Big Dance Theater, as always

The week is finally winding down with some glorious weather. But, hey, I still think you should spend at least some of it in a theater!

If you can manage to get a ticket, do check out Big Dance Theater's Comme Toujours Here I Stand--now at New York Live Arts--a 2009 work sourced in filmmaker Αgחès Varda's Çléο de 5 à 7 (1961). With its cheeky narrative fragmentation and visual splintering, Comme Toujours deals less with how things go in life than how they go in our heads when the world presses forward while we stress out and grasp at anything that could make momentary sense or soothe or distract. BDT founding member Molly Hickok is stellar as the central character who--like Varda's beautiful, vapid Parisian pop star, set adrift by a scary Tarot reading and impending medical test results--becomes a magnetic hub for phenomena that continuously remind us that we're watching a movie, an entertainment, something artificial that we construct and control and invest with a power not necessarily intrinsic to it.

Directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson, co-directed by Paul Lazar. With Hickok, the cast includes Tymberly Canale, Chris Giarmo, Jeff Larson, Aaron Mattocks, Ryutaro Mishima, Aaron Rosenblum and Kourtney Rutherford.

Now through Saturday at 7:30pm. For more information and ticketing, click here.

And take in a screening of Varda's Çléο de 5 à 7 at NYLA on Saturday, May 19 at 3pm. Details here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Annie-B Parson: Body and Soul podcast

Annie-B Parson--co-founder and choreographer of the Bessie Award-winning Big Dance Theater--joins forces with the exciting post-classical string quartet ETHEL and dancer Elizabeth DeMent for a site-specific production in the Winter Garden at World Financial Center. "Wait for Green"--ETHEL's third Winter Solstice concert at WFC--premieres on Friday, December 19, in two free performances--12:30pm and 7pm.
"Wait for Green" has been commissioned by arts>World Financial Center for its 20th Anniversary celebration.

(c)2008,Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Program Notes: Upcoming on "Body and Soul"

Annie-B Parson--co-founder and choreographer of the Bessie Award-winning Big Dance Theater--joins forces with the exciting post-classical string quartet ETHEL and dancer Elizabeth DeMent for a site-specific production in the Winter Garden at World Financial Center. Wait for Green--ETHEL's third Winter Solstice concert at WFC--premieres on Friday, December 19, in two free performances, 12:30pm and 7pm. Wait for Green has been commissioned by arts>World Financial Center for its 20th Anniversary celebration. Get further information here.

ETHEL

Big Dance Theater

arts>WorldFinancial Center

Annie-B Parson founded OBIE- and Bessie Award-winning Big Dance Theater in 1991. She has created 14 pieces for the company, touring the work both nationally and internationally to such venues as Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Spoleto Festival USA, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and American Dance Festival, as well as international festivals and venues in the Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany. She is currently working with David Byrne on his world tour and with the OtherShore dance company as well as preparing a premiere for Lyon with her company. In New York City, her work has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, City Center, The Kitchen, Classic Stage Company, and the Guggenheim Works & Process Series. She was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 and is working on a book about octagenarian, off-the-radar ballet teachers.

ETHEL is comprised of four world-class, Juilliard-trained composer/musicians: Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello), and Mary Rowell (violin). Described as "the fiercest string quartet this side of hell," and "the most bad-ass quartet around," ETHEL has performed over 300 shows in ten different countries as a favorite at countless festivals and venues around the globe. ETHEL's most recent CD release--Light (Cantaloupe Records)--was #3 on Amazon.com's Best of 2006: Top Classical Editors' Picks. As composers, the members of ETHEL draw on their singular and collective experience with a broad range of genres, styles and influences--from classical to bluegrass, from jazz to rock.

Paul Lazar is out of this world!

Just five minutes from Grand Central Station, there's a curiously-enchanting world known as 1965UU, created in all its fabulous fabulosity by playwright Mac Wellman from his book of imaginary tales about real asteroids--A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds--and directed by Stephen Mellor.

1965UU is a tiny world inhabited by the likes of the looming, mean, lustily-flatulent Albedo, the delicious but elusively-speedy Rosalind, and a thoughtful, heartsick but resilient soul, Ravenelo, played by Paul Lazar. Lazar--co-founder, with Annie-B Parsons, of Big Dance Theater--gives one of his cherishable performances as the focus of the piece, acting like a spinning wheel that refines Wellman's textual flights of absurd fancy through every well-considered, masterfully-coordinated inflection of movement, glance and voice. Supporting Lazar in what is considered a solo performance are narrator Heather Christian, dancer Kate Marks, and actors Ed Jewett and Daniel Manley.

Now through October 4, the asteroid 1965UU will be in residence at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, which is certainly as good a place as any for a miniscule space body that appears to be a long, metallic platform spanning the length of the performance space.  Get yourself a front-row seat, and see a show in which, thrillingly, sparks really fly!

For tickets, directions and more information, click here.