Bebe Miller Company and Susan Rethorst make room for process

Gabrielle Revlock and Gregory Holt
in Susan Rethorst's Stealing from Myself
(photo: Robert Altman)

Go here now.

It's "The Making Room," the cleverly-named online home (in development) dedicated to a meeting of the minds between dancemakers Bebe Miller and Susan Rethorst in embodied conversation about creative process "from start to premiere." This week, these two also share evenings at New York Live Arts where, if lucky enough to snare a ticket, you can sit among downtown's savviest artists and watch stellar performers of contemporary dance charge and activate space.

The Making Room is a much longer evening than one might expect at NYLA or most downtown spaces. Rethorst's duet, Stealing from Myself, runs 35 minutes, and Miller's ensemble, In a Rhythm, clocks in at 70. Between them: a 15-minute intermission. So: a commitment. Sort of like your trip to see Ailey, including Revelations...and maybe including revelations. Somehow, though, it never feels excessively long.

Both artists, admirably, draw from a seemingly bottomless, self-refreshing well of movement ideas; in the case of Rethorst, that also includes recycled material (hence, the "stealing from myself"). With Rethorst, the fascination is in watching how she deploys the bodies of Gabrielle Revlock and Gregory Holt along with simple props (two wood chairs, two small stacks of books) without being precious about how we usually see things--the bodies being people and the props being inanimate. Everything presented to us has shape and parts that, like 3-D puzzle pieces, can be set in motion, as if by Mickey's magic wand, and placed in proximity to each other in quirky ways, often at high speed. The pace of the pair's opening section makes things especially amusing if not laugh-out-loud funny. Seeing the familiar put to unfamiliar uses begins to make the viewer call everything into question. When something emerges that kinda looks like a ballet run through a Rethorstian blender, you just chuckle to yourself. Well, of course she would.

With Miller, I found myself not paying attention so much to individual movement ideas as to how she surveyed and, with her ensemble, claimed the landscape of the space, even extending it by leaving houselights up at times and addressing us directly to share artists and incidents that influence her making. The dancers are Michelle Boulé, Christal Brown, Sarah Gamblin, Angie Hauser, Bronwen MacArthur, Trebien Pollard and sometimes, and wonderfully, Miller herself. There's that initial, clean, floaty flow; agitation and scattering; sweep around and across the floor; a wash of movement, a splattering, a peeling away, a deft shifting of arrangements; a droopy hanging out together. Here and there, a centerpiece, like Boulé sailing over this song by Donny Hathaway which one YouTube commentor has rightly described as "grown folks music." Boulé gives us full-out grown-folks dancing, as she always does. The juxtaposition of that song--a man giving his all even when he has very little--and her performance is heart-stopping. It might be my imagination, but it sure looked like Boulé made everyone else after her work harder--even Miller.

I also enjoyed noticing individual minds at work--no two alike--and, in particular, watched for Christal Brown's decisions. I assuming they were decisions, not directives, because they looked that way, like they arose from her in the moment, had her signature and were fully hers to make. They made me think back to Miller's citing of Toni Morrison--and the frustrating silliness of an interview Charlie Rose conducted with the valiant Black author (questioning why she always has to write about Black people). In the face of so much failure to "get it," the corrective is just to persist in being Toni Morrison, being Christal Brown, being Michelle Boulé and Bebe Miller. Do what you do and press on.

The Making Room continues nightly through Saturday, February 24 with performances at 7:30pm. After tonight's program, there will be a Stay Late conversation. Saturday, from 2-4PM: Shared Practice. For information and tickets, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Alpert Award-winning choreographers featured online

Irene Borger, who directs the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, has sent me the following note about the Alpert Award's enhanced Web presence and extensive information about Alpert winners in the field of dance. Click the provided links for entry to this treasure house.

Tap artist Michelle Dorrance
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

What do some of today’s most compelling choreographers say about their work? Who – and what – has inspired them? What’s the place of collaboration in their practice? How do they view their lineage? What questions are they asking? What’s hard?

Right here: a substantive resource – the Herb Alpert Award website - filled with performance videos, exclusive interviews with choreographer-performers Nora Chipaumire, Michelle Dorrance, Susan Rethorst, Jess Curtis, and Julia Rhoads.

Michelle Dorrance, HAAIA in Dance 2014

Julia Rhoads, HAAIA in Dance 2013

Nora Chipaumire, HAAIA in Dance 2012

Jess Curtis, HAAIA in Dance 2011

Susan Rethorst, HAAIA in Dance 2010

The site itself invites questions: How does one represent an artist’s work? What makes a good interview? How do you organize text, images and time-based documentation to create useful and compelling web pages?

How does receiving a $75,000 award affect an artist? Watch here.

For a look at other risk-taking mid-career Herb Alpert winners working in Film/Video, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, click here.

Bill T. Jones and Susan Rethorst in conversation

Bill T. Jones and Susan Rethorst: A Conversation in Five Parts

from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

Recently, two seminal figures of the New York downtown dance world—Bill T. Jones and Susan Rethorst—sat down with Lois Welk, director of Dance/USA Philadelphia, to talk about their distinct practices and the evolution of the field. Though they share a birth year (both were 61 at the time of the interview), the dancer-choreographers represent two archetypal models or attitudes for how to live as an artist in society. During the interview, Jones refers to the French notion of l’artiste engagé, and talks about developing a thick armor to do battle with not only critics but audiences as well. Rethorst speaks of an openness to the world around her, of staying fluid and letting daily experience find a way into the work.

The New Yorker names Susan Rethorst book one of 2012's best

Alec Wilkinson writes, "Rethorst so clearly described the immensely receptive manner in which she apprehends the world that I felt I had a privileged view of the mechanics and procedures of an ardent life."

And I agree.

Read more about dancer-choreographer Rethorst's wonderful book of "autobodygraphical" essays, A Choreographic Mind, as well as other 2012 book selections here: 

Best Books of 2012
The New Yorker, December 13, 2012

Susan Rethorst: A Choreographic Mind

I've just finished reading essays by a dancemaker who, while pressing words to fine use, celebrates quiet, visceral intuition over verbal, intellectual modes of being that are usually more highly prized. Susan Rethorst's A Choreographic Mind: Autobodygraphical Writings (Teatterikorkeakoulu: Kinesis 2, 2012) takes her readers deep into the sensibilities of an artist who chooses to embrace "not knowing, not quite controlling," honoring what her body tells her and what the dances she makes tell her, too.

The book presents two strands for us to follow: Rethorst's life-altering experiences in youth and her application of personal transformation to creative process. In a custody dispute, her father kidnapped her and her brother Johnny when they were quite young. Two years later, he kidnapped the boy again and, this time, she would not see Johnny until he was 21. I get the impression that while Rethorst must relate this disturbing history--which left her, into adulthood, disinclined to speak but inclined to watch people intently and read the subtle currents and language of bodies--she does so only to set the stage for a calm exploration of how dances are made, how they reveal and present themselves and how they might best be perceived by maker and witness alike.

Rethorst's discussions could benefit fellow choreographers; clearly, she hopes to share her ideas with young artists who frequently stumble over treacherous piles of shoulds and shouldn'ts--what this favored artist does, what that prominent critic appears to reject or champion, what Teacher says is the right thing to do, what's trendy among peers or presenters this season. To these artists, she offers her trust in the unconscious, the body, the ongoing conversation with the dance itself.

The mainstream dance critic, picking up this book, will feel his/her ears burn:

Basically, they tell you what they want to see, and how the piece before them does, or does not, answer to that. It is rare to hear people try to cut through their own taste to try to examine what the dance maker is doing with the form.

Elsewhere, she writes,

What it, the dance, is doing is a door to see what it is valuing, what its goals are, how it functions. Talk about dance is too often, in my opinion, full of implied lack, and the lacks reveal what the particular talker desires to get out of dance.

For someone who grew up not caring to talk much--and, in this and in Rethorst's talent for intuitive perception of people, spaces and things, I strongly identify with her--she certainly enlivens these pages with an impressive, persuasive voice. But, she advises, "don't take my word for it." (Word. There's that word, again....) Yes, your mileage may vary at times, but the journey will take you places you could never anticipate.

Order this book online.

Rethorst: Make yourself at home

Here's the link to my Dance Magazine review of "Susan Rethorst: Retro(intro)spective," a series of events curated by Melinda Ring at Danspace Project, May 9-June 18.

Wishing upon stars: Rethorst's "Beau Regard"

An apparition out of the past--to be specific, an apparition out of 1989, a year I hold in high regard for my own reasons--Susan Rethorst's Beau Regard drifts in and out of one's conscious awareness. Sculpted partly by the choreographer's episodic whimsy, partly by Carol Mullins' confident, sublime lighting touch, partly by the dashes and splashes of music and a ground of silence, it comes and goes. Mainly its gestures, relationships and narratives inhabit subterranean, subcutaneous and distinctly subconscious space. A delicate and timeless thing, it fits the very notion of Retro(intro)spective, the Rethorst-focused series christened by PLATFORM 2011 curator Melinda Ring.

Its gentle charm softens you up, its clarity of execution makes you trust it even as the language escapes you or, at least, your conscious mind.  The main performances by Vicky Shick, Jodi Melnick, Iréne Hultman Monti, Rebecca Brooks and Noami Fall make of Danspace Project's home, St. Mark's Church sanctuary, a sanctuary indeed, a house of worship of goddesses ancient, classical, Romantic and everyday. I must say I found it a tad unnerving, almost too hushed in its most quiet moments, but I could sense my neighbors listening not just looking, as if forbidden to giggle in church or afraid to miss any exquisite, if esoteric, detail.

When you wish upon a star, you're graced by the women, a spectrum of generations, who perform in this piece. Men eventually appear, too, late in the course of things: Benjamin Ford Asriel, Neil Greenberg and Jon Kinzel, good sports who drew the audience's only chuckles last night and made me wonder what story Rethorst might be telling about the male of the species. Their costumes--tomato-red shirts and slacks with dark blue slacks awkwardly, comically belted and strapped to the front of their lower bodies--suggests an underlying, blunt vitality masked by superficial nobility and authority. The dawning of patriarchy is a goof. Not necessarily Rethorst's idea, though; just a thought from a watcher of symbols and colors.

Beau Regard continues tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm. For more information and ticketing--as well as additional information on the remaining Susan Rethorst: Retro(intro)spective events, click here. 

Danspace Project
Second Avenue at 10th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Rethorst and Rev. Billy win Alpert Award

And while we're at it, cheers to dancer artist Susan Rethorst, theatrical gadfly Bill Talen ("Reverend Billy") and all the other winners of the 2010 Alpert Award in the Arts!

2010 Alpert recipients

About the Alpert Awards

The audacity of Leichter

The Barnard Project--a collaboration of Dance Theater Workshop and Barnard College's dance department--brings students together with some of the foxiest choreographers around. The artistic residency program culminates in a season of new and developing works at DTW, and this year's lineup features pieces by Morgan Thorson (Minneapolis), Nora Chipaumire, Susan Rethorst and Nicholas Leichter.

Thorson's Monuments and Other Points of Interest: A Revisionist Construction of Closeness deploys an ensemble of bare-legged, skittering, sloshing women in bonnets that look like a soft-blue version of what the Sisters of Charity nuns wear in Doubt. There are also long tables wrapped in blue ruffled skirts, and I really can't tell what's going on here, but I enjoyed the tickling, eccentric musicality of the movements. Chipaumire's bismillah (which means, "in the name of Allah") evokes a tight-knit community of women. Among its subtle graces is the way the choreographer--herself, an extraordinary performer--has taught her young dancers to articulate the muscles in their torsos. Rethorst has shaped her corps of dancers into an ecosystem in a piece marred only by a tendency towards cutesiness. All three of these choreographers seem to be dreaming up societies and have shaped respectable, if not yet exciting, works out of these imaginings.

And then there's Leichter's Waltzes, Wonder and First Choice--made "with additional choreography and assistance by Aaron Draper"--which is a little bit different.

For one thing, it has a high-charged pop soundtrack--Mariah Carey and John Legend's "Born Again," Alicia Keys's "Falling," First Choice's "It's Not Over" and more. It has young men in business shirts and ties paired with women in--uh-oh!--midnight-blue party dresses. And you know exactly what's going on when it starts off with two of these dancing at--instead of with--each other, coldly missing opportunities to touch, hold and connect.

As the businessmen confront their dates--and, sometimes, one another--the mood becomes hectic, desperate and sometimes downright mean. The movement--broad and often awkward to a cartoonish extent--challenges each member of the hardworking corps with the speed and complexity of its isolations. I think Leichter, in working with these fledgling dancers, got the project precisely right. His work always strikes me as raw, almost like outsider art. He tosses street and club and folk stuff in with the fact of doing theatrical dance on a stage, and he refuses to smooth it back. I think these young Barnard dancers click with something there and grab hold and go with it.

The Barnard Project continues this evening at 7:30 and concludes with 2pm and 7:30pm performances on Saturday. Click here for information and ticketing.