Swallowing her whole: Volmir Cordeiro at Danspace Project

Volmir Cordeiro in Inês
(photo: Cristiano Prim)

One day, I met a woman named Inês. I wasn’t satisfied with just looking at her – I wanted to get closer. I immediately put aside my role as an observer and began to live with this “being of flesh.” It wasn’t enough to capture her; I had to swallow her whole.  -- Volmir Cordeiro

The figure you see in the photo above is Inês.

Or perhaps I should say it is Brazil-born dancer Volmir Cordeiro encasing the being of Inês in his rangy, barelegged body in a study named, Inês, presented by and at Danspace Project with Performa.

That's already a lot surrounding a woman who is not there, and this does not even take into account the audience also surrounding a woman who is not there.

Inêssssssss.  The cry of her name issues from Cordeiro's lips like an invocation of an orixá. Or a viper's hiss. Or a spray of rum from the mouth of a macumba priestess. Or all of these things at once.

Inês lives. Yes, an actual person, a sexagenarian and mom. By word of Cordeiro (and a useful post-show Q&A with Miguel Gutierrez and translator Patricia Hoffbauer), we know two other things: 1) She wants to get on a reality TV show. 2) She has had "a radical amount of plastic surgery," as noted by Gutierrez, to make herself a better candidate for elusive and likely ephemeral celebrity.

We must imagine what she looks like. What Cordeiro looks like borders on the wolfish. And when he strides right up to the edge of the audience's front row, right up to the eyeballs there, he can intimidate. Especially since he holds that place of dominance for a long time. Even when swiveling his limbs, or moving sideways along the row or venturing inside an aisle, he's a force that seems to want to pin you in your seat. You don't know what, in the very next second, could burst from him. And you don't want to know.

In your own head, you're walking on eggshells.

Is that Inês?

If so, she seems unbalanced enough to achieve the reality TV stardom she desires.

He/she is reckless with his/her body--especially when Cordeiro tapes his eyelids shut--in ways that make empathic/empathetic people like me cringe.

Is that Inês?

A useful tidbit from Danspace Project's material on Cordeiro (now based in Paris):

Volmir Cordeiro...is currently working on a PhD thesis on figures of marginality in contemporary dance at Paris VIII University. His studies and time spent in the favelas of Rio with Lia Rodrigues’ company reflect a desire to bring to life those who are “condemned to weaken, disappear, derail.” In previous works Cordeiro has explored the physicality of marginal and underprivileged figures.

Inês fascinates her observers, even as she scares them. How strange that her dream is such a flimsy thing, far flimsier than she herself must be.

Final performance of Inês: tonight at 9pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire

Brooklyn Museum 

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Thursday, November 21, 7pm

Nora Chipaumire
after winning 2008 Bessie Award for Choreography
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Wangechi Mutu in her Brooklyn studio, 2012.
Image courtesy of Wangechi Mutu
Photo: Kathryn Parker Almanas

Join artist Wangechi Mutu and dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire as they meet at the intersection of visual art and performance. 

moderated by Performa’s Adrienne Edwards

presented in conjunction with the Performa 13 biennial

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

(map/directions)

Maria Hassabi premieres "PREMIERE" at The Kitchen

Choreographer Maria Hassabi (far left) with members of her troupe--
l-r, Robert Steijn, Andros Zins-Browne, Biba Bell and Hristoula Harakas
(photo by Marialena Marouda)

From Hassabi's PREMIERE
(photo by Paula Court)

The publicist wasn't kidding when he wrote, "The artist and The Kitchen would like for me to remind you that there is absolutely no late seating for this show, so please plan accordingly to be here before 8:00."

As soon as you pass through the set of doors into the performance space for Maria Hassabi's PREMIERE (co-presented by The Kitchen and Performa for Performa 13), you're trapped. With the action--yes, I will use that word--unfolding in front of you, the five performers arrayed between you and those doors, there's no unobtrusive way to get up and walk out. And, any number of times, you might think about walking out, think about fleeing the tedium and the cumulative heat of countless stage lights massed on either side of the performance space. The dancers' movements are incredibly slow and slight; the temperature in the airless room, elevated; and you are uncomfortably aware of everything going on within your own body.

Over ninety straight minutes that feel like ninety minutes indeed, you tilt forward, backward into your seat, list to one side or the other. Your eyes droop. You fan yourself with your program. You hear your neighbors similarly shifting, rustling, coughing. You catch one checking her watch. You check your own watch.

And yet you stay put. Not because you are a Performa type, because maybe you're not. Not because you're self-conscious and/or polite. But because the work--an endurance trial for performers and audience alike--is a knockout.

From Hassabi's PREMIERE
(photo by Paula Court)

You first experience PREMIERE as you enter the space, noticing the dancers rooted in place--Biba Bell and Hristoula Harakas standing, Hassabi, Robert Steijn and Andros Zins-Browne lounging on the floor--all motionless as they face the theater's doors. They maintain that tableau, inside the blaze of hot lights, with their backs to the audience as it settles in. When the last stragglers enter, Kitchen staff close the doors--the only indicator that the time has come to pay serious attention.

You watch for something--anything--to break loose. You feel relief and triumph to notice even just the flow of breath ruffling through a dancer's back, and you search for more of the same. Your outer and inner senses reach out. Despite yourself, you have already begun to live in this dance.

This persists over a long stretch until Harakas breaks the spell with a teeny, tiny twist of one foot. Bell also makes a minute slide or twist that slightly re-positions her body. In time, Zin-Browne's arm, which has been supporting him on the floor, slips backward an inch or so, and so does both of Hassabi's supporting arms. Glacial pace and subtlety in movement get the job done, though. You can look away for a while and look back to find the grouping changed in significant ways. It not only breathes; it evolves.

"Sound, here," I wrote in my notebook, "is color." I cannot say what I meant in that moment, but, so be it. The sole of Bell's ankle boot makes little crackles as it inches along the floor. In the otherwise silent atmosphere, that reaches us like amplified music. This approach to sounds, created by the friction between surfaces, recurs throughout the piece as dancers adjust their grounding. In one part of the dance, a crinkly sound initially seems to issue from one or more of the lights, like a sudden electrical problem. That distracts you until the volume of the noise strengthens and you get the joke. It's part of a recording as is a soft, high voice that appears somewhere and swiftly disappears.

Late in the piece, the blast of light reduces and then gets restored. Maybe you notice, for the first time, the oval pattern of dusty shoe marks--presumably from the audience, but it looks so perfect--that decorates the floor. Maybe you think, "Who's to stop me from napping for the remaining time? Really, who?" Instead, you continue to watch the dancers work their way 'round to their original tableau in which they face the doors through which you now may exit. In their end is their beginning.

Sound design by Alex Waterman
Lighting design by Zack Tinkelman and Maria Hassabi
Styling by threeASFOUR
Dramaturgy by Scott Lyall

PREMIERE continues at The Kitchen through Saturday evening with performances at 8pm. For schedule and ticketing information, click here.

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

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More on The Kitchen

More on Performa 13

Tyler Ashley: orange, effort and opulence

Half-Mythical, Half-Legendary Americanism

Jane Fonda meets Rodchenko in this interactive exploration into the world of Stepanova style, Meyerhold Biomechanics, and 19th century Eastern massive sports demonstrations.

Free to the public and brought to you by Tyler Ashley

A presentation of Performa 11

 

 Saturday, Nov 12 (Noon)

Monday, Nov 14 (5:30pm)

Performance begins on the High Line at West 16th Street and travels south toward The Standard, New York. (map)

 

More about Ashley here:

Tyler Ashley's Performa Piece Under The Standard, New York

PERFORMA internships

Available Positions:

Press and Marketing Internship
Curatorial Internship
Director’s Office Internship

Click for information: Internships • PERFORMA

Performa 11 plans announced

...more than 100 performances, films, radio plays, concerts, and events by some of the world's most exciting contemporary artists, including 12 Performa Commissions, 6 Performa Premieres, and a host of new Performa Projects by established and up-and-coming artists at locations throughout the city.

November 1-21, New York City

Click here to connect with all things Performa!
Performa 11 press release

Tacita Dean remembers Merce

Visual artist and filmmaker Tacita Dean has a beautiful essay on her work with Merce Cunningham in the current issue (October 2009) of Art in America. The issue's not online; so, I can't give you a link, but it's worth picking up a copy.

Look for Remembering: A Tribute to Merce, pages 51-52.

Dean's film Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS... is being screened at Musee d'Art Contemporain (Montreal), now through January 3, 2010. Her film of Craneway Event will debut at Danspace Project, November 5-7, as part of Performa 09.