Sidra Bell's worlds of imagination and friction

Sidra Bell who presents two works this week
at New York Live Arts
(photo: David Flores)

I'm on the fence about Sidra Bell's new work F R I C T I O N (prequel)--on the bill now at New York Live Arts along with 2014's garment (Director's Choice) about which I am unreservedly enthusiastic. And so it goes. Like super-clever sci fi writers and filmmakers, Sidra Bell Dance New York creates new worlds, exactingly-designed ones and hellish, to which we are invited. We don't have to go, and maybe we don't always.

F R I C T I O N opens this season's lengthy program--two hours with an intermission. You don't get dancers more weirdly excellent--and let me underscore, here, both *weird* and *excellent*--than Bell's troupe. But I really found it difficult to stay with 56 minutes of them behaving like soulless, mechanistic blips in a manic video game. It was just not for me. That's not to say that the audacity and stylishness of Bell's entire interdisciplinary aesthetic isn't brilliant and impressive and even hypnotically seductive. It is.

But then there's garment (Director's Choice), which has already won praise, and rightly so. This 47-minute work has been promoted as:

a playful, slightly offensive jaunt that attempts to rescue the individual by constructing a world that navigates popular zeitgeists, cultural rituals and social containers. Conceived through materials the work exercises small performance ceremonies and allows the performers to speak and mask through filters to observe identity, appropriation, political incorrectness, subliminal language, transfiguration, nonsense, influence, authorship, and reformation. you’ll be remembered…###

So...okay.

But the team really worked the hell out of this one, in both sight and sound. There's Bell, the auteur who bills herself as "Director," not choreographer. And there's Amith Chandrashaker (Creative Director, Lighting Design, Décor), an adept of space and atmosphere, and costume designer Caitlin Taylor. Costuming, as might be guessed, looms large in Bell's universe but so much more here where it suggests a kind of kinky-glamorous masking of the self; an angry, frustrating search for a less-fraught, more ordinary self; and--with Sebastian Abarbanell's expansive, ritualistic solo--finally a taste of freedom.

Bell's worlds are singular--even when colliding with the worlds of Pina Bausch, fashion and Harlem's ballrooms, as they do here. They fold and contort as much as Abarbanell's uncanny body. They are as ridiculously opulent as an extravagant hotel. It's hard not to cheer Bell on when you see all these things laid out just right and danced to perfection by this crew: Abarbanell, Tushrik Fredericks, Drew Lewis, Misa Kinno Lucyshyn, Madison Wada and Leal Zielińska, her self-described "boutique brand of prolific movement illustrators...."

Sidra Bell Dance New York continues through July 1. For schedule and ticket information, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan

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Sidra Bell Dance New York at The Met Breuer

Last evening, as part of its Theater of the Resist series, The Met Breuer hosted bass-baritone Davóne Tines (singing Julius Eastman's searing Prelude to The Holy Presence of Jeanne d'Arc), rapper Himanshu Suri (a.k.a. Heems) and Sidra Bell Dance New York. I don't know if the museum installed the metal bleacher and bench seating to keep us all on edge to the point of mind-alteration but, if so, the artists certainly did their part. Curated and MC'd by media/culture writer Kali Holloway--who, frankly, often seemed as stunned as her audience--the two-hour program offered various media and modes of artistic resistance to the ground, unholy and toxic, in which we currently find ourselves.

I was there, primarily, for Bell's Stella (2012), which you can see tonight at 6pm. The ensemble dances in a relatively shallow space across the gallery and gets up close to front-row folks in ways that heighten the persistent air of tension, risk and thrill. There are the crisp rhythms of street dance, the stark, deep-queer glamour of a fashion catwalk, the enigmatic drama that just does not quit. Bell calls upon a seemingly limitless supply of intricate movement ideas and shows no hesitation to share this largesse. And, from start to finish, her disciplined crew is ON IT.

Video closeups amplify the unfiltered anxiety with performers staring into the camera and repeatedly tugging or clawing at their own bare flesh for reasons that remain mysterious.

Sometimes you visit museums to see dance that addresses museum space (its design, contents, atmosphere and everyday functions) in harmonizing or questioning and possibly illuminating ways. Sometimes you go, and it's just another container for performance; the dance, not made for its surroundings, could have happened elsewhere. As for Stella, she simply blasts herself into The Met Breuer and makes her formidable presence felt.

Tonight and all Theater of the Resist programs are free with museum admission and run from 6pm to 8pm. For the best seating, make your way to the 5th Floor no later than 5:30pm. For information, click here.

Upcoming events 

in the Met Breuer's Theater of the Resist series
through August 12:

Saturday, July 29

For Living Lovers with Brandon Ross, and Stomu Takeishi, musicians, and poet Sadiq Bey

Sidra Bell Dance New York

M. Lamar, performer

Friday, August 4

Nicole Fleetwood, Associate Professor Department of American Studies, Rutgers University moderates discussion between Lifers Group members Maxwell Melvins, president, and rapper Picard "Original" Galette.

Saturday, August 5

Stew, Singer-songwriter, playwright

Gina Yashere, British comedian

Friday, August 11

Film: Strong Island (2017)

with Q&A with filmmaker Yance Ford

Saturday, August 12

Maria Usbeck, Ecuadorian musician, traveler and diarist

Aparna Nancherla, introspective and outrospective standup comedian

DJ Mojo: Music is Life, directed by Lawrence Kim

(2017 documentary short, 5 mins.)

Live set by DJ Mojo

The Met Breuer
945 Madison (at 75th Street)
(map/directions)

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Traveling the many worlds of Sidra Bell Dance New York

Left to right:
Austin Diaz, Rebecca Margolick, Jonathan Campbell and Alexandra Johnson
of Sidra Bell Dance New York in Unidentifiable; Bodies
(photo: David Flores, 2015)

Three questions for...

Sidra Bell, Artistic Director of Sidra Bell Dance New York, presenting a new piece, Unidentifiable; Bodies, for the troupe's fifth season at Baruch Performing Arts Center, June 4-7.

Dance artist Sidra Bell
(photo: David Flores, 2015)

Sidra, what draws you to a particular tone for your movement and the landscape of your work?

In this work I have been attracted to rich and directionally challenging material that asks the dancers to chart and navigate extreme points in their bodies. I wanted to create a body of material that would give the dancers enough freedom to indulge in various worlds and physical identities.  In this rehearsal process I have been very active in facilitating lengthy durational improvisational periods where I take them through multiple realms of experience.  We have worked with images related to human development, universal and architectural systems, relativity, and dynamic energy. My intention is to give the dancers a world of multiplicity that they can create and destroy from performance to performance.

(photos: David Flores, 2015)

How do chaos and control play out in your dancemaking? 

We have been working with the idea of internal and external notions of danger in the piece.  I am interested in the tipping point between stasis and rupturing chaos.  The most provocative space in the movement is the quiet before the storm.

This is a dense, complex, demanding and, in many ways, disturbing 90-minute work. Your dancers tackle it all without much let up and relief. What qualities do you look for or work to develop in your dancers?

One of the things I love about this group is that we challenge each other but we are also compassionate. The most important quality I look for in dancers is empathy.  We really listen to each other and ask questions that are important to facilitating the world we are creating on stage. Additionally it is important that we have a durable and sustainable technical foundation that can support performance that asks us to hit physical and emotional extremes.

*****

SIDRA BELL (Artistic Director), is currently a Master Lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and was an Adjunct Professor at Barnard College in New York City. She will begin an adjunct position at Ball State University in Illinois in 2015.  She has a degree in History from Yale University and an MFA in Choreography from Purchase College Conservatory of Dance. Ms. Bell has won several awards, notably a prestigious 1st Prize for Choreography at the International Solo Tanz Theater Festival in Stuttgart, Germany. Her critically acclaimed work has been seen throughout the United States and in Denmark, France, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, China, Canada, Aruba, Korea, Brazil, and Greece. Bell has received many commissions from institutions internationally and created over 100 new works. She had the privilege of being on the international jury for the Stuttgart Solo Tanz Theater Festival in 2014. Bell was commissioned as the choreographer for the feature film “TEST” set in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS crisis in 1985. “TEST” was awarded two grand jury prizes from Outfest and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. It is nominated for a 2015 Independent Spirit Award. The film has had many screenings at festivals worldwide, notably The Seattle Film Festival, Frameline37 (San Francisco), Outfest (L.A.), Berlinale, and Lincoln Center's NewFest (NYC). It enjoyed an international theatrical run in 2014 and is currently available on Netflix, VoD, and iTunes. She was recently named one of 50 outstanding artists living or working in Westchester County as part of ArtsWestchester’s 50th Anniversary.

*****

See Sidra Bell Dance New York in Unidentifiable; Bodies:

Thursday-Friday, June 4-5 at 8pm
Saturday-Sunday, June 6-7 at 2pm and 8pm.

Tickets are available here or at the door. Box office: 646-312-5073

Baruch Performing Arts Center (Nagelberg Theater)
55 Lexington Avenue (entrance East 25th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Miller and Bell: new work at DTW

Andrea Miller's Gallim Dance and Sidra Bell Dance New York are bringing something that feels like high glamour to Dance Theater Workshop this week. With their juxtaposed world premieres, these two confident artists and their creative teams take dance theater and punch up the theatricality to an aggressive level. 

Miller's half-hour For Glenn Gould--inspired by a kind of before/after consideration of the pianist's two contrasting approaches to Bach's Goldberg Variations--evokes Gould's eccentricity. Metal folding chairs suggest the specially-designed piano chair that Gould insisted on using; stacks of books and other items prop up dancers' prone bodies just as Gould used blocks to raise his piano to an unusual, preferred height. The stage is littered--colorfully, artistically--with found objects, the detritus of internal disorder spilling outward from a brilliant artist to his environment. Safe to say, dances containing metal folding chairs are going to be irritating--sonically and, perhaps, otherwise. On that score, For Glenn Gould does not disappoint. But Gould seems to exist here as a screen upon which to project and pick through issues around irrationality and creativity in a way that proves more sensational than satisfying. The oddball Gould proves to be a very specific and specifically distracting screen. On the other hand, the Gallim ensemble--Caroline Fermin, Troy Ogilvie, Francesca Romo, Dan Walczak, Jonathan Royse Windham and Arika Yamada--drive the choreography and their bodies at a serious pitch that always amazes.

Bell's Pool ups the theatrical ante with disco-like decadence and sensational performance by Jonathan Campbell, Austin Diaz, Alexandra Johnson, Caroline Kirkpatrick, Zach McNally, Maud de la Purification and Kendra Samson. Miller and Bell share the same lighting designer, but, here, Vincent Vigilante has stepped up his own theatrical attack with stark lighting that carves out sharply-delineated zones and ovular pockets of space with radically different temperatures. Oh, baby, you feel the lighting--a truly impressive thing--while you wonder if you shouldn't be feeling the choreography, too, and getting a better grasp on meaning. Pool keeps spooling out more and more wild cleverness, seeming about to end and always finding more play (if not more sense) in that spool--a stretch of 41 minutes that seems to go on forever.

Gallim Dance and Sidra Bell Dance New York continue at Dance Theater Workshop through this Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. For more information, click here.

Dance Theater Workshop

219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan

(directions)