Now from TenduTV: "The Co(te)lette Film"

The Co(te)lette Film (58:16)
Savage Film, Red Mullet, WArd/waRD (2010)

Director: Mike Figgis

Choreography: Ann Van den Broek

Winner, Best of Festival Award, Dance Camera West Festival 2011 (USA); Best Dance Film, Cyprus International Film Festival 2011 (Cyprus); Le Prix du Film sur l’Art, 11th Festival du Film sur l’Art (Brussels)

Watching Mike Figgis' film of Ann Van den Broek's provocative, award-winning dance production, Co(te)lette (2007), reminded me of how a colleague had raised an objection after a showing of Nicholas Leichter's work-in-progress, Twenty Twenty. This critic thought that aspects of that dance too often verged on the pornographic. I walked away thinking, Hmmm... Well, even if that were so, what exactly would be the problem with a choreographer dipping into this other site of the body's vulnerability and power? Twenty Twenty, as a lot of folks will readily tell you, is growing into an outlandish duet (with Leichter's amazing young dance partner, Bryan Strimpel), but if Twenty Twenty makes you squeamish, you're simply not ready for Co(te)lette.

Van den Broek has her three female dances start out down on all fours in short, lightweight skirts and sparkly ballroom shoes. Backsides to the camera. Butts twitching in precise, mechanical rhythm. A metronomic trio panting industrial breath. Butts sloshing like a washing machine's agitation. Torsos swerving with the big swoosh of a cleaning rag or scrub brush in a cleaning woman's sturdy and determined hand. Gazed at as if from directly behind, from overhead, from one side or another and... But wait: The camera pulls away to reveal that there are others coolly watching the women's all-in, increasingly ferocious action from the sidelines as if visiting a cage in a zoo.

Concert dance shies away from much of what follows in Co(te)lette but, by doing so, sidesteps its potential to illuminate this treacherous, ambiguous, suspended place between the real and the artificial, the danger of being embodied and sexual, particularly embodied and sexual as female in a world where straight men hold the lion's share of power. This idea might be usefully conveyed by words alone. But dance must also be there, and this dance is there.

Click here for The Co(te)lette Film from TenduTV.

Leichter dance: all the way live and outspoken

Shay Wafer, 651 Arts's new Executive Director, and Anna Glass, Managing Director, were on hand last evening to usher in a new season of Live & Outspoken. This popular series, presented at the Mark Morris Dance Center, features conversations between stars and innovators of the performing arts and samples of the artists' work. A magical interview between Ntozake Shange and Marc Bamuthi Joseph was one of my highlights of 2011.

Last night's session paired the richly talented Eisa Davis (playwright, singer-songwriter, actress, dancer) with dancer-choreographer Nicholas Leichter. Davis and Leichter go back a long way. When she first moved to New York, she took up residence in his basement, and they have collaborated. So it was no surprise that this conversation would be a breeze. Davis brought to it not only personal insight but fresh imagination, a real interest in discovery.

Eisa Davis (Photo by Colman Domingo)

Nicholas Leichter

Reflecting on his club-kid period, Leichter reached back to one source of the intensity in his dancing and dance-making.

"I did it so young and so early when it was still in this dark period," he said. "I saw a lot of crazy shit, though I never did any of that. There was hysteria, but there was also a crazy amount of passion on the dance floor. Such energy. It just ignited me.

"It wasn't as segregated as it is now. It was kind of pre-hip hop and felt like what modern dance should be--a mix of a lot of things."

Leichter developed an attitude towards concert dance that was a mix of a lot of things, too--the fire and fluidity of club dancing, yes, but also the discipline of the ballet studio. A technical wiz kid himself, he says that the rigor of his training still underlies all of his work, although it might not be as overt as it used to be.

The evening's talk was interspersed with excerpts from a smokin' duet (from Twenty, Leichter's evening-length work-in-progress) that features the choreographer and a younger dancer, Bryan Strimpel. Here's a bit of Strimpel.


French Kiss (excerpt from Black Barbra) from Nicholas Leichter Dance on Vimeo.

That's all fine, but you really must see Strimpel and Leichter dance together, a collaboration that, the choreographer says, revitalized his own dancing.

Different in age (by almost twenty years), race, body type and sexual orientation, Strimpel seems to have absorbed and enhanced the qualities that have always been wildly magnetic about Leichter--an elastic body nevertheless given to delivering rapid, sharp, percussive language, the entire body as speech and gesture. Leichter mentioned that critics, admiring of his dancing, sometimes chide him for not having dancers who can replicate his abilities. I suspect that there's a subtle distinction here: It's not about having dancers who look like you and dance like you but focusing on dancers who can stand up to you. Lanky, blond Strimpel does just that, approaching his work in a dramatically sexy deadpan way, matching Leichter at every turn and then some. The results are electrifying.

Catch up with everything from Nicholas Leichter Dance here, and with 651 Arts' new season here.

Making bite-sized dance

Ever sit and watch some hyped, hyper-funded, bloated and disappointing production and wonder whatever happened to modest and incisive dance pieces?

Robin Staff, artistic director and producer of the DanceNOW NYC Festival, believes that size matters--small size, that is--and is prepared to put some money behind that notion.

Her festival artists will be challenged to "create a new work or present a repertory work seven minutes or less, that offers a concise, clear, and complete artistic statement."

Hooray!

The fest's announcement continues:

The artist that best meets the DanceNOW Challenge will be awarded a week-long residency at Silo at Kirkland Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, along with a $1000 residency stipend and a paid teaching opportunity at DeSales University, with whom DanceNOW has partnered since 2006 to bring New York City-based choreographer/educators to Bucks County/Lehigh Valley, to teach and perform. The artist will be selected during the Festival by a panel of administrators, educators, and peers.

Performances are scheduled for September 8-11 at Dance Theater Workshop.
As summer winds down, artists such as Kyle Abraham, Sydney Skybetter, Nicholas Leichter, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Camille Brown, Stefanie Nelson, Gina Gibney, Ellis Wood and Paul Singh will proffer what they hope you'll find to be good things in small packages.

Connect with DanceNOW NYC and its 2010 festival plans here.

Topaz Arts welcomes you to its Open House

TOPAZ ARTS celebrates nine years of providing a creative space for the performing and visual arts on Saturday, November 21, 4pm-8pm.

4pm: “Cabaret Solitaire,” a dance performance featuring solo works by choreographers Molissa Fenley, Nicholas Leichter, and Paz Tanjuaquio. Admission: $15. Seating is limited. Tickets at http://www.topazarts.org.

6pm: opening reception for “Footnotes For Revelation,” a solo exhibition of new work by visual artist Roger Rothstein. Free admission to the gallery after 6pm.

For full details on program and artists, click here or contact rsvp@topazarts.org or 718-505-0440.

Topaz Arts
55-03 39th Avenue
Woodside, Queens

Subways: #7 to 61 Street or R, V, G to Northern Boulevard

Leichter rocks his Joyce debut

I know a thing or two or two thousand about "As" and "Another Star"--a couple of back-to-back numbers from Stevie Wonder's 1976 album, Songs in the Key of Life. Mainly, I know what it's like to slap that vinyl down, play these two songs to smithereens and, further risking delirium, try to make a dance to them, too.

"As" starts off as typically smooth, bubbly Stevie before the man shifts into his hard-pumping roaring, and moralizing, mode. In Free the Angels (2001), choreographer Nicholas Leichter and his company members and guests get the initial melodic sinuosity right, and the dancers' flowing entanglements are enjoyable. But there's something obsessive about "As"--and the people who love it--and that obsessive insistence, if you're going to follow it closely, doesn't allow a lot of room. So, after a while, the dance becomes an exercise in finding ways to throw dancers together just to visualize the rhythm. The inventive Leichter manages to make it through "As," starting fine but with diminishing effectiveness. We soon see that there's little new to learn about Wonder's music here as it stretches on and, since the dancers are completely at its mercy, all we learn about them is that they sweat really hard for Leichter.

I used to love how "Another Star" starts up with absolutely no break after "As." Breathless! But it's impossible--just impossible--with a manic, even angry rhythm even more driven than "As." Watching Leichter's troupe work through this number, I began to hear something that bothered me. Wonder's music, although upbeat, sounded flat, compressed, tight, airless. The choreographer seemed to lose control of making movement and the overall stage picture creatively interesting, instead bowing even more to the music's dictates and to an audience's desire for more and more spectacle.

And, believe me, last night's Joyce audience desired and ultimately rewarded the spectacle. These dancers--of which, tall, watery, gorgeously guesting Will Rawls was the most unforgettable--danced the hell out of the song. Can't argue with that.

Let me say it another way: Leichter is blessed in dancers. He is, himself, a brilliant one. And now he has a crew that matches his own ability to make us sit up and take notice. His choreography, though, which often draws heavily from youth culture and has accessible, popular pizzazz, could use some substance, some sense that it is about and drawing on something of consequence. It's time.

So, along comes Killa, Leichter's world premiere, an ensemble working eight segments to music by MIA, Basement Jaxx, Lionrock and Monstah Black. Black--in a singing, dancing Trickster role--appears to preside over the piece. I'm impressed by the look and lyrics of his initial man-hopelessly-caught-in-a-huge-web number. I love his subsequent bust-out flamboyance--particularly how he bravely and quite skillfully prowls and prances atop the hoof-like wedges strapped to his feet. Killa is colorful, tuneful, marvelously danced by the company and guests, and that will be enough for most viewers. But, I have to say, I wish I came away with a stronger sense of Leichter's intention, of some emphasis and coherence. What's going on here, aside from crowd-tickling flash? Does Black's character--and his relationship to the other performers--have meaning? A meaning that we should understand and care about?

See nicholas leichter dance at The Joyce Theater, Friday, June 26 (8pm) and Sunday, June 28 (2pm and 7:30pm).

Information and ticketing

Killa dilla

Click here to watch Nicholas Leichter and his company nicholas leichter dance rehearsing for the world premiere of Killa, a celebration of the diaspora of dance music, featuring music by M.I.A., Basement Jaxx, Lion Rock and guest artist Monstah Black. This production's ensemble will include performers from Wayne State University (MI) and Sacramento State (CA). Coming to The Joyce Theater, June 24, 26 and 28.

The audacity of Leichter

The Barnard Project--a collaboration of Dance Theater Workshop and Barnard College's dance department--brings students together with some of the foxiest choreographers around. The artistic residency program culminates in a season of new and developing works at DTW, and this year's lineup features pieces by Morgan Thorson (Minneapolis), Nora Chipaumire, Susan Rethorst and Nicholas Leichter.

Thorson's Monuments and Other Points of Interest: A Revisionist Construction of Closeness deploys an ensemble of bare-legged, skittering, sloshing women in bonnets that look like a soft-blue version of what the Sisters of Charity nuns wear in Doubt. There are also long tables wrapped in blue ruffled skirts, and I really can't tell what's going on here, but I enjoyed the tickling, eccentric musicality of the movements. Chipaumire's bismillah (which means, "in the name of Allah") evokes a tight-knit community of women. Among its subtle graces is the way the choreographer--herself, an extraordinary performer--has taught her young dancers to articulate the muscles in their torsos. Rethorst has shaped her corps of dancers into an ecosystem in a piece marred only by a tendency towards cutesiness. All three of these choreographers seem to be dreaming up societies and have shaped respectable, if not yet exciting, works out of these imaginings.

And then there's Leichter's Waltzes, Wonder and First Choice--made "with additional choreography and assistance by Aaron Draper"--which is a little bit different.

For one thing, it has a high-charged pop soundtrack--Mariah Carey and John Legend's "Born Again," Alicia Keys's "Falling," First Choice's "It's Not Over" and more. It has young men in business shirts and ties paired with women in--uh-oh!--midnight-blue party dresses. And you know exactly what's going on when it starts off with two of these dancing at--instead of with--each other, coldly missing opportunities to touch, hold and connect.

As the businessmen confront their dates--and, sometimes, one another--the mood becomes hectic, desperate and sometimes downright mean. The movement--broad and often awkward to a cartoonish extent--challenges each member of the hardworking corps with the speed and complexity of its isolations. I think Leichter, in working with these fledgling dancers, got the project precisely right. His work always strikes me as raw, almost like outsider art. He tosses street and club and folk stuff in with the fact of doing theatrical dance on a stage, and he refuses to smooth it back. I think these young Barnard dancers click with something there and grab hold and go with it.

The Barnard Project continues this evening at 7:30 and concludes with 2pm and 7:30pm performances on Saturday. Click here for information and ticketing.

What I've been seeing lately...

Whew! Busy month! And now it's Pride Weekend! So, some quick notes:

nicholas leichter dance concludes its Spanish Wells premiere season at Dance Theater Workshop tomorrow night, and I'm just realizing just how much the smart and energetic Leichter has manage to throw into that very choppy ocean of his. I'm also starting to hear some buzz about Leichter's newest dancer, Mathew Heggem. One to watch.

Tom Pearson and Zach Morris (of Third Rail Projects) conclude their Vanishing Point premiere season at Danspace Project (www.danspaceproject.org) tonight. Everything about this one is big with heart--performances (of which Morris, Donna Ahmadi and Tara O'Con are the standouts), visual design, and music. This is a lovely one. See it, see it, see it!

The uncommonly handsome and indecently-talented Foofwa D'Imobilité concludes his Benjamin de Bouillis season at Baryshnikov Arts Center, a co-presentation with Chez Bushwick, tonight. Of course, he is a master of movement, and his overarching concept of embodiment/disembodiment gets played out in a myriad of clever, fascinating ways. But what I really hope you'll get to see (weather permitting) is the fantastic composition of sky, water towers, pigeons and window frame designed by New York City and God. I missed my camera, desperately, desperately!

And last, there'sThierry Malandain's Ballet Biarritz, concluding a season at the Joyce Theater tonight. I'm not on board for this one, but you'll enjoy the fine dancers.

That's it for now! Happy Pride Weekend!