Williams and a touch of Eire

Detail of Irish Hunger Memorial, Battery Park City 
(c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Everyone knows that when you follow a faerie or other ethereal denizen of the Nether World into its otherworldly space, you risk never coming back. Everyone knows that, right? You've all read the old tales, heard the legends? So why follow one of these creatures into the decidely un-Manhattan terrain of the Irish Hunger Memorial at Battery Park City--and under a blazing hot sun to boot? Yet batches of people have been willing to do precisely that for choreographer Christopher Williams all this week and will do so again today at 12:30pm.

The Voyage of Garbhglas

(excerpt)

by Christopher Williams

all photos (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

And now I will risk shocking you all by saying that, in this instance, I strongly agree with Times man Alastair Macaulay, who wrote: "You want Mr. Williams's work to be wonderful because it's so wacky."

Maybe something more than that, Alastair. I'd like Williams's work to be more effective because I like the course of his searching and talented mind, and I'm tickled by his idiosyncratic, determinedly retro trend in all things theatrical. He's a different kind of fellow. But I'll agree that the results, in terms of choreography and storytelling, can leave me unsatisfied.

Sydney Skybetter in The Voyage of Garbhglas

Sopranos Amanda Gregory and Amanda Kelly

all photos (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Detail from Irish Hunger Memorial inner wall

There's also the issue of the memorial's inner wall... 

Walking through that tunnel is not exactly an experience of wackiness. The memorial is a wondrous site--a collaboration by artist Brian Tolle, landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird and 1110 Architect--and is genuinely made up of stone, soil and vegetation from The Old Sod. Williams's production utilizes this for visual effect but feels not just flimsy as art but also disconnected from the larger meaning of the memorial itself.

The Voyage of Garbhlas (excerpt)

Today at 12:30pm -- free
Irish Hunger Memorial

Vesey Street and North End Avenue, Battery Park City, Manhattan

Info at River to River Festival

Shemy's "2 kilos of sea"

UPDATE: Since the rain forced Shemy to cancel a few performances last week, she's adding two more this Wednesday--12:30pm and 5pm.

***

The John Street United Methodist Church--a city landmark, nestled among lower Manhattan's financial-district towers--is the home of the country's oldest Methodist congregation, established in 1766. (The current building was erected in 1841.) Its people are proud of their history of service to the city--from the Revolutionary War to the Depression to 9/11. And now, its tiny outdoors courtyard is serving art, playing host to a Sitelines project that features Deganit Shemy and Company (continuing today through Thursday).

Israeli-born Shemy inserts her seven dancers into this confined, austere setting, turning it into a theater of sorts in which soft, human flesh conforms to (and messes with) rigid structure and takes on mechanical behavior. You become aware of the vulnerability of bare feet in a narrow patch of wood chips and on thin carpets of Astroturf. But the dancers, dressed in tacky polyester vintage-store clothing,  seem blasted beyond vulnerability--trapped in dissociated or pathologically elated states of mind.


Shemy--remember her Arena and its similarly driven, dissociated, often brutal women athletes?--has an endless well of invention of this sort of stuff. She puts it to use, once again, in this site-specific piece, 2 kilos of sea. Her dancers--the excellent Denisa Musilova, Savina Theodorou, Erika Eichelberger, Nicholas Bruder, Christina Robson, Leah Nelson and Michael Ingle--turn the courtyard into the most grotesque musical jewelry box or Swiss clock ever. Jim Dawson's soundscape gets under your skin.


Mysterious, fragmented, deeply weird and sometimes perplexing, 2 kilos of sea might send some Wall Street area workers back from lunch break with queasy stomachs.

Take your own chances, today through Thursday, at 12:30pm and 5pm; Thursday, only at 12:30. Free!

A co-presentation of the River to River Festival and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Directions

Located at 44 John Street, John Street United Methodist Church is 1.5 blocks east of Broadway between Nassau and William Streets.

Subway: Broadway/Nassau (A & C lines) and Fulton Street (2, 3, 4, and 5 lines). John Street is one block south of Fulton Street.

Bus service: #15 to John Street, #6 to Fulton Street, or The Downtown Connection to South Street Seaport and Fulton Street

Theater all over the place

Presenting New York Theater Where It’s Least Expected
by Erik Piepenburg, The New York Times, July 28, 2009

Collaboration on the "Corner"

Here are a handful of my photos from the premiere of Untitled Corner, a site-specific work by Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sánchez Ruíz (choreographers/performers) with Daniel Arsham (visual designer/performer) and Alexis Georgopoulos/ARP (original sound score).

Sitelines 09
at One Chase Manhattan Plaza

All photos (c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Above Chase Manhattan Plaza

Jonah Bokaer & Judith Sánchez Ruíz
in “Untitled Corner”

Bokaer with Daniel Arsham


Untitled Corner will be performed again on July 10, 13 and 17 at 12:30pm and on July 8 and 15 at 7pm.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza faces Nassau Street, between Liberty and Cedar Streets. Take the 2/3/4/5 to Wall Street.

Admission is free. Chairs and other seating options are available, but come early.

Sitelines 09 is a presentation of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the River to River Festival.

Naomi Goldberg Haas: Body and Soul podcast

Today, I visited with Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances for a Variable Population--fifteen dancers who range in age from mid-20s to 80s--at a rehearsal for the premiere of Fanfare at the Whitehall Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry. This twenty-minute work will utilize the terminal's bright, spacious and rather busy waiting room for 12:30pm and 1:30pm performances on June 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26 and 27. Subways: #1 to South Ferry, 4/5 to Bowling Green or R to Whitehall Street.

Admission is free. Just take the stairs or escalators up to the waiting room and look around!

Fanfare is a presentation of Sitelines 09, the summer site-specific performance series produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as part of the River to River Festival.

Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances for a Variable Population

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Sitelines

River to River Festival

MP3 File [Play]

MBB dancers put on their "Game Face"

Slideshow from Game Face by Monica Bill Barnes
All photos by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, (c)2008


(Click an image to see it larger.)

Free performances of Game Face (about 20 minutes) run now through August 7 and again from August 11-14 at noon and 1pm, Robert Wagner Jr. Park, at the southern end of Battery Park City's Hudson esplanade (4 or 5 train to Bowling Green) as part of the Sitelines08 festival of site-specific dance.

Monica Bill Barnes’ Game Face uses everyday people who have passed through the Robert Wagner Jr. Park as inspiration, with the performers cast as sightseers, sunbathers and Park Rangers. This oddly matched group slowly begins to perform a show, using the entire area as their stage. Made entirely on site, the cast of die-hard dancers perform their hearts out in the midst of tour buses, passing summertime crowds and the heat.

Curated by Nolini Barretto, Sitelines is a presentation of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and is part of the River to River Festival. For more information on Game Face and other Sitelines presentations, click here.

Risa Jaroslow: Body and Soul podcast

Program notes at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Guest info at www.risajaroslow.org. (c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Show notes: Risa Jaroslow: Body and Soul podcast

What do we expect of government in these fraught, transitional times? Choreographer Risa Jaroslow wants to know and has turned the power of asking questions into a new dance involving everyday New Yorkers in the live creation of its soundscape. See the following blog entry, and click on the audioplayer or mp3 link to listen to my Body and Soul podcast interview with Jaroslow.

Risa Jaroslow and Dancers present 311 at New York City's Municipal Building (1 Centre Street) on July 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and 15 at Noon and 1:30pm. These free site-specific and interactive events are commissioned by and presented as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Sitelines '08 series, produced in association with the River to River Festival.

For guest bio, event details, and additional information about Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, click here.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Tom Pearson and Zach Morris: Body and Soul

It’s immediately clear that Tom Pearson and Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects take great pleasure in their work and that the personal bond between them creates an atmosphere of trust and courage that nourishes their entire artistic team. The dancer-choreographers spoke with me today about their partnership, their creative process and “Vanishing Point,” a new presentation at Danspace Project (June 26-28).

BIOS

TOM PEARSON

Tom Pearson works in a variety of media. Each work introduces its own movement and/or visual vocabulary, defined by the parameters of the subject and performance environment. Pearson’s work ranges from the surreal to the absurd, and part of his creative project includes an examination of American Indian identity in urban situations and everyday circumstances. Through the lens of a contemporary movement vocabulary, he creates dense, evocative worlds that illuminate the transient and the transformational, using movement abstracted from and coupled with everyday action. Paired with this is a fierce percussive abandon, often complimented by meditative nuance. Likewise, Pearson uses art installation to achieve rich, multi-dimensional environments, and site-specific explorations seek to mine public spaces for hidden meaning and to capture and engage unwary and uninitiated passersby.

Tom Pearson has been commissioned to create original site-specific works as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s SiteLines series, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York, and American Express’s River to River Festival; by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for the 2006 Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival; and by the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation for the SWIRE ISalnd East Urban Dance Festival 2007. His work has been presented in New York by Dixon Place; La Mama E.T.C.; with The Thunderbird Indian Dancers at Theater for the New City; Dance Theater Workshop; Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church; The New York International Fringe Festival; the D.U.M.B.O. Dance Festival; The Bridge for Dance; and Crazy Cuban Productions/Dance Space Center. Pearson has been supported by creative residencies at LMCC’s MOVE:133 Beekman in space generously provided by General Growth Properties, Inc.; the Great Neck House, Great Neck, NY; by a Harkness Space Grant from the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center; Dance Theater Workshop’s Outer/Space program at Topaz Arts; Epiphany Theater Company; and as part of The Swarthmore Project at Swarthmore College, PA.

Tom Pearson is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects and frequently collaborates with the other members of Third Rail on joint ventures. He received his M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University, his B.F.A. in Dance and B.A. in English from Florida State University. He has taught as an Adjunct Professor of Dance at the Florida School of the Arts; as a movement instructor for Opera Workshop at LaGuardia High School for Music, Art and the Performing Arts (through New York City Opera's Arts-in-Education program); as the Dance Program Coordinator at the award-winning LEVELS teen center in Long Island; and as a part of several other high school and special interest programs and through master classes at Swarthmore College and Florida State University. Pearson's writings on dance have been published in Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit, Time Out New York Kids, and Uncoolkids.com.

ZACH MORRIS

Zach Morris believes that art should be fun. He also believes it should be well-crafted, engaging and have some meat to it. Most of all, Zach believes that art is a means to an end–a meditative discipline and an on-going investigation of the human condition utilizing a communicative system of images, juxtapositions and metaphors that resonate on a fundamental, intuitive level. As such, he is deeply interested in exploring themes and relationships that illuminate the broader patterns of human experience. He is fascinated with evoking archetypal images and placing them into highly personal or pedestrian contexts. By colliding the mythic with the mundane he has begun to understand how these dream-like images can inform, shape and elucidate our day-to-day existence.

Zach hopes to effect positive change by creating projects that allow both the artist and audience to sidestep our preconceived notions about our reality and ourselves, and allow us access to more elusive but equally potent ways of understanding. Some people have written about his work and said it is "wickedly funny", "visually stunning" and "hauntingly melancholy." Other people have said, "there is no escaping the feeling that you have been doing drugs for the past hour. Good drugs."

Zach is a director, choreographer, author, visual artist, and filmmaker. His work has been seen in London, at several theaters around the US and at numerous venues in New York City including: the South Street Seaport as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's SiteLines Series, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, University Settlement/The New York Fringe Festival, Dixon Place, the Williamsburg Art Nexus, and The Merce Cunningham Studio. He has received the Henry Boettcher Award for Excellence in Directing, the NYC Fringe Fest Award for Excellence in Choreography, and has been granted residencies or commissions from La Mama, LMCC, the Swarthmore Project, The Great Neck House, Epiphany Theatre Company, Dance Theater Workshop’s Outer/Space program at Topaz Arts, and others.

Zach is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects and has also served as the Co-Creator and Co-Director of the Westbeth New Works Program; the National and International Programs Associate at Dance Theater Workshop; the Bartender at a number of questionable establishments; and most recently, as the Dance Coordinator at LEVELS, a teen-center based in Long Island. Zach has a B.F.A. in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University. Click on name above to go to Zach's page.

EVENT

“Vanishing Point” at Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church–June 26-28, 8:30pm. A post-show discussion with dance writer Brian McCormick and the choreographers will follow the opening night performance.

LINKS

Third Rail Projects
http://www.thirdrailprojects.com

Danspace Project
http://www.danspaceproject.org

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com.

Subscribe through iTunes or at
http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Nolini Barretto: Body and Soul podcast

Presenting site-specific dance in the bustling financial, commercial and historic environment of downtown Manhattan is not without risk but can yield considerable excitement and rewards. Producer-curator Nolini Barretto and the artists she selects for her annual Sitelines series bring imagination and vision to this challenge and opportunity. In summer 2007, I spoke with Nolini about past productions and current highlights of this well-regarded festival, a project of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (http://www.lmcc.net/).


GUEST BIO

Nolini Barretto has long been part of the New York arts community. She worked for the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance for thirteen years, the last few years as Administrative Director of the school. She was a founding Director of the Emergency Fund for Student Dancers and continues to serve on its Board and the advisory Board of Buglisi Dance Company. She was the Director of Marketing for Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea, helping it transition into its new building, managing its rebranding efforts and launching its Inaugural season. At DTW she received the National Arts Marketing Project's Advanced Audience Development Training. Nolini was originally a classical dancer in India and received a Masters degree in Arts Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University. In 2005 CEC Artslink sent her to lecture on Public Art in St. Petersburg, Russia and Novosibirsk, Siberia. Nolini began working at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2003, where she founded the site-specific performance series, Sitelines, which she continues to curate and produce. She is in her first year as a member of the Bessies (New York Dance and Performance) Awards committee.

LINK

http://www.lmcc.net/

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at
http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File