InfiniteBody Honor Roll 2019

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

InfiniteBody Honor Roll 2019

Top: Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith in Queen & Slim
(Photo: Universal Pictures)
Bottom: Germaine Acogny in SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
(photo: Thomas Dorn)

Yes, it premiered on HBO in 2018 but, for me, My Brilliant Friend straddled those transitional days between the last gasps of December and New Year's Day when I breathlessly reached the finale of Season 1. Oh, how I love this brilliant series--as eager for Season 2 as "Lenú" is for "Lila."

Left, Gaia Gerace (as Rafaella "Lila" Cerullo)
with Margherita Mazzucco (Elena Greco),
who play the teenage leads in HBO's My Brilliant Friend
(photo courtesy of HBO)

Soon into the new year came Jane Gabriel's annual Pepatián Bronx Showcase and Conversation, this time with curation by artists Beatrice Capote and Maleek Washington. Gabriels has been producing this now for nine years. This was my second year attending, and I was even more impressed than last year. So, when the 10th anniversary comes around, you're finally going, right? Noted highlights of 2019 included works by Kayla Farrish (Decent Structures Arts), Matthew Perez and Cain A. Coleman (ColemanCollective) and Anya Clarke and Mitsuko Verdery (MICHIYAYA Dance).

I've got to acknowledge it even though I curated it: Ame-Ricana by Italy Bianca Welton at Gibney, January 10. Sorry, folx. The woman deserves the praise.

Okay, now onto the regular listings....

This Bridge Called My Ass by Miguel Gutierrez at The Chocolate Factory, January 9-19

Battle! Hip-Hop in Armor by It's Showtime NYC! at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 11 and other dates

Soprano Julia Bullock
(photo: Kevin Yatarola)

Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine by Julia Bullock at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 17-18

Bronxed at Food for Thought at Danspace Project, featuring works by Arthur Aviles, Alethea Pace, Matthew Perez/ColemanCollective and Richard Rivera/PHYSUAL, January 25

Amanda Seales
(photo: Lloyd Bishop/NBC/Getty Images)

Amanda Seales: I Be Knowin' (HBO), released January 26


Hair & Other Stories by Chanon Judson and Samantha Speis in collaboration with Urban Bush Women, January 31-February 9

Maleek Washington and Timothy Edwards
in Camille A. Brown's ink
(photo: Christopher Duggan)

ink by Camille A. Brown & Dancers at The Joyce Theater, February 5

Rambler, Worlds Worlds A Part by Kathy Westwater at New York Live Arts, February 14-16

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

United Skates (film), directed by Tina Brown and Dyana Winkler, released November 20, 2018

El Viaje by Edwaard Liang for Ballet Hispánico at The Joyce Theater, March 26-31

Entre Tú Y Yo by Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca at Connelly Theater, March 8-31

Sila Djiguba: The Crossroad by Les Ballet Afrik, Gibney, April 4-6

Fuck/Love: The Poetics of Adorationby Kelly Bartnik
(photo: Maria Baranova-Suzuki)

Fuck/Love: The Poetics of Adoration by Kelly Bartnik, Gibney, April 11-13

A Shared Evening of New Work by Tendayi Kuumba and Samita Sinha at Danspace Project, April 25 and April 27

Messages from Umi (work-in-progress) by Long Arms at Harlem Stage, May 2-4

EMERGE with works by Bobbi Jene Smith, Chanel DaSilva and Micaela Taylor for Gibney Dance Company at Gibney, May 2-4

Distance is Malleable, the 2018-2019 Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture by Eiko Otake, Miller Theatre, Columbia University, May 10

Radioactive Practice (work-in-progress showing) by Abby Z and the New Utility, New York Live Arts, May 17

Surveys the Prairie of Your Room by Witness Relocation/Dan Safer at La MaMa, May 18-19

Wanda Sykes: Not Normal by Wanda Sykes, released on Netflix, May 21

Performance by Linda LaBeija in La MaMa's Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance at La MaMa, May 31-June 2

The Dances Are For Us by Hadar Ahuvia at Danspace Project, May 30-June 1

Ava DuVernay's When They See Us
(photo: Netflix)

When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay, released on Netflix on May 31

Pose, created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals, launched on FX June 3, 2018; ongoing on FX and Netflix

Significant Others: Dances for Family, Friends & Lovers by Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion at Gibney, June 13-15

Dead to Me, created by Liz Feldman, on Netflix, launched on May 3; ongoing

We're Only Alive for A Short Amount of Time by David Cale at The Public Theater, June 13-July 14

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, released to theaters June 21

Marc Maron: Too Real by Marc Maron (Netflix, 2017)

They Ready: Tracey Ashley, presented by Tiffany Haddish, on Netflix, launched August

Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future, MetLiveArts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 7

The Amazing Adventures of Grace May B. Brown by Souloworks/Andrea E. Woods & Dancers, Gibney, September 12-14

Unbelievable (miniseries), created by Susannah Grant, Ayalet Waldman and Michael Chabon, Netflix, released September 13, 2019

Ayodele Casel
(photo: Michael Higgins)

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

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING by Germaine Acogny and Mikäel Serre, La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre, September 26-28

(re)Source by Maria Bauman-Morales/MBDance at BAAD!, September 25-28

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf
at The Public Theater
(photo: Joan Marcus)

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (choreography by Camille A. Brown) at The Public Theater, opened October 8.

Maya Beiser in THE DAY at The Joyce, October 22-27

Other Animal by Sam Kim at Danspace Project, October 31-November 2

5 St. Fifperhanway Place by Stefanie Batten Bland, performed by Gibney Dance Company at Gibney, November 14-16

Forming Out by Peter Chu, performed by Gibney Dance Company at Gibney, November 14-16

Colin Dunne in Concert
(photo: Whitney Browne)

Concert by Colin Dunne at Baryshnikov Arts Center, November 14-16

Queen & Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas, written by Lena Waithe (Universal Pictures), released November 27

And Still You Must Swing by Dormeshia at The Joyce Theater, December 3-8

Kaalo Jol by Samita Sinha at Gibney, December 5-7

topologies by Jennifer Harrison Newman at Gibney, December 12-14

GETTING CLOSER TO CORAL by Alexander Diaz at Gibney, December 12-14

FRESH TRACKS: Anh Vo, Annie Heath, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kayla Hamilton, Stuart B Meyers at New York Live Arts, December 13-14

Deep Out Agents by Hyung Seok Jeon at Gibney, December 19-21

We Wield by Lauren Atwell at Gibney, December 19-21

City of Rain (Camille A. Brown) and Busk (Aszure Barton) performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center, December 20

The Great Hall Commission: Kent Monkman: mistikôsiwak: Wooden Boat People at Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 19-April 9, 2020

Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig, released December 25

The Nutcracker Suite by Dorrance Dance at The Joyce, December 17-January 5

The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot, released June 7

Okay, that's my honor roll for 2019! 
What's on yours?

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

******

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

Dorrance Dance: The Joyce does it again!

Josette Wiggan-Freund
plays Clara's Mother and Sugar Rum Cherry
in The Nutcracker Suite.
(photo: Matthew Murphy)

Dorrance Dance
The Joyce Theater
December 17-January 5

The Joyce closes out the 20-Teens with another tap triumph--this time, a three-week run by Dorrance Dance, the superb troupe headed by 2015 MacArthur Fellow Michelle Dorrance. Dorrance has been showing three separate programs, each crowned--I can find no better word for it--by the world premiere of The Nutcracker Suite, set to the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn arrangement of Tchaikovsky and designed like you've never seen it before.

The actual title--as rendered in the program notes, if not on the Joyce's website--is as follows:

WE PRESENT TO YOU: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE OR, A RHYTHMATURGICAL EVOCATION OF THE SUPER-LEVIATHONIC ENCHANTMENTS OF DUKE AND BILLY'S SUPREME ADAPTATION OF TCHAIKOVSKY'S MASTERPIECE THAT TELLS A TALE OF A MISUNDERSTOOD GIRL WHO KILLS A KING AND MEETS A QUEEN AND DON'T FORGET OOOO-GONG-CHI-GONG-SH'-GON-MAKE-IT-DADDY AND THAT IT AIN'T SO BAD AFTER ALL

Okay?

But we'll certainly call it The Nutcracker Suite for short.

In the program I saw (B), it followed the cool and spacious Elastic Time, also a world premiere, by the company's Associate Artistic Director, Nicholas Van Young, who is also a drummer, with sections of improvisation by the dancers and wonderful live music. Elastic Time and The Nutcracker Suite are like night and day. The first: abstract, rhythmically complex and transparent so that you marvel at the spare, dynamic architecture of its design and zoom in on its dancers' clean technical abilities, with Warren Craft bringing spunk and playfulness to an exciting tap suite that feels, nevertheless, to avoid the element of swing. The second: all swing all the time, winkingly queer, drenched in and bursting with color (lighting by Kathy Kaufmann, costumes by Andrew Jordan, scenic design by Christopher Marc--all of whom, like Dorrance, should clear a shelf for awards).

Dorrance's jazzy charm offensive starts right off centering a jitterbug couple and proceeds to woo us with a pocket-watch-hypnosis chorus line and a trio of Sugar Rum Blossoms (Elizabeth Burke, Carson Murphy and Maddie Murphy, led by Sugar Rum Cherry Josette Wiggan-Freund) who evoke Harlem showgirls. With its mayhem (seriously brawling rats) and bustling merriment (Russian trepak dance with some b-girl moves from Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie), this Nutcracker is non-stop, over-the-top entertainment giving good value for the price of your ticket.

Dorrance has the skillz. See this show, and you'll see why she could (and should, if desired) follow Camille A. Brown to Broadway. You will love The Nutcracker Suite, and you'll want to see it again and again. May this show become an annual tradition. Make it so, you geniuses at Dorrance Dance and The Joyce. Make it so.

Dorrance Dance continues through Sunday, January 5. For program and schedule information and ticketing, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street, Manhattan

(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

Winter's treasures: New York's Ailey troupe at City Center

Khalia Campbell
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
(photo: Andrew Eccles)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
December 4-January 5

Each December, with the last leaves falling and the first hint of winter, we come to expect our beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to spread warmth at City Center with its numerous and varied productions. This year, I've kept things simple and opted for a single indulgence from the Ailey abundance--one evening including a world premiere by Donald Byrd, company premieres by Camille A. Brown and Aszure Barton, and a new production of Lar Lubovitch's 1990 duet, Fandango, first presented by Ailey in 1995.

That duet, set to Maurice Ravel's Bólero, depends on a nearly endless stream of partnering exploits and maneuvers that lock its lovers together like shapeshifting puzzle pieces. Knowing Bólero as well as most of us do, it's hard to not wonder, as you see and tick off the various grapplings, how the dancers will work with the next cycle of Ravel's intensifying music. But Danica Paulos and Clifton Brown, the pair I saw last evening, brought exactitude and crisp dynamism--in the case of Paulos, flashes of authentic human joy--to even the most toy-like moves. Here, you really can tell the dancer from the dance, and that makes a difference.

Byrd's Greenwood takes a Rashomon-style approach to the mystery behind an incident that touched off the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in which white Oklahomans rioted, unleashing widespread death and destruction in a prosperous Black district known as the "Black Wall Street." What actually happened, or did not happen, when a Black, 19-year old man encountered a 17-year-old white female elevator operator in her elevator? Byrd displays different scenarios--one, perfectly neutral; one, romantically sensual; one, crude and violent--within a mist-filled, dream-like atmosphere wonderfully lit by Jack Mehler, haunted by figures out of the Tulsa past who enter and slip away from the scenes as if drifting through a narrow space between slightly-parted elevator doors. In this stagecraft, dancers resemble pieces on a board game--mostly static, set in place for family photo portraits or rigidly deployed here or there as if by forces beyond their control. The piece works as a visual expression of a story idea, one with continued relevance in today's climate that tolerates and even encourages open expression of racism. (Audience members have been issued a booklet with a brief history of the Greenwood land and aircraft attack--a shameful history largely absent from US history books--and a helpful suggestion of questions Byrd's dance might raise.) However, Greenwood, in its movement and its storytelling approach, looks much closer to dances within the traditional Ailey comfort zone than anything else on this evening's program.

Aside from the Lubovitch duet, if you relish seeing this company step to and possibly master a challenge--and always I do--you need works like Brown's City of Rain (2010) and Barton's Busk (2009). Both are big ensemble pieces by dancemakers influenced by contemporary culture and confident in their ability to activate and wrangle a roomy stage. That both choreographers are women--and ones with accelerating renown on the world stage--is a gold star for Ailey.

The visual atmosphere of Brown's piece, a memorial to a friend who died from a paralyzing disease, hangs bleak and heavy, but you notice that the weight of this clouded sky holds no power over her dancers. Bodies cave in and are wrenched in every direction, but they are also liquid fire from within seeking every outlet for life and expression. Barton, too, evokes the indomitable human spirit in Busk, opening with a single, hooded, white-gloved street performer whose talents blend the disciplines of dance, mime, clowning and acrobatics then expanding to a chorus of the same whose driven, tribal togetherness ranges in mood from devotional to nearly combative.

The Ailey audience on Friday night looked to be same as it ever was-- typical in its racial, class and age demographics. And yet these fans greeted the contemporary works of Brown and Barton with roars of love and loyalty which did my heart good. Yes, the company moves on, and yes, it still is Ailey, now and forever.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continues at City Center through January 4. For scheduling information and tickets, click here.

New York City Center
131 West 55th Street (between 6th and 7th 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

The circus comes to town: Cirque Mechanics at New Victory

Battulga Battogtokh of Cirque Mechanics
in 42 Ft.--A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels

42 Ft.--A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels
by Cirque Mechanics
The New Victory Theater
December 6-January 5

Hailing from Las Vegas, Chris Lashua and Aloysia Gavre's Cirque Mechanics troupe has arrived at our city's family-friendly New Victory Theater with a production called 42 Ft.--A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels. (The measurement refers to the standard diameter of a circus ring.) Retrograde and wholesome, the show is a modest affair though, at nearly two hours with intermission, it might stretch beyond what most young kids would happily sit through, even some adults. Despite my own occasional squirming, I was charmed through most of the show and re-energized by fright at some of the dexterous aerial and slack wire work.

Impersonating a 1930s touring group named Circus Magnificus, the company eliminates the frills we might have come to expect from contemporary circus and just goes for feel-good basics, all the old-school sights and nostalgic sounds, but not without imagination. One of my favorite acts involved Tatiana Vasilenko dreamily juggling numerous balls while perched atop a wheeled chariot slowly "drawn" around the stage by a fetching cut-out horse--just one, and certainly the most benign, of the mechanical apparatuses alluded to the show's title and the company's name and reputation.

Justin Therrien combines low-key demeanor with exquisite physical skill as a wandering clown the troupe will eventually adopt. Mongolian strongman Battulga Battogtokh makes a believer out of the toughest skeptic when he handles weighty props with gusto and unexpected grace. There's even a lion tamer of sorts, though, in the blessed absence of trained animals, we must imagine a lion we will never see while Austin Bradley takes center stage, flourishing a stool and bullwhip. The show's only Black performer, Bradley otherwise has a minor presence in the lineup of acts. I was jarred by the crack of the bullwhip and the sight of it snapping and wrapping around his own body.

42 Ft.: A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels is recommended for ages 5 and up and continues through January 5 on a diverse time schedule. For information and tickets, click here.

The New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (Times Square), 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

Tracks get fresher: bold new moves at New York Live Arts

FRESH TRACKS artists, left to right:
Anh Vo, Annie Heath, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd,
Kayla Hamilton and Stuart B Meyers

FRESH TRACKS: Anh Vo, Annie Heath, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kayla Hamilton, Stuart B Meyers
New York Live Arts
December 13-14

I came away from last night's edition of FRESH TRACKS--New York Live Arts' showcase for rising choreographers--eager to see each of the five pieces separately, with ample contemplative, processing time and space around each. But, of course, an omnibus program like this--squeezing in five 15-minute works, diverse in maker and nature--does not allow for that. You might take a restroom break during intermission and look around at other audience members on the line, each of them exclaiming variations on "Whew!" Other than that, you better keep pace. Simply put, this particular FRESH TRACKS lineup can be overwhelming--in a good way. Presentations by Anh Vo, Annie Heath, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kayla Hamilton and Stuart B Meyers made me hopeful for the future of dance in New York City, exemplifying the bold, urgent spirit of the art today.

Kayla Hamilton, first up, is an artist you should already know. But if you don't, take this opportunity. Nearly Sighted/unearthing the dark, created with a community of makers, sasses back at the male gaze, the terrified Karens of this world and anyone who might want to voice unsolicited opinions about a fat Black woman's body. With its quirky lighting cues and accessibility accommodations--including a riveting ASL interpreter/dancer, Brandon Kazen-Maddox--it also messes with the usual centering of non-disabled viewers and points of view.  I love it to pieces.

Informed by German Expressionist film, Stuart B Meyers' KOPFKINO (head cinema) enhances its eerie scenario with dim, blueish lighting that strips its dancers--Meyers and Isabel Umali--of healthy skintones and readable, relatable facial features. Aside from its extraordinary visual aesthetics, the piece gets hair-raising power from a combination of slow, creeping movement and frozen tension in the bodies. A nightmare from the past but made for our nightmarish times.

Anh Vo's BABYLIFT--the title memorializes a tragedy of the Vietnam War, the crash of the first plane to airlift evacuated South Vietnamese orphans--is the boldest of the bold and would reward repeated viewings. The subversive quality of Vo's slithery femme, hypersexualized self-presentation in front of a carefully-arranged votive altar would seem to clash with the projected photo of a Buddhist monk immolating himself as fellow monks look on. When I later had a moment to think it through, I realized these two figures might agree that the body is the fiercest site of resistance.

Annie Heath and Sokunthary Svay--a Khmer refugee and now Bronx-based poet and librettist--often occupy different, primarily diametrically opposed areas of the stage in an excerpt from Heath's This Mother/land Fabric. This keeps you wondering about how they are related, how their thoughts and ways are related, as you gaze from one to the other. Careful, expert gestures of wrapping a sarong contrast with desperate, helpless ones such as lifting a heavy pile of folded clothes, trying to secure this bundle high against the back wall with nothing but one's tired arms. Heath struggles and struggles; Svay's words leave a chill: "my mouth is magically sewn together" and "to find a soft landing spot, leave your skin on the ground" and "let me nurture this brutality."

In his witty abstract ensemble, Neighbors, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd keeps five dancers moving like game pieces continually rearranged in dynamic spacial interrelationship. Coming at the end of a demanding evening, Neighbors both clears the palate and looks like a kind of work easily picked up by major troupe looking for bright new repertory. Which is to say, hooray for Lloyd. Watch this guy. But, really, keep track of everyone here.

FRESH TRACKS: Anh Vo, Annie Heath, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kayla Hamilton, Stuart B Meyers concludes with tonight's 7:30pm performance. For 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

Dormeshia and friends swing out at The Joyce

Dormeshia
(photo: Eduardo Patino)

And Still You Must Swing
by Dormeshia
at The Joyce Theater
December 3-8

No hype. Dormeshia has been crowned Queen of Tap and, while some might find the notion of regal hierarchy in the arts a bit distasteful, there's no denying the evidence of one's eyes and ears. Mastery is mastery. Moreover, the refined ability of this artist to make and switch up minute mental/physical calculations with every passing microsecond qualifies her for superstardom. Go see And Still You Must Swing, one of Aaron Mattocks' great tap presentations at The Joyce this season. All hail the Queen.

Dormeshia's show, which premiered in Summer 2016 at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, teams her with veteran dancers and frequent running buddies, Derick K. Grant and Jason Samuels Smith, of whom we can never ever see enough. The tap firepower is strong with this endearing trio, as we've come to expect. But look who's also in the house: Camille A. Brown, top-notch performer and in-demand choreographer of contemporary and Broadway dance. Her unmatched embodiment of Black culture and legacy adds a distinct, dedicated underpinning of wokeness/awareness to this seamlessly entertaining show.

From left to right:
Derick K. Grant, Dormeshia, Camille A. Brown and Jason Samuels Smith
(photo: Christopher Duggan)

Jason Samuels Smith
(photo: Christopher Duggan)

And Still You Must Swing, a 75-minute suite of dances and musical interludes, has a tight, intermission-less structure with generous fun but no time for fluff. Choreographed and "improvographed" solos, duos, trios and quartets each aim, jump and achieve high spots you think can't possibly be topped, all supported by a vivacious jazz band as sumptuously warm as it is driven--musical director and pianist Carmen Staaf, drummer Winard Harper, bassist Noah Garabedian and percussionist Gabriel Roxbury. And the linkage between the lush, expressive fluidity of swing in dance and swing in music--and the roots of all this in Black experience and sensibility--comes across clearly without being forced. If you can't imagine why a djembe, the iconic West African drum, deserves to get a highlighted moment in the middle of a tap show, no one will get up and tell you. But just wait for Brown's solos; she channels the innovations of enslaved African taking back the power of intense vibration and rhythm, preserving and expressing this freedom through the body. Drums, you see, were forbidden to a stolen people but never truly silenced.

Brown adds outrageous gutsiness and quirk to Dormeshia's lineup. The charming bros--often bookending sleek, slithery Dormeshia--add hoofericious heft while dazzling us with the possibly limitless variety of ways heels, toes and sides of feet can ring changes on the meeting of metal and wood. Legs and feet fly like the digits of a 75 wpm typist.

Breathless, you eventually stop thinking How'd they do that? and surrender to your own connection to the music.

Good. They got ya.

Original music: Allison Miller and Dormeshia
Lighting design: Sue Samuels/Divine Rhythm Prod./Event Systems & Design Inc.
Costume design: Javier Pedroza

And Still You Must Swing continues through Sunday, December 8 (Wednesday, 7:30; Thursday and Friday, 8pm; Saturday and Sunday 2pm and 8pm). If any tickets remain--and that's chancy--grab them here. In the event of sold-out shows, there will be a ticket line for hopefuls starting one hour before curtain time.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street, Manhattan

(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

Stepping out: Colin Dunne's "Concert" at BAC

Dancer Colin Dunne in his solo, Concert,
given its US premiere this month at Baryshnikov Arts Center
(photo: Whitney Browne)

Concert
by Colin Dunne
Baryshnikov Arts Center
co-presented with Irish Arts Center
November 14-16

Irish step dancing might start with a bit of stomping, a bit of running, as Colin Dunne--best known as an early superstar of the Riverdance phenomenon--informed us in the casual opening of his piece, Concert. But it can claim a more expansive range than we might have ever seen or imagined. Dunne's imagination, however, remains unfettered and restless after exploring contemporary dance for nearly two decades. Furthermore, as presented in Concert, his aesthetic journey is inspired by virtuoso Irish fiddler, Tommy Potts. Potts' spirit guided and presided over this intriguing hour of solo performance.

I should put quote marks around "solo." Dunne, dressed in unglamourous running shoes and black jeans and t-shirt, might have been the only flesh-and-blood performer in BAC's space, but he was far from alone. Potts, dead since 1988, was very much in the house. We heard him speak, watched him play in a projected film and saw his eccentric artistry reflected in the thoughtful whimsy of Dunne's choices.

Like Dunne's costuming, his choice of props and sonic accompaniment tilted towards the humble and the analog, stripping away flash, getting down to the nitty gritty. There's no pretense of perfection (or restraint) in Dunne's physicality. That's the honest body of a man who has lived a while. And for equipment to invoke both history and the spirit realm, he employed a turntable spinning the LP of Potts' The Liffey Banks, his only recording. A couple of unremarkable speakers carried Potts' words. There was an upright piano that probably has seen a few years. And, for god's sake, a cassette player. With all of these, Dunne wove an atmosphere with character and authenticity and--would you believe it?--continuity.

Moveable patches of flooring, rearranged as needed, helped the dancer--sometimes barefoot, sometimes wearing heeled boots--lay down sound, some tentative and soft or bold and complex scrapes and patters with one arm or another un-traditionally free to flap out or lift in a kind of punctuation. It was impossible to be a tap dance fan and not sit there mentally pairing him with tap artists--Black ones in particular--soul to soul.

Direction: Sinéad Rushe

Composing/sound designer: Mel Mercier
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Film design: Jeffrey Weeter

Concert is closed. For more information on events at Baryshnikov Arts Center, click here. For more information on events at Irish Arts Center, click here.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Tiffany Mills premieres "Not then, not yet" at The Flea

Top: Kenneth Olguin
Bottom: left, Mei Yamanaka; right, Jordan Morley
in Tiffany Mills' Not then, not yet at The Flea Theater
(photos: Robert Altman)

Not then, not yet
Tiffany Mills Company
The Flea
November 13-16

Making themselves at home in one's subconscious are all manner of energies and drives eluding conscious control. This is the disquieting atmosphere of Not then, not yet, a work by dance artist Tiffany Mills with Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón and French vocalist/composer Muriel Louveau, now in world premiere at The Flea Theater in Tribeca.

The first sight of a few toppled metal chairs--with toppled dancers crumpled beside them--hints that this chair dance, led off by Jordan Morley, will surely go in a dark direction. Indeed, a kind of "musical chairs" game breaks out. But...no game, folks. The dancers--each dressed in Pei-Chi Su's costumes that bind together clothing details assigned along binary gender lines--don't play. Not at all. Their wary, tense actions around the chairs are cutthroat, life or death, driving towards a passage in which Morley obsessively arranges four chairs in a row that, nevertheless, ends up off-kilter. Negrón's music, including vocals by Louveau, invokes the relentlessness pace of time, pressure and complexity.

Inspired by novelist Mary Shelley's writing, the piece locates humanity in a place of precarious transition, the possibility that our inherent potential for monstrosity might consume us all. Is there a way out? Surely, the condition of life in these times raises this unsettling question every single day.

Strongly directed, the performers display physical vibrancy and vivid expressiveness--traits I've come to expect from Mills ensembles. Besides Morley and Mills herself, they are Kenneth Olguin, Nicholas Owens, Emily Pope and Mei Yamanaka, and Mills is fortunate to have every one of them.

Dramaturgy: Kay Cummings
Lighting design: Chris Hudacs

The Flea
20 Thomas Street (near Broadway), 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

can you can you: Jerron Herman and Molly Joyce at Danspace Project

Jerron Herman and Molly Joyce
in Breaking and Entering at Danspace Project
In deep background below: ASL Interpreter Kathleen D.Taylor
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Breaking and Entering
by Jerron Herman and Molly Joyce
at Danspace Project
November 12, 15-16

Breaking and Entering, a collaboration between two well-regarded disabled artists--Jerron Herman and Molly Joyce--creates an intriguing relationship among its players and with its audience. Early on, we're introduced to American Sign Language Interpreter Kathleen D. Taylor whose signing rings with a robust, dancer-ly flow.

Uh-oh, I thought at first sight of her hands in motion, knowing all too well my tendency to gaze long at ASL interpreters whose particular style draws me in. What if I look at Taylor and miss important things that Herman might be doing?

No chance of that, really, since Herman is not exactly someone you can miss. Moreover--and curiously--Taylor soon gets relegated to deep backdrop, removed to the upper reaches of St. Mark's Church's altar steps for the rest of the piece. Thinking back on that now, I realize that distancing, blurring any initial, vivid connection to Taylor, might be by complicating design.

The words accompanying the work's three movements--entitled "Compliance," "Defiance" and "Emergence"--suggest a negotiated relationship with others, perhaps with viewers, perhaps with parts of the performers' own bodies.

Herman, who bills himself as "an interdisciplinary artist, primarily working in dance," is a snazzy performer with hemiplegic cerebral palsy which has caused him to devise ways to work balance and propulsion differently. His energy in the space is wrenching, surprising and always thrilling. Composer/musician Joyce, disabled in an accident, often moves with Herman, sings high and sweet, and plays a vintage toy piano set up in the middle distance between far-off Taylor and the audience. Their textures are so different, they make me think of their performance space as a painting canvas generous enough to make room, at once, for the roughest impasto and a silky brush.

The evening ends in an invitation to the audience to join the artists on the floor and dance to a DJ's fifteen-minute set. Disability activist and scholar Kevin Gotkin dj'ed last evening; Michael Hammond and JIJI will do the honors on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

Text: Marco Grosse, Molly Joyce, Jerron Herman
Sound: Michael Hammon
Costumes: Gerald and Cynthia Herman

Breaking and Entering continues with performances this Friday, November 15, and Saturday, November 16, at 8pm. Besides ASL interpretation, audio description is also provide for each performance. Each concludes with a fifteen-minute dance party for the artists and audience. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (and Second Avenue), Manhattan

******

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

Drury and Rankine: award-winning writers challenge whiteness

MaYaa Boteng portrays Keisha,
the pivotal character in Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview
(photo: Julienta Cervantes)

Hosted by Brooklyn's Center for Fiction and presented with Theater Communications Group, playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury and poet Claudia Rankine sat in conversation about Drury's Pulitizer-winning play, Fairview (2018), and Rankine's first published play, The White Card (March 2019). Both stories have scenes centered around a dinner party and deal with race and white surveillance, ultimately training a floodlight on what whiteness is and what it does. The writers discussed Fairview, mostly, including Rankine's experience of seeing Drury's play in the company of a white woman, a close friend and colleague, who (literally) failed to rise to its challenge. So, The White Card, which I have neither seen nor read will remain more of a mystery to me for a bit longer.

Though highly anticipated, the event proved to be frustrating, beginning with its late start (a half-hour) and a curious mismatch of speakers--both thoughtful, distinguished artists--whose personas could not have been more different. Rankine more reserved and watchful, read not from The White Card but from her essay responding to Fairview and contributed careful, finely-wrought, even mournful analysis at select moments. Drury, more accessible and endearing, too often seemed like a nervous student in awe of a visiting star scholar who is, yes, a MacArthur-certified genius. Rakine's 2014 multiple award-winning volume of poetry, Citizen: An American Lyric, zoomed her into mainstream awareness as a critical witness to everyday racist microaggressions that, along with the fundamental nature and tenacity of white supremacy, make any mention of "post-racial America" an absurd lie. Would that The Center for Fiction could have magically blended these two writers into one fascinating being.

Rankine largely supported Drury in working through the creative process and the varying audience responses to Fairview, a play that first soothes and reassures white audience members with a familiar sit-com scenario and then asks them to participate in gradual, then increasingly unsettling, hard-to-escape exposure of their own white privilege. This conversation gave me a moment to revisit my own reaction to Fairview's final section where the teenager Keisha invites white people to rise from their seats and reassemble on the stage. As a Black woman, I immediately got the system-tilting shift Drury was going for in this theatrical exercise, and I must admit I felt a little smug. No, a lot smug. I also recall that the white people in the SoHo Rep audience I had sat with were all quite cooperative. From Drury's report, it seems that reaction was far from common.

As with reading Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, I'm struck, once again, by a sense of unacknowledged tragedy--what Rankine refers to as the loneliness an oppressed person feels, the sense of having been abandoned by all to injustice. On many levels, for many reasons, so many of us live with unhealed trauma. Gaslighting deepens and worsens the tenacious psychological/emotional effects of injustice. It messes with our overall health as individuals, communities and a society, and we're living in a time when gaslighting is pretty much the National Anthem.

Artists like Drury and Rankine bring heroic witness to this incendiary, potentially transitional time. The rest is up to us--to clean these uncovered wounds and allow them to heal.

Learn about The Center for Fiction and its upcoming events--such as evenings with authors like Edwidge Danticat, Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins--here.

The Center for Fiction
15 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn

******

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

Sam Kim's "Other Animal" opens at Danspace Project

Sam Kim
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Other Animal
by Sam Kim
Danspace Project
October 31-November 2

When entering St. Mark's Church for Sam Kim's solo performance of Other Animal, you'll be directed towards one of two sections of chairs or cute floor cushions, all in a straight line spanning the width of the floor, facing and perfectly aligned with the church's distant altar space. When I was there last night, a few people took seats over on the carpeted risers along the side of the floor, as you're usually permitted to do, but ushers quickly redirected them to this linear set-up. Eventually, Kim made her first appearance, and the reason for this control of our angle of view became clear.

Kim entered the space from one of the sanctuary's doors, dressed in leopard-print leggings, a long white shirt and a loose wool coat in a bold, checked pattern. For a quite lengthy stretch of her 50-minute solo, she merely sauntered, assertively strode or simply hastened across the floor, unconcerned about her watchers, repeatedly disappearing somewhere behind us and through another of the church's doors. In the beginning, I was curious to know what she was doing outside my range of view and tried to crane my neck to see.

Impossible. I turned my whole upper-back, discovering that she was actually leaving us. I didn't notice more than maybe one or two other people checking on what was going on behind us, and I think they might have been content to just hear doors close and re-open, to see Kim when she was in view, to watch her exit and return through the two visible doors facing us. I wonder how many caught that momentary apparition up on the right-hand balcony.

Now you see her, now you don't. What's that about? And do you care? Why should you?

Kim's own don't-care look and sullen demeanor (butchy, I thought) actually endeared her to me, and I began to care. I'm not sure why I would or if I should, but I did. She had won me over, and it put me in a very good place to appreciate how she went on to labor in, fill and ironically dominate the space.

Watching Kim's performance felt like finding oneself inside of a restless but also persistent, generative mind. The video animation work of experimental filmmaker Stacey Steers seemed to swell and spill from that same source--a thick, unruly blossoming of imagery, possibly organic but largely indecipherable, weird though inexplicably appealing. It bloomed in sections of the altar-area's wall, eventually overtaking its entire arch.

"I'm messy," her movements and way of being seemed to say. "Kind of beautifully messy. I'm here. I claim it. Sometimes staggering, sometimes slumping, sometimes soft of step. Holding myself together. Letting myself go. Slipping uphill (the altar risers) and rolling down. No matter how awkward it all looks, how difficult, how stop-and-start the effort."

A muted, warm pool of light sometimes draped Kim's body in the overwhelming space of St. Mark's Church like a gesture of compassion. That light also looked as if it might be seeping from within her, softly brightening wherever her body landed.

She passed me as she left the space for the final time, and I would have tipped my hat--had I been wearing one--to a masterful performer, secure in herself and her vision.

Lighting design: Kathy Kaufman
Sound and projection design: Chloe Alexandra Thompson

Other Animal continues nightly through Saturday, November 2, with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (and Second Avenue), Manhattan

******

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 DAY" arrives

Cellist Maya Beiser with Wendy Whelan
performing The Day
(photos: Hayim Heron, courtesy of Jacob's Pillow)

THE DAY

by Maya Beiser, Lucinda Childs, David Lang and Wendy Whelan

October 22-27

at The Joyce Theater

In all honesty, when I hear that the events of September 11, 2001 inspired a piece of art, I note and then turn away from that detail, hoping for an alternative reason to connect. The excellence of THE DAY's principal collaborators--cellist Maya Beiser, dancer Wendy Whelan, choreographer Lucinda Childs and composer David Lang--drew me to The Joyce this week for this work's New York premiere. (I went, in particular, for Beiser, and please hurry to her site's video page and share my new obsession.) Thinking back now, I find myself drifting between certainty that THE DAY reflects a moment in our history and, at the very same time, wavering certainty about what my eyes and ears testified as I gazed from my seat in the audience. Thus, for me, it might be the perfect evocation of the experience of witnessing 9/11.

Performed without intermission, the interdisciplinary work consists of two parts--The Day and World To Come, named for music previously composed by Lang for Beiser--and contemplates the aftermath of a soul's separation from its body. The width and height of the Joyce stage, backed by Joshua Higgason's video projection, contribute to THE DAY's monumentality and hallucinatory depth of field and dreamy elusiveness.

In the opening part, Beiser and Whelan occupy separate, opposing territories--cellist and cello crowning a translucent incline; white-draped ballerina starting off artfully perched on a stool as if posing for a fashion shoot. Sara Brown's minimalist, abstract set--angled lines suggest subtle demarcation--works in tandem with the strength, and severity, that Childs' ideas bring out in Whelan's deft improvisations which, at times, evoke an iconic rendering of the architectural proportions of the human body. She creates, and exists within, pristine, divine abstractions.

Lang crafted the voiceover text for Part 1, Beiser writes in her program notes, out of numerous statements crowd-sourced from the Internet, each phrase completing his own phrase "I remember the day I...." Each statement is separated from the next by six seconds, giving the text a hypnotic rhythm, like a prayerful litany, and I found it fascinating to find that he had carefully alphabetized the statements.

I stopped speaking. I stumbled. I switched. I talked. I talked to myself sternly.

Each statement, taken out of context, could sound as if it captured a mundane moment in time. But, in fact, Lang intends each to mark a significant turning point in a person's life. Carefully strung on a silver thread of breath, each statement takes its moment to shimmer in light before giving way to the next. So, in a way, each is extraordinary but no one surpasses any other. Each stands in as a symbol of human consciousness, symbol of human experience--and, it is painful to remember, a single loss out of many.

Some of the sonic and visual atmospherics of THE DAY tease the audience while also being unsubtle--a long, muffled, engine-like roar; two white lengths of fabric suspended from the stage's fly space suddenly rippling to the floor; the video speeding bodies into spectral visitations blurred across an interior space; Whelan increasingly wrapped by shroud-like fabric as her body rolls down the incline.

But the music. Beiser's strong, exacting control of her instrument; the energies generated and invoked in her playing. This mastery at the core of THE DAY anchors everything, gives everything else here a reason for being.

Sound design: Dave Cook

Lighting design: Natasha Katz 

Costume design: Karen Young

The Day concludes today with a performance at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street, Manhattan

(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

For Colored Girls...yesterday, today, tomorrow

Cast of the 2019 production of Ntozake Shange's
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf
at The Public Theater
(photo: Joan Marcus)

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf

The Public Theater

October 19, 2019

When, in the mid-1970s, I first saw Ntozake Shange’s Black feminist choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf--back then, if I recall, all the letters in that title were still stylishly lower-cased--my Greek-American boyfriend emerged from the theater in a state of shock and horror. As for me--a colored Caribbean-American girl for whom the queer rainbow was yet to be enough--I relished the sheer moxie of it.

As it happened, one of my editors had already given the boyfriend a look-over and quickly summed him up as “not mature enough for you,” but it took me a bit longer to figure that out for myself.

That Shange, though. In For Colored Girls, she had handed me a clue. She handed so many of us a clue.

She had dreamed forth seven women who, through experiences of pleasure and of struggle, figured things out for themselves. Adorned in a rainbow of colors--each in blue, brown, orange, red, yellow, green or purple--her “colored girls” burst into the consciousness of early 1970s New York and proceeded to spin a web of influence in the theatrical arts that has never come to an end. I have since seen Shange’s aesthetics reflected in performers and choreographers I dearly love like Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Maria Bauman, Andrea E. Woods Valdés, Sydnie L. Mosley, Camille A. Brown and countless other dance, performance and spoken word artists.

Shange’s choreopoem first hit city bars, then The Public Theater for its formal premiere, then Broadway and then--maybe for worse rather than better--television and film. Now in 2019, welcomed back to The Public--under graceful direction by Leah C. Gardiner and with Camille A. Brown’s vivacious and accessible choreography--these legendary "colored girls" inhabit a small, intimate set-up encircled by audience seating. Gardiner and Brown's fantastic ensemble includes Sasha Allen (Lady in Blue), Celia Chevalier (Lady in Brown), Danaya Esperanza (Lady in Orange), Jayme Lawson (Lady in Red), Adrienne C. Moore (Lady in Yellow), Okwui Okpokwasili (Lady in Green) and Alexandria Wailes (Lady in Purple).

At center: Alexandria Wailes (Lady in Purple)
(photo: Joan Marcus)

Okwui Okpokwasili (Lady in Green)
(photo: Joan Marcus)

With every finger snap, every hand clap, every stomp, every swirl, every satisfied press and slip of hands against their own bodies, Shange’s characters insist that attention finally be paid to Black women marginalized and endangered by racism and patriarchy. Because they have learned to pay attention to themselves. Know themselves. Enjoy themselves. Famously, find god in themselves. They speak the truths life has taught them.

Choreography connects the cast through a percolating, expandable cypher that protects childlike play--the inevitable “Little Sally Walker” clapping game--the embodied relaying of amusing, sexy or harrowing stories and the communal, compassionate laying on of healing hands. Movement turns poetic text vividly three-dimensional; through physical expression, memories become all the more shareable with an audience willing to be moved. Bring tissues. I needed a few.

Scenic design and lighting create an atmosphere of permission (the disco balls at first retracted above the stage), a space for sensory indulgence (those clustered hangings of abstract stalactites rotating through lights of deep colors). Original compositions by American Roots and soul artist Martha Redbone and hits from generations past--”Dancing in the Streets,” “Stay in My Corner”--underscore and heighten the narratives’ driving intensity.

Sasha Allen, an exciting singer,
portrays Shange's Lady in Blue.
(photo: Joan Marcus)

It's time to discover--or rediscover--the joy and potency of For Color Girls. Go and discover Wailes, a deaf actor and dancer of eloquent charm and fluidity who absolutely dazzles. Rediscover Okpokwasili, a star of contemporary dance and performance, whose trenchant, urgent presentation of one of Shange's most famous soliloquies reminds us--us colored girls, at least--that there's still always going to be someone new trying to walk off wid alla our stuff.

Scenic design: Myung Hee Cho

Costume design: Toni-Leslie James

Lighting design: Jiyoun Chang

Sound design: Megumi Katayama

Understudy: D. Woods

Director of American Sign Language: Onudeah Nicolarakis

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf has been extended through Sunday, December 8. For information and tickets, click here.

The Public Theater

425 Lafayette Street (at Astor Place), Manhattan

(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