Nicky Paraiso: ready at La MaMa

Nicky Paraiso (right) with dancer Paz Tanjuaquio
in now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories

Nicky Paraiso
now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories
Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
March 22-April 7

Nicky Paraiso's performance memoir, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed by John Jesurun, runs about 80 minutes. A densely-packed, non-stop monologue, it is augmented, surrounded--and, more or less, supported--by scenic design, music, movement and the occasional verbal exchange with his dancing collaborators. It traces Paraiso's Queens boyhood in a Filipino immigrant family through an illustrious, four-decade career in theater, music and curation to the present day. These "intimate histories" of the verbal kind take the lion's share of space and oxygen--although the projections on the scrim dividing one half of the audience from the other can be as enchanting as Paraiso's piano playing and singing.

I question the choice of engaging four star dancers of downtown renown--Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick an Paz Tanjuaquio--if, while relating nearly every life and career detail of your own with a biographer's specificity, you keep these fine artists largely marginalized until nearly the end. I enjoy seeing these performers wherever they land, but why here for what adds up to so little?

Their movement patterns never achieve the impact of Paraiso's heartfelt reenactment of singing "Into The Mystic"--one of my own soul songs--at a lover's memorial. They can't match his remembrance of how the late La MaMa, Ellen Stewart, loved to proudly flash her melon-like breasts and how she admonished him that "you like those talky, talky plays. That's not La MaMa, baby!" And how she added, "You do whatever you want, but I don't gotta like it!"

Talky, talky, indeed.

now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories requires some patience, but the rewards are real. Go, if you want to learn what made Paraiso Paraiso. He is beloved by our downtown arts community and one of the most knowledgeable, diligent and gracious advocates for artists everywhere.

Written by Nicky Paraiso
Direction by John Jesurun
Created in collaboration with performers Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick and Paz Tanjuaquio
Dramaturgy/Script Development: Irene Hultman, George Emilio Sanchez and John Jesurun
Production Management by Caleb Hammond
Costume Design: Gabriel Berry
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur

now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories continues through Sunday, April 7. For schedule information and tickets, click here.

Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Manhattan

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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"Atlantic Terminus": Jon Kinzel's residency at Invisible Dog

Jon Kinzel
(photo: Erica Freudenstein)

Out of the blustery night, I arrived at The Invisible Dog Art Center around 7:15 only to find the space behind its streetfront windows pitch-dark. Puzzled, I reached for the doorknob anyway. It yielded to me.

For some reason, I'd had the start time for Atlantic Terminus, Jon Kinzel's performance, as 7:30, not 7pm. Even so, as I peered around the ground-floor space, it looked as it nothing was shaking. A faint glow emanated from something on the floor, but where was the audience? Had I made the trip from Manhattan in vain?

As it turned out, people were standing in random spots around the space, but it was a while before Kinzel lit a small light revealing himself, guest artist Jodi Melnick and a smattering of watchers.  I felt much relieved to see them but dismayed that I'd clearly arrived late.

Some context:

Atlantic Terminus rests on the pretext of using Kinzel’s own belongings as a set. Evolving over two weeks, he will sustain an onsite multi-faceted studio practice in the gallery creating new work daily. He aims to disclose his particular history of making connections between visual art and performance since 1988. Invited guests, collaborations, and set and improvised performances will contribute to the process and over all installation. Integral to the show will be the task of cataloguing and exhibiting some of his 25+ years of works on paper: drawings that informed his shows at The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122, Danspace Project, and Dixon Place among others. This will also serve to provide an unprecedented opportunity to share — a retrospective gesture — his ongoing interest in how kinesthetic and visceral sensibilities can be brought into engagement with visual thinking.

Kinzel is open-mined [sic] about ways in which a consensual relationship between audience and performer can allow both parties to engage in an atmosphere in which a very special “social” equilibrium is possible. He sees his work as collaboration between performer and audience, and as such there will always be unknown and uncontrollable elements, which provide a desirable tension to the experience on both sides.

That "open-mined" might be accurate. He's open to mining his journey and--with appropriate lighting--we could see evidence of an extensive engagement with paper and marking, including a table of supplies and tools in strict, neat arrangement. It was also nearly impossible, as an audience member, to wander about without coming into contact with drawings collaged on the floors or posted or stacked elsewhere. Much delicateness and vulnerability here in this open-mining.

Of course, for me, the performance was truncated. I only got to see both dancers vigorously swiping at taped-up drawings with wooden sticks as if whacking piñatas; Kinzel wriggling a long Mylar streamer in a kind of ribbon dance; Kinzel raising a charming paper cutout "sail" and moving a light around it; and Kinzel repairing to another part of the space to dance a bit of movement which, interestingly, made him look a bit like a charming paper cutout "sail." And, with perhaps no more than ten minutes of that, the performance was over.

Atlantic Terminus's remaining performances are tonight at 7pm and Saturday, February 13, at 7pm. Remember: 7pm, not 7:30! For information and tickets, click here.

The Invisible Dog Art Center
51 Bergen Street (between Smith and Court Streets), Brooklyn
(directions/map link)

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Jon Kinzel premieres "COWHAND CON MAN" at Gibney

Above: Nico Brown (front) with Simon Courchel in COWHAND CON MAN
Below: Jon Kinzel with one of Jarrod Beck's prop/sculptures
(photos: Scott Shaw)

At any point in Jon Kinzel's new ensemble work, COWHAND CON MAN--at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center through October 31--feel free to drop "why" from your vocabulary. Let it go.

Tempted to unravel the title?  Sure. Go ahead. Then just stop.

Tempted to try to figure out Jarrod Beck's surreal visual design and how it's used? Take your shot. Then sit back.

Wondering why Nina Katan costumes each dancer differently? About the specificity of that costuming? About Katan's most conspicuous decision--sheathing EmmaGrace Skove-Epes in must-be-sweltering Lurex shirt and slacks? No need to obsess.

Losing yourself in Jim Dawson and Kinzel's woozy, haunted sound collage? Stay lost.

That brings us around to Kinzel's choreography and his own dancing with the lovely ensemble of Nico Brown, Simon Courchel, Omagbitse Omagbemi, and Skove-Epes​. Because in a universe where nothing's fixed in place or meaning, at least choreography can serve as your North Star, right?

Don't count on it.

The dizzying beauty of COWHAND CON MAN lies in how it pulls the ground out from under you. Sort of the way the whole thing opens with a diagonal strand of fluorescent lights being slowly pulled out of sight. Just because.

Why were those fluorescent lights there to begin with? I haven't the foggiest.

The initial sensation--based on the manner of audience placement in Gibney's Studio C for this production--is one of being cornered in one section of the space. Beck's massive, inexplicable sculptures, though somewhat distant from the audience, dominate the environment. Some of them will double, in an equally inexplicable way, as props; they await activation. But they are never out of sight. They can remain, even in peripheral view, a bother to your need for reason.

But you learn, first from watching Brown and Courchel calmly, silently climbing onto and off each other, to follow dance without grasping at it--or without grasping it, which sounds like the same thing but is not. It breaks you down a little.

And then, broken down a little, you can be in the space with the dancing.

You might notice, again in Brown and Courchel's interactions, that nothing ever seems completed. They resemble circus acrobats making all-essential connections of their hands without the payoff of the anticipated risky and thrilling trick. You learn to not look for any payoff there or anywhere else in the hour-long piece. It's like asking a question and not waiting for an answer because the first response and the one after that and the one after that one is an endless series of new questions. The way it's not ever going to be clear why choreographer Kinzel parks Courchel by the studio's mirror wall for a long stretch of time, or why the light, springy dancer slips from angelic to demonic to Apollonian in a single evolving passage. Or why, at a later moment, Courchel and Kinzel clasp and lock hands, their conjoined arms violently writhing as if electrified. Answers never come.

All of this forces you down into the quality(ies) of the movements and interactions, where there is pleasure if you watch for it. Choreography as microscopic lens. Have a look.

COWHAND CON MAN continues with 7:30pm performances tonight and tomorrow, resuming next week, Wednesday-Saturday, October 28-31. For information and ticketing, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

DoublePlus: new works by Anna Azrieli and Stuart Shugg at Gibney

Choreographer Stuart Shugg dances in Dear Washing Machine, Long Night
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Making work for the new DoublePlus series (Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center), choreographers contend with distinctive features of the theater space, including two stands of columns and a mirrored wall. My sense of this environment, its challenges and opportunities, has grown--largely on a subliminal level, I think--as I've attended these artist-curated programs over several weeks. But last night, as I watched ensemble works by Stuart Shugg and Anna Azrieli (curated by Jon Kinzel), it really hit me.

It's fascinating how both of these artists put themselves and their fellow dancers into the space, taking up strategies that previous choreographers have used and discovering their own approach.

That mirrored wall, for instance, could be avoided and even covered, I suppose, but DoublePlus choreographers often seem drawn to it. Columns can temporarily hide things from view. They can also suggest handy subdivisions in what what would be, for a piece with one or a few dancers, a fairly roomy play area. You can stash one or more dancers in one spot and force viewers to shift attention between that place and something happening elsewhere, making us work to piece together a relationship between the two or abandon all hope of finding one. Or you can even make the audience look beyond the space itself. For instance, while choreographer Audrey Hailes (showing Death Made Love to My Feet in an earlier DoubePlus program) danced alone in the center of the theater, a door opened onto a partial view of two dancers in a brightly-lit dressing room. We could only wonder what they were doing (playing cards, I think, and later, applying makeup) and why Hailes wanted us to be aware of their presence.

Shugg's Dear Washing Machine, Long Night
above: Hadar Ahuvia, front, with Shugg and TJ Spaur
below: Spaur, left, and Shugg
(photos: Alex Escalante)

I mostly liked Shugg's Dear Washing Machine, Long Night for qualities of springiness and momentum where one thing leads to another--a tilt, a swing, a toss of the arm, an easy communication that doesn't have to mean anything other than the flow of a body's internal messages continuously sent and agreeably received and acted upon. It pleased me to watch how Shugg and Hadar Ahuvia and TJ Spaur move. Shugg acknowledges the columns, seems to have made peace with them. His dancers touch, slide down or push away from them with gentleness. The columns could be partners, or wished-for partners, in the dance, and they lend an unobtrusive structure to something soft and evanescent.

Anna Azrieli's Averaging
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Like some other DoublePlus artists, Azrieli sends some of her dancers in Averaging to wash right up against the front row of the audience. Like the mirrored wall, the Gibney audience's edge seems irresistible to artists. And why not? We're right there on your level, dancers. Make us feel something. Even, as with Averaging, a touch of seasickness.

But pretty much everything about Averaging feels organic yet odd and out of place in the space, bearing a hint of transgression. With her fellow dancers Talya Epstein, Evvie Allison, Megan Kendzior and Katy Telfer, Azrieli has created an environment of endless shifting, incremental change, that appears to reference how things in nature make their way over surfaces. Undulating, sidling, crawling, rocking, wriggling, flopping, splaying and sloshing while sometimes humming, sighing or moaning. Plainly, it's not so much about the feet or us two-leggeds.

One focal image, though, comes from the decidedly two-legged world of ballet--the arabesque penché, a step where the dancer stands on one leg, tilting the torso forward while raising the other leg in a high, backward lift. There's a lovely serenity about an arabesque penché and a deliberately soporific serenity about its serial deployment here in Averaging, isolated from a typical ballet sequence. According to the work's description, Averaging engages with "the inevitability of being average" and a certain "mediocrity" and "vulnerability," Azrieli sees in the arabesque penché. There's also a lengthy, repeated bit of business drinking glasses of water and making like water dispensers that, to be frank, got on my nerves.

Kinzel's program is the next to the last DoublePlus presentation of this interesting premiere season; next week, curator Bebe Miller presents works by Maree ReMalia and Abby Zbikowski. On Wednesday, December 17, come early (6:45) for a pre-show Q&A with Miller.

Azrieli and Shugg continue tonight through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. Friday's show will be followed by a Q&A with Jon Kinzel and the choreographers. For schedule information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis
Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Jean Butler premieres "hurry"

Jean Butler (photo by Ian Douglas)

Jean Butler--it should come as no surprise--has a great sense of presentation and self-presentation. In fact, she most reminds me of penmanship--the exacting kind I learned in Catholic grammar school and which inevitably loosened and drained away with time. A tall switch of a woman, Butler does not so much dance as write and etch her way across the floor and space, making the existence of thought and will starkly visible.

Her body as well as her intense focus define having everything in its place, and it's hard to look at her and forget her world-famous career in traditional Irish dance. As a recent sojourner in the world of New York's contemporary dance, she herself wants to forget none of this but, rather, burrow into it and see where grounded tradition and identity can lead her. With her new solo hurry, directed by Jon Kinzel, she's on her way, and that, for now, must be enough.

What can be done with rigidity and precision? Arms once constrained to this dancer's sides now jut and lock in place at a sharp angle as she cocks and twists one foot against the floor. Or they form an elegant wingspan which, after all, would have to be held taut as a bird takes to a thermal. When she scoops her torso or allows hips to wriggle and knees to be spongy, she measures out each move so nothing's ever wasted. She acknowledges gravity, and the body's core, never once losing the look of one invisibly suspended from above.

Her palpable self-consciousness keeps us from slipping into the trance of watching a body dance. We're watching a mind dance--not to be forgotten. There's instruction in this, even if it is a tad distancing (like the similarly alienating sound score with its overt and covert disturbances, friction and haunting reverb). Perhaps it's good to be held, for a time, in this place of wanting but not being able to just let go. There's something to be learned here.

As Butler addresses the space at St. Mark's--treading, sometimes just nearly tripping along a loop of infinity--Michael O'Connor's lighting, melancholy in its glow, emphasizes the exposure and the loneliness of her position.

The solo's title, hurry, derives from an Irish ballad, but there's only one tiny, ethereal suggestion of Irish music--courtesy of Ivan Goff on uilleann pipes--late in the score. Nor does hurry seem particularly hurried. Although it lasts just 35 minutes, it appears to exist in a place of memory and contemplation removed from the rush of time.

Near hurry's end, the barefoot Butler, turned away from us and toward a far corner of the church, suddenly channels the old Irish steps. How strange--and, at last, emotionally engaging--to gaze at this star from behind as she appears to dance into the lights of a familiar stage. For the viewer, it skews the perspective, raising questions: Who could see Butler from behind except another dancer? That would mean you're also dancing on that stage, would it not? If so, how does it feel to face those lights?

Music by Jim Dawson. Sound design by Jim Dawson and Jon Kinzel. Costume by Sylvia Grieser.

hurry continues at Danspace Project tonight or Saturday at 8pm. Click here for program information and here for tickets.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Related: Jean Butler prepares a new solo for Danspace Project

Jean Butler prepares a new solo for Danspace Project

Jean Butler in hurry (photo by Ian Douglas)

For many people in the US and abroad, New York-born and raised Jean Butler became the beloved face of Irish traditional dance, most notably through her star role in the megahit musical Riverdance, her partnership with Colin Dunne in Dancing on Dangerous Ground, as well as many appearances on tour with The Chieftains. Most of her fans might not be aware that this highly disciplined artist, so strongly rooted in her Irish ancestral culture, continues to challenge herself through forging impressive connections to New York's postmodern dance community.

In 2010, Butler made her Danspace Project debut, premiering Day, a solo work she commissioned from acclaimed choreographer Tere O’Connor. This winter (Thursday-Saturday, March 7-9), she returns to Danspace Project with a work of her own creation–a solo entitled hurry--that she has developed with Jon Kinzel as her director.

With O'Connor, Butler felt comfortable settling into the role of dancer. "There was a very clear-cut understanding that Tere was the choreographer," she says. "He had the last say, and I was there to put myself firmly in his process."

After decades of excelling in traditional dance, she was ready to try a new path.

"I wanted to challenge myself physically and also performatively, because his work is so nuanced in terms of how you perform it. I was very attracted to Tere’s aesthetic and still am. That felt like a very natural choice for me, especially to introduce myself to New York in a completely different way from my history."

Jean Butler (photo by Conor Horgan)

So, what prompted Butler to look to Irish traditions, once again, for her next solo? It seems to have come out of a desire to understand her identity as a woman and a sharp, specifically-trained instrument of art.

"I thought, It’s time to go back now and start re-evaluating how that experience with Tere affected my approach towards dancemaking, my approach towards vocabulary, my sensibilities–or not, as the case may be. It was time for me to go back into my history and my own body.

"It would be a solo, but I wanted an outside eye. I wanted the director working with me. I’m so close to what I do, and my body is so codified within a particular traditional lexicon, that sometimes I can’t see the woods for the trees. I wanted someone to be a translator to push me deeper into the work, because that’s my interest–going deeper into the body.

"Some of the things Jon brought to the table were things that I had taken for granted. He started taking apart my understanding of rhythm. He recognized that I had an innate sense of duration: How long is a minute? How long is a few minutes? How long is fifteen seconds? We started looking at time in that way. Jon also has a huge improvisation background, and that was something that I wanted to dive into a little bit, specifically with the musical elements in creating this form.

"Sometimes I feel I’m a little island in the New York dance world. Because I work on myself and I work on solos, having Jon in the dialogue, he’s been able to put language on ideas that I haven’t been able to find language for. That’s extremely helpful, invaluable. He helps me identify what I’m trying to talk about and what I’m trying to do, and that becomes a dialogue rather than simply a reflection.

"This does not come out of any conceptual ideas or any outside ideas. It starts with the body, dealing with things that define me physically–my verticality, the innate rhythm and timing that exist within my body, footwork, the idea of stepping, the fact that I’m most comfortable with my limbs close to my center. I’m less comfortable when they’re further away. I’m less comfortable when I’m off my center.

"Instead of ignoring those things, this piece would be about going as deep into them as I possibly can at this moment, finding the dance language that is idiosyncratic to me, and not imposing other techniques or other ideas on top of that, going deeper to locate what motivates me to move."

hurry grew out of a 16-minute draft or, as she also calls it, a "flavor palette of different ideas" that Butler presented for APAP last year. The impetus was a traditional Irish tune, one she had danced to for many years.

"I could sing it to you now, I can sing it in my sleep, like a lot of music that’s in my head. The title of that was 'Hurry the Jug,' and I shortened that to hurry. It really doesn’t mean anything, doesn't symbolize anything. Like 'The Blackbird': In traditional Irish music, they are just names of tunes.

"I took the music's structure as a compositional starting point and created a circular phrase that I could use while this music was going on in my head that nobody else could hear. That was the architecture of one tiny section, the seed to the entire piece. Ironically, as we’re making the piece, more music has come up and embedded itself compositionally, though the audience would be unaware of this.

"I don’t want to impose anything on the title but, from a personal point of view, there’s a lot you can read into it: It’s about age, about an older dancer, about the speed at which I can move and working against that as a counterpoint. So, ironically, it became this very relevant word. As the piece goes on, you find more and more connections."

In recent months, Butler has begun lecturing on Irish studies at New York University, offering an introductory survey of the history of Irish dance, its competitions and spectacles and current master performers, such as her colleague Dunne. She rejects the popular notion of "pushing the boundaries" of tradition. Instead, she says, her course material focuses on artists who innovate by "going deeper into it as opposed to pushing away from it; analyzing what is, not putting things on top of it so that it becomes something else."

Clearly, her own work in hurry springs from this quest to find more of the dance that is already there, to see it and show it as if for the first time.

See hurry at Danspace Project, Thursday-Saturday, March 7-9 (8pm). Click here for program information and here for tickets.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue, Manhattan
(directions)

and a few more things...

In the course of preparing for my talk with Butler, I made a surprising discovery: For a few years now, she has maintained a jewelry business filled with elegant, lyrical designs inspired by her Irish heritage. She describes her interest in jewelry as “an opportunity to be creative in something that is not ephemeral, something completely solid in front of you.” Visit Jean Butler Jewellery at this link.

Also, click here for a lovely portrait of Butler in a video series for The Gathering Ireland 2013, a year-long celebration of Ireland and all things Irish.

BIO

Jean Butler has been dancing for over thirty years. Trained in Traditional Irish Dance under revered NY based teacher Donny Golden, Jean  spent her childhood on the competitive circuit winning regional, national, and world awards. As soloist, Jean has toured with many Irish recording artists, most notably the Chieftains for a period of 6 years. In 1994 she joined the original production team of Riverdance as co-choreographer, creating and performing the principal female role. Jean performed with the company for three years before leaving to team up with colleague Colin Dunne to produce and choreograph Dancing on Dangerous Ground, which had exclusive engagements at Drury Lane, London (1999) and Radio City Music Hall, New York. (2000). In April 1999 she was awarded the prestigious Irish Post Award for her outstanding contribution to Irish Dance. Jean holds a BA in Theatre Studies from Birmingham University, England and in 2003 completed a Masters in Contemporary Dance Performance at The World Academy, Limerick University where she was also Artist in Residence between 2003-2005. During this time, Jean became interested in a different physicality. 

In 2007, Jean choreographed her first contemporary solo piece, does she take sugar? which ran at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. The show was awarded ‘most innovative production’ in the critics’ survey in Ballet-Tanz Magazine Yearbook 2007 and was remounted at the Dublin Dance Festival 2008, mentored by Jodi Melnick. Her  solo works have been commissioned and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland,The Dublin Dance Festival, Culture Ireland, The Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Daghdha Dance Company (Limerick), Plankton Productions (Japan), Movement Research (New York), the Abbey Theatre (Dublin), Danspace Project (New York), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Lower Manhattan Cultural  Council.

Jean is also a 2012 Project CATALYST, an initiative of Project Arts Centre. Recently Jean had the privilege of working with Tere O’Conner on DAY, a solo, choreographed by Tere. Commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, DAY was first co-presented at the Dublin Dance Festival 2010 and at Danspace Project in Nov. 2010. 

Jean currently lives in New York and lectures in Irish Studies at NYU.

Barnard Dances at Miller

Barnard College Department of Dance, under chair and artistic director Mary Cochran, has commissioned new works by renowned choreographers Kyle Abraham, Faye Driscoll, Jill Johnson and Jon Kinzel for its student performers. 

Barnard Dances at Miller
Friday, April 29, 7pm
Saturday, April 30, 2pm and 7pm

For more information, click here.

Tickets: $20; $12 with Columbia University ID
To purchase, call 212-854-7799

Miller Theater
2960 Broadway (at 116th Street), Manhattan
(map)

Giving themselves away at every moment...

A luminous summer evening. Dancers slip through breezecloudsmusic at the river's edge. I still get a powerful little thrill as I look through my photographs.

We Give Ourselves Away at Every Moment: An EVENT for Merce

July 26, 2010--First anniversary of the death of Merce Cunningham

"...we come together to nod in his direction through the ritual of dance itself."

Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City esplanade

a program of the River to River Festival, co-presented by Arts World Financial Center and the Battery Park City Authority

featuring choreography by Jon Kinzel, Lucinda Childs, Susan Marshall, Faye Driscoll and Bill T. Jones. Live music by David Eggar, Geoff Hersh and Kotchy.

curated and produced by Annie-B Parson and Will Knapp

Five plan major tribute to Merce

Five Choreographers to Honor Cunningham at River to River Festival

by Julie Bloom, The New York Times, July 1, 2010

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.