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Saturday, January 31, 2015

Niegel and Todd and ten willing participants



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*****



Niegel Smith and Todd Shalom

Oh. One more thing to celebrate...

Happy 10th anniversary of "artnership" to Niegel Smith and Todd Shalom who opened their latest collaborative gig, Dream State of Affairs, with sly toasts over sparkling cider and an invitation to their watchers to become doers. Presented by The Invisible Dog Art Center in partnership with Shalom's Elastic City, this dream state has a whimsical premise and a spine of steel.
We’ve scored a performance: a where-we-are but in your shoes. There are written prompts that overlap–a set of tasks that form a fairy tale weee invite you to complete.
We’ll play with race, lust, consent, underpaid labor and childhood shit; the cat and the meow. You’ve a choice: consent to be on stage or around it, as you will. We will take care of you.
Not to be overly paranoid, but "we will take care of you" is a promise that can be read different ways, and I ended up relieved that I did not volunteer to be one of ten participants. Sure, I would have gladly held the orange tabby (see photo above) but last night, the second of the two-night run, there was no cat in sight and no meow to be heard.

Instead, there was an orchestral structure involving a score with instructions set up on a semicircle of music stands, precision timing regulated by digital clocks set up around the space. Participants had to read and then leave their timed instructions on the stands and enter the performance space just at the right moment to not strand one or another of their fellow players working off their own set of directions and schedules.

In one of a few efforts to ease any pre-performance jitters, though, Shalom told his willing participants, "There's absolutely nothing you can do wrong tonight. Whatever you do is the right thing to do."

Well, that's not exactly the case. In one instance, action had to be stopped and clocks reset for another go with a guy, stretched across a broken-legged sofa, saying "What if nothing is too serious to be joked about?" And there remained the possibility that someone from the audience-audience (unwilling non-participants) might stop the proceedings and the clock (by calling "Hold" into a dangling mic) to critique what had gone before.

And yes, that happened, although only once, the unwilling being particularly unwilling. But when it happened, it was a doozy.

One of the players, to the shock and amusement of the audience, had just finished pelting the wall and windows with half a dozen eggs. Smith showed up with a bucket of water and sponges, but one woman wasn't having it. She got up and took the mic.

"I want to see the white man clean up," she said, indicating Shalom and excavating what could have been buried deep in the minds of others. I chuckled and snapped because--you GO, girl!--that was top of mind for me. This directive from the audience-audience required a momentary negotiation between Smith and Shalom, but they managed it.

Now, mind you, that was a white woman. Most of the audience, unsurprisingly, was white. Most, I'm guessing, were artist types, performers even--which is why the willing participants seemed to look like they could well handle both the surreal theatrical activities of Dream State of Affairs and its controlled, highly-choreographed unfolding.

But one player, a white woman, seemed to balk at her next set of directions. She muttered something about not being sure she could do this before approaching one watcher and beckoning for him to come into the performance area. As she came up to me, I motioned towards my notebook, and she got the message.

She moved on, but it was a while before I figured out what was up. She had been instructed to pick out the Black people in the room. All five of us.

Without me, then, her meager haul was four. Once arranged in front of everyone, the Black people found out their fate. Again apologizing under her breath, she ordered them to turn around and stand with their arms against the wall and legs spread while the rest of the players, all of them white, whimpered in guilt. In short order, I swear to you, Smith turned all of this into the Hokey Pokey.

What if nothing is too serious to be joked about, indeed? The places your childhood memories take you? The rough debris of racial history and all the "crazy shit"--to quote Shalom's bio--that happens now? The sensuality and sexuality that only you can define? The struggle to survival and make your work in a tough market?

[Closed] For information on future events at The Invisible Dog, click here.

Friday, January 30, 2015

Super WE: Raja Feather Kelly and Tzveta Kassabova

Tzveta Kassabova and Raja Feather Kelly
present their program Super WE at Danspace Project this weekend.



Who folded the programs into paper airplanes? Was it Raja Feather Kelly? Was it Tzveta Kassabova?

I don't know, but it could have been either of these whose dancing displays such sharpness, such a sense of daring, of serious play. Super WE, their hour-long show at Danspace Project, is a paper airplane with deliberate aim. Kelly and Kassabova have filled the space with artificial fog, and together they shine through and pierce through that soft filter.

Their space is ringed by lights that establish not just any arena for dance but a theatrical hothouse, perhaps a sacred precinct.

The slim, bewigged Kelly, a Black man with lips slathered orange-red and face smeared in matte makeup the color of blueberries, opens with one of his Andy Warhol studies--25 Cats Name SAM and one Blue Pussy, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, or How Can You Dance When Every 7 Minutes Human Conversation Lapses into Silence. The music's percussive impulses call for crunchy, flattened, expansive movement and primitive perambulation that might get a body somewhere but only after struggle and never too far. The understated poignancy of the solo suddenly gives way to an outburst of Streisand in full brass: "Gotta move, gotta get out/Gotta leave this place, gotta find some place/Some place where each face that I see/Won't be staring back at me/Telling me what to be and how to be it...."

Bulgarian-born Kassabova follows with her charged, staccato Letter (to Ed). Every single movement in this solo says, "I am here for this. I am here to give myself away." With her shaggy head of dark hair and her tendency to strain joints and muscles to the max, she reminds me of a rock star at the height of abandon.

The program continues with Be Still, My Heart, a duet by Sara Pearson--the dancers first met while performing with Pearsonwidrig Dance Theater--and the ferocious joint project, Super WE. Embracing virtuosity, Kelly and Kassabova match skillful precision to intense expression. They are compelling, must-see performers.

Music, played live by Aleksei Stevens
, and Tuce Yasak

's lighting design bring nature indoors with dense cacophony and subtle legerdemain.

Super WE continues through Saturday, January 31 with performances at 8pm.

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

What I've been seeing at MoMA

Osamu Shiihara (Japanese, 1905–1974). Construction of Hand. 1932–41
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Thomas Walther Collection

At the Museum of Modern Art yesterday, I saw a couple of recent Laura Owens paintings that I enjoyed for their noisy, hyper-caffeinated clash of media, color and dimensions. (One, written across sharp notebook lines on a giant canvas, inscribes a child's brisk and irresistible story about a runaway princess with a mind of her own and a monster with a "fears Gase.") Owens keeps these canvases dynamic, broadcasting on numerous channels at once, inviting while challenging perceptions. One wall plaque quotes her as saying that she does this "so that you can't fall into (the painting) like a window." I don't think this means she's trying to protect you, baby bird, from skyscraper glass. She's hoping you do get tossed around a bit as you try to make your way in.

See Owens's work and a trio of Mark Grotjahn's equally exhilarating Circus series pieces at The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World (through April 5). Also, don't miss Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949 (through April 19) in the Edward Steichen Photography Galleries.

And do I even have to remind you to see Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs? Well, if I do, take heart: You still have time to catch that delightful show (through February 10).

Coming up? Björk (March 8-June 7), Jacob Lawrence (April 3-September 7), Yoko Ono (May 17-September 7) and more. Click here for all the details.

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

So you think you can dance? What science says

Northumbria University conducted a study about the male dance moves that are attractive to women.
Here's what they found!

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Monday, January 26, 2015

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Saturday, January 24, 2015

In the works: Brer Rabbit for a new Brooklyn

Original artwork created by LaRonda Davis for Brer Rabbit: The Opera. (Reproduced with permission of the artist.)
Original artwork by LaRonda Davis
for Brer Rabbit The Opera
(image courtesy the artist)

Some rabbit ears, eh?

Brer Rabbit The Opera: A Funky Meditation On Gentrification [Work-in-Progress] won't get reviewed here now since it's incomplete, but I can tell you that the sold-out showing I attended last night at BRIC House gives me hope for good things to come.

This collaborative effort, developed during a BRIC Fireworks residency--with Aisha Cousins and Greg Tate with his Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber leading a totally amazing team--strikes the right balance between fun and serious dissection of an issue of the moment. And it strikes it consistently and without pretension.

That's why I'm hoping Cousins and Tate will do two things: 1) trim the two hours down a bit; 2) work on making the dialogue and lyrics (especially in the opening scene) more clearly audible.

Read more about Brer Rabbit The Opera here:

Brooklyn’s Own Briar Patch: A Funk Opera Takes On Gentrification by Alexis Clements, Hyperallergic, January 22, 2015

Attend BRIC's Town Hall meeting, Brooklyn For Sale: The Price of Gentrification, A Community Town Hall, January 28, 7-9pm (free). For information, click here.

For general information on BRIC's Spring 2015 season, click here.

Friday, January 23, 2015

I dance as my lungs need to breathe: "Cedars" at La MaMa

Joan Henry (Cherokee) in Cedars
(photo: Jonathan Slaff)
Matt Langer (Dakota) in Cedars
(photo: Tatiana Ronderos)

I dance for those who dance no more....
I dance as my lungs need to breathe....
I dance whatever my daily circumstance....
--excerpts from the text for Cedars

Cedars--revised from its 2002 production by a Seattle troupe and presented at La MaMa by Mirage Theatre Company--features an ensemble of five Native American actors and director June Prager's adaptation of works by writers such as Evan Pritchard (M'kmaq) and Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki). Its strength lies in its insistence on the self-definition and visibility of indigenous peoples, the owning and treasuring of difference: "Refusing to vanish, I can only answer with my dark name."

The 80-minute presentation and its cast seem reticent and mild, though, in comparison to Prager's text--a rough-textured collage drawn from existence in the crosshairs of history at the crossroads of cultures. As with the Black Lives Matter movement, our moment calls for disruptive narratives like those at the core of Cedars. If only this sincere and careful production could bring out and deliver a much-needed jolt.

Performances by Wolfen de Kastro (Aztec/Huasteca/Maya), Joan Henry (Cherokee), Alana LaMalice (Dene-Cree), Matt Langer (Sioux and Cree), John Scott-Richardson (Haliwa-Saponi and Tuscarora). Music by Charles Upham (Blackfeet) and masks by Roger Fernandes (Lower Elwha s'Klallam)

Cedars runs through February 1 with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theatre)
74A East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Free screening: Dee Rees's acclaimed "Pariah" at BAAD!



Friday, February 6

at BAAD!

5pm -- screening of Pariah
6:30pm -- open mic
8:30 -- dance contest

This free event begins with the powerful coming out/coming-of-age film about a 17-year-old African-American woman quietly but firmly embracing her identity as a lesbian and living with her parents and younger sister in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. She strives to love, be loved and get through adolescence with grace, humor, and tenacity. Directed by Dee Rees and executive produced by Spike Lee.
The screening will be followed by an open mic/open stage for youth and all to express themselves and a dance contest with a $50 cash prize.

Click here to view Pariah's trailer.

BAAD!
2474 Westchester Avenue, Bronx (map/directions)
718-918-2110
BAADBronx@gmail.com

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Making waves: Exploring Caribbean dance...while Black

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
New Waves! 2015 Dancing While Black Performance Lab

What practices constitute Caribbean dance? In what ways has Caribbean dance been recognized and acknowledged - within and outside the geocultural region? Is there a Caribbean embodied archive? How does dance, as a field of study, define Caribbean diasporic movement?

New Waves! 2015 invites proposals from choreographers, dancers and performance artists to submit proposals for the DANCING WHILE BLACK PERFORMANCE LAB. Co-curated by New Waves! Director, Makeda Thomas and Paloma McGregor, Director of Dancing While Black, this experimental, multi-performance, interdisciplinary environment will feature dance and performances in the yard of and on stage at Port of Spain’s Big Black Box.

The New Waves! 2015 Dancing While Black Performance Lab is a manifestation of the New Waves! Commission Project, which has offered a presenting platform for dance artists in the Caribbean since 2012. We welcome proposals from dance and performance artists working in the Caribbean and those throughout its diaspora whose work is grounded in Caribbean aesthetics. In a riff off “Dance a yard before yuh dance abroad,” we will also explore how Caribbean dance artists create and perform work in the international landscape and how a new generation of cultural producers is transforming the ways the region is imagined and represented.

Performance themes could include:
Migration
The Body as Home
Spaces, Objects, The Body as containers of memory
Hybridity, Authenticity & Otherness
Water, land and spirit
What is Black? Proximity to Blackness
Identity and community making
Gender and sexuality
Colonialism, nationalism, citizenship and commodification
Caribbean dance and mediated technologies
Proposals should be no more than 2 pages, single spaced, 12 pt. font and include:
Statement of how your work connects with theme(s) for this year’s Performance Lab.
Explanation of how your practice has engaged with site and space, including ways you envision that practice living in a multi-performance setting during New Waves!
A link to a work sample - 5 minutes or less - that demonstrates your aesthetic leanings, with a 150-word or less statement about how the work is connected to your proposal.
Due Date for Proposals: February 20, 2015
Confirmations: February 27, 2015
Submit a proposal to: dancingwhileblack@gmail.com
Questions to: institute@makedathomas.org

Registration must be paid by May 15, 2015.
Additional details are available at http://makedathomas.org/institute.newwaves.

Since 2012, Dancing While Black has supported dialogue, documentation, process and performance for Black dance artists living and working in the U.S. context. What carries over, strips away, shifts, amplifies when the context for presenting these platforms is a place where Black culture is the dominant culture? For the NEW WAVES! 2015 DANCING WHILE BLACK PERFORMANCE LAB, DWB founder, Caribbean-born Paloma McGregor, is interested in the way context plays a role in cultural production among people of color whose aesthetics are connected to Caribbean identity. Selected participants will be asked to submit a brief statement after the experience that helps to illuminate the myriad experiences that will emerge. These statements will be considered for publication in the forthcoming journal Dancing While Black: In Our Own Words.

Let’s Dance!

Be careful where you sit!

By the time I walked into the studio at Gibney 890 for last evening's Movement Research Studies Project--What is The Role of Class?--there were few chairs to be had, and I am not one for sitting on the floor. I found an unclaimed chair and plopped down with my bulky winter coat, backpack and little bag of grocery shopping.

There was Jodi Melnick to the left of me, John Jasperse and a new friend, Barbara Forbes, to my right. The wondrous Beth Gill rushed up for hellos and a hug, and noted that I had sat with the group that would be talking about the economics of class--not "class" as in social status, but "class" as in where dancers go to explore and hone their craft. Taken aback by this sudden requirement, I looked about to see what the other group topics were, and Jasperse handed me his sheet of notes. Fine, I said, but I'm basically here to listen and learn. Still a bit confused about the evening's game plan, I told Gill and Jasperse I'd probably float around, listening from group to group. Then everything started, and no one had time to correct me.

Gill (and everyone else) didn't realize that the event's other organizers had not invited me to be a panelist. I didn't realize that several small groups of panelists--maybe "discussants" would be a more apt word, given the intended casual format--were arranged along my half of the misshapen circle, invisibly embedded, for the moment, in what would appear to be an ordinary gathering of people.

In other words, I'd landed in a hot seat.

When I finally realized this error, it was too late to move elsewhere. And so, at a livestreamed event, I was seen to be curiously reluctant to open my mouth and contribute remarks along with everyone else arranged around me.

Afterward, people kept coming up to tell me they were disappointed that they hadn't had a chance to hear what I might have to say. In fact, I have just received an email from someone expressing the same disappointment.

Oy!

Okay, I survived.

Far be it from Movement Research to do a panel discussion like anyone else would do a panel discussion. With, like, a clearly, spatially-identified panel.

The main drawback, here, was near-inaudibility in that big studio. Panelists at a far remove from nearly everyone else came to realize the need to turn not to one another in discussion but, as individuals, to face the room and project their voices.

So. A group of panels after all.

Once past this initial awkwardness, the discussions took off in many directions. Must a dancer go to class on a regular basis, or can that dancer's physical practice take other forms? What are the factors--cost chief among them, certainly--that keep dancers from attending class regularly or at all? How is teaching a form of continuous learning for the dance teacher? How do you work with students who come to class solely for physical technique when your interests bend more towards social justice? What is revealed and challenged when a US-based dance artist teaches in another country and culture? How can this community make dance training sustainable for teachers and students? How can teachers take what they know so well and market it beyond the professional dance field, helping to subsidize professional dance classes for more students?

All of these, and more, are valuable questions and ones not easily addressed in less than two hours. The issues raised at What is The Role of Class? call out for further discussion, organizing and action. They call out for commitment.

I woke up this morning, thinking about Janet Panetta's remarks about "hobby dance classes." She said, "That's what we used to call them," and she meant the classes that studios would offer for non-professionals who wanted to exercise to lose weight or just have some fun after the work day. The money from these classes made it possible to keep studios open for the serious students and pros. Now, though, people go to health clubs and yoga studios. They get their Zumba on. The discussion turned, briefly, to the challenge of recapturing that civilian market to keep studios and teachers alive.

I was thinking, You know what? If it were not for so-called "hobby classes," I might not be involved in this community where I've witnessed and written about dance for decades. I came up in a family and at a time when I probably could never have found my way into the field as as professional, but dance classes of all kinds were where I took myself, seriously, to get healed the way others might go to church or visit the local shaman.

So, you can never tell about this "hobby dance class" thing because you can never tell who's out there and what dance really means to them--or could come to mean to them. I think we need to get more curious about this. And we need to take some care with the way we identify and view the outside world and put more interest and effort into the way we communicate with it.

And we need to turn and face outward and project.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Black women in ballet speak out: February 2 [UPDATED]

Dance Iquail, in partnership with Dance/NYC and HAA: Harlem Arts Alliance, will presents Black Swan: Solidarity Beyond Colored Pointe Shoes on Monday, February 2, 6:30pm at The Riverside Theater.

This free panel discussion of women of color in the ballet world "examines the importance of resilience as seen in the stresses on black artists, communities and institutions" and "how dance as an art form can help organizations and individuals adapt and recover from the stress of racial segregation, diminished resources, and social disenfranchisement."

Scheduled to speak:

Baraka Sele (moderator), Independent arts consultant, former VP of Programming at NJPAC

Zita Allen, dance historian

Delores Brown, former ballet dancer and teacher, member of NY Negro Ballet in 1957

Karen "KB" Brown, former Artistic Director Oakland Ballet

Andrea Long-Naidu,  former NYCB and DTH dancer

Iqail Shaheed, Artistic Director, Dance Iquail, choreographer of Black Swan, a new work set to the music of Nina Simone, exploring "the experience of the black ballerina as a window into issues of race, identity, and isolation"

Monday, February 2, 6:30pm (free admission)

Limited seating. RSVPs recommended: iquail@danceiquail.com

The Riverside Theater
The Riverside Church
91 Claremont Avenue, Manhattan
By Train - #1 to 116th and Columbia University
By Bus - M4, M104, M60 to 120th and Broadway
Enter on Claremont and 121st Street.

Save the date to honor Clark Center's history: April 17

Celebrate the historic Clark Center for the Performing Arts--
founded by Alvin Ailey in 1959 in New York as a multi-racial, multi-ethnic arts community--at Fridays at Noon at 92Y.
For 30 years Clark Center trained dancers, encouraged emerging companies and developed new choreographic talent. Among the choreographers and companies that performed there are Alvin Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Eleo Pomare, Anna Sokolow, Mimi Garrard, Donald McKayle, Kazuko Hirabayashi, Meredith Monk, Laura Dean, Ballet Hispanico, Chuck Davis, Sounds in Motion, Senta Driver, Bill T Jones, May O’Donnel, Gus Solomons, Capoeiras Bahia, Doug Varone and Urban Bush Women.
This afternoon event will include live dancing, film, photographs and a panel discussion.

Live streams of each
Fridays at Noon performance are available at www.tischdanceandnewmedia.com/live. The live streams of the Fridays At Noon performances are part of an educational collaboration between 92Y Harkness Dance Center and NYU’s Tisch Dance and New Media Program.
Friday, April 17, 12pm

Purchase tickets in advance online or at the 92Y Box Office (lobby).

For information, click here.

92Y (Buttenweiser Hall)
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Sunday, January 18, 2015

James Baldwin on the alchemy of live performance

James Baldwin by Beauford Delaney (1945)

In the theater, a current flowed back and forth between the audience and the actors: flesh and blood corroborating flesh and blood — as we say, testifying.
--James Baldwin on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, from The Devil Finds Work (1976)

Friday, January 16, 2015

"Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter" opens January 23




Modern dance is not a system. It's a point of view. -- Martha Hill

Greg Vander Veer's 80-minute documentary, Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter, explores the visionary path of dance educator Martha Hill, from her Bible Belt upbringing and first sight of a Graham dance through her poignant final years at the Juilliard Dance Division. Bursting with archival footage, photographs and interviews, the film traces dance history through the many lives and careers influenced by Hill. It notes the significance of her support for America's early modern dance pioneers and her prescient insistence on building the total dancer, one grounded in both modern and balletic training.

Vander Veer gives Hill her due as an insightful, nurturing and inspiring leader, tough when she needed to be. He has not shied away from addressing the professional struggles she faced--a society that, when not damning dance as a sinful pursuit, considered dance training to be little better than Phys Ed and for girls only. And then there was Lincoln Kirstein's aggressive move to poach Hill's Juilliard studios for Balanchine and New York City Ballet. The going gets a little heavy here--moneyed, privileged, well-connected NYCB once again pulling focus--but you soon see this ugly episode's relevance to a narrative about fighting for what matters. It takes a strong woman, but it takes a village, too.

See Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter, starting Friday, January 23, at Quad Cinemas. A Q & A with Vander Veer and Coordinating Producer Vernon Scott will follow Friday and Saturday (7pm) and Saturday and Sunday (4:30pm) shows. 

Future public screenings are scheduled for Spokane, WA, Columbus, OH, and Boston.

Distributed by First Run Features. For more information on future screenings or purchase, click here.

34 West 13th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan

The Pen Thief

Well, actually, from all accounts, there are two of them--Trajal Harrell and Eiko Otake.

Both award-winning, internationally-renowned dance artists. Both of Japanese descent--Harrell by way of one distant ancestor. Both of whom have presented work at the Museum of Modern Art where, last night, they met for the first time for Harrell's much-desired "blind date," introduced and ably chaperoned by LMCC prez Sam Miller.

So, about the pens. Harrell admitted that if he's handed a pen to sign papers, he's liable to just tuck that pen away for safekeeping. Otake, quickly raising her pen in the air, confessed to the same larcenous trait. As a huge fountain pen aficionado, I can tell you, I plan to keep both of these people at arm's length. You do not steal pens from me and live to make art another day. Fair warning.

The most exciting thing about the Harrell-Otake conversation, part of American Realness 2015, was the chance to hear Otake speak at length about her relationship to Japan--apparently, a challenging one. In 1972, with her husband, Koma Otake, she left behind Japan's master-disciple system to craft an independent practice. When she returns to her homeland now, she finds herself getting angry.

"Being angry is very important to me," she said. "It pushes me."

Along with that anger comes feelings of grief and remorse. "And I don't want to be released from that," she added.

Anger can be fuel. I was amazed to hear Otake's statement as I shared the same insight, just hours before, with another choreographer. When we shame and seek to scrub ourselves of these troubling energies--which the viewer can readily see in Eiko and Koma's demanding, uncompromising work--what creativity do we end up washing away?

American Realness: Discourse, now through Sunday, January18

Thursday, January 15, 2015

On the APAP Trail: Jack Ferver

Fred Herko was a dancer, an actor, a choreographer, and he took a bath and got out and danced naked in front of his friend to Mozart, finally dancing out of a window to his death. I am a dancer, an actor, a choreographer, and I love taking baths and I have danced naked though have yet to jeté out a window. I have often talked about suicide with my childhood friend Reid Bartelme. Reid will join me in the work. Reid is a beautiful dancer. Reid will make sure I don’t jump.
– Jack Ferver
I'd say there you have it in a nutshell, except there you don't have it.

Jack Ferver's duet with Reid BartelmeNight Light Bright Light--an American Realness presentation at Abrons Arts Center--runs faster than you can and will leave you panting. It is death-ridden but keeps its audience chuckling. Chock-full of play and humor, nevertheless it harbors the terrible and the irrevocable. It dwells in absurdity as well as precision, grandiosity as well as sincerity, trauma as well as release. There's so much splicing (convulsions of narrative, of tone) from moment to moment that one can get rather annoyed at Mr. Ferver even while marveling at his adorableness. I'm convinced that, with every performance, Ferver must turn his audience into his collective therapist, and that his actual one is somewhere out there in the night, grappling with confusion and doubt and self-medication.

Ballet, sex, torture, anxiety, singing, laughter, death, Tennesee Williams. These things belong together? Well, of course they do!  But see for yourself as the wondrous Night Light Bright Light repeats tomorrow night at 10pm and Sunday, January 18, 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

For details about other American Realness festival events at Abrons Arts Center and beyond, click here.

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

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

On the APAP trail--Tere O'Connor's "Undersweet"

In Undersweet, O’Connor works from the supposition that formalism might result from repressed sexual desire. The work is a choreographic meditation on how this paradox finds expression in dance, or possibly even generates it. -- American Realness
But of course.

And, of course, the Facebook hive mind sort of chimed in today with a listicle of ten reasons that dancers make superior sex partners. It's a good day in America when we wake up to find dancers acknowledged for being good for something.

Anyway, if you think you can cram into the tiny Experimental Theater at Abrons Arts Center--and American Realness fest will make every effort, even illegally from what I observed yesterday, to see that you do--try to see Undersweet. It's a 35-minute duet by Tere O'Connor for Michael Ingle and Silas Riener.

If sexual desire is repressed by formalism, that primal energy is seeping out all over the place in Undersweet, and it is affirmed. How could it not be? Let me repeat: Michael Ingle and Silas Riener. Those two angelically gorgeous men could dance the phone book, and it would be worth all of your time. The courtly framework and flourishes of Undersweet do not so much imprison desire as press grapes for wine.

with lighting by Michael O'Connor and a musical collage by Tere O'Connor from Jean-Baptiste Lully's Atys

Undersweet repeats on tonight at 8:30pm and Wednesday, January 14 at 5:30pm. Click here for information and tickets.

For information on other American Realness festival events at Abrons Arts Center and beyond, click here.

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

Monday, January 12, 2015

The Gathering 2015 meets at Gibney 280

The Gathering, as described by founder Camille A. Brown, is "an open forum for intergenerational black female artists to support one another and to advocate for greater cultural equity and acknowledgement in the contemporary dance world."

Following Winter 2014's successful launch, Brown brought The Gathering back last night in a new format guided by Onye Ozuzu (chair, Dance Department, Columbia College Chicago) at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway.

Camille A. Brown
(photo: Ra-Re Valverde)

Dancer-journalist A Nia Austin-Edwards
tweets The Gathering.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Left-to right: Choreographers Cynthia Oliver,
Edisa Weeks and Paloma McGregor
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Guests mingle before the evening's exercises begin.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Facilitator Onye Ozuzu leads participants in improvisatory exercises,
sparked by our questions and stories, keeping bodies in near continual flow.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The Gathering 2015 was more of a creative game than a discussion of issues, more of an intimate dance of immediacy than a verbal forum. Bodies, questions, tears and testimony filled the theater in shifting, fluid configurations with space for the invisible.

"How are you doing the work?" "What are you excited about?" "How do you know when you're working too hard?" "What is your joy right now?" "Do you ever dance because you hurt?" "I deserve the best. I am the best. I have allies." "Asking for help, connecting with other people, helps you to move from the I to the We."

Participants encircle dance artist Nia Love (seated) and Paloma McGregor.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa)
Dancemaker Christal Brown (right)
answers a few questions.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa 

These first steps are power-packed beginnings from which any number of useful new steps may develop for individuals, organizations and potential collaborators within the Black female dance diaspora. Periodic mini-gatherings during the year--to address specific needs, goals and actions--would be a most welcome addition to this inspiring annual event.

Once again, congratulations to Brown, and to all who worked to produce The Gathering 2015.

As Ozuzu would say, "Rest and hold.... Continue."

To connect with The Gathering, please visit this site.

"Selma" cinematographer Bradford Young discusses his work

If nominated for an Oscar on January 15, the 37-year-old Louisville native will become only the second black cinematographer in history to earn an Academy Award nom. -- Jen Yamato
Selma's Bradford Young On The Politics Of Lensing Black Films
by Jen Yamato, Deadline.com, December 31, 2014

On the APAP trail: Half Straddle and Ballez


Some members of The Ballez
(photo: Hedia Maron)

Now might not be the kindest season to hang around The Kitchen, that drab industrial box for the industry of experiment in far Chelsea. But Tina Satter's Obie-winning Half Straddle has set up shop there for the first time, and the chilly environs actually add a bit of vérité to the proceedings.

In Ancient Lives, which is kind of a movie-as-theater inspired by teen flicks from the 1980s but with a whiff of something decades, centuries and even aeons older, we find ourselves deep in the woods with a mesmerizing teacher, her three charges, a little witch and broadcast media equipment old and new. We know we're in the woods because that downstage chaise lounge, inexplicably covered, encrusted and taped by packing materials, has an owl statue perched atop, and there's an outsized badger (Chris Giarmo) playing Chris Giarmo's music live in the upper left corner of the space. And I swear there's a scent of pine--along with troubling power dynamics--drifting through the night air.

The aura of the artificial as well as the self-consciously awkward tickled me, everybody playacting in a production cobbled together as if by a magpie. My favorite bit--a time-warped set piece around the word "poppet"--shows Satter's players at their sharpest in vocal skills and timing.

Performed by Jess Barbagallo, Eliza Bent, Emily Davis, Julia Sirna-Frest, and Lucy Taylor with choreography by Elizabeth Dement, video by Ilan Bachrach, set by Andreea Mincic and lighting by Zack Tinkelman

Ancient Lives continues Wednesday-Saturday, January 14-17 with performances at 8PM. For information and tickets, click here.

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

***

Oh, how I regret that Katy Pyle's Variations on Virtuosity, A Gala Performance with The Stars of The Ballez--presented by American Realness at Abrons Arts Center--will have come and gone after only two shows on a single weekend. Why do the best things in life last so briefly while we must endure the likes of social injustice and bad performance? A better question: How soon can someone bring The Ballez (and sexy) back?

The Ballez, we're told,
celebrates the virtuosity of complexly gendered people by choosing the grandiose container of ballet for its presentation. The company celebrates a lineage of dykes and post-modern performance by telling queer/dyke histories inside the framework of classical ballet narratives.
The 45-minute program, beautifully lit by designer Carrie Wood, sampled the Ballez repertoire, including a suite from The Firebird, A Ballez; the Dying Swan excerpt from Sleeping Beauty & the Beast; and the smoking 1993 Club Suite from that last piece. With the exception of the striking Dying Swan solo--attributed to Pyle and dancer Michael Helland after the Fokine choreography for Pavlova--the other works are the handiwork of Pyle and Jules Skloot in collaboration with their ensemble.

Contemporary ballet, by and large, makes my eyes glaze over. I just can't get into it much or much of it. But this isn't contemporary ballet. With the exception of the Club Suite duets, it's classical ballet for contemporary people living in a real world, and it has got my full attention. The Ballez doesn't satirize ballet; it rewrites the rules of who can dance and how they must present themselves. It appropriates technique, stories and characters for all the right reasons. It makes us look closely, in the interactions between and among dancers, to witness utmost care and delicacy of touch as well as power in the fluidity of physical and emotional roles. Dance lives here and will never flame out.

This troupe could sell out--I'm not talking about seats--and part of me would be very happy for Pyle and her collaborators. They have developed a thrilling sophistication in their teamwork and bring something a wider American audience needs to see.

Last chance: Tonight at 9pm. Click here to see if tickets remain available.

For information on other American Realness festival events at Abrons Arts Center and beyond, click here.

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

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Friday, January 9, 2015

Brooklyn's JACK launches Forward Ferguson series

Wildcat! dance collective
(photo: Eleni Zaharopoulos)

Brooklyn performance venue JACK presents Forward Ferguson, a new series "dedicated to furthering the conversation around racial justice in America, featuring dance, music, theater and performance art."

Highlights include a discussion on community-police relationships; work by Social Health Performance Club; the dance collective Wildcat!; a Freedom Songs Festival; readings of Black-authored anti-lynching plays of the early 1900s, performances by our resident youth theater company Truthworker, and a partnership with the activist group Equality for Flatbush.

Events begin January 16 and run through June. For a complete schedule and descriptions, click here.

Artists, learn how to navigate Obamacare



EVERY ARTIST INSURED: 
NAVIGATING HEALTH CARE REFORM

Free Actors Fund Workshop

CO-SPONSORED BY 
HOWL ARTS, LA MAMA AND COMMUNITY BOARD 3 

Tuesday, January 13, 6:30-8:30pm
Saturday, January 17, 3-5pm

HOWL HAPPENING GALLERY
6 East First Street, Manhattan
(between Bowery and 2nd Avenue)

This free workshop will help you understand the Affordable Care Act and provide you with clear guidance on what your options are.  It’s an excellent opportunity for unbiased counseling on an important topic, and includes a Q&A session. RENATA MARINARO, Exchange Navigator and Eastern Region Health Services Director of THE ACTORS FUND, will answer questions like:

What do the "Obamacare" plans cover?
What are the penalties if I don't have insurance?
My income is low – can I get a break on insurance premiums? (Yes!)
Who is eligible for free insurance?  How do I apply?
I don't like the plan I was on – how do I pick a new one?
I'm uninsured; where can I go for discounted care?

For further information, questions and more workshop times (including the Affordable Housing series) and locations please visit actorsfund.org.

Elaine Summers remembered by Movement Research


Elaine Summers, 1973
(photo:Philip Hipwell)

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Elaine Summers, an original member of Judson Dance Theater and longtime friend of Movement Research.

For those of you who did not know Elaine personally, here are some bits from her bio, and we hope you will discover her and continue to enjoy her spirit and art in this world.

A memorial is being planned and details will be shared as we have them.

Elaine Summers, MA, Fulbright Fellow, MIT fellow (Center for Advanced Visual Studies) received her BA in Visual Arts in Boston, MA, and came to New York City in 1952 to study dance at Julliard. She worked and lived here ever since and became one of the founders of the by now legendary workshop that would form the Judson Dance Theatre. After her groundbreaking first large-scale intermedia concert "Fantastic Gardens" (1964) she founded the Experimental Intermedia Foundation and continued to produce work both nationally and internationally with her Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co. She received numerous awards and residencies, among others at the University of Iowa. Her work is being studied worldwide and is currently being archived at the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection of Lincoln Center Public Library, with the help of NYU Department of Cinema Studies.

Summers originated the movement approach Kinetic Awareness and has continuously explored and pioneered ways of moving with a healthy body. In 1987 she founded the Kinetic Awareness Center to continue the development and research of the Kinetic Arts & Sciences, as well as train new generations of teachers.

She worked with people as diverse as Trisha Brown, Davidson Gigliotti, Nam June Paik, James Byrne, the Wooster Group, Meredith Monk, Merian Soto, Amy Greenfield, Pauline Oliveros, and many, many others.

Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in Sanarcangelo / Italy, Australia, the UK, and Vienna. Her project, Skytime, was a web-based invitation to all the world to celebrate the sky together in any relatable medium. Its first beginnings can be seen at www.skytime.org.

www.elainesummersdance.com

Why I live for the dance


Sun Moon Child
A video altar piece, a celebration and tribute to Black dance, 
created in 2007 by pierre bennu
music by Imani Uzuri

Thursday, January 8, 2015

BAX announces Artist Services Day 2015

Artist Services Day
Dance artist Nia Love performs at BAX.
(photo: Iquo B. Essien)


BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange 

2nd Annual 
ARTIST SERVICES DAY 

Sunday, February 15

10am-6:30pm

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Suggested donation $5

For close to twenty-four years BAX has been at the forefront of developing and supporting dance, theater and performance artists through an array of programs and services that make up an artistic home for so many.

We designed Artist Services Day to share resources and support available to artists and their supporters.

The day will include a variety of workshops that range from activism, to writing to teaching artistry as well as welcoming Dancing While Black, the HELIX queer performance network, a discussion with parent artists, and a unique conversation about the relationship between performing artists and institutions. 2015/16 artist residency and space grant applications for BAX will also be available.

Workshops are sponsored through the underwriting and generous contributions of the Scott Klein Team Group at Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
***

SPECIAL NOTES

$40 registration for CREATING SPACE FOR YOUNG ARTISTS is required. This workshop is Part 1 of a 3-part series. To learn more about all three workshops, visit youth.bax.org/faculty-professional-development-initiative.
 
Free childcare is available by reservation one week in advance for participating adults. Please email artistservices@bax.org with names, ages of children and what time periods you are in need of childcare.
If you plan to participate in the Words on the Move writing workshop, please bring a brief writing sample as described below. 

***
THE DAY'S SCHEDULE
1-3pm
Creating Space for Young Artists*
Facilitated by Donna Costello *This workshop is Part 1 of a 3-part series and includes a $40 fee. Advance registration required: Purchase ticket.

Teaching Artists working in all disciplines and with all ages and skill levels, join Donna Costello for part one of a three part PD workshop series on creating a creative and collaborative class culture in which young artists can flourish.

Establishing an open and trusting environment is essential to a healthy and productive learning environment. It is the facilitator's role to create and hold this space in order for collaboration and creativity to flourish.  The workshop will look at ways to make this happen and the challenges that come up in the spaces we facilitate. We will look at tools for identifying who is in the room in order to lead to a collaborative community that engages in diverse perspectives and ideas.  By looking at different environments and participating in activities, this workshop will find ways to make connections to the daily rituals of the class and the art making we strive to engage in with young artists.


10:30-11:30am

BAX/2015 Artist Applications

Come learn about BAX's three artists grants. Residency, Space Grants and Parent/Artist Space Grants. Guidelines and applications will be available and staff & artists on hand to answer any questions you may have.


11-12:30pm

Words on the Move

Led by veteran dance writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa

 What challenges and opportunities do you face when you write about yourself? Your artistic mission? Your body of work or new projects?
Required: Bring one brief sample (~250-300 words) of this writing. We will share a freewriting exercise and explore a few of your samples, building strategies for effective, satisfying expression.


12-1:00pm

Making Art While Parenting

Led by Alexandra Beller, David Vining and Karen Grenke

Conversation with dance and theater artists whose children range from tots to teens. This event dives into the mess and opportunity of Making Art while Parenting (MAWP, which is coincidentally the sound your brain makes late at night).


12:30-2:30pm

Performance as Civic Engagement

With arts activists George Emilio Sanchez and Daniel Carlton

As we find ourselves nearly halfway through the second decade of the 21st century, this workshop aims to explore the significance and meaning of contemporary experimental artists and their involvement with "civic practice". This workshop will explore how to nurture and develop relationships and partnerships with communities and municipalities by bringing together arts and non-arts based organizations to address the needs and priorities of its residents. We will embark on a dialogue of how artistic practice dedicated to creating original performance works can extend into a collaborative process built on a foundation of dialogue, reflection and action to serve individuals, groups; communities and municipalities.


1-2:00pm

HELIX Queer Performance Network

Led by Dan Fishback with Greg Newton, Donnie Jochum, Kia LaBeija and T.L. Cowan

Director Dan Fishback will discuss Helix's expansive array of programming for queer artists, writers and audiences. He'll be joined by a variety of queer culture-makers, from people who present performance to people who make their own. All of the panelists make cultural work in a political or activist context, and our conversation will emerge from that intersection.


2:30-4:00pm

Dancing While Black: Cultivating Community

Led by Paloma McGregor with Dr. Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Nia Austin-Edwards, Candace Feldman, and Jaamil Kosoko

A roundtable discussion on building solidarity and equity within the field, featuring Dr. Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, dance scholar/author of The Black Dancing Body; Nia Austin-Edwards, founder Purpose Productions; Candace Feldman, Associate Producer of 651 Arts;  Jaamil Kosoko, curator of Black Male Revisited


4:15-5:15pm

The Relationship Between Artists and Institutions

Moderated by BAX Executive Director Marya Warshaw with Levi Gonzalez, luciana achugar, and current BAX Artists In Residence

Panel of BAX AIRs past and present including Levi Gonzalez and luciana achugar and discuss with BAX's Executive Director Marya Warshaw the complicated relationship between individual artists, the cultural institutions that "house" and present them, their funders and "who speaks for who?"


5:30-7pm

CLOSING RECEPTION

All panelists, participants, and people interested in Artist Services at BAX.

BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange
421 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)
 
ABOUT BAX

Founded in 1991, BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange is a vital center for artistic and cultural development in Brooklyn, serving over 2,500 artists, 9,000 students, and over 2,000 audience members each year. BAX offers an annual presenting season, artist services, and educational programs for youth and adults. Our two decades of providing student and emerging artists with the right support at the right time plays a crucial role in ensuring that important artistic voices are launched successfully. BAX provides classes six days per week, public school residencies, 75 evenings of performance and free conferences/festivals to NYC youth including our groundbreaking Young Women's Project and YouthWorks programs. BAX offers scholarships to 25% of the students who take class with us each year.

It is an organizational priority to ensure our core constituency continues to have access to community-based arts education. In addition, artists in dance, theatre and performance are provided meaningful residencies to develop artistically, professionally and curatorially. Residencies include uninterrupted development space, performance opportunities, peer and mentor support.

For more information about BAX and its programs please call 718-832-0018, email press@bax.org or visit us on the web at www.bax.org.

ABOUT ARTIST SERVICES

BAX's Artist Services Programs receive generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation.   

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

La Danse Noire Magazine debuts with tribute to Dunham



The life, work and legacy of the great Katherine Dunham is celebrated in the premier issue of Atlanta-based La Danse Noire Magazine, an online quarterly dedicated to "the history of Black dance, its pioneers and the ongoing continuum in the field."

Publisher Carol Lloyd invites you to access this issue for free on ISSUU here.

Dance-activists rise up for justice and healing

I really believe when people change, then the system will change.
--dance artist Lela Aisha Jones
Listen to Community Organizing, Self and Community Care, Activism & the Arts, a podcast from Moving Spirits of Color on BlogTalk Radio.

with guests Lela Aisha Jones and A. Nia Austin-Edwards discussing the significant role of the arts in racial justice activism and healing.

Click here to listen.

NEEDING IT, free workshops with Dan Fishback, is back!

Dan Fishback (Photo: Allison Michael Orenstein)

NEEDING IT: 
Solo Performance in Queer Community

with Dan Fishback


March 9 - April 27
Mondays, 7-10pm

Application due: January 27

Admission is FREE
Students will develop solo performances based on their personal obsessions and political impulses, all the while exploring the recent history of queer performance in New York City, and meeting some of the great artists of our time.  Performance artist and instructor Dan Fishback will work closely with students to move beyond conventional notions of “self-expression” and “autobiography” to something more primal and satisfying. 
For application instructions, click here.

This workshop is made possible, in part, by the Stonewall Community Foundation.

BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange
421 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)