"Surveys the Prairie of Your Room" opens at La MaMa

Ae Andreas (front) with Dan Safer
in the premiere of Surveys the Prairie of Your Room at La MaMa
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Surveys the Prairie of Your Room
Witness Relocation/Dan Safer
La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre
May 18-19, 2019

Not a person shifted place during last night's performance of Surveys the Prairie of Your Room, though Dan Safer--who collaborated on this bold duet with his Witness Relocation colleague Ae Andreas--invited us to move anywhere around three sides of the perimeter of their crisply delineated rectangle of performance space. Standing in a single, constrained line curved around that space--I had one of several folding chairs--viewers were encouraged to look at the performers' duet from any number of angles.

And we did not. We stayed where we were planted. Which is kind of okay. The piece--Safer's first full-length duet--looks just fine from a stationery viewing point. Certainly, it moves enough, itself, for dozens of people. And there's enough excitement when a dancer's arm, sneaker sole or backside gets within a foot of your face. The intimacy of the setting--wide but shallow liminal space betwixt the theater's entrance and the back of its seating rows--heightens a sense of drama, urgency and potential. This "prairie" in a box has got a lot going on.

David Bowie's "prairie of your room" (from "Eight Line Poem") had its "tactful cactus." Andreas has a chair--a hard, unsparing one--and they are mighty restless not only sitting on that metal chair but sitting within their body in its man's suit.

At the top of the 45-minute piece, Andreas darts past the rectangle's white tape that keeps the audience sidelined, and they sit on the chair, their left foot instantly jittery. Turbulence ensues. Their hands shove their jaw this way and that. From the chair to the floor, their body wriggles, writhes, twists and stumbles, a mess of angles. And when Safer--shadow, partner, instigator, supporter, challenger--melts into the scene, also suited-and-sneakered-and-contradictory, all of this trouble is doubled and magnified.

Andreas and Safer
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Longtime Witness Relocation collaborator Heather Christian contributed an intriguing music-scape evoking diverse moods, and writer Kate Scelsa worked found text into a voiceover rendered by actress Grace McLean into soothing seduction in sharp contrast to the dancers' agitation. In a soft, moist tone, McLean touts the amenities of a luxury hotel and, if you're like me, you'll fixate on the apparently hundreds of pillow variations on offer--from anti-allergy to duck down.

There are two people here, but this appears to be a journal of one life, a long stretch of unpaved road with some exhilarating views along the way. It's handsome and danced with all-out exuberance, and you have only one more chance to line up around the rectangle--this afternoon!

Directed, choreographed and performed by Dan Safer
Co-preated and performed by Ae Andreas
Original music by Heather Christian
Original text by Kate Scelsa
Voiceover by Grace McLean
Suits by Ministry of Supply
Lights by Juan Merchan

Surveys the Prairie of Your Room, presented by La MaMa Moves! dance festival, concludes today with a 5pm performance. Tickets are limited. Hurry and click here.

And La MaMa continues to move! Now through May 26, in fact. For schedule and ticketing information for this annual dance festival, click here.

La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan

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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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Witness Relocation answers the call of "The Loon"

L-r: Eva Jaunzemis, Robert M. Johanson and Dan Safer in The Loon,
a world premiere by Safer's Witness Relocation
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Early into The Loon--Witness Relocation's new show at Abrons Arts Center--I surrendered. I knew I had no way to keep pace as its writer/monologist, Robert M. Johanson, raced through a discourse on time, on muon particles and on chaos and its possible comforts. His outpouring of words threw out a tensile, almost visible barrier between the audience and Dan Safer's dance ensemble despite the close quarters of Abrons's Experimental Theater. Safer and chorus hit back with robust gesture, churning bustle, smoldering glamour with an aura of danger; Kaz PS hit back with a barrage of projected imagery, dazzling and ambiguous. But Johanson remained a gravitational force to be reckoned with.

"How do you feel when he moon is full? Do you find yourself having strange thoughts?" he asks.

Described as "a knock-down-drag-out, dance/theater show based on 1. an educational record about loons; 2 sociologist Erving Goffman; 3. the western house; 4. late night parties that last until the next morning," The Loon is 60 minutes of overload punctuated with hostility, distraction, drunken wrenching about and tender slow-dancing to a song about sex and death. During that hour, you learn stuff--like how surprisingly easy it is for your mind to cough up two handfuls of small memories, or what are four types of cries a loon makes and the purpose of each. It is full-moon strange, indeed, a seductive collage with vibrant performances from Alexa Andreas, Kelly Bartnik, Sunny Hitt, Annie Hoeg, Eva Jaunzemis, Johanson, Vanessa Koppel, Trevor Salter and Safer.

The Loon continues through October 29. For schedule and ticketing information, click here.

Abrons Arts Center (Experimental Theater)
466 Grand Street (between Pitt and Willett Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Witnesses relocated to La MaMa

Javier Perez and Saori Tsukada in Eterniday (Photo by Adele Bossard)

Let me tell you: Watching Witness Relocation theater troupe while dealing with the last but tenacious dregs of jet lag is a very weird thing. The wacky disjointedness gets even more disjointed, and if something isn't making clear sense--I don't know: something about clouds, something about love, something about traffic circles, something about Don Quixote, and I can't even read my notes at this point--well, who's fault is that? If jet lag is all the ultimate trouble of drinking without any of the fun, Witness Relocation's frothy, boisterous Eterniday--running now at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre through April 21--provides the fun part. When New Agey metaphysicians talk about how material things are, in essence, energy, they're talking about Witness Relocation, and the prevailing energies here, at La MaMa, are luminous, airily poetic, un-ironically romantic and playfully sexy.

While the usual suspects--Mike Mikos and Sean Donovan--are capable and charming beyond measure, I think you'll especially enjoy Saori Tsukada's star turn (how vibrantly she embodies the Witness Relocation dance/acting nexus) as well as the plummy intonations of Carey Harrison (son of Rex) whose larger-than-life image comes to us by way of video.

Members of Witness Relocation in Eterniday's strobe light segment (photo by Jonathan Slaff)

Written by Chuck Mee. Directed and choreographed by Dan Safer. Co-created and performed by Nikki Calonge, Sean Donovan, Vanessa Koppel, Kate Lee, Mike Mikos, Javier Perez, Saori Tsukada and Carey Harrison.

See Eterniday now through April 21. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan

(map/directions) 

Where in the world is Eva Yaa Asantewaa?

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo by Deborah Feller)

Well, back home in New York City, for one thing!

But also look for me at...

This. Witness Relocation's Eterniday at La MaMa. Info/tickets here.

Bebe Miller Company: A History--co-presented by 651 Arts and New York Live Arts at Brooklyn's Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at LIU. I'll be moderating a "Stay Late" post-performance sit-down with Bebe and collaborators this Friday, April 12. For program and ticket information, click here and here.

I hope to attend Deirdre Towers' film screening and salute to the producers, artists and educators of the US flamenco community. Monday, April 15, 6pm, at Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. ​For information on this free event and the library's exhibit, 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, click here.

My project-driven Writing on Dance 2013 takes off at New York Live Arts next Wednesday afternoon with a full house of new students. Also, I'll pretty much be living at New York Live Arts on Wednesday for the opening of that visionary series, Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks ("A five-day festival of arts and ideas exploring the mind-body connection through the works of the acclaimed neurologist"). My first WOD session will be sandwiched between the panel on "Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioperception" and the evening keynote with two of my heroes--Dr. Sacks and Bill T. Jones. And the following day, I cannot afford to miss "Minding the Dancing Body" with Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë and Gwen Welliver, followed by the performance of RE: Awakenings by Donna Uchizono Company. While that's probably all I'll get to, that's not all that's happening. For details on the full series of special events here.

Speaking of Writing on Dance: Last year, I was delighted to have the accomplished, Argentinian dance artist and educator Anabella Lenzu in my workshop, and she will be returning for this year's series. Anabella has just self-published a book about her life and career--Unveiling Motion and Emotion--which includes her forthright thoughts on dance education, dance community and more (as well as some striking photography by her husband, Todd Carroll). So, you'll also find me dipping into this, now and then. Presented in English and in Spanish, her writing is just like her: warm and sincere with an underlying tenacity born of a drive to become the best she can be, as artist and as communicator, in the service of dance and dancers. For information on her book, click here.

I look forward to Miami-based choreographer Rosie Herrera's New York premiere of Dining Alone at Baryshnikov Arts Center (a surreal work of "immersive dance theater," somehow involving food and an opera singer...hmmm). It's running April 18-19, and a new show has been added. Find out more here.

My Image and Psyche workshops on Tarot and psychic development continue at our wonderful East Village location. On Saturday, April 27 (Image and Psyche, Part 2), we'll experiment with dynamic layouts and the intriguingly varied, Trickster-ish reversed cards. On Saturday, May 4, I plan to repeat Part 1. For complete information and to register for a place in these fun and enlightening workshops, see my listings on Facebook for April 27 and May 4.

On May 21, artists Larissa Velez-Jackson, iele paloumpis, Katy Pyle and others at Lobby Talks (New York Live Arts--in the lobby, natch) for "Identity Matters: Persona and Politics," curated by Marissa L. Perel.  ("Choreographers, directors, and critics discuss contemporary issues in identity politics, and how these issues shape perceptions of persona and embodiment.") Free. Just show up for the 7:30 start time and grab a chair.

Oh, there's bound to be more. But--whew!--that's enough news for now. See you around town!

Reboot with Witness Relocation's Summer Bootcamp

Witness Relocation's Summer Bootcamp

for pre-professional and professional artists

June 10-22, 2013

A two week intensive dance/ theater workshop conducted in a newly renovated dance studio and the surrounding environs of a 23-acre former horse farm in the picturesque northeast Catskill Mountains.

    Create dynamic, genre-defying dance and theater.
    Learn techniques that focus on what is happening in the room, building material from what is on hand and spiraling out from there into surprising and endlessly inventive territory.
    Explore task based, problem solving methods that eliminate the pressure to “be creative” and simply allow you to work and make discoveries.
    Make sure what you do is continuously fun and exciting, as well as a little scary.
    For pre-professional and professional artists.

For complete details, including application information, click here.

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Body and Soul/Listen.: Dan Safer [AUDIO]

Dan Safer

Click here to subscribe to Body and Soul podcast in iTunes and listen to my guest Dan Safer (Artistic Director of the great dance/theater hybrid troupe, Witness Relocation) talking about the importance of listening.

Dan's bio

Witness Relocation

Next Tuesday, August 28, see Witness Relocation perform I’m Going To Make A Small Incision Behind Your Ear To Check And See If You’re Actually Human REDUX--free!--at East River Park. 8pm. Click here for complete details.

To subscribe to Body and Soul podcast, click here.

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

And now, a little morning music...

Directed by Kaz Phillips Safer (www.catbirdpictures.com)

Starring:
MaryLouise Burke as The Drinking Buddy

featuring:
Sam Pinkleton, Dan Safer, and Sean Donovan as The Boys.
with David Clement and Rob Bailey

Cinematography by Chase Bowman
Edited by Kaz Phillips Safer
Choreography by Dan Safer
Art Direction by Rachel Hauck

"Drinking Buddy (featuring Marylouise Burke)" by David Clement (ASCAP) is on
iTunes at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/drinking-buddy-feat.-marylouise/id467678720?

Produced and Recorded by Rob Bailey at Fancy Studios
Vocal: Marylouise Burke
Guitar: David Clement
Bass: Tony Garnier
Harmonica: Rob Bailey
Additional vocals: Erin Evermore Bailey

Locations provided by Clandestino Bar and the lovely Kourtney Rutherford

One night in heaven

From the sound of things, there was a fair chance that Heaven on Earth--the Charles L. Mee play developed by director/choreographer Dan Safer's Witness Relocation and France's ildi ! eldi, running now at La MaMa--could well have become an incoherent hellish mess. But none of the collaborators were about to let that happen. And, in a way, that tells you what Heaven on Earth has to offer--a vision of surviving disaster by cherishing and living for the little things that matter.

Ildi ! Eldi is new to me--though now I already adore their Sophie Cattani, thanks to her radiant comic performance in this piece. But I have built-up trust that Witness Relocation will exhibit brazen talent and take me on strangely compelling, amusing journeys that I won't find anywhere else. The two troupes here bravely propel themselves into Mee territory--vast open space with some resonant landmarks to be visited, furnished, decorated or completely ignored as they wish. The playwright--best known for his work with Anne Bogart's SITI Company--has given Safer and his team leave to create Heaven on Earth, and the co-conspirators allot room for audiences to enter as they wish.

The physical place-ness of Heaven on Earth, and its sense of past seeping into the present and future, is very important. Jay Ryan (set/lighting) and Deb O (costume/props) have included elements from from previous Witness Relocation shows. During last night's post-show Q&A, Safer told us that the collaborators had asked themselves, "What happens if we just, literally, drop all the sets on top of one another?"

It takes a pretty sharp crew to construct a crisp, vital piece out of the recycled detritus of older ones. The resulting collage around Mee's diffuse and lovely grid adds to the hyper, hectic texture created, as always, by Safer's extraordinary approach to movement and text.

Here's my loving counsel to you, potential theater-goer: Attend--in both senses of that word--but don't try to keep up. Heaven on Earth will overtake you. Let it. Let go. Another lesson for anyone facing the end of the world (as we know it).

Cast and co-creators: Abigail Browde, Heather Christian, Sean Donovan and Mike Mikos from Witness Relocation; Sophie Cattani, Antoine Oppenheim and Francois Sabourin. Video by Kaz Phillips Safer. Sound by Ryan Maeker.

Heaven on Earth continues tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 and Sunday at 2:30. Program information here. For tickets, call 212-475-7710 or click here.

La MaMa

74A East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenues), Manhattan

"There is no normal anymore."

Sure, there's a bar right there.

But if you go to Bushwick Starr to see Witness Relocation perform, you should, perhaps, think about limiting your alcohol intake. After all, someone will need to keep a level head.

I'm Going To Make A Small Incision Behind Your Ear To Check And See If You're Actually Human--a title that would have consumed nearly all of my word allotment at The Village Voice--should raise the alarm right away. Whose head and ear are we talking about here?

Situated on a funky Bushwick street--and I do mean funky, what with water inexplicably gushing from an apartment window and big mounds of excrement dotting your path--Bushwick Starr sits at the top of a steep flight of stairs, suggesting an unholy alliance between the old Dixon Place and the once elevator-less WOW Café. Filled with Witness Relocation performers milling about, its space is a tiny wedge as miniscule as its hip-hop-blasting sound system is mighty and equally in your face. The rising seating area fits about 60 people. On evenings between now and December 18, you'll immediately find director/choreographer Dan Safer's actors simmering in an atmosphere of low-grade chaos preparatory to an event that will be unique for them and everyone in attendance.

IGTMASIBYETCASIYAH runs by chance operation. As the audience assembles, Safer offers several people a bucket filled with ping pong balls, each identifying a pre-determined scene or an idea for a theatrical exercise. These legends correspond to sheets of paper that will be tacked up on a wall as a kind of score and ripped down as one wacky scene yields to the next. By picking a ball, you become a part of theater history, helping to bring disorder to disorder.

Think of IGTMASIBYETCASIYAH as a shuffled deck of cards, and its shuffling leaves no theatrical convention respected.  (Last night, we were welcomed to the roughly 50-minute show about 20 minutes into it. As one actor later said, "There is no normal anymore." Fair enough.) The resulting mashup encompasses romping movement, full-contact storytelling and pop-cultural parodies; it's like a sci-fi alien movie slash therapy session with an underlying game show vibe. In the course of things, many, many things, one gets to savor the hallmark of Witness Relocation--fluid, mercurial, downright gutsy physicality. Besides the frequent eruptions of mega-action, tiny details--say, the play of thought or emotion across the features of a face--are given intense and expert attention.

IGTMASIBYETCASIYAH stars Heather Anderson, Nikki Calonge, Emily Davis, Mike Mikos, Wil Petre, Sam Pinkleton and Kourtney Rutherford. These guys are just plain fun.

I'm Going To Make A Small Incision Behind Your Ear To Check And See If You're Actually Human plays at 8pm through December 18. Space--as noted before--is limited. For detailed schedule information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Bushwick Starr

207 Starr Street, between Irving and Wyckoff, Brooklyn

L to Jefferson Street. Exit at Starr Street. Walk against traffic on Starr. Theater is 3/4 block on the right.

Dan Safer at play in the gray area

Dance New Amsterdam presents

The Gray Area Between Dance and Theater

a composition workshop with director/choreographer Dan Safer and members of Witness Relocation, "geared towards bringing the idea of dance/choreography into direct collision with theater"

About the artists

Friday-Sunday, June 18-20

with a showing on Monday, June 21 at 2pm
See DNA site for complete schedule, registration and other details.

Location:

Dance New Amsterdam
280 Broadway, 2nd Floor (entrance on Chambers Street)
212-625-8369

Witness Relocation

My review of WR's Five Days in March, running through May 23 at La MaMa E.T.C.

Witness this!

So, back in January of last year, when I gave you an assignment to see Dan Safer's Witness Relocation troupe, did you follow through?

I hope so, because now you have a fresh assignment: See Dan Safer's Witness Relocation. 

Okay, that might not sound so fresh, but listen up: This time, they're at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, doing a very American take on Aya Ogawa's English translation of Toshiki Okada's wacky Five Days in March. I saw this 2004 piece performed in Japanese (with English subtitles) by Okada's chelfitsch Theater Company at Japan Society.  I reviewed that show here in February 2009.

As good as chelfitsch's show was, in its way, Safer's spoken-English, American pop-culture version opens up, punches up and clarifies Five Days with a visually and aurally gorgeous production and with outrageously capacious, perversely genius performances by Mike Mikos, Sean Donovan, Wil Petre, Heather Christian, Kourtney Rutherford, Chris Giarmo and Laura Berlin Stinger. I think that's because Witness Relocation--a company devoted to seamless theater/dance mashup--was made for this meta-tale of young, self-absorbed party-people in Japan recounting a five-night "love hotel" tryst conducted while Dubya was getting ready to wreak havoc on Iraq. WR brings out both the callous, mindless excess and the poignancy in Okada's story. Safer's direction and choreography; Dave Malloy's music; Jay Ryan's sets and lights; and Deb O's costumes are all award-worthy.

Luckily, you've got a few more weeks to get there. The show runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm through May 23. (No performance on Sun 5/16, Added 2:30pm performance on 5/22)

Information and ticketing

La MaMa E.T.C.
74A East 4th Street, Manhattan
212-475-7710

Flight of Yanaihara's "Blue Bird"

There's a thin line between zany and hysterical, and Witness Relocation--award-winning physical theater of multi-genre collage and excess--tramples that line with manic abandon in The Blue Bird, running now through January 24 at the Clemente Soto Velez Center. Inspired by Japanese anime, Maeterlinck and environmental science, The Blue Bird takes a sleepless look at the role of human progress in the decline of the natural world. A troupe would have to have exceptional control to present a work so verging on chaos, so stuffed with stuff and yet so powerfully capable of shaking and stunning an audience. The talented, skillful collaborators here range from playwright Mikuni Yanaihara to director/choreographer Dan Safer to the versatile cast of co-creators and guest stars. Consider this one an assignment. Go!

Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center (CSV)
107 Suffolk Street, Manhattan (between Rivington and Delancey Streets)

Information on Witness Relocation
Schedule and ticketing for The Blue Bird or call 212-868-4444