Setterfield and Scott ask "Who is Lear?"

Valda Setterfield's sublimity (there's no other word for it) and her postmodern cred--dancing for Merce Cunningham and husband David Gordon--place her in the highest echelon of "downtown" royalty. Now, in Lear--a collaboration with Irish dancemaker John Scott at New York Live Arts--she plays a king, sort of. But if you're looking for Shakespeare's King Lear, go curl up with a copy.

At first sight, Setterfield reflects the true nature of her kingship and of this dance-theater piece. Her crown: a childish, white paper cutout flattened around her head. Her stride: direct but understated, drama-free. When was the last time a monarch tossed little wrapped candies at you?

You will wisely note the title--Lear, not King Lear--and contemplate the possibility that, for this character, status is already beside the point, a thing of the past or no longer of consequence.

Setterfield first breathes a few simple words: "Family. Love. Children...." Her arms and hands flutter but without fuss, merely hinting at tradition or story. "Daughters. Kingdom. Death." She seems to summon these things from within herself and, before long, "daughters" do indeed appear.

Solemnly pacing or pelting back and forth, three male dancers embody daughters Goneril (Marcus Bellamy), Regan (Ryan O'Neill) and Cordelia (Keven Coquelard), presenting a dilemma to Lear. Who truly loves Lear? Clever, seductive declarations ensue, as do conflicts, elaborately imagined in language and movement. The daughters appear to be devices that--irritating and irritable--rock Lear back to something resembling life.

Setterfield and Scott took the inspiration for Lear from shared experience--their dying fathers. They sample Shakespeare but keep us constantly aware of the today-ness of their personal investment in the themes and outline of the source material. And they do so with a light hand, humor, modest ambition and the reliability of Setterfield's clarity and restraint.

At the end, alone in the space, she revisits some of her earliest, and most mysterious, gestures as if re-folding the energy of the three conjured, now-vanished daughters into her body.

The John Scott Dance production of Lear concludes this evening with a 7:30pm performance. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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DANSE: Celebrate this new book on contemporary dance

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy

invites you to a book launch event for

DANSE: A Catalogue

Thursday, June 4 | 6:30 pm – 8 pm

The French Embassy

972 Fifth Avenue at 79th Street, Manhattan

including DANSE: A Glossary, featuring brief and experimental presentations on a series of keywords vital to contemporary dance practices.

Participants include Michelle Boulé, Jenn Joy, Richard Move, Valda Setterfield, Dean Moss, Chrysa Parkinson and Gerard & Kelly.

Noémie Solomon

DANSE: A Catalogue, edited by Noémie Solomon and published by les presses du reel and the French Embassy, is a collection of commissioned essays and dialogues by choreographic artists, writers, and curators on key issues in contemporary dance.

Click here to read an interview with Solomon.

DANSE is a four-year program (2014-2018) dedicated to contemporary dance exchanges between France and the U.S.

For more information, click here.

Free admission with RSVP at 
robin.guivarch@diplomatie.gouv.fr

The new man in Valda Setterfield's life? King Lear!

‘I have played men before but King Lear is a new departure’
by Michael Seaver, The Irish Times, August 7, 2014

Seeing Valda Setterfield

Valda
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com, October 24, 2012

All the world's a Stage Stage Stage Stage

Cast of Beginning of The End of The...: Graham, Solomons, Fire, Mattocks, Setterfield, Gordon, Cunningham, Cohn, Skeist (Photo: Andrew Eccles)

David Gordon and Valda Setterfield (Photo: Andrew Eccles)

In the playwright's head (and here that would be the head of writer/director/choreographer David Gordon as well as the head of David Gordon playing the head of Luigi Pirandello), the world is not constructed of four primal elements--air, fire, water and earth--but of four stages. And the world of David Gordon's Beginning of The End of The..., as manifest at Joyce SoHo, is composed of four stages separated by hop-able gaps and demarcated by rectangles formed by neatly-placed lines of pristine white tape. And the mutable world and mutable narratives inside each of those rectangles are made of numerous characters--each rambunctiously alive with his or her back story, resentments, desires and passionate intensity.

Gus Solomons jr and David Skeist

Based on Pirandello texts--Six Characters in Search of an Author, A Character's Tragedy and The Man With The Flower In His Mouth--Gordon's Beginning runs only 60 minutes but packs enough verbal wit, choreographic elegance, visual playfulness and emotional vitality to supply 60 other dance makers. Vividly leading Gordon's deft Pick Up Performance Co(s) troupe in this cyclical tour de force on love and mortality, on autonomy and loyalty, on art's illusion and the theatricality of reality, are Gus Solomons jr (a harried and somewhat irascible commuter), David Skeist (a fierce man wrestling, poetically, with a fierce diagnosis) and Gordon's actual leading lady and wife in real life, exquisite Valda Setterfield who, at one point, reminds us that, unlike the others, SHE wears black for DRAMATIC EFFECT! These three performances are flashes of lightning skimming over the smooth, subtle, dependable flow of colleagues Charlotte Cohn, Scott Cunningham, Norma Fire, Karen Graham and Aaron Mattocks. "What a pleasure, watching good wrappers wrap," someone says here. And I can only add, What a pleasure, watching David Gordon's players.

With lighting by Jennifer Tipton

Beginning of The End of The... runs through June 30, a happy bit of news for a dance show. So, take advantage. Get schedule and ticket information plus David Gordon's own cheeky description of the piece here.

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan
(directions)

Shift that PARADIGM

Gus Solomons Jr. dancer / choreographer / writer / actor / PARADIGM - shifter
by Jennifer Edwards, The Huffington Post, January 12, 2011

Remembering "Trying Times"

On top of everything else I enjoy about Trying Times 1982 (remembered)--David Gordon's reimagined reconstruction, now at Dance Theater Workshop--I love the effortlessly-beautiful racial diversity of the current cast, the company plus dance students from CalArts. I felt so nourished just by the site of that intelligent and graceful cast. The work itself--a kaleidoscope of refined visual and movement design spliced with a cool, witty text--clears the palate and refreshes the head. And any opportunity to see the subtle, elegant and iconic Valda Setterfield in action should be taken.

Seeing many empty seats at dance shows and theater this season makes me depressed. Your last few chances to see Gordon's show are tonight through Saturday.