UMass Amherst hosts Toni Morrison, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Sonia Sanchez, February 13

Sonia Sanchez

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, singer and social activist Bernice Reagon Johnson and poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez will convene to discuss Black Women in the Arts in the 21st Century at UMass Amherst on Thursday, February 13 (7-9:30pm).

POSTPONED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER

Hosted by the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst, the event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:15 pm.

For further information, click here.

New York Live Arts presents world premieres from niv Acosta and Tess Dworman

Tess Dworman's new trio, macromen--opening last night at New York Live Arts on a program with niv Acosta's i shot denzel--had a quirky-fresh way of turning everything, from potted trees to flesh-and-blood dancers, into flat, malleable, playfully disappearing items. But what Acosta dropped into that familiar space felt a whole lot more radical and compelled the whole of my attention.

niv Acosta
(photo by Nicole Whelan)

denzel, I hear, has had five previous lives in the imagination and developing work of Acosta, a Black-Dominican, transgender-identified performer. This was my first encounter with Acosta's attempts to extract himself from the archetypal Denzel Washington and common notions of what it means to be a Black man. What got me is how uncool it all is.

I like several things about that. Going on a stage and singing when you're Black and your voice is adequate but not remarkable is uncool, and that's great. Bringing your gorgeous, singing mother onstage with you and dancing near her in a way that foregrounds all the tender vulnerability within your Black masculinity is uncool, and that's great. Reciting too-revealing, over-the-top text when people might expect Strong Silent Type or Angry Black Male is uncool, and that's great. Doing all of this in a body that defies both dance aesthetic expectations and gender conformity may not be all that uncool, or uncommon, especially at New York Live Arts, but it's still great. Repeatedly taking aim and smacking that body against a big ol' white wall might be painfully obvious and kind of futile and therefore uncool, but that's great.

niv Acosta and Yessenia Acosta in i shot denzel
(photo courtesy of New York Live Arts)

Sort of mixing up where audience should go and live musicians should go is kind of wacky, though not original, and that's not bad if not truly great. The only thing I thought was the exact opposite of great was how I couldn't make out the emotional Spanish lyrics Yessenia Acosta sang to, and apparently about, her son. The higher sound level for the band muffled her voice, and they were positioned closer to the audience. I hope that will be corrected for tonight and tomorrow's shows.

"No one has died inside of me," Acosta says at one point in his forceful monologue atop the white wall. Everyone and everything is there, and that's great.

Acosta's performance in i shot denzel makes me sorry that I'm just now catching up with this series, which has possibly reached its end. I enjoyed his dancing--his voguing and scrupulously clean inscriptions against space--but even more, I enjoyed all the uncool.

Performed by niv Acosta, Yessenia Acosta, Lee Free, Amy Gall, Lydia Berg-Hammond, Caitlin Marz, Jo Pang, Julia Read, Aleksei Wagner and Gary Zema. Music by niv Acosta and Jo Pang.

niv Acosta/Tess Dworman runs through Saturday, February 1 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Come Early Video Installation created by Anna Pinkas and Lani Rodriguez
(on view Thursday, January 30-Saturday, February 1)

Friday, January 31 - Stay Late Discussion: none-other: regarding the alien and the uncanny in the work of niv Acosta and Tess Dworman, moderated by Marissa Perel

New York Live Arts

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

(map/directions)

Gibney Dance Center welcomes community to its new downtown branch

Gina Gibney
(photo: Christopher Duggan © Gina Gibney Dance, Inc.) 

This is our space. It’s a safe space. And here is our opportunity to share our stories and look forward to what may be.

With those words, Lane Harwell (Executive Director, Dance/NYC) welcomed members of New York’s dance community and its supporters to an open discussion about Gibney Dance’s successful campaign to rescue 280 Broadway--former home of Dance New Amsterdam–and preserve it for the field of dance.  The SRO crowd, gathered in the 130-seat theater space, erupted in applause as Gibney Dance Artistic Director and CEO Gina Gibney announced the organization’s 20-year lease for 280 Broadway and its receipt of a $3 million grant from the Agnes Varis Trust.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and State Senator Daniel Squadron offered congratulatory remarks. GDC staff members were introduced, and panelists Adair Smith (Gibney Dance Executive Director), Gus Solomons, Jr. (Gibney advisor), and Kathleen Hughes (Assistant Commissioner for Program Services, Department of Cultural Affairs) spoke of their hopes and visions for the project.

Harwell opened the floor for questions and ideas from the audience. Four main questions or themes emerged from this segment of the evening:

● How can Gibney Dance Center 280 interact with its Tribeca neighborhood as a responsive, useful, creative participant in the downtown ecosystem? How can GDC 280's presence matter, not only in Tribeca, but in this diverse city as a whole?

● How can GDC 280 provide support and resources for the process of developing individual creative voices and original aesthetics in dance?

● How can GDC 280 provide consistent access to space for tech sessions, enhancing the quality of the presentation of work?

● How can GDC 280 provide physical space and opportunities for artists to interact more--especially in informal, social ways--fostering an atmosphere of creative cross-pollination and potential collaboration?

Gibney Dance welcomes you to share your thoughts, bring new ideas or offer your assistance at a series of small group discussions at GDC 890 Broadway, Fifth Floor, Studio 6:

Monday, February 3

4-5pm: Open Discussion/ Welcome Session Follow-up (Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

5-6pm: Rehearsal Space Needs (Adair Smith)

6-7pm: Class, Training and Education Needs (Hilary Easton)

Click to RSVP for February 3 at Eventbrite 

Tuesday, February 18

4-5pm: Performance Space Needs (Sara Juli)

5-6pm: Community Action and Advocacy (Amy Miller, Yasemin Ozumerzifon)

6-7pm: Open Discussion and Thoughts on Next Steps (Sydney Skybetter)

Click to RSVP for February 18 at Eventbrite

All are welcome to come to any and all sessions!

For further information on the expansion, click here.

Anita Gonzalez designs new global focus for theater studies program

Dr. Anita Gonzalez
Professor of Theater and Drama
University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance
(photo courtesy of Dr. Gonzalez)

Cultural studies and performance art collide in new Global Theatre minor

by Rebecca Godwin, The Michigan Daily, January 29, 2014

With Ubuntu, Carnegie Hall honors South African culture

Carnegie Hall

presents

UBUNTU: Music and Arts of South Africa

a citywide festival exploring South African arts and culture

October 10-November 5

dozens of events at Carnegie Hall 

and partner venues across New York City

music, film, visual arts, and more

featuring trumpeter, vocalist, and composer Hugh Masekela; vocalist Vusi Mahlasela; jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim; vocalist Angélique Kidjo; vocal ensemble Ladysmith Black Mambazo; visual artist William Kentridge; and many others

For information on Carnegie Hall's UBUNTU Music and Arts of South Africa festival, click here.

651 Arts to present Sarita Allen and Dianne McIntyre [UPDATE]

651 Arts

in association with

Clark Center NYC

presents

Live and Outspoken: Sarita Allen and Dianne McIntyre

Thursday, February 13, 7pm

POSTPONED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER

New date: Friday, February 28, 7pm

The James and Martha Duffy Performance Space 


Mark Morris Dance Center

3 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn

(map/directions)

International dancer/choreographer, Sarita Allen, sits down with legendary choreographer/dancer, Dianne McIntyre, in a candid conversation about their experiences throughout their careers. This program will also feature excerpts from Dianne McIntyre’s repertoire.

For more information and to make a reservation, click here.

National Women's Studies Association seeks dance panelist

The National Women's Studies Association seeks a panelist for its 2014 conference.

We will most likely be submitting under Theme 5: Creating Justice, and we are particularly interested in abstracts about 20th century American dance forms. 

If you are interested, please send an email with a brief description of your research to Kendra Unruh, PhD at kunruh@dcccd.edu.

Musicians remember Pete Seeger

‘Loud, Strong, Committed and Always in Search of America’

by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, January 29, 2014

Plan offered to save Detroit Institute of Arts

Detroit Art Museum Offers Plan to Avoid Sale of Art
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, January 29, 2014

Let's dance! Rennie Harris rules the Joyce

 

Top: Kyle Clark, Bottom: Ryan Cliett
of Rennie Harris Puremovement
(photos by Brian Mengini)

Rennie Harris Puremovement's just-opened retrospective at The Joyce Theater, running through Sunday, finds Philadelphia's fiery hip hop ensemble dropping knowledge about the best way to stream street and club dance moves through conventional dance venues. We're talking two different worlds here, mainly because of who pays attention to the social, vernacular sphere vs. who pays attention to contemporary theatrical dance and how they pay attention and respond. If those aesthetic borderlines have gotten more porous for dance artists since Harris founded RPHM in 1992 and went on to win strong popular and critical success, give credit to the man for meticulous leadership--laying down a foundation of technical authenticity and skill.

Watching b-boying, voguing and related arts of the body in an official Hall of Dance shifts one's way of seeing: You're looking for a less sporadic and less frontal presentation, something more kaleidoscopic and something with interesting context. You're also looking for kinds of variety and subtlety that the excellent Harris crew are perfectly prepared to show you over a leisurely stretch of time--rhythmic precision, uncommonly supple physicality, footwork that can rival tap dancers for agility and complexity, and a gymnastic approach to the body that utilizes more body surfaces and levels and directional orientation and speed that we're used to. Crazy stuff. It's particularly great to watch the ensemble's women dancers--Danita Clark, Katia Cruz, Mai Le Ho Johnson and Mariah Tlili--no less forceful for adding a gleeful, distinctive juiciness to their propulsion.

The Joyce program, nearly two hours with an intermission, includes the 1997 Rome & Jewels (Harris's striking, award-winning take on Romeo and Juliet crossed with West Side Story, Shakespeare filtered through the ways and lingo of a couple of "star-crossed homies"), Continuum (1997), P-Funk (1992), March of the Antmen (1992) and Students of the Asphalt Jungle (1995).

Rennie Harris Puremovement continues at the Joyce through Sunday, February 2. For schedule and ticketing details, as well as the January 29 Dance Chat and January 31 Master Class information, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (corner of 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Joan Finkelstein to head Harkness Foundation for Dance

Harkness Foundation for Dance Names New Director
by Michael Cooper, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

Reflections: Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger’s Last Night on Stage
by Jesse Wegman, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

For Seeger, Years of Singing and Sailing to Save His Hudson River
by Joseph Berger, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

Morrie Turner, 90

Morrie Turner Dies at 90; Broke Barriers in Comics
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

José Emilio Pacheco, 74

José Emilio Pacheco, Mexican Author, Dies at 74
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, January 27. 2014

Update on midtown NYC attack on Randy Gener

Midtown Attack Investigated as Hate Crime
by J. David Goodman, The New York Times, January 27, 2014

Pete Seeger, 94

Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

Carrie Mae Weems retrospective at Guggenheim Museum

Carrie Mae Weems: 
Three Decades of Photography and Video

Guggenheim Museum

January 24-May 14

Carrie Mae Weems
A Broad and Expansive Sky—Ancient Rome (from Roaming), 2006
Chromogenic print, 73 x 61 inches (185.4 x 154.9 cm)
Private collection, Portland, Oregon
© Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems
Untitled (Man and mirror) (from Kitchen Table Series), 1990
Gelatin silver print, 27 1/4 x 27 1/4 inches (69.2 x 69.2 cm)
Collection of Eric and Liz Lefkofsky, promised gift to The Art Institute of Chicago
© Carrie Mae Weems
Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago

New York Times critic Holland Cotter's otherwise admiring review of Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video (here) chides the Guggenheim Museum for not devoting its central, spiraling rotunda to Weems. Right now, if you visit the Guggenheim, you'll find that sloping spiral roped off in preparation for the upcoming Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe and that show's crates filling much of the ground floor.

The original Weems retrospective, curated by Kathryn Delmez, opened in September 2012 at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts. According to Cotter, the Guggenheim omits some works included in previous stops along the show's tour, and the exhibition has been broken up into galleries scattered over a few floors. Cotter points out that, for a first New York retrospective of Weems's career, thirty years worth of work, the limited selection and spatial placement give this Black American artist, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, short shrift. Cotter's argument seems all the more reasonable and urgent once you appreciate Weems's entire mission, which is all about visibility--to underscore and creatively document presence and experience against racist, sexist omissions and erasures.

She has done this, magnificently, in a variety of ways. Often putting her own body--at once, deific and down-to-earth--front and center in her photography and video work is the boldest stroke. Whether facing us head-on and meeting our gaze with her own or, by turning her back to the camera, slipping into iconic anonymity as in her dramatic Roaming series, Weems answers a denying world with defiance as if to say, Without my presence, you could not have come to be what you are.

I took a tip from Frida who from her bed painted incessantly--beautifully while Diego scaled the scaffolds to the very top of the world. -- from Weems's text for Not Manet's Type (1997)

Weems claims space for African and Afro-Atlantic realities, for people of African descent, particularly women, and our families and communities within society and its art.

Weems also exerts an artist's right not just to make new stuff but to appropriate existing objects--say, J. T. Zealy's daguerreotypes of "Negroid types" from slavery days--sealing these excavated memories under glass etched in white text, seizing control of how they will be seen and understood. She brings marginalized history to the table just as, in The Kitchen Table Series, she brings everyday eros to the table. Because she locates herself or others in historical time and in dreamtime and in something eerily combining the two--see her 2008 video Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment--we come to understand that we can do and often do the same.

The Guggenheim show might not have everything it could have or take pride of place in the main gallery, but it does educate and inspire (Guggenheim visitor information). See also Brooklyn Museum's Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey (closing March 9).

Presenting dance now: panel on new venues, new approaches

Movement Research Studies Project

presents

NEW MODELS FOR PRESENTING DANCE 

IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Tuesday, February 4, 6pm

Gibney Dance Center

890 Broadway, 5th Floor (between 19th and 20th Streets)

(map/directions)

The landscape of dance presentation in NYC has undergone a dynamic shift over the last five years. New spaces for showing work have opened. Museums and galleries are regularly programming performance, and several venues that present multiple artistic genres have become specifically interested in presenting dance. This conversation, with a sampling of voices from these venues, will create a layered portrait of the constantly shifting field of dance presentation and examine its new directions. How do these shifts in presenting spaces and structures address the current condition of the arts and artists in NYC, how do they affect the way artists make work and how that work is seen?

panelists 

(as of 1/26)

Brian Rogers (The Chocolate Factory)

Sally Silvers (Roulette)

Lucien Zayan (The Invisible Dog)

(others TBA)

Uncontainable: Collage Collective announces first show at La MaMa Galleria

CollageUncontained

by The Collage Collective

at La MaMa Galleria

January 23 – February 8

The Collage Collective’s first group show features an array of collage and mixed media work. These seven women cut, rip, shred, glue, stitch, tape and pin two- and three-dimensional pieces. They’ve been upcycling and recycling, hunting and gathering, scavenging and hoarding alone and together since meeting in a weekly art class in Manhattan three years ago. The results: diverse, colorful, exciting, thought-provoking and thoughtful expressions ripped from today’s headlines and their deepest desires.

La MaMa Galleria

6 East 1st Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan

Hours: Wednesday-Sunday 1-7:30pm

And, in celebration of this exhibition, a special performance:

Reports say arts journalist Randy Gener attacked, recovering from surgery

Theater Journalist Randy Gener Recovering From Brain Surgery After Assault
by Broadwayworld.com, January 24, 2014

From Proulx to Lee to Wuorinen: "Brokeback Mountain" goes opera

Love That Dare Not Sing Its Name
Charles Wuorinen Adapts ‘Brokeback Mountain’ as Opera
by Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times, January 24, 2014

Max Roach archive acquired by Library of Congress

Revelatory Archive of a Giant of Jazz
Library of Congress Acquires Max Roach’s Papers
by Ben Ratliff, The New York Times, January 24, 2014

Paulus Berensohn on the art of making a life

Paulus Berensohn

Do something. Start with pleasure.

So says Paulus Berensohn, author of Finding One's Way with Clay (1973), in a graceful documentary portrait by Neil Lawrence, To Spring from The Hand: The life and work of Paulus Berensohn (TOTM Film, 2013; 73 min).

Berensohn--whose wizard-like, generous life has embraced the art of dance as well as visual arts and crafts--loves to recite lengthy poems by heart and tell stories. In the short clip below, not included in the film, the artist recalls the pleasure of snaring a true thrift-shop find--a black leather jacket with a perfect fit--for $2 and wearing it while doing the most mundane things.

Everything is Art from TOTM Film on Vimeo.

To Spring from The Hand offers a colorful, laid-back visit with a resourceful man happily out of step with the contemporary art industry and completely at peace with himself at age 80. He talks about and illustrates his contemplative approach to creativity and living, moment to moment, in what he calls "radical presence."

"Everyone should put their hands on clay as a way of awakening their fingertips," Berensohn says, and this sounds like the wisdom of a Graham and Cunningham student who, as he professes, never left dance and continues to practice Qi Gong and The Alexander Technique. "We devour the Earth and don't pause to praise it, to thank and to sing up the Earth," he tells the filmmaker. The deep ecology of his practice as an artist and educator rests in a stubborn moral imperative: "It's the function of the artist to sing up the Earth."

Supporting interviewees--including a few of Berensohn's so-called "fairy godchildren," a status that sounds like more fun than simply having a mentor or creativity guru--attest to the power of this man's example. Lawrence's project--and Berensohn's--might just move you to pick up a pen or brush or lift your voice in affirmation.

To learn more about To Spring from the Hand and watch a clip from the film, click here.

Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa remembered in film

A Skylark Who Sang Truth to Power in Argentina
‘Mercedes Sosa,’ About a Voice for the Oppressed
by Stephen Holden, The New York Times, January 24, 2014

Michael Sporn, 67

Michael Sporn, 67, Film Animator, Dies
by William Yardley, The New York Times, January 23, 2014

Share with your peers at Downtown Dance Learning Circles

All movement, dance, theater and performance artists are invited to apply to join Downtown Dance Learning Circles.

OurGoods, New York Live Arts, and Fourth Arts Block are proud to offer Downtown Dance Learning Circles.

Want to meet with a group of peers once a month (4 meetings over 4 months) to discuss challenges and possibilities in your life and work? All movement, dance, theater, and performance artists can apply, and artists will be placed in peer groups based on years working as a generative artist. Apply for this opportunity by February 14.

Click here for complete information and a link to the DDLC application form.

Douglas Davis, 80

Douglas Davis, Critic and Internet Artist, Dies at 80
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, January 22, 2014

Martha Beck, 75

Martha Beck, Founder of the Drawing Center, Dies at 75
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, January 22, 2014

Leslie Lee, 83

Leslie Lee, Playwright of Black Life, Dies at 83
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 22, 2014

Juan Gelman, 83

Juan Gelman, Leftist Argentine Poet, Dies at 83
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 20, 2014

American Realness matters

My American Realness

by Keith Hennessy, americanrealness.com, January 19, 2014

Listen to a preview of Angélique Kidjo's "Eve"

NPR's First Listen presents

a preview of 

Eve

the new album by

Angélique Kidjo

The magnificent Angélique Kidjo
performing at Rockefeller Park, NYC
(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

on sale January 28

***click to listen***

You, too, can create a universe: Sarah A.O. Rosner's ETLE

Sarah A.O. Rosner: Creating a New Queer Universe
by Marcie Bianco, Lambda Literary, January 19, 2014

Artists and vulnerability: Mixing it up with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
(photo courtesy of Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

ClassClassClass 

presents

Preparing The Vulnerable Body

 for Performance

a workshop with 

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Sunday, Feb 16, 1-4pm

Abrons Arts Center

466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan

(directions)

Part performance theory, part vocalization, part group movement/thinking exploration, students will investigate themes of trans performance states, sensitivity, risk-taking, eroticism, exhibitionism, bad behavior, and vocal sounding as a means of healing the self through live performance. Together we watch and support each other by finding, exposing, and attempting to break open previously locked/hidden pathways of emotional, physical and visual performativity. Students are encouraged to bring props and costumes to the workshop to which they have personal meanings, but are willing to let be destroyed.

Kosoko with composer-musician Pauline Oliveros
(photo courtesy of Jaamil Olawale Kosoko)

Kosoko talked with me about his three-hour workshop, Preparing The Vulnerable Body for Performance, open to performing artists from a multitude of genres:

"My idea is to encourage a kind of desegregation in the classroom, to encourage a variety of different kinds of artists to occupy the same space and to learn from each other. So often, we encourage a more insular approach to the creative process and creative space-making. It’s super-important to give those of us who want to branch out of that and explore the terrain an opportunity to engage and meet and explore this idea of vulnerability with others who are working in a similar way but maybe not in the same genre, and use it as a platform to give and take in that way. 

"I also want to think about incorporating a variety of theory into the workshop, bringing in poets, music, maybe some text that I’ve been thinking a lot about--I really love the work of Daphne Brooks--author of Bodies in Dissent--and other literature that I plan to use as jumping off points to initiate certain creative spontaneity. That’s what I’m super-excited about. And then just to see who all comes and what we can share with each other and to create a safe space for that exploration to take place.

"In addition, I’ve been working a lot with Pauline Oliveros over the past year, here in Philadelphia, a legend in the sounding, experimental music, vocalization world. So, using various tactics that I have accumulated over the past ten years of my professional career, I’d love to share some of these methods and ideologies that I’ve learned as a part of my own practice for preparing my body for doing the kind of work that I do and present on the stage."

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a producer, curator, poet, and performance artist. He is a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University.

Rooted in a creative mission to push history forward, Kosoko’s work in theater and dance has received support from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance, The Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and The Philadelphia Cultural Fund. His new solo performance work entitled BLACK MALE REVISITED: Revenge of the New Negro premiered in December 2013 at Miami Theater Center as part of Art Basel and Art Miami '13. As a performer, Kosoko has created original roles in the performance works of visual artist Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater, and others. Kosoko’s poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, and Silo, among other publications. In 2011, Kosoko published Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). He is a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC). Visit: www.jaamil.com for more information.

*****

In February, CLASSCLASSCLASS will also present affordable workshops by iele paloumpis (see my interview with them on Dancer's Turn), Aretha Aoki, Nia Love and Jillian Sweeney, among many other artists, at Abrons Arts Center. Click here to learn more.

Claudio Abbado, 80

Claudio Abbado, Influential Italian Conductor, Dies at 80by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, January 20, 2014

Holland Cotter on money and power in the art industry

Lost in the Gallery-Industrial Complex
Holland Cotter Looks at Money in Art
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, January 17, 2014

Chryssa, 79

Chryssa, Artist Who Saw Neon’s Potential as a Medium, Dies at 79

by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, January 18, 2014

 

Work-in-progress by Nia Love presented by Ailey/Fordham students

Students from Ailey's New Directions Choreography Lab
rehearsing a work-in-progress by Nia Love
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Congratulations--and a big thanks--to choreographer Nia Love (Love/Forté: A Collective) and her wonderful dancers from the New Directions Choreography Lab of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Last Friday, the lab presented a showing of Love's work-in-progress at the Ailey Studios to a large circle of invited guests including Sylvia Waters (Ailey II Artistic Director Emerita), Melanie Person (Director, Ailey/Fordham BFA Program), renowned dance artists Christine Dakin, Gus Solomons Jr. and Marlies Yearby, and several members of Love's family.

After Love and I participated in Paloma McGregor's Dancing While Black program last month, I was most honored when she invited me to collaborate on this new work by contributing text--now called make a dance--that I had read at McGregor's event. In my words, Love heard echoes of her central theme of re-connection to the earth and to cultural memory and community through the earth, inspired by her visits to Tanzania and research into agricultural practices.

Top and bottom: Ailey/Fordham BFA students at Wednesday's rehearsal
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

New Directions Choreography Lab was initiated by Robert Battle, who succeeded Judith Jamison as Ailey's artistic director in 2011, as a way for the institution to offer independent choreographers access to the space, time and dancers they need to experiment and to develop solid work. "Things take time," Battle said, "And we should honor process.”

Besides working out the best way to integrate my text into the project, Love's process involved the careful preparation of a floor grid with large patches filled with potting soil. 

Design by Nia Love
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Love and Dancers prepare before Friday's showing
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The dancers would have to be willing to dance--and I mean dance fast and hard--on this soil and get messy. Ultimately, these students proved to be up to the task. And on Friday, during the actual showing, it was a thrill for me to see the soil get scattered outside its taped lines in the sunlit studio.

This was, of course, only the first leg of the journey--which will involve more travel and research overseas and to the American south--and I'm wishing Love the very best as she continues to develop this powerful and moving piece.

Contemporary visual art by Native Americans decolonized

Calling It Art, Not ‘Native American Art’
A Review of ‘Decolonizing the Exhibition’ at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie
by Sylviane Gold, The New York Times, January 17, 2014

Roy Campbell Jr., 61

Roy Campbell Jr., Avant-Garde Jazz Trumpeter, Dies at 61
by Nate Chinen, The New York Times, January 18, 2014

Brooklyn's Industry City gentrification threatens artists

Industry City, the SoHo of Sunset Park
by Julie Satow, The New York Times, January 17, 2014

Suchitra Sen, 82

Suchitra Sen, Actress Famed in Bengali Cinema, Dies at 82
by Haresh Pandya, The New York Times, January 17, 2014

Four artists talk about dancing while Black

Artist Talk | Dancing While Black: Collective(s) Action

with HNYPN Artist-in-Residence 

Paloma McGregor

Dance artist Paloma McGregor

Thursday, February 13 (7pm to 9pm)

An evening with the founders of Ase Dance Theatre Collective, Dance Diaspora Collective and The Body Ecology Performance Ensemble, who have developed potent, virtuosic performance practices rooted in cultivating collectivism. In a field that is so often individualistic or product-driven, how and why are Rashida Bumbray, Ebony Noelle Golden and Adia Tamar Whitaker making contemporary performance work aligned with community building? Join us in experiencing their work and vision.

This event is free and open to the public. A photo ID is required to enter NYU buildings.

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Other Forces presents WaxFactory's "#aspellforfainting"

Gillian Chadsey
in WaxFactory's #aspellforfainting

The always-dizzying APAP season continues, including one of the lesser-publicized festivals devoted to independent theater, Incubator Arts Project's Other Forces 2014. Last night, I caught WaxFactory performer Gillian Chadsey, sound artist Ivan Talijancic and video artist Shige Moriya in their collaborative piece, #aspellforfainting, at the Robert Moss Theater, a small performance space off Astor Place.

#aspellforfainting, a 40-minute improvisation, locates its soloist within cinematic sound from Moriya's electronic setup and within imagined, uncharted territory littered with wacky props--sky-high black high heels, a wiggly, musical robot poodle, the requisite fluorescent-pink fright wig--Talijancic delivering each item throughout the piece according to his fancy. Each time Talijancic, slim and mysterious in his shiny, silver hoodie, drops off another prop, Chadsey gives it a split-second, distracted glance and seems to be thinking, "Um, what do you want me to do with that?" But then she carries on. Because she must. Because that's what artists do.

And how she carries on. By now, readers of InfiniteBody might come to think that every APAP-season show is an intense, outlandish solo having something to do with a woman slipping right off the murky edge. Or that I've deliberately chosen to see the ones that do. Maybe I have.

Using Charcot’s Tuesday night lectures at the Salpêtrière and his instigation of hysterical performance as a leaping-off point, WaxFactory traces the lines of fainting, hallucination, delusion, and love letters that run through the source material.

If you go, you won't see exactly what I saw, of course, but you will experience some jumble of words and behaviors constructed from bits of culture, high and low, from A Street Car Named Desire to YouTube. And you will always have the work's north star, Chadsey, with her strength, versatile skill and magnetism. At a bite-size 40 minutes, what can you lose?

#aspellforfainting runs through January 19. For schedule and ticketing information, click here.

You'll be invited to use your mobile devices to to take photos (without flash) or video during the performance and tweet to #aspellforfainting--hence, the quirky title.

Robert Moss Theater

440 Lafayette Street (south of Astor Place), 3rd Floor, Manhattan

(map/directions)

Russell Johnson, 89

Russell Johnson, Professor on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 89
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 16, 2014

Jason Brown's free skate routine wows 'em

Fun fact: I used to watch figure skating championships (televised and live) and cry. I've long since fallen away from following figure skating, but now this guy....

Figure Skater Jason Brown Really Knows How to Work a Crowd

by Andrea Romano, Mashable, January 14, 2014

A book details the story of Black women in performing arts and activism

Harnessing Celebrity to Civil Rights Cause
‘How It Feels to Be Free’ Salutes Black Female Entertainers
by Farah Jasmine Griffin, The New York Times, January 15, 2014

Native American artist and mischief-maker Jeffrey Veregge

Superheroes Reimagined by Native American Artist Are Simply Stunning
by Stubby the Rocket, Tor.com, January 14, 2014

Jeffrey Veregge Web site

Sheila Guyse, 88

Sheila Guyse, Singer and Actress, Is Dead at 88
by William Yardley, The New York Times, January 15, 2014

New York Live Arts to explore the live ideas of James Baldwin

James Baldwin

As part of The Year of James Baldwin*, a city-wide, multi-disciplinary celebration, New York Live Arts will launch Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!, April 23-27, at its Chelsea center. Through lectures, panels, conversations and programming in theater, visual art, dance, video and literature, New York Live Arts will lead an exploration of the continuing pertinence of this great American essayist, novelist, playwright and social critic.

Highlights will include the world premiere of Nothing Personal, starring Colman Domingo; previews of Carl Hancock Rux's Stranger on Earth and STEW's Notes of a Native Son; the world premiere of Dianne McIntyre's Time is Time; a discussion on Baldwin and Queer Futurity; and a conversation on what Baldwin would say about contemporary America, moderated by festival curator, Lawrence Wechsler.

Click the Soundcloud link below to listen to the January 15 New York Live Arts media briefing for Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!

New York Live Arts media briefing audio (33:04)

Speakers:

Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts

Jean Davidson, Executive Director and CEO of New York Live Arts

Lawrence Weschler, non-fiction writer and Baldwin festival curator

Patricia Cruz, Executive Director, Harlem Stage

Rich Blint, Associate Director, Office of Community Outreach and Education, Columbia University School of the Arts

Aisha Karefa-Smart, niece of James Baldwin

For further information on Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!, visit newyorklivearts.org/liveideas/.

*Partner/Collaborators in The Year of James Baldwin include Harlem Stage, New York Live Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, The Office of Community Outreach and Education and The New School and its Vera List Center for Art and Politics and the School of Writing

Okwui Okpokwasili's "Bronx Gothic" at Danspace Project

Okwui Okpokwasili in her solo, Bronx Gothic
(photo by Ian Douglas)

Okwui Okpokwasili's Bronx Gothic--an arresting work-in-progress shown during Ishmael Houston-Jones's PLATFORM 2012: Parallels--has now returned to Danspace Project as a complete, evening-length masterpiece. Commissioned by Danspace Project and Performance Space 122, it had its world premiere as part of COIL 2014 and will continue through February 1.

But before you read on about Bronx Gothic, I'd like you to read my post on Dana Michel's Yellow Towel if you have not done so already. You'll find that here. Go and come back. Promise?

You're back? Great. Now I can tell you about Part Two of my evening.

So...I made it through almost all of Michel's show at Abrons then raced out to try to catch a bus uptown. I just missed that particular bus and ended up reaching Danspace Project with maybe two minutes to spare. By the time I made it down from the restroom--no way was I going to sit through 90 minutes more without a pit stop--Okpokwasili had already launched her solo, coursing a continuous orgasmic tremor through her entire body, her liquid muscles, her long, expressive arms. As I slipped into one of the remaining seats, I realized that the dancer's director and designer, Peter Born, had enclosed the space and her entire audience in white curtains similar to the ones Michel had used for her own solo. That was a moment.

For Bronx Gothic, Okpokwasili, raised by her Nigerian immigrant parents in the Bronx, had turned to her youth for inspiration--just like Michel--and mined painful memories of friendship, treachery and despair. Her text--by turns, witty, delicate and lacerating--takes us right back there through the device of a running record of notes surreptitiously passed between an 11-year-old girl and her more worldly school pal. Yes, what kids did before texting.

Sex is the topic of concern and fascination for these two preteens. Their language is frank; the implications of some of the talk--the unstated likelihood that the pal is being abused by her mother's boyfriend--is worrisome. But along with great pain, Okpokwasili finds humor and a certain powerful glamour in female strength, even when it's just fronting, and something literally tidal, earthshaking, in longing and anger.

I had seen Okpokwasili's performance at DP's Parallels and looked forward to Bronx Gothic in finished form. I can report that, since Parallels, this artist has achieved a rare balance between physical and vocal tours de force. These performing modes run parallel throughout the piece, doubling the required prodigious control and stamina. There should be not only a Bessie but Olympic gold for what Okpokwasili has now accomplished. The fact that, in the midst of this great feat of performance, she breaks your heart, absolutely slays you with the poetry of it, makes it all the more remarkable.

Bronx Gothic continues with 8pm performances through February 1. For complete schedule details and to reserve tickets, click here.

Danspace Project

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

(directions)

Dana Michel's "Yellow Towel" at Abrons

Dana Michel
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Dana Michel sidles out from behind a white curtain stretched along one wall. She seems shy, at first, not sure or secure about being seen. She's dressed in a black hoodie that hides her long dreadlocks, and in black slacks and shoes with thick soles. Her tense arms anchor her balled up hands like stumps at waist height. She moves in stiff, tiny jerks and twists of ankles and elbows and does not look at us. What's that box-like object poking out from the back of her hoodie? What are those squawking noises coming from her mouth? What's that white stuff smeared around her mouth?

"Ah...ah...obviously, I am the creator, and this is my house...."

We're at American Realness 2014 in the Experimental Theater at Abrons Arts Center, watching a performance called Yellow Towel, a US premiere of a work by a Canadian dance artist.  But it sure seems like we're trapped in a room with one of those eccentric street people we consider damaged goods and give wide berth. We're trapped for 75 minutes, forced to look at and listen to this person who moves in front of these white curtains like animated Expressionist brushstrokes rendered in thick black paint. She's a living piñata whose garments erupt in showers of Q-tips or rubber bands. When she goes with her impulses, she's all body--spread, contorted, vulgar, messy--and working on her own system, taking her time with everything in an environment that, except for her occasionally lucid mumblings and outbursts, can be dead silent.

That baseline quiet, and that pace in which little happens and what happens makes little sense, controls us. It is her show. A kind of victory in that.

Michel's publicity sources Yellow Towel in her childhood envy of girls with blonde hair and suggests that the solo probes Black stereotypes via her revealing, uncensored alter ego. You have ample time to think about that and what it might mean that her alter ego owns a laptop upon which she drapes a big, curly Afro wig.

I first saw Dana Michel performing a solo--the greater the weight--in the spring of 2007 at PS 122's DANCEOFF! series and noted that the Montreal-based artist was a "killer soloist" with "fiery authority." Seven years later, in Yellow Towel, she is no less than that.

Yellow Towel is now closed. For information about other American Realness 2014 events at Abrons Arts Center (through January 19), click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

BAX offers free Artist Services Day, February 9

Park Slope's BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) announces its first Artist Services Day, a lineup of talks and workshops for working dance, theater and performance artists and their supporters. Free (by pre-registration) and open to the public, these sessions are designed to benefit teaching artists, artists who are parents to children and teens, queer-identified artists and more. In addition, one session will present information on application for BAX's 2014-15 residencies.

Sunday, February 9 (1pm-7pm)

BAX

421 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn

(map/directions)

For complete information on BAX's Artist Services Day and to pre-register, click here.

Polendo's Juárez in transition: "Never mention hope. Say 'I'll do it!'"

Theater Mitu's Justin Nestor
in Juárez: A Documentary Mythology
below: Aysan Celik

Bill Clinton got lots of mileage from the name of his Arkansas hometown-- Hope. But the people of Mexico's Ciudad Juárez--infamous for entrenched government corruption and murderous drug cartels--would prefer that their city be known for tough determination rather than anything as passive as hope. That's one message from Juárez: A Documentary Mythology, a play conceived and directed by Theater Mitu's artistic director Rubén Polendo (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through January 19).

Drawn from numerous interviews--including conversations with folks in El Paso, right across the US border--Juárez might remind many of Anna Deavere Smith's award-winning documentary monologues. But here, the profusion of real-life personalities--factory workers, activists, artists, counselors, journalists, academics and more--are channeled through six white actors, all handsomely expressive in the spoken and sometimes sung material. Unfortunately, an aggressively didactic approach--text and visuals packed with statistics and touching upon complex issues--threatens to unbalance the delicate connection between a New York audience and the Mexicans and Texans whose lives and perspectives we learn about. Still, from the start, Polendo--a son of Juárez who has family there--wins our sympathy for a city he believes can be restored to the safety and beauty remembered from his youth.

Juárez is, the play says, "emblematic of what the rest of the world is going to look like." It is "a laboratory for the future." As Alfredo Corchado's recent article for The Dallas Morning News indicates, recovery will be no simple process. But Juárez: A Documentary Mythology offers one way to remind Americans that all our fates are bound together.

Performances by Denis Butkus, Aysan Celik, Adam Cochran, Ryan Conarro, Michael Littig and Justin Nestor

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
224 Waverly Place, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Camille A. Brown's The Gathering, a rousing success

The visionary Camille A. Brown
who created and convened The Gathering
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

With Baraka Sele (left), discussion moderator
for Brown's historic event
(photo by Cynthia Oliver)

Just do what you do.

-- Katherine Dunham

The Gathering--a special event conceived and convened by Camille A. Brown to offer safe space to discuss issues of concern to Black women choreographers--drew a huge, delighted response and support from all sectors of the field, including men, last evening. Brown--most recently hailed for her powerful evening-length work, Mr. TOL E. RAncE--realized her goal, not only drawing from her own peer group but an inter-generational, intercultural community including arts administrators, educators, journalists, presenters and supporters. Looking around the room, one could spot dance notables such as Dianne McIntyre, Sylvia Waters, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Ronald K. Brown, Nathan Trice, Elka Samuels Smith, Cynthia Oliver, Edisa Weeks, Paloma McGregor, Matthew Rushing, Renee Robinson, Theresa Howard and many more from New York and beyond. Frankly, the vibes in that City Center studio were mind-blowing!

Moderator Baraka Sele set a respectful, positive and productive tone, creating an atmosphere for deep listening and the discovery of resources we can share. She urged us to focus not on problems but on facts, solutions and our individual and collective responsibilities.

We spoke of numerous issues--from the prevalence of racism throughout the arts system and the need to "de-center" whiteness to a call for adequate resources for physical and emotional wellness for the dancer. Participants cited interests in securing more time and affordable space to develop work, meaningful collaboration, community building and, of course, more funding for our projects. We called for better feedback on creative work, both artist-to-artist and via published critiques. Of course, I mentioned the need for more writers of color in dance journalism and sustainability for all writers on dance.

Time was short but, while we could not address in depth every item on our list, we felt confident that The Gathering will generate future activity and exciting collaborations.

Congratulations and deepest thanks to Camille A. Brown and Baraka Sele!

Write to company_manager@camilleabrown.org to get on the mailing list for The Gathering.

Writing of Afghan women to be presented at Queens library

The Friends of Richmond Hill Library

and The Afghan Women’s Writing Project

present

Readings from the Afghan Women’s Writing Project
featuring novelist and founder Masha Hamilton

at Richmond Hill Library, Queens

Monday, January 13, 6:30pm

Admission: Free

A selection of poems, essays, and stories by participants of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project will be read by audience members, AWWP staff and volunteers, and special guests. AWWP believes that to tell one’s story is a human right, and this work testifies to the bravery of Afghan women and to the power of their words. Author and AWWP founder Masha Hamilton will also read from her latest novel What Changes Everything.  Admission is free.

Masha Hamilton is the author of five acclaimed novels, most recently What Changes Everything, which the Washington Post praised for its “elegantly wrought prose (which) conveys terror as well as tenderness” and 31 Hours, which the Washington Post called one of the best novels of 2009. In October 2013, she finished sixteen months working in Afghanistan as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the US Embassy. She is currently working as Communications Director for Concern Worldwide. She also founded two world literacy projects, the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

Masha is the winner of the 2010 Women’s National Book Association award, presented “to a living American woman who derives part or all of her income from books and allied arts, and who has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.” She began her career as a full-time journalist, working in Maine, Indiana, and New York City before being sent by the Associated Press to the Middle East, where she was news editor for five years, including the period of the first intifada, and then moving to Moscow, where she worked for five years during the collapse of communism, reporting for the Los Angeles Times and NBC-Mutual Radio and writing a monthly column, Postcards from Moscow. She also reported from Kenya in 2006, and from Afghanistan in 2004 and 2008. 

Richmond Hill Library
118-14 Hillside Avenue, Queens
Train: J or Z to 121 Street
Bus: Q10, Q55, Q56