My Eiko journal: Part 3

Eiko's A Body in Places
Saturday, March 5 -- 7-10pm

It was disconcerting to see Eiko with a bandaged sprained arm--the result of a trip and fall at home. But she still danced, still valiantly surveyed, on this Saturday evening in St. Mark's Church along with invited soloists--Michelle Boulé, Beth Gill, Neil Greenberg, Koma Otake, Jimena Paz, Arturo Vidich and Geo Wyeth. Each soloist took a piece of the church--Koma, on the porch in his filmy-thin costume, braving the cold night air; Greenberg commandeering one side of the balcony; Gill inchworming her way all around the sanctuary's carpeted risers--over the course of three hours.

Members of the audience, armed with a site map and schedule, curated their individual experiences. But, clearly, everyone wanted to see everything--or as much of everything as logistics will allow. That meant trying to get over to a tiny space--say, the reportedly-haunted Priest's Room--in time to squeeze yourself in with a dozen other people as Vidich struck and vibrated church bells. His solemn performance, though simple in form, rivaled only Paz's stark, crow-like expressionism for beauty.

Overall, this evening proved to be a fragmentary experience--chaotic, impossible, a nightmare for the claustrophobic but interesting for not only dancer-watching at various angles but watcher-watching. It was funny to run into an old friend who mentioned the same phenomenon--enjoying the unusual vantage points for looking at how people look at the dancing they're looking at.

*****

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Culturebot’s got the EPHEMERAL EVIDENCE

Arturo Vidich, Sarah A.O. Rosner and Witness Relocation's Dan Safer, Kaz Phillips Safer and Mike Mikos are just a handful of the hardrockers involved in EPHEMERAL EVIDENCE, Culturebot's multifaceted extravaganza at Exit Art.

Ephemeral Evidence consists of a series of collaborative explorations between writers and performing artists to investigate the relationship between practice and skill in performance-making, object-making and context. We propose an experiment in which objects are created directly from the result of the performing artist’s practice--their skilled application of learned techniques. Does the object, existing as residue of the ephemeral event, gain meaning as document or value object in itself? Both? How does the critical dialogue around the performance process and object inform our perception and valuation of the art?

The installations will be durational throughout the day with culminating performances at 5PM.  

Read more here.

Tuesday, April 17-Saturday, April 21

Exit Art
475 Tenth Avenue (at 36th Street), Manhattan
(directions/map)

Genesis Project residency welcomes applications

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
Genesis Project, New York
Artist Residency Program

Genesis Project is a unique, month-long, artists' residency program catering to body-based artists who identify as working between disciplines and/or seek to integrate other disciplines into their performance practice through individual experimentation and open-source collaboration. We seek to diversify the range of skills present in the residency; therefore, the committee will also consider artists working in non-performance disciplines and professionals from art-related fields who want to incorporate performance into their practice. To enhance the residency experience and to promote ideological exchange and discourse, local artists from various fields will conduct workshops with the program participants and take part in a lecture series throughout the month.

Genesis Project is a program of Culture Push, a New York-based non-profit arts organization that focuses on collaboration and group learning through active, participatory experiences. The residency will be hosted by 319 Scholes; a studio and exhibition space in Bushwick, Brooklyn that supports the minds and needs of contemporary artists of various disciplines. Genesis Project is directed by Culture Push co-director, Arturo Vidich.

Application Deadline: Friday, January 14, 2011
Notification: Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Residency Timeframe: Monday, August 1, 2011 to Monday, August 29, 2011

For more information, please send a brief letter of inquiry to genesisproject@culturepush.org

Genesis Project
Culture Push

Arturo's Moving Castle...

...and Aki's sock-draw puppetization continue tonight at The Chocolate Factory and, though you might have a hard time getting a reservation due to the limited space for this show, you ought to try.

Domestic Partner consists of two simultaneous installation/performance works: Secrets of My Mother's Child by Aki Sasamoto and A New Theory of Biology by Arturo Vidich. The latter includes a sound/video program by Howard Huang, and the whole thing concludes with a music set (tonight: the band of Matt Bauder and Aram Shelton).

Show up in comfortable shoes; you'll mostly be moving around and dodging the oncoming performers and their unruly props. The look and atmosphere is more hip gallery opening than dance concert. And if you don't immediately warm to this roughly blended fantasia of personal and global, micro- and macro-obsessions, put it in the pickling barrel.

Tonight, 8pm at The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(718) 482-7069

Listen to my Body and Soul podcast interview with Sasamoto and Vidich here.

Learn more about these artists here.

Aki Sasamoto and Arturo Vidich: Body and Soul podcast

Aki Sasamoto and Arturo Vidich of Culture Push discuss Domestic Partner--their provocative new installation/simultaneous performance, hosted by The Chocolate Factory (Wednesday-Saturday, April 8-11, 8pm).

Learn more about Aki Sasamoto and Arturo Vidich here.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Street
Long Island City, New York
Complete information, directions and ticketing

Movement Research

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Yvonne Meier's "Stolen"

Stolen opens in the dark with several regular blasts of super-amplified vocal noise from the commanding Sudanese soul singer Alsarah, a bracing sonic environment, and you sit there, helplessly counting the onrushing blasts, praying that the last you've heard will be the last indeed, not knowing, of course, that you've innocently wandered into a savage expanse of space and there's no escaping the plump, fertile, wacky and uncensorable mind of Yvonne Meier, the dancer-choreographer dressed in a t-shirt perhaps honoring one notoriously irritable, mayor-biting groundhog and accompanied by the always-game and valiant madman, dancer-in-extremis Arturo Vidich and the considerably calmer, more efficient Aki Sasamoto, all in a Kathy Kaufmann-illuminated terrain pelted from above by a load of insulting shoes.

Meier. Gotta love 'er.

Time cost is only 45 minutes. You can do this. Danspace Project tonight and tomorrow at 8:30pm.

Yes! Push that culture!

cml performance colleagues Arturo Vidich, Clarinda Mac Low and Aki Sasamoto announce Culture Push:

"CULTURE PUSH is a brand new organization, a group of artists and others who want to change the world. CULTURE PUSH acts as a gathering place for several projects with a common aim, and brings together several experienced artist-managers who produce work collectively and individually. It is a clearinghouse for ideas and methods and conversations, a state of mind that manifests in concrete events for an eclectic audience. The members of CULTURE PUSH create experiences. We walk the slippery line between disciplines, both within and outside art. We combine performance, visual art, and media of all kinds with social intervention, intensive research and political inquiry to make situations that enlighten, entertain and enliven our audiences. We seek to actively push against boundaries so that attitudes shift, assumptions are questioned, and minds and bodies are changed. We all share a desire to work through invitation rather than confrontation and shift the discourse and the direction of our culture through interaction, intimacy, humor and pathos."

Learn more about cml performance and CULTURE PUSH here.