luciana achugar: the body in power and joy

Choreographer luciana achugar
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Brujx, a world premiere, ritualizes the labor of the dancers, exposing and transcending it to unearth the powerful and primal magic brujx within them. As in all of achugar’s [sic] work it proposes DANCE as the necessary transformational healing for our time. Brujx resists western assumptions of beauty and hierarchical order, freeing the dancers both of their role as worker in the power structure within the creative project and of the universal shame of being animal-sexual-powerful-instinctive creatures. -- from publicity for luciana achugar's Brujx

As part of senior director and curator Jay Wegman's two-week Karl Marx Festival: On Your Marx at NYU Skirball, luciana achugar's Brujx embeds her audience in the flow of the work, instantly transforming most of these "viewers" into performative, even scenic objects to be gazed upon far more than the official dancers. In her somewhat nervous pre-show welcome on Skirball's grand staircase, achugar offered each of us a choice: Either stand or sit onstage, or take a regular seat in the theater's rows.

As it turned out, if you sat facing the stage, as I chose to do for most of the 90+ minutes of Brujx--think bruja, Spanish for witch, but  gender-busting--you'd have to work to catch as much as could be seen from there. Sometimes you'd lean to one side or the other to glimpse dancers through a sliver of space in the crowd. Or, guided by the percussion of bodies slapping the floor or walls, use your imagination. Imagining the scene onstage behind a tightly-packed semicircle of people was not so hard, actually. A lot of Brujx happens through consistent, monotonous kinetic and sonic repetition with a blend of the organic, the industrial and the sexual. See enough, and you can make a good enough guess about the rest.

These aspects--organic, industrial, sexual--never separate in our minds as we observe. Instead of fixating on one notion of what we're seeing and hearing, we fluctuate even as the dancers stay steady in many of their actions. Their evoked nature ranges from insect-like to human, from animal to machine. One of the most indelible, brilliantly conceived and executed images is of a languid, cattle-like walk with each of the dancers on all fours, their haunches exposed and the luminous focus of everyone's attention.

achugar, curiously, is the only performer identified in NYU Skirball publicity, and no program notes, that might identify the others, were issued. Perhaps this anonymity has something to do with the significant partial nudity and behavior of the dancers throughout the piece. I was unnerved to see one man approach the stage with a cellphone and train his videocam on one dancer's upended, pumping backside.

It was not until late in the game that the most of those of us in the seats had mounted the stage to watch the three half-naked witches gyrate to electronic polyrhythms produced by an ingenious sound sculpture. I often think achugar aims to bring back the Sixties, which part of me, remembering the Sixties, finds a bit hokey. Also hokey, having dancers climb to the top of the audience seating and then, row by row, clamber down over the backs of seats. This makes both parts of the audience have to shift their gaze for a while, but to little purpose, and perhaps tells us what we already know about these witches. Yes, they are wild, unruly things. And hasn't the fourth wall been breached already--and more creatively?

Still, looking around as I stood with other on the stage, I noticed the audience's bodies were noticeably relaxed, their faces softened, as the dancers' liberated spirit seeped out into everyone. One woman, absorbed in herself and not even gazing towards the performers, kept up a serpentine undulation in response. As I took my leave, the dancing and gawking continued, the audience now almost completely merged and submerged.

Brujx concludes this evening with a performance at 7:30pm. For information and reservations*, click here.

NYU Skirball's Karl Marx Festival: On Your Marx--*all free with an RSVP and a donation, if you desire--continues through October 28. For information, click here.

NYU Skirball
566 LaGuardia Place (between West 4th and West 3rd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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The sign reads: Danspace Project at Times Square!

Laurie Berg (front, right) and dancers
perform -scape- in Times Square
(photo: Nicky Paraiso)

Inspired by Times Square’s history as the home of Broadway musicals, vaudeville, dance halls, and vernacular dance forms that emerged throughout the 20th century, Danspace Project has partnered with Times Square Arts to commission three new, site-specific dance works by esteemed New York City artists. -- from publicity for Danspace Project in Times Square

Congratulations to the folks at Danspace Project!

As directed by Prof. Google, I got off the R train at 49th Street and exited at 47th, not quite sure where I'd find this "Duffy Square" and you. But then--wow!--a mainstage with big sign:

Danspace Project at Times Square

You all really have come a long way. Well, let's see. That would be nearly forty blocks, six subway stations?

Front: Ana "Rokafella" Garcia
Back, from left: luciana achugar,
Gabriel "Kwiikstep" Garcia and Laurie Berg
at the crossroads of the world
(photo: Ian Douglas)

And what a great night for outdoor performance. Refreshingly cool. A happy swirl of tourists speaking a multitude of languages (all variations on Uh...what? What are they doing?) and lifting phones to capture the unexpected moment. Starting around 6pm, Laurie Berg's dancers snaked through the gathered crowd, occasionally dropping out of view, their genial dancing accompanied by the rumble of trains beneath the grates.

Berg's -scape- has an easy-breezy feel that, at the same time, feels defiant of the towering advertisements that color and dazzle and overpower and absolutely define the area. In the middle of all of this, the ensemble seems to say, are us. Notice us. Notice yourselves. Turn your captured gaze away from the ads for a minute, and see us dancing.

The piece concludes with the troupe climbing the square's big staircase to the top where they sit, neatly spaced across the top step, and run a long, long, arcane string of semaphoric gestures and rhythmic, synchronized movements. They know they can't rise as high as the bright lights of Broadway and the corporate messages those lights train down on helpless humanity, but they can seize their own moment and send their own "message" that doesn't have to mean any one particular thing because, after all, this is Danspace Project.

-scape- performers: Jodi Bender, Laurie Berg, Melanie Greene, Madison Krekel, Kyle Marshall, Tonya Sisco, Anna Adams Stark

Costume Design/Concept: Liliana Dirks-Goodman, Jaime Shearn Coan, Laurie Berg
Costume Printing: Print All Over Me
Sound Design: Rena Anakwe
Glasses: Everything Branded
Gloves: Tyler James Designs

Along the way from -scape- and luciana achugar's 7pm performance of New Mass Dance, some of us stopped to watch some non-Danspace dancers work their own street dancing project, the kind you're more likely to see everyday. Then it was on to Broadway Plaza (at 44th Street), where I only knew I was in the right place when I noticed a woman steadying herself as she mounted one of those short, thick steel posts that act as a security barrier. Sure enough, it was achugar, assisted by a pair of those "barefoot" running shoes molded around each toe. And then I noticed several other people, a few of them also perched on posts, dressed like her in denim and the running shoes.

New Mass Dance came off as a ritual at the crossroads--the crossroads of the world, that is, as Times Square has long been called. The ensemble eventually drew a rapt crowd, but it was amazing to see how oblivious most passersby remained at the outset, never breaking stride, even those who bothered to snap a picture.

achugar built things up from a simple group circle with clasped hands pumping up and down to raise energy to a Busby Berkeley-style star pattern of synchronized (though markedly diverse) bodies to a writhing tangle of hedonists. At one point, after gazing around at the Ernst & Young ad and the Hard Rock Cafe facade and the like, I suddenly remembered how the dancer Eiko Otake's body has intervened in all kinds of places. achugar's piece, though lacking Otake's gravity and poignancy, did feel like an intervention. But I doubt last evening's strollers and watchers got achugar's intended, embedded connections to 1930s labor demonstrations, left-wing dance agitprop and resistance.

New Mass Dance performers: luciana achugar, Oren Barnoy, Rachel Berman, Malcolm-x Betts, Michael Mahalchick, Rebecca Wender, Sarah White

I regret I missed Full Circle Souljahs, the street dancing/club dancing troupe directed by Ana "Rokafella" Garcia and Gabriel "Kwikstep" Dionisio, back at Danspace Project's mainstage where they performed Behind the Groove: Times Square Edition. It had been a long evening for me, most of it spent on my feet. Close to the souljah's 8pm start time, I wound through Times Square's public space enticements--wow!--heading back to the subway.

Full Circle Souljahs: Odylle “Mantis” Beder, John “Flonetik” Vinuya, Nasir “Kid Break” Malave, Mark “Styleski” Mack, Raymond “Spex” Abbiw, Richard James
FC Hardrocks: Deana Richline, Jennifer “Beasty” Acosta, Janice Tomlinson, Sharmaine Sheppard
Lite feet by Noahlot: KR3Ts
Krumping: TJ Rocka and the Nu Knynnes
Logo design: Shiro
T-shirts: Eric Michael
Kuduro choreography: Manuel Kanza

Danspace Project at Times Square, presented in partnership with Times Square Arts, continues tonight and Sunday evening, beginning at 6pm. For information and directions, click here.

Information on the individual works can be found at these links:

-scape- (6pm at Duffy Square)

New Mass Dance (7pm at Broadway Plaza)

Behind the Groove: Times Square Edition (8pm at Duffy Square)

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My Eiko journal: Part 5

Eiko's A Body in Places
Conversation Without Walls: Bearing Witness
Friday, March 11 -- 4pm

Commemorating the fifth anniversary of Japan's triple disaster--earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactor meltdown--Eiko Otake and Danspace Project convened three rounds of hour-long conversations as part of A Body in Places. Scholars, activists and artists such as luciana achugar, Yoshiko Chuma, Koosil-ja, Katja Kolcio and William Johnston, offered contextual information on the ongoing crisis of nuclear waste and displacement in Fukushima. Presenting and responding speakers provided insight into the necessity and challenges of artistic response to this great loss as well as the numerous traumas of our planet.

I was fascinated to learn that the people of Fukushima, a site of Japan's neolithic culture, had preserved ancient folk and shamanic practices, a strong interest of mine.  Fukushima, impoverished and precarious, was long considered an expendable "sacrifice zone," a backwater targeted for industrialization and nuclear reactor construction.  Around 100,000 people were displaced from their homes by the disaster, and there's little hope that this area can ever be restored to normalcy.

Johnston's large photographs of Eiko dancing at affected sites in Fukushima and elsewhere filled the floor and risers at the sanctuary of St. Mark's. In the short breaks between conversation sessions, I tried to get around to see as many of these images as I could, and each one pierced my heart. As noted in the discussions, they are rigorous, exceedingly beautiful compositions but devastating to see. And they underscored what I've been learning about Eiko and her purpose--that her practice is shamanic in its resistance to and disruption of the daily current of time, in its ability to bridge apparent gaps of distance, bringing Fukushima to New York, and not just in Johnston's brilliant photographs but throughout her work in the world.

Someone described Eiko's performance as "a prophetic form of mourning" not just for Fukushima but for all the suffering that surrounds us now and the suffering that is to come. And dance artist achugar spoke of resisting "the tyranny of the [linear] arrow of time" and "the illusion of separation." Eiko, herself, spoke of how "distance becomes malleable." Collapsing distance--of time, of geography, of minds, of hearts--is her special gift with which she has bewitched and inspired us throughout A Body in Places.

******

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, 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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Dance artists exploring new directions: Thank you!

Many thanks to my excellent guest panelists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--who shared their experience and knowledge last evening at Gibney Dance. From the centrality of investing in sisterhood and partnering with community, to the courage to claim room in a city's public spaces for the practice of pleasure, to the challenges of funding and marketing an unusually multifaceted project, these three artists offered stories of adventurous questioning and questing that can inspire our own work and lives.

"The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"

– essay by Audre Lorde, 1984

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives will return to Gibney Dance on Monday, December 7 (6-8pm) with a new group of panelists to be announced here within the next several days.

Remember, these conversations are free and open to all. Your pre-registration--via a Gibney Dance site to come--will help us plan for the best space, but walk-ins are certainly welcome. Help us spread the word, and bring your friends and colleagues!

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Not the Master's Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Join me and three dynamic dance artists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--for the next Center Line program at Gibney Dance:

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Tuesday, November 3 (6-8pm)

moderated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

("The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House" – essay by Audre Lorde, 1984)

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

 Admission free with RSVP here

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

luciana achugar and the uses of the erotic

A day or two before the opening of luciana achugar's OTRO TEATRO at New York Live Arts, I received an email from the theater's publicist, requesting that critics not divulge sensitive information about the "surprises" in the production. Not only will I abide by that request, I'm not going to tell you much at all.

I think it fair, though, that you know the work lasts around three hours without a break, just in case you have, say, a babysitter issue, like a dance artist in last night's audience. But don't worry; you can come and go for pit stops as you please. You can even get up for a drink in the lobby and bring it back to your seat.

Why you'd actually need a drink to sit with something as sense-filling, dizzying and sometimes impactful as OTRO TEATRO, something meant to get you high, is a serious question.

A ritual of shamanic transformation, OTRO TEATRO unfolds as...

solo/network/field

whirling dervish crossed with Sheela na gig

sights and sounds of varying amplitudes

darkness and light

being and performing

Body standing in for body and body standing in for Body

breaking and building

vagina punk and hippie apocalypse

OTRO TEATRO continues nightly through Saturday at 7:30pm. For ticket information, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

luciana achugar at Abrons Arts Center

I read Gia Kourlas's interview with dance artist luciana achugar (Time Out New York) in which the two discuss the resurging interest in real theaters, as opposed to alternative spaces, as sites for performance. This fits with what I perceive to be achugar's distinctive focus on a sensory opulence that achieves theatricality without being conventional in any sense. The new--and intentionally self-descriptive-- FEELingpleasuresatisfactioncelebrationholyFORM continues her exploration of visceral resonance. She hypnotizes her audience over lengthy stretches in which otherwise bare women--achugar with her dance collaborators Rebecca Brooks, Jennifer Kjos and Melinda Lee--gently dip, bob, twist or sway heads and upper bodies obscured by long, thick hair, sometimes pushing towards and against one another as if sightlessly playing with mirror images.

achugar's imagery suggests a perverse conflation of a Christian penitent's self-punishing hairshirt (but with bothersome hair turned outward), Muslim burqas ironically made of women's hair and, unavoidably--since they are, after all, faceless, nearly nude women rocking nothing but voluminous hair--animated vaginas. An eerie, lulling score performed live by Michael Mahalchick, James Galbraith and Marisol Limon Martinez seeps into your head until the music gradually builds to thrilling, rock-show intensity for FEEL...FORM's final moments.

I think achugar, for the most part, makes the odd environmental stagings and Carrie Wood's manic-depressive lighting design work on her own terms up until that finale when the women--now dressed in jeans, faces visible and eyes smeared by colorful makeup--form a tight circle of heightened, ritualistic action. That finale, though, has neither the strangeness nor the excess nor the pull of the earlier material. As an ending, it seems more functional than meaningful, leading less to "celebration of experience" and "consummation of experience" than, simply, the end of the hour-long trip.

luciana achugar concludes her run at Abrons Arts Center--a co-presentation with The Chocolate Factory--with a performance tonight and Saturday, both at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Karen Bernard's "Mix"

luciana achugar (Photo: Michael Mahalchick)

Nami Yamamoto (Photo: Julien Jourdes)

The famed Performance Mix Festival--presented by Karen Bernard's New Dance Alliance in association with Joyce SoHo--opens its 26th annual program, March 13-18.

It's a huge lineup featuring Daniel Linehan, Nami Yamamoto, luciana achugar and Johanna S. Meyer among many other contemporary dancemakers including artists from Canada, Poland and the Netherlands.

Performance Mix Festival promotes interdisciplinary work through performances, informal artist/audience receptions and special events.

For further information, see these helpful links:

Artist Bios

Full schedule and ticket information

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Dance Roundup: Politics, Uganda, Field grants

Politics and the Dancing Body, an exhibition of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, focuses on the work of 20th Century choreographers who used dance as force for social justice, human rights and cultural diplomacy, from World War I through the Cold War. Open now through July 28. For more information, click here.

Spirit of Uganda returns to New York City, bringing a dynamic troupe of young drummers and dancers from the East African nation.

Spirit of Uganda combines cultural African traditions with contemporary concerns and addresses real life issues – issues that have affected the children personally – such as devastation in the wake of HIV/AIDS, poverty and war.

See this acclaimed company perform at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, March 2 (8pm) and 3 (2pm and 8pm). For information and ticketing, click here.

Congratulations to New York choreographers Luciana Achugar, Rachel Cohen and Michelle Dorrance, all winners of The Field Dance Fund grants. Learn more about The Field and this program here.

Collective for Dance Writing and New Media will meet twice in March at the Gibney Dance Center (Monday, March 5, 6pm and Thursday, March 8, 2pm). Get involved and help create the future of writing about dance. For more information and to RSVP (required), click here.

Back to class...with lusciousness

Bessie Award winner luciana achugar brings her Feeling Form classes--"connecting the parts of our whole and using imagination and intention to move more fully and with lusciousness"--to BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) on Tuesday mornings, October 4 to December 13. Click here for more details.

BAX -- map and directions

AUDIO PREVIEWS: Marya Warshaw and Levi Gonzalez

L-to-r: Marya Warshaw

with luciana achugar and Michael Mahalchick

(Photo: Angele Jimenez)

 Levi Gonzalez (Photo: Alex Escalante)

Levi Gonzalez (Photo: Alex Escalante)

AUDIO PREVIEWS

Founder and Artistic Director Marya Warshaw

talks about Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX)

Click (6:20)

Dancer-choreographer Levi Gonzalez

talks about BAX and his new work

Click (5:28)

intimacy

A Solo Dance by Levi Gonzalez

April 29-May 1

(Friday-Saturday, 8pm and Sunday, 6pm)

In his solo, intimacy,  Levi Gonzalez attempts to bring the practice of making into the moment  of live performance. In constructing material for this work, he  prioritizes instinct over concept, cultivating sensitivity to what  resonates with him on a visceral level. By exploring the idiosyncrasies  of his own interests in movement and performance, he builds a structure  that exposes his own personal relationship to the form. Often framing  the action with language, he establishes a directness with the spectator  that resists metaphor, while still leaving space for the engagement of  the imagination. Ultimately the work examines the intimacy of the  relationship between performer and audience, and how we navigate this  shared experience. The solo is being developed in collaboration with  dramaturg Susan Mar Landau.

More information and ticketing here

Join BAX in celebration of 20 years
of arts and artists in progress!

Thursday, May 5, 7:30pm

Prospect Park Picnic House

Prospect Park West at 5th Street, Brooklyn

(directions)

hosted by George Emilio Sánchez and Christalyn Wright

performances by

    LAVA
    Famous Accordion Orchestra
    Mike Albo
    Faye Driscoll
    BAXco Youth Dance Company
    (performing choreography by Nami Yamamoto)
    Drew Petersen
    and more...

BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Awards

Awardees have revealed and transformed our creative world. By  instigating and enduring change they have deepened the definition of  their field and paved the way for others.

The PASSING IT ON AWARD creates a complete cycle where a panel of peers  chooses the awardees and the awardees choose someone who demonstrates  some of the same qualities that they, themselves, were chosen for.

awards presented by Marya Warshaw, Founder and Executive Director, BAX

artist award: Gus Solomons jr, choreographer and co-founder, PARADIGM passing it on to Malcolm Jason Low

arts educator award: Terry Greiss, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Irondale Ensemble Project passing it on to Leese Walker

arts manager award: Leslie Strongwater, Associate Artistic Director, Dixon Place passing it on to Andy Horwitz

honorary award: Long-standing theater/dance partnership between the Brooklyn New School (BNS) and BAX, with José Joaquín García as lead teaching artist

All program, directions and ticket information online here

Dance theater as dark art: "PURO DESEO"

Back in April, my colleague Andy Horwitz (of Culturebot) reviewed luciana achugar’s PURO DESEO when it premiered at The Kitchen and called it “several kinds of awesome.” I usually try my damnedest to avoid that word, but--damn it--Andy got it right. Achugar has delivered a work that should define the experience of awesomeness in dance theater. She and her creative team went on to win a 2010 Bessie for it, much deserved.

Having missed the Kitchen season, I grabbed the chance to catch up with PURO DESEO during Ben Pryor’s innovative American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center.

The first thing that got me was the gutsiness of starting it off in darkness and keeping the audience visually locked down for a very long time, with just achugar’s sing-song voice rising from the far side of the audience, repetitively singing a Spanish lyric, her faint tone slowly intensifying from folksiness to a slightly more strident pitch, and then the sound of something heavy passing me in the aisle, pounding its way towards the stage. Lighting designer Madeline Best is several kinds of gutsy, too. When we’re finally permitted to see, she lights the playhouse’s raw stage to suggest some dank, fire-lit cave of the mind, one you’d do well to avoid.

Thoughout the hour-long piece, achugar and collaborator Michael Mahalchick roam that mysterious, unholy space like ritualists gone quite mad. Awkwardly swathed in heavy black drapery and elbow-length leather gloves, achugar shuffles, shuffles, shuffles, retracing her steps along a proscribed, diagonal path and turning her head to give us an impersonal, unseeing, chilling stare. Best’s lighting later picks out Mahalchick writhing on the floor like a beached walrus. The piece proceeds with solo segments and interactions between these two looming figures in a Gothic atmosphere where desire looks less than pure.

In one lacerating achugar solo, Best brutalizes our eyes (and nerves) by frantically switching light on and off. Eyes simply can’t adjust that rapidly, and it hurts, though achugar, repeatedly slamming herself onto the floor, is surely hurting more.

Another disturbing segment finds achugar flat on her back while Mahalchick, making wizard-like gestures with his arms, works her splayed legs as if by remote control. In another sequence, the two run through a long, striking series of strong, precise gestures of the arms and hands. As the pace of this gesticulation increased, I felt myself slipping into a trance I did not desire and twice had to yank myself back. Powerful stuff.

The sophistication of that ritualistic sequence--both as theater and as, well, a dark art--conflicts with apparently artless elements, such as when achugar, for no discernible purpose, rattles the metal gate at the rear of the stage. That noisemaking doesn’t add much...and yet it works...doesn’t work...works...doesn’t work. Oh, hell, I don’t know. It’s hard to settle one way or the other on this, and yet it seems very achugar, very much about simply throwing something at water to disrupt its surface.

PURO DESEO runs for just one more performance at Abrons--tomorrow, Sunday, at 5:30pm. Hurry for tickets!

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlemen
466 Grand Street (off Pitt Street), Manhattan
(directions)

It's all about CLASSCLASSCLASS

LOTSLOTSLOTS happening with CLASSCLASSCLASS, from March 1 to June 12!

Too much to tell you here. You'll have to check it out yourself.

But I will drop a few names of which I am perpetually enamored: Kyle Abraham, Hilary Clark, luciana achugar, Sydney Skybetter, Walter Dundervill, Aynsley Vandenbroucke...

 CLASSCLASSCLASS nurtures a continued future of dance pedagogy in New York City by engaging and developing a new generation of dance and performance artists as they teach their craft, while simultaneously making the act of taking and teaching class affordable for all. This year CLASSCLASSCLASS is partnering with Movement Research, but will continue to be a separate entity maintaining our own mission, goals, and modus operandi. We are hoping that this relationship fosters a very fertile space for newer teachers to experiment with their craft under the umbrella of an established organization.

Sounds cool. And so do the fees: classes $10; 

workshops $15.

First come first served. No reservations.

Sunday evening potluck/teaching forums (Fort Greene)

CLASSCLASSCLASS participating studios: 

BRAZIL (Bushwick)

The Chocolate Factory (Long Island City)

lululemon athletica (SoHo)

Studio 5-2 (Flatiron District)

Get complete info here.

A "Sublime" week

From The Sublime to the sublime and even more sublimity! For me, this has been an exceptionally rewarding week in dance. I don't want to put any undue pressure on the wonderful Sara Juli--my Body and Soul podcast interviewee whose new work, Death, I plan to see tonight at P.S. 122--but I'm hoping that my luck and this string of remarkable events will continue.

The Sublime is Us--an intriguing new piece by another recent Body and Soul interviewee, Luciana Achugar--continues running through November 1 at Dance Theater Workshop. It's a feast of instinct and sensuality set before a small audience placed in intimate proximity to the dancers--Achugar, Hilary Clark, Jennifer Kjos, Melanie Maar and Beatrice Wong--and the studio mirrors with which they partner. Visually, we become part of the dance, forced to also gaze upon ourselves and our fellow audience members in self-consciousness or curiosity, as we keep an eye on the performers. The pit-of-the-stomach visceral effect of this set up and of much of the movement cannot be overstated. Achugar, once again, seeks to take us deep into the natural intelligence and experience of the body. Details, schedule and ticketing information

At BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Belgium's Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, her dance troupe, Rosas, and the musical ensemble Ictus, performing live, offer a sublime tribute in Steve Reich Evening with music by Reich and György Ligeti, now through tomorrow evening. Here is an expansive and celestial feast of sound, light, choreography and performance, from the simplest first course--the varied sonic play of two pendulating microphones--to the complex and electrifying conclusion, Drumming--Part 1. Precision. Discipline. Exaltation. Worth any price, if you can still snare a ticket. Details, schedule and ticketing

Tami Stronach has gone straight to my heart. She has simply pushed open its door and taken up residence. Whether dancing the opening solo in her new But it's for you or deploying the ravishing duo of Lindsey Dietz-Marchant and Darrin M. Wright, this wildly imaginative, poetic choreographer never hits a false note or shows us anything our jaded eyes have seen before or could anticipate. She finds the human soul in exacting, abstract movement. In vulnerable romantic partnerings, she finds energies and images of extraordinary, even alarming power. And what a team--in particular, the aforementioned dancers, who could not have been better chosen nor delivered more affecting performances; lighting designer Japhy Weideman; and scenic designer Joe Levasseur. This sublime beauty ends its run tomorrow evening. Trust me: You don't want to miss your chance to savor it. Details, schedule and ticketing

Luciana Achugar update: Body and Soul podcast

Bessie Award-winning choreographer Luciana Achugar brings a new work--"The Sublime is Us"--to a studio space at Dance Theater Workshop, beginning October 21.

Program notes--http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Guest info at http://www.lachugar.org and http://www.dtw.org. (c)2008, Eva Yaa
Asantewaa

MP3 File

Program Notes: Upcoming on "Body and Soul"

My next guest--Bessie Award-winning choreographer Luciana Achugar--will be bringing a new work--The Sublime is Us--to a studio at Dance Theater Workshop this month. It was a pleasure to catch up with her. We last spoke in late January while this piece was in development and Achugar was preparing to revisit an older work, Franny and Zooey, for Sugar Salon, a program highlighting work by women choreographers. The Sublime is Us promises to offer what Achugar does best--invite watchers into an intimate space of expanded awareness, connection and meaning, grounded in the intelligence of the body.

Dance Theater Workshop ticketing
October 21-25, October 28-November 1 (7:30pm)
October 24, 25, 31, November 1 (9:30pm)
Post-Show Talk: Wednesday, October 22 with Levi Gonzalez
Coffee and Conversation Pre-Show talk: Thursday, October 23 at 6:30pm with Victoria Anderson Davies
Friday Night Toast October 24

Luciana Achugar is an Uruguayan choreographer based in Brooklyn. She moved to New York in 1995 after graduating from Cal Arts. In NY she worked as a dancer with several influential choreographers including Maria Hassabi, Chameckilerner and John Jasperse. From 1999 to 2003, she worked in a close collaborative relationship with choreographer Levi Gonzalez and has been doing her own independent work since 2002.

Achugar has created five independent works and will premiere her sixth project--The Sublime is Us--at Dance Theatre Workshop in October 2008. Her work has been presented in NY at Movement Research’s MELT Festival; the Ensemble Studio Theatre; The Latino American Dance: Not Festival Project; CANADA Gallery; Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery; La MaMa; Abrons Arts Center; Danspace Project and Dance Theatre Workshop; in Cambridge Massachusets at the Green Studios and in Uruguay at the Festival Iberoamericano de Danza and the Centro Cultural de España. In September 2007 she received a BESSIE Award as Creator/Choreographer for her first full evening-length piece Exhausting Love at Danspace Project which premiered in November 2006.

Luciana Achugar is a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Choreography. She was a 2007 Choreography Fellow of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University and a Sugar Salon Artist, a program developed by WAX in partnership with the Barnard College Department of Dance. She was a 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and has been in Residencies at Barnard College, Bennington College, DTW’s Outer/Space Program, the LEX-Dance Summer Residency, MANCC at FSU and at the Daghdha Dance Company in Limerick, Ireland. Her work has received support from the Meet the Composer Fund; the Puffin Foundation; The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund; and from public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the LMCC.

Nothing sweet about this salon!

The ladies of Sugar Salon invite you to a...heh-heh..modest, little tea party at Abrons Arts Center, tonight at 8pm. Come see what a trio of freethinking women choreographers can do when given time, space, practical support and the mentorship of Bessie Award-winner Donna Uchizono. Tasteful entertainment will include a wild new theatrical cornucopia from Heather McArdle/BLUEPRINTVIOLATION and a reprise of luciana achugar's Franny & Zooey, one of the bravest dances in memory, which premiered at Tere O'Connor's The Nothing Festival in 2007. (Click here to listen to my podcast interview with achugar and Barnard Dance Department chair Mary Cochran about Sugar Salon.) Reneé Archibald offers a peek at Curtain Wall, a developing work, and one hopes that the brilliant company she's been keeping will keep her moving.

As Apollinaire Scherr would say, just GO!

Information? Click http://www.henrystreet.org/arts
Tickets? 212-352-3101 or click here.

Luciana Achugar and Mary Cochran: Body and Soul podcast

Today, we’ll hear from Mary Cochran (Chair of the Dance Department, Barnard College of Columbia University) and Luciana Achugar (2007 Bessie Award-winning choreographer) about Sugar Salon, a program dedicated to mentoring, commissioning and presenting women at the forefront of contemporary choreography.

GUEST BIOS:

Luciana Achugar

Luciana Achugar is a Brooklyn-based Uruguayan choreographer. After moving to New York upon graduation from Cal Arts in 1995, Achugar danced with several choreographers, including Chameckilerner and John Jasperse. From 1999 to 2003, she worked in a close collaborative relationship with choreographer Levi Gonzalez. Their work was presented in New York by Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Dance-in-Progress at The Kitchen, and at Dance Theater. Achugar has also worked collaboratively with visual artists Marcos Rosales and Michael Mahalchick.

Mary Cochran

Department of Dance Chair and Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Barnard College of Columbia University, Mary Cochran has performed and taught on every continent except Antarctica. A renowned soloist with Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1984-1996, Cochran continues her association with Taylor to this day having completed 19 restagings of his masterworks and as Director of the Paul Taylor School’s Summer and Winter Intensives. Cochran has taught at numerous colleges and conservatories including Mills College, the Juilliard School, University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee in May of 2005.

UPCOMING EVENT:

See Sugar Salon's performances at Abrons Arts Center (February 15-16), featuring works by the 2007-08 residents: Luciana Achugar ("Franny and Zooey"), Renée Archibald ("Curtain Wall") and Heather McArdle/BLUEPRINTVIOLATION (excerpt from "Ballad of Arrivals & Departures"). Choreographer mentor Donna Uchizono will moderate a post-performance discussion with the artists on Friday, February 15. For full schedule and ticketing details, call 212-352-3101 or visit http://www.theatermania.com.

INFORMATION LINKS:

Department of Dance, Barnard College: http://www.barnard.edu/dance

Williamsburg Art NeXus (WAX): http://www.wax205.com

Abrons Arts Center: http://www.henrystreet.org/arts

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

New York pride

Yesterday, after dashing from one show (Doug Elkins's Fraulein Maria at Joe's Pub) to another (Danspace Project's Dance CoOp roundup of artists for the APAP crowd), I realized that an unanticipated feeling had blossomed in me--pride. I felt this pride most intensely while I watched Levi Gonzalez dance tribute, a "research project in progress," as he calls it, a lineup of snippets of movement prepared for him by a virtual Murderors' Row of postmodern choreographers. Before each bit, he'd call out the name of its creator: Luciana Achugar, John Jasperse, Miguel Gutierrez, Beth Gill, Maria Hassabi. I can't say why, exactly, but hearing Gonzalez's clear, resonant voice intoning each name sounded like a roll call of heroes. And I suppose it is. Sitting among all of these presenter folks from all over, I had this flash of pride for New York.

Earlier in the afternoon, I'd been swept away by Elkins's Fraulein Maria, his loving, clever dance-up of The Sound of Music--as hilarious as I'd been promised it would be but completely enchanting and soul-touching, too, which was a total surprise. Elkins packs so much rambunctious dance and comedy into an hour and a stage the size of an East Village bathroom, and his performers could not be more delightful. Too many heroic names to call out here--it takes a village to climb this mountain--but some of the most notable are Arthur Aviles, Nicole Wolcott, Jennifer Nugent, David Parker, Archie Burnett, Mark Gindick, Johnnie Moore and Elkins, the man himself. Next chance you get to see it, just go. You will be charmed and moved to your core.