Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance in repertory season at NYU Tisch

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance
(photo courtesy of CLD)

Ramona Kelley and Daniel Matei in Summer Evening
(photo: Charles Roussel)

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance
June 27-28
Jack Crystal Theater
NYU Tisch School of the Arts

The new, two-evening season of Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance presents four works from repertory and live music played on the kora, a stringed instrument from West Africa. That traditional music is lovingly rendered by Kane Mathis, a Brooklyn-based performer and composer who has long studied with master musicians of The Gambia.

When Mathis, a white man, brought out a kora for an interlude in the midst of a program of contemporary ballet, it took me a moment to grasp the meaning of this juxtaposition. Then Matthis began to pluck the strings, with deep concentration and delicate touch and timing. Tinkling sounds brushed past our ears like cool, sweet breezes. Lavagnino included him, clearly, because his dedication to traditions--he also learned the oud from master teachers--parallels her own.

I doubt you'll ever find disruptive, radical experimentation at a Lavagnino show. She's old school with a distinct reverence not only for classical ballet--her works often engage pointe work and fluid lifts,  emphasize well-sculpted, grounded structure and line--but also classic modern dance with its concern for human interest. If you crave dance theater with musicality, romance, universal themes and relateable emotions, you'll be comfortable with Lavagnino.

The loveliest work on hand this season might be RU (2014), which takes inspiration from an autobiographical novel by Canadian writer Kim Thúy, a Vietnamese refugee. It largely skirts specifics to embrace sensuous gesture, partner interaction and atmosphere, though it might be a bit jarring--again, these juxtapositions--to see predominantly white dancers wafting about in áo dài tunics and trousers. But, beyond that, Lavagnino captures the gentleness and flow implied by the work's title ("lullaby" or "stream"). Dancers here are Chad Balen, Jesse Campbell, Dervla Carey-Jones, Justin Faircloth, Gwendolyn Gussman, Corinne Hart, Emma Pajewski, Lila Simmons and Claire Westby. Also, look for Ramona Kelley's snappy performance with Daniel Mantei sweeping her off her feet in Summer Evening (2017), set to the Janis Joplin’s version of "Summertime." Kelley, who has danced with Twyla Tharp and Sidra Bell, has got spunk of the "Mary Richards" variety and delivers energy to the work.

Costume design: Christopher Metzger
Lighting design: Kathy Kaufmann

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance concludes tonight with a performance at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Jack Crystal Theater
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
111 Second Avenue, Manhattan

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Johnnie Cruise Mercer presents "process-memoir" at NYU Tisch

Dancer-choreographer Johnnie Cruise Mercer
and his troupe present a "process-memoir"
from their NYU Tisch arts residency,
this week at Tisch's Jack Crystal Theater.
(photo: Marisol Diaz)

Is there a possible way to ascend past what is expected from me, and to return to what I truly know? -- Johnnie Cruise Mercer

This is not really a formal review of the "process-memoir" offered, last evening, by Johnnie Cruise Mercer/TheREDprojectNYC at NYU Tisch School of the Arts's Jack Crystal Theater. I write merely to ask you to consider going tonight for its final showing.

And, yes, I know this has been the season from hell with multiple dance events stacked atop each calendar date like acrobats forming a circus pyramid. But still, go see Mercer's to ascend past numbness and witness birth. You'll have fun, you'll see some amazing performers, and you'll experience surprises I'm not going to reveal. Mercer treats his audience like frogs in that pot of water that starts off nice-and-comfy then gets progressively warmer and warmer.

I had just one problem: this evening--reportedly the third part of a multi-part "process-memoir" moving towards a two-part work...well, maybe you get the picture--feels very long, stuffed with stuff in need of judicious pruning. Excess, though, does seem to be a necessary Mercer ingredient. You'll see what I mean.

Take your buddy who thinks they/she/he can't get into dance or simply get it. Take your mate who only makes time for pop culture. Take your woke co-worker who will surely appreciate how art can simultaneously entertain and question that entertainment. Take anyone capable of having their mind blown.

And then, let's all wait and see what TheREDprojectNYC will make of all of this.

Mercer calls his performers "company partners" and "a community of artistic dare-devils," and so they are: Shanice Mason, Thomas Tyger Moore, Nicholas Rodrigues, Erica Saucedo and collaborating artist Adrianne Ansley.

Visual design/creative consultant: Torian Ugworji

to ascend past numbness and witness birth. concludes this evening with a performance at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, email theredproj.company@gmail.com or click for the Facebook event page.

Jack Crystal Theater
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
5th Floor, 111 2nd Avenue (between 6th and 7th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Branfman and Strimpel of B.S. Movement duet at Tisch

Shaina Branfman and Bryan Strimpel,
co-directors of B.S. Movement
(photo: epfalck|effyography)

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

--Pink Floyd, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-7)"

In 2013, I named dancer Bryan Strimpel--then performing with Nicholas Leichter Dance--as one of Dance Magazine's 25 to Watch for that year. I noted his "sizzling" duet with Leichter in Twenty Twenty and how he matched the two-decades-older choreographer, himself a sensation, in "the all-important slink and sass." Several years later, Strimpel is still one to watch, but now he's moving in concert with Shaina Branfman, his personal and artistic partner in B.S. Movement, and you need to keep both in sight.

I had my chance, on Thursday, at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and almost missed it. One of those one-night only gigs.

The pair presented an intense duet called FLOYD (as in Pink Floyd, their musical touchstone, along with a little Radiohead), and they made Tisch's Jack Crystal Theater their own domestic space. They filled it with signs of mundane homelife (the morning ablutions, the cheerful sharing of a bath towel), the occasional blow-up and reconciliation and, for most of the time, a sense of venturing, together or separately, into the swift currents of life and self. Watching much of this felt voyeuristic, but the couple doesn't mind having a few witnesses to what clearly sparks their creativity.

FLOYD, indeed, serves as a way to keep an eye on these two. Not only does it look like the kinetic, theatrical version of a personal journal; it is a dual portrait. And these two might have their moments of conflict, but they're definitely attuned. They both move through air like oil droplets in shaken water and flow like summer sweat. Molten creatures. Slouchy. Sloshing. Undulating. Woozy. Adaptable, like cats, to any size or shape of space, any potential obstruction. Smacking together only to rotate and glide over each other, slithering skin to skin. Collapsing and tumbling. Driving and diving bluesily into the bluesiest bluesiness those Brits could play. I don't know the story of how Branfman and Strimpel found each other, but I'm glad they did.

Now, let's hope next time we'll have more to see from B.S. Movement and a longer window of opportunity.

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NYU to host panel on contemporary dance in China, February 18

Building a Movement: 

A Conversation on Contemporary Dance in China

panel discussion

at NYU Tisch School of the Arts

February 18, 6-7:30pm

Contemporary dance in China, its history and evolution, its relationship to traditional Chinese dance, and its current role in Chinese society

Panelists:

Patricia Beaman, Dance History, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Tao Ye, Artistic Director, Choreographer and Founder of TAO Dance Theater
Alison M. Friedman, Founder and Creative Director, Ping Pong Productions
Aly Rose, Producer and Choreographer
Xiaoxiao Wang, Dance MFA Candidate, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Stephen Xue, Company Manager, Shen Wei Dance Arts
Hou Ying, Choreographer / Artistic Director, Hou Ying Dance Theater

Free and open to public with required RSVP to skirball.education@nyu.edu

NYU Tisch School of the Arts (Dean's Conference Room, 12th Floor)
721 Broadway (between Waverly Place and Washington Place, south of 8th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

******

Also of interest:

In New York, a Showcase for Chinese Performers
by Rachel Lee Harris, The New York Times, February 14, 2014

Writing on Dance:Film -- a WRITE OPEN workshop

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (InfiniteBody and Collective for Dance Writing and New Media) and Brighid Greene (Dance Films Association) will present a workshop on Wednesday, December 12 for students from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Dance Department.

Writing on Dance:Film will challenge dance students to explore and write about excerpts from two exciting filmed versions of DV8 Physical Theatre's Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Rosas danst Rosas.

The workshop--open to students only--is a presentation of Collective for Dance Writing and New Media's WRITE OPEN series in collaboration with Dance Films Association.