Take a walk through Colleen Thomas's childhood.

Dance artist Colleen Thomas grew up on Governors Island in the 1970s, long before it became today's popular playground for the creative arts and healthy outdoor fun. Her new interdisciplinary site work, Welcome Home, offers an impressions of an apartment--and life--much like the one she knew. She fills it with generations of relatives, artifacts, visual arts, music and social dancing. It's nostalgia for sure, but nostalgia with a potent kick--that energy provided by the many surprises that Building 10A's rooms hold and the edgy effect of stuffing twenty audience members and a corps of agile, fearlessly turbulent dancers into the same cramped spaces.

For the most part, Welcome Home is an enjoyable forty minutes. But not everything that happens in Building 10A, in the island's quiet Nolan Park area, is upbeat. Thomas evokes the racial divisions of the times, and there's at least one tiny room--darkened, hurried through--that looks like a nightmare in progress. We're hustled away, perhaps for the best.

On Friday, Thomas's dad was on hand in another room, one open to the light of day, to briefly guide us through old family photos.  The father/daughter resemblance is remarkable. Someone asked him how it felt to be back on the island.

"Weird," he said.

Performers: Samantha Allen, Keith Johnson, Saradiane Mosko, Jessica Stroh, Pedro Osorio, Kathy Stephens, Jim Stephens, Colleen Thomas, Darrin Wright, Olivia Young, Dylan Young, Bill Young

Visual Design: Rebecca Makus
Video Installation: Jason Akira Somma
Music: John McGrew
Costume Design: Rachel Jones Bellas
Dramaturgy: Adrian Silver

Welcome Home's remaining shows run today and tomorrow at 3pm, 4pm and 5pm.

(If you go, I strongly recommend that you also take advantage of some of the last chances to see the profoundly moving Michael Richards: Winged  exhibition in The Arts Center in Building 110, right off the Soissons ferry landing. Click here for information and gallery schedule.)

Click here for complete ferry information for Governors Island and here for Welcome Home tickets. Advance purchase is required as each performance accommodates only 20 audience members. You're advised to take a ferry leaving your departure point at least one hour before the start of the show you plan to attend.

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"Trade Practices" on Governors Island: "Dude, money is crazy!"

Scenes from HERE's Trade Practices
Above, l-r: Daphne Gaines, Mary Rasmussen, Peter McCabe
Below, l-r: Mike Iveson, Jr., Peter McCabe, Dax Valdes
(photos by Carl Skutsch)

A theme as weighty as the financial collapse of 2008, the hand basket we found ourselves in, and what money means in American society might take a project as big, as intricately textured and as labored upon--by a list of collaborators as long as my two arms and two legs spliced end to end--as Trade Practices, created by HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and David Evans Morris. A two-hour event directed by Marting and set in Governors Island's Pershing Hall, the site-specific, multimedia, physical theater performance is audience-immersive and interactive to the max, a game of "high-stakes" investor role-playing on our part as we move among rooms and storylines. It also has song-and-dance numbers, undercurrents of soap opera and even a bloodcurdling touch of the supernatural.

Clearly the entire creative team had a blast growing the witty, rousing Trade Practices and making the ten actors work their sweaty butts off--most notably, Daniel Kublick who, with all his physical might, gamely throws himself into his role as a roguish factory foreman. Tip: If you go, you'll sweat, too. This year for sure, Labor Day doesn't really mean the end of summer, and few of these Pershing Hall rooms have A/C.

Above and below: details from Works Progress Administration military history murals
inside Pershing Hall, Governors Island's former Administration building
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Trade Practices--written by Erin Courtney, Eisa Davis, Robert Lyons, Qui Nguyen, KJ Sanchez and Chris Wells--introduces us to the fictional Tender family and employees of Tender, Inc., proud paper manufacturers who go back centuries in New England and US history. Tender's CEO, played by the versatile Peter McCabe, would like to keep some of that New England history (and all of the corporation's current troubles) under wraps. Audience members get to trade shares in Tender, Inc. and witness the secret damage and debris from extremely close vantage points. Cast members' performances, and your own, can be fun even if this sort of thing--high finance, corporate intrigue--is so not your thing. Each viewer's experience will differ according to the storylines followed; if you find yourself disengaged, as I did at one point, you'll have a few opportunities to trade your shares for something potentially more promising.

L-r: Daniel Kublick, Dax Valdes and Mariana Newhard
(photo by Carl Skutsch)

Trade Practices runs through September 21 with performances by Jenniffer Diaz, Daphne Gaines, Megan Hill, Brooke Ishibashi, Mike Iveson, Jr., Daniel Kublick, Peter McCabe, Mariana Newhard, Mary Rasmussen and Dax Valdes. Click here for full details, including performance schedules, ticketing and Governors Island ferry departures from Manhattan and Brooklyn. Enjoy Governors Island.

Get a sneak peek at new work by Souleymane Badolo

Souleymane Badolo
(photo by Vaughn Brown)

Bessie Award-winning dancer-choreographer Souleymane Badolo will hold an Open Studio/Work-in-Process showing of his upcoming dance work, BENON, a new piece inspired by the Burkinabé tradition of dancing to celebrate the harvest. In BENON, which roughly translates to "harvest," Badolo explores the essential nature of food, sharing, and giving thanks. This new work premieres at Danspace Project, February 13–15, 2014.

Where: Building 110: LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island

When: Monday, November 4, (2pm–4pm)

Free and open to the public, RSVP required

Info: www.lmcc.net/calendar/event/open_studios_-_souleymane_badolo/

RSVP: http://www.tfaforms.com/303316

Souleymane “Solo” Badolo is a choreographer and dancer originating from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. In 1993, Badolo founded the Burkina Faso-based troupe, Kongo Ba Téria, which fuses traditional African dances with western contemporary dance. He has choreographed for Company Phoénix de Yaoundé (Cameroon), Cie Gabero de Niamey Company (Nigeria), and The National Ballet of Burkina Faso, among others. Souleymane developed a dance program at The Center of Dance, Music and Theatre in Rome that focused on the fusion of theatre and dance in contemporary performance and participated in a trans-African program initiative that set up creative collaborations for dancers from multiple African countries. He and Kongo Ba Téria are featured in the widely-screened documentary Movement (R)evolution Africa which documents the continent’s emergent experimental dance scene.

Governors Island: democratic playground or underachiever?

Times Critics Discuss Direction of Arts at Governors Island
The New York Times, August 16, 2010

Arts and fun on Governors Island

Governors Island as Playground for the Arts
by Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, August 12, 2010

Isherwood's 15-hour investment

'The Demons' - Peter Stein Takes Dostoyevsky to Governors Island

by Charles Isherwood, The New York Times, July 12, 2010

Swing out with Swing Space

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space program (project-based arts residencies) announces its next application deadline: July 22.

For this open call, LMCC is accepting applications for Studio Space at Building 110: LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island, and Rehearsal Space at The Vaults at 14 Wall Street.

Learn more and apply here.

Evidence of things unseen

This afternoon, I ferried over to Governors Island to check out choreographer Dana Salisbury's Unseen Dances, a presentation of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space program.


All photos (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

While big crowds arrived to take in the numerous, fun-looking offerings of a arts-and-public-creativity festival called Figment, I slipped into a small room at the back of Building 110 (LMCC's arts residency outpost) and joined a small group of people being de-shoed, separated from our belongings, blindfolded and guided around. Salisbury and the No-See-Ums provided a sightless experience of heightened aural, tactile and kinetic awareness, ranging from the amusing (when I briefly got snared in something plastic that failed to give way) to the amazing (a mini-earthquake of rapid, heavy footfalls; outside conversations from two opposing directions, simultaneously hitting each of my ears in a startling demonstration of brain hemispheres).


Unseen Dances comes in two flavors: improvised and choreographed. Feel free to visit anytime during open hours (12-4 tomorrow; 1-5 on Sunday) and sign up to go with the improvised flow. Come at 2pm tomorrow or 3pm on Sunday for the choreographed performance, which lasts 45 minutes. There's no charge.

You'll find Building 110 as soon as you come off the ferry. Look for it to the right of the path, past the building housing the new cafe. 110 is a long brick building with a sign for Figment. Stop in there for restrooms, then exit again and walk around to the building's left side.

Walk down to the far end of the building where you'll find LMCC's special entrance as well as a rather adorable sign for Unseen Dances.

Directions to and schedule for the Governors Island ferry

More on Dana Salisbury

Artists colonize Governors Island

Exotic Isle for Artists, Right in City

by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, June 1 2010

Dostoyevsky marathon set for Governors Island

12-Hour Dostoyevsky Play on Tap for Lincoln Center Festival

by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, March 10, 2010

Economic crisis hits Governors Isle plans

Warning of Lack of Money to Manage Governors Island
by Charles V. Bagli, The New York Times, March 12, 2009

LMCC to lead Governors Island arts development

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to Run Artists’ Studio and Exhibition Center on Governors Island
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, October 19, 2008