O’Con loves a mystery

Underneath Where We Are--the latest enigma from the interesting mind of choreographer Tara O’Con--features a couple of marvelously self-controlled performances by Jodi Bender and Megan Madorin at The Chocolate Factory. These two have a very difficult and sophisticated task: to draw an audience into the fine, delicate details of movement and of tactile experience, to keep watchers sharply focused even when the information coming from the dancers’ bodies aims to bypass the logic centers of the brain. It’s a gamble for O’Con and her collaborating dancers, and they win.

At the outset, a low rumble slithers beneath the dark, like a train passing deep below the building’s foundation. Opposite the audience, against a distant wall, an indistinct shape writhes in heavy shadow. The faintest light dusts the top of it, and eventually we can tell it is two bodies splayed against the wall, two women entwined, stretching with and collapsing upon each other. Since this opening goes on a while, a thought comes: What if this were to be the entire dance--Bender and Madorin endlessly twisting, twining and sinking, wallflowers drooping from weak stalks--could that gamble work? Interesting to contemplate. I almost think it could. In more light, however, they collapse to the floor and rest.

This pause afforded a moment to reflect on the abstract work of art that is The Chocolate Factory’s interior. Most of O’Con’s dance is performed quietly, slowly, and with reference to the space and its unusual features--the dark, ominous-looking shaftway, helpfully labeled SHAFTWAY and barricaded with two horizontal metal bars; the patchy-surfaced sliding door; the thick, vertical pipe at one side. Dancers never--to my best recollection--look into our eyes; most often, they dance with their backs or sides facing us, and they emphasize only the life of the animal body, not the life of any identifiable ego. They attend to their own bodies or to the surfaces of the space, and that attention seems to have nothing to do with us--at least, on an intellectual level. But O’Con makes us feel the breathing of bodies--quite literally, at times, as when Bender pants heavily after her solo to the old Motown tune, “Who’s Loving You,” a singular eruption from the identifiable world of pop culture. We also perceive, strongly, the breathing presence and soul of place.

With lighting by Chloë Z. Brown and sound design and compositioin by Jason Sebastian

Underneath Where We Are continues, nightly at 8pm, through Saturday evening. Click here for information and ticket reservations.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue
Long Island City, Queens
718-482-7069
(directions)

Sweeney: Could be

In This could be it, choreographer-soloist Jillian Sweeney, gives herself a tough assignment. She must fill a fairly unforgiving space--The Chocolate Factory, modest in size, intimate for the audience and raw in aspect--with the stuff of her inner, psychic life. She must also fill an hour and hold it down with the force of her personality. I'm not convinced that she's totally there yet--a compelling performer who can, indeed, hold down an hour and keep it from feeling too lengthy and self-indulgent--but I admire her poise and moxie.

This solo evening--concluding its run tomorrow--hinges on the artist's apparent predisposition to spontaneously go out of body. Through various creative means, it tells of her history with this phenomenon. Now, consider that we're talking about a dancer. The notion of a dancer not being all that tightly wedded to her actual physical form is pretty interesting, and Sweeney's ambitious approach offers a variety of ways to contemplate this state of affairs.

Sweeney's a pleasant, wholesome-looking young woman who starts her show by striking glamour-girl poses, hip jutting in a ridiculous fashion--not how you'd normally think of her. So, immediately, she's showing something of a disconnection, a picture of unreality. Her poses become tense, and her tiny moves quiver as if she's in a silent movie. She's also subject to the psychological lashings of a disembodied voice--her own, recorded--that meets her gentle equivocations with a demand that she "Say it!" and issues instructions, some of them contradictory. I was tickled when Sweeney finally--finally!--figured out that she could simultaneously "Go to the shaft!" and "Stay down!" if she just rolled the hell over to that shaftway!

That unrelenting Voice can be a bit of hoot. For those of you who will go tonight or tomorrow, I won't spoil it for you by revealing my favorite moment. At the risk of sounding like The Voice that she's already got inside her artist's head, I'd like to see her push that wit harder and Say It! Whatever it is, just Say It!

This could be it unfolds, with fine support for Sweeney, in a space created by Brian Rogers (sound and video) and Chloë Z. Brown (lighting). Sweeney collaborated with her director Jeffrey Cranor on the writing and set (which consists of her storytelling props) and with Mary McKenzie on the costumes.

See This could be it tonight or Saturday night at The Chocolate Factory, 8pm. Information, directions and tickets here.

Baldwin's "Bear Crown" at DTW

Congratulations to Body and Soul interviewee Ivy Baldwin and her creative team upon the successful opening night of Bear Crown at Dance Theater Workshop. Running 55 minutes, the piece dreams up an environment of open, luminous structure with pockets of wit, mystery and danger. Derived from many experiences and serendipities, it all means--to you--whatever you glean from and project upon it. The cast includes Anna Carapetyan (a new member of the troupe) and longtime collaborative performers Lawrence Cassella, Mindy Nelson and Katie Workum. Lighting designer Chloë Z Brown and sound designer Justin Jones are each on top of their game, and their magical work for this piece will be long remembered.

Bear Crown runs through this Saturday at 7:30pm.

Schedule and ticketing at Dance Theater Workshop

Listen to Ivy Baldwin on Body and Soul podcast.

DTW: Paper or plastic?

On Saturday night, the shared program of Kyle Abraham (of Abraham.In.Motion) and Layard Thompson drew one of the coolest audiences I've seen at Dance Theater Workshop--or anywhere--in a long time. If I could put in an order for more of the same, all around New York's dance scene, I would. But, then again, how diverse did this audience turn out to be when some of Abraham's followers left in the break before Thompson's half of the show? (Oh, well...) In any case, both of these artists made strong impressions over the course of an evening that, under normal circumstances, would have felt--and, indeed, would have been--way, way, way too long. Somehow, both of these guys pulled it off. How?

Abraham. Folks should rush to sign up to dance for him. I certainly would. With an assist from costumer Sarah Cubbage and lighting/projection designer Dan Scully, Abraham creates environments--no, havens--for the human body that show it off to startling effect. Witness his solo Brick, its multiple, moody aesthetic layers--minstrel-like stereotypes writ monumental, floating Afro wigs, black skin coated in jet-black grease paint, moody Japanese landscapes, crime-scene outline graffiti, a collaged soundscape of irresistible hip hop rhythms with highly-resistible hip hop lyrics--and the way it stuns you and suspends you in a light trance poised between avoidance and indulgence. A solo, sinuous and jarring, all of it coming at you, illogically, in waves of elegance. A haunted performance by a young yet confident performer, one who shows himself, in The Dripping Kind, his ensemble piece, to have a keen eye, serious discipline and incomprehensible originality. Whenever Abraham sets anything before you, be sure to keep track of stuff going on in the margins. He will color outside the box. I suspect we will have to reckon with this rising artist in coming years.

Thompson. The boundary-less Id that crashed the party. Propelling himself down DTW's stairs in a noisy, ruffly dress constructed from a gathering of used paper coffee cups. Thompson flopping and levitating. Chanting and burping. Shedding his shell-like dress and inner cocoon-like layers of plastic baggage. Cup...puC......K......Ohhhh, Beauty, full, vessel: Holy ritual. Wholly, a tantrum. Thompson is a child unsupervised, only sporadically self-conscious. Or, perhaps, Thompson is Mother Earth Herself, keening and flailing like a oil-soaked cormorant, wacked out and desperate to get out from under. Borderline. Some people tittered, but it's really painful (and potentially transformative) to watch with an open heart. Like Abraham, Thompson gathers collaborators who go full-tilt with him--in this case, lighting designer Chloë Z Brown and costumer Machine P.H.D. (Pixie Harlot Dazzle). The world they conjure--which is to say, our world of consumption, excess and heedless destruction--is completely mirrored in Thompson's risk-taking performance. Risky to body and damn challenging to an audience who, among other things, must witness the performer turning a spreading puddle of urine into a prop. Tempting to say that Thompson doesn't know when to stop, that Cup ranneth over numerous times and could have--should have--ended at any point along the way. But the man gave his all, and then some, and it all fit his intention. I'd call that a success.