Jim Nabors, 87

Jim Nabors, 87, TV’s Gomer Pyle, Is Dead
by Richard Severo, The New York Times, November 30, 2017

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BAM Next Wave presents "Haruki Murakami's Sleep"

from Haruki Murakami's Sleep
(photos: Julia Cervantes)

If you did not sleep for seventeen nights, wouldn't you be terrified? Jiehae Park doesn't look a bit frightened, though, when we first find the actress portraying "Woman," a Japanese housewife and mother, in Haruki Murakami's Sleep, presented by BAM Next Wave.

She's calmly, evenly performing a dry ritual--logical gestures and motions of everyday life in the everyday world, hands purposeful, smooth and deft. Where are the items her hands would actually touch and handle? From our point of entry and view, they are invisible. The box that houses her--taking up not quite all the width of BAM Fisher's Fishman Space--is open to the front and contains only a few, simple, representative things. A chair, a standing lamp. Normal enough. Normal enough...to be suspect.

With the audience fully assembled and houselights lowered, Park begins to address her sleeplessness and its cause. But, under a cool wash of light, her affect hints at fiery excitement. Her face betrays it; her speech races. What might be a source of legitimate concern for any one of us has become, for her, a portal to freedom. She relishes it.

Rachel Dickstein shares directing and choreographic credit with her Brooklyn-based Ripe Time troupe. With a luscious live soundscape by NewBorn Trio and an adaptation by playwright Naomi Iizuka of Murakami's short story, "Sleep," the production draws our eyes and ears into an internal world splintered and continuously shuffled like a deck of cards.

A husband slips into and out of the box--a dentist, nothing more down to earth than that--but he is clearly archetypal "Husband" as he exists inside "Woman's" head. And that head can produce more apparitions through the visual magic wrought by Dickstein's design team and the troupe's physical theater strategies. There are clever projections and material embodiments of "Child," "Shadow," "Anna Karenina"--a character lifted from Woman's daily reading--and other beings and other selves. And a floor board that can detach to become a table. And a table, tilted onto one edge, that still functions as a table you might sit to and gaze across because you see what you choose to believe.

She was not herself.

But no one has to know.

Woman awoke, one day, with one foot still anchored in a dream and chose this situation as a way to survive. An alluring time out of time for Woman becomes one for us as well.

Set design: Susan Zeeman Rogers
Projections design: Hannah Wasileski
Lighting design: Jiyoun Chang
Sound design: Matt Stine
Costume design: Ilona Somogyi

Haruki Murakami's Sleep continues tonight through Saturday, December 2 with evening performances at 7:30pm and an additional 2:30 matinee on Saturday. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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Shadia, 86

Shadia, Egyptian Actress and Singer, Is Dead
The Associated Press, November 29, 2017

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Films coming soon: Loïe and Isadora; the Afro-Andalusian influence in flamenco

French indie music star and actress Soko stars in The Dancer.
(above and below)

The biopic--which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival
and was first seen in New York at Lincoln Center Film Society's
Rendez-Vous with French Film Festival this past March--
receives its US theatrical release on December 1.

Lily-Rose Depp as a rivalous Isadora Duncan

The Dancer
directed by Stéphanie Di Giusto
(108 min/France/French with English subtitles)

With her first feature film, The Dancer, director Stéphanie Di Giusto helps us imagine what it must have felt like to see American fin-de-siècle phenom Loïe Fuller (1862-1928) mounting a stage, aswirl in billowing silk and saturating spotlights, a theatrical innovator of monumental spectacle. For her stubborn if put-upon Loïe, Di Giusto deploys the fascinating French indie singer/actress Soko--an early Malcolm MacDowell or Marc Bolan lookalike whose favored black bowler hat might also have you flashing back to Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) and Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) but just briefly. She's far more androgynous than that--one character euphemistically describes her to an ardent male admirer as "standoffish"--and her struggles around sexuality underlie what the director clearly sees as inability to cope with the heedless, cruel pace of a world about to race past her.

Our first sight of Soko shows her nearly smothered in yards of fabric. But, no, she's not performing her famous Serpentine Dance. Instead, she's being rushed by several running men from the stage to either a hotel room or a hospital room; I could not tell which. Although we later learn why, it's enough, in that first moment, to identify Loïe with calamity and vulnerability. The film rarely lets up from that initial impression of her.

Next, we flash back to her as a sturdily-built, gloomy Midwestern girl--a very emo Mary Louise Fuller--sharing rough beginnings with her French-born, alcoholic father. He quickly ends up dead, leaving her at the mercy of a religion-obsessed mother. The cinematography of these early scenes has a heavy, depressing murkiness that rarely lifts from the film even when it is actually better lit. A biopic about an artist who illuminated stages with eye-popping light and magic is taken up with an atmosphere of grim darkness. But, again, Di Giusto seems intent on showing Loïe in pain, insecurity and discouragement.

There's the brutal physical pain of maneuvering those yards and yards of fabric, a feat that leaves her gasping for breath. Despite diligent conditioning, Loïe's body breaks down, time and again, and performing at all becomes a risk. But there's also emotional pain throughout Di Giusto's story--from the loss of Fuller's father to the ultimate betrayal wrought by one Isadora Duncan (Lily-Rose Depp), a youngster more conventionally feminine, at once more graceful and choreographically adventurous in movement and more given to displaying her body before the male gaze.

Mélanie Thierry does fine, delicately nuanced work as Gabrielle Bloch, Fuller's compassionate champion at the Paris Opera. She gives their scenes life and reminds you of Fuller even when the dancer is elsewhere, because you feel how vividly present Fuller is in her thoughts.

Don't come looking for a documentary. As the film opens, we're told that it is "based on a true story." Bear that "based on" in mind, if you will, and grant Di Giusto a little running room with her creative narrative. I suppose an educational film about how the real-life Loïe Fuller first dreamt up the notion of turning silk costuming into both motile sculpture and extraordinary canvases for her unique lighting effects might satisfy some but not many. Actually, we don't get to learn a whole lot more about Isadora Duncan, significant pioneer in her own right, and Depp brings little of interest to her role.

I've long been drawn to both of these legendary artists. I really only perked up when Soko--well-trained by contemporary dance artist Jody Sperling, acclaimed Loïe Fuller specialist and choreographer for the film--dons her costumes and models the sort of transformational stagecraft for which Fuller became famous.

The Dancer opens in theaters Friday, December 1.

Also coming soon...

Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories
directed by Miguel Ángel Rosales
film screening and flamenco performance
Sunday, December 3, 7pm to 9:30pm

Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories, a feature-length documentary from anthropologist Miguel Ángel Rosales, explores the contribution of Afro-Andalusians to flamenco as the art form developed. Gurumbé (72 min, in Spanish with English subtitles) has won numerous awards in the festival circuit and it is currently premiering around the world.

Flamenco performance by dancer Yinka Ese Graves and live musicians

Roundtable with the performers and the director, moderated by
K. Meira Goldberg, author of Flamenco on the Global Stage and Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (forthcoming, Oxford University Press)

TICKETS

La Nacional
239 West 14th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Carol Neblett, 71

Carol Neblett, Soprano at the Met and City Opera, Dies at 71
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, November 28

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Pete Moore, 79

Pete Moore, an Original Miracle and Co-Writer of Hits, Dies at 79
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, November 26, 2017

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Eric Salzman, 84

Eric Salzman, Composer Who Championed Avant-Garde, Dies at 84
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, November 24, 2017

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Jon Hendricks, 96

Jon Hendricks, 96, Who Brought a New Dimension to Jazz Singing, Dies
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, November 22, 2017

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Ann Wedgeworth, 83

Ann Wedgeworth, 83, Dies; Tony-Winning Actress Known for ‘Three’s Company’
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, November 22, 2017

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Dmitri Hvorostovsky, 55

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Silver-Maned Baritone From Siberia, Dies at 55
by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, November 22, 2017

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Dance is her oxygen, and Smallwood welcomes your help

Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center, opened in 2014 by the former Alvin Ailey star, recently suffered a fire. No one was injured, and the intrepid Smallwood, her instructors and her students have returned to continue their essential work in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy community.

Why are dance, dance education and community important to Brooklyn and, especially, today's Bed-Stuy? Watch the above video, and read the DSPAC statement here.

And if you'd like to help Smallwood achieve her vision of owning rather than renting her space, please consider contributing to the DSPAC Building Fund. Contact DSPAC here to request information on how to donate.

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Dance artist yon Tande views that "Unicorn"

yon Tande
(photo courtesy of the artist)

For many observers, Memoirs of a... Unicorn--Marjani Forté-Saunders's recent premiere at The Collapsable Hole for New York Live Arts--proved to be an earth-shaking highlight of New York's Fall 2017 arts season (reviewed here by me). Not so much for the chief dance critic of The New York Times. Contrasting it to another dance artist's work he deemed to be "a real piece," Alastair Macaulay dismissed Memoirs as "an intensely personal piece with which I could make few connections" and "choppily incoherent," sparking a blaze of reproach on social media.

I'm happy today to welcome dance/performance artist yon Tande as guest writer. He contributes the following poetic reflections on Memoirs of a... Unicorn.

***

Marjani Forté-Saunders performs Memoirs of a... Unicorn.
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Memoirs of a... Unicorn: Reflections on an Imagined s/p(l)ace of memory, revelation and trauma.

This text is written as a response to the notion of being simultaneously present and absent. As an interviewed subject in the process, removed for technical reasons, but still feeling and knowing my presence and participation, not only as an audience member, an interviewee, but as a native to this society of magical creatures so “gloriously damaged.”

In reflecting on the imagistic creation of Marjani Forté-Saunders and collaborators, one question that remains is “What has been deleted or negated?” In the title written, “Memoirs of a... Unicorn,” the ellipses suggests that something in the title, perhaps in the world, has been negated, left out, deleted, denied. Do ellipses also function as denial?

Cleanse your Feet, for upon this terrain you will meet much filth. But, if you have been cleansed, you will be carried.

Follow the Action - staying engaged and connected to the artist. The agency of sight is precious. Curiosity is enabled and made possible by journeying through the various spaces. The interaction of Marjani, the objects and the spectators, stirring up scopophilic remembrances, and ultimately feelings tied to wonder and concealment. Getting so close to the action that psychic interconnectivity is palpable and its impact unnerving.

Enter the Room(s): a nucleus networked through memory where decentralization and fragmentation create a universe by which such “destruction” yields clarity.

See and Hear the video projections and sound imagery speaking to the slices of living which comes and goes like the long-passed joys and torments that memory realizes. The “jam” which makes you jump to your feet in cultural knowing, the strut that recalls a familiar coding of strength and vitality, and a projection of a “mother” who gives permission to revel in mundanity with the hope that a greatness and complexity may be revealed. Through the constructed collage, the view of fragmentation as wholeness.

“Confined body” - under the staircase speaking with a child’s voice. A vivid reminder of both the communal joy offered and the paralysis-induced desperation as a result of incest. Perhaps the ellipses implies all the possible affects of the unicorn, both making the unicorn what it is and recognizing that it is.

“Garden of the Golden Horn” - so dangerously provocative like a mine field waiting to destroy and delight. How can the image of a golden, dildo-ladened room instill so much fear? Desire has an evil twin called recollection. This room tempting the “outing” of the revelation of discovery and the potentialities of unearthing the makings of what it means to “feel good.” How and when does one first begin to know penetrative sensation...?

“Daddy’s Pyramid”- the mythological place to which one may escape and be born unto. The sledgehammer when tooled to destroy just two sections of the pyramid conjures up the possibility by which a removal from a place and state may be possible. Simply slide into it, like a grand garment, stand and away you go. Launch yourself into the ether never to return to this “place” again.

A Prayer:
Upon these horns, I sacrifice myself to the void of knowing and remembering, being and becoming. I consult, in a secret tongue, the oracle of the void for guidance and direction, in the hopes that one day, I may be resolved.

--yon Tande

***

yon Tande (Whitney V. Hunter) is a dance/performance artist/culture worker and BLACK SEED Native committed to #cultureascatalyst. His work centers around nurturing and cultivating individual and communal spirit through performance, education and curation. He has worked with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Rod Rodgers Dance Company, Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, Martha Clarke, Ralph Lemon, Fiona Templeton, Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik, John Jesurun, Kankouran West African Dance Company, Yass Hakoshima, Preach R Sun, Najwa Dance Corps and others. He was a Movement Research Artist in Residence (2013-15), a founding member/curator of Social Health Performance Club, and is co-creator of Denizen Arts: with Jude Sandy.

His works have been presented through RISD Museum, AS220, chashama, Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, Washington Reflections Dance Company, La Mama, Grace Exhibition Space, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival and in the streets of NYC, Chicago and Detroit. His grants and commissions for the creation and exhibition of his works are numerous: New York State Council for the Arts, Puffin Foundation Grant, Harlem Stages, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Lumen Festival, and others.

He has taught nationally and internationally at Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island, AS220, Peridance Center, Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre, Harlem School of the Arts, The Ailey School, Dance Institute of Washington, and Centro Nacional de Danza Contemporánea (MX), LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and Long Island University. His academic degrees include: B.F.A in Theatre Arts/Dance (Howard University), M.F.A in New Media Arts and Performance (Long Island University). He is presently a Ph.D. candidate and Driskell Fellow at Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.

www.whitneyhunter.com

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David Cassidy, 67

David Cassidy, Heartthrob and ‘Partridge Family’ Star, Dies at 67
by Jacey Fortin, The New York Times, November 21, 2017

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Della Reese, 86

Della Reese, Singer and ‘Touched by an Angel’ Star, Dies at 86
by Anita Gates, The New York Times, November 20, 2017

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Upcoming Long Tables: Abrons, Gibney, Dance/NYC

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo: Deneka Peniston)

Upcoming Long Tables


A Long Table conversation--as first conceived by theater artist Lois Weaver--is initiated by an invited core group of participants who "set the table" with food for thought, but it is open, throughout, to other folks, sitting around the perimeter, who can come up and take seats at the table to share their experiences, ideas, questions and insights in a non-hierarchical, non-panel/Q&A setting. They are not so much "audience members" as a listening and contributing community.

So, please join us! Listen in and/or pull up a chair at our table to share your thoughts and questions. Admission is free, except where noted.

***

Thursday, November 30 (7-9pm): DISCOMFORT: A Long Table. Presented and hosted by Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan. Curated/facilitated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa/EYA Projects. Core participants: Ash RT Yergens, Dan Fishback, Joya Powell, NIC Kay. DISCOMFORT makes space for dance, performance and other artists to talk about the place of discomfort in our lives, processes, practices and relationships with collaborators, audiences, our society and world.

Wednesday, February 7 (6:30-8:30pm): Long Table: Sexual Harassment in the Dance Industry. Presented and hosted by Center Line, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway (enter 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan. Curated/facilitated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa/EYA Projects. Core participants: Gabri Christa, Katy Pyle, Nicole Wolcott and Siobhan Burke

Sunday, February 25 (time tbd): Decolonizing Dance: A Long Table. Presented and hosted by Dance/NYC Symposium 2018 at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway (enter 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan. Curated/facilitated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa/EYA Projects. Core participants (list in formation): André M. Zachery, Ayodele Casel, J Soto, Layla Zami. Admission with Dance/NYC Symposium 2018 registration. Click here.

Wednesday, April 25 (6:30-8:30pm): Decolonizing Dance: A Long Table. Hosted by Center Line, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway (enter 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan. Curated/facilitated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa/EYA Projects. Core participants: (list tba)

Community Long Tables are also in the works for BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) and Dancing While Black in 2018. Keep watch for more information!

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Malcolm Young, 64

Malcolm Young, Whose Guitar Riffs Helped Propel AC/DC to Fame, Dies at 64
by Christina Caron, The New York Times, November 18, 2017

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Azzedine Alaïa, 82

Azzedine Alaïa, Fashion’s Most Independent Designer, Is Dead at 82
by Vanessa Friedman, The New York Times, November 18, 2017

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Gemze de Lappe, 95

Gemze de Lappe, 95, Dies; Keeper of the Agnes de Mille Flame
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, November 17, 2017

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Girish Bhargava, 76

Girish Bhargava, Film Editor Who Captured Dance, Dies at 76
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, November 17, 2017

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Marjani Forté-Saunders: The story we've always known

Marjani Forté-Saunders
dancing Memoirs of a... Unicorn
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Marjani Forté-Saunders
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Memoirs of a... Unicorn--a breathtaking work by dance soloist Marjani Forté-Saunders--fills the Westbeth underground now known as The Collapsable Hole. The space is rough, roomy, multi-leveled, multi-surfaced and multifaceted. You enter and look around, dreaming of all the talented artists who might dare to try it. But for now, presented by New York Live Arts, Forté-Saunders owns every corner and staircase, every recessed area and side room with intricate, unexpected treasures, every inch of concrete floor and brick wall. With her design team--including dad, Richard Forté--she has turned this basement into mythic space and immersed her audience in Black-centered story.

You reach it, appropriately, through labyrinthine corridors. But instead of confronting a minotaur, you eventually spot the Black unicorn concealed in her lair. Maybe not right away.

The installation opens to the public a half-hour before performance time, and you might wander the space unguided or get distracted by a noisy conversation with your buddies or just sit, stare at your phone and wait for something to happen not realizing that something already is.

At some point, you become aware of the unicorn, her fearsome vulnerability, her defining feature with its awkward, unreasonable length, its prickly yet delicate construction. A structure that will both confine and exalt this strange captive has been built (by Forté-Saunders's father) to endure. By the end, that reassuring durability, coupled with a long-remembered song by Gil Scott-Heron, might move you to tears.

The space, filled with a light haze, balances precariously between dark and light, looks a little dangerous for any number of reasons--among them, the painted spikes of wood affixed to a wall like metal studs. Forté-Saunders is similar--a mix of audacious power and trembling sensitivity, an archive of damage and of ingenuity, a warrior and a mother. She's a woman capable of channeling exacting, telling details of masculine personality, energy and movement, neither afraid for her body nor afraid of it. Her speech patterns emerge sly or wrecked and disrupted, her singing voice imperfect yet Sending Its Message. A fedora-clad figure, she can be a little scary and quite a bit seductive. Direct, elusive. Controlled as she loses control. She dredges up memories--some personal, some collective--that sometimes wound or sometimes soothe. She makes you chuckle with her determined yanking of a man's jacket over costume wings, those stiff yet flimsy things jutting out from collar and hem.

In a generous, informative chat with Okwui Okpokwasili, post-show, Forté-Saunders expressed gratitude for having unpolished space in which to tell her complex, miles-deep, centuries-deep story. To my eyes, not one element of the many, many here seemed out of place, and even excess felt like the right move in The Collapsable Hole. Forté-Saunders is a confident, important, extraordinary performer hitting a new high mark in Memoirs of a... Unicorn.

Medi design: Meena Murugesan
Original composition and sound design: Everett Saunders featuring violinist Juliette Jones
Set design: Mimi Lien
Set built by Richard Forté/Build with Forté and August Hunt
Lighting design: Tuce Yasak

Memoirs of a... Unicorn continues tonight through Sunday the 19th with performances at 7:45pm. Doors open at 7:15 for a gallery pre-show. For information and tickets, click here.

The Collapsable Hole
55 Bethune St (enter at Bethune and Washington), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Debra Chasnoff, 60

Debra Chasnoff, Whose Films Redefined Gay Families, Dies at 60
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, November 14, 2017

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Fred Cole, 69

Fred Cole, Leader of Garage-Rock Band Dead Moon, Dies at 69
by Ben Sisario,The New York Times, November 11, 2017

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Jillian Sweeney's (un)reality show at University Settlement

Top: Jillian Sweeney dances in her Arrows & Errors
Bottom: from left,
Lindsay Reuter, Tara O'Con, Laurie Berg and Jodi Bender
(photos: Maria Baranova)

Who is "Myrna?" I'm certainly not going to tell, but if you go to see dancer-choreographer Jillian Sweeney's Arrows & Errors at University Settlement, you will not forget her--Myrna, that is. Or, at least, that's what Sweeney tells us, with insistence: You will never forget Myrna. I've got my own idea of who/what Myrna is, and I'm going to hold onto it. Yes, I guess Sweeney's right. Unforgettable.

What are the arts for if not to make something necessary where there was nothing. Even if that something is an illusion. That illusion points to something we could have and gives it a shape we can be energized by, a shape we can use. Why not Myrna, then? It seems artists know that however we manage this, it's okay. They give themselves permission to do it imperfectly, because imperfection works, too. There seems to be human energy in imperfection that just works--especially when people get together.

So, Jodi Bender starts off sitting in a chair on the top edge of an oval of light, an odd kind of spotlight. Her casual aspect is hardly star-like, and it's like the light is aware of her but half-heartedly includes her in its own space. In any case, she's just sitting, serenely gazing out at us. Then she's easily replaced by one or another of Sweeney's other dancers--Laurie Berg, Tara O'Con or Lindsay Reuter. Easy substitutes.

Reuter, seated, introduces a rippling through the body, from tailbone to head, that the others copy, each in her own way. Some get up and carry this sloshing into short walks across the stage from one set of chairs to another. And, by the way, those lines of chairs along either side of the performance space? A few members of the audience sit there, too. So dancers periodically melt into the lineup, becoming almost invisible, or at least unremarkable, and only rise into visibility when it's time for the next task.

I noticed O'Con's and Bender's tiny smirks, completely absent from the other dancers' faces--the blank Reuter, the sullen or quietly skeptical Berg. The differences opened a few dimensions in the work, alternate places where it could live and be received. It seemed to ask me to notice these present but unforced expressions and to watch and see if they might change over time.

Beyond those micro-features, though, were the macro ones--like the way aggressive Sweeney imagined folding chairs--a game of musical chairs under new rules that might find two dancers crowding and pressing into each other and using chairs as supports, props or even costumes. The adaptive play parallels the choreographic process and life itself.

Sweeney goes old school with a collection of old tape recorders and cassette tapes that serve multiple imaginative functions--sonic and visual--throughout the piece. These also evoke the past, our memories of the past, which may or may not still be on Memorex, and they are beat up and outmoded, just like our very human memories. They have energy, though. Just the sight of them can take us places. Like to an old, classic tap dance routine that lights up in some of our heads (the more senior heads, surely) while she's showing us something entirely different.

I'm not sure what it is that makes Sweeney herself so fascinating to watch dance, both borderline amusing and borderline formidable. I'm not sure why, when she carries or drags out a bizarre mix-match of kitschy props (credit Michael DiPietro) they start off somewhat irritating to look at and end up making sense because, you understand, she's got an inner vision of them making sense and they must and they just sort of do or your resistance has been worn down and now you're seeing in them what she's seeing. In any case, as with Myrna, you're suddenly able to see them. Choreography!

Sound consultation: Robert Ramirez
Lighting:Vincent Vigilante
Dramaturgical support: Jeffrey Crano

Arrows & Errors continues with a performances tonight at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Katie Lee, 98

Katie Lee, Folk Singer Who Fought to Protect a Canyon, Dies at 98
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, November 10, 2017

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What we have in Commons: The Commons Choir at BRIC

Daria Faïn
in her mayday heyday parfait at BRIC House
Below: members of The Commons Choir
(photo: Ryan Muir) 

You find yourself surrounded by resonant sneezes, explosive farts, otherwise unidentifiable big or more subtle expulsions of air from a multitude of gesticulating bodies.

No. Not the subway system.

It's the sonic opening of mayday heyday parfait, a new 90-minute work presented by The Commons Choir at BRIC House. This large, multifaceted, multicultural ensemble, co-directed by choreographer Daria Faïn and poet Robert Kocik, represents artists spanning disciplines from dance to poetry to song.

For the first several minutes, the audience stands in the middle of the performance space with performers darting or weaving through them. Every sound has a clear launchpad within a moving body. You watch--and feel--it being produced. To experience this at maximum intensity, keep your eyes on Faïn's clenched movements. But every dancer contributes to a variable soundscape that pulls the standing, slightly shifting audience together into one organism--like a forest with sounds whistling through its canopy and rustling through its understory.

After a time, the watchers can take seats on the space's perimeter, and the story continues with words spoken by a man, a woman and a young girl. In his opening remarks, the man mentions Brooklyn--BRIC's home, of course, and a symbol of historic, if threatened, class and cultural diversity. I forget now what the woman said--and my scrawled notes are of minor help--but the youngster wrapped up by thrice intoning three words, like a mantra and admonition: Change what happens.

Those words combine a sense of inevitability (shit happens and will happen) with a directive: Do your magick. The ensuing performance continues the interdependency of physical movement and vocalization testifying for the body as a site of individuality, intelligence, will, communication and meaningful interaction. The vocalizing is varied. Dancer Saúl Ulerio, for instance, gradually rolls onto his side and front while quietly emitting a kind of musical moan--un-ing. At other moments, strings of words like "uninhabitable worst-case scenario invaluable" float by in an enigmatic stream.

As the movers move, the arrangements look like drifting patchworks of individual bodies doing individual things and putting sound into a site, and that seems okay because no one is impinging on the space of another. I wrote--and think I actually heard someone say--"You can only be who you are." Co-existence and working together do not render us all exactly the same. Cannot. Should not. How could it? Why would it?

Sometime later, Ulerio says something else that sticks with me: "That which I can't know about myself is you."

Writing my notes, I was one of a handful of people who did not opt to reassemble in the middle of the space for the work's resolution and, once again, become bathed in sound. This time, people sat in a large, round bunch like herded cows, and they were ringed by the performers, vocal music rising, falling, burbling, reverberating. At the end, the performers announced their names: Martita Abril, Massimiliano Balduzzi, Ilona Bito, Yoon Sun Choi, Lydia Chrisman, Ichi Go, Alvaro Gonzales Dupuy, Antígona González, Michael Ingle, Aram Jibilian, Anaïs Maviel, Jean Carla Rodea, Saúl Ulerio, Drew Devero, Cecilia Woolfolk and Fay Victor.


Daria Faïn: Co-director and choreographer
Robert Kocik: Co-director and librettist
Darius Jones: Composer
Anaïs Maviel: Composer & Musical Director
Tuce Yasak: Light Designer
AshakaGivens: Costume Design
Eternal Polk: Video Design
Dov Tiefenback: Sound Design
Saúl Ulerio: Assistant choreographer

mayday heyday parfait continues through Sunday, November 12 with performances tonight and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BRIC Arts Media
647 Fulton Street (entrance on Rockwell Place), Brooklyn
(directions)

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John Hillerman, 84

John Hillerman, Who Played Snooty Caretaker on ‘Magnum, P.I.,’ Dies at 84
by Matthew Haag, The New York Times, November 9, 2017

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"Confusing times" call for clarity: Discuss!

Judy Hussie-Taylor
Exective Director and Chief Curator
Danspace Project
(photo: Michael Kirby)

In these confusing times, why and how do performing arts presenters and curators decide what work to present in their season? What is the interplay of determining factors – sociopolitical climate, curatorial vision, audience trends, diversity, the bottom line?

--publicity text for "Commissioning and Presenting in Confusing Times," an Open Spectrum Community Dialogue presented by New York Live Arts and co-curated with Brian Tate of The Tate Group

"For some reason, I kept calling this panel Presenting in A Crisis," said moderator Judy Hussie-Taylor, introducing Commissioning and Presenting in Confusing Times, hosted by New York Live Arts last week. Her alternate title made more sense, really, since most of us in the arts are not at all confused. We're clearheaded enough to be damned angry.

That sense of specific, political outrage seemed elusive at this gathering of five of New York's most powerful curators and presenters--Lili Chopra (French Institute Alliance Française), Tim Griffin (The Kitchen), Kamilah Forbes (Apollo Theater), Jay Wegman (NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts) and Hussie-Taylor herself, an innovator who has made space for award-winning "Platform" programming at historic Danspace Project.

Referring to our current American moment as "a crisis, the turning point in a disease," Hussie-Taylor suggested that her panelists might tackle four questions:

• What needs to be explored?
• What or who needs to be honored?
• What or who needs to be challenged?
• What needs to be jettisoned?

Relatively new to their positions, Forbes and Wegman are both clearly still researching, experimenting and seeking their best path at institutions with, respectively, formidable cultural legacy (the Apollo) and conventional, somewhat muddled programming (NYU Skirball). Wegman--formerly, and famously, artistic director of Abrons Arts Center--was forthcoming about challenges he faces in replacing stodgy Skirball fare with something actually attractive to NYU students. To do so, he has let go of familiar acts that, as he put it, tend to do little but recycle their material. The 2016 election re-energized his focus, inspiring him to produce more adventurous events such as an appearance by author Ta-Nehisi Coates and the U.S. premiere of a controversial Palestinian play, The Siege.

All the panelists expressed, to one degree or another, dedication to supporting artists and putting artists' needs and concerns at the center of operations--with all the practical complications that can entail. Forbes argued that the job of the institution is to be the locus of transformation and a vehicle for creating the "21st Century canon." But, for the most part, I must say I walked away still questioning how this might be achieved, not just at the Apollo, but elsewhere in what is arguably the arts capital and most progressive city of our nation.

Even in New York's dance and performance community, we are still looking at citadels of power in need of the knowledge, skill, insight and visionary courage of more women and more people of color. The expertise and talent, which I witness regularly, are out here in abundance....and not in the least in a state of confusion. 

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Those rebellious Trocks, now on film!

REBELS ON POINTE

(2017, 90 minutes)

A film by Bobbi Jo Hart

An Icarus Films Release

This month, Icarus Films and director Bobbi Jo Hart will celebrate the US theatrical release of Hart's Rebels on Pointe, the first documentary devoted to the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. For more than four decades, the New York-based Trocks have strapped on pointe shoes, delighting world-wide audiences with irreverent, accessible interpretations of ballet's classics. While the gender-bending is all in fun, their dancing also demonstrates serious technical capability and attention to detail.Artistic director Tory Dobrin sees no reason, he says, to choose between joke or no joke. The Trocks, says ABT's James Whiteside, an ardent admirer, strike "an incredible balance between high art and clever camp."

Generous with samples of the troupe on stage, Hart's film is also lavish with clips of interviews with and about the dancers. We come to appreciate their work ethic, their drive to perform and the joys and challenges of day-to-day life within and outside of dance.

I only wish Hart had delved a little deeper, seizing an opportunity to contextualize the Trocks's achievements. Dance fans can now explore an exciting landscape in which openly queer, trans and gender non-conforming artists expand how we see, read and respond to dance, both classical and contemporary. It would have been interesting to hear from out-lesbian dance artist and educator Katy Pyle whose Ballez--a philosophy, practice and company--is designed to re-write "the narratives of Story Ballets to tell the history of our lineage, as dancers, and as queers" and re-imagine "Archetypal characters to reflect multiplicity: of identity, desire and expression." And Pyle is only one of many artists upending conventional roles and affirming more gender fluidity in dance today.

Rebels on Pointe leans more personal than political, though, of course, these things glide along a spectrum. It's more of a glance behind the scenes and the dressing room door but, if you love people, love dancers, love the Trocks, that might be enough.

See Rebels on Pointe 

in the following theaters:

New York City: opening November 15 at Quad Cinema

Los Angeles: opening November 24 at Laemmle Music Hall

Chicago: opening November 24 at Gene Siskel Film Center

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Dance as an Act of Resistance: Feminist Magazine interview

Valecia Phillips, host of Feminist Magazine (KPFK 90.7FM), interviews me and interdisciplinary dance artist, educator and Avest Award winner taisha paggett on the role of the body and dance in today's urgent activism and resistance.

Listen live today, November 7

2pm PST/5pm EST

or connect to Feminist Magazine

via iTunes

Feminist Magazine is a weekly radio show: Intersectional feminism, news, views & culture. Grassroots to Global, stories you hear nowhere else, from all kinds of kickass feminists making change.

More ways to listen to this episode:

On Stitcher Podcast

At KPFK Archives (available for 90 days)

On Feminist Magazine Homepage (The episode will be available until November 14. Look for the box on the far right called LISTEN TO THIS WEEK'S SHOW.)

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Maleek Washington brings family memories to BAAD!

Dance artist Maleek Washington
(photo: Whitney Brown)

Last night in the sudden chill, the mist-veiled, almost-full moon rode high over St. Peter's Episcopal Church, its landmark chapel, Foster Hall--home to Bronx performance space BAAD!--and its cemetery. Approaching from nearby Zerega Avenue station felt like stumbling onto the set for Michael Jackson's Thriller, a feeling intensified at first sight of signs directing visitors to enter not through the usual chapel doorway but by a side path within inches of massive gravestones.

For the opening section of Shadows of Heaven: Bronx Blues, dance artist Maleek Washington took over the familiar, modest allotment of space inside Foster Hall's entrance. So his audience had to wait downstairs in BAAD's office--stocked with refreshments and brightened by disco classics--before being let upstairs, carefully, in groups of five. I lined up, walked up and found myself in cramped quarters with a ring of people, some of whom, clearly, were family and friends of Washington. How did I know this? Well, he had strung up several mobiles to which old family snapshots were clipped. People were touching them, oohing and ahhing and wow-ing and OMG-ing at the sight of people they knew--or themselves!--so much so that they appeared to completely ignore the dancer's presence and performance.

I kept shifting--dodging these folks, trying to stay out of Washington's way, too, as he coiled and spun or abruptly darted back and forth with photos or photo albums in his hands. I admired how he managed the continuous reconfiguration of his space as people entered and moved about. I wondered if he improvised his ductile maneuvers according to whatever space was presented to him at any given moment.

There was something...a sudden lighting change, if I recall...that signaled the next phase. Filing past large painted portraits (by Sophia Dawson) and reflective "portal" paintings (by Chet Gold), we transferred to BAAD!'s theater space and, gratefully, its usual seating. "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" was in the air, and dancers--a man and a woman--posed behind huge painting frames on either side of an empty frame. A disco ball twirled, and Chic's "Le Freak" came on, which made the dancers groove, and then Smokey Robinson's "Ooo Baby Baby," which took their story further. In just the space created by two songs, you could grasp how different they are--her powerful self-possession; his sweetly easy-going, if less-focused, nature. As I type that now, I realize how stereotypical it looks--the Strong Black Woman; uncertain, emasculated Black man. But this seems drawn from personal life, Washington's history, a couple of actual portraits, and Washington is at his best, in this work, as a portraitist.

Although a first-rate dancer with extensive technical background and range, I find my attention not fully engaged with the solo material he has made for himself. I think we're meant to understand him to be the son of this couple long separated, apparently, by the man's incarceration--a story that ultimately fascinates me much more for its sensitive and moving depiction.

Performers: Danielle Mills, Sophia "Wet Paint" Dawson, Chet Gold and Maleek Washington

DJ: DTTONYMONKEY (aka Antonio Brown)

Writer: Niya Nicholson

Mentors: Sidra Bell, Francesca Harper

Shadows of Heaven: Bronx Blues (closed) was a presentation of Pepatián and BAAD!'s joint Dance Your Future: Artist & Mentor Collaborative Residency and a feature of BAAD's BlakTinX series (on through November 18).

Dance Your Future programming continues 

with the following performances:

Tatiana Desardouin / Passion Fruit Dance Company

Friday, November 10

Beatrice Capote & Miguel Aparicio / The Sabrosura Effect

Friday, November 17

Click here and scroll down for information and tickets.

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

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Virginia Thoren, 97

Virginia Thoren, Artful Fashion Photographer, Dies at 97
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, November 2, 2017

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Muhal Richard Abrams, 87

Muhal Richard Abrams, 87, Individualistic Pianist and Composer, Is Dead
by Howard Mandel, The New York Times, November 1, 2017

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