Kyoung's Pacific Beat presents "PILLOWTALK"

JP Moraga and Basit Shittu,
the stars of Kyoung H. Park's PILLOWTALK
(photo: andytoad)

If PILLOWTALK were a streamable series, I would so binge-watch it. This short two-hander written and directed by Kyoung Park (Kyoung’s Pacific Beat) has that all-essential factor that gets me every time--people I can give a damn about. That would be Buck (JP Moraga), an Asian-American journalist just fired from the job he hates anyway and who avoids telling this news to his super-practical husband Sam (Basit Shittu), a Black man and former competitive swimmer now working for a bunch of Republicans, the only job he says he was able to find. From beginning to end, and even through the inevitable tension and dissension, Moraga and Shittu subtly radiate the genuine, consistent humanity and appeal in their characters. The romance of Buck and Sam, two contemporary Brooklynites, reflects true complexity and sweet affection in equal measures. I believe in them and root for them.

Co-presented by Park's company and The Tank for The Exponential Festival, the show delves into issues of racism--even inside relationships between people of color--as well as economics, gentrification and political strategy. Most notably, Park probes the issue of how the fight for marriage equality might have robbed queer marginality of its unique, revolutionary bite. His tight, energized writing, deftly linking political and personal issues, contains no waste material. It's all hard at work all the time, and keeps both the actors and us viewers on our toes.

Setting up in the smaller of The Tank's two spaces contributes to our sense of the couple's vulnerability. The tiny black box space and its ingenious, minimalist decor (by Marie Yokoyama) suggest the cramped existence of real-life New Yorkers similar to Sam and Buck. When challenges emerge in this marriage, the men retreat to an even narrower slot of territory on opposite sides of the space, or one might flee the space entirely. Their apartment's un-cozy spatial constraints are as real a worry as the external, invading pressures from community and society. But we also feel the spirit of love in the air. And that's underscored by the final sequence, a pas de deux choreographed by Katy Pyle (of Ballez fame).

Moraga, whose character longs for a new career as a ballet dancer, more clearly resembles someone with ballet training (those feet, that line). I don't know about Shittu, and neither man's bio reveals a history with dance. But Pyle's work as the creator of the inclusive, queer-friendly ballez approach to classical dance upends what we expect, re-purposing and opening up all of ballet's strengths, beauty and fun to people of all genders. Her sequence for Sam and Buck strips away all the external and internal static and reveals what matters and what endures at the heart of this relationship.

Live music: Helen Yee
Sound design: Lawrence Schober
Scenic and lighting design: Marie Yokoyama
Costume design: Andrew Jordan

PILLOWTALK’s Long Table Series is curated by Shannon Matesky and Kyoung H. Park and each event will follow 15 minutes after each listed performance date. Last Long Table:
LOVE’S POWER/MICROINVISIBILITY (Thursday, January 25, 8pm) sheds light on the aggressions and invisibility of QPOC love. What are the spiritual and material dimensions of QPOC love? What are our acts of radical love? Facilitated by Stephanie Hsu with Guest Speakers Nic Kay, Kirya Trabor and more to be announced.

PILLOWTALK continues through Saturday, January 27. For information and tickets, click here.

The Tank
312 West 36th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

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Those rebellious Trocks, now on film!

REBELS ON POINTE

(2017, 90 minutes)

A film by Bobbi Jo Hart

An Icarus Films Release

This month, Icarus Films and director Bobbi Jo Hart will celebrate the US theatrical release of Hart's Rebels on Pointe, the first documentary devoted to the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. For more than four decades, the New York-based Trocks have strapped on pointe shoes, delighting world-wide audiences with irreverent, accessible interpretations of ballet's classics. While the gender-bending is all in fun, their dancing also demonstrates serious technical capability and attention to detail.Artistic director Tory Dobrin sees no reason, he says, to choose between joke or no joke. The Trocks, says ABT's James Whiteside, an ardent admirer, strike "an incredible balance between high art and clever camp."

Generous with samples of the troupe on stage, Hart's film is also lavish with clips of interviews with and about the dancers. We come to appreciate their work ethic, their drive to perform and the joys and challenges of day-to-day life within and outside of dance.

I only wish Hart had delved a little deeper, seizing an opportunity to contextualize the Trocks's achievements. Dance fans can now explore an exciting landscape in which openly queer, trans and gender non-conforming artists expand how we see, read and respond to dance, both classical and contemporary. It would have been interesting to hear from out-lesbian dance artist and educator Katy Pyle whose Ballez--a philosophy, practice and company--is designed to re-write "the narratives of Story Ballets to tell the history of our lineage, as dancers, and as queers" and re-imagine "Archetypal characters to reflect multiplicity: of identity, desire and expression." And Pyle is only one of many artists upending conventional roles and affirming more gender fluidity in dance today.

Rebels on Pointe leans more personal than political, though, of course, these things glide along a spectrum. It's more of a glance behind the scenes and the dressing room door but, if you love people, love dancers, love the Trocks, that might be enough.

See Rebels on Pointe 

in the following theaters:

New York City: opening November 15 at Quad Cinema

Los Angeles: opening November 24 at Laemmle Music Hall

Chicago: opening November 24 at Gene Siskel Film Center

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Serious Moonlight dance podcast launches on iTunes!

I am over the moon about Serious Moonlight, a new dance interview podcast I'm producing with Tei Blow for Gibney Dance Center's Digital Technology Initiative. (Big thanks to you, Tei!) Our first shows are finally up on iTunes. (Subscribe, please!) 

Episode 1 is a recording of my final Not The Master's Tools panel of speakers--Katy Pyle, Nia Love, Benjamin Kimitch and Kazu Kumagai. Episode 2 is a chat with Cassie Mey, archivist for the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division. In Episode 3, choreographer Jessica Chen talks about her blooming life and career following a devastating accident. And in Episode 4, dance artist Sydnie L. Mosley of SLMDances discusses her multifaceted work as a performer, dancemaker, scholar, educator, administrator and activist dedicated to social justice.

I hope you'll enjoy Serious Moonlight. Let's dance!

Visit and subscribe to

Serious Moonlight here.

Ballez: La MaMa Moves presents ballet on the wild side

Khadija Griffith (left) and Deborah Lohse in
Sleeping Beauty & The Beast,
a Ballez world premiere
(photo: Theo Coté)

Ballez is performance, company, class and community, that invites everyone to witness and celebrate the history and performances of lesbian, queer, and transgender people.

Ballez dancers claim our inherent nobility and belonging within, around, and on top of a form that has historically excluded us. 

Ballez celebrates the virtuosity of complexly gendered embodiment, energetic eloquence, queer coding, and the magical adaptability of expression that Ballez dancers have cultivated through their lives as a way to survive and thrive.

--some statements from www.ballez.org

Sleeping Beauty & the Beast--the latest project of Katy Pyle (with Jules Skloot and members of Pyle's Ballez troupe) is big.

How big, you ask?

So big, it requires more than two hours and two--not one--theater at La MaMa to tell its story.

So big, it's really telling multiple stories, mashing up classical ballets and fairy tale archetypes with Lower East Side labor organizing history and with L.E.S. queer culture--resulting in a hot mess that is and isn't.

So big, Pyle needs two dozen versatile, well-trained and coached dancers (most playing multiple roles) and eighteen classical musicians (New York's Queer Urban Orchestra playing straight-up Tchaikovsky for Act 1) plus a DJ JD Samson's house music (Act 2) and even that's not enough.

So big, it Occupies the Ballet Canon; big enough for a look-in from Graham and Loie Fuller; too big for the gender binary; too big to behave.

So big, it can embrace sweetness, humor, revolutionary fervor, sexual heat of diverse and ever-shifting varieties, and the pain of loss.

So big that--well, you know those old timers who regale you with stories about being there when so-and-so made her stunning debut or first danced with Nureyev and knocked their socks off in that difficult role? One day, if you're lucky, you will be that old timer, unable to shut up about how you saw Ballez premiere Sleeping Beauty & The Beast at La MaMa Moves.

That big. Historic. Meaningful. Moving.

Pyle and company get so much joyfully right, starting with the complex precision work of Act 1's opening yarn weaving dance. But I'm going to let you discover the best of Sleeping Beauty & The Beast for yourself, because you're going, right?  You're going.

Sleeping Beauty & the Beast continues tonight and through May 8--Wednesday to Saturday at 7pm; Sunday at 4pm. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa
at Ellen Stewart Theatre and The Downstairs
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between Bowery and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Panelists announced for April's Not The Master's Tools

Katy Pyle will discuss how The Ballez
"inserts the herstory of lesbian, queer and transgender lives"
and "disrupts the exclusionary form of ballet."
(photo courtesy of Katy Pyle)

I'm delighted 

to announce my next panel:

Not The Master's Tools IV

with presentations by

Benjamin Kimitch

Katy Pyle

Kazu Kumagai

Nia Love

sharing their experiences, discoveries, 

alternative strategies and philosophies 

as dance artists in New York

moderated by

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Tuesday

April 5 (6-8pm)


Gibney Dance: 
Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center


It's free!

Help us spread the news,

and RSVP here!

"The Master’s Tools 

Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"

– essay by Audre Lorde, 1984

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Panelists announced for April's Not The Master's Tools

Katy Pyle will discuss how The Ballez
"inserts the herstory of lesbian, queer and transgender lives"
and "disrupts the exclusionary form of ballet."
(photo courtesy of Katy Pyle)

Not The Master's Tools IV

with presentations by

Benjamin Kimitch

Katy Pyle

Kazu Kumagai

Nia Love

sharing their experiences, discoveries, 

alternative strategies and philosophies 

as dance artists in New York

moderated by

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Tuesday
April 5 (6-8pm)


Gibney Dance: 
Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

It's free!

Help us spread the news,

and RSVP here!

"The Master’s Tools 

Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"

– essay by Audre Lorde, 1984

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

On the APAP trail: Half Straddle and Ballez

Some members of The Ballez
(photo: Hedia Maron)

Now might not be the kindest season to hang around The Kitchen, that drab industrial box for the industry of experiment in far Chelsea. But Tina Satter's Obie-winning Half Straddle has set up shop there for the first time, and the chilly environs actually add a bit of vérité to the proceedings.

In Ancient Lives, which is kind of a movie-as-theater inspired by teen flicks from the 1980s but with a whiff of something decades, centuries and even aeons older, we find ourselves deep in the woods with a mesmerizing teacher, her three charges, a little witch and broadcast media equipment old and new. We know we're in the woods because that downstage chaise lounge, inexplicably covered, encrusted and taped by packing materials, has an owl statue perched atop, and there's an outsized badger (Chris Giarmo) playing Chris Giarmo's music live in the upper left corner of the space. And I swear there's a scent of pine--along with troubling power dynamics--drifting through the night air.

The aura of the artificial as well as the self-consciously awkward tickled me, everybody playacting in a production cobbled together as if by a magpie. My favorite bit--a time-warped set piece around the word "poppet"--shows Satter's players at their sharpest in vocal skills and timing.

Performed by Jess Barbagallo, Eliza Bent, Emily Davis, Julia Sirna-Frest, and Lucy Taylor with choreography by Elizabeth Dement, video by Ilan Bachrach, set by Andreea Mincic and lighting by Zack Tinkelman

Ancient Lives continues Wednesday-Saturday, January 14-17 with performances at 8PM. For information and tickets, click here.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

***

Oh, how I regret that Katy Pyle's Variations on Virtuosity, A Gala Performance with The Stars of The Ballez--presented by American Realness at Abrons Arts Center--will have come and gone after only two shows on a single weekend. Why do the best things in life last so briefly while we must endure the likes of social injustice and bad performance? A better question: How soon can someone bring The Ballez (and sexy) back?

The Ballez, we're told,

celebrates the virtuosity of complexly gendered people by choosing the grandiose container of ballet for its presentation. The company celebrates a lineage of dykes and post-modern performance by telling queer/dyke histories inside the framework of classical ballet narratives.

The 45-minute program, beautifully lit by designer Carrie Wood, sampled the Ballez repertoire, including a suite from The Firebird, A Ballez; the Dying Swan excerpt from Sleeping Beauty & the Beast; and the smoking 1993 Club Suite from that last piece. With the exception of the striking Dying Swan solo--attributed to Pyle and dancer Michael Helland after the Fokine choreography for Pavlova--the other works are the handiwork of Pyle and Jules Skloot in collaboration with their ensemble.

Contemporary ballet, by and large, makes my eyes glaze over. I just can't get into it much or much of it. But this isn't contemporary ballet. With the exception of the Club Suite duets, it's classical ballet for contemporary people living in a real world, and it has got my full attention. The Ballez doesn't satirize ballet; it rewrites the rules of who can dance and how they must present themselves. It appropriates technique, stories and characters for all the right reasons. It makes us look closely, in the interactions between and among dancers, to witness utmost care and delicacy of touch as well as power in the fluidity of physical and emotional roles. Dance lives here and will never flame out.

This troupe could sell out--I'm not talking about seats--and part of me would be very happy for Pyle and her collaborators. They have developed a thrilling sophistication in their teamwork and bring something a wider American audience needs to see.

Last chance: Tonight at 9pm. Click here to see if tickets remain available.

For information on other American Realness festival events at Abrons Arts Center and beyond, click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Study Adult Ballez with Katy Pyle

Dancers from Katy Pyle's The Firebird

Admit it: You saw Katy Pyle's gender-fabulous Firebird at Danspace Project and got inspired, right? Well, here's a workshop for you!

Adult Ballez 

with Katy Pyle and guests

Mondays at BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange  

September 30 through December 16 (7:30-9:00 pm)

$12 Drop-in | $60 for workshop

Katy Pyle

Adult Ballez is a dance class to explore the historically gendered and Imperialist movements of Ballet, and to radically re-imagine those potentially oppressive tools into a physicalized site of play, freedom, strength, and liberation. We will shift the focus away from athletic virtuosity and towards the virtuosity of genderqueer embodiment, and seek active engagement with classmates (aka cruising), as opposed to the typically endless shame spirals of self-loathing based upon an unattainable ideal! We'll play with ballet's traditionally gendered form, learning and practicing the steps of both ballerinas and danseurs. We'll warm-up at the barre, practice codified postures and movements, and then move into center to turn, jump and learn short movement phrases. We'll learn techniques for, and practice, partnering that is not based on size, but rather on weight-sharing, listening, and cooperation, all with the accompaniment of oft-embarassing music by queer icons. 

For more information about Adult Ballez and Katy Pyle visit accessbax.bax.org/adult-ballez.

BAX (Brookly Arts Exchange)
421 Fifth Avenue (and 8th Street) in Park Slope, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

"The Firebird, A Ballez" at Danspace Project

This lesbian princess expects this Firebird to perch on her finger! (Photo: Christy Pessagno)

I think what I love most about Katy Pyle's queer appropriation of The Firebird--in the Firebird, A Ballez, concluding tonight at Danspace Project--is that almost nobody's trying terribly hard to live up to critical standards, to tailor themselves to any outsider's approval.

The first person we meet, the Narrator (Sacha Yanow) isn't declaiming her lines in a well-trained theatrical voice. She's just talking. She could be your lesbian girlfren' from around the block with a big grin and bit of gossip on her tongue. From what I can see, she's having a quick word with an audience filled with people who are a lot like her. So, yeah, she is your lesbian girlfren' from around the block!

Pyle, herself, for all her training in ballet, isn't the princess you might expect from the traditional Firebird tale and its balletic renderings. In this "ballez," she chooses to look like a cross between an animated ragdoll and a cake left out in the rain, but she shows no hesitation in stalking her desired "tranimal" Firebird (Jules Skloot) or lifting him numerous times like a stevedore--a stevedore with blue and purple hair. Dance technique- and plot-wise, she's more will than grace.

I love the chorus of lez and trans princes* in their ballet school black tights and white t-shirts and don't want them to aim for "perfect." Their earnestness and willingness and sense of togetherness in all things move me like little else can. That's a team any princess--this one included--would be lucky to gather close.

I love the space that Pyle and Skloot, with his modest charm, make for ballet to contain imperfection and feeling by reeling it back from mechanical exactitude and just plain giving it to the people. So that when the vampirish Sorceress (Cassie Mey) finally makes her electrifying entrance, with flapper-like bob, velvet, floor-sweeping coat and barely-there costume of straps and rhinestones, we see her flashy technique as a cold, heartless, relentless, manipulative thing with no room for love.

There's also the fancy of Hedia Maron's video, projected on the church's altar wall. It conjures a sense of place--a formidable castle rising on craggy heights; a classic garden with statuary and orange trees; a raging pyre--that we might find illustrating a volume of kid's fairytales. This naivete turns my heart over and turns me childlike. The excellent Queer Urban Orchestra, conducted by Nolan Dresden, brings the Stravinsky in a thrilling performance from St. Marks's balcony.

This evening-length version of The Firebird, A Ballez--long in the dreaming and making--has arrived. Tonight's performance (8pm) is sold out, but it's definitely worth a try. The wait list starts at 7:15pm.

[*Princes: Effie Bowen, Zari Esaian, Ariel "Speedwagon" Federow, Leah Hafezi, Sam Greenleaf Miller, Francis Rabkin, Mary Read, Lindsay Reuter, Lollo Romanski, Silky Shoemaker, Sacha Yanow and Nyx Zierhut]

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

Dan Safer's "Body and Soul: Listen." audio...redux!

A Facebook friend, downloading an episode of Body and Soul podcast, noticed that the Dan Safer Listen. segment had been switched with the Katy Pyle segment. I don't know how this happened, but I have uploaded Dan's podcast again.

You'll find the original InfiniteBody post about Dan's segment here.

So check for the new (9/28/12) Dan Safer segment, and ignore the old (8/23/12) one--that is, unless you enjoy Katy Pyle so much you'd like to hear her twice, and I can understand how you might!

As far as I know, this should be the final glitch in the Hipcast/iTunes saga, but if it isn't let me know right away, and I'll see what I can do about it!

Thanks!

Pyle and Skloot premiere "Covers" at The Bushwick Starr

Covers--presented by dancer-choreographers Katy Pyle and Jules Skloot at that funky little Bushwick Starr performance space--is totally worth your time this weekend.

Performing beneath quilts, Katy Pyle and Jules Skloot shape-shift through an amorphous landscape of literal and metaphorical covers, inhabiting and discarding roles through cover songs, dance styles, and contemporary performance tropes.

Text by Francis Weiss Rabkin.  Music contributions from Erica Livingston, Margot Bassett, and Katie Workum. 

That does not mention Carrie Wood's enchanting lighting design (evoking candlelight, a campfire, daybreak) and how an interweaving of guileless entertainment and emotional transparency--plus some beloved pop music--makes this hour-long duet poignant and irresistible.

See it tonight, Saturday night or Sunday at 8pm. Get tickets here.

The Bushwick Starr
207 Starr Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

And if you haven't yet heard Pyle's beautiful recording for Listen., here's the link to my blog post for it (click).

Body and Soul/Listen.: Katy Pyle [AUDIO]

Katy Pyle

Click here to subscribe to Body and Soul podcast in iTunes and listen to dancer-choreographer Katy Pyle talk about the the saving grace--and the power--of imagination and performance.

Katy's bio

Katy Pyle and Jules Skloot present COVERS -- September 6-9 at The Bushwick Starr. Get details here.

To subscribe to Body and Soul podcast, click here.

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Dixon Place presents Diana Crum and Katy Pyle

The Don't Miss of The Week

Kim Brandt--curating Dixon Place's Brink program--has the winning entry in this week's just-made-up-out-of-thin-air Don't Miss contest!

With everything popping on the dance scene lately, it's easy to overlook some interesting work getting a little less publicity--like Katy Pyle's gender-blurring, species-blurring take on The Firebird with its cool, lyrical ballet and hot romance. Word-of-mouth should help, though, since this is a natural for THE Dyke Date of The Week (another contest I should launch, maybe?). The considerable charms of this queer fairy tale--with Pyle as the Lesbian Princess and Jules Skloot as the Firebird--will lift your spirits.

if I tell myself I have enough time, then I can be with you, Diana Crum's duet for Erin Cairns Cella and Kathy Wasik, opens the evening. The brightly-costumed dancers move like Crayola calligraphy across DP's white wall and gray floor to the textured drone of Peter Kerlin's guitar. Even with eyes closed, even stumbling, they appear to be lucid and in confident control. The work plays with ideas of parallel but rarely synchronous times sliding past one another and sometimes intersecting. Its concept might be a touch too subtle--"the layering of experiences presents viewers with opportunities to both witness and exist inside of different time scales, perhaps even simultaneously," Crum's publicity tells us--but the clean, clear performances are a pleasure.

Brink featuring Katy Pyle and Diana Crum closes tonight with a performance at 7:30pm. For information, cick here, and for ticket reservations, click here.

Dixon Place

161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan

(directions)

Young Jean Lee and the naked truth

Untitled Feminist Show--created by award-winning director Young Jean Lee, choreographer Faye Driscoll, associate director Morgan Gould and other collaborators--has earned a place on my mental list of favorite dance events of the very young 2012. I know I'm going to have some explaining to do because--as I see here in Lee's program notes--Lee doesn't consider this work to be a dance piece. "Like the performers themselves," she writes, "the show is meant to resist categorization."

So, what am I talking about?

Well, aside from the fact that I would like to be able to claim every damn good thing in the Universe for dance, I'm beginning to get a sense that calling something "theater" (as she calls her company, after all: Young Jean Lee's Theater Company) is fine and dandy, but calling something "dance" is somehow limiting. 

Hmmm....

Seems it was just yesterday that the idea of calling all sorts of wild and crazy (or mild and boring) things "dance" was bold and liberating.

In any case, Lee's six marvelous stars are performing arts of the body, including dance and some incredibly edgy mime, and they are stark naked throughout the hour. I'm calling this one for dance, and I will not be dissuaded.

I also hear tell--because I've been reading some of her interviews--that she doesn't want Untitled Feminist Show to be considered sexy. Oh, please. Nothing wrong with (or un-feminist about) sexy. Bring sexy back. In fact, this show does so--directly and indirectly.

What couldn't be genuinely sexy about six unselfconsciously nude, female-bodied performers, each with a distinct body type and size, defining themselves across a fluid gender spectrum and expressing, almost entirely in iconic and primal physical movement, how it might feel to be free?

Free is sexy.

They are Becca Blackwell, World Famous *BOB*, Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo), Hilary Clark, Katy Pyle and Regina Rocke, collectively hailing from cabaret, theater, dance and burlesque with some crossovers, all stripped of theatricalizing makeup, hairstyling and, of course, costumes. They make a fabulous team in this fabulous romp, but Blackwell, Zirin-Brown and especially Clark seem to be having the most high-charged and, yes, liberating fun.

Some of them initially enter the space by slowly drifting down the aisles, giving the audience a sense of being represented in the performance space. (They come from us.) We hear their soft and human breathing, which establishes a comforting sense of common humanity. But don't get too comfortable. Although the inhabitants of Lee's feminist utopia sometimes sport frilly pink parasols, they're capable of using these items as weapons, and they'll happily consume their victim. No, you've never seen Marcel Marceau do the kind of mime you'll see in Untitled Feminist Show--at least, not on Ed Sullivan's show.

And check out that acid-trip video projection at the end! Through the Looking Glass, through the black hole you go! What are you going to be when you come out the other side?

With scenic design by David Evans Morris; lighting design by Raquel Davis; sound design by Chris Giarmo and Jamie McElhinney; and projection design by Leah Gelpe.

Untitled Feminist Show is a presentation of Performance Space 122's COIL Festival and runs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center through February 4. For information, schedule and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Jerome Robbins Theater

450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan

(directions)

Keithley's opulent park

I followed Karinne Keithley down the rabbit hole of Montgomery Park, or Opulence, trying to make sense, until I realized that--as Keithley quotes William James--"the boundary-line of the mental is certainly vague." This multimedia performance isn't vague as much as it is poetically surrealistic and delicately laced with the exquisite opulence of Keithley's musical and movement aesthetics.

How bizarre to witness Lucy Guerin's stunning Corridor at BAC one night then hear two references to a burning insane asylum corridor in Keithley's piece the next afternoon. How bizarre to watch Keithley and Katy Pyle demonstrate a sequence of "Spinozan Calisthenics" (created by Sara Smith) then, later that evening, see Michelle Boulé, Miguel Gutierrez and Tarek Halaby demonstrate something that should really be called Hellaerobics in Gutierrez's outstanding Last Meadow at DTW. This has been a weird--if ultimately rewarding--weekend.

Keithley's show concludes its run at 7pm tonight at HERE Arts Center. Space is limited, but if tickets are still available, you can get them HERE or at 212-352-3101.

Note: My review of Gutierrez's Last Meadow will be featured in Dance Magazine, and I will let you know when that's available.