Yamamoto curates the unseen

Guest curator Nami Yamamoto named her Food for Thought evening at Danspace Project "something/someone that you haven't seen." In my case, the "someone previously unseen" were two young Japanese dancer-choreographers--Michiyo Akamatsu and Yoko Maruyama--who call themselves Akamarukyugyosho. A couple of cartoonish, hard rock'n'rolling kittens from hell, they have energy to burn. I really liked the humor and raw force of their duet, Rise vs Fall, and its clever depiction of support and competition. And, coming right after I spent a couple of hours up at MOMA's On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century show, it made me want to swing by the nearest Staples and buy a bagful of markers. I hope we'll see more of Akamarukyugyosho.

Karen Sherman and Morgan Thorson--who showed part of a work-in-progress--have been seen many times before, though not often enough since making their home in Minnesota. I'm looking forward to the finished piece and whatever they care to bring us when they're next in town.

Another Minnesotan/ex-New York couple--Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs--are also dearly missed, and they were looking good in The Very Unlikeliness (I'm Going to KILL You!). Mostly, I love watching how on top of things they both are despite the off-centered nuttiness of their mission; they're a couple of artists who--like the best comics, verbal or physical--know precisely what they're doing at any given moment. After a while, you notice, with pleasure, their musicality, and it's particularly fascinating to watch them move in unison, side by side, and see how differently they approach the same moves and gestures while remaining in delicious harmony. Fun, fun, fun!

There's one more Food for Thought show this season--tonight at 8pm. Curated by Will Rawls, this one is called appearing and erasing and features work by Sahar Javedani (tranquility in the presence of others), Liliana Dirks-Goodman (Dance #3: Duet for Two Buildings, with Chorus) and Kennis Hawkins with Jocelyn Ladd (Lost in Space).

Food for Thought is Danspace Project's semiannual canned-food drive. Admission is $5 with two cans of food or $10. (details)

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
2nd Avenue at 10th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Catching up with New York

Back from the powerful earth of Arizona, I managed to haul my jetlagged self to Hoofers' House at The Kitchen (curated by Rashida Bumbray and MC-ed by Jason Samuels Smith) on Friday night and to La MaMa Moves Festival's "Dancing Divas" evening on Saturday evening (curated by Nicky Paraiso and Mia Yoo and featuring works by Vicky Shick, Jodi Melnick, Pam Tanowitz, Barbara Mahler, Sally Silvers and Sara Rudner). Lovely, sensitive and interesting moments were in good supply at La MaMa Annex, but the mamadiva who moved us most had to be Rudner, one of my dance-crushes from way back, whose Positions--The All Star Variation was a true, openhearted gigglefest. I loved its extravagant size, its combination of the serene and the silly, its total lack of taking itself seriously. My kind of extravaganza with amusing performances from John Scott and Chris Yon among a bevy of downtown dance beauties, Rudner among them. Look for my Hoofers' House review on DanceMagazine.com sometime down the line.

Meet "Hugo"

I strongly recommend Chris Yon's new work--Hugo--running now through Saturday evening at Dance Theater Workshop--if miraculous performances are the sort of thing you like. And, if not, go there anyway. You might end up smiling in satisfaction despite yourself, enchanted by the surprising cohesiveness and coherence of Yon's fragmented movement suite in which "untranslatable and unattachable" nonsequitors subliminally whisper a story that will leave you defenseless. And there's the wonder of dancers Jeff Larson and Taryn Griggs--a kind of arcane, avantgarde Astaire-Rogers, deployed and tightly coordinated by the wildly- imaginative Yon. These two--especially Griggs, a queenly girl-next-door with breathtaking precision of control--will surely hold you enthralled through all 60 minutes (including David Bagnall's unusually lengthy but wonderful opening video). The textures and surprises in the soundscape (designed by Justin Jones, arranged by Yon) are also all-the-way magickal. The soundscape is spacious, capacious and will swallow you up. Surprises and delights continue through to the very end. Yon's other essential collaborators include Karinne Keithley and Nicky Paraiso, in a special musical segment, and lighting designer Chloë Z Brown. I badly needed a shot in the arm--dance-wise, that is--and Hugo gave it to me.

Visit Yon's site for more information and Hugo resources, and DTW's site for schedule and ticket information. And do go!

Men in motion at Dixon Place

Walking down to Dixon Place last night to see this week's Moving Men program--curated by the amiable Michael Cross Burke--I really absorbed how the Bowery area has changed. (Oh, please! Even I shop at that Whole Foods! But I spent probably no more than fifteen minutes at the New Museum's Open House, drifting past sculpture that looked exactly like the assemblages of homeless people.) Someday, we'll have to say goodbye to the impossible little haven that has been Dixon Place as we've known it and hello to a state-of-the-art performance center--"complete with a bar!"--on Chrystie Street. I'll assume I'll have a real theater seat then (sigh), a printed program so I can follow stuff and identify people (yay!) and a more conventional amount of distance between me and whoever is dancing (oh, well...).

Being extremely close to dancers in action has its charms, and I often wonder how radical audience proximity might change specific types of companies and individual dancers and pieces of choreography for the better. In any case, I loved watching Gabriel Forestieri and Ted Johnson up close, especially to savor how gracefully the tall, imposing, superbly controlled Johnson can move. Up close, you can see the origin of each movement and you think you can even feel his thoughts fire up. Gabe and Ted move like dolphins--the kind of fish trained in contact improv, perhaps--and have an original, niftily-calibrated range of vulnerability and humor in their interactions. I could have watched a whole show of these two men.

Dancing Fish Productions/Megan Sipe offered a triplet of male solos, the last of which--an electric, full-bodied shimmier--was the guy to see. Next time, Megan, make sure your dancers are individually identified.

Miri Park--in the guise of someone named "Stella Ho"--had her cheering section working overtime, but I think a Korean-American woman portraying a flamboyant Black woman pop singer wearing a skintight, spangled dress and flipping her store-bought hair is only notable because--woowee!--it's a Korean-American woman doing it and not, you know, some drag queen. Her act was cute, nothing more.

I had a little concern for Nicky Paraiso whose solo, Song for Bill, quietly followed all the hooting and hollering for "Stella Ho." The piece opened in the dark with the sounds of Nicky playing a piano and, as the lights came up, continued as he sat there with his back to us, tenderly singing a love song. He then danced something by Chris Yon which I will forever think of as the "Chris Yon Postmodern Sort-of-Hula Mime Dance." Visualize Nicky Paraiso looking as much like Chris Yon dancing as a Filipino man can. Kind of strange. But what really got me was Nicky's New York apartment/landlord story with its exploding sink and its downstairs neighbor who lives like a princess and Nicky singing the love song to Bill in his hospital bed. This tale was surprisingly suspenseful, absorbing and, yes, moving. Nicky Paraiso: a moving man, indeed.

The next Moving Men show--featuring works by David Appel, Ojay Morgan, Leslie Guyton and
Kristen Shifferdecker--will be on Wednesday, February 20 at 8pm. For further information and reservations, call 212-219-0736 or click here.