DANCING WHILE BLACK is an artist-led initiative that supports the diverse work of Black dance artists by cultivating platforms for process, performance, dialogue and documentation. We bring the voices of black dance artists from the periphery to the center, providing opportunities to self-determine the languages and lenses that define their work.
DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
Musician, vocalist and actor
Rhiannon Giddens
(photo: David McClister)
I don't recall how and when I first learned that musician and vocalist Rhiannon Giddens would be hosted by Symphony Space for a full-on residency (November 8-17), but that day was a blessed one. Despite a busy schedule and frequent exhaustion, I set my mind to the task and made my way to Symphony Space last night for the final performance by Giddens and her collaborators. My guest and I will long remember this evening for its generosity and phenomenal powers of healing.
Fans of Giddens have admired her since she first stepped out as co-founder, with Dom Flemons, of beloved, Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops at the nexus of folk, blues, Celtic, bluegrass, gospel and other traditional genres. Her versatile voice and keen, beguiling musicianship on banjo and fiddle brought buoyancy and illumination to the band's signature Americana blend. Since then, pursuing a solo career appears to have sharply defined and deepened this artist, recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship.
The musical alliances she makes now--with long-revered Toshi Reagon and (new to me) Chicago's Allison Russell and Tennessee's Amythyst Kiah--signal a growing desire to join forces with Black women dedicated to both ancestral nourishment and the struggle for social justice. The Giddens who was present onstage with these sisters--as well as her blood sister and beautiful poet Lalenja Harrington, pianist/accordionist Francesco Turrisi, drummer Attis Clopton and bassist Jason Sypher--seems radically pared down to the essentials of being a direct conduit of spiritual energy and effort. By evidence of last night's show, Giddens has mastered the intuitive art of, as I often call it, "getting the right people in the room." But she also knows how to foster unparalleled focus and harmony among those talented allies.
In Giddens now, clearly there is an inward turning, a seeking out of, as she announced in her first lyric, the "ten-thousand stories, ten thousand songs" to chronicle, as well, the "ten-thousand wrongs." At her right hand was Russell, a sensitive, joyous woman with her mind on Black folks surviving and thriving, a Caribbean lilt in her own first song. (She has Grenadian roots.) Even "with feet in shackles," she trilled out, "we'll be dancing."
To Russell's right, Kiah stood, gruff and driving voice transforming the well-rehearsed tale of John Henry into a peppy tune spotlighting, instead, his gutsy wife Polly Ann. Polly can you lift that hammer? Yes, I can. Yes, I can.
Reagon, as she is often wont to do--whether onstage or on Facebook--reminded us what time it is, that we're the ones we've been waiting for, that "there is nobody else but you." I have never heard Reagon as seductively full of revolutionary fire as she was during this show, seated with her guitar on the far left end of Giddens's musical crew. She came with legacy and nothing to prove, and yet she proved so much in every moment, whether supporting her sisters or rocking out on her own.
I was sorry that I missed Thursday's residency show, the one devoted to Turrisi's artistry. His accordion-playing on Friday was a delectable surprise--every bit as fluid, as supple, as his piano work.
This coming February, look for Songs of Our Native Daughters, a Smithsonian Folkways album recorded by Giddens, Russell and Kiah, confronting slavery, racism, and misogyny in our nation's history and offering stories of Black struggle, resistance, and hope.
And here, from 2016, is Giddens's and Russell's a capella performance of Russell's "The Wind That Shakes The Barley."
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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon share an evening of new work. The two choreographers share aesthetic lineages, through working with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project and Yvonne Rainer. Emmanuèle Phuon’s Bits & Pieces (Choreographic Donations) looks backward and inward, narrating her personal journey through dance via Cambodia, France, New York, and Brussels with the help of 5 choreographers: Patricia Hoffbauer, David Thomson, Elisa Monte, Yvonne Rainer, and Vincent Dunoyer. Their choreographic donations intersect in an eclectic collage of sounds, dances, childhood wounds, anecdotes, and memories from Phnom Penh to New York, with an open return. A History of Light, Emily Coates’ new project with MacArthur recipient Josiah McElheny, looks backward and outward: tracing a history of light, by intertwining dance aesthetics and scientific knowledge, and the unique history of the universe through the stories of women who have pushed art, science, and technology ahead. Twentieth century cultural and scientific references inform the work’s content and form.
--from publicity for "Emily Coates & Josiah McElheny / Emmanuéle Phuon: A Shared Evening"
So, backward and inward, backward and outward, all in search of what is unseen or unacknowledged. A particle of light. The story that light can tell. The life of a dancer. The brilliance of a scientist ignored because she happens to be a woman. The subtle strands of connection within dance lineages and webs of influence. The struggles of refugees and of those who devote their lives to helping them. A passionate Black composer less well known to most of us than her world-famous husband. A lighting designer without whom this work--and Phuon's--would be missing a large part of its magic. Our world rushes forward with little awareness or valuing of any of these.
Both artists sharing an evening at Danspace Project--Emily Coates and Emmanuéle Phuon--radiate mature elegance and intelligence in every move as they serve as witnesses and reporters for us.
Coates is the former New York City Ballet dancer whose book on physics and dance, co-authored with CERN particle physicist Sarah Demers, comes out in January 2019. Demers appears as a narrator--though, unfortunately, challenged by audio issues last evening--in A History of Light. Sculptor Josiah McElheny, both integrates his work into the piece and plays a physical role in its scenario, further breaking down borders between disciplines. I especially enjoyed his simple, clear demonstration of relative distances in the cosmos and the profound sense of our planet's humble presence in a cosmos mostly made of dark matter.
"Why are ballerinas always dying?" Coates asks after her own "dying" in front of a filmed Dying Swan sequence. That irritable question lingers in the air, untouched.
Conceived/created by Emily Coates and Josiah McElheny
Performed by: Emily Coates, Sarah Demers and Josiah McElheny
Music direction and composition: Will Orzo
Lighting design: Carol Mullins
If, in some strange turn of events, I was forced to see only one more dancer for the rest of my life, I wouldn't linger over that choice. I'd select Emmanuèle Phuon whose performance, Bits & Pieces (Choreographic Donations), is an embodied, seamless memoir collage with a long, varied personal narrative about unfolding as an artist and person, contributions from several dance colleagues, and musical tastes as diverse as John Cage, Tina Turner and Eric Satie. Like Coates, Phuon makes room for a non-dance collaborator--her amazing sound wizard, Zai Tang--to physically and vocally stray into the dance. Although there was a point at which the thread seemed to be stretching out a bit too long, I ended up feeling sad to have to tear myself away from an artist--a human--I could watch and listen to forever. I wished, in that moment, for young artists everywhere to witness Phuon--her specificity of gesture and story-like pacing, her foxy sense of humor, her claiming of pleasure and freedom in movement despite the damaging messages she, as a vulnerable, developing artist, absorbed along the way. Her presence says victory to me.
Concept: Emmanuèle Phuon
Performed by: Emmanuèle Phuon, Zai Tang
Dramaturgy and Direction: Vincent Dunoyer
Choreography: Vincent Dunoyer, Patricia Hoffbauer, Elisa Monte, Emmanuèle Phuon, Yvonne Rainer, David Thomson.
Sound Design: Zai Tang
Lighting Design: Carol Mullins
Emily Coates & Josiah McElheny / Emmanuéle Phuon: A Shared Evening concludes tonight with an 8pm performance. For information and tickets, click here.
DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
Ashley R.T. Yergens in character for prettygirl264264 (photo: Fred Attenborough)
What you focus on increases. Or, maybe it's, What you focus on expands. Or what...ever.
That favored quote of New Agey savants came to mind at last evening's world premiere of prettygirl264264, when I gauged the distance--physical and otherwise--between trans performance artist Ashley R.T. Yergens and a flat screen television displaying appearances by singer Cher, the late Sono Bono and their trans son Chaz Bono. My interest in Sonny and Cher had faded out quite early, with their pop star heyday and my youth, and has not made a miraculous recovery in the current age of celebrity tv and Twitter. So, I was content to train nearly undivided attention on the present moment and the live action before us at Abrons Arts Center where the Underground Theater's floor was nearly blanketed by a cheery layer of party balloons. Yes, party balloons for something Yergens billed as his "premature funeral."
The service served an atypical "In Loving Memory Of" funeral card in lieu of a program. The dearly not-quite-yet-departed took a while to appear, the buildup to that appearance including a standout, if painful, performance of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" by lily bo shapiro, dolled up in gleaming, cherry pink unitard and oversized, rhinestone-encrusted glasses. Yes, a Celine Dion anthem at a premature funeral where evocation of Judy Garland's connection to blackface, Sonny Bono's death by skiing into a tree, and a full-out dance duet routine to La Bouche's "Be My Lover" are not only inevitable but completely appropriate.
Not too long ago, I read a New York Times obituary that told the story of how the late actor James Karen asked his buddies, unbeknownst to one another, to draft his obit long before he actually passed. His wife finally revealed to one friend, George Clooney, that Karen had a habit of doing this so that he'd be around to enjoy what people thought of him. Not a terrible idea. And, in his way, Yergens is doing the same--inviting us in to indulge one trans man's moment of celebration and to contemplate how rare acknowledgement and celebration can be at the end of many trans lives.
If neither the celebs onscreen (one, a "gay icon" who is cisgender and straight; the other, an early, selective and reluctant object of mainstream media spotlight on trans lives) can fairly represent the range of trans experience, neither can Yergens, keenly aware of his white, able-bodied visibility and privilege. prettygirl264264--the title comes from an old AOL handle--speaks from a particular sliver of experience and sensibilities, bringing wry lightheartedness in a time of serious political struggle. And, yes, we need that contribution, too.
Video: Rena Anakwe
Performers: Sydney Boyu, Nico Brown, lily bo shapiro, Mur, Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal, Ashley R.T. Yergens
Lighting: Jennifer Fok
Original Music: Trashed My Living Room and ErasedMur
prettygirl264264 continues tonight and Saturday evening with performances at 7:30pm. 50% of ticket sales benefit trans rights organizations. Although both performances have sold out, Abrons promises to get some walkups in. So try for it! For information, click here.
DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
Joanna Kotze in Kimberly Bartosik's I hunger for you (photo: Jim Coleman)
Lighting designer Roderick Murray's fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling inside BAM Fisher's Fishman Space, colder and more severe than stalactites. Two dancers--Christian Allen and Lindsey Jones--step into the bare space of Kimberly Bartosik's I hunger for you. You can almost hear raptor wings, so forceful is the way they will lunge and beat and spin against the air. Arms lifting and rotated. Heavy breath audible. Heads and chins tilted upward. Torsos arching as they drop to a knee.
Burr Johnson, Dylan Crossman and Joanna Kotze--raptors, too, or perhaps angels, if angels have feet to strike mountainous earth--come in and churn and lash against the empty space as well. Back and forth, they cross it, overlapping in time and close pathways, until their labors clearly take a toll. Watching them, too, provides an initial sensation of exhilaration followed by exertion. When they stop--just stop and stand and shift inside and gasp--you feel the same internal wooziness, everything inside one's own body saying, "Hold up. Can we just settle back into order?"
I hunger for you plays with the risk of release--the kind of dropping of form and letting go that we experience in extremes of sensual and spiritual ecstasy--without guarantee of connection. Or guarantee that connection achieved will stay or will satisfy. A partner backs off or quietly quits the space entirely. The one remaining might freeze in a pose of hopelessness--arms wrenched forward from a torso bent as if in abject submission.
Much of the inspiration for the piece comes from the choreographer's religious upbringing, and it's interesting that she has cast her own child, Dahlia Bartosik-Murray, as a silent witness to some moments of Kotze's dancing as well as, later, a figure of release, coursing around the space like a wild filly.
Choreography: Kimberly Bartosik in collaboration with the dancers
Music: Sivan Jacobovitz, with arrangement by Kimberly Bartosik
Costume design: Harriet Jung
Sound Engineering: James Bigbee Garver
Dramaturgy: Melanie George
I hunger for you continues a sold-out run through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. For information, click here.
Also, Friday's audience is welcome to an informal post-show discussion, facilitated by Melanie George with Bartosik and company in BAM Fisher's Lower Lobby.
DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
Performer Narcissister opens the world theatrical premiere and two-week run of her documentary, Narcissister Organ Player, at Film Forum next Wednesday, November 7. A former dancer, she's best known in the performance art world for the contradiction of concealing her identity with doll-like masks while revealing her flesh and wildly creative preoccupation with body organs, orifices and functions. Narcissister regularly propels audiences into forbidden dimensions of the familiar. With this new self-portrait, though, she guides us to the hidden source of that extreme courage--the familial.
Just over 90 minutes, this stunning, poignant film--expansive and mythic in imagery--centers the influence of the artist's relationship with her Morocco-born Jewish mother (and, to a far lesser extent, her Black American father) on the ideas that drive her work. Q&As with Narcissister will follow the 7pm screenings on these dates:
Wednesday, November 7, moderated by Jeffrey Deitch, Gallerist, Deitch Projects
Thursday, November 8, moderated by Lia Gangitano, Director, Participant Inc.
Saturday, November 10, moderated by writer Ren Weschler
Narcissister Organ Player will also be screened at Northwest Film Forum (Seattle, Washington), November 15-18.
209 West Houston Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)
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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
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