Being.Here.NOW. with Pat Catterson

Moments of NOW.
(photos courtesy of Pat Catterson)

I love dancers, and I love dancing, and I find it meaningful and beautiful and spiritual.

--Pat Catterson

I do, too. All of the above. And if you feel the same way, you'd likely enjoy NOW., a challenging experiment choreographer Pat Catterson and Paul Galando conducted yesterday at NYU Tisch Dance and New Media, which Galando directs. Aside from being an experiment in bringing ocean-separated dancers together in real time via Skype™, it was simply an afternoon of lovely movement by seventeen skilled and lovely movers spanning time zones.

An audience member could freely move between and sit or stand in two studios--the second one divided into two performance spaces--to watch the simultaneous performances. Studio 1 held several monitors and a wide projection screen, and it hosted a series of solos, group movement sequences and a video of Catterson dancing the material. The spaces on the left and right sides of Studio 2 each had its own screen and hosted a series of duets.

"No one will see everything," Catterson noted. "But everyone will see all the dancers" over seventy minutes or so. "The seams will show. It's technology. The seams are part of the experience."

Technical seams did indeed show but, as far as I could see, not until late in the game with all seventeen dancers waiting to perform together in Studio 1 as present bodies or distant images. But by that time, I suspect, nobody begrudged a few glitches here or there.



In Studio 2, individually-performed duets overlapped in-studio dancers with onscreen folks from places like Buenos Aires and Amsterdam and Tokyo. The design was most often clean, open, like fine, sprightly lines on watercolor paper drawn in a confident hand. The energy was all in those lines, nothing overdramatic or extraneous, although perky playfulness (Aisha in Paris at 6:37; Macy here in New York at 12:37) or watchful curiosity sometimes sparked between duet partners.

In Studio 1, a glance and smile might bridge gaps between dancers of the ensemble. As each of Studio 2's duets concluded or were about to begin, one or another dancer would exit Studio 1's ensemble or return to it, giving a sense of the dance as a sprawling continuum continuously refreshing itself.

"I have an excellent memory, back to when I was three," Catterson said in the post-performance Q&A. "Past, present and future are one. The present is just one thing."

As a watcher, I could create my experience through my own movement in space--from room to room, from standing to sitting. It came to feel as if dance could be an everyday thing going on all day. I could be present for all without tiring.

If Catterson gets her wish, she'll find a museum willing to host NOW., and run it all day. Fingers crossed!

NOW. Dancers:

Irina Baldini (Amsterdam)

Gry Bech-Hanssen (Oslo)

Brynt Beitman (New York)

Mauro Sebastian Cacciatore (Buenos Aires)

Emilia Gasiorek (Copenhagen)

Pierre Guilbault (New York)

Sarah Haarmann (New York)

Gina Ianni (New York)

Tomoko Maeda (Tokyo)

Adele Nickel (New York

Maia Ramnath (New York)

Rodolfo Saraiva (Dortmund)

Sania Strimbakou (Athens)

Macy Sullivan (New York)

Asha Thomas (Paris)

Joshua Tuason (New York)

Maria Uppin (Tallinn)

*****

See NOW. today at noon.
NYU Tisch, 111 Second Avenue, 4th Floor, Manhattan

*****

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Yvonne Chouteau, 86

Yvonne Chouteau, Native American Ballerina, Dies at 86
by Jack Anderson, The New York Times, January 29, 2016

Jacques Rivette, 87

Jacques Rivette, Enigmatic French New Wave Director, Dies at 87
by David Kehr, The New York Times, January 29, 2016

Shannon Gillen's Vim Vigor troupe premieres "Separati"

Shannon Gillen's Separati
(photos: Arnaud Falchier)

Separati enters the turbid psychic space of highway travel and anonymous companionship. Caught up at a midway point, five characters travel through the past, present and dark hallucinatory projections of the future. Stilled periods of waiting juxtapose wild physical bouts of surreal movement, as reality gives way to the imagination. What is the distance between where we have come from and where we want to go? Between what happens to us and who we are? Can the space between bodies and ideas ever be joined? And if not, can we exist in the middle ground of separation?

Separati--Shannon Gillen's hour of dance theater at Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center--left me winded and feeling pistol-whipped. I would have checked her Vim Vigor Dance Company for bruises and sprains, but I was too busy checking myself.

And its psychic space really is "turbid," as advertised. With its Edward Hopper lighting and its stark old phone booth isolated in the middle of nowhere, Separati strands its characters, and its watchers, in a nightmare between real life and the surreal. Unpredictable cacaphony--disembodied or channeled voices that taunt and mock; pop-up music, new and nostalgic; assortments of sounds--would be enough to make anyone want to claw her way back to wakefulness. But it's the choreography for the five characters--seemingly rootless travelers who hook up and entangle--that takes the greatest toll.

(photos: Arnaud Falchier)

Jason Cianciulli and Martin Durov portray two creepy men, endlessly controlling and abusive; Laja Field, Lavinia Vago and Emma Whiteley, the women caught in their magnetic force field. Separati might need to come with a trigger warning.

I'm not sure about Gillen's murky questions about "the space between bodies and ideas" and "can we exist in the middle ground of separation." All I can say is it would have been far better had these bodies, these human gyroscopes, never closed any separating gap. As hard to watch as it is, the action exerts punishing, diamond-making pressure on these performers, and they are absolutely there for that pressure.

Although Gillen herself boasts an extensive international career in performance and dancemaking, Vim Vigor is a young venture, just formed in 2015. Given the all-out dancing and acting on display in Separati--and Gillen's impressive direction--this troupe bears watching. Fortify yourself and go tonight or tomorrow at 7:30pm. For tickets, click here.

Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center
29 Jay Street (between John and Plymouth Streets), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Paul Kantner, 74

Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane Dies at 74
by William Grimes, The New York Times, January 28, 2016

Anna Laerkesen, 73

Anna Laerkesen, Danish Ballerina With Poetic Originality, Dies at 73
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 27, 2016

Mrinalini Sarabhai, 97

Mrinalini Sarabhai, Renowned Indian Classical Dancer, Dies at 97
by Nida Najar, The New York Times, January 27, 2016

Thornton Dial, 87

Artist Thornton Dial, an American Genius, Dies at 87
by Edward M. Gómez, Hyperallergic, January 26, 2016

Girl Be Heard on eating disorders and the diet industry

Members of Girl Be Heard
perform Embodi(ED).
(photo: Ashley Marinacccio)

They will inform, delight, alarm and help you to reawaken
that authentic voice that still lives within you. – Gloria Steinem

Girl Be Heard--the award-winning troupe that empowers girls to tell their real-world stories with guidance from theater professionals and activists--announces Embodi(ED), a dance and theater piece about eating disorders and "the American distorted perception of body images."

Directed by Ashley Marinaccio, and produced by theater-maker and activist Jessica Greer Morris, the production will run at HERE for eight performances, Thursdays through Sundays, February 11-21.

All performances will be followed by a 15-minute talkbacks, featuring health professionals, women’s rights activists and the creative team.

For Embodi(ED) tickets, 

click here or call 212-352-3101.

Learn more about Girl Be Heard 

here and on YouTube.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/girlbeheard

Twitter: @girlbeheard

HERE

145  Sixth Avenue (entrance: Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Abe Vigoda, 94

Abe Vigoda, Actor of ‘Godfather’ Fame, Dies at 94
by Stuart Lavietes, The New York Times, January 26, 2016

Guest curators offer food for thought at Danspace Project

Earlier in the day, I screened a documentary about Yvonne Rainer in which Rainer quipped, "I love existing in front of spectators."  And I had been thinking about the way performance is less a game to be played and won or lost with good or bad reviews than an invitation to someone's world. In the case of the frequent reviewer, that's like frequent flying. I have decades worth of miles and navigation within worlds created by others.

Thinking of it this way removes the pressure to level judgment and opens up some room for...whatever. For Yvonne Rainer's existence, certainly.  For Larissa Velez-Jackson's star crap. For the pleasure curator Ali Rosa-Salas intimated by calling her Food for Thought program "pleasure principles."

Rosa-Salas was the second of three guest curators recruited by Danspace Project for this season's Food for Thought (the series title referring to DP's canned food drive for the food distribution program at St. Mark's; donate a couple, get a ticket discount). Her evening last night brought us performances by serpentwithfeet,  Jasmine Hearn, Dan and Lindsay Reuter, and Jonathan González. These artists had also contributed words to something not labeled an artist statement inviting us to follow our pleasure, our melancholy, our bliss.

serpentwithfeet ("a brooklyn based singer") whose two performances opened and closed the evening--presented the challenge of being completely unfamiliar to me and being about sound instead of dance. I entered his world and bonded with him over the superior metallic gleam of his emerald green nails. I stayed for the way his perfected R&B voice and stylings layered over classical music. His voice had a right (and a rite) to be there, and I took instruction from that. I found myself thinking visually as I listened to him. He wasn't dancing, and there were no projections. Yes, with his piercings, skirt, sneakers, those nails, he was a certified work of art. But something else happened in which I saw what his voice was doing and, sorry, I can't explain it.

I have seen Jasmine Hearn dance, admirably, with Marjani Forté-Saunders (and, I think, Ni'Ja Whitson maybe?). Her solo, cinder, seems like attempts to reach out through voice, through sound, through direct address to a watching, unfortunately passive crowd--"I need an adjective! How are you feeling?" But I found myself looking past all that, almost softly batting it away so that I could concentrate. What shined through was Hearn herself--uncommonly pliable, mercurial, intense, physically invested to the max with zero caution, allowing no daylight between herself and her choreography. She began the work as if carving herself out of darkness and ended it by returning to the dark. In between, she burned and glowed.

Dan and Lindsay Reuter's Annie largely evaporated around me. I followed along behind their backs, noting the drab coloration of their costumes, and lost track of them somewhere atop the church's altar steps. For some reason, I never found my way around.

This is the second time I've seen work by Jonathan González; the first time was on a shared program at BAAD! It seems the world he makes is about taking ordinary things--the space, the lighting, his body parts, his voice--and twisting them into unfamiliarity and absurdity. So, if you visit one of his worlds, no matter what you bring in your knapsack, you will never be prepared. Even as the experience winds down, González will find a way to subvert your expectations of an ending. I enjoyed the way he did it this time.

Let's hope that, despite the snowstorm, the third and final evening of Food for Thought will be able to run tonight at 8pm. Curated by Greta Hartenstein, the program will feature work by Ayesha Jordan and André D. Singleton. Check online for details and updates. If it's on, don't forget to bring a couple of cans.

UPDATE: Tonight's program has been cancelled due to weather conditions. Stay safe!

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

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

"Dance on Camera" at Film Society of Lincoln Center, February 12-16

Above: Dance artist and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer in
Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer
Below: Cuban ballerina Viengsay Valdés in
Horizons/Horizontes
These two documentaries will be screened
at Film Society of Lincoln Center
in the 2016 Dance on Camera festival.

Curated by Liz Woolf and Joanna Ney, the 2016 edition of Dance on Camera once again explores the multifaceted histories and expressions of dance through film documentaries, shorts, features, experimental works, and music videos. You won't want to miss Jack Walsh's Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer, an engrossing collage of interviews and footage in which radical dance artist Rainer, now 81, reveals "I love existing in front of spectators" and traces her adventurous, eccentric pathway from the Judson revolution to her filmmaking work and subsequent return to choreography. Why not subtitle this The Lives of Yvonne Rainer? She's had as many as any wily cat.

See Feelings Are Facts (82 min) on the festival's closing night, Friday, February 16 at 8pm, including a Rainer/Walsh Q&A. (Click for details and tickets.)

I also got advance look at two films with a Cuban connection:

My body is in Cuba, but my soul is in Africa, and it is my African soul that nourishes my Cuban body.

--Alfredo Duquesne Mora (El Duque), Cuban artist, woodcarver and stonemason, in They Are We

They Are We: In this affecting film, anthropologist and first-time director Emma Christopher documents how she united people from an Afro-Cuban ethnic group, Ganga-Longoba, with their counterparts across the Atlantic in a Sierra Leone village. Learning that these Cubans, descendants of African slaves, know and regularly practice their traditional songs and dances, the Africans react with surprise, keen interest and generosity. Despite notable redundancy, Christopher's film has genuine emotional impact.

See The Are We (77 min) on Monday, February 15 at 3:15pm, including a Q&A with Emma Christopher. (Click for details and tickets.)

All along, I knew there's an easy life I could have chosen but did not.

--lyrics from "With My Heart" by Heidi Happy, in Horizons/Horizonte 

Horizons/Horizontes: Eileen Hofer connects intimate and ultimately poignant portraits of three generations of Cuban ballet dancers. The film opens with vintage footage of Cuba's queen of classical dance, the now nonagenarian Alicia Alonso, flawlessly performing multiple fouettes. Then Hofer quickly introduces us to two younger women aspiring to follow in Alonso's footsteps at Ballet Nacional de Cuba--Viengsay Valdés, a rising star, and Amanda de Jesús Pérez Duarte, a student hoping to join the company. Their stories demonstrate how much ballet requires--a sacrificial investment of body and psyche to create the illusion of effortless grace, an art both sensual and brutal. Cuba keeps ballet and its stellar dancers tied closely to the glory of its revolution--a political relationship completely unimaginable on the US scene.

See Horizons/Horizontes (71 min) on Saturday, February 13, 1pm. (Click for details and tickets.)

For a complete lineup of 

Dance on Camera screenings

and associated events, click here.

Screenings will be held at:

Walter Reade Theater
16 West 65th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Panels and free events will be held at:

Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Auditorium
144 West 65th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Dance/NYC to present seventh annual Symposium

On Sunday, February 28, the advocacy organization Dance/NYC will convene its seventh annual symposium, featuring panels, workshops, legal and management consultations, film screenings and more. Hosted by Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, the event aims to confront issues of dance education, racial equity, technology, dance in public spaces, and the accessibility of dance to performers and audiences with disabilities.

Keynote speakers include Misty Copeland (American Ballet Theatre), Virginia Johnson (Dance Theatre of Harlem), Edwin Torres (Acting Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs), and Darren Walker (Ford Foundation).

Brother(hood) Dance! Collective (Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr and Ricarrdo Valentine) will offer a performance of Black Jones, "an exploration of manhood through the naked lens of two same-gender loving men" activating "their emotional and spiritual selves."

For complete schedule and registration information for Symposium 2016, click here.

For complete information and registration for the Disability. Dance. Artistry pre-symposium (Saturday, February 27), click here.

Volunteers are welcome. Click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

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

(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Ettore Scola, 84

Ettore Scola, Italian Film Director of Satire and Farce, Dies at 84
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, January 20, 2015

Leila Alaoui, 33

Leila Alaoui, Photographer Wounded in Burkina Faso Siege, Dies at 33
by Dan Bilefsky, The New York Times, January 19, 2016

Glenn Frey, 67

Glenn Frey, a Founding Member of the Eagles, Dies at 67
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 18, 2016

C. D. Wright, 67

C. D. Wright, Poet of Ozarks and Beyond, Dies at 67
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, January 16, 2016

Got to be real: "Star Crap Method" at American Realness '16

Star Crap Method is Larissa Velez-Jackson’s compositional methodology that complicates and redefines the skill set of the contemporary dancer and functions as an absurd exposé of the inner workings of the dancer in process. Performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein and Larissa Velez-Jackson collectively compose the entire work in real time, including the sound score of live vocals and digital sound. Bessie-award-winning lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann improvises illumination throughout. The work is founded on Velez-Jackson’s improvisational practice that embraces technical brilliance and failure in equal measure, ushering in a form of interdisciplinary creative limitlessness with opportunities for great humor, and vulnerability.

I wanted to start off with that helpful promotional statement for Star Crap Method because if there's anything I'm sure of, it's that dancemaker Larissa Velez-Jackson is precise as heck about how she wants us to understand the power in any given mess. Sharing space with her and Epstein and Ashley yesterday at Abrons Arts Center was a workout, a vicarious exercise in trust and a parallel to the primordial dance of crap from which stars and planets arose.

Introducing Star Crap Method yesterday, Velez-Jackson called it "the complete encapsulation of my artistic identity" and, even more cheekily, "an emerging artist retrospective." It is definitely all about emerging. And what I take away from several hints sprinkled into live, improvised narration is just how much emerging has to do with breaking down.

Doing the thingness of my body. Thingness. One more time: thingness.

There are many people in me. Sometimes I am surprised who comes out front and who is left behind.

 I disintegrate for you....

I like the way Velez-Jackson encourages--no, requires--audiences to contribute to the crap without her being overbearing about it. She makes it fun. I like the way sincerity dances with satire, both partners quite nimble, ultimately inseparable. I like how the rigorous readiness of each of the three performers--their skills and charisma undeniable--supports and activates the rough materials of chaos. Abrons's space looked like what it is for Velez-Jackson and her collaborators: an ongoing workspace, with all manner of mystery debris--including a fourth person, hooded, masked, possibly sleeping--carelessly thrown against walls and into corners. I like that it's okay for us to see that, to give up any attempt to make things make sense and to give ourselves over to the electric flash of the moment, visual and verbal.

American Realness 2016 ends tomorrow, and you can try to get into the last performance of Star Crap Method tomorrow at 5:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Star Crap Method is presented in association with New York Live Arts.

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

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Circus at APAP: Acrobatic Conundrum (Seattle), Company Oktobre (Paris)

Dance, theater, performance folks, scoot over a bit, won't you? Circus has arrived, taking its place among the city's vast APAP-related offerings. The mission? To make visionary, contemporary circus as thriving an artform in the US as it is abroad. For the second year, Circus Now--the community's support and advocacy organization--has partnered with NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. The festival features six troupes and runs for three nights.

Circus Now: International Contemporary Circus Exposure 2016 opened last evening at Skirball with performances by Acrobatic Conundrum, a Seattle ensemble founded in 2012, and Company Oktobre, an accomplished trio of Parisian performers. Essentially two shows in one, the program ran over two hours. If you're going to program like that, I question the need to have festival MC Sxip Shirey--a musician and veteran of circus--consume time delivering two circus-boosting intros, each with its musical performance. One wild-haired man, his toys and his electronics can sound like a party in full throwdown, but a little of this goes a long way. Next time: One and done.

Acrobatic Conundrum's piece, The Language of Chance, frustrated me. The clear talents of the company--most notably, amiable and multi-skilled Ty Vennewitz--were not matched by signs that anyone grasped the potential dynamism of activating the entire stage space, not just filling it with decor, and the importance of pacing and smooth transitions. Performers often simply crouched or lurked within the set like deadweight while one or another person performed in the center. Contemporary circus can offer a more holistic, integrated stage with people and things cleverly interconnected and interacting. Done right, that makes for truly magical, unforgettable experiences in the theater. Acrobatic Conundrum has produced five shows and made it to this prestigious festival but, by evidence of The Language of Chance, it needs to step up its game.

After Acrobatic Conundrum, intermission, and Shirey Part II, I would have liked to come to Company Oktobre with something approaching freshness of eye and ear.  But that was not to be, which I regret because the sophisticated Oktobre--created by its performers, Eva Ordonez-Benedetto, Jonathan Frau and Yann Frisch and director Florent Bergal--deserves better attention. When you're presenting farce, your technique and timing must be razor-sharp. You have to quickly get your audience invested in your people--total strangers, usually--with their weird and tickling idiosyncrasies, their little sleight of hand tricks and struggles with props. In the case of Oktobre, you're asking watchers to toggle between baffling behavior and English supertitles that only deepen the absurdity. In all things, Company Oktobre is completely on point, and I look forward to any chance to see them again.

Circus Now: International Contemporary Circus Exposure 2016 continues tonight and concludes tomorrow night. Here's the lineup:

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 8pm

Water on Mars (Sweden)
Andréane Leclerc/Nadère arts vivants (Canada) — Whore of Babylon
Barely Methodical Troupe (England) — Bromance

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16

Aloft (US) — Dinner of our Discontent
Water on Mars (Sweden)
Barely Methodical Troupe (England) — Bromance

For complete festival information and tickets, click here.

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts 
566 LaGuardia Place (south of Washington Square Park), Manhattan
(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Triple "Realness" at Abrons: Lamar + Markey + Shelton Mann

As if the expected adventure of American Realness were not enough, I decided to turn it up a notch, at the last minute, by slipping in an extra show between the two I had already scheduled to see yesterday. So, basically, from around 5:30 to 10pm, I lived at Abrons Arts Center, dashing from M. Lamar (Destruction) to Erin Markey (A Ride on the Irish Cream) to Sara Shelton Mann (Sara (the smuggler)) with hurried bathroom breaks in between.

It was a popular evening at Abrons with the last two of these shows sold out, although the festival can always create ways to cram in the desperate. The extra audience seating at Sara (The Smuggler) tested me for claustrophobia, though I made it through just fine.

Markey's on for several more shows in Abrons's Experimental Theater before the end on Sunday, and her personal chemistry with co-star Becca Blackwell (so winning as "Irish Cream," a boat or a horse or...) anchors all the wild, comic tanginess and simmering eroticism. Accompanied by a rock band with music by Markey, Emily Bate and Kenny Mellman, this production is alive, crazed, relentless, voracious and completely irresistible. I'm glad I took a chance and made it in. (Click for scheduling/ticketing info.)

For Lamar's 70-minute solo, Destruction, the audience looks on from within a dimly-lit space (Abrons's Underground Theater) with a ceiling sloping darkly and heavily over a shallow performance area. The gloom and compression suit this project. An operatic lament co-written with Tucker Culbertson, Destruction calls vengeance on white supremacy and racist violence through art director Sabin Michael Calvert's creepy visuals (smoky stone crypt; coffin; handsome Black male corpse; severe subtitles) and the performer's countertenor pyrotechnics and piano work. Think Diamanda Galás but, in Lamar's words, "Negrogothic Devil worshipping free black man in the blues tradition." Lamar's vocals dip into the good well of Black spirituals and uppity-ism and have the tone of dread prophecy, swerving from stone-cold anger to bleak despair and back again. The number 2116 appears in the video projection, perhaps a hint that--despite the grieving singer's consigning everyone to hell--society might actually have something like 100 years to get its damn act together. 100 years--but no more.

Destruction continues tonight at 8:30pm and concludes with a 10pm performance on Saturday. Get more information and your tickets here.

Sara (the smuggler), an hour-long event by dance artist Sara Shelton Mann, is a patchwork infused with emotions, a performed life review, a fast trot from childhood through to the now, spoken in a great, gender-blurring, Lauren Bacall but a tad drier voice. (Her essential nature: "I've always felt kind of half on the planet and half off." Of discovering Contact Improvisation: "I got to touch people, and I didn't have to talk.") Her slipped-through history in dance--starring the likes of Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis and Remy Charlip--was less of a draw for me than her engagement with energy healing, which parallels mine. In this way, her hour did not disappoint as it folded in a guided meditation for her by Keith Hennessy, some shamanic-looking clearing work she unleashed upon the patient Kayvon Pourazar volunteering from the audience, and a vigorous somatic exercise for anyone who cared to participate.  (Closed)

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

If you like what you're reading, 

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Brian Bedford, 80

Brian Bedford, Peerless Classical Actor at Stratford and Broadway, Dies at 80
by Robert Simonson, Playbill, January 13, 2015

Alan Rickman, 69

Alan Rickman, giant of British film and theatre, dies at 69
by Catherine Shoard, The Guardian, January 14, 2016

Alan Rickman, Actor Known for ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Die Hard,’ Dies at 69
by David Itzkoff and Katie Rogers, The New York Times, January 19, 2016

Back to APAP: Regina Nejman at Dixon Place

Above, Brazil-born choreographer Regina Nejman
in Beautiful Figure
Below, Ryan Tully at piano and Julie Miller with Nejman
(photos: Julie Lemberger)

This past weekend, felled by the bad cold that's going around town, I missed some APAP-season shows I had long looked forward to seeing. I'm back now, and a full week it will be--culminating on Sunday with The Gathering, Camille A. Brown's annual event for Black women dance artists, scholars, educators and allies!

Last night, I made it to Dixon Place for a showing of Regina Nejman's work in progress, Beautiful Figure. I won't say too much about Beautiful Figure since it is, after all, still "in progress."  But it's worth keeping watch for an official launch. Ambitious in concept and design, though compact in length, this piece fully reflects the painstaking effort already invested in its development.

Nejman tackles the notion of beauty as conceptualized through historical and contemporary Western societies. Late in the piece, she also satirizes today's digital obsessions and hookup culture.

She opens with a duet danced with Julie Miller under dim, sculpting light, both women draped in rippled lengths of slate gray fabric. Ryan Tully, the work's composer, sits at his piano, playing spare, quiet notes that, in time, will build and recede in intensity. The women move through a string of languorous poses--twisted, arched, splayed, crossed--as if at the behest of an invisible painter. Later, each will gather a length of fabric to herself, flip it around with her feet and make a grand whirlpool of energy. The dance takes the women (and their fabric) through various transformations, and even draws Tully into an undertow coursing down centuries to the age of hip hop and sexting.

Cast-wise, Beautiful Figure is a cleverly expandable thing. As noted before, Tully gets swept up into movement and dialogue, an expansion that, amusingly, does not stop with him. Nejman demonstrates her ability to coordinate activity on intimate and large scales and shows a creative range--from exquisite to athletic, from quiet to raucous, from meditative to absurd. There's palpable tension beneath all the beauty on display--always--and an evident desire for freedom. She's convincing in most things, though perhaps not yet convincing in the way she appears to conclude with a note of hope for the arrival of that freedom.

Early on in the piece, before Nejman branched into text and satire, I noticed something interesting about her approach to movement. She made us see her and Miller's bodies as human first and foremost. Not abstractions. Not symbols. Not even tools for a choreographer, trained to deliver the assigned steps and shapes. I was struck by this: Here were women. Dancing. And, yes--despite our imagination of the imaginary "artist" sketching or painting them--these were women's bodies speaking for their lives as bodies. Real ones. And Nejman's insistence on giving us even a small glimpe of the human being within the choreographed body was...well, I can only call it beautiful.

Closed. For further information on Regina Nejman & Company, click here.

If you like what you're reading, 

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

David Margulies, 78

David Margulies, Mayor in ‘Ghostbusters,’ Dies at 78
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, January 12, 2015

Richard Libertini, 82

Richard Libertini, Character Actor With a Memorable Turn in ‘The In-Laws’, Dies at 82
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, January 11, 2016

Otis Clay, 73

Otis Clay, Soul and R&B Singer, Dies at 73
The Associated Press, The New York Times, January 11, 2016

Fly, fly, fly with Julie Ludwick's Fly-By-Night Dance Theater!

photo courtesy of Fly-By-Night Dance Theater

Audition/Scholarship News:

Fly-by-Night Dance Theater's annual scholarship audition for dancers of color  is coming this Sunday, January 17 (4:30-7pm). This free audition class celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Day. A few students will be selected for a course of study, under scholarship, with Julie Ludwick's Williamsburg-based aerial dance troupe.

For details on audition requirements and training schedules, click here.

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Billie Allen, 90

Billie Allen, Actress Who Bridged Racial Gap, Dies at 90
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 10, 2015

David Bowie, 69

David Bowie, the Legendary Musician, Has Died at 69
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 11, 2016

COIL 2016 festival: It's "DISCOTROPIC" down below

Diahann Carroll as the holographic Mermeia
from Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)
(photo from Starwarsholidayspecial.com)

Somewhere, there must be an Official Contemporary Performance Checklist that itemizes terms like "Afrofuturism" and "queer politics" and "the black female body," all of which show up in promotion surrounding niv Acosta's DISCOTROPIC (part of PS 122's COIL festival). I'm always wondering where this spaceship is headed; the answer isn't always clear. But DISCOTROPIC turns out to be a quality ride, bracing and perhaps as illuminating as any potential destination.

Running for ninety minutes, DISCOTROPIC utilizes rough basement space at Westbeth, artist housing in the West Village, including a recessed room, straight and spiral staircases and an ample platform. As architecture, DISCOTROPIC revels in the aesthetics of hide and seek, hear and strain to hear, sincerity and exhibitionism. Instrumental and electronic sound sources are tucked around the space, and bold, color-saturated video abstractions and lighting play a hallucinogenic role. Audience members stand to watch and--carefully, please--step here and there, following the actions of Acosta, Monstah Black, Justin Allen, Ashley Brockington and Dion TygaPaw.

DISCOTROPIC, we've been told, exists "between the pragmatic and the fantastical while exploring the relationship between science fiction, disco, astrophysics and the black American experience." The unseen, but presiding, archetypal figure here is the elegant Diahann Carroll. Specifically, Acosta's literature references Carroll's acting role as a sea creature in a 1978 television movie. Added to the cast after pressure to bring in a Black performer, Carroll portrayed not a flesh-and-blood woman but a sexy sea creature--and a hologram at that. Acosta sees Carroll's role as "an illusion that distills the ways in which the black female body has been consumed in mass media: as alien, bodacious, and marginalized."

That's a familiar concern in contemporary performance, and the bodies in Acosta's work, with booties frequently a'twerking at any and all angles, can be viewed in these ways, both boldly playing to and subverting exploitation.

"I exist for you. As you create me, yes, I control your reaction. I'm getting your message. Are you getting mine?" 

--Ashley Brockington in DISCOTROPIC

But I sensed something deeper going on in DISCOTROPIC that proved unique and exciting. I sensed the engineering of a durable spaceship.

My first inkling came as Monstah Black, back turned towards us, flailed his arms and slipped his sneakered feet over what appeared to be a layer of black sand in a recessed storage room. His "sand dancing," his more distinct stomp-and-drag rhythm, and a minute burst of shimmying had me thinking about vaudevillian dance acts. In a later segment, I watched the dancers form a tight, disciplined squadron in which various dancerly routines emerged, the sort of thing we used to see Black singing groups do to enhance the appeal of their acts. I thought of how some marginalized, underemployed tap dancers survived by teaching dance skills to these emerging pop and R&B artists.

Invoking We Travel the Spaceways, by future-perfect jazz priest Sun Ra, the cast's circling, metronomic, escalating vocal patterns suggest an evolution of something post-human, proto-robotic.  But not post-Black. Black survives in the rocking, the swinging and, eventually, in the excess--Acosta's beaming as joy leaps out of his vocal performance.

There's always something passed along, voice to voice, body to body. Something Black survives any alteration of form and any displacement of form, from Africa to the Americas, from the Americas to worlds beyond. Black always was and always will be.

DISCOTROPIC's remaining performances run today at 3pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 4pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Westbeth Artist Community
55 Bethune Street (corner of Washington Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Donna Uchizono's "Sticky Majesty" premieres at Gibney

Molly Lieber and Heather Olson dance in Sticky Majesty
at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center.
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Last night at Gibney Dance, as we waited for her show to begin, choreographer Donna Uchizono quietly, sweetly sidled up to members of her audience and dropped little bits of instruction. Something about a "forest view" and a "desert view."

Why can't she show up before every dance show, everywhere, not just her own? I, for one, would be delighted to see her.

And since Sticky Majesty--the new work from Donna Uchizono and the Professionals--splits its space, its cast of performers, its audience and its audience's visual focus, you might appreciate a little direction going in.

But here's what she does not tell you--at least, not while you're waiting for the dancing:

Sticky Majesty was conceived from the uneasy intimacy of one-on-one, invited tea-time conversations between Donna Uchizono and a spectrum of individuals with diverging socio-political views. The choreography and seating arrangement structured at angles means no one vantage point can claim an authoritative view of the dance. 

Sticky Majesty might have been sourced in those "uneasy" teas, but it strikes me as turning out to be more about consciousness than politics--at least, overtly. Maybe Uchizono is going where we need to go before we even get to politics. All I know is that the result is a big, saturated and really stunning work of weirdness--as wayward to our human eyes and, paradoxically, as tightly organized in its own way as a deep forest landscape.

Dancers Molly Lieber and Heather Olson were assigned to the side of the audience I inhabited, the "forest view," and they were marvelous to see, with movement so stark and dry and nonsensical and sometimes tense that I could squint at it and imagine tangled branches and twigs going every which way and mossed-over logs tumbled across the understory.

Their shifting within their corridor of space gave me a sometimes better, sometimes worse, sometimes frustrating, sometimes illuminating vantage point on Hadar Ahuvia, Sarah Iguchi and Meg Weeks moving in the space beyond. Barefoot and wearing sand-colored tulle like bridal veils, these three commanded their floor, mainly oriented towards the other half of the audience ("desert view"). They spent a scarily high percentage of their time dancing sur les demi-pointes, the minute movements of their indomitable, arched feet somehow making me perceive grains of sand--many, many, many of them.

The work stretches on for seventy minutes or so--which, as a matter of practicality, feels excessive. But Uchizono and collaborators David Shively (music) and Natalie Robin (lighting) have tossed practicality aside in favor of something that not only challenges your visual perspective but lights up your nervous system. And Michael Grimaldi's visual design makes quite fascinating and lovely use of the Gibney theater's little forest of columns.

Sticky Majesty continues through Saturday, January 16. For tickets and complete information (including special deals and onsite childcare reservations) click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

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

(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Save the date--February 17--for "Not The Master's Tools"

Ali Rosa-Salas

Jack Ferver

Maria Bauman

Great news!

Join us on Wednesday, February 17 (6-8pm) for the third edition of Not The Master's Tools at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center.

I'm excited to be moderating a new panel including:

Maria Bauman

Jack Ferver

Ali Rosa-Salas

and

Dan Safer

sharing their experiences, discoveries, alternative strategies and philosophies as artists, arts advocates and activists in New York.

Dan Safer

If you've joined us for previous editions of NTMT at Gibney, you know how full and valuable these discussions have been. Please don't miss your opportunity to meet and learn from our speakers, and bring your own thoughts and questions for our Q&A period.

NTMT is FREE. Please pass this announcement along to your friends and colleagues in dance and performance.

RSVP here!

We look forward to seeing you!

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

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

(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Pierre Boulez, 90

Pierre Boulez, Composer and Conductor, Dies at 90; a Postwar Force in Classical Music
by Paul Griffiths, The New York Times, January 6, 2016

Paul Bley, 83

Paul Bley, Adventurous Jazz Pianist, Dies at 83
by Ben Ratliff, The New York Times, January 5, 2016

Eugenie Schwartz, 64

Eugenie Schwartz, Artist From New Orleans, Dies at 64
by Penelope Green, The New York Times, January 5, 2016

Elizabeth Swados, 64

Elizabeth Swados, Creator of Socially Conscious Musicals, Is Dead at 64
by William Grimes, The New York Times, January 5, 2016

Vilmos Zsigmond, 85

Vilmos Zsigmond, Cinematographer, Dies at 85
by The Associated Press, The New York Times, January 3, 2016

She walks her dark road: "Antigona"

Acclaimed flamenco artist Soledad Barrio
with members of Noche Flamenca in Antigona
(photo: Zarmik Moqtaderi)

Nothing prepares you for Antigona, classical Greek tragedy viewed and renewed through the Spanish art of flamenco.

Perhaps you've read the primary source (Sophocles) or a recent review of Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca's production, now in its second New York run (West Park Presbyterian Church). Perhaps you've long followed the careers of Barrio and her husband Martín Santangelo, Noche Flamenca's artistic director. In the end, none of that matters. This Antigona, this phenomenon, will make your eyes fly open in surprise.

Ninety-minutes in length, with no intermission, it is dense but swift-moving, integrative theater by artists originally noted for the intimate simplicity and transparency of their approach to flamenco. Although Noche Flamenca has previously experimented with characters and storytelling, the company has never risked as much nor won as much as it has with Antigona. And no one can say "At least, see this show for Barrio's dancing," since every aspect of the production is carefully, generously wrought and woven into the whole, each working towards overall excellence.

Like the Sophocles play, Antigona is a highly moral and political work of theater, dramatizing the conflict between conventional law and a private sense of family honor and justice. In short, Antigone/a--daughter of Oedipus, former King of Thebes--loves her rebel brother Polynieces as much as the brother, Eteocles, who remained loyal to the state. Both are now dead by each other's hand, and the new king, their uncle Creonte, orders a fine burial for Eteocles while denying burial to Polynieces. This is anathema to the gods, and Antigona's anguished intervention draws her and those around her towards a dark fate.

The static church setting at West Park presents visual limitations--including, for the audience, level rows of pew seating--but dynamic stagecraft and variable temperatures of light stir the drama to life. Even without the warrior brothers' pivotal, badass dance battle, accompanied by rocking percussion and electric guitar, that pits the flamencero Polyneices (Carlos Menchaca) against the hip hop of Eteocles (Robert Wilson), this production would work for the typical attention spans of today. Fifteen scenes quickly tumble after and into one another. Instrumental and vocal music ring out strong. Dashes of lyric poetry, enough to give the gist of a singer's lengthier expression, are projected above the action. And the placement and movement of players continuously mutate, neatly exploiting every level, angle and corner of the stage. All of it comes at you without cease and with equal respect and weight afforded each discipline--dance, music, singing, acting, visual design.

Barrio dances at the corpse of Polyneices in Antigona.
(photo: Zarmik Moqtaderi)

Just turning focus to dance alone, you have Barrio sweeping through like a storm cloud. Never before has she danced better, attacking with the directive force and fullness of mature authority and, late in the play, with searing abandon. You're convinced the great performer has taken up sorcery with no qualms about slipping between the here-and-now and the world of the dead. But Barrio, lioness though she is, must share essential duties with Menchaca, Wilson, frequent partner Juan Ogalla (as Haemon, Antigone's bethrothed) who dances up an earthquake, and all of the tightly-orchestrated cast.

Juan Ogalla (Haemon) with Barrio
(photo: Zarmik Moqtaderi)

Singer Emilio Florido also stands out as an adroit, sassy Master of Ceremonies, and Marina Elana displays concentration and finesse in her dancing as well as unexpected comedy in her role as Ismene, a chatty Valley Girl narrator blithely filing her nails as her sister Antigona leads blinded Oedipus across the stage. In another wry scene, Creonte (the wonderful singer Manuel Gago) gets crowned with a matador's montera hat and drives hot pink bandilleras towards Ismene as she charges him, bar stool flipped up to her head like threatening horns.

Yes, comedy in the midst of tragedy. Antigona frequently toys with irreverent humor and does so in successful balance with other modes and moods. The power of political satire is key to understanding why Santangelo and Barrio felt moved to revive this ancient story: Antigone/a can illuminate any moment of social repression. Their publicity has referenced, among other things, its relevance to the Victorian era, South African apartheid and Franco's Spain.

Antigone, then, continues to walk her dismal road in all places and throughout eternity. And here's a thought to make you shudder: If inclined, one could also draw a parallel between this heroine's resistance--her adherence to personal belief against the rule of law--and the stance of, say, county clerk Kim Davis or some Oregon militia seizing a wildlife refuge.

Antigona continues through January 23. Click here for schedule information and tickets.

West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street (between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Natalie Cole, 65

Natalie Cole, ‘Unforgettable’ Voice, Dies at 65
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 1, 2016

Wayne Rogers, 82

'MASH' Star Wayne Rogers Dies at 82
by Antoinette Bueno, Entertainment Tonight, December 31, 2016