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

What are you reading this summer? Part 3

Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out by Nadine George-Graves (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010)

Nadine George-Graves's comprehensive study of the art of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Urban Bush Women is the gift of an embodied approach to research. She has examined this acclaimed troupe from every possible angle--including from within, taking company class. She backs up her insights with copious details from many examples of Zollar choreography and the artists' extensive community engagement.

Although informed by scholarly theories and methods of analysis, George-Graves's 206-page volume is written for a broad audience and largely free of academic jargon. This important work will benefit anyone with an interest in contemporary Black choreography, indeed, anyone thinking or writing about dance of any kind. But I want to give a strong recommendation to activists for its documentation of the powerful confluence of art, spirituality, healing, community and social justice. And I especially want to see this book in the hands of Black women—even if they never bother with concert dance—for its example of honesty and its celebration of personal and communal agency which, as the author writes, “promotes a relishing of the [Black female] body, trying to take the body back” from the centuries of myths that have obscured it and fostered its exploitation.

STREB: how to become an extreme action hero by Elizabeth Streb (The Feminist Press, 2010)

Elizabeth Streb is an artist of turbulence, one who races towards the unknown and danger and potential disaster with scientific curiosity, drawing inspiration, she says, from “slapstick, accidents and labor.” Not content with the standard issue nomenclature of dance, she seeks to forge her own vocabulary of motion based in personal challenge and investigation. Her company holds events--”events of desire and purpose”--not presentations. Her performers engage in PopAction, not dance. They are extreme action specialists, not dancers. And, yes, they are heroic. Heroes don't stop to ask why, she says. They ask how; they take action.

Since evolution has not yet provided a way for humans to fly unassisted, Streb has decided to take the initiative. Appropriately, with this book, Streb gives us a wild ride—part-memoir, part-manifesto, part-Book of Shadows. Just as her method of making motion avoids transitions, her text avoids predictability. At times, following Streb's turns of mind can be as exhilarating--and, frankly, hair-raising--as watching her troupe at work.

Like John Cage—cited as an influence, along with Harry Houdini, Philippe Petit, sound-barrier-breaker Chuck Yeager and Niagara Falls barrel-jumper Margaret E. Wagenfuhrer—Streb is “frightened of the old ideas.” Trained in conventional dance theater forms—from Humphrey-Weidman and Limón technique to classical ballet—she's after experience that eschews decorative artificiality and zooms in on real moves. Real means irreducible; it belongs to itself and stands for nothing else. It belongs to Now. She brings to this quest a working-class daughter's instincts about why concert dance might appeal only to a select, privileged audience—a situation she's committed to busting open in every possible way. See her “new operating system for audience sovereignty” in which you will recognize very little, if anything, of your current experience of going to the theater.

Elsewhere, she writes, “I want the STREB Extreme Action performances to do something to the audience, to cause a physical reaction so strong that they feel that some of the moves have literally happened to them.”

Heaven help us. But not only is she right on about that, she's right on about what forces might be in play when movement, of any kind, works powerfully for the watcher as well as for the doer. In the absence of that visceral, empathic connection, we have distancing and boredom.

I was struck, too, by a passage in which Streb contrasts the way circus space has been purposefully designed for that spectacle's needs with the circumscribed way dance artists traditionally engage space:

“Movement artists...have always settled for already existing places: opera houses, theater stages, or music halls...presentation spaces designed by others, for other disciplines...the majority of the available visual space, the vacant twenty feet above performers' heads is empty, not used, and mostly ignored.” Of the conventional dance studio, she writes, “What could a body do in such a sterile environment? How could you fly there?”

The photos included here provide wonderful documentation of Streb's early performance career as well as offering a taste of the exciting development of her work. My favorite has got to be Tom Caravaglia's photo of the two performers riding the huge wheel from Revolution (2006) which not only shows their strength but captures a sense of their radically-altered orientation in space, their bold claiming of some of that high void above the ground.

Anna Deavere Smith's foreword is, as you might imagine, a joy to read. These two brilliant, unique artists have become fast friends. Unfortunately, there's the puzzling matter of the transcript with which Streb concludes, and potentially undermines, her book—a half-hour, largely inarticulate Q&A session in which the actor-playwright keeps circling around and trying to press Streb to directly address the issue of her fierce attraction to danger. Just remember, Streb's not big on asking—or answering—why.

Devotion to motion

A few points about Elizabeth Streb, who read from her new memoir/guide--STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero--last night at NoLiTa's McNally Jackson Books:

1) The woman is funny.

2) She's definitely one of a kind, decidedly her own person.

3) She knows a lot of science--and scientists!

4) She's got guts galore.

In summation, she's the coolest thing next to Rachel Maddow. I'm looking forward to this book and to finding out all that went into creating a daring, intellectually curious and pioneering artist who investigates everything from the conventional language of dance to the nature of time.

My adventure in life began with action, 

and I know it will end with action. 

-- Elizabeth Streb

STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero (The Feminist Press, 2010)

ISBN 978-1-55861-656-1

paperback, 144 pp.

Slammin' Streb at McNally Jackson Books (posted August 12)

Walk it like Petit

Learning to Walk in the Slippers of a High-Wire Artist
by Emily B. Hager, The New York Times, August 12, 2010

Slammin' Streb at McNally Jackson Books

From the Twittersphere:

STREBSLAM "STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero" Elizabeth Streb @ McNally Jackson Books 52 Prince St NYC 8/12 7:30 (TODAY!!) :D

Elizabeth Streb Author of STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero (The Feminist Press, $18.95) Elizabeth Streb has been testing the potential of the human body since childhood. Can she fly? Can she run up walls? Can she break through glass? How fast can she go? Combining memoir and theory, Streb conveys how she became an extreme action choreographer, developing a form of movement that’s more NASCAR than modern dance, more boxing than ballet. This book is for those who try or are willing to do just about anything to become a hero in their own way. Streb believes that true movement invention (the rubric of her investigations) happens accidentally with the milling together of strangers and out of the diverse movement voices that accidentally cross paths. Her dance and choreography organization SLAM is the Petrie dish that feeds the possibility for these new forms to emerge.

A sad dispute in our community

One account and one opinion on disturbing developments in STREB, a dance company that I've greatly enjoyed over the years.

Extreme Action, Extreme Dispute
by Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times (July 23, 2007)

How Elizabeth Streb says Thanks
by Paul Ben-Itzak, The Dance Insider (July 5, 2007)

Daniel J. Wakin's original Times piece about deeAnn Nelson's accident:

A Troupe Known for Daredevil Choreography Copes With a Casualty (June 2, 2007)

Benefit Planned for Injured STREB Dancer deeAnn Nelson

(Editor's Note: I was saddened to receive the following message this morning from Terry Dean Bartlett of STREB. Please take note, help if you can, and forward this appeal as widely as possible. Thanks!)

Hello my friends.

I am in the process of securing a venue, help in organizing, etc. for an evening, afternoon, all day? Of dance performances to help out my dear friend, an amazing performer, deeAnn Nelson, of STREB, who broke her back this past weekend, in a fall during a performance. She fractured her L1, and destabilized her spine above that, is going into surgery on Thursday, and will be in pins, rods, screws, and a brace for the next 6 months. Her medical bills will be covered by workman’s comp, but rent, bills etc are going to mount up and I want to help her out in any way I can, and ask if anyone is willing/able to help out a fellow dancer/performer/artist?

I hope to secure a venue within the week, for the Monday or Tuesday the 18th or 19th of June. If anyone can contribute a piece, it would be greatly appreciated, and it will help to raise funds for one of the fiercest performers I’ve ever known.

Do you wanna’ show new work? Great! Wanna’ show a classic/old favorite? Great. Got PR connections? A huge email list? A fabulous theater? Tons of Money, and love dancers? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Drop me a line and let me know if you might be able to contribute to a show that Monday/Tues, (a potential “dark day” at most theaters that we might be able to slide into?) and I will get back to you about the official “When and Where.”

Thank you for all your help. Send your thoughts/prayers/energy/love to deeAnn at Bellevue ICU:

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm Regards
Terry Dean Bartlett

DANCEOFF!

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

DANCEOFF!--the cheeky omnibus series curated by Terry Dean Bartlett and Katie Workum--concluded another season last week at P.S. 122 with work by choreographers Heather McCardle, Nicole Wolcott, Andrew Dinwiddie, Dana Michel and Brian Brooks as well as comic interludes by Nathan Phillips. For the first time, Workum said, neither she nor Bartlett would perform in the show. Why not? Well, besides Bartlett's engagement with his home company--fantabulous STREB, kicking it in SLAMSHOW 9 over in beautiful Williamsburg--the two dancers were simply "too old," Workum joked, for DANCEOFF!

A statement like that is enough to spur the New York Times to publish a piece about ageism in dance (and kudos to the Times for recently taking a couple of whacks at racism and size-ism in dance). DANCEOFF! indeed has a youthful slant towards informality, high energy, sexiness and humor. I don't think you have to be a young hipster to have goofy fun at DANCEOFF! or find something that will continue to intrigue you beyond its moment, but it does help to not take yourself or postmodern dance all that seriously.

DANCEOFF! always introduces me to someone or something of interest, and this time those someones are Dana Michel, a black dancer-choreographer from Montreal with a background in track and touch football, and New York's Andrew Dinwiddie (co-curator of the highly-regarded Catch series, a spinoff of DANCEOFF!, at Galapagos).

Michel, who performed an excerpt from the greater the weight, is a killer soloist who tackles the warped, frenetic and fierce rhythms of her piece with precision and fiery authority. Check her out next time.

Dinwiddie's understated movement in Get Radical! seemed to provide a soft background for the bravura performance of a radio talk show financial advisor holding forth in its accompanying recording. Seems like it should be the other way around, right? Dance backed up or at least embraced by its sound? But even Dinwiddie's choice of this guy's concocted spiel--as theatrical as a preacher's--made me curious to find out whatever else Dinwiddie might have up his sleeve. I like him more for his sensibilities than for his choreography--at least what I can tell from Get Radical!--but I'll be happy to see more.

(c) 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa