Nicky Paraiso: ready at La MaMa

Nicky Paraiso (right) with dancer Paz Tanjuaquio
in now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories

Nicky Paraiso
now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories
Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
March 22-April 7

Nicky Paraiso's performance memoir, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed by John Jesurun, runs about 80 minutes. A densely-packed, non-stop monologue, it is augmented, surrounded--and, more or less, supported--by scenic design, music, movement and the occasional verbal exchange with his dancing collaborators. It traces Paraiso's Queens boyhood in a Filipino immigrant family through an illustrious, four-decade career in theater, music and curation to the present day. These "intimate histories" of the verbal kind take the lion's share of space and oxygen--although the projections on the scrim dividing one half of the audience from the other can be as enchanting as Paraiso's piano playing and singing.

I question the choice of engaging four star dancers of downtown renown--Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick an Paz Tanjuaquio--if, while relating nearly every life and career detail of your own with a biographer's specificity, you keep these fine artists largely marginalized until nearly the end. I enjoy seeing these performers wherever they land, but why here for what adds up to so little?

Their movement patterns never achieve the impact of Paraiso's heartfelt reenactment of singing "Into The Mystic"--one of my own soul songs--at a lover's memorial. They can't match his remembrance of how the late La MaMa, Ellen Stewart, loved to proudly flash her melon-like breasts and how she admonished him that "you like those talky, talky plays. That's not La MaMa, baby!" And how she added, "You do whatever you want, but I don't gotta like it!"

Talky, talky, indeed.

now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories requires some patience, but the rewards are real. Go, if you want to learn what made Paraiso Paraiso. He is beloved by our downtown arts community and one of the most knowledgeable, diligent and gracious advocates for artists everywhere.

Written by Nicky Paraiso
Direction by John Jesurun
Created in collaboration with performers Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick and Paz Tanjuaquio
Dramaturgy/Script Development: Irene Hultman, George Emilio Sanchez and John Jesurun
Production Management by Caleb Hammond
Costume Design: Gabriel Berry
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur

now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories continues through Sunday, April 7. For schedule information and tickets, click here.

Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Manhattan

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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A panel on creating and sustaining the arts on the Lower East Side

The Lo-Down
and Educational Alliance's Manny Cantor Center

co-presented an April 28 discussion:

The State of the Performing Arts

on the Lower East Side

Traven Rice (left) and Ed Litvak
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The two founding publisher/editors of The Lo-Down--
a print and online publication covering Lower East Side news and culture--
introduced the evening's program.

Hosted by Educational Alliance's Manny Cantor Center,
panelists from La MaMa, Abrons Arts Center, Elevator Repair Service and Dixon Place
discussed their organizations' missions and challenges
in light of the changing development and demographics of the Lower East Side and of New York City as a whole.

John Collins, founding Artistic Director, Elevator Repair Service
with Traven Rice
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Collins says his troupe "owes everything to that downtown spirit"
of venues like La MaMa where ERS maintains its office space.
"It's a willingness to take a risk, to fail,
to try things where no one knows what the outcome will be," Collins says.
"Significant careers get launched, a kind of faith gets expressed, in these venues."

Jay Wegman, Director, Abrons Arts Center
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

As part of a social service agency (Henry Street Settlement) where provision of community and youth education has always taken precedence,
Grand Street's Abrons Arts Center has struggled to effectively market its arts offerings to potential local audiences.

"80% of our audiences comes from outside this neighborhood," says Wegman.
"This is a neighborhood of families--people in the 30s and 40s who [come off work] and just want to go home and stay home."

Under Wegman's focus, though, Abrons has become an acclaimed presenter of cutting edge productions.
Artists want to be shown there, and audiences travel from all over to see them.

Ellie Covan, Founder/Artistic Director, Dixon Place
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

"It's hard to be a multi-genre space," says Covan.

That includes the usual slate of theatrical genres plus puppetry, burlesque, circus, vaudeville
and probably anything else you might or might not imagine.

 "We do it all. The funders are confused, the press is confused," she says.
"But it's part of our mission to be inclusive and cast a wide net."

Dixon Place also gets a big bang from drinkers' bucks at its popular bar.
"I wish this would catch on here like it has in London, in Europe," says Covan.
As long as patrons keep drinking, Covan's venue will keep ticket prices low and stay open as
"a place for artists to figure out what they're doing."

As for Essex Crossing, the city's glitzy, mixed-use development project
that will include, among other features, the Andy Warhol Museum,
Covan and her colleagues expressed no concern about potential competition.

"I don't feel competition with other spaces for audiences," says Covan. "Bring it on!"
And Wegman concurs, eager for more foot traffic that might help everyone's fortunes.

Nicky Paraiso, Director of Programming, The Club at La MaMa
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

With the loss of legendary founder Ellen Stewart in 2011,
La MaMa is "an older, established institution revitalizing itself without giving up its mission," says Paraiso.

Paraiso admits that he "never studied to be a curator." Instead, he took his cues from Stewart, who told him,
"Baby, you know all these people! What do you want to do, Baby?"

It was a trial by fire. Under the leadership of Stewart's successor, Mia Yoo, Paraiso continues his practice of talking and working closely with artists.
He tells them, "We will find a way to help you--like young, gay playwrights who don't find a home in more conventional Off-Broadway theater."

He cites La MaMa's intergenerational mentorship initiatives as an important part of the organization's mission, mentioning his pleasure at watching how generous Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, in particular, have been with younger artists at La MaMa.

"I'm helping artists because I am one."

For information on future events at Manny Cantor Center, click here.

La MaMa fest to honor Alien Comic Tom Murrin

Performance Festival at LaMaMa to Honor Tom Murrin
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, March 12, 2014

Yoshiko Chuma's "Love Story, Palestine"

To read my Dance Magazine review of Yoshiko Chuma's Love Story, Palestine--running now at the La MaMa Moves! festival--click here.

In search of mavericks

John McClain might say he never claimed to be one. Sarah Palin might give it a bad name. But La MaMa still loves mavericks. This week, you can visit the La MaMa Moves Festival and see who--among a bevy of choreographers across four shared Mavericks in Motion programs--deserves to wear the label with pride.

I'm going to cast an early vote for a couple of handsome Cunningham dancers, Rashaun Mitchell and his collaborator/dance partner Silas Riener, who showed Nocturnal Excerpts, a work-in-progress. Telfar Clemens's costumes turn them into a couple of vaguely disheveled, modern-day Pierrots, and Mitchell's movement ideas disturb and contort any conventional notion of what human bodies can do. Riener, in particular, is a compelling presence and mover, and it will be interesting to see where these guys take this duet.

If you missed Mitchell and Riener last night, try for Saturday's show (8pm), which also includes offerings by Benjamin Asriel, Myra Bazell w/ SCRAP, David Capps, Luke Gutgsell (partnering the fascinating Elise Knudson), and Lionel Popkin & Robert Een.

Mavericks in Motion programming concludes this Sunday evening. The festival continues through June 20.

Complete La MaMa Moves festival schedule

Tickets

La MaMa E.T.C.
First Floor Theatre
74a East 4th Street (near 2nd Avenue), Manhattan

Catching up with New York

Back from the powerful earth of Arizona, I managed to haul my jetlagged self to Hoofers' House at The Kitchen (curated by Rashida Bumbray and MC-ed by Jason Samuels Smith) on Friday night and to La MaMa Moves Festival's "Dancing Divas" evening on Saturday evening (curated by Nicky Paraiso and Mia Yoo and featuring works by Vicky Shick, Jodi Melnick, Pam Tanowitz, Barbara Mahler, Sally Silvers and Sara Rudner). Lovely, sensitive and interesting moments were in good supply at La MaMa Annex, but the mamadiva who moved us most had to be Rudner, one of my dance-crushes from way back, whose Positions--The All Star Variation was a true, openhearted gigglefest. I loved its extravagant size, its combination of the serene and the silly, its total lack of taking itself seriously. My kind of extravaganza with amusing performances from John Scott and Chris Yon among a bevy of downtown dance beauties, Rudner among them. Look for my Hoofers' House review on DanceMagazine.com sometime down the line.

Nicky Paraiso/Mia Yoo (Pt. 2): Body and Soul podcast

In Part 2 of our conversation about the 2008 La MaMa Moves! dance festival, co-curators Nicky Paraiso and Mia B. Yoo discuss a new
addition to their festival schedule--a forum for choreographers.

GUEST BIOS

See Part 1.

EVENT

La MaMa Moves! -- May 2-June 1

For up-to-the-minute calendar and ticketing details, see the link
below or call 212-475-7710.

LINK

La MaMa e.t.c.
http://www.lamama.org/
Click on Dance Festival 2008

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at
http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Nicky Paraiso/Mia Yoo (Pt. 1): Body and Soul podcast

La MaMa Moves! again! Ellen Stewart's legendary East Village theater presents its big annual dance festival, starting this weekend with a presentation of Ivy Baldwin Dance. I spoke with co-curators Nicky Paraiso and Mia B. Yoo about all of their sensational events, including the "Dancing for Micki" benefit in honor of Micki Wesson, the great supporter and champion of New York dance.

In Part 2 of our conversation--a separate podcast--Nicky and Mia discuss a new addition to their festival schedule--a forum for choreographers.

Nicky Paraiso is currently Performance Curator at The Club at La MaMa Experimental Theatre, and co-curates (with Mia B. Yoo) La MaMa Moves!, La MaMa’s annual spring dance festival. He has been a prolific actor at La MaMa, and the New York downtown theater and performance scene, since 1979. Paraiso has been a member of Meredith Monk/The House and Vocal Ensemble (1981-1990), touring extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. He has worked as an actor and musical director with playwright/actor/director Jeff Weiss and his partner Carlos Ricardo Martinez since 1979, and has performed with Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks since 1988. Nicky is also a critically-acclaimed solo performance artist, whose one-man shows Asian Boys, Houses and Jewels and House/Boy have been presented at La MaMa ETC, Dixon Place, PS122, Dance Theater Workshop and on tour. House/Boy, originally presented by La MaMa ETC in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company, written & performed by Paraiso and directed by Ralph B. Pena, has been presented as part of the KO Performance Festival’s 15th Anniversary season at Amherst College, at Pillsbury House Theater’s Late-Night Series in Minneapolis (November 2005) and also at the 4th Festival Internacional de Cabaret in Mexico City (June 2006), among other venues. House/Boy was recently presented as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2007 and also in November at the Initiation International Festival 2007 in Singapore. Paraiso's awards include a 1987 BESSIE Award for Performance, a 2004 Spencer Cherashore Fund grant for mid-career actors and a 2005 NY Innovative Theater Award. He was a finalist for the prestigious Cal Arts/Alpert Award in 1998. Nicky is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory, and holds an M.F.A. from New York University's Graduate Acting Program.

Mia B. Yoo is an actress and director who earned her BA in Theatre at Brown University and her MFA in Acting at Columbia University. She has appeared with the Great Jones Repertory Company, the American Repertory Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She is an Artistic Associate at La MaMa e.t.c. and co-curates La MaMa Moves! with Nicky Paraiso.

EVENTS

La MaMa Moves! -- May 2-June 1

Ivy Baldwin Dance at The Club at La MaMa e.t.c., May 2-11, Friday-Saturday, 10pm; Sunday, 5:30pm

For up-to-the-minute calendar and ticketing details, see the link below or call 212-475-7710.

LINKS

La MaMa e.t.c.
http://www.lamama.org/
Click on Dance Festival 2008

Ivy Baldwin Dance
http://www.ivybaldwindance.org

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at
http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

When dizzy critics happen to good performers

It's good for critics to remember that we're humble humans...and ones who must mind our health. Last night, I got a vivid reminder at Club La MaMa when I tried to concentrate on a show that, I'm very sorry to tell you, was up for only one night.

I had no idea how exhausted I was until I realized that while I felt somewhat sleepy over the course of the two-hour show, I felt much more like falling over with dizziness. I've heard too many stories about people who got the flu this winter who started out by feeling dizzy. (And my wife suffered a severe case of vertigo this season.) I'd gotten my flu shot. In the summer of 2006, I was diagnosed with a mild, stable case of a lung disorder and must get the shot each year, although I've always gotten one anyway. But I'd heard that this year's shot doesn't cover every strain that's out there. The good news, today, is that I have not come down with the flu, and I feel somewhat better. I'm going to get more rest and try to make it to Bill T. Jones's Breaking Ground discussion at Harlem Stage tonight.

Now, as for last night's show....to Joseph Keckler (singer, writer and multimedia artist), who presented a monologue named Cat Lady, my apologies. Even through my difficulties, I could tell that you have mad talent, and I look forward to catching up with your work another time. To John Moran (composer) and Saori Tsukada (choreographer), who performed John Moran...and his neighbor Saori, you are both fierce--frighteningly so--just as savvy colleagues had promised. Despite my condition last night, I was impressed, amused and charmed by your visual and sonic ideas, your whimsical and razor-sharp synchronization of sound and mime, and I am prepared to become a huge fan. Would Nicky Paraiso, Club La MaMa's performance curator, have the three of you back, if I ask nice?

For more La MaMa events and information, click here.
Joseph Keckler on MySpace
John Moran and Saori Tsukada on MySpace

Men in motion at Dixon Place

Walking down to Dixon Place last night to see this week's Moving Men program--curated by the amiable Michael Cross Burke--I really absorbed how the Bowery area has changed. (Oh, please! Even I shop at that Whole Foods! But I spent probably no more than fifteen minutes at the New Museum's Open House, drifting past sculpture that looked exactly like the assemblages of homeless people.) Someday, we'll have to say goodbye to the impossible little haven that has been Dixon Place as we've known it and hello to a state-of-the-art performance center--"complete with a bar!"--on Chrystie Street. I'll assume I'll have a real theater seat then (sigh), a printed program so I can follow stuff and identify people (yay!) and a more conventional amount of distance between me and whoever is dancing (oh, well...).

Being extremely close to dancers in action has its charms, and I often wonder how radical audience proximity might change specific types of companies and individual dancers and pieces of choreography for the better. In any case, I loved watching Gabriel Forestieri and Ted Johnson up close, especially to savor how gracefully the tall, imposing, superbly controlled Johnson can move. Up close, you can see the origin of each movement and you think you can even feel his thoughts fire up. Gabe and Ted move like dolphins--the kind of fish trained in contact improv, perhaps--and have an original, niftily-calibrated range of vulnerability and humor in their interactions. I could have watched a whole show of these two men.

Dancing Fish Productions/Megan Sipe offered a triplet of male solos, the last of which--an electric, full-bodied shimmier--was the guy to see. Next time, Megan, make sure your dancers are individually identified.

Miri Park--in the guise of someone named "Stella Ho"--had her cheering section working overtime, but I think a Korean-American woman portraying a flamboyant Black woman pop singer wearing a skintight, spangled dress and flipping her store-bought hair is only notable because--woowee!--it's a Korean-American woman doing it and not, you know, some drag queen. Her act was cute, nothing more.

I had a little concern for Nicky Paraiso whose solo, Song for Bill, quietly followed all the hooting and hollering for "Stella Ho." The piece opened in the dark with the sounds of Nicky playing a piano and, as the lights came up, continued as he sat there with his back to us, tenderly singing a love song. He then danced something by Chris Yon which I will forever think of as the "Chris Yon Postmodern Sort-of-Hula Mime Dance." Visualize Nicky Paraiso looking as much like Chris Yon dancing as a Filipino man can. Kind of strange. But what really got me was Nicky's New York apartment/landlord story with its exploding sink and its downstairs neighbor who lives like a princess and Nicky singing the love song to Bill in his hospital bed. This tale was surprisingly suspenseful, absorbing and, yes, moving. Nicky Paraiso: a moving man, indeed.

The next Moving Men show--featuring works by David Appel, Ojay Morgan, Leslie Guyton and
Kristen Shifferdecker--will be on Wednesday, February 20 at 8pm. For further information and reservations, call 212-219-0736 or click here.