Stepping out: Colin Dunne's "Concert" at BAC

Dancer Colin Dunne in his solo, Concert,
given its US premiere this month at Baryshnikov Arts Center
(photo: Whitney Browne)

Concert
by Colin Dunne
Baryshnikov Arts Center
co-presented with Irish Arts Center
November 14-16

Irish step dancing might start with a bit of stomping, a bit of running, as Colin Dunne--best known as an early superstar of the Riverdance phenomenon--informed us in the casual opening of his piece, Concert. But it can claim a more expansive range than we might have ever seen or imagined. Dunne's imagination, however, remains unfettered and restless after exploring contemporary dance for nearly two decades. Furthermore, as presented in Concert, his aesthetic journey is inspired by virtuoso Irish fiddler, Tommy Potts. Potts' spirit guided and presided over this intriguing hour of solo performance.

I should put quote marks around "solo." Dunne, dressed in unglamourous running shoes and black jeans and t-shirt, might have been the only flesh-and-blood performer in BAC's space, but he was far from alone. Potts, dead since 1988, was very much in the house. We heard him speak, watched him play in a projected film and saw his eccentric artistry reflected in the thoughtful whimsy of Dunne's choices.

Like Dunne's costuming, his choice of props and sonic accompaniment tilted towards the humble and the analog, stripping away flash, getting down to the nitty gritty. There's no pretense of perfection (or restraint) in Dunne's physicality. That's the honest body of a man who has lived a while. And for equipment to invoke both history and the spirit realm, he employed a turntable spinning the LP of Potts' The Liffey Banks, his only recording. A couple of unremarkable speakers carried Potts' words. There was an upright piano that probably has seen a few years. And, for god's sake, a cassette player. With all of these, Dunne wove an atmosphere with character and authenticity and--would you believe it?--continuity.

Moveable patches of flooring, rearranged as needed, helped the dancer--sometimes barefoot, sometimes wearing heeled boots--lay down sound, some tentative and soft or bold and complex scrapes and patters with one arm or another un-traditionally free to flap out or lift in a kind of punctuation. It was impossible to be a tap dance fan and not sit there mentally pairing him with tap artists--Black ones in particular--soul to soul.

Direction: Sinéad Rushe

Composing/sound designer: Mel Mercier
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Film design: Jeffrey Weeter

Concert is closed. For more information on events at Baryshnikov Arts Center, click here. For more information on events at Irish Arts Center, click here.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Darkness into light: Kota Yamazaki at Baryshnikov Arts Center

Julian Barnett in Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination,
Raja Feather Kelly and Mina Nishimura in background
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

Philosophy, dance, and folklore merge in Bessie Award-winning choreographer Kota Yamazaki’s latest work inspired by French writers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, butoh pioneer Tatsumi Hijikata’s notion of a “dance of darkness,” and Japan’s Goze music tradition. Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination explores the fragile body, the vaporizing body, and the body as an absorbing force.

--from promotional material for Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination

Mina Nishimura (foreground) with Raja Feather Kelly
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

I started watching Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug's new dance, Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination, by drawing a diagram of each dancer's position along the floor of Baryshnikov Arts Center's Gilman space. So one corner of my notebook page now resembles a star map. It also includes an arrow representing Kota's delayed entrance and indicating the direction in which, for most of the dance, his prone body will rest, alongside the outer edge of the special floor mat. And I drew a little, three-lined flap hanging just above the stars. That's for the sheer, opalescent fabric dipping low over the space (like the costumes and, indeed, the choreography, the inexplicably whimsical handiwork of Kota Yamazaki). It seems arbitrarily placed and more decorative than functional--say, as a space divider. But then, to be decorative is a function, and the fabric catches, liquifies and softly reflects a portion of Thomas Dunn's lighting. Even silence seems to have a function destabilized by the patter of dancers' feet on the surface. Later, Kenta Nagai's music will emerge--at first, a distance whistling seemingly from two sources and then a muffled chiming. 

Yamazaki's dancers--Julian Barnett, Raja Feather Kelly, Joanna Kotze and Mina Nishimura, all seasoned dancemakers in their own right--spend much of the time in relative proximity to but isolation of one another, each suspended in a specific portion of space, maybe slowly...slowly...shifting weight and gaze and, eventually, location. Limbs jutting or retracted, taking a few steps here or there on the balls of their feet, go their own way and mind their own business in that way aquarium fish have. And we watch them in a similar fashion. I quickly realized Yamazaki was splitting up the imagery so I'd have to make a choice. Most often I chose Barnett, a dancer who turned into a volatile madman as the piece went along, his nearly-comical agitation so propulsive that he stormed the audience...twice!

At one point, facing the black back curtain, Kotze muttered something we all could hear but, I'm sure, not make out. That was fine with me, because I doubt Yamazaki wanted us to try to understand it any more than he needed any other pop-up scrap of speech to make contextual sense.

The hour-or-so "hallucination" is part of a planned trilogy, and I missed Part 1, which is probably okay in the overall scheme of things. It has a fishy relationship to clock time and a (suspected) protagonist who, intriguingly, stays out of sight at first and then stays out of action for almost the entirety of it. And the piece winds down with wondrous Dunn lighting that bathes increasingly serene dancers in the cool gold of morning.

Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination continues tonight and Friday, December 15 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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I'm your puppet: Ronnie Burkett's marionettes at BAC

The actor Lovey Lunkhead (above)
and his creator, Ronnie Burkett (below)
in The Daisy Theatre
(photos: Hiroyuki Ito)

From the look and, especially, the sound of things at Baryshnikov Arts Center last evening, Canadian puppeteer extraordinaire Ronnie Burkett has a legion of south-of-the-border fans. And now he has one more, because I love him.

That's not too extreme a position to take, given how Burkett seeks to wring every bit of love and laughter out of audiences for his Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, putting a positive spin on the word manipulation.

The New York premiere of The Daisy Theatre stars a handful of Burkett's forty finely-designed creations--a motley crew who are impossible to resist--in acts ranging from burlesque to opera. Improvised around each marionette's personality and John Alcorn's loopy songs, the show has elastic tendencies. Performed without intermission, it can stretch from ninety minutes to two hours, depending upon how much fun Burkett is having with his marionettes, with volunteers from his audience and with the serendipity of any given moment.

Burkett indulges himself, and us, because he is a child. He is a happy child, standing up there on the bridge, deftly working the control bars and wires that give his marionettes uncanny, supple life. With his own marionette-like jaw, resplendent smile and maniacal, motormouth voice, he resembles someone from his nomadic tribe of performers. Or the Second Coming of Robin Williams. In fact, if you find yourself gazing up at Burkett about as much as you watch the marionettes acting out below, you would not be wrong--or alone. He's a huge, huge part of the show.

Burkett and his rotating cast of characters
(photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

Steeped in fearless queer attitude, profane language and racy innuendo, The Daisy Theatre ain't puppetry for tots, and anyone under 16 will not be admitted. But anyone over 16 will enjoy the likes of sweet, yearning "fairy child" Schnitzel (a stand-in for Burkett's inner child, I suspect) and Las Vegas belter Rosemary Focaccia, a-shimmy in fringe dress and knee-high boots, hair-trigger rage and foul mouth out of all proportion ("I know people, Baryshnikov! Don't cross me!!"). An eerie segment featuring marionette Meyer Lemon--an ancient master ventriloquist--and his dummy stood out for near-literary, surreal quality and Burkett's exacting skill.

Acclaimed ventriloquist Meyer Lemon takes the spotlight.
(photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

I have no idea who--among all forty of the possible players--will perform when you see The Daisy Theatre and what they'll be up to. You'll be, in Burkett's words, one of the "poor bastards sitting in the dark not knowing what happens next."

How exhilarating!

Remaining performances:

Tonight, October 1, 7:30pm
Friday-Saturday, October 2-3, 8pm
Wednesday-Saturday, October 7-10, 8pm

Ronnie Burkett in Conversation:

A conversation with Ronnie Burkett and Kristy Edmunds of Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will be held in BAC's Jerome Robbins Theater on Monday, October 5 at 6:30pm. Reservations are not required.

Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Carmen de Lavallade: Remembering it her way

Carmen de Lavallade in As I Remember It (photo: Stephanie Berger)

Carmen de Lavallade's solo, As I Remember It, seems to rip by in a flash, faster than its by-the-clock hour length. Premiered last June at Jacob's Pillow, now presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center, it's less a comprehensive tale of a life unfolding at the epicenter of American entertainment than a gesture towards that history and its dazzling characters--Lester Horton, Pearl Bailey, Harry Belafonte, Alvin Ailey, Jack Cole, Duke Ellington and de Lavallade's late husband, the multi-talented Geoffrey Holder, among so many more. And, of course, as a de Lavallade gesture--direct, shaped with elegance and efficiency--it doesn't need much embellishment. Everything in this production, from set to video to text, works by light touch.

The title tells us two things. First, these are de Lavallade's remembrances of her six-decade-plus career in dance, theater and film; others, she knows, might recall people and events differently. Second, we can expect a little tongue twisting and a few--very few--memory slips along the way. At 83, though, de Lavallade commands better alignment and lively, playful dexterity of body and mind than a lot of folks many years younger.

The memories, brief as snapshots, come with sensory sharpness: a hardworking father's hands, one rough, one smooth; a mother often sitting and staring; the sinuous coils of smoke from ballet teacher Carmelita Maracci's cigarette. Maracci, impatient, would upbraid de Lavallade: "Carmen, talk to your feet! What are they saying to you?" Carmen: "Help!"

In her dance of story, de Lavallade lights but never lingers. She keeps it moving, even when she speaks of racism. Particularly when she speaks of racism. Of being selected to study with LA dance master and choreographer Lester Horton, she says, "In those days, there were only some people who would take you if you were colored. And the white girls would walk out of class." If Hollywood is Hollyweird (as a sign says), we're not privy to a lot of the gritty details of what makes it so. I suspect de Lavallade is one of those sisters--I see them all around me today--who survive and thrive by keeping positive-mind phasers set to stun. I must study this.

Go see As I Remember It and marvel at how good the young de Lavallade looked in any setting, how thoroughly self-possessed. Time has diminished absolutely nothing of that.

Collaborators:

Joe Grifasi (director)
Talvin Wilks (co-writer/dramaturg)
James F. Ingalls (lighting design)
Maya Ciarrocchi (video design)
Mimi Lien (set design)
Christopher J. Bailey (sound design)
Esther Arroyo (costume design)
Jane Ira Bloom (music)

As I Remember It continues: February 20-21 and 24 at 8pm as well as a February 25 at 1pm (with a moderated conversation with de Lavallade).

When advance tickets are no longer available, a wait list will begin at the Box Office one hour prior to show time on the day of the performance. In the event of last minute cancellations, seats may be released and sold to those on the wait list on a first-come, first-served basis.

Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Seeing "Illusions" at Baryshnikov Arts Center

Illusions.

You tell yourself, "Of course, illusions." It's a play about love, isn't it? But you don't know. You really have no idea.

Because Illusions--written by Russian playwright Ivan Viripaev and premiered in 2011--starts out all heartwarming, even if that warmth develops an obsessive edge that should clue you to what's down the line. And then someone grabs the wheel and takes you careening around several hairpin turns and hurtles you past once-familiar landmarks until you're not sure where you are. You sit up, reach for your seat belt, try to get your bearings. By then, it's too late.

Baryshnikov Arts Center presents the US premiere of Illusions, newly translated and directed by Cazimir Liske. Actors Anthony Gaskins, Stephanie Hayes, Annie Purcell, and Mickey Solis take turns dispassionately narrating the story of two long-married couples, decades full of unexpected or unknown intersections and interlockings. Death, the invisible MC of this show, forces realizations and revelations. Hayes and Solis are particularly steady, masterful drivers of this treacherous road. And the production--which incorporates a bit of puppetry and projections--seeks to make things even more disorienting, if amusing, as it highlights the shiny little magic trick that is theater.

Watch a preview here.

Remaining performances: September 19, 20, 23 and 24 at 8PM. Click here for information and tickets.

Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 10th and   Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Plans for massive arts center to rise in Hudson Yards

City Allots $50 Million to Arts Project Tied to Bloomberg Allies
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, July 31, 2013

"Dining" with Rosie Herrera...and Bausch

Making up my mind about Rosie Herrera--who offered the New York premiere of Dining Alone this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center--turns out to be a work in progress. This morning, I'm still at it. Welcome to my process.

Herrera is shrewd enough to color a corner of her ensemble piece with a jazz instrumental of the Jimi Hendrix's slow-simmering "Hey Joe"--sounds like Robert Glasper at the piano, but I'm not sure--so that it slips a hook into you, warmly percolating, just a sliver above subliminal. There's a moment of "Oh, wait...I know that song." Then you remember the disturbing lyrics of the original tune ("...where you goin' with that gun in your hand? I'm goin' down to shoot my old lady, you know I caught her messin' 'round with another man...."). Well played. There are other smart, fresh moves in Dining Alone--for one, its opening gambit places the suave Octavio Campos, steadily if inaudibly holding forth, at the head of a long dining table lined by cardboard-cutouts guests--but I'm not sure it's all quite enough.

Herrera hails from what she calls the "Cuban ghetto" of Hialeah in Miami. For her vivid dance theater in Dining Alone, she chooses to mine that world and popular culture for its passionate preoccupations and cheesy excesses. Love seems a delicious danger, a delirious indulgence and a fundamental necessity all at once. No narrow, post-modern bed, this: It's roomy. Straight-up Rachmaninoff and Eric Carmen's power-ballad changes on Rachmaninoff are both welcome, because Herrera's got to keep slipping you that one something more. Of course. White dinner plates, when not creating transitory pathways for moonstruck sonamubulists, spin on edge and clatter, clatter, clatter to novel visual and aural effect. The episodic Dining Alone "reads" like magical realism, like a fever dream amid bouts of red-eyed tossing and turning.

And I like this about it. I just wish the ghost of Pina Bausch would lift away and leave Herrera to devise her own ways of doing things. I'm looking at Dining Alone and thinking way too much about Bausch: Would or wouldn't Pina do this or that? And, if so, would she do it in this way? So, after watching Dining Alone, I was startled to pick up a Dance Magazine profile in which Herrera described herself as follows: "If Pina Bausch and Michael Jackson had had a baby...."

Okay, one thing I know: I'm eager to see Herrera step out and test the strengths of her own vision, push the choreographic and visual design elements much further.

With performances by Campos, Ivonne Batanero, Leah Verier-Dunn, Liony Garcia, Katie Stirman, Raymond Storms, Melissa Toogood and Fernando Landeros. Lighting by David Ferri.

Closed April 19.

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Where in the world is Eva Yaa Asantewaa?

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo by Deborah Feller)

Well, back home in New York City, for one thing!

But also look for me at...

This. Witness Relocation's Eterniday at La MaMa. Info/tickets here.

Bebe Miller Company: A History--co-presented by 651 Arts and New York Live Arts at Brooklyn's Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at LIU. I'll be moderating a "Stay Late" post-performance sit-down with Bebe and collaborators this Friday, April 12. For program and ticket information, click here and here.

I hope to attend Deirdre Towers' film screening and salute to the producers, artists and educators of the US flamenco community. Monday, April 15, 6pm, at Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. ​For information on this free event and the library's exhibit, 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, click here.

My project-driven Writing on Dance 2013 takes off at New York Live Arts next Wednesday afternoon with a full house of new students. Also, I'll pretty much be living at New York Live Arts on Wednesday for the opening of that visionary series, Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks ("A five-day festival of arts and ideas exploring the mind-body connection through the works of the acclaimed neurologist"). My first WOD session will be sandwiched between the panel on "Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioperception" and the evening keynote with two of my heroes--Dr. Sacks and Bill T. Jones. And the following day, I cannot afford to miss "Minding the Dancing Body" with Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë and Gwen Welliver, followed by the performance of RE: Awakenings by Donna Uchizono Company. While that's probably all I'll get to, that's not all that's happening. For details on the full series of special events here.

Speaking of Writing on Dance: Last year, I was delighted to have the accomplished, Argentinian dance artist and educator Anabella Lenzu in my workshop, and she will be returning for this year's series. Anabella has just self-published a book about her life and career--Unveiling Motion and Emotion--which includes her forthright thoughts on dance education, dance community and more (as well as some striking photography by her husband, Todd Carroll). So, you'll also find me dipping into this, now and then. Presented in English and in Spanish, her writing is just like her: warm and sincere with an underlying tenacity born of a drive to become the best she can be, as artist and as communicator, in the service of dance and dancers. For information on her book, click here.

I look forward to Miami-based choreographer Rosie Herrera's New York premiere of Dining Alone at Baryshnikov Arts Center (a surreal work of "immersive dance theater," somehow involving food and an opera singer...hmmm). It's running April 18-19, and a new show has been added. Find out more here.

My Image and Psyche workshops on Tarot and psychic development continue at our wonderful East Village location. On Saturday, April 27 (Image and Psyche, Part 2), we'll experiment with dynamic layouts and the intriguingly varied, Trickster-ish reversed cards. On Saturday, May 4, I plan to repeat Part 1. For complete information and to register for a place in these fun and enlightening workshops, see my listings on Facebook for April 27 and May 4.

On May 21, artists Larissa Velez-Jackson, iele paloumpis, Katy Pyle and others at Lobby Talks (New York Live Arts--in the lobby, natch) for "Identity Matters: Persona and Politics," curated by Marissa L. Perel.  ("Choreographers, directors, and critics discuss contemporary issues in identity politics, and how these issues shape perceptions of persona and embodiment.") Free. Just show up for the 7:30 start time and grab a chair.

Oh, there's bound to be more. But--whew!--that's enough news for now. See you around town!

"Interface" -- Rashaun Mitchell puts a face to that emotion

The cast of Interface: l-r, Silas Riener, Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell and Melissa Toogood (Photo by Stephanie Berger)

I was pretty sure I didn't need to see dancers behaving like artists' posable mannequins--even fabulous, razor-sharp ones like choreographer Rashaun Mitchell and his colleagues, Silas Riener, Melissa Toogood and Cori Kresge. I was fairly sure I'd seen this idea played out any number of times in dance. Thomas Arsenault (Mas Ysa)'s music for Mitchell's quartet Interface--given its world premiere last night at Baryshnikov Arts Center--sounded like the protracted, labored breathing of an android. Then, suddenly, dancers' tongues began to press hard against the inside of their cheeks. Later, crude expressions would bulge out the skin of formerly placid faces from Cunningham-land, distorting the message of their bodies' clean assertions. Interesting.

Interface at Baryshnikov Arts Center (Photo by Stephanie Berger)

This happened within and around a large, white square of empty space and within the Howard Gilman Performance Space that, famously, looks out on the the lights and architecture of Hudson Yards, the theater's generous windows now interspersed with striking visual designs in black and white. (Of the four performers, only Riener--his usually lush, dark hair here tamed into a tight topknot--breaks the monochrome by wearing a childish-looking yellow romper.) Some of those windows come alive by video, so that movement may happen by chance--say, a passing jet streaking across the sky--or by design.

For me, this integration of handsome urban vista with an innerscape arranged by Mitchell and his collaborators proved more enchanting than the dance alone might have been.

Black/white, inside/outside, mechanical/animal, constrained and not so constrained, functional and (perhaps) not so functional, apart and together: Interface exists in a dynamic state of between, of flux, of uncomfortable becoming. Which is Mitchell's condition as a burgeoning dancemaker suddenly set loose in the world, is it not?

With visual design by Fraser Taylor, Davison Scandrett and Mitchell; video by Nicholas O'Brien; lighting design by Scandrett; textiles and prints by Taylor; and costumes by Mary Jo Mecca

Rashaun Mitchell's Interface concludes with two performances tonight: 7:30pm and 9:30pm. Click here for details and tickets.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/direction)

All that is: Emily Johnson at Baryshnikov Arts Center

See if you can you snare a ticket to tonight's concluding presentation of Niicugni--an interdisciplinary, movement-based work by Minneapolis-based Emily Johnson/Catalyst.

Presented at Baryshnikov Arts Center as part of PS 122's COIL fest, the 70-minute work offers rich storytelling through poetic words, movement, soundscape and scenic design--all reflecting the values inherent to Johnson's Central Alaskan Yup'ik heritage. It demonstrates and encourages empathy with all life--most memorably, those little red foxes imagined by Johnson and Aretha Aoki, on their nimble run through a forest and a batch of just-folks who periodically emerge from the audience to exalt in being part of the fabric of life.

If you manage to un-guard your heart and pay attention to subtle things--which is what the title, Niicugni, explicitly invites--you will perceive a gracefully-integrated, seductive work of art at the core of which is one rare, exquisite and charming performer, Emily Johnson. Oh, how I long to see more of her work!

Niicugni concludes its run tonight at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

It's alive!!! Radiohole at The Kitchen

I'm so mind-spun by all the APAP-connected presentations and confused by PS 122's peripatetic condition of late, that I ran a small risk of ending up at Baryshnikov Arts Center last night instead of The Kitchen where, for PS 122's COIL festival, the experimental, interdisciplinary theater troupe Radiohole (Erin Douglass, Eric Dyer and Maggie Hoffman) put on their Inflatable Frankenstein show in front of a hip and actually rather cool (not in a good way) audience. I'd had "The Kitchen" in my head, rightly, but had written "Baryshnikov Arts Center" on the dry erase board that helps keep me organized and my wife informed, and it was only until I was preparing to leave for the show that I realized that I'd been glancing at the exactly wrong thing all day, and the mistake just hadn't registered. I go to BAC tonight to see Emily Johnson!

Never having seen the legendary Radiohole--okay, relax: dance shows keep me a little busy--I'm unable to guess how high Inflatable Frankenstein would rank in their repertory, but the audacity of the hour-long show's elaborate design and execution impresses and tickles me. Hey, kids, let's "liberate Frankenstein from the long shadow of Boris Karloff!" Let's blow up Mary Shelley (literally and in more ways than one)! Go!

The troupe has littered Kitchen's performance space with everything from hi-tech whiz-bang to lo-tech aluminum mixing bowls filled with a pinkish substance like a particularly runny Silly Putty. In the recesses behind the central action, there's a whole big jumble of colorless...something (to be revealed later). We gaze on it apprehensively, past the actors and scenery, for nearly the entire time. Characters continuously shift names and identities (who's who? who's where? when's when?). What's the purpose for all of this mess? One of the play's funniest sequences happens right away when the actors discuss how Inflatable Frankenstein came to be and offer surprisingly competing views of what the show is about. Informal discourse quickly degenerates into speakers stepping all over one another's statements and, finally, a rapid plunge into artistic theoritizing so dense and garbled it might as well be baby-talk. Purpose? Purpose lurches this way and that throughout the hour like a big, misshapen creature stitched together and shot through with high voltage.

It's a good time. One can love it to pieces and love individual pieces--the sharp, wacky performances, the clever sound and visual elements, the allusions to James Whale's films--all spliced together with a sense of desperation and aggression, the kind of desperation and aggression that brings forth humor. I can't answer the question, What does it all add up to? Maybe there really can't and shouldn't be an answer--the troupe's notes quote Artaud: "...to be more precise would spoil the poetry of the thing"--but maybe that's why last night's audience, at the end, sounded polite but less than smitten.

See Inflatable Frankenstein at The Kitchen--for sure!--through January 19. For schedule and ticketing details, click here.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

doug elkins choreography, etc. at Baryshnikov Arts Center

The theater at Baryshnikov Arts Center was totally packed for the New York premiere of Mo(or)town/Redux, presented by doug elkins choreography, etc. So, while I can't tell you if you'll be able to get in, do try. You get Elkins's exhilarating Scott, Queen of Marys into the bargain--a cocktail blend of Scottish dancing, voguing, capoeira moves and more, first seen in 1994 but ever-fresh with a fine cast that includes very cool/on fire Javier Ninja. Seventy minutes all told, the two-dance program makes quite a very neat package for your weekend.

In the ingenious Mo(or)town/Redux, Elkins brings both Shakespeare's Othello and José Limon's The Moor's Pavane into the age of Motown and soul music. Kyle Marshall plays the Othello figure like a tall, dignified Black athlete; Donnell Oakley, his treasured Desdemona in high spirits and with bright energy just oozing from every pore. Alexander Dones and Cori Marquis--scheming Iago and his dupe, Emilia--make another sexy couple. Elkin's choreography references the lively use of space and the quartet and duet court dance patterns Limon skillfully employed as well as Limon's clever, ultimately treacherous business with a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't handkerchief--all of this arranged against a soundscape Black music hits of the '60s.

The carefully selected music--not the original versions of songs like "Tears of A Clown" and "Just My Imagination," of course--is effective, if borderline obvious and actually my least favorite element in this piece. The choreography rolls out so suave and delicious, the dancers so deft, that I think Elkins could tell the Othello story just as well without the overlay of well-known lyrics. Best of all, these dancers--especially, Oakley and the sensational Dones, who clearly loves dancing so much he can't seem to help making villainous Iago downright appealing--work out with such natural truth that they can draw you right into the dance. Not just great moves well done: This thing is alive, baby!
doug elkins choreography, etc. continues its BAC run tonight and Saturday at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Jeu d' Esprit...indeed!

I need a little break...and so do you!

So, I'm posting a link to a lovely dance film, Jeu d' Esprit, by Amelia Golden, shot live at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

soloist James A. Pierce III
choreography by Mitzi Adams of the Adams Company Dance

Click here.

Body and Soul podcast: Review of Raimund Hoghe at BAC

The latest Body and Soul podcast episode features my audio review of German choreographer Raimund Hoghe's Pas de deux at Baryshnikov Arts Center, with a beautiful performance by Takashi Ueno.

Download the mp3 or subscribe (please do!) here.

Pas de deux continues tonight and tomorrow at 7:30, at Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Howard Gilman Performance Space, 450 West 37th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. For information and tickets, click here.

Thanks for listening to Body and Soul!

Dance Heginbotham at BAC

I like Dance Heginbotham very much--meaning that I respect John Heginbotham's new ensemble, take strong interest in how this promising troupe will grow, and tip my hat to the enormous effort and skill the dancers showed last night at Baryshnikov Arts Center. But that program--featuring the New York premiere of Closing Bell and the world premiere of Twin--simply wore me out!

In a way, these two works belong together because of similarities in movement texture. But the mechanistic, blistering nature of that texture (and, often, the music driving it) is tough to hang out with and absorb over time. Watching it feels like a solid hour of walking against gale-force wind. As my introduction to Heginbotham as choreographer, it leaves me hoping that the guy has other tricks up those roomy, rather bizarre mental sleeves of his.

Closing Bell's playful people, rising from discrete circles--I saw them as pods--of light, go through exacting, if cartoonish, paces with robotic intensity. The unsparing music (excerpts from Tyondai Braxton's Central Market) pumps them up, and Heginbotham--a Mark Morris alumnus among other things--is nothing if not musical to a sly and fastidious degree and fascinated by the precise mathematics of design. It's the folk dance of the pod people!

Fair enough, but I can watch dancers being deployed like an army of kooky wind-up toys only so much before my nerves start going on me. Twin, which shares some of that relentless energy, redeems itself with its gathering atmosphere of horror laced with absurdity. Heginbotham does both subtle, spooky menace and absurdity very well--yes, those "bizarre mental sleeves" of his--and his dancers get a chance to show off effective drama in interactions that allude to cinematic scenarios without being obvious. John Eirich--the only guy not wearing Maile Okamura's Op Art costumes, because he's wearing a diaphanous skirt instead--is a wonderful iconic figure of mystery and resonance. And Lindsey Jones has just the right whippet look and directness to be both exhilarating and slightly chilling to watch.

Dance Heginbotham--which also includes Allysen Hooks, BJ Randolph, Evan Teitelbaum and Kristen Foote--concludes its run with an 8pm performance tonight. Click here for information and tickets.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Tiffany Mills: Berries, bulls and BAC

Opening this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center 

and recommended

Top: Petra van Noort with Jeffrey Duval
Bottom: Emily Pope-Blackman with Kevin Ho
Photos: Julie Lemberger (c)2012

 

Tiffany Mills Company presents the world premiere of Berries and Bulls, a dance that relentlessly digs below the surface of long-term relationships. With her title--which sounds to me like a folk song in the making--the crafty Mills plays with duality of the masculine/feminine kind. The hour-long quartet features some serious rough-and-tumble and wit of the physical as well as verbal variety. Mills' terrific and durable dancers journey through a raw, precarious emotional landscape. If you follow them, you'll wind up feeling as if you've just been spun around in a blender, but how can you not follow Jeffrey Duval, Kevin Ho, and especially Emily Pope-Blackman and Petra van Noort?

It takes serious teamwork to pull off a work this rich and complex, and that team includes organizations and programs that gave Mills a string of residencies and space grants to develop her piece--Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dance New Amsterdam, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, BAC and Joyce Theater/Mellon Anchor Tenant Program. Getting it done!

See Berries and Bulls, Thursday-Saturday, March 1-3, 7:30pm. Opening Night will be followed by a gala. For more information and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

BAC FLicks screens Lidberg's "Labyrinth Within"

Trailer for Pontus Lidberg's Labyrinth Within (2010, Sweden, 28.5 min.)

Jury Prize for Best Picture, Dance on Camera Festival 2012, New York

Labyrinth Within--screened this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center--opens with a horizontally compressed view of a dizzying swirl of bare torsos belonging, provocatively, to the film's male performers. They are director/choreographer Pontus Lidberg, a remarkably lithe dancer, and the brooding Giovanni Bucchieri, who also played a similarly sensual role in Lidberg's award-winning film, The Rain (2006).

After your half-hour with Labyrinth Within, you might walk away uncertain of what you just saw. (Who's who? What's what? What's with that mask you see for a split second?) But asking this film to deliver straight answers is like asking a dream to get out of bed and make you bacon and eggs. That's not its job. Lidberg's project, co-written with dramaturg Niklas Holmgren, deals with mystery--change itself--as a permanent reality.

Labyrinth Within's layers slip through your awareness through multiple pathways--dramatic lighting and suspenseful camerawork; Bucchieri's brooding melancholy; rapturous, expressionistic duets between Lidberg and his female muse, the versatile NYCB principal Wendy Whelan, and the tension-building power of David Lang's original and arranged music. Place matters, too. The work--developed in residencies at BAC and Joyce SoHo but mostly filmed within the muted, under-furnished interior of a Stockholm apartment--turns upon evocative architectural as well as psychological space. In the discussion that followed BAC's screening, Lidberg, quite rightly, volunteered few revelations about his beautiful film but did dangle this tidbit: "I had a very eccentric father and grew up in an apartment with things like secret doors."

Upcoming at BAC Flicks: Carmen & Geoffrey (2005), a documentary on the lives and careers of Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder by filmmakers Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob. The screening will be followed by a discussion with de Lavallade. Tuesday, April 24, 7pm. For further information and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map and directions)

Young Jean Lee and the naked truth

Untitled Feminist Show--created by award-winning director Young Jean Lee, choreographer Faye Driscoll, associate director Morgan Gould and other collaborators--has earned a place on my mental list of favorite dance events of the very young 2012. I know I'm going to have some explaining to do because--as I see here in Lee's program notes--Lee doesn't consider this work to be a dance piece. "Like the performers themselves," she writes, "the show is meant to resist categorization."

So, what am I talking about?

Well, aside from the fact that I would like to be able to claim every damn good thing in the Universe for dance, I'm beginning to get a sense that calling something "theater" (as she calls her company, after all: Young Jean Lee's Theater Company) is fine and dandy, but calling something "dance" is somehow limiting. 

Hmmm....

Seems it was just yesterday that the idea of calling all sorts of wild and crazy (or mild and boring) things "dance" was bold and liberating.

In any case, Lee's six marvelous stars are performing arts of the body, including dance and some incredibly edgy mime, and they are stark naked throughout the hour. I'm calling this one for dance, and I will not be dissuaded.

I also hear tell--because I've been reading some of her interviews--that she doesn't want Untitled Feminist Show to be considered sexy. Oh, please. Nothing wrong with (or un-feminist about) sexy. Bring sexy back. In fact, this show does so--directly and indirectly.

What couldn't be genuinely sexy about six unselfconsciously nude, female-bodied performers, each with a distinct body type and size, defining themselves across a fluid gender spectrum and expressing, almost entirely in iconic and primal physical movement, how it might feel to be free?

Free is sexy.

They are Becca Blackwell, World Famous *BOB*, Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo), Hilary Clark, Katy Pyle and Regina Rocke, collectively hailing from cabaret, theater, dance and burlesque with some crossovers, all stripped of theatricalizing makeup, hairstyling and, of course, costumes. They make a fabulous team in this fabulous romp, but Blackwell, Zirin-Brown and especially Clark seem to be having the most high-charged and, yes, liberating fun.

Some of them initially enter the space by slowly drifting down the aisles, giving the audience a sense of being represented in the performance space. (They come from us.) We hear their soft and human breathing, which establishes a comforting sense of common humanity. But don't get too comfortable. Although the inhabitants of Lee's feminist utopia sometimes sport frilly pink parasols, they're capable of using these items as weapons, and they'll happily consume their victim. No, you've never seen Marcel Marceau do the kind of mime you'll see in Untitled Feminist Show--at least, not on Ed Sullivan's show.

And check out that acid-trip video projection at the end! Through the Looking Glass, through the black hole you go! What are you going to be when you come out the other side?

With scenic design by David Evans Morris; lighting design by Raquel Davis; sound design by Chris Giarmo and Jamie McElhinney; and projection design by Leah Gelpe.

Untitled Feminist Show is a presentation of Performance Space 122's COIL Festival and runs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center through February 4. For information, schedule and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Jerome Robbins Theater

450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan

(directions)

Shay Wafer to lead 651 Arts

651 ARTS has announced the appointment of Shay Wafer as its new Executive Director. Ms. Wafer will be the fourth woman to lead 651 ARTS, now entering its 23rd year, and succeeds Georgiana Pickett who steps down in mid-August to become Executive Director of the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

Here is an excerpt from today's announcement:

Wafer’s appointment comes at a critical time for 651, as the organization is launching a planning and fundraising effort to relocate to a new home outside of the BAM Harvey Theater. While undertaking this next step in the organization’s history, 651 will continue to present live performing arts events born of the African Diaspora in venues in Ft. Greene and Downtown Brooklyn along with conducting education, international exchange and artist development programs focused on artists of African descent.

Ms. Wafer has held senior level positions at a number of non-profit arts organizations with a focus on African-American programming, community engagement and arts education. In 2007 Ms. Wafer became the founding Vice President of Programs for the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, a new multi-disciplinary performing arts center and museum in downtown Pittsburgh. Prior to the August Wilson Center, Wafer served for six years as the managing director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, California- her hometown. She also served as the Managing Director of the St. Louis Black Repertory Company and was a founding partner of Crossroads Arts Academy and Theatre in L.A. and was a co-founder of Colored Girl Productions. Ms. Wafer has engaged in additional community and volunteer activities throughout her career including serving on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group (TCG). Ms. Wafer is a graduate of Howard University and Yale School of Drama.

It is the mission of 651 ARTS to deepen awareness of and appreciation for contemporary performing arts and culture of the African Diaspora, and to provide professional and creative opportunities for performing artists of African descent.

For more information about 651 Arts and its programs, click here.

Stanford Makishi takes new role at Asian Cultural Council

Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Executive Director Jennifer P. Goodale announced the appointment of Stanford Makishi as Director of Programs. The newly created position signifies ACC’s ongoing, dynamic response to the changing needs of cultural, educational and artistic exchange between the United States and Asia. Mr. Makishi begins the new position on August 1.

“Ever since it was founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1963, ACC has played a crucial and visionary role in promoting major cultural and artistic exchanges between the United States and Asia as well as between the countries of Asia,” said Ms. Goodale in announcing Mr. Makishi’s appointment. “Stanford’s uniquely rich and varied artistic, cultural, and intellectual background will offer a new perspective on our work and facilitate ACC’s ability to meet the needs of contemporary artists at critical stages in their careers and the shifting issues that mark cultural exchange in our rapidly changing world.”

Mr. Makishi’s responsibilities will include leadership of the organization’s grant-making process, as well as exploring and creating new ways to meet the unique needs of each of the creative individuals funded by ACC.

“ACC has been remarkably forward-thinking in its support of important emerging artists, revered masters and scholars from a vast Asia, long before the digital age shrank our world,” said Mr. Makishi. “The organization is now identifying new ways to enrich the lives and careers of creative people, while remaining true to the far-sighted goals set forth by John D. Rockefeller 3rd nearly 50 years ago. I am thrilled and humbled to be able to help make this possible.”

Prior to his present appointment at the ACC, Mr. Makishi was Executive Director of the Baryshnikov Arts Center, where he oversaw all facets of the organization, including fundraising, strategic planning, capital expansion, budget oversight, artistic planning and programming, and general management of staff and facilities. During his tenure, in addition to more than doubling BAC’s annual operating budget, he put in motion a $15 million capital campaign, led the purchase and renovation of BAC’s new Jerome Robbins Theater, greatly expanded the Center’s robust residency program, and was closely involved with the launch of an international festival at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida.

As Director of Creative Services at Carnegie Hall, Makishi oversaw the group that serviced and optimized institutional brand management, publishing operations, Internet activity, fundraising efforts, pedagogy, and communications. Mr. Makishi was a performer with the Trisha Brown Dance Company and became the company’s development director after he retired from dancing. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mr. Makishi, 46, is a graduate of Harvard University, where he was recognized as a Harvard National Scholar and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. He is presently a panelist for the dance program at the New York State Council on the Arts, a board member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and the Artistic Advisor for the Fall for Dance Festival at New York City Center.

The Asian Cultural Council awards an average of 100 grants a year for travel and study, totaling approximately $1.5 million annually, with offices and affiliates in Hong Kong, Manila, Taiwan and Tokyo. To date, the ACC has supported nearly 6,000 artists and scholars in cultural exchange programs; among them are Cai Guo-Qiang, Ushio Torikai, Lee Breuer, Yang Meiqi, Meredith Monk, Lin Hwai-min, Robert Wilson, Ming Cho Lee, and Barbara London.