Rosie Herrera work featured in Limón season at The Joyce

Limón Dance Company performs The Unsung
(photo: Beatriz Schiller)

Amid the historic repertory of José Limón--Missa Brevis, premiered in 1958, and The Unsung, from 1971--Limón Dance Company has added an edgy splash of color and razzledazz to Program A of its new season at The Joyce Theater. It's the New York premiere of Querida Herida (2017), a women's trio by Rosie Herrera, a Miami-based, Cuban-American choreographer. Its clever title translates as dear (or beloved) wound, and its mischief stands out in a program that otherwise underscores the Mexico-born José Limón's earnest focus on the heroism embedded in our common humanity.

For instance, in The Unsung's signature opening ensemble, Limón envisioned a ceremony of beautiful men, each dancer named for an indigenous warrior chief--Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Tecumseh and so forth--something that might raise eyebrows if created today, say, by a white dancemaker. The gorgeousness of the group's work, though, is unquestionable. The patterns of their communal dancing are rich in rigorous geometric structure, and their well-ordered footfalls provide the only music, a bracing percussion reminiscent of Native American drumming.

Missa Brevis--set to Zoltán Kodály's Missa Brevis in Tempore Belli--salutes the endurance of survivors of war-torn Poland and what Limón called their "heroic serenity." He said, "I'm going to do a dance about it--in the ruins I found a dance." He forged a prayerful congregation who become their prayers, whose bodies transform into rung church bells. Made by artistic director and former Limón dancer Colin Connor, The Body is a House without Walls (2017), with its atmosphere of heroic grief and release, fits well with Limón modern dance aesthetics while lacking the boldface visual clarity that makes Limón's craft still affecting even as contemporary dance speaks to us in newer ways.

Which brings me around to Herrera and her beloved--artfully concealed, artfully revealed--wounds. How to take a work that careens between being barely there and over-the-top? Where two women cling to each other, dancing slow drags to Cuban music as if half-asleep, periodically unzipping parts of their skintight, midnight-black gowns as if slicing satiny, raspberry-red gashes into each other's flesh? Where, one minute, there's fake nudity (a dancer stripped down to a pale-colored leotard), and another, the women suddenly cavort in gleaming, gold-spangled party dresses? Where the lovers grapple and shove, leaving one vanquished and abandoned? Where an arterial ribbon of red spans the stage like a guide wire as a third dancer crosses that space in increasingly whimsical ways? How to take a work that makes some viewers chuckle at absurdity while others cringe at violence? And where some might very well do both at the same time? Where can we locate Herrera's fugitive tone and her intent?

Like the bright, picturesque wounds its dancers inflict upon each other, Querida Herida ruptures the sobriety and solemnity of Program A. Is this a good thing? Perhaps. Is it a different take on life and humanity from a Latinx artist of a new generation, new outlook? Something to ponder. Audiences who attend Program B and C--which, respectively, introduce New York premieres by Adam Barruch and Yin Yue--will get to ponder how these young choreographers affect the overall balance and alchemy of the Limón season.

Limón Dance Company: Jacqueline Buines, Terrence D. M. Diable, Angela Falk, Tanner Myles Huseman, David Glista, Logan Frances Kruger, Alex McBride, Brenna Monroe-Cook, Jesse Obremski, Frances Samson, Savannah Spratt, Mark Willis; apprentices Deepa Liegel and Malik Williams

Guest dancers: Carolina Avendano,Terry Springer, Kristen Foote and Julian Nichols

Limón Dance Company continues through Sunday, May 13 on the following schedule:

PROGRAM A:
Thursday at 8pm
The Unsung (José Limón)
The Body Is a House Without Walls (Colin Connor)
Querida Herida (Rosie Herrera)
Missa Brevis (José Limón)

PROGRAM B:

Friday at 8pm and Saturday at 2pm (family matinee)
The Unsung (José Limón)
The Body Is a House Without Walls (Colin Connor)
Conjurations (Adam Barruch)
Missa Brevis (José Limón)

PROGRAM C:

Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm
The Unsung (José Limón)
The Body Is a House Without Walls (Colin Connor)
No Room For Wandering (Yin Yue)
Missa Brevis (José Limón)

For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eight Avenue (corner of 19th Street), Manhattan
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"Dining" with Rosie Herrera...and Bausch

Making up my mind about Rosie Herrera--who offered the New York premiere of Dining Alone this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center--turns out to be a work in progress. This morning, I'm still at it. Welcome to my process.

Herrera is shrewd enough to color a corner of her ensemble piece with a jazz instrumental of the Jimi Hendrix's slow-simmering "Hey Joe"--sounds like Robert Glasper at the piano, but I'm not sure--so that it slips a hook into you, warmly percolating, just a sliver above subliminal. There's a moment of "Oh, wait...I know that song." Then you remember the disturbing lyrics of the original tune ("...where you goin' with that gun in your hand? I'm goin' down to shoot my old lady, you know I caught her messin' 'round with another man...."). Well played. There are other smart, fresh moves in Dining Alone--for one, its opening gambit places the suave Octavio Campos, steadily if inaudibly holding forth, at the head of a long dining table lined by cardboard-cutouts guests--but I'm not sure it's all quite enough.

Herrera hails from what she calls the "Cuban ghetto" of Hialeah in Miami. For her vivid dance theater in Dining Alone, she chooses to mine that world and popular culture for its passionate preoccupations and cheesy excesses. Love seems a delicious danger, a delirious indulgence and a fundamental necessity all at once. No narrow, post-modern bed, this: It's roomy. Straight-up Rachmaninoff and Eric Carmen's power-ballad changes on Rachmaninoff are both welcome, because Herrera's got to keep slipping you that one something more. Of course. White dinner plates, when not creating transitory pathways for moonstruck sonamubulists, spin on edge and clatter, clatter, clatter to novel visual and aural effect. The episodic Dining Alone "reads" like magical realism, like a fever dream amid bouts of red-eyed tossing and turning.

And I like this about it. I just wish the ghost of Pina Bausch would lift away and leave Herrera to devise her own ways of doing things. I'm looking at Dining Alone and thinking way too much about Bausch: Would or wouldn't Pina do this or that? And, if so, would she do it in this way? So, after watching Dining Alone, I was startled to pick up a Dance Magazine profile in which Herrera described herself as follows: "If Pina Bausch and Michael Jackson had had a baby...."

Okay, one thing I know: I'm eager to see Herrera step out and test the strengths of her own vision, push the choreographic and visual design elements much further.

With performances by Campos, Ivonne Batanero, Leah Verier-Dunn, Liony Garcia, Katie Stirman, Raymond Storms, Melissa Toogood and Fernando Landeros. Lighting by David Ferri.

Closed April 19.

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Where in the world is Eva Yaa Asantewaa?

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo by Deborah Feller)

Well, back home in New York City, for one thing!

But also look for me at...

This. Witness Relocation's Eterniday at La MaMa. Info/tickets here.

Bebe Miller Company: A History--co-presented by 651 Arts and New York Live Arts at Brooklyn's Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at LIU. I'll be moderating a "Stay Late" post-performance sit-down with Bebe and collaborators this Friday, April 12. For program and ticket information, click here and here.

I hope to attend Deirdre Towers' film screening and salute to the producers, artists and educators of the US flamenco community. Monday, April 15, 6pm, at Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. ​For information on this free event and the library's exhibit, 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, click here.

My project-driven Writing on Dance 2013 takes off at New York Live Arts next Wednesday afternoon with a full house of new students. Also, I'll pretty much be living at New York Live Arts on Wednesday for the opening of that visionary series, Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks ("A five-day festival of arts and ideas exploring the mind-body connection through the works of the acclaimed neurologist"). My first WOD session will be sandwiched between the panel on "Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioperception" and the evening keynote with two of my heroes--Dr. Sacks and Bill T. Jones. And the following day, I cannot afford to miss "Minding the Dancing Body" with Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë and Gwen Welliver, followed by the performance of RE: Awakenings by Donna Uchizono Company. While that's probably all I'll get to, that's not all that's happening. For details on the full series of special events here.

Speaking of Writing on Dance: Last year, I was delighted to have the accomplished, Argentinian dance artist and educator Anabella Lenzu in my workshop, and she will be returning for this year's series. Anabella has just self-published a book about her life and career--Unveiling Motion and Emotion--which includes her forthright thoughts on dance education, dance community and more (as well as some striking photography by her husband, Todd Carroll). So, you'll also find me dipping into this, now and then. Presented in English and in Spanish, her writing is just like her: warm and sincere with an underlying tenacity born of a drive to become the best she can be, as artist and as communicator, in the service of dance and dancers. For information on her book, click here.

I look forward to Miami-based choreographer Rosie Herrera's New York premiere of Dining Alone at Baryshnikov Arts Center (a surreal work of "immersive dance theater," somehow involving food and an opera singer...hmmm). It's running April 18-19, and a new show has been added. Find out more here.

My Image and Psyche workshops on Tarot and psychic development continue at our wonderful East Village location. On Saturday, April 27 (Image and Psyche, Part 2), we'll experiment with dynamic layouts and the intriguingly varied, Trickster-ish reversed cards. On Saturday, May 4, I plan to repeat Part 1. For complete information and to register for a place in these fun and enlightening workshops, see my listings on Facebook for April 27 and May 4.

On May 21, artists Larissa Velez-Jackson, iele paloumpis, Katy Pyle and others at Lobby Talks (New York Live Arts--in the lobby, natch) for "Identity Matters: Persona and Politics," curated by Marissa L. Perel.  ("Choreographers, directors, and critics discuss contemporary issues in identity politics, and how these issues shape perceptions of persona and embodiment.") Free. Just show up for the 7:30 start time and grab a chair.

Oh, there's bound to be more. But--whew!--that's enough news for now. See you around town!