Sheldon Patinkin, 79

Sheldon Patinkin, Force in Chicago Theater, Dies at 79
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, September 29, 2014

An hour or so of the 12-hour "Little Dot"

Impressions of Suzanne Bocanegra's Little Dot,

a 12-hour dance installation 

presented by Danspace Project

Saturday, September 27, 2014

11am-11pm

featuring 14 members of

New York Theatre Ballet

all photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

***

Little Dot is more an object than a dance.
It is a sculpture that lasts only 12 hours and then is gone.
--Suzanne Bocanegra

all photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Milton Cardona, 69

Milton Cardona, Keeper of New York Salsa’s Beat, Dies at 69
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, September 26, 2014

Mandallying Columbus Circle (for Karen Finley)

Mandallying Columbus Circle 

(for Karen Finley)

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

This is Karen Finley.
She is a performance artist.

Karen wants to know why Columbus Circle
has fountains styled after Bellagio Las Vegas.

None of us can answer.
Maybe there is no answer.
And that is the answer.

This little fella doesn't care.

It's bath time.

This leaf is quite through with its tree.
It's fall time.

This creature (wounded eagle?)
lives on a monument
ringed by traffic and glass.
Not quite used to it yet.

Columbus doesn't care.
He has conquered the ocean,
now stands on a phallus
hard by CNN, Time Warner.

The conquered ocean.
Really?

Karen tells us
the fruit of these trees
from North Carolina
hold poison.
Well, so does the fruit of conquest,
does it not?

Here is fountain water.
Before you learned it was fountain water,
it looked liberated, didn't it?

Here is Karen again.
She wants us to muse
on inner and outer circles
and leads us over a stone path
between flower plantings
where nobody walks.
Protected space.

A wondrous thing to know:
below our feet,
indigenous trail from Albany to Battery Park

The corpses we've drawn are exquisite,
it might turn out.
Or maybe not.
Hard to tell.

The Bike Rental guy
doesn't care.

Everything is going up at Columbus Circle

And on the rise at Central Park

And super-jazzed at Lincoln Center

 All photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

On September 26 at noon, performance artist Karen Finley led an Elastic City walk, Mandala: Reimagining Columbus Circle, co-presented with Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

For information on future walks by Elastic City, click here.

Love is crazy...or so says Justin Vivian Bond

CDs by singer/performance artist
Justin Vivian Bond

It's no small matter that two people--myself and an arts presenter I know--exclaimed the same words as we left Justin Vivian Bond's one-night concert, Love is Crazy, at FIAF: "So inspiring!"

On the subway trip back downtown, we conferred and agreed: It's the kind of performance that makes you want to look for and bring out your own best. I remember watching Ben Kingsley act in Gandhi and quitting a soul-snuffing job the very next day. I'm not yet sure what Bond's example--or any other part of FIAF's Crossing the Line fest--might inspire me to do in coming days, but V, I'm all ears.

Loosely strung around a theme of love, Love is Crazy found Bond (aka V) in warmly relaxed and sincere, if glamorous, form. V opened with the '40s jazz standard "Angel Eyes," the singer allowing this boozy torch song an unadorned reading, quite right, that only faltered in its final moment. Without an ending note to tether it, "Excuse me while I disappear...." really did seem to dissipate into the ether. But inspiration need not require perfection, as V laughingly proved throughout the show.

Over the next 80 or so minutes, Bond pushed on, recovering voice, energy and wild mind. It's not every songwriter/chanteuse--transgender or otherwise--who would think to source Peggy Lee and Aleister Crowley simultaneously. Nor is it every singer who can build from a husky hush to a voice that makes you feel the scalding steam coming off Sinnerman's boiling seas and fear its devil.

Justin Vivian Bond sings a song by being alert and wholy alive within it. That's the teaching.

The set drew from V's Dendrophile (2011) and Silver Wells (2012) recordings, with selections like Mark Eitzel's furious "Patriot Heart" and Bambi Lake's "The Golden Age of Hustlers," fierce and picturesque dramas from the queer red light zone. We were also invited along quiet strolls through Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" and The Cure's "Lovesong." In the latter, V's sensitive accompanists--Matt Ray (musical director/piano), guitarist Nathann Carrera and violinist Claudia Chopek--knew when to hold off and when to fill in and support the simple lyrics and wispy melody.

Bond clearly relished v's folkish duet with guest artist Miguel Gutierrez--better known as an award-winning choreographer--and even got a chance to display a few dance licks. The highlight of Gutierrez's segment was his version of "Smalltown Boy," an '80s hit by Bronski Beat; if you saw Marissa Perel's recent work, More Than Just a Piece of Sky, at The Chocolate Factory, you heard Gutierrez's recording of this song. Gutierrez, though no Jimmy Somerville, has a haunting shimmer to his voice and beautiful delivery.

Visit Justin Vivian Bond's site (photo, videos, the works) here.

For news of the Miguel Gutierrez universe, go here.

For details on FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival, which runs through October 20, click here.

Christopher Hogwood, 73

Christopher Hogwood, Early-Music Devotee, Dies at 73
by Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times, September 25, 2014

Alastair Reid, 88

Alastair Reid, a Restless Poet and Essayist, Is Dead at 88
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, September 25, 2014

Alpert Award-winning choreographers featured online

Irene Borger, who directs the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, has sent me the following note about the Alpert Award's enhanced Web presence and extensive information about Alpert winners in the field of dance. Click the provided links for entry to this treasure house.

Tap artist Michelle Dorrance
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

What do some of today’s most compelling choreographers say about their work? Who – and what – has inspired them? What’s the place of collaboration in their practice? How do they view their lineage? What questions are they asking? What’s hard?

Right here: a substantive resource – the Herb Alpert Award website - filled with performance videos, exclusive interviews with choreographer-performers Nora Chipaumire, Michelle Dorrance, Susan Rethorst, Jess Curtis, and Julia Rhoads.

Michelle Dorrance, HAAIA in Dance 2014

Julia Rhoads, HAAIA in Dance 2013

Nora Chipaumire, HAAIA in Dance 2012

Jess Curtis, HAAIA in Dance 2011

Susan Rethorst, HAAIA in Dance 2010

The site itself invites questions: How does one represent an artist’s work? What makes a good interview? How do you organize text, images and time-based documentation to create useful and compelling web pages?

How does receiving a $75,000 award affect an artist? Watch here.

For a look at other risk-taking mid-career Herb Alpert winners working in Film/Video, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, click here.

Kyle Abraham's "Watershed" moment

Kyle Abraham (front) and company in The Watershed
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Kyle Abraham's The Watershed is, in no way, a work about opulence in the usual sense.  But at the end of my evening at New York Live Arts, that word quickly came to mind. I guess I mean an opulence of intention, conception, execution. An opulence of confidence. More than just making a new work. Really feeling that, for once, you've got the goods. And there's the deftly coordinated look, across a color spectrum I associate with humble yet versatile clay, of the set (by visual artist Glenn Ligon), lighting (Dan Scully) and costume designs (Karen Young). Your partners got this, too, clicking together all over that stage like the pieces of a solved puzzle. Satisfying. This production is large. My guest said she envisions it at Lincoln Center, but I was thinking BAM.

I have enjoyed KyleAbraham/Abraham.in.Motion without really understanding how the choreographer's female dancers, no matter how focused their presence and rigorous their technique, never seem to pop from their surroundings like the male ones almost always do, and that has not changed. My most vivid memories of The Watershed will always be what men--individually or together--do, even how they radiate a palpable and purposeful individuality when they merely walk out into the space. And that includes Abraham himself, in one scene, sashaying in a satin gown and cottony wig and smearing light concealer all over his face.

Kyle Abraham in a scene from The Watershed
with set by Glenn Ligon
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Far from some overt, linear discourse on America's issue with race (and gender and sexuality), The Watershed appears to have been dreamed up like a series of scrims placed one behind another, each bearing a saturated or filmy stream of visual information. (There's sonic information, too--from Otis Redding to Chopin.) At any moment, you reach in as deep as you want, taking in what the dancers are doing--as dancers, as dancers of different genders, as dancers of different races--and making associations, perhaps according to your generation, your memories, your strongest concerns. The Watershed is, well, watery, a place of integration and transition, a turning point for many currents. Which one will carry you now?

So many ways to swim. Some of the music (Redding) takes me. The choreography, made in collaboration with the dancers, is an abundant--yes, opulent--gush and, true to this troupe's fashion, mercurial and full of flair. ("Beautiful," my guest called it, even as she felt that useful ambivalence about the way artists like Abraham, like Kara Walker, can draw us ever closer to disturbing things--like the most explosive racial stereotypes--by the beauty of their presentation.) When I zoom in on the dancers as dancers, I think I see Abraham quietly shaping an understory about how race plays out in the dance world. If I pull back, I see all of this in a more historical and societal context--literally, as projected images of civil rights demonstrators set upon by police dogs or cops beating a man into the ground play across the stage's wall. And it makes me wonder. The two things--artistic current and societal current--are they, in essence and effect, so different?

In a brief passage that made me ponder this, two Black dancers, contentedly going about the business of dancing, suddenly assume a submissive posture--chests sunken, heads bowed--when a white dancer suddenly enters and stands watching them. He maintains his dominant posture, his silent gaze, just long enough for it to register in our heads as a threat with all kinds of historical resonance. Just long enough. Then--surprise or no surprise--he peaceably slips into formation with them as they all finish out their dance.

If you noticed this moment at all, you might ask, "What did I just see?" Or, "Did I really see that, or did I see it/read it right?" All sorts of slippery stuff like that goes on in The Watershed, where irresistible rhythms and the dancing they inspire pull people of different cultures together. The work is chock full of images--some subtle, some blatant, some proffered with a wicked sense of humor and entitlement--that can only be willfully ignored.

I'm set to see Abraham's other New York Live Arts premiere, When the Wolves Came In, on September 30. More will be revealed.

KyleAbraham/Abraham.in.Motion includes Abraham, Matthew Baker, Winston Dynamite Brown, Tamisha Guy, Catherine Ellis Kirk, Penda N'diaye, Jeremy "Jae" Neal, Jordan Morley and Connie Shiau. Sound design by Sam Crawford.

Remaining performances of The Watershed: Friday, September 26*, Wednesday, October 1, Friday, October 3** at 7:30pm, all reportedly sold out. For additional information, click here.

*September 26 at 6:30pm: Come Early Video Screening and Talk: Visual Artist and Videographer Carrie Schneider discusses her dance on camera collaboration with Kyle Abraham/AIM

*October 3: Stay Late Discussion: Aesthetics of Jazz and the Performance of Protest, moderated by Carrie Mae Weems

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

Marta Moreno Vega and the culture of East Harlem

From Expanded Home, Celebrating the Cultures of the African Diaspora
by Kia Gregory, The New York Times, September 24, 2014

International Center of Photography will move to the Bowery (yay!!!)

Photography Center Leaving Midtown for the Bowery
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, September 24, 2014

Of margins and sticky fingers

Let’s talk about margins
We’re making a book. The margins are important. Do you know how important?
by Craig Mod, Medium.com, August 18, 2014

J. California Cooper, 82 [UPDATE]

J. California Cooper, Prolific Writer, Dead at 82
by The Associated Press, The New York Times, September 24, 2014

J. California Cooper, Award-Winning Writer, Dies at 82
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, September 25, 2014

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Photos (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

May you dance divinely

on the balancing point 

of the equinox!

Butterfly's still got the beat!

Tap artist Roxane Butterfly joyously announces the revival of her BeauteeZ'n The Beat dance ensemble--not seen for ten years!--for a concert at Nublu on New York's Avenue C.

November 9, 9pm

Roxane Butterfly

Brinae Ali

Ayodele Casel

and guests

Admission: $10

Nublu

62 Avenue C (between East 4th and 5th Streets), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Yin Yue presents her troupe and Chinese guests at Peridance

It shouldn't be too difficult to write a headline. But this one--pretty generic, eh?--took longer than usual to come together. That reflects a larger quandary about how to write about the show that Shanghai-born Yin Yue presented at Peridance Capezio Center this past weekend.

Her New York-based Yin Yue Dance Company's own abstract, contemporary pieces alternated with festive delicacies--brief ballet ensembles and Chinese classical and folk dances choreographed by Ying Yin and Zhou Dan and performed by students from China's Jiangxi Zhongshan Dance School. This curious coin kept flipping.

First, it would be all bright, cheery colors and unflagging smiles from China; precision-crafted fantasias--a bevy of young women in pink pointe shoes, tassels, spangles, the works--that would have inspired Busby Berkeley. Then lights would dim again, and out would come one or more of the Yue crew, dressed dark and drab, launching one of the choreographer's typically stretchy, gnarly, bulletproof assaults on space. The mood-swinging went back-and-forth like this for roughly 90 minutes. What to make of it all?

I cannot claim insight into the conventions of dance in China--insight that might have been more available to some of my fellow viewers--but I'd say that Yue would serve her Chinese colleagues and their New York audience better by producing a separate showcase for their artistry and providing, in program notes or a spoken introduction, a little background on the school and each of the dances presented.

Her own quartet--herself, Grace Whitworth, Luke Bermingham and Liane Aung--can be terrific. I can't say I "get" the enigmatic choreography or have a sense of what drives Yue as a maker, what matters to her beyond the forcefulness of her movement. But the sculptural, nearly industrial movement looks sharp, clean, purposeful. It has spring and tensile strength and cuts air like nobody's business. All of her dancers have lithe, compact but athletic bodies similar to hers, with Whitworth being particularly grounded, surefooted and--you can clearly see--mentally focused. Bermingham excels in this way, too, in the solo One Step Before The Exit. Duets are occasions for exacting puzzles in the handling of one partner by the other; ensembles bring rhythmic retractions and ricochets--all thrilling, mysterious assertions in space that, in all honesty, I craved after each injection of sunshine and sugar from the Chinese students.

Polly Bergen, 84

Polly Bergen Dies at 84; Emmy-Winning Actress
by Robert Berkvist, The New York Times, September 21, 2014

Seeing "Illusions" at Baryshnikov Arts Center

Illusions.

You tell yourself, "Of course, illusions." It's a play about love, isn't it? But you don't know. You really have no idea.

Because Illusions--written by Russian playwright Ivan Viripaev and premiered in 2011--starts out all heartwarming, even if that warmth develops an obsessive edge that should clue you to what's down the line. And then someone grabs the wheel and takes you careening around several hairpin turns and hurtles you past once-familiar landmarks until you're not sure where you are. You sit up, reach for your seat belt, try to get your bearings. By then, it's too late.

Baryshnikov Arts Center presents the US premiere of Illusions, newly translated and directed by Cazimir Liske. Actors Anthony Gaskins, Stephanie Hayes, Annie Purcell, and Mickey Solis take turns dispassionately narrating the story of two long-married couples, decades full of unexpected or unknown intersections and interlockings. Death, the invisible MC of this show, forces realizations and revelations. Hayes and Solis are particularly steady, masterful drivers of this treacherous road. And the production--which incorporates a bit of puppetry and projections--seeks to make things even more disorienting, if amusing, as it highlights the shiny little magic trick that is theater.

Watch a preview here.

Remaining performances: September 19, 20, 23 and 24 at 8PM. Click here for information and tickets.

Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 10th and   Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Jazz musicians demand their due

New York City Council Hears Push for Benefits by Jazz Veterans
by Tatiana Schlossberg, The New York Times, September 17, 2014

Legos @Large: works by Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz

Art Man of Alcatraz
Ai Weiwei Takes His Work to a Prison
by Jori Finkel, The New York Times, September 18, 2014

Marissa Perel dreams it out

Marissa Perel in More Than Just a Piece of Sky
at The Chocolate Factory
(photo: Madeline Best)

Marissa Perel seems so very far away.

Even in a smallish space where the white bed and bedding that cloak her hidden body are not only visible to all eyes but glowing in pristine, ghostly light.

When her audience enters the space, there might be a tiny sliver of skin to see. That's all.

Later, after Perel sits up in the bed, which she never leaves, we strain to hear her singing or speaking voice. But her alter egos--the dancers Lindsay Reuter and Jumatatu Poe, with whom Perel created More Than Just a Piece of Sky--extend her range into our world.

Choreographed and written by Perel, the performance fractures and refashions characters, text and--in one smart moment--vocal music from Barbra Striesand's 1983 movie, Yentl, itself sourced in "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy," a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Yentl, you might recall from the film, is really a young Orthodox Jewish woman with a thirst for Talmudic knowledge in a culture that relegates women to home and family. Yentl's defiant self-disguise--her cross-dressing, name-changing strategy--works fine until... Well, just download Streisand singing "The Way He Makes Me Feel."

Presented at The Chocolate Factory as part of Queer New York International Arts Festival, the piece applies artfully arranged text, movement, video, music and lighting to invoke a dream state in which gender identity and roles shift like the moon through its cycles. I'm thinking especially of the delicate verbal and gestural exchanges between Reuter and Poe around a dangling microphone, but each instant of More Than Just a Piece of Sky is meant to show the many facets of difference as forms of sensual magic power.

A passage where Poe presses and slides his naked skin against a wall seems to slip into the ether, to evaporate, perhaps intentionally transient in its effect. Another sequence in which the dancers languidly roll across the floor in each other's embrace feels different, substantial, and is just gorgeous. But I suspect it is not a big deal to Perel to make an impact by making an impact. She might be more intent on charting an ephemeris of all that cannot be pinned in place.

More Than Just a Piece of Sky continues through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For more information, click here. For tickets, click here.

For a schedule of other events in the 2014 Queer New York International Arts Festival, click here.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions)

Arthur Mitchell and Chuck Davis to receive Bessie Awards in October

Bessie Awards to Honor Arthur Mitchell and Chuck Davis

by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, September 16, 2014

Trajal Harrell: Serving looks at The Kitchen

Dancer Trajal Harrell and his audience,
prepare for Monday night performance at The Kitchen.
(all photos: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Trajal Harrell is, by now, legendary for his "looks"--specifically, the array of interconnected dance projects, created since 2008, that wear the title Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. In each of these pieces, Harrell plays with the fantasy of crossing two influential performance movements that arose in New York in the 1960s--a neutral minimalism favored by "downtown" dance artists, questioning what dance is, and Harlem's competitive and fabulous ball culture. Harrell's works, like articles of clothing, come in a variety of sizes--(XS), (S), (jr.), and so on, leading up to what he says will be a publication (XL). On Monday night, Harrell performed his solo, (S), at The Kitchen as part of FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival.

In the stripped-down, democratic Judson aesthetic, external appearance was nothing; in the world of the balls, it was everything, all about displaying the look of something you're not and, in most cases, will never be. That surface look transcends its illusion and elusiveness, cleverly employing yet moving beyond costume and even physicality to something trickier to glimpse, the spirit of the performer. That spirit becomes more clearly visible the longer we watch Harrell perform (S).

For (S), Harrell spends an hour on and around his catwalk, shifting through twenty personae of apparel and movement, starting from "West Coast Preppy School Boy" (in yellow slicker and white flipflops) and nerdy "East Coast Preppy School Boy" (complete with Obama backpack). In a Judsonian touch, the frequent costume changes take place right in front of us at a stand of ordinary folding chairs draped in pants, jackets and other gear, shoes and boots stored beneath. Harrell dons each "look" with zero fuss and with utmost transparency, hurriedly discarding one outfit for the next. Harrell's strides back and forth and around the rim of watchers, though inspired by the atmosphere and dramatics of a high fashion runway, are based in matter-of-fact human walking.

In the early phases at least, he takes on a modest, restrained demeanor that looks like the imaginary Harlemite showing up for postmodern dance class: "I'm here, but I'm not here." But there's way too much drama, way too much Josephine Baker, Graham, Basquiat, Meryl Streep in this guy to be sealed up in pure Judson, and what Harrell allows to shimmer through and seep out of any and all formal containers can be weirdly beautiful.

More "looks" coming up: (M)imosa, tonight at 8pm; (jr) Antigone Jr. and, at 9:30pm (Plus) Antigone Jr. ++ on Wednesday; (L) Antigone Sr. on Friday; and (M2M) Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem on Saturday. Clicking here will get you complete schedule, casting and ticket information.

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

For more information on FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival, running through October 20, click here.

Photography show highlights a wealth of Bronx artistry

At Work in a Bronx That Brims With Creativity
by Winnie Hu, The New York Times, September 15, 2014

Tony Auth, 72

Tony Auth, Pulitzer-Winning Cartoonist, Dies at 72
by William Yardley, The New York Times, September 15, 2014

Nature Theater of Oklahoma crosses the line

Once again, French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) tempts us to cross boundaries of geography, genre and imagination with its eighth edition of Crossing the Line festival (now through October 20). I will share my thoughts on a few CTL events in coming weeks.

Last night, I attended FIAF's New York premiere of The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is Calling You!, a documentary by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, founders and co-directors of the OBIE Award-winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma. (The name, if you're wondering, derives from Kafka; this New York-based performance troupe is about as Oklahoman as I am.) The reaction I posted on Facebook, earlier today, says it all: "Endearing and alarming: THEATER!"

Running at 127 minutes, the diary-like film traces events before and during a 2013 residency in Berlin, a demanding time for the anxious Copper and for Liska, a charismatic Slovak complete with bald head and natty handlebar mustache. Liska wrestles with urges to be creatively out of control and in charge at all times. The couple's personal relationship and their confidence as artists are taxed by the considerable stress of overwork, tension and insecurity wrought by their project's complexity.

We witness the heady playfulness and the nearly impossible intricacy of NTO's group process, so much hard, ceaseless labor for productions that seem so slippery of form, swimming between the familiar and the unknown, buoyed by droll humor. A visual knockout with unrestrained, cheerful light and color, the film can also plunge its unsuspecting viewers through emotionally cloudy and dark places.

Oddly enough, The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is Calling You! made me think back to a Hollywood film I'd just caught up with--George Clooney's World War II drama, The Monuments Men, a diverting, if slapdash, throwback. That film stepped all over its opportunity to make, for our blasé nation, a solid and still necessary case that art is worth sacrificing and maybe even dying for. But I thought of that argument as I watched the NTO collaborators labor and Liska struggle to the point of near breakdown. Maybe not so much why this particular strain of hipster art might matter to society at large but why it matters, greatly, to the artist's soul.

For information on Crossing the Line 2014 programs and venues, click here.

Gibney dancers in action and advocacy

Gibney Dance Center presented an informal yet, in true Gibney fashion, immaculately organized survey of its Community Action program, last Wednesday morning, in a private introduction to its new lower Manhattan annex at 280 Broadway. Since 2000, choreographer Gina Gibney's organization has partnered with domestic violence shelters in New York City and abroad, connecting women and children survivors with Gibney dancers and trainees who demonstrate restorative, energizing techniques through accessible, playful movement activities. The innovative program will now be headquartered at 280, the former home of Dance New Amsterdam, across from City Hall.

"Dancers are aware and want to be involved in community well-being but are underutilized," said Community Action Manager, Yasemin Ozumerzifon, whose background includes training in both ballet and developmental psychology.

Dedicated to fostering self-care, self-expression and a renewed sense of agency, Community Action has offered 500 free workshops per year. It now includes in-school presentations for teenagers around violence in dating. Viewing dancers' choreographed duets, students observe many telling differences between healthy and unhealthy behavior in relationships.

For further information on GDC's Community Action workshops, advocacy and training, click here. Also see my October 2013 interview with Ozumerzifon and Amy Miller, Gibney dancer and Associate Artistic Director, here.

Joe Sample, 75

Joe Sample, Iconic Jazz Pianist & Composer, Is Dead at 75
by David La Rosa, The Jazz Line, September 13, 2014

Exploring the African diaspora of Argentina

Argentina Rediscovers Its African Roots
by Michael T. Luongo, The New York Times, September 12, 2014

And, with luck, coming to a theater near you: Stevie Wonder!

Stevie Wonder to Tour, Playing ‘Songs in the Key of Life’
by Ben Sisario, The New York Times, September 10, 2014

Coming to a device near you: ballet world live-streamed

Five Ballet Companies Join for Live Streaming ‘World Ballet Day’
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, September 10, 2014

Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman to retire

Brooklyn Museum’s Longtime Director Plans to Retire
Arnold Lehman to Step Down From His Post
by Carol Vogel, The New York Times, September 9, 2014

40th anniversary of "For Colored Girls..." celebrated in Harlem

Schomburg Center Plans Exhibition on ‘For Colored Girls’
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, September 8, 2014

Miguel Gutierrez talks about "West Side Story"

Following that headline, I think I need add nothing more than Location, Date and Time...but here's everything else anyway!

Queer/Art/Film presents

MIGUEL GUTIERREZ 

presents WEST SIDE STORY

at

IFC Center

Monday, September 8, 8:15pm

WEST SIDE STORY
1961. US. 152 min.
directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise

It took four of New York’s leading gay theater artists – Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents – to brilliantly update one of the most beloved straight love stories in history, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. For our guest presenter, acclaimed choreographer Miguel Gutierrez (whose most recent show premiered at the 2014 Whitney Biennial) the Academy Award-winning film adaptation was his favorite film growing up, even though its “weird mix of codes” set him up for a “lifetime of confusion about being a queer, Latino dancer." If you’ve only seen it on TV, don’t miss the chance to see it on the big screen. Tonight, tonight...

Screening followed by drinks and discussion at Julius Bar (map/directions).

Get more information and screening tickets here.

IFC Center 
323 6th Avenue (at West 3rd Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Dancers Miguel Gutierrez (left)
and Mickey Mahar in costume for
Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/
(photo by Eric McNatt)

Miguel Gutierrez, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow in choreography, lives in Brooklyn and makes performances. His most recent show - Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ -premiered in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. His work is presented frequently in NYC, across the country and internationally at venues and festivals such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance Theater Workshop, On the Boards In Seattle, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, PICA in Portland, Pompidou Centre in Paris, ImPuls Tanz in Vienna and many others. His video and performance work has appeared in the NYC MIX Festival. He has received support from Foundation for Contemporary Art, United States Artists, Lambent Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, MAP Fund, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, Jerome Foundation and Creative Capital. He has choreographed music videos for Diane Cluck, Holcombe Waller and Le Tigre, has released an EP as The Belleville, has performed several times at Joe’s Pub and has sung with Antony and the Johnsons and My Robot Friend. He teaches at Hollins University and Movement Research. His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press and he maintains a blog at Stargayze.com about his emotional spinouts due to celebrity sightings. He invented DEEP AEROBICS, most recently used to warm up audiences for The Knife’s tour, and is training to become a Feldenkrais Method practitioner. 

Artist collective's pop-up museum takes on Koch brothers on climate change

Ahead of the People's Climate March, Creative Time Reports Editor Marisa Mazria Katz speaks with the artist collective Not An Alternative about their Natural History Museum, a new project that confronts the unsavory influence of corporate cash on science institutions.

Clearing the Air: Artists Take on Corporate Influence in Natural History Museums
by Marisa Mazria Katz and Not An Alternative, Creative Time Reports, September 2, 2014

"The Natural History Museum" is a new museum that offers exhibitions, expeditions, educational workshops and public programming. Unlike traditional natural museums, it makes a point to include and highlight the social and political forces that shape nature.

Grand Opening 

Saturday, September 13

The Queens Museum

For more information, click here.

Joan Rivers, 81

Joan Rivers, a Comedian for Whom Nothing Was Too Soon or Too Sacred, Dies at 81
by Robert McFadden, The New York Times, September 4, 2014

for Jaamil/Jeremiah....

Reflecting on

Perspectives on Black Male Revisited:

Black Masculinity, Illegibility, Materiality, Constructs, Creative Space

& Imaginative Experience

curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

last evening at 

Gibney Dance Center's

Sorry I Missed Your Show

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
producer, curator, poet and performance artist
(bottom photo courtesy of Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

Brother of Names and Spirits, I am
not sorry.
I did not miss your show.
I saw your show.
And I see your show.

And I see their show.
Black flesh pressed against concrete.
Holes, from arm to eye, inked black
on this white chart, entry points and exits.

They see animals, their dumb property, commodities.
Let us merge with earth, strong and vulnerable, and
with animals, raising sacred animal powers in images
of magickal readjustment.

And, yes: your Geranium Essential.
What place does healing oil have
in a National Conversation On Race?
It has the place of pleasure.

Pleasure exists in truth, banner flowing
over neighborhoods and continents.
Hold it not tightly.

Please
let it take breeze, currents, sun.
It is pleasure, after all. Or...what is it?
It is Trickster, indefinable
Trickster
of Names Shapes Faces
with amplitude, yes, even enough
for "wading, wading."

You ask us to prophesy
"an infinite space
of limitless creativity,
empowerment,
safety,
and
evolution."

This needs safe space for a sister's tears
--and yours. Let our bodies cry.

Let this conversation open when
and where we enter:

Where do we find pleasure? And where,
a shout for joy?

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

*****

Here, for your consideration, are three questions offered by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko during last evening's Sorry I Missed Your Show:

How do we redirect/reimagine sources of trauma as sources of pleasure, healing, freedom and modes of creative thought and/or experience?

What is your relationship to Blackness in terms of identity, representation, and gender politics, and in what ways are you considering this position into the future?

How do we institute new pathways of thinking where illegible and/or complex queer and black bodies do not become continual platforms of colonized rage.

Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Are The Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Religion and the Burdens of Black Sexual Politics

A Conference

co-sponsored by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

and 

Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University

Thursday-Friday, October 23-24

We are living through a moment of tremendous change at the intersection of race, religion, and sexuality.This conference will bring together scholars, activists, and religious leaders to unearth and engage with the often-unstated claims about the African Diaspora in relation to gender and sexuality, exploring a range of historical and contemporary phenomena in both scholarship and lived experience.

Speakers include Anthea Butler, Kenyon Farrow, Darnell Moore, Alondra Nelson, Emilie Townes and more.

For complete information and registration, click here.

NYU, Jennifer Homans to launch Center for Ballet and the Arts

Think Tank to Ponder a Future for Ballet
New Center at N.Y.U. Focuses on Dance and the Arts
by Michael Cooper, The New York Times, September 2, 2014

Lida Moser, 93

Lida Moser, Photographer With an Urban Eye, Dies at 93
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, September 2, 2014

"Trade Practices" on Governors Island: "Dude, money is crazy!"

Scenes from HERE's Trade Practices
Above, l-r: Daphne Gaines, Mary Rasmussen, Peter McCabe
Below, l-r: Mike Iveson, Jr., Peter McCabe, Dax Valdes
(photos by Carl Skutsch)

A theme as weighty as the financial collapse of 2008, the hand basket we found ourselves in, and what money means in American society might take a project as big, as intricately textured and as labored upon--by a list of collaborators as long as my two arms and two legs spliced end to end--as Trade Practices, created by HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and David Evans Morris. A two-hour event directed by Marting and set in Governors Island's Pershing Hall, the site-specific, multimedia, physical theater performance is audience-immersive and interactive to the max, a game of "high-stakes" investor role-playing on our part as we move among rooms and storylines. It also has song-and-dance numbers, undercurrents of soap opera and even a bloodcurdling touch of the supernatural.

Clearly the entire creative team had a blast growing the witty, rousing Trade Practices and making the ten actors work their sweaty butts off--most notably, Daniel Kublick who, with all his physical might, gamely throws himself into his role as a roguish factory foreman. Tip: If you go, you'll sweat, too. This year for sure, Labor Day doesn't really mean the end of summer, and few of these Pershing Hall rooms have A/C.

Above and below: details from Works Progress Administration military history murals
inside Pershing Hall, Governors Island's former Administration building
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Trade Practices--written by Erin Courtney, Eisa Davis, Robert Lyons, Qui Nguyen, KJ Sanchez and Chris Wells--introduces us to the fictional Tender family and employees of Tender, Inc., proud paper manufacturers who go back centuries in New England and US history. Tender's CEO, played by the versatile Peter McCabe, would like to keep some of that New England history (and all of the corporation's current troubles) under wraps. Audience members get to trade shares in Tender, Inc. and witness the secret damage and debris from extremely close vantage points. Cast members' performances, and your own, can be fun even if this sort of thing--high finance, corporate intrigue--is so not your thing. Each viewer's experience will differ according to the storylines followed; if you find yourself disengaged, as I did at one point, you'll have a few opportunities to trade your shares for something potentially more promising.

L-r: Daniel Kublick, Dax Valdes and Mariana Newhard
(photo by Carl Skutsch)

Trade Practices runs through September 21 with performances by Jenniffer Diaz, Daphne Gaines, Megan Hill, Brooke Ishibashi, Mike Iveson, Jr., Daniel Kublick, Peter McCabe, Mariana Newhard, Mary Rasmussen and Dax Valdes. Click here for full details, including performance schedules, ticketing and Governors Island ferry departures from Manhattan and Brooklyn. Enjoy Governors Island.