My Eiko journal: Part 3

Eiko's A Body in Places
Saturday, March 5 -- 7-10pm

It was disconcerting to see Eiko with a bandaged sprained arm--the result of a trip and fall at home. But she still danced, still valiantly surveyed, on this Saturday evening in St. Mark's Church along with invited soloists--Michelle Boulé, Beth Gill, Neil Greenberg, Koma Otake, Jimena Paz, Arturo Vidich and Geo Wyeth. Each soloist took a piece of the church--Koma, on the porch in his filmy-thin costume, braving the cold night air; Greenberg commandeering one side of the balcony; Gill inchworming her way all around the sanctuary's carpeted risers--over the course of three hours.

Members of the audience, armed with a site map and schedule, curated their individual experiences. But, clearly, everyone wanted to see everything--or as much of everything as logistics will allow. That meant trying to get over to a tiny space--say, the reportedly-haunted Priest's Room--in time to squeeze yourself in with a dozen other people as Vidich struck and vibrated church bells. His solemn performance, though simple in form, rivaled only Paz's stark, crow-like expressionism for beauty.

Overall, this evening proved to be a fragmentary experience--chaotic, impossible, a nightmare for the claustrophobic but interesting for not only dancer-watching at various angles but watcher-watching. It was funny to run into an old friend who mentioned the same phenomenon--enjoying the unusual vantage points for looking at how people look at the dancing they're looking at.

*****

Read My Eiko journal: 

Part 1
Part 2

*****

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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DANSE: Celebrate this new book on contemporary dance

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy

invites you to a book launch event for

DANSE: A Catalogue

Thursday, June 4 | 6:30 pm – 8 pm

The French Embassy

972 Fifth Avenue at 79th Street, Manhattan

including DANSE: A Glossary, featuring brief and experimental presentations on a series of keywords vital to contemporary dance practices.

Participants include Michelle Boulé, Jenn Joy, Richard Move, Valda Setterfield, Dean Moss, Chrysa Parkinson and Gerard & Kelly.

Noémie Solomon

DANSE: A Catalogue, edited by Noémie Solomon and published by les presses du reel and the French Embassy, is a collection of commissioned essays and dialogues by choreographic artists, writers, and curators on key issues in contemporary dance.

Click here to read an interview with Solomon.

DANSE is a four-year program (2014-2018) dedicated to contemporary dance exchanges between France and the U.S.

For more information, click here.

Free admission with RSVP at 
robin.guivarch@diplomatie.gouv.fr

Dance artist Michelle Boulé offers free presentation on BodyTalk, Saturday

Michelle Boulé

Dancer-choreographer Michelle Boulé will give a free introduction to the BodyTalk system, offer a demo session and explain how BodyTalk is customized to each individual.  

Saturday, November 16 (11am-1pm)

Details and registration

Oriens Living

36 West 44th Street, Suite 1212 (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Wondrous Michelle Boulé

Aztec goddess giving birth

A woman, stark naked, bursts in as bright lights and pumping dance music flood the space. You could say she strides, but her forceful, relentless action more closely resembles flight: a rigid wingspan of glistening arms, the same electric tension extending through neck, jaw, constant grimace, upward stare.

She stops, now and then, to rhythmically wave her arms to the music but never looks into the eyes of the people surrounding the performance space on all four sides. Though she eventually also roams and waves behind the audience rows, you never sense that she's aware of other people in the room. For the span of a long, repetitive song, she's just... elsewhere. A figure of human flesh, gleaming under the light, nevertheless she appears to be constructed of steel capable of resisting and deflecting anything projected upon it.

Michelle Boulé's opening to Wonder--her solo, commissioned by Issue Project Room and premiered in the Gallim Dance Studio at Clinton Hill's Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew--could be remembered as this dance season's most stunning and certainly most courageous adventure.

Isadora Duncan
(Arnold Genthe, 1917)

As the song suddenly deflates, though, so does her velocity, her energy, her mood. She retrieves a stash of clothing tucked under a chair, dressing in underwear, a tank top and leggings, before turning back to the space. Her dancing remains expansive and rapturous in its fashion--just different, more human. She moves in every which way, and you feel the weight of her body parts moving her. Like sentences, her twisty phrases often roll to a complete stop where you can sit for a moment, absorbing what you have just "heard."

A little later, when she neatly settles into a yoga pose,  we actually do hear speech--a voice-over monologue about a dancer's life and career and disappointments and killer ambition (Boulé's?). These musings flow a little too rapidly to record or retain, but one line stays with me: "I could have built cities with that power." It feels right for a dancer to say that.

"Shame on me for trying so hard. Shame on me for being afraid." Dance, dance, dance! Keep on dancing!, sings Chic. Boulé spins a hula hoop around her waist, then spins within it with undeniable, if somewhat desperate, virtuosity.

The woman who spins out of that hoop takes up space, makes her footfalls resound, yells her identification and desire (for everthing!) from the core and is not at all afraid to make herself look increasingly ridiculous.

Frog anatomy

Michelle Boulé dances Wonder
(photo by Wah-Ming Chang)

The dance--about forty-five minutes in length--takes an affecting turn towards its conclusion. Boulé gradually makes her way around the room, around the circle of watchers. She lingers in front of one after another, presenting each of many people with what appears to be a dance tailored and perhaps responding to that individual.

Wonder finishes its two-night run this evening with a sold-out performance at 8pm.

For more information about Issue Project Room events, click here.

Boulé blogs at http://michelleboule.wordpress.com/ where she has shared insights that followed a trip to the West Bank city of Ramallah:

At the very least, I can be responsible towards myself and the people I interact with everyday.  It almost feels like a violent act to jump from a conflict-stricken nation to focusing solely on me, myself, and I, but it’s here where I truly have the immediate power to make a difference–to attempt to undo all that I’ve acquired that supports fear, judgement, violence, manipulation, and separation, and to literally turn myself ON to the fierce clarity of love, forgiveness, and growth.  It’s a physical reaction.  If I can pay attention to this simple feeling of when I close down, when my heart literally beats less freely, I can also ask myself in the moment what other choice I can make to support space and movement.

Read more of I'm turning myself ON by Michelle Boulé here.

Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People at BAM Next Wave Festival

A soft, glowing globe--like a goddess breast of white, translucent parachute cloth--looms over cramped performance space carved out by three angled thrusts of audience seating, their front edges cutting right into that surface in BAM Fisher's Fishman Space. Miguel Gutierrez hasn't given himself--or his dancers...or us, for that matter--much room to maneuver. And yet, during its 90 minutes, And lose the name of action aims to channel big, hefty other worlds and states of being and perception.

L-r: Luke George, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones and K.J. Holmes (Photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Performed by Gutierrez with a stellar cast of collaborators--Michelle Boulé, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Luke George, Hilary Clark and K.J. Holmes--And lose the name of action takes its premise from the choreographer's interest in neuroscience and the senses and, in particular, what he sees as the absence, in any discourse on philosophy and innovations in neuroscience, of any mention of what dancers know about the body. On a deeply personal level, though, it is also influenced by his father's struggles with a neurological disorder.

His program notes for the piece (worth a read, if you get a copy) conclude,

Along the way, I became intrigued with seemingly irrational ideas from the paranormal field, with their focus on insubstantial bodies, and I created a link between this field and my experiences performing and watching dance, which itself constantly disappears and haunts, and the hallucinatory experience of watching my father and family undergo a change I could never have predicted and only barely understand now.

From the outset, even before the performance begins, something is in the air. A heavy, soapy scent, actually. I can't swear this is deliberate--not something an audience member was wearing--but Gutierrez is interested in the senses. And so...maybe. And there's a very low-level sound thing going on, too. Something chiming, some voice or voices barely detectable beneath the audience chatter and the usher's anxious seating instructions.

The piece, itself, goes on to wink and wobble and lurch so much that it sometimes dumps and spills us out of its disoriented/disorienting state as much as it envelopes us. The relatively brief audience participation in a kind of seance presided over by a smarmy Houston-Jones seems especially wink-y--and yet, also, genuinely intense with all the dancers chanting and stiffly splaying their limbs in spirit-infused rapture.

Gutierrez either contains or explodes energy, feeling, thought. Sequences of hand gestures are performed with great calm despite a sense of obsessive and/or sacred ritualization--playing a piano runs into typing runs into chopping runs into declaiming without words and bigger, formal, ritualistic movements in duets or groups. In inexplicable but interesting spotlit-moments, Houston-Jones makes like a ninja sprite and Boulé, like a drunken Isadora. Dancers spill into the space, flowing, flopping, sloshing, stuttering, stumbling, twirling, negotiating near collisions like suddenly agitated molecules. A voice mumbles a musical "Fuck you," so barely discernible that you check, again and again, to be sure that you're really hearing it. There's pregnant talk of "a gesture of bad faith." The space fills with mad Ophelias. A bearded guy (actor Paul Duncan) appears in a video that, depending on your seat, you can see or not see. Deck chairs on the Titanic get rearranged...okay, well, not the Titanic...or maybe...but the very special, restricted white chairs interspersed among the front audience rows and commandeered by dancers play a heavy role in all of this and take a good deal of the brunt.

With a soundscape often lulling us into an altered state (and possibly slumber), And lose the name of action can switch between graceful and graceless, sharply envisioned and disorganized (deliberately or not), ludicrous and alarming. I doubt that it will come to count among my favorite Gutierrez works, but it does remind me of my first--and abiding--impression of his work, that gut feeling that I'm in the middle of an earthquake.

With lighting by Lenore Doxsee, sound design by Neal Medlyn, video and writing by Boru O'Brien O'Connell, costumes by David Tabbert and dramaturgy by Juliana May

Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People perform And lose the name of action at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) through Saturday, December 8 at 7:30pm and December 7 at 10pm.

Seating is limited. Sold out, although people on last night's waiting list were able to get in. So, give it a shot. For information, click here.

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

O, Hay! Dancers talk about working with Deborah Hay

Watch three dancers--Luke George, Michelle Boulé and Miguel Gutierrez--talk about working with choreographer Deborah Hay in this video from Walker Art Center. Click here.

Michelle Boulé gets Elastic

You all know, from my brief note on Miguel Gutierrez' wonderful SENSEWALK #3: SPACE IS THE PLACE at the New York Public Library (see it here), that Elastic City's programming is cool. So I'm sorry that I'm getting this announcement to you at the last minute, but here it is anyway:

POCKET VIRTUOSITY by Michelle Boulé

What does it mean to be in one’s body? How does one’s body register and convey experience? How do we see ourselves and ask to be seen? Through simple movement scores and exercises from Michelle’s performance, teaching and bodywork practices, participants will traverse the depths of everyday movement, from the mundane to the virtuosic, to dig into, expand, and go beyond ideas of ‘self’ while moving their bodies in relationship to time, environment and each other. The group will write, move, look and laugh through this way, leaving with a platform for more questions and understanding about seeing and being in one's body.

Come as you are, skilled or unskilled, with curiosity and willingness. This way holds 10 people.

TODAY! Monday, July 9 at 7pm

Also Wednesday, July 11 at 7pm

Starting Point: 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn (steps of the Brooklyn Public Library)

Duration: 100 minutes

Admission: $20

Age: 16+

Space is limited. Only 10 participants admitted.

For complete information and to purchase admission, click here.

Keep up with all things Elastic City here.

APAP Diary: A Saturday on the run!

My APAP experience is as much about what I can't get to--inhabiting a human body without superhuman powers--as what I can and choose to attend. It includes smug self-satisfaction ("Oh, esteemed dance critic colleague, you ran to that media-hyped, cooler-than-cool, must-see production and ended up hating it? Well, good for you!") as well as feelings of mental weakness and overwhelm ("Gosh, no, actually, I didn't schedule any of your venue's showings. Frankly, in the crush of information about other events, I simply forgot!"). The cure for all of this personal and programmatic too-much-ness will soon arrive but, in the meantime, let's look at three nice things from yesterday--one of them non-APAP--when I became a mere blur in the lives of my cats who had already been abandoned by their other mother who was checking out the big Degas and The Nude show in Boston.

Michelle Boulé and Phillip Connaughton in Body Duet. Photo (c)Julieta Cervantes

 

John Scott and his Irish Modern Dance Theatre at La MaMa, The Club:

The pairing of dancers as smart, gifted and game as New York's Michelle Boulé and Dublin's Philip Connaughton made this showing catnip. In Scott's half-hour Body Duet, the collision and tangling of two headstrong body/minds appears to be an attempt to force the reconnection of odd-shaped fragments of a busted relationship--or of a busted self. Within the randomness and illogic of these quirky choreographic and physical juxtapositions, we can enjoy the clarity and fervor for life running through this dance and giving it its measure of hope. Body Duet also offered my very first view of a dance that includes a tablet--presumably an iPad--as prop, prompter and nearly dance partner. And that worried me, since the two humans clutching this electronic gadget between them were lashing around quite a bit. Body Duet will tour Ireland later this year, and Scott's New York fans can expect a new full-length at La MaMa in Spring 2013. See Body Duet this Monday at 3pm or Tuesday at 1pm. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. For information, click here.

La MaMa
74A Est 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue & Bowery), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance:

After gobbling a quick lunch, I took an APAP-break and caught the R train out to Brooklyn to visit the new Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance on Fulton Street, a close neighbor to BAM Harvey, BAM Opera House and the Mark Morris Dance Center. For the center's Grand Opening weekend, all dance and percussion classes for adults and kids were free, and a dance party, featuring a live band and two DJs, was planned for the evening. Up winding flights of red stairs, I found co-directors Dominique Bravo and Jimena Martinez and artistic director Pat Hall with their hands full, greeting a bustling crowd of well-wishers and class-takers. I watched part of master teacher Baba Richard Gonzalez's inspiring Afro-Caribbean/Orisha Dances class, mainly from a big screen television, since the moderate-sized studio itself was packed to overflowing. Two studios and a music room will somehow contain the energy and goodness of Cumbe's program--including classes in Contemporary Dance (Ronald K. Brown), Bomba y Plena (Alma Cruz), Haitian Drumming (Frisner Augustin) and Afro-Colombian (Daniel Fetecua Soto) and so much more.

Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance
558 Fulton Street, 2nd Floor, (near Flatbush Avenue), Brooklyn
718-935-9700
(map/Subway 2/3/4/5 to Nevins, Q/R to DeKalb or 2/3/4/5/N/D/Q/R to Atlantic Avenue)

Kimberly Bartosik/Roderick Murray at Gibney Dance Center:

Bartosik showed a fragment of an evening-length work-in-progress, You are my heat and glare, in its very early stages. The finished piece, inspired by poet Anne Carson's "The Anthropology of Water," will be structured as three duets for dancer/designer, dancer/dancer and voice artist/voice artist. Its premiere is planned for 2013. In the segment shown yesterday for APAP at the Gibney Dance Center, the dancer pairs with Bessie Award-winning lighting designer Roderick Murray whose hands-on effects and installation bring out a severe, old-time movie star glamor in her natural elegance. The showing, though too fleeting to predict what will come of this work, was certainly lovely and intriguing enough to peak my interest. If you want to see what I mean, you have another two chances: Bartosik and Murray will bring their showing uptown to Barnard College today at 5:30pm and tomorrow, Monday, at 12:30pm. 

Barnard College, Barnard Hall, Studio 305
Broadway and 117th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Michelle Boulé in focus

I'm sharing a couple of very interesting items I received in the press kit for last week's Dance & Process program featuring, among other choreographers, Michelle Boulé at The Kitchen:

Michelle Boulé

by Samara Davis, BOMB, April, 2010

Performance in Process: Michelle Boulé

by Lauren Bakst, BOMB, December 21, 2011

Boulé, Alexander and Lanz at The Kitchen

The Kitchen's current Dance and Process show, curated by Yasuko Yokoshi, features some impressively fluid moving by Lindsay Clark (in Michelle Boulé's duet of randomness and beauty, Hello, I need you); the absorbing, authoritative presence by Julie Alexander in her solo, From nothing real; and an ultimately gorgeous blend of the odd and the exacting in Martin Lanz's resonance... Each piece, in its own way, speaks to me of the value of an artist's eye, choice, commitment and rigor.

See the final performance tonight at 8pm. For complete information and ticketing, click here.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th 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.

Michelle Boulé: Body and Soul podcast

Michelle Boulé is a choreographer, teacher and performer well-known for her work with cutting-edge dancemakers such as John Jasperse, Miguel Gutierrez, Donna Uchizono, Beth Gill, Doug Varone and Deborah Hay. She is also a certified practitioner of BodyTalk, a fascinating bodymind healing modality which we discuss in today's podcast.

Michelle Boulé's blog

Nurture Day Open House
Nurture New York
Thursday, May 7 (4-8pm)
$30 for one of various mindbody modalities, including BodyTalk; $25 for 2 or more. See Nurture New York Web site for details. Drop in: Reservations not required!

Nurture New York, 1123 Broadway, Suite 1205, Manhattan (at 25th Street); 212-580-2689

The BodyTalk Center Web site

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File