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Friday, September 27, 2019

La Mama hosts the great Germaine Acogny

Germaine Acogny, "Mother of Contemporary African Dance,"
performs SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
(photo: Thomas Dorn)

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
by Germaine Acogny and Mikäel Serre
FIAF's Crossing The Line Festival
La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre
September 26-28

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING--a US premiere for Crossing The Line Festival by renowned Senegalese/French contemporary dance artist Germaine Acogny and director Mikäel Serre--unfolds as if it were dreamt, a full-sensory haunting both sustained in time and elusively fluid in nature. A rich soundscape makes the viewer feel surrounded, engulfed. Visual design tucks things far out of reach or behind layers of other images, or suddenly zooms them large or slips them back into darkness, seriously messing with rational sense of space.

Its fascinating and troubling text, adapted for the stage by Serre, is often spoken in French by Acogny while also running in English as supertitles. If you do not comprehend French, this regularly pulls your gaze up and away from the stately moving sculpture that is Acogny.

You make your choices here; they're difficult, disruptive, regretful and the only ones you're allowed. At almost every turn, she and her creative team suspend us in a phenomena from which we cannot turn away. Even the smell of baby powder and the tickle of tiny, airborne feathers will eventually reach our unguarded selves.

A stage-spanning string curtain serves as a scrim onto which ghostly images may be projected and into which solid objects (and our beloved dancer) can be swallowed out of sight as if dragged below waves.

Like the simple props that will gather dramatic meaning--an open notebook, its white pages reflecting light; a pillow the dancer hugs to her chest, a heavy rock--Acogny contains the brooding power of history, of secrets, a complicated narrative with webs of connection to the Greek Medea and the tragedy of today's refugees seeking safety in Europe.

One surprise discovery, among many, in a diary--the words "Power is passed down from woman to woman." How to access that inheritance? Does it come from things--a set of formidable butcher knives passed along to the wrong person? Or is it knowledge, the force of truth about oneself that can purge the evil wrought by colonialism, patriarchal religion, racism, male supremacy?

Now in her 70s, Acogny--choreographer, performer and educator--has been called "Mother of Contemporary African Dance." Watch as she makes startling use of Johnny Cash's recording of "Hurt" with its evocation of self-inflicted pain and "empire of dirt," and you will grasp why this artist can claim worldwide reverence. Do not miss her historic performance at La MaMa.

Concept and direction: Mikäel Serre
Choreography: Germaine Acogny
Set design: Maciej Fiszer
Costumes: Johanna Diakhate-Rittmeyer
Music: Fabrice Bouillon "LaForest"
Video: Sebastien Dupouey
Lighting design: Sebastien Michaud

Talkback moderation: Okwui Okpokwasili
Translation: Courtney Geraghty

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING runs through tomorrow evening at La MaMa with performance at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

For information on other events in Crossing The Line, an annual presentation of French Institute Alliance Française, click here.

La Mama (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), 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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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Ayodele Casel and Arturo O'Farrill team up at The Joyce

Tap dancer Ayodele Casel
(photo: Michael Higgins)


Ayodele Casel + Arturo O'Farrill
The Joyce Theater
September 24-29

As I take my seat at the Joyce, a couple of audience members to my left peruse their programs, making note of the fact that tap artist Ayodele Casel has cast herself among her ensemble in all nine dances on the bill. It doesn't faze me. I know Casel. That one--given the Yoruba name for "joy has arrived"--has energy to burn.

This season's particular display of joy, though, surely comes from the victory of sharing her prestigious first full-length program at The Joyce with six-time Grammy-winning Afro-Latin jazz musician Arturo O'Farrill. The woman who once created a solo tap show called While I Have the Floor (Spoleto Festival, 2017) took another floor this time to foreground cultural pride (she is Black and Puerto Rican). Both Casel and O'Farrill are in top form here--as introduced by Scalular, the sharp-edged, scintillating world premiere ensemble piece that opens the night. Their respective arts clearly grow from the same seed. The deep, intuitive communication and affection between these master artists could be easily read throughout the theater.

If you need any reason to be convinced that tap belongs in a bond with Afro-Latin jazz, buy a ticket to this show. As offered by O'Farrill and Casel, the combined music endlessly cascades like a crystalline stream over a long stretch of rocks, sparkling, glinting in sunlight. It gives life. Casel, in particular, finds innumerable delicate, exquisite facets to bring forth in sound--nothing expected or stale or slapdash; her discipline is steely--and she's joined by a diverse, talented young ensemble that includes Naomi Funaki, Dre Torres, Luke Hickey and Andre Imanishi. If I wished for anything at all, it might be a second program with juicy challenges for spirited artists like Hickey or Imanishi, in particular. Both look game for anything, grounded in good training and inspiration.

But I do love this program with its easy-going interlude where Casel tells of going from being a Ginger Rogers fan girl to her revelation at Fazil's--legendary, dearly-departed dance studio--when the entry-level tap she'd mastered fell embarrassingly short of the hoofer's mark. And with its feminist shout-out to Girl Power everywhere and, especially, to the once-overlooked women of color in tap's history, like Jeni LeGon. And O'Farrill and Casel's embrace of everything from Bach (Chromatic Fantasy in D Minor) to Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and Wayne Shorter.

A grand new leap forward in Casel's career, this show is a must-see if you can manage to get a ticket. I suggest you don't delay.

Arturo O'Farrill (pianist/composer)
Keisel Jiménez (percussion)
Zack O'Farrill (drums)
Ivan Renta (saxophone)
Bam Bam Rodriguez (bass)
Kali Rodriguez-Peña (trumpet)

Carolina Gonzalez Mama (vocals)

A Broadway Foundation Leaders-in-Training (2019-2020):

Sasha Arteaga
Samaria Dalling
Karime De La Cruz
Mckayla Faye
Jasmine Mendoza
Vanessa Pavia Fuentes
Amani Varney

Betsy Chester (lighting)
Daniel Erdberg (sound)

Ayodele Casel + Arturo O'Farrill continues through Sunday, September 29 with 8pm performances through Saturday and a 2pm Sunday matinee. For information and (hurry!!) tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 8th Avenue (corner of 19th 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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I made the news!

Excited and pleased to share THIS!

At Gibney, a New Curatorial Director Makes a Revolution
Eva Yaa Asantewaa takes what she’s learned from a career in writing and puts it on the dance stage.
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, September 24, 2019


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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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Friday, September 20, 2019

Melanie George reflects on (re)Source, new performance from Maria Bauman-Morales

Maria Bauman-Morales performs (re)Source.
(photo: Kearra Amaya Gopee)

I celebrate the abundance of this essay by guest writer Melanie George on (re)Source, a new immersive dance work by Maria Bauman-Morales co-commissioned by BAAD! and The Chocolate Factory. The solo premieres at BAAD! in its BLAKTINX 2019 series on September 25 and runs nightly through September 28. For more information, click here.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Getting By, Getting Through, Getting Over, and Making it:
Reflections on Maria Bauman-Morales’ (re)Source

by Melanie George


(re)Source is a work of blood and bone, of muscle and memory. It only lives in Maria Bauman-Morales, and will likely only ever be performed by her. In part, because it is an improvisational work, but also because the specificity within the thematic content – America, race, family, identity – can only be assembled by way of her understanding of her origin story and place in the world. She is tethered, literally and figuratively, as she navigates and negotiates her relationship to space, memory, and family lore. Her body is an interpreter of stories, individual and collective, detailed through the supple facility of her movement, and open curiosity of her gaze. I hesitate to use words like earnest and confrontational, as, too often, we associate them with the absence of complexity and nuance, but to deal with race in America is be smothered in complex nuances. The willingness to do so openly (but not fearlessly because our history with race is overflowing with the consequences of fear) is to be vulnerable and critical, for performer and audience. I find the work to be one of meaning-making, not statement-making. In her multi-hyphenate identity – as a queer, woman of color, artist, educator, anti-racism facilitator, womanist, wife, daughter, citizen – her sociopolitical values are realized and transparent so as to not to be proclamations. Lived truth and embodied identity speak volumes.   


As I attempted to locate (re)Source in contemporary art making practices, Maria pointed me toward the work of Amara Tabor-Smith, and her theory of Conjure Art. In Conjure Art, there are no boundaries between the spiritual and artistic practice. In fact, they serve as reciprocal conduits within the process of art-making. In defining the practice, Tabor-Smith explains, “Conjure artists believe in the forces of nature such as ancestor spirits, gods and/or deities found in indigenous cultures and recognize these energies as the guiding forces in their art practice.Through the improvisational score that comprises much of (re)Source, we experience conjuring in real time. On multiple occasions in rehearsal, Maria noted that her deceased father had joined her during runs of the piece. This is not metaphor or allusion. In crafting (re)Source Maria makes room for her elders and ancestors to dance with her and through her, to receive impulses that guide choice-making during the performance. I was particularly struck by adaptation of Doug Varone’s “room reading” exercise to prepare to rehearse. As her line of inquiry is steeped in exploring non-proscenium spaces, she is negotiating her relationship to the stage and inquiring about the role of agency on uneven terrain. Her practice is guided by relationships to people, to environment, to identity. So, of course, there is a need to engage with all of these things before diving into the dance. 


For those inclined to over-academise the art-making process (I, too, can be guilty of this), the identification of Conjure Art is fundamental to receiving (re)Source as it is intended, rather than applying erroneous models to interpret it. Please note my identification of the academy. This is purposeful because of its predisposition to valuing Western-normative art-making models, and its function as a gatekeeper in our field. What does it mean to accept this work on its own terms? What is our role and responsibility in engaging with this dance? First, we must allow the artist to define the landscape of the work. In (re)Source, Africanist elements are centered, as is the importance of storytelling. This must be the terra firma from which we start our journey with the piece.  Maria is highly conversant in several dance languages. Chiefly, she values the weight, rhythm, dynamism, and spirituality that we recognize as essential to an Africanist movement lexicon. Her training in capoeira informs her movement vocabulary and is instrumental in her strength and use of space.  Additionally, she employs elements of movement abstraction that we associate with the choreographic tools of post-modernism. In her work, I see the intersection of multiples ways of knowing and claiming contemporary dance. Within one movement there may be a composite of physical textures, alternately competing and co-existing. In centering the names and stories of her ancestors - purposely keeping black folks present and visible in the work -  she is also centering her art-making practice. All are resources toward the making of the work. All are valid and do not require defense.


(re) Source is not a sentimental work. Maria may be conjuring her ancestors, but she is doing so in the age of Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the rising tally of Black trans women’s deaths this year. There is little time for sentiment when you’re gathering your tools for survival. She sees (re)Source and her family history as “a microcosm for race relations” in this country. Within that history are black and white relatives, and white relatives that owned enslaved black people. Maria reckons with the weight of that knowledge through movement and text, and aligns it with the jarring shift in our political climate since the ascent of Donald Trump as a political figure. There is great responsibility in telling personal truths about one’s family. Maria endeavors to make the labor visible, but in doing so she does not wallow in the impact of that labor. Instead, her role, part oracle and part griot, is to synthesize the contrasting content into a locking archive. The set, which functions as installation, immersive theatrical design, and interactive playground for the performer, is both obstacle and portal. A series of interwoven strings and chairs resembling a human sized cat’s cradle, the bonds can be tenuous, supportive, pliable, or binding. Alternately highlighting positive and negative space, they function as a metaphor for taking up space, holding space, and moving through it. The seating arrangement interlocks so that perspectives are varied, but no one sits alone. Interdependence is also a theme of the work. Though it is a solo performance, through conjuring and the seating arrangement, Maria is never, truly dancing alone. (re)Source invests in telling truths about race. By design, the audience is implicated in her navigation of this content.


“Resources are tools. I want to make transparent that 
‘I am because we are’. 
I have resources because people have gone through worse.”
  • Maria Bauman-Morales
Though I am writing about (re)Source, I feel it is important to note Maria is developing this new piece concurrently with another evening-length work, Desire: A Sankofa Dream. The processes for the productions are not related. Solo vs. Group. Fantastical vs. Non-linear Improvisation. Personal history vs. imagined biography. Though they are wholly individual works, the continuum between the two productions encapsulates a core underpinning in Maria’s artistic identity: Interconnectedness and the continuum between the intrapersonal and interpersonal. It feels significant that she is working on these dances concurrently. The duality of honoring the individual and the group is an Africanist element that is a resource for how she makes meaning in the world. This speaks to a larger, overarching theme in her work: Life as practice, and an embodied investment in the survival and thriving of black and brown folks. The processes used in the making of her art are enacted in comparable ways in all areas of her life, notably through her work with Urban Bush Women’s BOLD program (Builders, Organizers and Leaders through Dance) and as a facilitator of Anti-Racism training with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. The various roles Maria plays an artist-activist are not discreet from each other, they are in dialogue, as she is openly and actively in dialogue with us.

Melanie George is an educator, choreographer, and scholar. She is the founder of Jazz Is… Dance Project, and the Audience Educator and Dramaturg at Lumberyard Center for Film and Performing Arts. She is honored to be the Dramaturg for (re)Source.

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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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Saturday, September 14, 2019

Look around us: 600 Highwaymen presents "Manmade Earth"

Teen performers in Manmade Earth by 600 Highwaymen,
presented by Crossing the Line Festival
at The Invisible Dog Art Center

Manmade Earth
by 600 Highwaymen
Crossing the Line Festival
at The Invisible Dog Art Center

We would like you to think about who is surrounding you. How you feel surrounded by the people around you.
-- Performers of Manmade Earth 

Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone (known, together, as 600 Highwaymen) spent a year building Manmade Earth with eight American teenagers of various cultural backgrounds, including immigrants from Malaysia, Somalia, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The work incorporates movement and text with a modular set design by Eric Southern and Deb O deftly utilized and reconfigured by the performers.

Audience seating is arranged in rows at the sides of a long strip of performance space--like a high-end fashion runway--covered in off-white canvas. Performers, one by one, introduce their participation with a model-like solo turn under the lights, whether in contrasty athletic-wear or a delicate, elegantly-draped hijab. The audience gazes at each young stranger as one and then another proceeds to voice a series of questions to the unseen Other that might be us.

Questions asked without emotional expression, with the matter-of-fact manner that models employ on their walks. When speaking, each one gestures or strikes poses with no motion wasted. The audience looks on, listens, tries to figure them out.

Some of the questions:

"Do you think I look smart?"

"When you look at me, what do you see?"

"What makes you laugh? Do we all laugh at the same things?"

"Does that seem fair? Is being fair important to you?"

"Should I take my shoes off before I come in?"

"Should I eat with a fork or my hands?"

"Do you wish that things were different? Do you want me to change?"

There are some "This is..." statements, too, in a section before these individuals shift gears, folding the canvas into a protective tarp so they can laboriously mix and produce a round slab of cement for which there is no apparent use.

Perhaps it is the quiet ritual of the buckets and water containers and stirring sticks that bears more weight than the actual final product. What seems to come of all this activity--this dedicated teamwork--is an awareness of interdependence. It leads on to the construction and activation of an ingenious environment of corrugated sheets and upturned ladders. There the performers engage in a rapid line game with frequent player eliminations, done in fun while revealing things that cause each of these youngsters to be afraid.

I have no doubt they have all experienced fear, for any number of reasons, but I take note of the focus, poise and precision with which each one of them meets the considerable, if often subtle, demands of Manmade Earth's script and movement.

Performers:

Nur Aisyah
Nasra Ali
Raiza Almonte
Dimyana Angelo
Amanda Barsi
Augustin Bonane
Jeanvier Nkurunziza
Diaaeddin Zabadini

Original music and sound design: Michael Costagliola

Production design: Eric Southern and Deb O

Manmade Earth continues with performances tonight and Sunday at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here. For more information on FIAF's city-wide Crossing the Line festival--devoted to the creative work of French, Francophone and American artists--click here.

The Invisible Dog Art Center
51 Bergen Street (between Smith Street and Boerum Place), Brooklyn
(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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Monday, September 9, 2019

Days of Black Future Past: Black Rock Coalition at The Met


Above: Sandra St. Victor
Below: Shelley Nicole
Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future
Metropolitan Museum of Art
photos: Paula Lobo

"Black music has been the taproot of every significant movement in rock music. Sadly, the vast majority of Black artists in rock have been erased from the historical narrative or relegated to footnotes."
--Darrell M. McNeill
When you imagine venues to host one of the badbadbadass-iest rock concerts of all times, do you think of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Mmmhmmm.

Well, think again, because you missed Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future, a MetLiveArts show designed to demonstrate that Black people not only did rock first but they did it best, do it now and have no intention of stopping. Under Darrell M. McNeill's creative and musical direction, the famed Black Rock Coalition Orchestra and featured guests rocked that house last night with a steady roll. All walls and pedestals should be checked for damage.

Named for BRC Orchestra's 1991 album, the two-hour show started off with the pumping Sly Stone hit "Dance to the Music." That funk functioned here like it did when it was new back in 1967--a sure-fire commercial success for David Geffen's CBS Records and, in 2019, an icebreaker like no other. Though the predominantly white Met Museum audience needed the initial permission to dance to the music, as the evening sped along, folks required little prompting to get up on their feet.

The stage of the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium was packed, side to side and front to back, with instruments and artists including a revolving cast of standout featured performers--among them, Nona Hendryx, Toshi Reagon, StewCarl Hancock Rux, Living Colour's Vernon Reid and Corey Glover and, led by a commanding Sandra St. VictorThe Family Stand reunited. Yoruba chants and drumming, spoken word, jazz vocals, traditional work songs, gospel tunes, rock and roll and straight-up rock presented a stream of Black genius, all telling a story of determination, improvisation, spiritual depth and lust for life in the face of a long, long stretch of rough times under white supremacy. Times are still rough; the music persists and continues to do its work.

"So what is rock and roll?" Hancock Rux asked, "We begin with juke joints, and women loving women...." He went on to say it's rooted in "trying to find our way home."

Each performance--like vocalist Everett Bradley's unquestionable authority on both "Dance to the Music" and Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie"--felt like a sturdy home and one connected, at the foundation, to every other home. Places of rest and reflection, generous nourishment, everyday miracles and jubilation. Hendryx, above all others, took all my heart with witchy renditions of the jazz classic "Afro Blue" and, later, an unexpectedly expanded and capacious "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." She enters a song at unusual angles, spies just the right, clear path, then guides you through as intensity builds. Reagon quietly took up and met the challenges of Curtis Mayfield's bleak "When Seasons Change" with agility of voice and soul. Stew, with David Barnes on harmonica, updated Bo Diddley's "I'm A Man," making a statement on toxic masculinity from the White House to the church house, from FOX News to NPR. And it was just pure fun to watch Glover rock out again to "Cult of Personality," the show's closer.

An historic one-night only event. So, if you didn't catch it, bummer! But if you love rock, you can still check out Play It Loud: The Instruments of Rock & Roll, at the Met through October 1. Plan your Met visit here.

*****

Featured Artists:

Nona Hendryx
Fantastic Negrito
Vernon Reid, Corey Glover (Living Colour)
Toshi Reagon
Stew (The Negro Problem)
The Family Stand
"Captain" Kirk Douglas (The Roots, Hundred Watt Heart)
Carl Hancock Rux
Ronny Drayton

Black Rock Coalition Orchestra:

Darrell M. McNeill (bass)
LaFrae Sci (drums)
Howie Robbins (keyboards)
Elenna Canlas (keyboards)
Marcus Machado (guitar)
Marvin Sewell (guitar)
Gordon "Nappy G" Clay (percussion)
V. Jeffrey Smith (saxophone, flute)
Don Byron (clarinet, saxophone)
Bruce Harris (trumpet)
JS Williams (trombone)
Sophia Ramos (vocals)
Shelley Nicole (vocals)
Bruce Mack (vocals)
Everett Bradley (vocals, percussion)
Kelsey Warren (vocals)
David Barnes (harmonica)
Mikal Amin (vocals)

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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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