Two looks at nudity

The Psychology of Nakedness
by Jonah Lehrer, Wired, November 30, 2011 

Naked Choreography
by David Parker, DanceMagazine.com, January 2012

Kravas and Wade at Danspace Project

Dance artists Heather Kravas and Jeremy Wade opened their shared season at Danspace Project last evening in a program billed as "distinctly different perspectives on the underbelly of desire and composure." True to word, there's nothing resembling composure in either Kassidy Chism (Kravas) or fountain (Wade). The Danspace promo continues, "Both are provocative dance makers and equally magnetic performers whose work reveals what happens when social contracts are broken or suspended." True enough, but that's where their solos diverge.

I hesitate to describe precisely what Kravas did, not out of squeamishness but, rather, a feeling that if you're spending money on a ticket, you really should get the full-on shock effect of this arguably courageous exorcism. But a performance is a kind of ecosystem, and a shared program even more so. Kravas sucked all the air out of the room and, for me at least, left very little energy for what Wade would offer after the fifteen-minute intermission. The audience politely endured it and then responded with the flattest applause I've ever heard at Danspace, where audiences are reliably supportive. It felt like an acknowledgement that merely said, "Yes, you've done your thing." Kravas's outlandish soundscape by Preshish Moments (aka Micheal Carter) should get hearty applause, though--and maybe a Bessie.

Wade, a New York legend who lit out for Europe, is a mover with a power to rock worlds. St. Mark's is a Christian church, and I wish Wade had trusted the enoughness of his half-tender, half-bizarre, shamanic performance style to transgress in this space--yes, even in this reasonable, liberal Christian space--because the extreme, continuous changes within his mind, voice, body and aura indeed transgress and bring multiple beings into his solo.

What disappointed me and, ultimately, made me drift to the sidelines, was Wade's choice to dip into some really old-school New Age-y audience involvement things--everybody make a circle, turn to your neighbor and hum at your neighbor, touch the walls and hum at them, too.... (While we're at it, Jeremy, why don't we levitate the Pentagon?) After sitting through Kassidy Chism--which, believe me, was all that was required of us, and quite enough at that--this aspect of Wade's otherwise riveting performance seemed naive and beside the point. Why bother with this when, with your own outrageous performing, you have already hit the grand slam that my Yankees could have used last night?

A Shared Evening: Heather Kravas and Jeremy Wade continues tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm. For more information and tickets, click here. 

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
10th Street and Second Avenue, Manhattan
(directions)

Jeremy Wade: Cute, then not so cute

Director-choreographer Jeremy Wade concludes There is No End to More--performed by Jared Gradinger of Berlin's Constanza Macras/Dorky Park troupe--at Japan Society tonight. So, people, there really is an end to No End. Try, try, try to get in.

This production--and Gradinger's demanding, non-stop solo--hit me with the force of a thousand-thousand stars. If that sounds like a wild exaggeration, let it. It should give you a sense of the intensity of the manga-fabulous text dreamed up by writer Marcos Rosales with Gradinger and Wade, the increasingly maniacal, nightmare visuals by illustrator Hiroki Otsuka and video artist Veith Michel, and Brendan Dougherty's breathtaking sonic design.

Moving in the jerky, grotesque style that Wade, a Bessie Award winner, has made his trademark, Gradinger depicts a nerdy figure trapped in an overheated mental bubble filled with obsessive fantasies and fanciful artifacts of Japanese kawaii ("cute") pop culture. Gradinger believes he is "wearing a three-piece suit--and a cape."  He is "being chased, chased by...I don't know what!" As kawaii commercialism spins out of control, fantasy slips into sad realism which, in turn, becomes sinister phantasmagoria. This work is rich, visceral, unforgettable.

And enough cannot be said about the creative imagination--that sheer, defiant, leap-of-faith agility--of Yoko Shioya, Japan Society's perceptive artistic director. Following hunches, she commissioned this work from the Berlin-based Wade and brought it to New York, sight unseen. She tends to do this kind of thing, and bless her.

Information and ticketing or 212-715-1258

Wade and Twist go for the gut

Jeremy Wade's new show in the close quarters of Joyce SoHo this week (...and pulled out their hair) got me in the gut. That's nothing new. Most people find Wade's unrelentingly spastic, grotesque choreography viscerally wrenching. But what really set me off this time was one dancer's horrendous, nearly endless sobbing wail. Humans must be hardwired to respond at gut level to an enormous expression of distress like this--or perhaps it was just me. It was inescapably horrifying and exhausting to listen to her. It's important for certain artists to show us anti-beauty and rip us out of our security, and Wade has brilliantly devised ways to do so. As others have noted, his own uprooting from the U.S.--he now lives and works in Berlin--seems to fit what he's about. The season concludes this Sunday with an 8pm performance.

Master puppet theater artist Basil Twist's Bessie Award-winning Dogugaeshi has returned to Japan Society, running now through September 22. I was entranced by layer after layer after layer of painted screens, each one parting and sliding and revealing the next layer behind it, seemingly without end. I was charmed by the tilting, dancing candles and the all-too-elusive white fox with the huge, almond-shaped eyes. But what really got me in the gut was the twist at the end--which I won't give away, on the chance that it might just grip you the way that it gripped me and move you to tears. I am in awe of this artist.