Tiffany Mills premieres "Not then, not yet" at The Flea

Top: Kenneth Olguin
Bottom: left, Mei Yamanaka; right, Jordan Morley
in Tiffany Mills' Not then, not yet at The Flea Theater
(photos: Robert Altman)

Not then, not yet
Tiffany Mills Company
The Flea
November 13-16

Making themselves at home in one's subconscious are all manner of energies and drives eluding conscious control. This is the disquieting atmosphere of Not then, not yet, a work by dance artist Tiffany Mills with Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón and French vocalist/composer Muriel Louveau, now in world premiere at The Flea Theater in Tribeca.

The first sight of a few toppled metal chairs--with toppled dancers crumpled beside them--hints that this chair dance, led off by Jordan Morley, will surely go in a dark direction. Indeed, a kind of "musical chairs" game breaks out. But...no game, folks. The dancers--each dressed in Pei-Chi Su's costumes that bind together clothing details assigned along binary gender lines--don't play. Not at all. Their wary, tense actions around the chairs are cutthroat, life or death, driving towards a passage in which Morley obsessively arranges four chairs in a row that, nevertheless, ends up off-kilter. Negrón's music, including vocals by Louveau, invokes the relentlessness pace of time, pressure and complexity.

Inspired by novelist Mary Shelley's writing, the piece locates humanity in a place of precarious transition, the possibility that our inherent potential for monstrosity might consume us all. Is there a way out? Surely, the condition of life in these times raises this unsettling question every single day.

Strongly directed, the performers display physical vibrancy and vivid expressiveness--traits I've come to expect from Mills ensembles. Besides Morley and Mills herself, they are Kenneth Olguin, Nicholas Owens, Emily Pope and Mei Yamanaka, and Mills is fortunate to have every one of them.

Dramaturgy: Kay Cummings
Lighting design: Chris Hudacs

The Flea
20 Thomas Street (near Broadway), Manhattan
(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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World premiere of Geraldine Inoa's "Scraps" at The Flea

Roland Lane (left), Alana Raquel Bowers (bottom center),
Michael Oloyede (top center) and Tanyamaria (right).
the main cast members of Scraps at The Flea
(photo: Hunter Canning)

What we always hear: “Black Male Shot by White Police Officer.” What we never see: how loved ones struggle to cope amidst their anger and grief.

-- from program notes for Scraps

In its new Tribeca home and its fresh new season devoted to "Color Brave" programming, The Flea Theater comes out swinging with Scraps, a psychological drama by LA-based playwright and television writer Geraldine Inoa, directed by Niegel Smith. With a strategy similar to Jackie Sibblies Drury's recent Fairview (Soho Rep), another theater piece examining race in America, Inoa carefully grounds her audience in the familiar before hauling us into bizarre territory. Hard to tell, though, which one hauls with the rougher hand: Fairview's second and third acts seem more cleverly conceptual while Scraps goes full-out surreal nightmare with a menacing Greek tragedy-style chorus.

The 85-minute piece takes place in The Flea's tiny Siggy Theater on a shallow stage not even a leg-stretch away from the audience's first row, a set-up that will only become more engulfing and threatening as this tale of Black urban life and racist police violence proceeds. Inoa introduces us to four main characters--connected by race, culture, neighborhood and personal history--whose interactions become complicated by grief, resentment and fear.

All roles are played by members of the Flea's resident acting troupe, The Bats. We first meet unemployed Jean-Baptiste (Roland Lane) who deftly raps up a bleak, nearly Shakespearean take on the prospects for a Black man under white supremacy. Like his namesake, he's a voice of one crying in the wilderness, and a stern warning.

Inoa quickly--maybe too much so, too stereotypically--gives him a nemesis in the form of Calvin (Michael Oloyede), a London-based college student now home in Bed-Stuy for only a brief visit. Calvin, looking casually-sharp in a way that immediately ticks off Jean-Baptiste, has been able to avoid dealing with the police killing of an unarmed Black man they both knew. Calvin longs to get back in the good graces of Aisha (Alana Raquel Bowers), single mother and young widow of the slain man. Though none too pleased with Calvin either, the alternately sunny, bone-tired and volatile Aisha is susceptible. But her sister Adriana (Tanyamaria) carries the heaviest burden of all, a trauma she tries to conceal with good humor and toughness. Tries and repeatedly fails.

This quartet of skilled actors has energy to burn, particularly Bowers and Tanyamaria who, when they get going with their lines, leave us in the dust, hyperventilating, unable to catch up. Of all, even Jean-Baptiste, Inoa gives the women the best language. But all actors turn on extraordinary ferocity in the final, disturbing developments of the story, which I will not reveal here.

Where Sibblies Drury concluded Fairview with a panoramic view of white privilege, boldly implicating her audience, Inoa maintains focus on the tragedy of unhealed racial trauma passed from generation to generation.

Other cast members: Andrew Baldwin, Bryn Carter

Sets: Ao Li
Costumes: Andy Jean
Lighting: Kate McGee
Sound: Megan Deets Culley
Violence choreography: Michael G. Chin

Scraps continues at The Flea through September 24. For information and tickets, click here.

The Flea Theater
20 Thomas Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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This show should make you tappy!

Tap is an exuberant part of the New York City dance mix and, appropriately, you'll find it in all its glory at the 27th Performance Mix Festival. On Sunday, April 14th, join host and longtime tap wiz/producer/historian Jane Goldberg for an afternoon of RHYTHM´N SCHMOOZE.

Roxane Butterfly (photo by Leslie  Lyons)

The program features performances by dancers Michela Marino Lerman, Roxane Butterfly and Cheryl Johnson.

3pm

The Flea Theater
41 White Street (Tribeca)
(map/directions)

For programming and ticket information for Goldberg's RHYTHM 'N SCHMOOZE and all things Performance Mix, just click here.

Get in on the "Conversations"

Dance Conversations @ The Flea
February 6 – 19, 2012

Curated by Nina Winthrop
Assistant Curator: Taimi Strehlow

Application Deadline: Friday September 23

Proposals are now being accepted for the 2012 season of Dance Conversations @ The Flea, a free performance, film and discussion series at The Flea Theater, curated by Nina Winthrop and Taimi Strehlow.

Dance Conversations @ the Flea features dance films and live works by emerging, mid-career and established filmmakers and choreographers, followed by an open discussion between the artists and the audience, moderated by choreographer Nina Winthrop and special guests.

Further information and downloadable applications available here.

Springing down to Spring Downtown

The Lower Manhattan Arts League invites you to Spring Downtown--a new, multi-venue series of affordable events including dance, film, music, theater, visual arts and much, much more.

In response to the economic challenge of the times, LMAL's organizations have banded together to produce and host fiscally-sustainable arts events. They include:

Blue Coyote Theater Group

3-Legged Dog/3LD Art & Technology Center

Access Theater

Battery Dance Company

Children's Museum of the Arts

DCTV

Dance New Amsterdam

Dixon Place

Soho Rep

The Flea

HERE

For a schedule of events and more information, visit this site.

Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Jody Oberfelder is one of dance’s irrepressible forces–elfin in physique yet strong and secure, bursting with energy and humor. Her background in athletics informs her choreography, which pours forth as if from a gurgling font of endless supply. Charming and robustly vital dancers Luke Gutgsell, Elise Knudson, Rebekah Morin, Brandin Steffensen and Carlton Ward have the ability to do amazing things with their bodies while infusing every interaction with radiant humanity. Two new dances, premiered at the intimate Flea Theater in Tribeca and running through Sunday afternoon, show them at their best, although the first works far better.

In Heavy Light, made in collaboration with the dancers, Oberfelder sees what can be done with the daily news. As it opens, she’s engulfed in a mound of crumpled newspaper pages but somehow manages to whip up into some pretty nifty, twisty headstands in the middle of this mess. As we listen to the spare, dreary Bach Cello Suite #5, she continues on, scrambling and slithering through the newsprint. Later, her ensemble enters, scattering the paper to the sidelines to open room for dancing.

And what dancing it is: big, bouncy, gymnastic, playing with weight and momentum with an androgynous equality of the genders and an attitude towards the body that is both demanding and witty. Body parts are independently dynamic puzzle pieces or moving toys, and so are whole bodies when meeting other bodies coming through the wry. I suppose the duet between Steffensen and Gutgsell really goes on far too long but I found it such a pleasure to watch their physically and emotionally rich interaction of these two good-looking men that, in the moment, the excessive length seemed quite right. Oberfelder tends to linger over duets and, since her dancers light them up like fireworks, why shouldn’t she?

The title might have come last in The Title Comes Last but one item still seems to be missing from this trio: a definitive ending. Unlike Heavy Light, this piece feels long, ungrounded and rushed into existence. It’s also silly and not in a good way. Oberfelder’s theme–the joy of senses–gets muddled as dancers stick out their tongues to lick themselves and others’ bodies and munch on pieces of fruit that (yuck!!!) have been all over the floor. It does have a nice opening in which Knudson, Morin and Ward turn their bodies into pretzels and then engage in a slipstream of contact where body boundaries blur, and there’s another wonderful duet (set to music by The Tango Group). It’s also great to hear the spooky-beautiful version of “Because” performed by strings-and-turntable ensemble MystiQuintet.

See Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects at The Flea Theater tonight and Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 3pm.

(c)2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa