Berry's movers and shakers

The Irondale Center’s feels like a mini-BAM Harvey Theater, what with its air of history, charming intimacy and dark, peeling walls. I visited for the first time last night, to attend a FLICfest performance. A good place, I think, to see a good, old-school piece of humanism like Confined, a work from the repertory of dancer-choreographer Emily Berry. The hour-long work was performed by Berry and her collaborative B3W company--Nicole McClam, Milvia Pacheco, Sara Roer and Akiko Tomikawa, with actress Sarita Covington and violinist Regina Sadowski. Music was composed by Daniel Bernard Roumain.

Confined’s text, scripted by Todd Craig, is a torrent of words tumbling from Covington throughout the dance. As far as I could follow, it treats of a multiplicity of identities and the experience of feeling constricted within roles imposed by self or others but it also has something to do with family heritage. I say, “as far as I could follow,” because the words are jammed so tightly against one another and fly so quickly from Covington--who must have one hell of a memory--that I could barely keep up. Because she sometimes moved around the dancers, she occasionally placed herself just far enough away that her delicate voice was not clear enough for me to understand. In fact, I experienced the overwhelming and, yes, confining presence of Craig’s text as a competition with imagery--Berry’s dancers and Gail Scott White’s fresh and engaging video. There were times when I had to block out one thing in order to try to grasp and honor the integrity of the other.

Berry works well with props--little wooden tables that turn into cleverly used projection screens; paperback books gently applied to a fallen dancer’s body like bandages; clothing knotted together into long strings that confine and burden. She can create quite touching moments with these imaginative uses of simple things. She has a wonderful eye for visual elements, a capable, well-grounded corps of dancers and a excellent collaborator in her videographer. The missing piece might be an awareness of what could be usefully pared away, a sense of when less could have a chance to mean more.

FLICfest--a Fort Greene, Brooklyn festival devoted to feature-length independent choreography--will run through January 29 with a diverse lineup and an after-hours cabaret. Some of the upcoming performers include Artichoke Dance Company, CatScratch Theatre (the company of FLICfest founder Jeramy Zimmerman) and Layard Thompson. Find out more and get tickets here.

The Irondale Center
Lafayette Avenue Church
85 South Oxford Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
(directions)

Emily Berry: Body and Soul podcast

“I believe that art has the power to create change,” says Emily Berry, artistic director of B3W and my guest for today’s podcast. Recently, Berry set a new dance on her students at Queensborough Community College, dealing straight on with the issue of race. Given the prominence of this issue–for better or for worse--in this year’s presidential campaign, I thought it appropriate to take a look at how one contemporary dance artist has chosen to address this longstanding societal divide.
You can see videos of Berry's work at http://www.b3w.org.

BIO

Emily Berry is the Artistic Director of B3W, formerly the Emily Berry Dance Company, which has performed in the US, England and Mexico. She has performed with Ann Arbor Dance Works, Boris Willis Moves, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh & Company, Michele Dunleavy, Lesole’s Dance Project (South African), and Ashe Moyubba Afro-Cuban Folkloric Dance Ensemble. She has performed at such venues as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Dance Place, Teatro de Danza in Mexico City, and a solo show in England, as well as numerous dance festivals. Emily is a Certified Movement Analyst. She also has a MFA in dance from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Dance Arts from the University of Michigan. She has taught at Oakland University, George Mason University, Marymount University, Coppin State University, Montgomery College, and the Community College of Baltimore County. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Queensborough Community College. Emily has presented a paper titled “On Looking: Representations of the female body in art” at Northampton University in England at the Post-Feminists Practices in the Arts Conference. She was also a panelist at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies Conference in New York on Dance and Politics.

COMPANY MISSION STATEMENT

B3W (Beyond Third Wave), formerly the Emily Berry Dance Company, uses video, text, music, and movement to address the state of humanity.

The company has performed in the US, England, and Mexico, presenting works tackling such issues as race, the glass ceiling, domestic violence, women in prison, and war since 1995. The Third Wave is referring to the third wave of the women’s movement. While the work is mostly coming from a feminist perspective, the work is not limited to feminist issues, which adds “Beyond” to the title of the company. The company's fundamental belief is that art has the power to create change.

LINK

http://www.b3w.org

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com.

Subscribe through iTunes or at http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File