Imre Kertesz, 86

Imre Kertesz, Nobel Laureate Who Survived Holocaust, Dies at 86
by Jonathan Kandell, The New York Times, March 31, 2016

Zaha Hadid, 65

Zaha Hadid, Groundbreaking Architect, Dies at 65
by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, March 31, 2016

Egypt's Hafez and HaRaKa bring the future

Adham Hafez Dance Company in 2065 BC
at New York Live Arts
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Part political summit, part multi-media opera, part protest Hafez’s 2065 BC is a displaced and revisited re-enactment of the infamous ‘Berlin Conference’ of 1884 presenting a complex set of questions around the ethics of occupation in a manner that is dark, comic and politically ignited. In the year 2065, a conference of African scientists, politicians and diplomats gather in Berlin to announce the new world order. 2065 BC is the result of a two-year research process on politics and aesthetics, developed and directed by the Adham Hafez Company and the platform HaRaKa. The research took place in Cairo, Berlin and New York, and continues to unfold its many products in the form of a performance triptych and publications series.

--promotion for Adham Hafez's 2056 BC

In 1884, the colonial powers of Europe, invited by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, met in Berlin to organize and step up their occupation and pillaging of the African continent. With 2065 BC, Egyptian choreographer Adham Hafez flips this history, envisioning sprawling realms of victorious African queens--"Her Majesty the Queen of Liberia and the American West Coast" is heralded, for instance--in the wake of World War III. In what must have been one hell of a systemic global collapse, shoes are now firmly on the other foot.

This week, 2065 BC is making its U.S. debut at New York Live Arts as part of Live Ideas 2016: MENA/Future–Cultural Transformations in the Middle East North Africa Region, an ambitious, multidisciplinary festival co-curated by NYLA's Tommy Kriegsmann and Hafez.

Four women actors portray the royalty, diplomats and scientists of this New World Order--Mona Gamil, Alaa Abdellateef, Salma Abdel Salam and Charlene Ibrahim, exacting in their roles. Inside their sterile-looking and echoey environment, whether sitting around a table strewn with thick legal documents, declaiming from a podium or performing frosty approximations of cabaret acts, they exude manipulative command. Assurances of safety and benevolence should not be taken seriously. Mockery comes easy and, everywhere, there's a current--calling it "undercurrent" would not be quite accurate--of sexuality firmly in women's control like weaponry. So who's the Venus Hottentot now? Listen and learn.

Hafez and 2065 BC's team have created an extraordinary look and sound; that sound--like rage compressed and parceled out with clinical accuracy-- can punish and takes its sweet time doing so. Despite a brief intermission, there's no let-up from this two-hour experience. It's difficult to receive and bear, yet brilliant in design and performance. Might as well pick up your "Arkisa passport" and enter.

2065 BC continues through Saturday, April 2 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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April memorial for performer, visual artist Fred Holland [UPDATED]

Dance, theater and visual artist Fred Holland, who died of cancer on March 5 at 65, will be remembered at a public memorial at Middle Collegiate Church on Sunday, April 10, 3:30pm. Doors open at 3pm.

And there's still time to catch Tilton Gallery's witty and moving exhibition, Fred Holland: SSAPMOC, just extended now through April 23.

******

Middle Collegiate Church
112 2nd Avenue (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
212-477-0666
(map/directions)

Tilton Gallery
8 East 76th Street (between 5th and Madison Avenues), Manhattan
212-737-2221
info@jacktiltongallery.com
(map/directions)

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Patty Duke, 69

Patty Duke, Child Star and Oscar Winner, Dies at 69
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 29, 2016

Jim Harrison, 78

Jim Harrison, Free-Spirited Writer of ‘Legends of the Fall,’ Dies at 78
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 27, 2016

Garry Shandling, 66

Garry Shandling, Star of Groundbreaking Sitcoms, Dies at 66
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, March 24, 2016

Gibney Dance celebrates an anniversary...and its home

Alexeya Eyma-Manderson (left) with Nigel Campbell
in a duet from Gina Gibney's Time Remaining (2003)
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Duets mean everything to choreographer Gina Gibney: evolving moments of human drama compressed, anchored, revealed and displayed in her work like new gems. This season, with a program entitled Duet, Gibney celebrates 25 years of dancemaking by overlapping and interweaving duets from her evening-length dances--from 1992's Landings to a preview of coming attractions.

The unique presentation takes advantage of Gibney's command of a sprawl of redesigned space at 280 Broadway, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, opened in 2014 at the site of the former Dance New Amsterdam.

Amy Miller (above) with Natsuki Arai
in a duet from Coming From Quiet (1998)
(photo: Scott Shaw)

The hour-long suite of dances moves performers and audience from a tiny downstairs studio lab to two larger studios and two transitional spaces--Gibney's gallery and a long corridor connecting the familiar Gibney floor plan to the rest of the building and a bank of elevators. Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of a rather fraught ensemble derived from 2013's Dividing Line, a chime suddenly sounded, and an elevator door opened onto the floor. Watching from the far end of the corridor, the audience could clearly see the leading edge of a plastic bag swing out and quickly draw back. Someone inside, spying several barefooted, black-clad bodies scattered around the floor, thought twice about venturing out!

Gibney's scheme for Duets has the flexibility to both allow for and recover from a possibly mood-shattering, if amusing, incident like that. Even the shuttling of audience from place to place can't diffuse the focused atmosphere created by seasoned veterans Natsuki Arai and Amy Miller along with impressive newcomers Nigel Campbell, Alexeya Eyma-Manderson, Devin Oshiro and Brandon Welch. I most enjoyed anything involving Campbell and Eyma-Manderson, two well-matched deities with lightning and intelligence crackling between them. Gibney's intricate, never less than human interactions--whether assertive, volatile, sexy, tender or contemplative--reward men and women with physical strength, range and genuine, one-to-one responsiveness. Duet offers ample opportunity to watch a promising, well-chosen team go to work.

Amy Miller (left) with Brandon Welch
in a preview from a work-in-progress, Folding In
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Duets continues through Saturday, March 26 with performances at 8pm each evening plus a 5pm matinee on Saturday. But don't delay, because ticketing is limited. The availability of chair seating varies from location to location. Dress comfortably for possible standing-room-only or cushion seating and cool temperatures. A complimentary coat check is provided. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

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

(map/directions)

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Phife Dawg, 45

Tribe Called Quest star Phife Dawg dies aged 45
by Mark Savage, BBC News, March 23, 2016

Bob Adelman, 85

Bob Adelman, Photographer Who Captured the Emotion of the Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 85
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, March 21, 2016

Geoffrey H. Hartman, 86

Geoffrey H. Hartman, Scholar Who Saw Literary Criticism as Art, Dies at 86
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 20, 2016

And then Boom...erang!

Matty Davis (left) and Adrian Galvin of Boomerang
(photo: Mark Davis)

Boomerang almost didn't have a show last night at Dixon Place as a packed house sat waiting for, uncertain about, the arrival of drummer Greg Saunier (of Deerhoof) from somewhere we knew not where. A man without a cellphone. A man integral to the dance because not only needed for the live accompaniment but needed as frequent partner-prop in the movement. I use that term "partner-prop" advisedly, because this is Boomerang and, as you will see, that's how things go.

So there was an embarrassed Ellie Covan (Dixon Place founder and artistic director), a quite worried Kora Radella (choreographer) and a couple of dancers who just stood there looking stunned, Matty Davis and Adrian Galvin. Covan said nothing like this had ever happened to Dixon Place and fretted about how to organize refunds, if necessary. And I began to pack up my glasses, notebook and pen when a shout went up: He's here!

Everyone sighed in relief, and out came the glasses, notebook and pen. I never quite grasped the reason for Saunier's late arrival but, at that point, I don't think anybody gave a hoot. Covan pulled out her usual introductory shpiel, this time starting off: "Is there anyone here who has not been to Dixon Place before? [beat] Well, you're never going to forget it!"

Now see, the name of the brand new piece--a Dixon Place commission, inspired by new work from writer Lewis Hyde--is Repercussion. As that tells you, the percussionist should be pretty important. You might expect a Boomerang duet of Davis and Galvin, characteristically full of equal parts roughhousing, near-erotic intimacy and acrobatic efficiency, but the hour-long piece is actually a trio driven by percussion of both the musical and the physical kind.

In the ongoing swirl of things, parts of Saunier's drum kit often get commandeered by Davis and Galvin but so does Saunier. After a while--say, when dancers' cheeks rest against the metal of a cymbal, or dancers use each others' bodies for propulsion--it becomes hard to separate human from object, dance instrument from music instrument, and so forth. (Percussionists Mixing It Up With Dancers must be the theme of the week. See my review of Rebecca Lazier's There Might Be Others.) The Boomerang gang literally entwine and lock themselves in, their motion and interactions often bizarre, primal, even brutal, their momentum with the force of weather sweeping across the Great Plains.

It's hard to pick apart the threads of skill, courage, endurance, beauty and sensitivity in all of this. They fuse, but I found the dancing sometimes taking me to ancient imagery like this:

Minoan bull-leaper
Fresco from the Palace at Knossos (17-15th centuries BC),
Heraklion Archeological Museum, Greece

and this Greek fresco I saw in Paestum in southern Italy:

The Diver (470 BC),
from the covering slab of the Tomb of the Diver
Paestum Archaeological Museum

Repercussion is an uncommon sensation--or many--only lessened by repetition of movement and relational ideas that jolt us without, in the end, taking us someplace new. In that way, it seems sealed in a circular environment. Even so, Davis and Galvin are always wonderful to see.

Repercussion continues tonight as well as next Friday and Saturday, March 25-26 at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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Rebecca Lazier and Dan Trueman: "There Might Be Others"

Pawel Sakowicz (center) and cast
in Rebecca Lazier's There Might Be Others
photo: Ian Douglas

Christopher Ralph
photo: Ian Douglas

Going under the hood with a choreographer--to glean the fine details of how a performance was built, from first flicker of idea to Opening Night--can be useful. But I often think that inside peek is of primary interest to other dance folks. Now, at this point, I should be able to say something like, "The lay audience, on the other hand, is looking for results, and perhaps that hood can stay closed?" But look around. Who's usually sitting there? Other dance artists.

How Rebecca Lazier made There Might Be Others, her formidable new presentation with composer Dan Trueman, has been extensively articulated, including a nearly 200-page museum catalog-quality book that documents and breaks down each component ("a field guide to a process of collective composition"), and Lydia Mokdessi's two-page "context notes" for the New York Live Arts season program.

The inspiration of Terry Riley's IN C.  The practice organized around "play, openness, indeterminacy, and performer agency." The "collections of 'modules' and cueing systems that sync and contrast...." These modules appearing and disappearing. Leadership shifting among what can sometimes look like a cast of thousands from New York and abroad (fourteen dancers and nearly as many musicians often deeply integrated with the movers). "Subscores, metascores, layers of rules, discarded rules, discrete exceptions to rules...." Modules with "rules of fragmentation" and others that are "simply tasks."

The modules "Destroyer: Dance" and "Destroyer: Music," for instance, both go like this:

The Destroyer is assigned to a specific person prior to the performance

by the director and no one knows who it will be.

Destroy what is happening in the space.

Everyone can stop and watch or join.

Cannot last longer that 1 minute.

-- From There Might Be Others (Rebecca Lazier and Dan Trueman)

raja feather kelly (center) and cast
photo: Ian Douglas

Lazier's cast in action
photo: Ian Douglas

It takes a while to drill down to what Lazier eventually came to realize she was getting at with all these words and all this play--something about ethics and empathy, "how people relate to each other," breaking out of habits and shaping new patterns as a collective. Here's where I want to step up and see what she has to offer and say what I see.

The resulting work, just past an hour in length, might live out certain creative decisions made on the spot by individuals or groups, but I'm not sure if I can see that or need to recognize that that's what I'm seeing to appreciate a few important things:

Lazier and Trueman and their respective performers show absolutely no hesitation to take over a big expanse of space or involve themselves in space that, conventionally speaking, would belong to one type of artist versus the other. Drivers don't stay in their lanes. Some of the ways musicians and dancers physically relate to each other are completely surprising and satisfying, and there's always something happening somewhere, usually in stark contrast to everything else. Attention-challenging performance for the attention-challenged!

Lazier and her collaborating dancers show an apparent limitless store of movement ideas and zero fear about pelting them all over the space in eccentric ways. And beyond the space. There Might Be Others can be full-on sensory overload, including the sudden and lingering acrid aroma of dancer sweat right in your face.

The percussion troupes have elemental powers that, if you're not careful, could kill you. Watch that bass drum, in particular. When it's struck like a taiko, hearts can skip beats. But from the softest shimmer to the jolt of thunder, the music is rich, evocative, often thrilling.

Davison Scandrett's lighting, which blithely reorders the normal timing of day and night on Earth, and certain primary colors in Mary Jo Mecca's super-casual costumes enhance the cartoonish, outlandish, nonsensical, habit-breaking movement.

For her New York Live Arts debut, Lazier has gone big, supported by Trueman and all their performers in making a gutsy, unforgettable mark in this historic theater. It's unfortunate to have to say how exciting it is to see a woman choreographer work at this pitch for her first time in this space, but there it is.

There Might Be Others might be intended--on an ideas level--as a model for other artists and for society itself.  Maybe that's needed. But there's no shame in saying that, first and perhaps foremost, it's a phenomenal entertainment.

Dancers:

Rhonda Baker
Sara Coffin
Simon Courchel
Natalie Green
raja feather kelly
Cori Kresge
Agnieszka Kryst
Jan Lorys
Ramona Nagabczynska
Christopher Ralph
Pawel Sakowicz
Anna Schön
Tan Temel
Saúl Ulerio

Musicians:

Mobius Percussion and Sō Percussion, also performing tonight.  Saturday's show will include members of Mantra Percussion.

There Might Be Others continues through tomorrow with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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Talks on "Dreams, Magic and Desire" at The Met: Part 2

Sir Edward Burne-Jones: 
The Beguiling of Merlin (1872-77)
Lady Lever Art Gallery

This morning, I attended "The British Invasion," the second of Alison Hokanson's excellent presentations on Dreams, Magic and Desire at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her talk, this time, focused on Britain's Pre-Raphaelites--exemplified by painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Sir Edward Burne-Jones--and their direct influence on the later Symbolist movement. (See my post from last week's talk about Belgium Symbolist Fernand Khnopff.)

Again, Hokanson led us through the factors that gave rise to Symbolism in many European nations--primarily the intensely nationalistic urge to break from the dominance of France-centric academic art, realism and Impressionism, and the desire to explore inner worlds and mystical realms. Symbolism, she said, was not a specific technique but "a range of principles," "a state of mind" valuing individual expression.

As the Symbolists took inspiration from the earnest, elaborately symbol-laden work of the Pre-Raphaelites, that movement looked even further back to paintings of the medieval and early Renaissance eras, citing their "immediacy, purity, authenticity" all that was "full of life and heartfelt." Burne-Jones belonged to the second wave of Pre-Raphaelites, artists devoted to an even more idealized depiction of nature, humanity, myth and mind.

Beauty of form grew in value for these artists, but beauty as "a way to guide the spirit" in a world lately upended by industrialization, commercialization, scientific discovery and political upheaval. The movement also embraced the decorative arts in furnishings, book illustration and objects of everyday use.

"The British Invasion"

Taking as a starting point the Met’s masterpiece The Love Song by Edward Burne-Jones, this talk highlights the appeal that the work of the Pre-Raphaelites in England had for the Symbolist generation in Northern and Central Europe. From Brussels to Munich and Vienna, artists drew on British models to develop modern styles that differed radically from the French trends that dominated the art world. Their work, as one critic put it, “rendered the profundity of life and a melancholy attitude of beauty.”

Sir Edward Burne-Jones:
The Love Song (1868-77)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hokanson's talk centered on The Love Song--the romantic, atmospheric Burne-Jones masterpiece in the Met's collection--tracing its influences back to Botticelli, Giorgione and Titian. A gifted communicator, she made her feelings for this work most clear by adding a recorded chanson to our visual experience of this painting's overtly depicted and subliminal music. It was a sublime moment.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones:
Flamma Vestalis (1896)

Hokanson ended her discussion by noting the trauma of World War I and its sweeping effect on the arts in Europe. The Symbolist movement fell away, supplanted by emerging forms for a brutally altered world.

*****

For information on future art talks at the Met, click here. To learn about all other special programming at the Met, click here.

*****

Special note for dance fans:

David Dorfman Dance will take part in tomorrow's lineup celebrating the official opening of The Met Breuer with performances all day long, free with museum admission or membership. Click here for information.

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Frank Sinatra, Jr., 72

Frank Sinatra Jr., Singer Who Followed in His Father’s Footsteps, Dies at 72
by Eli Rosenberg, The New York Times, March 17, 2016

Feel free to use the stairs: Maria Hassabi at MOMA

Mickey Mahar in PLASTIC

Maria Hassabi: PLASTIC

Wednesday, March 16

Site-adaptive work by Maria Hassabi 

at Museum of Modern Art

performed continuously during museum hours

closing Sunday, March 20

All photos ©2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Oisín Monaghan

Oisín Monaghan

Maria Hassabi

Niall Jones

Micky Mahar

Michael Helland

Maria Hassabi

PLASTIC information
Museum of Modern Art visitor information

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Ernestine Anderson, 87

Ernestine Anderson, Grammy Nominated Jazz Singer, Dies at 87
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, March 16, 2016

Naná Vasconcelos, 71

Naná Vasconcelos, Daring Brazilian Percussionist, Dies at 71
by William Grimes, The New York Times, March 11, 2016

Peter Maxwell Davies, 81

Peter Maxwell Davies, Contrarian British Composer, Dies at 81
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 14, 2016

Anita Brookner, 87

Anita Brookner, art historian and Booker prize winner, dies age 87
by Ben Quinn, The Guardian, March 14, 2016

My Eiko journal: Part 6

Eiko's A Body in Places

Saturday, March 12 -- 3pm

Meredith Monk
marked the hour at 3pm
at St. Mark's Church
for Eiko's A Body in Places.
photos (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Eiko (left) with Meredith Monk
who taught us all a Japanese lullaby, The Red Dragon Fly
(c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Come by today and this evening for the continuation of Danspace Project's commemoration of the Fukushima tragedy with an installation of William Johnston's powerful photographs and a performance offering by artists every hour on the hour through 9pm. For more information, click here.

******

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, click here.

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

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Keith Emerson, 71

Keith Emerson, ’70s Rock Showman With a Taste for Spectacle, Dies at 71
by Ben Ratliff, The New York Times, March 11, 2016

Talks on "Dreams, Magic and Desire" at The Met

Above: The Silver Tiara
Fernand Khnopff (1911)
The Museum of Modern Art

Below: Self-portrait, Fernand Khnopff (1879)
Willems Collection, Brussels

On Thursday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a talk by Alison Hokanson (Assistant Curator, European Paintings) on Symbolism with a focus on the work of Belgian painter Fernand Khnopff. In discussing the broad and enigmatic Symbolist movement, with its concern with "desire, the unconscious, human mortality, timelessness and the inner self," Hokanson acknowledged that it had long been dismissed by most art scholars as "an artistic dead end, not sufficiently sophisticated or forward-thinking."  Now that assessment is under revision. A prime example of this new consideration: The Met's own recent acquisition of Hortensia, an interior innovative, for its time, in Khnopff's confident experimentation with perspective and foregrounding.

Fernand Khnopff's Hortensia (1884)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hokanson is a clear, illuminating presenter, and if you missed this first talk from her Dreams, Magic and Desire series, I highly recommend catching the second--"The British Invasion"--on Thursday, March 17 (11am-Noon).

Taking as a starting point the Met’s masterpiece The Love Song by Edward Burne-Jones, this talk highlights the appeal that the work of the Pre-Raphaelites in England had for the Symbolist generation in Northern and Central Europe. From Brussels to Munich and Vienna, artists drew on British models to develop modern styles that differed radically from the French trends that dominated the art world. Their work, as one critic put it, “rendered the profundity of life and a melancholy attitude of beauty.”

Click here for ticket information.

The Grace Rainy Rogers Auditorium at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
82nd Street and Fifth Avenue
(visitor information including map and directions)

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My Eiko journal: Part 5

Eiko's A Body in Places
Conversation Without Walls: Bearing Witness
Friday, March 11 -- 4pm

Commemorating the fifth anniversary of Japan's triple disaster--earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactor meltdown--Eiko Otake and Danspace Project convened three rounds of hour-long conversations as part of A Body in Places. Scholars, activists and artists such as luciana achugar, Yoshiko Chuma, Koosil-ja, Katja Kolcio and William Johnston, offered contextual information on the ongoing crisis of nuclear waste and displacement in Fukushima. Presenting and responding speakers provided insight into the necessity and challenges of artistic response to this great loss as well as the numerous traumas of our planet.

I was fascinated to learn that the people of Fukushima, a site of Japan's neolithic culture, had preserved ancient folk and shamanic practices, a strong interest of mine.  Fukushima, impoverished and precarious, was long considered an expendable "sacrifice zone," a backwater targeted for industrialization and nuclear reactor construction.  Around 100,000 people were displaced from their homes by the disaster, and there's little hope that this area can ever be restored to normalcy.

Johnston's large photographs of Eiko dancing at affected sites in Fukushima and elsewhere filled the floor and risers at the sanctuary of St. Mark's. In the short breaks between conversation sessions, I tried to get around to see as many of these images as I could, and each one pierced my heart. As noted in the discussions, they are rigorous, exceedingly beautiful compositions but devastating to see. And they underscored what I've been learning about Eiko and her purpose--that her practice is shamanic in its resistance to and disruption of the daily current of time, in its ability to bridge apparent gaps of distance, bringing Fukushima to New York, and not just in Johnston's brilliant photographs but throughout her work in the world.

Someone described Eiko's performance as "a prophetic form of mourning" not just for Fukushima but for all the suffering that surrounds us now and the suffering that is to come. And dance artist achugar spoke of resisting "the tyranny of the [linear] arrow of time" and "the illusion of separation." Eiko, herself, spoke of how "distance becomes malleable." Collapsing distance--of time, of geography, of minds, of hearts--is her special gift with which she has bewitched and inspired us throughout A Body in Places.

******

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, click here.

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

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Fred Holland, 65

Sculptor and Choreographer Fred Holland Dies at 65
by Sarah Cascone, Artnet News, March 10, 2016

Stephen Petronio Company at The Joyce Theater

Emily Stone (r) and Cori Kresge of Stephen Petronio Company
in Trisha Brown's Glacial Decoy
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu)

Trisha Brown can claim special place in Stephen Petronio's artistic DNA and now, as well, in his "Bloodlines" series, a platform for reviving masterworks by choreographers who have informed his practice. Last spring at The Joyce Theater, Stephen Petronio Company launched Bloodlines with performances of Merce Cunningham's RainForest (1968). For the current Joyce season, the troupe has mounted Glacial Decoy, the 1979 landmark collaboration between Brown and Robert Rauschenberg that features the artist's unforgettable costumes and visual design.

A line from Petronio's brand new ensemble piece--Big Daddy (Deluxe), second work on the bill--reminded me of the one concern I had about Glacial Decoy. Towards the end of Big Daddy (Deluxe), a danced/spoken homage to the choreographer's late father, Petronio says, "Death, like gravity, steals the show." Gravity, ultimately, does not steal Glacial Decoy, but Petronio's dancers keep us too aware of it, and what might be a silken transition for a Trisha Brown dancer looks like a split-second negotiation with gravity, a conscious, visible decision about making one's body disrupt its expected patterns to do the unusual. Brown's dancers never look heavy or hesitant, even for a nanosecond; they yield, elusive, incomprehensible. Only Petronio's pairing of Emily Stone and Cori Kresge restores Brown's sleight-of-hand, sleight-of-shoulders, torso, everything else. I loved these two sisterly clouds, so much pleasure in their billowing and playfulness.

"The anger forged into my language is utilized as a call to action," wrote the choreographer and ACT UP activist of his ensemble work, MiddleSexGorge, premiered in 1990 but new to me. The problem with MiddleSexGorge is that--aside from its grating, unrelenting music--the work doesn't read as angry. Saucy, at times, and outright orgiastic for the most part. But not angry. I really can't see what it's saying about AIDS, about community, about society. In any case, I longed to be released from it.

Stephen Petronio, at center, in Big Daddy (Deluxe)
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu)

Big Daddy (Deluxe), then, seems the more radical of the two Petronio works on the program. Bear with me for a minute.

Based on Petronio's 2014 solo, Big Daddy, this loving, compassionate piece includes all the dancers in a visualization of the choreographer's memories of life with his Italian-American family and Thomas Petronio, its charismatic, "warm and luminous" patriarch. Bringing Tom, Sunny, Big Daddy--the man had numerous nicknames--to life for us, Petronio narrates throughout and does so imperfectly with stumbles, here and there, and the smallest hint of upwelling emotion. It's a transparent and bravely imperfect un-performance. And this is the reason I find it radical--at least for the Joyce where we expect polish even when polish might not end up meaning anything in particular.

Petronio's victory in Big Daddy (Deluxe) is to make me chuckle a lot more than once and wish that I could have met Tom Petronio and--although he'd probably not care for my politics--shake his hand. What could be more successful than that?

Stephen Petronio Company continues at the Joyce through Sunday, March 13 (various times). For information and tickets, click here.

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

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New work by Molly Poerstel at Gibney Dance

Scenes from Are we a Fossil, and Of Facings by Molly Poerstel
Above: Jennifer Kjos, Eleanor Smith, and Alice MacDonald
Below: Kjos and MacDonald
(photos: Scott Shaw)

Energy.

It's one of the things I love most about dance, whether doing it or being there to see it. Molly Poerstel's Are we a Fossil, and Of Facings would have great, great gusts of energy even if it were not for the unusual audience seating arrangements which expose the viewer to it. These arrangements expose the viewer, too, creating a heightening and unnerving effect.

The hour-long dance takes place in the theater at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center and tames that space by ignoring the customary rules of engagement. There's no front. Folding chairs for audience members are arranged around the floor of the performance area in a few single strands with small circles or clumps of chairs here and there, especially surrounding columns. You and your closet neighbor might find yourselves in chairs pointing away from a column at radically different angles, wondering how that's going to work later when, reportedly, there will be dancers and dancing to be seen.

Though dark and still somewhat heavy in feeling, the theater seems, if not airy, at least more encouraging of a flow of energy. You can well imagine a river of energy--or a real river--coursing through it.  It's a little bit nice but, as noted before, also exposing. You're forced to look around at everyone else sitting in their lines of chairs or their groupings, and you feel on display.

One of the secret little psychological perks about performance-going is that you're usually not on display. You sit back, and it's somebody else's show, somebody else's responsibility to make it all work.

Situating the audience inside the belly of the work, Molly Poerstel offers complex rhythmic structures and movement patterns in which forms calcify and disintegrate. Here, Poerstel gives agency to her performers as they unveil courageous bodies in transformation.

--from promotional material for Are we a Fossil, and Of Facings 

Being in that belly means you make decisions. You make mistakes. You make discoveries. Being in that belly means the likelihood of missing some courageous bodies in transformation--Jennifer Kjos, Alice McDonald, Eleanor Smith and, at times, Tara Sheena--because you're looking one way and don't see one or another of them over there doing her thing; or turning your head to catch someone way off to the side and wondering if you're supposed to be doing that; or tucking your feet out of the way of a surging dancer or two or three.

And, boy, do they ever surge. Yes, these bodies are courageous, sculpted by Poerstel--statuesque, monumental, Winged Victories sweeping through in rhythmic, repetitive flight or charge or leaping trot. At a certain point, the movement to Dana Wachs's music recalls Laura Dean's work with Philip Glass--driven, repetitive with striking variations and developments. Some of Mandy Ringger's lighting schemes remind me of dramatic museum lighting on a precious object, darkening everything that surrounds and could distract from the object of focus.

Poerstel's prelude melds creativity with basic carpentry--an apt way to set the tone for this impressive performance.

Are we a Fossil, and Of Facings runs through Saturday, March 12 with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

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

(map/directions)

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My Eiko journal: Part 4

Eiko's A Body in Places
Tuesday, March 8 -- 7pm

Tonight is not necessarily about linking the work of Eiko and DonChristian but considering their perspectives side by side. Through this intergenerational conversation around institutionalized forms of violence and inequality, I hope we can reach a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of our present moment.

--Lydia Bell, co-curator of Danspace Project's A Body in Places

DonChristian in Remembering "Egg Box"
The rapper and painter was a guest artist
for Eiko's A Body in Places platform at St. Mark's Church.
photos (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Although he studied with Eiko at Wesleyan University, DonChristian--painter, rap/R&B artist and producer--does not claim to be, in his words, "a mover." For her part, Eiko eshews the label "professor," preferring to think of herself as "a working artist who teaches." However they identify themselves, the non-academic likely approves of the way the non-dancer surveyed the difficult realities faced by young Black men at risk in a violent America in his short solo Remembering "Egg Box".

DonChristian, a guest artist for Eiko's A Body in Places platform at Danspace Project, journeyed through Eiko's installation in St. Mark's sanctuary. Stooped and vibrating, he crept down the sanctuary steps, around its outskirts, among canvases hung to serve as video screens, past costumes and props from Eiko's various solos. These items laid down a pathway--or a gentle, atmospheric surround--with a touch of ritual magic to their presence.

DonChristian at St. Mark's Church
photos (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

He surveyed as a barefoot youth pulling thick rope behind him, a rope tied around his waist and, with our history, there can be no mistaking the significance of Black Man + Rope.  He might be an Eiko-styled ghost-in-places or, at best, an escapee--the rope remaining, though.

A few surprising musical accents--Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "A Felicidade" from Black Orpheus--infuse the solo with an air of sensuality and tenderness. "Escape," then, suggests the slipping of imposed, internalized restraints that bind body and mind, the offer of a freer way for Black men to see themselves and interact in the world.

DonChristian,
circling back to the sanctuary steps,
claims a place of power.
photo (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I wished for better clarity of sound for DonChristian's vocals, but he and Eiko made their meanings clear later in the post-performance chat moderated by Danspace Project's Lydia Bell. Guest curator Shin Otake--son of Eiko and Koma, and DonChristian's friend at Wesleyan--also spoke of the interconnection of state violence and intimate violence: "No violent incident is isolated [but is] embedded, generation to generation, in our DNA." 

Eiko and DonChristian share an interest in getting at the root of this trauma, a wound central to the American origin story and so many stories around the world. "Her practice alone makes me want to work harder," he said. She taught him to "find the light, feel the light that's on your body." When he felt daunted by the invitation to create a responding solo for the platform, she encouraged him. "She told me, 'Make this work thinking that I'm your aunt.' She's an extension of my family."

Yes, and by the time A Body in Places concludes in a few more weeks, we'll all feel that way about Eiko.

*****

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, click here.

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

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Sir George Martin, 90

Obituary: Sir George Martin
BBC News, March 9, 2016

My Eiko journal: Part 3

Eiko's A Body in Places
Saturday, March 5 -- 7-10pm

It was disconcerting to see Eiko with a bandaged sprained arm--the result of a trip and fall at home. But she still danced, still valiantly surveyed, on this Saturday evening in St. Mark's Church along with invited soloists--Michelle Boulé, Beth Gill, Neil Greenberg, Koma Otake, Jimena Paz, Arturo Vidich and Geo Wyeth. Each soloist took a piece of the church--Koma, on the porch in his filmy-thin costume, braving the cold night air; Greenberg commandeering one side of the balcony; Gill inchworming her way all around the sanctuary's carpeted risers--over the course of three hours.

Members of the audience, armed with a site map and schedule, curated their individual experiences. But, clearly, everyone wanted to see everything--or as much of everything as logistics will allow. That meant trying to get over to a tiny space--say, the reportedly-haunted Priest's Room--in time to squeeze yourself in with a dozen other people as Vidich struck and vibrated church bells. His solemn performance, though simple in form, rivaled only Paz's stark, crow-like expressionism for beauty.

Overall, this evening proved to be a fragmentary experience--chaotic, impossible, a nightmare for the claustrophobic but interesting for not only dancer-watching at various angles but watcher-watching. It was funny to run into an old friend who mentioned the same phenomenon--enjoying the unusual vantage points for looking at how people look at the dancing they're looking at.

*****

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, click here.

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

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That new French magic from CIE 14:20

Shadow puppeteer Philippe Beau and his avian friend
(photo courtesy of CIE 14:20) 

What quiets a theater packed with boisterous kids and parents? Phillippe Beau's shadow puppetry, for one thing. I speak with confidence, having heard that with my own ears at French Institute Alliance Française's Florence Gould Hall, one of several city hosts for the new Tilt Kids Festival. Launched by FIAF and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the festival offers a wealth of family-oriented arts, ideas and fun at venues like BAM Fisher, The Invisible Dog Art Center and, of course, Time Square's New Victory Theater. It runs through April 3.

Accompanied by the wonderful pianist Madeleine Cazenave, Beau performed a segment in the magie nouvelle (new magic) production, Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle, presented by CIE 14:20. The Parisian troupe also featured renowned sleight-of-hand magician, Yann Frisch. If you missed these two masterful performers, I'm sad for you. Don't let that happen again.

My attempt to recreate Beau's tricks in order to describe them better for you has proven futile (and might require hand splints). Let me just say that this digital magician does not only pull a rabbit out of the "hat" of his imagination but produces a complete menagerie of animals--a stag with magnificent antlers; a snarling wolf; a galloping, rearing horse; a cat with swishing tail, licking its fur and scratching its ear. A bird feeds its young, later teaching the fledgling how to fly. A lover plants a kiss on a shyer, somewhat startled partner. Even the Devil himself makes an appearance. I'm not sure why but, hey, if you can form a Devil shape with your shadow puppetry, why the hell not?

If your notion of shadow puppetry has always been something amateurish and cheesy, please, get over yourself. This is new shadow puppetry. (I might as well follow the French trend of "new circus," "new magic," "new whatever.") As practiced by Beau, it is a razor-sharp storytelling skill and damned awesome.

Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle has closed, but there's much more Tilt up ahead through April 3, from the visual to the gastronomic arts, co-curated by Lili Chopra (FIAF) and Violaine Huisman (BAM). For information on the festival's lineup, click here.

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