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)

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)