BAM Next Wave presents NYC premiere of "The Exalted"

Carl Hancock Rux (l) and Theo Beckmann
in costume for The Exalted
(photo: John Labbe)

I might have drawn closer to The Exalted--or, at least, felt a better grasp of its purpose--had writer/teller Carl Hancock Rux delivered his words with a consistent clarity to match their earnestness. I found myself often straining to follow text stuffed with historical and biographical data, distracted from other elements of the collaborative piece--strangely enough, Onome Ekeh's trippy and quite showy video. I started off wishing that Rux could speak without being hemmed in by music but quickly realized that the problem was not the impingement by Theo Bleckmann's sound design but Rux's vocal and narrative cloudiness. Bleckmann's ethereal melodies and supple voice, in fact, handsomely served this multimedia fantasy throughout its hour.

Bleckmann, as performer, contributes an understated elegance, wafting in and out of Rux's awareness like a shade. He portrays the influential German-Jewish art historian and critic Carl Einstein, noted for his scholarship on African sculpture and Cubism, leftist ideology and engagement in the Spanish Civil War. Trapped in Nazi-occupied France in 1940, Einstein committed suicide. Rux's interest in the writer appears to have roots in his own history--an adoptive father who served in World War II, a revelation, through genealogical research, of a link to Germany, and perhaps more.

Under the direction of SITI Company's Anne Bogart, The Exalted gracefully incorporates physical theater--characteristic movement and articulate gestures through which the men initiate a playful understanding of each other. But in a telling scene, Rux stands stock still, mid-space, warily gazing at Bleckmann as he skirts around him, lecturing on how Europeans devalue African art. In this encounter--and, perhaps, in this work--so much remains to be unpacked and examined.

With lighting by Brian H Scott and scenic and costume design by Maureen Freedman

The Exalted continues its run tonight through October 31 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher/Fishman Space
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Anne Bogart: neuroscience of empathy in theater

Seeing and Doing
by Anne Bogart, Anne's Blog, SEE Siti Extended Ensemble, September 1, 2010

The artist as Pandora

Pandora's Box
by Anne Bogart, Anne's Blog, SEE, August 2010

SITI: "Okay. That feels good to me."

In her Director's Note, Anne Bogart wonders how SITI Company's new DTW production of bobrauschenbergamerica--a work premiered in the innocent American spring of 2001--will resonate with today's audiences. Let me take a stab: We are now either too scarred and scared--and cynical--for this or we are greatly in need of its delirious good spirits. Actually, I can't decide which way to go on this question, but I can tell you that I, for one, love this show.

bobrauschenbergamerica works like one of Raushenberg's "combines" of homely things. It makes something magic(k)al of the mess. In its wild and basically good-natured juxtapositions, it keeps prodding you to reconcile what's artificial with what's natural or sincere. No, you don't get to choose.

It doesn't take diversity, of any kind, seriously in any dreary kind of way but rather turns the seriousness of social diversity into the exuberance of a neighborly smorgasbord, mercilessly dragging you to the table. If you're still kicking and screaming--you're overthinking, perhaps, why the whole cast is suddenly doing the Electric Slide or, at another moment, square dancing--this is a vaudevillian show that shoves pop music and fried chicken at you until you're helpless and giggling because, basically, it knows who you are. You're an American. This stuff--all of it--is your DNA.

And that's the way it should be--America, a delicious mess, a raucous work-in-progress. This visually-festive production and playwright Charles L. Mee spliced material argue that there's nothing we need to fix about that--and keep that in mind, Arizona. As the final words go, "Okay. That feels good to me."

Bogart's ensemble is, overall, great. But pay particular attention to performances by Ellen Lauren (Susan, a white woman in a racially-mixed couple rocked by fairly ordinary challenges) and Leon Ingulsrud (darkly sculpted by Brian H Scott's lighting and his own physical discipline, as he delivers his decreasingly funny chicken jokes).

bobrauschenbergamerica continues at Dance Theater Workshop through May 16. Click here for complete schedule information and ticketing.

Sideways gaze

Nude with Skeleton

by Anne Bogart, Anne's Blog/SEE SITI Extended Ensemble, April 2010

Anne Bogart: the effort of balance

In connection with attending last night's conversation among director Anne Bogart, playwright Charles L. Mee, Jr. and other members of Bogart's SITI Company at Dance Theater Workshop, I discovered Bogart's interesting blog. Here's some of wonderful ruminating...

Instinct vs. Impulse
by Anne Bogart, SEE (SITI Extended Ensemble), February 2010

Last in the SITI Company Mondays@DTW series:

March 8 (7pm) SITI's devised creations--the why, what and how. Tickets: $10. Call 212-924-0077 or click here.

And coming up at The Joyce in June: 

American Document, by visionary choreographer Martha Graham, premiered during the summer of 1938. Her most theatrical ballet at the time of its creation, Graham’s piece incorporated vaudevillian structures, folk rhythms, and spoken text to examine Americana and the continual conflict between the rights of the individual and society. Although there is no complete record of Graham’s first
popular work, the Martha Graham Dance Company has enlisted director Anne Bogart, playwright Charles L. Mee Jr. and SITI Company to reinvent American Document using filmed excerpts, written descriptions and Graham’s handwritten notes. This stirring new theatrical work will feature a groundbreaking collaboration between SITI Company actors and Martha Graham Company dancers. American Document reflects our current cultural concerns by answering the same questions Martha Graham asked over seventy years ago: What is an American? And, what is America?

American Document (World Premiere)
June 8-13
The Joyce Theater
175 8th Avenue (19th Street), Manhattan
Box office at 212-242-0800 or purchase online