Where do we fit? 92Y Harkness Dance explores identity

Dancer-choreographer Aimee Rials
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Dance artist Aimee Rials curated Where do we fit? for 92Y Harkness Dance Center's Fridays at Noon, choosing five choreographers to question "identity and sexuality, personhood and power, inclusion and exclusion and the universal desire to belong." With the exception of an ethereal Jasmine Hearn duet from shook-- performed with care by Dominica Greene and Angie Pittman--the hour-long showcase focused on solos danced by their creators. It explored everything from dexterous physicality, quirky and rash in its expression (Chuck Wilt's Cadet) to the mystery and spirituality of gender fluidity (Trebien Pollard's She Gives Birth to Stone). Through a dream-like relationship to costuming, Pamela Pietro worked clear contrasts between a woman's determined self-protection and her vulnerability in everything I thought I Knew but....

Rials's solo--"The Quiet We Keep," a compelling excerpt from Modifi(her)--had dramatic impact, drawn from her experience as an androgynous white lesbian with roots in the rural south. In a post-show Q&A, she noted her caution and self-vigilance on visits home, her need to protect her kin from scrutiny and danger by altering her appearance and behavior. Rials did not discuss the formal qualities of her solo, but I had taken note of intriguing similarities to ritual--the formation and interactions with a circle of empty folding chairs possibly representing absent and recalled family members; tremulous movement that could signal "catching the spirit" or resolutely engaging old pain and trauma. The Quiet We Keep, without being obvious, powerfully evokes place, people and psyche.

Closed. For information on future 92Y Harkness Dance Center Friday at Noon events, click here.

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92Y presents Overturning Expectations: Dance and Disability

Alice Sheppard
(photo: Britten Traughber)

Edisa Weeks's Overturning Expectations: Dance and Disability, curated for 92Y Harkness Dance Center's Fridays At Noon series this past week, drew upon the ability of dance artists with disabilities to take up the charge of Artist in the full sense of the word--to question, make with rigor, challenge self and audience, and nurture awareness of possibilities.

The event opened with two film screenings--choreographer Heidi Latsky's heady, striking Soliloquy (2015), featuring dancers of varying ages and abilities, and Karina Epperlein's short documentary, Phoenix Dance (2006), a profile of the late Homer Avila. If Latsky's film underscores the awesome force and sensuous beauty of dancers, Epperlein--through Avila, who lost a leg and hip to a rare form of cancer--shows us what goes into making a dancer, any dancer. Love, determination and discipline. Watching the one-legged Avila take daily class, watching his nimble work with duet partner Andrea Flores and choreographer Alonzo King, you revise your expectations of both the human body and the mind. Avila--whose spreading cancer took him from us at age 48--educated his audiences and colleagues well.

Dance artists Jerron Herman (Phys. Ed) and Alice Sheppard (So, I will wait and Trusting If/Believing When) might be polar opposites, at least by evidence of their respective solos. Herman's piece leans towards the athletic side of things. He is a dancer with Cerebral palsy's spastic condition, dystonia, noticeable in one arm and hand. Phys. Ed's repetitive nature--maybe a tad too lengthy and repetitive--has a down-to-earth, pedestrian feel despite his forceful jerking and jackknifing. Sheppard's solos here were infused with meditative, classical lyricism, her arms and torso arching and flexing into space above and around her wheelchair. Rather than an impediment to graceful movement, her wheelchair was both partner and a source of ability. Like Avila, she redirected our thoughts to the potent bodily and psychic strengths that make dance possible.

For information on upcoming Fridays at Noon programs at 92Y--including Moving Forward: Women Choreographers East and West, April 28--click here.

92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 92nd and 93rd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)


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Save the date to honor Clark Center's history: April 17

Celebrate the historic Clark Center for the Performing Arts--
founded by Alvin Ailey in 1959 in New York as a multi-racial, multi-ethnic arts community--at Fridays at Noon at 92Y.

For 30 years Clark Center trained dancers, encouraged emerging companies and developed new choreographic talent. Among the choreographers and companies that performed there are Alvin Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Eleo Pomare, Anna Sokolow, Mimi Garrard, Donald McKayle, Kazuko Hirabayashi, Meredith Monk, Laura Dean, Ballet Hispanico, Chuck Davis, Sounds in Motion, Senta Driver, Bill T Jones, May O’Donnel, Gus Solomons, Capoeiras Bahia, Doug Varone and Urban Bush Women.

This afternoon event will include live dancing, film, photographs and a panel discussion.

Live streams of each Fridays at Noon performance are available at www.tischdanceandnewmedia.com/live. The live streams of the Fridays At Noon performances are part of an educational collaboration between 92Y Harkness Dance Center and NYU’s Tisch Dance and New Media Program.

Friday, April 17, 12pm

Purchase tickets in advance online or at the 92Y Box Office (lobby).

For information, click here.

92Y (Buttenweiser Hall)
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
, Manhattan
(map/directions)