"Eclipse": Forces of Nature celebrates 35th Anniversary

Above and below:
Scenes from Eclipse: Visions of the Crescent and the Cross
by Abdel R. Salaam for Forces of Nature
(photos: Erin Baiano)

For its 35th anniversary season, Forces of Nature has gone all out with Eclipse: Visions of the Crescent and the Cross, choreographed and designed by the company's visionary artistic director, Abdel R. Salaam. Presented last evening at Aaron Davis Hall, this bustling ensemble work traces a narrative of interaction and intermingling between people of Christian and Islamic faiths from the Crusades through the Civil Rights/Black Nationalist years and up to the present day. Even that other visionary, Nostradamus, makes an appearance.

That sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and it is. But Salaam balances his fertile imagination with a strict editor's eye. And any didacticism keeps its proper place--in the program notes--as two hours of dance theater simply breeze by.

Were it not for its provocative subject matter, Eclipse, in excerpts or as a whole, would be absolutely Broadway-ready. Salaam has it all--abstract, stylistic battle scenes crafted like cut crystal; idyllic, lyrical entwinement between once shy, now rapturous lovers; energetic villagers breaking out their best Celtic, Mediterranean or West African moves and much, much more. Each scene, with further development, could work as a standalone piece or a self-contained number ready to be neatly, helpfully dropped into someone else's musical. There's old-school entertainment throughout for any audience that wants it, and Salaam's opening night audience digged it the most. Eclipse is best approached with a relaxed attitude of anything goes/what's next?/bring it!

Salaam is a man for every season, every mood and every dance technique--from modern to ballet, from step dance to flamenco to hip hop--with an equally eclectic, and quite wonderful, ear for music. He meets each opportunity to create characters and tell stories with panache--for instance, turning the competition between "The Cross" (Jeffrey Freeze) and "The Crescent" (Nathan Trice) into a boxing match that, ultimately, neither wins, though, from the look of Trice's stance and form, I'd give him the clear advantage in any rematch.

A work this demanding and ambitious calls for a lot from its dancers, and Salaam is blessed with a disciplined and ardent ensemble with notable work from Trice, Petra Duskova (as a Crusader's widow) and Jason Herbert (as her Muslim suitor).

See the repeat of Eclipse tonight at 7pm. For Program B, tomorrow evening at 7pm, the company presents classic repertory--Terrestrial Wombs, Fallen Idols, B’Flowin B’Smoove, The Word Made Flesh and Lamban Plus!

Get information and tickets for Forces of Nature here.

Aaron Davis Hall
on campus of The City College of New York
between West 133 and 135 Streets, Convent Avenue, Manhattan

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City College plans expanded arts programming

City College to Establish New Arts Center
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, May 15, 2014

The anatomy of change: Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and LIz Lerman at Harlem Stage

Impressions of: Blood, Muscle, Bone: the anatomy of wealth and poverty

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, The Dance Enthusiast, October 14, 2013

New theater initiative for Harlem

City College Backing for New Haarlem Arts Theater
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, May 29, 2011

The right to marry

Harlem Stage and Human Rights Campaign welcome you to the world premiere of Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness, a documentary short film directed by Thomas Allen Harris, on Tuesday, April 26 at Aaron Davis Hall.

The film compares the civil rights struggles of Black and LGBT communities. A community forum on the topic featuring a slate of rights advocates, political activists and religious leaders follows the screening.

Panelists include Alphonso David, New York State Division of Human Rights advisor, Rev. Irene Monroe from the Pacific School of Religion, Cathy Marino-Thomas, board president of Marriage Equality New York, Massachusetts-based pastor Rev. Eugene Rivers who is president of the National Ten Point Leadership Foundation, and Human Rights Campaign board member David Wilson. Jonathan Capehart, editorial writer for The Washington Post and contributor to MSNBC, will moderate.

The film centers on Massachusetts State Rep. Byron Rushing (D), a Civil Rights veteran who, in the past decade, took the campaign for same-sex marriage into communities of color in his home state. In doing so, he challenged religious leaders and defined equal marriage as a civil rights issue on par with the Black social justice movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness

Tuesday, April 26, 7:30pm
Reception to follow

Aaron Davis Hall
135th Street at Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(directions)

For ticket information, click here or call 212-281-9240, ext. 19 or 20.

WeDaPeoples uptown

Harlem Stage presents

WeDaPeoples Cabaret

curated by Carl Hancock Rux

co-presented by the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University

and the Columbia/Harlem Jazz Project

Saturday, September 25, 9:30pm

Harlem Stage 

at Aaron Davis Hall

WeDaPeoples Cabaret was created in 2006 by Sekou Sundiata for The American Project. Fusing political consciousness with artistic mastery in the spirit of Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln's "We Insist: Freedom Now Suite."  Carl Hancock Rux curates a raucous night of art and activism inspired by Sundiata's vision of extending insurgent testimony and discourse beyond the academy and into the art space to reach the community at large.

Features:

Helga Davis
Queen Esther
Toshi Reagon
Greg Tate
Roger G. Jeffreys/Subtle Changes Dance Company

and more

with DJ Phonozone

Information and ticketing

Aaron Davis Hall
on campus of The City College of New York
between West 133 and 135 Streets, Convent Avenue, Manhattan

Directions

Nina Simone tribute

NINA SIMONE TRIBUTE/ BLACK ROCK COALITION ORCHESTRA
presented by Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall

Friday, March 26, 7:30pm

7:30 pm Pre-show DJ mixer
8:30 pm Performance
10:00 pm After party

An 18-member all-female ensemble, under the direction of composer Tamar-Kali:

Angela Johnson http://www.angelajohnson.com/fr_index.cfm
Imani Uzuri http://www.imaniuzuri.com/
Joi http://www.myspace.com/joi
Lisala Beatty http://www.myspace.com/lisalab
Toli Nameless http://www.tolinameless.com/
Portia Rolle
Tara Thierry http://www.myspace.com/tarathierry
Tarrah Reynolds http://www.myspace.com/misstarrah
LaFrae Sci http://www.lafrae.com/Frae%20Frae.html
Jenny Hill http://www.jennyhilljazz.com/
Pam Fleming http://www.fearlessdreamer.com/
Lauren Sevian http://www.laurensevian.com/
Mazz Swift-Camlet http://www.myspace.com/mazzmuzik
Amali Premawardhana http://www.myspace.com/amaliprema
Surai Balbeisi http://www.myspace.com/nesrinebalbeisi
Narjess Saad-Ellaoui
Dawn Drake http://www.dawndrake.com/

For complete details, click here. For tickets, click here.

Getting ready to werrrk!

Go backstage with These Women from This Woman's Work: Part Three!

These Women Werrrk!

This Woman's Work: Part 3 is a two-hour-plus program that's bursting at the seams with talent. If you love Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, you'll want to see TWW3 because so many bright lights who have graced that troupe and more are in evidence here at Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall (135th Street and Convent Avenue), both as dancemakers and as performers. Tonight's your last chance to go. And do go. Last evening, there were plenty of seats available for you, and that's too bad because the point of This Woman's Work--the brainchild of co-directors Bridget L. Moore and Princess Mhoon Cooper--is to give much-needed attention to emerging women choreographers of the African diaspora. These women ought to be seen anywhere and everywhere that dance is welcomed and supported; all of our artistic minds need to be working together and learning from one another.

The program--which opens with a showy danced introduction to all of the choreographers--includes ensemble pieces by Cooper, Francine Elizabeth Ott, Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins (who bills herself here as SNIC) and Makeda Thomas. The incomparable Camille A. Brown dances her solo to music by Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter and Nancy Wilson. Ursula Payne's duet had to be cut because Payne had worsened a back injury sustained earlier in the week.

The ensemble works by Moore and Ott, although handsomely performed, suffered from a similar reliance and emphasis on big, bustling abstract movement in tiresome unison. "Please, let's see a solo," I thought (and voiced to the colleague sitting beside me). "Something focused, quiet, small, a lot of small, specific, intricate, absorbing things--just as a challenge. Show us what else you can do." No sooner did I wish that than Brown breezed onto the stage, a hat dipped low over her eyes, and launched into The Evolution of A Secured Feminine. (What a title! But, by the end of this tour de force, you understand it.) It certainly could not be called quiet or small, but it had lots of tiny, vivid treasures, specific, focused movements danced with frightening control and pieced together like letters tapped out on a keyboard by a speed-demon-typist-with-attitude, and the message was "Don't fuck with me, sucker!" I adored this dance, and so did the audience who could not get enough of Brown.

Collins, my other Ron Brown favorite, brought something I don't recall witnessing on a dance stage: the deep sobbing of a woman releasing years of pain followed swiftly by the lilting, healing reverberation of women's laughter. Her quartet, Don't Live Here Go, is a sacred ritual of cleansing, supported by one's sisters on the path. It has singing, bold dancing and attractive theatrical design--in particular, the mound of straw, dispensed from white satin pillows, that makes a lovely shushing sound as dancers pass through it--but some parts lose focus where it's hard to tell exactly what's going on and why.

Inspired by the words of Mozambican women with HIV/AIDS, Thomas's A Sense of Place achieves the rare successful blending of humanistic feeling and meaning with sophisticated visual style. The movement seamlessly combines African and modern influences. Thomas is, herself, a dancer of serious interest and brings out integrity in her partners Khaleah London and Collins. Clearly Thomas learned many discomforting truths from the women she interviewed for her original video. However, with the sure touch of a poet, she has distilled this into just enough telling words, just enough flashes of video imagery--all of these appearing only to fade away--to create a balanced atmosphere for the dancing trio. The piece--which I saw in an earlier version--has been evolving for a while and might have a bit further to go. In any case, Thomas is a choreographer well worth keeping in sight.

It's hard to say which W of TWW has the boldest vision, but Cooper is certainly a contender with her Dangerous Liaisons--social satire of the sassiest, most acidic variety. Theatrical with a big T--thank you!--this piece rips the polite covers off a trio of well-to-do couples at a dinner party served by three maids. Clever choreography, dancing and acting make this a sure bet for audiences, although I wondered how best to respond to what I was being shown--with derision? judgment? horror? sadness? Is it really funny to watch a wife mime stuffing herself with food, really scarfing it down in defiance of her husband and then dancing in such a wrenching way you fear she'll mime barfing? Or to watch another husband and wife bicker and fight (only to slip off to a bedroom to make up--for the moment)? The only scenario I enjoyed involved the wife who kept slipping out of her husband's watch to go dance with the maids. Yeah! Way more fun! You go, girl!

For tickets for tonight's TWW3 show at 7:30, visit Harlem Stage's Web page.