (violin), Sara Biber (cello) and Andrea Lam (piano).

Schubert also seems to have Lavagnino, through the capable men of her company, musing on the proper way to get things done. Lifts, catches, turns: If the job in question is complex and even risky, watch those assured hands go to work--firm and accurate. It's an education! The appealing qualities on display in each case, do they necessarily belong to one specified gender or another? Who cares?

Last evening's program also included works by Lavagnino's partners in Musa!--Dušan Týnek and Zvi Gotheiner, performed by each of their enjoyable troupes. These and other pieces will appear, in various configurations, over the course of the festival. See here for complete schedule and programming details. For ticket information, click here.

Baruch Performing Arts Center
Baruch College (CUNY)
55 Lexington Avenue (25th Street entrance), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Shut up....

"Shut Up" from UK post-punk band Savages 

Jehnny Beth, lead singer

Savages Website

"Naked Soul" at the Rubin

Holly Near

Did you know that Chelsea's Rubin Museum of Art will feature a great acoustic singer/songwriter series, starting this month and presenting the likes of Kristin Hersh (July 26), Holly Near (September 27) and Toshi Reagon (November 8)?

Presented with Music without Borders, the Naked Soul series opens June 28 (Slaid Cleaves) and continues on select Fridays at 7pm.

Members may receive up to 25% off tickets.

Get the complete schedule and ticketing information here or call the box office at 212-620-5000 x344.

Special ticket offer for Zuštiak's "The Painted Bird" at La MaMa [UPDATE]

From Pavel Zuštiak's The Painted Bird (photo: David Kumerman)

SPECIAL OFFER

On Wednesday, June 13--from midnight to midnight--buy one ticket and get another at half-price!

Note: Discount applies to first weekend only.

When ordering your tickets, 

enter the promotional code: 

FALCON

To purchase tickets, 

click here. 

Again, this is a limited time offer. Don't miss it!

The acclaimed dance trilogy, The Painted Bird, will be shown in New York in its entirety (four hours with two intermissions) for the first time as a highlight of the 2013 La MaMa Moves! Festival!.

A presentation of Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo Company, the work addresses themes of "displacement, otherness and transformation," taking its impetus from the 1965 controversial novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Previously, New Yorkers have seen individual sections--Bastard, Amidst and Strange Cargo--at various venues as the piece developed. La MaMa will offer tickets for the complete trilogy or for individual sections.

This should prove to be a hot ticket. Put it on your calendar now (June 21-30). For a schedule and complete ticketing details, click here.

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

Birds do it

Bird Night at the Disco
by Sindya N. Bhanoo, The New York Times, June 10, 2013

Writers of color in science fiction and fantasy

Beyond ‘Game of Thrones’: Exploring diversity in speculative fiction

by Mindy Farabee, Hero Complex, Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2013

Harold "Stumpy" Cromer, 92

Broadway and vaudeville pioneer Harold ‘Stumpy’ Cromer is dead
by David Hinckley, The New York Daily News, June 9, 2013

The spectrum of dance with Donald Byrd

An excellent interview of Seattle-based choreographer Donald Byrd by Dance Magazine's Wendy Perron.

Click here to listen!

Khalid Albaih: Cartoonist of the Arab Spring

Cartoonist’s Pen Leaves Mark Across Arab World
by Ismai'il Kushkush, The New York Times, June 7, 2013

Roberta Smith reviews Whitney show of Edward Hopper drawings

A Master, Between the Lines
‘Hopper Drawing,’ at the Whitney Museum
by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, June 6, 2013

In the fog with "Vulture-Wally"

Dance artist Jillian Sweeney and director/writer Jeffrey Cranor strike just the right balance between earnest mysteriousness and kickass satire in their new work, Vulture-Wally, a presentation of Incubator Arts Project's New Performance Series at St. Mark's Church. As described by Sweeney, the 65-minute, immersive Vulture-Wally

uses spoken word, song, and dialog to create a long-form poem about who owns our bodies and who authors our stories. Based on the 19th century Austrian Alps folk novel Geier-Wally, the dance dissects the melodramatic hero(ine) by examining individual body parts and pairing the movement with deconstructed classic film scores.

Set in IAP's small, black box theater--upstairs from the more familiar Danspace Project home in the church's sanctuary--the work unfolds in a dimly-lit space engulfed in artificial fog.* Faint lines of light often demarcate areas of new action, guiding the circulating audience members to position themselves out of the way of developing scenes. People sometimes perch on risers that extend across one wall but, now and again, watchers have to make way for dancers.

In fact, Vulture-Wally opens with Sweeney's dancers--Siobhan Burke, Lydia Chrisman and Tara Willis--dramatically gesturing as they tread back and forth, in strained and grave slow motion, across those risers in the mist and Vincent Vigilante's filtered light. Vaguely romantic music plays faintly in the background. Sweeney, moving even more sparingly, occupies a separate box of light in a corner of the theater, and we must deliberately lose sight of the severe trio to turn around and catch up on whatever she's doing. The "chapters" of the piece unfold a story of either conforming to authority or striking off on one's own. Hell is indeed other people who wield cosmetic brushes or singalong hymns.

Cranor's clever text and the excellent performance by Sweeney and company make a worthwhile event of this smart, accomplished work.

*One important note of caution: If you have respiratory allergies, a cold or asthma, the ever-present fog might prove challenging. It's not the same as watching fake fog billow across the stage of a big theater at the normal, safer remove. You're all up in it for a full hour. I'm still struggling this morning with congested nasal passages and a severely irritated throat. For information on adverse health effects of fog or smoke machines, see here.

Vulture-Wally continues this evening through Sunday with performances at 8pm. For tickets, click here.

Incubator Arts Project
St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue, 2nd Floor, Manhattan
(directions)

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on race and writing

Life Across Borders: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Talks About ‘Americanah’
by John Williams, The New York Times, June 6, 2013

Mira Awad's "Arabic Fusion"

A Rainbow of Fragility
Mira Awad at the Metropolitan Room
by Stephen Holden, The New York Times, June 5, 2013

Free movement workshops for all at First Street Green

Movement Workshops at First Street Green

Free

Saturdays June 8-29

12pm-1pm

Levi Gonzalez describes these workshops as "LOVELY and AMAZING." So, I think you'll want to be there.

He writes:

These classes are not intended just for dancers, but for anyone who wants to have a thoughtful and engaging movement experience.

This Saturday, Jaime Ortega will teach his Move to Heal class. Originally developed for people living with AIDS in the 90's, this class takes really simple exercises based on both eastern and western approaches to the body and moves gently towards movement, perception and being in the body. I will be there this Saturday, and I hope you will join us and let others know.

The details:

For all workshop descriptions, click here.

All classes take place at First Park (33 East 1st Street, Manhattan). The class meets at the side of the park where Second Avenue and Houston Street meet. Do not use the First Avenue entrance.

June 8
Jaime Ortega
Move to Heal

June 15
Diana Crum
Workshop with Diana Crum

June 22
Jennifer Monson
A Workshop on Navigation From the Point of View of the Body

June 29 
Kathy Westwater
SHAKE/WALK Workshop

You can also learn more about activities in the park in partnership with various local cultural organizations at www.firststreetgreenpark.org

Helen Hanft, 79

Helen Hanft, Master of Camp Way Off Broadway, Dies at 79
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, June 5, 2013

Famed Detroit rock house in jeopardy: Jack White to the rescue

Jack White Pays Detroit Concert Hall’s Back Taxes to Save It
by James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times, June 5, 2013

Speaking of shyness...and dance

At a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by... you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are... especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself... But I am this person. And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love.

Patricia Clarkson (Miss Dodger) to Elle Fanning (Phoebe Lichten)

Phoebe in Wonderland (2008), directed by Daniel Barnz

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo: Deborah Feller)

I grew up an only child, a self-conscious, shy kid overwhelmed by the many larger-than-life--and sometimes out-of-control--personalities in my striving Barbadian immigrant family and our network of African American and Caribbean friends. Born in New York and raised Roman Catholic in a northern Queens neighborhood steadily transitioning from Irish and Italian to Black and Latino, I retreated into the rich worlds of books, writing poetry and television parodies, and absorbing the 1960s' abundance and diversity of music. Just the idea of speaking to or in front of people would unnerve me. I'd fret about it before, during and after.

Oddly enough, I loved to dance and, in those moments, did not mind being watched and enjoyed. I have vivid sense memories of papers shaking in my hands as I stood to read in class, and equally strong recall of improvising dances to the sensuous calypso, Latin and soul music records played at our big family gatherings. Music and dance were things I just got. Smiled upon for providing entertainment, I was never encouraged to build upon this sensitivity to music and obvious talent for movement and choreography. In fact, for a reason I could not grasp at the time, my family actively discouraged me from even imagining a path that could lead to a profession they clearly deemed unsuitable and unseemly. Instead, I gained approval all around for being smart, quiet and manageable. If it was a frequent puzzlement to people that I was a shy girl, it was also a relief. It took me a very long time to learn how to make trouble.

Since I loved dance so much, I stuck with it in my own way over the years into young adulthood, seeing a lot of shows, studying various forms--from Graham and Isadora to jazz, from Afro-Brazilian to Middle Eastern--and eventually writing about dance as a professional critic and journalist. Through the energy and example of dancers--as through my own spiritual studies and practices--I developed an individual and purposeful voice.

And yet, whenever I watched a dancer grow diffident during a post-show Q&A, deflecting a question or answering with something vague and abstract or deferring to the omniscient choreographer, I wondered if I could be looking at the same person who had just torn up the stage and wow-ed the audience. I began to suspect that introversion and discomfort with verbal expression might run in the family of dance. And I considered some of the consequences of this shyness: How do you make a case for yourself and your worth as a performer or creator of dance if you cannot speak up for yourself? How do you effectively communicate with colleagues, collaborators, potential presenters, curators, funders, media, audiences? In these difficult times, how do you advocate and fight for your art in a society that fails to value or prioritize it?

A few weeks ago, I posted a notice on my Facebook Timeline, a call for dance artists who experienced shyness in youth, who might or might not consider themselves somewhat shy as adults and who would be willing to talk about how introversion affected their lives and work. A handful of my Facebook friends quickly replied. While a few urged me to contact people who they felt were shy, I only wanted to work with subjects who identified and volunteered themselves. I drew up a list of questions and began conducting phone interviews, little realizing how profoundly I would be moved by what these interviewees would share with me.

In each interview with the talented and accomplished artists you will meet here--Chris Masters, Jennifer Edwards, Jonathan Riseling and Audrey Kindred--I was astonished to hear elements of my own thoughts, tendencies and experiences, then and now, in their stories. Each of them struck me as possessing a kind of liberated power that I also recognize working through me in adult life.

Although, at the outset of each interview, I actually could feel a part of myself regressing to a place of vulnerability and shyness, I ended up feeling comforted, encouraged by each artist's honest sharing and grateful for new insights.

How I want to live out loud, uncensored and free, to feel like myself on the outside, and to forgive myself when I fall, shut down, get scared, go small. -- Jena Strong, "This is the Yes" from The Inside of Out (2013) 

Chris Masters
(photo: Robert Flynt)

Dancer-choreographer Chris Masters, 31, hails from the suburbs of Detroit and started dancing around age twelve. His performance career includes work with Martha Clarke and Doug Elkins, and he recently joined the cast of Third Rail Project's critically-acclaimed immersive theater work, Then She Fell. Masters traces his introversion back to age five when his parents divorced and his grandparents assumed custody of him and his two-year-old sister.

"Living with them was wonderful--a warm, safe home life--but they were so much older," he says. "The zest for showing things and doing things with children wasn’t there. We did not live in a neighborhood with other children my age. I missed out on traditional boy things like Little League.

"My shyness wasn’t paralyzing, but it was problematic. All the way up through my undergrad years, I still had issues initiating conversation, meeting new people, putting myself out there. The wallflower, not the life of the party. My sister and I both have introverted tendencies. Mine were a bit more extreme. My sister could do the normal things with a little more gusto.

"I had an inkling, from a very young age, that I was homosexual but never acted upon it or even questioned it. A piece of my introversion had to do with anxiety or apprehension about opening myself to that possibility. My grandparents both have very strong views about a lot of things. My parents had left, and I knew that I had to do whatever I had to do to keep that safe environment, even if that meant closeting who I was."

Typical adolescent feelings of self-doubt and gloom compounded Masters's hesitation to hang out with his peers. He compensated, as so many shy kids like myself did, by escaping to the magical realm of books.

"I got lost inside someone else’s world where I could be a visitor, reading about things and places I wanted to experience," Masters says.

Shyness proved a boon to his education, helping him maintain focus.

"I wasn’t interested in making jokes in class," he explains. "I wanted to learn. I was fully present, in the moment, reading people's body language and taking in new information all the time. Instead of playing at recess, I'd sit and read. A bit of a nerd, in a manner of speaking! I got good grades, and my teachers noticed my shyness but treated me well. They never pressured me to be extroverted.

"The fact that I started dancing when I was twelve, just as I was ending elementary school, starting middle school, pushed me back into a corner. So, even if I had felt comfortable being more social, people could point and laugh at me for being a dancer. It caused me to be a little bit quieter. But as soon as I went to college and wasn’t the oddball for wanting to dance, I started to feel almost an immediate shift--being around people with a common goal and passion.

"In my first undergrad year, I made three dances–they were all awful!–but I was proud of them and not embarrassed to talk about them. Also, being in much smaller classes--maybe a ballet class with eight to ten people--definitely helped me to come out of my shell.

"In my late teens and early twenties, my sexuality hadn’t been fully actualized. I didn’t feel that I was being absolutely honest, though I was starting to become confident in my ability to say something of interest, having coffee with a friend, discussing a book or a music artist, or making a dance. But there was still a lot of tongue-biting going on. I wasn't fully transparent.

"I definitely still feel some social anxiety. When I’m not running the show, I retreat back. When I’m teaching, when I’m talking about my work or it’s being presented, when I have to market my work and be my own advocate--in those situations, whether it’s natural or if it’s a bit forced, I find it much easier to wear the hat of an extrovert."

Still, putting himself out there in a professional setting--say, to engage in a post-performance talkback session--can take a huge toll.

"It takes a lot out of me, mentally and emotionally, to have to be that person," Masters says. "My recuperation period is pretty intense. But just give me my couch, a glass of wine and a book, and I'm as happy as can be."

Masters credits his time in a two-year MFA program in dance (University of Iowa) for strengthening his professional voice and sense of self-worth as a choreographer.

"I needed to retreat from other requirements and just focus again. I selected a program with a strong mix of composition and theory to anchor my work with some kind of logic--not just making dance for the sake of making dance. My ability to vocalize and write about my work has increased ten-fold. I'd had a small dance company in Detroit for four or five years. Though I felt happy with my choreography, I wasn't getting any traction with it, I think, because of my inability to talk about it and color in why this was important, why the community needed it. I couldn't fully crystallize those thoughts. After grad school, I felt more confident.

"I recognize that some artists feel that their work should speak for itself. Some of us are able to sell our work very well, and some of us aren't. We're really awkward in social settings--talking to a potential funder, stumbling over words. Of course, there are also those who feel that their work transcends the need for explanation because it's just amazing.

"But one of my colleagues gave me this piece of advice. When I feel bashful--or, perhaps, I don't feel qualified--she told me: 'No one's going to walk up to you and give you $100,000. If you're not actively putting yourself out there, as uncomfortable as it might make you feel, the likelihood of someone just stumbling upon your work and deciding that it's brilliant, without having a thoughtful conversation with you, is probably pretty low.'

"You have to take it upon yourself to ask for what you want. The answer could be, 'No,' but you won't know that it's a firm No until you ask. If you don't, someone else will take that space that you could have occupied. And, yes, I have to remind myself about this every single time I write a grant proposal!"

Jennifer Edwards

Jennifer Edwards, 40, serves as a partner in Edwards & Skybetter Change Agency, co-founded with fellow dancer-choreographer-consultant Sydney Skybetter to conduct "the business of facilitating change within creative companies...when some major technology, communications or programmatic shift happens (or needs to happen) within an organization." They promise to "move organizations through a process in a matter of hours or days that it would take them months or more to accomplish on their own." Okay, if it takes guts to be a dance artist--and it certainly does--this change-agent role sounds even more demanding. Can a shy person really pull that off?

Edwards grew up an only child, born to parents approaching middle age, in a tiny New Jersey town. She spent a lot of time by herself, having little interaction with other children. As is common in such situations, her inner life far outpaced her outer life.

"I was mostly shy around adults," Edwards says. "I have a muscle memory of being very small and hugging my mother's leg, constantly not wanting to be seen. But then, when I went to school, I was punished a lot for talking in class--the kid stuck in the corner all the time. That changed my behavior quite a bit. I developed a reaction to adults where I'd clam up and be very withdrawn. When I was around kids, I was excited, but then I was told not to talk.

"When we'd have to go around and read in class, the sweat...oh my gosh... the drop in your stomach! I'd sit there, not listening to anyone else, terrified, and just reading, reading, reading the one sentence that I would have to read aloud. When it came to my turn, I'd be so quiet, and the teacher was constantly telling me to speak up. 

"My grandma used to say, 'You're a tiny little mouse in a tiny little house!' That was my existence for a very long time. Afraid of my own voice, or noise of any kind. Really afraid of being. Being seen, being heard, being noticed."

At the same time, she felt completely at home and thrilled to be dancing onstage--no surprise to me!

"I couldn't engage in group play, but if it was a group of dancers and we all had this way of being with each other in our bodies, then it was easy to transition into group activities."

At age eight, Edwards faced a family crisis--her mother's cancer diagnosis. Her mother died when the youngster was just fifteen, a critical time in psychological and social development. 

"I didn't know how to talk about things and advocate for myself. When my mom died, my dad was not actively in the picture. He didn't know how to be a parent, and I didn't know how to navigate the world in a verbal way. So, it definitely impacted my education, because I didn't know how to ask for help. I could do my assignments well, but class participation was hard. But in that point in our development as a culture, girls didn't talk in class either."

Edwards calls herself "a very good listener," a skill that serves her well in her new role as a  consultant to organizations. "That was my way of being involved in things. I've just always been very observant, a whole-body listener, trying to figure out how to engage. How do people do this?

"Because I didn't know how to be like the people who did things so easily, it was always about the how. I was watching everything from how they inhabited their homes to how they cooked a meal or poured water. Everything was a study for me all the time. It became like live cinema."

Did shyness have any effect--positive or negative--on her training and work in dance?

"When I was at North Carolina School of the Arts, a couple of teachers were brought up on charges and let go," she remembers. "They had been entirely abusive. I didn't know how to tell my parents why I didn't want to return, and that led them to put me into a regular public high school.

"Later on, making my work, having just finished my MFA, it really held me back that I couldn't put myself out there. 

"You know, though, a lot of my career has been as a spoken-word poet. So I really overcame it. Just threw myself onstage at the Nuyorican [Poet's Cafe] and went for it!"

She had taken a brave step during her high school years--signing up for a course in public speaking.

"But even now, when I do a lot of public speaking, there's always this tension, days when I just retract.

"My shyness comes out actually being in community rather than leading a group. Being in a place of leadership is comfortable because it's still protected. Shyness comes up a lot when I'm just a member of a group."

I suggested a reason for this apparent contradiction: A leader can prepare to apply herself to a specific role and task, whereas for group members, the roles and rules might not be as clear cut, and the shy person might not quickly figure out how best to fit into the overall picture. Like Edwards, I'm on much firmer ground when I have a job to do.

Auditions don't go easily for Edwards. She also finds it challenging to talk about her own dancemaking, much of which, interestingly, involves speech, relationships and the tension between internal and external worlds.

"I'm blown away by people who can be articulate off the cuff," she says. "I always wonder,  Do they have talking points for everything they do? Are they just prepared all the time? They can always speak with authority. I constantly want to get better at that, feel really grounded.

"In my development, I've allowed myself to go to very quiet, internal places. It's fine to live there, but it's tricky. I found myself in conversations, all of a sudden, like, Wow, I don't know where we are. I've just been completely hanging out with myself over here. I don't know where you all are!"

Hierarchical authority can squelch dancers' ability to speak up for themselves, as can corrections and criticism projected onto and internalized by them. Edwards pushes her dance students to exercise their hidden verbal skills and develop confidence in speaking and drafting professional tools such as artist statements and program notes.

"For the class I just taught at Skidmore, each student had to get up and speak in front of their classmates. I get shyness, understand it at a core level, but I hear this argument over and over again: 'I'm a dancer, and I shouldn't have to explain myself to my audience.'  It's lazy. You're not helping people to understand this medium. You're a teacher.

"Introspection may be natural to most artists. We need to go inside and be self-aware to make the work that we make. But it's also our responsibility to take the time to communicate what we're making.

"Communication is a muscle that you need to train and practice using. It isn't something that you're either good at or not. We can all learn to do different things. Practice in low-stake ways. I love talking to strangers, and it's actually easy to do. Have a conversation on a train with somebody who you're never going to see again!"

From Edwards's personal experience, she knows that daring to speak up can unlock the body's energies and release a lifetime of stress. It's almost miraculous.

"I had irritable bowel syndrome, I had ocular nerve disorder, and I've been completely symptom-free for over ten years," she says. "The more I practiced the things that scared me the most--and speaking was one of them--the more my physical symptoms receded.  So, it's not just about communicating with other people; it's also about communicating more clearly with myself, breaking down those walls and fears that prevented me from being a full, healthy human."

Jonathan Riseling

Jonathan Riseling, 48, performed with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (for which he won a 1990 Bessie Award), The Jamison Project, Jennifer Muller, Lar Lubovitch and numerous other contemporary dance troupes. He has had an equally extensive career as a dance educator. He now teaches at The Putney School, a progressive co-ed boarding school in Vermont whose famous alumni include composer David Amram, filmmaker Errol Morris, playwright Wallace Shawn and a few members of the Kennedy clan.

Riseling reflected on rootlessness in early family life as one source of his introversion.

"You know how Army brats are constantly moving? Well, I'm a hippie brat," Riseling says.

"My parents kept moving. A tent community in Vermont in the summer. A tenement in lower Manhattan. Then we were in Boston. By the time I was about four, we ended up in the Midwest, pre-K through sixth grade. Nice little college town. Brought up mostly by my mother. My stepfather worked the night shift, so I didn't see a lot of him. I got an old-school kind of reading-'riting-'rithmetic education, and I was part of the Head Start program, which was incredibly valuable.

"Seventh grade, my hippie parents decided to move again, go back to nature. They got a super-cheap farm in Kentucky. Turns out it was super-cheap because you paid part of your rent to the bank in bales of tobacco."

"They thought they would be part of the food movement but, instead, they had to become tobacco farmers. That was a shock to the family. I hated it and ended up moving to New York City to live with my father. I hadn't seen him since I was about three.

"I had done part of eighth grade in a Brooklyn public school, and the transition from country to city was rough. I ended up right in the middle of a neighborhood that was divided racially--Black and Latin gangs, gang wannabes, white gentrification. So, by the time I got to the High School of the Performing Arts, I was incredibly introverted.

"I'm the oldest of four children, definitely welfare kids, never a lot of money around. My stepfather was abusive. Since he worked at night, and my mom was trying to go to college I was--quote/unquote--the responsible one. We didn't have a television until I was twelve. So, I found my escape from the demands in life through becoming a voracious and fast reader. I never really talked with other kids in my neighborhood, most of whom were a few years younger. I wasn't playing. I found my reality in books, and it became a defense mechanism.

"In class, I operated on the 'speak-when-spoken-to' principle, don't say anything when you don't have to. Monosyllables. I created a persona to keep people away. Very long hair. Always wore a hat with a brim and always had a book in my face. I can still walk down the street in New York City with a book in my hand, reading, and not bump into people. It's like I built a little box around my head. People tend not to bother you."

A young reader with clearly-defined choices for his age--Hermann Hesse, yes; The Great Gatsby, a decided no--he was also drawn to writing.

"Much of my writing was sarcastic parody, which I kept doing over and over again because my teachers loved it! I also have a love for words themselves. Out of the twelve words that sort of mean something, there is the perfect one."

Riseling's relationship with his birth father--a political activist living in a far-left commune--did not work out well. Taking dance classes after school provided another form of escape.

"I came late to dance, but I could catch up because shyness helped me to focus, almost obsessively, within the dance classroom. You obsess about your foot or your flexibity or your musicality or whatever it is. To this day, I'm not good at entirely self-motivated activity. I need a little outside push, a deadline. Given that, I go all in."

Citing the multiple intelligences theory of developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, Riseling describes himself as extremely kinesthetic and auditory.

"When I learn dance, in my mind, I don't necessarily go, 'And 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.' I'm going 'Boom-boom-chickee-boom. Dah-dah-dah.' It's a rhythmic thing. Spatial arrangement. I can see my body flipping around in space and fit myself into that vision. That's how I process learning movement. So, when I teach, very often, I'll use very emotive language or sound effects."

His inherent learning modes help him to craft vivid directions for his dance students, guiding them away from reliance on external feedback--"the mirror is your enemy; it will turn you into a zombie"--and into their own creative realms and powers. Teaching appears to be an ideal outlet for his sensibilities and voice. Socializing? That's still complicated.

"I will chat with anybody about anything," he says, launching into a mini-performance of his younger self working at Starbucks, effusively admiring a customer's earrings or pooch.

"But, at the same time, I am extremely anti-social. I never want to go to the movies...to go out, period. I'm so happy being a hermit. With a book, with my laptop. My ex found it very frustrating."

"I will occasionally regress," he admits. "I'm capable of not moving my butt off the couch except for bodily functions or food for two days. I could read four books in a row and absolutely love it."

Riseling, who has performed dance works that require that he wrestle with text and vocal expression, sees a lot of shyness or verbal self-consciousness among dancers.

"'I don't do that! My talent is in my feet!'"

Where does this come from?

"More in ballet than modern dance...ballet is a dictatorship where you don't speak in class, you're always at attention. As we say, the bun is screwed on very, very tightly--which is necessary if you want to excel. You're never asked to speak.

"Most of the dancers I know are very uncomfortable speaking publicly. Every time they have to do a lecture-demonstration, where all you have to do is say, 'Hi, my name is.... We're here to do this dance called.... 'I can't do it! I can't do it!'

"When we're dancers, it's so easy to really remain very young emotionally. We're told what to do. This is when you show up. This is the class you're going to take. Now it's four hours of rehearsal. Now you get on the bus. Now you go to the airport. This is the hotel you are staying in. This is the only restaurant that's open. Now, do it again.

"You think you're grown up, because you have a job, make money, pay your rent, but you're not, really.

"You're completely isolated in this bubble. And that won't last--particularly for dancers. We're done when we're forty. If we're lucky, we last 'til forty. And most of us don't have any other skills. But you have to go out and present yourself in the real world and hustle. Not everyone's going to be a choreographer or a teacher. And even if you are, you're going to have to present yourself. 'Hi, my name is Jon. I'm a great dance teacher, and you should hire me.'

"The day when you could just send in your resumé and your headshot is gone. Without that personal connection, you're just one of five-thousand people, and everyone can do what you can do.

"Finally, what's important," Riseling says, "is not what you've done but who you are."

Audrey Kindred

Audrey Kindred, 48, and her twin sister were born in Ethiopia, the children of a young American educators. Their father, a law professor, taught at a school funded by the Emperor Haile Selassie (1892-1975), instructing the country's first generation of lawyers. Their mother, a fine artist, taught at an art school. Kindred, who says she has spent the past decade reconnecting with her experience of Ethiopia and its culture, describes these schools as "two of the most wonderful spots in Addis Ababa." The family lived there for four years, staying even through and after the parents' eventual divorce. Kindred's mother eventually brought the girls to the states to live in New York City before relocating to northern Maine.

She remembers kindergarten classes where teachers could not tell the difference between her and her sister. Her mother theorizes that, in her anger at not being recognized by these adults, Kindred refused to speak to them, and a form of shyness developed out of this initial resistance.

"Whenever I would have to go to the bathroom, my sister would speak for me. So the teacher saw me as being incapable and would say to my sister, 'Then, please take her to the bathroom.'"

Apparently, Kindred's sister had this teacher well trained. Whenever she wanted to skip out, she would say, "Audrey has to go...," and the teacher would inevitably say, "Please take Audrey...." Unfortunately, that only reinforced Kindred's unexplained behavior.

"My sister really was the talker," she says. "And I became a non-talker."

As with other shy kids, Kindred paid extremely close attention to her environment, and she didn't always like what she saw.

"I wasn't happy with the way people hurt one another in the world," she says. "I felt very scared to become part of that battlefield, but I also felt hopeful that--maybe in fantasy way--I could enact a different kind of power in the world.

"I was trying to create the angel of myself.

"I didn't want to involve myself in the darkness within friendships, within interpersonal stuff. I would stay a little removed from it and try to sparkle my energy into it. I had a great hope that I could create more goodness by doing that.

"I saw my eyes as the things that did the talking--a silent communication to the world. And I see dancing as some extension of that--a way to keep blessing the world without interfering too much."

She thought of herself as as happy child. Only through therapy later in life would she come to recognize the pain her parents' divorce had caused her. Even so, early on, she could look around and sense how desperate people's lives could be, even in the midst of her beautiful East African surroundings.

At 28, Kindred was diagnosed with narcolepsy--excessive sleepiness and the uncontrollable tendency to fall into deep sleep during normal waking hours. This disorder, coupled with her shyness, produced in her a sense of difference and isolation. Before a lover confronted her and named her condition, she had lived like this for many years, thinking that all she had was an interesting personality quirk.

"I lived in a world of my own. I was very quiet, very sleepy. I smiled a lot, wanting people to like me, but I had a big space between me and the world that was hard to cross."

She remembers that, as a youngster, she would fall asleep in classes and during exams, a source of shame as well as denial by herself and others.

"I became the sleeping kitten in the corner--so cute and so acceptable. I was perceived as smart, but I wasn't achieving what smart people achieve. Nobody could understand why. It's a very elusive disorder. So little information about it existed when I was a child."

While the narcolepsy kept its own tight control of her body while, shyness, in its own way, robbed her of energy and agency.

"How does your voicelessness live in your body? If you're in school, and you have an answer to a question, the only and appropriate way to reveal that answer is to raise your hand. I remember the feeling of my triceps being sown to my ribs with shyness, the feeling that I could not possibly expose my whole body to lift my arm in the air to tell you the answer. It was too much.

"You can try squeezing your arm into your body and then try to lift your hand as you would have to in a schoolroom to be seen. It's impossible. I remember this terror in me. I could not open my physical shell.

"Even my handwriting--perfect penmanship--was microscopic. It's such a hiding. What was that about? What is shyness trying to hide? Why is it that feels so dangerous?"

In third grade, during a brief spell in Indiana before her mother took the girls to Maine, performing dance became magical for her--"the typical ballet child fantasy," as she recalls. In Maine, Kindred found nothing comparable to satisfy her newfound craving for physicality except sports. Then a dancer moved to her area--"She married a potato farmer"--and started a school. The twins became her first students. Many years later, when it came time for college, Kindred chose Bennington, "because they valued dance."

In her twenties and thirties, although her creative ambitions had fully emerged, Kindred found it impossible to tell a date or other people close to her whenever she had an upcoming performance. "I could tell my sister, because there was no risk there, only witness." Saying "I love you" to someone was also profoundly difficult, "almost like I had to push it from the back of my brain," she says. "And I surprised myself that I could find that connection between the brain and the mouth."

Dancing, though. Ah, dancing!

"It felt like privacy in public. You could be so private, dancing, and be so public. That was an enormous relief to me to be expressive.

"Dancing brought me into the breath. Breath brought me into a greater awakeness. Breath brought me into my own sound, my sigh. Eventually, I was waking up more and more in my consciousness, waking up in my body more. I trusted my body, even if I didn't trust my words, could take risks with my body, even if I couldn't take them with my words.

"The breath links all of that together. Through the breath of moving, I found tools to conquer my shyness.

"I started to love words! I began to write more, to speak more."

Her lover, a writer and orator who Kindred describes as courageous, put her in touch with her own courage. She began to make dances about the narcolepsy, and they were full of words--a coming out on all fronts.

"I watch snails a lot in this season. They're in their shells and afraid, but when they come out, they really go far! I connect with that.

"I started to love to speak in front of people. At some point, I became in charge of Movement Research, and I was hosting all these forums, and I loved that space of being a spokesperson for a community, to stand up for other people and their art. It was surprising how much I loved it.

"As a dancer, I loved improvising and taking risks with words. I studied a little with Ruth Zipporah, a changing point for me. She said, 'Boy, you're a mover, but can you bring yourself into the rest of yourself?' She saw how movement dominated my entire sense of myself, and she challenged that: 'Can you be as powerful being still? Try that!' And I'd be, like, What? 'Can you open your mouth and let something come out without knowing what it's going to be?'

"In some sense, I almost started to love talking about dance more than I loved to do it! It amazes me that words are such a big part of my life now, so much of what I bring to the world.

"How did I do this? I remember the girl who couldn't speak."

Kindred stops to consider how her appearance played a role in her shyness.

"Being considered pretty and sexy was terrifying for me. I wanted to be accepted, but people accepted me in a way that made me uncomfortable and scared. Getting through my teen years and young adulthood without getting raped and pregnant seemed impossible. I put a huge, protective shroud around myself, a golden shield. I was often called a slut. How could I prove to the world that I was good?

She mentions having had an "inappropriate experience" with an older man who knew her family well. "Not rape," she says, "But enough to create shame" and a concern that revealing what occurred would bring blame upon herself or the man.

"'What do I do about this?' I buried it in my body.

"My second boyfriend, a very verbal person, said to me, 'Would you like to learn to talk?'

"He said, 'Because I'd like that. I'd like to learn to talk about the hard stuff in life. If we could grow together that way, it would be good for each of us, whether we decide to make a life with each other or not.'  His question was, Can we talk about this to be safe together?"

She finally told him her story--but not before saying, "You will not like me after this. This might be the end of everything."

Kindred's recall of discomfort (and self-diminishing self-protection) under the male gaze triggered memories of my own coping strategies as an attractive young girl and young woman. In her next thought, she drew a connection from this to the world of performance, perhaps identifying the very thing that made dance a place of power for both of us.

"If you're going to be audienced in the world and whistled and catcalled, and that's not the way you want to be audienced...well, performance was like a Take Back the Night for me. There was enormous safety for me. In dance, I found that I created the way I want to be viewed.

"My heroes became Jennifer Monson and Yvonne Meier, mentors for me, in a way, completely unfeminized in their movement." By describing these dance artists as "unfeminized," she makes a distinction between their uncompromising fierceness and the kind of performance that, as she sees it, coyly flirts with the world, seeking approval. "I was so relieved to see their work. Dance is a remedy or a healing path that shyness can find and, when it does, it's an enormous relief.

For Kindred, shyness is a state of being that we can--and must--pass through.

"A lot of people get attached to their shyness, and when I see that, I fear for them. It's something that we romanticize and think is a beautiful quality," she says.

"Your shyness is a part of you, but it's the shell, and you are the snail. When you find your safety, let yourself out."

***

I welcome your comments. Please feel free to share your own experiences, observations and ideas about shyness in the lives of dance artists.

Also, please link back to this article and share it with your friends, students and colleagues.

Thanks!

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

Artist Bios

Jennifer Edwards is a writer, choreographer, educator, and an organizational development and communication consultant with Edwards & Skybetter | Change Agency. A sought-after speaker and teacher Jennifer has been called on by various organizations including The American Heart Association, Columbia University Medical Center, HUD, the Girl Scouts of America, and The Juilliard School. Major publications have written about her work in stress management including The New York Times and Martha Stewart's Whole Living Magazine. She is currently a visiting professor at Skidmore College, and has served as a Scholar in Residence for the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Known for her work in both dance and spoken word poetry, Edwards has earned titles including Sister Spit Slam Champion and her album Exposed won an Indy Girl Music award and was nominated for Just Plain Folks and Outmusic awards. Jennifer’s recent projects include choreographing the relaunch of Expatriate, a play by Lenelle Moïse. http://www.edwardsandskybetter.com/ and http://www.jened.com/

Audrey Kindred lives in Brooklyn and teaches children PEACE: Processes of Ethics, Arts, Creativity and Empathy. Currently she teaches with Bent On Learning's Yoga programming in public schools, and directs New York Society For Ethical Culture's "Ethics for Children." Movement research processes are central to her life and she has done the work of programming, choreographing, and contemplating dance over many years, sometimes publicly, other times more privately.

Chris Masters completed an MFA in Choreography at The University of Iowa, where he was recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship. Masters began his teaching career at The University of Michigan – Ann Arbor at the young age of 21. Between his time in academia and the professional stage, Masters has performed the work of Martha Clarke, Jeff Rebudal, Colleen Thomas, Stephanie Liapis, Jana Hicks, Keith Thompson, Doug Elkins, and Jan Erkert, among others. Currently, he is making dance under the name ChrisMastersDance, and his work has been presented in New York at Galapagos Art Space, The Stables, Irondale Center, Judson Memorial Church, and 100 Grand Performance Space, in Detroit at Detroit Opera House, Boll Theatre, and 555 Gallery, as well as at The University of Michigan, Albion College, Wayne State University, and The University of Iowa. Recently, Chris has joined the cast of Third Rail Projects' Then She Fell. chrismastersdance.org

Jonathan Riseling graduated from the High School for the Performing Arts in New York City as a recipient of the Helen Tamiris Award. He was invited to join the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble and later was accepted into the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Mr. Riseling left to dance with a number of other companies, among them those of Jennifer Muller, Lar Lubavitch, Zvi Gothiener, Amy Pivar, and Francis Patrelle. He worked with Judith Jamison, assisting her in choreographing and staging her works until she formed her own company, The Jamison Project, in 1998. There he held the position of Assistant Rehearsal Director to Ms. Jamison, as well as dancing lead roles in her repertoire. In September of 1990, he was awarded a 'Bessie' award. He has taught at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, STEPS On Broadway, Danspace, Peridance, Ballet Hispanico and Ballet Academy East studios in New York City, the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, and as Adjunct Professor for the Universities of Adelphi and The New School for Social Research. Currently, he teaches dance at The Putney School in Putney, Vermont.

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