The Apollo celebrates James Brown in dance: my review for TDE

The amazing Derick K. Grant
in Live by Otis Sallid
(photo by Shahar Azrari)

I reviewed the just-closed James Brown: Get on The Good Foot, A Celebration in Dance show at The Apollo Theater for The Dance Enthusiast, and you can find my review by clicking here.

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie takes the subway for "A Single Ride"

The fun, fast-paced A Single Ride (at Dixon Place now through the 29th) didn't give me time to mentally whine that its director-choreographer--the talented hip hop dancer Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie--doesn't perform in it. Or to ponder the fact that a whole swath of it brought to mind The Groove to Nobody's Business, a popular piece by Camille A. Brown that also features a humorous, sometimes contentious ensemble impatiently waiting for and eventually riding the subway. Asherie carries the physical humor of this situation a little further and funnier. Another sold-out crowd was richly entertained last night at Dixon Place.

You've swiped your Metrocard a billion times, but have you ever thought how that brisk, nearly automatic but sometimes thwarted action might look translated by three dancers' bodies (two to play the turnstile)? Asherie has. You've heard that announcement that "a crowded train is no excuse for sexual harrassment," but have you ever wondered what might happen if a cluster of riders decided that, no, actually it's the best excuse going? Asherie has.

Asherie gets a big assist from her creative team, especially Grammy-winning composer Marty Beller and projection designer David Bengali, both of whom are so bold and brilliant here, I would pay to experience their work even in the absence of an accompanying dance. And her dancers--Ljuba Castot, Teena Marie Custer, Valerie "Ms. Vee" Ho, Erin Holmes, Richard Maguire and MiRi "Seoulsonyk" Park--turn out to be capable dancer-actors, appealing and wonderful overall. You'll forget that Asherie isn't among them until she joins them for the final bows.

Shows are at 7:30pm through Saturday, September 29.

Information and tickets

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

Up by their bootstraps!

You go to omnibus dance shows featuring emerging choreographers with hopes that you'll catch someone worth following. Last night, The Bootstrap Festival--a multidisciplinary showcase created by the New York Foundation on the Arts--devoted an hour to short pieces by five up-and-coming dancemakers, all women, at Joyce SoHo.

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie, whose solo Brothers I enjoyed at Dixon Place last year, led the evening with Sonatina (in three movements), a title offering no hint of what would come. The Israeli-born dancer, steeped in the ways of hip hop and club dancing, is compact and forceful. In Sonatina, she flings and splatters angular movement against space but manages to do so with wit, musicality and the kind of upfront, audience-snaring presentation I associate more with jazz dance than contemporary dance. Bounce is, I think, working on being a star and should get there in due time. I also liked Cristina Jasen's Mouth for String, a quintet that displays a sensibility that's intriguingly off-centered and roomy. Discover this artist.

Caitlin Trainor's (un)Square dance is a refined modern-ballet hybrid for a quartet of women--Alison Cook Beatty, Aditi Dhruv, Julia Lindpaintner and Leslie Ziff, all lovely performers. Trainor has a fresh eye for picturesque lyricism and unusual transition but deserves a conclusion that doesn't look pat, like a quick snip and tuck.

Sydnie L. Mosley showed an excerpt from The Window Sex Project which raised a bunch of questions for me, including: Who are the four women in this piece? Are they sex workers (sort of judging by their costumes and the title)? Or are they everyday Black women who, as can happen, get showered with all kinds of verbal harrassment, like the ones litanized here, from Black men just for simply walking down the street? I ask because not only the costuming but the flow of the dance blurs these identities. The overall loopy chorus line vibe and neutrally energetic dancing also makes me wonder: What's Mosley's point of view? That doesn't really become clear until the very end when actress Leah King delivers her final line, "Is this the kind of culture we want to see?"

Throughout Shandoah Goldman's vivid ensemble piece, 23 skiddoo, I kept thinking of Pina Bausch (wacky doings among women in evening gowns and their dashing dans) and wondering if I should be tickled or alarmed by the clever resemblance. I still haven't decided. But if Goldman can marry an original vision to the kind of brazenness on display in 23 skiddoo, I'll certainly want to see more.

The Bootstrap Festival continues through February 18, culminating with a "Celebration of Movement and Interdisciplinary Art" at Brooklyn's new Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance. For complete schedule and venue information for all festival events, click here.

Women on the move at Dixon Place

It was heartening to see Dixon Place filled to the rafters with audience last night. How amazing to watch as DP--home of "go ahead, show us anything, take a chance, even be a little half-assed"--became the site of some very grown-up performance. And how gratifying to see that work coming from the women dance artists of "Women Moving," part of DP's HOT! Festival.

The evening featured short pieces by

Maria Bauman/MBDance (Women I Know)

Ephrat Asherie ("brothers," a work-in-progress)

Jen Abrams (Any Resemblance, an excerpt from a work-in-progress)

as well as a more extended movement/text solo for the renowned LAVA acrobat-aerialist Diana Y Greiner, created with playwright Lauren M Feldman. I regret that this was a one-night only program, but don't fail to keep an eye out for another chance to see these artists and their work.

Bauman, who has danced for choreographers such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Nia Love and Bill T. Jones, is an up-and-coming force of her own. In Women I Know, set to gentle, lyrical guitar played live by Ashley Phillips, Bauman dances a portfolio of studies juxtaposed with a montage of photo portraits by BJ Watkins. Each seeks, clearly, to suggest the essence of their many subjects. As a choreographer Bauman expresses this humanistic insight with the blend of strength, suppleness and flow that her training in capoeira has given her.

The slight, sinewy Asherie (aka Bounce) blew the audience away with her handsomely-arranged and expert breaking, club dancing and vogueing. Simply put, it's great to see a woman completely own the floor: not just be capable of these dance styles but actually nail every challenge of timing, accuracy of detail, flow and theatrical presentation that she has set for herself. This solo might be a work-in-progress, but I think the only work left to be done would be for Asherie to add more because we would probably be content to watch her forever.

Abrams's solo, on the other hand, really does look like an excerpt-in-progress. So far, this meditation on our hyper-cyber age has a couple of interesting points--some intermittently strange gestures and facial movements and an ethereal accompaniment, delicious to the ear and produced in a clever way that I will not reveal here. Abrams leaves us, perhaps, with an unsettled feeling of something, or perhaps, someone deteriorating, dissolving into electronic blips falling through space.

Greiner is like a stage magician skilled at misdirection. Or maybe she's more like a spider--forgive me, Julie Taymor--skilled at snaring audiences in a web made of alarming props, gutsy physicality, a gift for gab and a heart-stopping smile. In either case, unless you know her personal story--which, after a lengthy bit of weaving, she gets to when you least expect it--there's no way to be prepared for the journey of Now/Not Now or Just on the Corner of Walk/Don't Walk. Again, on the chance that you will see this piece, I won't reveal more. At times, this solo feels needlessly overextended. However, it is not only crafted and performed with impressive maturity and style but performed with confidence.

Hot! Festival 2011--Dixon Place's 20th Annual NYC Celebration of Queer Culture--continues through August 6 with a mix of "theater, dance, music, burlesques, performance art and homoeroticism for the whole family." Find out more and make ticket reservations here.

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