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Monday, March 31, 2014

This Spring, look sideways with choreographer Pavel Zuštiak


A workshop with Pavel Zuštiak
Artistic Director of Palissimo

designed for choreographers, dancers, actors, 
artists working with body as medium

at Abrons Arts Center

Tuesday-Friday, Apr 22-25, 12-3pm 
(NOTE: Wednesday, April 23 12:30-3:30pm)

Fee: $180 ($120 if booked before April 1)

“You cannot change something unless you know what you are doing.” -- Moshe Feldenkrais
How to start? What is material? How to use improvisation /scoring? What to set? What to leave open?

The objective of this workshop is to set participants free from the notion of originality as something that did not exist before. It will introduce ways of getting away from the planned, comfortable and familiar in dance making. Four three-hour sessions are meant to unveil and develop existing ideas and motions brought to the class by participants, and help them address some of the questions regarding their own creative process.

The workshop focuses on developing conscious presence while improvising in performance; connecting technique to composition and improving skills in this area; exploring tools useful in developing and crafting the work. Attention will be given to creating structures for dance; generating movement material, editing and deconstructing it; relationships between composition and improvisation; and introducing elements of chance. Each session starts with a guided physical warm up that opens the senses, stirs up imagination and heightens physical and mental awareness and exploration of body systems that then leads to exploration and ultimately to composition.
For complete information, click here.

To register, click here. (NOTE: April 1 is the deadline for a $60 discount on the regular $180 fee!)

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

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Dancemakers: Apply for a NYC residency at Gibney

Dance in Process

Immersive Residency Program

Apply now for Summer-Fall 2014. 
The DiP Residency provides mid-career dance artists with a concentrated period of creative time in a private studio and adjacent production office, as well as artistic and technical resources, and a generous fee - without leaving New York City. DiP Residencies support the development of new work, specifically work that is in the mid-stage of development. 
For full guidelines and application, click here.

For questions, contact Center Programs Manager Sarah Holcman at sarah@gibneydance.org.

Past DiP Resident Artists

2013-14 DiP Artists: Dean Moss, Jon Kinzel (in partnernship with the Chocolate Factory), Lance Gries (in partnership with Danspace Project), and RoseAnne Spradlin

2012-13 DiP Artists: Anna Sperber, David Thomson, DECADANCE, and Melinda Ring

Gibney Dance Center Web site

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

How about a little less Bill?

Actual listing for Bill Chats
from TimeOut.com, February 13, 2014:
Bill T. Jones sits across noted artists in a series of talks.
Last Sunday evening, I attended Bill Chats: When did the avant-garde become black?--a two-hour panel discussion hosted and moderated by Bill T. Jones at New York Live Arts. Since then, I've largely kept my own counsel as I sorted out thoughts that progressed from ambivalence to outright dismay.

From these "chats" to Jones's ambitious Live Ideas event series--last year, inspired by Oliver Sacks; this time by James Baldwin--it's clear that Jones intends to place his singular mark on the entity now known as New York Live Arts. He's steering it out into broader, deeper, more intellectually heady and political waters and aims to attract a sophisticated audience not necessarily affiliated with contemporary dance. I think good things can come of this for dance as well as for those smart newcomers to the art, although it has the potential to rattle and possibly alienate the more tightly focused folks in our dance community.

I do like this potential encounter and overlapping of worlds; it mirrors my own interests. I'm even more excited about the Baldwin programming for Live Ideas than I was about the Sacks series, but what I saw of Bill Chats worries me.

I'll step out in front of this and just say it: It's not a "chat" if you're hectoring your guests and some of your audience members. It's not a "chat" if you invite the following extraordinary panelists--

Ishmael Houston-Jones
Bebe Miller
Adrienne Edwards
Dianne McIntyre
Charmaine Warren
Ralph Lemon
Brenda Dixon Gottschild

--each of whom is a living archive and then get so caught up in your own button-pushing agenda, your own history, and your own sense of being stereotyped or slighted that you rarely take time to tap the considerable knowledge that your guests possess. That's a Murderer's Row of experience, scholarship and sensibilities just sitting around you, Mr. Jones, hardly utilized.

How useful is this self-declared role of "provocateur"--everything "said with a wink and a 'fuck you' smile," as Jones would have it--in the long run? Curtly dismissing Ralph Lemon's analysis in his opening statement--why? because there wasn't enough "feeling" in it?--was not cool and felt disrespectful. Suddenly putting John Jasperse on the spot, as a white choreographer sitting in the audience, really wasn't cool either. Cryptic shoutouts to the soon-departing Carla Peterson--"I'm doing it right now, Carla!"--sound just ill-tempered. These behaviors don't actually advance discussion of complex issues. They are merely showy and rude.

A chat is also not a performance. A performance is not a chat.

In other words, it is so not about you.

For future Bill Chats, please let the panelists breathe. Give them room to stretch and run. You cannot choreograph their voices, and you should not try.

We show up because we want to hear what they have to say.

Funeral service planned for choreographer-educator Joan Miller

Joan Miller; John Jay College; New York; 2007
Joan Miller at 2007 retirement party, John Jay College

Dyane Harvey-Salaam has sent the following message on the recent passing of choreographer/educator Joan Miller:
Joan entered the Ancestral realm Sunday morning peacefully in her sleep after a very long illness. She was a brilliant, courageous, inquisitive, expressive and creative artist. We are missing her already.
A funeral service for Miller will be held this coming Saturday, March 29 (Noon to 2pm) at the Riverside Funeral Home followed by a celebration of her life and work.

Riverside Funeral Home
5044 Broadway (at 214th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Joan Miller bio by Julinda Lewis-Ferguson:
Born and raised in Harlem, Joan Miller began dance training in a local troop of the Girl Scouts, performing folk and ballet work. While a Brooklyn College physical education major, she continued to study dance at the José Limón studio with Ruth Currier and Betty Jones. In the late 1950s, Miller continued to study with Limón, and went on to study choreography and work with Doris Humphrey, Louis Horst, and Pauline Koner.
Miller completed a master's degree at Teachers College, Columbia University (1960), and earned a professional diploma in dance from Juilliard (1962). From 1960 to 1967 Miller performed with Ruth Currier and was featured in Currier's The Antagonists. Miller also began teaching at the Hunter College Bronx campus (later Lehman College) in 1963. Also in 1963 and in 1964, Miller danced with the Merry-Go-Rounders, a group that performed for children. From 1965 to 1968 she worked with James Waring, Remy Charlip, and Yvonne Rainer, members of the experimental Judson Church group. Between 1968 and 1970 she performed with both Rod Rodgers in African traditional dance and Rudy Perez, an exponent of avant-garde dancing.
In 1970, Miller founded her own troupe, the Dance Players, which became a forum for her socio-political ideas and satires. Her company enjoyed resident status at Lehman College from 1970 until 1980, from which time they stayed on unofficially and also performed in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The Dance Players' repertory consists primarily of Miller's creations, such as the 1970 solo, Pass Fe White, and the group work, Manhattan Thoroughfare 1980. Her company also performs works by Rael Lamb, Eleo Pomare, and her former student Abdel Salaam, director of the Forces of Nature Dance Company.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Political performance artist Tania Bruguera to speak at NYU's IFA

A lecture by


Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International Pin
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm

RSVP required*: Click here.

*Seating in the Lecture Hall is on a first-come, first-served basis with RSVP. 
There will be a simulcast in an adjacent room to accommodate overflow.

About the artist
Tania Bruguera is one of the leading political and performance artists of her generation. Focused on the application of art to everyday political life, she works to transform the condition of "viewer" to one of active citizenry, shifting social affect toward political action. Bruguera's long-term projects, such as Immigrant Movement International (conceived 2005, initiated 2010), are intensive interventions in the institutional structures of collective memory, education, and politics.
The recipient of numerous awards including the Prince Claus Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Bruguera is part of the original Occupy Wall Street movement and has been an advisor in cultural rights and artistic freedom to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She is currently at work on a book on the collaborative art process with Claire Bishop.
The Institute of Fine Arts
1 East 78th Street (near Fifth Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

For more information on the Artists at the Institute lectures at the Institute of Fine Arts, click here.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Saturday, March 22, 2014

651 Arts to honor former directors...oh, and LISA FISCHER will sing!

Lisa Fischer
Singer Lisa Fischer

Have you heard???

Save the date--Thursday, May 1--for a celebration of the 25th Anniversary of 651 ARTS at BAM's Lepercq Space!
A festive night to commemorate 25 years of celebrating and cultivating performing arts of the African Diaspora honoring our former Executive Directors Mikki Shepard (Executive Producer, Apollo Theater), Maurine Knighton (Senior Vice President of Operations, The Nathan Cummings Foundation) and Georgiana Pickett (Executive Director, Baryshnikov Arts Center) with performance by GRAMMY Award Winner Lisa Fischer. Hosted by Jodine Dorcé.
Come dressed in your party best for a reception, honoree presentation, performance and party with DJ NY Giant!
For information, call 651 ARTS at 718-636-4181. For sponsorship opportunities, email sponsorship@651ARTS.org or call 718-230-2528.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Desert immersion: Beth Gill at New York Live Arts

L-r: Heather Lang, Jennifer Lafferty,
Marilyn Maywald and Christiana Axelsen
in Thomas Dunn's hazy sunlight in
New Work for the Desert
(photo by Cherylynn Tsushima)
In New Work for the Desert, dancemaker Beth Gill and her collaborators--composer Jon Moniaci and lighting and set designer, Thomas Dunn--translate the desert regions of the American Southwest to the spare, artificial confines of New York Live Arts's stage.

(photo by Cherylynn Tsushima)
Live imagery and motion (or lack of same) and sound (or lack of same) and gradiations of light mimic a psychic and somatic experience of being there. Pre-dawn silhouettes. Clean, empty space and time stretching out in austere silence. Sound just below conscious awareness and then arriving in hums, reverberations, chimes. Sun-baked noon. Bodies introducing slender lines, linear shapes, constructing balance, holding stillness, drifting in and out of sight, twisting as if to seek out signals from afar.
Kayvon Pourazar and Christiana Axelsen
(photos by Cherylynn Tsushima)
with dancing by Christiana AxelsenJennifer Lafferty, Heather Lang, Marilyn Maywald, Kayvon Pourazar, Stuart Singer

Now through Saturday, each evening at 7:30pm. For ticket information, click here.

Tonight's show will be followed by a conversation, "Under the Influence of Light," with Beth Gill and John Jasperse.

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

Beautiful, beastly and renegade: Muz and Fraser at Abrons

Julie Atlas Muz as Beauty
At rear, Mat Fraser as The Beast,
flanked by Jonny Dixon (l) and Jess Mabel Jones
(photo by Sin Bozkurt)
Mat Fraser
with puppeteers Dixon and Jones
(photo by Sheila Burnett)
To be sure, the Playhouse stage at Abrons Arts Center is set up for a fairy tale--here, Beauty and the Beast--with an ornate, antique-y, rose-strewn set drenched in crimson light and gently breathing mist. And so, on a rainy evening perfect for storytelling, begins not one but two uncommon love stories. The familiar one we came for--in which a lovely daughter, having staved off family disaster by agreeing to go away to live in a beast-man's castle--gets charmingly, seamlessly interwoven with real-life details about the show's charismatic stars, Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser.

Muz, former beauty queen and a multi-talented artist best-known for neo-burlesque, and Fraser, a British actor, writer and rock musician, are a married couple who met and fell in love when they were Coney Island sideshow performers and married to other people. Fraser, whose mom took Thalidomide for morning sickness, has the congenital deformation phocomelia with, in his case, missing forearms and thumbs. When these two artists dreamed up a collaborative project, "Beauty and the Beast" immediately sprung to mind. But because they are who they are--both kickass provocateurs, one whose visible disability has long been integral to his art--this "Beauty and the Beast" would have to be a "Beauty and the Beast" like no other.

And so it is.

A very sexy "Beauty and the Beast," indeed, with frequent, matter-of-fact nudity, erotic food play and joyous sexual simulation where even paper puppets get it on. And a hilarious "Beauty and the Beast" in which Muz's sharp talent for comedy--along with Jonny Dixon and Jess Mabel Jones's skillful, innovative puppetry--give extra dimension and brightness to every scene. And a tender "Beauty and the Beast" which, without hesitation, welcomes us into the love that this couple shares. I don't believe I have ever seen this much love (genuine love) in a work on stage.

So, if you think all that might be too much to handle, stay home...or, go anyway, take a chance and see if it changes you.

Directed by Phelim McDermott (Satyagraha, Shockheaded Peter) of the British theater troupe, Improbable

Beauty and the Beast runs through March 30. For information and tickets, click here.

The Playhouse
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/direction)

*******

Of related interest

Access All Areas--Live Art & Disability (NYC edition), a free, all-day event looking at some of the radical approaches to the representation of disability by contemporary performance artists.

March 29, 10-6pm at Abrons Arts Center

For information, click here.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Lance Gries brings "IF Immanent Field" to Danspace Project

Dancer-choreographer Lance Gries
Below, performing in IF Immanent Field,
his new ensemble work with
original score by Ryan Seaton and lighting by Carol Mullins
(photos courtesy of Lance Gries)
As a member of The Trisha Brown Dance Company (1985-1992),
Gries won a Bessie Award and also received a 2011 Bessie nomination
for his solo evening, Etudes for an Astronaut.
Hands float, sneak, snake, dowse, elongate, coil, swirl and fuss, always leading the way through space bristling with energy. Encircled by watchers, Lance Gries and his fellow dancers come and go. An austere, sometimes billowing Jimena Paz; a deific, stately Diane Madden; and Juliette Mapp, alternately ethereal and wry, they infuse the space with a visualized music.

Gries's IF Immanent Field, premiering at Danspace Project tomorrow evening, draws from the choreographer's belief in a common awareness, "a primary field of shared conscious energy pervades and connects all things," and that dancers readily access and utilize.

You are invited to sit and contemplate and breathe it all in.

March 20-22, Thursday-Saturday, 8PM
Arrive around 7:45pm each night for pre-show entertainment.

TICKETS

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

The radical art of disability highlighted in New York



Saturday, March 29 (10am-6pm)

Free with required reservations (RSVP here)
Access All Areas (NYC Edition) is a free, all day event looking at some of the radical approaches to the representation of disability by contemporary performance artists, particularly in the UK. Featuring performances by UK artists Noemi Lakmaier and Martin O’Brien; Aaron Williamson, Leroy Franklin Moore Jr and many more.
For the schedule information and to make your reservation, click here or here.

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

******
Of related interest
title
Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser
of Beauty and The Beast
Upcoming:

Check back for my review of Beauty and The Beast, starring Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser at Abrons Arts Center (closes March 30).

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Five days with Miguel Gutierrez, making work!

title
Miguel Gutierrez

MAKING WORK

In this five-day workshop, Miguel Gutierrez focuses on the creative process in making body/movement-based performance/dance. A variety of approaches to creating — intuitive, improvisational, analytical — are exploited to uncover your individual interests, your process and your work. The workshop consists of unequal parts making, discussing, improvising, and watching the work of other workshop participants. Miguel’s interest is in creating a space in which traditional notions of dance are critiqued, absorbed, or discarded in the service of creating performance that comes from a vital place. An ongoing question throughout the workshop is how to make work that is located in a contemporary context.

Monday-Friday, April 7-11 (10am-2pm)

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

STooPS: a Bed-Stuy arts and neighborhood event, June 14

STooPS is a community-building event that uses the arts to bring people outside and promotes social interaction among artists, homeowners, residents, and businesses of Bed-Stuy. Bed-Stuy homeowners collaborate with local artists to host mini performances and art showcases on their stoops, yards, or sidewalks. At the same time, various local businesses and organizations will bring folks together at the event’s main space, the Freebrook Mansion at 375 Stuyvesant Avenue. STooPS culminates with performances by several renowned Brooklyn based artists.
Recent changes in demographics and economics have evolved the fabric of Bed-Stuy. STooPS builds on the unmistakable Bed-Stuy identity and bridges the gap between Bed-Stuy “then” and “now.” It is a tangible way to unite artists, new residents, businesses, and those deeply invested in the neighborhood such as homeowners and community organizations. STooPS supports members of the neighborhood in discovering and sharing the multitude of resources that exist within Bed-Stuy.

In 2013, STooPS attracted 200 SightSeers (ticket buyers) along with countless passersby of all ages. The event was featured in the BedStuy Patch, Brokelyn, A.R.T.S.Y. Magazine, and covered by News12 Brooklyn. The STooPS team is ecstatic about engaging the Bed-Stuy community for another year. 
STooPS is just one way to engage, support, and develop Bed-Stuy, and as STooPS expands, the entire Brooklyn community grows stronger.
Keep up with STooPS here.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Where the blues brings joy: Dorrance and Reagon at the Schomburg

Tap maverick Michelle Dorrance
in The Blues Project, a collaboration
with singer-composer Toshi Reagon (rear, right),
curator of the Schomburg's Women's Jazz Festival


The Women's Jazz Festival, now in its 21st annual presentation by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, got off to an exciting start with the New York premiere of The Blues Project in the sold-out Langston Hughes Auditorium. Given its world premiere last summer at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the production is the marriage of two top-notch artistic entities--Dorrance Dance, the tap ensemble led by Bessie-winning choreographer Michelle Dorrance, and Toshi Reagon's marvelous band, BIGLovely. And if that's not enough, how about Derick K. Grant and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards adding their choreography and star-power?

Dorrance Dance in action
Up front: Elizabeth Burke (l) and Nicholas Van Young
Far left: Derick K. Grant
Center: Christopher Broughton
(photo: Bob Gore)
L-r: Claudia Rahardjanoto, Michelle Dorrance,
Demi Remick, Elizabeth Burke
and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards
(photo: Bob Gore)

The Blues Project opens with the steady BOOM-THUMP, BOOM-THUMP of Allison Miller's drumming. Dancers--dressed as if for a summery country romp--first creep out from the wings then quickly unpack Dorrance's signature moves: loose-limbed, broad, pelting, the entire body activated and engaged in addressing space. They charge and skim and gobble the stage in just a few happy bites. It's a distinctly American, idealistically American look and feel--indomitable, optimistic, on the upswing and culturally integrated--and one that Reagon's BIGLovely supports throughout the hour-long show with its own buoyant eclecticism, from blues to bluegrass, from swing and rockabilly to hard rock. The tightly edited hour--each cleanly-arranged number following close upon its predecessor--never strains a viewer's interest.

Some dancemakers go astray in their effort to prove that tap is respectably choreographic, not just improvisatory. Dorrance, though, demonstrates that she can more than handle the challenge of fielding a big, purposeful group in space and making an ensemble look intricately sharp and never, never ever cornball. No matter what era of dance or music she drops into, she and her talented and disciplined dancers come up with a vitalizing response, as do Reagon and her musicians. I might wish for fewer ensemble moments in The Blues Project--that's just me, folks--but the thrilling solos eventually balance things out, and then some.

Grant's solo is a model of workmanship of the feet akin to fine brushstrokes in the painting of a master, strokes that make you lean forward to look and gasp. His technique is breathtaking. Sumbry-Edwards brings authority and, yet continuous surprise, concentrating hard as if dance is a most solemn duty, and that's because it is. She renders herself transparent so that history flows through her. Her solo is--I'll just say it this way--populated. Reagon's spiritual, soulful "There and Back Again" (2010) lays out the mesh that Dorrance's solo will embroider in her deep-listening, thoughtful way, one of the most inspired and inspiring pieces I've ever seen her dance. This youthful dancer and choreographer truly represents tap's historic and enduring through line and signals its potential.

Dorrance Dance: Megan Bartula, Christopher Broughton, Elizabeth Burke, Michelle Dorrance, Eboni Edwards, Derick K. Grant, Claudia Rahardjanoto, Demi Remick, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Caleb Teicher, Byron Tittle, Nicholas Van Young, Ali Dietz

BIGLovely: Toshi Reagon (vocals, acoustic guitar), Adam Widoff (electric guitar), Ganessa James (electric bass), Juliette Jones (violin), Allison Miller (drums and percussion)

For information on upcoming Women's Jazz Festival events, now through March 31 at the Schomburg, click here. Hurry! Tickets go fast!

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Blvd, Manhattan

Clowning around with Kendall Cornell: Get your ha-has out!



Clowns Ex Machina's Kendall Cornell will teach a 2-day clowning workshop for women, Saturday-Sunday, April 5-6.
"I'm not funny. What I am is brave." -- Lucille Ball
Come and unleash your inner Delightmaker. Find the truth, the open heart, the freedom, and the physical vitality of the clown. Laugh 'til you pee.
In this 2 day workshop for clowns, actors, performers, and all adventurous women we will explore: 
play, physical improvisation,
spontaneity & imagination,
character & clown psychology, comic timing,
the joyful truth of failure and more...
Saturday, April 5 (3-7pm)
Sunday, April 6 (3:30-8:30pm)

Flamenco Latino Studios
244-250 West 54th Street (between Broadway and 8th Avenue), Ste. 404 Manhattan
(map/directions)

Fee: $175

For more info or to register: kendall@ClownsExMachina.com or 646-729-1188
Kendall Cornell has been creating, directing and performing clown work since falling in love with it in 1993. At the helm of the all-women clown troupe, Clowns Ex Machina, Kendall has created and directed the shows Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics, (described as “kaleidoscopically-dizzying physical theater of the absurd with a wicked steel edge"), Clown Axioms and Clowns By Dead Reckoning, all of which played to sold-out audiences at LaMaMa. In 2007, the troupe’s Not Just for Shock Value: A Femmes-Clowns Assemblage, was called “one of the funniest and best-assembled shows in town.” Most recently, her flamenco-clown show Oil of Ole! played to sold-out crowds at LaMaMa. She and her work have been profiled in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Backstage and Spectacle Journal for the Circus Arts. Her solo clown pieces, such as The Maneater, Glamourpuss, P.S. de la Resistance, and The Wallflower have been presented at LaMaMa, The New York Clown Theatre Festival, the International Festival de Pallasses, Dixon Place, 92nd Street Y and elsewhere in New York City and abroad. Kendall was nominated for “Clown of the Year” by the New York Downtown Clown Revue. Kendall has taught clown, dance and performance in Europe and NYC, and assisted director David Shiner on the U.S. version of the circus-theatre spectacle, Pomp, Duck and Circumstance. In 2006, Kendall was commissioned to create a special clown extravaganza with her women clowns for Cirque du Soleil. Check out www.ClownsExMachina.com for more info.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Time, place and action: Vijay Iyer

DNA of a Polymath, Restlessly Mutating
Vijay Iyer’s New Release Bridges String Quartet and Improvisation
by Nate Chinen, The New York Times, March 7, 2014

No safety net for retiring US dancers

'A Dancer Dies Twice': The Unique, Sad Challenge of Retiring From Ballet
Acclaimed ballerina Wendy Whelan is just one of many professional dancers who find themselves struggling to transition into new careers as they hit middle age.
 by Maroosha Muzaffar, The Atlantic, March 7, 2014

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Mid-Manhattan Library welcomes renowned storyteller Laura Simms

Laura Simms
(photo by Steve Savage)

Our Secret Territory: The Essence of Storytelling
a talk by Laura Simms, internationally acclaimed performing artist, writer, educator and humanitarian, examining the spiritual and social aspects of storytelling, and its process of engagement
Monday, March 17 (6:30-8:30pm)
Free Admission

Mid-Manhattan Library
New York Public Library
455 Fifth Avenue (at 40th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Friday, March 7, 2014

She Gone Tarot: Flawless Sabrina reads Whitney Biennial artist

2014 Whitney Biennial artists Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst visit the apartment of drag performance icon Flawless Sabrina, who features in Drucker and Ernst’s video She Gone Rogue. Flawless Sabrina performs a Tarot reading for Drucker and the two discuss the pitfalls of success.
Watch video (2:36)

Thursday, March 6, 2014

26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced

26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced
Lambda Literary, March 6, 2014

2014 marks the debut of the Graphic Novel category. The awards ceremony will be held on Monday, June 2, at The Great Hall at Cooper Union, New York City.

For complete information and tickets, click here.

Recommended: Cynthia Hopkins in "A Living Documentary"

Cynthia Hopkins
as her sassiest character in A Living Documentary
(photo by Jeff Sugg)
Whatever enrages, disturbs, and/or frightens me most becomes the subject of my work.
-- Cynthia Hopkins, from her Artist Statement
More intimately enraging, disturbing and frightening than global climate change--a topic Cynthia Hopkins treats in This Clement World--is the abject condition of the serious theater artist attempting to live a healthy life and make meaningful work in New York City. The multiple award-winning Hopkins takes on this issue in her new performance, A Living Documentary, this week at New York Live Arts.

In this quasi-fictional, quasi-autobiographical "documentary," Hopkins transforms herself into a series of comedic characters--veterans of the performing arts scene, for better or for bitter--whose behavior and words maintain a sizzling tension between what's off-putting and what's wise, what's over the top and what's completely down to earth. Their varying points of view on the possibility of a sustainable arts career shape up into a pretty interesting seminar. It's a more bracing kind of career seminar than you might ever imagine attending, with generous helpings of profanity and poignant musical interventions from this irresistible singer/composer.

For her ninety-minute show, Hopkins has adopted the sustainable strategy of simplicity. First, it's a solo. That saves a lot of cash right there. There's recorded music--played on an ancient cassette recorder to boot--and a set and props that look as if they were pulled from her apartment and/or some thrift shop. That's enough when the mission is to call bullshit on the external arts gatekeepers and overseers as well as the internal sabotage agents that conspire to keep artists fearful, passive and broke.

My favorite character, her hilarious motivational speaker-type--rocking rhinestones and a jet black halo of feathers--exhorts us to "act like you're worthy of a prosperous life...act like you're a woman of dignity...even if you're not a woman!" Hopkins knows that while one part of us is smirking, the other part is likely absorbing, that the clown's job has always been to slip around the guards and Make. That. Delivery.

A Living Documentary runs through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. For more information and tickets, click here.

March 6, 6:30pm -- Come Early Conversation: The Truth Behind A Living Documentary. Moderated by Paul Lazar

March 7 -- Stay Late Discussion: No-nonsense - Discussing the Economy of Art-Making. Annie-B Parson in conversation with Cynthia Hopkins

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

A workshop on injury prevention for dancers


An Injury Prevention Workshop

Sponsored by 

Sunday, April 6, 6:30pm
Learn ways to prevent and recover from dance injuries.
Dancers, teachers, and parents will gain valuable information on such topics as the importance of a strong core, the role of physical therapy in a dancer’s recovery, and the effects that adolescent growth and dance training have on one another.
Leigh Heflin, The Harkness Center for Dance Injuries
Robin Powell, Pilates Instructor
Dr. Andrew Price, Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, New York University Hospital/Hospital for Joint Disease

with special guest Sara Mearns, New York City Ballet Principal, who will offer a firsthand account of her recovery process.

For ticket information, click here or call 212-874-3678.

Steps on Broadway
2121 Broadway (between 74th and 75th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Celebrate World Poetry Day, March 21

Poetry is one of the purest expressions of linguistic freedom. It is a component of the identity of peoples and it embodies the creative energy of culture, for it can be continuously renewed.
--Irina Bokova, Director-General, UNESCO 
How will you celebrate World Poetry Day--Friday, March 21?

For the Academy of American Poets's roundup of international poetry organizations and festivals in Ireland, Chile, Tasmania and more, click here.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Hurray! Okwui Okpokwasili plans her return to Danspace Project!

Okwui Okpokwasili in Bronx Gothic
(photo by Ian Douglas)

Okwui Okpokwasili, who had to curtail her January run of the astonishing Bronx Gothic at Danspace Project due to ill health, will return with the acclaimed solo for a short run, May 8-10.

Read my review of one of her Danspace Project/COIL Festival performances here.

And be sure to watch the Danspace Project site for ticket information. Tickets are sure to go quickly!

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

Robert Ashley, 83 [UPDATE]

Composer Robert Ashley Dead at 83
by Evan Minsker, Pitchfork, March 3, 2014

Robert Ashley 1930-2014
by Kyle Gann, PostClassic, ArtsJournal.com, March 3, 2014

Robert Ashley, Opera Composer Who Painted Outside the Lines, Dies at 83
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 6, 2014

Monday, March 3, 2014

Danspace Project to honor the late arts advocate Elizabeth H. Berger

Elizabeth Berger (1960-2013)

Danspace Project's Board of Directors 
invites you to

Elizabeth H. Berger Tribute

Monday, March 10, 7-8pm

Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church
131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue, Manhattan
Please join us at Danspace Project on March 10 at 7pm as we recognize the life of Elizabeth H. Berger (1960-2013) and her dedication to and love of the arts community. The tribute will celebrate her profound impact on the arts in New York City as a board member, advisor and lobbyist for numerous arts organizations, including more than a decade of service as a Danspace Project Board Member from 1990-2002, serving as Board President for eight of those years.
To honor Liz, the Danspace Project Board of Directors is establishing the Elizabeth H. Berger Fund, which will support choreographers and dancers as they create new work. We encourage you to remember Liz by contributing to this new fund.
The evening will feature tributes by family and friends and short performances by Ishmael Houston-Jones, John Kelly, and a screening of THREE (1998) directed by Isaac Julien with choreography by Ralph Lemon and Bebe Miller. A reception will follow.
To RSVP (if you have not already) and request more information, please contact Peggy Cheng at peggy@danspaceproject.org or 212-674-3838.

Lupita Nyong'o discusses her 2009 documentary, "In Our Genes"


In this video, Lupita Nyong'o (2014 Academy Award winner, Best Supporting Actress, 12 Years A Slave) discusses In Our Genes, her 2009 documentary about the lives of albinos living in Kenya.


Click here for more information.

Novelists Edward P. Jones and Yiyun Li read at 92Y, April

92Y

welcomes novelists

Edward P. Jones and Yiyun Li

Thursday, April 10, 8:15 pm

Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. “It’s difficult to think of a contemporary novel that rivals its sweep, its humanity, the unvarnished perfection of its prose and its ultimately crushing power,” wrote Dave Eggers.
Yiyun Li’s new novel is Kinder Than Solitude. “Li is extraordinary, a storyteller of the first order,” wrote Junot Díaz. She “inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents.”
Ticket information

92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan
(map/direction)

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Hollywood blacklist remembered: Walter Bernstein at The New School

The Hollywood Blacklist, with Walter Bernstein


a free screening of
The Front (1976)

followed by a Q&A 
with screenwriter Walter Bernstein

at The New School

Thursday, March 6, 6:30 pm
In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy carried out a witch hunt for Communists that led to the creation of the infamous Hollywood blacklist, resulting in 150 directors, actors, writers, and others in the entertainment business being banned from making a living for over a decade.

Don't miss this screening of
The Front (1976), which received an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. Written by Walter Bernstein, himself a victim of the blacklist, the movie takes a comedic look at what happened during this dark period in American History. Bernstein is the author of "Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist." His other films include: Miss Evers' Boys, The House on Carroll Street, Yanks, Semi-Tough, The Train, Little Miss Marker, to name a few.
Moderated by Brian Rose--Professor of Media Studies, Fordham University; moderator for BAFTA and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Free with registration at
www.cencom.org or by e-mail to info@cencom.org

The New School (auditorium)
66 West 12th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

It's a Fiasco! In a good way!

Paul L. Coffey (Angelo) and Emily Young (Isabella)
in Fiasco Theater's Measure for Measure
(photo by Joan Marcus)
WHY FIASCO?
Legend has it the word “fiasco” was first used to describe commedia dell’arte performances that went horribly (and hilariously) wrong. In those instances the performer would have to fare fiasco or “make a bottle.” In other words “You’re buying!” While we hope to avoid on-stage disasters, we do believe that it is only when artists are brave enough to risk a fiasco that the possibility exists of creating something special. 
-- from Fiasco Theater Web site
Gotta love it.

Anyway, the fiasco going on at New Victory Theater, as of last evening's opening of Measure for Measure, is not the work of the delightful Fiasco Theater, but the fix that Shakespeare's comic characters have gotten themselves into.

The laidback Duke of Vienna (Andy Grotelueschen) suddenly decides to take a powder--or so it seems--and dump all governing responsibility onto his deputy. He grabs a valise and scrams. The deputy, Angelo (Paul L. Coffey), turns out to be a vindictive law-and-order type, upsetting people's lifestyles and livelihoods and even chance of continuing to live at all. Fiasco!

Funnily enough, the errant duke actually remains right there in the city and in the thick of things, disguised as a friar, closely monitoring developments and, in the nick of time as only Shakespeare could nick it, setting things aright.

Before we get to the Happily Ever After with an Big Ol' Asterisk, Fiasco's performers, singing English Renaissance vocal works as lovely preludes to each act and doubling up characters, take us through twisty complications and disturbances of the social order. As physical actors, they have charming vitality--in particular, Ben Steinfeld (Lucio and Froth), Jessie Austrian (Escalus and Mariana), Noah Brody (Claudio and Pompey) and the terrific Emily Young (Isabella and Mistress Overdone). Unlike his colleagues, Grotelueschen has a tendency to rush through and sink back behind his lines. We know the duke is a man in a hurry, yet this actor need not be. But Grotelueschen pulls off a flawless Act Two scene as the friar conversing with Steinfeld's Lucio. Steinfeld is a hoot throughout the play but never more focused than here as these two guys lock eyes and bring out the best in each other. Electric!

Co-direction: Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld
Set: Derek McLane
Costumes: Whitney Locher
Lighting: Tim Cryan

Fiasco Theater's Measure for Measure runs now through March 16. Get tickets here.

New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)