At water's edge: Jennifer Monson/iLAND presents "ditch"

ditch--presented by Jennifer Monson/iLAND
at South Street Seaport Museum's Melville Gallery
(photo: Brian J. Green)

ditch
by Jennifer Monson/iLAND
River to River Festival 2019
Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum
June 26 and 28

Happy hour at South Street Seaport is for something other than paying attention to post-modern eccentrics dressed in plastic materials like creatures ironically stuck inside reusable shopping bags. On this summer evening, folks pass the seaport museum's site or sit nearby or do whatever they do while Jennifer Monson's dancers do whatever they're doing on the cobblestones and iron steps. For a moment, I turn away from the building and, in a little parklet across the pathway, suddenly spy Monson herself. Her look and her positioning on the pavement suddenly remind me of a more familiar, mundane sighting--a pigeon. Like dancers, pigeons exist among us in the urban ecosystem and, to be honest, most of New York and its tourists pass by and pay them no mind. I recently learned that some people--may they burn in Hell--net loads of our pigeons and haul them out of state to shoot for sport.

When I turn back towards the steps to the museum's Melville Gallery, I see that audience is being admitted for the continuance of Monson's ditch--a multifaceted project motivated by the local effects of Hurricane Sandy (2012). I take a seat up front near one of the room's many wooden columns. The space feels confined; the lighting, dim. There's a dancer already in motion--swiveling, dipping, skittering and plié-ing barefooted and barelegged, her torso encased in a misshapen cube of black plastic with lime-green trim. There's a set up for composer/sound artist Jeff Kolar whose sonic communications, performed live over the course of perhaps 45 minutes, ebb and flow from nearly imperceptible, intermittent blips to deepened, driven pulses.

Three other dancers appear here and there, sometimes wholly or partially obscured by columns that could be an abstract forest of trees or stalks in a hugely-magnified stand of grasses at river's edge. This is home to sensitive, elusive critters who shed their casings and pitch and swirl in imaginary waters and, surprisingly, ace synchronized scarf juggling. Intelligent and, when need be, well-coordinated beings. Ben Demarest's lighting evokes a natural and changing world while also marking this gallery space as a sanctuary--at once, protected and vulnerable.

• View the ditch rehearsal trailer here.

Monson premiered ditch on June 23 at the Lower East Side "ecopark" of Pier 35. At sunrise! How I wish I had been there for that or, later that morning and afternoon, for her iLanding Workshop where participants got to "dance, draw and map based on their observations of the movement and living ecologies of the pier, including birds, mussels, fish, plants, humans and other creatures."

Choreography: Jennifer Monson
Performers: Madeline Mellinger, Kaitlin Fox, Courtney Cooke, Jennifer Monson
Music/sound: Jeff Kolar
Costumes: Susan Becker
Lighting: Ben Demarest

ditch is closed. River to River Festival 2019 concludes today. For information on remaining programs, click here.

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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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On the AstroTurf, somewhat elevated

L to r: Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener perform "r e v e a l" at Elevated Acre
(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

At 1:30pm, all looked serene. Three dancer-collaborators--Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener--wandered onto the AstroTurf at Elevated Acre, a windswept park up an escalator and 'round the back of an office building not far from Wall Street and a noisy heliport on the Hudson.

Kresge and Riener (c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

At first, r e v e a l slowly, even shyly disclosed its eccentric self with the trio repeatedly drawing together and spreading apart, a triangle breathing, stretching, morphing and, for a moment, vanishing. 

Rashaun Mitchell (c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Then Riener buried himself beneath some waxy-looking yellow throw, while Mitchell became a human pretzel propelling and stumbling his way across the fake grass, and Kresge reappeared adorned in black plastic that she worked like some Loie Fuller finery, elegant and dramatic.

Four views of Cori Kresge (c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Silas Riener rising from the "grass" (c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

And then the rain came (c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Wind blew, the sky opened up--at first, taunting, then with increasing vehemence--and most of the audience fled, either back to their offices or to shallow overhangs at the back of 55 Water Street. In heavy downpour, the unperturbed, determined dancers--now dressed in skimpy nude-colored costumes draped in rippling, flame-orange fabric--darted all over the wet AstroTurf. Risky business.

Let's hope the weather r e v e a l s a kinder face on Friday and Saturday (July 5-6), when the trio offer their performance again at 1:30pm, part of this summer's diverse and imaginative River to River Festival. 

But, just in case, pack your brolly.

Free, as always. 

Elevated Acre
55 Water Street, Manhattan
Look for the hot pink River to River flag, and  ride the elevator up.
(map/directions)

From the artists

r e v e a l is a site-specific dance work. It includes transformation, nature, magic, latex, flaying, ecstasy, skin, hair, creatures, monsters, fantasy, aggression, impulses, the future, peristalsis, masks, perception, articulation, control, freedom, exertion, underwater trees, silk, minotaurs, semiotics, aliens, animals, sorcery, urgency, agency, fluency, and the translational acts of communicating through space and movement.

Part of the conceptual and choreographic material for r e v e a l must be attributed to initial explorations that were part of Harrison Atelier’s large-scale installation VEAL, with choreography by Silas Riener in collaboration with Rashaun Mitchell and Cori Kresge.

Angélique Kidjo: "The heat is killing you guys, and I'm having fun!"

Grammy-winning recording artist Angélique Kidjo at Rockefeller Park
(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Ah, yes, the heat.

It's summer. That means it's River to River Festival time. And that means it's Kid-joy time when that bighearted Angélique Kidjo, performer and philanthropist, once again holds court at Manhattan's Rockefeller Park, singing, dancing, playfully making us get up from our chairs to join in the great, transformative work of being completely alive.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Despite this June's tropical clime--or, perhaps, because of it--last evening set the mood for joy as the Benin-born superstar and her band rolled through a 90-minute set of songs. As always, Kidjo brought us the world as she hears and loves it, drawing from the sounds of West, North and South Africa, Brazil, Bollywood, funk--that last represented by her encore, the beloved 1991 tune "Batonga"--and more. Her enthralling voice pierces the air, hooks everyone within earshot and rings us like bells.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Beautiful child, you are so poor

But you dance like a princess and you do as you please

The rich people in the village are furious

"What on earth is going on ?"

Because you dance like a princess and you do as you please

--from "Batonga"

Recalling her father's dedication to providing education for all of his ten children--especially his daughters--Kidjo addressed the youngsters in the audience, saying "You can make choices for yourself....You are part of this moving world." As she does so often, she spoke out against female genital mutilation and violence against women. Her most rousing message, though, came via Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" which, in her voice, becomes an optimistic and unifying call to communal action. She wears it well.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Every audience I've seen totally adores Kidjo, who shows no hesitation to get down off a stage and boogie her way through a thicket of admirers with smartphone cameras, or to bring as many of them up on stage as can safely fit. If you missed her this year, don't do that again. Just don't do it. If  you do, both of us will be mighty mad at you.

(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Keep up with Angélique Kidjo here.

For more River to River summer fun, click here.

Behind the scenes with LMCC and Enrico D. Wey

Great new art doesn't just auto-magically appear during Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's popular River to River Festival (various sites, June 15-July 14). It has to be made, and making it takes space and a fair amount of time. LMCC provides both to artists like Enrico D. Wey, now working on a dance project with a company of four in LMCC's Process Space residency at 125 Maiden Lane. Yesterday afternoon, a small group of visitors got a chance to look under the hood and see how Wey works.

Wey's work-in-progress, targeted for premiere later this year or in 2014, is conceived to be responsive and adjustable to multiple outdoor and traditional indoor venues. In his sample showing, each dancer twisted, slouched and seamlessly flowed through a connected sequence of moves of his or her own or adopted his colleagues' moves. Wey continuously shuffled and recombined dancers and number of moves--"Jeremy, can you learn Mary's 20," "Simon, go to your 75." In a later passage, dancers executed patterns of bending and swaying that, like gazing out at a wind-rustled meadow, made my breath slow down. All of this seemed an ideal way to hook audiences on the notion that contemporary dance can be welcoming and even fun.

To find more opportunities to visit Open Studio showings, and for complete information on River to River's "over 150 events in 30 days at 28 sites," click here.

Prepare for "Le Grand Continental"

This just in from Andy Horwitz, curator, River to River Festival:

Dear Colleagues,

As you probably know, I curate and produce the River To River Festival, Lower Manhattan’s largest, free, multidisciplinary summer arts festival. This summer the River To River Festival, together with The Joyce Theater, will be presenting the U.S. premiere of Le Grand Continental by Montréal-based choreographer Sylvain Émard at the South Street Seaport. This exciting performance brings together 200+ participants of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds – dancers and non-dancers alike – to perform a contemporary re-imagining of a traditional festive line dance. The piece has been performed in Montreal and Mexico City, and in each case the dancers have formed a community unto themselves. We look forward to bringing together a diverse and dynamic group of New Yorkers from all five boroughs to show off what makes our city so great! And we need your help.

We want our call for participants to reach as far and wide as possible and we’d be thrilled if you could help us spread the word. We are looking for people of all ages, ethnicities, orientations and backgrounds, with or without formal dance training – all they need to have is a creative spirit and a sense of fun and adventure! We will be holding information and recruitment sessions on April 4th and 5th. Rehearsals will be two nights a week from April 25th–June 19th with performances June 22-24 on Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport.  Attached is a PDF with all info which we'd love for you to forward to your friends, family, audiences, email lists, Facebook pages, Twitter, etc.–whatever and wherever you feel comfortable–we’d really appreciate it. This is going to be a fun and fantastic project and we look forward to bringing together a great group of people.

Get the info session sign-up form here.

Visit our Facebook event page here.

View videos:

from Montreal
http://www.fta.qc.ca/en/shows/2011/le-continental-xl

http://www.sylvainemard.com/en/creations/le-grand-continental/

from Mexico
http://www.festival.org.mx/fmx/evento.php?i=120

http://fmx-festivaldemexico.blogspot.com/2011/03/el-gran-continental-el-poder-social-de.html

If you have questions, please feel free to email Production Assistant Santino Lo at slo@lmcc.net.

Thanks and all best,
Andy Horwitz

Through the looking glass...

NY Premiere of Looking Glass
by Third Rail Projects

Performed by Tom Pearson, Tara O'Con, Elizabeth Carena, Jennine Willett, Tori Sparks and Marisa Nielsen-Pincus

All photos (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Extraordinary Moves: A Celebration of Dance through Movement, Film and Art at the World Financial Center (River to River Festival)

Giving themselves away at every moment...

A luminous summer evening. Dancers slip through breezecloudsmusic at the river's edge. I still get a powerful little thrill as I look through my photographs.

We Give Ourselves Away at Every Moment: An EVENT for Merce

July 26, 2010--First anniversary of the death of Merce Cunningham

"...we come together to nod in his direction through the ritual of dance itself."

Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City esplanade

a program of the River to River Festival, co-presented by Arts World Financial Center and the Battery Park City Authority

featuring choreography by Jon Kinzel, Lucinda Childs, Susan Marshall, Faye Driscoll and Bill T. Jones. Live music by David Eggar, Geoff Hersh and Kotchy.

curated and produced by Annie-B Parson and Will Knapp

Shemy's "2 kilos of sea"

UPDATE: Since the rain forced Shemy to cancel a few performances last week, she's adding two more this Wednesday--12:30pm and 5pm.

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The John Street United Methodist Church--a city landmark, nestled among lower Manhattan's financial-district towers--is the home of the country's oldest Methodist congregation, established in 1766. (The current building was erected in 1841.) Its people are proud of their history of service to the city--from the Revolutionary War to the Depression to 9/11. And now, its tiny outdoors courtyard is serving art, playing host to a Sitelines project that features Deganit Shemy and Company (continuing today through Thursday).

Israeli-born Shemy inserts her seven dancers into this confined, austere setting, turning it into a theater of sorts in which soft, human flesh conforms to (and messes with) rigid structure and takes on mechanical behavior. You become aware of the vulnerability of bare feet in a narrow patch of wood chips and on thin carpets of Astroturf. But the dancers, dressed in tacky polyester vintage-store clothing,  seem blasted beyond vulnerability--trapped in dissociated or pathologically elated states of mind.


Shemy--remember her Arena and its similarly driven, dissociated, often brutal women athletes?--has an endless well of invention of this sort of stuff. She puts it to use, once again, in this site-specific piece, 2 kilos of sea. Her dancers--the excellent Denisa Musilova, Savina Theodorou, Erika Eichelberger, Nicholas Bruder, Christina Robson, Leah Nelson and Michael Ingle--turn the courtyard into the most grotesque musical jewelry box or Swiss clock ever. Jim Dawson's soundscape gets under your skin.


Mysterious, fragmented, deeply weird and sometimes perplexing, 2 kilos of sea might send some Wall Street area workers back from lunch break with queasy stomachs.

Take your own chances, today through Thursday, at 12:30pm and 5pm; Thursday, only at 12:30. Free!

A co-presentation of the River to River Festival and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Directions

Located at 44 John Street, John Street United Methodist Church is 1.5 blocks east of Broadway between Nassau and William Streets.

Subway: Broadway/Nassau (A & C lines) and Fulton Street (2, 3, 4, and 5 lines). John Street is one block south of Fulton Street.

Bus service: #15 to John Street, #6 to Fulton Street, or The Downtown Connection to South Street Seaport and Fulton Street

Five plan major tribute to Merce

Five Choreographers to Honor Cunningham at River to River Festival

by Julie Bloom, The New York Times, July 1, 2010

Theater all over the place

Presenting New York Theater Where It’s Least Expected
by Erik Piepenburg, The New York Times, July 28, 2009

"We are a dance band!"

Benjy Fox Rosen (left, bottom); Rima Fand (right)
(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Rima Fand (left), Sarah Alden (right)
(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Yes, they are.

That would be Brooklyn's Luminescent Orchestrii, with their waltzes for the proletariat, their mashups of klezmer and Jimi Hendrix, their transformation of what they called Andy Statman's "quiet mandolin thing" with its droning, pleasing dragginess into something raucous, their Yiddish songs that proclaim things like "I can't dance/my shoes are broken/I will dance in my socks!" These musician/singers are peppery and irresistible, and it did my heart good to see a couple of totally unselfconscious dads twirling and frolicking with their joyful tots right in front of the stage. Any band that can get a couple of (presumably straight) guys to cut loose like that will surely stir your weary ass, too.



Rima and Sarah (left); Sxip Shirey (right); Sarah (bottom)
(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Sxip (c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


So, if you missed today's show at World Financial Center Plaza, you can catch Luminescent Orchestrii at Celebrate Brooklyn, where they will open for the Kronos Quartet in a free show on Thursday, July 16 (7:30pm).

Check out some LO music here.

Collaboration on the "Corner"

Here are a handful of my photos from the premiere of Untitled Corner, a site-specific work by Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sánchez Ruíz (choreographers/performers) with Daniel Arsham (visual designer/performer) and Alexis Georgopoulos/ARP (original sound score).

Sitelines 09
at One Chase Manhattan Plaza

All photos (c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Above Chase Manhattan Plaza

Jonah Bokaer & Judith Sánchez Ruíz
in “Untitled Corner”

Bokaer with Daniel Arsham


Untitled Corner will be performed again on July 10, 13 and 17 at 12:30pm and on July 8 and 15 at 7pm.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza faces Nassau Street, between Liberty and Cedar Streets. Take the 2/3/4/5 to Wall Street.

Admission is free. Chairs and other seating options are available, but come early.

Sitelines 09 is a presentation of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the River to River Festival.

John Kelly + Joni Mitchell = !

John Kelly has opened Paved Paradise Redux: The Art of Joni Mitchell--the revival of his stunning cabaret-style impression of the great singer/songwriter--for a limited run at Abrons Arts Center, now through June 27. Take it from this fervent Joni fan, If you've already seen Kelly do his Joni, go back; it will do your heart good. If you've never seen it, now's the time. This is one brilliant artist crossed with another, brilliance squared, and we cannot have too much of that today.

From the romantic, gawky, kinda strange girl in a white tablecloth lace dress singing her increasingly sophisticated art songs to the dramatic, weary, chain-smoking, blue Joni of Act Two, Kelly gets voice, posture, sensitivity, goofiness and even the occasional toothy flash absolutely right. Nice song selection, too, among which "Woodstock"--winkingly re-purposed as "Wigstock"--and other numbers like "A Case of You" and "Down to You" are virtuoso performances, and not just for Kelly's able scaling of steep notes. When Kelly really feels a song, you hear deep into it, and these are songs worth hearing and savoring.

Tickets

On August 6, The River to River Festival presents Kelly's Songs for A Shiny Hot Night: The Joni Mitchell Songbook at Castle Clinton, 7pm. For further details, click here.

Naomi Goldberg Haas: Body and Soul podcast

Today, I visited with Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances for a Variable Population--fifteen dancers who range in age from mid-20s to 80s--at a rehearsal for the premiere of Fanfare at the Whitehall Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry. This twenty-minute work will utilize the terminal's bright, spacious and rather busy waiting room for 12:30pm and 1:30pm performances on June 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26 and 27. Subways: #1 to South Ferry, 4/5 to Bowling Green or R to Whitehall Street.

Admission is free. Just take the stairs or escalators up to the waiting room and look around!

Fanfare is a presentation of Sitelines 09, the summer site-specific performance series produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as part of the River to River Festival.

Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances for a Variable Population

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Sitelines

River to River Festival

MP3 File [Play]

Risa Jaroslow: Body and Soul podcast

Program notes at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Guest info at www.risajaroslow.org. (c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Show notes: Risa Jaroslow: Body and Soul podcast

What do we expect of government in these fraught, transitional times? Choreographer Risa Jaroslow wants to know and has turned the power of asking questions into a new dance involving everyday New Yorkers in the live creation of its soundscape. See the following blog entry, and click on the audioplayer or mp3 link to listen to my Body and Soul podcast interview with Jaroslow.

Risa Jaroslow and Dancers present 311 at New York City's Municipal Building (1 Centre Street) on July 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and 15 at Noon and 1:30pm. These free site-specific and interactive events are commissioned by and presented as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Sitelines '08 series, produced in association with the River to River Festival.

For guest bio, event details, and additional information about Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, click here.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa