Life on the Fringe: "Inexcusable Fantasies" [UPDATE}

Susan McCully

The New York International Fringe Festival

(now through August 25)

Say, do you know where you're going to be this Saturday afternoon? Specifically at 4:45pm? (Or, as I just learned, tonight at 7:30!) Well, I do.

You'll be in the East Village, at The Theater at the 14th Street Y, seeing Inexcusable Fantasies, a two-woman play written by Susan McCully and performed by McCully with Rachel Hirshorn. Inexcusable Fantasies takes up musings and memories from the perspective of an aging lesbian--one with humble charm, wired nerves and uproarious humor to burn--in a complicated relationship with her own fluctuating libido. Over seventy minutes, the tale spans several scenes, including one with a couple of rival job seekers nearly coming to blows over one's driving lust for Martha Stewart, the media empress painstakingly analyzed and finally deemed "just the perfect erotic blend of butch/femme in motion." Both actresses are gifted with deft physical and verbal adaptability--McCully, enormously so. Her total embodiment of a biker dyke trying to flex her powers of seduction is simply perfection.

This is one Fringe show that makes and keeps its promise, and I predict you're going to have fun.

You're welcome.

Director: Eve Muson

Last chance: See it Saturday, August 24 at 4:45pm. Get tickets!

WAIT, WAIT! There's a show tonight at 7:30, too!!!!

Theater at 14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues, close to 1st), Manhattan
Entrance at the big orange banner (directions)

For complete information on the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival, click here.

Life on the Fringe: "Pussy"

Maura Halloran in Pussy
(photo by Claire Rice)

The New York International Fringe Festival

(now through August 25)

Predictable double entendres abound in Pussy, a one-woman show on the ups and mostly downs of a bi-cultural lesbian affair, written and performed by Canadian-born, San Francisco-based actress Maura Halloran. Just short of an hour, the work leans heavily on character sketches and physical theater techniques, especially in the form of clever mimicking of feline behavior. Yes, an especially nosy cat--who stages one hilarious and pivotal intervention late in the story--is one of four characters the lithe and sly Halloran portrays. She also impersonates a sweet, vulnerable Canadian woman, her snobby, exploitative English lover and their watchful Russian landlady. Halloran's often uncomfortably sharp talent for the subtleties of psychic shifts and facial expressions are the main reasons to catch this otherwise modest production.






Pussy

Director: Claire Rice
Movement Director: Julianne Fawsitt

Upcoming performances:

Thursday, August 15 at 8:15pm
Sunday, August 18 at 3:30pm
Wednesday, August 21 at 2pm
Thursday, August 22 at 9:30pm

The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre
115 MacDougal Street (between West 3rd Street and Minetta), Manhattan
(map/directions)

For complete information on the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival, click here.

FringeNYC: Yin Yue's "We Have Been Here Before"

I found myself longing for something as I watched We Have Been Here Before performed by Yin Yue Dance Company--a sense of why. That can happen even when both choreographer and dancers show prodigious facility, as is the case here. That doesn't mean that there isn't a why--just that it might not be clear to me, one viewer. The piece ran for 50 minutes, which I figured is a reasonable amount of time to hang out with people displaying serious talent and bravery, even if I'm not sure what it's supposed to add up to beyond what the choreographer said elsewhere--that she wants to "push the limits of physical capability" and bring out deep human emotion. Those desires are not unique in dance-making.

I'll guess at a how--which is that Yin draws from her training in Chinese classical and traditional dances, applying superb flexibility and an alert complexity of timing and coordination to the contemporary dance she makes for her small ensemble. What makes her project contemporary is, in particular, its embrace of physical distortion, great stretches of crunchiness alternating with taffy-pull movement. A big, chewy meal.  

We Have Been Here Before is "beautiful ugly"--shapely and picturesque with a strain of mania running through it, beginning to end. And what dancers: able to walk, chew gum, rub their bellies and--I'm sure if you asked them--launch into some throat singing, all at the same time. I exaggerate, sure, but not by much. The work relates no story, draws no characters, and continously snaps together minute jigsaw puzzle pieces of movement that could have been plucked from the bottom of a black velvet bag in the the dark. So you've got to wonder: How did they ever memorize all of that?

For some reason, the FringeNYC program lists only five performers--Rachel Patrice Fallon, Daniel Holt, Sarah F. Parker, Nicole von Arx and Grace Whitworth--but Yin also performs late in the piece. Also watch the darkly dramatic Whitworth and often simian Holt, but all dancers serve this intriguing, diverting work quite well.

See We Have Been Here Before tonight at 7:30pm or Friday, August 17 at 2pm.

The New School for Drama Theatre
151 Bank Street, 3rd Floor (between Washington and West Streets), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here. 

"Saharava" on the Fringe

I'm only getting around to a couple of FringeNYC shows this August. With age--and heat and humidity--comes the desire, and the right, to be more selective and dash about less. But Saharava: A Ritualized Dance-Opera, with its Tarot-related theme, called to me, and its nearby location at Theater 80 on St. Mark's Place made it an easy choice.

Described as "a primitive and raw theatrical ritual combining dance and wordless song," the hour-long production "follows the journey of the Fool through the Major Arcana of the Tarot." As wonderful as Theater 80's tiny, shallow stage can be for some shows, the ambitious Saharava needs bigger space to serve Andre Megerdichian's large, skillful cast, passionate, sometimes complex choreography and bustling stage arrangements. A little more distance between viewers and performers might also work in its favor--for example, minimizing the awkwardness of up-flipping, underwear-exposing lifts. These close-up, unsightly flashes of strange-looking, "flesh"-colored underpants beneath the women's faux-Greek tunics had unintended comical, trance-deflating effect. Megerdichian's respectable efforts--and his dancers--deserve a chance.

Fahad Siadat, who played The Magician, a symbol from Tarot's Major Arcana, also composed the instrumental and vocal elements of this "dance-opera." His influence begins in the lengthy "Prelude" of Om-like vocalization, didgeridoo-blowing and drone-droning from a dimly-lit stage, dropping the audience's blood pressure several notches. That's cool and befits a ritualistic atmosphere. Unfortunately, despite the presence of trained voices, the subsequent straight hour of wordless howling, screeching, barking, wheezing and the like sounded amateurish, suggesting an extended acting exercise more than a ritual of transformation.

I know the Tarot well, and the only archetype that read at all clear to me was The Devil (David Niles), who turns the stage into hell on earth for his driven minions. It would have been good to comprehend this work better as The Fool's Journey if other Tarot characters had been rendered with sharpness and purpose.

But see for yourself. Saharava: A Ritualized Dance-Opera continues at Theater 80 over the following schedule:

Sunday, August 12 at 1pm
Tuesday, August 14 at 2:30pm
Wednesday, August 15 at 7:45pm
Friday, August 24 at 7:15pm

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here.

Need a fringier Fringe?

A Fringe Festival That’s Too Tame? Too Bad
by Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, August 23, 2010

The Fringe: in search of benefits

The annual New York International Fringe Festival--"New York's Best Staycation" for the long, hot summer--has had a spotty record with dance. Yesterday, I spent part of my staycation at two Fringe shows--one including dance elements, the other focused on dance. Unfortunately, the spotty reputation holds.

Theatre of Eternal Values: Eternity in an Hour  (1hr 10min)

at The New School for Drama Theater

151 Bank Street (between West and Washington Streets)

A brief but otherwise conventional musical fantasia dedicated to William Blake, this piece is too pretty and tepid in both music and movement to convey anything compelling about the visionary poet and artist and his wild, revolutionary spirit. Instead of burning bright, it seems a beast more tamed than fiery. But Tim Bruce--the piece's playwright and star--carries the hour-and-change with charismatic charm and focused embodiment of Blake's fluid emotions. He even sparks a few moments of chemistry with his Catherine Blake, Monia Giovannangeli, one of the show's two choreographers. I just wish I didn't keep looking at Bruce and expecting-- hoping--he'd suddenly bust out with "Brown Eyed Girl" or "Into the Mystic."

Remaining shows: Tonight, 7pm; Sunday, 8/15; 7:15pm; Friday, 8/20, 4pm; Sunday, 8/22, 2pm

Deliquescent Designs: Perspectives (1hr 30min)

(choreography and performances by Stephanie Dixon, Mary Beth Leigh, Tamora Petitt and Karen Voyles)

at Dixon Place

161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets)

I slipped out of Perspectives after the dance with the feathers and the cranberry-red Isadora Duncan-style gowns. So, it might not be fair to say a whole lot about Deliquescent Designs. But I will note that this company's film projection--an unintentionally hilarious guide to bowling from, it appears, the 1950s--is far more arresting than any of the choreography I saw. I'm looking forward to the Macaulay review.

Remaining shows: Tonight, 10:15pm; Wednesday, 8/18, 5pm; Friday, 8/20, 4pm; Saturday, 8/21, 2pm.

At the Fringe, I see dead people

Yes. A handful of them. Dancing in Ectospasms, written and directed by Jessica Bonenfant and Edmund B. Lingan of Lola Lola Dance Theatre, which should not to be confused with LuLu LoLo from one of the other Fringe Fest shows I've recently seen. But like LuLu LoLo, Bonenfant and Lingan take their inspiration from women's history. In this case, the history concerns the 1848 birth of the American Spiritualist movement in Hydesville, NY, a town where, we're told--via words projected on a hanging bed sheet--"entertainment is not plentiful."

This relatively brief, impressionistic piece introduces us to Hydesville's infamous Fox sisters and their increasingly volatile and suspect spirit rapping (not what that sounds like) and an unidentified medium who summons various spirits out of a cabinet and exudes or regurgitates endless lengths of white, ectoplasmic-like fabric.

Spiritualism's rise converged with other interesting movements--women's suffrage, abolitionism and temperance--and was stoked, during the Civil War years, by widespread loss and grief. Ectospasm's characters--lightly touched upon and presented, without dialogue, in uninspired modern dance movement--might be worthy of more interesting choreographic design as well as a connection to this rich historical context.

Ectospasms runs again this evening at 7:30pm and has its final performance tomorrow evening, Sunday, at 9:30pm at the Robert Moss Theater at 440 Lafayette Street, 3rd Floor.

Complete New York International Fringe Festival information

On the Fringes again

Congratulations to choreographers Jennifer Schmermund and Anahid Sofian, the well-respected Middle Eastern dance master, for their charming contribution to John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, concluding its Fringe Festival run on Saturday, 7:30pm, at NYU's Skirball Center. With its book by William Peter Blatty--yes, the Exorcist guy--and direction by Jeffrey Lewonczyk, this musical comedy about spy planes and bellydancing harem girls and Arabs who love football seems anything but promising at its start. It's dated and peppered with cultural references that fall flat today, pitched at people who actually remember who Polly Adler was. (For the rest of us, I Googled her: a notorious madam.) But I sat tight and held on as the comedic acting improved, and the gently satirical silliness pulled me in. The music--written by Michael Garin, Robert Hipkens and Erik Frandsen--is played live on the side of the stage by a wonderful combo led by Garin. It's old-school entertainment, and you probably won't be able to get "Bubbi, Habibi, they both mean baby" out of your head. Want to risk it? For ticket information, click here.

Another Fringe production at the Skirball had the exact opposite effect: growing more absurd and annoying by the minute, lasting many minutes indeed and seeming to last even more minutes than it actually did. The Hoarde: A Dance Drama by Courtney Ffrench's Vissi Dance Theater promised much in its firey opening, full of complex and inventive deployment of its multicultural cast of dancers. However, it quickly degenerated into a hyper and showy confusion of musical and dance styles. Designed by Ffrench as a feverish fantasia, the piece involves events in a village under siege and in the dark kingdom of the Hoarde. Two gentle, young lovers (Min and Isis, danced by Ariel Polanco and Jalila A. Bell) are victimized and abducted by invaders (the Hoarde, whose goose-stepping march is curiously Rockette-like) led by arrogant Osiris (Charles Logan) whose makeup and costuming suggest a theatrical mashup of punk, goth and gay. The musical collage might have been served up by an out-of-control iPod, featuring everything from John Williams movie scores to Roberta Flack's "First Time Every I Saw Your Face" (for the love scene) and Donna Summer's "Love to Love You, Baby" (for the rape scene), everything from Carl Orff to Carlos Santana. Characterizations get muddy, the story grows sloppy and nuttily operatic towards the end, and the dancing suggests everything from derivative Ailey to Las Vegas extravaganza, sometimes simultaneously. Ffrench commands a hearty, skillful and often genuinely expressive cast of dancers who put it all out there for you. The final show runs on Saturday at 5:15pm. Want to risk it? For ticket information, click here.

Lucid--a less-than-satisfying Fringe drama about quantum physics, lucid dreaming and expanded consciousness at the Cherry Lane Theatre--does not have dance but it does have the luminous presence of Natalie Thomas (formerly, a Ballett Frankfurt soloist) and sharp, appealing performances by Jeremy Goren and Pat Swearingen. Two shows remain: Friday at 4:45pm and Saturday at 9:15pm. For ticket information, click here.

They Got "Game"

Movement Forum Dance Company will present three more rounds of The Game, its very entertaining, hour-long show at the New York International Fringe Festival. This Utah-based ensemble specializes in fast, fluid improvisational dance, and the current production turns a dance concert into a combination of challenge solos, nutty duets, old-style game shows and raucous party games. Program notes tell us the rules; very simple: "No choreography!"

You'll surely have your favorite contestants--mine being the rangy Graham Brown who moves like a wild man and takes big risks, and the beautifully grounded, capoeira-smooth Chris DelPorto--but these well-trained, flexible and expressive dancers are all winners.

Although we were promised (threatened with?) audience participation, there was a minimum of that in the Thursday afternoon show I attended. Every show, of course, is one-of-a-kind. Take your chances and try to see them tomorrow (Friday) at 7:45pm, Saturday the 18th at 6:15pm and Sunday the 19th at noon. Click here for details and ticketing.

Fringe Benefits

See the New York Times's slide show of images of dance from the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival. Click here.

And here's a Fringe tip you're probably savvy enough to not need: A Beautiful Child is a charming adaptation of Truman Capote's essay about his friendship with Marilyn Monroe. Not dance but it does have choreography (brief and cute) by Ben Munisteri. It's directed by Linda Powell and stars Maura Lisabeth Malloy (Monroe) and Joel Van Liew (Capote) who collaborated on the adaptation. Van Liew looks nothing like Capote, which is not in the least distracting since he's otherwise entertaining and wisely avoids trying to be a sound-alike.

Remaining performances--Thursday, August 16 (3:30pm) and Sunday, August 19 (1:45pm)--are probably sold out, but you can give it a shot by clicking here or here for ticketing or call 212-279-4488 or 1-888-FringeNYC. Advance ticketing (more than 24 hour hours before show time) is recommended. Otherwise, purchase tickets at the door, cash only, 15 minutes before show time.

© 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Orientarhythm takes Manhattan!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Fringe is on! For rabid fans of this dog-days-of-theater festival, that means it’s once again time to dash around downtown, from venue to venue and for better or for worse.

My first Fringe foray this month came down on the better side with the New York debut of the fierce yet personable Japanese duo known as Orientarhythm--Katsumi Sakakura and Eiko--and their versatile ensemble of women dancers. According to the troupe’s Web site, the unbelievably slick Sakakura’s superpowers include locking, street nunchaku (the pair of weaponry batons linked by a cord or chain), karate and boxing; silky-butchy Eiko (not to be confused with the famous avantgarde dancer of the same single name) claims panking, jazz, hip hop, street nunchaku and body boarding.

Their Fringe show is wonderful fun, combining Japanese youth culture and martial arts with hip hop culture in a confident and often humorous way. I wanted to see them slip in a little juicy capoeira for good measure, but I'm content with their electrifying staccato style. The show could be improved by snipping out the contemporary dance--Sakura--which two young women perform competently. This number displays no discernible choreographic flare, especially compared to the wit and dramatic fireworks of the duet that follows it--Sakakura and Eiko’s ninja fight dance, Shadow master.

When Orientarhythm returns to New York, I hope they’ll have a far better venue than the musty assembly hall of Our Lady of Pompei Church (West Village). If you go, take your earplugs, or don’t sit in the music’s line of fire; this troupe likes to crank up the volume.

Remaining shows: tonight (Sunday) at 7:15PM; Monday, August 13 at 9:30PM, Tuesday, August 14 at 6:45PM, and Wednesday, August 15 at 7:45PM. Click here or here for ticketing or call 212-279-4488 or 1-888-FringeNYC. Advance ticketing (more than 24 hour hours before show time) is recommended. Otherwise, purchase tickets at the door, cash only, 15 minutes before show time.

© 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa