Katie Workum: "making a living dance" at Danspace Project

Dancers Weena Pauly (l) and Katie Workum
(photo: Ross Karre)

Here's Ross Karre's lovely photo of dancers Weena Pauly and Katie Workum engaged in a contemplative somatic practice called Authentic Movement. This practice forms the basis for Black Lakes, a trio Workum presents this weekend at Danspace Project with collaborators Pauly and Eleanor Smith.

Authentic movement is a profoundly simple form in which a mover moves with eyes closed in the presence of a witness. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology, it is a practice that stands alone with its own integrity.

--Zoë Avstreih, Founder/Director, Center for the Study of Authentic Movement

Each performance of Black Lakes is created by three deeply engaged dancers right before your eyes. Found movement. From the inside. And what I saw last night will not be what you might see tonight or tomorrow.

How does that alter how a concert audience looks at movement and relationships sparked in the moment versus how we look at set choreography? Authentic Movement requires not only a mover but a witness who receives perception of the movement without judgment.

It reduces the typical expectations--what makes sense? what is right? what is perfect? It heightens alertness to everything emerging as well as awareness of the witness's own inner stirrings. The hour-long Black Lakes reminded me of the trusting flight into open air that, for me, is my experience of giving a Tarot reading, a container for the arrival and expression of anything, the next thing and the next after that.

With Black Lakes, Workum, who has been making dance in more traditional ways since 1997, offers us a view into what she has begun exploring with Pauly over the past few years. Her program notes address the reason for this shift and invite the audience to be Witness as understood in Authentic Movement terms.

Black Lakes continues tonight and tomorrow night with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Hassabi's collage

When the audience enters Performance Space 122's theater, dancer Maria Hassabi is already in action--well, maybe not in action, since SoloShow is so much about the collaging of a series of static images--"the history of female representation...pulled from art history, pop culture and everyday life." But she's there, amid James Lo's recording of what sounds like a large, bustling audience assembling for a performance.

Wearing a cream-colored, sleeveless top and pants clinging to her ballerina-skinny frame, she occupies one corner of a large platform, shifting from pose to pose. We don't often see her expression. When we do, it's like a thunderclap;  she suddenly pivots towards us with that haunted, big-eyed face and legs splayed in tremulous, claw-like rigidity. Soon, though, she tilts her head back so far that her torso appears beheaded.  Although the soundtrack's roar subsides, the severe tension of her pose increases. Joe Levasseur's overhead lighting blasts her, but she appears to take to it, willingly, like a lizard adjusting and drying itself under desert sun.

Sometimes she drapes herself over the platform's edge, neck straining, blood pooling in her face. Often, she will turn her body into brittle sculpture on the featureless, ungiving platform. The work lasts about an hour of clock time--quite a testament to Hassabi's vigor and determination--but you might find yourself completely losing track of time.

I regret missing Hassabi's Solo--conceived as an autonomous half of a diptych and premiered at PS 122 last month as part of FIAF's Crossing the Line festival--and I also haven't seen her SoloShow alternate, Hristoula Harakas.

A joint presentation of Performa 09 and PS 122, SoloShow continues through Sunday: Friday and Saturday, 8pm and 10pm; Sunday, 6pm. Complete information and ticketing here.