In the "Mix"

Karen Bernard's Performance Mix Festival 2011 continues mixing it up at Dixon Place through Sunday. Happy 25th Anniversary to both the fest and to DP for surviving in this tough town by throwing hearts, minds and doors open to adventure. Not quite knowing what to expect is considered something of a virtue at both DP and Le Mix, and last night's mashup--with work by Dawn Springer, Shree "Shyam" Das, Myra Bazell and Lindsay Browning, Kai Lossogott and Mduduzi Nyembe, and Isabel Lewis--proved to be no exception.

For me, there were two takeaways. Composer-musician Shree "Shyam" Das's Serenity to Madness, and Back--a coursing, ghost-ridden electronic piece maybe a bit too lengthy, ultimately, and too pretty for madness--might have been the evening's most captivating "dance," oddly enough, for the elaborate, precision hand movements he used to interact with his equipment. This sound wizard was rivaled only by the fascinating performance of Lindsay Browning in Molt (directed by Myra Bazell with Bazell-Browning choreography), hissing, trembling and, yes, molting out of her strapped-on tulle hoop skirt, rolling like tumbleweed and helplessly arcing into ecstasy and oblivion and, it would appear, liquefaction. The work uses a version of Johnny Mathis's 1957 tune "Wild is the Wind"--not the great Nina Simone cover, a song like a seal upon my soul, but welcome nonetheless.

Showtime: 7:30pm, tonight through Sunday. General information about the Mix's remaining and, as always, multifarious events can be found here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(directions)

Strange actions

Click here for my Dance Magazine review of Isabel Lewis in Strange Action at Performance Space 122.

Lewis Forever forever

Mmm, mmm, mmmm. Lewis Forever. Freak The Room. Cute as a basket of shaggy puppies. Glamourous but edgy. Edgy but accessible. Continuing tonight at Performance Space 122. But I can't tell you whatall they're going to do because--if they hold to their promise--it won't be the same as what they did last night. But it will still be siblings George Lewis Jr., Isabel Lewis, Sarah Lewis and "impostor" Eric Green filling in for Ligia Manuela Lewis--and, let me tell you, these Lewises--true and fake--have got talent to burn. There will be fun.

PS 122 info and ticketing

How they carry on: Gill and Lewis

I'm not sure I was glad to walk home last night with old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young songs stuck on loop in my mind, but the reason was Beth Gill--specifically, a solo performance she gave at Dixon Place in a Brink series program curated by Michael Helland and shared with soloist Isabel Lewis.

In Resurrected Dance Dance III, Gill played the scratchy vinyl on an old turntable set up on a chair, both items silhouetted in front of DP's wall by the solo's initial illumination--a single nightlight. What got me was the way she calmly slowed, grounded and rested herself inside the lilting, tilting, sometimes driving force of voices and guitars; how, when she chose to step, she stepped like a quiet, watchful heron on the hunt. A compelling performer, Gill can pull and hold viewers' focus by drawing us out of the forward strain of ordinary time and into a place deep stillness and concentration. DP is the place for doing a lot (or a meaningful little) with simple, ordinary things, and Gill can be a kitchen magician.

Lewis's Untitled Solo (Sweet Exorcist) contains poetic, powerful imagery and energy. Like Gill's solo, it plays with the effect of light on body and objects and harkens back to the '60s and early '70s in its selection of recordings with songs by The Great Society with Grace Slick, Curtis Mayfield (the source of the "untitle") and the Ethiopian ensemble Alemayheu Eshete/Alem Girma Band.

I've no idea what either artist intended here, but each of their solos conclude in an unsettling way. Gill--who has re-dressed herself in a black hoodie and slacks--replaces the last CSN&Y anthem with a fingernails-on-chalkboard number from Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band. As the Ethiopian tune unfolds, Lewis begins to drape her body in lengths of golden fabric and does not stop until she has wrapped her head and face too and tied the gleaming cloth fast around her neck. Her glamorous, sinuous wriggles do nothing to lessen the chilling effect of this image.

For information on future events at Dixon Place, click here.