Davalois Fearon: dancing for C.J. and so many others

Davalois Fearon wearing a costume from For C.J.

Davalois Fearon Dance
For C.J.
BAAD!
March 29-30

When dance artist Davalois Fearon lost her nephew to asthma, she turned mourning into action. Her work, For C.J., represents a cry against the dire health outcomes for communities--predominantly, Black and Latinx people--doubly-impacted by urban pollution and inadequate health care. Fearon, a Jamaican immigrant who grew up in the Bronx, created The For C.J. Initiative to raise awareness and spur city policymakers to address these life-threatening conditions. But she also created a dance to honor her nephew, set to music played live at BAAD! by her husband, composer Mike McGinnis (wood winds), Elias Bailey (tuba) and Jeff Hermanson (trumpet). For C.J.'s resolute symbolism even carries over into instrumentation which requires expert and sustained use of breath.

Without careful reading of Fearon's program notes, it might be tricky to figure out at first look, but her performers represent not only an asthma victim (Mikaila Ware) but also the engulfing forces of her doom (Morgan Anderson, as the medical system, and Njeri Rutherford as the environment). The minute you grasp it, though, the symbolism feels heavy and obvious. All three are dressed in extraordinary wearable art--like hair-coverings made of whole and broken plastic hair rollers--and glittery makeup, blurring distinctions between high and low, pretty and poisonous. The set, unusual costuming give the work the heightened aura of tribal ritual.

The audience gets drawn in, too. Before the piece begins, we're invited to inscribe the names of deceased loved ones on cut-out leaves and tie the stems to ropes that play a significant part in this dance. Those leaves, then, will accumulate and remain for all future performances of the piece.

Like the visual display--including Ware's grotesque, bulbous headdress constructed of something mysterious and, frankly, nauseating--choreography alternates oddity with poignancy. We end with the vision of Ware's body folded forward in yoga's child's pose, covered in a glittery, earth-dark wrapping that now kills her.

To lift the energy, then, the choreographer and her dancers return to celebrate the life and spirit C.J. with the exuberance I remember of forceful, high-flying Fearon dancing for choreographer Stephen Petronio.

Concept, choreography and artistic direction: Davalois Fearon
Collaborating dancers: Morgan Anderson, Njeri Rutherford and Mikaila Ware
Costumes, wearable sculptures and makeup: Jasmine Murrell
Set Design: Myssi Robinson

For C.J. concludes this evening with an 8pm performance. For information, click here and scroll down.

BAAD!
2474 Westchester Avenue, The Bronx
(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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Nicky Paraiso: ready at La MaMa

Nicky Paraiso (right) with dancer Paz Tanjuaquio
in now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories

Nicky Paraiso
now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories
Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
March 22-April 7

Nicky Paraiso's performance memoir, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed by John Jesurun, runs about 80 minutes. A densely-packed, non-stop monologue, it is augmented, surrounded--and, more or less, supported--by scenic design, music, movement and the occasional verbal exchange with his dancing collaborators. It traces Paraiso's Queens boyhood in a Filipino immigrant family through an illustrious, four-decade career in theater, music and curation to the present day. These "intimate histories" of the verbal kind take the lion's share of space and oxygen--although the projections on the scrim dividing one half of the audience from the other can be as enchanting as Paraiso's piano playing and singing.

I question the choice of engaging four star dancers of downtown renown--Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick an Paz Tanjuaquio--if, while relating nearly every life and career detail of your own with a biographer's specificity, you keep these fine artists largely marginalized until nearly the end. I enjoy seeing these performers wherever they land, but why here for what adds up to so little?

Their movement patterns never achieve the impact of Paraiso's heartfelt reenactment of singing "Into The Mystic"--one of my own soul songs--at a lover's memorial. They can't match his remembrance of how the late La MaMa, Ellen Stewart, loved to proudly flash her melon-like breasts and how she admonished him that "you like those talky, talky plays. That's not La MaMa, baby!" And how she added, "You do whatever you want, but I don't gotta like it!"

Talky, talky, indeed.

now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories requires some patience, but the rewards are real. Go, if you want to learn what made Paraiso Paraiso. He is beloved by our downtown arts community and one of the most knowledgeable, diligent and gracious advocates for artists everywhere.

Written by Nicky Paraiso
Direction by John Jesurun
Created in collaboration with performers Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick and Paz Tanjuaquio
Dramaturgy/Script Development: Irene Hultman, George Emilio Sanchez and John Jesurun
Production Management by Caleb Hammond
Costume Design: Gabriel Berry
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur

now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories continues through Sunday, April 7. For schedule information and tickets, click here.

Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Manhattan

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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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Ballet Hispánico: all that and a stack of bowlers

From top: Bennyroyce Royon, Edwaard Liang
and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Ballet Hispánico
Works by Edwaard Liang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Bennyroyce Royon
The Joyce Theater
March 26-31

The women of Ballet Hispánico
and their Magritte-inspired bowlers
in a work by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
(photo: Paula Lobo)

For this Joyce Theater season, Ballet Hispánico bookends a cheeky, all-female performance of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Magritte-inspired Sombrerísimo--a 2013 work made for men--with world premieres by two Asian-American dancemakers. With El Viaje, Taiwan-born Edwaard Liang has gifted this ensemble with a meditation on immigration and the journey towards love, community and hope. What's the connection to this troupe's Latinx profile? Literally, the historic migration of a Chinese diaspora to the shores of Cuba; yet, beyond that specific backstory, the work--lucid and moving--will prove accessible to anyone with a heart. For music, Liang selected Academy of St. Martin in the Fields's sublime recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis--a performance that has always given me chills. With designers Danielle Truss (costumes) and Joshua Paul Weckesser (lighting), he has turned the Joyce stage into a jewel box displaying every elegantly-sculpted facet of individual movement, partnership and grouping. The dancers are profoundly supple and expressive. One cannot help but get swept up in the energy of Liang's searching and threshing of stage space.

Bennyroyce Royon's gift to Ballet Hispánico draws upon his Filipino heritage and his culture's Spanish/Asian intersection. As in El Viaje, but without the exalted poetics of Liang's dancemaking, Homebound/Alaala, suggests a variety of interpersonal relationships and environments in flux and in possibilities. This robust ensemble will be remembered most for a colorful, cleverly adaptable set design of large boxes developed, in collaboration, by Amanda Gladu and Royon. Continuously rearranged and re-purposed by the dancers, the boxes aid in the telling of stories of leave-taking and travel, of containers holding history and identity, of erecting and dismantling barriers between people.

Ballet Hispánico continues at The Joyce through Sunday, March 31. For schedule information and tickets, click here.

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

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SPECIAL EVENT:

I'm also excited to announce that Eduardo Vilaro (Ballet Hispánico's Artistic Director and CEO) will join choreographer Bennyroyce Royon for a conversation and screening of excerpts from Homebound/Alaala at Gibney on Wednesday, April 17, 6:30-8pm.

This Sorry I Missed Your Show program is free, but seating is limited. So, please RSVP soon. Learn more here.

Gibney
280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers 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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Okpokwasili and Born's "Adaku's Revolt"

Okwui Okpokwasili
(photo: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Adaku's Revolt
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born
Abrons Arts Center
March 14-24

One young black girl becomes alert to her inner signals, finds the strength to resist expectations, and revolts against efforts to straighten her hair. -- from Abrons Arts Center's website

Out of the blue, a thought visited me over breakfast today:

No, you can't touch my hair. My hair is part of my body. I do not give you permission to touch my body. So, why do you think you can touch my hair?

I'd swear I don't know where that came from, but I do know it's something I should have said, years ago, to one man--the husband of a fellow dance critic--whose white hand shot out and touched my woolly head. Happened so fast, I didn't have time to cringe, flinch or launch a preemptive strike, which I now so wish I had done.

And I also know Okwui Okpokwasili (with director/designer Peter Born) must have triggered something with a new ensemble work, Adaku's Revolt, just opened at Abrons Arts Center. It's not about white people touching Black people's hair, the site of both painful and glorious historical experience and culture. But it is about how white aesthetics touch Black people's hair...and bodies...and values...and lives.

Dear Okwui, as you must imagine, I know all about the perils of getting the "kitchen" straightened with a hot comb. I think you must have reached out and touched a nerve.

Urban Bush Women's dancers are also looking at the Black hair thing this season with Hair & Other Stories. But Okpokwasili's concept and Born's visual design appear to have the potential to help Adaku's Revolt work down into the subconscious in a way that UBW's far more direct piece--with audience participation that keeps our conscious minds centered and on high alert--might not.

Above: Dancer AJ Wilmore as Adaku
Below: Wilmore with Okwui Okpokwasili
(photos: Ian Douglas)

The audience is directed to its place on the stage of Abrons's theater through a back channel and instructed to take seats lining three sides of the performance space. As we enter and get settled, the scene has already been set, a compelling visual atmosphere already built. Before a white screen, four dancers lie on the floor with torsos stiffly arched and heads thrown back. Above them, a large windsock of pearly-white gossamer continuously flows out from a big fan, its hypnotizing, watery fabric reaching for another dancer, our Adaku (AJ Wilmore), who writhes, wriggles, tilts, chops and revs up as she sits in a chair. A dense assemblage of what appear to be ordinary desk lamps lights the area.

Within Born's vision, Okpokwasili's placement and movement of individual and group bodies take the shape of dreams with nonlinear but soul-tugging storytelling. White fabric engulfing and molding itself across faces. Bodies emerging from beneath pulsating fabric. Hips and feet twisting, pelvises rocking and left hands raised high in the air over a captivating--and destabilizing--polyrhythm of music and women's voice-overs and live singing.

I tried to jot down something Wilmore said before her turbulent yet mutually-supportive duet with Okpokwasili, and I think I got it right:

I'm going to open all the doors in my head.

Doors opening bring music and voices--both louder, brighter, undeniable--and the birth-like reclamation of bodies. I think the piece, just under an hour, seemed longer. For me, its conclusion fell short of grace or definitude. But something about it all clearly reminded me to revolt.

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Choreographed and created in collaboration with Peter Born and performers Khadidiatou Bangoura, Peter Born, Audrey Hailes, Breyanna Maples and AJ Wilmore

Adaku's Revolt runs through March 24 with performances at various times. For information and tickets, click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(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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Lime Rickey International presents "Future Faith" at Abrons

Lime Rickey International (aka Leyya Mona Tawil)
(photo: Vesa Loikas Photography)

Future Faith
Lime Rickey International
Abrons Arts Center
March 7-9

"Lime Rickey International is the superconsciousness of Leyya Mona Tawil, an artist working with dance, sound and performance practices. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Lime Rickey International emerged as a container for the world of lost homelands. The works of Lime reference Tawil’s training in Arabic dabke as well as decades of work in the realm of contemporary dance, improvisation and experimental performance." -- from publicity for Future Faith 

*****

Syrian-Palestinian-American transdisciplinary artist Leyya Mona Tawil first appears to us drenched in red light, hunched in a corner just to the side of the Underground Theater's staircase. We're finding our seats, and she's taking a private moment, crouched on the floor with the front of her body turned towards a wall. The audience seating has been shifted around from its usual orientation to now afford a view of the theater's door and staircase and part of the balcony. The theater space is not big but, gazing across at Tawil, an onlooker might feel, at once, both distant and invasive.

The deep red serves as the performer's shield, though; at the start, we can't detect, for instance, the glossy electric-blue/green cyan of her wig or shiny chartreuse of her costume. Later, these items become shields, too, for the human beneath.

There's a persistent drone that--even more than the visual elements--serves notice that we've stepped into altered, potentially hazardous space. Although it comes from equipment near Tawil, it might just as easily stream from her pores. Just who and what are we looking at, anyway, and what is about to happen?

*****

"The choreographers that I know and respect who are pushing dance forward right now are trying to create a model of relationships - not just between dancer and dancer, but dancer and audience, and also dancer and society, and stage and society. So what we're doing onstage is actually a suggestion for how we can treat one another in the world. Contemporary dance is a suggestion about how we wish the world would be. It is less about art reflecting society and more about art going through the wall and creating something more. This is a search for future forms." -- "Leyya Tawil in Conversation with Linda Weintraub" (Critical Correspondence, 2014)

*****

The visual and sonic mood eventually lifts, and we see Tawil more clearly despite the fake hair flopping over her skin. Dancing, she looks robust in her futuristic, kind of goofy costume, a strapping woman freely inventing and reinventing herself and not hesitating to assert herself in space. Her angular moves sprawl every which way, gesticulate as if she were a stick figure engaged in full-body sign language. She flaps and stomps, and I'm reminded that dabke--the name of an exuberant Arabic dance tradition she cites as an influence in her work--literally means the dance of stomping.

I do not know what it means when, late in the 45-minute piece, Tawil's sound swerves back into the threat zone, but it's like the room becomes a paper shredder, and I'm thinking that--what does she call it? superconsciousness?--is something formidable with which we should never presume to get too cozy.

Composition/Choreography/Performance: Leyya Mona Tawil
Live Lighting: Emese Csornai
Costume: Scott Tallenger
Set Design:Tim Clifford
Audio Tech: Ian Douglas-Moore

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Future Faith concludes with a 7pm performance this evening. For information and tickets, click here.

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