FRINGE BENEFITS: Emily Carding--and you!--in "Richard III"

Emily Carding as Richard III
in Brite Theater's Richard III (a one-woman show)
at FringeNYC
(photos: Dixie Sheridan)

Instead of paying actors to play Shakespearean roles, Emily Carding gets them to work for free. By that, I mean most of the people in her small audience, each one sporting a lanyard ID--her "Duke of Buckingham," her "Lady Anne"--and occasional looks of uncertainty as Carding's masterful Richard III shares cynical confidences with one or gruffly orders around another. As the tale of bloody power grabs unfolds, condensed to under an hour, no one in attendance--even those without named roles--can fully relax. We know that Carding's Richard might suddenly lock eyes with us, requiring something of us, find us wanting.

We are not safe, Clarence. We are not safe.

What's more, Clarence, we can easily be offed by little more than an arsenal of office supplies.

An anticipated highlight of this summer's FringeNYC, Brite Theater's Richard III (a one-woman show) comes to New York bearing awards from the Fringes of Prague and Edinburgh. And, by Richard's will and Carding's skill, it will conquer in its US premiere. The set-up of the new-ish Alpha Omega studio on East 4th Street provides just enough space for Carding to pace or impatiently push off on the wheels of her office chair while maintaining intimacy and a tyrant's grip on her audience.

This Richard's world of scheming and endless violence is our own, where battleground reports come via text message and leaders can instantly document their narcissism with selfies.

The narrow runner of space between two rows of seating--accommodating perhaps 25-30 people--is charged with the energy of Richard's malevolence and excess. Directed by Brite's founder Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir, Carding interprets Shakespeare's Richard--a man of visible disability--with bearing and even speech that I'm greatly tempted to call dance. Dark business suit and skinny red tie askew, her body seems, at once, frozen and propelled in multiple directions even when still. And her speech, if failing in rhythm, moves with varying, unpredictable angles of attack. Deep into the performance, Carding seems to drop into a flow state from which she yields improvised snark--snapping at an unexpectedly stubborn "Lord Grey," Well now I know what you are getting killed for!--or minute, quite convincing facial expressions of fear and disintegration.

Make Richard III (a one-woman show) one of your priority stops along the Fringe. See it today at 4:30pm or tomorrow, Saturday, at 5pm. For information and tickets, click here.

And here's a special note to Fringe veterans and newbies alike: Happily, there's ample AC at Alpha Omega. In fact, you might want to bring a little wrap to throw over your shoulders.

Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company
70 East 4th Street (Lower Level), between Bowery and 2nd Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Get your free email subscription

to InfiniteBody.

Click here!

Out on the Fringe: "Dancers" dancing time away

Sarah Ware and Sifiso Mazibuko
in a London performance of Dancers.
(photo: Ieva Blaževičiūtė)

At 45 minutes, Dancers is a slight but rich work of physical theater from Ohio's Wrought Atlas Theatre Ensemble. Originally written by Emma Dante for her Sicilian troupe and set to Italian pop many decades old, Dancers depicts an elderly woman's fantasy as she reminisces about romance and marriage to the love of her life. Its two actors--Sarah Ware and Sifiso Mazibuko--share choreographic credits with its translator and director Francesca Spedalieri. 

Ware portrays the aged, ailing widow, and Mazibuko is the deceased husband magically emerging from one of two old, battered trunks of keepsakes. At first, both resemble life-sized marionettes. They wear soft cloth masks attached to their grey hairpieces. With alterations in posture and body language, clever shedding and donning of clothing, the performers become suddenly young and then reflect the progression of their lives as memories unfold, vivid stories within a story. There's sexy, exuberant courtship, merry jitterbugging, a wedding, a few pregnancies and parenthood, all told mostly through interactive gesture, dance, nonverbal vocalizing and that music. Quando, quando, quando, quando...! Words, when they come, have a visceral quality as if birthed straight from the heart rather than the head.

Dancers benefits from energetic, appealing performances--especially the all-around flexibility of Ware and Mazibuko who, by the way, has one of the most beautiful smiles you will ever see. Let me show it to you right here.

One show remains: Friday, August 28 at 8:45. For information and tickets, click here.

The Theater at the 14th Street Y

344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan

(map/directions)

For information on all programming of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), continuing through August 30, click here.

Out on the Fringe: Shamamian shakes the earth she loves

Louisine Shamamian
(photo: Kyle MaKrauer)

Courage can take many different forms. Comic Louisine Shamamian binds together distinct forms of true courage in her new monologue, Shake the Earth (FringeNYC), directed by Misti B. Wills. But don't expect one of her standup routines or her offbeat "lesbian matchmaker to the straights" videos.

While Shake the Earth has sweetly amusing moments, its Armenia-born writer-performer earnestly imparts two stories--her immigrant youth and coming out in Brooklyn and the Turkish oppression and slaughter of its Armenian population, including members of her family. This year marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide, a crime still denied by the Turkish government. In fact, in today's Turkey, it's criminal to even breathe the words "Armenian genocide." Shamamian breaks all silence--personal and political.

First, she charms us with family portraits and vignettes. As a kid, her red shock of hair and her size made her stand out; her kin called her "a red round tomato." There were enormous, festive gatherings with "women cooking for days." She recites a litany of food and its flavorful ingredients, the music, the dancing. You know how it goes--familial and, even to this Bajan-American, instantly familiar, the same sort of memories for many in an audience hailing from around the American melting pot.

Curious about the odd eating habits of one relative, the young Shamamian began asking questions and eventually researching the genocide with a "passion for a mythical place," her Armenia. At the same time, another life-altering passion stirred--a crush on a beautiful Black butch who returned her interest. Her sweetheart "didn't entertain shame." They became the first openly queer couple in their high school.

Shamamian took a big step in coming out to her mother. I don't know if the comic is aware of this, but her mom's initial reaction ("There are no gay people in Armenia!") syncs up perfectly with the words of comedian Margaret Cho's mom ("There are no gays in Korea!") in Cho's I'm The One That I Want performance. Some day, these two mothers--both of whom came around because they love their daughters--should really get together.

On occasion, Shamamian falls into a didactic tone that feels arid and artificial. There must be more efficient ways to impart facts than these flat, inserted teachings. (Expand the brief notes on genocide in your program? Project some text on the curtain behind you?) But she hits her high point with a recounting of one man's amazing escape from a Turkish work camp near Aleppo, Syria. We learn the source of her dedication to accurate history and honesty about the continued threat to Armenians and Kurds.

"Hold this information with me today," she says. "It is all I ask."

In accordance, each audience member receives a forget-me-not pin--the centennial symbol not only of past suffering but also the hoped-for unity, futurity and eternity of the Armenian people.

Remaining performances of Shake the Earth:

Saturday, August 22 (7pm)

Monday, August 24 (2pm)

Saturday, August 29 (8:45 pm)

For information and tickets, click here or here.

Read an interview with Shamamian here.

For information on all programming of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), continuing through August 30, click here.

Spectrum

121 Ludlow Street (between Delancey and Rivington Streets), 2nd floor,  Manhattan

(map/directions)

FringeNYC benefits: "La Donna Improvvisata"

Lisa Flanagan (photo: Michael Kroll)

La Donna Improvvisata

Improvised by Lisa Flanagan

Improvised Music by Frank Spitznagel

Directed by T.J. Mannix

"A witch!" cries a man to my rear, without hesitation, choosing one of fifteen possible operatic roles. "A condescending witch," another audience member quickly elaborates. Similarly, four specific musical notes are selected my fellow viewers. 

And so begins an hour of opera improvised, from start to triumphant finish, by soprano Lisa Flanagan and pianist Frank Spitznagel. It might sound like a gimmick--and one with no guarantee of success--but it turns out to be one of FringeNYC 2014's most innovative theatrical formats. 

When you see La Donna Improvvisata this Friday or Sunday, it will be completely different. Spitznagel's thunderous, threatening opening from this afternoon will be replaced by something new. Casually-dressed and ponytailed Flanagan will embody a different central archetype--perhaps Sorcerer or Maiden, Soldier or Temptress--crafting a plot that arcs from problem to resolution with a whole lot of song and physical action in between. She will move from character to character, mood to mood, cleverly rhyming lyrics on the fly. She will do this with nothing but her agile imagination and a trio of plain black boxes for a set.

This woman's opera auditions must be interesting. (Er...what's that she's singing?) If her voice gets a little tiring after about a half-hour or so, her chipper, sunny smile and undeniable gutsiness maintain their appeal. And that melodic, Broadway-ish number she whipped up late in today's show--call it "Quiet Little Street," perhaps--could be a viable thing. Lisa, I hope you remember what you made up there. It's good.

Remaining shows:

Friday, August 22, 7:30pm

Sunday, August 24, 3:30pm

Buy tickets for this and other FringeNYC shows.

The White Box

440 Lafayette St, 3rd Floor (Astor Place and East 4th Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

For all things FringeNYC, click below.

New York International Fringe Festival

FringeNYC benefits: "Cortez"

Heather Holmes
in Milkwood Theater's Cortez
(photo: Cortney van Jahnke)

Cortez

Presented by Milkwood Theater

Written by Judith Goudsmit

Directed by David Riley

I'll be upfront about it: A large part of the reason I chose Milkwood Theater's Cortez out of numerous Fringe fest offerings was a photo (seen above) that showed a woman of color (Heather Holmes) in what would appear to be a significant role as a marine biologist. Of course, I hoped I'd also take interest in the rest of Judith Goudsmit's characters, played by David Riley, who also directs, Cory Lawson and Peter Waluk--three white male actors. Kudos to Milkwood for casting Holmes for a (sort of, really, really sort of) romantic role unspecified by race. But, sorry to say, I ended up not caring, one way or another, about anyone here. 

At the center of this hour-long physical theater piece about scientists Mike (Riley) and Heather (Holmes) and their research expedition to the Sea of Cortez is a deteriorating relationship. Since we do not get to see this couple at its best, we build no investment in their lives, together or apart, and it's irritating, and more than a little confusing, to witness how their personal failure impacts the innocents they're studying--the poor, nearly-extinct tomatians. 

What? You've never heard of tomatians? Think squishy, tomato-red ball with little knobby protrusions all over it. Tomatians are losing their ability to reproduce. (Shhhh! They don't really exist at all. But you'll end up giving more of a damn about them than about....)

All of this floats in the dreamy absurdity of some well-done movement-oriented segments and gestural characterizations (the physical in "physical theater") as well as Matthew Keff's fanciful, ghostly-white projections--a drifting full moon, a boat's revolving steering wheel, slowly-twirling candelabra, marine creatures flashing through the sea's inky darkness. There's charm and diversion in these aspects of Cortez.

The show opens with Riley giving a glitchy, harried presentation for the fictitious Monterey Research Institute, his funding source. He starts off by suggesting a better name for Planet Earth--Planet Water--since our planet has far more of that element. After watching the behavior of humans in Cortez, I'd have to agree. Yes, let's focus on the sea creatures.

Remaining shows:

Thursday, August 21, 2pm

Saturday, August 23, 8pm

Buy tickets for this and other FringeNYC shows.

Theater at the 14th Street Y

344 East 14th Street (at 1st Avenue), Manhattan

(map/directions)

For all things FringeNYC, click below.

New York International Fringe Festival

FringeNYC benefits: "I'll Say She Is"

Four members of the cast of Noah Diamond's I'll Say She Is, left to right:
Seth Shelden (Harpo), Robert Pinnock (Chico),
Melody Jane (Beauty) and Diamond (Groucho)

I'll Say She Is

Written by Will B. Johnstone

Adapted by Noah Diamond

Music by Tom Johnstone (additional music by Alexander Johnstone)

Directed by Trav S.D.

At times, I'll Say She Is--Noah Diamond's adaptation of Will B. Johnstone's book and lyrics for the Marx Brothers' first and forgotten Broadway show--really does seem like something shut away from the world for 90 years. Early on, the cute jokes in this musical comedy revue--starring Diamond as Groucho and directed by Trav S.D.--can land flat and sound musty, even if you're a card-carrying Marxist. Maybe especially if you are. But hang on.

I'll say it: The ambitious I'll Say She Is becomes a sure contender for Fringe Hit of 2014.

It opens with a chorus line of Kewpie Dolls in spangles and feathers and some quick-rhyming patter between the young lover-to-be character played by Zeppo Marx (played, in turn, by Aristotle Stamat) and a Broadway talent agent (Bob Homeyer). Groucho and Chico (Robert Pinnock) soon stumble into the scene. But it is the arrival of Harpo (wonderful Seth Shelden) with his smooth, childish face, wayward eyes, red curls and boisterous physicality, that suddenly injects exuberance into things. Now the "Four Horsemen of the Apoplexy," as Groucho calls himself and his kin, are complete, ready to trade barbs and flirtation with a thrill-seeking socialite (Melody Jane) and her well-meaning, Margaret Dumont-like aunt (Kathy Biehl). Up ahead? A world of trouble.

I'll Say She Is works best when when it leaves behind its one-off zinger-wannabes and busts out bizarre, 360° farce like the suspicious-Napoleon/faithless Josephine skit led with great verve by Diamond and Jane. Or the opium den scene that eventually draws everyone into a courtroom drama where the puns flow free. These are sparkling moments with the cast at its best.

Today's show was sold out, drawing an older crowd that seemed much more Broadway-oriented than Fringe-y. The Sheen Center's Loretto Auditorium is not big, and seating is by general admission. So, if you want a shot at a good seat--or any seat at all--hit that Fringe Web site now and don't dawdle.

Remaining shows:

Wednesday, August 20, 8:45pm

Friday, August 22, 9:30pm

Buy tickets for this and other FringeNYC shows.

Loretto Auditorium at the Sheen Center

18 Bleecker Street (at Elizabeth Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

For all things FringeNYC, click below.

New York International Fringe Festival

FringeNYC benefits: "Forgetting The Details"

Nicole Maxali (photo: Paciano Triunfo)

Forgetting The Details

Written and performed by Nicole Maxali

Directed by Paul Stein

No, I'm not really picking only solo shows at the Fringe on purpose. But, if you want to see an expert and thoroughly enjoyable one, pick this: Nicole Maxali's Forgetting The Details at Studio 440's White Box. California born-and-raised, this Filipina-American performer gets it all right, quickly dunking us into the flow of things as she draws canny portraits of her family members--divorced mom gleefully knocking back tequilas as she joins Maxali in a San Francisco bar to watch the Giants win World Series 2010; musician dad, with his history of drug addiction, surreptitiously offering her pot so she doesn't experiment out on the street; and, most of all, her adored "Lola" (Tagalog for grandma) endlessly serving up ice cream and meddlesome, loving advice.

So, I'm sure you can tell Forgetting The Details is not innovative, experimental theater. It's a personal performance trading in nostalgia about family and culture and takes you places that you fully expect to go--although not always when you expect to get there. It's like a short visit with a complete stranger who ends up being totally forthcoming, warm and delightfully funny. You will quickly feel that you know Maxali very well.

The show is seamless, polished, well-paced over its 75-minutes and coherent. Maxali renders it with skill and handsome discipline in storytelling and impersonations--voices, body language, gestures, facial expressions and overall energy and physicality every bit as convincing as the subtle, underlying compassion she reveals. In its intricate complexity, her monologue is a feat of prodigious memory, too--an ironic fact, considering that Forgetting The Details largely deals with how she and her family cope with her Lola's mental decline.

Maxali is an unforgettable performer, one I'd be eager to see meet any number of challenges in theater. I'm a believer.

Remaining shows:

Friday, August 15, 9:30pm

Sunday, August 17, 7:45pm

Thursday, August 21, 2pm

Friday, August 22, 5:30pm

Saturday, August 23, 3pm

The White Box

440 Lafayette St, 3rd Floor (Astor Place and East 4th Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Buy tickets for this and other FringeNYC shows.

For all things FringeNYC, click below.

New York International Fringe Festival

FringeNYC benefits: "Magical Negro Speaks"

Magical Negro Speaks

Written and performed by Jamil Ellis

No arguing. I'm sending you over to The White Box at 440 Studios to see Magical Negro Speaks, an hour-long performance by comic Jamil Ellis. Structurally, the show's messy, but it's genuinely funny and effectively rips at that Hollywood tradition of casting Black actors in certain archetypal, stereotypical roles that, on the face of things, can seem benign.

Ellis frequently cites Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance, Michael Clark Duncan in The Green Mile, Morgan Freeman in almost anything. You get the picture. These "magical Negro" roles flatten talented artists into two dimensions, making them sidekicks, second fiddles, self-effacing helpmates, mystical wisemen/women, generous healers and--to be blunt--handy props for the white actors who ultimately go on to get the glory.

Ellis knows he's not the entertainment industry's idea of a leading man. Denzel, relax. But he'd certainly like to have Washington's option to play against type. Or to play a role that at least does not embarrass him and will one day inspire his adorable little daughter.

A combination of stand-up, music numbers and clever video clips, Magical Negro Speaks is flawed in a human way. Where Ellis's mind drifts to dispiriting current events, for instance, everything goes slack. By the end of the hour, though, he has more than earned his right to connect the sentimentally personal and the political, and he gets the audience rooting for him.

Remaining shows:

Friday, August 15, 7:45pm

Saturday, August 16, 5:45pm

Sunday, August 17, 1:45pm

Wednesday, August 20, 9:15pm

Sunday, August 24, 5:15pm

The White Box

440 Lafayette St, 3rd Floor (Astor Place and East 4th Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Buy tickets for this and other FringeNYC shows.

For all things FringeNYC, click below.

New York International Fringe Festival

FringeNYC benefits: "No Static At All"

Alex Knox in No Static At All (photos: Karianne Flaathen)

No Static At All

Written and performed by Alex Knox

Directed by Becca Woolff

"Have you ever listened to a song and felt like the singer was telling your story?" asks the wiry, energetic Alex Knox near the opening of his one-hour monologue at FringeNYC, No Static At All. Maybe he should ask Roberta Flack, now that I think of it. Her answer, of course, would be, Why, yes--as would most of ours.

It's a banal question that tells you much of what you need to know about Knox's musing on a couple of supposedly parallel and troubled bromances--the first, between the two Steely Dan stars, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker whose song, FM, is the source of this play's title; the second, between Knox and his old school buddy, Josh. This show, like many bite-sized Fringe numbers, doesn't really have room to stretch out, and that puts pressure on Knox to rush his stuffed narrative and try to deliver something engaging and convincing. Despite a few truly funny moments--his argument that a certain rock in northern Israel renders sacred the name of his favorite band comes to mind--Knox doesn't quite make it.

With the exception of a nearly Talmudic exegesis of "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)," we don't learn anything much about the Steely Dan songs that have come to mean a lot to Knox and exactly what they say about the twists in the lives he and Josh have lived together and apart. We have to take all that as a matter of faith--and, in this work, faith turns out to be a very big matter, indeed.

Knox at first seems an ordinary sort, a bit intimidated by the sharper Josh whom he describes as self-assured to the point of arrogance. But he's just as capable of falling heart-first into an all-consuming religious pursuit--in this case, the Church of the Dan where momentary flashes of arrogance alternate with humiliation. 

Remaining shows:

Friday, August 15, 2:30pm

Sunday, August 17, 12pm

Wednesday, August 20, 9:15pm

Sunday, August 24, 4:15PM

Buy tickets for this and other FringeNYC shows.

The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre

115 MacDougal Street, 3rd floor, (between West 3rd Street and Bleecker), Manhattan

(map/directions)

For all things FringeNYC, click below.

New York International Fringe Festival

Life on the Fringe, still: Q from the BX

Qurrat Ann Kadwani
(bottom photo by Bolti Studios)

"60 minutes..13 characters..1 actress."

That's it. That's how the program notes sum up They Call Me Q!, a monologue about growing up in the Bronx as a child of a family from India, performed by award-winning playwright/actress Qurrat Ann Kadwani. I'd add "an hour well spent with a wicked smart and genuinely funny performer."

Directed by Obaid Kadwani and Claudia Gaspar, the piece manages to charm audiences and critics wherever it goes--from Chicago's Fringe fest to Maui's to Montreal's--and it did well here in New York in the Fringe edition just recently closed. As a result, Kadwani garnered a slot in the FringeNYC Encore series, and you can see her this afternoon at 1pm in the second and final performance of this production.

As a child of an immigrant family (Barbados), I must say Kadwani's anecdotes tickled me, partly because they're truly amusing and wonderfully delivered, but also because, even despite a wide difference in our ages, there may be almost no difference between some of the things her mother told her, what I heard from my folks out in Queens and what my Jewish wife recalls from her family life in the Bronx. This astounded me and reinforced my love of this city as I know it.

See They Call Me Q!, today at 1pm, at Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue (entrance on East 25th Street between Lexington and 3rd Avenues). For program information and tickets, click here.

map/directions

Life on the Fringe: "Inexcusable Fantasies" [UPDATE}

Susan McCully

The New York International Fringe Festival

(now through August 25)

Say, do you know where you're going to be this Saturday afternoon? Specifically at 4:45pm? (Or, as I just learned, tonight at 7:30!) Well, I do.

You'll be in the East Village, at The Theater at the 14th Street Y, seeing Inexcusable Fantasies, a two-woman play written by Susan McCully and performed by McCully with Rachel Hirshorn. Inexcusable Fantasies takes up musings and memories from the perspective of an aging lesbian--one with humble charm, wired nerves and uproarious humor to burn--in a complicated relationship with her own fluctuating libido. Over seventy minutes, the tale spans several scenes, including one with a couple of rival job seekers nearly coming to blows over one's driving lust for Martha Stewart, the media empress painstakingly analyzed and finally deemed "just the perfect erotic blend of butch/femme in motion." Both actresses are gifted with deft physical and verbal adaptability--McCully, enormously so. Her total embodiment of a biker dyke trying to flex her powers of seduction is simply perfection.

This is one Fringe show that makes and keeps its promise, and I predict you're going to have fun.

You're welcome.

Director: Eve Muson

Last chance: See it Saturday, August 24 at 4:45pm. Get tickets!

WAIT, WAIT! There's a show tonight at 7:30, too!!!!

Theater at 14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues, close to 1st), Manhattan
Entrance at the big orange banner (directions)

For complete information on the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival, click here.

Life on the Fringe: "Pussy"

Maura Halloran in Pussy
(photo by Claire Rice)

The New York International Fringe Festival

(now through August 25)

Predictable double entendres abound in Pussy, a one-woman show on the ups and mostly downs of a bi-cultural lesbian affair, written and performed by Canadian-born, San Francisco-based actress Maura Halloran. Just short of an hour, the work leans heavily on character sketches and physical theater techniques, especially in the form of clever mimicking of feline behavior. Yes, an especially nosy cat--who stages one hilarious and pivotal intervention late in the story--is one of four characters the lithe and sly Halloran portrays. She also impersonates a sweet, vulnerable Canadian woman, her snobby, exploitative English lover and their watchful Russian landlady. Halloran's often uncomfortably sharp talent for the subtleties of psychic shifts and facial expressions are the main reasons to catch this otherwise modest production.






Pussy

Director: Claire Rice
Movement Director: Julianne Fawsitt

Upcoming performances:

Thursday, August 15 at 8:15pm
Sunday, August 18 at 3:30pm
Wednesday, August 21 at 2pm
Thursday, August 22 at 9:30pm

The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre
115 MacDougal Street (between West 3rd Street and Minetta), Manhattan
(map/directions)

For complete information on the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival, click here.

FringeNYC: Nejla Y. Yatkin's Oasis

Every Fringe fest--stuffed to the gills with lots and lots of stuff--also has its must-see, unforgettable shows. This year brings us NY2Dance in Oasis: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Middle East but were Afraid to Dance--a work-in-progress by dancer-choreographer Nejla Y. Yatkin and some wonderful collaborators. The 70-minute ensemble piece--at once more serious, more powerful and more delicate than its subtitle would suggest--is showing at Theater 80 a few more times before the festival closes this weekend.

Oasis, inspired by the Arab Spring revolts, takes on difficult subject matter that others have tried on in dance theater and often fumbled--oppression, exploitation, rape, torture as well as the complexity of women's sense of personal identity and autonomy in repressive societies. Yatkin and her fellow dancers--Shay Bares, Sevin Ceviker, Ahmaud Culver, Jean-Rene Homehr, Rachel Holmes and Fadi Khoury--deliver a work that sears while daring to be exquisite, sensual and, during a fashion show devoted to hijab couture, even cheeky.

The modest East Village theater is clearly not the best location for Oasis, yet it presents little obstacle to this work's effectiveness and polished look--top-notch choreography enhanced by lighting design (Ben Levine), music (Shamou), animation (Iga Puchalska and Julien Smasal) and costuming (Ursula Verduzco and Yatkin). The seven dancers manage the small stage with ease, although this work needs, and will work well, in roomier surroundings.

A series of segments flow one into another, leaving no time for the viewer to recover from the dreamy spell or emotional devastation of the preceding one before becoming swept into the next. At the outset, animated silhouettes of a young girl conversing with her wise grandfather introduce the element of innocent curiosity. We might also ask, with this youngster, why we have created a world of so much pain? How did we lose our souls? How can we recover them?

That first bit of animation gives way to a swift, voluptuous duet between Yatkin and Iraq-born Khoury--both of them lithe and sinuous, continuously meeting and intertwining to the sound of muffled percussion and tinkling chimes. The dance is stylish, romantic and so engrossing that it takes a while before you notice something wrong: They're both wearing blindfolds. This segment yields to an anguished, frenzied solo for Khoury before a well-staged episode where masked men confine and torture him.

Yatkin can be a fiery dancemaker, but sometimes cool-and-quiet gets the job done--as in another section where Khoury lays out a serving tray and glassware along Bares' abject back and takes sips while calmly gazing at the young man who is so clearly his property and sexual conquest. And again, when Bares, alone and shyly trying out the finger cymbals that seem to manifest out of nowhere, slowly builds a deeply undulating solo--think of a Nijinsky, maybe, discovering bellydance--that speaks of the dawn of an inner power, a sexuality that is defined by self, for self.

I was shaken by much of Oasis. In the post-show Q&A, dancers revealed how deeply and personally it had affected them. Their investment in it clearly went far beyond getting the steps down.

Yatkin plans to tighten Oasis in advance of its premiere at next year's Bates College Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME). The Turkish Cultural Foundation will sponsor a presentation of Oasis at New York Live Arts (dates to be announced). Catch it this week at Theater 80 (Thursday, August 23 at 2pm and Sunday, August 26 at 1pm) or keep watch for these upcoming presentations of the finished piece.

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here.

FringeNYC: Yin Yue's "We Have Been Here Before"

I found myself longing for something as I watched We Have Been Here Before performed by Yin Yue Dance Company--a sense of why. That can happen even when both choreographer and dancers show prodigious facility, as is the case here. That doesn't mean that there isn't a why--just that it might not be clear to me, one viewer. The piece ran for 50 minutes, which I figured is a reasonable amount of time to hang out with people displaying serious talent and bravery, even if I'm not sure what it's supposed to add up to beyond what the choreographer said elsewhere--that she wants to "push the limits of physical capability" and bring out deep human emotion. Those desires are not unique in dance-making.

I'll guess at a how--which is that Yin draws from her training in Chinese classical and traditional dances, applying superb flexibility and an alert complexity of timing and coordination to the contemporary dance she makes for her small ensemble. What makes her project contemporary is, in particular, its embrace of physical distortion, great stretches of crunchiness alternating with taffy-pull movement. A big, chewy meal.  

We Have Been Here Before is "beautiful ugly"--shapely and picturesque with a strain of mania running through it, beginning to end. And what dancers: able to walk, chew gum, rub their bellies and--I'm sure if you asked them--launch into some throat singing, all at the same time. I exaggerate, sure, but not by much. The work relates no story, draws no characters, and continously snaps together minute jigsaw puzzle pieces of movement that could have been plucked from the bottom of a black velvet bag in the the dark. So you've got to wonder: How did they ever memorize all of that?

For some reason, the FringeNYC program lists only five performers--Rachel Patrice Fallon, Daniel Holt, Sarah F. Parker, Nicole von Arx and Grace Whitworth--but Yin also performs late in the piece. Also watch the darkly dramatic Whitworth and often simian Holt, but all dancers serve this intriguing, diverting work quite well.

See We Have Been Here Before tonight at 7:30pm or Friday, August 17 at 2pm.

The New School for Drama Theatre
151 Bank Street, 3rd Floor (between Washington and West Streets), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here. 

"Saharava" on the Fringe

I'm only getting around to a couple of FringeNYC shows this August. With age--and heat and humidity--comes the desire, and the right, to be more selective and dash about less. But Saharava: A Ritualized Dance-Opera, with its Tarot-related theme, called to me, and its nearby location at Theater 80 on St. Mark's Place made it an easy choice.

Described as "a primitive and raw theatrical ritual combining dance and wordless song," the hour-long production "follows the journey of the Fool through the Major Arcana of the Tarot." As wonderful as Theater 80's tiny, shallow stage can be for some shows, the ambitious Saharava needs bigger space to serve Andre Megerdichian's large, skillful cast, passionate, sometimes complex choreography and bustling stage arrangements. A little more distance between viewers and performers might also work in its favor--for example, minimizing the awkwardness of up-flipping, underwear-exposing lifts. These close-up, unsightly flashes of strange-looking, "flesh"-colored underpants beneath the women's faux-Greek tunics had unintended comical, trance-deflating effect. Megerdichian's respectable efforts--and his dancers--deserve a chance.

Fahad Siadat, who played The Magician, a symbol from Tarot's Major Arcana, also composed the instrumental and vocal elements of this "dance-opera." His influence begins in the lengthy "Prelude" of Om-like vocalization, didgeridoo-blowing and drone-droning from a dimly-lit stage, dropping the audience's blood pressure several notches. That's cool and befits a ritualistic atmosphere. Unfortunately, despite the presence of trained voices, the subsequent straight hour of wordless howling, screeching, barking, wheezing and the like sounded amateurish, suggesting an extended acting exercise more than a ritual of transformation.

I know the Tarot well, and the only archetype that read at all clear to me was The Devil (David Niles), who turns the stage into hell on earth for his driven minions. It would have been good to comprehend this work better as The Fool's Journey if other Tarot characters had been rendered with sharpness and purpose.

But see for yourself. Saharava: A Ritualized Dance-Opera continues at Theater 80 over the following schedule:

Sunday, August 12 at 1pm
Tuesday, August 14 at 2:30pm
Wednesday, August 15 at 7:45pm
Friday, August 24 at 7:15pm

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here.

Yatkin's "Wallstories": dancing to freedom

There's a moment, late in the hour, when Wallstories--a Fringe Festival multimedia work presented by Nejla Y. Yatkin's NY2Dance--takes flight. Prior to this point, the production seems an earnest, generically energetic ensemble based in thoughts about the Berlin Wall and the eventual passing of the Cold War era.

Opening with a blaring voice-over and a very narrow horizontal strip of film imagery of workers laying bricks, the dance employs a multicultural cadre of performers in short, rumpled raincoats who repeatedly bunch together and collapse one moment and, at another, make big, jazzy gestures like a Broadway chorus line of mimes. Their dancing, set to music by Bach and Pink Floyd, runs from lunges, stretches, dashes and collisions that give an impression of restlessness and inevitable release to sharply-rendered solos that convey the essence of an individual's recollections and emotions. Occasionally--as in the sixth section, "Dorothea's ?uestions," set to Pink Floyd's "Blue Sky"--the movement achieves a rapturous flow.

Yatkin's fifth section--superfluously titled "The Government, Mother Russia, my Mother, your Mother"--feels like the first clear evidence that Wallstories aims to operate on a level of psychological and universal insight beyond its aesthetic and historical concerns. But it isn't until one of the final sections, when Yatkin suddenly rises from her front-row audience seat to move in sync with one of her dancers, that the work comes home. As a member of the audience, she stands on the cusp between us and the dancers, bridging temporal, physical, emotional and psychological divides. She visually identifies herself, finally, as the heart of this piece.

A Berlin native of Turkish-Egyptian descent, now living and working in the States, Yatkin is a tall, sinewy, strong-featured wonder, a gifted dancer's dancer whose every performance is living sculpture. Watching her move last evening offered the thrill and, simultaneously, the poignancy that Wallstories had previously withheld despite the admirable effort of its other hard-working performers. It located Wallstories squarely in Yatkin's body and in her experience as a descendant of immigrants, and that touched off connections to issues roiling Western Europe in the present day.

A joyous coda brings the evening to a close, but Yatkin's presence brought it to its height.

Performed by Ahmaud Culver, Shay Bates, Sevin Ceviker, Rachel Holmes, Fadi Khoury, Karina Lesko, Marissa Maislen, Derek Crescenti, Nejla Y. Yatkin and Ehizoje Azeke

Lighting: Caroyn Wong

Video Design: Michael K. Rogers and Nejla Y. Yatkin

Photography: Nejla Y. Yatkin

Text: Nejla Y. Yatkin, with original interviews with Germans from the East and West

Wallstories is a presentation of the New York International Fringe Festival and runs through Sunday, August 28 at Dixon Place. For specific schedule details and ticketing, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey), Manhattan
(directions)

Need a fringier Fringe?

A Fringe Festival That’s Too Tame? Too Bad
by Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, August 23, 2010

Juggling for a cause

Jacob Weiss, Ted Joblin, Michael Karas and Ben Detrick--the four juggling gents of Playing By Air--open their Fringe Festival show with colorful lightworks in the darkened performance space at Dixon Place. It's a low-grade version of the kind of razzledazzle Alwin Nikolais dancers might have whipped across a stage on a much larger scale back in the day, and not the most sophisticated or promising of openings. But then, Playing By Air--both the Nashville-based troupe and its show--is clearly a throwback to an era of direct, good-natured simplicity in entertainment. What ends up being winning about this show is how sincerely, intimately human it is.

And fun. These guys are talented jugglers. Moreover, they actually do have some jaw-droppingly slick tricks up their sleeves--like Karas's ability to balance a music stand, sheet music and all, on his upper lip. And those sleeves can be very nice indeed because, as it turns out, these guys place high value on dressing to impress. Juggling may be something circus clowns do but Weiss and his crew, though amusing physical comedians, say they prefer the kind of respect stage magicians get.

Karas--based in New York, originally relocated here for an acting career--seems the most polished of the four. Even before he launched into some brief dance moves, his juggling tricks showed dancerly, choreographic chops with subtle, precise timing and a taste for the unexpected. He's the most delightful reason for dance fans to catch Playing By Air.

Besides juggling, Detrick serves as the troupe's violinist/fiddler. His playing paralleled the dexterity of the other jugglers' moves, and I began to look at his colleagues and "hear" the intricate music of their juggling.

Founded and directed by Weiss--who tells me he earned his PhD, at Vanderbilt University, in something called Biomedical Informatics--the Playing By Air organization devotes its talents to cancer awareness and the support of survivors, families and caregivers. You can learn more about this creative mission at Playing By Air Cares. Check out the show, which has a typically eccentric Fringe schedule with remaining shows running on Sunday, August 22 (8:45pm), Monday, August 23 (9:30pm), Wednesday, August 25 (2:15pm) and Saturday, August 28 (7pm).

Playing By Air

The New York International Fringe Festival

Dixon Place

161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets)

Tickets

The Fringe: in search of benefits

The annual New York International Fringe Festival--"New York's Best Staycation" for the long, hot summer--has had a spotty record with dance. Yesterday, I spent part of my staycation at two Fringe shows--one including dance elements, the other focused on dance. Unfortunately, the spotty reputation holds.

Theatre of Eternal Values: Eternity in an Hour  (1hr 10min)

at The New School for Drama Theater

151 Bank Street (between West and Washington Streets)

A brief but otherwise conventional musical fantasia dedicated to William Blake, this piece is too pretty and tepid in both music and movement to convey anything compelling about the visionary poet and artist and his wild, revolutionary spirit. Instead of burning bright, it seems a beast more tamed than fiery. But Tim Bruce--the piece's playwright and star--carries the hour-and-change with charismatic charm and focused embodiment of Blake's fluid emotions. He even sparks a few moments of chemistry with his Catherine Blake, Monia Giovannangeli, one of the show's two choreographers. I just wish I didn't keep looking at Bruce and expecting-- hoping--he'd suddenly bust out with "Brown Eyed Girl" or "Into the Mystic."

Remaining shows: Tonight, 7pm; Sunday, 8/15; 7:15pm; Friday, 8/20, 4pm; Sunday, 8/22, 2pm

Deliquescent Designs: Perspectives (1hr 30min)

(choreography and performances by Stephanie Dixon, Mary Beth Leigh, Tamora Petitt and Karen Voyles)

at Dixon Place

161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets)

I slipped out of Perspectives after the dance with the feathers and the cranberry-red Isadora Duncan-style gowns. So, it might not be fair to say a whole lot about Deliquescent Designs. But I will note that this company's film projection--an unintentionally hilarious guide to bowling from, it appears, the 1950s--is far more arresting than any of the choreography I saw. I'm looking forward to the Macaulay review.

Remaining shows: Tonight, 10:15pm; Wednesday, 8/18, 5pm; Friday, 8/20, 4pm; Saturday, 8/21, 2pm.

Noworol's Fringe element

Patricia Noworol's fascinating Circuits feels "but-kitchen-sinky"--as in, everything but the kitchen sink--and sprawly and elusive but, even so, unusually tidy. How's that possible? I have no idea, but there it is.

This hour-long Fringe Festival piece begins even as the audience assembles and settles in, and then it appears to restart a few times--or Noworol's words suggest that it's restarting--as the choreographer gives an order to her sound person and, for our benefit, reiterates that Circuits was "miraculously created" in just two months, collaboratively, with improvisation. But if that feels as if she's toggling rewind/forward, that toggling also feels curiously smooth and expertly controlled.

The work goes on to amalgamate a load of ideas and encounters and impulses, and it puts potentially-charged emotional experiences on display in the form of challenges (the excruciating "Take your top off, Chelsea" sequence), personal narrative (Nick's first job in a zoo and a memory of his favorite charge, the emus) and physical gutsiness (including a lot of people repeatedly throwing themselves at one another). But it's all executed by Noworol's performers with a cool, fairly uniform affect that's kind of unsettling because, under their deceptively serene surface, there's just so, so much.

Ultimately, it might be hard to put your finger on whatall's going on, overall, in Circuit. But that's probably Noworol's way: to get the viewer to plunge in anywhere, look around, maybe take a sharp interest in one thing or another and see where that leads. Every viewer can resurface with something different and interesting. Her well-coordinated team of dancers makes it rewarding: Chelsea Bonosky, Nicholas Bruder, Matthew Oaks, Christina Noel Reaves, Elliott Reiland, Mika Yanaghira and the gazelle-like choreographer herself.

Circuits continues tonight at 8pm, Friday at 7:45pm and Sunday at 1:45pm at the Robert Moss Theatre, 440 Studios, 440 Lafayette Street, 3rd Floor, Manhattan. For reservations (strongly recommended), call 866-468-7619.

Patricia Noworol Dance Company

New York International Fringe Festival