Jennifer Monson's iLAND premieres "bend the even"

bend the even
danced by Mauriah Kraker (left) and Jennifer Monson
Below: Monson (left) and Kraker
(photos: Ryutaro Ishikane)

This work allows for the possibility that movement disappears and leaves only sensation, an emanation that is experienced through the skin and ears, not so much through the eyes. In bend the even this asks the viewer to release what might be tangible about the experience in preparation for what is newly emerging.
--from publicity for bend the even

Most of New York's dancemakers struggle to secure space to develop their work. But, for Jennifer Monson's latest piece, nature has provided...provided a place for research and exploration...provided motivation, inspiration, even, in its way, partnership.

bend the even--now in its premiere run at The Chocolate Factory Theater--is an experience of an Illinois prairie that we cannot (or maybe can) see. It is darkness and dawn at a beach we cannot (or maybe can) feel beneath our feet. It comes to life in a small loft studio in Long Island City but is intended to take us somewhere to wait for the unexpected and unforeseeable to become apparent to us.

To label it as a dance, and specifically a duet between Monson and Mauriah Kraker, is to lop off two of its essential limbs--the live soundwork of Jeff Kolar (electronics) and Zeena Parkins (acoustic harp); the lightwork of Elliott Jenetopulos, performed in the breath of the moment. (Costumes are by Susan Becker; scenic design by Regina Garcia.) It seems important to this team that their contributions be noted then removed from that hook and released. Something else, we've read, will come to "emanate at the edge of kinesthetic perception."

The research for this project was started in February 2017 with weekly rehearsals at dawn. These rehearsals have generated material connections between light, music, and movement – not as a representation of the liminal states of dawn but as a way of accessing new frameworks for emanating presence and animacy through the three mediums. This work allows for the possibility that movement disappears and leaves only sensation, an emanation that is experienced through the skin and ears, not so much through the eyes. Through the choreographic process, the collaborators will research the physics of sound, light, and movement on multiple scales – both scientific and experiential – drawing on atmospheric science as well as particle physics to inform the dawn practice.

Monson proposes something new, not so much relinquishing the choreographer's role--for the movement in this piece is fascinating and appealing as it is willful and wayward--as redirecting us to an unacknowledged result of choreography, a different purpose for it and for its fusion with other stimulants. I feel that I'm quite stuck on the edge of this desire, instinctually sympathetic with it while what's aimed for remains elusive. As audience members, we're habituated to focus on looking and listening for things and to appreciate (and, yes, interpret and judge) what we see and hear. bend the even intends disruption, or some form of liberation, but I'm caught up in its sensations.

What did we do with the sudden, absolute stillness that broke out on occasion? Did we check for external or internal vibes, or did we tick the seconds, wondering what we were supposed to be feeling and when the dancers might finally move again? Did that time feel more awkward than destabilizing? What about Jenetopulos's precipitous jolts in the lighting or other changes in sound and the dynamics of motion? Did we just "even" the bends right out and get back to our usual way of taking things in?

All that's to say, I'm not sure the bends in any even did more than point to a barrier we should know about. It did not lower that barrier--at least, not for me, not last evening. But maybe that pointing is, in itself, a useful beginning.

bend the even, running through Saturday with performances at 8pm, is sold out, but there is a waiting list. For information, click here.

The Chocolate Factory Theater
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions)

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Lily Gold's "Good Mud" opens at Danspace Project

Good Mud,
the first evening-length work by Lily Gold
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Gold performing some of her music
at Danspace Project's box office.
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Scene from Good Mud featuring dancers (l-r):
Madison Krekel, Eleanor Hullihan,
Asli Bulbul and Alice MacDonald
(photo: Ian Douglas)

The more time I give it, the more Lily Gold's first evening-length dance, Good Mud (now at Danspace Project), tells me that its vibe is decidedly, and affirmatively,  feminine.

In Gold's program notes, I find a quote from Clarissa Pinkola Estés--she who famously ran with women who run with the wolves--counseling us to "intervene in a stormy world" by standing up and showing our souls. "Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times." And I know exactly what she and Gold (no pun) mean. These times are not only dark but arid and hungry for souls. They could suck the air right out of your lungs. But Good Mud shines like gold.

It makes me want to chuckle with skepticism and yet embrace it at the same time. Gold, nestled inside the hot pink folds of something, greets us, next to the box office, with music that sounds like an organ voluntary crossed with New Age-y atmospherics. I know we're going into St. Mark's Church. But are we going to church?

Inside, she has our seating set up so that we're wedged into each of the four corners of the space. I don't think I've ever seen a Danspace audience arranged that way. Four dancers--Asli Bulbul, Eleanor Hullihan, Madison Krekel and Alice MacDonald--eventually emerge in the gaps between like celebrants entering an ancient amphitheater. Their quiet, solemn opening of simple, patterned, repetitive, gradated, side-to-side steps--I thought, a little, of Lucinda Childs--give the proceedings a ritualistic import.

New Agey, too, is the thin, fabric-like "canopy" of plastic suspended above the dance floor, fastened to the balconies, billowing and undulating like a jellyfish, hovering like the Holy Ghost in delicate shimmer light designed by Elliott Jenetopulos. I want to chuckle at it, too, especially when it's lowered, drawn through a gap between audience wedges, wiping across a couple of faces. But, like everything else--like the dancers' prancing, swirling, sloshing and settling, the round-like vocalizing and the ebb and flow of everything--it has its seductive powers.

The overalls worn by two of the dancers are simple and humble--the very idea of an overall--and not at all workmanlike but rather pristine and, also, clever. We are suspended between our views of things and feelings about them. And, yet, still seduced.

Good Mud runs through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)


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Naturally Jen Rosenblit

Left to right: Justin Cabrillos, Jen Rosenblit and Addys Gonzalez
in a performance at Judson Memorial Church

What's natural?

In a dance by Jen Rosenblit--say, a Natural dance by Jen Rosenblit at The Kitchen--it appears to be bodies being in space, a lot of open space, and being exactly what they are and doing what they do and not being overly messed with. Bodies occupying space together--say, Rosenblit herself and Addys Gonzalez and Justin Cabrillos and Effie Bowen and Hillary Clark--co-existing without the force of How Bodies Should Occupy Space Together and How to Make Things Happen. And if anything happens between and among those bodies in space, it happens in the charged and naturally absurd space of juxtaposition and repetition, not because someone once laid out Rules of Choreography. Or rules of anything.

Natural like, You've got this meadow over here and this little tree standing up that you can see out of the corner of your right eye, and maybe a pinto scampering in the far distance. You turn your head to look directly at the tree, and suddenly a hare hops into view.

a Natural dance has a voiceover passage (uncredited, but Rosenblit is a fascinating writer to explore; see her blog) that is a wry enumeration and litany of colors from, it would appear, the world of cosmetics. [UPDATE: Folks on Twitter seem to have discovered the true source: A catalogue of theatrical lighting color filters!] There's no clear sense of why this text accompanies this particular stretch of movement. Like anything else spliced into the space, there could have been a specific reason for it, but why burden it with thoughts like that when it's just delectable to the ear, the way that Rosenblit's striking costumes for Gonzalez and Cabrillos--cartoonishly oversized overalls, one in teal green, the other in royal blue, skimming the two mens' bodies, offering space, space, space--enchant the eyes?

At times, Rosenblit sails warm-toned vocalizing across the space from a platform--more space for one or another dancer to claim--set up, at the edge of the audience, with lounging pillows, which go unused, and a microphone. Sound is a rich part of Rosenblit's sculpture, of her ecology, and so is silence, every bit as much as motionlessness. Lighting designer Elliott Jenetopulos turns the space into a lightbox, making Rosenblit's images pop. But, for a short spell, he transforms it into a velvet-lined gift box--a little technical drama dropped, for a moment, into this natural world.

a Natural dance runs through tomorrow evening with performances at 8pm. Tickets are sold out, but for information, click here or call (212) 255-5793 ext. 11 (2-6pm).

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/direction)