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Saturday, May 31, 2014

We're Dancing While Black. And we're golden.


Were you at BAAD! last night for Paloma McGregor's Dancing While Black panel (Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Greg Tate and cultural anthropologist Aimee Cox with moderator Shani Jamil) and the amazing performance that followed? If so, I'm sure you walked out of there with more inspiration, motivation and energy than most people would know what to do with. And I'm hoping you know what to do with it, because we all benefit when you do. Live your life like it's golden.

If you didn't get there last night, you might miss a chance to buy a ticket for tonight's repeat of the performance. It's a smallish space, and clearly the artists know lots and lots of supportive folks. But give it a try.

The set features developing works by emerging dancemakers
  • Adia Tamar Whitaker and Brian Polite
  • Ebony Noelle Golden
and Rashida Bumbray's right shout Run Mary Run

Also, today, BAAD! hosts a full day of Dancing While Black master classes. Click here for information or call BAAD! at 718-918-2110.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Naturally Jen Rosenblit

Left to right: Justin Cabrillos, Jen Rosenblit and Addys Gonzalez
in a performance at Judson Memorial Church
What's natural?

In a dance by Jen Rosenblit--say, a Natural dance by Jen Rosenblit at The Kitchen--it appears to be bodies being in space, a lot of open space, and being exactly what they are and doing what they do and not being overly messed with. Bodies occupying space together--say, Rosenblit herself and Addys Gonzalez and Justin Cabrillos and Effie Bowen and Hillary Clark--co-existing without the force of How Bodies Should Occupy Space Together and How to Make Things Happen. And if anything happens between and among those bodies in space, it happens in the charged and naturally absurd space of juxtaposition and repetition, not because someone once laid out Rules of Choreography. Or rules of anything.

Natural like, You've got this meadow over here and this little tree standing up that you can see out of the corner of your right eye, and maybe a pinto scampering in the far distance. You turn your head to look directly at the tree, and suddenly a hare hops into view.

a Natural dance has a voiceover passage (uncredited, but Rosenblit is a fascinating writer to explore; see her blog) that is a wry enumeration and litany of colors from, it would appear, the world of cosmetics. [UPDATE: Folks on Twitter seem to have discovered the true source: A catalogue of theatrical lighting color filters!] There's no clear sense of why this text accompanies this particular stretch of movement. Like anything else spliced into the space, there could have been a specific reason for it, but why burden it with thoughts like that when it's just delectable to the ear, the way that Rosenblit's striking costumes for Gonzalez and Cabrillos--cartoonishly oversized overalls, one in teal green, the other in royal blue, skimming the two mens' bodies, offering space, space, space--enchant the eyes?

At times, Rosenblit sails warm-toned vocalizing across the space from a platform--more space for one or another dancer to claim--set up, at the edge of the audience, with lounging pillows, which go unused, and a microphone. Sound is a rich part of Rosenblit's sculpture, of her ecology, and so is silence, every bit as much as motionlessness. Lighting designer Elliott Jenetopulos turns the space into a lightbox, making Rosenblit's images pop. But, for a short spell, he transforms it into a velvet-lined gift box--a little technical drama dropped, for a moment, into this natural world.

a Natural dance runs through tomorrow evening with performances at 8pm. Tickets are sold out, but for information, click here or call (212) 255-5793 ext. 11 (2-6pm).

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/direction)

Mysteries of light: new work by Anne Zuerner at The Invisible Dog

LIGHT HOUSE
from Anne Zuerner's Light House
The floor is raw; the temperature, nippy. Windows on the upper floor of this former belt factory--Brooklyn's Invisible Dog Art Center--look out on leafy branches bending to a strong evening wind. The sudden, dramatic shift in weather on Anne Zuerner's opening night cooperates more with the choreographer than with her audience, casting the trees dancing just beyond the glass as perfect backdrop to her own supple undulations.

This solo, Prelude, opens as Zuerner, flashlight in hand, rotates like the beam of a lighthouse; light travels across the space's whitewashed bricks. That would be a banal lead-up to a trio entitled Light House, except that Prelude has a bit more than that going on--including the spooky cool patch of light trained on part of Zuerner's face as she slowly pours blue-dyed water over her head, face and clothing and then repeatedly lashes her head forward and back. Later, with her long, brown hair obscuring head and neck, her body will look weirdly reversed and endlessly reversible, even amphibian. Galen Bremer's dense, engulfing soundscore, performed live, contributes to this surreal atmosphere.

Light House, Zuerner has said, "began as a simple idea: the image of a light in the darkness. In a time in my life when I was feeling overwhelmed by darkness, creating Light House was a way for me to look for sources of internal and external illumination."

The trio--danced by Erin Cairns Cella, Phoebe Rose Sandford and Zoe Rabinowitz--takes place on a smooth surface set down in the other half of Invisible Dog's floor. The dancers are first seen reclining on the floor, sliding and otherwise manipulating several fluorescent tubes (lighting design by Haejin Han) as they fold, unfold, arch and ripple in crisp, synchronized geometrics to Bremer's softly industrial, hydraulic music. Carefully coiffed and dressed alike in deep blue unitards covered by a loose skin of translucent fabric (designed by Emma Hoette), they are nearly identical, mechanical and anonymous in look and behavior. Light House seems to stretch on for the sake of making a respectable length for a major dance presentation, but I found much of it visually captivating.

Light House runs through Saturday, May 31 with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street (between Smith and Court Streets), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Kate Peila: In "lessons learned" post, Harwell ignores DNA's efforts

Two respected leaders of New York's dance community differ in their accounts of the recent history of The Sun Building at 280 Broadway, the former home of Dance New Amsterdam (DNA), a dance education, development and presenting organization which went bankrupt and shut down last year after a long struggle to renegotiate its lease and pursue a new business plan.

[Read more here: Curtain Closes On Dance New Amsterdam: Beloved NYC Studio And Simonson Technique Hub Bankrupt, To Close Doors by Nadine DeNinno, International Business Times, August 29, 2013]

280 Broadway, located across Chambers Street from City Hall, was recently annexed by Gibney Dance Center, an organization that administers Gina Gibney's dance troupe and several rental studios developed at 890 Broadway, a Flatiron District building owned by ballet choreographer/director Eliot Feld. GDC has reconfigured the Lower Manhattan extension for a slate of dance classes and plans to create new spaces for performance at the site. In addition, the organization's well-regarded Community Action program for survivors of domestic violence will be relocated to 280.

On May 14, Lane Harwell, Executive Director of Dance/NYC, contributed a blog post to The Huffington Post about "lessons learned" in the effort to save 280 Broadway for New York's dance community. The essay, which makes no mention of DNA's accomplishments or struggles, begins,
There are lessons for the creative sector in the story of 280 Broadway, whose new tenant, Gibney Dance, opens its doors to the community to shape the future. In a real estate climate where too many are losing space and reporting escalating costs -- real threats to creative life -- some, like Gibney Dance, are making solutions.
[Read more here: Making Space Solutions for Making Arts and Culture]

Catherine A. Peila, who served as Executive and Artistic Director of DNA from 2007 to 2014, asserts that that organization's "30 years of community building has been disappeared." In her initial response, posted yesterday on Facebook and forwarded to this writer among others, Peila wrote,
Having received phone calls from the cultural community regarding Lane’s blog “Making Space Solutions for Making Arts and Culture,” I must respond. It is imperative that a deeper investigation regarding the 280 Broadway transition from DNA to Gibney Dance be initiated before any attempt of a qualified statement regarding “lessons learned” be made. As the executive and artistic director of DNA, 2007-2013, Lane’s post is devoid of information that sets the stage for the DNA to Gibney transition. DNA’s original renovations, partnership negotiations, efficiency practices and financial modeling, legal battles, bankruptcy filing and its unnecessary dissolution enabled Gibney Dance to “reengage” the 280 Broadway dance space.

DNA successfully saved a space in NYC for dance, which represented nine years of unflagging work by its staff and board, thousands of artists, pro-bono lawyers and financial analysts, foundations and individual donors, elected officials, city cultural representatives, and Fram Realty. Gibney’s team received all the benefits without the burden of DNA's renovation debt, which proved to be its ultimate unraveling. Lane omits vital information that shows the cultural, funding and government sectors colluded to transfer the assets of DNA's/Dance Space Center’s 30 years of community building and program development to what they considered to be a healthier business. 280 Broadway is reengaged. I recognize Gina Gibney's commitment, but it is important to publicly analyze 280 Broadway’s transition so a proper list of “lessons learned” will aid in strengthening the non-profit field and this city’s cultural policy.
Yesterday, I reached out to Lane Harwell for a response to Peila's concerns, and he agreed to forward a written reply by 10am this morning. I have not received his response in time to include it in this post. Business travel over the next few days will delay my ability to post a follow-up, but I still hope to receive and append anything that Harwell would like to share with the readers of InfiniteBody.

Your comments on this issue are also welcome.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Indigenous dance and music of Black Cockatoo at Asia Society

Dancer Albert David of Black Cockatoo Dance Company

Australia's indigenous peoples are a culture so old that it takes us through history but is also current.
These artists are about the present and the future...about what it means to be human and what it means to be on the Earth.

-- Rachel Cooper, Director of Global Performing Arts and Cultural Initiatives, Asia Society

Black Cockatoo Dance Company: Indigenous Australian Song and Dance, presented on Friday night by Asia Society in partnership with Australia's Consulate General, was one of the finest concerts I've seen this season. But that's not all. The personable members of Black Cockatoo also gave us one of the best post-show Q&A sessions of all time--informative and charming in equal measure.

Company founder Sean Choolburra and colleagues Albert DavidSmilar Sinak and Vivian Anderson first cleansed the theater's energy with percussive didgeridoo music and chant. They followed this opener with a brisk-paced sample of ceremonial dances and songs from mainland aborigines and people of the Torres Strait islands (which lie between Queensland, Australia and Papua New Guinea). The earliest of the cultures represented here stretches back more than 50,000 years. Indigenous Australians are elders to the world; their artists preserve foundational stories necessary for the cohesion, survival and well-being of their communities. What's thrilling is the blend of seriousness and lightheartedness with which Choolburra and his compatriots carry these stories and discharge their responsibilities to their people and to our shared planet and its precarious future.

These mainland and islander cultures were severely impacted by European encroachment and violence. Choolburra's troupe dedicates itself to seeding the future through their many educational programs and upholding the value of kinship. It's there in every turn of phrase the artists used in the lengthy Q&A. Everyone is brother, auntie; everyone interconnected with land, sea and the abundance of animal life. Infused with this respect and love, many of the ceremonial dances portray animal totems of key importance to clans and individuals--the emu, the kitehawks and sea eagles, each fondly mimicked through characteristic details like the kangaroo's flipping ears and short front legs held close to the breast. Black Cockatoo derives its name from the fabulous totem of Choolburra's clan.
File:Calyptorhynchus banksii (pair)-8-2cp.jpg
Black Cockatoo pair
(photo by Snowmanradio)
In the sunny mainland dances, the performers strike the floor with lively, articulated feet, almost pawing it, and easily skim about. By contrast, some island dances seem stern and minimalist, but there's subtle, eerie poetry in the Welub Batayrik feather dance and crackling electricity in David's performance of a warrior's bow-and-arrow dance. Hey, bro! Watch where you point that arrow!

New York City got only one night to witness these dedicated artists. I hope Asia Society is already working on ways to bring them back.

For more information about Asia Society's arts programs, click here.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Flamenco great Farruquito comes to NYU Skirball, June 21-22

World Music Institute

presents

in his first NYC performance in over ten years

at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

Saturday, June 21, 8pm
Sunday, June 22, 7pm


HOME from FARRUQUITO on Vimeo.

Son of the singer El Moreno and dancer La Farruca, Farruquito is the chief proponent of the unique dance style founded by his grandfather, El Farruco. Farruquito made his Broadway stage debut at age five, starred in Carlos Saura's film Flamenco at twelve, and was directing his own shows by fifteen. After years of successes—and some personal tragedies—he makes a ­triumphant return to NYC after more than a decade. He’ll present his new work, Déjà vu.
Ticket information

Farruquito Web site

NYU Skirball Center
566 LaGuardia Place (south of Washington Square Park), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Mix it up with Performance Mix, June 10-15 at HERE

Christal Brown
(photo by Kimara Dixon)
Dana Michel
(photo by Valerie Sangin)
What's (and who's) emerging this spring at Performance Mix, Tuesday-Sunday, June 10-15?

Mix it up with the likes of Celeste Hastings/The Butoh Rockettes in Victoria’s Shadow, "an over the top abstract otherworldly murder/soap/mystery...incorporating chorus lines, the butoh dance medium with layers of social/political commentary and ideas of reincarnation." Or maybe Magdalene San Millan and Chelsea Murphy, billed as "two crazy motherfuckers trying to change the modern dance world right before your very eyes.” Or how about Victoria Libertore who, once upon a time, did some serious research into the life and times of a female serial killer?

So far, none of these folks sound tame. And there's more: Christal Brown, Dana Michel, Emily Faulkner, Rebecca PatekAntonio Ramos....

Connect with Performance Mix, the annual presentation of Karen Bernard's New Dance Alliance, by clicking here.

HERE Arts Center
145 Avenue of the Americas (entrance on Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Al Aswany on the subversive dance of women

by Alaa Al Aswany, The New York Times, May 13, 2014
And it is because Oriental dance poses a challenge to a religiosity that sees any form of display as an act of impurity that it has always been misunderstood and associated with dishonor.

That is precisely what makes it a subversive art: The dancer who shakes off the shackles of the patriarchal order strikes fear into the hearts of religious conservatives, and may even pose a threat to tyranny. Hence its periodic repression.
Read more from Al Aswany here.

Dreaming the porous boundaries

When the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn arrived in a small village deep in the Amazon, people slept largely outdoors in an open thatch house, surrounded by other people. They would wake at night to drink tea, because it was cold, or because of the calls of animals. "Thanks to these continuous disruptions," he writes, "dreams spill into wakefulness and wakefulness into dreams in a way that entangles them both."

To my mind, the intriguing question is whether different sleep cultures encourage different patterns of spiritual and supernatural experience. That half-aware, drowsy state is a time when dreams commingle with awareness. People are more likely to have experiences of the impossible then.
--from "To Dream in Different Cultures" by T. M. Luhrmann, The New York Times

Read more from Luhrmann's essay here.

Dimitri from Paris: Tribute to Frankie Knuckles

I discovered Frankie Knuckles through his music, one that was, gentle, lush with a subdued, understated power that rocked many a dancefloor. I had the privilege to hear him once in the heyday of his legendary residency at Sound Factory Bar in New York. I was submerged, sonically and emotionally by the beauty of the music I heard that night. I remember very clearly saying to myself that this would be impossible to ever equal. That was 20 years ago, and I never got to hear this magic combination again.
--Dimitri from Paris, music producer and DJ
Read more here.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Summer begins with Spain's Buika in Central Park



BUIKA
and
MARQUES TOLIVER

In association with
Blue Note Jazz Festival
Presented by SummerStage

Central Park, Manhattan
Sunday, June 22 at 7:00pm
FREE admission


Buika
Since her introduction to the American marketplace in 2007 with her album Mi Niña Lola (My Little Girl Lola), Buika has experienced a meteoric rise, earning lavish praise from The New York Times, The Miami Herald, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as NPR which quickly included her in their "50 Great Voices" radio gallery. Her next release, Niña de Fuego (Fire Child) paved the way for relocation to Miami in 2011. After achieving success in Europe, her works were compiled on the 2-CD set En Mi Piel (In My Skin) to coincide with the Pedro Almodovar movie of the same name in which she appeared. Buika was nominated for a Grammy for best Latin Jazz album this year, for her latest album La Noche Mas Larga
Marques Toliver
Marques Toliver burst onto the scene via the UK with an arresting television performance in 2010 and a declaration from Adele as her "new favorite artist." Toliver has played live and on records for the likes of Holly Miranda, Grizzly Bear, and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. After a move to London, Toliver signed to Bella Union and released his well-received debut EP Butterflies Are Not Free. Following worldwide tours, he began work on the mixtape Studying For My Ph. D, a cornucopia of music, speech, loops, and news reports from the London Riots. Through the mixtape he would also delve in to some of the themes and ideas that would eventually influence his full-length debut Land of CanAan, a work brimming with his own unique R&B and Classical music influences.
For more information on this show, click here.

Feminism: fierce and French: Join the conversation on Saturday, May 17

DD Dorvillier
(photo by Eileen Travell)

Danspace Project 
presents

Conversation Without Walls: 
DANSE to Diaries: French feminisms

Saturday, May 17 
3pm-5:30pm
In conjunction with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy's DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas, this conversation traces the legacies of French feminism – the fierce re-imagination of writing through sensuous intellect, an écriture for dancing as it touches on desire, on language, on power.
Moderator: Jenn Joy
with DD Dorvillier, Noémie Solomon, Emmanuelle Huynh, Liz Santoro, and Judy Hussie-Taylor
Following the Conversation, Danspace Project Executive Director Judy Hussie-Taylor will receive the insignia of Chevalier of the Ordre des arts et des Lettres for her significant contributions to the arts. The medal ceremony begins at 6:15pm with remarks from Antonin Baudry, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, followed by a reception.
Admission: $10 suggested donation at the door. RSVP recommended. Click here or call (866) 811-4111.

Also this week, Danspace Project and DANSE will co-present Emmanuelle Huynh's A vida enorme/épisode 1, May 15-17, at Danspace Project. Describing the piece, performed with dancer Nuno Bizarro, Huynh writes, "In this story the language and the body celebrate the flesh of the world and its opacity." Click here for details and ticket information for A vida enorme/épisode 1.

For more information about DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas, click here.

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

Apply for 2014-2015 Queer/Art/Mentorship program

Now in its forth year, the intergenerational Queer/Art/Mentorship program, founded by filmmaker Ira Sachs and writer/dance producer Lily Binns, seeks applications from New York City-based, early-career queer working artists. The mentors for Q/A/M's 2014-2015 program cycle are:

Jibz Cameron
Chitra Ganesh
Thomas Allen Harris
James Lecesne
Simone Leigh
Jaime Manrique
Caden Manson
Carrie Moyer
Bradford Nordeen
Stacie Passon
Yoruba Richen

Applicants must:

*work within at least one of the following disciplines: literary, film, visual arts, performing arts (including dance and music), and curatorial arts (in any kind of medium; e.g. galleries, books, etc.)

*self-Identify as queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgendered

*be New York City-based

*not be currently enrolled in school or university

*be early-career and professionally focused

*have a project that they’d like to work on with a mentor during the 2014-2015 Mentorship cycle.

Intent to Apply Deadline: June 7, 2014
Application Deadline: July 1, 2014

Applicants selected to participate in the program will be paired with individual Mentors for year-long support (Oct 2014-Sept 2015) with once-a-month meetings between each Mentor and Fellow. Fellows are also required to meet monthly as a group, further developing a community of artistic peers across disciplines.

For more information and application instructions, click here.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Artists step up: creativity in social practice

How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time

Social practice is going mainstream as more artists focus their work on making an impact on problems like homelessness and pollution. But the question of how to judge activist art remains elusive.

by Carolina A. Miranda, ARTnews, April 7, 2014

HyperISH: Taking it from street to stage

Who's afraid?

These two words are the first uttered in HyperISH, an hour of power presented by the Amsterdam-based troupe ISH at The New Victory Theater, now through May 18. Dancers begin by creeping out under hazy light, wobbling atop a row of drab, ungainly platforms to woozy music--the first and last time you'll believe that any of these seven rambunctious men and women have ever suffered a moment of fear.

Founded in 1999 by Marco Gerris, ISH draws from diverse sources--hip hop, club dancing, acrobatics, ballet, Kathak, capoeira and other martial arts. A choreographic collision for sure, but you'll be happy to know that it works, thanks to Gerris's imagination and the outlandish talent and charisma of dancers like Micka Karlsson, Shailesh Bahoran and especially the unbelievable Martin Barnes. What does not work so well is Gerris's well-intentioned concept, a mess of dramaturgidity obviously aimed at young audiences.


When it is not just about fantastic dancing, HyperISH is sort of about alienation, about finding one's True Self despite the distractions and pressures of conformist, consumerist society, about our obsession with cyber-connectedness and being liked and...Liked. And so forth. The Catcher in the Rye has been cited as an inspiration. It tries way too hard.

But let the dancing help you forget all that. Don't overthink this show. Just go and watch what happens.

HyperISH runs through May 18. For program and ticket information, click here.

New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (Times Square), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Friday, May 9, 2014

How do we define feminist liberation?

"How Do We Define Feminist Liberation?", a discussion with bell hooks, Kim Sykes and Lisa Fischer at The New School (May 4, 2014)

Click here for Livestream video of this event.

Round-up: Turkish activism; Akerman closes in on Bausch; ballet fiction

Coming after a few dry presentations (Movement Research Studies Project panel on Vulnerable Bodies and the Embodiment of Resistance, Gibney Dance Center, May 6), Turkish dance artist Tan Temel held my attention with the clarity of his witness as a participant in the anti-development, Occupy-like protests in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. His brief talk also greatly benefited from a slide show of vivid photos from the early days of the Taksim Gezi sit-in, demonstrating the activists' confident and peaceful creativity. Inspiring! (An audio recording of this panel will be made available on iTunes. Click here for play or download links to recorded Movement Research events.)

Chantal Akerman's 1983 film, One Day Pina Asked... (Dance Films Association screening/discussion at Gibney Dance Center, co-presented by Gibney Dance Center's Sorry I Missed Your Show, May 7), looks quite different from Wim Wenders's grand, gorgeous and better-known Pina (2011), and feels different, too. Akerman's choice of a passive but magnifying camera zoomed right in on Pina Bausch's dancers rehearsing or performing puts the viewer right into the mix. It's a dancer's-eye view. Remember the scene in Nelken (Carnations) where a pack of men crowd a lone woman, touching and increasingly manhandling her body? From a proscenium theater's potentially safe, intellectualizing distance, Bausch's imagery is already disturbing. But try it this way, and your skin will crawl. The encounter of two extraordinary artists--Akerman and Bausch--produced a documentary of rare sensitivity and power (distributed by Icarus Films).
image description
Novelist Maggie Shipstead
(c) Michelle Legro

Astonish Me, a novel by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf, 2014), astonished me a bit less than I would have expected, given the raves from book critics, some of whom spun remarks off the title (derived from Serge Diaghilev's challenge to Jean Cocteau: Ètonnez-moi). And it almost lost me, early on, with its account of a bland suburban mismatch--the stay-at-home mom who fled a low-level ballet career and never got over a brush with international intrigue; the husband who desired her first, married her somehow, but still can never quite feel sure of her. But, in the nick of time, Shipstead won me back with a scene centered around a fit of inappropriate, uncontrollable and infectious laughter. That's when I threw in with this writer. Even so, I can't say that I ever came to like or feel empathy for her characters, two generations worth. I never really settled into the narrative's chronological jumble, and at no time did I think the central "secret" would surprise any character or reader. But I did enjoy and rely upon Shipstead's shrewd, finely rendered insights into the psychology of her characters and their relations. This is where she truly shines. (ISBN: 978-0-307-96290-4)

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Qurrat Ann Kadwani: Still calling her Q!

Qurrat Ann Kadwani
(photo Bolti Studios)
offbwayposter
Talented and personable Qurrat Ann Kadwani (whose solo show, They Call Me Q!, I wrote about here) is back and, I hope, every bit as "wicked smart and genuinely funny" as I observed back in September. Now she's bringing the show to the Off Broadway St. Luke's Theatre, May 19-June 4, Mondays at 7pm and Wednesdays at 8pm.
THEY CALL ME Q is the story of an Indian girl growing up in the Boogie Down Bronx who gracefully seeks balance between the cultural pressures brought forth by her traditional parents and wanting acceptance into her new culture. Along the journey, Qurrat Ann Kadwani transforms into 13 characters that have shaped her life including her parents, Caucasian teachers, Puerto Rican classmates, and African-American friends. Laden with heart and abundant humor, THEY CALL ME Q speaks to the universal search for identity experienced by immigrants of all nationalities.
Program, schedule and ticket information

St. Luke’s Theatre
308 West 46th Street (just west of Eighth Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Great opportunity for cultural journalists interested in circus

En Piste invites ten cultural journalists from Canada and the northeastern United States to participate in a residency program in Montreal, during the festival Montréal Complètement Cirque, July 3-6, 2014.
During the 4-day program, participants will contribute in a series of moderated thematic discussions, attend lectures by key circus experts, see three to five shows and meet with artists taking part in the festival.
At the end of the residency, participants will each be required to deliver one article (2,000 words) in English or French. These articles will be published on En Piste’s website and on all other pertinent media: social networks, newswire, blogs, etc. Journalists will also be invited to publish the articles in their respective media.
En Piste will cover costs related to the residency: plane or train tickets, local transportation, accommodation, meals, tickets for shows. There are no participation fees.
Get complete information and an application form here.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Tribute to Isadora Duncan at historic Green-Wood Cemetery, May 31

Isadora Duncan
(photo by P. Aresu)
A tribute to American dance pioneer and legend Isadora Duncan will be held on Saturday, May 31 (5pm) outdoors at Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood Cemetery.

Hosted by the Green-Wood Historic Fund, this special event features a performance by Catherine Gallant and her troupe, Catherine Gallant/DANCE, of some of Duncan’s most memorable works--"the mournful Grande Marche (1914) set to the music of Schubert, as well as late-period dances evoking sorrow, hope, and rebirth set to Chopin. The performance will conclude with dances of exuberance and light."

Meet inside Green-Wood's main gate (25th Street at 5th Avenue, Brooklyn).

Via Subway: From the Atlantic/ Barclays Center stop in Brooklyn, take the R train to 25th (Service on the R train between Manhattan and Brooklyn is suspended until October 2014.) Walk east one block to Green-Wood at 5th Avenue and 25th Street. Free parking is available.

Admission: $30 ($25 for members of the Green-Wood Historic Fund and the Brooklyn Historical Society).  Reservations are recommended.  To make a reservation or for more information, click here or call 718-210-3080. For Inclement Weather policy, click here.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Striking sound: Dance meets percussion at Japan Society

Choreographer Luca Veggetti and musician Kuniko Kato
collaborated with dancer Megumi Nakamura
on a multimedia work inspired by the music and theatrical ideas of Iannis Xenakis.

Project IX--Pleiades, a work by Italian choreographer Luca Veggetti to percussion music of Iannis Xenakis, received its North American premiere last evening at Japan Society. A duet for percussionist Kuniko Kato and dancer Megumi Nakamura, it was first shown, last month, in Yokohama, Japan.

The duet, initiating in Xenakis's Pléïades (1978), announces itself in a flare of sound that drops away before returning in a bright progression of chimes like sonic droplets sprinkling around you. The almost-physical presence of music here is key.
Above: Kato (l) with Megumi Nakamura
in Project IX--Pleiades
Below: Kato in action
(photos by Julie Lemberger)

When the piece opens, we first see Kato's instruments before we see the performers. Various drums, a marimba, xylophone and more span the theater's wide stage along with a scrim suspended along a diagonal. When the women finally arrive onstage, Nakamura assists Kato in moving all of her instruments to one corner of the stage in a long, serene passage, ceremonial in tone. But it would be a mistake to think that the dance begins only when every instrument is carefully situated. In a real way, the women have been dancing all along and now continue to do so.

Nakamura, recipient of numerous awards for interpreting modern and contemporary dance masters, brings attentiveness to Veggetti's ultimately cautious, if visceral, dissonance. Kato, though, commands attention, whether it be with her videotaped image multiplied and stretched across the scrim or her flesh-and-blood performance on the array of instruments--big, big, powerful moves into the surrounding space that throw off rhythmic slashes and shockwaves. She is solar.

All artists involved in this project are here to serve the music, but it is Kato who brings it. Last evening, the audience's fondness for her was completely clear and completely justified.

With sound design by Yuji Sagae, lighting design by Takeaki Iwashina and videography by Hiroyoshi Takishima

For tickets to the final performance of Project IX--Pleiades this evening at 7:30pm, click here.

For information on Japan Society programs, click here.

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
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Friday, May 2, 2014

New York Live Arts presents Buffard's "Baron Samedi"

David Thomson leads the international cast of
Alain Buffard's "choreographed opera," Baron Samedi,
at New York Live Arts, now through Saturday evening
(photo by Ian Douglas)
Danse: a French-American Festival of Performance & Ideas will run through May 18 at fourteen New York City venues (see information here) to examine "the ways in which dance engages with and informs our understanding of the world." The festival got off to a provocative start last night at New York Live Arts with Baron Samedi (2012), the final work of the late multi-genre artist Alain Buffard.

This "choreographed opera" is not easy to embrace. It took me a while before I found my way into it, and its continues to unfold today in my mind--which argues for the gravity and value of Buffard's offering.

Drawing from Haitian voodoo symbolism--in which the corpse-like Baron Samedi rules both healing and death--and the music of Kurt Weill, this work emerges from a very dark morass. At it opens, we are given only a woman's strong, melancholy singing voice and the soft, vulnerable patches of light on her face, something for us to hold onto. An hour later, everything brought to light slowly seeps back into darkness.

When we are first granted full sight of the stage, we see motley figures moving over and away from a clean white platform. Designed by Nadia Lauro, this platform resembles a large, undulating sheet of blank paper. It nearly engulfs the performance space, and it complicates it, creating discrete areas for encounters and interactions or for individual behavior separate from the whole. There's a slippery slide effect, too, that plays a part in the physical theater of the piece.

You will notice that the typical racial balance of "downtown dance" has been upended; most of the performers are Black, born either in African nations or in the US. They include Nadia Beugré (Ivory Coast/France), Dorotheé Munyaneza (Rwanda/France), Hiengiwe Lushaba (South Africa) and venerable New York dance artists Will Rawls and David Thomson. Three others--dancer Olivier Normand and the two musicians, double bass player Sarah Murcia and guitarist Sébastien Martel--are, like Buffard, white and French. This shift in balance, and the pulse and propulsion of the dancers' movement across the sloping white surface, works brilliantly with the platform's undulation, keeping everyone, including observers, in a continuous, unsettling state of flux. Although the villain of the piece--the amoral, lascivious and hideously vain Baron, played by Thomson--is Black, he serves as a lens on the nasty workings of European colonialism. Buffard underscores his preoccupation with this theme by having performers sing Weill's "Pirate Jenny" and "Ballad of the Soldier's Wife."

Baron Samedi, himself, is on hand to stir movement and provoke uncertainty (of one's identity, one's station in life, one's autonomy, one's physical and psychological safety). Thomson, sounding like a bit like the great Geoffrey Holder, reaches his high point in dancing when the Baron is at his lowest. Confronted by his victims, he is revealed to be nothing more than a hollow man, a skeleton tottering on the verge of collapse, a sack of graveyard dust.

Baron Samedi runs through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. You're also invited to come early this evening at 6:30pm for a conversation on Baron Samedi--Symbolism and Practice in Haitian Voodoo moderated by Whitney V. Hunter, PhD Candidate and Director of Whitney Hunter [MEDIUM]. For complete information and tickets, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
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The consequences of men: Gutierrez and Mahar at the Whitney

Dancers Mickey Mahar (l)
and Miguel Gutierrez (before he went fabulously blond)
(photo by Eric McNatt)

Some questions raised by an afternoon visit to Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:1/, a world premiere and Whitney Biennial commission by Miguel Gutierrez in collaboration with Mickey Mahar:

1. Do ten nails with freshly, perfectly painted "divine decadence" trump an offer of fluorescent hot pink polish?

Answer: Why, yes. They do. Refuse the offer.

2. Fluorescent hot pink strips pop off white walls and floors. Is this the queerest color of them all?

Yes. Inescapably so. Especially in a swimming suit and face paint on a newly bleached-blond, bearded choreographer.

3. Is 13 a lucky number?

Answer: Yes, if it's your 13th show.

4. I have a thousand and ten thousand things to say to you. My heart is full of futurity. What does this William Blake line (from a letter to Thomas Butts) have to do with anything?

Answer: We'll find out.

Some man got nervous--or something--yesterday at the Whitney, just as Miguel Gutierrez was winding down his affable introduction to Age & Beauty Part 1 in front of an audience jammed into a small, white-box performance space. The guy got up, mumbled an apology and left. Who knows why? Maybe all that gleaming white reflection was too much. Or maybe Gutierrez's hot (pink) look? In any case, he surely missed a thousand and ten thousand things.

The duet with Mickey Mahar launches a new area of investigation for Gutierrez and, he says, "deals with the challenge of being a mid-career artist and the attendant questions of longevity, sustainability, aesthetic signature and burnout."

Its opening passage gives us ample time to compare the two men--different in ethnicity, age, physique, skin tone and garb--as they move in strict unison. It is all parade, a mechanical display of hotness--shimmying and shrugging shoulders, deep pliés, gestures of arms and legs growing in kinetic and linguistic intricacy--in sync with blaring, pounding house beats. Mahar's light, precise and detached approach contrasts, interestingly, with the choreographer's self-presentation. Gutierrez inhabits the movements in a way that seems to contain and constrain a thousand and ten thousand things just below the surface. (You're in there, Miguel. We see you!) This goes on and on but, in a little while, both men will achieve some moments of intense and impressive physical control and physical inevitability.

Further along, the individuality of each performer becomes more pronounced. Gutierrez is like hard rubber tumbling noisily; Mahar, equally turbulent but still somewhat delicate, strangely graceful in his awkwardness, like a baby animal.
And Gutierrez's text--a trenchant cross between spoken word and art song--wrenches an audience in so many directions in so short a space of time that the only possible response is sweat.

Age and Beauty Part 1 feels like entropy--a copious, detailed, rigorous language devolving into common and familiar, if passionate, expression, Mahar slow, dreamily writhing on the floor while Gutierrez runs or flails or belts a song into a white microphone.

At the end, Gutierrez calmly dismisses the audience: It's over; you can leave now, or words to that effect. Yesterday, the audience took a while to get that he was serious and to rise and file out. How strange to be told to leave at the end of a presentation but, remember, it was also kind of strange for Gutierrez to personally welcome us and introduce his own show. The feeling? Good and more than a little not so good. Friendly and maybe not so friendly. What is the choreographer saying about who we are and what we've been doing--and watching--for the last 55 minutes?

I could be wrong but, just below the surface, a thousand and ten thousand things, barely held in check, all sound like: Get the fuck out!

With additional dance material by Christoffer Schieche and Roman Van Houtven; set design by Miguel Gutierrez; lighting by Lenore Doxsee; costumes by Dusty Childers

Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ runs through Sunday, May 4. Advanced ticket sales are closed. If available, tickets will be released each performance date at 11am. A stand-by line will form one hour prior to each performance.

For show information, click here.
For Biennial information, click here.
For general Whitney visitors information, click here.

2014 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, Manhattan
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