Get ready for '(W/HOLE)" at Invisible Dog

AORTA Films and the A.O. Movement Collective proudly present (W/HOLE), an artful work of queer-feminist--if otherwise uncharacterizable--porn commissioned by The Invisible Dog and sure to be a highlight of its season.

Directed by Mahx Capacity, this evening-length film is handsome in choreography, performance and camera work, sometimes sunlight bright, sometimes dungeon dark, with robust poetry and wit. From a symphony of f-bombing in all its expressive permutations to an extended sex scene where watchful attendants--as elusive as black-clad kuroko--hold glass spray bottles at the ready, keeping the lovers moist and dewy. The way the cast affirms that every body, and everything about the body, is erotic can be both amusing and profound. Leave it to dancers to come up with something like this.

(W/HOLE) runs at The Invisible Dog on Friday, January 4 (9pm), Saturday, January 5 (7pm) and Sunday, January 6 (2pm and 7pm). Hurry for tickets, though. They're selling fast. Click here.

The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street (between Smith Street and Boerum Place), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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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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Dance artists exploring new directions: Thank you!

Many thanks to my excellent guest panelists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--who shared their experience and knowledge last evening at Gibney Dance. From the centrality of investing in sisterhood and partnering with community, to the courage to claim room in a city's public spaces for the practice of pleasure, to the challenges of funding and marketing an unusually multifaceted project, these three artists offered stories of adventurous questioning and questing that can inspire our own work and lives.

"The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"

– essay by Audre Lorde, 1984

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives will return to Gibney Dance on Monday, December 7 (6-8pm) with a new group of panelists to be announced here within the next several days.

Remember, these conversations are free and open to all. Your pre-registration--via a Gibney Dance site to come--will help us plan for the best space, but walk-ins are certainly welcome. Help us spread the word, and bring your friends and colleagues!

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Not the Master's Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Join me and three dynamic dance artists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--for the next Center Line program at Gibney Dance:

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives

Tuesday, November 3 (6-8pm)

moderated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

("The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House" – essay by Audre Lorde, 1984)

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

 Admission free with RSVP here

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

The maximal A.O. Movement Collective

Above, Lillie De and below, Ariel Speedwagon
in scenes from ETLE and the Anders
(photos: Alex Escalante)

You know how it is when you first open a sci-fi or fantasy novel and, right away, you're plunged into a world teeming with characters, creatures, exotic place names, complicated back stories, unfamiliar languages, ideas and values? It can be jarring, overwhelming. You need a little time to acclimate.

The ETLE Universe--a massive project shaped by feminist and queer thought, three years in the making by Sarah A.O. Rosner and her A.O. Movement Collective--reminds me of that experience. I have dipped into just one portion of it--ETLE and the Anders, a performance set in Clinton Hill's Loft 172. To use a Rosner term of choice, it is maximalist.

My best guess is that ETLE and the Anders is a schematic of what it might look like, sound like and feel like to have any number of universes rushing at you all at once. And I believe Rosner and her collaborators take this to be necessary training for a coming world that awaits our evolution--or maybe a world that's already here, waiting to be noticed.

I don't feel moved to describe most of what happens in this piece. Go have your own experience, please. But here are some things I'm still thinking about.

It would be limiting to call ETLE and the Anders a dance work, just as it would be limiting to ignore the way ETLE universality encompasses everything from dance to gaming to fashion to photography to shopping to porn. (That's right, thanks to ETLE, Rosner's bio now reads: "choreographer, pornographer, and radical arts businessman....") Nevertheless, bodies and movement carry the main charge and main interest in ETLE and the Anders--some of the most diverse, unconventional, in-your-face bodies in professional dance and some of the most prodigious energy. Rosner thrills us with the momentum and sound of these bodies rushing through air and making contact with the floor. When her dancers run the ring of their space, the breeze hitting the audience is pretty damn maximal.

They execute movements and movement patterns in a big, open way. Heroic. Also somewhat predatory. Not afraid of being large and in charge. Not afraid of the body. Not afraid of any body. They jabber and shout. They build and deconstruct imagery with a speed that will make you question whether you saw what you just saw, and they fracture your ability to attend to any one thing at any one time. Destructive of boundaries, expressive of multiplicity, they require that you release your own hold on form and focus and certainty.

The mysterious ETLE--unseen but referenced as "she" and "her," and maybe those pronouns should be capitalized--appears to be driving what will turn into sacred erotic ceremony, centered in the stately Anna Adams Stark. Coordinating Anders efficiently arranged the audience closer to peer through the transparent windows of a vinyl enclosure.

Here, performer Lillie De--who also serves as the collective's manager, we're told--guided our way. With De in the spotlight, I felt the tone shift, and a handle present itself to me. I needed a handle, a way into this work. It seemed to come in the note of irony she introduced.

But even that irony quickly fell apart. No sooner did De draw chuckles from some of us than orgasmic ecstasy buffeted and wrenched her.

Each time we hurl our bodies through space, we have shifted the universe.... Our bodies are time machines...."

Let yourself go! Let your Future Self in!

Suddenly, dancers sailed past us, naked or nearly so. Inside the clear vinyl enclosure, Ariel Speedwagon--dressed in a long, medieval tunic, arms stretched out from her sides--revolved and whirled to the martial cadence of Idgy Dean's live percussion. For a brief moment--everything ETLE flares, shimmers and becomes something else--wary dancers patrolled the enclosure, baseball bats in hand, tough attitudes in place. Baseball bats seem kind of old school for sci-fi, don't they? But the sight of them was both amusing and entirely convincing. We get the message. I have never seen a better protected ceremonial site.

ETLE and the Anders is a fascinating experience, but I won't pass judgment on it in isolation from a web of manifestations that I won't have the chance to experience. See for yourself. The ETLE Universe continues, through October 10, with three weeks of performances, parties, screenings, workshops and much more. For a schedule of ETLE and the Anders performances and a guide to the entire ETLE universe of events and resources, click here.

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ETLE and the Anders performers: Lillie De, Anna Adams Stark, Aya Wilson, Ariel Speedwagon, Eli Steffen and Tara Aisha Willis with Tony Carlson, massima selene desire, Benedict Nguyen, and Jax Jackson. Music by Idgy Dean. Costumes by Walter Dundervill and Jeff Poulin. Lighting by Vincent Vigilante. Video and installation by Andre Azevedo + Caitlin Rose Sweet. Set designed by Sarah A.O. Rosner and created by Abigail Lloyd

Loft 172
166 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

You, too, can create a universe: Sarah A.O. Rosner's ETLE

Sarah A.O. Rosner: Creating a New Queer Universe
by Marcie Bianco, Lambda Literary, January 19, 2014

Who--or WTF--is ETLE?

I found this in my inbox today.

It's more than a little unnerving. Truthfully, I don't know what to make of it.

Maybe you do...?

Feel compelled to figure this out? Click here.

Culturebot’s got the EPHEMERAL EVIDENCE

Arturo Vidich, Sarah A.O. Rosner and Witness Relocation's Dan Safer, Kaz Phillips Safer and Mike Mikos are just a handful of the hardrockers involved in EPHEMERAL EVIDENCE, Culturebot's multifaceted extravaganza at Exit Art.

Ephemeral Evidence consists of a series of collaborative explorations between writers and performing artists to investigate the relationship between practice and skill in performance-making, object-making and context. We propose an experiment in which objects are created directly from the result of the performing artist’s practice--their skilled application of learned techniques. Does the object, existing as residue of the ephemeral event, gain meaning as document or value object in itself? Both? How does the critical dialogue around the performance process and object inform our perception and valuation of the art?

The installations will be durational throughout the day with culminating performances at 5PM.  

Read more here.

Tuesday, April 17-Saturday, April 21

Exit Art
475 Tenth Avenue (at 36th Street), Manhattan
(directions/map)

The urgent A.O. herself!

The resourceful Sarah A.O. Rosner gets profiled by New York Live Arts blog here.

Objects in the mirror...

By far, the foxiest, scariest object on hand at Object as Performer, a program of videos and dances curated by Sarah Dahnke, is actually two objects--a needle and thread in the hands of dancers Anna Adams Stark and Emily Skillings in barrish (curation #4). This work-in-progress, choreographed by Sarah A. O. Rosner in development with various pairs of dancers, begins in the lobby at Center for Performance Research while the audience waits to be admitted to CPR's studio.

Since the women's movements are so small, close and intimate, this prelude of sorts serves to shift the crowd's consciousness, taking watchers from the energy of the urban nighttime streets to something quieter, more sensual. But with a distinct edge. After all, we're watching that always-threatening sewing needle, the implication of piercing flesh. We watch the women sew together a patch of each of their lightweight, stretchy shirts, winding the length of thread around that point of connection. Each one them pulls back from this curious suture, making visible lines of force between them as they move, externalizing their interdependence, their balance and imbalance, their support and risk.

This provocative interaction continues and is expanded after the audience enters the studio but, this time, with the sculptural beauty and enhanced implications of full and partial nudity.

Object as Performer--including works by Rebecca Davis, Juri Onuki and Abigail Levine--concludes with this evening's performance at 8pm. For more information, click here.

Be sure to wear warm socks. You will be required to remove your shoes before entering the studio; the temperature is decidedly chilly and the program, long.

Center for Performance Research
361 Manhattan Avenue (between Jackson and Withers Streets), Brooklyn
(directions)

Find me...

Me (photo by Me)

...on my Web site

...on InfiniteBody

...on hummingwitch

...on starlight-sensitive

...on Facebook (Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

...on Facebook (Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Journalist)

...on Twitter

...on tumblr (Eva, naturally)

...on Warren Adam's Home4Dance
(A new professional/social site for the dance community. Check it out!)

...on LinkedIn (though not very active there)

...and last, but not least, on Google+. (No link. You'll just have to...find me.)

Yes, I really am all over the place. It's fun, surprisingly easy and, as the whip-smart Sarah A.O. Rosner once said, "We're just wired this way."

Rosner, a choreographer and new media activist, is much younger than I am, but I seem to be wired in a similar way and curious about it all. And, yes, in the CyberAge, it really does make a difference.

I especially love it when someone comes up to me at a dance event and says, "I've never met you, but I feel like I know you!" :-D

See you around town (and the 'Net), folks!

Rosner at Joyce SoHo: Yay, oh!

With the world premiere of 90 ways to Wake from drowning, Sarah A.O. Rosner and her ensemble, The A.O. Movement Collective, have taken an important, assertive step into the spotlight of contemporary dance. After two years of developing 90 ways--their first evening-length work and first New York season--these performers show a remarkable cohesion and intensity that other troupes might take a decade or more to achieve. Rosner and her young colleagues are ready to rock.

90 ways to Wake from drowning emerges out of the shambles of the past--a messy performance space strewn with analog tvs, cassettes and VHSes, some with tape unspooled, an ancient projector and wadded-up plastic bags. Dancers mill about, alluding to some never-identified incident that sounds dire and final. Now and again, bodies appear on the floor. Television screens run scenes of cars crashing, cars on fire. One section's soundscore might trigger terrible memories of the roar of low-flying planes on 9/11. Rosner, who is also a filmmaker, utilizes drastic, cinematic splicing effects to make visible and audible those nightmarish things stuck in a looping pattern in the head.

"I just need to see it again," says dancer Ilona Bito about something never defined. She's quickly told, "You can't. It. Doesn't. Exist. Anymore."

What disaster has happened here? Might as well supply your own. You might think, too, about the tension between the immediacy and corporeality of dance and the fact that, usually, when it's done, it's gone, a memory. Rosner, a dedicated documenter of process, must wrestle with this issue of dance, here and gone, as we usually think of this art.

Rosner's brutal focus on relationships and emotions might seem retro, but there's nothing clichéd or formulaic about how she handles these things in her theater. Among the many, many elements to admire here is a male-female duet in which the heaviness of the dancers' bodies and the seriousness of their interactions are, very strangely, manipulated by the airy lightness of the crumpled plastic bag that they toss, whirl and reach to grab. Rosner makes you look at a wafting plastic grocery bag that you might swerve to avoid on a windy street, and suddenly see a batch of things that this stupid object could be or mean.

She also handles space with gutsy imagination. For example, I enjoyed her vertical line of four dancers from nearest to farthest from the audience, each with his or her assignment to be still, slow, active or variable (from still-to-active in relation to dancer #3).

I also marveled at the outright, raw ferocity of her dancers. At first, I was thinking it was only the men--Cory Antiel, Jon Cooper and Rowan Magee--and I wanted more edginess from the women. But forget that. The women-- Bito along with Lillie DeArmon, Cristina Jasen and Larissa Sheldon--turn out to be plenty edgy, like a python wrapping itself around your neck and torso. The entire company keeps the audience on edge at all time.

"I just need to see it again."

Yeah, I could see this one again. And whatever's next in Rosner's plans. The only question, now, is whether to take anxiety meds before or after.

Keep an eye on this choreographer and this collective.

The A.O. Movement Collective completes its run with a show tonight at Joyce SoHo (8pm). See a video clip from the show and get tickets here.

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan
Directions

Dance criticism, RIP?

Is dance criticism dead? Or, through the migration of displaced print journalists to the Web, is that classic, high-authority form of criticism just hanging on life support? And does anybody out there really give a damn?

Dance bloggers, social media fans and 'Net-savvy dance artists and administrators certainly smell blood. Last evening, Movement Research convened a panel to examine the undeniable new media revolution that is already bringing new voices, perspectives and strategies to the creation, documentation, promotion and discussion of the art of dance. Moderated by Brian McCormick--Executive Director of nicholas leichter dance and former dance editor of Gay City News--the panel included:

Eric Ost, High 5
David Parker, The Bang Group
Doug Fox, Great Dance
Jaki Levy, Arrow Root Media
Laura Colby, Elsie Management
Marc Kirschner, TenduTV
Maura Nguyen Donohue, In Mixed Company
Paz Tanjuaquio, Topaz Arts
Sarah A.O. Rosner, The A.O. Movement Collective

and myself. Although drawing a small audience, the forum offered a lively exchange of views and a useful airing of concerns about the perceived declining quality--not to mention quantity--of dance criticism in New York's mainstream media.

Here's one of the topics McCormick suggested to us prior to the panel, and it's the one that commanded our attention over the two hours:

THE DECLINE OF PRINT MEDIA (THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA)

In any event, the age of the dance critic is coming to an end. The print media brands that supply a critic with credentials continue to see their circulations shrink. A simultaneous convergence of artistic focus on PROCESS versus PRODUCT and social media capacities for sharing artistic process and practice are also at odds with a dialectic that focuses solely on one experience of a performative end to the process, which in some cases isn’t even happening anymore. In such an environment, (3) What purpose does dance criticism serve, and (4) can those purposes be achieved through other means? What possible/practical strategies can artists engage in restore some balance to the control of information about their work? [How does career level influence responses?]

As a print emigrant, I've been thrilled to indulge in new media's many resources and opportunities, both as a consumer and a creator. (InfiniteBody blog and Body and Soul podcast represent only a fraction of my online involvement, just as my interest in dance represents only a fraction of who I am as a person.) I'm betting on the new tech communications not only to make it more efficient--and, frankly, more fun--for me to connect potential consumers to the artists I value but also to introduce me to all sorts of people with diverse knowledge, sensibilities and viewpoints that can enrich my experience. As a writer and a reader, I'm psyched to think that mainstream gatekeepers--with their commercial, aesthetic and personal agendas--have been so rapidly, so decisively circumvented by new media with its open-door policy and DIY ethic. Hooray for the cool kids!

But I'm also a little cautious, and I expressed some of those concerns at last night's panel. This is the second discussion of these issues in which I've participated; these forums can easily become focused on the menu of neat tools--Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, dance videos, video blogging--that we should all be adopting right now and lose sight of the original purpose of it all.

The methods of delivery of information are surely changing with the times, but the encounter and engagement with art remains--for me and for writers I respect and cherish--a deeply human and decidedly fleshy one. I still want to read writers whose full-bodied writing entertains me and educates me and dazzles me and frightens me and shocks me, ones who bring the power of their connection with a work to life for me and have taken some time to craft a response instead of dashing off a reaction. (At the panel, I cited Jill Johnston--from the early days of my interest in dance--and Holland Cotter, visual arts critic of the Times as two examples of writers I'd follow anywhere, no matter what they were writing about.) In a similar way, while I can appreciate the presentation of dance on video as an art in itself, I still most often want to feel the energy of dancers in the same room as me, breathing the same air I breathe. All of these things move me, and dance will always be, for me, a transformative power.

Champions of new media argue that wonderful new voices will eventually emerge out of the crowd, hastening to add that this does not mean, of course, a return to hierarchical standards. I do want the usual suspects shaken up, and I'm eager to see who's out there and what they've got. Everyone agrees that we need better dance writing. So, if the new media revolution means we've gotta have more before we get better, okay then.

But replacing the once-almighty New York Times with new media's democratization of expression won't necessarily bring about dance reviews that we'll be happy to read. More venues and more voices mean way more opportunities for work to get picked apart by folks whose voices are fresh but whose knowledge might be shaky, who are not your friends and who don't have your back and--I can tell you from years of involvement on the 'Net--people rarely hold back. The level and tone of discourse can be mean. Even irrational. And poorly spelled.

Connection, empathy, consideration, well-crafted, clear communication, thoughtful dialogue and useful, constructive criticism take time. (We won't get into how inadequately, disrespectfully compensated that time is for most dance writers--another topic for another day.) I want to see more attention to these essential qualities in media, both old and new. If new media can bring that to me, then bring it.


Okay, see you on Facebook!


[For Jaki Levy's commentary on our discussion, click here.]