BODY AND SOUL: Judith Sánchez Ruíz: no better time than now

Judith Sánchez Ruíz (photo: David Beecroft)

 

The Closest Knot, HKAPA, Hong Kong, 2022 (photo: Ah Liu)

 

Initially trained in dance in her native Cuba, Judith Sánchez Ruíz has enjoyed an illustrious international career that includes performing for one of the towering figures of post-modern dance, Trisha Brown, who died in 2017. Fans of both Sánchez and Brown rejoiced last year when the Trisha Brown Dance Company named Sánchez as the troupe's first commissioned guest choreographer.

 

I was honored when Sánchez agreed to take time out from her whirlwind schedule--we're talking about zipping from Hong Kong to Münster to Brooklyn to Switzerland!--to record this wonderful talk for Body and Soul podcast!

To listen to today's podcast with Judith Sánchez Ruíz, click here!

And scroll down for more information!

 

Rehearsing new work, Let’s talk about bleeding,
with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (photo: Julieta Cervantes)

"The Trisha Brown Company Hires a Choreographer Not Named Trisha Brown," by Brian Seibert, The New York Times, November 21, 2022

BIO: Judith Sánchez Ruíz, the Berlin–based director (Havana, Cuba) began her dance studies at 11 at the National School of Arts, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba. Ms. Sanchez has worked with Sasha Waltz & Guests (2011-2014); Deborah Hay (2012); Trisha Brown Dance Company (2006-2009); DD Dorvillier (2002, 2019); David Zambrano (1997), Mal Pelo (1997-1999); and DanzAbierta, (1991-1996). She established the JSR Company in New York City in 2010, creating numerous choreographic stage works and site-specific projects involving live music with innovative composers and visual artists.
 
Her choreography doesn't rely on the mechanization or memory of movement but more on ramifications and layering of subjects on a radio, a concept used in her last two more significant pieces, ENCAJE (2017) and My Breast on the table (2019). Human casualness and complexity, improvisation, community, and activism are essential to her work.

Sánchez has been awarded grants by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The American Music Center's Live Music for Dance program, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Her work has been commissioned at Danspace Project, Works & Process at Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, and Storm King Art Center, NY.

Sánchez has been established as a choreographer and as a teacher at major higher education institutions in dance throughout Europe, the US, Latin America, and Asia. She was a recent artist in residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and is currently a guest choreographer of an interdisciplinary opera premiering this January 28 at the Théâtre de Münster, Germany. In addition, she is the first commissioned guest choreographer for Trisha Brown Dance Company and will premiere the original work Let's talk about bleeding at the company's Joyce Theater season, May 2-7, 2023.

https://www.judith-sanchez-ruiz.com/

Lost and found at Danspace

Hello, out there! Yes, it's me again, wearing my dance blogger hat and getting pushy with you.

Today, I'm pointing you in the direction of Danspace Project and hoping you'll get there tonight or tomorrow night for the latest offering in the Platforms 2010: i get lost series, curated by Ralph Lemon.

i get lost: An Evening of Solos presents two 30-minute works by Judith Sánchez Ruíz (And They Forgot to Love) and Souleymane Badolo (Yaado), and if you crave the chance to spend time with singular, compelling performers, you'll want to make tracks.

Also, watching Sánchez Ruíz and Badolo last night, I came away with a much clearer idea of what Judy Hussie-Taylor (Danspace's Executive Director) intends to do with her Platforms initiative. From what I've seen thus far (David Zambrano, Sánchez Ruíz and Badolo, even the recent screening of Maya Deren's raw footage of voudon dancing in Haiti), it's evident that Lemon and Hussie-Taylor want to open out the way we look at mediated dancing, dance presented in a concert space or via media. Platforms proposes a shift of the paradigm that demands and privileges well-made, finished product--every detail of it stamped and controlled and often blown up to impress funders, presenters and a dazzlement-craving market.

But there's no flashback to Judson in this. Yes, we can have glamour, glitter, the drama of real human context and humanity in its splendid diversity. But we can also, in the instance of Sánchez Ruíz and Badolo, have soloists who don't seek to dominate the space--and, as a performance venue, St. Mark's sanctuary is, oddly, both intimate and formidable--but, rather, seek to draw you into the luminous physical and mental sectors that they occupy. They experiment with ways to make us look more closely, see more and see it more sharply.

A work of art is an invitation to a conversation. A conversation can start anywhere and go anywhere--live, unscripted, responsive in the moment. I understand that more now through i get lost. Badolo's solo, Yaado, underscores these truths by starting out with the dancer standing before us, in utmost simplicity and dignity, saying "Je suis Souleymane Badolo..." If someone introduces himself to you, unless there's something wrong, you're going to step into that space he's offering, open up and respond in kind. Can we get that that's what could/should be going on when we encounter a work of art?

Both solos here remind me of that (sometimes annoying) question: Would you rather be right or happy? As I see it, neither choreographer has put forth a piece meant to be earthshaking or satisfying in that mind-fattening way that makes dance critics snap their pens and notebooks closed and declare that it has met all the right requirements for being good. i get lost--as I see it--is not about being right but about being willingly and happily engaged in sharing something interesting in conversation. There's no need to be right--to snap a statement and tuck it away.

Now, let's see if critics can get that.

The conversation continues. Click here.

Collaboration on the "Corner"

Here are a handful of my photos from the premiere of Untitled Corner, a site-specific work by Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sánchez Ruíz (choreographers/performers) with Daniel Arsham (visual designer/performer) and Alexis Georgopoulos/ARP (original sound score).

Sitelines 09
at One Chase Manhattan Plaza

All photos (c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Above Chase Manhattan Plaza

Jonah Bokaer & Judith Sánchez Ruíz
in “Untitled Corner”

Bokaer with Daniel Arsham


Untitled Corner will be performed again on July 10, 13 and 17 at 12:30pm and on July 8 and 15 at 7pm.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza faces Nassau Street, between Liberty and Cedar Streets. Take the 2/3/4/5 to Wall Street.

Admission is free. Chairs and other seating options are available, but come early.

Sitelines 09 is a presentation of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the River to River Festival.