Covering up for Luke George

Dancer Luke George (above)
and a scene from Not About Face
(photos: Madeline Best)

Australian-born dance/performance artist Luke George has a pretty hearty notion of what audiences will tolerate. Never before have I been asked, as an audience member, to divest all of my belongings and don a bed sheet with eye holes that would make me look like a little ghostling who got terribly confused on her way back from Trick-or-Treating (with disconcerting, not so subtle visual echoes of chadors and KKK gear). George's current iteration of Not About Face, performed with collaborator Hilary Clark and, yes, every single person in attendance at The Chocolate Factory, has been described as:

An experiment in anonymous intimacy and fake belief, Not About Face questions the nature of the unspoken contracts between performer and audience, and accesses the supernatural and spiritual as a way to investigate how the yearning for belief can make people do many things. For this performance, audience members are robed in full-body shrouds and join a free-roaming and anonymous gathering in the performance space. We will come together. We will become anonymous. We will fake belief or believe in faking it.



Luke George
(photo: Madeline Best)

Funny thing about bed sheet ectoplasm: It underscores the earthly nature of the bodies underneath. Especially when you can easily recognize your friend or colleague or that downtown dance star by their height or their signature sneakers or snazzy boots. The quest for the intangible puts you smack up against the tangible when George directs you to huddle together ever closer, closer, closer to him and your neighbor runs into your toe.

The body also roars back into view with Clark's sudden crying jag, George's tantrums and, finally, George's lengthy, undeniably charismatic dance that concludes the performance. Transparency, here--used as a form of theatrics--is more spirited than spirit-ly.

I don't know about the "fake belief" thing or George's stated interest (see the program notes) in the behavior of crowds. Seems to me, it's pretty hard to see Not About Face, at least for its audience, as anything but an ordered experience that you consciously agree to participate in (with your paid ticket) to the extent of your comfort. Everyone covered up--that was the fun part--but not absolutely everyone followed every direction.

If you go, know that you will spend nearly ninety minutes mostly on your feet, milling around the space, wearing a heavy sheet that traps body heat. (Ah, yes, the body again....) Since it's cold out these nights, dress in layers and, before the show, leave most of them with that nice coat check person downstairs.

Sound/video/set/system programming: Nick Roux
Lighting: Benjamin Cisterne

Not About Face continues tonight and Saturday with performances at 8pm, and there's an additional show on Saturday at 5pm. Plan to arrive no later than 15 minutes before start time. For tickets, click here.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions)

Alone and not so: Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, Taisha Paggett

Dance Magazine has just posted my review of Solos & Solitudes: Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, Taisha Paggett at Danspace Project--although, they've misspelled Taisha's last name. Perhaps that will be fixed by the time you see it. Click here to have a look!

Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People at BAM Next Wave Festival

A soft, glowing globe--like a goddess breast of white, translucent parachute cloth--looms over cramped performance space carved out by three angled thrusts of audience seating, their front edges cutting right into that surface in BAM Fisher's Fishman Space. Miguel Gutierrez hasn't given himself--or his dancers...or us, for that matter--much room to maneuver. And yet, during its 90 minutes, And lose the name of action aims to channel big, hefty other worlds and states of being and perception.

L-r: Luke George, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones and K.J. Holmes (Photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Performed by Gutierrez with a stellar cast of collaborators--Michelle Boulé, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Luke George, Hilary Clark and K.J. Holmes--And lose the name of action takes its premise from the choreographer's interest in neuroscience and the senses and, in particular, what he sees as the absence, in any discourse on philosophy and innovations in neuroscience, of any mention of what dancers know about the body. On a deeply personal level, though, it is also influenced by his father's struggles with a neurological disorder.

His program notes for the piece (worth a read, if you get a copy) conclude,

Along the way, I became intrigued with seemingly irrational ideas from the paranormal field, with their focus on insubstantial bodies, and I created a link between this field and my experiences performing and watching dance, which itself constantly disappears and haunts, and the hallucinatory experience of watching my father and family undergo a change I could never have predicted and only barely understand now.

From the outset, even before the performance begins, something is in the air. A heavy, soapy scent, actually. I can't swear this is deliberate--not something an audience member was wearing--but Gutierrez is interested in the senses. And so...maybe. And there's a very low-level sound thing going on, too. Something chiming, some voice or voices barely detectable beneath the audience chatter and the usher's anxious seating instructions.

The piece, itself, goes on to wink and wobble and lurch so much that it sometimes dumps and spills us out of its disoriented/disorienting state as much as it envelopes us. The relatively brief audience participation in a kind of seance presided over by a smarmy Houston-Jones seems especially wink-y--and yet, also, genuinely intense with all the dancers chanting and stiffly splaying their limbs in spirit-infused rapture.

Gutierrez either contains or explodes energy, feeling, thought. Sequences of hand gestures are performed with great calm despite a sense of obsessive and/or sacred ritualization--playing a piano runs into typing runs into chopping runs into declaiming without words and bigger, formal, ritualistic movements in duets or groups. In inexplicable but interesting spotlit-moments, Houston-Jones makes like a ninja sprite and Boulé, like a drunken Isadora. Dancers spill into the space, flowing, flopping, sloshing, stuttering, stumbling, twirling, negotiating near collisions like suddenly agitated molecules. A voice mumbles a musical "Fuck you," so barely discernible that you check, again and again, to be sure that you're really hearing it. There's pregnant talk of "a gesture of bad faith." The space fills with mad Ophelias. A bearded guy (actor Paul Duncan) appears in a video that, depending on your seat, you can see or not see. Deck chairs on the Titanic get rearranged...okay, well, not the Titanic...or maybe...but the very special, restricted white chairs interspersed among the front audience rows and commandeered by dancers play a heavy role in all of this and take a good deal of the brunt.

With a soundscape often lulling us into an altered state (and possibly slumber), And lose the name of action can switch between graceful and graceless, sharply envisioned and disorganized (deliberately or not), ludicrous and alarming. I doubt that it will come to count among my favorite Gutierrez works, but it does remind me of my first--and abiding--impression of his work, that gut feeling that I'm in the middle of an earthquake.

With lighting by Lenore Doxsee, sound design by Neal Medlyn, video and writing by Boru O'Brien O'Connell, costumes by David Tabbert and dramaturgy by Juliana May

Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People perform And lose the name of action at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) through Saturday, December 8 at 7:30pm and December 7 at 10pm.

Seating is limited. Sold out, although people on last night's waiting list were able to get in. So, give it a shot. For information, click here.

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Young Jean Lee and the naked truth

Untitled Feminist Show--created by award-winning director Young Jean Lee, choreographer Faye Driscoll, associate director Morgan Gould and other collaborators--has earned a place on my mental list of favorite dance events of the very young 2012. I know I'm going to have some explaining to do because--as I see here in Lee's program notes--Lee doesn't consider this work to be a dance piece. "Like the performers themselves," she writes, "the show is meant to resist categorization."

So, what am I talking about?

Well, aside from the fact that I would like to be able to claim every damn good thing in the Universe for dance, I'm beginning to get a sense that calling something "theater" (as she calls her company, after all: Young Jean Lee's Theater Company) is fine and dandy, but calling something "dance" is somehow limiting. 

Hmmm....

Seems it was just yesterday that the idea of calling all sorts of wild and crazy (or mild and boring) things "dance" was bold and liberating.

In any case, Lee's six marvelous stars are performing arts of the body, including dance and some incredibly edgy mime, and they are stark naked throughout the hour. I'm calling this one for dance, and I will not be dissuaded.

I also hear tell--because I've been reading some of her interviews--that she doesn't want Untitled Feminist Show to be considered sexy. Oh, please. Nothing wrong with (or un-feminist about) sexy. Bring sexy back. In fact, this show does so--directly and indirectly.

What couldn't be genuinely sexy about six unselfconsciously nude, female-bodied performers, each with a distinct body type and size, defining themselves across a fluid gender spectrum and expressing, almost entirely in iconic and primal physical movement, how it might feel to be free?

Free is sexy.

They are Becca Blackwell, World Famous *BOB*, Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo), Hilary Clark, Katy Pyle and Regina Rocke, collectively hailing from cabaret, theater, dance and burlesque with some crossovers, all stripped of theatricalizing makeup, hairstyling and, of course, costumes. They make a fabulous team in this fabulous romp, but Blackwell, Zirin-Brown and especially Clark seem to be having the most high-charged and, yes, liberating fun.

Some of them initially enter the space by slowly drifting down the aisles, giving the audience a sense of being represented in the performance space. (They come from us.) We hear their soft and human breathing, which establishes a comforting sense of common humanity. But don't get too comfortable. Although the inhabitants of Lee's feminist utopia sometimes sport frilly pink parasols, they're capable of using these items as weapons, and they'll happily consume their victim. No, you've never seen Marcel Marceau do the kind of mime you'll see in Untitled Feminist Show--at least, not on Ed Sullivan's show.

And check out that acid-trip video projection at the end! Through the Looking Glass, through the black hole you go! What are you going to be when you come out the other side?

With scenic design by David Evans Morris; lighting design by Raquel Davis; sound design by Chris Giarmo and Jamie McElhinney; and projection design by Leah Gelpe.

Untitled Feminist Show is a presentation of Performance Space 122's COIL Festival and runs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center through February 4. For information, schedule and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Jerome Robbins Theater

450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan

(directions)

It's all about CLASSCLASSCLASS

LOTSLOTSLOTS happening with CLASSCLASSCLASS, from March 1 to June 12!

Too much to tell you here. You'll have to check it out yourself.

But I will drop a few names of which I am perpetually enamored: Kyle Abraham, Hilary Clark, luciana achugar, Sydney Skybetter, Walter Dundervill, Aynsley Vandenbroucke...

 CLASSCLASSCLASS nurtures a continued future of dance pedagogy in New York City by engaging and developing a new generation of dance and performance artists as they teach their craft, while simultaneously making the act of taking and teaching class affordable for all. This year CLASSCLASSCLASS is partnering with Movement Research, but will continue to be a separate entity maintaining our own mission, goals, and modus operandi. We are hoping that this relationship fosters a very fertile space for newer teachers to experiment with their craft under the umbrella of an established organization.

Sounds cool. And so do the fees: classes $10; 

workshops $15.

First come first served. No reservations.

Sunday evening potluck/teaching forums (Fort Greene)

CLASSCLASSCLASS participating studios: 

BRAZIL (Bushwick)

The Chocolate Factory (Long Island City)

lululemon athletica (SoHo)

Studio 5-2 (Flatiron District)

Get complete info here.

Kinzel's responsible

Jon Kinzel's Responsible Ballet And What We Need is a Bench to Put Books On--curated by Sarah Michelson for The Kitchen--is a tasty bit for lovers of contemporary dance and its star performers. Vicky Shick, recovering from a fall, did not appear last night, but Kinzel, Hilary Clark, Jodi Melnick, Christopher Williams and promising newcomer Jeremy Pheiffer held everything together--not one of these folks duplicate any of the others or, for that matter, can anyone else in the dance-iverse duplicate them.

There aren't wings at the sides of The Kitchen's performance space, just one, smallish and dark partition--part of Kinzel's visual design--hanging in space. The piece begins when dancers scatter from behind this screen; when dancer return during the course of the piece, it amusingly hides everything but their legs. The bare, WYSIWYG space contains one other clever design element--a few long strips of masking tape. Yep. That's basically it. But really, it's fun when Williams rips the strips from the black wall and turns them three-dimensional. A little effort, a little act of down-to-earth alchemy. 

Responsible Ballet--free of overwhelming multimedia distractions--exposes its dancers and the arbitrary-seeming quirks of its movement. Kinzel favors spongey, stretchy, sometimes bizarrely distorted moves that shift and slither through positions that are unusually, continuously alive. This dancing writes across open space in an unknown or forgotten language--postmodern hieroglyphics.

In Kinzel's solos and duets, each dancer carries an elusive story of sorts. Melnick (with the big, intact valentine on her holey shirt) and especially Pheiffer carry the most distinct, resonant ones. Pheiffer's springy gyrations have a viscerally disturbing quality--like the first stirrings of seasickness--but I think something about him brings out the squirmy, sloshy-iness running through Responsible Ballet as a whole.

Clark, who has been more interestingly deployed, makes out less well than any of her colleagues here where it seems she serves merely as a blunt, undefined physical contrast. To be fair, that might not have been Kinzel's intention, but that is the effect. If Pheiffer writes with a fine Rapidograf, Clark wields a luxurious sable brush, but her hieroglyphics look all slash, splash and babble. And Kinzel has not added anything fresh to Williams' excellent track record.

Even so, these highly responsible and responsive dancers are well worth our venturing out to The Kitchen on some of this winter's coldest nights. But there's only one show left--tonight. Click here for ticketing.

O'Connor's "Rammed Earth"

I relished the chance to return to Tere O'Connor's Rammed Earth (2007)--which I'd first experienced at The Chocolate Factory last autumn--with its dozens of chairs that, for the initial section, spread audience members throughout the performance space, each chair facing this way or that, set in its own eccentric inclination. Against the ushers' gentle suggestions, I kept my well-stuffed messenger bag (on my lap, where it would not get in the way of any dancer). And in accord with a (perhaps not so gentle) suggestion that O'Connor once offered dance critics some time ago--a suggestion I clicked with straightaway--I left my notebook and pen stowed deep in the recesses of that bag where they would not get in my way.

I remembered what it felt like to inhabit the same space as Rammed Earth, with its high-pitched, mysterious poetics and its wide-open possibilities of meaning, and these masterful dancers--Hilary Clark, Heather Olson, Matthew Rogers and Christopher Williams--so weirdly good they make my skin crawl. This time, in the Howard Gilman Performance Space at Baryshnikov Arts Center, it felt as if we, the audience, were being buffeted and shaped by those four powerful bodies and intelligences.  Make that five, not four; of course, O'Connor shapes us, too, as architectural elements in his environment and as nervous systems that cannot help but fire up in such a charged setting.  

More than any other, this dance explicitly reminds me that a work of dance seen more than once is never the same, that it alters and is altered by the giver and by the receiver, and that there's always more there than can be grasped on first glance or easily told. I cherish this dance without needing to figure it all out. And even those things I think I do know about it are things that I'm just as happy to silently nod at and leave alone.

See Tere O'Connor Dance in Rammed Earth, now through Sunday, with two shows per evening: 7pm and 9pm; no late seating.

Baryshnikov Arts Center

450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan

Ticketing at Ticket Central or 212-279-4200