So these four guys get "HYPERACTIVE" at La MaMa.....

John Scott's La MaMa production of HYPERACTIVE,
starring (clockwise from front, left) Stuart Singer, Ryan O'Neill,
Marcus Bellamy and Kevin Coquelard
(photo: Jinyoul Lim)

Give up the struggle.

In the arm wrestling between physical movement and verbal expression, the body wins. See? Even there: It's arm wrestling.

I give in.

As a writer, I will never keep up with what John Scott's dancers do in HYPERACTIVE (2013), a presentation by Irish Modern Dance Theatre, currently at the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. This Irish import, billed as a "human dance installation," takes pretty much everything the bodies of Kevin Coquelard, Ryan O'Neill, Marcus Bellamy and Stuart Singer have to offer. Thank goodness what these men have to offer is a lot. My wife was surprised when I returned home so quickly from Scott's show, which is only fifty-minutes long. I told her, "Had it gone any longer, they would have killed themselves."

You get a sense of HYPERACTIVE, right from the start, as Coquelard, first on the scene, violently scrunches his nose and mouth in ways that will be familiar to anyone suffering New York's spring allergy attacks. Coquelard probably doesn't have a seasonal allergy, but what he has, in HYPERACTIVE, is the essence of something only likely to grow in irrational force.

He's soon joined by Bellamy, whose truncated tale of a dog who likes to chase lizards and another dog with floppy ears quickly gives way to full-bodied howling and floppiness. When the two guys face each other, wind up and wind up and wind up, spin and stumble and wind up some more and guffaw and scamper, it's clear that HYPERACTIVE is going to be a little nuts. And the body will win.

Scott's sense of funny scrambles over any flimsy barrier. What is an "invisible hand dance?" Don't ask. What does an all-male chorus line and a Mack truck have in common? Why does Marcus's "inner geometry" look more like how Jackson Pollock might drip a dance? What might it be like to stop to smell the roses only to have a herd of bison gallop by only inches away? What's the DMZ between exhilarating exuberance and bodily danger? Sit along either of two available sides of the actual dance space, as I did, and you will find out. Or you could sit in La MaMa's regular theater seats and stay all cool and stuff.

HYPERACTIVE wears its own "inner geometry" on the outside. Random steps are often identified by name--as are people, by first names, some of whom I recognized for their connections to Scott and his work. Phrases are vocally counted. Exertion is demonstrated in the booming slap of feet against floor and the rivulets of sweat against skin and soaking clothing. The work embraces transparency and anti-virtuosity in its raucousness, its grin at failure, its refusal to go anywhere near pretty payoff or uplift.

And four butts are worked off, relentlessly, for the entire fifty minutes.

With music by JG Everest and Blackfish; Michael Galasso

Co-presented by the Irish Arts Center, HYPERACTIVE continues at La MaMa tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

MoCADA--and 651 Arts--on the move

Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts to Move to Larger New Space in Brooklyn
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, May 27, 2015

DANSE: Celebrate this new book on contemporary dance

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy

invites you to a book launch event for

DANSE: A Catalogue

Thursday, June 4 | 6:30 pm – 8 pm

The French Embassy

972 Fifth Avenue at 79th Street, Manhattan

including DANSE: A Glossary, featuring brief and experimental presentations on a series of keywords vital to contemporary dance practices.

Participants include Michelle Boulé, Jenn Joy, Richard Move, Valda Setterfield, Dean Moss, Chrysa Parkinson and Gerard & Kelly.

Noémie Solomon

DANSE: A Catalogue, edited by Noémie Solomon and published by les presses du reel and the French Embassy, is a collection of commissioned essays and dialogues by choreographic artists, writers, and curators on key issues in contemporary dance.

Click here to read an interview with Solomon.

DANSE is a four-year program (2014-2018) dedicated to contemporary dance exchanges between France and the U.S.

For more information, click here.

Free admission with RSVP at 
robin.guivarch@diplomatie.gouv.fr

Mary Ellen Mark, 75

Mary Ellen Mark, Photographer Who Documented Difficult Subjects, Dies at 75
by William Grimes, The New York Times, May 26, 2015

Traveling the many worlds of Sidra Bell Dance New York

Left to right:
Austin Diaz, Rebecca Margolick, Jonathan Campbell and Alexandra Johnson
of Sidra Bell Dance New York in Unidentifiable; Bodies
(photo: David Flores, 2015)

Three questions for...

Sidra Bell, Artistic Director of Sidra Bell Dance New York, presenting a new piece, Unidentifiable; Bodies, for the troupe's fifth season at Baruch Performing Arts Center, June 4-7.

Dance artist Sidra Bell
(photo: David Flores, 2015)

Sidra, what draws you to a particular tone for your movement and the landscape of your work?

In this work I have been attracted to rich and directionally challenging material that asks the dancers to chart and navigate extreme points in their bodies. I wanted to create a body of material that would give the dancers enough freedom to indulge in various worlds and physical identities.  In this rehearsal process I have been very active in facilitating lengthy durational improvisational periods where I take them through multiple realms of experience.  We have worked with images related to human development, universal and architectural systems, relativity, and dynamic energy. My intention is to give the dancers a world of multiplicity that they can create and destroy from performance to performance.

(photos: David Flores, 2015)

How do chaos and control play out in your dancemaking? 

We have been working with the idea of internal and external notions of danger in the piece.  I am interested in the tipping point between stasis and rupturing chaos.  The most provocative space in the movement is the quiet before the storm.

This is a dense, complex, demanding and, in many ways, disturbing 90-minute work. Your dancers tackle it all without much let up and relief. What qualities do you look for or work to develop in your dancers?

One of the things I love about this group is that we challenge each other but we are also compassionate. The most important quality I look for in dancers is empathy.  We really listen to each other and ask questions that are important to facilitating the world we are creating on stage. Additionally it is important that we have a durable and sustainable technical foundation that can support performance that asks us to hit physical and emotional extremes.

*****

SIDRA BELL (Artistic Director), is currently a Master Lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and was an Adjunct Professor at Barnard College in New York City. She will begin an adjunct position at Ball State University in Illinois in 2015.  She has a degree in History from Yale University and an MFA in Choreography from Purchase College Conservatory of Dance. Ms. Bell has won several awards, notably a prestigious 1st Prize for Choreography at the International Solo Tanz Theater Festival in Stuttgart, Germany. Her critically acclaimed work has been seen throughout the United States and in Denmark, France, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, China, Canada, Aruba, Korea, Brazil, and Greece. Bell has received many commissions from institutions internationally and created over 100 new works. She had the privilege of being on the international jury for the Stuttgart Solo Tanz Theater Festival in 2014. Bell was commissioned as the choreographer for the feature film “TEST” set in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS crisis in 1985. “TEST” was awarded two grand jury prizes from Outfest and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. It is nominated for a 2015 Independent Spirit Award. The film has had many screenings at festivals worldwide, notably The Seattle Film Festival, Frameline37 (San Francisco), Outfest (L.A.), Berlinale, and Lincoln Center's NewFest (NYC). It enjoyed an international theatrical run in 2014 and is currently available on Netflix, VoD, and iTunes. She was recently named one of 50 outstanding artists living or working in Westchester County as part of ArtsWestchester’s 50th Anniversary.

*****

See Sidra Bell Dance New York in Unidentifiable; Bodies:

Thursday-Friday, June 4-5 at 8pm
Saturday-Sunday, June 6-7 at 2pm and 8pm.

Tickets are available here or at the door. Box office: 646-312-5073

Baruch Performing Arts Center (Nagelberg Theater)
55 Lexington Avenue (entrance East 25th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Anne Meara, 85

Anne Meara, Comedian and Actress, Dies at 85
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, May 24, 2015

Paloma McGregor builds her net...for us

Yesterday, I started thinking about how dance artists should market their genius for adaptability, for doing more with less. I've also been watching dance in fairly small spaces lately--not always a bad thing. Then Paloma McGregor brought Building A Better Fishtrap/Part 1 to BAAD!, premiering an evening-length version of work explored, over the last four years, in various venues. At BAAD!, this beautiful and moving ensemble piece is danced across a shallow strip of floor. It's a big burst of heart, and the dancers dance the hell out of it. If you sit in the front row, as I did, watch that your feet don't get trapped like fish.

McGregor, a native of St. Croix, draws spirit and imagery from, as she writes, "the vanishing fishing tradition of [her] 89-year old father." The work feels like a danced bedtime tale with dreamy happenings and archetypal, beloved characters who shapeshift form with ease. Indeed, like a cozy bedtime tale, it works best by leaving ample room for your own imaginings and feelings.

Empty chairs speak of separated or departed loved ones, the ever-present past. A "road" materializes when a young lady--bearing a modest, old-fashioned suitcase and a vision--strides forth while others hustle to pave the air with a row of chair seats continuously arranged below her advancing feet. As our loving storyteller, McGregor proffers not too much information, just enough--articles and spare gestures that suggest spearing, sorting, stirring; a wheel gently held aloft like a mystical symbol or used in the clever pantomiming of a family excursion; long spliced and braided cords that, when swept across the breadth of the space, evoke both the act of fishing and the foamy rush of Caribbean tide.

Now and again, a voice floats into the space, words suggesting identity and deep nourishment from which one can never be entirely separated. (I have been here before, maybe as a tree...The water is the Grand Queen of us all.) Still, dancers like Christine King and Audrey Hailes don't need words to connect when playful, girlish body language spins clear, universal "conversation" and inclusion.

That inclusion includes us, too, in a literal, ingenious and necessary way that I will not reveal here. Building A Better Fishtrap prepares and invites its audience, casting a spell that inspires trust. Last night, we fell into McGregor's welcome with gratitude.

Performances by Christine King, Audrey Hailes, Stephanie Mas, Erica Saucedo, Ricarrdo Valentine
Scenic Design: Paloma McGregor
Costumes: Kym Chambers

Lighting: Susan Hamburger
Soundscore: Everett Saunders
Text: Ebony Noelle Golden

Building A Better Fishtrap/Part 1 continues tonight at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. For information, click here, and for tickets, click here.

McGregor continues to build her fishtrap. Over the next two years, her Building A Better Fishtrap project moves on to BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange and to sites in Red Hook and along the Bronx River. "With each iteration," McGregor writes, "the hope is to deepen the connections collaborators and audiences have with one another's legacies and the future of our embattled water spaces." Keep up with McGregor's progress at Angela's Pulse.

BAAD!
2474 Westchester Avenue, Bronx
(map/directions)

#SayHerName and the value of art over politics

Poet Aja Monet Confronts Police Brutality Against Black Women With #SayHerName
by Maddie Crum and Irina Dvalidze, The Huffington Post, May 21, 2015

PJ Paparelli, 40

American Theater Company Artistic Director PJ Paparelli Dies at 40
by BWW News Desk, BroadwayWorld.com, May 21, 2015

Maggie Black, 85

Maggie Black, Teacher to the Stars of Ballet and Modern Dance, Dies at 85
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, May 21, 2105

New dances by Bartosik and Crossman at Abrons Arts Center

Above and below:
Scenes from Kimberly Bartosik's Ecsteriority4 (Part 2)
(photos: Ryutaro Mishima)

In a human environment, propulsion--willed by the self or coerced by outside forces--means you're bound to stray through someone's airspace, run up against another body and do damage. Kimberly Bartosik creates that supercharged, contested, treacherous space in her world premiere ensemble, Ecsteriority4 (Part 2), a trio for Dylan Crossman, Melissa Toogood and Marc Mann.

Crossman and Toogood, like Bartosik, had distinguished careers with Merce Cunningham. Guyana-born Mann has his own illustrious history, including Principal and Soloist roles in the Martha Graham Dance Company and work with Bill T. Jones and Susan Marshall. While handsomely sleek, nimble in force and timing, these three performers share a reckless drive in Ecsteriority4 (Part 2). They are up for anything.

Roughly a half-hour in length, the piece takes full advantage of the dramatic confines of a small, spare chamber, Abrons Arts Center's Black Box Experimental Theater. Bartosik's audience should sense the desperate impact of bodies against walls and the risk of those bodies colliding with the Fourth Wall, too. Believe me, we do.

It opens with a slice of chaos. At first, houselights dim only slightly, leaving watchers exposed. Bartosik's torrential soundscape, much of it, could be songbird tweets on Fast Forward. Don't imagine that would sound pretty at all. To the keening sound, dancers thrash against the black backdrop, careen wild splashes of movement around the floor.

This action had already begun when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a person quietly close the door to the space, closing us in. The timing seemed oddly late but perhaps deliberate and had real psychological power.

Gaze at Toogood's face. Her eyes reflect vulnerability, apprehension, perhaps shock, even while she stays in motion. But she not only stays in motion, she survives and with unexpected aggression, red in tooth and claw. At one point, the dancers engage in staged combat without real contact; the air takes the kicks and blows. Crossman ends up on the ground with what appears to be two victors astride him, closely eyeing each other. Who will haul away the spoils?

In a scene near the end, Toogood's eyes lock onto Mann's, staring him down, literally; he backbends away from his overpowering competitor. Toogood then looms over Crossman and deftly strips the shirt from his torso. As Crossman, in particular, repeatedly discovers, there's no easy way to break or scale the wall that contains this dance's violence and furtive sexuality. Yet everything ends with a decisive choice made by each combatant.

Above and below:
Scenes from Dylan Crossman's BOUND
(photos: Ryutaro Mishima)

Crossman's own world premiere, BOUND, opened the evening. (Both works are part of Abrons's new TRAVELOGUES dance series curated by Laurie Uprichard, former director of Danspace Project and of Ireland's Dublin Dance Festival). Of BOUND, a solo, Crossman writes that it "questions emotional (in)dependence--how real freedom may lie in recognizing what binds us, what we have already freed ourselves from, and what ties will always be with us."

To convey this might not absolutely require white cords anchored to the walls and attached to Crossman's ankle, elbow and back, but this design element works well, both visually--subdividing and moving against the murky space--and as a suggestion of living as someone or something else's marionette.

Interestingly, Crossman, like all three dancers in Bartosik's work, commands more agency than you might first realize. The first sign, for me, was in the care with which he positions his bound body--particularly, the firmly pointed feet--which seems a choice, though straight out of classical ballet. At times, he clearly aims to float and to fly, and he can and does release or re-position his attachments at will. He can lash his arms as if wielding weaponry, and he can push into the space and noisily claim it. Only the abruptness of this solo's end suggests one controlling tie that none will ever remove.

Bartosik and Crossman's shared program continues nightly through Saturday with performances at 8pm. There will be a post-performance talk with the artists, moderated by Uprichard, on Saturday, May 23.

For more information and tickets, click here. The box office opens a half-hour prior to the performance. All seating is general admission.

Black Box Experimental Theater
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (between Pitt and Willett Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Upper Manhattan's dance advocates speak out

Look who's speaking out for dance!
Above: Nia Love
Below: Charmaine Warren

47 notable leaders and local residents of Upper Manhattan--including choreographer Nia Love, Yuien Chin of Harlem One Stop, Mikki Shephard of the Apollo Theater, Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation--tell what they value about the art of dance in Dance/NYC’s NEW YORKERS FOR DANCE video campaign.

Here are a few samples from the series: 

Nia Love

Charmaine Warren

Mikki Shepard

All videos are now live on DanceNYC.org website and YouTube channel.

Prashant Bhargava, 42

Prashant Bhargava, Filmmaker of ‘Patang (The Kite),’ Dies at 42
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, May 18, 2015

Bringing diverse talents to the MacDowell Colony

MacDowell Colony announces diversity fellowship
by Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2015

Creative Time's Anne Pasternak will lead Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum Picks Anne Pasternak as New Director
by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, May 19, 2015

After the fire: Puppet artist displaced by East Village explosion

A Puppet Master Loses Life's Work in East Village Fire
by Stephen Nessen, WNYC News, May 19, 2015

Saving New York: James Godwin's "The Flatiron Hex"

James Godwin in The Flatiron Hex
(photo: Jim Moore)

The pipe is the underworld of NYORG. The main section is what’s left of an old pipeline. Nobody knows what used to flow through it or even who built it.. Some of the old tech still works and the L train still makes its run across the island. Granted, it’s only 4 times a month. AND NEVER ON WEEKENDS.

--James Godwin, The Flatiron Hex

One of Manhattan's most distinctive, most photographed structures, the Flatiron Building certainly captures the imagination. But did you know that it also holds the key to our salvation?

Okay, neither did I. Something about opening the right windows in the right order to create just the right Aeolian harp-like tone and vibration. But you can try figuring it out with hilarious James Godwin at The Flatiron Hex, his new puppet/performance art/visual art extravaganza, a Dixon Place commission directed by his co-writer and sound designer, Tom Burnett.

This is a supernaturalhexacalifragilistic tale of one Wylie Walker, a sorcerer-shaman hired to protect a futuristic, plague-ravaged New York City (now called NYORG) from an impending superstorm. We meet the nonsense chant-spouting Walker--"Most of what I do is flim flam..."--and Godwin surreptitiously controls and visibly speaks for a host of some of the creepiest, most pointless puppets you've ever seen. Favorites include an elegant rat queen and The Tongue--security firm owner and mayoral candidate--who makes exits in a certain way that, for no reason at all, leaves people in stitches.

Godwin's super-power appears to be the ability to creep and gross us out while keeping us tethered to his charm. Last night, that charm got tested to the max by equipment malfunction, a situation Godwin milked and milked productively and quite winningly.

Just avoid the front row because...well, there will be blood.

Remaining shows are tonight; May 22-23; and May 29-30--all at 7:30pm. I suspect this will sell out. So hurry to get more information and tickets here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Franz Wright, 62

Franz Wright, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry, Dies at 62
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, May 15, 2015

A database for Black/Diasporic dance communities

Here's an important announcement and request from our colleague, A Nia Austin-Edwards:

There is an emerging outcry for more intensive connection, communication, and sharing of resources/networking amongst and within the Black and/or Diasporic dancing communities. The Coalition of Diasporan Scholars Moving (CDSM) has been in conversation concerning the development of a database that connects diasporan scholars moving and a dialogue also surfaced during the Dancing the African Diaspora Conference led by the Collegium of African Diaspora Dance.

As if that wasn't enough, Camille A. Brown took on an exciting endeavor at APAP 2014 to organize a conversation among Black female choreographers and those who support their work - The Gathering. Through conversation facilitated by Baraka Sele, the database concept emerged as a place where Black dance artists and their supporters can connect, share resources, and build their network. Camille, Indira Goodwine (Company Manager), and myself took on this task and began to gather information to lay a foundation for this database.

Recently at a CDSM steering committee meeting me, Lela Aisha Jones, Saroya Corbett and Norma Porter Anthony committed to moving the database concept forward.  From this point forward they are working to combine efforts as many entities seem interested in the database coming to fruition.  This is where you come in.  We need some feedback regarding the creation of a database as we want to be sure to fulfill a need that the community is invested in.  
Please complete and SHARE this survey:

http://bit.ly/BlackDanceDatabase

The more responses we get, the more responsive this database can be (couldn't resist a little tech humor! lol). If you are not on the CDSM listserv please contact cdsm@iabdassociation.org so they can make sure your receive information regarding the database.  Following the survey we'll be reaching out to a number of partner organizations to help build this database in the way that best serves us all. If you are interested in more detailed information or have additional suggestions about the database, LET ME KNOW.

Slowly but surely, we're moving this idea along. As with all things, we can't do it alone. We look forward to your responses!

Peace & Love, 

A. Nia Austin-Edwards (ANAE) | anae@PURPOSEProductions.org

PURPOSEProductions.org | @KwanzaaKid

Audree Norton, 88

Audree Norton, Who Paved Way for Deaf Actors, Dies at 88
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, May 14, 2015

B. B. King, 89

B. B. King, Defining Bluesman for Generations, Dies at 89
by Tim Weiner, The New York Times, May 15, 2015

First home season for the Gibney Dance Company

Amy Miller and Brandon Welch
in The Short-Cut by Hilary Easton
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Choreographer Gina Gibney took a moment to reassure fans that "I'm not going anywhere" as her Gibney Dance Company launched its first downtown home season as a showcase for two other artists. Work by Women, running now at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, is an act of stepping back to help other talented women step forward. The shared program features just two works, neither by Gibney. There's a commissioned premiere from Amy Miller, the company's Associate Artistic Director and its most fascinating dancer, as well as a revival from colleague Hilary Easton.

It plays out in the center's modest and compact Studio C, which I'm coming to prefer to the broad, more complicated space of Gibney's theater. Studio C helps me--and maybe choreographers, too--focus more on the dance matters at hand.

In both works, this compression of space nicely crops and foregrounds the luster and dynamism of Gibney's five-member ensemble--Natsuki Arai, Javier Baca, Jennifer McQuiston Lott, Miller and newcomer Brandon Welch. This is a tight, intuitive crew--Gibney trains for interrelationship--which appears to have folded Welch into its mix with ease.

Peter Swendsen's music opens Miller's Still and Still Moving with somewhat harsh, reverberating string notes that shoot Miller and Welch into the space. Slender and spongey, the dancers twist and bend and oscillate. Miller is her usual articulate, quicksilver self, but Welch is no slouch. A clean, limber mover, he will, on occasion, grip her to his torso and swing her around or catch and hook her to himself by one arm. When Arai, Baca and Lott spill into the space, the group repeatedly clusters then unfurls along discrete patches of space, dipping low then arching high. One notices an interesting detail: connections, hand to hand, and exchanges often performed with the efficiency of circus performers whose lives depend upon that sort of thing, being safe while looking good. Images pass very quickly.

A dancer--Arai, for instance--might slip out a few paces to solo a bit while a trio stands just north of her, as her frame. They've got her back.

Miller's images and energies offer a subtle synesthesia with the visual sense triggering simultaneous experience of the sonic. When the word "synesthesia" popped into my mind, it opened up the entire dance. I started to see how dancers ring themselves like massive church bells, arms pulling their own cables and metal shivering and tolling in wider and wider circles of sound.

Easton's The Short-Cut, an hour-long ensemble piece, premiered at Danspace Project in 2005. In the half-hour excerpt for Gibney, actor Steven Rattazzi reprises his original role as an efficiency expert studying and timing the five busy dancers. Perhaps appropriately, his first subject of analysis is Miller--the sharp flicks of her legs, her twirls and flares, gradually streamlined into a model worker bee's routine. "That's the beauty of efficiency," says Rattazzi. "No one has to think."

"In the past, man came first. In the future, it is the system that must take precedence," Rattazzi declares from writer Helen Schulman's text. For Easton, though, the system seems quite vulnerable to everything human--confusion, orneriness, competition, irrepressible sense of fun. The audience's favorite parts of The Short-Cut happen when things go against plan--an often amusing and rather healthy state of affairs.

Work by Women continues each evening through Saturday at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

Rachel Rosenthal, 88

Rachel Rosenthal, Bold Performance Artist, Dies at 88
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, May 13, 2015

"Dance Criticism in New York" -- Thank you so much!

Glitter valentine, East Village
(c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

T H A N K  Y O U !

to everyone from Gibney Dance, especially Craig Peterson,  Margaret Tudor,  Julia Vickers,  Paul Galando and the entire team

to my esteemed panelists--Rose Anne Thom,  A Nia Austin-Edwards,  Jaime Shearn Coan,  Siobhan Burke,  Charmaine Warren and Marissa Perel

and to all who attended or participated online

Dance Criticism in New York was an unqualified success with our six panelists sharing diverse experience and perspectives, each speaker demonstrating professional commitment to honest, responsible work on behalf of this art that we all love. We can all agree that our writing thrives on the dynamic energy of multiple worlds--our immediate, one-to-one encounter with artists and their work; our own histories and inner landscapes; and our life OUT THERE in our communities with readers who value dance now or might recognize its worth through our special insight and passionate example.

Moving on, we need to look at the power we invest in dance criticism, who claims access to that power and to what ends, who is denied access and the consequences of that exclusion. We need to create alternative, but adequately supported, venues for dance writing, and we need to value and compensate the dedicated time, skill and labor of that writing.

I hope our conversation will continue in many forms, generating new ideas and collaborations. Please reach out to me with your thoughts and suggestions. I am ready to partner with you.

If you missed this event or its livestream, you can access the recording here.

In the meantime, here is the text of my introductory remarks.

******

In his 2002 essay, “The Perfect Dance Critic,” Miguel Gutierrez wrote, “The perfect dance critic does not exist.” [http://www.miguelgutierrez.org/words/the-perfect-dance-critic/] And then Miguel went on to tell us the many, many qualities, abilities, tendencies and working conditions that would make it possible for that mythical unicorn, The Perfect Dance Critic, to exist.

But, perhaps, what we should be looking for in dance criticism is progress, not perfection.

Convening tonight’s panel is my way of asking, Can we get a little progress here in New York, a city that remains of great importance in dance’s history, its growth and innovation and, I trust, its future? A little progress, if not perfection?

Can we, as critics, be a meaningful part of this community? Or do we stay at the sidelines? Do we, as dance critics, have a meaningful place out in the world beyond dance? A world of beauty and also a world of inequities and injustice? Can we bridge the gap, bringing that world in, bringing dance out to that world?

Rather than perfection, can we seek humanity?  Rather than cool and lofty distance from the artist, can we respond to art and to artists with empathy?  Can we meet the poetry of dance with the poetry of words?  Rather than complacency, can we have insurgency? Provocation? Transformation? Shamanism? Can we value the diversity and complexity of a changing world in which we do not fear those changes nor fear how they require us to rigorously examine ourselves, to question our assumptions and to evolve? Can we foster communion, perception, intuition? Can we honor deep and broad experience and knowledge without resisting new questions, new tools, new pathways?

Do we truly love dance enough to give it the respectful attention and witness that it deserves?

I’m wondering. I’m hoping. And that is why we are here tonight.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2015, InfiniteBody

William Zinsser, 92

William Zinsser, Author of ‘On Writing Well,’ Dies at 92
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, May 12, 2015

We're livestreaming "Dance Criticism in New York"

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

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo: D. Feller)

If you can't make it to our Dance Criticism in New York panel at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center tomorrow at 6pm, catch the livestream at:

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.

Chris Burden, 69

Chris Burden dies at 69: artist's light sculpture at LACMA is symbol of L.A.
by Christopher Knight, The Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2015

Also see:

Chris Burden, Pioneering Performance Artist and Large-Scale Sculptor, Dead at 69
by Benjamin Sutton, Hyperallergic, May 10, 2015

Elizabeth Wilson, 94

Elizabeth Wilson, a Vivid Actress in Many Character Roles, Dies at 94
by David Belcher, The New York Times, May 10, 2015

Got rhythm?

IN 1890, the American psychologist William James famously likened our conscious experience to the flow of a stream. “A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described,” he wrote. “In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.”

While there is no disputing the aptness of this metaphor in capturing our subjective experience of the world, recent research has shown that the “stream” of consciousness is, in fact, an illusion. We actually perceive the world in rhythmic pulses rather than as a continuous flow. 

--Gregory Hickok

Read more:

It’s Not a ‘Stream’ of Consciousness
by Gregory Hickok, The New York Times, May 8, 2015

Get in the spirit of writing!

NY Writers Coalition invites you to an eight-week creative writing workshop in Brooklyn's beautiful and historic Green-Wood Cemetery. And it's free!

Beginning May 27

8 Wednesdays, 5-6:45pm

Click here or here for full details and required pre-registration.

Green-Wood Cemetery
(map/directions)

Guy Carawan, 87

Guy Carawan Dies at 87; Taught a Generation to Overcome, in Song
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, May 7, 2015

Whitney V. Hunter: Open Practice in Harlem

Whitney V. Hunter at Chasama in Harlem
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Whitney V. Hunter

1st American Shapist House for the Practice of Performance/Ritual

Open Practice

a seven-day public performance/installation 

at chasama

Activate The Materials
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Hunter, activating
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persistence Is Resistance
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Soil platform for Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persisting
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Daily Public Participation 5-9pm

remaining dates: May 8-9

May 9: 
5-6pm -- closing solo performance & reception
7pm -- artist talk with guests, Manbo Dowoti Desir, Samita Sinha and Andre M. Zachery

Admission: free

chasama
1351 Amsterdam Avenue (at 126th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Premiere by Marjani Forté & Works at Gibney Dance

Tendayi Kuumba in being Here.../this time
below, l-r: Kuumba, Jasmine Hearn and Ni'Ja Whitson
(photos: Alex Escalante)

Here's hoping you're one of the few people who will get to attend being Here…/this time, a new piece by Marjani Forté & Works. One of the few, because the space--Gibney Dance's Agnes Varis Performance Lab, the mixed-use studio right off the downtown center's lobby--seats so few. With a music and media station tucked into one corner and audience squeezed into two others, there's barely room for dancers to gallop through the middle. Yet they do. And how.

being Here.../this time concludes Marjani Forté-Saunders's unusual three-year project, a consideration of racial oppression, its resulting trauma and its consequences of poverty, mental illness and addiction. The work questions how we view these conditions and how our social policy has always, and quite deliberately, failed to confront them. A hefty load for dance, certainly, but Forté-Saunders does not bear it alone. Her accomplished team includes husband Everett Saunders (sound), Monstah Black (costumes), Wendell Cooper (media) and Howard Curry, who performs a pivotal voiceover as a good Christian advocate of slavery. Powerful dancers (Ni'Ja Whitson, Tendayi Kuumba and Jasmine Hearn) embody Forté-Saunders's Afrofuturistic aesthetic.

Tendayi Kuumba
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Forté-Saunders gulped when she first saw the space Gibney assigned to her, but limitation turned out to be her best friend. By compressing every element--us included--the tiny lab creates inescapable sensory immersion, as if the entire production takes place within one stressed body, one hallucinating mind. If you can walk out of this show feeling calm and unchanged, see your doctor.

After viewing a prelude out on Chambers Street and in the tiny lobby, audience members enter the studio, take seats and slip on headphones to hear Saunders's vivid 3-D soundscape. His choice splicing of voices, music and sound samples delivers information--sometimes disturbing or satirical, often loud--direct to one's ears and nervous system. There's no buffer, no mediation. Like Cooper's projections, and like the choreography, the sound shifts, and jerks us, from states of crystalline clarity to disorientation, from unnatural excitation to exhaustion. Black's costume design, too, fuses trash and beauty, the right partner for a dance channeling personae who flicker between states of mysterious and mystical nobility, belligerence, frantic struggle, and tenderness.

Kuumba (l) with Hearn
(photo: Alex Escalante)

The choreography--layered in complex, suggestive imagery--can buffet and distort the human body so that you wonder who's in charge. Maybe more than one driver, maybe not of this time or space but all being Here.../this time in this lab, in this pressure cooker, on this sacred and sacrificial altar.

Hearn (l) and Whitson
(photo: Alex Escalante)

being Here.../this time continues nightly through Saturday at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

Dance treasures, one and all!

Dance Heritage Coalition--founded in 1992 with the mission of documenting dance and preserving its record--has announced twelve additions to its list of America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures. The roster includes:

Josephine Baker

Joan Myers Brown

Clark Center for the Performing Arts

Alonzo King

Isamu Noguchi

Ginger Rogers

Urban Bush Women

See the complete list here.

Gregory Hines in The Cotton Club (1984)
(photo: Photofest.)

See the page for Dance Treasure Gregory Hines here.

Dance History Coalition is the sole national non-profit alliance of institutions holding significant collections of materials documenting the history of dance. Its mission is to preserve, make accessible, enhance and augment the materials that document the artistic accomplishments in dance of the past, present, and future.

Learn more here.

Poet as witness: Claudia Rankine reads from "Citizen: An American Lyric"

On October 30, 2014 Claudia Rankine gave this reading from Citizen: An American Lyric (2014 National Book Award) and discussed American racism, police violence, and responsibility at the Williams College Museum of Art. Her words, of course, remain fresh, relevant and insightful.

Dance for everybody: See "PS DANCE!"

Ana Nery Fragoso and students in PS DANCE!
(photo: Christopher Duggan)

Movement unlocks the body and heightens the spirit. -- Paula Zahn

Documentary filmmaker Nel Shelby has crafted a love letter to the power of dance and the power of learning with her new film, PS DANCE!

Narrated by veteran TV journalist Paula Zahn, the hour-long film takes viewers inside several New York City public schools (K-12) that incorporate dance programs into their educational vision--still a rarity in US schools.

We meet a host of lucky students and their gifted teachers--among them, Patricia Dye of Brooklyn's Science Skills High School for Science, Technology and the Creative Arts and Catherine Gallant of Lower Manhattan's PS 89--who make a persuasive case for the value of dance in the curriculum, with clear benefits far beyond the boosting of academic performance. Yes, teachers can use creative movement to reinforce class material students need to learn, but dance also enhances imagination, body awareness and wellness, confidence, the ability to give and take respectful feedback and to collaborate with others as dance artists do. Students need not aim for professional careers in dance to acquire habits and skills that will serve them well in all aspects of life.

Watch PS DANCE! 

THIRTEEN -- May 15, 10:30pm

WLIW21 -- May 17, 3:30pm and 10pm

NJTV -- May 26, 10pm

Click here
for more information about PS DANCE!

And join the movement to bring quality dance education
to every student nationwide:
Click here.

Protest with joy: a view from Baltimore

We need to be reminded of black beauty in the face of black death. Moments of light to help us not to get lost in the darkness.

--Steven W. Thrasher

In Baltimore we need protest in all its forms. Even joyful ones
by Steven W. Thrasher, The Guardian, May 2, 2015

Ruth Rendell, 85

Ruth Rendell, Novelist Who Thrilled and Educated, Dies at 85
by David Stout, The New York Times, May 2, 2015

Visit with Maria Hassabi, 2015 Alpert Award winner

Dance artist Maria Hassabi
(photo courtesy of The Herb Alpert Foundation)

The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to five risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre and the visual arts.

Click here to explore video, images and a conversation with New York-based choreographer Maria Hassabi, winner, the 2015 Alpert Award for Dance...

...for changing the nature of spectatorship, for challenging conventional ideas about performance, for stripping away busyness and the ornamentation of dancing to allow for rare contemplative experience.

Maya Plisetskaya, 89

Maya Plisetskaya, Ballerina Who Embodied Bolshoi, Dies at 89
by Sophia Kishovsky, The New York Times, May 2, 2015

Marty Napoleon, 93

Marty Napoleon, 93, Dies; Jazz Pianist Played With Louis Armstrong
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, May 1, 2015

Ben E. King, 76

Ben E. King, Soulful Singer, Dies at 76; ‘Stand by Me’ Was One of His Hits
by William Grimes, The New York Times, May 1, 2015

Happy Beltane!

Bright blessings 

for a delightful Beltane!

Northern Mockingbird at Wave Hill
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa