La Mama hosts the great Germaine Acogny

Germaine Acogny, "Mother of Contemporary African Dance,"
performs SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
(photo: Thomas Dorn)

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING
by Germaine Acogny and Mikäel Serre
FIAF's Crossing The Line Festival
La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre
September 26-28

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING--a US premiere for Crossing The Line Festival by renowned Senegalese/French contemporary dance artist Germaine Acogny and director Mikäel Serre--unfolds as if it were dreamt, a full-sensory haunting both sustained in time and elusively fluid in nature. A rich soundscape makes the viewer feel surrounded, engulfed. Visual design tucks things far out of reach or behind layers of other images, or suddenly zooms them large or slips them back into darkness, seriously messing with rational sense of space.

Its fascinating and troubling text, adapted for the stage by Serre, is often spoken in French by Acogny while also running in English as supertitles. If you do not comprehend French, this regularly pulls your gaze up and away from the stately moving sculpture that is Acogny.

You make your choices here; they're difficult, disruptive, regretful and the only ones you're allowed. At almost every turn, she and her creative team suspend us in a phenomena from which we cannot turn away. Even the smell of baby powder and the tickle of tiny, airborne feathers will eventually reach our unguarded selves.

A stage-spanning string curtain serves as a scrim onto which ghostly images may be projected and into which solid objects (and our beloved dancer) can be swallowed out of sight as if dragged below waves.

Like the simple props that will gather dramatic meaning--an open notebook, its white pages reflecting light; a pillow the dancer hugs to her chest, a heavy rock--Acogny contains the brooding power of history, of secrets, a complicated narrative with webs of connection to the Greek Medea and the tragedy of today's refugees seeking safety in Europe.

One surprise discovery, among many, in a diary--the words "Power is passed down from woman to woman." How to access that inheritance? Does it come from things--a set of formidable butcher knives passed along to the wrong person? Or is it knowledge, the force of truth about oneself that can purge the evil wrought by colonialism, patriarchal religion, racism, male supremacy?

Now in her 70s, Acogny--choreographer, performer and educator--has been called "Mother of Contemporary African Dance." Watch as she makes startling use of Johnny Cash's recording of "Hurt" with its evocation of self-inflicted pain and "empire of dirt," and you will grasp why this artist can claim worldwide reverence. Do not miss her historic performance at La MaMa.

Concept and direction: Mikäel Serre
Choreography: Germaine Acogny
Set design: Maciej Fiszer
Costumes: Johanna Diakhate-Rittmeyer
Music: Fabrice Bouillon "LaForest"
Video: Sebastien Dupouey
Lighting design: Sebastien Michaud

Talkback moderation: Okwui Okpokwasili
Translation: Courtney Geraghty

SOMEWHERE AT THE BEGINNING runs through tomorrow evening at La MaMa with performance at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

For information on other events in Crossing The Line, an annual presentation of French Institute Alliance Française, click here.

La Mama (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

"What Remains": Claudia Rankine and Will Rawls collaborate

from What Remains,
a new work by Claudia Rankine and Will Rawls,
premiered this week at Danspace Project
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)

“One thing about being black in America—you have to curtail your movements, to live in such a way that what the white gaze projects upon blackness will not end your life,” says Rankine to The New York Times. “So you’re always thinking, can I walk at night?…Can I have my cell phone out? If it glitters, will someone think it’s a gun? At what point can I just be?”

Adds Rawls, “One never just happens to be black, even in the most abstract dance…Whiteness in our society — and this is something Claudia talks about, too — is the space that produces the conditions and terms against which all other lives are measured and enabled or disabled. Dance doesn’t escape those power dynamics.”

-- Danspace Project publicity for What Remains

At what point can I just be?

A few years ago, I read poet Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric and felt immediate, grateful identification in her detailing of both the overt and the deceptively subtle aggressions Black people endure, every day, in our society. Racism--within white, patriarchal supremacy--is the American condition, something that does not go away because a Black president gets elected. In fact, as we certainly recognize now, such an unexpected shock to the system only wakes and further enrages the persistent many-headed Hydra.

Upon hearing that Rankine, as writer, would team up with dance artist Will Rawls, I knew, at once, that we should not expect anything as straightforward as Citizen. Rawls--winner of the 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer--comes from that sector of dance that embraces the oblique, the abstract, the elusive, that leaves pin pricks and cracks and often big gaping holes in the fabric of a work for the light--and, ultimately, the viewer's mind--to get in.

What Remains--co-presented by Danspace Project and French Institute Alliance Française for FIAF's Crossing The Line Festival--would not be Citizen. And I'm going to be danged honest and tell you that part of me rolled my eyes when I thought about that. The other part of me, though, was chill and is now glad all of me got there.

Rawls has a dream team of collaborating performers for this work--Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste (also his sound designer and composer), Leslie Cuyjet, Jessica Pretty and Tara Aisha Willis. Draped by designer Eleanor O'Connell in funereal black and haunting St. Mark's sanctuary with its stained glass windows also shrouded in black, they have been described as "a resonant, ghostly chorus."

What they most appear to be are embodiments of the undead spirit of resistance. Nimble, resourceful and unruly, they rise from unshapely, ungainly lurching and stumbling and gentle, quiet harmonizing to steadily refine and define themselves, both physically and vocally, over a solid 70 minutes of un-curtailing their movements. There are musical surprises in this séance that delighted the hell out of me and an ingenious synergy of space, darkness and scattered lighting that transforms the church into mutating dreamscape. I won't spoil any of this for anyone lucky enough to get in to see the final show tonight.

Yes, if you were to have a house haunted by not one but a whole batch of brilliant Black artists--pent-up spirits reclaiming their time at the mic or piano bench--I imagine you might have something like Rawls and Rankine's What Remains. Something more tickling than scary...at least to a Black woman like me. I can imagine some people might find all of this deeply frightening.

Creative Consultant: John Lucas
Production design: David Szlasa

What Remains concludes tonight with a show at 8pm, with no late seating. Tickets are sold out, but a wait list starts at the door beginning at 7:15. For information, click here.

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

Subscribe in a reader

#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.

Subscribe in a reader

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)

Subscribe in a reader

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.

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

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.

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.

Radhouane El Meddeb: He's Everywoman

In Sous leur pied, le paradis ("under their feet, heaven"), Tunisia-born Radhouane El Meddeb dances to rapturous music and crowd cheers from a live performance by Umm Kulthum, the Egyptian vocalist who died in 1975 after a long, world-renowned career. Costume El Meddeb in satin brocade and glitter, and he might look quite a bit like this beloved singer, substantial of face and body. But in his hour-long solo--a U.S. premiere presented at Alliance Française's Florence Gould Hall for the World Nomads Tunisia festival--the dancer wears a loose black t-shirt and black shorts and sometimes slips behind or between folds of heavy black drapery.

Through a minimalist, schematic approach to both self-presentation and movement, El Meddeb pursues not self-camouflage but revelation of a state of consciousness, sourced in women's experience, existing beyond gender. His bare feet and limbs, the casualness of his attire, eschew glamour but do not preclude regality. He allows the tangy, shimmering, low-rumbling music and the singer's dark, earthy voice to entrance him into stark, iconic postures and gestures. Despite difference in language, that voice and that music, both unsparing in passion and torment, reach right into the listener's chest.

"Under their feet, heaven" refers to the Islamic saying, "Paradise is found under the feet of mothers." Choreographed by the performer in collaboration with French dancemaker Thomas Lebrun, the solo presents a lens through which we are invited to see the condition and striving of women of the Arab world and Arab Spring. It is a dance of recognition, of honor, of celebratory ululation and encouragement to action--just as Umm Kulthum's bitter love song, the famous "Al-Atlal" ("The Ruins"), can be read as a sly indictment of any form of seduction and betrayal, from intimate dyad to oppressive societal hierarchy.

My heart, don't ask where the love has gone/It was only a mirage that collapsed....

Give me my freedom, release my hands/Indeed, I've given everything and have nothing.

We woke up, ah if only we did not awaken/Wakefulness ruined the dreams of slumber....

Perhaps one day our fates will cross/when our desire to meet is strong enough.

As El Meddeb's hour nears its end, he gradually sheds his meager clothing. Shorts off. A little later, bikini briefs off. Then, the t-shirt--tugged down in front and behind before it, too, gets pulled away. In themselves, these are acts of rebellion, modest only in the quiet, matter-of-fact manner of their execution. The dancer's broad back gleams at us under the lights before he draws a train of filmy, white fabric around his lower body and sinks into the floor. The singer's voice rises to crescendo, and the trance is done.

For more on El Meddeb, read this account of a journey of the senses in another work, I Dance & I Feed You, reported by Neil de la Flor in Miami for Knight Arts.

For information on remaining World Nomads Tunisia 2013 events and exhibits, click here.

Sonia M'barek performs at World Nomads Tunisia fest

Tradition Performed With a Twist
Sonia M’barek at the French Institute Alliance Française
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, May 7, 2013

Bessie Awards 2012 press conference (AUDIO)

New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies)

Lucy Sexton, Director

Lane Harwell, Chair, Bessies Steering Committee

2012 Press Conference at French Institute Alliance Française

Wednesday, July 18

To listen to an mp3 of the complete Bessies press conference, click here. [40:32]

Highlights

Opening performance by hip hop dancers Noel Rodriguez and Noah Cabrera from KR3TS, the company of 2011 Bessie winner Violet Galagarza

Juried Bessie Award to choreographer Souleymane Badolo by the 2012 jury--choreographers Lar Lubovitch, Yvonne Rainer and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Badolo will be presented by Nazareth Dance Festival, an inaugural Bessies partner. In addition, a new Bessies partner, DanceForce, a statewide network of dance activists dedicated to linking artists and communities across New York State, will help to generate residencies, performances and educational events around the state for Badolo.

The Bessies will return to Harlem's historic Apollo Theater on Monday, October 15 at 8pm. "How could we not have the Bessies back at the Apollo?" asked Mikki Sheppard, the theater's Executive Producer. "We intend for them to be there forever!" Sheppard also announced that Bessie winner Badolo has already been engaged to present a major work at the Apollo in October 2013.

Click the audio link above to hear announcements of nominees for each of the following categories:

Outstanding Production (of a work performed in a larger capacity venue of more than 400 seats)

Outstanding Production (of a work that stretches the boundaries of a traditional or culturally specific form)

Outstanding Production (of a work performed in a smaller capacity venue of less than 400 seats)

Outstanding Production (of a work not technically considered dance but happening in and influencing dance in New York)

Outstanding Revived Work

Outstanding Visual Design

Outstanding Sound Design or Composition

Outstanding Emerging Choreographer

Outstanding Performer (of a work performed in a larger capacity venue of more than 400 seats)

Outstanding Performer (of a work that stretches the boundaries of a traditional or culturally specific form)

Outstanding Performer (of a work performed in a smaller capacity venue of less than 400 seats)

Outstanding Performer (of a work not technically considered dance but happening in and influencing dance in New York)

The Bessies: The New York Dance and Performance Awards,

produced in partnership with Dance/NYC

For further information, click here.

The Bessie Awards to hold cocktail party and press conference

An announcement from The New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) in partnership with Dance/NYC

The Bessie Awards Steering Committee--Cora Cahan, Beverly D'Anne, Lane Harwell, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Carla Petterson, Elizabeth Streb, Martin Wechsler, and Reggie Wilson--invite you to an evening of cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

Immediately following the Cocktail Party, all nominees of the 2011/2012 award year will be announced at a Press Conference, and the Juried Bessie Award will be presented.

Wednesday, July 18 (5pm-7pm)

French Institute Alliance Française
Le Skyroom
22 East 60th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues), Manhattan
 
Tickets are $50 and can be purchased here.

Yvonne Rainer, Lar Lubovitch, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar will announce their choice for the Juried Bessie Award. This jury of acclaimed choreographers is chosen each year by the Bessie Steering Committee. Together they have chosen a single work or a choreographer that exhibits the most interesting and exciting ideas happening in dance in New York City today. The honored dance maker will tour their work to one or more regional theaters outside the city.

This annual affair has become one of the most anticipated dance events in New York City.

The Bessie committees look forward to raising a glass with you!

The New York Dance and Performance Awards, aka The Bessie Awards, have saluted outstanding dance work since 1984. They were founded by David White and named for the treasured teacher of dance and composition, Bessie Schonberg. The 2012 awards ceremony will be held October 15, 2012 at the legendary Apollo Theater.

Dance/NYC is a branch of the national dance service organization Dance/USA. Dance/NYC's mission is to bolster the support structure for dance in New York City-serving as a voice, guide, and infrastructure architect for all local dance artists and managers.

The extraordinary Ouramdane

Just posted: my Dance Magazine review of Rachid Ouramdane's Ordinary Witnesses (North American premiere) and World Fair (New York premiere) last week at New York Live Arts. Click here.

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

Hoghe: "I invite dancers to my universe."

After a DTW performance of Sans-titre--wrought and performed by Raimund Hoghe (Germany) with Faustin Linyekula (Democratic Republic of Congo)--a respected colleague came up to me and told me that, even allowing for a broad definition, he failed to find much in the way of choreography in the piece. By this, I think he meant a deliberate, effective selection and arranging of movement material with connective tissue, some internal logic, a recognizable through-line. Instead, he found ideas and pieces of things here and there.

This frank assessment sent me into a momentary brain jam. The work had been, for me, intuitively recognizable as a "universe"--as Hoghe might call it--with its own structure and resonance. I had come out of the theater with chills up my back and feeling unable to speak and, what's more, feeling that words were not necessarily the most necessary things I could offer. In the course of seventy minutes, Hoghe and Linyekula had--through stark visual and kinetic elements and a haunting blend of Baroque music and Black spirituals--taken mundane space, marked it off for sacred work and turned it into a place of solemnity and tenderness. I felt no distance between myself, as spectator, and moments of loss, absence, grief or, for that matter, compassion and healing that these two men--different in so many ways--might have experienced in their lives.

The work is entitled "untitled," and it is a work that belongs to, and leaves generous space for, its audience. I cannot say how, but I know that I--as well as others--found ourselves inhabiting those spaces.

At the post-show Q&A--a curious and largely disappointing one, since DTW's Carla Peterson seemed unable to think up a way to engage Linyekula in a conversation dominated by Hoghe--Peterson noted that the audience had remained completely still during the performance. Listening and, now and then, gazing around me, I had noticed that, too. It felt, to me, like an attentiveness that ran unusually deep.

I note--but find myself less interested in--the striking differences between Hoghe and Linyekula. These include realities of race, age, nationality, culture, history and--the ones that usually make the most difference on a dance stage--physical form and ability. Hoghe--exposing his pronounced spinal deformity to our gaze--fits no conventional notion of dancer. (Please note: I wrote conventional.) Linyekula--youthful, slender, sinewy and with the facility of a marionette--is a handsome African Mercury, a dancing god. Their undeniable differences are Hoghe's preoccupation in this work--that and the possibility of human connection across difference.

What interested me more, in a personal way, as a former ritualist in women's spirituality circles, was the two men's creation and holding of ritual space, largely through minimalist iconography--blank sheets of white paper; pale-colored stones smoothed by the pressure of water--that simply takes you there. And as a former ritualist, I recognized, with a catch of my breath, Hoghe's equally deliberate, necessary, erasure of that space near the conclusion of the evening. Ritual space exists in a timeless place--a place out of ordinary human time. It is conjured as a protective enclosure for sacred work, and then it is carefully dispersed before we return to linear time and our day-to-day lives. Hoghe understands this.

Afterwards, in DTW's lobby, I felt I had returned to my life and the world a little too abruptly. Generally speaking, I prefer to incubate my experience with serious art--at least, overnight--before fully assessing it. Moreover, the Q&A felt strange. Had it not been for prompting from a choreographer in the audience, Linyekula--quietly sitting to Peterson's right--would not have been drawn into it at all. Peterson's body language--she was completely turned towards Hoghe for almost all of the time--puzzled me. Was she uncomfortable with the prospect of questioning Linyekula? Both men speak English clearly and both, I would think, could and should speak to the intention of the piece, the creative process and what the work feels like from inside. That Linyekula was left in silence for almost the entire time underscored difference--brought it roaring back into focus--in a way I found disturbing.

And yet this is our world. We leave the theater, leave sacred space, and we are right back in it. If theater, if ritual, has served its purpose, perhaps we will have learned something that we can use in the thick of things.

[Sans-titre, a co-presentation of Dance Theater Workshop and FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival]

Invisible Dog, Off Leash and Reimagined

Invisible Dog, Off Leash and Reimagined
by Melena Ryzik, The New York Times, September 13, 2010

Hassabi's collage

When the audience enters Performance Space 122's theater, dancer Maria Hassabi is already in action--well, maybe not in action, since SoloShow is so much about the collaging of a series of static images--"the history of female representation...pulled from art history, pop culture and everyday life." But she's there, amid James Lo's recording of what sounds like a large, bustling audience assembling for a performance.

Wearing a cream-colored, sleeveless top and pants clinging to her ballerina-skinny frame, she occupies one corner of a large platform, shifting from pose to pose. We don't often see her expression. When we do, it's like a thunderclap;  she suddenly pivots towards us with that haunted, big-eyed face and legs splayed in tremulous, claw-like rigidity. Soon, though, she tilts her head back so far that her torso appears beheaded.  Although the soundtrack's roar subsides, the severe tension of her pose increases. Joe Levasseur's overhead lighting blasts her, but she appears to take to it, willingly, like a lizard adjusting and drying itself under desert sun.

Sometimes she drapes herself over the platform's edge, neck straining, blood pooling in her face. Often, she will turn her body into brittle sculpture on the featureless, ungiving platform. The work lasts about an hour of clock time--quite a testament to Hassabi's vigor and determination--but you might find yourself completely losing track of time.

I regret missing Hassabi's Solo--conceived as an autonomous half of a diptych and premiered at PS 122 last month as part of FIAF's Crossing the Line festival--and I also haven't seen her SoloShow alternate, Hristoula Harakas.

A joint presentation of Performa 09 and PS 122, SoloShow continues through Sunday: Friday and Saturday, 8pm and 10pm; Sunday, 6pm. Complete information and ticketing here.

House of Harrell

How nice to get let into a performance space well before a show begins and be able to enjoy the quietly cheerful presence of its star-to-be as he greets friends. Last night at the New Museum, the stellar soloist in question--Trajal Harrell—started the show by handing out impeccably-printed cards with the lineup of twenty voguing “looks” to be performed over fifty minutes in the museum’s intimate theater space, surrounded on three sides by audience.


The piece is called Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (S)—the S representing “small”; reportedly, there are XS, M, L and XL versions. Besides the museum, Harrell’s savvy co-presenters include Danspace Project and French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line festival. You have one more chance to see the exquisitely-performed (S): Go tonight!

Using a sextet of metal folding chairs—draped in pieces of clothing--as his dressing room, Harrell dons a changing, mix-match array. From Preppy Schoolboy (West and East Coast versions) to Legendary Face and Basquiat Realness, Harrell walks, embodying his long-imagined collision of Judsonian postmodernism (the party of NO!) and the aesthetics of the Harlem ball scene (YES! to glamour, YES! to theatricality, YES! to seduction). In fact, it is a big YES! to the importance of surface impressions and a hearty embrace of making magic (and magick) theatricality in postmodern dance.

For the most part, Harrell avoids the gleaming runway, created by artist Franklin Evans, taped over the theater’s floor. It’s there, but he’s elsewhere, breaking up not only the way we can look at him but the way he looks at everything with a gaze that sometimes draws the watcher in and sometimes evades or wards off the watcher, but is always pulled together and deployed like a serious and irreversible hoodoo spell.

This performance—a pleasure to witness--combines wit, patience, subtlety, awesome fluidity and grace and even some room for amusingly tacky effects (kitchen apron turned superhero’s cape with the help of an electric fan, for instance). The man’s keen taste in music and sure application of it for color and atmosphere are simply delectable. Harrell has always been an interesting thinker and creator. This piece, though, should make him legendary.

Tonight, 7pm, at New Museum, 235 Bowery, at Prince Street between Stanton & Rivington. 212-219-1222. Information also at Danspace Project.

Eat, dance and be merry!

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) invite you to two full days of complimentary dancing, workshops, and cutting-edge cuisine.

Friday, September 11:

10am–12pm: Workshop with French choreographer Pierre Rigal

1–6pm: Dance Class with Odile Duboc, Latifa Laâbissi, Olivier Dubois, and Germaine Acogny (represented by Nora Chipaumire)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Studio 6A
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan

Saturday, September 12:

1–6pm: Le Bal NYC

Central Park, East Meadow
Entrance on Fifth Ave and 99th Street, Manhattan

Kindly RSVP by calling 646-731-3206 before Wednesday, September 2.

Program

On Friday, September 11, attend a workshop with world-renowned choreographer Pierre Rigal at Baryshnikov Arts Center, followed by a fun and invigorating class with four of France’s most respected choreographers: Odile Duboc, Latifa Laâbissi, Olivier Dubois, and Germaine Acogny (represented by Nora Chipaumire). Each choreographer will teach brand new dances created especially for Le Bal NYC, the free public dance party/picnic in Central Park that will launch FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival the next day.

Then, on Saturday, September 12 you’ll attend Le Bal NYC and assist the choreographers in teaching the dances you’ve just learned to the crowd in the Park—all while sampling snacks created by some of the hottest chefs in France and NYC!

What is Le Bal NYC?

A fresh new take on some classic French traditions, the “bal populaire” and the “pique-nique” are reinvented as Crossing the Line is launched on the East Meadow in Central Park. French choreographers Odile Duboc, Latifa Laâbissi, Olivier Dubois, and Germaine Acogny have specially created short new dances to be taught section by section to the public. As both audience and performers of the new work, participants get an insider’s look into the mechanics of contemporary choreography as well as the creative imagination of dance personalities. To sate the appetite of all these dancing feet, the Omnivore “brigade” will be creating special Crossing the Line Bento Boxes—a unique vision of the picnic with different elements created by innovative master chefs Inaki Aizpitarte, Alexandre Gauthier, Pascal Barbot, and Michel Bras from France, as well as New York’s David Chang and Wylie Dufresne.

Dancers of all ages are invited to participate in Le Bal NYC, a unique celebration set to take place in East Meadow, Central Park on Saturday, September 12, 2009.

Le Bal NYC

What is Crossing the Line?

Crossing the Line is FIAF’s annual fall festival, conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of transdisciplinary artists working in France and New York City. Initiated, conceived, and produced by FIAF (the French Institute Alliance Française) in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, the third annual edition of this inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival further develops its focus on artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Over three intensive weeks this fall—whether by performing shopping, watching sounds, composing films, or reading movements—audiences will join in exploring and tasting a unique collection of outstanding new works and experiences, and discovering new revelations from each of these extraordinary artists.

Crossing the Line

French Institute Alliance Française
22 East 60th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues, Manhattan

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