Artists Reach Out: Gus Solomons jr

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Gus Solomons jr

Gus Solomons jr
(selfie courtesy of the artist)

Dancer Gus Solomons jr graduated in architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied with Jan Veen at Boston Conservatory before moving to New York City to dance in Kicks and Co.! Solomons joined Donald McKayle’s company and studied the Martha Graham Technique but soon felt the constraints of modern dance. He was part of the collective of avant-garde experimentalists that eventually formed the Judson Dance Theater. Then, postmodern choreographer Merce Cunningham asked Solomons to join his company. Solomons began interpreting Cunningham’s postmodern concept of kinetic intention in his own choreography, founding The Solomons Company/Dance (1969-1994) and co-founding PARADIGM (1996-2011) with Carmen deLavallade and Dudley Williams. He has created over 165 dances and is known for his analytical approach, architectural concepts, musical collaborations, and use of video and other forms of media. Today, Solomons writes dance reviews and performs internationally with various artists.

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

At the moment, I’m in recuperation mode, healing form a particularly recalcitrant hip fracture, which has obliterated my mobility and limited my day-to-day life for nearly a year and a half. During recovery, I was still reviewing performances on my blog--www.solomons-says.com--until all live performances were canceled due to COVID-19. Now, I am doing a lot of contemplating the next thing I feel motivated to do.

I’m scheduled to complete a residency at University of Oklahoma, which was postponed from last fall, 2019, due to discovery of a medical crisis, which was rescheduled until this month, and now due to COVID-19, has been again postponed until November. Who knows?

I’m also starting to research a new solo for the 25th anniversary of DanceNow at Joe’s Pub, which I’ve been involved with since its beginning. Since suspending my company PARADIGM-dance in 2011 and retiring from teaching at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts in 2014, I have been mostly a choreographic advisor, both professionally--in the New Directions Choreography Lab at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and in the Alumni Choreography Workshop at NYU/Tisch and informally for choreographers whose work interests and/or inspires me.

Since suspending PARADIGM in 2011, I have been freelance performing for various choreographers in Europe. I’ve realized that my passion is to perform and have expand my range in that realm, rather than continue to make dances, per se. That’s the most fulfilling way I can use my experience as a performer with Martha Graham, Donald McKayle, and Merce Cunningham, among others, and as maker of over 170 dances of my own.

While all my proposed performance projects are on hold due to the state of the world, I have been exploring Tai Chi meditation with Sharon Smith and contemplating my next act of creation, whatever it may be.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I started dancing at age four in Sunday school at Rush A.M.E. Zion church in Cambridge, MA, and have been at it since, at first by just doing it, then by imitating movie musical stars, then finally studying formally at the Boston Conservatory, when I entered college at MIT to study architecture. Since then, I have done the next interesting thing that was presented to me in dance, acting, teaching, and performance.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

Currently, my daily practice is therapeutic and strength exercises to regain and maintain what physical power I still have, adjusting to the new physical instrument life and injury have presented me with, and trying to remain useful to the field I have loved and been part of for over 75 years.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

Since, at age 81, I am still being invited to create and perform, my daily practice is directed toward making that possible: maintaining physical and mental mobility and adaptability.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

Although my practice normally used to involve daily weightlifting at the gym and bicycle-riding around town, I am trying to hold onto the hope that we will soon be released from the confinement imposed by COVID-19 and an out-of-control government situation and resume life as we knew it.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

In the words of Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

******

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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All the world's a Stage Stage Stage Stage

Cast of Beginning of The End of The...: Graham, Solomons, Fire, Mattocks, Setterfield, Gordon, Cunningham, Cohn, Skeist (Photo: Andrew Eccles)

David Gordon and Valda Setterfield (Photo: Andrew Eccles)

In the playwright's head (and here that would be the head of writer/director/choreographer David Gordon as well as the head of David Gordon playing the head of Luigi Pirandello), the world is not constructed of four primal elements--air, fire, water and earth--but of four stages. And the world of David Gordon's Beginning of The End of The..., as manifest at Joyce SoHo, is composed of four stages separated by hop-able gaps and demarcated by rectangles formed by neatly-placed lines of pristine white tape. And the mutable world and mutable narratives inside each of those rectangles are made of numerous characters--each rambunctiously alive with his or her back story, resentments, desires and passionate intensity.

Gus Solomons jr and David Skeist

Based on Pirandello texts--Six Characters in Search of an Author, A Character's Tragedy and The Man With The Flower In His Mouth--Gordon's Beginning runs only 60 minutes but packs enough verbal wit, choreographic elegance, visual playfulness and emotional vitality to supply 60 other dance makers. Vividly leading Gordon's deft Pick Up Performance Co(s) troupe in this cyclical tour de force on love and mortality, on autonomy and loyalty, on art's illusion and the theatricality of reality, are Gus Solomons jr (a harried and somewhat irascible commuter), David Skeist (a fierce man wrestling, poetically, with a fierce diagnosis) and Gordon's actual leading lady and wife in real life, exquisite Valda Setterfield who, at one point, reminds us that, unlike the others, SHE wears black for DRAMATIC EFFECT! These three performances are flashes of lightning skimming over the smooth, subtle, dependable flow of colleagues Charlotte Cohn, Scott Cunningham, Norma Fire, Karen Graham and Aaron Mattocks. "What a pleasure, watching good wrappers wrap," someone says here. And I can only add, What a pleasure, watching David Gordon's players.

With lighting by Jennifer Tipton

Beginning of The End of The... runs through June 30, a happy bit of news for a dance show. So, take advantage. Get schedule and ticket information plus David Gordon's own cheeky description of the piece here.

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan
(directions)

Zip the snark

To snark or not to snark? Why is that still the question?

I must respectfully disagree with my colleague, dance critic Robert Johnson, whose recent article--see "Shall we dance: in defense of 'snarky' reviews", NJ.com, March 2--seems to dignify the terms snark and snarky, as appropriate and helpful modes of critique, while sometimes sealing them away in quote marks of inconsistent ambivalence.

Johnson wrote:

In my opinion, snark is an especially appropriate gift for the High-and-mighty. It’s the pin-prick that makes over-inflated reputations shrivel and sputter. Dance is the most wonderful thing, ever, but let’s be clear about this: dances that are boring, derivative, tasteless, badly rehearsed, pretentious and/or willfully opaque do nothing to strengthen the dance community. They do not enhance its reputation, or win converts for the art form. If we say everything is good then nothing is good, depriving truly brilliant artists of the honor they deserve. Great dancers and choreographers, and not critics, set the standards; and without pruning, mediocrity will rise up to choke us.

Snark is not a dance critic's defense against mediocrity in choreography and performance; it is the weapon of the petulant.

If a critic sees something that displeases, he or she can say something without indulging the temptation to lash out and throttle.

Yes, part of the critic's role is to be a smart and reliable Consumer Reporter, especially if the critic is writing for the mainstream press and the general reader. But effective questioning--or even outright negative critique--rarely, if ever, requires snark. And deliberate snark in dance writing does nothing to correct the marginalization and underclass status of dance and dancers in American society. Nor does it further communication between artists and dance journalists to treat artists as if they are nothing more than hypersensitive children pleading for special protection from reality.

Johnson's article derived from a thread of discussion at the recent Dance/NYC State of Dance symposium where a panel--including Johnson, Dance Magazine Editor-in-Chief Wendy Perron, New York Times critic Brian Seibert and dancer-choreographer-critic/blogger Gus Solomons jr--took up the topic, among others. "Among others" becomes necessary here because, as far as I can tell, talk of snark and its worth was the only splash that created a ripple of continued discussion beyond that panel. That happened, probably, because whenever the dance community talks about mainstream dance critics, the Curse of Snark is the primary focus of complaint.

So, I want to know, at this late date, don't we all have something better to talk about? If talk about why snark is good is the only way to give sizzle to a panel on dance criticism--and that might still be the case--we all have huge amount of work to do.

Shift that PARADIGM

Gus Solomons Jr. dancer / choreographer / writer / actor / PARADIGM - shifter
by Jennifer Edwards, The Huffington Post, January 12, 2011

Through thick or thin ice

What real dancers think of figure skating
Insiders reveal what they love and loathe about their balletic cousins on ice 
by Margaret Eby, Salon.com, February 16, 2010

The Bessies are coming back!

I started out this morning, wishing all my Facebook friends a day of revelations. And, indeed, the day revealed itself to be a big one for dance and performance in New York!

Suspended during the 2008-09 season,The Bessies (New York Dance and Performance Awards) are up and running again, thanks to the collaborative efforts of its longstanding producing team and its new administrators, DanceNYC and, as independent fundraiser/producer, the dance and performance artist Lucy Sexton.

In a brief press conference at the French Institute Alliance Francaise, Gus Solomons jr--who served on the Bessies' inaugural nominating committee (1983-84)--underscored why these awards have lasting significance to artists:

"It was the first time that there had been an annual gathering where we could reflect on and celebrate each other's work and draw attention to artistically challenging work some of the audience was unaware of. So often in New York you feel like your working in a cave, struggling to find ways to continue dancing and making work, struggling to get that work seen and written about, struggling to pay your dancers and your rent. Here at last was a way to say publicly that work was being seen and appreciated, and that there was a real community to which that work mattered."

"The Bessie Awards will return next fall, yes!" cheered Elizabeth Streb, pumping her fist in the air. "That's really the most important thing I'll say today. There are many questions still to be answered, but we didn't want it to go on another year--or even another month--with anyone wondering if the Bessies were going to disappear."

The strategy and some ideas in development for reviving the beloved awards include:

• Current producers (Danspace Project, The Joyce Theater and Dance Theater Workshop) working in partnership with DanceNYC as it transitions into its producing responsibilities

• DanceNYC dedicating part of its soon-to-be redesigned Web site to a homepage for the Bessies, scheduled to debut on March 15, as "a hub for the New York dance world, a place to share information on companies, shows and projects, as well as...detailed information on the Bessie Committee and ongoing developments related to the awards"

• Seeking ways to extend the usefulness of the awards to the community and the award winners--for instance, pursuing commissioning grants to attach to certain awards, creating opportunities to show winning work at events targeting presenters, streaming awarded work on the Web site, and rebroadcasting the awards ceremony.

Sexton asked for our "patience and support" as work continues on making the Bessies process transparent and meaningful to the community. "There's no 'They' in this. It's us. It's important for all of us to keep talking to each other."

Streb noted, "The city is changing. The way dancers survive here is changing, as it always has. The scene is more decentralized than it has ever been and actually more vital--and more viral. So, the Bessies need to explore ways to better serve the changing landscape."


The committee for the 2010 awards includes:


Nolini Barretto
Rashida Bumbray
Lili Chopra
Joan Finkelstein
Boo Froebel
Stephen Greco
Ishmael Houston-Jones
Virginia Johnson
Brad Learmonth
Stanford Makishi
Brian McCormick
Nicky Paraiso
Brian Rogers
Philip Sandstrom
Yoko Shioya
Sydney Skybetter
Ivan Sygoda
Charmaine Warren
Susan Yung

A new Bessie Awards Steering Committee is in formation, currently including Michelle Burkhart, Martin Wechsler, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Andrea Sholler, Carla Peterson, Jennifer Goodale and Reggie Wilson.

An announcement of details about the Fall 2010 awards ceremony will be made on May 1.

For further information, contact Lucy Sexton at thebessies@gmail.com

A complete list of former Bessies recipients can be found at this link (pdf). And for information on DanceNYC, click here.

Out of Site at Lincoln Center

As I'd already had a very long day, I didn't stay around for Hidden Forests by Elaine Summers Dance, but I enjoyed most of 60's Snapshots, the program of Sixties-referencing dances by Gus Solomons jr (Random Funny Walks), Merián Soto (What is Love?), Yoshiko Chuma (RED CARPET 1967- ) and Summers at Lincoln Center Out of Doors at the South Plaza.

Solomons's male sextet--dressed in slouchy, hooded costumes in colors that made them evoke, in a purely abstract way, the entire produce section at Whole Foods--bounced around in nifty, diverting patterns amid the park trees and walkways to the music of Frank Zappa. The performers were Bryan Campbell, Andrew Griffin, Silas Riener, Saeed Siamak, Sydney Skybetter and Nick Strafaccia--dancing fools, indeed. Kudos to Oana Botez-Ban for the costumes and to Solomons for remembering that Zappa was a mad genius. Why don't more choreographers raid that treasure house of clever, delirious music?

Soto's What is Love? continues her "dances with branches"--deep, slow, meditative explorations. Her company of collaborating dancers--Danielle Kinne, Megan Mazarick, Shavon Norris, Jumatatu Poe and Olive Prince--is now renamed Merián Soto/Performance Practice. The ensemble, dressed in iconic Sixties hippie-wear, performed atop a platform under warm lighting that gave them--and the bare tree branches they carried, tilted and balanced--a poetic, Butoh-like cast. Soto draws sensitive viewers into a peaceful grove of awareness where time stretches into infinity.

Chuma's runway retrospective--danced up and down a long, red mat--seemed too insular and self-referential to connect with the actual site in a specific, meaningful and resonant way.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors continues this weekend with more interesting shows, including two afternoon-long La Casita gatherings--"a beloved little house, a city garden where poets and bards celebrate las palabras, the words"--on Saturday, August 25 and Sunday, August 26. Hey, don't you dare forget to celebrate my birthday on Sunday! And maybe I'll see you on Monday night for the grand finale in Damrosch Park--La India!