"Lacuna": MATYCHAK in action

Scene from Lacuna with dancers of MATYCHAK
(photo: Grayson Dantzic Photography)
Below: choreographer Nathalie Matychak
(photo: Dea Jenkins)

Lacuna is a highly athletic, yet organic quintet for five women that investigates lucid dreaming and cyclical relationships we can't seem to let go of.

--Nathalie Matychak

What drives you, Nathalie?

It sounds heavy, but I’m driven by the unbearable lightness of being--an urgency to create and share work because anything could happen.

What drives Lacuna?

Lacuna is driven by the dancers and their relationships in space to one another. While creating the dance, I realized how it became a completely different dance if any one person was taken out. It became clear to me that my job with it was to create an environment where the dancers worked within the space as structures within a larger cell.

Scene from Lacuna by MATYCHAK

(photo: K. Bonura Photography)

Why lucid dreaming?

Lucid dreaming is something I’ve only recently started to do--the ability to control your dreams and have those brief moments of consciousness and connection within an environment in which you feel you have no control over. It’s quite startling.

How does lucid dreaming relate to dancing and/or dancemaking?

I always find myself dreaming of dancing or watching dance, which often starts as a catalyst for making new work, or even altering old ones. For me, it is so important to be able to be both inside and outside the dance when I am shaping it so I know what holes need to be filled and what aspects need to be taken away.

An excerpt from Lacuna with choreography by Nathalie Matychak 

in collaboration with MATYCHAK dancers

Rebecca Allen, Titilayo Derricotte, Sarah Hillmon, Danielle McIntosh and Alex M Schell

What were the most valuable lessons you learned from being mentored by two acclaimed choreographers--Doug Varone and Stephen Petronio?

Being able to get feedback from and get an inside look at the way these two men’s minds work was invaluable: honored doesn’t really begin to describe it. I learned how important it was to embrace failure. Not everything works out perfectly on the first try, and that attitude was stunting my progression as a choreographer. I edit constantly now, and I am more tuned in to what works and what doesn’t and when to throw away something to make room for something new to grow.

******

See MATYCHAK perform an excerpt from Lacuna this Thursday, April 30 and Saturday, May 2, 8pm, at WestFest Top Floor (Program A) at Martha Graham Studio Theater, Westbeth Artists Residency, 55 Bethune Street, Manhattan (11th floor). For complete information, click here.

Nathalie Matychak is a graduate of LaGuardia Arts High School (2007) and holds a BFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (2010). Since founding MATYCHAK in 2011, the project-based company has shown work at venues such as Joe’s Pub, Dixon Place, Symphony Space and The 92nd Street Y. She has also been mentored as a choreographer by Stephen Petronio and Doug Varone. In 2013, she co-founded The Breaking Glass Project to provide a platform for emerging female choreographers. Her next large-scale endeavor is setting a new work on LaGuardia Arts High School’s Graduating Class of 2016.

Master's program in International Arts Management announced

Announcement from HEC Montreal, Southern Methodist University​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We are currently accepting applications for our unique joint Master’s program designed for young executives in the arts. This eleven-month Master of Management in International Arts Management program targets people who would like to acquire the skills to work on the global market.

 
This program is endorsed by first class international arts managers such as Daniel Lamarre (CEO, Cirque du Soleil), Glenn D. Lowry (Director, MoMA) or Sergio Escobar (Director, Piccolo Teatro), only to name a few (see the program's International Advisory Committee), and is offered jointly by the Meadows School of Arts of Southern Methodist University in Dallas (USA), HEC Montréal (Canada) and SDA Bocconi in Milan (Italy).

The program is structured so that students experience the reality of working internationally by studying in each of the three partners’ Universities plus doing a ten-day campus abroad on another continent (for details, see the program's PDF brochure).

The web site's address is www.mm-iam.com. We can be contacted at mmiam@hec.ca and followed on the social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Scholarships are available.

Professor François Colbert and Professor Zannie Voss

Co-directors, Master of Management in International Arts Management

HEC Montreal, Southern Methodist University​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Jayne Meadows, 95

Jayne Meadows, Actress and Steve Allen’s Wife and Co-Star, Dies at 95
by Michael Pollak, The New York Times, April 27, 2015

Despina Stamos: Dancing the immigrant experience

passTRESpass (2011)

directed by Jill Woodward

filmed in Athens, Greece 2009

20 minutes -- in English, French and Greek with English subtitles

Tens of thousands of immigrants and refugees make their way across the porous borders of Greece every year. Despina Stamos, a Greek American dancer, connects with a diverse group of immigrants in Athens and proposes a community dance performance. Their collaboration bridges communities from four continents and culminates in an experience that will touch their lives profoundly.

Support the work of Despina Stamos and the modern dance awareness society at their 2015 Benefit Gala (Monday, May 11, 6pm), including a "transcontinental live-stream dance performance" with Athen collaborators and silent auction.

Proceeds make possible a three-week movement workshop, performance and film project with refugees in Greece.

For complete information and tickets, click here.

"Rhythm in Motion" tappers bring their A game to Program B

L-r: Gabe Winn, Elizabeth Burke and Caleb Teicher
dance one of Teicher's Variations.
Photo: Vitaliy Piltser

Live and on video,
Chloe Arnold's hard-charging dancers
lay claim to fame and New York City
in Apartment #33...Where Dreams Are Made.
Photo: Vitaliy Piltser

L-r: Japan-born tap star Kazunori Kumagai
with vocalist Sabrina Clery and guitarist Masa Shimizu
in Kumagai's Excuse Me Mr.
In the face of discouraging world events, Kumagai says,
"music always helps me and inspires me to move forward."
Photo: Vitaliy Piltser

With his Rhythm in Motion programs, Tony Waag (American Tap Dance Foundation) has created an important new resource--space for the bumper crop of contemporary tap choreography of stylistic and thematic diversity. And he has found a congenial, if somewhat confined, home for it at The Theater at the 14th Street Y.

I missed this season's Program A. But, lordy, Program B--with works by Chloe Arnold, Felipe Galganni, Susan Hebach, Kazu Kumagai, Michela Marino Lerman, Caleb Teicher and Nicholas Young--was killer.

Introduced by Waag's appealing video montage of dancers at work and play in ATDF's studios, the show raced through ninety tightly-structured minutes of cool. Cool enough that even sand dancing--by a trio from Hebach's Nica's Dream crew--looked fresh enough to be the next street dance trend. Cool enough for me to take more interest in body percussion than I usually do (Young's intricate and social justice-minded WhiTeNoiSe). And even cool enough that the show's most traditional piece--Stardust, Marino Lerman's jazz duet with partner Dan Mitra--sustained its easygoing ways at length without wearing out its welcome.

More highlights included new pieces from Teicher and Kumagi.

Teicher has launched a study Glenn Gould's recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations, and Waag wove three of these trios--so far, he tells me, there are nine--throughout the Program B. Teicher, along with colleagues Elizabeth Burke and Gabe Winns, executes stark lines, delicate expressiveness and fiery speed with equal care. He looks poised to follow the acclaimed Michelle Dorrance into wider recognition as a striking performer and inquisitive dancemaker. Excuse Me Mr.--Kumagai's raw solo, accompanied in song and by guitar--plays the floor as a multi-voiced instrument and channel of soul. A modern rock star of tap, Kumagai holds true to its great Black ancestors while listening to his own empathic heart. And that will always be fresh and cool.

For information on future ATDF events, including this summer's Tap City festival (15th Anniversary, y'all!), click here.

Cori Kresge's poetry in motion

Cori Kresge and Hiroki Ichinose's duet in Do You Like This Title?
(photo: Ryan Reich)

In Wendy Ossserman's Do You Like This Title?, presented in March at Theater for The New City, four dancers struggle to be three-dimensional in a 2D world and two-dimensional in 3D space. Additional movement sources include Hokusai’s manga, Matisse’s cut-outs, 3D printing and the anatomy of the mouth.

Kresge

(photo: Liz Magic Laser)

Wendy Osserman writes of her dancer Cori Kresge,

Cori Kresge first started dancing with me eleven years ago when she was still an undergrad at SUNY Purchase. After a long movement session one day, I suggested she sit and write for awhile. Ever since, Cori has been astounding us all with her dancing as well as her writing.

Enjoy samples of both below!

DO YOU LIKE THIS GARDEN?

by Cori Kresge

In the beginning
there were two howls in the barren black velvet.

There was dust, lots of it,
and an old screen door flapping on its hinge in the white wind.

Turn around and see spring,
budding It's pink tongue.

In fact, spring makes tongues of us all.
A wrist also wants to eat the amber light.

A breast bone wants to lick the hyacinth from the dewy air.
And here is where it gets interesting:

when the pair of mantises quibbles about who said what,
whose turn it is to be fig leafed,

which limbs to keep or discard,
they go for an evening walk as one.

A walk on the air perhaps.

This spring, stem cells in bloom
are sold in tidy bundles.

Kinkos makes kidneys in a gyrating cube,
ready-to-wear in translucent pinks and grays.

Soon nature will pulse with new mechanical precision;
Swatch brand bromeliads that promise to be better than real.

New guns full of hope for making the world a better place,
new knives for carving the air into roses.

At the drawing board of obsessive doodling
where ideas are piling up in crisp new shapes,

squeezed from the minds of Apple and Google,
we wait to pour through into the next dimension.

Like the goo in a 3D printer
in a silicon dream, waiting to join the pulse of life

without beginning/without end. Amen.

CORI  KRESGE is a NYC based dancer and writer. She was a member of the Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group and part of the Cunningham teaching faculty. Cori graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in dance and the Dean’s Award for "breaking the mould." She was a recipient of the Darmasiswa International Scholarship to travel to Indonesia and study traditional Balinese dance. Cori is thrilled to be dancing with Wendy Osserman for over 10 years. She also currently works with Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Reiner, Ellen Cornfield, Rebecca Lazier, and film maker Zuzka Kurtz. In recent years she has worked with Jose Navas/Compagnie Flak, Sarah Skaggs, and performance artist Liz Magic Laser.

Richard Corliss, 71

Richard Corliss, 71, Longtime Film Critic for Time, Dies
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 24, 2015

Working on it: Gibney's Work Up 1.3 presents emerging dancemakers

Elena Rose Light has a background in classical ballet and a feeling for history and intricacy. Alyssa Gersony works in job placement for people with disabilities. Ni’Ja Whitson Adebanjo keeps top of mind the abducted girls of Nigeria, virtually forgotten in the mainstream discourse.

All three choreographers are being showcased this week in Work Up 1.3, the latest edition of Work Up, a new four-week series highlighting emerging dance and performance artists, presented by Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center in the intimate space of Gibney's new Studio C.

On the surface, Light, Gersony and Whitson Adebanjo might seem to have little in common.

English Country Ballz (Sadie Hawkins Remix), Light's duet with Margaret Tudor, dwells on the formal, restrained qualities and courtly framing of the waltz. Yet Light casually slips in time-warpy traces of Patti Page and Frank Sinatra songs or slow-mo twerking and provocative poses.

With part of its soundscape sampled and part eerily created live by electronic looping and layering, Gersony's solo, this place with the pretty-sounding name, recalls the shameful history of Staten Island's Willowbrook State School for children with mental disabilities. Closed since 1987 after decades of investigations into overcrowding, unethical medical experimentation and the physical and sexual abuse of its residents, Willowbrook's "pretty name" became associated with hell on earth. Gersony draws on her agility and strength to portray the living fight within a body in captivity and under siege. At times, that unmistakable life flares, equally disturbing and impressive.

An assured, exuberant physicality in When Water Dries the Mouth obscures its choreographer's stated themes of religion-based repression and violence against women. Or so it would seem. Watching Whitson Adebanjo, Kirsten Flores-Davis and Carissa Chavez-Matsushima made me think of the great spiritual, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," but the opposite way around: "I Know How It Feels to Be Free and I'm Going to Show You."  It's as if the performers dance for the vanished girls and young women, dance as who they are or were or could have been or...still are. Dancing their integrity, their resilience, their creativity, their spirit, their desire.

In each work, then, I see dancers responding to the very idea of oppression with resistance shown in sexuality, anger and courage of body and mind.

The final performance of Work Up 1.3 will be tonight at 7:30 pm. Come early for the pre-show talk moderated by Ursula Eagly and to spend some time with Gibney's interesting display of visual presentations created by Work Up choreographers.

Click here for information and tickets for the Work Up series, which concludes next week with presentations by Lauren Ree Slone, Eli Tamondong / Projectile Imagery and Jacob Slominski.

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

Gather here: Walking Minetta Creek trail with Emily Johnson

Gathering at the basketball court of Chelsea's PS 11
for the opening passages of
Emily Johnson's SHORE in Lenapehoking (NYC)
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Dance artist Emily Johnson with audience member
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I view our bodies as EVERYTHING: our bodies are culture, history, present and future, all at once. Out of respect for and trust in our bodies and collective memories, I give equal weight to story and image, to movement and stillness, to what I imagine and to what I do not know.

-- Emily Johnson, Artist Statement

Emily Johnson (Emily Johnson/Catalyst), a Minneapolis-based dance artist born in South Central Alaska of Yup'ik descent, seeks to use her art and knowledge to reawaken people to their environment and to one another, to realize connections that offer meaning and dignity. Her mission springs from her own deep longing for the landscape of her native state and for its indigenous traditions.

She has taken up this healing work in a celebrated trilogy, including The Thank-You Bar, which won a 2012 Bessie, and Niicugni (2013). The trilogy concludes now with SHORE, originally presented in Minneapolis and now manifesting in our city as SHORE in Lenapehoking (NYC), a multifaceted ceremony spanning several days and venues, with multiple artistic and community partners. The project involves volunteer activities in the Rockaways and on Governors Island, storytelling and readings, bike rides and potluck feasts, and a silent procession to dance installation performances at New York Live Arts.*

All parts of SHORE engage with the larger world beyond theater space. According to Johnson, each bears equal importance. Certainly, total immersion in SHORE should offer not only the most complete understanding of the project but likely provide its intended benefits. Regrettably, I could only take part in last evening's event--a dance/vocal prelude and silent walk from the basketball court of Chelsea's PS 11 along a serpentine path, once the large Minetta Creek, to the New York Live Arts's theater for the rest of the performance. I'm glad I did at least this much.

A sliver of moon hung above the city, and a crow winged across 21st Street, quickly disappearing. Audience and performers gathered, greeting friends and colleagues in the sudden dramatic chill of this late April evening. Johnson provided heavy red blankets as wraps for several folks, and the rest of us made do with winter gear we thought we would have stored away by now.

Performers at PS 11 basketball court
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

A cluster of performers began an unhurried dispersal. Meanwhile, beyond the court's gate, other dancers took slow, intermittent strides along the sidewalk. Eventually, members of the inside group picked up their pace, even sprinting around us in a wide orbit. Through their movements, the ground seemed to come a little more alive, indeed provoking curiosity about who and what once coursed through this region.

Above and below: Emily Johnson at PS 11
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Johnson, her face sporting a band of red makeup across her eyes set with thick, jet-black false eyelashes, mounted a wooden stand to relate her dream of an eagle, a hawk and a baby. A dream that, in her impassioned telling, felt numinous and ecstatic and right for this stark weather. She then asked us to make our way to the theater, walking the creek trail together without talking.

We walked, guided by soothing, pulsing sounds from little portable speakers and human voices. We moved forward, united in purpose, as if part of an invisible watercourse, an invisible ceremony feeding through the busy, darkening Chelsea streets. We held no signs, wore no identifiable costumes. We could have been any stream of pedestrians making our way through traffic and street noise. In fact, outsiders unwittingly strode in and out of our procession. I'd like to think the sonic and kinetic energy reached them on a level just beneath everyday consciousness.

At New York Live Arts, SHORE performers
L-r: Krista Langberg, Emily Johnson and Aretha Aoki
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Johnson's stagecraft at New York Live Arts works boldly with the visual and kinetic energy. SHORE straddles a line between stark abstraction and subtle representation. Performers mass in large groups or lines that recall swaying, rustling trees or pound footfalls like earth tremors or recede like a damaged, vanishing habitat. Dancer Aretha Aoki makes no obvious bird-like moves, but the lash of her arms, jutting turns and impetuous attacks on air seem avian to me. Gasps, electronically amplified, connect human breath to the life force within all living beings. Pairs of dancers sometimes move right into each other's space, nose to nose, so close that they might breathe as one. Kettledrums blare out another potent voice of nature.

There is gracefulness and power, a sense of empty distances, quiet and loneliness as well as a certain homeyness and intimacy--the presence of houseplants at the edge of the space, sounds of a televised basketball game, the flicker of false eyelashes in the otherwise stillness of a hunched over body. Late in the performance, you might become aware that the theater's houselights have gotten a little brighter because, really, you're not just watching from over there, are you? You're part of the story and the song, too.

*****

The SHORE Choir: Margot Bassett, Pareena Lim, Jules Skloot, Erika Banks, K.J. Holmes, Emma Brown, Lisa Loew, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Peter Sciscioli, Michael Becker, Carime Santa-Coloma, Jack Gray

The Physical Choir: Marýa Wethers, Ben Weaver, Madeline Sayet, Koliane Rochon, Tara Willis, Erica Ricketts, Pavel Machuca, Mary Kate Sickle, Monica Gonzalez, Steph Lee, Maré Hieronimus, Erica Chen, Brooke Wheeler, Greer Dworman, Tyler Rai, Lariza Reyes, Gavino Limon

Concept, choreography and writing: Emily Johnson
Direction: Ain Gordon
Soundscore: James Everest and Nona Marie Invie with Fletcher Barnhill
Lighting: Heidi Eckwall
Costumes: Angie Vo
Scenic design: Johnson, Gordon, Everest, Ecwall

*****

REMINDER

It's going to be another cold night. If you're planning to see SHORE tonight, wear sufficiently warm clothing for standing around at the school and walking to the theater.

Do not arrive at New York Live Arts. Performances--tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm--begin in the basketball court of PS 11: The William T. Harris School at 320 West 21st Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues), Manhattan.

GET TICKETS HERE

*Additional SHORE events this Sunday

SHORE: FEAST Group Bike Ride*

Sunday, April 26 at 12:30pm
Red Lantern Bicycles, 345 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn

Bicycling songwriter, poet, and SHORE cast member Ben Weaver, will lead a group bike ride starting at Red Lantern Bicycles in Brooklyn and ending 6 miles later at the North Brooklyn Boat Club where SHORE: FEAST will take place.

*Riders are responsible for getting themselves home from the feast.

Pre-register (FREE)

SHORE: FEAST (potluck celebration) at North Brooklyn Boat Club

Sunday, April 26, 2pm-6pm
North Brooklyn Boat Club, 49 Ash Street, Brooklyn
Under Pulaski Bridge, on Newtown Creek

Outdoor event: Please dress for the weather.

Pre-register (FREE)

For all information and tickets or RSVPs, click here.

Frederic Morton, 90

Frederic Morton, Author and Essayist, Dies at 90
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 21, 2015

Time Out New York eliminates dance section. Take action!

I just received this news from a dance community colleague and wanted to quickly share it with you. Take action. Just do it!

*****

I'm writing with some urgent news about the state of dance coverage at Time Out New York -- and to encourage you to take action.

Dance editor Gia Kourlas has resigned. Her last day will be May 1, and the status of her replacement is unknown.

 
Gia's decision coincides with changes at the magazine that include the elimination of dance as a stand-alone section. Dance, in a much-abbreviated form, has been integrated into a new Theater and Dance section. This week, the magazine does not have a feature profiling a dance artist, and the section has been diminished to one page with just eight listings and no photos.

    
Write a letter to the magazine telling them how essential dance is to New York City cultural life, and how important -- and trusted -- TONY's coverage of dance has been. If you're a producer, ask the magazine why you should continue to advertise in a publication that doesn't respect dance on par with other art forms. If you're an artist, explain how crucial these features were in building an audience and support for your work.

 

Send letters ASAP to the following individuals:

Editor-in-Chief Terri White terri.white@timeout.com

Deputy Editor Carla Sosenko carla.sosenko@timeout.com

Managing Editor Ethan LaCroix ethan.lacroix@timeout.com

with a CC to letters@timeoutny.com 

Ira Lewis, 82

Ira Lewis, Actor and Playwright, Dies at 82
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, April 16, 2015

Limits of the S K Y: Gill, Anderson, Hay at New York Live Arts

New York Live Arts is what now? Some combination of 92Y and TED Talks? A place, beyond dance, for avant garde marquee names and hip intellectuals to hold forth?

Not that those are necessarily bad things. Let us, indeed, engage with the most stimulating and crucial issues of our day. But the home for a wide range of contemporary dance and performance art--a place I've cherished since the 1970s, where ideas were already quite alive without being forced--seems far from recognizable today.

Again, this is not to suggest that, as a work of intersection, New York Live Arts's annual Live Ideas Festival--launched in 2013 with programs inspired by Oliver Sacks and, last year, James Baldwin--lacks potential meaning and usefulness. By all means, let's intersect. Let's get real intersecty in ways that even the new boss, Bill T. Jones, might not be ready to imagine.

But let's make it work.

This year's Live Ideas Festival, curated by the famously intersecty Laurie Anderson, bears the title, "S K Y - Force and Wisdom in America Today," and New York sophisticates will please themselves to be in one another's presence enjoying contributions from marquee names like Anderson's, Anne Carson, Julian Schnabel, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros and dance's own Deborah Hay in a slate of 25 events, including performances, screenings, readings and talks.

The desired audience for New York Live Arts will be able to shell out a minimum of $50 to witness a "conversation" between Anderson and Hay, her collaborator on Figure a Sea, a upcoming premiere for Sweden's Cullbert Ballet. And, yes, this less than enlightening encounter followed the premiere of an hour-long dance by Bessie-winner Beth Gill, commissioned for the festival, something that certainly might have run all by itself at New York Live Arts (or even Dance Theater Workshop) but at less than that S K Y-high price point.

From Beth Gill's Portrait Study
at New York Live Arts
(photos: Yi-Chun Wu)

No shame to Gill in describing her presentation, Portrait Study, as a rush job. Gill admits as much. She got Live Arts' invite at the end of January.

January 2015.

So, with her bang-up cast of downtown dance artists, here's how she handled things:

I am building a structural overlay that will both incorporate and highlight the improvised movement of a cast of brilliant dancers. I am using a complex and layered movement score, which will act as both a map and a set of directives for the performers. The show as a whole will be an improvised installation in which the event's timing and structural arrangement is determined by the performers. The movement material for each dancer will be a combination of self-directed individualized choreography and past experiences they have from working within the score during our rehearsals.

--Artist's Statement 

Portrait Study--accompanied live with Eliot Krimsky and Ryan Seaton's electronic score and a song by Eliot Krimsky/Glass Ghost--presents "short autobiographical solos that collect in the space over the course of the hour." One or another of a total of thirteen dancers emerges or bursts into the space, executes a short or sustained passage of abstract, eccentric improvisation and finally sinks into a dead pose on the floor. The floor, littered with bodies of the fallen--at one point, I thought of Jonestown--becomes a more and more crowded platform for each dancer, each self-portrait drawn.

A one-time-only event, remember. Here, Gill used the ephemeral nature of dance--and of her specific challenge from New York Live Arts--to strip her usually meticulous process of its training wheels. In this, she reminds me of Katie Workum with her Authentic Movement-inspired Black Lakes shown, just last week, at Danspace Project. Like Workum, Gill now entertains a "broad goal of finding less controlled ways of working—while still producing beautiful and meaningful work...without the pressure of becoming bound over time to the product." She asks of each dancer that they find and make the dance largely from their own inner materials.  Since we're talking about recognized adepts such as David Thomson, Neal Beasley, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Stuart Singer, Jodi Melnick and Emily Wexler, there can be interesting moments to take in and appreciate.

And there can be puzzlement.

Again, as with Workum's presentation, each witness will decide whether all these parts--fascinating or not so much--add up to a substantial sum or if they even need to do so. Perhaps, as observers of dance, we're also being trained to take satisfaction where and when we can.

After a 20-minute intermission, the Anderson-Hay "conversation" kicked on with a rocky, baffling start. Collaborators? The two women did not seem to occupy the same psychic space.

If you're wondering why the quote marks: Is it a conversation when, over the course of an hour, one person is doing almost all of the talking, nearly nonstop? After a long time, though, Hay slipped from her folding chair and started moving around it, around the space, to the edge of the audience and back home to her original perch--while Anderson rambled on or played music, some of which was delicious, at her electronic setup.

I don't know if Hay's sojourn was planned, but it was reasonable strategy--meeting verbal torrent with the language of the body in space.

The evening had started at 7:30. Around 9:40, Anderson looked out and acknowledged that the audience might have questions. I took my leave.

For information on other events from Live Ideas 2015: S K Y - Force and Wisdom in America Today, click here.

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

Percy Sledge, 74

Percy Sledge, Who Sang 'When A Man Loves a Woman,' Dies
The Associate Press, April 14, 2015

Eduardo Galeano, 74

Eduardo Galeano Dead, Prolific Writer Was 74
by Alana Horowitz, The Huffington Post, April 13, 2015

Eugene Louis Faccuito ("Luigi"), 90

Eugene Louis Faccuito, Creator of Jazz Dance Style, Dies at 90
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 11, 2015

Ivan Doig, 75

Ivan Doig, Author Who Lived the Western Life, Dies at 75
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, April 10, 2015

Judith Malina, 88

Judith Malina, Founder of the Living Theater, Dies at 88
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 10, 2015

[UPDATE] "Dance Criticism in New York" panel at Gibney

Dance Criticism in New York

Tuesday, May 12 -- 6pm to 8:30pm

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway, Manhattan

Above, l-r: Charmaine Warren, A. Nia Austin-Edwards and Marissa Perel
Below, l-r: Rose Anne Thom, Jaime Shearn Coan and Siobhan Burke

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 writers A. Nia Austin-Edwards, Charmaine Warren, Jaime Shearn Coan, Marissa Perel, Rose Anne Thom and Siobhan Burke, with moderator Eva Yaa Asantewaa, followed by a frank and lively discussion of your own ideas on dance criticism in New York.

Free admission

RSVP here

Note: As of Monday, April 13, we are at capacity for this event, but we will be livestreaming!

CLICK HERE: http://www.danceandnewmedia.org/live

Also, we'll be taking questions for the panel via Twitter! All you have to do is tweet @GibneyDance with #AsktheCritics.

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

Katie Workum: "making a living dance" at Danspace Project

Dancers Weena Pauly (l) and Katie Workum
(photo: Ross Karre)

Here's Ross Karre's lovely photo of dancers Weena Pauly and Katie Workum engaged in a contemplative somatic practice called Authentic Movement. This practice forms the basis for Black Lakes, a trio Workum presents this weekend at Danspace Project with collaborators Pauly and Eleanor Smith.

Authentic movement is a profoundly simple form in which a mover moves with eyes closed in the presence of a witness. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology, it is a practice that stands alone with its own integrity.

--Zoë Avstreih, Founder/Director, Center for the Study of Authentic Movement

Each performance of Black Lakes is created by three deeply engaged dancers right before your eyes. Found movement. From the inside. And what I saw last night will not be what you might see tonight or tomorrow.

How does that alter how a concert audience looks at movement and relationships sparked in the moment versus how we look at set choreography? Authentic Movement requires not only a mover but a witness who receives perception of the movement without judgment.

It reduces the typical expectations--what makes sense? what is right? what is perfect? It heightens alertness to everything emerging as well as awareness of the witness's own inner stirrings. The hour-long Black Lakes reminded me of the trusting flight into open air that, for me, is my experience of giving a Tarot reading, a container for the arrival and expression of anything, the next thing and the next after that.

With Black Lakes, Workum, who has been making dance in more traditional ways since 1997, offers us a view into what she has begun exploring with Pauly over the past few years. Her program notes address the reason for this shift and invite the audience to be Witness as understood in Authentic Movement terms.

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

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

Richard Dysart, 86

Richard Dysart, Emmy-Winning Actor on ‘L.A. Law,’ Dies at 86
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 9, 2015

It's open season: "People feel hunted."

Documentary filmmaker Rachel Lyon (left)
at screening of Hate Crimes in the Heartland at Harvard Law School
below: Tulsa, OK memorial for victims of the race riot of May 31, 1921
(Photos from http://www.hatecrimesheartland.com)

"What does it mean to be a Black body out loud?" asked dance artist Edisa Weeks at a recent Movement Research Studies Project forum.

One answer came as choreographer (and forum co-organizer) Whitney V. Hunter (Social Health Performance Club) lay like a crumpled corpse on the floor of a Gibney Dance studio and recalled the complexities of staging a #BlackLivesMatter "body count outline" intervention at Union Square Park when, as he discovered at the last minute, it was Greenmarket day.

In America, it's always Market Day--green or otherwise--and the artist/activist is challenged to complicate the easy, inebriating flow of that narrative. Rachel Lyon's Hate Crimes in the Heartland, screened last night as part of The New School's Creatively Speaking film series, is one film project that interrupts the same-old flow, dredges up history and connects the all-important dots. In April 2012, two white men went on a hunt through Tulsa, Oklahoma suburbs, shooting random Black people, killing three, critically injuring two others. Lyon's film looks beyond the "Good Friday Murders" and their aftermath to the city's post-World War I history of thriving Black businesses, white rage and tragedy.

Dealing with the Good Friday Murders, Lyon at first pelts the viewer with news media images and commentary too rapid to digest. However, her work becomes more effective--and moving--as she examines the story of the prominent, self-contained community of Greenwood ("Black Wall Street") Black people built in the wake of World War I.

On May 31, 1921, Tulsa's struggling whites, resenting Black success, rampaged through Greenwood, destroying 25 city blocks, leaving 300 people dead and 10,000 homeless. The shattered community still bears signs of decimation while white Tulsa rebounded and continues to flourish. Not a single person has ever been charged or faced justice for the genocide of 1921.

Lyon has been touring Hate Crimes in the Heartland around the US in an effort to bring awareness of this atrocity--certainly absent from my high school history books--and create opportunities for discussion of hate crimes, systemic racism, and strategies for empowerment.

Click here to order the film and consider hosting a screening in your home or community venue (discussion guide provided).

Paul Jeffrey, 81

Paul Jeffrey, Saxophonist Who Worked With Thelonious Monk, Dies at 81
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, April 8, 2015

AUDITION: Sydnie Mosley's SLMDances

Members of SLMDances
(photo: Keevan Girdharry)

SLMDances AUDITION|Seeking Dance Collaborators

Sunday, April 12 | Audition

10:30am- 12:00pm

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Center for Performing Arts

280 Broadway (Entrance at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

Wednesday, Apr 15 | Interviews

Thursday, Apr 16 - Thursday, April 28 | New Dancer Courtship

Sunday, May 1 | Final Notifications

Artistic Director Sydnie L. Mosley seeks dancers who believe in and uphold our Core Values: DREAMING, ACTIVISM, AUTHENTICITY, INDIVIDUALITY, COMMUNITY, LEARNING. Dancers must have strong technical foundation in a range of modern dance techniques including release and contact improvisation. Experience with some West African dance traditions a plus. Dancers also should enjoy creating collaboratively, must be willing to take risks & must be unafraid to use their voices.

Compensation and benefits include: paid performances, company class at every rehearsal, professional development opportunities including teacher training and support for achieving personal goals, community building.

Commitment includes: Rehearsals every Tuesday/ Thursday after 5pm. Occasional additional rehearsals as needed. Professional Development meetings first Sunday of the month 2-4pm.

Pre-season: May-August 2015 (July OFF)*

Performance Season: September 2015-April 2016

*mandatory for 2015/2016 performance season

To RSVP, please send resume and headshot to sydnielmosleydances@gmail.com with the subject "AUDITION."

Julie Wilson, 90

Julie Wilson, Sultry Cabaret Legend and Actress, Dies at 90
by Stephen Holden, The New York Times, April 6, 2015

Phyllis R. Klotman, 90

Phyllis R. Klotman, Scholar and Archivist of African-American Cinema, Dies at 90
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 5, 2015

Dolbashian's DASH

Gregory Dolbashian, dancer-choreographer
and artistic director of The DASH Ensemble
(photo: Lloyd Stevie)

Gregory Dolbashian is still raising money for the diverting show he presented with his troupe, The DASH Ensemble, last evening at The DiMenna Center. A one-night-only show. This crazy little thing called dance, right?

DASHOW, six scenes that flash by, was my first look at the company. I especially enjoyed Dolbashian, a shaggy-haired, loose-limbed clown with transparent personality. DASHOW, which he carefully and lovingly credits as a collaboration with his dancers, is drawn from his story.

In amusing vignettes with speech and movement, we learn how a youth--awkward and naive, though confident at heart--won an Ailey scholarship; how a straight male, eager to meet women dancers, adjusted to life around a lot of gay men; how there are at least four Dolbashian personae, from hothead to business wiz. DASHOW spreads the man's rambunctious energies, inner conflicts and rigorous, even torturous, self-examination over the bodies of six other hardworking performers--Antonio Brown, Isaies Santamaria Perez, Christopher Ralph, Lilja Ruriksdottir, Lauren Santos and Elena Valls.

The choreography, when abstract and enigmatic, requires eager, full-bodied pliability to a great degree with dancers as 3D puzzle pieces that continuously lock in, entangle, disentangle and morph only to tangle again. In duets or ensembles, they connect in ways that appear functional to the point of being manipulative. Question: What is a hand for? Answer: To attach to this spot on another dancer and make that body move in a new way. It's fascinating to track.

DASHOW is a swift current, over soon enough for it to not lose that power to fascinate. It made me wonder what else Dolbashian has to say for himself.

Sample a Dolbashian duet with dancers Daisuke Omiya and Christopher Ralph (click here). Follow the company on Facebook, and keep watch for a chance to see DASHOW on July 2 at Central Park's SummerStage series.

Andrew Porter, 86

Andrew Porter, New Yorker Classical Music Critic, Dies at 86
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 3, 2015

Don't curb your dance enthusiasm! Join Christine Jowers, April 7!

The Dance Enthusiast

invites you to

Dance As Empowerment

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

Tuesday, April 7, 6:15pm

Christine Jowers
(photo: Jordan Matter)

Join Christine Jowers (Editor-in-Chief, The Dance Enthusiast) in welcoming Lucija Stojevic, (director-producer of La Chana) and David Leventhal (founding teacher/Program Director for Dance for PD®, a collaborative program of the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group) for an intimate discussion about dance as a force for empowerment.

See film clips from Stojevic's upcoming documentary, La Chana, which tells the story of Antonia Santiago Amador (La Chana), a brilliant, self-taught flamenco dancer who, after thirty years, resumed her career in triumph over victimization and physical limitation.

The evening includes a performance by flamenco dancers Sonia Olla and Ismael de la Ros Fernandez and food by Chef Babo.

6:15pm -- first course of food, drinks, socializing

7pm -- flamenco performance and conversation 

followed by second course of food and mingling

PURCHASE TICKETS
 HERE

The Dance Enthusiast, now in its 8th year, is a NYC-based dance news website, that brings the best of NYC dance writing, reporting, and communications to national and international audiences--boasting over 200,000 avid readers a year.

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

"Daily Life Everlasting": For weekend fun, relocate to La MaMa

Vanessa Koppel in Daily Life Everlasting
 (photo: Kaz PS)

Easter season finds a trio of bunny-costumed people bopping around La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre in a set that looks like someone's poorly-furnished studio apartment. It's never clear why, but don't mind that. After all, it's Witness Relocation. Just follow those bunnies down the rabbit hole of Daily Life Everlasting, the latest collide-oscopic collaboration of writer Charles L. Mee and director-choreographer Dan Safer.

Although one seeker of meaning will mouth the words "Things can't just happen for no reason at all," don't believe it for one minute. With Mee and Safer, things happen for no reason at all all the time to delirious, sometimes delicious, effect. Daily Life Everlasting sends love and sex and Mee's verbal exuberance through Safer's trusty blender along with the usual helping of quirky gestural movements, all-out ensemble dance numbers, video hallucinations, and other playful distractions. There's action front, back and at the sides, there's same-sex canoodling, and there's singing. If divided attention (or strobe-lit orgies) stress you out, don't go.

Performed by Alexa Andreas, Aziza Barnes, Nikki Calonge, Philip Gates, Tori Khalil, Vanessa Koppel, Mike Mikos, Dan Safer and Chinaza Uche

Original songs: Heather Christian
Video and projections: Kaz PS
Set: Jay Ryan with Andrew Bordwin
Lighting: Jay Ryan
Sound: Michael DeAngelis
Costume: Brad Callahan

Daily Life Everlasting continues through April 19: Thursday through Saturday performances at 8pm; Sundays at 4pm. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Here to set it off: "FLEXN" comes to Park Avenue

Klassic (Joseph Carella) with the cast of FLEXN at Park Avenue Armory
Now, try re-creating his pose.
Klassic counsels, "If you have the imagination,
[you] can do anything you want because the body is able to do it."
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

FLEXN co-directors Peter Sellars (l) and Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

Flex is Brooklyn street, not Park Avenue street. Yet, thanks to FLEXN, you'll find the Brooklyn street dance form known as flex at the Park Avenue Armory behind a set of thick wooden doors that, when closed in front of you, don't exactly say, "Welcome!"

Pull those heavy doors, though, and you'll find a huge, dark space re-imagined for sensation and spectacle--STREB's action heroes "kissing the air" comes to mind--now given over to some of Brooklyn's most extraordinary young street dance performers. This ninety-minute production, a collaboration between choreographer Reggie (Regg Croc) Gray and director Peter Sellars, is a magnet intended to engage New Yorkers with issues like racism, policing and youth incarceration. The co-directors began work on FLEXN against the backdrop of #BlackLivesMatter, aware that the Armory commission could offer a platform not only to introduce flex to a broader audience but to raise awareness of the realities that drive the art.

Audiences are encouraged to come at least an hour early for pre-show panels on topics such as "Profiling Stop & Frisk" and "Judging the Juvenile Justice System," moderated by Sellars and Gray. As you wait for the panel, you can view photography by Richard Ross documenting the lives of teenagers in solitary confinement and a range of visual art by Akira Somma creatively tracing several years in the development of flex. The show's segments have been arranged to underscore the multiple challenges of city life for young people of color while highlighting these critical values--self-awareness, dedication and community.

FLEXN, from evidence of last night's show, mainly attracts a New York mix of the hip and the affluent only slightly more diverse in race than your typical concert dance crowd--in other words, largely a white audience--but spanning a wider range in age. Many appeared to have arrived only for the performance, although they are probably most in need of what FLEXN's Race and the City panels have to offer.

The dancers, I read somewhere, hoped audiences would feel free to voice their pleasure and support all through the show, the way it's done in flex culture. But, aside from a smattering of applause after segments or particular solos, the armory crowd watched in complete silence and stillness. I saw only a few people, at least in my immediate vicinity, acting on the show's invitation to take photos and videos for upload to Facebook and Twitter. But the evening ended with many standing in ovation, and friends turned to their companions with happy murmurs and exclamations of awe. As we all filed out past the massive, hall-spanning platform stage, the dancers sat along its edge, waiting to receive our individual greetings. That was a nice touch--and smart--giving us a chance to finally share whatever feelings we held back during the show itself.

At 14, Germany-born Android (Martina Heimann) almost abandoned
her training in conventional movement techniques, but her mother challenged her:
"Are you sure you want to live with the thought of not being a dancer?"
Today, she is a star of flex and FLEXN.
"I want flexn to be accepted as a full-blown art."
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

At center, Sam I Am (Sam Estavien)
One of FLEXN's most talented performers, Sam I Am writes,
"I feel like dance is my connection to the divine....
One of my goals is to raise the status quo of how dancers are respected."
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

Lookin at my watch its about that time
I done patiently waited
And I hate
That I'm so underrated
I hope you hear this song and know I'm singing from the heart
And I'm kinda faded
I wasn't created to be so underrated

-- Tank ("Underrated")

FLEXN uses solos, duets, ensemble pieces and a creative range of music (reggae, hip hop, R&B) to tell archetypal stories of complicated relationships, temptations and their consequences, violence and loss, the meaning of friendship and mentorship. Flex offers its young dancers not only a way to show clever and robust virtuosity--the flashy contortions called bone-breaking, the smooth knee glides, the minute, jerky isolations--but to define and speak for themselves.

I will no longer be defined by
What someone else believes that I am
Now that I have dropped the weight
I am light as a feather
It's time to elevate

-- India.Arie ("SoulBird Rise")

Performers to watch for include: Dayntee (Deidra Braz), marrying willowy, undulating flow to flex's more angular distortions of the body line. The masterful Banks (James Davis) who, as a teenager, took two bullets to the knee--which only made him more fervent about dancing. Sam I Am (Sam Estavien), deeply gifted, totally connected and coherent from head to toe. The theatrically expressive Android (Martina Lauture). And Karnage (Quamaine Daniels) with the abrasive solo he calls "Fuck the World."

But through all the bullshit I throw up a sign of hope…

-- Ace Hood ("Fuck Da World") 

FLEXN speaks of chaos, confusion and pain but also demonstrates two beautiful things: art as the key and community as absolute necessity.

Lighting sculpture/design: Ben Zamora
Sound design: Garth MacAleavey
Costume design: Gabriel Berry
Music: Epic B

Performers: Ace (Franklin Dawes), Android (Martina Lauture), Banks (James Davis), Brixx (Sean Douglas), Cal (Calvin Hunt), Deidra (Deidra Braz), Dre Don (Andre Redman), Droid (Rafael Burgos), Droopz (Jerrod Ulysse), Karnage (Quamaine Daniels), Klassic (Joseph Carella), Nicc Fatal (Nicholas Barbot), Nyte (Ayinde Hart), Pumpkin (Sabrina Rivera), Regg Roc (Reggie Gray), Sam I Am (Sam Estavien), Scorp (Dwight Waugh), Shellz (Shelby Felton), Slicc (Derick Murreld), Tyme (Glendon Charles), Vypa (Khio Duncan) and YG (Richard Hudson)

FLEXN continues through April 4 with Thursday-Saturday performances at 8pm and a Sunday matinee at 3pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Watch FLEXN-related YouTube videos here.

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Liz Gerring brings "glacier" to the Joyce

Scenes from glacier
Liz Gerring Dance Company
(photos, above and below: Johanna Austin)

Presented without intermission, Liz Gerring's dance octet, glacier, gives the impression of being longer than its 65 minutes--alternately, a welcomed thing and, at times, a burden. But that strange elasticity reflects how the piece mirrors the fullness, diversity and adaptability of the natural world while remaining--like a watercolor painted in strokes of varying saturation--just abstract enough to tantalize.

What is going on here? Gerring's meticulous craft seduces with faint suggestion (ah! that looks somewhat familiar, but...), continuous metamorphosis and elusion. And the members of Liz Gerring Dance Company are exquisite in their performance for this Joyce Theater season.

Scene from glacier
Liz Gerring Dance Company
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Given its world premiere in 2013 at Peak Performances @ Montclair State, glacier has been slightly readjusted for the Joyce's stage. It looks fine, as if it had been made for the Joyce.

Robert Wierzel (set and lighting) suspends three cool white rectangular panels, like empty canvases, across the black expanse at the back of the stage. The floor also transmits a muted white. Both set off the sculpted gestures of Gerring's eight dancers whose movements alternately evoke vast space and intimacy, whose limbs suggest the odd stem here, the bent twig there, the fiddlehead of a fern. Michael Schumacher's electronic score, Glacier, captures, alters and layers sound from the woods and town around Colorado’s Glacier Lake with more conventional musical instrumentation. The sounds' origins remain nonspecific, delightful puzzles for the ear. A frog? A whistling duck? Fissuring ice? The stately procession of a ghost?

The soundscape can turn thrillingly harsh and agitated, with dancers rebounding and riding that energy while never looking forced, never violent. Most often, they let go and surrender--to gravity, to momentum. They inscribe curving, arching shapes where the eye does not expect to find them in everyday human posture or locomotion. This is a constant pleasure.

Gerring's odd-man-out, offbeat spatial flow and Schumacher's aural surprises don't tire the eye or mind--until moments when they do. That does happen, although I must admit any mental flagging and impatience on my part might have been due to the unusually chilly temperature in the Joyce on an unseasonably cool spring night. It made me wonder. Was that by design--you know, glacier and all?

glacier's closing, a disappearance by lighting effect, seems especially apt. A day of rich, sensory experience finally closes. Or more threatening: an entire landscape, a vital web of relationships, declines before our eyes.

Performers: Benjamin Asriel, Brandon Collwes, Tony Neidenbach, Adele Nickel, Brandin Steffensen, Jake Szczypek, Jessica Weiss and Claire Westby

glacier continues through April 2 with performances tomorrow (7:30pm) and Thursday (8pm). Following tomorrow's show, there will be a discussion with Gerring and dancers. For information and tickets, click here.

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