Give STREB some ACTION! Now!

Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker and activist Catherine Gund (What's On Your Plate?) is currently working with Elizabeth Streb on a film about the life and work of the world-famous "Evil Knievel of dance."

You can learn more about their project here and support it, through Kickstarter, here: STREB: HOW TO BECOME AN EXTREME ACTION HERO. They are more than halfway to their goal of $40,000.

Deadline: August 12, 10:23EDT

Streb, Dalva, Morris

She left this phosphorescent contrail of energy behind her

, said Nancy, remembering Elizabeth, young and dancing.

I have an interest in doing only real moves

, Elizabeth had said.

What's an unreal move?

, Nancy remembers asking.

Today, I know the answer to this question.
It only took me three decades, but I got here!

says Nancy.

I read her book as we would read the Tao Te Ching
--as a book of philosophy

, says Nancy.

When I was about two years old,
I trapped a fly in a mason jar

, says Elizabeth.

Smudgy, wiggly, dirty things leaving smudges on the end of the jar. 
I identified with that.

17, dance class, SUNY Brockport:

I was obsessed with extreme action, 
which is what I thought that fly was doing.

Easy Rider. Off to San Francisco, motorcycle.

What content does movement hold that nothing else contains?

, Elizabeth asked herself.

Dangerous?

A condition that establishes a forcefield...,
says the motion anthropologist, as she calls herself,  
searching for what is true about action, 
what everyone could respond to, 
not just dance people.

I think dancers are holy people.

My dancers...they're spatial artists,
people who can take a hit.

It was important that you heard the sounds we made.

I'm looking for what is the rhythm of action.

In the dance world, we have not developed
a vocabulary for movement; 
we've borrowed from the music world.

Space is not lateral or vertical. 
It's incomprehensible, really.

Starting with questions like...
(and here, Trisha Brown is briefly invoked,
her and her dances from Atlantis).


Looking at dancers,
I wondered why
their base of support was always the soles of their feet, 
why they were always upright

, says the action scientist.

There is some talk of dancers throwing up in the wings,
wiping their mouths,
coming back onstage for more.

In dance, they conceal the exaction of every moment

, says the writer.

Elizabeth reveals what this art form exacts.

What STREB does is really action, 
not dance

, says the action hero.

I believe in virtuosity...
to do something that no one else has been able to do.

Excerpts from a conversation between dance critic Nancy Dalva and action architect Elizabeth Streb of Brooklyn's STREB Extreme Action Company on Leap Year Day, appropriately, at Barnard College

*** 

Nancy Dalva is amusing to listen to, an interviewer who brings her own irrepressible dramatics to the proceedings. As a result, you learn as much about her, really, as about the interviewee, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Watching Dalva and Streb work together--Streb staying very rooted and crystal clear--was quite interesting. I'd say they made an instructive team.

After the talk, I greeted and chatted with Dalva briefly, and she reminded me that passion is what keeps us all committed to this art. "If your heart isn't in it, you might as well pack it in," she said. If you heart isn't in it, there's nothing, we both agreed. And Streb, an exemplar, clearly has never backed down from giving her heart what it most wants.

I thought about Nancy's words again last night when I watched Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM Opera House. MMDG made its audience not just applaud but roar. They roarrr! for Four Saints in Three Acts (2000), Morris' vision of the Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein confection and for the singers and the dancers, his fantastic technicians, like perfect porcelain figurines come to life, deployed with precision, surprising intricacy and buoyancy. And there's Maira Kalman's warm, merry set design that would make anyone--saintly or otherwise--break into dance. 

They roarrr! again at the end of A Choral Fantasy, where Morris applies his sharp ear and wily craft to Beethoven's Fantasia in C minor for Piano, Chorus and Ochestra, Op.80. There were moments in A Choral Fantasy that made me want to say, Wait. What exactly just happened? Can I see that again, please? There's that whirlpool, for instance, that suddenly forms in the middle of streaming lateral lines of dancing, disappears, then manifests again. I drew a rough sketch of this in my notebook, perhaps to be able to convince myself later that it actually did exist. The zippy slipperiness of Morris' arrangements and interactions of dancers can dazzle.

I have to admit, though--at risk of bringing wrath down upon my head--that I've yet to feel personally drawn to Morris' work. That's a matter of the heart, and I seem not to be able to do anything about it. Perhaps there are others who would not connect to the dance and performance that make my heart pound.

Mark Morris Dance Group continues tonight and tomorrow night with 7:30pm performances, likely sold out. Get information here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn

(map/directions)

STREB ascending

If STREB Extreme Action could hold onto the Park Avenue Armory indefinitely, the troupe's new show could easily keep running for years on the strength of New York's tourist trade alone. Oh, yes. STREB: Kiss the Air! is that kind of show and a world-class triumph for the mad genius (MacArthur-certified) Elizabeth Streb ("action architect and choreographer," according to her current self-labeling), her company of "action engineers" (not just dancers, thank you) and a regiment of technical and artistic collaborators. Forget Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and whatever Julie Taymor thought she was doing.  STREB: Kiss the Air! happens to be the real thing.

The visionary Elizabeth Streb steps up to the challenge of the Armory's enormous drill hall, filling it, from one end to the other, with lighting, huge video projections (including live videocam footage), massive scaffolding and equipment, a large, shallow pool of water, big sound and the formidable energy of her tribe of action heroes. She has developed and shown various components of STREB: Kiss the Air! over time, clearly honing and enhancing the choreography and risk-taking until it all stands before us like a mainstream-friendly hybrid of nouveau cirque, movie stunt work and the Olympics cranked up, like that Spinal Tap amp, to 11.

STREB DJ/MC Zaire Baptiste, wearing a row of lights up each leg of his pants, gets the action rolling by instructing us to disregard the standard theater announcement we just heard. "We want you to take out your cellphones, your iPhones! Take photos! Take videos! Upload them to Facebook...!"

How refreshing!

And for the audience--heavy on families with small kids--STREB: Kiss the Air! is refreshing indeed. The souped-up hybridization of everything Americans love--from extreme sports to action hero animations on big screen TVs--works because the discipline and skill necessary to pull it off are so much in evidence. Which makes me wonder if the reason most folks aren't drawn to just-plain-dance is because the actual skill and discipline it takes are not as nakedly obvious unless--as with certain big ballet companies or the Ailey troupe, for instance--it absolutely is. Dance, possibly, might not seem sufficiently hardcore. STREB? Now that's hardcore.

Hardcore and entertaining, not at all averse to showing its audience a good time, even if a good time means sitting there with your heart in your mouth because, at any moment, something could go wrong and someone could get seriously hurt. Elizabeth Streb herself might have started off in the rarified, purist territory of early post-modern experimentation, but today's STREB machine is built for people who love race cars, high-speed car chase scenes and Philippe Petit. It's built for the masses.

The 70-minute, multi-sectioned Armory program opens with harnessed performers, one after another, zooming over the heads of the audience and smacking into big square pads. They move on to Swing, in which bodies hurl--one at a time or in duets or trios--at and swing by two huge hoops dangling from metal scaffolding. Their movements on and around the swings grow more elaborate, their attack more daring, their cries, on impact and landing, more bloodcurdling. And if you somehow forget that these "action engineers" are, in Streb's mind, not just dancers but athletes--or military on maneuvers, even--they get an official break for re-hydration before moving on to a "pop action" drill lead by Associate Artistic Director Fabio Tavares Da Silva. As for that drill, think of it as an edgy kind of aerobics or yoga for action heroes, if repeatedly falling flat on your back were a kind of yoga.

In the daredevil world of STREB, weight and gravity are your frenemies. They make everything at once frustrating, thrilling and terrifying. Hence, the excitement of pulling or dropping away from bungee cords, slamming into mats or into one another, fine-tuning the velocity of a revolving metal ladder, and standing just millimeters away from the end of that ladder as it spins. For the audience, seated along either side of the long expanse of the Armory's drill hall, being close to all this action is a constant source of tension and rush.

Towards the latter part of the show, it can also be a frequent source of hydration--and I don't mean hydration of the healthful kind. Audience members in the mid-range of the hall are (imperfectly) shielded by Plexiglas and rain ponchos for good reason. All the belly flops and backflips in the pool kick up quite a lot of water, and a fair amount of it clears those Plexiglas walls. Hilarious fun to watch from a distance!

Not as much fun to watch at a distance--but still lovely, in its way--is Streb's Human Fountain section where the performers repeatedly climb up and leap from three levels of scaffolding to mats below in rhythmic patterns. This scaffolding is set up at the far end of the space. So if you happen to be closer to the hall's entrance, as my wife and I were, the action looks and feels remote--almost as if you were seated towards the back of a big, conventional theater. That's the only downside to the way Streb has arranged and utilized this great gift of space.

There is absolutely no downside to Elizabeth Streb's courageous Action Engineers: Sarah Callan, Jackie Carlson, Leonardo Giron Torres, Felix Hess, Samantha Jakus, Cassandra Joseph, John Kasten, Daniel Rysak, and Fabio Tavares Da Silva, with additional performers Tyler Ashley, Uys Du Buisson, Jessica Kreuger, CaCa Macedo, Mercedes Searer, McCurry Sherman, Ashley Caroline Walters.

Original music and sound design by David Van Tieghem
Lighting design by Robert Wierzel
Costume design by Andrea Lauer
Projection design by Erik Pearson
Set and installation design by Elizabeth Streb and Hudson Scenic

STREB: Kiss the Air! continues through Thursday, December 22. For complete schedule and ticketing, click here.

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Extreme ladder action

All photos (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

STREB Extreme Action Company performing Ascension, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, on July 9. Location: Gansevoort Plaza, Manhattan

More information on Ascension 
More information on STREB