I made the news!

Excited and pleased to share THIS!

At Gibney, a New Curatorial Director Makes a Revolution

Eva Yaa Asantewaa takes what she’s learned from a career in writing and puts it on the dance stage.

by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, September 24, 2019


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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.

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In review: "the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds"

Cast of the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Read reviews of the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, an evening of site-specific improvisation curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, part of Danspace Project's Lost and Found platform at St. Mark's Church, Saturday, October 22, 2016.

Click to read:

Maura Donohue, Culturebot

Alexis Clements, Hyperallergic

Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone, The Dance Enthusiast

Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

For information on remaining Lost and Found events, 

now through November 19, click here.

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to InfiniteBody.

Click here!

Time Out New York eliminates dance section. Take action!

I just received this news from a dance community colleague and wanted to quickly share it with you. Take action. Just do it!

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I'm writing with some urgent news about the state of dance coverage at Time Out New York -- and to encourage you to take action.

Dance editor Gia Kourlas has resigned. Her last day will be May 1, and the status of her replacement is unknown.

 
Gia's decision coincides with changes at the magazine that include the elimination of dance as a stand-alone section. Dance, in a much-abbreviated form, has been integrated into a new Theater and Dance section. This week, the magazine does not have a feature profiling a dance artist, and the section has been diminished to one page with just eight listings and no photos.

    
Write a letter to the magazine telling them how essential dance is to New York City cultural life, and how important -- and trusted -- TONY's coverage of dance has been. If you're a producer, ask the magazine why you should continue to advertise in a publication that doesn't respect dance on par with other art forms. If you're an artist, explain how crucial these features were in building an audience and support for your work.

 

Send letters ASAP to the following individuals:

Editor-in-Chief Terri White terri.white@timeout.com

Deputy Editor Carla Sosenko carla.sosenko@timeout.com

Managing Editor Ethan LaCroix ethan.lacroix@timeout.com

with a CC to letters@timeoutny.com 

Lucy Sexton responds to Gia Kourlas' Bessie Awards criticism

The Bessies are not only back but in boldface--and drawing some heat. See the recent critique by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times here.

Lucy Sexton, Director, NY Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies), replies here:

I’m writing in response to Gia Kourlas’s recent article on the changes in The NY Dance and Peformance Awards, The Bessies (Aug 11, 2012). Ms. Kourlas says the awards “absolutely” matter, and that they are engaged in a mission not only to recognize outstanding dance and performance, but to “make the world care about dance.” But she takes issue with the creation of subcommittees within the Bessies Selection Committee, which are charged with looking at work in different areas of NYC’s large and diverse dance landscape. She rather inexplicably concludes that the changes mean the awards are “focused on raising the profile of the Bessies rather than on artistic achievement.”

The total number of the Bessie Selection Committee was raised from 15-20 to a total of 41, so there are more eyes looking at more work. The members work in subcommittees so there can be more rigorous considerations of specific areas of dance. The intent, and indeed the result, of the new structure is that artistic achievement is more central to the discussions. And to state the obvious, raising the profile of The Bessies is critical to ensuring the artistic achievement recognized gets broader visibility.

Ms. Kourlas is rightly concerned with how to define the purview of the subcommittee considering more performance-oriented work. As she noted, we have recently changed the wording so it does not define the work recognized as “not dance.” The Judson movement opened up what could be considered dance. The club and performance scene in the 80s created a stew where dancers were mixing it up with people in different disciplines, from drag queens to visual artists doing performances. This is precisely why the awards are called the NY Dance and Performance Awards.

The subcommittee categories are certainly imperfect, but they are adaptive to a wide, ongoing community dialogue and a changing creative environment. The Bessies’ partnership with Dance/NYC, a branch of the national service organization, Dance/USA, has helped to extend and deepen the dialogue with a broad range of dance artists.

Our opportunity is to make clear to a non-dance-insider audience the wide spectrum of dance and performance work being considered. Making what The Bessies do more transparent and understandable to a wider audience is a step in our efforts to “make the world care about dance.”

We welcome feedback and ideas on how best to accomplish that goal.

Lucy Sexton
Director, NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies
Produced in partnership with Dance/NYC
thebessies@gmail.com

Parsing the complexities of dance...and dance awards

Bessies’ New Categories Limit Definitions of Dance
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, August 10, 2012

Melnick: "the center of the stage"

Jodi Melnick is a dancer's dancer...and a critic's dancer, too. I didn't get to see her New York Live Arts show, but I enjoyed this review.

From the Everyday, the Extraordinary: Jodi Melnick at New York Live Arts
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, March 9, 2012

Stephen Petronio Company at The Joyce [UPDATE]

Barrington Hinds in The Architecture of Loss
Stephen Petronio Company
(Photo: Steven Schreiber)

My guest and I spent entirely too much time scheming how one or the other of us would take possession of Stephen Petronio's shiny copper shoes by any means necessary. Then again, we had lots of time to dwell on this because Petronio was doing this queer-New Yorker-in-London spin on Steve Paxton's Intravenous Lecture (1970). Petronio turned Paxton's tale of censorship of nudity into an epic of wearing the wrong shirt at the wrong time in front of the wrong bobby and winding up in jail. Petronio talked to us while a male nurse hooked up to an IV drip and later drifted around the stage, dancing and gesticulating, as an assistant wheeled the IV pole just so and quietly gazed at him. Dancing Petronio--the Rubberband Man--was as amazing as his story's pacing and tone. And it turned out to be possible to stop coveting those shoes long enough to think how great it would be to force Rick Santorum to watch this man work.

Gia Kourlas writes an interesting assessment of Petronio's season in "Explorations of Loss, the Personal and the Public" (The New York Times, March 7), although I certainly don't agree with her preference for practice clothes over wearable art. It just wouldn't be Petronio without the sartorial drama. What's more, the new piece--The Architecture of Loss, scored by Valgeir Sigurdsson--presents the perfect integration of movement, scenic design and costuming. Even more than City of Twist (2002), The Architecture of Loss speaks to me of the atmosphere of 9/11. By that, I don't mean just the images of smoke smudging, and later billowing, across the three background panels, but also the strained, shredding and torn costumes (by Gudrun & Gudrun), as fragile as cobwebs, tinted in ash and charcoal, and the movement that seems to be all incessant, risky transition, even when one or another dancer does not move. This dance embodies insecurity. Nothing looks safe. Everything looks violated. And every action exacts more and more of a price.

In the Ethersketch I solo from Underland (2003), guest artist Wendy Whelan--in gleaming gold fringe and necklace and a crotch-high black skirt--seems to be colliding centuries in her costuming. As for her dancing, the sound equivalent of it would be a trumpet's blast--alarming, exciting and over way before you can ever settle down and get used to it.

UPDATE: Petronio has added three more performances of Ethersketch I--one tomorrow and two on Sunday.


Stephen Petronio and Company continues at The Joyce Theater through Sunday, March 11. Click here for schedule and ticket information.

The Joyce Theater
Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

A meditation on "The Making of Americans”...and writing

Juliette Mapp’s The Making of Americans
by Maura Nguyen Donohue, Culturebot, April 21, 2011

What does "choreography" mean today?

Time to Put Choreography Back on Its Feet

by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, September 2, 2010

Hay in Review

Deborah Hay Explores Fleeting States

by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, March 26, 2010

koosil-ja in modern times

Gia Kourlas's New York Times review offers a comprehensive overview of Blocks of Continuality/Body, Image, and Algorithm, the new work presented by koosil-ja/danceKUMIKO at Dance Theater Workshop. I agree with Kourlas's assessment that koosil-ja's execution of an ambitious technological concept fails to cohere and that what virtue Blocks has lies in the fresh, exacting performances of three live, human performers--Melissa Guerrero, Ava Heller and Elise Hudson.

I felt so overwhelmed by the copious, heavy program notes that I tried to go back to my old Tere O'Connor experiment: sit there without taking notes, let the whole thing wash over me, and see what happens. After all, no matter what an artist writes, no matter what she says, and no matter how hard she works a work, the work itself must work.

My resolve did not last long, and I did take out my notebook. I wanted to be sure to remember how Guerrero, in particular, cut clear to the bone of movement that usually is so lush and fraught with tradition and cultural meaning. I felt it was important that koosil-ja's visual projections of theatrical and cultural dance styles that are normally so rich were, by comparison with her live dancers, rendered flatter than flat. Her contemporary movers--cleverly modeling themselves after the movement and still imagery they watched on screens--turned dancing into as yet arcane hierogylphics. They were consistently fascinating and rewarding.

But Blocks of Continuality feels not only like a retread but several retreads run together--the geeky computerized command base set-up; the almost ritualistic "calibration" of equipment and NASA-like checking in and launching; the live movement determining what the techno-toys do, and vice versa. Oh, look! Avatars! Wow!

Why did this all seem so drawn out--really, really drawn out--with a less than impressive payoff? Why is it that dance, when it tries to reflect what's happening now, so often seems to be lagging a few crucial heartbeats behind?

And why, if you've got a guy hooked up to a monitor so that his meditation--or whatever--supposedly makes a big, contorted contraption tap a wall, do we end up merely hearing something that sounds like the occasional thump and reverberation of a staple gun? What's the radical point here?

Blocks of Continuality/Body, Image, and Algorithm continues tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30pm. For complete information and ticketing, visit Dance Theater Workshop.

Tharp: Taking a chance on love

A Nightclub. Sinatra Singing. Couples in Love.
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, September 20, 2009

Kourlas doing what she does best...and Tharp doesn't sound half bad either.

Awaiting a new "Place"

Dixon Place: A Workspace in Progress
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, November 2, 2008

Catching up...!

Another whirlwind week+ finds me needing to quickly catch up here. As Governor David Paterson would say, "It's Monday. Let's get to work!" Errrr..., okay, so it's Wednesday!

Credit where it's due: Times critic Gia Kourlas got it right in her review of Aviva Geismar's Line of Descent, which premiered last week at Dance New Amsterdam. So right in every way, in fact, that I was amazed to read the following sentence: "For a dance so intent on creating raw emotional characterizations, the lack of conviction among the dancers in delivering the text is most problematic." I remembered watching the dance and thinking one word over and over--unconvincing--and how jarring it was that Geismar's dancers were all notably fresh-faced, vibrant young women attempting to convey the emotional struggles of descendants of Holocaust survivors. For me, the lack of conviction Kourlas noted extended beyond the text to the embodiment of Geismar's idea itself.

Congrats to another Aviva: Last night, I attended An Evening with Dancing in the Streets--a reception, celebration and introduction to the coming season of Aviva Davidson's well-regarded site specific dance series. After welcomes from Davidson and board president Anthony Russell, we were treated to explosive performances by Larry Keigwin (AD of KEIGWIN + COMPANY), who later spoke of how his involvement with the program had refreshed his creativity, and Brandon Albright (AD of Hip Hop Generation Next, a Dancing in the Streets community project in Red Hook, Brooklyn) with his colleague Engine. (I hope to get Brandon--aka Peace--and Engine on Body and Soul podcast in the near future.) Most surprising was a loving and humorous statement from Michael Shaver, Chief Park Ranger of Governors Island National Monument which hosted a spectacular site presentation by Davidson's organization in 2006 at historic Fort Jay. Shaver's enthusiastic support for dance and for Davidson (shared by Robert Pirani, ED of Governors Island Alliance) gives me great hope that this extraordinary mound of land at the confluence of waters and winds will remain a powerful location for the arts.

St. Patrick?: Walking home from a show at Dixon Place on St. Patrick's night--which means dodging pubcrawling students and tourists but, since I'm talking about the East Village, the only thing unusual about that is the color green--it suddenly struck me that I'd forgotten something very important about St. Patrick. He's the Catholic saint identified with the voodoo loa Damballa, the snake god! St. Patrick, as the old myth would have it, rid Ireland of snakes (a euphemism for Catholicism conquering paganism). Afro-Atlantic people, who sought to retain something of the integrity of their traditional beliefs, always twisted what they learned of the Catholic saints to fit their own purposes. The Haitian slaves, for instance, decided that their "St. Patrick" was a big snake himself. With that saucy thought in mind, I continued my Paddy's Day walk with a jauntier step.

By the way, I was coming from a showing of Nile Ford's work-in-progress, In Search of the Invisible People, and you can read Claudia La Rocco's review here. You can read my Dance Magazine review...well, whenever they get around to posting it on the Web. I'll try to remember to tell you. And, yes, Ford and his manager gave both of us permission to review a work-in-progress.

Cranes falling from the sky: On my way to a Brainwave event on the Upper East Side, I passed through midtown east--luckily by subway--close to the time of last Saturday's crane accident. Let's get serious about putting an end to these terrible incidents in our city. I keep walking past that big one down here on the Bowery and giving it a wide berth.

Jonah Bokaer at Abrons Arts Center: You'll agree with me, surely, he's perfection. He could dance the phone book and be rivetting. After a while, though, you want more than the phone book. The notable thing about False Start (2007) is Bokaer's fine-tuned facility, previously noted. He moves like a kind of cyberposable doll. The Invention of Minus One, his premiered ensemble, is cleverly, brazenly overstuffed for the ADD Age. Keep watching this guy, though. How can you not?

Jeremy Nelson at Danspace Project: I liked watching fleet but surefooted Jeremy Nelson dance with his ensemble. He's beautiful.

Kourlas views "One Shot"

Very nice work on this Gia Kourlas review of Ronald K. Brown's new One Shot, presented at The Joyce Theater this week. Click here. My review of this new, full-evening work by Brown's Evidence, A Dance Company will appear in Dance Magazine...ah, well, I'll try to remember to tell you!

Ratmansky in negotiations with NYCB

Bolshoi Director May Take Job at City Ballet
by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, February 5, 2008

History evoked by choreographer Joanna Haigood

San Francisco-based choreographer Joanna Haigood specializes in site-specific dance and aerial dance. Her Zaccho Dance Theatre is currently presenting Invisible Wings (1998), inspired by the slavery-era Underground Railroad, at one of its historic New England sites, Jacob's Pillow, through Saturday, August 25. Collaborators include Linda Tillery, director of the Cultural Heritage Choir, storyteller Diane Ferlatte, lighting design by Jack Carpenter and design by Wayne Campbell.

Read Freedom Bound in Forest Dance by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times (August 20, 2007).