How strange: Melinda Ring's engagement at Danspace Project

Cast of Strange Engagements
(photo: Melinda Ring)

Strange Engagements
by Melinda Ring
Danspace Project
January 30-February 1

Dance fans flock to see some contemporary work like a dance version of that old quip: "I would pay to hear her read the telephone book!" (Yes, kids. Once upon a time, there was something called a telephone book, and some of us professed to be willing to listen to extraordinary actors reading it, page after page...oh, never mind.) There are dancers whose technical acuity and smart, sensitive presence make almost any work an occasion. Melinda Ring has the blessings of one such team for Strange Engagements, which ends its Danspace Project run this evening.

Laurel Atwell, Paul Hamilton, Rainey White, Sam Kim and Talya Epstein--lit in various degrees of revealing starkness or sedating cool by Kathy Kaufmann--start out in a sort of hunched-over huddle before activating silent space with quirky, stretchy, wrenching and swirling movement and sounds made by the slap of a palm or a foot on the floor or the occasional eruption of a few words. What Ring and her folks accomplish most securely, I believe, is our growing awareness of rhythm even when there's no audible music to guide us. Rhythm can be seen and felt even in the absence of the sonic impact of feet on the floor or the sharp clapping of hands.

This is an abstract journey with fine, strangely-engaging dancers--strange attractors, maybe, displaying clear patterns within what a lazy gaze might deem to be chaos--and that might be enough. However, I was sometimes vexed by Hamilton's deployment in all of this. He's Ring's only Black dancer and only male dancer--a tall, dark-skinned Black man whose showiest behavior in the piece looks aggressive and, at times, could be interpreted specifically as sexually aggressive. (You can't tell me Kim slapping him on the butt while he writhes over her is abstract.) Is this deliberate? Is it unintended and accidental? All I know is you can't put your one man, your one Black man, in a mix like this and surface movement like this and not expect it to raise a few eyebrows. I found it distracting because it made me pull away and start analyzing Hamilton's presence--a strange engagement, indeed.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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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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Sam Kim's "Other Animal" opens at Danspace Project

Sam Kim
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Other Animal
by Sam Kim
Danspace Project
October 31-November 2

When entering St. Mark's Church for Sam Kim's solo performance of Other Animal, you'll be directed towards one of two sections of chairs or cute floor cushions, all in a straight line spanning the width of the floor, facing and perfectly aligned with the church's distant altar space. When I was there last night, a few people took seats over on the carpeted risers along the side of the floor, as you're usually permitted to do, but ushers quickly redirected them to this linear set-up. Eventually, Kim made her first appearance, and the reason for this control of our angle of view became clear.

Kim entered the space from one of the sanctuary's doors, dressed in leopard-print leggings, a long white shirt and a loose wool coat in a bold, checked pattern. For a quite lengthy stretch of her 50-minute solo, she merely sauntered, assertively strode or simply hastened across the floor, unconcerned about her watchers, repeatedly disappearing somewhere behind us and through another of the church's doors. In the beginning, I was curious to know what she was doing outside my range of view and tried to crane my neck to see.

Impossible. I turned my whole upper-back, discovering that she was actually leaving us. I didn't notice more than maybe one or two other people checking on what was going on behind us, and I think they might have been content to just hear doors close and re-open, to see Kim when she was in view, to watch her exit and return through the two visible doors facing us. I wonder how many caught that momentary apparition up on the right-hand balcony.

Now you see her, now you don't. What's that about? And do you care? Why should you?

Kim's own don't-care look and sullen demeanor (butchy, I thought) actually endeared her to me, and I began to care. I'm not sure why I would or if I should, but I did. She had won me over, and it put me in a very good place to appreciate how she went on to labor in, fill and ironically dominate the space.

Watching Kim's performance felt like finding oneself inside of a restless but also persistent, generative mind. The video animation work of experimental filmmaker Stacey Steers seemed to swell and spill from that same source--a thick, unruly blossoming of imagery, possibly organic but largely indecipherable, weird though inexplicably appealing. It bloomed in sections of the altar-area's wall, eventually overtaking its entire arch.

"I'm messy," her movements and way of being seemed to say. "Kind of beautifully messy. I'm here. I claim it. Sometimes staggering, sometimes slumping, sometimes soft of step. Holding myself together. Letting myself go. Slipping uphill (the altar risers) and rolling down. No matter how awkward it all looks, how difficult, how stop-and-start the effort."

A muted, warm pool of light sometimes draped Kim's body in the overwhelming space of St. Mark's Church like a gesture of compassion. That light also looked as if it might be seeping from within her, softly brightening wherever her body landed.

She passed me as she left the space for the final time, and I would have tipped my hat--had I been wearing one--to a masterful performer, secure in herself and her vision.

Lighting design: Kathy Kaufman
Sound and projection design: Chloe Alexandra Thompson

Other Animal continues nightly through Saturday, November 2, with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (and Second Avenue), 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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Vicky Shick brings "Another Spell" to Danspace Project

Heather Olson (above)
Below, l-r: Donna Costello, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Lily Gold
and Heather Olson dancing Another Spell at Danspace Project
(photos: Ian Douglas)

New York provides so many ways to spend your precious weekend. But--oh, you lucky ones--you can spend an hour at Danspace Project with Vicky Shick, Jodi Bender, Donna Costello, Lily Gold, Marilyn Maywald-Yahel, Heather Olson and Omagbitse Omagbemi. Shick and all of her collaborators have brought us Another Spell, one of the most beguiling events of the dance season.

Another Spell's modular look, we're told, came together by picking through earlier work for elements of Barbara Kilpatrick's costume and set design. Even the movement bears that popular aesthetic--easygoing, sustainable--plus all the charm of an afternoon of thrift store shopping with a friend blessed with taste and ingenuity.

I imagine Another Spell drawn across white boards and then described--in juicy 3D--by circling hips, flapping thighs and knees, tensile ideas projected into receptive space. The scrapbook tape, filmic splices and stitched seams never show, and Kathy Kaufmann's lighting makes it all look mutable and luxurious.

Glitches prevented the opening night audience from hearing the proper soundscape (performed live by Elise Kermani with additional tracks composed by Todd Lent), but you might get to hear it if you go tonight or tomorrow. I hope you can!

Another Spell runs through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Got to be real: "Star Crap Method" at American Realness '16

Star Crap Method is Larissa Velez-Jackson’s compositional methodology that complicates and redefines the skill set of the contemporary dancer and functions as an absurd exposé of the inner workings of the dancer in process. Performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein and Larissa Velez-Jackson collectively compose the entire work in real time, including the sound score of live vocals and digital sound. Bessie-award-winning lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann improvises illumination throughout. The work is founded on Velez-Jackson’s improvisational practice that embraces technical brilliance and failure in equal measure, ushering in a form of interdisciplinary creative limitlessness with opportunities for great humor, and vulnerability.

I wanted to start off with that helpful promotional statement for Star Crap Method because if there's anything I'm sure of, it's that dancemaker Larissa Velez-Jackson is precise as heck about how she wants us to understand the power in any given mess. Sharing space with her and Epstein and Ashley yesterday at Abrons Arts Center was a workout, a vicarious exercise in trust and a parallel to the primordial dance of crap from which stars and planets arose.

Introducing Star Crap Method yesterday, Velez-Jackson called it "the complete encapsulation of my artistic identity" and, even more cheekily, "an emerging artist retrospective." It is definitely all about emerging. And what I take away from several hints sprinkled into live, improvised narration is just how much emerging has to do with breaking down.

Doing the thingness of my body. Thingness. One more time: thingness.

There are many people in me. Sometimes I am surprised who comes out front and who is left behind.

 I disintegrate for you....

I like the way Velez-Jackson encourages--no, requires--audiences to contribute to the crap without her being overbearing about it. She makes it fun. I like the way sincerity dances with satire, both partners quite nimble, ultimately inseparable. I like how the rigorous readiness of each of the three performers--their skills and charisma undeniable--supports and activates the rough materials of chaos. Abrons's space looked like what it is for Velez-Jackson and her collaborators: an ongoing workspace, with all manner of mystery debris--including a fourth person, hooded, masked, possibly sleeping--carelessly thrown against walls and into corners. I like that it's okay for us to see that, to give up any attempt to make things make sense and to give ourselves over to the electric flash of the moment, visual and verbal.

American Realness 2016 ends tomorrow, and you can try to get into the last performance of Star Crap Method tomorrow at 5:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Star Crap Method is presented in association with New York Live Arts.

Abrons Arts Center (Experimental Theater)
466 Grand Street (between Pitt and Willett Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Like, "WOW": Keely Garfield at Danspace Project

photo: Keely Garfield

In beginning to make WOW, I started thinking about what it would be like to make something that was entirely sincere without a hint of irony or trying to be clever.



--Keely Garfield 

Keely Garfield's WOW is a luminous mess that makes me smile, and I mean that sincerely. WOW encircles the music of Kate Bush, whose song "Wow," ironically, seems to lash at the insincerity of the entertainment biz.

The hour-long production, running now at Danspace Project, is an act of disruption, an unmasking with occasional masks, a mouthful of Pop Rocks, a baptismal immersion in feelings that continuously build, ebb and build again. Theatricalized for performances that, after all, will happen over three evenings, these feelings nevertheless appear to originate in and take their sustenance from someplace real.

WOW's a trip down the sub(terranean)way where public announcements end up not being what they seem at first. The edge comes off. These are not quite the expected MTA alerts any typical New Yorker could repeat out of a deep sleep, but dreams could produce the disarming little things Garfield turns them into.

A dancer (Leslie Kraus) pulls up a chair and locks with you, eye to eye, allowing all the sun to come through her face, and she cracks up, unable to hold anything back. A duet happens but with Garfield and Paul Hamilton endlessly writhing, wriggling their backs against the floor, and you might wonder where you, the baffled viewer, are located. Physically, you've retained your seat, surely, but has your vantage point somehow shifted to the air above this pair? No, that doesn't quite feel right either. Let's ask again: Where are you?

Big gestures and energies come unleashed; hills are run and conquered by desire. You're in the presence of a playful, exuberant mind, like that Facebook poster, "a browser with 2,857 tabs open. All. The. Time." Garfield's thousands of tabs include her collaborators, among them Brandin Steffensen, Jordan Morley, Hamilton and Kraus, each dancer a resource so wonderfully distinct and fascinating; singer/pianist Matthew Brookshire; and Kathy Kaufmann, whose lighting wizardry transforms the gaping openness of St. Mark's into the intensified dramatics of a proscenium.

WOW closes with tonight's performance at 8pm. Get information and tickets here.

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

Yvonne Meier's "Stolen"

Stolen opens in the dark with several regular blasts of super-amplified vocal noise from the commanding Sudanese soul singer Alsarah, a bracing sonic environment, and you sit there, helplessly counting the onrushing blasts, praying that the last you've heard will be the last indeed, not knowing, of course, that you've innocently wandered into a savage expanse of space and there's no escaping the plump, fertile, wacky and uncensorable mind of Yvonne Meier, the dancer-choreographer dressed in a t-shirt perhaps honoring one notoriously irritable, mayor-biting groundhog and accompanied by the always-game and valiant madman, dancer-in-extremis Arturo Vidich and the considerably calmer, more efficient Aki Sasamoto, all in a Kathy Kaufmann-illuminated terrain pelted from above by a load of insulting shoes.

Meier. Gotta love 'er.

Time cost is only 45 minutes. You can do this. Danspace Project tonight and tomorrow at 8:30pm.

Gina Gibney Dance: The Distance Between Us

The Distance Between Us--the new piece by Gina Gibney, closing tonight at the Ailey Citigroup Theater--looks very much like a short story filled with characters engaged in shifting relationships. I can't tell you exactly what those relationships are, but this is the sort of work that asks a watcher to tilt forward and read into it whatever is in the watcher's experience and soul. It's a sophisticated, if abstract and tantalizingly enigmatic, tale. It unfolds within an extraordinary environment--one that seems to breathe, pulsate, flush with emotion, harbor haunting memories and even speak like a living being--created by Kathy Kaufmann (lighting), Lex Liang (set) and Ryan Lott (music).

Among Gibney's six women dancers--always a strong, vivid bunch--Courtney Drasner, Janessa Clark and Kristy Kuhn give especially focused, super-energized performances that make them seem larger than life. Naoko Nagata's dizzily constructed black-and-white costumes are the only feature that seems a little off, a little too kicky for the low-key tone of this piece; otherwise, they have and contribute their offbeat appeal to this rich production.

Gibney's initial solo segment for the tall, gorgeous Drasner introduces the tidal flow of so much of the movement: the lush, lashing, twirling and spongey moves, performed with ease and confidence, that appear throughout much of Distance, running through solos, duets and ensemble gatherings in which stuff, whatever it is, happens in privacy or with others. Gibney has given herself a lot of time and space in which to have stuff happen, and sometimes this generosity seems to have worked against the kind of scrupulous decision-making that chooses what's most crucial for us to see and that guarantees variety of texture. There are any number of places at which the dance seems to have reached an end but continues. Still I would much rather sit out a lengthy Gibney dance than many another choreographer's because she has an eye for sensuous beauty and an appetite for feeling.

(c) Eva Yaa Asantewaa, 2007