Choreographer Douglas Dunn celebrates his new book

Book launch for Douglas Dunn's new book of collected writings, Dancer Out of Sight

Douglas Dunn (photo by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan)

Wednesday, December 5 (6pm-7:30pm)

Douglas Dunn Studio
541 Broadway (between Prince & Spring), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Wheelchair accessible

Reservations Suggested
866-620-7509

While I was away...

When you've had very little (and unreliable) access to the 'Net, catching up with nearly three weeks of dance-related news (just for starters) is quite a task. Here's a handful of notable items culled from The New York Times, just in case you happened to miss these, too.

Gerald Myers, 85, Writer on Dance and Philosophy, Dies by William Grimes, February 23

New Punch in an Old tale as a Trickster Reappears by Claudia La Rocco, February 27 (I'm including this since my pile of email messages reveals quite a bit of raving about this work, and I regret missing it. Damn nicely-done review, too.)

Pearl Lang, Dancer and Choreographer, Dies at 87 by Jack Anderson, February 27

For a Dancer Making His Way, It's All Tap, All Day by Tammy La Gorge, March 1

Bigger Woes for Library, as a Buyer Backs Out by Robin Pogrebin, March 4 (not dance-related, specifically, but...you know.)

Dancing With the Average Folk by David McKay Wilson, March 8, 2009

Much ado about...something

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Curator and artiste provocateur Tere O’Connor has given the City That Always Seems to Need One More Dance Festival a new festival in which choreographers start off with nothing–no concept, no music, no whatever–and come up with...something. (Funny, I thought that was the way it usually worked. In creativity, isn’t there always that moment right before the initial, germinating idea emerges?) This week and next, DTW’s showing The Nothing Festival (www.dtw.org for details and tickets) with work by Douglas Dunn, HIJACK, Sam Kim and Dean Moss (April 18-21) and Luciana Achugar, Walter Dundervill, Jon Kinzel and Susan Rethorst (April 25-28). On Saturday, April 21, DTW will host a panel discussion with O’Connor and the choreographers (1-4pm).

Opening night’s lineup included:

–the interminable but harmless and attractively danced Zorn’s Lemma, in which Dunn makes like a senescent, disoriented speedskater surrounded by fairies wearing wonderful Mimi Gross costumes,

–Colin Rusch and Angelina Jolie, in which the Minneapolis duo Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder (aka HIJACK), two clever, technically-gifted women who regularly subvert all of that, get a lot of mileage out of and put a lot of mileage into a very different form of social studies class,

--Sam Kim’s Cult, a tedious duet for the choreographer and her collaborator Justine Lynch in which these two–check out that hair, those scary fake nails–appear to be having the sleep-over party from hell, and

–States and Resemblance, a work-in-progress (collaborators/performers: Dean Moss, Ryutaro Mishima and Restu Kusumaningrum) that is such an accomplished, elegant piece of art at this point that you have to ask what the heck more they think they need to do to it. Yeah. Seeing this one dance again is all I want to do right now.

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa