Get ready for Reker at New York Live Arts

 

Above and below: Steven Reker wrecks his own scenery (photos by Ian Douglas)

 

When it comes to stretching a note, Steven Reker--shown above with a ripped-up floor panel from his new work, Specific Ocean--really, really knows how. The rock musician/dancer/choreographer and his band of dancing musicians and musician/dancers, People Get Ready, are tearing it up at New York Live Arts this weekend. Reker's driving indie rock has a heady intensity, and his choreography, an uncomplicated playfulness and gusto. I wish I could have made out all of the lyrics (or had a lyric sheet), but that's not an insurmountable problem: Just go with it. I'm thinking the sound/movement stuff with the floor panels (like the swinging of corded mics in a previous Reker work) doesn't actually add much though, as you can see from the terrific Ian Douglas photos above, it can be picturesque).

Above: Aaron Mattocks's pas de deux with guitar. Below: Some of the 7-member People Get Ready crew (photos by Ian Douglas)

The band's first album is now available from Brassland Records at Bandcamp! Click here. The show is available at New York Live Arts tonight at 7:30pm, tomorrow at 9:30pm. Info here. If there are tickets to be had, you can get them here.

New York Live Arts

219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan

(directions)

Body and Soul: Listen.: Steven Reker

Steven Reker (photo by Liliana Dirks-Goodman/New York Live Arts), above and in a video clip from WNYC's SoundCheck

                  
Click here to subscribe to Body and Soul podcast in iTunes and listen to the multitalented Steven Reker (dancer, choreographer, musician, songwriter) talk about "creating sonic landscapes" with his band of musicians and dancers, People Get Ready.

People Get Ready/Steven Reker will present the world premiere of Specific Ocean at New York Live Arts (October 18-20). Prior to the October 18th show, there will be a conversation about 'Where Contemporary Dance and Pop Music Intersect in NYC Today" at 6:30pm, moderated by Michael Azerrad. Information and tickets are available here.

Steven Reker bio

People Get Ready Web site

People Get Ready artist page on Brassland

To subscribe to Body and Soul podcast, click here.

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(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Reker's "People Get Ready"

Tonight’s your last chance to see People Get Ready, a performance named for Steven Reker’s tribe of indie musician/dancers, at The Kitchen. So listen up.

Musically, Reker’s mixtape certainly has appeal. What starts off with Reker’s very low-key singing and plinking guitar notes and the gang stomping out the rhythm like trained horses counting with their hooves quickly expands into this primal heartbeat--full-force, deliciously melodic, deeply layered rock. One drawback to totally loving it is, at least in this setting, the indecipherable lyrics. (”a Squandering,” sung very deliberately and clearly, is the exception.) It’s all quite danceable, although the group’s collective and often whimsical choreography and awkward, ineffectual way with video and props--usually manipulating unorthodox light sources--shows no evidence of confidence in the overall design.

But, dance-wise, People Get Ready has high points. The energetic Reker, a well-loved stalwart of “downtown” performance, provides some of that interest in Red Skeleton where he performs a kind of meditative, stop-motion hip hop while plastered against the back wall, a white hipster suspended against its charcoal bricks as if stuck by Velcro. And there’s that boyish smile. Microphone’s dance--a swinging-corded-microphones-like-lassos number choreographed by Reker and his drummer Luke Fasano--has strong, uncomplicated visual impact but wastes it by going on too long and abusing people's tolerance for grating noise. Side Saddle brings together the kickass women of the troupe--Jen Goma, Jessica Cook and Megan Byrne as Reker’s backup singers, perhaps deliberately arranged in line with him, not behind him, for chorus moves that, for the first time, happily align with the pumping, pounding, expansive waves of Reker’s music.

Other members of the troupe include musicians James Rickman and Eddie Crichton who, though generally integrated into the flow of things, mostly stick to making music on the sidelines.

People Get Ready concludes its run tonight at 8pm. For tickets, click here.

Sample songs by People Get Ready on Myspace.

Sample a 2009 performance of People Get Ready at The Kitchen.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)