Lincoln Center Festival presents Rosas revival

Right before the evening's performance of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Rosas Danst Rosas, I find myself seated behind a tall, big-headed man accompanied by his tall, big-headed friend--they tend to go about in pairs--and our section of rows facing the Gerald W. Lynch Theater's stage at a less-than-ideal angle anyway. I have never seen a Rosas dance live--only on video...theirs and Beyoncé's--but I'd hoped to see De Keersmaeker's stage in full. I longed to see De Keersmaeker's stage in full and to track the play of energies between bodies. I'd not expected to have to tilt way over in my chair at times, the way her dancers sometimes tilt in theirs, in order to follow some of the action. The first man's head, as things develop, will be precisely stationed in some crucial gaps between dancers--De Keersmaeker, Tale Dolven, Cynthia Loemij and Sue-Yeon Youn--bifurcating the choreographer's enigmatic arrangements at certain times. In a mood of revenge, I wildly fantasize going all Harlem Church Lady on this Lincoln Center Festival audience, leaving and coming back with a big ol' feathered hat and refusing to remove it. But you can't go out and come back--hat or no hat. De Keersmaeker won't let you.

My seat is way back in the packed theater, and the distance and frequently dimmish lighting (Remon Fromont) make it hard to read facial expressions, the kind that, on video, make a particularly striking segment of Rosas Danst Rosas look like a growing conspiracy among a clique of bored teenagers. Dolven's open, eager presentation and coltish energy carry most clearly, but I often glance at De Keersmaeker, who made this signature piece as an NYU undergrad and performs it now three decades later. I'm excited to see her dance, to see what this piece, born of her body and spirit, can tell me about this woman.

I find a solemn, closed face, what I can see of it, and a dutiful body. It does its work in the ensemble but does not show too much of itself amid the younger women. She tells me nothing. But when De Keersmaeker performs that repeated turning movement that looks like a flamenco dancer whipping a dress front and back, gripping it at her pelvis and tailbone--if you've seen the dance, I think you'll know what I mean--she shows an intensity that underlies everything. Underlies abstraction, repetition, synchronicity, motionlessness. Underlies melting and dissolution. Underlies uncertainty and self-consciousness. A dashing style, a passion and a power that turns the stage and all four physically, mentally vibrant women on it into an engine that, with Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch's aggressive music, opens your head like nobody's business.

Lincoln Center Festival presents Rosas through July 16 with a schedule of performances of Rosas Danst Rosas (1983), Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (1982), Elena's Aria (1984) and Bartók/Mikrokosmos (1987) as well as several free public events. For further information, click here.

Gerald W. Lynch Theater
John Jay College
524 West 59th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Waiting at BAM: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's "En Atendant"

So, yesterday afternoon, this malcontented woman in the audience--loud enough for people on at least one side of BAM's Gilman Opera House to overhear--leaned over to her date and said, "It doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense." And as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's often unusually silent and exposed En Atendant continued for ninety-plus minutes, the critic-at-large found any number of thoughts to share with us all, culminating with "It's over, I hope!" as gloomy darkness closed in on the final dancer.

Michael Schmid opens a performance of En Atendant

The rest of us, far better behaved, had waited patiently through what seemed to be at least five--possibly as much as ten--minutes of dry, flat sound issuing from Michael Schmid's flute as as he stood alone at the lit edge of an otherwise bare, darkened stage at the opening of En Atendant. The houselights, still up, united audience with one another and with the flutist and--at least for those of us who chose to listen--made us collaborators in the creation of a disquieting place in the mind, a void into which Schmid poured raspy breath, a foreshadow of death.

The bleak, intense 2010 ensemble, En Atendant ("While waiting, I must suffer grievous pain/and languishing live; such is my fate, for I cannot reach the fountain....") is one of two works, premiered at Festival d'Avignon, that the Belgian troupe Rosas has brought to New York for this fall's BAM Next Wave Festival. The other, Cesena (2011), which I will not get a chance to see, represents the flip side--the coming of dawn's light. De Keersmaeker steeped both pieces in the atmosphere of western Europe's 14th century--a time of plague and massacre--while highlighting the exquisite polyphonic music also characteristic of that violent age. The ensemble Cour et Coeur, featuring the sublime vocalist Annelies Van Gramberen, performs live as part of the stage scene.

Above and below: Dancers of Rosas perform En Atendant
at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Gilman Opera House
(photos courtesy of BAM)

In En Atendant, De Keersmaeker resists easy theatricality and obvious narrative while going for the primal essence of drama. You know that when any dancer touches another, a relationship is forged there and registered in your mind, although you might not clearly identify the nature of it. It lives. It resonates. Each of these brilliant dancers transmits a specific and memorable human sense of himself or herself. There is nothing cookie-cutter about these presences--from the severity of Chrysa Parkinson to the frenetic, bull-like thrashings of Boštjan Antončič. De Keersmaeker makes sure of that, just as she makes vivid movement that genuinely breathes like music even when--as in long, long, long stretches of this dance--there's no music to be heard.

Danced by Boštjan Antončič, Carlos Garbin, Cynthia Loemij, Mark Lorimer, Mikael Marklund, Chrysa Parkinson, Sandy Williams and Sue-Yeon Youn

Music performed by Michael Schmid, Bart Coen, Thomas Baeté and Annelies Van Gramberen

En Atendant will be repeated today at 2pm. Cesena will be performed this evening at 7:30pm, concluding Rosas' BAM season. For information on Cesena, click here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Catch the livestream of our workshop on dance film, writing: Today at 5pm

Writing on Dance:Film
A WRITE OPEN workshop

Wednesday, December 12 (5-6:30pm)

Open to NYU Tisch Dance students only
Department of Dance, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
(Cherylyn Lavagnino, Chair)

co-presented by Dance Films Association and Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

In this informal workshop, we will explore and write about excerpts from two exciting filmed versions of DV8 Physical Theatre's Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Rosas danst Rosas.  Screenings will be presented by Brighid Greene (Communications Associate, Dance Films Association).  Writing exercises will be facilitated by dance writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa.

To catch the livestream of Writing on Dance:Film -- 5pm to 6:30pm today -- click here. Download student handout here.

Beyoncé called out for stealing dances

Beyoncé Accused of Plagiarism Over Video
by James C. McKinley, Jr., The New York Times, October 10, 2010

Hey, Beyoncé! Make amends. If you love other people's choreography that much, become a celebrity advocate for dance!

A "Sublime" week

From The Sublime to the sublime and even more sublimity! For me, this has been an exceptionally rewarding week in dance. I don't want to put any undue pressure on the wonderful Sara Juli--my Body and Soul podcast interviewee whose new work, Death, I plan to see tonight at P.S. 122--but I'm hoping that my luck and this string of remarkable events will continue.

The Sublime is Us--an intriguing new piece by another recent Body and Soul interviewee, Luciana Achugar--continues running through November 1 at Dance Theater Workshop. It's a feast of instinct and sensuality set before a small audience placed in intimate proximity to the dancers--Achugar, Hilary Clark, Jennifer Kjos, Melanie Maar and Beatrice Wong--and the studio mirrors with which they partner. Visually, we become part of the dance, forced to also gaze upon ourselves and our fellow audience members in self-consciousness or curiosity, as we keep an eye on the performers. The pit-of-the-stomach visceral effect of this set up and of much of the movement cannot be overstated. Achugar, once again, seeks to take us deep into the natural intelligence and experience of the body. Details, schedule and ticketing information

At BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Belgium's Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, her dance troupe, Rosas, and the musical ensemble Ictus, performing live, offer a sublime tribute in Steve Reich Evening with music by Reich and György Ligeti, now through tomorrow evening. Here is an expansive and celestial feast of sound, light, choreography and performance, from the simplest first course--the varied sonic play of two pendulating microphones--to the complex and electrifying conclusion, Drumming--Part 1. Precision. Discipline. Exaltation. Worth any price, if you can still snare a ticket. Details, schedule and ticketing

Tami Stronach has gone straight to my heart. She has simply pushed open its door and taken up residence. Whether dancing the opening solo in her new But it's for you or deploying the ravishing duo of Lindsey Dietz-Marchant and Darrin M. Wright, this wildly imaginative, poetic choreographer never hits a false note or shows us anything our jaded eyes have seen before or could anticipate. She finds the human soul in exacting, abstract movement. In vulnerable romantic partnerings, she finds energies and images of extraordinary, even alarming power. And what a team--in particular, the aforementioned dancers, who could not have been better chosen nor delivered more affecting performances; lighting designer Japhy Weideman; and scenic designer Joe Levasseur. This sublime beauty ends its run tomorrow evening. Trust me: You don't want to miss your chance to savor it. Details, schedule and ticketing