#PUNK it out, Africa! Nora Chipaumire at FIAF

Nora Chipaumire, above,
and below, with Shamar Watt at far right, in #PUNK
(photos by Elena Olivo)

#PUNK is the first part of a triptych titled #PUNK 100% POP*NIGGA, a live performance album that confronts and celebrates three sonic ideologies: punk, pop, and rumba, explored through the radical artists Patti Smith, Grace Jones, and Rit Nzele. -- from program notes for #PUNK

Nora Chipaumire--a Zimbabwe-born dancer with intensity to rival any other performing artist plus, I see, the ability to land herself an interview on CNN--has made her sinewy body more than the instrument of her forthright ideas. It is a force to be reckoned with and, like her incisive mind, a force that will roll up on you the second you merely think about messing with it.

In #PUNK, company nora chipaumire's new piece for Crossing the Line 2017 at French Institute/Alliance Française, she's joined by Shamar Watt, native of Jamaica, who danced in her sensational and controversial trio, portrait of myself as my father, for BAM's Next Wave 2016. His participation in this new work makes it a duet, a fact that does not appear in the press release that I was issued, just as his bio does not appear in the program (although his name, as performer with Chipaumire, does). I don't know what all this means but, just like the unusual set-up of space and audience for the show, the presence of this killer dancer turned out to be an exciting surprise.

So, they're doing punk now...but with an African twist because Black. And because punk energy is pure joy and indomitability, and that's how Chipaumire sees today's Africa and, likely, the world's future.

The space evoked a humid, airless dive with just a few chairs for folks who needed them--regrettably, nobody advised me about this--and, otherwise, just standing room in front of the performers' territory and above it in a low balcony (where I hung out). Notable faces in the crowd signaled this as that show that everyone in contemporary dance knows they've got to be at (if not in Brooklyn at Bausch).

We had to be on our feet, most of us, because Chipaumire and Watt were all about turning this evening into a rave-up with fans clapping and whooping. "Come up! It's a motherfucking party!" cried Chipaumire as some of us took a second too long to step up to the balcony. We then hastened to comply just as we would all go on to comply with everything the two exhorted us to do.

The performance itself amused me for the way it relentlessly lashed together typical moments of lift-off and climax in rock music performance without delivering anything in between. Chipaumire and Watt always seemed to be startin' somethin' and goin' nowhere in particular, but givin' it all they got. Repeatedly calling out New York! Are you ready??? Counting up 1, 2, 3, 4!!! Or Uno, dos, tres, quatro!!! Literally reminding us, now and again, that they're introducing introductions. Declaring "I am a world-class African nigger" (Chipaumire) or goose-stepping (Watt) to rev up (or scandalize) the crowd.

In #PUNK, Chipaumire riffed on Patti Smith's iconic lyric "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" from "Gloria." She changed the "somebody's" to "your," which makes perfect in-you-face political sense in #PUNK's context, and she kept threatening to go back to Africa and telling us what she'd do when she got there.  "Watch me!" she cried, and I kept hearing James Brown's yowl.

"Watch me! I'm in Africa now!" And, yes, she seemed to have flung every cell of her body home in an altered state. You don't want to cross this woman.

Or Watt. Both dancers were in full command of their lunging, twisting bodies and voices despite the extreme demands of the work (particularly on those strained voices) over the hour or so. I could hardly believe that Chipaumire had anything left for the (lengthy) post-performance conversation moderated by choreographer Ralph Lemon and joined by Congolese dancer Faustin Linyekula, who has three premiere works featured in Crossing the Line.

Two choice moments from that conversation:

Chipaumire:

"I'm a particular kind of Black body. I'm an African body. We hold things differently. I'm acting out against everything but more about having love, joy, having the freedom to act out, having the time to act out."

"The joy. People know how to live. They're there [Zimbabwe] partying all night, and there's a lesson in that. Life is short. You could die tomorrow. It should be worth it."

Linyekula:

"Maybe joy is another way of acting out your rage. I'm here to stay. Maybe this body will be crushed, but there will be other bodies."

"[Euro-centered thinkers] will have to wake up and realize that the world has moved on. We are creating our own world on our own terms. Africans are experts in precarity and re-inventing ourselves."

#PUNK has closed. For information on other Crossing the Line events--now through October 15--click here.

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Faustin Linyekula's "Banataba [new work]" at Met Museum

Dance artist Faustin Linyekula
is Crossing the Line's Mr. September.
(photo courtesy of FIAF)

Banataba [new work]'s world premiere at The Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday afternoon launched a major series of events featuring acclaimed Congolese dancer-choreographer Faustin Linyekula as part of French Institute Alliance Française' annual Crossing the Line festival which runs through October 15. This month, Linyekula will also present events with FIAF's co-presenters NYU Skirball, Dancing in the Streets and 651 ARTS in partnership with several other organizations (catch up on all of it here). Clearly, it's the September of Linyekula...and of widespread collaboration.

Commissioned by MetLiveArts and inspired by the museum's Kongo: Power and Majesty exhibition (2015), Banataba [new work] is performed in the Met's Spanish Renaissance Vélez Blanco Patio. It employs visual, kinetic and verbal storytelling as we ponder the meaning of objects created in native cultures and appropriated by museums. An hour-long duet for Linyekula and his enchanting collaborator Moya Michael (South Africa), it includes video and photographic elements representing the forested earth, the waters and the people of Linyekula's homeland.

The confined yet fixed, linear setup of the space--several rows of audience seating facing forward; video projected on the not-so-broad base of a statue or against the wall; headshots of unsmiling villagers gazing directly into the camera--works against a possibility of effectively immersing observers within these visual elements. At the same time, it's also possible that the choreographer chose separation rather than an easier connection and familiarity. After all, this piece appears to be about his ultimate decision to withhold and protect a precious discovery.

Much of the live performance involves the toting and gingerly careful transfer of a cloth-wrapped parcel from dancer to dancer, each either gazing at the other or slowly, gracefully bending and turning away with the mysterious object cradled in his or her arms. We listen to Linyekula chanting, singing or (sometimes near inaudibly due to the room's muddying acoustics and his sweet, soft voice) relaying a tale about visiting his mother's village.

We watch the unwrapping and assembly of the parts of the wooden object on top of a platform and the way this revelation makes the dancers jerk, tremble and eventually shake violently. While it becomes clear that this object--which the dancers will labor to reassemble with poignant yet also comical difficulty--is not the actual one Linyekula saw in his village, it stands in for it. Eventually, it stands--quite literally--and they glide it forward, close to the edge of our front row. Arms stretched out wide to each side, it gazes at us.

Aspects of Banataba [new work] suggest human bodies as tuning forks, dowsing rods or formidable, spirit-inhabited objects of power (nkisi). And as supple branches on trees whose ancient roots continuously supply information and nourishment. Just as we need to understand the contextual significance of the crafts created and valued by a people, so too do we need to comprehend the people themselves within the living fabric of their own culture and environment.

Banataba [New Work] continues with performances today at 12pm and 3:30pm. Seating is limited. For information and ticketing, click here.

Gallery 534, Vélez Blanco Patio
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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That new French magic from CIE 14:20

Shadow puppeteer Philippe Beau and his avian friend
(photo courtesy of CIE 14:20) 

What quiets a theater packed with boisterous kids and parents? Phillippe Beau's shadow puppetry, for one thing. I speak with confidence, having heard that with my own ears at French Institute Alliance Française's Florence Gould Hall, one of several city hosts for the new Tilt Kids Festival. Launched by FIAF and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the festival offers a wealth of family-oriented arts, ideas and fun at venues like BAM Fisher, The Invisible Dog Art Center and, of course, Time Square's New Victory Theater. It runs through April 3.

Accompanied by the wonderful pianist Madeleine Cazenave, Beau performed a segment in the magie nouvelle (new magic) production, Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle, presented by CIE 14:20. The Parisian troupe also featured renowned sleight-of-hand magician, Yann Frisch. If you missed these two masterful performers, I'm sad for you. Don't let that happen again.

My attempt to recreate Beau's tricks in order to describe them better for you has proven futile (and might require hand splints). Let me just say that this digital magician does not only pull a rabbit out of the "hat" of his imagination but produces a complete menagerie of animals--a stag with magnificent antlers; a snarling wolf; a galloping, rearing horse; a cat with swishing tail, licking its fur and scratching its ear. A bird feeds its young, later teaching the fledgling how to fly. A lover plants a kiss on a shyer, somewhat startled partner. Even the Devil himself makes an appearance. I'm not sure why but, hey, if you can form a Devil shape with your shadow puppetry, why the hell not?

If your notion of shadow puppetry has always been something amateurish and cheesy, please, get over yourself. This is new shadow puppetry. (I might as well follow the French trend of "new circus," "new magic," "new whatever.") As practiced by Beau, it is a razor-sharp storytelling skill and damned awesome.

Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle has closed, but there's much more Tilt up ahead through April 3, from the visual to the gastronomic arts, co-curated by Lili Chopra (FIAF) and Violaine Huisman (BAM). For information on the festival's lineup, click here.

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Be the show: Ivana Müller (and you) at New York Live Arts

Croatian-born Ivana Müller,
choreographer, artist and author of texts,
concludes her unique presentation, We Are Still Watching,
at New York Live Arts tomorrow night.

About We Are Still Watching at New York Live Arts (part of FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival 2014)

Made by Ivana Müller in collaboration with Amsterdam-based choreographer Andrea Bozic, Brussels-based artist and theater director David Weber-Krebs and Brussel-bsed dramaturg Jonas Rutgeerts

                                                                                                                                                                                

I was part of the Legendary Reading Group of October 1, 2014.

Sort of. Which means I ended up with all of one line.

Except for the choral part.

Here's what I learned from Ivana Müller's We Are Still Watching.

1. Arranging a small audience along the sides of a square can foster close observation and intimacy among strangers. If you're lucky.
2. Selling tickets to people who come to see a show and end up being the show--they take turns reading your script about a group of people coming to see a show who end up being the show--is kind of cheeky. And kind of cool.
3. Doing this and then later revealing that you "hate participatory theater" is outrageous. Until you explain that the things you hate about audience participation are totally not what your piece is doing.
4. Not knowing who's going to show up and how they'll behave with your guidelines and your script is risky. And thrilling.
5. Every audience is its own show, and every show is different.
6. It works if all sorts of people reading your words have all sorts of accents, some of them a little hard to hear if you're not sitting right next to them. You're an accented foreigner, too. Constantly. Moving yourself and your work from place to place while making a home in two different European cities. And here you are now, showing this piece in New York City. Where every other person, it seems, hails from someplace else.
7. The words are simple. Got to be. But sometimes, a beautiful surprise: Your "Romeo" and your "Juliet" may end up being the same sex. Or not. Maybe simply two people with foreign accents giggling over the words they mispronounce. Musically, impossibly sweet in the middle of all of this.
8. Sometimes your audience/listeners/readers will chuckle through the entire thing. It's good for their bodies.
9. A touch of subversion will flare for mere seconds along with a smidgen of confusion.
10. Some people may try to "act" their lines, and that will sound funny ha-ha and funny peculiar. Because it's beside the point.
11. Your Q&A moderator will script the follow-up Q&A and have it read by people who are neither you nor him. Happily, this cutesiness will not last long.
12. The script is not as important to you as how people appropriate it.
13. This work is "very choreographic." The voice, traveling.
14. Sometimes people who do not know each other go for drinks afterwards.
15. "Clearly marked with what is about to happen," the script "creates a frame in which everyone is exactly the same."
16. This has some source, you suggest, in social change happening in the Netherlands, one of two places you call home.
17. The New York Times will declare it all "disappointingly banal." Because. And of course. And...Next!!!

Be a part of the Legendary Reading Group of October 3, 2014. Tickets for the final evening of We Are Still Watching--this Friday at 8pm--are here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

For details on FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival, which runs through October 20, click here.

Love is crazy...or so says Justin Vivian Bond

CDs by singer/performance artist
Justin Vivian Bond

It's no small matter that two people--myself and an arts presenter I know--exclaimed the same words as we left Justin Vivian Bond's one-night concert, Love is Crazy, at FIAF: "So inspiring!"

On the subway trip back downtown, we conferred and agreed: It's the kind of performance that makes you want to look for and bring out your own best. I remember watching Ben Kingsley act in Gandhi and quitting a soul-snuffing job the very next day. I'm not yet sure what Bond's example--or any other part of FIAF's Crossing the Line fest--might inspire me to do in coming days, but V, I'm all ears.

Loosely strung around a theme of love, Love is Crazy found Bond (aka V) in warmly relaxed and sincere, if glamorous, form. V opened with the '40s jazz standard "Angel Eyes," the singer allowing this boozy torch song an unadorned reading, quite right, that only faltered in its final moment. Without an ending note to tether it, "Excuse me while I disappear...." really did seem to dissipate into the ether. But inspiration need not require perfection, as V laughingly proved throughout the show.

Over the next 80 or so minutes, Bond pushed on, recovering voice, energy and wild mind. It's not every songwriter/chanteuse--transgender or otherwise--who would think to source Peggy Lee and Aleister Crowley simultaneously. Nor is it every singer who can build from a husky hush to a voice that makes you feel the scalding steam coming off Sinnerman's boiling seas and fear its devil.

Justin Vivian Bond sings a song by being alert and wholy alive within it. That's the teaching.

The set drew from V's Dendrophile (2011) and Silver Wells (2012) recordings, with selections like Mark Eitzel's furious "Patriot Heart" and Bambi Lake's "The Golden Age of Hustlers," fierce and picturesque dramas from the queer red light zone. We were also invited along quiet strolls through Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" and The Cure's "Lovesong." In the latter, V's sensitive accompanists--Matt Ray (musical director/piano), guitarist Nathann Carrera and violinist Claudia Chopek--knew when to hold off and when to fill in and support the simple lyrics and wispy melody.

Bond clearly relished v's folkish duet with guest artist Miguel Gutierrez--better known as an award-winning choreographer--and even got a chance to display a few dance licks. The highlight of Gutierrez's segment was his version of "Smalltown Boy," an '80s hit by Bronski Beat; if you saw Marissa Perel's recent work, More Than Just a Piece of Sky, at The Chocolate Factory, you heard Gutierrez's recording of this song. Gutierrez, though no Jimmy Somerville, has a haunting shimmer to his voice and beautiful delivery.

Visit Justin Vivian Bond's site (photo, videos, the works) here.

For news of the Miguel Gutierrez universe, go here.

For details on FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival, which runs through October 20, click here.

Trajal Harrell: Serving looks at The Kitchen

Dancer Trajal Harrell and his audience,
prepare for Monday night performance at The Kitchen.
(all photos: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Trajal Harrell is, by now, legendary for his "looks"--specifically, the array of interconnected dance projects, created since 2008, that wear the title Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. In each of these pieces, Harrell plays with the fantasy of crossing two influential performance movements that arose in New York in the 1960s--a neutral minimalism favored by "downtown" dance artists, questioning what dance is, and Harlem's competitive and fabulous ball culture. Harrell's works, like articles of clothing, come in a variety of sizes--(XS), (S), (jr.), and so on, leading up to what he says will be a publication (XL). On Monday night, Harrell performed his solo, (S), at The Kitchen as part of FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival.

In the stripped-down, democratic Judson aesthetic, external appearance was nothing; in the world of the balls, it was everything, all about displaying the look of something you're not and, in most cases, will never be. That surface look transcends its illusion and elusiveness, cleverly employing yet moving beyond costume and even physicality to something trickier to glimpse, the spirit of the performer. That spirit becomes more clearly visible the longer we watch Harrell perform (S).

For (S), Harrell spends an hour on and around his catwalk, shifting through twenty personae of apparel and movement, starting from "West Coast Preppy School Boy" (in yellow slicker and white flipflops) and nerdy "East Coast Preppy School Boy" (complete with Obama backpack). In a Judsonian touch, the frequent costume changes take place right in front of us at a stand of ordinary folding chairs draped in pants, jackets and other gear, shoes and boots stored beneath. Harrell dons each "look" with zero fuss and with utmost transparency, hurriedly discarding one outfit for the next. Harrell's strides back and forth and around the rim of watchers, though inspired by the atmosphere and dramatics of a high fashion runway, are based in matter-of-fact human walking.

In the early phases at least, he takes on a modest, restrained demeanor that looks like the imaginary Harlemite showing up for postmodern dance class: "I'm here, but I'm not here." But there's way too much drama, way too much Josephine Baker, Graham, Basquiat, Meryl Streep in this guy to be sealed up in pure Judson, and what Harrell allows to shimmer through and seep out of any and all formal containers can be weirdly beautiful.

More "looks" coming up: (M)imosa, tonight at 8pm; (jr) Antigone Jr. and, at 9:30pm (Plus) Antigone Jr. ++ on Wednesday; (L) Antigone Sr. on Friday; and (M2M) Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem on Saturday. Clicking here will get you complete schedule, casting and ticket information.

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

For more information on FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival, running through October 20, click here.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma crosses the line

Once again, French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) tempts us to cross boundaries of geography, genre and imagination with its eighth edition of Crossing the Line festival (now through October 20). I will share my thoughts on a few CTL events in coming weeks.

Last night, I attended FIAF's New York premiere of The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is Calling You!, a documentary by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, founders and co-directors of the OBIE Award-winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma. (The name, if you're wondering, derives from Kafka; this New York-based performance troupe is about as Oklahoman as I am.) The reaction I posted on Facebook, earlier today, says it all: "Endearing and alarming: THEATER!"

Running at 127 minutes, the diary-like film traces events before and during a 2013 residency in Berlin, a demanding time for the anxious Copper and for Liska, a charismatic Slovak complete with bald head and natty handlebar mustache. Liska wrestles with urges to be creatively out of control and in charge at all times. The couple's personal relationship and their confidence as artists are taxed by the considerable stress of overwork, tension and insecurity wrought by their project's complexity.

We witness the heady playfulness and the nearly impossible intricacy of NTO's group process, so much hard, ceaseless labor for productions that seem so slippery of form, swimming between the familiar and the unknown, buoyed by droll humor. A visual knockout with unrestrained, cheerful light and color, the film can also plunge its unsuspecting viewers through emotionally cloudy and dark places.

Oddly enough, The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is Calling You! made me think back to a Hollywood film I'd just caught up with--George Clooney's World War II drama, The Monuments Men, a diverting, if slapdash, throwback. That film stepped all over its opportunity to make, for our blasé nation, a solid and still necessary case that art is worth sacrificing and maybe even dying for. But I thought of that argument as I watched the NTO collaborators labor and Liska struggle to the point of near breakdown. Maybe not so much why this particular strain of hipster art might matter to society at large but why it matters, greatly, to the artist's soul.

For information on Crossing the Line 2014 programs and venues, click here.

The heroic song of Emel Mathlouthi: World Nomads Tunisia

Tunisian vocalist-guitarist Emel Mathlouthi (photo by Ghaith Ghoufa)

Emel Mathlouthi--exalted voice of the Arab Spring--concluded the live performance offerings of French Institute Alliance Française's World Nomads Tunisia last evening, accompanied by pianist Emmanuel Trouvé and guitarist Karim Attoumane. (The festival's film and visual arts presentations continue. See here.) Mathlouthi, who spent several years abroad in France where she could freely develop her career, is revered by progressive forces in her homeland. Her "Kelmti Horra" ("My Word is Free"), a song from 2007, became a major anthem of Tunisia's uprising. At Florence Gould Hall, she took a full and mesmerized audience on a ninety-minute tour through a spectrum of emotions--from alienated despair to thoughtful hope and even giddiness.

Mathlouthi is quite a mix: bare feet not quite squaring with the resplendence of her tomato-red party dress; pure, mellifluous vocals channeling anger and heartbreak not quite aligning with the impulse to sprinkle a couple of songs with Stevie Nicks spins. "Ethnia Twila," or "The Road is Long"--dedicated to "all those courageous people who fought for dignity and freedom"--veers from ballad to power ballad to New Age, Celtic-tinged folk reminiscent of Ireland's Máire Ní Bhraonáin (the voice of Clannad) and Canada's Loreena McKennitt.

Her gorgeous voice, soaring over the poetic, sometimes spooky work of Trouvé and Attoumane, often strongly evokes Björk. I noted that Björk resemblance and, later in the evening, chuckled to myself when, with an expression of ruefulness and yearning, Mathlouthi actually pulled Björk's "All Is Full of Love" from up her sleeve. Oh, and there was a Canadian angle, too, both unexpected and, curiously, expected. Can you guess? Yes, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," little more than dutiful in execution yet well-received.

Mathlouthi also doesn't need the reverb effects she occasionally applies to her songs. From art song to full-throated protest, her straight-ahead singing is quite enough.

It's regretable that FI:AF did not make provision for at least one or two more shows with this inspiring artist. But let's hope that the audience response--warm and loving--will encourage them to bring her back. While she need not have worried that her show would suffer without the two musicians who were unable to secure visas in time, it would be grand to have her return someday, able to share her songs in the way that, to her taste, represents them best.

Download Mathlouthi's Kelmti Horra CD here.

Connect with FI:AF here.

Simply beautiful: Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal

Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal

performing Thursday, February 28, 8pm

at FIAF (Florence Gould Hall)

Vincent Segal and Balleké Sissoko

“...beautiful, nurturing, sublime....music that straddles the boundaries between classical and folk, Africa and Europe” -- SoundRoots

Ballaké Sissoko, a Malian griot who plays the 21-stringed kora harp-lute, and Vincent Segal, a classically trained French cellist, team up to present a memorable evening of world chamber music for the 21st century. Sissoko has worked with Taj Mahal, Toumani Diabaté, and Italian minimalist Ludovico Einaudi; Segal’s résumé ranges from the Opéra de Lyon to Sting and Elvis Costello. The two share a powerful link to tradition, and a longing to push tradition to its limits.

Co-presented with the World Music Institute

Information and tickets

FIAF (Florence Gould Hall)
55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

A house is not a home: David Levine's "Habit"

"This is so wild--the semiotics of it! Do you even know what semotics means?"

--David Levine, Habit

David Levine's theater/installation piece, Habit--co-presented by the currently nomadic Performance Space 122 and FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival--inhabits several rooms of an unremarkable ranch house. What is remarkable, though, is that this house and all of its dismal furnishings have been painstakingly assembled within the bare, unused confines of the original Essex Street Market near Rivington Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The audience views the action by peering through or parting several diaphanous curtains and gazing in on dusty Halloween decor dispiritedly strewn around and the typical hipster mess of well-worn electronics, cheap living room furniture and empty beer cans. Kudos to scenic designer Marsha Ginsberg for the cheesy, fascinating macro- and micro-details of all of this, right down to the food-stained menu stuck to the refrigerator and the fine layer of undisturbed dust. Achoo!

Sure, pull the curtains aside, if you wish. No one stops you. If you want to reach past the window and slap some sense into one or another of Levine's characters, you're often close enough to do so. Lucky for the actors, I restrained myself, and I trust most other people will, too, though the temptation lingers through the hour-plus of increasing intrigue and tension.

It all starts off banal enough. "Nobody likes Frank Zappa," argues the curiously snide, menacing Doug (well played, in the cast I saw today, by shark-eyed Ben Mehl). "Nobody likes Captain Fucking Beefheart," he harangues his brother and housemate Mitch (Brian Bickerstaff). In return, the rangy, hapless Mitch can only offer a feeble retort, "But The Grateful Dead are okay?"

The (unwanted--by Doug, vaguely-wanted--by Mitch) presence of a blowsy cokehead named Viv (Eliza Baldi) introduces a few more critical areas of hostility between the brothers, which I will not reveal. Not that revealing any of this story would make a difference one way or another. That the plot of this thing is not really the point of this thing will become obvious once you experience it.

Your experience as a watcher is the point. Looking through those windows, figuring out where and how quickly to trot in order to catch the next batch of action, wondering if the "sleeping" Doug--one hand resting in a suspect location under the bedcovers--will start masturbating in front of your very eyes...all of this is the point. Getting to a place where you find yourself also looking hard at your fellow voyeurs as they gaze through windows on the opposite side of the house--that, too, might be the point.

If you lose interest--and you don't opt for reaching in and slapping--you can always keep an eye on the Animal Science show running on the characters' unwatched television. You know: wolves, bears, salmon swimming upstream. Wholesome family fare.

Habit runs through Sunday, September 30, open 1pm-9pm daily, featuring alternating casts. It's free and open to the public. Come and go as you please.

Essex Street Market (not the new one, though)
130 Essex Street (near Rivington Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Bouchra Ouizguen and "Madame Plaza"

A few thoughts on Madame Plaza (2009), curated by Trajal Harrell for Danspace Project's PLATFORM 2010, certain difficulties, certain joy and co-presented by FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival at Florence Gould Hall:

With her research into the cultural practices of the Aïta women singers and dancers of her native Morocco, dancer-choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen tells us that she intends to break free of conventional perspectives on the female body and its uses in dance. Madame Plaza, however, seems to me to be a sign of the sheer beginning, not the fruit, of experimentation. 

The strongest push of the envelope that this hour-long production offers--at least for an audience that, as usual, is almost completely white--is the sight of four brown-skinned women, three of whom are far heavier than conventional dancers Americans are used to and are, indeed, Aïta performers, moving in spare, often pedestrian gestures and patterns like old-school and, frankly, tedious "downtown" stuff. This made me wonder: If this work did not have the Moroccan context--or the short passages of ecstatic incantation, thrashing and a little bit of gender-bending that directly relate to the world of the Aïta--would we find it interesting, intellectually or sensually compelling enough to justify the time? I paid attention and sought engagement from Madama Plaza's first, langourous, dead-silent moments, when the women sit or recline on oblong cushions, occasionally rearranging themselves. It never sparked my interest.

There was a telling moment, at the conclusion of Harrell's post-show Q&A, when Ouizguen took a final question from the audience about a statement she'd made about breaking away from her training and all that dance was supposed to be. The questioner asked,"What did you think dance was?"  The choreographer thought for a second, then replied that she no longer knew the answer to that question, didn't know what she's originally meant--a quite apt answer from someone apparently still in a liminal state of search. Both ends of the search--past and possible future--seem fuzzy to me, but I'd love to see what she and the Aïta can do when it all comes into focus.

Madame Plaza--with performances by Fatima El Hanna, Naïma Sahmoud, Kabboura Aït Ben Hmad and Bouchra Ouizguen--completes its run tonight at 8pm.

FIAF's Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues), Manhattan

Ticketing

I KIFFE NY

Accrorap (photo by Yves Petit)

I KIFFE NY, the festival of French Urban Culture, breaks out all over New York City this October with live music, film, dance, visual art, talks and documentaries. Two hip-hop dance companies Accrorap and Pockemon Crew will present American premieres of new works at the Florence Gould Hall at FIAF (French Institute Alliance Française).

Accrorap, whom Le Monde has called “an artistic goldmine” performs Little Stories.com on Friday and Saturday, October 10 and 11 at 8pm.

Pockemon Crew, which won the 2003 international hip-hop championship dance competition, will perform That’s Life!? on Friday, October 17 at 8pm and Saturday, October 18 at 2pm.

Tickets for all performances are available via Ticketmaster. Standard admission is $25; $15 with FIAF member discount. Florence Gould Hall is located at 55 East 59th Street, between Park & Madison Avenues, Manhattan.

Kader Attou, Mourad Merzouki and Eric Mézino founded the Accrorap collective in 1989 in Saint-Priest, near Lyon. Now, nearly ten years on, the company is headed by Attou and has become one of France’s premier hip-hop companies with founding members hailing from diverse backgrounds and places: Algeria, Switzerland and other countries, in addition to France. Little Stories.com’s main themes are the will to survive, the fight against repression and the effort break free from the confines of “urban” culture into a broader social context.

Pockemon Crew, another of France’s foremost dance ensembles, has helped disseminate the American urban tradition of hip-hop throughout French youth and urban cultures. The group began ten years ago as an assemblage of teenagers and, since 2006, has been preeminent on the international hip-hop dance scene. Drawing on variety of music, from cabaret to traditional Arabic, That’s Life!? juxtaposes France’s “urban experiment” with the varied traditions and influences of the dancers. With strength and elegance, the company provides an electrifying performance that will serve as an apt introduction to hip-hop dance à la française.

Why do politicians need artists?

Why Do Politicians Need Artists?
Crossing the Line 2008, French Institute Alliance Française

Saturday, September 20 (4pm-6pm)
French Institute Alliance Française (Tinker Auditorium)
55 East 59th Street, Manhattan

Moderator:

André Lepecki, Associate Professor of Performance Studies (NYU)

Panelists:

Ralph Lemon, Independent Artist (New York)
Julia Mandle, Independent Artist (New York)
Arthur Nauzyciel, Artistic Director of National Dramatic Center of Orléans (France)

Americans, and the world, will remember 2008 for its historic presidential election. As the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain move into full gear, little is said about the candidates’ positions on the arts, or their views on the role of artists in contemporary society.

This panel brings together independent artists from France and New York whose work engages with social and political issues. They will examine what role artists already play in relation to building a healthier society, and what value and function Americans place on a vibrant artistic community.

Join FIAF for this pertinent and timely round-table discussion on the role of the artist in society including an opportunityfor audience members’ questions and observations.

Free admission by reservation only (by September 18): rsvp@fiaf.org or 646-388-6681