Fight fire with fire: Byrd's "The Minstrel Show Revisited"

Donald Byrd's Spectrum Dance Theater
in The Minstrel Show Revisited
Below, l-r:
Fausto Rivera, Alex Crozier and Alexis "Tilly" Evans-Krueger
(photos: Ian Douglas)

The black-faced mask of minstrel shows is a lingering image from America's past that still inflicts wounds today through its psychic hold...In the future if we are to be free from its terrible grip we must confront it boldly and courageously by staring back into its face and laughing at the absurdity of its representation until it no longer has the power to hurt us. Only then will it be vanquished and we are free to be. -- Donald Byrd

You might have thought Donald Byrd would bury the tough stuff somewhere down inside The Minstrel Show Revisited and gradually ease you into it. But this dance-theater piece--sourced in Byrd's provocative 1991 Bessie-winner, The Minstrel Show--opens with the problem right before your eyes: a white male dancer singing that classic rag, "A Hot Time in the Old Town," in blackface and Afro wig. It doesn't ease anything when more blackfaced dancers from Byrd's multiracial Spectrum Dance Theater join in--peppy entertainers whose high kicks and high jinks, tumbling and sexy hip-pumping establish a through-line from 19th Century minstrelsy to today's musical theater.

In the program for The Minstrel Show Revisited's run at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Byrd reprinted Scott Delahunta's essay for the original production. Delahunta argues that stereotypes are a survival mechanism, making complexity less challenging and reality less threatening. They worked for white Americans faced with an African population they could no longer define and claim as property. They still work, today, for white Americans faced with the looming prospect of no longer being the majority group in this country. And that's just for starters.

Rather than shrink from mindless and noxious stereotyping, Byrd wallows in it for the sake of doing exactly what popular entertainment is not supposed to do--hold a merciless mirror up to the people who have paid to be distracted from problems. "We like to laugh, to cry and not have to 'think too much' and in doing so we become complicitous in the process of stereotyping," Delahunta wrote. Thus the tension in The Minstrel Show Revisited. The choreography and performances are skillful and dynamic. But, if you pay close attention, you become aware of how hollow and shallow the stage picture, for all its activity, looks and feels.

Over the course of the hour, Byrd's dancers not only dance a lot but also line up to tell an alarming number of offensive jokes aimed at a diversity of targets. But reworking 1991 also gives Byrd the chance to open the piece to audience participation, inviting several folks up on stage to tell the last racist joke they heard. (When I saw it, most of his volunteers happened to be youngish people of color.) This strategy encourages the watcher's Inner Performer to come out and play. It's safe, and it's not safe. It's bad...but it's permitted.

How will the volunteers respond to that invitation? How will the rest of us--sitting not so safely in our chairs--respond to what we're about to hear?  It's complicated!

How quickly the volunteers learned just the right intonations and body language for their brief interaction with Byrd. How easily they remembered and told their jokes.

OMG! Look at all these people running around with offensive jokes in their heads! And what was the last offensive joke I heard?

We giggled some because the tellers were cute and brave, and we knew they didn't mean what they said. It felt okay--sort of. That is, until the final and truly cringe-making one, which--whoa!--brought everybody up short.

And even then Byrd wasn't finished with us. He looked out over the house and urged people in the seats to write down a stereotypical joke to be collected and used later. Since I did not stay for the post-show Q&A--the theater seemed unusually tardy in getting it started--I can't say how that worked out.

In his pre-show talk, Awam Amkpa (NYU Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis) noted, "Art does not just reflect culture; it makes it." Byrd accepts his responsibility, as artist and entertainer, to highlight how the arts have served to deliver, spotlight and perpetuate stereotypes, making them not only useful but seductive and addictive. His work work offers no solution but a tap on the shoulder: Now, your turn.

Closed.

For more information on Donald Byrd's Spectrum Dance Theater, click here.

For information on upcoming events at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, click here.

Steve Gebhardt, 78

Steve Gebhardt, Who Made Films With Rock Stars, Dies at 78
by William Grimes, The New York Times, October 30, 2015

Al Molinaro, 96

Al Molinaro, Diner Owner on ‘Happy Days,’ Dies at 96
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, October 30, 2015

Experimenting with Miss Ruth: Lionel Popkin at Abrons

(Left to right) Lionel Popkin, Emily Beattie and Carolyn Hall
in Popkin's Ruth Doesn't Live Here Anymore
(photo: Cristal Jones)

Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, says dancer-choreographer Lionel Popkin. And why not? Well, maybe that's because Ruth St. Denis--illustrious modern dance pioneer--was a white woman who got famous for pushing a vaudevillian Orientalist fantasy, and Popkin is a contemporary dancer of Jewish-Indian lineage who is more than ready to go toe-to-toe with her. His hour-long dance at Abrons Arts Center--a trio performed with enchanting Emily Beattie and Carolyn Hall--asserts a right to mess in and mess up her space in the greater interest of, perhaps, starting to clean up his own ambivalence.

Popkin takes a leaf blower to St. Denis's legacy, the way he takes a leaf blower to Beattie's abundant hair, stirring up swirls of theater dust in the process. When we first see them, both are dressed in a uniform of blue-collar workers--heavy, navy-colored coveralls--suggesting a certain no-nonsense approach to dance, the hallmark of more recent dance eras. By contrast, the glam St. Denis was all about sparkly artifice and nonsense and just plain making shit up.

Lionel Popkin
(photo: Brian Mengini)

Like a Ghostbusters crew, Popkin and his dancers venture deep into an ectoplasmic detritus of discarded saris and veils, the haul of St. Denis's far and frequent travel, strewn across the theater floor. Choreographic instructions (projected in white type on the backdrop) will be indifferently observed because, modeling St. Denis, Popkin says, they have given themselves leverage to excavate, appropriate and revise.

Watching a Hall solo, in particular--the one with the green skirt we're told "she found at a thrift store for seven dollars"--I have a sense of Popkin thinking through what he, as an American dancer, inherited from St. Denis and her age. He tips his hat to her ingenuity, her self-assurance and way of presenting herself, showing us something in her that transcended the wrongheaded aesthetics. Something useful in the way the mothers of modern dance clawed out a place for this art in the world's imagination and fought to keep it alive so folks could do and see it differently today. Like with more awareness. When we actually have awareness, that is.

Ruth Doesn't Live Here Anymore is well danced and fun. But who wins out here? Well, from Popkin's final words, it's clear that, as activists always say, the struggle continues.

Music composed and performed live by Guy Klucevsek (accordion) with Mary Rowell, violinist (ETHEL); costumes and set design by Marcus Kuiland-Nazario; lighting design by Christopher Kuhl; video design by Cari Ann Shim Sham

Ruth Doesn't Live Here Anymore, curated by Laurie Uprichard for her Travelogues series, continues through November 1 with performances tonight and Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 3pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

BAM Next Wave presents NYC premiere of "The Exalted"

Carl Hancock Rux (l) and Theo Beckmann
in costume for The Exalted
(photo: John Labbe)

I might have drawn closer to The Exalted--or, at least, felt a better grasp of its purpose--had writer/teller Carl Hancock Rux delivered his words with a consistent clarity to match their earnestness. I found myself often straining to follow text stuffed with historical and biographical data, distracted from other elements of the collaborative piece--strangely enough, Onome Ekeh's trippy and quite showy video. I started off wishing that Rux could speak without being hemmed in by music but quickly realized that the problem was not the impingement by Theo Bleckmann's sound design but Rux's vocal and narrative cloudiness. Bleckmann's ethereal melodies and supple voice, in fact, handsomely served this multimedia fantasy throughout its hour.

Bleckmann, as performer, contributes an understated elegance, wafting in and out of Rux's awareness like a shade. He portrays the influential German-Jewish art historian and critic Carl Einstein, noted for his scholarship on African sculpture and Cubism, leftist ideology and engagement in the Spanish Civil War. Trapped in Nazi-occupied France in 1940, Einstein committed suicide. Rux's interest in the writer appears to have roots in his own history--an adoptive father who served in World War II, a revelation, through genealogical research, of a link to Germany, and perhaps more.

Under the direction of SITI Company's Anne Bogart, The Exalted gracefully incorporates physical theater--characteristic movement and articulate gestures through which the men initiate a playful understanding of each other. But in a telling scene, Rux stands stock still, mid-space, warily gazing at Bleckmann as he skirts around him, lecturing on how Europeans devalue African art. In this encounter--and, perhaps, in this work--so much remains to be unpacked and examined.

With lighting by Brian H Scott and scenic and costume design by Maureen Freedman

The Exalted continues its run tonight through October 31 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher/Fishman Space
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Bill Keith, 75

Bill Keith, Who Transformed Banjo Playing, Dies at 75
by Bill Friskics-Warren, The New York Times, October 26, 2015

Leon Bibb, 93

Leon Bibb, Actor, Folk Singer and Civil Rights Activist, Dies at 93
by William Grimes, The New York Times, October 26, 2015

Clark Center NYC pays tribute to Thelma Hill

Dance artist and educator
Thelma Hill
(photo courtesy of Clark Center NYC)

On Tuesday, November 17, Clark Center NYC and 651Arts will join forces at MOCADA in a symposium to honor the life and legacy of acclaimed dance educator Thelma Hill.

CCNYC Steering Committee member Jill Williams writes, "Thelma was one of the architects of Clark Center and a major influence and mentor."

Hill in the studio
(photo courtesy of Clark Center NYC)

"Delores Brown who danced with Thelma in The New York Negro Ballet will moderate.  She'll be joined by Otis Sallid who began studying with Thelma as a teenager and continues to work as a choreographer, producer (recently with the James Brown project, Get on the Good Foot at the Apollo Theater), Mickey Davidson who was a student of Thelma's at Clark Center and works as a dancer, choreographer and director of her own company and Kathe Sandler who will share her short documentary gem, Remembering Thelma."

For further information on the symposium and to purchase tickets, click here.

MOCADA
80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Mark Murphy, 83

Mark Murphy, an Unconventional Jazz Vocalist, Dies at 83
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, October 25, 2015

Maureen O'Hara, 95

Maureen O’Hara, Irish-Born Actress Known as Queen of Technicolor, Dies at 95
by Anita Gates, The New York Times, October 24, 2015

Colleen Thomas Dance: Looking beyond the blueprint

Samantha Allen of Colleen Thomas Dance
in Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint
Photo: Alex Escalante

"We see what we think we know, not what stands before us," Colleen Thomas writes, introducing Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint, presented by 92Y Harkness Dance Center's new Dig Dance weekend series.

An artist's handiwork gets complicated, re-imagined and completed by what the individual observer brings to it. In the shifting gloom of 92Y's Buttenwieser Hall, we encounter Thomas's sensibilities, ideas and decisions, bringing "the stories we keep telling ourselves" about ourselves and about everything else. As she writes further, "Life is here, this moment. Now....and now...and now."

With the exception of composer John McGrew, who performs his score live, every single one of the men in Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint--Ehizoje Azeke, Marc Mann, Nathan Trice and the striking Orlando Hunter--are Black. Startled to notice this, I returned to Thomas's words and wondered if anyone else had experienced a similar jolt.  (Tamara Joy Clarke, also Black and also a dancer, passes through and around the space. But in this work, she's primarily serving as vocalist.) Thomas and the other women dancers--Samantha Allen, Jenna Riegel and Jessica Stroh--are white, and we had just watched them, stationed across the space, scaring us with images of obsessive self-grooming, as if they wanted to rub every bit of clothing, hair and flesh away from their inflamed bodies. And then, BLACKOUT. And now, these four men--each one grand and vulnerable.

Knowing of Thomas's concern with how we get ensnared in "the web of perceived social, gender and racial narratives," I felt she'd just dropped a grenade in our midst. We have seen multicultural dance ensembles; Thomas, herself, has danced with some of them. But the demographic makeup of Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint--and the balance of prominence and power within it--are rare in contemporary dance.

Tricia Toliver's preternatural lighting turns this hall--a dimly-lit space with a heavy, heavy feel--into a camera obscura or chamber of hallucinations, the perfect setting for the stark and fiery choreography. We're made aware of an outside--a black drape gets pulled aside; an opened door emits a blast of white light--to this tense and murky inside. Toliver takes the simple facts of folks--Have you seen dancers when they are off-duty?--and splashes harsh light across bodies, turning them spooky or monumental.

We can't trust our eyes. Or maybe sometimes we can. But it's important, first of all, to make the effort to look. For "life is here, this moment. Now....and now...and now."

Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint continues tonight at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.

92nd St Y (Buttenwieser Hall)
Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Marty Ingels, 79

Marty Ingels, Actor Funny Onscreen and Outrageous Off, Is Dead at 79
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, October 22, 2015

Schumacher's BalletCollective opens at Skirball in November

Here's a taste of Invisible Divide by BalletCollective, 

shot during BalletCollective's Summer 2015 residency in Telluride.

Choreography and direction: Troy Schumacher

Music: Ellis Ludwig-Leone performed by Indie vocalist Violetness

World Premiere: 

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

November 4-5

 For information and tickets, click here.

Jon Kinzel premieres "COWHAND CON MAN" at Gibney

Above: Nico Brown (front) with Simon Courchel in COWHAND CON MAN
Below: Jon Kinzel with one of Jarrod Beck's prop/sculptures
(photos: Scott Shaw)

At any point in Jon Kinzel's new ensemble work, COWHAND CON MAN--at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center through October 31--feel free to drop "why" from your vocabulary. Let it go.

Tempted to unravel the title?  Sure. Go ahead. Then just stop.

Tempted to try to figure out Jarrod Beck's surreal visual design and how it's used? Take your shot. Then sit back.

Wondering why Nina Katan costumes each dancer differently? About the specificity of that costuming? About Katan's most conspicuous decision--sheathing EmmaGrace Skove-Epes in must-be-sweltering Lurex shirt and slacks? No need to obsess.

Losing yourself in Jim Dawson and Kinzel's woozy, haunted sound collage? Stay lost.

That brings us around to Kinzel's choreography and his own dancing with the lovely ensemble of Nico Brown, Simon Courchel, Omagbitse Omagbemi, and Skove-Epes​. Because in a universe where nothing's fixed in place or meaning, at least choreography can serve as your North Star, right?

Don't count on it.

The dizzying beauty of COWHAND CON MAN lies in how it pulls the ground out from under you. Sort of the way the whole thing opens with a diagonal strand of fluorescent lights being slowly pulled out of sight. Just because.

Why were those fluorescent lights there to begin with? I haven't the foggiest.

The initial sensation--based on the manner of audience placement in Gibney's Studio C for this production--is one of being cornered in one section of the space. Beck's massive, inexplicable sculptures, though somewhat distant from the audience, dominate the environment. Some of them will double, in an equally inexplicable way, as props; they await activation. But they are never out of sight. They can remain, even in peripheral view, a bother to your need for reason.

But you learn, first from watching Brown and Courchel calmly, silently climbing onto and off each other, to follow dance without grasping at it--or without grasping it, which sounds like the same thing but is not. It breaks you down a little.

And then, broken down a little, you can be in the space with the dancing.

You might notice, again in Brown and Courchel's interactions, that nothing ever seems completed. They resemble circus acrobats making all-essential connections of their hands without the payoff of the anticipated risky and thrilling trick. You learn to not look for any payoff there or anywhere else in the hour-long piece. It's like asking a question and not waiting for an answer because the first response and the one after that and the one after that one is an endless series of new questions. The way it's not ever going to be clear why choreographer Kinzel parks Courchel by the studio's mirror wall for a long stretch of time, or why the light, springy dancer slips from angelic to demonic to Apollonian in a single evolving passage. Or why, at a later moment, Courchel and Kinzel clasp and lock hands, their conjoined arms violently writhing as if electrified. Answers never come.

All of this forces you down into the quality(ies) of the movements and interactions, where there is pleasure if you watch for it. Choreography as microscopic lens. Have a look.

COWHAND CON MAN continues with 7:30pm performances tonight and tomorrow, resuming next week, Wednesday-Saturday, October 28-31. For information and ticketing, click here.

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

Paul West, 85

Paul West, Writer Who Shoveled Absurdity Into His Books, Dies at 85
by William Grimes, The New York Times, October 21, 2015

Cory Wells, 74

Cory Wells, Singer With Three Dog Night, Dies at 74
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, October 21, 2015

Please join me at these two special events!

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo: D. Feller)

I'm pleased to announce two special (and free) events coming up next month, and I hope to see you and your friends. Help spread the word!

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Join me and three dynamic dance artists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--for the next Center Line program at Gibney Dance:

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Tuesday, November 3 (6-8pm)

moderated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

("The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House" – essay by Audre Lorde, 1984)

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

 Admission free with RSVP here

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

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Please join me and some sensational guests for Movers and Shakers: Dance Activists in NYC at Brooklyn Historic Society -- Thursday, November 19, 6:30pm (FREE!)

New York City has always been a place where artistic expression and activism merge, and the dance world is no exception.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa leads a discussion about artistic expression as activism among pioneering dancers who are leaders in their genre including Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Camille A. Brown, Jason Samuels Smith and Ant Boogie.

Doors open at 6pm. Event begins at 6:30pm. Please note that seating is first come, first served.

Click here to RSVP!

Brooklyn Historical Society

128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn

Gamal al-Ghitani, 70

Gamal al-Ghitani, Egyptian Novelist, Dies at 70

by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, October 21, 2015

Oh, Canada!

Eh, Canada! Your new Prime Minister is gorgeous, progressive and supports the arts, too?

Why Canada’s New Prime Minister Might Be Good for the Arts, Eh?
by Gabriella Santiago-Vancak, Hyperallergic, October 20, 2015

TONY review: afroFUTUREqu##r

Hey, gang! I reviewed the Friday program of afroFUTUREqu##r (curated by Thomas DeFrantz and niv Acosta) at JACK for Time Out New York, and TONY had a delay in posting it. But you can find it now at this link.

Not the Master's Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Join me and three dynamic dance artists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--for the next Center Line program at Gibney Dance:

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Tuesday, November 3 (6-8pm)

moderated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

("The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House" – essay by Audre Lorde, 1984)

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

 Admission free with RSVP here

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

And the 2015 Bessies go to...!

With deep regret, I missed this year's Bessies celebration at the Apollo, as I'm struggling with the horrible cold that's going around. But I'm absolutely delighted to share this list of winners. Congratulations to everyone!

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Hosts with the mostest, Carmelita Tropicana and Jock Soto
on The Apollo stage
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu)

The 2015 NY Dance and Performance Awards

Lifetime Achievement in Dance

Steve Paxton

For a relentless curiosity into the possibility of movement, from the redefinition of modern dance with the movers who gathered at Judson Church in the 1960s, to the development of contact improvisation now practiced around the world, and for his ongoing rigorous and surprising choreographic investigations.


Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance

Movement Research

For nearly four decades as a creative incubator for innovation, enquiry, and dialogue. For providing a range of platforms to disseminate ideas about dance, art, and civic life via its classes, publications and weekly performance gatherings. For championing the importance of artistic process.


Outstanding Production

Dorrance Dance with Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely for The Blues Project at The Joyce Theater

For a symphonic dialogue between a stellar company of tap artists and a groundbreaking blues band; a true fusion of dance and music, expanding the boundaries of two great American traditions.


Outstanding Production

David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group for I Understand Everything Better, Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory

For creating a mysterious and whimsical world in which to explore the dual devastations of personal loss and public destruction, taking the audience on a visceral journey through internal and external storms.


Outstanding Production

Justin Peck for ‘Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes, New York City Ballet

For a bracing new interpretation of a well-known score, wiping it clean of prior associations and using it as the springboard for an entirely new ballet marked by wit, surprise, poignant intimacy, and robust ensemble energy.


Outstanding Production

Roger Guenveur Smith for Rodney King at BRIC Arts Media

For a powerful and timely performance using gesture, voice, and historical document to link the personal tragedy of Rodney King's life to our national tragedies of racism and police brutality.
For extending that conversation into the street in an improvised post-show town hall that evolved into a peaceful demonstration in reaction to the Eric Garner case unfolding in New York City.


Outstanding Revival

Alexei Ratmansky for The Sleeping Beauty, American Ballet Theatre

For recapturing the spirit and style of Petipa from 19th-century ballet notation starting with simple steps to reconstruct that world’s ideas about movement, musicality, aesthetics, and storytelling in dance.


Sustained Achievement in Performance (posthumous)

Lawrence Cassella for his work with Ivy Baldwin

For the ability to be smooth, strong, fast, fearless, dangerously sexy, and bizarrely hilarious. For more than a decade of creation in a richly intertwined collaboration with choreographer Ivy Baldwin.


Sustained Achievement in Performance

Lauren Grant for her work with the Mark Morris Dance Group

For nearly two decades’ work gracing Mark Morris’ choreography with invigorating spontaneity, expansive phrasing, and robust musicality. For bringing to life an extensive and varied repertory, embodying the essence and individual tone of each work.


Sustained Achievement in Performance

Amar Ramasar for his work with New York City Ballet

For his natural ease and contemporary presence on the classical stage. For his ongoing contributions to a wide range of new ballet work, and for his sensitivity and skill in the demanding and sometimes unseen art of partnering.


Outstanding Performance

Ryoji Sasamoto in OQ by Kota Yamazaki at Japan Society

For his mastery and presence in a dance palace filled with extraordinary movers. For a never-ending flow of movement merging an ingrained sense of lock and pop with a contemporary sense of fluid release.


Outstanding Performance

Melissa Toogood for her work in the 2014−15 season with Pam Tanowitz, Kimberly Bartosik, Merce Cunningham, Rashaun Mitchell, Stephen Petronio, and Sally Silvers

For dancing so precise and fluid, elegant and electric, it captivates the viewer in each work in which she appears. For committing herself so completely to enhancing and transforming the vision of an astounding number of unique choreographers.


Outstanding Sound Design

Tei Blow for I Understand Everything Better by David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory

For a virtuosic live audio performance mixing recorded sounds, percussive rhythms, a live mic, and spinning vinyl to transport the audience from the mountains of Japan to the hurricane-ravaged shores of New York.


Outstanding Visual Design

Geoff Sobelle, Steven Dufala, Christopher Kuhl, Nick Kourtides, Jamie Boyle, and Rachel McIntosh for The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle at BAM Fisher

For creating an immersive environment built from the material debris of an individual life. For sparking curiosity in the audience about the need, meaning, and weight of their own lives’ objects.


As previously announced, the 2015 Emerging Choreographer Award was given to Storyboard P for fusing various styles of hip-hop with elements of modern and jazz dance, creating a cinematic choreographic vision for new dance narratives and abstract movement-based works. The 2015 Juried Bessie Award was given to Pavel Zuštiak for his poetic layering of movement and visual imagery, and conceiving of the stage space as a decentralized world in which the corporeal body is the focus and canvas for a wide range of human expression.


The full list of nominees can be found at: http://bessies.org/2015-nominees-announced/.


2014−15 Bessie Committees

The Bessie Awards Steering Committee, responsible for setting policy and providing oversight of the Bessie Awards throughout the year, is comprised of Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Lane Harwell, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Stanford Makishi, Carla Peterson, Laurie Uprichard, and Martin Wechsler.

The Bessie Awards Selection Committee consists of Nolini Barretto, Diana Byer, Kim Chan, H.T. Chen, Blondell Cummings, Nancy Dalva, Andrew Dinwiddie, Maura Donohue, Simon Dove, Boo Froebel, Laurel George, Caleb Hammons, Zhenesse Heinemann, Iréne Hultman, Robert LaFosse, Matthew Lyons, Nicole Macotsis, Caridad Martinez, Harold Norris, Nicky Paraiso, Mathew Pokoik, Susan Reiter, Rokafella, Walter Rutledge, Sue Samuels, Philip Sandstrom, Gus Solomons Jr., Sally Sommer, Risa Steinberg, Carrie Stern, Kay Takeda, David Thomson, Muna Tseng, Kay Turner, Tony Waag, Edisa Weeks, Ryan Wenzel, Adrienne Westwood, and Elizabeth Zimmer.


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ABOUT THE BESSIES

The NY Dance and Performance Awards have saluted outstanding and groundbreaking creative work in the dance field in New York City for 31 years. Known as “The Bessies” in honor of revered dance teacher Bessie Schönberg, the awards were established in 1984 by David White at Dance Theater Workshop. They recognize exceptional work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. Nominees are chosen by a 39-member selection committee comprised of artists, presenters, producers, and writers. All those working in the dance field are invited to join the NY Dance and Performance League, as members participate in annual discussions on the direction of the awards and nominate members to serve on the selection committee. www.bessies.org

Encountering Moriah Evans at Danspace Project

(Photo courtesy of Moriah Evans)

My heart sank a little when I heard the words "You'll be sitting on cushions" as I waited in line to be admitted to Moriah Evans's new ensemble piece SOCIAL DANCE 9-12: ENCOUNTER last night at Danspace Project. But when my group's usher led the ten of us up stairs and around the St. Mark's balcony, I was thrilled to look down upon the sanctuary's light-filled space, the gleaming white floor covering and its sprinkling of dancers in black-and-white unitards, the rim of observers already perched on their spartan foam cushions.

For the moment, it was as exciting as entering the arena of an ice skating show or the stands of a stadium lit up for a night game. My mood brightened and brightened still more when our usher directed me and another woman to sit, not on one of the thin, little grey cushions, but on a sturdy riser. As a few more waves of people arrived, I noticed many smiles. The trip around the balcony might have worked a similar charm for them.

The practical matter of getting an audience neatly organized meshed with the dramatic aesthetics opened up by St. Mark's Church. My first personal encounter with Moriah Evans--I had read some interviews and watched a video of earlier work--made a good first impression.

At the same time, I realized that Evans had put all of us--the audience, including numerous members of the dance press, and her dancers--on the same level. Her dancers--Maggie Cloud, Lizzie Feidelson, Iréne Hultman, Rashaun Mitchell, Lydia Okrent and Benny Olk--sat or reclined on the floor or crawled into place, at times just inches away from the front row of watchers. The big volume of the sanctuary and its dazzling white contrasted with their stillness and the smallness of the way one or another might incline his or her head. You had to be up close to a dancer to catch the momentary distorting twist of a mouth. And you had to be willing to let go of that inexplicable moment as the dancer might summarily rise and wander off to a far corner.

With Social Dance 9-12: Encounter, choreographer Moriah Evans investigates a “possible core of the choreographic” where mind and muscles are at work together in search of a dance. In the process of looking and being looked at, acts of repetition and simulation get filled with life and exchange.

"The theatrical event moves towards the transmission and circulation of sentiment through the re-positioning of its participants. What may be social in origin becomes biological and physical in effect.” –Moriah Evans

          from promotional material for Social Dance 9-12: Encounter

Now and again, Evans--usually with a dancer in tow--would cross the side risers and position herself along one end or another. It looked as if she was carrying a paperback book and something else. A dancer might carry a CD player. Under the altar arch, members of Evans's team sat at tables with laptops. A rack of clothing stood to one side and, at the other, long packing tubes were propped against the wall; neither items were touched but the arrangement left the impression of being admitted backstage to a theatrical work in development. If you had come for something definitive, perhaps think again. We are all "in search of a dance."

Dancers showed me something elusive, too--a kind of impassive, remote-controlled behavior that felt odd to see but also oddly pleasant. A dancer would pivot his or her head and chin, or gently slip into positions and rest there, or make leisurely adjustments in stance or level. I could visualize Evans fixing her gaze at a dancer's body and thinking, "You know what? I'm going to rotate her shoulders inward and make her hold them that way as she slowly hunches forward and lowers her fingers to the floor, and I'm going to do that because nobody else asks her to use her body that way. Nobody. And why not?"

At times, the dancers' physical adjustments made them look like objects of clay stripped of human agency, and I questioned, or did not question, my enjoyment of this abstract claymation. At times, the adjustments made me think of time-lapse films of unfurling flowers or sprouting ferns, at least two different kinds of visible or invisible time simultaneously working through the body.

The day/night unitards distorted any sense of the true size and weight of the dancers' bodies. My eyes registered the black area as solid dancer; the white tended to merge with the surrounding floor. When the dancers moved, these illusions made their bodies look extra-melty, bendy, stretchy. In one moment, the lights quickly dimmed, engulfing the space and dancers before gradually recovering. How strange to realize that, despite the brevity of the dancers' absence from view, I had missed them.

David Watson's sound score shimmered in and out of awareness, light as breath. How often do you stop to notice the fact and the minute workings of your breathing?

How does the spacing of the dancers across the floor--fish in Evans's aquarium-- affect our relationship to them? Close up, you can notice minute shifts and eccentricities. To connect with a dancer further away, you must shift in some way; you project something of yourself into the space, and doesn't that feel strange and marvelous?

Ah...and isn't that how she catches us like more exotic fish for her tank?

There is a real way in which we are pulled in, plugged in and deeply implicated and impacted at a level of breath, nerves, mind. Although just one hour and 15 minutes in length, Social Dance 9-12: Encounter looks like an act of endurance and can leave even observers feeling spent.

With visual design by Strauss Bourque-La France and Moriah Evans, and lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann

SOCIAL DANCE 9-12: ENCOUNTER continues tonight and Saturday, October 17 with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Decolonizing mind, language, history

Clockwise from left:
Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi (photo: Ben Carver),
Tommy Pico (photo: Tommy Pico),
Mette LouLou von Kohl (photo: Laura Bluher)

Hosted by artist-activist Dan Fishback, DECOLONIALLY QUEER drew quite a crowd to a small studio--legal capacity: 78, and things were kept legal, more or less--at NYU's Performance Studies department. The program--a collaboration of The Helix Queer Performance Network, Queer Union-NYU and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics--featured three queer artists of indigenous heritage and offered a bracing corrective to the week's traditional Columbus Day commemoration. In fact, if performers Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Tommy Pico and Mette LouLou von Kohl could agree on an anthem for Decolonially Queer, it might well be Fuck Columbus and The Ship He Rode Over In, a sentiment the evening made abundantly clear.

Each artist rallied the strength of resistance and self-definition. Kumeyaay poet Pico, self-described "weirdo Indian faggot" living in Brooklyn--opened with wry defiance of typical expectations that he'd deliver a poem about nature--like "anemones and shit," "fodder for the Noble Savage narrative" before dazzling us with cracked wit and torrential delivery. Nature emerged in Pico's own time, on his own terms, giving us images of hills with "backs that love being stroked by our eyes" and the sky as the sole "stellar inheritance" shared by himself and his ancestors.

Lady Dane--accomplished singer, dancer, writer and ritualist--declared herself "the mother of a verbal revolution" powered by the complex experience of being a trans woman at the intersection of African, Cuban and indigenous American cultures. "Growing up, I was told by my elders, 'You have to read people who look like you.'" Stripping off her high-heeled sandals--"I'm decolonizing my feet, bitches!"--she wove a partly-sung incantation designed to shake listeners awake. Later, in the talkback moderated by Marlène Ramírez-Cancio of the Hemispheric Institute, Lady Dane spoke of her influences--outspoken singers like Nina Simone and Abby Lincoln, formal gestures recorded in Egypt's ancient hieroglyphs, rich ancestral practices disrupted by colonization and now reclaimed. In her work, she confronts English, crafting ways to turn that language into a protective and healing force.

Von Kohl's performance incorporated dance, photography, video, audio and voice in a poetic and moving evocation of her Palestine at a time before Israeli occupation. With Lebanese/Palestinian (mother) and Danish (father) ancestry, she speaks only English and French; we hear speaking French as she portrays her cigarette-smoking grandmother. Unlike her grandmother, though, von Kohl speaks no Arabic, and that disconnection pains her.

In silence, she crushes an orange she had carefully, tenaciously grasped between her jaws--juice, pulp and seeds falling at her feet. "To remember is to resist," she later tells us. With that precious orange, she calls attention to the richness of the land, the once-earthy wealth of Palestine before Israeli occupation, when her parents were orange farmers. "This is not about nostalgia," she says. "This is about memory as a weapon, as noise for the silenced."

All three artists grapple with the limitations and creative possibilities of language. For queer artists of color, indeed, this struggle has high stakes, meaning the difference between erasure and empowered presence. Pico remarks that he had to "flush all the ideas I had about poetry" and, instead, focus on "how do I sound?" Lady Dane studies, she says, "who I was before colonization; that's at the heart of everything I do."

The inspired and inspiring DECOLONIALLY QUEER ran for one night only, but you can keep up on Helix Queer Performance Network's future activities by clicking here.

BIOS:

LADY DANE FIGUEROA EDIDI

“The Ancient Jazz Priestess of Mother Africa” is an African, Cuban and Indigenous American performance artist, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, Author (Yemaya’s Daughters, Brew, Baltimore: A Love Letter), playwright, healer, cohost of Inside Out Radio Show, a member of Trans Women of Color Collective Leadership Team, a volunteer at Casa Ruby, and a founding member of interdisciplinary theater company Force/Collision. She began producing her own cabarets at the age of seventeen. In 2013 she became the first trans woman of color published author of a work of fiction in DC. She has also written the book and lyrics to Roaring The Musical.

TOMMY PICO

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the author of absentMINDR (VERBALVISUAL, 2014)—the first chapbook APP published for iOS mobile/tablet devices—was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has poems in BOMB, Guernica, and [PANK]. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and with Morgan Parker co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) @heyteebs

METTE LOULOU VON KOHL

Mette Loulou von Kohl was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. Currently based in New York City, Mette Loulou is a mixed-race queer femme, born to a Lebanese/Palestinian mother and Danish father. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco and Denmark. She is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. Mette Loulou weaves movement, words, and her love for the unexpected into the exploration of her embodied histories. Mette Loulou is a graduate of EMERGENYC- the Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program and participant of EmergeLAB and Needing IT ALL at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange. She is the co-founder of the performance collective A Beautiful Desperation and has performed both nationally and internationally in Canada and across Europe.

THE HELIX QUEER PERFORMANCE NETWORK

The Helix Queer Performance Network is a collaboration between La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics, seeking to nurture emerging queer performers, empower diverse queer communities, and celebrate the legacy and lineage of queer performance in New York City. Through educational initiatives, innovative stage productions and challenging public conversations that prioritize justice across age, race, class and gender, Helix aims to foster an inter-generational, multi-racial, multi-gender performance community where artists can document a broad spectrum of queer experience in the context of a rich artistic history.

LAST CHANCE: Watch out for ponydance!

Ireland's ponydance in action
at Abrons Arts Center
(below: Neil O'Brien lifting Leonie McDonagh)
Photos: Amanda Gentile

If the desperation and mayhem of a typical night out on the Lower East Side doesn't faze you, you should really, really, really like ponydance. And you won't even miss your chance to score a drink. You can get a free one right in the performance space and sip as you watch. What could be more convenient?

The intrepid comedy dance troupe, hailing from Ireland and Northern Ireland, wraps up its run of Anybody Waitin'?  tonight at Abrons Arts Center. With a quirky arrangement of seating, ponydance has made an already small space even moreso by allowing performers a mere melon slice of room to romp in and putting the audience well within reach of kicking feet, hurling bodies and smeary lipstick. That's right, but I'm not going to tell you to sit in the back. What would be the fun of that?

You can't run. You can't hide. But you can tuck your feet in and tilt out of the way.

With a comic and choreographic aesthetic that sweatily embraces dance competitions, music videos, speed dating and pole dancing, Anybody Waitin'?  is certainly not waitin' around for Godot or anybody else. I can scarcely imagine a more proactive bunch of artists or characters, and their approach to audience engagement is more like audience forced marriage. Seriously. Have that drink.

Leonie McDonagh, Paula O'Reilly--Google Images thinks she resembles Paula Deen!--Duane Watters and Neil O'Brien dance their wildly-costumed, skit-like duets and coordinated routines like demons. Tight and with superhuman energy and edge. They are intensely funny.

The show--curated by Laurie Uprichard and co-presented with Irish Arts Center--runs roughly an hour, give or take a few audience-inspired antics I'll leave to your anticipation. Anybody Waitin'? concludes with two performances tonight: 6pm and 9pm. Click here for information and tickets.

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

Chantal Akerman, 65

Chantal Akerman, Whose Films Explored Women’s Inner Lives, Dies at 65
by Rachel Donadio and Cara Buckley, The New York Times, October 6, 2015

Jock Soto and Carmelita Tropicana to host Bessie Awards

Carmelita Tropicana
(photo: Uzi Parnes)

Jock Soto
(photo: Rosalie O'Connor)

The 2015 awards show of the New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) will be hosted by former New York City Ballet principal Jock Soto and performance artist and playwright Carmelita Tropicana at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater on Monday, October 19.

Doors open at 6:30pm for red carpet and pre-show celebrations, and the awards show begins at 7:30pm with an illustrious lineup of presenters, including Marcelo Gomes, Rennie Harris, Linda Celeste Sims, Kyle Abraham, Liz Prince and Ivy Baldwin.

Bessie Award-winning artists Camille A. Brown, Lisa Nelson and Storyboard P, recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award, will perform.

The evening will also include special presentations to Steve Paxton, recipient of the 2015 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and Movement Research, for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

Get more information and your tickets for the 2015 Bessies celebration here.

The Apollo Theater 
253 West 125th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Henning Mankell, 67

Henning Mankell, Dean of Scandinavian Noir Writers, Dies at 67
by Jonathan Kandell, The New York Times, October 5, 2015

Wilton Felder, 75

Wilton Felder, Saxophonist for the Crusaders, Dies at 75
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, October 3, 2015

TONY review: Patricia Hoffbauer's "Dances for Intimate Spaces and Friendly People"

So many thoughts and feelings still aswirl, but I had to get this recommendation posted punchy quick for Time Out New York's purposes, since Hoffbauer's show is closing tonight. In any case, here's the link!

Brian Friel, 86

Brian Friel, Playwright Called the Irish Chekhov, Dies at 86
by Benedict Nightingale, The New York Times, October 2, 2015

Rage against the machine: James Thierrée at BAM Next Wave

James Thierrée in Tabac Rouge
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

James Thierrée with Valérie Doucet
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

What technical glitch kept a big, well-behaved audience standing for 45 minutes in the lobby of BAM Gilman for last night's performance of Tabac Rouge before ticket-takers finally opened the doors?

Here's my guess: James Thierrée's set. Specifically, the massive, mobile wall--old, discolored mirror panels on one side; dark, formidable lattice of pipes on the other.

This cleverly adaptable sculpture maintains such a crucial, active, nearly living presence throughout the 90-minute piece that you might argue for its status as lead dancer and star. And it has all the makings of a diva that you wouldn't want to cross, with capacity to maim its human co-stars--Thierrée and several members of his Compagnie du Hanneton--in any number of ways as they touch it, move it or scramble over it.

Did its lifting mechanism seize up? Or did it bop someone in the head? Mash a foot? Slice a hand?

Certainly, this structure sets the work's dystopian mood right off. The curtain rises on the wall, pipes-side forward, confronting the audience from the edge of a murky, smoke-filled stage. Viewers barely make out a few dancers crossing the back of the stage or clinging to frameworks that rise or descend. Now and then, a glow will flash from deep within the haze, like distant lightning. Fluorescent bulbs fire, here and there, but you quickly sense that any meaningful illumination (of the literal or metaphoric kind) will be hard-won.

Matina Kokolaki and other cast members in Tabac Rouge
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

Thierrée, a performer of exquisite physical skill, hails from a storied lineage: child of circus innovators Victoria Chaplin and Jean-Baptiste Thierrée; grandson of Charlie Chaplin; great-grandson of Eugene O’Neill. His previous confections have drawn from the worlds of mime, dance, physical theater and circus, but he considers this steampunk fantasy, Tabac Rouge, to be more in the realm of dance or dance-theater.

Whether bodies are swirling in smooth, circular patterns, hurling themselves with desperate, revolutionary fervor or twisting into showy contortions, the dancey-ness of Tabac Rouge seems pitched to fill space and time and the hunger for entertainment. The second-night audience--perhaps overeager after such a long wait to claim their seats--seemed to crave little things to chuckle at; their choices left me deeply uncertain.

Elements of dance, mime and circus seem stuffed into a container that, in itself, has no clearly thought-out identity. In place of a developed story, there appears to be a situation--Thierrée portraying, maybe, hallucinating, an ash-coated despot whose court includes a military man, a woman who might be a daughter and another who might be a lover, presumably survivors of an unspecified disaster. Things look not only grimy but grim despite dancing and clowning. The balance of power keeps shifting, sort of the way Thierrée's angular balances shift--continually, weirdly, improbably--when he dances.

It's material for a drama--in this rendering, only material. The piece lives, instead, in its central visual element, making Tabac Rouge most convincing and satisfying as art installation. I consider the wall's final, dazzling moments to be my reward for enduring that wait in the lobby.

With performances by Thierrée, Mehdi Baki, Valérie Doucet, Magnus Jakobsson, Namkyung Kim, Matina Kokolaki, Thi Mai Nguyen, Ioulia Plotnikova and Soa Ratsifandrihana

Direction, set design, and choreography: James Thierrée
Costumes: Victoria Thierrée
Sound design: Thomas Delot
Lighting: Bastien Courthieu

Tabac Rouge runs through Sunday, October 4.  For schedule and ticket information, click here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

I'm your puppet: Ronnie Burkett's marionettes at BAC

The actor Lovey Lunkhead (above)
and his creator, Ronnie Burkett (below)
in The Daisy Theatre
(photos: Hiroyuki Ito)

From the look and, especially, the sound of things at Baryshnikov Arts Center last evening, Canadian puppeteer extraordinaire Ronnie Burkett has a legion of south-of-the-border fans. And now he has one more, because I love him.

That's not too extreme a position to take, given how Burkett seeks to wring every bit of love and laughter out of audiences for his Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, putting a positive spin on the word manipulation.

The New York premiere of The Daisy Theatre stars a handful of Burkett's forty finely-designed creations--a motley crew who are impossible to resist--in acts ranging from burlesque to opera. Improvised around each marionette's personality and John Alcorn's loopy songs, the show has elastic tendencies. Performed without intermission, it can stretch from ninety minutes to two hours, depending upon how much fun Burkett is having with his marionettes, with volunteers from his audience and with the serendipity of any given moment.

Burkett indulges himself, and us, because he is a child. He is a happy child, standing up there on the bridge, deftly working the control bars and wires that give his marionettes uncanny, supple life. With his own marionette-like jaw, resplendent smile and maniacal, motormouth voice, he resembles someone from his nomadic tribe of performers. Or the Second Coming of Robin Williams. In fact, if you find yourself gazing up at Burkett about as much as you watch the marionettes acting out below, you would not be wrong--or alone. He's a huge, huge part of the show.

Burkett and his rotating cast of characters
(photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

Steeped in fearless queer attitude, profane language and racy innuendo, The Daisy Theatre ain't puppetry for tots, and anyone under 16 will not be admitted. But anyone over 16 will enjoy the likes of sweet, yearning "fairy child" Schnitzel (a stand-in for Burkett's inner child, I suspect) and Las Vegas belter Rosemary Focaccia, a-shimmy in fringe dress and knee-high boots, hair-trigger rage and foul mouth out of all proportion ("I know people, Baryshnikov! Don't cross me!!"). An eerie segment featuring marionette Meyer Lemon--an ancient master ventriloquist--and his dummy stood out for near-literary, surreal quality and Burkett's exacting skill.

Acclaimed ventriloquist Meyer Lemon takes the spotlight.
(photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

I have no idea who--among all forty of the possible players--will perform when you see The Daisy Theatre and what they'll be up to. You'll be, in Burkett's words, one of the "poor bastards sitting in the dark not knowing what happens next."

How exhilarating!

Remaining performances:

Tonight, October 1, 7:30pm
Friday-Saturday, October 2-3, 8pm
Wednesday-Saturday, October 7-10, 8pm

Ronnie Burkett in Conversation:

A conversation with Ronnie Burkett and Kristy Edmunds of Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will be held in BAC's Jerome Robbins Theater on Monday, October 5 at 6:30pm. Reservations are not required.

Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)