Gene Saks, 93

Gene Saks, Tony-Winning Director of Neil Simon Hits, Dies at 93
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, March 29, 2015

Seek balance: stefanie nelson Dancegroup at Triskelion Arts

Stefanie Nelson
(photo: Paul H. Taylor)

In TULA, Stefanie Nelson (stefanie nelson Dancegroup) and composer Wendy Leigh Wilf delve into the chakra system--the alignment of energy centers widely known through yoga and New Age practices. The seven fundamental chakras ("wheels") start at the base of one's feet and are stacked like rungs along the spine. Each chakra serves as an inlet/outlet, storehouse and processing center for etheric energy and....

Did you stop reading at "etheric?" My own background in esoteric pursuits gives me away, doesn't it?

It's also what drew me to Nelson's season at Triskelion Arts, a reasonable enough premise for a new dance. Couldn't we all use a little balance (tula), right about now?

Structured as seven parts that flow one into the next, Tula, expresses the nature of each chakra through movement and sound. In Chakra 1: To Have, for instance, Nelson keeps us constantly mindful of the ground/earth through deep pliés, collapses, hops, tests of balance, and noisy shuffling and footfalls. Wilf's percussion starts off spare but suggestive of weight giving into gravity--ba-DUM...ba-DUM...ba-DUM--eventually building up rhythms reminiscent of house music. Chakra 3: To Act, Nelson's most clever and visually dramatic, depicts a frenzy of rockstar/acolyte dynamics. That fiery chakra, her notes tell us, governs "personal power, will and self-esteem," and she certainly demonstrates how it can go awry.

Unfortunately, in execution, TULA looks uneven and unconvincing, even undercooked. One should feel the chakras and feel the dancers feeling them, not just going through the motions, however well. In a funny way, we should really forget that they are dancers and, instead, be moved to remember that they and we are, each one of us, chakras.

TULA continues tonight and tomorrow with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Performers: Erik Abbott-Main, Emily Giovine, Mor Mendel, Ali Schechter, and Benjamin Wolk with Alex Clair, Marissa Nigro and Amanda Reichert. Lighting design: Andrew Dickerson

Muriel Schulman Theater
Triskelion Arts
106 Calyer Street (between Clifford Place and Banker Street), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

John Renbourn, 70

John Renbourn, Eclectic Guitarist Who Founded the Pentangle, Dies at 70
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, March 27, 2015

Tomas Transtromer, 83

Tomas Transtromer, Nobel-Winning Poet, Dies at 83
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, March 27, 2015

Dance artist Jessica Chen lights a candle

Jessica Chen
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster)

In 2013, I interviewed dancer-choreographer Jessica Chen (J Chen Project) a little over a year since a near-fatal car accident left her with injuries so severe that she needed surgery and spent two weeks in a medically-induced coma. (Read Unbreakable Spirit: dancer Jessica Chen--here). Towards the end of that Q&A, I asked Chen, "What is the absolutely most important thing that people should know about you?" She told me, "I am a fighter, and I am a rebel." She said the hospital had to strap her down and place an alarm on her bed because she'd once tried to leave. That's the artist you see today in her suite of dances, Never Was Broken: a dance through life and death and life, running now at Ailey Citigroup Theater.

Jessica Chen
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Chen combines this toughness with a sense of spirituality and gratitude infusing every aspect of her program. The evening begins with a "pre-show invocation installation" on a stage strewn with votive candles and lissome, swirly dancers as, over an instrumental track from Sade, vocalist Enrico Rodriguez sings of the desire to "focus my energies to heal my body/fill my mind with beautiful images and sounds." In this song, forgiveness is called "the healer of hearts." Dances that follow bear titles like Let Us Pray, No (evil), Leap of Faith and Amen--this last one set to a reading of The Lord's Prayer. Program notes express Chen's articles of faith on art and life itself. At no point, though, does any of this seem overly pious or overbearing. It's a sharing she handles with grace, and the gutsiness of her choreographic voice helps to balance things out.

Under Alan Edwards's dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, Chen's movement ideas flow and ebb and flow again with the wild force and sinuosity of ocean waves. Dancers, when connecting with others, resemble nerves firing impulses and influence across synapses. These abstract interactions, always searching and inventive, suggest an entire system illustrated across the stage--one brain, one body--healthfully proceeding with its work. In Chen, I recognize a desire for beauty--her version of tikkun olam, to make connections and make sense of the world through movement.

The most eye-opening work on this program, though, travels a dark space. It's Training the Devil, a piece Chen co-choreographed with Chien-Hao Chang. The piece explores the volatile nature of a relationship between lovers apparently equal in strength and bullheadedness. Chen makes a fascinating match with her partner and mirror Sandy Shelton, a whirlwind. Even without knowledge of Chen's backstory, one would be impressed with the confidence and tenacity of this artist in body, mind and spirit.

Performers: Jessica Aronoff, Flannery Houston, Sandy Shelton, Rafael Sanchez, Yasmin Schoenmann and Cole Mills with vocalist Enrico Rodriguez

Guest choreographers: Norbert de la Cruz III, Nicole Smith and Chien-Hao Chang

Never Was Broken concludes this evening with a performance at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Ailey Citigroup Theater
405 West 55th Street (at 9th Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

On the nature of climate change: Karole Armitage at AMNH

Two scenes from On the Nature of Things by Karole Armitage
(photos: Julieta Cervantes)

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in Field Notes From A Catastrophe, "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Problems such as climate disruption, toxification of Earth, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services are solveable, but to do so human behavior must be basically altered.

In the twenty-first century we have created a civilization that is way out of step with the realities of our planet. 

--Paul Ehrlich, from text for On the Nature of Things

So our beloved American Museum of Natural History has funding from that climate change-denying Koch brother (click here). Well, last night's world premiere of On the Nature of Things, staged beneath the museum's iconic blue whale, felt like nothing short of an exorcism.

Choreographer Karole Armitage (Armitage Gone! Dance) filled Milstein Hall of Ocean Life with a multi-generational corps, including dancers from Manhattan Youth Ballet, as Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, performing live narration, laid down the science in layperson's terms. The message? Uncompromising: Climate is changing, we are responsible for it, and we are responsible for it.

And, no, I'm not merely repeating myself. We did it. Now we have to fix it.

Armitage and Ehrlich--a longtime friend of the choreographer's father, a biologist--fervently agree that the only way to engage most people with the complex science around climate and environment is through the heart, hence through the power of the arts. In that light, On the Nature of Things serves more as a supportive underscore, I think, than as educator or motivator--at least, up there on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The piece was made for the museum, but imagine the public service Armitage could do by touring it around the heartland and southlands before our next elections.

As a visual phenomenon, the work benefits, first, from its unique setting which places its uniformly-costumed dancers--a subliminal message in that coral color scheme?--in the midst of the museum's displays, encircled by onlookers there and on balconies. Armitage handles the hall's broad open floor with dramatic force, her deployment of dancers suggesting rising population, mounting tensions, collisions, competition for space and dominance. Her movement technique--a fusion of modern and ballet, meticulous, often showy--can hold the eye without necessarily spelling out matters spoken by Dr. Ehrlich. Unfortunately, the narration-dance overlay does not work. Luckily, I had the script and time to read it beforehand.

One wonders at the presence of a few dancers en pointe, especially when they use those pointe shoes for the clever but weirdly distracting trick of a quick slip across the floor. The dancers, though, are all in. They accomplish a handsome, coherent performance culminating in the choreographer's vision of serenity, hope and healing that we have yet to earn.

On the Nature of Things will continue with performances tonight and tomorrow at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West and 79th Street, Manhattan
(Enter at 79th Street underneath staircase.)
(map/directions)

******

Other American Museum of Natural History presentations of interest:


Our Earth’s Future: One-Day Course
Saturday, April 11, 9am–4pm
Free with application, available on amnh.org

In a special one-day offering, Dr. Debra Tillinger will lead an in-depth exploration of the science of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and how changes in these two critical areas of Earth indicate and catalyze the impacts of climate change. Participants will hear from guest speakers on the geology, biology, and cultures of these beautiful and fragile parts of the world. They will also engage in discussions, take Museum hall tours, and enjoy a challenging game of geopolitics—SMARTIC, in which players must enact real-life solutions to the potential large-scale problems anticipated by the impact of climate change in the polar regions. Refreshments will be served.

Milstein Science Series: Sea Turtles

Sunday, May 3, 11am–4:30pm 

Free for Members or with Museum admission

Sea turtles are simply astounding! They lived alongside dinosaurs 150 million years ago, and still survive today. Playing a crucial role in our oceans’ ecosystems, this incredible animal group is now endangered due to climate change, poaching, habitat destruction, and accidental capture in fishing gear. Learn more about these resilient aquatic creatures and the conservation efforts in place to protect them with Eleanor Sterling, Chief Conservation Scientist, Center for Biodiversity & Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History; Wallace J. Nichols, scientist and New York Times-bestselling author of Blue Mind; and Michael Coyne, executive director of seaturtle.org. The event includes a live music performance by Bash the Trash, playing instruments made out of reused and repurposed materials.

For additional information, call 212-769-5100 or visit the Museum’s website at amnh.org.

Hold the date! Tuesday, May 12: Dance Criticism in New York

Dance Criticism in New York

presented by

Gibney Dance Center

280 Broadway, Manhattan

moderated by

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

InfiniteBody

Tuesday, May 12 

6pm to 8:30pm

Free admission

(RSVP information to come)

Do dance critics play a useful, integrated role within New York’s dance community? 

How well do they serve the field and its audiences? 

How can dance writing and its presentation evolve to make the most of changed and challenging economic, social and technological environments?

Listen to insights from our panel of dance writers--

A Nia Austin-Edwards

Charmaine Warren

Jaime Shearn Coan

Marissa Perel

Rose Anne Thom

and

Siobhan Burke

--as they respond to these questions as well as "The Perfect Dance Critic," an essay by Miguel Gutierrez. Brief presentations will be followed by a frank, lively community discussion of your own ideas and strategies around dance criticism in New York.

Confirming Adams: Attacca and The Francesca Harper Project

Attacca Quartet
l-r: Luke Fleming, Amy Schroeder, Keiko Tokunaga and Andrew Yee
(photo: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco)

Limor Tomer, Metropolitan Museum of Art's Curator of Performance, was admittedly starstruck to be onstage with composer John Adams last evening at the museum's auditorium. For his part, Adams playfully disputed her description of his work--"I don't really think of Bach when I think of myself...I'm more inspired by country fiddling and R. Crumb comics"--while praising Attacca Quartet, there to present John Adams "Confirmed" Dances, selections from his chamber works for strings. 

Mentioning past collaborations with Shen Wei and Trisha Brown, Tomer noted the museum's intent to work more often with dance artists. And, indeed, in this concert, Attacca's music would be paired with The Francesca Harper Project and guests from Dance Theater of Harlem and Howard University.

Marred only by a technical glitch that briefly interrupted the performance of John's Book of Alleged Dances (1994), the concert proved why the young musicians--Luke Fleming (viola), Amy Schroeder (violin), Keiko Tokunaga (violin) and Andrew Yee (cello)--have won multiple awards. Their needle-fine sensitivity, clear, distinct polyrhythmic layers and blistering speed--this last, especially in the driven, early moments of String Quartet, a piece from 2008--more than live up to Adams's word for Attacca: "jaw-dropping."

In John's Book of Alleged Dances, the dances Adams had in mind were, yes, just in mind--"alleged," he has said, because "the steps for them had yet to be invented." Enter Francesca Harper with her background spanning Forsythe, Broadway and DTH to "confirm" them. She opened with a restless solo Bradley Shelver made for her, set to Adams's "Judah to Ocean." Her charismatic presence--a tall, pliant woman in a tomato red dress--flared through across the stage, taking command. But her approach to Alleged Dances for the dazzling, superheroic Eriko Iisaku and her dancers went much further and was more intriguing. Show-off images that, mindful of Adams, never take themselves too seriously; lush, gleaming beauty prone to being off-kilter, even bizarre; an elastic, athletic, aggressive rush that, coming from a troupe of mostly women, can look...well, jaw-dropping. I much prefered this disruptive Harper to the more conventional sculptor of String Quartet, danced by the guests from DTH and Howard. She posed hard challenges to her own dancers in Alleged, and they confirmed that they are up to the task.

******

Seven Words

Hear Attacca Quartet perform a string quartet arrangement of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross with video by Ofri Cnaani at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on Thursday, April 2, 7pm.

For information and tickets, click here.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue (street entrance at East 83rd Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Sorry I Will Miss Your Show

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo by D. Feller)

Gibney Dance Center has a running program they call Sorry I Missed Your Show. So I'm riffing off that title here because I want you to know that I'm aware how exceedingly tough it is to get press coverage (and decent press coverage) for dance shows in New York.

Throughout the year, I get numerous requests--not only press releases but also personal emails and Facebook messages--and try to juggle those requests along with my own interests and personal needs. No secret: I love dance a lot--as well as other arts and other activities; I am generally a quiet yet wildly multifaceted person--but have not managed to acquire bilocation or multi-location as my superpower!

Of course, ask, but there will be times when, for any number of reasons, I cannot get to your show (or even your rehearsal or informal showing). And it's better for all of us that I recognize those times and honor them. That way, I'm going to be more nourished, rested, resourceful, at ease and effective at what I do when I do get there.

Here's what led me to write this post:

How to Not Die: Some Survival Tips for Black Women Who Are Asked to Do Too Much

It's a terrific post, written in June 2013 by educator Robin M. Boylorn for the Crunk Feminist Collective blog. While it's directed to Black women, it contains wisdom that anyone should consider, and perhaps someday you too will take some of these ideas and recommendations to heart.

In the meantime, please remember that I'm grateful for what the arts, particularly dance, have meant to me throughout my entire life. I might not get to every show, but I stand with you in support and celebration.

Love,
Eva

Howard H. Guttenplan, 80

Howard H. Guttenplan, Longtime Director of Millennium Film Workshop, Dies at 80
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, March 22, 201

A season of celebration for dance artist Davalois Fearon

Davalois Fearon, left, with Gino Grenek and Nicholas Sciscione,
members of the Stephen Petronio Dance Company
(photo: Sarah Silver)

The 30th anniversary of the Stephen Petronio Dance Company happens to coincide with another notable anniversary for this renowned and stylish troupe. Dancer and Education Coordinator Davalois Fearon is marking ten years working with Petronio. She's excited to be part of the launch of the company's five-year Bloodlines project which will pair classics of postmodern dance with Petronio's repertory. This season, the troupe will present Merce Cunningham's RainForest (1968) alongside the world premiere of Petronio’s Locomotor/Non Locomotor at The Joyce Theater (April 7-12).

A native of Jamaica, Fearon was raised in the South Bronx from the age of four with her siblings. She remembers her immediate surroundings as "not the safest neighborhood."

"But my parents did a good job of sheltering us," she says. "I had no idea that I was in Crack Central. We would go to school and then come straight back. When I was at home, it was like going back to Jamaica. I had a very Jamaican upbringing."

She's been dancing, she says, "since I was out of the womb" and would force her older sister--"quiet and more like a bookworm but always supporting me"--to put on shows for the family gatherings.

"Jamaicans love to dance, and it would be rooted in reggae with a gymnastic influence. As I got older, I got exposed to pop, hip hop and salsa. I would always be performing for anyone who would look!"

In eighth grade, she took part in an eight-week Alvin Ailey outreach program where she had her first exposure to ballet, studying with Ron Alexander. Her parents, like many Caribbean immigrants, foresaw a secure career path--perhaps medicine or law--and did not support the idea that their daughter might choose dance instead.

"In their minds, they had the big American dream, and they wanted that for us."

Money was tight, too.

"I auditioned in socks, because I didn't have ballet shoes and didn't know where to get them," she recalls, marveling that she made it into the school anyway. In fact, Fearon had to sit out her first class at Ailey, lacking the proper attire for class--a school requirement. "My first pair of ballet shoes, tights and leotard were from the lost-and-found." But dance was, for her, "like a calling, something I had to do."

Today, in her role as a dance teacher, she looks for similar desire and focus in her young students.

"You have to want it so bad that you're looking for every little detail that the teacher is giving you. I have this one student, about five years old. In her first class, she didn't know anything--didn't know a plié, didn't know first position. Now she knows the whole class by heart--there, right in the front, in first position, ready to go before anyone else. 'I know what's coming!' It's beautiful, really beautiful."

With role models like Ailey, Denise Jefferson and Judith Jamison--"the pride they brought to the work"--Fearon made steady and accelerated progress up the levels of Ailey training.

"They saw something in me that I didn't know that I had, and that helped build my confidence."

She won a scholarship to Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, where she earned her BFA in 2005. In a way, even her parents' resistance helped strengthen her resolve even as she was forced to take numerous jobs to support her pursuit.

"Junior year, I thought about auditioning. I had to show my parents that I can do this. You don't have to worry about me."

She auditioned for Petronio and spent her senior year as an apprentice to the troupe.

Today, her parents could not be more proud, her mother remembering being able to buy Fearon at least one crucial item--a pair of pointe shoes.

Davalois Fearon
in Petronio's Beauty and the Brut
(photo: Sarah Silver)

So, what's most interesting, challenging and eye-opening about dancing for a maverick like Stephen Petronio?

"Stephen is an incredible mover," she says. "He started late as a dancer, and that speaks to me. I started with reggae and hip hop and salsa and then started training.

"We were in rehearsal, and Stephen was working with Joshua Tuason on a solo, and he did a syncopated move that reminded me of something African that I knew from my Ailey training. And here is Stephen, you know, tall, white, bald man doing that and doing figure eights a lot like salsa dancing. The freedom and choices that he comes up with I love because I have that wide background, too. I can do that, too. I can move into a moonwalk one minute and a so de chat the next. His range of movement is all over the place--a lot of fun!"

But, at first, the work was just different enough from what she'd seen of conventional ballet and modern dance training to be a challenge. Remembering, her initial efforts to enter Petronio's philosophy and approach to movement, Fearon took a proposal to him. She wanted to write a syllabus as a guide for other company members and future recruits.

"I would see new dancers come into the company and go through the same struggles. 'You know what? I don't get it.' It was a need I saw not only for our dancers but for our outside teaching work, decoding what he would do in a way that, say, a first-year Juilliard student could understand."

Interviewing students gave her insight into what they needed from the company, and she was able to convince Petronio to create an education department.

Besides performing and teaching, Fearon has been developing her own voice as a choreographer. One upcoming project--Consider Water, her first full-length piece--was inspired by a talk with a UN ambassador working on issues of water-related disasters and scarcity of safe drinking water in many regions of the world. He happened to read about Fearon in a New York Times article and reached out to her. She told him of water shortages in Jamaica and how her family paid to get water shipped to her grandmother's house. The ambassador simply challenged her, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I was thinking, Wow, I don't have much money. I can't save the world. But I have dance."

Excerpts from Consider Water,

a work in progress choreographed by Davalois Fearon

with music by Mike McGinnis

Fearon began work on Consider Water as a way to raise awareness of water-related concerns. The project has taken off, connecting her to supporters and collaborators such as the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) and the Bronx River Alliance, a respected local environmental organization. Through the BCA, which awarded her a 2014 BRIO fellowship, she will present excerpts of Consider Water at the Andrew Freedman Home, an arts-related community center, on May 1, and at the Bronx River Alliance Fish Festival on June 6. She plans to preview the finished piece in September at BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance).

To learn more about Fearon and her Consider Water project, visit her Web site here. See the Stephen Petronio Dance Company at The Joyce Theater, April 7–12. For complete schedule and ticketing information, click here.

******

Davalois Fearon is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer born in Jamaica and raised in The Bronx, New York. In 2005, Fearon received a BFA from the Purchase College Conservatory of Dance program and has since performed and taught around the world with Stephen Petronio Company, staged its repertory, assisted as rehearsal director, and is currently its Education Coordinator. As a choreographer, she is a recipient of the 2014 Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO fellowship and a member of The Joyce Theater’s Prestigious Young Leaders Circle Artists’ Committee. Her choreography has been presented throughout New York City, including at Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, Bronx Art Space, Roulette, The Vasquez, the Inception to Exhibition Dance Festival, The Warwick Summer Arts Festival, as well as at the Light Box, Portland OR and Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Fearon has created work in collaboration with internationally renowned poet Patricia Smith, multi-reedist Mike McGinnis, and fashion photographer Nigel HoSang. In addition, she has performed with Daniel Ezralow, Forces of Nature, Ballet Noir, Darrell Robinson, and Ballet International Africans. She is proud to be celebrating her tenth year with the company.

In the name of freedom: Charlotte Brathwaite's "Prophetika: An Oratorio"

Prophetika: An Oratorio
Below, Jadele McPherson in the focal acting/singing role
(photos: Hao Bai)

So, it looks bad for the world. The only things left are shabby-glamorous or just shabby. The whole thing's hanging by a thread, and that thread is fraying fast.

If you're of the African diaspora, you might have a better grasp on what to do with what's left, making your way out of no way, in time-honored fashion, while making sure there's still some shine and style. Something that speaks of who you are, who you remain. Here and there, you scavenge the discards. Half-shredded tarp. Broken electronics. Dead branches pile outside a nest you will inhabit alone. You make a Buckminsterfullerene shelter. You cover yourself in shards of mirrors and face paint. You've still got that harp, miraculously intact, wondrously carved from warm-colored wood. At times, in the midst of your gasps and clicks and wordless cries, your body remembers old songs. And you remember charging rhythms and how it feels to be on the march. You remember ancestors. Malcolm X. Sun Ra. Harriet Tubman. Fanny Lou Hamer. You consider: How to get from here to there? You make of yourself a spaceship in violent vibration, aiming to clear the atmosphere.

Charlotte Brathwaite describes her new multidisciplinary piece, Prophetika: An Oratorio, as "part theatrical event, part visual art installation, part ritual ceremony," all of which says that it reawakens primal human urges and strategies. The Club at La MaMa serves as sacred ground for this conjuring of spirits by singer Jadele McPherson with musical support by composer-pianist Courtney Bryan, harpist Brandee Younger and sound designer Justin Hicks. The visual environment shaped by Abigail DeVille (installation, costumes), Kent Barrett (lighting) and Cauleen Smith (video art) suggests the obsessively repetitive, vaguely menacing dreamscape of what's left of the American dream--I question America. I question America. Who will play with Jane?--where, if you take a minute to focus more closely on things, you might see that they are both more ordinary than you imagined and more impossible than you'd feared. Or you might just rev up, break the seal and fly outta there.

Prophetika finds strength when music takes the foreground--strongest when McPherson stakes claim to the recently contested Take My Hand, Precious Lord and the familiar, maybe too familiar Four Women, lucid moments lucidly willed into a heavy, airless dream. One of Brathwaite's guiding "divine spirits," composer Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, described sacred music as a transcendent healer. Brathwaite and her collaborators clearly want to make that kind of offering with Prophetika but, sitting among last night's audience at La MaMa, I was uncertain about how it was being received, and I'm still unsure. Can this work, as a whole, move audiences to not merely sit back and gaze at the phenomena?

Prophetika: An Oratorio continues through Sunday, April 5 with Friday and Saturday performances at 10pm, Sundays at 6pm. For tickets, click here.

Post-performance conversations on Sundays:

The collaborators of Prophetika invite experts in the humanities and the arts, to participate in one of two informal conversations on core themes in this work including: Afro-futurism, spirituality, politics, activism, science, representation and the arts. The duration of all conversations will be 50 minutes.

March 22: “Transcendence” Discussion topics: Spirituality, Politics, and the Arts speakers: Kara Lynch, Dr. Matthew Morrison, Dr. Imani Perry, Imani Uzuri. Moderator:  Dr. Courtney Bryan

March 29: “Dark Matter” Discussion topics: Science, Technology, and the Arts speakers: Greg Tate, Didier Sylvain, Abigail DeVille. Moderator:  Charlotte Brathwaite

La MaMa The Club
74A East 4th Street, (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

New York's Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet to close

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Plans to Close
by Michael Cooper, The New York Times, March 20, 2015

Rebecca Serrell Cyr premieres "Assemblage" at JACK

Alex Escalante and Rebecca Serrell Cyr in Assemblage
(photo: Ed Forti Photography)

How much is too much? Who cares!

I'm captivated by the excess in Rebecca Serrell Cyr's Assemblage, her first evening-length work, running now at JACK. I don't need to know why we've each been issued a marginally useless flashlight the size of a quarter and have to hand it back before the show begins--although, as the pre-show lighting is dim, it kind of makes sense for program reading, and the tiny brights look sweet, like something I'd get at the circus and ice shows at Madison Square Garden when I was a kid and every bit as lasting. I don't absolutely need to know why a plywood model house, erected atop a folding tray, gets stripped of its toy inhabitants, disassembled and carted off, floor by floor, before the dance begins--although I might like to know. Then Alex Escalante, embarking in darkness, noisily collapses onto a sheet of Mylar, one of a few stations set up across a floor strewn with apparently random discards. Sure thing.

On the soundtrack, Ravel, master of the out of bounds. Escalante rolling over Cyr's body as fog belches a few times from a sluggish fog machine. Bodies used for resistance and as bracing assistance in half-acrobatic moves. Hurried costume changes. Aretha Aoki emerging from a pile of stuff. The terrain of scrunched up tissue paper, plastic, Mylar, fabric, a fat empty bottle for water. Coffee cups and dervish spins and long skirts that swirl and swordplay with invisible swords and wafting bubbles and pom poms and branches entangled like antlers in a struggle for dominance. The movement lush, the movement heated with the dial forced ever higher in a heck yeah, go-for-it recklessness. And then, the tidying up. Every scrap meticulously cleared away, while we watch, as if what happened never happened but, of course, we watched it happen.

I fell in love with this. And then Cyr hit me with the Bob Ross voiceover and the pliant, heroic dancing of Eleanor Hullihan, a wealth seemingly limitless in its source.

Now, the late Bob Ross is known to me only by reputation--that and a funny Facebook meme about turning mistakes into birds, one of the least offensive Bob Ross memes out there. (The Internet is a cesspool. Avoid it at all cost.) Cyr uses sound--Ross's clear, soothing voice and scratchy brush strokes--from an episode of the PBS instructional series, The Joy of Painting. Which I had never watched. To my regret now. Because.

A few sample quotes from the Ross instructional:

Just this mountain flows right off the knife.

All we want is a nice outside edge. We couldn't really care what's happening on the inside now.

This is your world. let your imagination take you where you want to go.

Just want this mountain to softly, softly disappear...happy little mountains way back in the distance.

It's your projection. You can put it anywhere you want it.

Bend the bristles. Make that brush work for you.

Cyr, lauded for her work as an instrument for other dancemakers, knows she cannot completely discard all that she has absorbed from the outside. Assemblage makes much of accumulation, disguise, dismantling--ah, hah! that model house!--permission, exuberance and mastery. It looks like an artist statement in motion--perpetual motion and perpetual flux. It is rich, deep, thoughtfully accomplished and tickles the hell out of me.

Assemblage continues through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For all information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue (between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Samuel Charters, 85

Samuel Charters, Foundational Scholar of the Blues, Dies at 85
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 18, 2015

Adventurous voices: Odeya Nini and Gelsey Bell at Roulette

Odeya Nini
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Odeya Nini (l) and Gelsey Bell (r)
(photos courtesy of Odeya Nini)

When two barefoot wizards of vocal music sing you into sublimity, it's time to turn over for a nice, warm sleep. Unfortunately, last night, I had to leave Roulette, walk through the pre-spring chill and navigate the subway system. The charm of the final moments of A Solo Voice: Works by Odeya Nini and Gelsey Bell was, of necessity, followed by MTA charmlessness. But I will long remember singer-composers Nini (hailing from LA) and Bell (from around these parts) for their lovely efforts.

The collaborators presented a two-hour show with separate sets culminating in a jointly improvised piece, Spent Horizon, a kind of sonic woodland. Here their voices soared from opposite ends and levels of the theater, from balcony to stage, in birdlike call and response, overlapping and mingling, before the women slowly approached each other in an aisle, embraced and exchanged flyways as they drew apart.

This exploration of voice in trajectories of space is key to how Nini, in particular, wants us to understand vocal music. For her, as demonstrated in her 40-minute opening set, A Solo Voice, the moving body and the imaginative voice combine in a unified expression with elements of composition and improvisation. This carries the willing viewer and listener along through ethereal moments or ones that can pounce and grab and pierce. In other sections of this piece, Nini fills space with rich sampled sounds smoothly flowing into one another--some of this: bleating sheep, a creaking door, a whistler, gurgling water and what might have been eggs frying--and whirly tubes that simultaneously sing at varying pitches and make visible shapes in the air.

Bell's set, including four pieces before Spent Horizon, is cagey and fierce. Her combinations of vocal sounds can sound irrational with lines suddenly strangled or lyrics--briefly surfacing from her primal surround--that reveal disturbing histories. You come to suspect that even her melodic Now It Catches the Gleam of the might harbor something questionable underneath its honey-sweet and quiet, quiet, ever quieter repetitions. Those repetitions are a bit maddening. I'm thinking, Lullabye? Not so much. And, sure enough, there it is in Bell's program notes:

"Now It Catches the Gleam of the" was developed from my work with Gregory Whitehead on his radio piece Dimly Seen, which will air in May. Dimly Seen focuses on current American torture practices and uses the text of Francis Scott Key that was set in "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Click here to download Odeya Nini's debut CD, Vougheauxyice (Voice), released last April. Gelsey Bell's albums can be found here.

Buddy Elias, 89

Buddy Elias, Cousin of Anne Frank and Guardian of Her Legacy, Dies at 89
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 19, 2015

Vivian Phillips: new leadership for Seattle's arts commission

Vivian Phillips
Chair, Seattle Arts Commission
(Photo by Jerry and Lois Photography)

Last month, the Seattle Arts Commission announced that Vivian Phillips--director of marketing and communications for the Seattle Theatre Group--would become the 16-member commission's new Chair (click here). Ms. Phillips has an extensive background in arts management, marketing and advocacy. She agreed to respond to a few questions about what's stirring with artists, communities and arts policies in Seattle.

*****

EYA: You have a background in media as well as marketing for arts organizations. What motivated you to become involved on a larger scale in arts advocacy and arts policy for your city?

VP: The majority of my work in media has been focused on elevating the arts. I’ve given 100% to arts advocacy, management, and support since the 1980’s. This is my second time serving on the Seattle Arts Commission, and it just happens that this time I’ve become chair. I have training as a political strategist and served a former Mayor as Director of Communications.

Policy is important to me, but assuring that a policy is implemented is often the challenge and even more important. As Chair of the Arts Commission, my experience and passion work together, and with my fellow commissioners, I advise on policy and its equitable implementation. 

The Seattle Arts Commission supports the Office of Arts and Culture as an advisory and advocacy body, so my primary responsibility is to lead the work of the Commission in ways that uphold that responsibility. This year, all of our work will be done with an eye on holding an equity lens up to all of our decisions, be it funding or community engagement. We are working closely with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights and developing a set of tools and philosophies that will help assure that we are being accountable to creating an arts environment that is more racially equitable in all areas.

In January, the entire Commission participated in two half-days of race and equity training so that we could all have a common starting place from which to move for our work together. A number of new initiatives and programs will launch in 2015, some of which could have incredible impacts on communities of color.  My job is to lead the body in a way that leads to successful outcomes.

EYA: What arts-related issues are top of mind today for Seattle's citizens?

VP: Equity! It’s not enough to be diverse. Along those lines, there is a big gentrification issue and we are in the process now of establishing the Central Area, as a Cultural Arts District. The Central Area is experiencing an enormous amount of development and gentrification and so with our capacity for applying an equity lens to all the work and investments we can make, this is a great opportunity to make a big difference. We don’t know yet how we will make it all come together, but we do know that we are willing to take a risk and do it in a way that increases not just the appearance but the true outcomes in an equitable fashion.   

Under the banner of equity, our work plan also touches on increased outreach and engagement with arts and artists from communities of color. Social justice is obviously a big part of achieving equity as well. The Office just held a #SeaArtsFem Twitter conversation yesterday, and the conversation garnered lots of participation. There are a lot of women making moves in the arts in Seattle right now. Women are expressing their leadership in the arts today in beautiful and effective ways. I think this is noticeable and also top of mind.

EYA: Do you see ways in which Seattle can model sound arts policy for other cities across the nation? What arts initiatives, resources or upcoming events are you particularly excited about this year?

VP: Seattle is already modeling. The Creative Advantage, an initiative to restore arts education to Seattle Public School classrooms, is a program out of our Office of Arts and Culture, and the Seattle Arts Commission. This initiative is unique and leading the path toward equitable arts access.

The Office just launched a Spacefinder Tool that literally documents and provides access to information on all of the cultural arts spaces in the city. And Artists Up is a program designed to support access to funding to targeted groups of artists. These are all programs are examples of sound arts policies that are of interest to arts policy-makers around the nation.  

I’m particularly excited about and focused on the successful transition of Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute into a private non-profit organization, and the designation of the Cultural Arts District for the Central Area. These are cultural assets that need to be fully supported in a thoughtful and strategic way and I’m thrilled to be in a position where I can take a more active role in shaping these two things.  

In addition to the two things listed above, Seattle will be experiencing it’s first District-based City Council elections in the coming year. Several current Council members are leaving and the field is getting quite full of potential candidates. The Commission will hold candidate forums this year so we are clear about who supports the arts and how they intend to deliver.  

It’s a very interesting moment in time, and I feel like this is where my experiences, skills, energy, contacts and history can all culminate for the benefit of the arts, artists and community I love so deeply!

*****

Keep up with Seattle's progressive arts initiatives here.

"First Move," a new work by Ori Flomin at Gibney Dance

Ori Flomin probably could do without showing us the printouts of responses to his survey about dancers' "lives, influences and current work in the dance field." Neatly positioned across the floor during parts of First Move, Flomin's new quartet at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, these sheets of paper do provide stark and startling visual contrast to their surroundings. But when his own dancers read from these pages, the words seem an awkward interruption, superfluous to this abstract, if inspired, work. It might be enough to know, via Flomin's program notes, that forty dance artists--among them, Lance Gries, Miguel Gutierrez, Vicky Shick, Ellis Word and David Thomson--participated in the survey and that First Move attempts "to translate these words back into the moving body."

"How the world falls away the minute I step onstage," begins a poignant poem in the program notes, its lines plucked from survey responses by Jane Gabriels. For starters, Flomin and his fellow dancers--Hannah Button, Isaac Gonyo and Colleen Thomas--occupy separate spaces, mostly in silence. Movement, when it comes, at first looks soft and dreamy. It takes a while for definition to focus and force to gather. They do.

First Move gathers into rock'n'roll-ish insistence with jabs and twists, wind-ups and crunches, unexpected stopping and starting. Pierre de Gaillande and Gary Greenblatt's original score also starts off spare and intermittent, eventually injecting propulsion and occasional and interesting distortions. The lighting (by magical Joe Levasseur) alternates between enhancing theatrical atmosphere and ripping away theatrical pretense.

Flomin, dressed in plaid shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, often looks like a knot struggling to untangling itself. Thomas, Button and especially Gonyo--a gorgeous mover--provide excellent support in the exactitude of their shaping and timing and how they regard one another, near or far. The piece, which exploits the Gibney theater's width to create divergent, sometimes conflicting swarms of activity, feels longer than it needs to be. But, as Flomin intended his survey to do, it beautifully highlights intelligence and sensitivity in dancers.

Ori Flomin's First Move concludes its run tonight with a performance at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The inaugural Making Space spring season continues at Gibney through June 27. Click here for the complete schedule.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis
Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Hip Hop showing and workshop with David Sincere Aiken

TOPAZ ARTS is thrilled to present Queenz Finest David Sincere Aiken for an informal showing of his latest choreography and Hip Hop workshop. As one of TOPAZ ARTS’ early dance video projects back in 2001, we are proud to present this rising star, David Sincere who is back from Los Angeles, originally from South Jamaica Queens, to bring a taste of his new moves. David Sincere’s style is a fusion of NY Hip Hop, African and Reggae style dance topped off with a technical approach. Come for an informal showing and take a workshop as Sincere and Friends prepare for upcoming shows in April 2015.

Hip Hop with David Sincere Aiken

Sunday, March 22, 4pm

Free, suggested $10 donation encouraged

RSVP by email: rsvp@topazarts.org or on Facebook

For complete details, click here.

TOPAZ ARTS
55-03 39th Avenue, Woodside, Queens
(map and directions)

Don't fail to listen to Anna Deavere Smith and Sarah Lewis!

New York Public Library podcast:

Sarah Lewis & Anna Deavere Smith on Inspiring Failures

A discussion of Sarah Lewis's The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search of Mastery

Michael Graves, 80

Michael Graves, Postmodernist Architect Who Designed Towers and Teakettles, Dies at 80
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, March 12, 2015

Terry Pratchett, 66

Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, dies aged 66
by Caroline Davies, The Guardian, March 12, 2015

Richard Glatzer, 63

Richard Glatzer, Co-Director of ‘Still Alice,’ Dies at 63
by Ashley Southall, The New York Times, March 12, 2015

Responding to Austin, dance artist Edwards calls for r/evolution

A Call for R/evolution
by Jennifer Edwards, Dance/USA From The Green Room, March 10, 2015

in response to:

Is American Modern Dance a Pyramid Scheme?
by Sarah Anne Austin, Dance/USA From The Green Room, March 2, 2015

Lew Soloff, 71

Lew Soloff, Trumpeter for Blood, Sweat and Tears, Dies at 71
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, March 9, 2015

Inspiring Ellen: Still making dance at age 100

Meet 100-Year-Old Dancer Eileen Kramer, One Of The Oldest Choreographers In The World
by Priscilla Frank, The Huffington Post, March 5, 2015

Museum's changes reflect a changing Brooklyn

With Expansion, Brooklyn Children’s Museum Is Accused of Forsaking Its Community
by Nikita Stewart, The New York Times, March 6, 2015

Albert Maysles, 88

Albert Maysles, Pioneering Documentarian, Dies at 88
by Anita Gates, The New York Times, March 6, 2015

Interview with Korean dancer-shaman Hi-ah Park

At the initiation ceremony, the minyong was placed leading onto the upstage portion of the house as a bridge between the heaven and the earth. To test my psychic ability and to determine if I could identify the deities who had descended on me, my Godmother and her assistant shaman, who serves as a messenger, sat at the end of the minyong, in a sense ending in heaven. A straw mat was placed downstage. Each question asked by the head shaman was repeated by her assistant. Instead of answering the questions directly, I began dancing. Then, kneeling down on the straw mat, I answered the questions orally. The dance seemed to heighten the trance state so that my answer came without thinking as if I know everything already.

The first question was, “If you become a shaman, through which gate will you enter?”

I started singing in an occult nature, previously unknown to me. Again I danced until possessed and knelt down to wait for the next question.

--Hi-ah Park as interviewed by Lauren W. Deutsch

Read more at:

Meeting With Sanshin:
An Interview with Hiah Park, Lover of the Mountain God
by Lauren W. Deutsch, Kyoto Journal, 1993

Cuba's Malpaso Dance Company returns to the Joyce

Scene from Trey McIntyre's Under Fire,
performed by Dunia Acosta, Maria Karla Arujo and Tahimy Miranda
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu) 

Besides the new thaw in relations between Washington and Havana, there's another big Cuban story in the news--the return of Malpaso Dance Company to eager US hosts at The Joyce Theater. Last year, the Joyce helped the company make its first trip out of Cuba and first landing in the states. New York was charmed especially by the combination of this young but tremendously capable ensemble and the choreography of our own Ronald K. Brown.

This season, New York premieres of Under Fire by another US dancemaker, Trey McIntyre, and Despedida/Farewell by Malpaso's artistic director Osnel Delgado offer a telling contrast. Both works are fresh to the troupe, premiered just this year, but only one appears to have already taken firm root in muscles and bones.

Osnel Delgado (standing rear) with his company in Under Fire
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu)

Set to unvarnished country folk by Idaho singer-songwriter Kelsey Swope (aka Grandma Kelsey or, now on Facebook, Bijoux), Under Fire commands the stage, re-imagining every molecule of space on and above it. The air seems a thick-ish, malleable, animated substance immediately surrounding the dancers' bodies. Not just transitioning from step to step, dancers acknowledge space as partner and platform. Legs hitching up, arms hooking over, using superb flexibility and facility throughout their bodies, they pair up or group up, swirling or twisting around one another in remarkable chain reactions. McIntyre's flow across the stage seems endless and endlessly inventive.

Under Fire's interesting backstory concerns McIntyre's decision to disband his own Boise-based company to pursue independent projects within and outside of dance. One night, he made a bonfire of his old documents. Clearing away the charred paper, he discovered untouched materials beneath. The sight of those remains--he called them "pristine"--recalled his own search for authenticity. In Swope's ragged voice--especially her chilling delivery of Dolly Parton's "Jolene"--I hear another sign of longing for what's true, what's essential, even when it scares you.

Under Fire fits so handsomely on Malpaso's bodies that I can only hope McIntyre, as he moves on in life and artistry, will maintain strong ties with these Cuban dancers--and with dancemaking.

For the score for Despedida/Farewell, Delgado partners again with Arturo O'Farrill, Mexico-born son of Cuban jazz legend Chico O'Farrill. O'Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble perform live, a feast in itself. In fact, their music is such a tasty feast that one wonders why Delgado did not turn his dancers loose to feed on it.

Make no mistake, they dance this thing. They're good but muted and blunted while O'Farrill's music struts out and busts out all around them, confident in its energy. As in Under Fire, pliable Joan Rodriguez, forceful Dunia Acosta and Delgado himself make the looking rewarding, but Under Fire provides the more persuasive introduction to every one of Malpaso's dancers.

Dancers: Osnel Delgado Wambrug, Daile Carrazana Gonzalez, Taimy Miranda Ruiz de Villa, Randy Cívico Rivas, Maria Karla Araújo, Joan Rodriguez Hernandez, Dunia Acosta Arias, Manuel Durán Calzado, Isvel Bello Rodriguez, Beatriz García Díaz

Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble: Arturo O'Farrill (piano), Vince Cherico (drums), Carlo de Rosa (bass), Carly Maldonado (percussion, bongos), Rafi Malkiel (trombone), Ivan Renta (tenor sax), Tony Rosa (congas), Adam O'Farrill (trumpet, replacing Jim Seeley)

Malpaso Dance Company continues at the Joyce through Sunday, March 8. For the complete schedule and ticket information, click here.

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

What's to become of American dance? Sarah Anne Austin's analysis

A New York Observer article about Gibney Dance closes with its founder, Gina Gibney, asking a community forum, “How are we going to build a new audience?” She continued, “It’s not enough to say what artists need in a performance venue — you also have to ask what audiences need.” 

No one had an answer to her question, because no one was educated on it before. Dance in higher education is about your body, about your work, about your thoughts about the field, not figuring out how to get other people to see what you make.

--Sarah Anne Austin

Read more in:

Is American Modern Dance a Pyramid Scheme?
by Sarah Anne Austin, Dance/USA From The Green Room, March 2, 2015

Reminder: Meet the Publicists...and Eva! Tomorrow!

Here's a quick reminder to RSVP for Meet the Publicists!, a free panel discussion that I'm moderating at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center (280 Broadway) tomorrow evening at 6pm.

Four top-notch arts publicists--Amber Henrie, Fatima Kafele, Chris Schimpf, and John Wyszniewski--will share their knowledge and wisdom on best strategies to connect with the media and your audiences. We look forward to seeing you and taking your questions!

For more information and to RSVP, click here now!

William Thomas McKinley, 76

William Thomas McKinley, Jazz-Loving Composer, Dies at 76
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, February 28, 2015

Yasar Kemal, Turkish novelist, dead

Yasar Kemal, Master Turkish Novelist and Strident Political Critic, Is Dead
by Stephen Kinzer, The New York Times, February 28, 2015