Mix it up with Performance Mix, June 10-15 at HERE

Christal Brown
(photo by Kimara Dixon)

Dana Michel
(photo by Valerie Sangin)

What's (and who's) emerging this spring at Performance Mix, Tuesday-Sunday, June 10-15?

Mix it up with the likes of Celeste Hastings/The Butoh Rockettes in Victoria’s Shadow, "an over the top abstract otherworldly murder/soap/mystery...incorporating chorus lines, the butoh dance medium with layers of social/political commentary and ideas of reincarnation." Or maybe Magdalene San Millan and Chelsea Murphy, billed as "two crazy motherfuckers trying to change the modern dance world right before your very eyes.” Or how about Victoria Libertore who, once upon a time, did some serious research into the life and times of a female serial killer?

So far, none of these folks sound tame. And there's more: Christal Brown, Dana Michel, Emily Faulkner, Rebecca Patek, Antonio Ramos....

Connect with Performance Mix, the annual presentation of Karen Bernard's New Dance Alliance, by clicking here.

HERE Arts Center
145 Avenue of the Americas (entrance on Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

This show should make you tappy!

Tap is an exuberant part of the New York City dance mix and, appropriately, you'll find it in all its glory at the 27th Performance Mix Festival. On Sunday, April 14th, join host and longtime tap wiz/producer/historian Jane Goldberg for an afternoon of RHYTHM´N SCHMOOZE.

Roxane Butterfly (photo by Leslie  Lyons)

The program features performances by dancers Michela Marino Lerman, Roxane Butterfly and Cheryl Johnson.

3pm

The Flea Theater
41 White Street (Tribeca)
(map/directions)

For programming and ticket information for Goldberg's RHYTHM 'N SCHMOOZE and all things Performance Mix, just click here.

Karen Bernard's "Mix"

luciana achugar (Photo: Michael Mahalchick)

Nami Yamamoto (Photo: Julien Jourdes)

The famed Performance Mix Festival--presented by Karen Bernard's New Dance Alliance in association with Joyce SoHo--opens its 26th annual program, March 13-18.

It's a huge lineup featuring Daniel Linehan, Nami Yamamoto, luciana achugar and Johanna S. Meyer among many other contemporary dancemakers including artists from Canada, Poland and the Netherlands.

Performance Mix Festival promotes interdisciplinary work through performances, informal artist/audience receptions and special events.

For further information, see these helpful links:

Artist Bios

Full schedule and ticket information

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

In the "Mix"

Karen Bernard's Performance Mix Festival 2011 continues mixing it up at Dixon Place through Sunday. Happy 25th Anniversary to both the fest and to DP for surviving in this tough town by throwing hearts, minds and doors open to adventure. Not quite knowing what to expect is considered something of a virtue at both DP and Le Mix, and last night's mashup--with work by Dawn Springer, Shree "Shyam" Das, Myra Bazell and Lindsay Browning, Kai Lossogott and Mduduzi Nyembe, and Isabel Lewis--proved to be no exception.

For me, there were two takeaways. Composer-musician Shree "Shyam" Das's Serenity to Madness, and Back--a coursing, ghost-ridden electronic piece maybe a bit too lengthy, ultimately, and too pretty for madness--might have been the evening's most captivating "dance," oddly enough, for the elaborate, precision hand movements he used to interact with his equipment. This sound wizard was rivaled only by the fascinating performance of Lindsay Browning in Molt (directed by Myra Bazell with Bazell-Browning choreography), hissing, trembling and, yes, molting out of her strapped-on tulle hoop skirt, rolling like tumbleweed and helplessly arcing into ecstasy and oblivion and, it would appear, liquefaction. The work uses a version of Johnny Mathis's 1957 tune "Wild is the Wind"--not the great Nina Simone cover, a song like a seal upon my soul, but welcome nonetheless.

Showtime: 7:30pm, tonight through Sunday. General information about the Mix's remaining and, as always, multifarious events can be found here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(directions)

Get in the Mix

New Dance Alliance's 25th Anniversary Performance Mix Festival presents experimental dance and interdisciplinary performance from New York City, across the U.S. and Canada and beyond. Performance Mix Festival 2011 application is on-line now and due (postmarked) June 1st.

Layard Thompson's warrior ways

Performance, if done right, is shamanism--skillfully skateboarding that sweet, demilitarized zone between worlds and tipping over either border with just the right combination of courage, childlike trust and sheer insouciance. That's why Layard Thompson--shapeshifting dancer and Deborah Hay mentee--stood head and fairy-dusted shoulders above anyone else on the Performance Mix program this week at Joyce SoHo. (Claudia La Rocco lays it out pretty clearly in her Times piece today.) Performing The Warrior--his adaptation of Hay's The Runner--looks as if he has either escaped from a ballet school or invaded one with a pair of scissors as his weapon of choice. He's a rebel...and his face is a mess. Not only does he run with scissors--defying worrying mothers everywhere--but he wields them with glamour and simmering menace that feels as if they are generated from deep within as opposed to being contrived and applied from the outside. In a time when a young audience for contemporary dance seems content with hip, wacky absurdities as sources of easy laughs and easy shocks, Thompson gives us the shocks that catch those laughs in our throats and make us wonder if those flimsy seats we're sitting on might give way and slip us into the chaos. Best of that Mix program because he's convincing, a true star--Layard Thompson.

Mobile Clubbing!

The 2008 Performance Mix Festival is in the works for early spring with an international feast of experimental dance, music, video and multidisciplinary work. That's cool enough, but what's this Mobile Clubbing deal I'm reading about?

Well, grab your MP3 player and just show up at Foley Square (near City Hall) at 12:30pm on either Thursday, March 27 or Thursday, April 3, and you can make of Mobile Clubbing whatever you'd like it to be.

It's described as "a spontaneous gathering for dance...a matter of personal identity: you dance the way you want, and listen to the music you choose."

I don't know about you, but to me this is pure catnip!

RSVP to 29friendsdancing@gmail.com

And for further information about Performance Mix's extensive schedule (two weeks, four locations, fifteen events), click here.