Batsheva: "Last Work" at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

Above and below:
Batsheva Dance Company
performs Last Work
by Ohad Naharin
(photos: Gadi Dagon)

Last Work, performed in its New York premiere at BAM by Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, runs for about 65 minutes. And so does Rani Lebzelter, placed upstage right, her royal blue gown flowing around her shins for that entire time as she pumps away on an unseen treadmill. Her look at once heedless and heroic, she comes to represent a figure of privilege and athletic glamour. Never once does she break stride or even turn her head to gaze at her fellow performers who, after all, stay hellabusy for that same hour-and-change creating an entire Ohad Naharin fantasy world and all that implies. At one point, a blob of these dancers congeals center stage right, obstructing the audience's view of the Lebzelter's body. You can see only her disembodied head continuously bobbing above them.

She's Naharin's ostinato. A few times, the soundscape fades, allowing the perfect, rhythmic clopping of her shoes to resound. She is ground and context--even visually, the watery blue against the stage's dark surround, a pop of color amid other white and skimpy costumes, dark, monk-like cloaks, grey, accordion-like screens rigidly guarding the wings. Avi Yona Bueno's lighting makes the stage and all its creatures look like pricey abstract art in motion.

After Naharin first introduces this vision of Nakamura, another dancer advances from center stage left, hunched over and pedaling across on bent knees. To be sure, nothing as silly as a simple walk will ever do. This is the famous Gaga. More and more dancers accumulate, all with untamed bodies that have long figured out how to do things their own way. The contortion and force of it will often look uncomfortable, reckless, much less than human. But it will also mesmerize. That first man, for instance, takes his sweet time demonstrating a deep, repetitive undulation that flows from one raised knee all the way through the shoulder on that side of his body, sometimes slow, sometimes speedy. It's a sensuous yet deceptive seduction into a world where you will probably find yourself alarmed and repelled.

 A scene from Last Work
(photo: Gadi Dagon)

As it develops, Last Work comes across the most as a dire warning--and, hence, political and timely. (Naharin has openly criticized policies of the Israeli government and, I'd bet, would not look kindly on our own mess in Washington.) The community he builds and reveals in this dance is less unruly than you might first think, more likely to mold itself into tight, locked groups, engage in reassuring rituals or--and this is where the women dancers' bodies carry the heaviest symbolic burden--throw itself wide open for the taking.

It's all heading towards dubious celebration. An orgasmic barrage of rifle shots. A burst of metallic confetti. The rippling satin of a huge, white flag of.... Of what? Of national purity? Or is it, ultimately, a flag of surrender?

Affixed to their spots and firmly connected to one another by packing tape, the once hyperactive dancers come to a standstill. Not our runner, though. She wears the tape and now grasps that gleaming flag in one hand but, somehow still unaware of what has happened, keeps running in place.

Batsheva Dance Company

William Barry

Yael Ben Ezer

Matan Cohen

Omri Drumlevich

Bret Easterling

Hsin-Yi Hsiang

Rani Lebzelter

Eri Nakamura

Ori Moshe Ofri

Rachael Osborne

Nitzan Ressler

Ian Robinson

Kyle Scheurich

Or Meir Schraiber

Maayan Sheinfeld

Yoni Simon

Bobbi Jene Smith

Zina (Natalya) Zinchenko

Lighting design: Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi)
Soundtrack design and edit: Maxim Warratt
Original music: Grischa Lichtenberger
Stage design: Zohar Shoef
Costume design: Eri Nakamura

Last Work continues nightly through Saturday, February 4 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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Jonah Bokaer's big wave hits Next Wave

Scenes from Rules of the Game
(photo: Sharen Bradford)

What eye-popping, impulsive joy Jonah Bokaer brings to a stage--every inch, edge and corner of it. He's got a fantastic crew of dancers who, if they haven't exactly absorbed his exalted degree of exquisiteness as a performer, more than make up for it in agility, stamina and adventurousness. He has, in longtime collaborating scenographer Daniel Arsham, a fellow artist with a keen sense of that dream-like place where bold, luscious imagery overlaps with anxiety and menace. In a new ensemble work, Rules of the Game, he's joined by Grammy-winning hit-maker Pharrell Williams (original score) and arranger/co-composer David Campbell for rousing, viscerally affecting sound that straddles and destroys borders between pop and symphonic, cinema-like orchestration. Nino Rota might have dug it.

The season, part of BAM's Next Wave Festival also includes a couple of notable head trips from repertory. There's RECESS (2010), the signature solo in which Bokaer's body, clad in jet black, disturbs, romps with and brazenly "writes" its way across a massive unrolling sheet of white paper. In Why Patterns (2011), Bokaer's dancers share a marked-off square of space with thousands of hyperactive ping-pong balls. The program--one hour and 45 minutes with intermission--might be the most visually clever, stimulating event I've seen this season.

Rules of the Game fields eight players in dusty-pink hoodies with Spalding basketballs in a game that, over time, gets less abstractly playful--less civilized--and more personal in its tension and viciousness. It's backed by a video showing the rise, fall and frequent slow-motion shattering of oversized plaster casts of basketballs and statue heads. The effects behind the stage, as on it, can be startling, often unnerving, but unfortunately repeat themselves beyond reason. No sooner does a possible ending of the piece subside than new action starts up on the stage with a new round of rising, falling, shattering behind it.

Visionary Bokaer and his team make impressive, appealing theater magic. They truly rock. But there comes a point, in each work, where you question why the excess needs further elaboration and where all of this is meant to take us.

Performances by Wendell Gray II, Laura Gutierrez, James Koroni, Callie Lyons, James McGinn, Szabo Pataki, Sara Procopio and Betti Rollo

Rules of the Game concludes tonight with a performance at 7:30pm. The program runs 1h 45 min with intermission. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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The Bessies at BAM: Yes, we've got winners!

Bessie Awards executive director Lucy Sexton (left)
with choreographers luciana achugar, Jack Ferver and Mariangela Lopez
(photo: AK47 Division)

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, announced the complete list of the 2015–16 season award recipients tonight at the 32nd Annual Bessie Awards ceremony at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, hosted by acclaimed choreographer, writer, and comedian Adrienne Truscott.

Awards were presented in the categories of Outstanding Production, Outstanding Performer, Outstanding Music Composition/Sound Design, and Outstanding Visual Design, with additional awards presented for Lifetime Achievement and Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

The evening included performances by Joya Powell, recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award, an excerpt from Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder (2016 Bessie for Outstanding Revival), performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and produced by Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, and a tap tribute to 2016 Lifetime Achievement in Dance recipient Brenda Bufalino.

Champions of tap Tony Waag and award-winner Brenda Bufalino,
co-founders (with the late Honi Coles)
of the American Tap Dance Foundation
(photo: AK47 Division)

Composer and director Meredith Monk presented Eiko Otake with a Special Citation for her A Body in Places platform, presented and produced by Danspace Project. Dancer Ayodele Casel presented Brenda Bufalino with the 2016 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance. Judy Hussie-Taylor, Executive Director & Chief Curator of Danspace Project, and Alastair Macaulay, chief dance critic of The New York Times, presented an award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance to The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Alex Smith, Executive Chairman of the Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center also received an award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance, presented by Philadanco founder Joan Myers Brown.

Other presenters included Tei Blow, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Judith Jamison, Amar Ramasar, Regg Roc, Carlota Santana and Alice Sheppard.

The 2016 Bessie Awards are produced in partnership with Dance/NYC and presented in partnership with the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The 2016 NY Dance and Performance Awards

SPECIAL CITATION
Eiko Otake
2015 Danspace Project Platform: A Body in Places
For making herself “radically available” in public and private spaces over several weeks, actively engaging with pressing political and environmental issues of our time. For collaborating with a wide range of artists through performances, readings, films, discussions, and rituals to evoke the power and meaning of the human body inhabiting a planet in crisis.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE
Brenda Bufalino
For her visionary work ensuring the future of the American art form of tap dance with the formation of the American Tap Dance Orchestra and Foundation. For introducing innovative concepts to tap choreography and for inspiring a new generation of tap artists to expand the art form.

OUTSTANDING SERVICE TO THE FIELD OF DANCE
Alex Smith
For his 21-year commitment to the presentation and preservation of dance by choreographers of color through the Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center. For offering emerging and established artists performance opportunities and for developing audiences from underserved and underrepresented
communities.

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
For giving the ephemeral art of dance a rich afterlife through its unrivaled collection of video, writing, photos, choreographers’ notes, and more. Thanks to decades of work by dedicated staff and leadership, dance’s past is there to be remembered, recovered, discovered, and imagined.

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION
Souleymane Badolo for Yimbégré at BAM Fisher
For investigating the artist’s experience of home and not home, of African and American identity, of ancient rhythms and modern jazz in a work that gloriously communicated the clash and reconciliation of the different traditions held within one’s life, one’s body.

Pat Graney for Girl Gods at Peak Performances at Montclair State University
For a visually stark and surreal depiction of the emotions, strength, and rage of generations of women and girls struggling under the constraints of society’s image of what it is to be female.

Maria Hassabi for PLASTIC at MoMA
For masterfully transforming the museum environment into an inclusive performance space in which the viewer’s gaze was directed from performer to spectator, putting all bodies on display.

Ralph Lemon for Scaffold Room at The Kitchen
For a complex meditation on the black female experience in our culture, exploring its expression, projection, and manipulation. For mining Southern family stories and pop culture icons to create a work that troubled, entertained, and challenged its audience.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMER
Ephrat Asherie
For her body of work
For a presence and a skill that is immediate and unmistakable, explosive and captivating. For her vibrant contributions to the works of Michelle Dorrance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, Cori Olinghouse, Gus Solomons jr, and others.

Kazunori Kumagai
For Live at the Blue Note
For his powerful athletic technique combined with a riveting clarity. For extending the improvisational tradition of tap with a show danced in dialogue with musicians Alex Blake, Bill Ware, and Samuel Torres at the Blue Note.

Molly Lieber
For her body of work
For her introspective and tenacious performances, demonstrating her clear intention and visceral choices, and embodying the choreographic intention of a wide range of artistic processes in the work of luciana achugar, Maria Hassabi and Donna Uchizono.

Jamar Roberts
Sustained Achievement with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
For impeccably representing the traditional values of classic modern dance while forging new paths with his sublime artistry, technical precision, and passionate presence with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

OUTSTANDING MUSICAL COMPOSITION/SOUND DESIGN
Dan Trueman in collaboration with Sō Percussion and Mobius Percussion
For There Might Be Others by Rebecca Lazier at New York Live Arts
For building a sound system which enabled an infinitely varied aural world, using drums, percussion instruments, pieces of paper, mobile phones, wine bottles, and more. The percussionists and dancers equally inhabited an everchanging composition in Rebecca Lazier’s There Might Be Others.

OUTSTANDING VISUAL DESIGN
Holly Batt
For Pat Graney’s Girl Gods at Peak Performances at Montclair State University
For creating an immersive and interactive environment of boxes that metamorphosed in tone and purpose, from towering backdrop to dresser drawers to ritual containers for Pat Graney’s Girl Gods.

Three awards were presented in July at the Bessies press conference:

The 2016 Bessie for Outstanding Revival -- Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder by Donald McKayle, performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and produced by Paul Taylor American Modern Dance at the David H. Koch Theater
For giving a classic modern dance powerful new life, transforming the midcentury portrayal of an African-American prison chain gang into a searingly resonant cry for our current times, performed with humanity, craft, and beauty.

The 2016 Emerging Choreographer Award  -- Joya Powell
for her passionate choreographic engagement with issues of justice and race in our communities and our country, for connecting with the audience in ways that make it clear that these concerns belong to all of us—and action is required.

The 2016 Juried Bessie Award -- Pam Tanowitz
for using form and structure as a vehicle for challenging audiences to think, to feel, to experience movement; for pursuing her uniquely poetic and theatrical vision with astounding rigor and focus.

The 2016 Bessie Jury was comprised of Yoshiko Chuma, Liz Gerring and Bill T. Jones.

The list of 2015–16 nominees can be found at: www.bessies.org

The Bessie Committees:

The 2016 Bessie Awards Steering Committee, responsible for setting policy and providing oversight of the Bessie Awards throughout the year, is comprised of Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Lane Harwell, Jeanne Linnes, Stanford Makishi, Nicky Paraiso, Carla Peterson, Tamia B. Santana, Laurie Uprichard, and Martin Wechsler.

The 2015−16 Bessie Awards Selection Committee consists of Diana Byer, Kim Chan, Leah Cox, Nancy Dalva, Maura Donohue, Simon Dove, Angel Feliciano, Boo Froebel, Angela Fatou Gittens, Caleb Hammons, Zhenesse Heinemann, Jerron Herman, Iréne Hultman, Robert LaFosse, Melissa Levin, Matthew Lyons, Harold Norris, Craig Peterson, Mathew Pokoik, Rajika Puri, Susan Reiter, Walter Rutledge, Sue Samuels, Philip Sandstrom, Risa Shoup, Sally Sommer, Risa Steinberg, Carrie Stern, Kay Takeda, Catherine Tharin, David Thomson, Muna Tseng, Kay Turner, Tony Waag, Eleanor K. Wallace, Edisa Weeks, Ryan Wenzel, Adrienne Westwood, William Whitener, and Elizabeth Zimmer.

About the Bessies:

The NY Dance and Performance Awards have saluted outstanding and groundbreaking creative work in the dance field in New York City for 32 years. Known as “The Bessies” in honor of revered dance teacher Bessie Schönberg, the awards were established in 1984 by David R. White at Dance Theater Workshop. They recognize outstanding work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. Nominees are chosen by a 40-member selection committee comprised of artists, presenters, producers, and writers. All those working in the dance field are invited to join the NY Dance and Performance League, as members participate in annual discussions on the direction of the awards and nominate members to serve on the selection committee. www.bessies.org

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Eiko Otake to take special honor at the 2016 Bessies

This brings back memories!
A moment from Eiko Otake's East Village sojourn,
A Body in Places, presented by Danspace Project
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Today, the NY Dance and Performance Awards organization (the Bessies) announced that a Special Citation will be awarded to dancer-choreographer Eiko Otake "for her expansive and transformative A Body in Places," a platform presented in March by Danspace Project. Meredith Monk will present Otake's citation at the 32nd annual Bessie's ceremony, hosted by award-winning choreographer, writer, and comedian Adrienne Truscott.

Adrienne Truscott
will host the 2016 Bessies
at BAM.
(photo: Richard Hardcastle)

The 2016 Bessies

Tuesday, October 18, 7:30pm

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

Doors open at 6:30pm 

for red carpet and pre-show celebrations.

The 2016 Bessies presenter line up includes Tei Blow, Katy Clark, Ayodele Casel, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Judith Jamison, Alastair Macaulay, Joan Myers Brown, Amar Ramasar, Regg Roc and Carlota Santana.

Other special presentation recipients include Brenda Bufalino, recipient of the 2016 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and to The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Alex Smith, Executive Chairman of the Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, both recipients of awards for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

The ceremony will feature a performance by Joya Powell, recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award, Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder (2016 Bessie for Outstanding Revival), performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and produced by Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, and an all-star tap tribute to Brenda Bufalino.

Post-ceremony party 

(open to all Bessie Awards ticket holders)

BRIC

647 Fulton Street, Brooklyn

Produced in partnership with Dance/NYC, the Bessies recognize exceptional and groundbreaking work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. For a complete list of 2015−16 Bessie nominees, go to: www.bessies.org.

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Rage against the machine: James Thierrée at BAM Next Wave

James Thierrée in Tabac Rouge
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

James Thierrée with Valérie Doucet
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

What technical glitch kept a big, well-behaved audience standing for 45 minutes in the lobby of BAM Gilman for last night's performance of Tabac Rouge before ticket-takers finally opened the doors?

Here's my guess: James Thierrée's set. Specifically, the massive, mobile wall--old, discolored mirror panels on one side; dark, formidable lattice of pipes on the other.

This cleverly adaptable sculpture maintains such a crucial, active, nearly living presence throughout the 90-minute piece that you might argue for its status as lead dancer and star. And it has all the makings of a diva that you wouldn't want to cross, with capacity to maim its human co-stars--Thierrée and several members of his Compagnie du Hanneton--in any number of ways as they touch it, move it or scramble over it.

Did its lifting mechanism seize up? Or did it bop someone in the head? Mash a foot? Slice a hand?

Certainly, this structure sets the work's dystopian mood right off. The curtain rises on the wall, pipes-side forward, confronting the audience from the edge of a murky, smoke-filled stage. Viewers barely make out a few dancers crossing the back of the stage or clinging to frameworks that rise or descend. Now and then, a glow will flash from deep within the haze, like distant lightning. Fluorescent bulbs fire, here and there, but you quickly sense that any meaningful illumination (of the literal or metaphoric kind) will be hard-won.

Matina Kokolaki and other cast members in Tabac Rouge
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

Thierrée, a performer of exquisite physical skill, hails from a storied lineage: child of circus innovators Victoria Chaplin and Jean-Baptiste Thierrée; grandson of Charlie Chaplin; great-grandson of Eugene O’Neill. His previous confections have drawn from the worlds of mime, dance, physical theater and circus, but he considers this steampunk fantasy, Tabac Rouge, to be more in the realm of dance or dance-theater.

Whether bodies are swirling in smooth, circular patterns, hurling themselves with desperate, revolutionary fervor or twisting into showy contortions, the dancey-ness of Tabac Rouge seems pitched to fill space and time and the hunger for entertainment. The second-night audience--perhaps overeager after such a long wait to claim their seats--seemed to crave little things to chuckle at; their choices left me deeply uncertain.

Elements of dance, mime and circus seem stuffed into a container that, in itself, has no clearly thought-out identity. In place of a developed story, there appears to be a situation--Thierrée portraying, maybe, hallucinating, an ash-coated despot whose court includes a military man, a woman who might be a daughter and another who might be a lover, presumably survivors of an unspecified disaster. Things look not only grimy but grim despite dancing and clowning. The balance of power keeps shifting, sort of the way Thierrée's angular balances shift--continually, weirdly, improbably--when he dances.

It's material for a drama--in this rendering, only material. The piece lives, instead, in its central visual element, making Tabac Rouge most convincing and satisfying as art installation. I consider the wall's final, dazzling moments to be my reward for enduring that wait in the lobby.

With performances by Thierrée, Mehdi Baki, Valérie Doucet, Magnus Jakobsson, Namkyung Kim, Matina Kokolaki, Thi Mai Nguyen, Ioulia Plotnikova and Soa Ratsifandrihana

Direction, set design, and choreography: James Thierrée
Costumes: Victoria Thierrée
Sound design: Thomas Delot
Lighting: Bastien Courthieu

Tabac Rouge runs through Sunday, October 4.  For schedule and ticket information, click here.

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

BAM welcomes roots musicians Carolina Chocolate Drops and Twyla Tharp

The Carolina Chocolate Drops
L to r: Hubby Jenkins, Rhiannon Giddens,
Rowan Corbett and Malcolm Parson
(photo by Michael Wilson)

The Carolina Chocolate Drops (reviewed by me here in March 2012) brought their acclaimed, rollicking rhythms to the BAM Gilman Opera House for one special evening including the world premiere of a duet choreographed by Twyla Tharp. In the spirited couplings and variations of Cornbread Duet, a contemporary ballet set to several of the Black fiddle-and-banjo band's songs, Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild of New York City Ballet infused fluid, lighter-than-air, speedy technique with accents of jazz, square dance, social dance and joyful sass. Embedded in the lavish, two-hour-plus program, this segment aptly reflected not only the historic cultural blend (the Black and Celtic lineage of the 19th to early 20th Century American South) that the Drops honor in their music but also the qualities that give American performance widespread, enduring appeal and influence. The ballet stars were dressed by Norma Kamali in bold, horizontal layers of black and white, and while I'd like to believe none of us need the possible subliminal message in those adjoined colors, there it is.

Tiler Peck
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Robert Fairchild
(photo courtesy of the artist)

From Tharp's Cornbread Duet
(photo by Rahav Segev)

By now, I'd imagine, smart Tharp fans would also be hip to the Drops. But if any turned up last night just for Tharp and the NYCB principals, never having encountered the band, they were probably won over by Rhiannon Giddens' ebullient personality and valiant singing and the band's rousing performance. Welcome to what the rest of us have been loving for some time now, Grammy-winners for their 2010 Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig.

Certainly, the Drops warmly welcome you, too, with a set list ranging across revival church music, some soul-seeking Odetta blues, Joe Thompson fiddle tunes, Hank Williams's "Please Don't Let Me Love You"--this last delivered with Giddens's near-yodeling voice bending notes before kicking everything into high, trotting speed. Fan faves like "Country Girl" (written by Giddens and her sister) and the countrified version of Blu Cantrell's "Hit 'Em Up Style" were given fresh, full-on performances. The only problem was that Giddens got to slip off her shoes and stomp and twirl, while the audience had to sit still watching from the theater's "Line 'Em Up Sardine Style" rows.

As Giddens noted, with typical generosity, two former members of the band have split off into solo careers--the charismatic Don Flemons, a founding member, and cellist Leyla McCalla, who appeared with the band on tour and on their Grammy-nominated Leaving Eden (2012). Flemons and McCalla are out there doing their thing and spreading the goodness, and if you miss them, you can support their new moves by checking up on Flemons here and McCalla here.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for Giddens's own solo album, which she's working on for the band's label, Nonesuch Records.

For more Spring events at BAM, click here.