On the nature of climate change: Karole Armitage at AMNH

Two scenes from On the Nature of Things by Karole Armitage
(photos: Julieta Cervantes)

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in Field Notes From A Catastrophe, "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Problems such as climate disruption, toxification of Earth, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services are solveable, but to do so human behavior must be basically altered.

In the twenty-first century we have created a civilization that is way out of step with the realities of our planet. 

--Paul Ehrlich, from text for On the Nature of Things

So our beloved American Museum of Natural History has funding from that climate change-denying Koch brother (click here). Well, last night's world premiere of On the Nature of Things, staged beneath the museum's iconic blue whale, felt like nothing short of an exorcism.

Choreographer Karole Armitage (Armitage Gone! Dance) filled Milstein Hall of Ocean Life with a multi-generational corps, including dancers from Manhattan Youth Ballet, as Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, performing live narration, laid down the science in layperson's terms. The message? Uncompromising: Climate is changing, we are responsible for it, and we are responsible for it.

And, no, I'm not merely repeating myself. We did it. Now we have to fix it.

Armitage and Ehrlich--a longtime friend of the choreographer's father, a biologist--fervently agree that the only way to engage most people with the complex science around climate and environment is through the heart, hence through the power of the arts. In that light, On the Nature of Things serves more as a supportive underscore, I think, than as educator or motivator--at least, up there on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The piece was made for the museum, but imagine the public service Armitage could do by touring it around the heartland and southlands before our next elections.

As a visual phenomenon, the work benefits, first, from its unique setting which places its uniformly-costumed dancers--a subliminal message in that coral color scheme?--in the midst of the museum's displays, encircled by onlookers there and on balconies. Armitage handles the hall's broad open floor with dramatic force, her deployment of dancers suggesting rising population, mounting tensions, collisions, competition for space and dominance. Her movement technique--a fusion of modern and ballet, meticulous, often showy--can hold the eye without necessarily spelling out matters spoken by Dr. Ehrlich. Unfortunately, the narration-dance overlay does not work. Luckily, I had the script and time to read it beforehand.

One wonders at the presence of a few dancers en pointe, especially when they use those pointe shoes for the clever but weirdly distracting trick of a quick slip across the floor. The dancers, though, are all in. They accomplish a handsome, coherent performance culminating in the choreographer's vision of serenity, hope and healing that we have yet to earn.

On the Nature of Things will continue with performances tonight and tomorrow at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West and 79th Street, Manhattan
(Enter at 79th Street underneath staircase.)
(map/directions)

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Other American Museum of Natural History presentations of interest:


Our Earth’s Future: One-Day Course
Saturday, April 11, 9am–4pm
Free with application, available on amnh.org

In a special one-day offering, Dr. Debra Tillinger will lead an in-depth exploration of the science of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and how changes in these two critical areas of Earth indicate and catalyze the impacts of climate change. Participants will hear from guest speakers on the geology, biology, and cultures of these beautiful and fragile parts of the world. They will also engage in discussions, take Museum hall tours, and enjoy a challenging game of geopolitics—SMARTIC, in which players must enact real-life solutions to the potential large-scale problems anticipated by the impact of climate change in the polar regions. Refreshments will be served.

Milstein Science Series: Sea Turtles

Sunday, May 3, 11am–4:30pm 

Free for Members or with Museum admission

Sea turtles are simply astounding! They lived alongside dinosaurs 150 million years ago, and still survive today. Playing a crucial role in our oceans’ ecosystems, this incredible animal group is now endangered due to climate change, poaching, habitat destruction, and accidental capture in fishing gear. Learn more about these resilient aquatic creatures and the conservation efforts in place to protect them with Eleanor Sterling, Chief Conservation Scientist, Center for Biodiversity & Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History; Wallace J. Nichols, scientist and New York Times-bestselling author of Blue Mind; and Michael Coyne, executive director of seaturtle.org. The event includes a live music performance by Bash the Trash, playing instruments made out of reused and repurposed materials.

For additional information, call 212-769-5100 or visit the Museum’s website at amnh.org.

Peace. Love. Freedom. Happiness.

The moon? In the seventh house. The Tribe? Re-united. Yes, the king of all rock musicals is finally back on Broadway, and long live the king!

Director Diane Paulus’s celebrated revival of Hair has made a successful transfer from Central Park’s Delacorte to the Al Hirschfeld, and loads of theater-goers are lining up to take its delirious and poignant trip back in time.

Back in the day, Ragni-Rado-MacDermot brought downtown to Broadway, messing with the conventions of the typical popular musical. Things like full nudity and performers breaking down that fourth wall to interact with the folks in the seats have since become familiar.

But Hair’s songs still have the power to whip our heads around, songs surely beamed down from moon satellites, heartily poured forth until...well, whoops! where did they go? There was a song here, last time I looked, and now it seems to be missing, or maybe it has segued into something hailing from a different crater. These spliced together songlets could be as speedy and wacky and badassedly in-your-face and irresistibly danceable as some of today’s hip hop, or they could be sorrowful, bluesy and druggy or wide-eyed with optimism. Sometimes, downright expert pop stuff emerged from the mix, soaring, bouncing, racing right out of the theater into unforgettable Top 40 hits for other people. Aquarius. Good Morning, Starshine. Easy to Be Hard. Let the Sun Shine In. Much of it gradually lost connection to its first context: an unruly spectacle about hippies resisting every pressure to conform, shedding clothes as as a sign of peaceful, vulnerable un-shielding of the self, and staging mass protests of the Vietnam death trap.

Hair has returned in the New Age of an actual “President of the United States of Love,” but there’s no need to force comparisons between then and now. Americans are considerably less focused on our current war (and more consumed by the economic crisis which is, after all, preventing most of us from maintaining or attaining the kind of lives that hippies dropped out of). Our avenues for expression–of racial and sexual identity, of creativity and spirituality, of political engagement and protest–have been blown wide open by the Internet. Street protests, when they manage to happen, are now organized by text message. The broad diversity of lifestyles and points of view are simply part of the overall societal landscape, no big thing. The sober, grounded and confident Obama is our most accessible president ever and runs a government that’s continually inventing ways to listen to what the people have to say. Let the Sun Shine In!

Hair is still goofy, dizzy fun. Reasons to see it today include its top-notch tribal cast, among whom Will Swenson (the Dionysian Berger), Gavin Creel (ebullient, conflicted Claude), and Caissie Levy (Sheila, the activist with the heavenly voice) stand out. Andrew Kober makes a hilarious Margaret Mead, and Bryce Ryness, a comic, appealing Woof.

Choreographer Karole Armitage gives each Tribe member his or her touch of individuality. And--despite amplification that can sometimes muddy things--hats off to the band!

Tickets at Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

More innformation

Hair hailed on nytimes.com:

Fizzy, Frizzy Welcome to the 60's
by Ben Brantley, April 1, 2009

A Signature Shuffle Enjoys a New Life
by David Segal, March 30, 2009

Evidence and the United Colors of Armitage

Every year, dance events at Lincoln Center Out of Doors bridge the gap between dance artists and New Yorkers who aren't necessarily dance aficionados but who like that certain sexy combination of summer + free + outdoor + entertainment. It's one of the perks of having the endurance to stay in (or visit) New York during the heat stroke season, and this year's lineup shimmers with great opportunities. You can catch up with Fraulein Maria, Doug Elkins's deliciously bite-sized and lovingly-wacky version of The Sound of Music (August 16). And, if you were elsewhere last night, perhaps devastated by John Edwards's revelation, you could instead have witnessed a West African musical phenom--electronica band Burkina Electric, fronted by the dynamic, Angelique Kidjo-reminiscent Maï Lingani--that features some pretty hot dancing of their own.

I haven't yet mentioned Armitage Gone! Dance, with its own stellar and fierce performers, who collaborated with Burkina Electric on Karole Armitage's Summer of Love, previewed last evening at LC's Damrosch Park. This dancemaker is on a natural high, having recently made her Broadway choreography debut with Passing Strange and choreographed the Public Theater's critically-acclaimed revival of Hair. Teaming up with the Burkina Faso troupe is a very smart move. Not only do Lingani and her comrades provide irresistible beats, they also provide the glue that Armitage's loosey-goosey hour requires. Not enough though. In bits and pieces, Summer of Love can be fun--with its aura of a kind of upscale, deliberately multiculti '60s dance party--but its patched-together, song-related sections don't congeal and keep teasing us with potential endings that aren't. It feels shallow and as self-indulgent as neo-cons accuse the '60s counterculture of being. Despite the dancers' technical perfection and their obvious sense of play, AGD in Summer of Love comes off like the United Colors of Armitage. On the other hand, Burkina Electric is the real deal, and I'm glad to have made their acquaintance.

As for Evidence, A Dance Company, second on the Damrosch bill, Ronald K. Brown's troupe lit up the stage just as we knew it would. Brown presented a couple of works from repertory: Upside Down (excerpted from Destiny, a 1998 collaboration with Jeune Ballet d'Afrique Noire) and High Life (2002). Upside Down? Call the FDNY! These people are on fire! Top marks to Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins and Tiffany Quinn, dancers who go from strength to strength. But it was especially wonderful to see Brown himself dancing with renewed vigor, openness and acuity--evidence of what inspires all his dancers to give their all.

She dances me with science

New York's brand new World Science Festival (May 29-June 1) is way, way cool! Visit the WSF Web site for its extensive schedule of programming for adults and families. And, yes, there's a dance tie-in!

Dance genius Bill T. Jones joins a panel of various artists and neuroscientists entitled Illuminating Genius: Unlocking Creativity (Thursday, May 29, 8pm at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, NYU), moderated by John Hockenberry, co-host of WNYC's new morning show, The Takeaway. And what's more, Karole Armitage weighs in with a dance work inspired by Brian Greene's bestseller, The Elegant Universe at Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, Friday, May 30 and Saturday, May 31 (both at 7:30pm).

Ticket prices for these and many more fascinating events can be found--although buried deep--on the WSF Web site. Have a little patience: the site can be slow. It all looks very good and maybe next year, with some advance warning, I'll be able to schedule my dance-going to avoid missing this terrific stuff. (Oh, did you know I was a science nerd, too?)