Marital burnout is no laughing matter...and yet: Sara Juli

Sara Juli in her show, Burnt-Out Wife, at Dixon Place
(photo: Nick Pierce)

Burnt-Out Wife
Sara Juli
Dixon Place
February 21-28

What a set! Designer Pamela Moulton's vision for Burnt-Out Wife, a solo performance by multi-talented Sara Juli, is lying in wait for the Dixon Place audience. And I say that advisedly, for this set is a monster, an eyesore. A cotton-candy-pink bathroom complete with polka dot toilet seat cover, a filmy pin-up girl robe with hot pink feather boa trim; and a wall splotched with wound-like flowers crafted, with childlike imperfection, out of who knows what. You gaze and wonder what Juli has in store for her unsuspecting visitors.

Burnt-Out Wife is everything that set suggests--and more. "I wanna get married...that's why I was born," sings Nellie McKay in the wry, melancholic song that ushers in this brilliant performance. Juli appears, giving the left-up toilet seat a certain look that immediately invokes the mate at fault and aiming another look at two baby dolls strewn about the floor. But if you think that tells you everything you'll need to know about Juli's project, think again.

Written by Juli, the performance draws clarity and vitality from her background in dance and stand-up comedy, and she shows ease and confidence in both genres. Marital burnout might not be first on your list of the funniest things in life, but Juli is really funny without straining and really fresh. She looks like a woman waking up to realize she's an Amazon and one with a future in performance art. She's physically strong--as you'll discover if she shakes your hand in a firm grip or strikes poses to represent the misalignment between her desires and her husband's--stronger than you might suspect from the weary look she gives the world most of the time. And she's smart as a whip, more than holding her own with the unseen spouse and her wackadoodle surroundings as she slyly, steadily lays waste to heteronormative conventions. In fact--through the magic touch of Moulton, costume designer Carol Farrell, sound designer Ryan McDonald and lighting designer David Ferri--she turns her hideous bathroom into a throne room worthy of pissed-as-hell royalty.

The surprises, joys and rewards of this show are many, and I will not spoil them for you as I hope you'll make your way to Dixon Place tonight for the final performance. But hurry! Last night's show was packed with happy people laughing their heads off.

Burnt-Out Wife concludes this evening with a show at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)


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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Soles of Duende asks Can We Dance Here? Please do!

Left-to-right: Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales
and Brinda Guha of Soles of Duende
(photo: Spinkick Pictures)

Can We Dance Here?
Soles of Duende
Dixon Place
December 7-8, 14-15 and 20-21

I'm not sure I follow the progression of existence to seeking permission to gaining trust to arriving at freedom alluded to in program notes for Can We Dance Here? Something about the "Transtheoretical Stages of Change" as the underpinning of the story this new dance wants to tell. But while I'm not hip to all that, I do know the three grounded, skillful and vivacious dancers of Soles of Duende--Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales and Brinda Guha, 2018 Artists in Residence at Dixon Place--make a compelling argument for the power of women and the joy of women making really big sound together. Six pounding feet rattled the floor beneath our chairs like a tremblor. Anyone placing their bar drinks on that floor surely risked a spill.

Supported by the live music of Anjna Swarminathan (violin), Frank Malloy IV (drum) and JADALAREIGN (DJ), Castro brings tap; Rosales, flamenco; Guha, Kathak, all with great conviction that these three percussive dance forms belong in conversation. Can We Dance Here? is the perfect package for that exchange of life force--no more than an hour in length, superbly focused in structure, its staging of trios, duos and solos tight as a drum.

I caught the next-to-last evening of a show that has been running on weekends since December 7. So, you have one more shot--tonight. Can We Dance Here? is an offbeat holiday-season treat, but a treat it is.

Can We Dance Here? runs at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
171 Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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We gon' dance now: Hank Smith's "Story of Tap" turns 20

Hank Smith, host of The Story of Tap,
remembered the late Sammy Davis, Jr.
patting his shins, before rising from his chair,
and telling them, "We gon' dance now."
(photo: Charles Dennis)

I felt myself smiling nearly all the way through dancer Hank Smith's program last night at Dixon Place--The Story of Tap: 20th Anniversary. Launched back in 1998 at the original Dixon Place with Marion Coles and James "Buster" Brown as Smith's first guests, the evening works a bit like a tv talk show...but better. Way better.

The better part is that it's all about tap and has the elfin Smith--dancer and so much more--as genial host. Better in that this edition had kickass tap stars Jason Samuels Smith and Derick Grant as guests along with Ayako Shirasaki, a jazz pianist whose playing is simply delicious. Better, too, because you're not home on your couch in front of a screen. You're just a few feet from the action, helplessly smiling.

The Story of Tap offers Smith a venue for humorously chatting up colleagues and idols about how they started and built their careers; who taught and mentored them; the grand inspirations--like Gregory Hines and Jimmy Slyde--they most miss; places where their skills were tested and honed; values that drive them to this day; issues that continue to intrigue them. Conversation, illustrated by archival photos and video clips, alternates with tap improvisations--astoundingly intricate or blistering solos with each dancer setting the bar higher and higher; playful face-offs; and, of course, the traditional shim sham ensemble with friends from the audience bringing it all to a close. Shirasaki was also granted her own solo at the keys during which every last one of us fell in love and awe.

I can't urge you to go to The Story of Tap: 20th Anniversary. That story has been told. But I hope Smith plans to bring tap's wonderful stories back to Dixon Place next year and the year after that and then some.

CLOSED. For information on upcoming Dixon Place events, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Laurie Berg: Say, what's that around your neck? Ewww!

from the Terrifying Jewelry collection

Last evening, dance- and jewelry-maker Laurie Berg brought her perfectly-named, perfectly-true Terrifying Times Call for Terrifying Jewelry to Dixon Place for one night only. The Lower East Side bar and performance venue was turned into a merchandizing party space with circulating performer-models (lounge), jewelry gallery/boutique (lounge and hallway leading to the theater) and Boschian den of iniquity (theater).

I first saw Berg's finished jewelry and works-in-progress at a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council artist salon back in January, charmed by its magpie-scavenged nature, collage-like whimsy, the embedding of old, found jewelry and miniatures. She makes colorful amulets, all the more powerful for their playful spirit. As I inspected the work, Berg let me in on a little secret plan to unleash a new line of necklaces with gummy or metallic cockroach pendants.

Okay, Laurie....

As it happens, this summer I've been all about tamping down my lifelong abject fear of centipedes. Maybe I shouldn't say that because Berg will probably up her jewelry game, but I have long since gotten over the cockroach/waterbug thing.  If you want to really freak me out, try centipedes...but hurry, because I've been getting steadily better at dealing with them.

Well, the "terrifying jewelry" is now manifest, saucily modeled, fashion runway- or bordello-style, towards the end of Berg's performance piece by the likes of Antonio Ramos, Madison Krekel and Carolyn Hall. But I have to say the most terrifying elements were surely the smiling 2-D masks of the face of late PBS painting instructor Bob Ross, donned by dancers--Jodi Bender, Jillian Sweeney and Berg--eerily cavorting and propping themselves around the theater's balcony railings. The stuff of nightmares, truly.

But it's a funny thing with Berg--funny, icky, lovely, irritating and beguiling all at once, qualities and moods deliberately hard to tease apart. She turned a rough alcove into a kind of catacomb awash in frightful/luscious flame red. Here we watched a mound of nude, inflatable sex dolls, rustled by living performers, slip and cascade over the edges of a grand piano. There was a huge fake roasted turkey wrestled and ported around, and who knows why?

Fake votive flames wriggled in the dazzle of their artificial light source, and a "fire-toasted" marshmallow on a stick was offered 'round the arc of viewers seated on the floor, passed hand to hand, as if we were scouts at a campground that also happened to be a mass grave. And brief, fairly random movement kept breaking out and ending up with a dancer suddenly hurling her body backward into the performance space wall--splat!--looking for all the world like...well, like a squashed waterbug with one futile, dead leg cocked at an undignified angle. Electronic experimental cellist Topu Lyo's sound work contributed obsessive repetitiveness crossed with self-medicating, mind-numbing vagueness--the perfect atmospherics.

For Berg's promotion, someone wrote the following:

"With the Terrifying Jewelry Collection, Berg explores the insidious and grotesque things that seep into our lives and 'under our couches,'  turning them into talismans for exuberant defiance and resilience."

If we humans go the way of the dinosaurs--these days, a fate that seems more and more likely--the meek will inherit what we leave of the Earth. The insects and the microbes will survive us. But, in the meantime, maybe these tough little badasses can teach us something.

Too amusing to be terrifying,
an alien makes landing in a Berg pendant.
(photo courtesy of Laurie Berg)

Terrifying Times Call for Terrifying Jewelry is closed, but you can check out some of that jewelry, and other fine work by Berg, right here.

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Antonio Ramos: For love of the body

L-r: Antonio Ramos, Darrin Wright and Alvaro Gonzalez
in Almodóvar Dystopia, premiering next month at Dixon Place
Below: l-r, Wright, Gonzalez, Luke Miller and Ramos
(photos: Peter Yesley)

When I read about Antonio Ramos and The Gangbangers planning a world-premiere Dixon Place commission described as "part Latinx-flavored 'asstravaganza,' part humorous celebration of queer culture, and part an outrageous political statement against the body-negative and repressed nature of the world we live in" and, btw, "the work is performed in the nude," I must admit I thought: 'Great. Queer. Check. POC. Check. Nude and body positive. Check and check. Dixon Place. But, of course." I envisioned the delightfully Tricksterish Ramos bringing coals to Newcastle or...whatever would be the appropriate metaphor in this case. The famously-inclusive, provocative Dixon Place is not exactly enemy territory for any of the communities or sensibilities Ramos represents.

The work's title, Almodóvar Dystopia, references Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar with whom Ramos feels creative kinship. Award-winning playwright/director/actor David Drake is onboard as dramaturg, and Ramos is joined in performance by Luke Miller, Darrin Wright, Alvaro Gonzalez Dupuy, Angie Pittman, Sarah White-Ayón and Awilda Rodriguez Lora--a diverse cast who "cull exaggerated personae from their personal backgrounds, exploring the challenges, anxieties, and neuroses entailed in the process of dance-making."

I asked Ramos, the self-identified "Queer-Puerto-Rican-Cha-Cha-Heels-Shaman," to share more about the mission and vulnerability behind the new work and how he hopes to relate to his audiences. Here are some excerpts from his remarks.

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I wish an audience that is not used to seeing this kind of work would come to see it. I really want people to understand the importance of body respect and that, in my work, all bodies are beautiful. Right now, in society, there’s this whole thing about how the body should look and how the body should be. That’s affecting us on so many levels, even in the queer community. We call each other names, and I have a problem with that.

I’m actually doing a lot of work on genitals in Almodóvar Dystopia, about how society views genitals as disgusting, taboo, that we constantly have to cover them. It’s an issue I deal with myself: why, if we are made beautiful, we have to cover, and we treat people like they are perverts. To me, that’s the perversity–finding the nude body disgusting and sinful.

It has also been hard for me to find dancers who have that sense of freedom and to deal with photographers who have strict limits on what they can show in their photographs. They don’t have to be rude about it, though. If you’re a photographer, you should find a way to work with the nudity. Their discomfort can be funny, but it’s also offensive to me. Again, it’s the issue of how we deal with genitals in this country. For me, the body is sacred. This is the real thing. We’re real people who sweat. We’re real people who shit and fart.

I am grateful for my dancers' courage, for being vulnerable and naked with me, and for believing in the work.

When you look at Almodóvar’s work, I think he’s always been interested in Hollywood and how to copy Hollywood. I’m not interested in that. I’m more interested in his process and how that process of creating is very similar to mine. It’s almost like the meta of the meta of the meta. Kind of doing a play that is being recorded or making a film of and, at the same time, you see the inside of the film, and you see the actors showing you the process of making the film. I do that a lot--show you how the work is done. I have a collage of images--things happening right now, things happening to me, things happening in the world, in Latin America. I’m excited to work with David Drake as my dramaturg. He has been really great.

I’m using elements I haven’t used before, like green screen and livestream. My video designer Alex Romania has helped me with that. Live music. I wanted to make it like you’re in the studio making a film, making a dance and trying to make sense of this mess we live in.

I feel like I have to get my voice out there, and this is my practice to deal with how we are treating one another.

In terms of shamanism, it is my spiritual practice, and I’m trying to do it within my dance. It is my way of living, my way of breaking through. It’s not a dogma, not a religion, not a rule, but more things that come through nature. I feel related to that. A lot of the source material comes from my journey, connecting with nature. Some of this is connected to my mother’s illness and death.

I’ve always been interested in herbalism. I’m a massage therapist. I like energy work. I’m very involved with all that. This sustains the work and my practice as a shaman, as a healer. And I go in nature, I get undressed, and I do my little video in the sea, in the mountains. And somehow that material gets filtrated into the dance, and the dancers learn from these improvisations. The process keeps changing, but the process also keeps creating and setting things from that process.

I don't want to give too much away about the piece, but I always have food in my pieces, and it's a symbol of unity and family, getting people together--the warmth of the food, the sweetness of it. It's part of my Latin culture.

In Almodóvar Dystopia, it's a gift to the audience. I'm grateful to the audience for taking this journey with me. Regardless if you see me as dirty, nasty, queer, perverse, there's always the sweetness. 

I hope people laugh and have fun!

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Antonio Ramos is a dancer, choreographer, and licenced massage therapist / Feldenkrais practitioner from Puerto Rico whose recent work has been presented at American Realness, The Center for Performance Research, JACK, and Museo del Barrio. He is currently a resident artist at Gibney Dance and Danspace Project. Ramos is the artistic director and choreographer for Antonio Ramos & the Gangbangers. As a performer, Antonio has danced with choreographers Mark Dendy, Neil Greenberg, Jeremy Nelson, Stephen Petronio, Merian Soto, Kevin Wynn, Ori Flomin, Donna Uchizono and Larissa Velez-Jackson/YACKEZ, among others.

 The Gangbangers find inspiration in pop music, queer identities,  shiny objects, all forms of dance, and the fabulous way a wig can enhance how one presents themselves to others.

Catch Almodóvar Dystopia at Dixon Place on Fridays and Saturdays, September 15-30 at 7:30pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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D'Lo bears witness--and gets laughs--at Dixon Place

Dixon Place presents comic performer D'Lo
in To T, or Not to T,
a highlight of the 2017 Hot! Festival,
DP's annual celebration of queer arts and culture.
(photos: Ryan Harper Gray)

Bearing witness is the only way I know to be alive. -- D'Lo

From the outset, D'Lo literally trampolines and pogo-sticks into our hearts and, if you haven't seen him perform before--and I hadn't--you figure that's cute. But where will he go after this wacky first impression?

To T, or Not to T--a Dixon Place commission for this summer's Hot! Festival--hooks in and never lets you go. Just over an hour in length, this one-trans show is, by turns, hilarious, tender and sharp. D'Lo's so talented and smooth, he makes it all look effortless, but you know a hellawork went into getting all this material to line up and flow this well.

To T, or Not to T traces D'Lo's experience being raised as a girl in a Tamil-Sri Lankan family in Lancaster, California ("aka Sri Lancaster, California") and gradually coming to terms with his true gender identity. He has now been on testosterone for two years. Right there, that's a whole lot of content. Heavy-going, you say? Oh, no. Not one bit.

What gives D'Lo and his narrative so much lift and embraceable charm is how strongly it is rooted in his observation of and complete delight in his family--a family that wrestled with challenges but ended up cheering him on in the most heartwarming way. Which makes me think: Despite the idiot in the White House and his delusional supporters, we're actually living a moment in America where D'Lo's relatives and friends could easily find themselves the subject of a quality tv sitcom. And I would watch it. Every last episode.

To T, or Not to T continues tonight and July 21-22, all performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

For a full Hot! Festival schedule (through August 4), click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Artists come together for global human rights at Dixon Place

This weekend, Dixon Place hosts a new arts festival dedicated to global issues around human rights. The International Human Rights Arts Festival has been launched by DP and producer Tom Block's Institute of Prophetic Activist Art, an educational venture drawing from a spectrum of mystical philosophies, from Martin Buber to Black Elk, for creative engagement with societal concerns. Last evening's opening ceremony was introduced by the venerable television writer, producer and progressive activist Norman Lear. Richard Nixon, he reminded us, derided his groundbreaking All in the Family as a show for and about "queers, fags, homos and hippies."

Well, "queers, fags, homos and hippies," frequently make up the audience at Dixon Place and might well enjoy much that's on tap at the IHRA fest now through Sunday. And there's certainly a lot with 2016 Bessie-winner Joya Powell (Outstanding Emerging Choreographer) showing work today at 1:30 with her troupe, Movement of the People Dance Company, on a bill with Spilling Ink Dance Company, a troupe devoted to the arts of India and the Indian diaspora. Another up-and-coming dancemaker, Jessica Chen has commissioned works for a 10pm show tonight featuring her J CHEN PROJECT troupe, Tom Tsai, Karla Garcia and Heather Robles. Edisa Weeks (Delirious Dances) and Jacqueline Dugal (Dugal Dance Projects) share tomorrow evening's 9pm slot.

And, whew! That's just the dance part!

With performance, film, poetry, theater, music, visual arts, kids activities, discussions, lounge performances and the ever-handy Dixon Place bar, there's truly something for every interest. Get a schedule of events and ticket information (including day passes) here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Underexposed at Dixon Place...for now

Artists from Dixon Place's Under Exposed program
Above: Breeanah Breeden (left) with Kathleen Kelley
(photo: Andy Ribner)
Below: Sari Nordman
(photo: Shane Solow)

The Dixon Place performance series Under Exposed, curated by Doug Post, offers emerging choreographers opportunities to show work at various stages of development. New York dance watchers might discover one or more up-and-coming artists who should be on our radar. Any such testing-ground programming will be eclectic and likely uneven but not without rewards.

The following artists showed work last evening at Dixon Place:

Kathleen Kelley and Breeanah Breeden

Justin Faircloth and Maddie Schimmel

Liz Charky

Sari Nordman

Ranardo-Domeico Grays

Grays's three excerpts from Roots--performed by members of his VISIONS Contemporary Ballet--is the kind of big-hearted ensemble deployment that would benefit from more space to spread out in and more distance from the audience than Dixon Place can offer. A praise dance steeped in traditional ballet and modern techniques, it finds its life in the elegant technique and conviction of Wesley McIntyre, the one performer who reflects the roaring fire of devotion right down to the cellular level. He is a joy to watch.

I also enjoyed the chance to see a duet by Kelley--my Montclair State University colleague--and Breeden. In Orbicular, the two women--one white, one Black--start out silently, warily eyeing each other as they begin a shifting, growing interaction. Near the end, each dancer takes turns slipping behind the other in a braid of imagery that could mean any number of things. I perceived a newfound bond against external threat, a protective alliance between the two.

Charky is the artist I'll be most excited to track in the future, and you should keep up with her, too. Her funny/scary I'm Afraid of Everyone--a sort of celebrity gossip game played out as interrogation--proved to be the perfect vehicle for four performers capable of droll humor. The two Chris Isaak songs she drops are a big bonus. Dancer Elizabeth Furman's ebbing, flowing, desperately vulnerable solo set against Isaak's "Wicked Game" makes her another distinctive artist to look for again and again.

Under Exposed is closed for the season. For information on this and all Dixon Place programming, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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SERIOUS MOONLIGHT podcast: Jessica Chen

Jessica Chen
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster
http://www.vgbphotography.com/)

Click here to listen to 
Serious Moonlight, Episode 3: Jessica Chen

Subscribe to Serious Moonlight

Jessica Chen, Artistic Director of J CHEN PROJECT, graduated from the University of California in Santa Barbara and continued her dance training in NYC at The Ailey School and Earl Mosley’s Institute of the Arts, where she received a full scholarship.

She has taught master classes at institutions such as Yale University, Boston University, Mt. Holyoke, DeSales University and Orange County School of the Arts, as well as her alma mater.  As a speaker, she presented “If I Can Dance It, Then It’s Possible” at the 2014 TEDx organized by Semester at Sea and was honored as the Keynote for Cornell University’s 2011 Celebration of Asian American Women.   Her choreography has been showcased throughout NYC including NYLA Studio Series, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Ailey Citigroup Theater and she choreographed and directed a Featured Float in the 2015 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Ms. Chen started a Mentorship Program – Summer Intensive for aspiring professional dancers and curates an annual choreographers’ festival at Dixon Place ‘TRANSLATE (voices of dance).’

J CHEN PROJECT is creating an evening length show title “The Shadow and The Like,” based on real-life tragedy, which addresses the psychological struggles behind a glossy Social Media image.  This show will run at Dixon Place from September 29 to October 1, 2016.

http://www.jchenproject.com

Read more at "Unbreakable Spirit: dancer Jessica Chen" 
by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody, September 3, 2103

Serious Moonlight--hosted by Eva Yaa Asantewaa and produced with Tei Blow--is a production of Gibney Dance Center's Digital Technology Initiative.

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Seeking a friend for the end of the world: Monstah Black's HOT!

Clockwise from bottom left:
Shiloh Hodges, Monstah Black, Benedict Nguyen,
Alicia Dellimore and Joey Cuellar (center)
(photo: Peter Yesley)

The world is coming to an end!

(No kidding!)

So, what do you do?

Well, if you're Monstah Black, you grab your pals, slap on wigs and stilettos, shake your cocktails and throw a fabulous dance party. Hyperbolic! (the last spectacle)--running Fridays and Saturdays through July 23 for Dixon Place's 25th Anniversary HOT! Festival--takes place by the light of a mushroom cloud and suggests nothing more complicated than what a lot of us have been saying lately in the wake of one bad, unacceptable piece of news after another.

Wherever you go, there you are.

You bring to each crisis precisely who and what you are and do what you were sent to Earth (from, you know, wherever Sun Ra hailed from) to do. So, let's just get the funk on with it!

When we first meet Black and company, they most bring to mind the Wicked Witch of the West--after she's been slain by a flying house, that is. Dressing room chairs and clothing racks have already toppled, pinning them against the floor. Glittery pools of blood-like fabric spread away from their poor heads.

It's August 11, 2033, and only Tucker (Joey Cuellar) appears to have survived the fashion apocalypse, perched on a bed, curly white wig dangling from fingertips. But, like creatures arising from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" ("Midnight hour is close at hand...."), the others soon spring to life, as preoccupied as ever with their usual pursuits.

Johnnie "Cruise" Mercer's character, for instance, can't get enough of his phallic selfie stick. Really, really, really can't get enough. Others obsess over their mirrored reflections, and Black--addressing us from a balcony--frets about how to fit a huge shoe collection into one suitcase.

What's important is important. "I'm going to make sure I look good if the world is coming to an end," one dancer declares. And Black--who designed the amazing costumes--certainly made sure everyone looks smashing, not only in these clubbing outfits but also the show's brisk, cartoonish movement stylings.

A lot of disciplined teamwork went into this production, you can tell, and the creative, performance and production team is sizable and complex--even with multi-talented Black appearing numerous times in the credits. The end result is far more amusement and glamour than you'd expect from catastrophe. But, then again, that's why we have queer artists.

Hyperbolic! (the last spectacle) continues Fridays and Saturdays, July 9, 15, 16, 22 and 23 at 7:30pm.  For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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And then Boom...erang!

Matty Davis (left) and Adrian Galvin of Boomerang
(photo: Mark Davis)

Boomerang almost didn't have a show last night at Dixon Place as a packed house sat waiting for, uncertain about, the arrival of drummer Greg Saunier (of Deerhoof) from somewhere we knew not where. A man without a cellphone. A man integral to the dance because not only needed for the live accompaniment but needed as frequent partner-prop in the movement. I use that term "partner-prop" advisedly, because this is Boomerang and, as you will see, that's how things go.

So there was an embarrassed Ellie Covan (Dixon Place founder and artistic director), a quite worried Kora Radella (choreographer) and a couple of dancers who just stood there looking stunned, Matty Davis and Adrian Galvin. Covan said nothing like this had ever happened to Dixon Place and fretted about how to organize refunds, if necessary. And I began to pack up my glasses, notebook and pen when a shout went up: He's here!

Everyone sighed in relief, and out came the glasses, notebook and pen. I never quite grasped the reason for Saunier's late arrival but, at that point, I don't think anybody gave a hoot. Covan pulled out her usual introductory shpiel, this time starting off: "Is there anyone here who has not been to Dixon Place before? [beat] Well, you're never going to forget it!"

Now see, the name of the brand new piece--a Dixon Place commission, inspired by new work from writer Lewis Hyde--is Repercussion. As that tells you, the percussionist should be pretty important. You might expect a Boomerang duet of Davis and Galvin, characteristically full of equal parts roughhousing, near-erotic intimacy and acrobatic efficiency, but the hour-long piece is actually a trio driven by percussion of both the musical and the physical kind.

In the ongoing swirl of things, parts of Saunier's drum kit often get commandeered by Davis and Galvin but so does Saunier. After a while--say, when dancers' cheeks rest against the metal of a cymbal, or dancers use each others' bodies for propulsion--it becomes hard to separate human from object, dance instrument from music instrument, and so forth. (Percussionists Mixing It Up With Dancers must be the theme of the week. See my review of Rebecca Lazier's There Might Be Others.) The Boomerang gang literally entwine and lock themselves in, their motion and interactions often bizarre, primal, even brutal, their momentum with the force of weather sweeping across the Great Plains.

It's hard to pick apart the threads of skill, courage, endurance, beauty and sensitivity in all of this. They fuse, but I found the dancing sometimes taking me to ancient imagery like this:

Minoan bull-leaper
Fresco from the Palace at Knossos (17-15th centuries BC),
Heraklion Archeological Museum, Greece

and this Greek fresco I saw in Paestum in southern Italy:

The Diver (470 BC),
from the covering slab of the Tomb of the Diver
Paestum Archaeological Museum

Repercussion is an uncommon sensation--or many--only lessened by repetition of movement and relational ideas that jolt us without, in the end, taking us someplace new. In that way, it seems sealed in a circular environment. Even so, Davis and Galvin are always wonderful to see.

Repercussion continues tonight as well as next Friday and Saturday, March 25-26 at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Revolution revisited: WOW pioneers celebrate now

Left: Carmelita Tropicana

Right: Claire Olivia Moed (at left) and Peggy Shaw

(photos: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Moments after the thought crossed my mind, Lois Weaver spoke it: "This is like the high school reunion I always dreamed of!" Then she held up a book to show to the merry, over-spilling crowd of, mainly, lesbians of a certain age (like mine) last night at Dixon Place. Co-edited by Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana and Jill Dolan and published by University of Michigan Press, Memories of The Revolution: Celebrating the first ten years of the WOW Café  features "scripts, interviews, photos, and critical commentary documenting the riotous beginnings of this long-lived experimental theater space for women" founded in 1981.

Last night's gathering was pretty riotous, too, with many shrieks of recognition, hugs, laughter and gratitude for the way WOW nurtured community and encouraged DIY spirit and free expression. This funky, spunky theater space launched some notable careers including performance artist Hughes, poet Eileen Myles and Tony-winner Lisa Kron (Fun Home's book and score). "Coming to WOW," Kron said, "changed everything about my life."

Running close to three hours, the show featured numerous WOW favorites, such as the Split Britches team of Weaver, Peggy Shaw and Deb Margolin (performing their goofy West Side Story/Yiddish theater mashup) and the Five Lesbian Brothers (Moe Angelos, Babs Davy, Dom Dibbell, Peg Healey and Kron), reigniting crushes that we had on all these charming and inspiring performers back in the day. One of the strongest moments, though, was a serene one--Sharon Jane Smith, quietly singing and playing her mandolin, drawing her audience closer and closer.

It's heartening to know that, despite the challenge of surviving in a changing New York, WOW Café still carries on (click here). But it's a little sad to have to give this particular event and its audience a hashtag: #WOWSOWHITE. For the most part, it appeared that younger women and people of color found other things to do last night. Maybe that had something to do with the demographics of the cohort celebrated in Memories and reflected in last night's lineup. Or maybe it was the ticket price (which, to be fair, included a copy of the book).

*****

Don't miss the next Memories of The Revolution event--"Memories of The Revolution: Locating Lesbian Culture in the Age of Queer"--a panel discussion tomorrow, March 2, at 6:30pm at New York University's Bobst Library.

The panel, composed of WOW alumnae in dialogue led by theater historian and critic Alisa Solomon and performance studies scholar Ann Pellegrini, will address the impact of feminist and lesbian voices on the downtown New York culture of the 80s and 90s, and discuss the legacy of WOW for current generations. Karen Finley will introduce the event, and Jessica DelVecchio will open it by performing songs from the period.

Other participants include Alexis De Veaux, Gwendolen Hardwick, Holly Hughes, Lisa Kron, Eileen Myles and Carmelita Tropicana.

RSVP to

rsvp.bobst@nyu.edu 

with your name and title/date of the event.

Bobst Library
New York University
70 Washington Square South (at LaGuardia Place), Manhattan
(map/directions)

*****

Help keep WOW Cafe Theater open for future generations of women and trans artists: CLICK!

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Back to APAP: Regina Nejman at Dixon Place

Above, Brazil-born choreographer Regina Nejman
in Beautiful Figure
Below, Ryan Tully at piano and Julie Miller with Nejman
(photos: Julie Lemberger)

This past weekend, felled by the bad cold that's going around town, I missed some APAP-season shows I had long looked forward to seeing. I'm back now, and a full week it will be--culminating on Sunday with The Gathering, Camille A. Brown's annual event for Black women dance artists, scholars, educators and allies!

Last night, I made it to Dixon Place for a showing of Regina Nejman's work in progress, Beautiful Figure. I won't say too much about Beautiful Figure since it is, after all, still "in progress."  But it's worth keeping watch for an official launch. Ambitious in concept and design, though compact in length, this piece fully reflects the painstaking effort already invested in its development.

Nejman tackles the notion of beauty as conceptualized through historical and contemporary Western societies. Late in the piece, she also satirizes today's digital obsessions and hookup culture.

She opens with a duet danced with Julie Miller under dim, sculpting light, both women draped in rippled lengths of slate gray fabric. Ryan Tully, the work's composer, sits at his piano, playing spare, quiet notes that, in time, will build and recede in intensity. The women move through a string of languorous poses--twisted, arched, splayed, crossed--as if at the behest of an invisible painter. Later, each will gather a length of fabric to herself, flip it around with her feet and make a grand whirlpool of energy. The dance takes the women (and their fabric) through various transformations, and even draws Tully into an undertow coursing down centuries to the age of hip hop and sexting.

Cast-wise, Beautiful Figure is a cleverly expandable thing. As noted before, Tully gets swept up into movement and dialogue, an expansion that, amusingly, does not stop with him. Nejman demonstrates her ability to coordinate activity on intimate and large scales and shows a creative range--from exquisite to athletic, from quiet to raucous, from meditative to absurd. There's palpable tension beneath all the beauty on display--always--and an evident desire for freedom. She's convincing in most things, though perhaps not yet convincing in the way she appears to conclude with a note of hope for the arrival of that freedom.

Early on in the piece, before Nejman branched into text and satire, I noticed something interesting about her approach to movement. She made us see her and Miller's bodies as human first and foremost. Not abstractions. Not symbols. Not even tools for a choreographer, trained to deliver the assigned steps and shapes. I was struck by this: Here were women. Dancing. And, yes--despite our imagination of the imaginary "artist" sketching or painting them--these were women's bodies speaking for their lives as bodies. Real ones. And Nejman's insistence on giving us even a small glimpe of the human being within the choreographed body was...well, I can only call it beautiful.

Closed. For further information on Regina Nejman & Company, click here.

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TONY Review: Mark Dendy Project at Dixon Place

I'm delighted to bring you the link to my first Time Out New York dance review--Mark Dendy Project's Whistleblower at Dixon Place.

Coming up soon: Camille A. Brown & Dancers at The Joyce Theater in BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play

Writing for Time Out New York!

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo: D. Feller)

Hey there, gang!

A quick note to announce that I have been invited to write dance reviews for Time Out New York (online) a few times per month. My first will be a piece on Mark Dendy's Whistleblower (now through September 26), a Dixon Place dance commission. I'll post links to the TONY reviews here, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, as they become available.

Otherwise, I'll continue reviewing dance and other arts here on InfiniteBody.

I hope you're enjoying the new arts season! See you around town!

Eva :-)

Pinel and Long: Choreography and the Goldilocks Principle

A moment from Nocturne by Alexandra Pinel
(photo: Brian Austin)

Choreography can tell too little. Or it can tell too much. A show of works by Alexandra Pinel and Vanessa Long, last night at Dixon Place, left me feeling like Goldilocks looking for something that's just right.

Pinel's four light-footed dancers squiggle across Allison Ball's video backdrop of animated contours which, in the dance's opening passage, resemble nestled, mute-colored lines of a topographic map. The dancers, themselves, could be abstracted features of a shifting landscape--arching away from the floor or rolling across it, skittering sideways or twirling. There's a toggling of outlandishness--in gait, in intensity--and fashion runway coolness, giving this work some quirky interest at the outset. You do wonder what comes next.

Pinel's strength appears to lie in her easy musicality, but Nocturne's techno beat landscape fails to inspire dance ideas with roots and development. Ideas arise--have the four women face one another in a close, dynamic and then looser circle; have dancers, for some reason, make slurping sounds when they lunge or extend; pose them face down with their butts wiggling for a second before they drum their fingertips into the floor. Stringing together these momentary bits sheds no light on the purpose of the work as a whole. An unclear, awkward ending does not help.

If I read the program right, Long's work is named for her company, Vanessa Long Dance Company LLC. As such, it's fair to think of it as a calling card. And, as such, it represents its eleven-member cast extremely well--in particular, Justin Heim, a standout as sharp as one of those hypodermic needles used as a prop in the piece. But, really, all of the dancers are in good form--brave and on target--in this demanding piece.

VLDCLLC--forgive the acronym--has much on its agenda. The choreographer's skills at gestural drama--literal, often cartoonish, sometimes feverishly so--make Long's ideas quite evident, delivered with no measure of subtlety. Let's check them off: We spend too much time looking at our electronic devices. We don't spend enough time looking at one another. We are busy, hectic urbanites. We are too competitive, in a soul-gutting rat race of winners and losers. We are driving ourselves crazy and drugging ourselves to death. We are in an emergency and woefully unprepared, groping around in the dark with only LED tea lights to decorate Apocalypse.

Long's capability and drive are undeniable, but we probably don't need a dramatic dance to illustrate these observations, at least not to this degree.

Closed. For information on the upcoming fall season at Dixon Place, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Michelle Sui presents "Body of Song" at Dixon Place

Multidisciplinary artist Michelle Sui
composed and wrote lyrics for Body of Song.
(photo: Len Irish)

Performing for a small audience mainly consisting of your buddies offers a chance for a bit of insider fun. So I'm not sure if composer-vocalist Michelle Sui was speaking in earnest or having a little joke, last night at Dixon Place, when she made reference to doing "site-specific theater."

The site in question, for Songs of Body, was the Dixon Place lounge, squeezed between the famous bar--This pays the bills, folks! Drink up!--and the waiting area and box office for the theater downstairs. Dixon Place uses its lounge space for compact performances of all kinds, but they might as well erect subway poles for a couple of street dancers. That's about as much room as you get, and anyone heading from the front door to the restrooms or theater below distracts audience and performers alike.

I'm still trying to figure out if Songs of Body would just work better in a more suitable, less awkward venue. Or if Sui's singers should perform it while holding cocktails. Or if she needs to cook this work more thoroughly. Maybe all are true.

The work grew of out the artist's interest in polyphonic folk vocals of Georgia and the Balkans--"laughing songs, drinking songs, eating songs, traveling, wedding, healing, dancing--song as function." In these vocal traditions, "music becomes the medicine," Sui told her audience. "It has a life of its own."

Songs of Body is described as an exploration of  "sound as touch, voice as body and language in all its senseless disintegration and relocation." A quintet of white-clad women, including Sui, sing her lyrics--"You have dismembered all melody in my eyes...I will not remember," for example--re-configuring their orientation in space for each song and, on rare occasions, making fleeting, puzzling gestures. In the work's most body-centric moment, a singer cocks back in her chair, allowing her arms and legs to paw the air as if climbing invisible clouds. Otherwise, the women remain as stationary as dolls encased in their factory boxes.

Sui erased expression of the flesh, leaving only traces to discover, contradicting the "body" part of this equation. (Sort of. I do see singing, itself, as an art of the body.) However, it does set off the voices really well because you cling to them for information. Sui's voice sounds like power constricted, reining in a mature fullness that she will let you notice and admire...from a distance. Meghan Hourigan is surprisingly jazzy in timing but like an abstract painting of a horn playing itself. A brief duet between Sui and Tayi Sanusi carries--solely because of Sanusi--an inviting lushness that makes up for the spare and shrill tone of much of the composition.

Unlike the songs that inspired Sui, Songs of Body's function is hard to discern. Its medicine remains elusive.

Closed. For information on Sui's multifaceted projects, visit her site here. For information on all events at Dixon Place, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Marga Gomez has a big problem--and shares it in POUND!

Marga Gomez
(photo: Kent Taylor)

Now that Pride weekend is done and gone, and the USA women's soccer team has its way through New York's Canyon of (She)roes, what's left to do, people?

Opening night's standing ovation made the answer clear. The Dixon Place to be is at POUND, a presentation of the 2015 HOT! Festival and the latest one-lesbian show from Marga Gomez, directed by David Schweizer. You'll need some stamina; the monologue feels much longer than its advertised 75-minutes and could use a few scissor snips. But if you find Hollywood movies involving lesbians in any way absurd and surreal--and why wouldn't you?--you'll laugh your head off.

Gomez whip-blends encyclopedic knowledge of movies and culture, rambunctious physicality, and tireless ability to zip from character to character, decade to decade and gentrified coast to gentrified coast without much mussing her lumberjack flannel. If Bound is on your Favorites list, try POUND. If you agree with Gomez that Basic Instinct made America "a little afraid of lesbians," and that's a really good thing, try POUND. If, like Gomez back in the day, you relied upon the National Legion of Decency to actually be your dyke-flick recommender, try POUND.

POUND continues Fridays and Saturdays, July 11, 17, 18, 24 and 25 at 7:30pm. Click here for information and tickets.

Comic monologist Reno
performs free shows at Dixon Place
during the 2015 HOT! Festival.

Another HOT! tip: Also see Ignorance Is No Excuse, Reno, an hour with the matchless comic provocateuse at Dixon Place--free!--Mondays, now through August 3, at 7:30pm. Click here.

For more HOT! Festival events, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Chen's TRANSLATE: New voices, new dances

Some of Jen Roit's dancers in the comical and hyperkinetic Tropes,
curated by Jessica Chen for TRANSLATE (the voices of dance)
(photo: NYCreative Photography)

Below: Cody Potter in Shauna Sorensen's Circular Shift
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster)

Jessica Chen's dance festival, TRANSLATE (the voices of dance), offers developing choreographers ground to network with their peers, trade ideas and tools, build work and show it to a paying audience. A July 9th performance at Dixon Place, curated by Chen, gave us a look at what can come of these opportunities for creative exchange.

The show featured brief works by select troupes:

Simona De Tullio/Breathing Art Company

Ellen Sickenberger/Ellen&Artists

Jen Roit/Armada

Cleo Carol Knopf/Poemdance Co

Rachel M. Hettinger

Robert Moore

Shauna Sorensen and Dancers

with Chen's J Chen Project rounding out the evening in Training the Devil, the electric, contentious duet she choreographed with Chien-Hao Chang. A highlight of Chen's spring season at Ailey Citigroup Theater, it shines again, now with performances by Melissa Wu and Sean Nederlof. You can tell the sort of things that matter to Chen--character and feelings grounded, shaped and revealed in sharp imagery and rigorous, dynamic motion. Her curated artists hit those marks--or nearly so, clearly aspiring to them. They are all promising and worth encouragement, but I will note here two works that reached me and stick with me for two distinct reasons.

from Rachel M. Hettinger's Unfocused Blues
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster)

Rachel M. Hettinger's Unfocused Blues, with its many oddities, comes across like a smartly-designed calling card delivering just enough flair and mystery to make a viewer remember to seek out this artist in the future. New lifeforms erupting in motion, the ten dancers maneuver swift turns and scoops, with spongy knees and smoothly articulate torsos. A soloist can resemble tumbleweed, and a chorus splash movement like graffiti on concrete. The piece and its well-rehearsed corps--which includes the choreographer--have a steady, indeed brazen, confidence.

I'll admit I tried to resist Awakening Earth, a solo by and for Cleo Carol Knopf. An aerial dance set to "We Shall Overcome," sung by a Gay Men's Chorus, city undefined, and Holly Near's "Singing for Our Lives, a song I haven't heard in decades, sounds a bit much, a bit treacly. Yes, it almost is. Social justice anthems mixed with a circus act? I backpedaled. But Knopf grounded her sincerity in strong discipline, and that pulled me back. As she worked within her aerial hoop--ascending, coiling, stretching and yearning--it was impossible to not get carried along with her effort, skill and emotional momentum. Her dance, ultimately, is about giving one's all, one's best. A quest and a personal tribute to all who have struggled for social change we have seen and have yet to see.

Closed. To keep informed on future plans for Jessica Chen's TRANSLATE program, visit her Web site here. For Dixon Place's summer schedule, click here.

Saving New York: James Godwin's "The Flatiron Hex"

James Godwin in The Flatiron Hex
(photo: Jim Moore)

The pipe is the underworld of NYORG. The main section is what’s left of an old pipeline. Nobody knows what used to flow through it or even who built it.. Some of the old tech still works and the L train still makes its run across the island. Granted, it’s only 4 times a month. AND NEVER ON WEEKENDS.

--James Godwin, The Flatiron Hex

One of Manhattan's most distinctive, most photographed structures, the Flatiron Building certainly captures the imagination. But did you know that it also holds the key to our salvation?

Okay, neither did I. Something about opening the right windows in the right order to create just the right Aeolian harp-like tone and vibration. But you can try figuring it out with hilarious James Godwin at The Flatiron Hex, his new puppet/performance art/visual art extravaganza, a Dixon Place commission directed by his co-writer and sound designer, Tom Burnett.

This is a supernaturalhexacalifragilistic tale of one Wylie Walker, a sorcerer-shaman hired to protect a futuristic, plague-ravaged New York City (now called NYORG) from an impending superstorm. We meet the nonsense chant-spouting Walker--"Most of what I do is flim flam..."--and Godwin surreptitiously controls and visibly speaks for a host of some of the creepiest, most pointless puppets you've ever seen. Favorites include an elegant rat queen and The Tongue--security firm owner and mayoral candidate--who makes exits in a certain way that, for no reason at all, leaves people in stitches.

Godwin's super-power appears to be the ability to creep and gross us out while keeping us tethered to his charm. Last night, that charm got tested to the max by equipment malfunction, a situation Godwin milked and milked productively and quite winningly.

Just avoid the front row because...well, there will be blood.

Remaining shows are tonight; May 22-23; and May 29-30--all at 7:30pm. I suspect this will sell out. So hurry to get more information and tickets here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)