Ainesh Madan returns with "Phantasies"

Phantasies
Ainesh Madan
Speyer Hall, University Settlement
May 24-25, 2019

The play of children is determined by their wishes, really by the child's ONE wish, which is to be grown-up.... He always plays at being grown-up; in play he imitates what is known to him of the lives of adults. -- Sigmund Freud, "The Poet and Daydreaming"

Superbly skillful dance artist Ainesh Madan has worked with noted choreographers such as Bill T. Jones, Pramila Vasudevan, RoseAnne Spradlin and Heidi Latsky. He won a 2018 Gibney Work Up residency and intrigued audiences with his developing solo, Phantasies, on a strong program shared with performers Evelyn Lilian Sánchez Narvaez and Marion Spencer. He now lives and works in his native India but is back in New York this weekend with a handsome production of Phantasies.

This solo, now roughly 40 minutes, is episodic, stark sections tightly spliced together by changes in Emma Matters's lighting and distinguished by unexpected imaginings of ways in which props (coins, umbrellas) can be used. Apparently tireless, Madan seems suspended between adulthood and childhood--his rendering of a Sigmund Freud quote, above, about child's play inspired the piece--drawing a palpable vitality from being in that liminal state.

His choreography for the piece, though informed by contemporary aesthetics, invokes qualities of classical Indian dance--percussive force and sweep and a breathtaking precision and speed of arm and hand gestures conveying a narrative. Only, with Madan, that narrative often remains elusive. Why Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee?" That music drops into the atmosphere like a memory, and might well be one, the significance of which we're left to imagine.

The piece, which opens with the sharp-pitched sounds of song birds, reads like a long series of random journal entries--or short-short stories, or a cycle of songs--each entry its own shiny facet in the diamond.

Here, by the way, is the original text of the quote from Freud's 1907 talk, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming."

A child’s play is determined by wishes: in point of fact by a single wish–one that helps in his upbringing–the wish to be big and grown up. He is always playing at being “grown up,” and in his games he imitates what he knows about the lives of his elders. He has no reason to conceal this wish. With the adult, the case is different. On the one hand, he knows that he is expected not to go on playing or fantasying any longer, but to act in the real world; on the other hand, some of the wishes which give rise to his fantasies are of a kind which it is essential to conceal. Thus he is ashamed of his fantasies as being childish and as being unpermissible. 

In that talk, Freud also spoke of the way artists learn to draw a veil across personal elements in their work, sparing us what we might perceive to be TMI. I think it's possible to enjoy Phantasies without gaining entrance to all that's going on within it--which is surely a lot--and to leave that to the dazzling performer at work.

Phantasies concludes this evening with an 8pm performance. For information and tickets, click here.

Speyer Hall, University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street (between Rivington and Delancey), Manhattan
(map/directions)

******

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.

******

Subscribe in a reader

Hamilton and Zachery at University Settlement's Performance Project

André M. Zachery (left) and LaMont Hamilton
(photo: Layla Zami)

The dance series Five on the Black Hand Side/Dapline! draws its title from the practice of the dap ("dap" meaning "dignity and pride"), a spectrum of elaborate gestural greetings and supportive hugs between Black men. Visual artist/photographer LaMont Hamilton and André M. Zachery of Brooklyn's Renegade Performance Group have curated three programs that can be seen as commentary on, as Hamilton has written about one of the works, "Not 'Black Lives Matter' but blackness as matter moving throughout the space; real and present."

Last evening, the series opened with three works that approached this embodied Black presence in different ways, each with a flavor of dreamlike timelessness.

Oxana Chi
(photo: Layla Zami)

Oxana Chi (Oxana Chi & Ensemble Xinren) comes to us from Germany, a dancer of Nigerian and Eastern European origin. A chart of her dance background would look like a spinning globe--from ballet and Cunningham and jazz to Javanese and Egyptian dance. Her solo Neferet iti, performed to live music by Layla Zami and a recorded score by Gilbert Trefzger and Abdoul Aziz Sinka, dares to draw visual and kinetic elements from different cultures, too, in a quilt-like, multi-textured performance. Her Central American plumed headdress, her yellow-gold harem pants, her hip thrusts and shimmies, her archer's bow draws, Masai jumps, capoeira maneuvers, vogue hands and dervish spins add up to a heady mixture. She believes it all works--you can see that--and makes it work. A somewhat delicate presence, she is, nevertheless, a woman writ large, claiming concert dance space for a diverse and teeming world, blessing that space. I don't claim to understand the two theatrical sneezes--clearly not real afflictions--that punctuated sections of Chi's performance. Perhaps the audience was meant to respond by offering its own blessing.

Hamilton collaborates with sound artist Jeremy Toussaint Baptiste on Evil Nigger (pt 1), a hallucinatory performance in which he sits behind a small table covered in a drop cloth and smears his dark chocolate face and white dress shirt and tie with a succession of gloopy paints--white, red and black. He is flesh-and-blood canvas, wrecking convention, striking out for something unknown in what starts off, it might appear, as a sendup of blackface and veers out of control. Like the droning, distorted music, the streaks and splotches and ungainly blends of stark, gleaming wet color eventually turn him into a still object of art fading from our view as the lighting slowly drains away.

The dap originated in the Vietnam War/Black Power era with Black GIs and spread throughout African American communities as a way for Black men to express cultural identity and support. In Zachery and Hamilton's ensemble piece, Dapline!, six men of color perform a fugue-like imagining of military discipline and, at the same time, reveal a tight community responsive to the pain, frustration and momentary failures of its members. The idea of the dap is addressed both in spirit and, later in the piece, in technical execution. The viewer marvels at the unity and elegance of this corps of men, the clean architecture of their shifting arrangements and movements in space, the softness and tranquility that can emerge when masculinity is unshackled, given more than one narrow definition. We watch some of the daps performed in slow motion, skin sliding over skin, our eyes absorbing the beauty and meaning of these silent interactions. These are duets; one quite fanciful interpretation unfolds like a stretchy, twisting tango. If I could have anything reconsidered about Dapline!, it would be its duration. Portions of it seem unnecessarily repetitious and drawn out. Rounding out the program, it makes for a long evening. But this important work is given magnificent and affecting performances by its dancers--Brian Henry, Andre Cole, Johnnie Mercer, Malcolm McMichael, TJ Jamez and Stephen Galberth.

Five on the Black Hand Side/Dapline! continues this evening with guest artists Candace Thompson/Nehemoyia Young and University Settlement's New Youth Movement Collective (NYMC). On Saturday evening, the series concludes with Laurie M. Taylor/SOULMOVEMENT and Hamilton and Baptiste's Evil Nigger (Part 2). Both programs include performances of Dapline!, not to be missed.

For information and tickets for tonight and tomorrow's performances, both at 8pm, click here.

Speyer Hall
University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Handa and the culture chameleons

Perhaps the list of cities and countries in which you've lived since childhood is as long as your arm. Cultures other than your own have touched your life, shaping your view of the world--and of yourself. You're a TCK. That's a Third (or Trans-) Culture Kid--a sociological term from the 1960s--with far more in common with other global nomads than with folks from your own native culture.

That's the premise of an interesting program curated and produced by Alaine Handa, running this week at University Settlement on Eldridge Street. The multi-talented Handa--dancer, choreographer, make-up artist, photographer, videographer and director of A. H. Dance Company--drew together numerous collaborators and guest performers to artistically explore what it means to be rooted in rootlessness, a mobile citizen of a larger, more complex world than most people experience. The two-hour evening--Chameleon--employs a collage of dramatic monologue, spoken word, video, dance and music. The music selections are lovely, and the performers are all technically secure, vivacious and handsome--even when serving up dance that looks a bit generic rather than capable of sharply articulating the program's unique theme. But Handa's video, I am a TCK, successfully conveys the core and heart of her story.


With its segments interspersed throughout Handa's ensemble dance, 4. Chameleon--a world premiere--the video is a fairly standard talking heads interview clip compilation and, on occasion, the sound quality is wanting. However, it does introduce us to a wonderful, diverse group of young people who share what it's like to adjust to and benefit from a succession of foreign homes.

Handa's project--which she describes as "living, breathing, evolving and growing"--strikes me as the kind of work intended more to generate cross-cultural engagement, discussion and support than for the kind of cutting edge aesthetic innovation critics tend to expect. I enjoyed the video, in particular, because it gently drew me close to the lives of these interesting young people--a valuable experience in empathy.

Chameleon continues tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 at University Settlement (184 Eldridge St, corner of Rivington Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side; map). Click here for information and ticketing.