Oona Doherty: the stories she's carried

Belfast's Oona Doherty is a thrilling soloist
in Hope Hunt and The Ascension into Lazarus.
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Hope Hunt and The Ascension into Lazarus
by Oona Doherty
92Y Harkness Dance Festival
March 6-7

Such a percussive and narrative, if mystifying, title: Hope Hunt and The Ascension into Lazarus. It makes the heart beat a bit harder and the breath come a bit faster just to read it out loud. And that's an appropriate reaction. It really is a bracing kind of story, an epic one with what seems to be hundreds of characters--working-class men you might find on the byways of dancer-choreographer Oona Doherty's Belfast, Northern Island.

The multiple award-winning artist brought her electrifying tour de force to 92Y Harkness Dance Festival for a short run of three performances over two days. I hear tell it's the last time she'll ever perform it. So, head there this afternoon or tonight because she's worth a look.

The piece begins directly in front of 92Y at the Lexington Avenue curb and sidewalk with some crunchy pelting and hip-hop tumbling about in hoodies. This launch introduces Doherty and a couple of her compatriots, two young men who soon speed away from the scene. A first impression, it deftly encapsulates how reckless she's willing to be as a mover but, in retrospect, I don't know how much of this you actually need once you've seen what she does upstairs in 92Y's Buttenweiser Hall.

For, once there, you're captive to a short solo that moves past you at the speed of light--or as if someone took a very long novel and flipped the pages so you'd get flashes of characters in action, flashes of speech, all of it thrown your way with tremendous force and unexpected fluidity, with transitions from one situation to another that would seem to be impossible but, no, there they are unfolding right in your face.

Once there in your seat, the first thing you notice are flashes of Doherty's flesh caught in light, the parts not covered by a dark, shapeless, nondescript costume, as she whips back and forth from one side of the darkened space to the other. Then she comes forward in the space, building an impression of harsh environments and harsh life with her repetitive, explosive vocalizations, physical and vocal tics and eruptive movements. You hear a fan chanting at his favorite football team, a man trying (and failing) to make time with someone named Stephanie, and any number of people you give up trying to hold onto in the avalanche of scenes and players.

Life is raw, vivid, fleeting. Doherty's putty-like tomboy's body, expressive face and vocal dexterity make her a thrilling performer in full mastery of this roaring stream of consciousness.

It takes little over a half-hour to complete but, really, how much more could Doherty's body have sustained? She has given so much.

She accepts our grateful applause and goes away only to come right back and draw aside a curtain, revealing her DJ, Joss Carter. She invites the audience to get up and dance and--if I heard this right--find some cans of beer among the garbage (her set) tucked away in a far corner of the space. The music played, and a small handful of folks rose from their seats, but this ending seemed oddly awkward, lifeless and superfluous.

Nevermind. If Doherty is saying goodbye to all the men she brought through in Hope Hunt and lived with since 2016, I'm quite eager to see where she's moved to since then and where she's moving next.

Music by Oona Doherty and Luca Truffarelli
Set and costumes by Oona Doherty

Hope Hunt and The Ascension into Lazarus continues and concludes today with performances at 4pm and 9pm. For information and tickets, click here.

92Y Harkness Dance Center
92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue, 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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92Y Harkness samples Dancing While Black: December 7

Paloma McGregor

Performing Justice: Dancing While Black

presented by Fridays@Noon

92Y Harkness Dance Center

Friday, December 7

Noon to 1:30pm

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

Performances by Maria Bauman/MBDance and Jaimé Yawa Dzandu

DANCING WHILE BLACK is an artist-led initiative that supports the diverse work of Black dance artists by cultivating platforms for process, performance, dialogue and documentation. We bring the voices of black dance artists from the periphery to the center, providing opportunities to self-determine the languages and lenses that define their work.

Information and tickets!

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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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A taste of Ballet Hispánico at 92Y Harkness

Choreographer Bennyroyce Royon is developing
a new work for famed Ballet Hispanico.
(photo: Kuo-Heng Huang)

92Y Harkness Dance Center's Fridays@Noon series regularly offers audiences up-close-and-personal views of dance. Yesterday, New York's Ballet Hispánico delivered a presentation so masterful and  charged that it was a wonder the relatively small space could contain its energy.

Billed as a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and an intersection between Asian and Latinx cultures, the Pino-Latino program gave a just a taste of what Eduardo Vilaro's troupe can do. The afternoon opened with Sombrerisimo (2014), Colombian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's male sextet with Magritte-inspired bowlers. It is filled with intense and slippery entanglements between and among men, acrobatic flourishes and dashes of salsa, flamenco and Fosse. Filipino-American dancemaker Bennyroyce Royon previewed a work in development, Homebound/Alaala. With its novel use of visual symbolism--primarily, numerous brown cardboard boxes--and the dancers' deeply expressive performances, this ensemble reflects on caring, longing, suffering, mourning, collaboration and community resilience, speaking to what and how we share as human beings.

Following these performances, John-Mario Sevilla, Harkness's director, engaged Vilaro, Royon and two dancers (Raúl Contreras and Gabrielle Sprauve) in a conversation that often returned to the value of the arts for the health of society. When evoking difficult histories (in this case, the ravages of colonialism), the arts can also strengthen cultural identity and help dissolve artificial and destructive barriers between people.

Hurry, hurry, hurry if you want tickets to catch this beautiful company  on either October 12 or October 13 at New York City Center's Fall for Dance Festival. Click for information here.

For information on upcoming Fridays@Noon at 92Y Harkness Dance Center, click here.

92Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (91st-92nd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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92Y presents a tribute to Arthur Mitchell

Arthur Mitchell
dancing in George Balanchine's Agon
(photo: Martha Swope)

Arthur Mitchell with Darren Walker: 

A Stellar Life in Dance

presented by

92Y Harkness Dance Center

Fridays@Noon

Arthur Mitchell--who, in 1955, brought Black excellence to Balanchine's New York City Ballet as a principal dancer and, in 1969, founded historic Dance Theatre of Harlem--is, at age 84, a stone-cold hoot. Sure, it took a couple of folks to help the man to his chair at 92Y's Buttenweiser Hall today but, as soon as he took that seat, he took control. Just ripped control right out of the hands of Donna Walker-Kuhne, veteran arts marketer, billed as moderator of his conversation with Ford Foundation president Darren Walker. Make no mistake, Walker-Kuhne can handle herself. But, at least for the moment, there was no handling Mr. Arthur Mitchell.

There was so much he wanted to tell us, you see. And he wasted no opportunity to admonish the young students lining the floor in front of the first row of audience seating at this sold-out event.

"Pull your feet back!" he ordered a few.

"Don't upstage me, dear!" he warned a scurrying Catherine Tharin, Fridays@Noon's curator.

"Darren is one of my role models," he told us. "I need someone to educate me in the business part of dance."

Well, thank goodness there's a reason to keep Darren Walker around!

When Walker-Kuhne finally took the reins, posing a question about diversity in the dance field, Mitchell held to what seems to always be his primary focus--discipline.

"Very few people know what [diversity] means," he said.

To Mitchell, it brings thoughts of the multitude of dance techniques and performance skills today's dancer must possess--everything from ballet and tap to a strong, projecting voice.  Speaking of projection, everyone--from audience members with mumbly questions to the moderator of the concluding panel--got a tongue lashing for not speaking up!

Next up, Darren Walker offered that "diversity is about excellence" and that excellence has the potential to lift everthing from dance troupes to major corporations and foundations like Ford.

"It does not correlate with a loss of quality," he argued. Rectifying the chronic inequality in our society and establishing social justice should be the ultimate goal of philanthropy. However, today's philanthropists, many of them flush with Silicon Valley success, have not yet turned attention to the arts.

"But the arts are what make it possible for us to be empathetic," Walker said. "Without empathy, we won't have justice."

Both men lamented the decline of arts education in our nation's schools, and Walker offered the example of how pressuring New York mayor Bill de Blasio led to his establishment of universal pre-K. Why can't we have a similar push for more arts activities in all our schools?

"You've just implemented the most complicated thing you can do--add on a new population of students," Walker said. "But we lack the political will for an arts policy that puts arts education in every classroom. We have to hold our political leaders accountable to get to that goal."

The program stretched Fridays@Noon's usual ninety minutes to a full two hours. It included an enjoyable slate of performances: Paunika Jones (Mitchell's Balm in Gilead), Rasta Thomas (Flight of the Bumble Bee by Vladamir Angelov after Milton Myers), Jones and Jamal Story (Doina by Royston Maldoom), and Maria Kowroski and Amar Ramasar (the duet from Agon by George Balanchine, made famous by the extraordinary Mitchell and Diana Adams and controversial for that interracial casting). A panel, facilitated by archivist Gillian Lipton, featured remarks by Anna Kisselgoff (former chief dance critic of The New York Times) and remembrances from Lydia Abarca Mitchell (DTH's first prima ballerina), Sheila Rohan (soloist) and Tania León (conductor and composer).

For information on upcoming 92Y Harkness Dance Center and Fridays@Noon events, click here.

92Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 91st and 92nd Streets), Manhattan
Subways: #6 to 86th or 96th Streets

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Urban Bush Women's "Hair Parties" at 92Y Harkness

Madame C. J. Walker (1867-1919)
Hair care entrepreneur, philanthropist and activist
America's first woman millionaire

Urban Bush Women's Hair Parties is a boldly hybrid event integrating excerpts of a developing dance (premiere of Hair & Other Stories coming this spring) with a community-sharing workshop in kitchen table-like settings. I'd imagine each "audience"--surely, that's not the right word here--brings a different energy to it and ultimately determines how well it will work.

After all, the folks who participate are what it's about. Through a variety of activities, they're encouraged to remember and tell stories about things they learned, from childhood on, about beauty and grooming and to contemplate how those seminal influences affect their attitudes towards themselves and others today. It's very much about--as one of the dancer/facilitators noted--"practices that allow us to stay inside our greatness" and those that drag us far from it.

Oh, you surely know UBW, the lifework of the great, beloved Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, is a Black troupe, right? But while Hair Parties must be a blast in an all-Black gathering, its meditations on race can be useful for anyone from any culture--as was evident yesterday afternoon at 92Y's Harkness Dance Center where the presenters embraced a multicultural gathering.

Somebody here thinks they came for a show!

We're going on a journey!

A journey it was, indeed--starting with the sight of dancer Samantha Speis arranging, thoughtfully gazing upon and slightly rearranging a collection of hair care products, almost as if they were chess pieces. For me, this brief, subtle moment was amusing, a subtlety anyone caring for Black people's hair in the "natural" way will recognize. We know how much time and money we put into experimenting to get just the right products used in the right combination or sequence for the particular texture and willfulness of our hair. Tell me that's not choreography!

Dancers invited us to come together around certain agreements on how to work as a community--such as "speaking from the I"--and gave us gestural movements to anchor each agreement, in a fun way, in our bodies. We watched a dance segment depicting a Black woman suffering "hair hell" in an elevator populated first by a group of mocking Black people and then by white people whose very different attention to her hair freaked her out just as much or even more. We learned a tiny bit about the Black hair care entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker (1867-1919), who went from being the child of enslaved parents to being the first American woman to make a million. From table to table, we performed a shared reading of lines from a letter Zollar addressed to this fascinating pioneer. And we moved with the dancers.

The party kicked up memories for many of us. I was stunned when I suddenly recalled the Breck Girl shampoo ads of the 1960s and later bonded with a white woman over these memories. These ubiquitous magazine ads were in my face--all of our faces--at a time when it would have been more useful for me to be learning about Madame Walker. Do you remember them, too?

As I left 92Y, I actually had a pleasant elevator moment when the same woman who remembered those darn Breck girls told me she'd come to the Hair Parties event terribly drained and tired and came away feeling exhilarated. This, I think, is pretty much the hallmark of an Urban Bush Woman event, and I'm glad she got that healing.

Conceived and choreographed by Chanon Judson and Samantha Speis in collaboration with the company--Du'Bois A'Keen, Chanon Judson, Courtney J. Cook, Jaimé Dzandu, Rochelle Jamila, Samantha Speis and Tendayi Kuumba

Music composed by The Illustrious Blacks (Manchildblack and Monstah Black)

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Where do we fit? 92Y Harkness Dance explores identity

Dancer-choreographer Aimee Rials
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Dance artist Aimee Rials curated Where do we fit? for 92Y Harkness Dance Center's Fridays at Noon, choosing five choreographers to question "identity and sexuality, personhood and power, inclusion and exclusion and the universal desire to belong." With the exception of an ethereal Jasmine Hearn duet from shook-- performed with care by Dominica Greene and Angie Pittman--the hour-long showcase focused on solos danced by their creators. It explored everything from dexterous physicality, quirky and rash in its expression (Chuck Wilt's Cadet) to the mystery and spirituality of gender fluidity (Trebien Pollard's She Gives Birth to Stone). Through a dream-like relationship to costuming, Pamela Pietro worked clear contrasts between a woman's determined self-protection and her vulnerability in everything I thought I Knew but....

Rials's solo--"The Quiet We Keep," a compelling excerpt from Modifi(her)--had dramatic impact, drawn from her experience as an androgynous white lesbian with roots in the rural south. In a post-show Q&A, she noted her caution and self-vigilance on visits home, her need to protect her kin from scrutiny and danger by altering her appearance and behavior. Rials did not discuss the formal qualities of her solo, but I had taken note of intriguing similarities to ritual--the formation and interactions with a circle of empty folding chairs possibly representing absent and recalled family members; tremulous movement that could signal "catching the spirit" or resolutely engaging old pain and trauma. The Quiet We Keep, without being obvious, powerfully evokes place, people and psyche.

Closed. For information on future 92Y Harkness Dance Center Friday at Noon events, click here.

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Tap artist Kazu Kumagai and friends rock 92Y

92Y's Dig Dance series hit big last night with Kazu Kumagai: HEAR/HEAR, an intimate yet full-on performance by the 2016 Bessie-winning Kumagai and friends in the Y's Buttenweiser Hall. The show featured Kumagai's talents in tap, music and poetry, and he was accompanied by bass player Alex Blake, guitarist Masa Shimizu and singer, Sabrina Clery, whose heartbreaking voice always leaves me wanting to hear more of it. Special guest Ted Louis Levy--multiple award winner and nominee for work on Broadway and television--turned up the heat with his amusing stories, unique jazz vocals and smooth dancing.

Kumagai is anything but smooth in intent or execution, but even his tuning up on the wood platforms sounded good. Brushing the wood, pecking at it with one knee locked, going quieter, he's a man always in search of the right sounds to channel his concerns. He'll find it with the inside edge of a foot, or drop his heels with thwacks you feel like repeated jolts to the chest, or fire off a steady fusillade of beats while Shimizu weaves around him. While he might pivot to one or another direction once in a long while, maybe facing the musician with whom he's dialoguing, he tends to root himself somewhere on the wood and drill it...earnestly. The relative stationary nature of his dancing underscores his role as musician playing the instrument of tap against surface. We can appreciate, even more, what he's doing to create sound. A lot of power in his game, but his technical control can also takes us to quiet, thoughtful places.

So much of his poetry is about searching--for the authentic self, for someone who can be there for one's search for the self, for authentic expression that sometimes takes an artist to the edge. ("I want to know if you'll stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.") He's a man on a mission and one with much on his mind.

Levy's sunnier, funnier, Mr. Show Biz approach stands in contrast, but the two guys together? They can take it from delicate trading of tiny gestures on the wood all the way to thunder, Levy bringing out the spark and charm and, yes, the aggression in Kumagai.

"I'm not an improvisationalist," the not-even-nearly-winded Levy said afterwards, "But you made me look good!" Yes. He did.

It was nice to hear Levy invoke tap icons like Chuck Green, Buster Brown and Dianne Walker in his solo as he danced away as if it were the most natural thing in the world to teach an audience while beguiling them. I loved his unconventional vocalizing of "Nature Boy," the classic song first recorded and most associated with Nat King Cole, and Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" which offered the two men--one Black, the other forever revering the Black mentors in his life--the perfect opportunity to take a knee.

If you were not in the house last night, I hope you already have your ticket for tonight. For this evening's show, Kumagai will be joined by acclaimed tap artist, educator and mentor Brenda Bufalino.

Kazu Kumagai: HEAR/HEAR concludes with an 8pm show tonight.  For information and tickets, click here.

92Y (Buttenweiser Hall)
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Stars talk star stuff: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Robert Krulwich at 92Y

What's your hurry? Whatever.
Dr. Tyson's here to drop some science.
(W. W. Norton, 2017)

Since its 1935 opening, there have been five directors of New York's beloved Hayden Planetarium. Okay, class. How many can you name?

That's right: Neil deGrasse Tyson

L-r: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Robert Krulwich

And there you have it. A solid scientist---astrophysics, for heaven's sake!--with top-notch communication skills, irrepressible charm and the celebrity of a rock star. Raised in New York's very own Boogie Down Bronx by a Black father and Puerto Rican mother. Able to tap into his own life-long wonder and intellectual curiosity to help the rest of us mortals wrap our brains around stuff like the possibility of dimensions beyond the mere three we perceive with our puny, survival-oriented senses.

Last night, when Dr. Tyson strode out onto the stage of 92Y's Kaufmann Concert Hall, cheers went up from the audience, so much so that host Robert Krulwich (himself a celebrated broadcast journalist and co-host of NPR's Radiolab) had to wave us into silence so the two friends could get down to their conversation and the business of promoting Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Tyson's latest book.

While waiting for your morning coffee to brew, or while waiting for the bus, the train, or the plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

Science and scientists have taken a severe beating in Trump's New American Order. In this toxic atmosphere, Tyson's educational mission, visibility and accessibility loom even larger, approaching heroic status. While no one, onstage or in the audience, broached political or needlessly politicized issues during the 92Y appearance, anyone who thinks Tyson shirks from speaking up for rational policy needs to look at this video. The informal and wide-ranging chat revolved around both men's interest in stripping science facts of their austerity and their abilities to approach all of this with a storyteller's ready wit.

Tyson: "I have a photon joke. Can I tell it?"

Krulwich: "Go ahead."

Tyson: "Photon checks into a hotel, and the bellhop asks, 'Do you have any luggage?' Photon says, 'No, I'm traveling light.'"

And if you ever run into Tyson, you must ask to hear the entire hot cocoa/whipped cream story, which I will not spoil here. No worries. Just thank me when you see me later.

To be honest, I'm more of a casual science geek (and Tyson fangirl) than a deeply knowledgeable one but, as a neo-pagan, I share the agnostic Tyson's sense of wonder and admire his dedication to a cosmic perspective that rescues spirituality from being defined, confined and ultimately smothered by religious orthodoxy.

Excerpts from "Reflections on the Cosmic Perspectives," Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone.
The cosmic perspective is humble.

The cosmic perspective is spiritual -- even redemptive -- but not religious.

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.

The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another.

The Virgo in me--sorry for the astrological reference, Dr. Tyson--completely gets his resistance to calling the color violet anything but "violet" as in "Roses are red, violets are...violet." The poet in me forgives him for that and grooves on the very idea of things called dwarf galaxies and runaway stars. The nosy person in me likes the question "What's going on between planets?" OMG, what, indeed?

I'm sympathetic to the notion that humans are simply not smart enough to figure out universes that might be trivial to the brain of a more intelligent species. I've seen what my fellow Americans are capable of unleashing on this planet. So, there's that. And how's this for real talk from Tyson? "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." Oh, yeah. That much is clear every. damn. day.

For information on Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, click here. And to learn about other cool programs at 92Y, click here.

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92Y presents Overturning Expectations: Dance and Disability

Alice Sheppard
(photo: Britten Traughber)

Edisa Weeks's Overturning Expectations: Dance and Disability, curated for 92Y Harkness Dance Center's Fridays At Noon series this past week, drew upon the ability of dance artists with disabilities to take up the charge of Artist in the full sense of the word--to question, make with rigor, challenge self and audience, and nurture awareness of possibilities.

The event opened with two film screenings--choreographer Heidi Latsky's heady, striking Soliloquy (2015), featuring dancers of varying ages and abilities, and Karina Epperlein's short documentary, Phoenix Dance (2006), a profile of the late Homer Avila. If Latsky's film underscores the awesome force and sensuous beauty of dancers, Epperlein--through Avila, who lost a leg and hip to a rare form of cancer--shows us what goes into making a dancer, any dancer. Love, determination and discipline. Watching the one-legged Avila take daily class, watching his nimble work with duet partner Andrea Flores and choreographer Alonzo King, you revise your expectations of both the human body and the mind. Avila--whose spreading cancer took him from us at age 48--educated his audiences and colleagues well.

Dance artists Jerron Herman (Phys. Ed) and Alice Sheppard (So, I will wait and Trusting If/Believing When) might be polar opposites, at least by evidence of their respective solos. Herman's piece leans towards the athletic side of things. He is a dancer with Cerebral palsy's spastic condition, dystonia, noticeable in one arm and hand. Phys. Ed's repetitive nature--maybe a tad too lengthy and repetitive--has a down-to-earth, pedestrian feel despite his forceful jerking and jackknifing. Sheppard's solos here were infused with meditative, classical lyricism, her arms and torso arching and flexing into space above and around her wheelchair. Rather than an impediment to graceful movement, her wheelchair was both partner and a source of ability. Like Avila, she redirected our thoughts to the potent bodily and psychic strengths that make dance possible.

For information on upcoming Fridays at Noon programs at 92Y--including Moving Forward: Women Choreographers East and West, April 28--click here.

92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 92nd and 93rd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)


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Tap dancer Kazu Kumagai and friends at 92Y

Kazu Kumagai
(photo: Leslie Kee)

Kazu Kumagai--newly-minted Bessie winner for Outstanding Performance--has grown ever more soulful over his years in tap dance. His show for yesterday's Fridays@Noon at 92Y--shared with bassist Alex Blake, vocalist Sabrina Clery, guitarist Masa Shimizu and dance colleague Gabe Winn--should leave no doubt that Japan-born Kumagai's a hoofer in bearing, technique and feeling, a solo artist with something deep and urgent to say and the feet to say it.

Speak with Your Feet: Tap Dancer Kazu Kumagai and Guests Soliloquize is a mouthful and tongue-twister of a title, but the show proved to be a smooth, swift run through popular music from Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin'" to Sting's "Fragile."

Kumagai opened with a dance to Maya Angelou's "Touched by an Angel," read by Clery. Angelou speaks of love's power to challenge and embolden the fearful, a love that "costs all we are and will ever be." Rippling his feet and slicing his toe along an amped oak wood platform, Kumagai seemed to test out newfound freedom before getting down and digging in. Finding that love real, reliable, he picked up this note of hope again, easing up a bit for "People Get Ready" (Curtis Mayfield) and, later, "Three Little Birds" (Bob Marley) where "every little thing gonna be alright." And even when things were very much not all right with this damaged world of ours, as in Ben Harper's confrontational "Excuse Me Mr.," Kumagai pulled us with him into the concentrated, confident energy he had steadily built. Ending "Excuse Me Mr.," he returned to that slicing toe, this time as sassy, triumphant punctuation.

The rapidity, steely clarity and array of his improvised footwork--so many points of impact, foot to wood; so mercurial these flips from rhythm to rhythm to rhythm--demonstrated numerous mental weapons at the ready. Yet Kumagai is decidedly a man of peace. His face-off with the young Gabe Winn was less a battle than a meeting of exhilarated minds sharing space, Winn starting quietly with a delicate filligree of sound, occasionally striking the edge of the platform for an accent. But both revved up, teasing out more and more saucy inventiveness from each other--two superb dancers in flight, head over heels for their art.

Speak with Your Feet was livestreamed for 92Y by Tisch School of the Arts Dance and New Media, and the video will be available here.

Check out Fridays@Noon's upcoming events here.

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Who's falling for dance?

I attended two dance shows yesterday: Fridays@Noon at 92nd Street Y and New York City Center's Fall for Dance. I haven't been to Fridays@Noon in a long while, largely due to time and energy factors, but I'm glad I found my way to this one. Over the years, I have never taken in too many of the extremely popular Fall for Dance shows either, and that's because I've already fallen and I can't get up.

Who's falling for dance? And who's spending lunch break catching some dance on the Upper East Side?

It was a small, mainly "insider" dance audience at 92Y yesterday afternoon for Words and Images: Trebien Pollard, A Future Vision. Pretty much everyone voiced some version of these words: "I wish more people could have seen this program." Well, actually more people can, since 92Y has a recorded livestream, thanks to Paul Galando and his dance and new media fellows from NYU Tisch. So you don't have to take it from me, but curator Pollard and his colleagues Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Aimee Rials and Brother(hood) Dance! (Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine) killed it.

Pollard's dance artists step up and acknowledge that dance, while maintaining rigorous craft, can make powerful contributions to the current discourse on race, gender, sexuality and justice. I greatly admire Hunter and Valentine's work. In the video and dance excerpt they showed from Black Jones, they continue to set a high bar for exploring facets of Black gay identity and threats to Black life and well-being. They get me with accomplished performance technique as well as with humor and tenderness. Pollard, draped in a long, black gown, approaches his solo, Never Not Broken, like a ritual priest. Inspired by Martin Buber's I and Thou and Claudia Rankine's Citizen, the work makes use of Rankine's text and stark, solemn imagery to establish a space where hard questions can be asked about the cost of living as one's true self in oppressive society.

Mercer and Rials were discoveries for me. The only white and only female artist on the program, Rials is a New York-based Tisch grad raised in Alabama. Her solo, Modif(her), draws from her sense of crossing strict borders whenever she goes home, adjusting her appearance to conform, not out of shame but out of genuine concern for her and her family's safety. Modif(her) crackles with tension, obsessiveness and watchfulness, all sharply contained and restrained in space. Mercer's performance (with "drifter and assistant" Johnny Chatman II) impressed me for the opposite reason: Despite also alluding to societal strictures and dangers, Mercer seemed voracious in his imaginative reach and energy.

For a schedule of upcoming Fridays@Noon events, click here.

The Friday night Fall for Dance show featured France's CCN de la Rochelle/Cie Accrorap (acrobatic hip hop), Australia's Bangarra Dance Theatre and Hong Kong Ballet, all bringing big, crowd-pleasing US premieres. Oh...and among those unfurling ensembles, one more act, a solo: New York's Ayodele Casel, holding down the City Center stage with her assertive and nimble tap style. ("I feel like Ray Barreto on the timbales!") But maybe I should look at this a different way, because no tap dancer ever dances alone. Casel may have appeared to be up there by herself, but she showed up with her tribe--the ancestral women tap dancers, like Jeni Le Gon and Marion Coles, who she honors in While I Have the Floor. Every other act on Friday's program sprawled out in time, maybe too much so. (Dance sampler programs aimed at new audiences should give us samples, not productions almost lengthy enough to serve as their own evening.) But, if I had my wish, it would be for more Casel and a broader sample of her musical powers. It has been a long time since I've seen her dance, and While I Have the Floor, with its outward focus on others and heritage, though admirable, was not satisfying.

Fall for Dance's affordability is a great deal for dance artists and dance fans on a budget. Its omnibus programming enables established dance fans to easily try out companies or genres of dance they've never before considered or to catch up with a production they might have missed. I hope it really does inspire folks to explore and support other shows. For the hardcore dance-goer, though--okay, for me, I will own it--the evening can seem long while devoid of meaningful context for each company's presentation. It feels like both too much and not enough. But here's one sure thing: The folks in the seats throw a lot of love back at that stage.

This Fall for Dance program continues tonight at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here. For information and tickets for programs running October 5-8, click here.

New York City Center
131 W 55th St (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Harkness Dance Festival: Keely Garfield Dance in "POW"

Molly Lieber and Keely Garfield
in Garfield's POW
(photo: Julie Lemberger)

The dancing body is exposed to the golden wind and shines through.

--Keely Garfield

Keely Garfield calls POW--presented this weekend at 92Y's Harkness Dance Festival--"a 'Frankenstein' of a dance made from scraps of fear and loathing that are boldly transformed, sutured, amplified and left to run amok, creating a brave new version of events."

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein character was the creator, not his creation, the monster. Maybe, in some sense, that's relevant, too.

POW does seem, like Frankenstein's poor monster, a fragile, vulnerable construction, one with a look of intense, obsessive labor about it. The hour-long ensemble work--a trio plus pianist/singer Matthew Brookshire--might inspire the viewer to zoom out to consider every contour and suture of the whole production, observing how beauty and disturbance lie a mere thin veil away from each other. On the other hand, particular imagery and energies, here and there, might ensnare you, a valid way to respond to the too-muchness of it all.

Garfield's opening solo
(photo: Julie Lemberger)

Garfield first presents herself as a woman precariously striding about and rocking her hips in a sheer mesh unitard--a cross of white tape covering one nipple--and firetruck-red, fringed stillettos. This reads, immediately, as extravagance crossed with eccentricity, and get used to the fact of much matter-of-fact crisscrossing in POW and little by way of explanation for it.

There might be a reason for dancers Paul Hamilton and Molly Lieber to show up in matching black leotards that read "I Only Got Ice For You." Or there might not be. But molding these two bodies into the space--frequently evoking un-theatrical but full-out movements of champion athletes, frequently testing power of statuesque balance against gravity--illustrates Garfield's interest in the commitment and heroism of dance/the body in the face of ultimate extinction, exposed to the golden wind. Much of POW alludes to extremity and the eternal in ways that seem squeezed between the cornball and the genuinely moving. Just try pulling them in one direction or the other. They won't budge.

Garfield and Hamilton
(photo: Julie Lemberger)

Some things, for me, did not resolve. I resisted Brookshire's intermittent role in the performance even as I got it. But one section of the work absolutely gripped me--Garfield and Hamilton crawling, rhythmically lumbering across the floor to (and with) Rihanna's stunning reggae-pop song "No Love Allowed."

Like a bullet your love me hit me to the coreI was flying 'til you knocked me to the floorAnd it's so foolish how you keep me wanting moreI'm screaming murderer, how could you murder usI call it murder, no love allowed

No coincidence, I take it, that Hamilton is a Black Jamaican and Garfield white and British-born and that she ultimately mounts his back and presses his body to the floor. We see that and cannot un-see it, cannot un-think its implication.

Without warning, Garfield drops her audience into the mess of race, societal and domestic violence, white privilege, all of that while producing the kind of movement that, against our will, rocks our insides. As if that's not enough, the two dancers also cram their heaving bodies against the legs of a couple of people in the front row as if to say, "You think you're not part of this, but you are. Take what is yours, too."

POW continues through Sunday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Buttenwieser Hall

92nd Street Y

Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan

(map/directions)

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Claudia Rankine, at 92Y, on the psyche under racism

Claudia Rankine

Poet Claudia Rankine's multiple award-winning Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) artfully documents the experience of being Black and embattled by racist aggressions, both macro and micro. Some of these aggressions can be so very, very subtle as to make the person on the receiving end wonder if she is imagining things. In a society in deep, purposeful, willful denial about the legacy and continued pervasiveness of racism, Black people walk around with original trauma compounded, on the daily, in numerous ways that can tear at our overall well-being. Rankine brings all of this out in her book, and it was exciting to see this literary hero in person and hear her read passages from Citizen last night in an Unterberg Poetry Center event at 92Y.

Billed as "a conversation on art, trauma and social justice," the evening opened well with Rankine's introductory remarks and reading but took an odd turn as Cleonie White and Sarah Stemp, clinicians from the William Alanson White Institute for Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology, joined the author onstage. That might have seemed a reasonable pairing, given Rankine's concern for the way that racism threatens the health of individuals as well as societies. However, it turned awkward, particularly as Stemp delivered a long, labored statement before the increasingly restive audience.

Rankine betrayed no impatience, but the multigenerational, largely white crowd voiced displeasure several times, yelling "Ask questions!" at Stemp and even criticizing one another when, after something like 75 minutes, the floor was finally opened for their own questions. Even before the outbursts, though, you could sense an unhappy vibe around the hall. It felt less like a dignified literary event and more like a music gig where the crowd realizes it isn't getting what it came for.

At one point, Rankine mentioned the concept of "ethical loneliness"--that undercurrent of isolation--when you live in a society diametrically opposed to your ethics. Her observation was not only intellectual, it had a personal feeling tone that reached me. I got my pen out and made a note just as Rankine took matters further, adding how hard it is, in that situation, "if you don't have people...or you can't pay for people."

That got White's attention. She quickly responded that the Institute accepts sliding scale, a defensive rejoinder that seemed to come from out of nowhere. How had White envisioned this event, then? As a marketing tool?

I turned to the friendly woman on my right and whispered, "This is just not gelling. I don't know what's going on here." She agreed--"It's like they didn't communicate beforehand"--and made an early exit. I hung on but left a little bit into the audience Q&A.

So, what to tell you? Read Citizen: An American Lyric. Just read it.

For information on upcoming events at 92Y, click here.

92nd St Y
Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Colleen Thomas Dance: Looking beyond the blueprint

Samantha Allen of Colleen Thomas Dance
in Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint
Photo: Alex Escalante

"We see what we think we know, not what stands before us," Colleen Thomas writes, introducing Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint, presented by 92Y Harkness Dance Center's new Dig Dance weekend series.

An artist's handiwork gets complicated, re-imagined and completed by what the individual observer brings to it. In the shifting gloom of 92Y's Buttenwieser Hall, we encounter Thomas's sensibilities, ideas and decisions, bringing "the stories we keep telling ourselves" about ourselves and about everything else. As she writes further, "Life is here, this moment. Now....and now...and now."

With the exception of composer John McGrew, who performs his score live, every single one of the men in Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint--Ehizoje Azeke, Marc Mann, Nathan Trice and the striking Orlando Hunter--are Black. Startled to notice this, I returned to Thomas's words and wondered if anyone else had experienced a similar jolt.  (Tamara Joy Clarke, also Black and also a dancer, passes through and around the space. But in this work, she's primarily serving as vocalist.) Thomas and the other women dancers--Samantha Allen, Jenna Riegel and Jessica Stroh--are white, and we had just watched them, stationed across the space, scaring us with images of obsessive self-grooming, as if they wanted to rub every bit of clothing, hair and flesh away from their inflamed bodies. And then, BLACKOUT. And now, these four men--each one grand and vulnerable.

Knowing of Thomas's concern with how we get ensnared in "the web of perceived social, gender and racial narratives," I felt she'd just dropped a grenade in our midst. We have seen multicultural dance ensembles; Thomas, herself, has danced with some of them. But the demographic makeup of Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint--and the balance of prominence and power within it--are rare in contemporary dance.

Tricia Toliver's preternatural lighting turns this hall--a dimly-lit space with a heavy, heavy feel--into a camera obscura or chamber of hallucinations, the perfect setting for the stark and fiery choreography. We're made aware of an outside--a black drape gets pulled aside; an opened door emits a blast of white light--to this tense and murky inside. Toliver takes the simple facts of folks--Have you seen dancers when they are off-duty?--and splashes harsh light across bodies, turning them spooky or monumental.

We can't trust our eyes. Or maybe sometimes we can. But it's important, first of all, to make the effort to look. For "life is here, this moment. Now....and now...and now."

Her(e) Repetitive Blueprint continues tonight at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.

92nd St Y (Buttenwieser Hall)
Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Wanda Sykes interviewed by Judy Gold at 92Y

Wanda Sykes
(photo: Malcolm Jason Low)

If the delightful, Emmy-winning Wanda Sykes were to be offered Jon Stewart's Daily Show, would she take it?

After all, wouldn't it be great to have a woman--and, way better still, an out, activist lesbian of color--running with the late-night wolves?

Wanda Sykes
(photo: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

With Judy Gold at right, Wanda Sykes greets fans at 92Y.
(photo: Malcolm Jason Low)

The Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams, touted all over social media as a top choice, has recently asserted that she does not want this challenge. A nation--well, a nation of women of color--might well turn their lonely eyes to Sykes who, for a short time, did host her own late-night talk show on Fox.

She's not saying yes. But she's not exactly saying no. At least, during her 92Y conversation last night with Emmy-winning colleague Judy Gold, she seemed to keep a fan's hope alive.

"How can you follow Jon Stewart? He was so good," Sykes first responded to the question. "Who knows?"

After citing family priorities, though, she added, "But if they asked me, how could you not?"

Pay attention to that last sentence. "But If they asked me" is far from a casual line with this particular talent. As Sykes outlined her pathway in the entertainment business--as multifaceted comedy writer and performer--it became clear that she's consistently approached and invited by folks like Chris Rock and Larry David who know she's right for their projects. Listening carefully to Sykes's history, Gold noted, with a flicker of envy and shade, that Sykes seems to never have had to audition for a part. The industry knows her worth. Even the Obamas know her worth, tapping her in 2009 to be the featured entertainer at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner--a first for a Black woman or anyone queer.

Gratitude is a big operating principle for Sykes, as it should be, given the blossoming of her career, love life and family life as wife to Alex and co-mom to their twins. If truth be told here, Sykes has got to be one of the luckiest people in showbiz.

Although it might be inscribed "in the US Constitution," as the two comics joked, that late-night talk shows have to hosted by white men, surely it's time for a new amendment to that constitution.

Visit Wanda Sykes's Web site here, and Gold's site here.

Keep up with happenings at 92Y by clicking here.

Save the date to honor Clark Center's history: April 17

Celebrate the historic Clark Center for the Performing Arts--
founded by Alvin Ailey in 1959 in New York as a multi-racial, multi-ethnic arts community--at Fridays at Noon at 92Y.

For 30 years Clark Center trained dancers, encouraged emerging companies and developed new choreographic talent. Among the choreographers and companies that performed there are Alvin Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Eleo Pomare, Anna Sokolow, Mimi Garrard, Donald McKayle, Kazuko Hirabayashi, Meredith Monk, Laura Dean, Ballet Hispanico, Chuck Davis, Sounds in Motion, Senta Driver, Bill T Jones, May O’Donnel, Gus Solomons, Capoeiras Bahia, Doug Varone and Urban Bush Women.

This afternoon event will include live dancing, film, photographs and a panel discussion.

Live streams of each Fridays at Noon performance are available at www.tischdanceandnewmedia.com/live. The live streams of the Fridays At Noon performances are part of an educational collaboration between 92Y Harkness Dance Center and NYU’s Tisch Dance and New Media Program.

Friday, April 17, 12pm

Purchase tickets in advance online or at the 92Y Box Office (lobby).

For information, click here.

92Y (Buttenweiser Hall)
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Novelists Edward P. Jones and Yiyun Li read at 92Y, April

92Y

welcomes novelists

Edward P. Jones and Yiyun Li

Thursday, April 10, 8:15 pm

Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. “It’s difficult to think of a contemporary novel that rivals its sweep, its humanity, the unvarnished perfection of its prose and its ultimately crushing power,” wrote Dave Eggers.

Yiyun Li’s new novel is Kinder Than Solitude. “Li is extraordinary, a storyteller of the first order,” wrote Junot Díaz. She “inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents.”

Ticket information

92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan
(map/direction)

Behind the scenes with Gelsey Kirkland

92nd Street Y 

presents

BEHIND THE SCENES:

THE GELSEY KIRKLAND ACADEMY OF CLASSICAL BALLET

Wed, Jul 31 (12pm)

Go behind the scenes as acclaimed ballerina Gelsey Kirkland conducts a demonstration with an advanced class at the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in Tribeca.

After the demonstration, join Michael Chernov, the Academy’s co-founder and co-artistic director, for a reception and Q&A about how he and Ms. Kirkland groom the next generation of dancers.

Gelsey Kirkland began her storied career in 1968 at New York City Ballet, where she rose to principal dancer. At the American Ballet Theatre she danced with Baryshnikov, receiving worldwide acclaim for performances in title roles in Giselle, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty and others.

Michael Chernov has been an actor, dancer, director, classical ballet teacher and choreographer. 

Meet at the Gelsey Kirkland Academy, 355 Broadway (between Grand and Leonard Streets in Tribeca), 2nd floor.

Admission: $38

Information and registration

Dance as a sustainable art: a panel at 92Y

92nd Street Y

presents

MovementTalks: 

Sustainable Arts - Policy, Practice and Programing

Lise Brenner, Paul Nagle and Judy Hussie-Taylor

moderated by Edward Henkel

Friday, April 5 (8pm)

Let’s talk about artistic communities as tangible social assets, both for the artists themselves, and the role that protecting art-making plays in the daily life of our neighborhoods. What does maintaining the possibility for arts production (i.e. studio space, affordable housing, etc) give to the city? What do small business incentives, producing and curating contemporary dance, zoning laws, ConEd electrical rates for non-profits, and planting street trees have in common? This will be a discussion about choices and the creative ecology that results.

Program and ticket information

92nd Street Y (Buttenwieser Hall)
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Also: See Dance and the American Sacred Cows: Meat and Money, May 31, with Carrie Ahern and Zefrey Throwell

Novelist Jamaica Kincaid to read at 92Y

Jamaica Kincaid

a reading from her new novel, See Now Then,
and a conversation with critic Darryl Pinckney

Monday, February 25
8:15pm

presented by 92Y's Poetry Center 

in collaboration with The Paris Review

Her writing is a shared plenitude, a promise of more where that came from....[A] writer of boldness and encouragement who keeps on showing us the ever-dawning possibilities in writing and in the world. -- Ian Frazier

Ticket information

92nd Street Y (Buttenwieser Hall)
Lexington Avenue at 92nd St, Manhattan
(map/directions)