BAM's Joseph V. Melillo to receive a Bessies honor

Joseph V. Melillo
(photo: Jesse Winter)

The NY Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) has announced the recipient of the 2018 Bessies Presenter Award for Outstanding Curating--Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer, since 1999, of Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Melillo will receive the award at the Bessies Presenters Gathering on Sunday, January 14 (5-7pm), at La MaMa's Downstairs Theater.

“The Bessie committees wanted to recognize Joe Melillo for his visionary curation for more than three decades,” said Bessies Executive Director Lucy Sexton. “Joe has made sure dance has a place on the stages of BAM—from the grand Howard Gilman Opera House to the adventurous Harvey Theater to the intimate space at the Fisher. He has brought so many international choreographers to New York City and lifted up generations of American dance artists on the world stage. We are thrilled to be honoring him with this award.”

The celebration of Melillo's award is free and open to all in the dance and performance community. Please click here to make your reservation.

La MaMa (Downstairs Theater)
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

ABOUT THE BESSIES PRESENTER AWARD

Established in 2017, the Bessies Presenter Award for Outstanding Curating recognizes a presenter or curator of work performed in the New York City area. It is presented to an individual or curatorial team whose work has had a palpable impact on artists, audiences, or the dance and performance field in general. While the award can recognize sustained achievement in curating or presenting over time, it can equally recognize a particular project, festival, or season that occurred in the past year. Visiting or guest curators, as well as full-time curators and presenters are eligible. The first Presenter Award (in 2017) went to Judy Hussie-Taylor, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Danspace Project. 

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 33 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 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. The Bessies are produced in partnership with Dance/NYC. For more information about the Bessies, visit www.bessies.org.

Follow the Bessies on Facebook / #theBessies / @bessieawards

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Kronos Quartet brings "My Lai" to BAM Next Wave

Tenor Rinde Eckert (left) as Hugh Thompson, Jr.
and musician Vân-Ánh Võ in My Lai
(photo: Richard Termine)

On the morning of March 16, 1968, U.S. army soldiers fired upon more than 500 unarmed civilians--elders, children, infants, women, some raped and mutilated--in the South Vietnamese hamlets of My Lai and My Khe. More innocents would have been slaughtered in this Vietnam War atrocity--since known as the My Lai Massacre--were it not for the witness and persistent intervention of a young American helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, Jr. His three descents into the chaos, though futile as attempts to halt the killing, ultimately saved lives, including, on his final landing, a young boy rescued from his dead mother's arms.

For Thompson's courageous efforts and his official reports of the massacre, he at first became a pariah in Nixon's America, as much a non-surprise as it is heartbreaking. His story inspired a concise, deeply affecting opera, My Lai, now in its New York premiere run at BAM Harvey Theater for BAM Next Wave. It was composed by Jonathan Berger with a libretto by fiction writer Harriet Scott Chessman for Kronos Quartet, tenor Rinde Eckert and Vân-Ánh Võ, a master performer of traditional Vietnamese string and percussion instruments.

Running at 70 minutes, the work suggests the dissonance between cultures--the flare-ups and gusts of Western strings set against Vân-Ánh Võ's measured, airy and delicate tones. Sounds converge and diverge; their players become factions physically separated by Eckert and the set the way Thompson's chopper, on its second descent, kept murderous soldiers from reaching potential victims. The set at the center of it all depicts a sterile hospital room: ceiling-to-floor white curtains, a couple of chairs, a table covered in prescription bottles. The curtains serve as screens for the ghostly shadowplay of helicopter blades and the gleam of wind-blown grasses. Here Eckert gives voice to an aging Thompson consumed by ugly memories and dying of cancer. The heroic pilot died in 2006.

Once Eckert parts the curtain and emerges before us, haunted and restless, the work maintains tight focus on him; the singer maintains his own tight grip in a performance of exacting force and endurance. He is almost never not singing, compulsively remembering, compulsively reporting, dreaming, desiring escape from the body, desiring, ironically, to share with his remembered young son the beauty of flight. He hallucinates his testimony as a game show.

Once you land, there's no turning back.... You can't just hover.

At one point, the bewildered Thompson asks, "How has this happened?" It's a question with no one good answer--or far too many. It resonates and disturbs as much today, in the Age of Trump, as then, in the Age of Nixon.

Kronos Quartet:
David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola) and Sunny Yang (cello)

Direction, set design: Mark DeChiazza and Rinde Eckert
Video projection design: Mark DeChiazza
Lighting design: Brian H. Scott

My Lai has one final performance, tonight at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here. For information on other BAM Next Wave events, click here.

BAM Harvey
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Chuck Davis, 80

Chuck Davis, Who Brought African Dance Traditions to America, Dies at 80
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, May 15, 2017

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Harvey Lichtenstein, 87

Harvey Lichtenstein, Who Led Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Rebirth, Dies at 87
by Robert Berkvist, The New York Times, February 11, 2017

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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Verdensteatret's latest show leaves question marks

Verdensteatret's Bridge Over Mud
(photo courtesy of Verdensteatret)

Having seen Verdensteatret's wondrous audiovisual fantasia, And All the Question Marks Started to Sing (Dance Theater Workshop, 2011, review posted here), I looked forward to Bridge Over Mud, the Norwegian art collective's US premiere at BAM Next Wave. First shown in 2014 in Oslo, this award-winning production has some of the enchantments of Question Mark. It boldly engulfs and transforms its space, filling it with a combination of cleverly re-purposed objects, looming video imagery and otherworldly sounds, some played or vocalized live. Viewers may feel as if they have pulled chairs up to the edge of a dream an intelligent, sleeping machine might be having as its brain processes the multitude of physical things and environments--humans, not so much--that it has dealt with throughout its day and down through time.

The hour seems long. Bridge Over Mud strikes me as far murkier and less inviting than Question Mark, if no less strange. The looming, advancing shadows, the massive sculpted sliding panels, the mysterious imagery in the background are items that we in the audience regard and check off from an emotionally-glazed distance. I did initially enjoy the model train engines snaking along 195 feet of track throughout the space but got distracted recalling that I never had model trains as a child. But, at least, that memory formed a momentary bridge to what I was seeing. Dangling from flies to floor, giant strands of Polynesian leis--apparently made of tiles simulating puka shells--seemed at variance with the overall funereal atmosphere. But then, this is the machine's dream, and maybe only the machine can sort it all out.

Presented here in association with Wayne Ashley's provocative FuturePerfect Productions, Verdensteatret is Asle Nilsen, Lisbeth J. Bodd, Piotr Pajchel, Eirik Blekesaune, Ali Djabbary, Martin Taxt, Espen Sommer Eide, Torgrim Torve, Elisabeth Gmeiner, Niklas Adam, Kristine Sandøy, Thorolf Thuestad, Janne Kruse, Laurent Ravot and Benjamin Nelson.

Bridge Over Mud concludes tonight but is sold out. For information and standby ticket details, click here.

BAM Fishman Space

BAM Fisher/Fishman Space
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Joya Powell, Donald McKayle win early Bessies; nominations announced

Oh, how I deeply regret missing the Bessies press conference last evening, but I am up very early this morning to catch a train out of town for a few days.

Here's all the exciting news you need to know, and my hearty congratulations to the winners and the nominees.

I hope to see you on October 18!

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

*****

The 32nd annual Bessie Awards, presented in association with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, will take place on Tuesday, October 18 at 7:30pm, at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.

Three 2016 awards were presented at last evening's press conference at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center:

Outstanding 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."

Outstanding Revival: Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder, choreographed by Donald McKayle

"for giving a classic modern dance new and powerful 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 by the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, produced by Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance as part of its 2016 season."

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 Nominations

Outstanding Production:


luciana achugar

An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center



Souleymane Badolo

Yimbégré: Replanting roots in the name of freedom

BAM Fishman Space



Camille A. Brown

Black Girl: Linguistic Play

The Joyce Theater



Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson

Chambre

The New Museum co-presented by FIAF



Pat Graney

Girl Gods

Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University



Maria Hassabi

PLASTIC

MoMA



Heather Kravas

dead, disappears

American Realness at Abrons Arts Center



Ralph Lemon

Scaffold Room

The Kitchen



Dada Masilo

Swan Lake

The Joyce Theater



Justin Peck

Heatscape

Miami City Ballet

David H. Koch Theater



Liz Santoro & Pierre Godard

For Claude Shannon 

The Kitchen



Safi A. Thomas with H+ | The Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory

Sleeping Beauty

Flamboyán Theater



Outstanding Revival (* indicates award recipient):



get dancing

By Andy de Groat & Catherine Galasso

Danspace Project



Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder  *

Choreographed by Donald McKayle

Performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

Produced by Paul Taylor American Modern Dance

David H. Koch Theater



Outstanding Performer:



Ephrat Asherie

Sustained Achievement with Dorrance Dance, Doug Elkins, Bill Irwin, Gus Solomon jr., Rennie Harris, Cori Olinghouse, and many others



Nicolas Bruder

In Custodians of Beauty by Pavel Zuštiak

New York Live Arts



Omar Edwards

In FLY

New Victory Theater



Paul Hamilton

For his body of work including Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room and the work of Jane Comfort, Keeley Garfield, and others



Parisa Khobdeh

For her body of work with Paul Taylor Dance Company



Kazunori Kumagai

For his body of work including Live at the Blue Note Late Night Groove Series



Jennifer Lafferty

In Catacomb by Beth Gill

The Chocolate Factory



Molly Lieber

For her body of work with several artists including luciana achugar, Maria Hassabi, and Donna Uchizono



Aaron Mattocks

In Big Dance: Short Form by Big Dance Theater

The Kitchen



Gillian Murphy

Sustained Achievement with American Ballet Theatre



Aakash Odedra

In Rising

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts



Jamar Roberts

Sustained Achievement with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

 

Outstanding Emerging Choreographer (* indicates award recipient):



John Heginbotham



Jillian Peña



Joya Powell *



Larissa Velez-Jackson



Outstanding Music Composition/Sound Design:



Admanda Kobilka

For Clap Hands by Jen Rosenblit

Invisible Dog Art Center / New York Live Arts



Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste

For #negrophobia by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko | anonymous bodies

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center



Dan Trueman, Sō Percussion, and Mobius Percussion

For There Might Be Others by Rebecca Lazier

New York Live Arts



Ustatshakirt Plus

For Dream'd in a Dream by Seán Curran

BAM Harvey Theater



Outstanding Visual Design:



Holly Batt

For the visual and set design of Girl Gods by Pat Graney

Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University



Design Team: F. Randy deCelle, Ralph Lemon, Roderick Murray, Naoko Nagata, R. Eric Stone, Mike Taylor, and Philip White

For the visual design of Scaffold Room by Ralph Lemon

The Kitchen



DD Dorvillier and Thomas Dunn

For the lighting and visual design of Extra Shapes by DD Dorvillier

The Kitchen



Eamonn Farrell

For the new media scenography of Forgiveness by Emily Berry | B3W Performance Group

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center

ABOUT THE BESSIES

Produced in partnership with Dance/NYC, 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 White at Dance Theater Workshop. They recognize exceptional 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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Elemental dancing: Munisteri's new "Antimony (51)"

Katie Weir and other dancers
performing Ben Munisteri's Petrichor (2015)
The company also premieres Antimony (51) on this weekend's program at BAM Fisher.
(photo: William Chafkin)

Antimony sounds as if it could be the opposite of harmony. But while the word--literally meaning "not alone"--does connote the presence of contradiction or paradox, it's also the name of a metalloid element, the 51st element on the Periodic Table. And now it's the newest creation--entitled Antimony (51)--from choreographer Ben Munisteri.

Premiered at BAM Fisher's Fishman Space, the hour-long ensemble work finds its inspiration in the brittle element variously described as "white," "silvery," "silvery-white," "bluish-white" or "lustrous gray." Antimony, Munisteri says, is "unable to exist alone in nature." His dancers exist in an orderly structure and decidedly not alone; in fact, when we first notice them, lined up on the nearly-dark stage, they're holding one another's hands. A brief image, perhaps meant to be received almost subliminally, but it well conveys the spirit of the dance to come.

Munisteri works with only six dancers in this--and only eight in the following piece, Petrichor, last year's premiere--but gives the illusion of far more. It does not take showy, aggressive movement to fill and animate this space--just the opposite. Every turn, dip and extension, every coalescence or separation and regrouping is unforced, performed with modest restraint and within undisturbed tranquility. Partners use the gentlest, most nimble control of each other, by simple touch to, say, a head or a shoulder. This is best shown in the smooth and non-gendered way in which a lift of one can easily transform into a lift of the other. The soft pastels and brights of designer Harry Nadal's flattering unitards contribute to this magic, turning every twirl into a display of quicksilver, fairy-like changeability.

In all things, the dancers model mutual support, and no one gets more spotlight time or higher status than anyone else. Here is Utopia expressed in movement, and I suppose it could not truly be a dance unless "contradiction" and "paradox"--questions, differences contained within the whole--did not empower things to actually move. But what you get out of all of that movement--and out of the clear dedication of these fine dancers to Munisteri's aesthetic--is a remarkable sense of cohesion. You see that also in Petrichor, which offers both a showcase for the dancers' technical rigor with an underlying trace of jazzy impulse and rhythm.

I was surprised by how much this cohesion meant to me, how much it worked on me and charmed me. I always love seeing the spark of individuality in individual dancers, and that is so not the look here. And yet. What's in the fabric of this dance, giving it its seamless appearance? Contradiction, paradox, human presence.

Dancers: Eric Sean Fogel, Katie Weir, Shane Rutkowski, Angela Maffia, Shomeiko Ingham, Kenneth Stephen Neil, Andrew Harper and Ricky Wenthen

Lighting: Kathryn Kaufmann

Antimony (51) continues tonight and tomorrow, Saturday, with performances at 7:30. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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MoCADA--and 651 Arts--on the move

Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts to Move to Larger New Space in Brooklyn
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, May 27, 2015

Batsheva BAM opening protested

50 Protest Batsheva Dance Company Opening at BAM
by Mostafa Heddaya, Hyperallergic, November 13, 2014

Jodi Melnick has her Next Wave moment

Jodi Melnick premieres Moment Marigold,
at BAM Next Wave 2014
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Dancers, left to right:
EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, Maggie Thom and Jodi Melnick

Her dancer's resumé includes work with stars of contemporary choreography--Twyla Tharp, Trisha Brown, John Jasperse, to name a few. She has won two Bessies and launched her own well-regarded dancemaking career. This week, Jodi Melnick made her BAM debut as a choreographer with Moment Marigold, created for BAM's 2014 Next Wave Festival.

Moment Marigold announces itself as a special kind of trio when, after simply walking out into BAM's humble Fishman Space, three women--Melnick with EmmaGrace Skove-Epes and Maggie Thom--variously attach themselves to one another. Hands touch, heads touch. Three graces intertwine in silence, clothing themselves in each other's physicality.

The dance progresses, for slightly less than an hour, as an unspooling of movement that really does look like what Melnick has called it--"a living thing" and "a continuous act of creating."

An early passage in Steven Reker's new composition for this piece reminds me of a journey by train, a regular rhythm of chugging and chiming, marking time spent that can be either tedious or pleasurable. How you hook into Moment Marigold might say something about your own fascination with small discoveries, your patience in observation and your own identification with these three explorers on their journey together. Do you feel their sticky-looking hands and sense your own? Their heavy arms? Their controlled stumbles? Their rubbery capabilities? Their bodies' twisting, rippling impulses opening out into the surrounding air? When Skove-Epes wing-like arms cup a buffer of space around Melnick's arms, can you see and hear what energy is doing in that gap between flesh?

In this context, some marigold moments work well because they are understated. Others, conversely, shout to pointless effect, feel out of place, break the spell by trying too hard. I'm thinking, specifically, of those arms extending out in a circle with splayed, vibrating hands. Melnick brings this out twice, and each time, the impulse looks forced and phony.

Melnick is a delicate bird--one with determination and durability. Skove-Epes and Thom, as powerful and gorgeous as raptors, translate Melnick's fluidity more directly and firmly and provide a necessary grounding force for this dance.

At one point, each of the dancers stride right up to the margin in front of the first row of audience seats on two sides of the space. It's their first acknowledgement--if it is, truly, an acknowledgement--of an outside world and outsiders. They become monumental, properly humbling to gaze upon. One should feel a little awe in the presence of a dancer. If you manage to get a ticket, go early and claim a front-row seat.

Original music and sound: Steven Reker (People Get Ready)
Lighting: Joe Levasseur
Costumes: Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung

Moment Marigold's final performance is tomorrow evening at 7:30pm. Tickets are sold out, but check here for ticket standby information--and good luck!

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Abdel R. Salaam to succeed Chuck Davis as head of DanceAfrica

Transition in Leadership for BAM’s DanceAfrica
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, May 16, 2014

How are the mighty fallen: Langella's "King Lear"

Harry Melling, Frank Langella, Steven Pacey
in Chichester Festival Theatre's King Lear
(photo by Richard Termine)

Yes, it's certainly Frank Langella's King Lear, as one would expect it to be and, perhaps, as it should be. But if everything revolves around the grave, magnetic center of Chichester Festival Theatre's production at the intimate BAM Harvey Theater, that doesn't mean that the show's satellites lack their own pull.

First to meet our eyes and impress is a simple but variable set design by Robert Innes Hopkins--variable not only in what can be done to it but also what we can imagine through it. It creates a rugged, rustic, elemental environment, but even the general winter's chill throughout BAM's theater--tip: don't divest yourself of your sweater--feels in character with the chilling events onstage.

Vibrant performances are especially offered by Max Bennett as Edmund, by turns, devious and a hoot ("Gods, stand up for bastards!") and Harry Melling as Fool with sizzling, infinite energy over sustained engagement. Of the three contentious women setting off the tragedy to come, Catherine McCormack, Lear's scheming Goneril, seems most her father's daughter. Regrettably, Isabella Laughland's Cordelia leaves me wondering. Promising flickers of expressiveness play across her facial features from time to time, but the performance lacks stable focus and embodied authority. Whenever she spoke her lines while not facing my direction, the lack of a face to try to figure out only served to further diminish her.

When Langella, 76, made his first royal entrance through a thicket of wooden planks, I watched him as I might watch a dancer. The rewards came quickly. I immediately saw a battered battle ship heading into more fire, too big and unwieldy to turn itself around in time. Ultimately, he will indeed run out of time.

He enters stooped, rigid, harboring rage. His body is one big tangle, but don't dare glance away: He's not dead yet. 

With every encounter and every directive, he uses whatever power is left in his body to dominate. He gets in your face. Further along, he grabs Goneril in a maneuver so swift and decisive, I missed it. He's a raptor diving, striking some hapless creature on the forest floor; those creatures can die from fear alone.

Langella looks ready to pop McCormack's arm right out of its socket as he curses her. ("How sharper than a serpent's tooth...") For good measure, he spits in her palm. Later in the play, he will enact a scene of perverse misogyny, once again, showing that, no matter how decrepit and out of his wits, this king can still depend upon anger to fuel life. Now he can move quite well, thank you. Hate is amazing that way.

I imagine the young actors sharing the stage with this monster--this master--and thinking to themselves, Damn! Pinch me! But I'm thinking the same: I got to see Frank Langella rocking King Lear. I must be dreaming.

King Lear, directed by Angus Jackson, runs through February 9. For schedule details and tickets, click here.

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Tere O'Connor premieres "BLEED" at BAM Next Wave Festival

David Thomson (l) with Ryan Kelly in BLEED
(photo by Ian Douglas)

In the close quarters of BAM Fisher's Fishman Space, audiences enjoy an impressive, affecting view into BLEED--the new piece from Tere O'Connor Dance for BAM's Next Wave Festival. Seating is by general admission. So, if you go tonight for the final performance, arrive early so that you can sit up front and take pleasure in watching some of New York's smartest performers at work. O'Connor's eleven dancing adepts include Tess Dworman, devynn emory, Natalie Green, Michael Ingle, Ryan Kelly, Oisín Monaghan, Cynthia Oliver, Heather Olson, Mary Read, Silas Riener and David Thomson, each of these a veteran of one or another disparate works--Secret Mary, poem and Sister--folded into one another and distilled for the making of this piece. 

While that's the creation story behind BLEED, it does not explain BLEED, nor does BLEED seem to call for explicit analysis. For me, it is an hour of pure experience--awareness of being floated into and through a work of art so that its components, made and performed with exacting craft, suddenly magnify, opening themselves to exploration and marvel and amusement. Ideally, we should always be moved to see art in this way. Ideally--as I have come to anticipate from O'Connor--art should always reward this way of seeing.

James Baker--a Bessie winner and frequent O'Connor collaborator--composed the musical enchantments, performed along with cellist Chris Gross and vocalist Julia Read. Lighting is by Michael O'Connor and costumes by Walter Dundervill.

BLEED's concludes this evening with a 7:30pm performance. If tickets remain, you can get them here. 

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Following Moses(es): Reggie Wilson at BAM

This morning, I continue to mull over why I felt, and still feel, somewhat cool towards Moses(es), a new work presented by Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group for Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. I love it in pieces--and those pieces, I love to pieces. But...I still don't know....

Taking its premise from the biblical story of Moses, notions of leadership/followership and worldwide traditions of migration, Moses(es)--the plurality is important to Wilson, not just clever--incorporates building blocks and methods this dancemaker has employed before. Dry wit, personally researched and beloved vocal music of the African diaspora, choreography sourced in and flavored by cultural traditions but smartly abstracted and meticulously arranged in movements clean as a hound's tooth. His collaboration with lighting designer Jonathan Belcher locates his work in a place of theatrical glamour--never more so than in Moses(es)--and delight, as if spinning popular and folkloric culture into fine gold thread and opulent fabric for optimum display.

And there are Wilson's fellow dancers, a few whom have been along for his journey for more than two decades and turn their steadfast strengths to this piece; out of them all, none quite as eye-catching and heart-stopping in this particular work as the compact and scissory-sharp Anna Schön, a petite Orthodox Jew in a company mostly made up of tall Black men of American, Caribbean and African origins. Dressed in Naoko Nagata's red-themed costumes, Wilson's dancers pop from their empty environment on the Harvey Theater stage, creating pockets of movement and vitality. When I think of those pockets of vitality, though, I recall thinking that they looked like isolated lights clicking on in a stretch of darkness.

Watching Moses(es), I'm just realizing now, turned me into a follower, trailing behind, stumbling behind Wilson and the company as they--literally and figuratively--populated various locations onstage, offered and embodied various cultural reference points, moved to and sometimes sang various genres of music (spirituals, klezmer, house, what have you). At times, dancers would park themselves in a corner--lying on the floor or looking into the wings or just standing around--as action would break out in another location. Set against the rawness of the Harvey's stage which, for some reason, felt farther away from me than it usually does, Wilson's abstract choreography made the air seem completely still around not only any moving group but around each individual mover. The stage picture looked static and chilled, particularly any time that regulated or repeated or ritualistic action was involved or the ensemble evenly distributed its members in the manner of the white polka-dots that decorated some costumes.

Singing and chanting--some live, some on recording--and rhythmic clapping and stamping accompany much of the dancing. Some vocals emerge, subtly, from the dancers, or from Wilson and one or another performer almost entirely tucked out of sight in a corner of the space. Our ears are pulled to follow all of that, too.

I'd catch a glimpse of the very end of Wilson's tapping foot, and I'd want to go down there, round any obstruction, to be able to simply watch him. That strong sense of distance and separation and longing--maybe intentional--formed such a large part of my experience of this piece that, at the end, I felt I never got a chance to wrap my arms around it as a whole.

Did I say how it all starts? Wilson, dressed in a white jumpsuit, comes out on stage and just stands gazing out at us for a while longer than seems normal and comfortable. Then suddenly, and dryly, he identifies the troupe: "Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group." Then the other performers come out, one by one, telling us their names, their places of origin and how long they've been with the company, all of which charms the audience no end. Then they retreat to a corner, turning their backs on us and gazing at something we'll never see, as Louis Armstrong swings "Go Down, Moses." Instead, we watch Wilson, in the middle of the stage, working hard to stuff a large piece of red, soft-sided luggage with what looks like half-a-stage's worth of Mylar tinsel. He pushes and prods and pushes and prods the billowing tinsel. Will he eventually get it all in? What do you think? Now that was one sequence I felt my arms wrap around.

I think back on the silver glitter of that mound of tinsel and the nearly unreasonable dazzle of Belcher's lighting throughout, especially in the house music sequence. Impractical and fabulous, all of it, stuffed in a totally mundane piece of luggage, the way fabulosity can inhabit and animate our mundane physical selves. And necessary for all of its fabulous impracticality. It's a must. Wilson has spent most of his life in art--unreasonably impractical, that--and traveling, traveling, traveling to feed that art with all the unreasonably fabulous gifts of the turning world.

Moses(es) continues through Saturday evening with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

WOW! Hey! It's Zimmerman & de Perrot at BAM!

Now that I have seen Zimmermann & de Perrot--and, by that, I mean these two Swiss guys, their whole award-winning team and their production of Hans was Heiri at the BAM Harvey Theater--I never want to not see them.

Look at these guys!

Fellow on the right is Dimitri de Perrot, a composer and DJ. From what I could tell, as the opening night audience assembled, he stealth-recorded our discordant chatter, amplified it to a grating roar, sampled it and mixed it with electronic melodies to play as an overture to the evening. He had us from gggggrrrr!!!

Fellow on the left is Martin Zimmermann, the troupe's choreographer. Why I love him is because his performing reminded me of my tuxedo cat (who has been ailing), from his character's sly, wily personality and lithe acrobatics to his black, open-toed footwear with the paw-like white socks showing. I don't know if he intended to look and behave like a tuxedo cat, but he did.

"We call it theater because we haven’t found a better word," the partners write in their wonderful manifesto, "Our Theater."* This phenomenon combines theater, dance, circus and music, blending it all to a rich consistency presented with panache. They came to my attention when I became interested in learning more about contemporary circus--a performance genre that is all about dissolving boundaries between artistic disciplines and blowing minds.

The troupe is so good--particularly in their acrobatic and contortion skills, but also in the freedom with which they establish their individual, endearing characters and present scenarios that make sense in their fantastical senselessness because they have disarmed us.

Scenes from Hans was Heiri
top, left: Tarek Halaby
top, right: Mélissa von Vépy
with Martin Zimmermann
(photos by Mario del Curto/Strates)

In the central showpiece of Hans was Heiri, the cast occupies a quartet of room-like boxes that fit together, open side facing us. This structure frequently tilts and turns at varying speeds, challenging its human cargo. You know how you discover just how much nerve and muscular specificity it takes to merely walk from one side of a room to the other if you slooooooowww down every movement? Imagine the extraordinary fluidity and agility these performers must have, the precise adjustments they must make when they're sloshing around inside this contraption or poetically dangling from it or acting like they're just sitting around at a table as the box bucks upward or moving through doors in the walls as if they're right at home. Throw in a terrifying power yoga class with the cast stuffed into one of the "rooms" by an out-of-control instructor who has worked with Miguel Gutierrez (that would be American ex-pat Tarek Halaby), and you get a sense of why the creative spunk of this troupe is completely irresistible.

With performances by Dimitri de Perrot, Martin Zimmermann, Tarek Halaby, Dimitri Jourde, Gaël Santisteva, Mélissa von Vépy, Methinee Wongtrakoon

Hans was Heiri continues at BAM Harvey Theater through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. Click here for more information and ticketing.

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

******

*OUR THEATER

We build our pieces from little things, everyday things, things that happen when a person feels unobserved—we hunt them out and gather them together. And that’s where we go to discover characters, spaces, sounds—a small gasp, a moment of distractedness, a constriction of the heart.

For our pieces we use everything that comes our way, and let it work its way through the meat grinder.

We call it theater because we haven’t found a better word.

We like distortion, we turn everything upside down.

We seek the possible in the impossible.

We risk and we fail.

We like little things. For us, objects are living beings.

We are little wannabe greats who are suddenly in over our heads.

We fool around at the edge of the abyss.

We laugh our heads off and are deadly serious.

We ride roughshod over physical pain.

We are extremely diligent and quite painstaking.

We let it rip.

Sweat and tears, good luck and bad.

Dimitri de Perrot and Martin Zimmermann 
from program notes for BAM Next Wave Festival production of Hans was Heiri

Theater for a New Audience joins downtown Brooklyn arts district

A Vagabond Troupe Gets Its First Home
Theater for a New Audience Opens New Quarters in Brooklyn

by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, October 21, 2013

Waiting at BAM: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's "En Atendant"

So, yesterday afternoon, this malcontented woman in the audience--loud enough for people on at least one side of BAM's Gilman Opera House to overhear--leaned over to her date and said, "It doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense." And as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's often unusually silent and exposed En Atendant continued for ninety-plus minutes, the critic-at-large found any number of thoughts to share with us all, culminating with "It's over, I hope!" as gloomy darkness closed in on the final dancer.

Michael Schmid opens a performance of En Atendant

The rest of us, far better behaved, had waited patiently through what seemed to be at least five--possibly as much as ten--minutes of dry, flat sound issuing from Michael Schmid's flute as as he stood alone at the lit edge of an otherwise bare, darkened stage at the opening of En Atendant. The houselights, still up, united audience with one another and with the flutist and--at least for those of us who chose to listen--made us collaborators in the creation of a disquieting place in the mind, a void into which Schmid poured raspy breath, a foreshadow of death.

The bleak, intense 2010 ensemble, En Atendant ("While waiting, I must suffer grievous pain/and languishing live; such is my fate, for I cannot reach the fountain....") is one of two works, premiered at Festival d'Avignon, that the Belgian troupe Rosas has brought to New York for this fall's BAM Next Wave Festival. The other, Cesena (2011), which I will not get a chance to see, represents the flip side--the coming of dawn's light. De Keersmaeker steeped both pieces in the atmosphere of western Europe's 14th century--a time of plague and massacre--while highlighting the exquisite polyphonic music also characteristic of that violent age. The ensemble Cour et Coeur, featuring the sublime vocalist Annelies Van Gramberen, performs live as part of the stage scene.

Above and below: Dancers of Rosas perform En Atendant
at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Gilman Opera House
(photos courtesy of BAM)

In En Atendant, De Keersmaeker resists easy theatricality and obvious narrative while going for the primal essence of drama. You know that when any dancer touches another, a relationship is forged there and registered in your mind, although you might not clearly identify the nature of it. It lives. It resonates. Each of these brilliant dancers transmits a specific and memorable human sense of himself or herself. There is nothing cookie-cutter about these presences--from the severity of Chrysa Parkinson to the frenetic, bull-like thrashings of Boštjan Antončič. De Keersmaeker makes sure of that, just as she makes vivid movement that genuinely breathes like music even when--as in long, long, long stretches of this dance--there's no music to be heard.

Danced by Boštjan Antončič, Carlos Garbin, Cynthia Loemij, Mark Lorimer, Mikael Marklund, Chrysa Parkinson, Sandy Williams and Sue-Yeon Youn

Music performed by Michael Schmid, Bart Coen, Thomas Baeté and Annelies Van Gramberen

En Atendant will be repeated today at 2pm. Cesena will be performed this evening at 7:30pm, concluding Rosas' BAM season. For information on Cesena, click here.

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

An ordinary acrobat's extraordinary tale

I've just finished Duncan Wall's The Ordinary Acrobat (Random House, 2013), which interweaves two engrossing narratives: the often elusive history of circus and this young American's sojourn to France to explore contemporary circus as an increasingly enamored student, scholar and advocate. (Wall currently serves as National Director of Circus Now, the American advocacy organization, and teaches circus history and criticism at the National Circus School of Montreal.) While some of Wall's swings between past and present, personal and historical, might dizzy a few readers, I hung on for the whole vicarious, mental ride, coming away with a thirst for seeing more contemporary/interdisciplinary--and even traditional--circus and turning my skills as an arts writer to this stimulating challenge. If you think you know everything that circus is and can be--Ringling Bros. over here; Cirque du Soleil over there--this book will give you a peek at unexpected possibilities and may inspire you to search out more. Good stories, good ideas, good company.

And on Thursday, October 24 (6pm), meet Duncan Wall at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fisher Hillman Studio for a talk on the rise of contemporary circus and the state of the art today. This event is presented as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival in conjunction with the American premiere of Hans was Heiri by Swiss circus innovators, Zimmerman & de Perrot.

For complete information and tickets for Wall's talk, click here.

BAM Fisher Hillman Studio
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Harvey Lichtenstein, former head of BAM, to receive city award

Former BAM President to Receive Handel Medallion
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, February 19, 2013