InfiniteBody Honor Roll 2018

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody Honor Roll 2018

Michael B. Jordan (left) and Chadwick Boseman
face off as rivals for power in The Black Panther.
(courtesy of Marvel Studios)

Two marvelous stars--
Alex Borstein (left) and Rachel Brosnahan--
of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
(courtesy of Amazon Studios)

Alice Sheppard (above as "Andromeda")
and Laurel Lawson ("Venus")
duet in DESCENT.
(photo: Rain Embuscado)

Acclaimed hip hop choreographer Rennie Harris
accepted the challenge of crafting a two-act dance, Lazarus,
for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in record time

in celebration of the beloved troupe's 60th Anniversary.
(photo: Paul Kolnik)

The year 2018 started off with me nursing the flare-up of an old back injury, avoiding subfreezing climes and a "bomb cyclone" and going stir-crazy while catching up to these excellent streams:

@The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Amazon Prime (premiered 2017)

@One Mississippi, Amazon Prime (premiered 2015)

@Six Feet Under, Amazon Prime (premiered 2001)

@Scandal, Netflix (premiered 2012)

I was grateful to finally heal and make it out to my first live show of the year: @Panorama by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò with actors of the Great Jones Repertory Company at La MaMa, December 29, 2017-January 21, 2018

@Caleb Teicher & Company at American Dance Platform, The Joyce Theater, January 9 and 14

@Mugen Noh Othello, directed by Satoshi Miyagi, for The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival at Japan Society, January 11-14

@8th Annual Bronx Artists Now: Showcase & Conversation, produced by Jane Gabriels for Pepatián, January 12

Thomas F. DeFrantz
(photo: SLIPPAGE/Shonda Corbett)

@White Privilege, a lecture performance by Thomas F. Defrantz/Slippage with Sonicscape by Quran Karriem, American Realness festival, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, January 15

@We Wait In The Darkness by Rosy Simas, American Realness Festival, Abrons Arts Center, January 13-15

@THIS by Adrienne Truscott, American Realness Festival, Abrons Arts Center, January 14-16

@Unexploded Ordnances (UXO) by Split Britches, The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival at La Mama, January 4-21

@The Post (film), directed by Steven Spielberg (20th Century Fox/Dreamworks), released 2017

Left: Choreographer David Thomson with Paul Hamilton
in he his own mythical beast(photo: Maria Baranova)

@he his own mythical beast by David Thomson at Performance Space New York, January 31-February 4

@Reflecting Rhythms: Kazunori Kumagai and Kaoru Watanabe at Asia Society, February 2

@Come Ye finale by Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE at The Joyce Theater, February 6-11

@"Everything you have is yours?" by Hadar Ahuvia at 14th Street Y, February 8-10

@The Black Panther (film), directed by Ryan Coogler (Marvel Studios), released February 16, 2018

@In a Rhythm by Bebe Miller Company in The Making Room: Bebe Miller Company & Susan Rethorst at New York Live Arts, February 21-24

@Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 28 through May 28

@Rosalie by Marion Spencer at Work Up 4.1, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, March 2-3

@Okay, I'm Gunna Start Now by Evelyn Lillian Sánchez Narvaez at Work Up 4.1, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, March 2-3

@Eurythmics in the Southern Burn by Jonathan González in The Dossier Charrette: A Series of Working Dance Essays, part of Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) at Danspace Project, March 8-10

@leaning by Angie Pittman in The Dossier Charrette: A Series of Working Dance Essays, part of Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) at Danspace Project, March 8-10

@Oba Queen King Baba--Excerpt One by Ni'Ja Whitson in A Shared Evening: Keely Garfield Dance, Same As Sister and Ni'Ja Whitson, part of Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) at Danspace Project, March 15-17

@The Exciting Event... by Same As Sister, part of Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) at Danspace Project, March 15-17

@DESCENT by Alice Sheppard, New York Live Arts, March 22-24

@...they stood shaking while others began to shout by Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group, part of Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) at Danspace Project, March 22-24

Dance artist Gesel Mason
(photo: Enoch Chan)

@No Boundaries/Dancing The Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers by Gesel Mason Performance Projects at The Billie Holiday Theatre, April 6-7

@We live this (film), directed by James Burns (2016), at Moving Body-Moving Image: A Dance on Screen Festival, Barnard College, April 7

@Six Solos (film), directed by Simon Fildes with choreography by Sang Jijia (2016), at Moving Body-Moving Image: A Dance on Screen Festival, Barnard College, April 7

@Shamar Wayne Watt in The Dark Swan's Last Breath of Life by Nora Chipaumire at The Rubin Museum of Art, April 18

@(re)Source, an investigation-in-process (showing) by Maria Bauman, MBDance, at BAX, April 27-28

@Indumba by Fana Tshabalala, performed by Deeply Rooted Dance Theater at BAM Fisher, April 28 and 29

Kyle Abraham solos in INDY at The Joyce Theater
(photo: Steven Schreiber)

@A.I.M. (Kyle Abraham) season at The Joyce Theater, May 1-6

@Sen Koro la (work-in-progress) by Lacina Coulibaly at e-moves at Harlem Stage, May 2-5

@Living Our Legacies, featuring Maria Bauman and work by J. Bouey with Wendell Gray II, Shelby "Shellz" Fenton, Alethea Pace and Jason Samuels Smith, curated by Rashida Bumbray, at Dancing While Black 5th Anniversary, at BAAD!, May 4

@Dear White People (Season 2), Netflix, streaming from May 4

@The Story of Tap: 20th Anniversary, hosted by Hank Smith, with Derick Grant, Jason Samuels Smith and Ayako Shirasaki at Dixon Place, May 16

@Untitled (NYC 2018) (showing) by Keith Hennessy at Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, May 21

@Raising the Bar at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, May 25

@to ascend past numbness and witness birth. showing of a "process-memoir" by Johnnie Cruise Mercer at Jack Crystal Theater, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, May 31-June 1

@Rennie Harris: Funkedified at The New Victory Theater, May 31-June 10

@Four Questions (featuring Regie Cabico, Gary Champi, Aviva Jaye, Ni'Ja Whitson and Shannon Matesky), curated by Shannon Matesky for La MaMa's Squirts at La MaMa Downstairs, June 10

Rachel Bloom as Rebecca,
titular lead character in Netflix's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

@Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Netflix (premiered 2015)

@THEM by Chris Cochrane, Dennis Cooper and Ishmael Houston-Jones at Performance Space New York, June 21-28

@garment (Director's Choice) by Sidra Bell at New York Live Arts, June 28-30, July 1

@Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury at Soho Rep, June 2-July 22

@Tap City's Rhythm in Motion at Symphony Space, July 11

@50 Years of Dance Theatre of Harlem: Experiencing History on Pointe and in Color panel at New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, August 4

@Hot to Trot (film), directed by Gail Freedman (Hot to Trot Productions, LLC; distributed by First Run Films), August 24

@Homeland, The CURRENT SESSIONS at wild project, August 18-19

Top: Members of Move(NYC) Young Professionals
(photo: Matthew Karas)
Below: Move(NYC) executive team
left to right: Niya Nicholson, Nigel Campbell and Chanel DaSilva
(photo: Lelund Thompson)

@Move(NYC) Young Professionals Program Summer Finale Showcase, August 25-26

@Magdalena by Gabri Christa at Theaterlab, September 12-22

@Pino-Latino: The Intersection of the Latino and Asian Cultures, featuring Ballet Hispanico in works by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Bennyroyce Royon at Fridays@Noon at 92Y Harkness Dance Center, September 14

@Elena Rose Light and Evelyn Lillian Sánchez Narvaez in By Association: Elena Rose Light, Pallavi Sen, Bully Fae Collins at Abrons Arts Center, September 20-22

@A Memorial and Celebration of the Life of Sam Miller (1952-2018) at Danspace Project, September 15

@What Remains by Claudia Rankine and Will Rawls at Danspace Project, September 25, 27-29

@Ten by Deborah Hay in Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done at Museum of Modern Art, October 4-6

@Y by RoseAnne Spradlin at New York Live Arts, September 27-29, October 4-6

@another piece apart by Jennifer Nugent & Paul Matteson at New York Live Arts, October 10-13

@Emily Coates & Josiah McElheny/Emmanuéle Phuon/A Shared Evening of New Work at Danspace Project, November 8-10

Musician, vocalist and actor Rhiannon Giddens
(photo: David McClister)

@Sisters Present (Rhiannon Giddens Residency) at Symphony Space, November 17

@DoublePlus: Kayla Hamilton + Jerron Herman at Gibney, November 29-December 1

@Skeleton Architecture: An Evening of Performance at Danspace Project, December 8

@Lock 'em Up by DANCENOISE at New York Live Arts, December 12-15

@BBB by Fana Fraser, DoublePlus at Gibney, December 13-15

@Lazarus by Rennie Harris for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Center, November 28-December 30

@Soles of Duende at Dixon Place, December 7-21

@A Star is Born, directed by Bradley Cooper (Warner Bros.), released October 5, 2018

@Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Participant Media and Esperanto Medio; Netflix), released November 21, 2018

#StillTheBoss.
And those of us without the $$$ for Broadway got to see why.

Thank you, Netflix!

@Springsteen on Broadway, directed by Thom Zimny (Netflix), released December 15, 2018

@If Beale Street Could Talk, directed by Barry Jenkins (Annapurna Pictures), released December 25, 2018

Okay, that's my honor roll for 2018! 
What's on yours?

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Subscribe in a reader

Zahava Griss: the sacred work of transforming white culture

A list of the skills Zahava Griss has amassed and roles they have played might fill this entire blog post--gender-transcendent dance artist, erotic ritualist, bodyworker, educator, coach, anti-racist activist and so much more. Recently, Griss contributed a chapter of perceptive writing to a new anthology of essays, Sacred Body Wisdom: Igniting the Flame of Our Divine Humanity, out soon from Flower of Life Press.

Their chapter, “Transforming the Culture of Whiteness in Dance and Sexuality Communities,” outlines ways in which white artists and activists like themselves can approach creative and social justice work--as well as the relationship with their own and others' bodies--with greater openness, awareness, respect and joy.

Sections of the essay deal with issues of white culture within ballet (where authoritarian traditions predispose dancers to follow rules and not speak up for themselves), within sexuality and within the complex challenges of community building across differences. Griss notes, "so many of the body-centered events and communities I have explored are mostly white people, white leadership and white culture." And, by that, Griss means “certain ways of communicating, an aesthetic of what is valued and acceptable, an unspoken way of framing what being a body is, what ‘safety’ is, what spirit is, what having a body means, what success or beauty means that is familiar to a dominant white culture...an often unconscious culture that has been created by those who came before us that does not acknowledge or reflect awareness and respect for people of color, who make up the majority of people on this beautiful earth.”

Griss continues, “I wrote this so we could better observe white culture, vision what we want to replace it with, clarify what diversity means to us personally, and take action to create the society we want to live in.”

Sacred Body Wisdom: Igniting the Flame of Our Divine Humanity will become available on Amazon.com on January 21. Learn more about it here. For more on Zahava Griss and their projects, visit www.EmbodyMoreLove.com.

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Get ready for '(W/HOLE)" at Invisible Dog

AORTA Films and the A.O. Movement Collective proudly present (W/HOLE), an artful work of queer-feminist--if otherwise uncharacterizable--porn commissioned by The Invisible Dog and sure to be a highlight of its season.

Directed by Mahx Capacity, this evening-length film is handsome in choreography, performance and camera work, sometimes sunlight bright, sometimes dungeon dark, with robust poetry and wit. From a symphony of f-bombing in all its expressive permutations to an extended sex scene where watchful attendants--as elusive as black-clad kuroko--hold glass spray bottles at the ready, keeping the lovers moist and dewy. The way the cast affirms that every body, and everything about the body, is erotic can be both amusing and profound. Leave it to dancers to come up with something like this.

(W/HOLE) runs at The Invisible Dog on Friday, January 4 (9pm), Saturday, January 5 (7pm) and Sunday, January 6 (2pm and 7pm). Hurry for tickets, though. They're selling fast. Click here.

The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street (between Smith Street and Boerum Place), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Soles of Duende asks Can We Dance Here? Please do!

Left-to-right: Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales
and Brinda Guha of Soles of Duende
(photo: Spinkick Pictures)

Can We Dance Here?
Soles of Duende
Dixon Place
December 7-8, 14-15 and 20-21

I'm not sure I follow the progression of existence to seeking permission to gaining trust to arriving at freedom alluded to in program notes for Can We Dance Here? Something about the "Transtheoretical Stages of Change" as the underpinning of the story this new dance wants to tell. But while I'm not hip to all that, I do know the three grounded, skillful and vivacious dancers of Soles of Duende--Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales and Brinda Guha, 2018 Artists in Residence at Dixon Place--make a compelling argument for the power of women and the joy of women making really big sound together. Six pounding feet rattled the floor beneath our chairs like a tremblor. Anyone placing their bar drinks on that floor surely risked a spill.

Supported by the live music of Anjna Swarminathan (violin), Frank Malloy IV (drum) and JADALAREIGN (DJ), Castro brings tap; Rosales, flamenco; Guha, Kathak, all with great conviction that these three percussive dance forms belong in conversation. Can We Dance Here? is the perfect package for that exchange of life force--no more than an hour in length, superbly focused in structure, its staging of trios, duos and solos tight as a drum.

I caught the next-to-last evening of a show that has been running on weekends since December 7. So, you have one more shot--tonight. Can We Dance Here? is an offbeat holiday-season treat, but a treat it is.

Can We Dance Here? runs at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
171 Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

The Bessies to honor Japan Society's Yoko Shioya

Yoko Shioya, Artistic Director of Japan Society will receive
a Bessie: the 2019 Presenter Award for Outstanding Curation.

The Bessies organization (New York Dance and Performance Awards) has announced the recipient of its 2019 Presenter Award for Outstanding Curation--Yoko Shioya, Artistic Director of Japan Society. “Yoko has been an amazing force for good in the New York dance world, curating with a bold and discerning eye and bringing important work across cultures,” said Bessies Executive Director Lucy Sexton. “I am so pleased she is being honored with this award.” And I agree!

Celebrate with Shioya at the Bessies Presenters Gathering on Sunday, January 6 (5pm to 7pm) at La MaMa La Galleria. Free and open to all! RSVP here.

La MaMa La Galleria
47 Great Jones Street (between Bowery and Lafayette), Manhattan
(map/directions)

BIO

Yoko Shioya became artistic director of Japan Society in 2006, overseeing the organization’s performing arts and film departments. Since assuming the position of Director of Performing Arts in 2003, she has enlarged the scale and number of commissions for the creation of new works related to Japanese culture by non-Japanese artists, and increased the number of tours of Japan Society-produced works throughout North America. Shioya also launched new initiatives, including co-producing commissioned work by international artists with presenting organizations in Japan, presenting works from East Asian countries, and establishing artists’ residency projects in New York City. Known in Japan as a writer and researcher on the public and private arts support systems in the U.S. and Japan, Shioya has been invited to speak at numerous symposia and lectures and on TV programs presented by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government, Keidanren, the Academy of Cultural Economics, and the Japan Council of Performers’ Organizations, among others. She has been a regular contributor to arts columns on performing arts and exhibitions for the Asahi newspaper, and has served as a committee member and selection panelist for numerous programs, including the Bessie Awards, Rolex Mentor and Protegé International Program, and the Toyota Choreography Awards. Shioya holds BAs in musicology and dance history from Tokyo National University of the Arts.

About the Presenter Award for Outstanding Curating

Established in 2017, the Bessies Presenter Award for Outstanding Curating recognizes a presenter or curator of work performed in the New York City area. It is presented to an individual or curatorial team whose work has had a palpable impact on artists, audiences, or the dance and performance field in general. While the award can recognize sustained achievement in curating or presenting over time, it can equally recognize a particular project, festival, or season that occurred in the past year. Visiting or guest curators, as well as full-time curators and presenters, are eligible. The recipient is chosen jointly by the Bessies Selection and Bessies Steering Committees. The first Presenter Award (in 2017) went to Judy Hussie-Taylor, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Danspace Project, for her curation of A Body in Places, Danspace Project Platform 2016 by Eiko Otake. The second awardee (in 2018) was Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for his championing of dance on the stages of BAM.

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

DANCENOISE makes some noise on West 19th

Connie Fleming performs in Lock 'em Up
(photo: Lola Flash)

Lock 'em Up

DANCENOISE
New York Live Arts
December 12-15

There's no business like show business, and the best in the biz know how to zing you with surprises here and there. So, the only thing I'll say about the opening of DANCENOISE's Lock 'em Up is some advice. Keep your coat on and your cellphone camera ready. Night's are cold, and there's so much to see and hear in our fair city.

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of DANCENOISE, the duo of Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton are back to remind us that feminism not only co-exists with raunchy humor and pugnacious slapstick, yelling at the top of one's lungs and symbolic bloodletting/bloodwearing at the expense of patriarchy but might absolutely require those things. Making space for the rageful Id we'd rather not contemplate, they are all about sprawling across the breadth of New York Live Arts' theater, filling it with the irritating noise of crumpled wads of packing paper, the insistent, rhythmic churning of half-naked dancers and a Goth-friendly, less-than-merry spill of black balloons. What's up with the dancing swastikas? Well, those noxious symbols, regaining open popularity these days, absolutely belong in the universal and cautionary time capsule that Iobst and Sexton is designing for the future of our world. Lock 'em Up is both the audacity of Nope! and a blast of energy to make you get busy with the painful and painstaking work of snatching our country back from the fascist bastards. And it's fun. You must get there.

Choreographer/directors Iobst and Sexton have lots of (great) help with this. So, here come the credits:

Performers: Tyler Ashley, Laurie Berg, Heidi Dorow, Connie Fleming, Melanie Greene, Greta Hartenstein, Anne Iobst, Madison Krekel and Lucy Sexton

Lighting design: David Jensen with Tsubasa Kamei

Video: Charles Atlas

Additional dancers on video: Yoshiko Chuma, koosil-ja, Richard Move, Heather Robles, John Walker, Edisa Weeks, Ashley R.T. Yergens

Production Direction: Lori E. Seid

Production Management: David Jensen with Tsubasa Kamei

Lock 'em Up runs through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. Tonight's show will be followed by a Stay Late conversation moderated by Cynthia Carr. Saturday's show will be followed by an after party with DJ Johnny Dynell of Jackie 60 in the lobby, free with ticket purchase. For information and tickets, click here.

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

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

In an octopus's garden at Performance Space New York

Performance Space New York
introduced its new Octopus series
with an afternoon of performance
curated by Gillian Walsh.

Octopus: Inverted Jester
Organized by Gillian Walsh
Presented by Performance Space New York
Saturday, December 8, 2018

Performance Space New York has a cooler way for us to think about activated networks--not spider webs this time but, instead, an octopus with arms stretching, flexing, rippling and sensing in multiple directions, each of these arms a nimble outpost of the central brain. Wouldn't you like to have what is, essentially, nine brains with which to navigate this mad, mad world?

For the first of Performance Space New York's four, artist-curated Octopus programs, dance artist Gillian Walsh ran with this concept and produced a smart show entitled Inverted Jester, a name that, for me, immediately called up the image of that jester's many-tentacled fool's cap as another octopus-like thing in our universe. And sure as can be, Walsh's many-tentacled program also invoked the historic role of jester as provocative wiseass.

We had Davon Rainey, in barely-there sparkles and stilettos, lip syncing Björk ("Bachelorette") and Nina Simone ("I Loves You, Porgy"), both songs supercharged by the blend of race and gender in one glamorous, sinewy body. It was enough of an exacting performance at a comfortable distance from Rainey's audience, but when he strode into the aisle between seats, a viewer could clearly see, close up, the intelligent complexity of his body, especially his face, in every moment and movement.

Sophia Cleary's website describes her as "a genreless, childless & interdisciplinary artist working with jokes, video, dance, music, and more," and I thank Walsh for making sure I can add Cleary's intense, aggressive weirdness to my long list of experiences in life. Our paths might not have crossed otherwise. Like electric coils wrapping ever more tightly around your sensibilities, her humor demands, and it dares, and then it delivers an unbelievable, nightmarish lap dance to someone you know.

The last Octopus arm I saw--I couldn't stay for Cherry Iocovozzi and Silver Cousler--was Lorelei Ramirez's stand-up act plus her Joy of Painting-style demo. For the latter, just imagine if the late Bob Ross had not been Bob Ross but, rather, a queer Latinx with a laptop loaded with Adobe Illustrator and a mind loaded with a sneaky kind of scary. As her website reveals, "my mother thinks I am possessed and I have accepted this as my only beautiful truth." Mom might know what she's talking about. I had to leave after Ramirez to go feed my cat and get a bite to eat before an evening show elsewhere, but I came away with a serious case of Adobe Illustrator-envy--that Brush Library!!--and I am not at all a visual artist.

Performance Space New York's Octopus is potentially fun and worth checking out if you like taking a chance on something unexpected. Future editions, all at 4pm include:

Saturday, February 23—organized by the Ethyl Eichelberger Committee
Saturday, March 23—organized by Richard Kennedy
Saturday, June 1—organized by Charlotte Brathwaite

For program details and ticketing for each show, click here.

Performance Space New York
150 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

92Y Harkness samples Dancing While Black: December 7

Paloma McGregor

Performing Justice: Dancing While Black

presented by Fridays@Noon

92Y Harkness Dance Center

Friday, December 7

Noon to 1:30pm

Eva Yaa Asantewaa and Dancing While Black founder Paloma McGregor in conversation

Performances by Maria Bauman/MBDance and Jaimé Yawa Dzandu

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.

Information and tickets!

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

An urgent radiance: Rhiannon Giddens and "Sisters Present"

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."

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Coates and Phuon--and Mullins!--light up Danspace Project

Left: Emmanuéle Phuon
Right: Emily Coates
(photo: Pascal Lemaitre)

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.

Danspace Project

131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan

(map/directions)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

prettygirl264264 checks in from Abrons Arts Center

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.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(Plan your visit.)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Forever hunger: Kimberly Bartosik at BAM Fisher

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.

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

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Inside the mask: Narcissister releases documentary self-portrait

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.

Film Forum

209 West Houston Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Shamar Wayne Watt and family revisit "Gully spring" at JACK

Shamar Wayne Watt
(photo: Scott Shaw)

This week, Brooklyn's JACK performance space is presenting a new version of Gully spring: Di exhortation, a dance piece by Jamaica-born Shamar Wayne Watt, originally shown on a Gibney program curated by Nora Chipaumire. (See my review of that late 2017 engagement here.) Just short of an hour, the piece centers Afro-Atlantic spirituality as a landscape of resistance to colonial power and the constraints of Eurocentric Christianity. The work embodies and elevates family with the presence of Watt's mother, Valerie Davis, who contributes her choir-singing joy and, now at JACK, brother Lamar Jerome Watt, a Florida-based student athlete and krump dancer.

The center of Gully spring, though, remains the prophet Watt, mounting a platform and revolving and testifying beneath the ongoing baptismal drip of a gallon jug of water suspended above his head. I recall, from Gibney's promotion, that he declared a new religion of his own making, drawn from African-Jamaican traditions and Pentecostal worship as well as the political awareness and urgency of the moment. Is it not fitting and right that he administer his own benediction?

You have one last chance to witness this performance I called "exhortative, magnetic, formidable" this evening at JACK (8pm). For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 ½ Waverly Ave, Brooklyn
C or G train to Clinton-Washington

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

luciana achugar: the body in power and joy

Choreographer luciana achugar
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Brujx, a world premiere, ritualizes the labor of the dancers, exposing and transcending it to unearth the powerful and primal magic brujx within them. As in all of achugar’s [sic] work it proposes DANCE as the necessary transformational healing for our time. Brujx resists western assumptions of beauty and hierarchical order, freeing the dancers both of their role as worker in the power structure within the creative project and of the universal shame of being animal-sexual-powerful-instinctive creatures. -- from publicity for luciana achugar's Brujx

As part of senior director and curator Jay Wegman's two-week Karl Marx Festival: On Your Marx at NYU Skirball, luciana achugar's Brujx embeds her audience in the flow of the work, instantly transforming most of these "viewers" into performative, even scenic objects to be gazed upon far more than the official dancers. In her somewhat nervous pre-show welcome on Skirball's grand staircase, achugar offered each of us a choice: Either stand or sit onstage, or take a regular seat in the theater's rows.

As it turned out, if you sat facing the stage, as I chose to do for most of the 90+ minutes of Brujx--think bruja, Spanish for witch, but  gender-busting--you'd have to work to catch as much as could be seen from there. Sometimes you'd lean to one side or the other to glimpse dancers through a sliver of space in the crowd. Or, guided by the percussion of bodies slapping the floor or walls, use your imagination. Imagining the scene onstage behind a tightly-packed semicircle of people was not so hard, actually. A lot of Brujx happens through consistent, monotonous kinetic and sonic repetition with a blend of the organic, the industrial and the sexual. See enough, and you can make a good enough guess about the rest.

These aspects--organic, industrial, sexual--never separate in our minds as we observe. Instead of fixating on one notion of what we're seeing and hearing, we fluctuate even as the dancers stay steady in many of their actions. Their evoked nature ranges from insect-like to human, from animal to machine. One of the most indelible, brilliantly conceived and executed images is of a languid, cattle-like walk with each of the dancers on all fours, their haunches exposed and the luminous focus of everyone's attention.

achugar, curiously, is the only performer identified in NYU Skirball publicity, and no program notes, that might identify the others, were issued. Perhaps this anonymity has something to do with the significant partial nudity and behavior of the dancers throughout the piece. I was unnerved to see one man approach the stage with a cellphone and train his videocam on one dancer's upended, pumping backside.

It was not until late in the game that the most of those of us in the seats had mounted the stage to watch the three half-naked witches gyrate to electronic polyrhythms produced by an ingenious sound sculpture. I often think achugar aims to bring back the Sixties, which part of me, remembering the Sixties, finds a bit hokey. Also hokey, having dancers climb to the top of the audience seating and then, row by row, clamber down over the backs of seats. This makes both parts of the audience have to shift their gaze for a while, but to little purpose, and perhaps tells us what we already know about these witches. Yes, they are wild, unruly things. And hasn't the fourth wall been breached already--and more creatively?

Still, looking around as I stood with other on the stage, I noticed the audience's bodies were noticeably relaxed, their faces softened, as the dancers' liberated spirit seeped out into everyone. One woman, absorbed in herself and not even gazing towards the performers, kept up a serpentine undulation in response. As I took my leave, the dancing and gawking continued, the audience now almost completely merged and submerged.

Brujx concludes this evening with a performance at 7:30pm. For information and reservations*, click here.

NYU Skirball's Karl Marx Festival: On Your Marx--*all free with an RSVP and a donation, if you desire--continues through October 28. For information, click here.

NYU Skirball
566 LaGuardia Place (between West 4th and West 3rd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Subscribe in a reader

"Folk Incest": a new Juliana F. May ensemble at Abrons

Molly Poerstel dancing in Juliana F. May's Folk Incest
(photo: Ian Douglas)

In FOLK INCEST, five women interrogate seemingly unrepresentable subject matters including the Holocaust, sexual trauma, and the fetishization of young girls. As pop cultural references, genres, and bodily traumas compress into each other, the work’s biting humor offers catharsis, simultaneously critiquing and supporting abstraction. (from publicity for Juliana F. May's Folk Incest) 

Disorientation. It starts with being directed into one of the drab rooms at Abrons Arts Center not usually used as a venue for performance.

Once there, the audience for Juliana F. May's new, short ensemble--
Folk Incest--sits in a single row around the perimeter of the room. Last night, May drew a particularly chatty, lively group with a bunch of friends even posing for a cellphone photo before, strangely, everyone suddenly piped down. I looked around to see if there something signaled this quieting. If so, I couldn't detect it. Eventually, the lights lowered.

Then a woman appeared--amazing Molly Poerstel--seated in a chair near one of two doors to the corridor. A gentle light fell upon her, a marking that told us she was not really one of us. Or maybe she was. One of us. Plus.

She held a few sheets of paper. She began to read from them...or try to speak with great, forceful difficulty...and I rapidly became so engrossed in what I heard that I don't even recall if she was really glancing at the paper. Poerstel's monologue turned into a tour de force utilizing dexterous mental and vocal ability, beginning with stammering and sputtering, spinning out into something that...oh, I don't know...maybe an exorcist should be brought in to handle. Secrets blurted, profanities barked, surfaces erupting with the long-buried dead. Searing. Scorching. It felt of the moment.

In time, other women appeared in the space--Leslie Cuyjet, Tess Dworman, Lucy Kaminsky, Rebecca Wender, eventually joined by Poerstel. Their big, ungainly, willful, scattered movements smack away any sense that they will behave, or that we can relax, or that they don't belong there. Vengeful energies Poerstel's monologue unleashed, perhaps. Later, there came a wiping-off of makeup, a baring of breasts, a flurry of words sometimes tripping out too quickly to catch, an incredibly elaborate performance of something folksong-ish that, once again, made a viewer marvel at performers' abilities to memorize and recall.

I take the "folk" aspect of this to allude to commonality, and that is something we are certainly coming to grips with as we deal with #MeToo revelations and other testimonies of trauma. Traumatic experience and its consequences are common, not rare, one-off incidents happening to people we do not know. They happen to people we know. They happen in our families. They happen to us. They happen with such frequency to make us question the environments in which we should seek safety and solace. They are common, shared among us like the air we breathe, toxic and injurious to individuals and, ultimately, to all.

And they are festering under the skin and in the bones of the art we choose to call abstract.

Seating is limited, and remaining shows are sold out. But if there's a waiting list, Folk Incest is worth a try to get in.

Folk Incest continues through this Saturday, October 20, with performances at 7:30pm. For information, click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Subscribe in a reader