Call for applications: Fall Movement at Center For Performance Research

Applications for 

CPR Presents: Fall Movement 

(November 7-9)

Center For Performance Research (CPR) invites applications from artists working within the various aspects of dance and performance as well as unique collaborations with the technological and visual art world to apply to present their work at CPR Presents: Fall Movement November 7-9, 2013.

DEADLINE: Monday, September 9, 6pm

For more information, click here.

Objects in the mirror...

By far, the foxiest, scariest object on hand at Object as Performer, a program of videos and dances curated by Sarah Dahnke, is actually two objects--a needle and thread in the hands of dancers Anna Adams Stark and Emily Skillings in barrish (curation #4). This work-in-progress, choreographed by Sarah A. O. Rosner in development with various pairs of dancers, begins in the lobby at Center for Performance Research while the audience waits to be admitted to CPR's studio.

Since the women's movements are so small, close and intimate, this prelude of sorts serves to shift the crowd's consciousness, taking watchers from the energy of the urban nighttime streets to something quieter, more sensual. But with a distinct edge. After all, we're watching that always-threatening sewing needle, the implication of piercing flesh. We watch the women sew together a patch of each of their lightweight, stretchy shirts, winding the length of thread around that point of connection. Each one them pulls back from this curious suture, making visible lines of force between them as they move, externalizing their interdependence, their balance and imbalance, their support and risk.

This provocative interaction continues and is expanded after the audience enters the studio but, this time, with the sculptural beauty and enhanced implications of full and partial nudity.

Object as Performer--including works by Rebecca Davis, Juri Onuki and Abigail Levine--concludes with this evening's performance at 8pm. For more information, click here.

Be sure to wear warm socks. You will be required to remove your shoes before entering the studio; the temperature is decidedly chilly and the program, long.

Center for Performance Research
361 Manhattan Avenue (between Jackson and Withers Streets), Brooklyn
(directions)

Szabo: Why-o did I leave Ohio?

What is it about the kitchen? (lowercase t and k, mind you)

If I need a good cry--or even if I don't consciously think I need it but have no way to prevent it--I'm usually standing up at our kitchen sink, washing plates and eye-to-eye with a pigeon on the neighbor's fire escape. Clearly Michou Szabo (The Mill Michou Szabo) has some history here, too.

Szabo's new trio, Alone, OH--presented at Brooklyn's Center for Performance Research--takes us into what the quiet, spare kitchen of what appears to be a working class, midwestern (Ohio) household of three women. Hard to know the ages of these three, since the dancers could be roughly the same age, but from their deportment and behavior you can imagine a middle-aged mom (Sandy Tillett) with two youngish teenagers (Julie Alexander and Jennifer Lafferty). Designer Joanne Howard has arranged functional furniture--a simple dining table, chairs--as well as a sink, stove, basic equipment, dishes and silverware. Nothing outstanding. Even the decorative curtains--hanging straight down on either side of the sink--fail to be remarkable in any way. It's a feeling of hardness and withholding.

But this kitchen conceals an undercurrent of emotional energy that explodes, rarely in words or facial expressions, but in direct, brutal and relentless movement. There's something of Graham's psycho-physical starkness in this, but a Graham electrified and wilded. We think we are in the bedrock of civilization, but we will discover that we are not. Szabo peers into the minds of his three characters and channels psychological expression through the body with inescapable impact.

Composer Guy Yarden's score captures the low-grade but toxic obsession and tense emotional weather, but Tillett, Alexander and Lafferty--often punishing to watch--really make this piece. There's a fleeting moment in which, with posture and a single look, Tillett suggests what might be the source of her anger. In that moment, especially, she's stellar and stunning.
 
Alone, OH can be a long hour--with some overly repetitive motifs--but see it for these dancers' gutsy, all-in performances.

See The Mill Michou Szabo in Alone, OH at Center for Performance Research tonight and Saturday night at 8pm. Details here.

Center for Performance Research
631 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn

Directions: L to Graham Avenue (3rd Stop in Brooklyn). Exit to the right of the turnstile. Take a left down Graham, another left on Jackson Street and a right on Manhattan.

Faïn and Kocik: transformative space

Daria Faïn (choreographer) and Robert Kocik (architect/sculptor/poet) have had the good fortune to visit and soak up the atmosphere of ancient healing sites on the isle of Amorgos in Greece. Their new work, The Extent to Which, evokes the resonant geometry and history of the temples, baths and ampitheaters in which the Greeks cleansed bodymindsoul. As part of The Prosodic Body--Faïn and Kocik's overarching project--The Extent to Which re-links art and health in our modern-day awareness with an aim to create true transformation, not mere spectacle.

As spectacle, though, Extent has its beauties and its intensities, certainly not separate from its purpose. Performed inside and around an open enclosure of plexiglas and wood, with a stream of increasingly primal sounds both remote and startingly near, the hour-long work abstracts the experience of sitting in the ancient structures and witnessing the ritual arts. In one captivating passage, we watch dancers orbit the center of the performance space, and one another in shifting arrangements and pathways, with their arms and hands forming various hieratic gestures and their bare feet making a soft, dry, shuffling sound.

Another segment takes a less soothing approach as dancers pitch painted rocks at the barriers. There's a fascinating theatrical tension between the crash of rocks smacking into plexiglas--not far from audience members looking on from risers on those sides of the space--and the total control of dancers who, though dashing precariously around one another, toss those rocks with the power and disciplined, studied grace of Olympian athletes.

At the end of the performance, I felt more than a little spacey, as if I had been transported to another world.

The Extent to Which, a joint presentation of Danspace Project and CPR--Center for Performance Research, features Faïn's troupe, Human Behavior Explorers: Benjamin Asriel, Charlotte Gibbons, Alexandra Martorell, Valerie Samulski and Peter Sciscioli. Other members of the collaborative team include Rodrick Murray (lighting), Matt Dick (costumes), Michelle Nagai (music), and Kenta Nagai (live sound performer). The show runs through Sunday with two performances tonight, Friday and Saturday (7pm and 9pm) and a 3pm performance on Sunday.

CPR
361 Manhattan Avenue, Williamburg, Brooklyn
Just a short walk from the L train at Graham Avenue

Information and reservations or 718-715-1500

CPR for dance and performance

A (Green) Place for Dance and Performance to Bloom
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, March 7, 2008