Rethorst: Make yourself at home

Here's the link to my Dance Magazine review of "Susan Rethorst: Retro(intro)spective," a series of events curated by Melinda Ring at Danspace Project, May 9-June 18.

Wishing upon stars: Rethorst's "Beau Regard"

An apparition out of the past--to be specific, an apparition out of 1989, a year I hold in high regard for my own reasons--Susan Rethorst's Beau Regard drifts in and out of one's conscious awareness. Sculpted partly by the choreographer's episodic whimsy, partly by Carol Mullins' confident, sublime lighting touch, partly by the dashes and splashes of music and a ground of silence, it comes and goes. Mainly its gestures, relationships and narratives inhabit subterranean, subcutaneous and distinctly subconscious space. A delicate and timeless thing, it fits the very notion of Retro(intro)spective, the Rethorst-focused series christened by PLATFORM 2011 curator Melinda Ring.

Its gentle charm softens you up, its clarity of execution makes you trust it even as the language escapes you or, at least, your conscious mind.  The main performances by Vicky Shick, Jodi Melnick, Iréne Hultman Monti, Rebecca Brooks and Noami Fall make of Danspace Project's home, St. Mark's Church sanctuary, a sanctuary indeed, a house of worship of goddesses ancient, classical, Romantic and everyday. I must say I found it a tad unnerving, almost too hushed in its most quiet moments, but I could sense my neighbors listening not just looking, as if forbidden to giggle in church or afraid to miss any exquisite, if esoteric, detail.

When you wish upon a star, you're graced by the women, a spectrum of generations, who perform in this piece. Men eventually appear, too, late in the course of things: Benjamin Ford Asriel, Neil Greenberg and Jon Kinzel, good sports who drew the audience's only chuckles last night and made me wonder what story Rethorst might be telling about the male of the species. Their costumes--tomato-red shirts and slacks with dark blue slacks awkwardly, comically belted and strapped to the front of their lower bodies--suggests an underlying, blunt vitality masked by superficial nobility and authority. The dawning of patriarchy is a goof. Not necessarily Rethorst's idea, though; just a thought from a watcher of symbols and colors.

Beau Regard continues tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm. For more information and ticketing--as well as additional information on the remaining Susan Rethorst: Retro(intro)spective events, click here. 

Danspace Project
Second Avenue at 10th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Startin' somethin'

Judy Hussie-Taylor's Danspace Project is going all out, busting out the pleasure, the humor, the joy. No shame in this, my friends, because in godawful times--which is definitely where we find ourselves now--we need to hold on to what's best about us as humans, or what's the point?

Dancer-choreographers Michelle Dorrance and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards are sharing a show--curated, with wicked glee, by David Parker--that explodes St. Mark's Sanctuary with the excitement of tap dance. I cannot say for sure that tap dance has never shown up at Danspace Project but, certainly, it has never shown up there quite like this.

So, first reason to go, if you can get in: Parker and his artists are making dance history. Second reason: If you don't know these two women--and, if so, where the hell have you been?--it's time to catch up with them. They be slammin'. There's Sumbry-Edwards, a paragon of authority and earthy glamour, the woman who taught Michael Jackson to tap dance and pays tribute to him here with her Blood on the Dance Floor ensemble. The punk-geek Dorrance, with her stylistic penchant for all things goofy, off-kilter and marginal, brings a fresh explorer's vision to dance-making within an art form with closely held traditions, and she's got serious chops as a dancer, too.

I insist that you become acquainted with young dancers like Cartier Williams (a mighty bantam) and Caleb Teicher (oh, my...what grace, what ease, what potential stardom) as well as rangy, mile-high Ryan P. Casey and his wonderful partner Elena Steponaitis who dance Dorrance's rag duet in Dorrance's a petite suite.

Tickets are sold out, but there's a waiting list! Check it out here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
Second Avenue and Tenth Street, Manhattan

House of Olinghouse

Absolutely no advance tickets remain for Cori Olinghouse's voix de ville, but don't hesitate to get on the waiting list! You'd be mad to miss a chance to see this show, part of PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness, at Danspace Project.

Before I go further, let's get another layer of titling out of the way: DP ED Judy Hussie-Taylor--wearing her curator's hat this time--has labeled her chosen PLATFORM sequence "Part 1--Absurdity & Wit." All of this sounds impossibly clunky to my ears, but it really doesn't matter what Hussie-Taylor or her fellow PLATFORM curators call this or anything else. They have turned New York's contemporary dance scene upside down by radically expanding the nature of work we usually envision in the sanctuary of St. Mark's.

The lush jewel box of voix de ville ("voices of the city") contains three gems. Olinghouse's opener--The Animal Suite: Experiments in Vaudeville and Shapeshifting--deserves a more relaxed title. But its actual execution is pure, lapidarian grace. It lifts the audience away from time and into a fanciful world where vaudeville, eccentric, postmodern and house dance overlap, where gender identity ebbs and flows, and where fairytale birds and bears may coexist in peaceable spirit. The five-member cast is perfect--especially exquisite Olinghouse and Neal Beasley, whose Keatonesque-Chaplinesque dancing is a tasty joy.

(I think you'll enjoy this conversation between Olinghouse and MIT professor, writer and performer Thomas DeFrantz: Click here.)

The eccentrically-costumed Kota Yamazaki dances Itsuko san--part-Butoh, part-drag-from-hell, part fever dream--as splashes and splotches of music whimsically flare up and depart. His locomotion gets him from here to there but never through a straight path or with deliberate steps, and the dance just slips away, evaporates at the end. Quite right.

Elements of Vogue--created and performed by the truly legendary Archie Burnett (Olinghouse's master teacher) and Javier Ninja of the House of Ninja--ends the evening with a real house dance bang. Ninja is comically robotic and fussy to Burnett's sexy earthiness, but they both move with astonishing conviction and power.

Try to see voix de ville at Danspace Project tonight or tomorrow at 8pm. More information here and ticketing info here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
Second Avenue and 10th Street, Manhattan