Setterfield and Scott ask "Who is Lear?"

Valda Setterfield's sublimity (there's no other word for it) and her postmodern cred--dancing for Merce Cunningham and husband David Gordon--place her in the highest echelon of "downtown" royalty. Now, in Lear--a collaboration with Irish dancemaker John Scott at New York Live Arts--she plays a king, sort of. But if you're looking for Shakespeare's King Lear, go curl up with a copy.

At first sight, Setterfield reflects the true nature of her kingship and of this dance-theater piece. Her crown: a childish, white paper cutout flattened around her head. Her stride: direct but understated, drama-free. When was the last time a monarch tossed little wrapped candies at you?

You will wisely note the title--Lear, not King Lear--and contemplate the possibility that, for this character, status is already beside the point, a thing of the past or no longer of consequence.

Setterfield first breathes a few simple words: "Family. Love. Children...." Her arms and hands flutter but without fuss, merely hinting at tradition or story. "Daughters. Kingdom. Death." She seems to summon these things from within herself and, before long, "daughters" do indeed appear.

Solemnly pacing or pelting back and forth, three male dancers embody daughters Goneril (Marcus Bellamy), Regan (Ryan O'Neill) and Cordelia (Keven Coquelard), presenting a dilemma to Lear. Who truly loves Lear? Clever, seductive declarations ensue, as do conflicts, elaborately imagined in language and movement. The daughters appear to be devices that--irritating and irritable--rock Lear back to something resembling life.

Setterfield and Scott took the inspiration for Lear from shared experience--their dying fathers. They sample Shakespeare but keep us constantly aware of the today-ness of their personal investment in the themes and outline of the source material. And they do so with a light hand, humor, modest ambition and the reliability of Setterfield's clarity and restraint.

At the end, alone in the space, she revisits some of her earliest, and most mysterious, gestures as if re-folding the energy of the three conjured, now-vanished daughters into her body.

The John Scott Dance production of Lear concludes this evening with a 7:30pm performance. For information and tickets, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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So these four guys get "HYPERACTIVE" at La MaMa.....

John Scott's La MaMa production of HYPERACTIVE,
starring (clockwise from front, left) Stuart Singer, Ryan O'Neill,
Marcus Bellamy and Kevin Coquelard
(photo: Jinyoul Lim)

Give up the struggle.

In the arm wrestling between physical movement and verbal expression, the body wins. See? Even there: It's arm wrestling.

I give in.

As a writer, I will never keep up with what John Scott's dancers do in HYPERACTIVE (2013), a presentation by Irish Modern Dance Theatre, currently at the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. This Irish import, billed as a "human dance installation," takes pretty much everything the bodies of Kevin Coquelard, Ryan O'Neill, Marcus Bellamy and Stuart Singer have to offer. Thank goodness what these men have to offer is a lot. My wife was surprised when I returned home so quickly from Scott's show, which is only fifty-minutes long. I told her, "Had it gone any longer, they would have killed themselves."

You get a sense of HYPERACTIVE, right from the start, as Coquelard, first on the scene, violently scrunches his nose and mouth in ways that will be familiar to anyone suffering New York's spring allergy attacks. Coquelard probably doesn't have a seasonal allergy, but what he has, in HYPERACTIVE, is the essence of something only likely to grow in irrational force.

He's soon joined by Bellamy, whose truncated tale of a dog who likes to chase lizards and another dog with floppy ears quickly gives way to full-bodied howling and floppiness. When the two guys face each other, wind up and wind up and wind up, spin and stumble and wind up some more and guffaw and scamper, it's clear that HYPERACTIVE is going to be a little nuts. And the body will win.

Scott's sense of funny scrambles over any flimsy barrier. What is an "invisible hand dance?" Don't ask. What does an all-male chorus line and a Mack truck have in common? Why does Marcus's "inner geometry" look more like how Jackson Pollock might drip a dance? What might it be like to stop to smell the roses only to have a herd of bison gallop by only inches away? What's the DMZ between exhilarating exuberance and bodily danger? Sit along either of two available sides of the actual dance space, as I did, and you will find out. Or you could sit in La MaMa's regular theater seats and stay all cool and stuff.

HYPERACTIVE wears its own "inner geometry" on the outside. Random steps are often identified by name--as are people, by first names, some of whom I recognized for their connections to Scott and his work. Phrases are vocally counted. Exertion is demonstrated in the booming slap of feet against floor and the rivulets of sweat against skin and soaking clothing. The work embraces transparency and anti-virtuosity in its raucousness, its grin at failure, its refusal to go anywhere near pretty payoff or uplift.

And four butts are worked off, relentlessly, for the entire fifty minutes.

With music by JG Everest and Blackfish; Michael Galasso

Co-presented by the Irish Arts Center, HYPERACTIVE continues at La MaMa tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The First Floor Theatre @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

The new man in Valda Setterfield's life? King Lear!

‘I have played men before but King Lear is a new departure’
by Michael Seaver, The Irish Times, August 7, 2014

Love brings surprises: "The White Piece" by John Scott Dance at La MaMa

Members of John Scott Dance in The White Piece (Photos by Chris Nash)

top photo: Philip Connaughton and Rebecca Reilly; bottom photo: John Scott and Haile Takabo

Dancer-choreographer John Scott--who has offered dance workshops for Dublin's Centre for Care for Survivors of Torture and also dealt with his performers' knotty, desperate immigration asylum cases--does not make art that speaks directly to the pain he has witnessed and internalized. With a field of trained dancers as well as survivors of injustice whose bodies carry concealed stories, he makes bighearted, absurd rituals of healing. The White Piece--its title referencing the symbolic color of purification, sanctity and, for some cultures, mourning--is one such work. Presented at La MaMa now through March 24, in association with the Irish Arts Center, The White Piece can have a curious effect on audiences, daring to be deceptively uncool in its methods and borderline corny in its optimistic appeal to humanity.

Before the audience can even settle in, Scott subjects everyone to a cacophony of voices as thirteen racially- and culturally-diverse performers mill about and speak, each man or woman on his or her own trajectory or sometimes pairing off to trail and mirror a momentary partner. I would imagine those voices and bodies represent the situation Scott found himself in with so many people--from Eastern Europe, from African nations--and so many troubling histories thrown his way. But pretty soon the mess shifts to a follow-the-leader game of word-and-movement phrases, and the talk is all about love. "Love is a piece of paper written but left unread," one dancer says, tossing a sheet of paper over her shoulder. The others follow suit. "Love is an escape from self," says another, burying his head in the arm of a partner. The rest repeat these words and actions. "Love brings surprises" leads to the initial surprise of one man grabbing a partner by the foot and dragging him halfway around the floor. This love talk goes on for quite a while, through many variations, during which some actual dancey-dance breaks out only to be cheekily undercut by the Broadway razzmatazz its dancers momentarily give it. Scott and company seem to be aware of the inherent disruptive weirdness of mixing privileged dance and theater specialists with folks new to the pleasure and power of movement as a means of artistic expression. They pack the self-consciousness of all of this into the piece, and they don't care if some of the raggedy ends of that hang outside the luggage. It's more fun (and more disruptive) that way.

There's nothing new about "breaking the fourth wall"--and certainly not at La MaMa--but it's cute how John Scott Dance does it in The White Piece where your footwear might get removed to become a flamboyantly admired prop. And not just one time. Then again, if you're fortunate enough to actually be the great Sara Rudner--a Scott colleague--the choreographer might trot over to you and say, "Thank you for coming. I'm giving the rest of this performance for you, and if you need anything, let me know."

But you probably don't have to be Sara Rudner to receive the gift of The White Piece, if willing. After the company's post-show Q&A, guided by La MaMa curator Nicky Paraiso, I left the theater feeling a touch giddy and with a noticeable pep in my step. It's true that, in most times, I am a lighthearted soul and that most dance nourishes me. Even so, this was an unexpected sensation.


The White Piece--performed by Joanna Banks, Ashley Chen, Philip Connaughton, Crinela, James Hosty, Kiribu, Sarah Patience, Florence Welalo Poudima, Rebecca Reilly, John Scott, Daniel Squire, Cheryl Therrien and Mufutau (Junior) Kehinde Yusuf--runs through Sunday, March 24. For schedule and ticket details, click here.

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (2nd Floor), Manhattan
(map/directions)

APAP Diary: A Saturday on the run!

My APAP experience is as much about what I can't get to--inhabiting a human body without superhuman powers--as what I can and choose to attend. It includes smug self-satisfaction ("Oh, esteemed dance critic colleague, you ran to that media-hyped, cooler-than-cool, must-see production and ended up hating it? Well, good for you!") as well as feelings of mental weakness and overwhelm ("Gosh, no, actually, I didn't schedule any of your venue's showings. Frankly, in the crush of information about other events, I simply forgot!"). The cure for all of this personal and programmatic too-much-ness will soon arrive but, in the meantime, let's look at three nice things from yesterday--one of them non-APAP--when I became a mere blur in the lives of my cats who had already been abandoned by their other mother who was checking out the big Degas and The Nude show in Boston.

Michelle Boulé and Phillip Connaughton in Body Duet. Photo (c)Julieta Cervantes

 

John Scott and his Irish Modern Dance Theatre at La MaMa, The Club:

The pairing of dancers as smart, gifted and game as New York's Michelle Boulé and Dublin's Philip Connaughton made this showing catnip. In Scott's half-hour Body Duet, the collision and tangling of two headstrong body/minds appears to be an attempt to force the reconnection of odd-shaped fragments of a busted relationship--or of a busted self. Within the randomness and illogic of these quirky choreographic and physical juxtapositions, we can enjoy the clarity and fervor for life running through this dance and giving it its measure of hope. Body Duet also offered my very first view of a dance that includes a tablet--presumably an iPad--as prop, prompter and nearly dance partner. And that worried me, since the two humans clutching this electronic gadget between them were lashing around quite a bit. Body Duet will tour Ireland later this year, and Scott's New York fans can expect a new full-length at La MaMa in Spring 2013. See Body Duet this Monday at 3pm or Tuesday at 1pm. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. For information, click here.

La MaMa
74A Est 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue & Bowery), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance:

After gobbling a quick lunch, I took an APAP-break and caught the R train out to Brooklyn to visit the new Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance on Fulton Street, a close neighbor to BAM Harvey, BAM Opera House and the Mark Morris Dance Center. For the center's Grand Opening weekend, all dance and percussion classes for adults and kids were free, and a dance party, featuring a live band and two DJs, was planned for the evening. Up winding flights of red stairs, I found co-directors Dominique Bravo and Jimena Martinez and artistic director Pat Hall with their hands full, greeting a bustling crowd of well-wishers and class-takers. I watched part of master teacher Baba Richard Gonzalez's inspiring Afro-Caribbean/Orisha Dances class, mainly from a big screen television, since the moderate-sized studio itself was packed to overflowing. Two studios and a music room will somehow contain the energy and goodness of Cumbe's program--including classes in Contemporary Dance (Ronald K. Brown), Bomba y Plena (Alma Cruz), Haitian Drumming (Frisner Augustin) and Afro-Colombian (Daniel Fetecua Soto) and so much more.

Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance
558 Fulton Street, 2nd Floor, (near Flatbush Avenue), Brooklyn
718-935-9700
(map/Subway 2/3/4/5 to Nevins, Q/R to DeKalb or 2/3/4/5/N/D/Q/R to Atlantic Avenue)

Kimberly Bartosik/Roderick Murray at Gibney Dance Center:

Bartosik showed a fragment of an evening-length work-in-progress, You are my heat and glare, in its very early stages. The finished piece, inspired by poet Anne Carson's "The Anthropology of Water," will be structured as three duets for dancer/designer, dancer/dancer and voice artist/voice artist. Its premiere is planned for 2013. In the segment shown yesterday for APAP at the Gibney Dance Center, the dancer pairs with Bessie Award-winning lighting designer Roderick Murray whose hands-on effects and installation bring out a severe, old-time movie star glamor in her natural elegance. The showing, though too fleeting to predict what will come of this work, was certainly lovely and intriguing enough to peak my interest. If you want to see what I mean, you have another two chances: Bartosik and Murray will bring their showing uptown to Barnard College today at 5:30pm and tomorrow, Monday, at 12:30pm. 

Barnard College, Barnard Hall, Studio 305
Broadway and 117th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

John Scott's "Fall and Recover" at La MaMa

We don't imagine we are by ourselves. That is how the dance healed us. 

It allowed us to open ourselves and reach out for help.

--a cast member of John Scott's Fall and Recover

I'm just realizing now that John Scott's program notes list no credit for lighting design, which leads me to my only partly fanciful conclusion that Fall and Recover, the ensemble work he has finally been able to bring to La MaMa's stage, gets its splendid lights from the natural radiance of its cast of dancers. So let me begin with appreciation for the luminous contributions of Francis Acilu, Julie Chi, Philip Connaughton, Aisling Doyle, Faranak Mehdi Golhini, Solomon Ijigade, Sebastiao Mpembele Kamalandua, Kiribu, Patience Namehe, Nina, Elizabeth Su, Haile Tkabo and Mufutau Kehinde Yusuf (Junior).

With the exception of Connaughton and Doyle (longtime members of Scott's critically acclaimed Irish Modern Dance Theatre), these performers come to their work from disturbing backgrounds. Survivors of torture and wrenching loss in their homelands--Angola, Uganda, Eritrea and some pointedly unidentified countries, nine nations in all--they sought asylum in Ireland. As clients of Dublin's Centre for the Care of Survivors of Torture, they participated in Scott's movement workshops. Fall and Recover, with original music composed and performed live with sparkling wizardry by Rossa O'Snodaigh, eventually developed out of these sessions. Fall and Recover is an atypical and therefore heartening choice to be included in the New York offerings of Culture Ireland's US-wide Imagine Ireland fest.

This piece defies expectations, curving towards postmodernist abstract impression and suggestion, rather than literal declaration. In addition, the dancers underscore not past oppression and violence but resilient vitality, beauty and the humane exchange of support across differences of language and culture. Near the beginning, two women sit side by side as one calmly relates a story, possibly something of her experience, in an African language, periodically nodding and gesturing. Her silent companion--who is not African--nods when she does, careful to gesture in the same way as if to say, "You speak, but I might as well be speaking. We are very different but, nevertheless, we align."

While Scott's choreography pays detailed attention to individuality, at times highlighting the specific skills and contributions of each performer, it is the ensemble's moments of unity that most move me. One happens as members of the ensemble grasp hands and form a diagonal line, all of them speaking at once in their various tongues, as they advance, angle away or recede from us. The line looks massive, impenetrable; the force of the line also seems difficult, and one can imagine Scott being a bit overwhelmed by all of the assembled energy of a crowd of people with so much trauma that would not be, could not be, directly addressed. Scott reminds us of Doris Humprey's teaching that the moment between a fall and recovery--"the arc swept by a body moving between equilibrium and uncontrol"--contains power, contains the future.

Aside from gorgeous lighting and O'Snodaigh's imaginative variety of sounds, Fall and Recover benefits from an often fresh use of space and visual design. See this beautiful production at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre through April 9, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 2:30pm. (tickets)

Audio file: Leonard Lopate interviews choreographer John Scott and performers Nina and Kiribu on WNYC (15:41)

Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)