ART MATTERS NOW

ART MATTERS NOW

Since word first leaked that Donald J. Trump wants to gut the National Endowments of the Arts and the Humanities, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, many commentators have focused on the economic impact of the arts on communities, cities and the nation as a whole. Statistics argue for the arts as a contributor to American prosperity. The arts give far more than what they take in government support. The arts, we repeatedly hear, drive economic development and employment on the local level and represent this nation before the world as one dedicated to innovation and excellence.

As a writer, and one devoted to the arts, I’m grateful for any persuasive advocacy. However, with so much energy invested in painting the arts’ material benefits--linking their worth to monetary usefulness and relative low maintenance--we tend to ignore the full extent of good that the arts provide any society. These benefits happen to be desperately needed right now as we face the ascendancy of Trump and his nationalist, white supremacist regime.

The Arts as Story

The arts seek ways--ever new and as ancient as humanity itself--to articulate and preserve the story of individual lives as well as diverse communities, cultures and nations. They remind us where we’ve come from, who we are, what we most value, what we have built, to what stars we aspire. For each of us and for all of us, they give abundant sustenance for the Hero’s Journey.

The Arts as Guide

The arts inform how we choose to live our lives, how we relate to our inner selves as well as to the world around us, how we engage with hard problems and join our many individual talents to solve them. They show us where we slipped up in the past so that we need not repeat these errors or, if we do, we can recognize them as such and choose differently next time. They stimulate our intuition and creative potential. They give us ideals to reach for, consolation when we fall short and energy to try again and again and again.

The Arts as Healer

The arts have consistently demonstrated outstanding power to heal--in body, mind, heart and soul--those who study and work through them as well as those who witness and receive them. In a nation with historic unhealed trauma, unacknowledged anger and deep, deep layers of denial, the arts offer ways to surface and express pain, to empathize and align others who suffer, to gather what each and all of us will need to cleanse our wounds and grow strong in the broken places.

The Arts as Change

The arts have the ability, if willed and well utilized, to speak truth to power. They are rousing instigators that can help us question and dismantle rather than accept injustice. Through their example, we see our situation more clearly as they capture reality in mirrors that may be playful and surprising, personally life-changing and revolutionary on a grander scale. They serve the creation of the world we desire.

The Arts as Joy

The arts bring joy by radically dispersing the hateful lies and shame thrown upon individuals and whole communities of people. They awaken a healthy sense of roots, of awe, of agency and the capacity for freedom and pleasure. They restore us to our true selves.

Of course, all of these sacred roles speak to the reason the arts have long been undervalued, even held suspect, in a society caught up in mass commercialism, escapism, fear of the Other and conservative fear of creativity itself. A minority of the US electorate has now empowered an insecure, vindictive man threatened and enraged not only by a free, newly revitalized press but by artists who dare criticize his policies and refuse to normalize his election and its aftermath.

There has never been a more crucial time for our people to affirm and activate the arts--and support artists engaged with the ancient and evergreen roles of Storyteller, Guide, Healer and Agent of Change and Joy. There’s more at stake than jobs and the tourist dollar. There’s a nation’s soul to be rescued.

(photo: D. Feller)

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody

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Bill Paxton, 61

Bill Paxton, Star of ‘Big Love’ and Movie Blockbusters, Dies at 61
by Erin McCann, The New York Times, February 26, 2017

Frank Delaney, 74

Frank Delaney, 74, Author Whose Passion Was Deconstructing Joyce’s ‘Ulysses,’ Dies
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, February 22, 2017

Thomas Lux, 70

Thomas Lux, Poet Who Wrote of Life’s Absurdities, Dies at 70
by William Grimes, The New York Times, February 22, 2017

Seijun Suzuki, 93

Seijun Suzuki, Director Who Inspired Tarantino and Jarmusch, Dies at 93
by Dennis Lim, The New York Times, February 22, 2017

FABnyc's new RESPONSE series: show work, get peer feedback [UPDATE]

Sign up now* for a spot in RESPONSE, FABnyc's series of sessions (part of The Sustainable Artist Toolkit), intended to foster a culture of support and care in our artist community. I'm honored to be the facilitator for the launch of what we hope will be a useful, ongoing resource.

The series offers opportunities for participants to sign up to present work and to respond to those presentations.

Spots to share your work will be given on a first-come first-serve basis. We would like to adopt a “pay-it-forward” model and ask that artists that wish to present work also sign up for an alternate session as a responder.

At RESPONSE, artists share work in development and receive feedback from peers in safe, supportive space. We will be asking the presenting artists to give us a brief idea of the kind of feedback they would find most useful. In general, we hope you will approach this time with respect and empathy for your fellow artists and offer the kind of responses and reflections you would seek for your own work. This is not a space for judging the merit of artistic product but for sharing what you’ve experienced and asking questions that will help artists see their work through your eyes and move it forward. Please feel free to give us your helpful suggestions to make future RESPONSE sessions work well for everyone.

Available salon dates are:

Mar 1, Apr 12, Apr 26 and May 3--all Wednesdays, 2-4pm

NOTE: The March 1 salon has been cancelled.

*Sign-up!

We are taking reservations for these slots now.

hosted by Arts On Site, 12 St Marks Place, Manhattan

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Larry Coryell, 73

Larry Coryell, Guitarist of Fusion Before It Had a Name, Dies at 73
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, February 21, 2017

Richard Schickel, 84

Richard Schickel, Critic and Filmmaker, Dies at 84
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, February 20, 2017

Clyde Stubblefield, 73

Clyde Stubblefield, the ‘Funky Drummer’ for James Brown, Dies at 73
by Jon Caramanica, The New York Times, February 18, 2017

Re-membering Black lives with Taja Lindley

This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering (9:58) is a stunning film by Brooklyn-based visual and performance artist Taja Lindley, based on her solo healing performance ritual This Ain't A Eulogy (premiere: La MaMa's SQUIRTS, 2015). Co-directed with and edited by Ellen Maynard, the film was premiered on February 16 at the 5th Annual Black Artstory Month (Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership).

The film draws "parallels between discarded materials and the violent treatment of Black people in the United States," Lindley writes. "People in the African Diaspora have a long history of repurposing, remixing, and transforming oppressive systems into valuable cultural practices." Through the surreal, eye-catching artistry of her film, Lindley invites the viewer to "imagine how we can recycle the energy of protest, rage, and grief into creating a world where, indeed, Black Lives Matter."

Taja Lindley

Taja Lindley is a writer and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the founder and Managing Member of Colored Girls Hustle, and a member of Echoing Ida and Harriet's Apothecary. Lindley considers herself a healer and an activist, creating socially engaged work that reflects and transforms audiences, shifts culture and moves people to action. She uses movement, text, installation, props, ritual, burlesque, and multi-media to create performances that are concerned with freedom, healing and pleasure. She is currently developing a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials. Her artwork has been featured at the Movement Research at Judson Church series, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), the Gallatin Arts Festival at New York University, WOW Café Theater, La Mama Theater, in living rooms, classrooms, conferences and public spaces. In 2014 she was a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project and a participant in EMERGENYC, an artist activist program of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University. In 2015 she was a Fall space grantee at BAX. This summer (May-August 2017) she is an Artist in Residence at Dixon Place. Her writing has appeared in Rewire, EBONY, Feministe, Yes! Magazine and Salon. www.TajaLindley.com

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Play the floor: Dorrance and Young at the Guggenheim

Michelle Dorrance
(photo: Works & Process at the Guggenheim/Jacklyn Meduga)

Audience waiting for the opening
Works & Process: Rotunda Project performance
at the Guggenheim Museum rotunda
(photo: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Despite what you might have read, tap dance is not on its last legs. Nor is it at death's door. Not while gifted makers like Michelle Dorrance and Nicholas Van Young still craft new ways to put its legacy and possibilities, its fun and glories in front of ever-expanding audiences like the ones that packed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum last night for three back-to-back performances for Works & Process: Rotunda Project, the museum's new residency and commissioning initiative.

The opening crowd, for the 6:30 show, was an eager and, it should be noted, overwhelmingly white audience--fairly easy to notice as people climbed and lined the museum's famous helical ramps, single-file, to view the museum's ground floor, the primary area for performance. Seeing the show required standing at the ramp's balconies for about 30 minutes plus the wait time before the show started.

According to a New York Times report, when Dorrance, Young and the troupe got their first go-round at the rotunda, they were shocked to discover its tap-unfriendly acoustics. Ooops.

Above: Claudia Rahardjanoto
Below: Dorrance and Young
(photos: Matthew Murphy)

Well, being smart people, they set to work on this formidable beast and, while perhaps not quite besting it, they created a playful sonic dialogue with it. From the opening boom, boom, boom of Dorrance's straddled drum, to angelic voices spiraling towards the skylight, to Young's body percussion and whistling, to the clack and rumble of batons on the floor, wooden boxes or balustrades, music was made by determined performers, and the audience got a lesson in music as a phenomenon of bodies in motion in space, any space. The charming Young even served as conductor, wordlessly training the audience in a complex score and drawing delighted laughter from us. Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie, the Bessie-nominated b-girl, paired with Matthew "Mega Watts" West to contribute hypnotic breakdance segments like jewels nestled inside settings offered by their colleagues and the gleaming white floor.

Gazing down on that floor for most of the performance gave watchers a view of dancers who resembled worker ants or a crisp marching corps as they executed elaborate geometry and braids of formations. Towards the end, the sixteen dancers strapped on tap shoes, bringing the thunder to platforms and planks of wood: We shall have tap!

And so, they shall. And so shall we.

Performers:

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie
Elizabeth Burke
Warren Craft
Donovan Dorrance
Michelle Dorrance
Michael Landis
Aaron Marcellus
Carson Murphy
Gabe Winns Ortiz
Claudia Rahardjanoto
Gregory Richardson
Leonardo Sandoval
Byron Tittle
Penelope Wendtlandt
Matthew "Mega Watts" West
Nicholas Van Young

Lighting: Kathy Kaufmann

Works & Process Rotunda Project: Michelle Dorrance with Nicholas Van Young has concluded. For updates on future events in the Guggenheim Works & Process series, click here.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Max Ferrá, 79

Max Ferrá, a Trailblazer for Latino Theater, Dies at 79
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, February 14, 2017

Barbara Carroll, 92

Barbara Carroll, Pioneering Jazz Pianist and Singer, Dies at 92
by Stephen Holden, The New York Times, February 14, 2017

Bobby Freeman, 76

Bobby Freeman, of ‘Do You Want to Dance,’ Dies at 76
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, February 13, 2017

Voices of The Skeleton Architecture at Gibney Dance

Charmaine Warren
(photo: Tony Turner)
Below: Ni'Ja Whitson
(photo: Flybird Photography)

The Skeleton Architecture is a vessel of Black womyn and gender nonconforming artists rooted in the rigor and power of the collective in practice. We create, organize, advocate, gather, curate, perform, play, challenge, and teach through the deep of our ancestral knowledges toward the liberated future of our worlds.

This past weekend, The Skeleton Architecture collective completed we (been) here--a unique series of private and public events (here and here) hosted by Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center and welcomed by Yasemin Ozumerzifon, Gibney's Senior Community Action Manager.

Before the collective opened its Sunday afternoon of storytelling and movement activities, I asked four member artists to reflect on their feelings about the weekend and the meaning of the work ahead.

Charmaine Warren: A community, a gathering, a time to remember self and to remember those who are part of self. A time to listen. A time to recognize. A time to honor. A time to love, a time to touch hearts. A time to cry, inside or outside. And a time to share just what we need to share with an outside audience.

Charmaine Warren identifies as "Jamaican-born performer, curator, consultant, mentor, mother, wife, sister, friend."

Ni'Ja Whitson: I participated in Friday [the private gathering for members of the collective], and I'm participating today [in the public forum]. Over the course of the planning, what has resonated and has continued to be a place for me to ruminate is how we are being in the practice of collectivizing, and the work of that, and the real love-centered and heart-centered intentionality around creating a collective and that process. So this is what I'm thinking about, and I feel excited about it, a little scared about it, because it also requires honest contribution in a way that's not just the political, educational thing that we know but your emotional depth and what are you going to contribute there. It isn't about half-in and half-out. Not that I would show up that way anywhere. But truly being in a circle that feels like family, I need to feel fully present. 

Ni'Ja Whitson identifies as "an interdisciplinary artist activating practice through movement, text, installations; a member of this growing collective; a practicing student of herbalism and African diasporic ritual, sacred practices, for over twenty years now. And I use they/them gender pronouns."

Leslie Parker: At this moment, I think I still need to process the whole thing. All that's popping in my head right now is: amazing, breathtaking. I'm overwhelmed. I'm excited. Like the turnout, the conversation, the movement, the dancing, the sharing of histories and values, the exchange...the heat! We talked about the heat. A lot of heat, just really belly gut goodness. It's been great. 

Leslie Parker identifies as "a Black woman, dancer, artist happy being in this space, loving sharing space with The Skeleton Architecture and other Black women and gender nonconforming artists. That's what's left over from what has been happening in this weekend, and I feel embraced."

Edisa Weeks: I keep coming back to the word "empowering." That's the first thing that came to my brain, empowering in the sense of how do we share resources, how do we embrace difference, how do we create space for difference, celebrate difference but, in that, celebrating community, celebrating who we are as individuals within the collective, and kind of shifting working in silos and working in isolation and shifting more towards how do we support each other and how do we disagree and agree and improvise and activate. And I come back to "empower."

Edisa Weeks identifies as "Edisa Weeks, Delirious Dances, Black artist, multidisciplinary artist and part of a larger sharing, standing on shoulders."

*****

Artists Angie Pittman, Charmaine Warren, Davalois Fearon, Edisa Weeks, Grace Osborne, Jasmine Hearn, Kayla Hamilton, Leslie Parker, Marguerite Hemmings, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Maria Bauman, Marýa Wethers, Melanie Greene, Nia Love, Ni'Ja Whitson, Paloma McGregor, Rakiya Orange, Samantha Speis, Sydnie L. Mosley, Sidra Bell and Tara Aisha Willis performed in the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds as part of Danspace Project's Lost and Found platform, October 22, 2016. For a round-up of reviews of that program, click here.

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Al Jarreau, 76

Jazz Legend Al Jarreau Dead at 76
by Britni Danielle, Ebony, February 12, 2017

Al Jarreau, Singer Who Spanned Jazz, Pop and R&B Worlds, Dies at 76
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, February 12, 2017

Harvey Lichtenstein, 87

Harvey Lichtenstein, Who Led Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Rebirth, Dies at 87
by Robert Berkvist, The New York Times, February 11, 2017

Choreographer Hansen critiques misogyny in "Mr. Gaga" film

Anneke Hansen
(photo: Baille Younkman)

Yesterday, I received a letter dance artist Anneke Hansen sent to film producer Barak Heymann about Tomer Heymann's documentary, Mr. Gaga. After seeing the film, which deals with the life and work of acclaimed Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, Hansen spoke with the producer to voice her concerns as outlined here.

*****

Dear Mr. Heymann,

I am writing, as promised, to reiterate my dismay at the misogynistic filmmaking displayed in Mr. Gaga.

As I mentioned, I was appalled by the section of the film that covers Ohad Naharin's early years in NYC. The film shows archival footage of the women whose bodies helped realize and establish his aesthetic. It uses the voices of these women. For several minutes they occupy the screen without ever being credited by name. In contrast, a male dancer, Daniel Tishman, I believe, is identified by a caption. This is a great and offensive mistake.

The disrespect is deepened by the fact that, at the same point in the film, Mari Kajiwara is introduced as "the most beautiful woman" Ohad has ever seen. We watch Ms. Kajiwara dance for many minutes, learning of her unique artistry, her acclaimed work with Alvin Ailey, and - rather smugly - of Ohad's conquest, without ever learning her name. Again, this is shameful. It is only after several minutes that Ms. Kajiwara's first name is introduced, leaving the audience to wonder, for quite some time, what her full name might be.

This treatment of Ms. Kajiwara, and other women who danced with Mr. Naharin, is shameful. Your film treats them as lesser beings, as objects for Ohad Naharin's male brilliance, rather than the great artists who allow for the work's existence. The misogyny of your filmmaking accidentally highlights an old and ugly tradition in the field by replication: women have often been the clay from which men mold their names.

As a choreographer, I'm usually grateful to see a film about dance - especially when it receives some critical acclaim and support. In this case, however, I was left with a foul taste in my mouth.

I sincerely hope you will re-edit the film to name these women and give them respectful recognition for their work and contributions to Mr. Naharin's success. I intend to share this letter with the NYC dance press and community. I look forward to your response.

Best regards,
Anneke Hansen 

*****

Anneke Hansen is a choreographer, performer, and teacher based in new york city who primarily presents dance works through her company, Anneke Hansen Dance. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence college, her work has been presented in NYC by the Chocolate Factory Theater and as part of the La Mama moves! Festival, Draftworks at Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dance Conversations @ The Flea, and at University Settlement. Hansen has been international guest artist-in-residence at Dance House in Dublin, Ireland, Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico, and her company has enjoyed creative residencies at Rockbridge Arts Exchange in Virginia, and Vermont Academy in Saxtons River, VT. The company's work has been featured at the Big Range Dance Festival in Houston, TX, among other venues, and her site-specific work has been performed in NYC parks and abroad in Washington D.C. and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her most recent project, a collaboration with Lori Yuill, was selected as Best of Fringe at the Houston Fringe Festival, 2016. Anneke Hansen Dance has received funding from LMCC’s Manhattan Community Arts Fund, NYFA’s BUILD grant, and the Puffin Foundation. As a performer, Hansen has had the pleasure of dancing for New York choreographers Sara Rudner and Susan Rethorst, and for Australian choreographer Russell Dumas, among others. A student of anatomy, she served as assistant to master anatomist and neuromuscular educator Irene Dowd. In addition to teaching dance in both the US and abroad, Hansen maintains a practice as a private movement instructor in NYC, specializing in rehabilitative movement and performance training, and has taught anatomy at several area colleges. www.annekehansendance.com

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Buchi Emecheta, 72

Buchi Emecheta, Nigerian Novelist, Dies at 72
by William Grimes, The New York Times, February 10, 2017

Nicolai Gedda, 91

Nicolai Gedda, Celebrated Opera Tenor, Dies at 91
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, February 10, 2017

"a fragile son": Matthew Rogers solos at JACK

Dance artist Matthew Rogers
Below: performing a fragile son
(photos: Nika Brunova)

Startlingly clear images from a fragile son--a solo performed by dancer-choreographer Matthew Rogers at JACK--have lasting power. I can attest. I woke up in the middle of the night, and they were right there, in my mind, complete and fresh.

There's something nondescript about Rogers himself. Take the fair, wispy, wayward tresses that, at times, blur his delicate, Southern white guy features. But, lit by Tuce Yasek, he can bring things into focus and bury them deep in the mind even as they retain their enigmatic nature.

He opens by first trotting up to a riser opposite the audience and telling us a few things about his family--related to Thomas Jefferson on his granddad's side; the men marked by a rare genetic disorder that thickens their palms and limits their fingers' flexibility. That "son" is part of the title implies we'll likely be dealing with father-son stuff, and "fragile" points to some sort of fault line.

Before the piece began, Rogers personally handed each of his watchers a copy of a missive that begins "Hlelo Dad," nearly every word containing misplaced letters. It's written to a long-absent father, ultimately an act of taking account of, and responsibility for, his own life and happiness.

Some of the indelible imagery involves a thick rope drawn out straight across a diagonal, a rope like an orderly measurement of time, the unfolding of a path. Then rippled, wriggled, lashed, its oscillations invoke a rodeo act, expert and--since we are so close to the performer in this intimate space--a little unsettling at times. Whistling through the air, the rope also calls up images from slavery.

There are also cords, the red of blood and undeniable bloodlines, sometimes stretched between Rogers and an audience member willing to hold an end. Sometimes Rogers wraps himself in the grip of a cord then unwraps his body. It is a slight, wiry body with sufficient knowledge of itself to be deliberate and surprisingly graceful; to tumble hard and flail loosely; to bound up steps as nimbly as "Bojangles" Robinson; to offer itself up as a blank sheet for audience members to mark; to be naked and fragile.

In the genesis of a fragile son, there might have been some work around a literal father, or a lineage of fathers of fathers. But the piece moves in less than literal space and, if you will, can take in the whole idea of place and home, the whole idea of heritage, the whole idea of white patriarchy and masculinity, and what it means to be a body, a mind and a spirit moving in and out of orbit of those ideas.

A few years ago, Rogers uprooted himself from his familial roots in Virginia and his more recent dance roots in New York--dancing in the work of major artists such as Tere O'Connor, Ivy Baldwin and Pavel Zuštiak--and relocated to Slovakia and Germany. Traces of that relocation and possible struggles around it move through a fragile son.

Curated by Stacy Grossfield for her Images//Landscapes series, a fragile son continues through February 12 with performances tonight and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Urban Bush Women to preview "Hair and Other Stories" at Baruch

Urban Bush Women
previews Hair and Other Stories next month
at Baruch Performing Arts Center.
(photo: Jennifer Lester)

Baruch Performing Arts Center, in partnership with the CUNY Dance Initiative, welcomes choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and her renowned Urban Bush Women troupe on March 31 for a preview of Hair and Other Stories. Developed with director Raelle Myrick Hodges, writer Keisha Zollar and the company, this multidisciplinary, evening-length work deals with issues of race, gender identity and economic inequality in the lives of African-American women. Hair and Other Stories will have its world premiere in April at the Virginia Arts Festival.

The Baruch PAC performance--open to the public with free admission for Baruch students--will be followed by a discussion with the artists.

Urban Bush Women

Hair and Other Stories (preview)

Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College

March 31 at 7:30pm

For information and tickets, call 646-312-5073 or click here.

Baruch Performing Arts Center

55 Lexington Avenue (enter 25th Street between 3rd and Lexington Avenues), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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William Melvin Kelley, 79

William Melvin Kelley, Who Explored Race in Experimental Novels, Is Dead at 79
by William Grimes, The New York Times, February 8, 2017

Tzvetan Todorov, 77

Tzvetan Todorov, Literary Theorist and Historian of Evil, Dies at 77
by Sewell Chan, The New York Times, February 7, 2017

Irwin Corey, 102

Irwin Corey, Comedian and ‘Foremost Authority,’ Dies at 102
by Ron Wertheimer, The New York Times, February 7, 2017

Alec McCowen, 91

Alec McCowen, British Actor Who Played Saint and Fool, Dies at 91
by Robert Berkvist, The New York Times, February 7, 2017

Richard Hatch, 71

Richard Hatch, Who Starred in ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ Dies at 71
by Christopher Mele, The New York Times, February 7, 2017

Sanctuary: George Emilio Sanchez and BAX's Marya Warshaw on upholding free speech

First Amendment Sanctuary Spaces is an initiative that aims to create a network of performance and cultural spaces, as well as places of worship, that pledge to uphold the foundational elements of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment at a time when enforcement of these fundamental constitutional guarantees is not assured.

A statement from

George Emilio Sanchez, 

writer, performer, director, educator

and the creator of the First Amendment Sanctuary Spaces project

Almost overnight, we have found ourselves in a threatening time with little light. Almost overnight, ways of life, the questions of citizenry, the avenues by which people identify who they are and where they come from, our racial and gender identities, and the reality of the 1% v. the 99%, have suddenly arisen to become the signifiers for "authentic" Americans.  As a way to move forward, to continue to create, to find ways to connect one story to another, one person to another, to meet indifference, fear, and ignorance at the crossroads, this initiative, First Amendment Sanctuary Spaces, offers one alternative to create a narrative that brings stories, cultures, faiths and people together under the umbrella we call the Constitution.

The First Amendment articulates the foundational elements essential to any free and open society.  The arts and expression, a free and open press, and the exercise of religious beliefs, all are key ingredients of a democratic society.  Each strand of this quilt, the arts, the press and religion, individually and collectively, function to create the practice of freedom.  All are essential to the life and soul of this country.  But they are all in jeopardy under El Trumpo's administration.  We have awoken to a dark time with little light.  But this project aims to be pro-active, to be one step ahead, as we carve a way forward where we can affirm our place in this country.  Frederick Douglass, who has been cited by our president to be doing amazing things, once said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never has and it never will."  Rights, and subsequently our freedom, are not passively given to people.  Laws are meaningless without the passion and fervor to make the word flesh.  The challenges every one of us faces individually, or as members of the myriad communities we find kinship and solace with, stare us in the face today.  But dark times are also the windows of opportunity we can take up to bring us the light we demand.  Through the arts, we can nurture the strength and commitment of affirming who we are in the face of these challenges.  The arts are the human-made gifts that can bring us joy, can throw us to the depths of our fears, and still ignite celebrations and declarations of how the nuances of our commonality present us with years and years of newfound understanding.  The arts are the ultimate form of non-violent resistance that express the eloquence of the human spirit.

This network is committed to upholding the tenets of the first amendment.  We are sanctuaries that will protect and keep safe the freedom of speech, of the press, of the people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  In perpetuity, which colloquially means....to keep on keeping on!

For more information on First Amendment Sanctuary Spaces and to find out how you or your organization can participate, visit the Facebook page here.

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Update on Eiko Otake at Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Eiko Otake at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine
November 2016
(photos: William Johnston)

Ask master dancer Eiko Otake about her experience of being an artist-in-residence for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's Dignity Initiative and, among other things, she will speak of keen feelings of outsider identity. Not US born, not white, not Christian. And yet this grand, historic institution on New York's Upper West Side--with its well-known commitment to the arts, the environment and social justice--has become a space for her to connect with people from all over the world and all walks of life, most by happenstance.

Eiko's residency at the Cathedral from Eiko and Koma on Vimeo.

Last November, I wrote of Otake's engagement there in The Christa Project, a visual arts exhibition centered on images of female divinity (see post). Her unique residency continues through early March when she will join with anthropologist Marilyn Ivy (Columbia University), photographer-historian William Johnston, videographer Alexis Moh, performance artist John Kelly and other speakers and participants to commemorate the six-year anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the most severe nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations, presented in partnership with Asia Society and Danspace Project, will explore the relationship of body, place and history. Participating artists and speakers include:

Eiko Otake

William Johnston

Marilyn Ivy

Thomas Looser

Mark McCloughan

Alexis Moh

Nora Thompson

Megu Tagami

John Kelly

Carol Lipnik

DonChristian Jones

Geo Wyeth

Ronald Ebrecht

Ralph Samuelson

Elizabeth Brown

Jake Price

Nona Faustine Simmons

NYC iSCHOOL

Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations

Saturday, March 11, 1pm-5pm

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine

1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street), Manhattan

(directions)

All are welcome. A donation of $10 is suggested but not required.

For information and updates, click here.

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Gillen's Vim Vigor presents "FUTURE PERFECT" at Baruch

Jason Cianciulli and Emma Whiteley
of Vim Vigor Dance Company
in FUTURE PERFECT
(photo: David Bazemore)

I'll say this for choreographer Shannon Gillen: She's got wicked imagination. And you might want to think twice about going camping with her. Or taking a swig of whatever she's got in that thermos. I'll say that, too.

Anyway, VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY is running the New York premiere of Gillen's FUTURE PERFECT at Baruch Performing Arts Center. The premise is a wilderness trip that's as wild as they get, where this dance artist plays loose and fast with time, identity, sex, death--everything but taxes. Taxes you can do yourself. Leave the rest to Gillen and her un-matchable performers whose near-acrobatic skills give this roughly hour-long dance drama its wow power.

Hooking up with beer-swilling, shifty-looking strangers under the stars? To be avoided at all costs. But who, actually, are the dangerous ones? Everyone in the show and watching it will be saying the same thing: "Your guess is as good as mine." I only dare tell you that great care has been taken--with the set, the sound and the now normal, now eerie, now garish lighting--to give this landscape just the right combination of realism and pumped-up, laughable artificiality, which is to say, to make it a nightmare waiting to happen.

L-r: Martin Durov, Laja Field, Shannon Gillen,
Emma Whitely, Rebecca Diab and Jason Cianciulli
of VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY
(photo: David Bazemore)

The wonderful cast of Jason Cianciulli, Martin Durov, Laja Field, Emma Whiteley and company apprentice Rebecca Diab could have been recruited from (or might easily be recruited for) one of those online series we all love to binge watch. The only problem I see is the way Gillen's movement--rough handling, tumbling and whirling, with dancers sailing around and over fake boulders and one another--stretches to fill nearly every development in the piece. It's a hoot when you first see it, a holler when you see it again but, after a while, you might have seen it too much, and it veers close to looking like a gimmick.

Best to ignore the press release's claim that the characters "confront their place in the universe," and the piece "wrestles with our desperation for a spiritual sign and asks: What magic is left?" At what point in the making of FUTURE PERFECT were these ideas floated and, I wonder, at what point were they left to float right out to sea? Because I don't know that I see any of that here--or need to.

Concept, Direction, Writing, Set Design: Shannon Gillen

Choreography: Shannon Gillen in collaboration with VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY 

Sound Score: Martin Durov

Lighting Design: Barbara Samuels

Costume Design: Joseph Blaha

FUTURE PERFECT runs Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm through February 11. For tickets and further information, click here.

Baruch Performing Arts Center

55 Lexington Avenue (enter 25th Street between 3rd and Lexington Avenues), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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We always win: Marguerite Hemmings and friends at JACK

Marguerite Hemmings
(photo: Delwin Kamara)

Look and see. Black women make and hold space within dance for everything to come through.

The latest example of this is To Make Ready Again, an evening of performance and discussion offered by Jamaica-born dance artist Marguerite Hemmings, four dance colleagues, singer/musician Solo Woods and drummer Themba Mkhatshwa. It opened at JACK, the small Brooklyn venue famously decorated with crinkly aluminum foil; its run concludes tonight at 8pm.

Inspired by the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, JACK plans a year-long focus on exploring and expansively defining concepts of reparations in a program entitled Reparations365: From Memory to Movement (February 2017-January 2018). One primary insight already surfaced in community discussions is that monetary value cannot be placed on historic trauma, true justice and healing. It's hard to imagine and calculate in any realistic, satisfying way. Repair and restoration come not from the outside but from within vulnerable yet profoundly resourceful individuals and their communities.

Hemmings's we free multimedia series, of which To Make Ready Again is a part, draws from her knowledge of African diasporan street dance styles, social dancing, hip hop and dancehall, and her work, she says, centers around liberation. In TMRA, she's joined by powerhouse dancers--Courtney J. Cook, Jaimé Dzandu, Katrina Reid and Italy Welton--who whisper and conspire, laugh and vocalize, activating the space in ways both protectively intimate and boldly assertive. A loving circle, a sinuous warrior force, a reservoir of care and uncomplicated joy, they channel and filter even the male vocal energy of hip hop through grounded bodies. Their frequent broad stance roots them into the floor and earth below, freeing up torsos, shoulders and arms for hair-trigger action whenever, wherever necessary. They dance the ancestors through and make their mark on a world they wish to manifest.

Black women like Hemmings--a founding member of the emerging Black women and gender non-conforming collective The Skeleton Architecture--are dancing liberation and reparation. "Bring it down, and spread it all around." And remember, "We always win."

Lighting design: Nikita Maturine
Set design: Zunnania Anderson

To Make Ready Again concludes with a performance this evening at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly, Brooklyn
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Batsheva: "Last Work" at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

Above and below:
Batsheva Dance Company
performs Last Work
by Ohad Naharin
(photos: Gadi Dagon)

Last Work, performed in its New York premiere at BAM by Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, runs for about 65 minutes. And so does Rani Lebzelter, placed upstage right, her royal blue gown flowing around her shins for that entire time as she pumps away on an unseen treadmill. Her look at once heedless and heroic, she comes to represent a figure of privilege and athletic glamour. Never once does she break stride or even turn her head to gaze at her fellow performers who, after all, stay hellabusy for that same hour-and-change creating an entire Ohad Naharin fantasy world and all that implies. At one point, a blob of these dancers congeals center stage right, obstructing the audience's view of the Lebzelter's body. You can see only her disembodied head continuously bobbing above them.

She's Naharin's ostinato. A few times, the soundscape fades, allowing the perfect, rhythmic clopping of her shoes to resound. She is ground and context--even visually, the watery blue against the stage's dark surround, a pop of color amid other white and skimpy costumes, dark, monk-like cloaks, grey, accordion-like screens rigidly guarding the wings. Avi Yona Bueno's lighting makes the stage and all its creatures look like pricey abstract art in motion.

After Naharin first introduces this vision of Nakamura, another dancer advances from center stage left, hunched over and pedaling across on bent knees. To be sure, nothing as silly as a simple walk will ever do. This is the famous Gaga. More and more dancers accumulate, all with untamed bodies that have long figured out how to do things their own way. The contortion and force of it will often look uncomfortable, reckless, much less than human. But it will also mesmerize. That first man, for instance, takes his sweet time demonstrating a deep, repetitive undulation that flows from one raised knee all the way through the shoulder on that side of his body, sometimes slow, sometimes speedy. It's a sensuous yet deceptive seduction into a world where you will probably find yourself alarmed and repelled.

 A scene from Last Work
(photo: Gadi Dagon)

As it develops, Last Work comes across the most as a dire warning--and, hence, political and timely. (Naharin has openly criticized policies of the Israeli government and, I'd bet, would not look kindly on our own mess in Washington.) The community he builds and reveals in this dance is less unruly than you might first think, more likely to mold itself into tight, locked groups, engage in reassuring rituals or--and this is where the women dancers' bodies carry the heaviest symbolic burden--throw itself wide open for the taking.

It's all heading towards dubious celebration. An orgasmic barrage of rifle shots. A burst of metallic confetti. The rippling satin of a huge, white flag of.... Of what? Of national purity? Or is it, ultimately, a flag of surrender?

Affixed to their spots and firmly connected to one another by packing tape, the once hyperactive dancers come to a standstill. Not our runner, though. She wears the tape and now grasps that gleaming flag in one hand but, somehow still unaware of what has happened, keeps running in place.

Batsheva Dance Company

William Barry

Yael Ben Ezer

Matan Cohen

Omri Drumlevich

Bret Easterling

Hsin-Yi Hsiang

Rani Lebzelter

Eri Nakamura

Ori Moshe Ofri

Rachael Osborne

Nitzan Ressler

Ian Robinson

Kyle Scheurich

Or Meir Schraiber

Maayan Sheinfeld

Yoni Simon

Bobbi Jene Smith

Zina (Natalya) Zinchenko

Lighting design: Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi)
Soundtrack design and edit: Maxim Warratt
Original music: Grischa Lichtenberger
Stage design: Zohar Shoef
Costume design: Eri Nakamura

Last Work continues nightly through Saturday, February 4 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
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