LA's BlakTinx choreographers featured in video series

The June 2020 BlakTinx Dance Festival: Dancing on the Edge
was presented online by Bootleg Theater.

At some early (now forgotten) point during the confusion of the past few months of our troubled planet, a thought surfaced. Unbidden and, from that moment on, completely unexplored, it was composed of three simple words:

I miss choreography.

I thought it and...yeah...left it right there.

I think I realized how unpopular it might be in the "new normal" of EXCITEMENT!!! over EVERYTHING THAT DANCE CAN BE!!! now that it can't be what it once was, which--as we all know--was terrible. Absolutely terrible.

I'm not even going to try to argue what about dance might not have been so terrible. Because now that the fact of its terribleness is up in our faces, we can finally do something about it, right? No more procrastination.

All I can tell you is that, of the tons of content emerging online since the pandemic first divided us from one another, I have consumed a lot of virtual theater and music, many thoughtful conversations and informative panels and...a smattering of dance. Of that dance, what I've most enjoyed--although not completely--happened to be recordings of full productions of works from prior months and years. I am still waiting for up-to-the-minute made-for-Zooms to knock me out of my desk chair.

I still love you all, but these virtual solos-in-place; these housebound duets danced safely with your significant other, these whimsical improvs, these trippings of the light fantastic around your backyard are giving me an ache for something I'm apparently not supposed to continue to yearn for because there were, I'm hearing, all these problems with it.

So, come on, Eva. Get happy.

I thought about this I miss choreography thought again when I was watching the YouTube video series Dancing on the Edge, the 2020 edition of Bootleg Theater's BlakTinx Dance Festival that presents work by Los Angeles-based Black and Latinx choreographers, all alumni of the festival from years past. I had accepted Bootleg's request to view and review the four-part series out of curiosity about a dance community largely unfamiliar to me, a New Yorker, and because the brief new and archival works were all by Black and Latinx artists, twenty-five strong, responding to this double-whammy of social distancing and social uprising.

These compilations--a resilient adaptation to the extreme realities of our times--turned out not to be the best way to get to know these artists, the legacies that shaped them, their histories in the field, the contexts in which they regularly work and the meaning they may hold within their respective communities. I'm also wondering if enough time has passed for any artist to deeply process all that has happened since coronavirus began its deadly spread and since George Floyd's death awakened a passionate movement. Have they had time to dive and return with something not obvious but truly incisive and unique to them?

With all that in mind, and after having watched Dancing on the Edge  without sufficient background, I'm not going to review these works--which is to say, I'm not going to white-supremacist this thing.

Catch my drift?

I'll give you the BlakTinx Theater Festivals channel links for your own exploration:

Program 1: https://youtu.be/Le-9yWLPz2o

Program 2: https://youtu.be/CkRS_eIDSzw

Program 3: https://youtu.be/lSJfVjtJWcA

Program 4: https://youtu.be/fdNjj_3BnQE

And let me just point out some items that most captured my imagination. Someday, I might make it out west to learn more--that is, if we're ever safely back to seeing dance in the flesh.

From Program 1:

Add Water & Stir (excerpt from a 2017 performance)
Brigette Dunn-Korpela
B.Dunn Movement/Dance & Theatre Company
www.bdunnmovement.com

Ghostly 1950s white housewives swan around ghostly domiciles and stir bowls of mysterious ingredients, literally sidelined by Dunn-Korpela's bustling troupe. While the white-folks imagery quickly gets relegated to a small oval in one corner of the screen, dancers of color churn through and own the space in a physically-demanding piece that references the deaths of Emmett Till, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner.

Como los Pájaros
Andrea Ordaz
A.Ordaz Dance
http://www.andreaordaz.com/

Super-short, lyrical video featuring the body of a dancer in a flowery blouse and wind-blown hair sliding over a dark grey sky with bright, scattered clouds. In program notes, Ordaz sites Puerto Rican poet Willie Perdomo's The Crazy Bunch:

How to describe that sound when the birds flutter like a deck
         of cards being shuffled? Where to find your uplift &
         hallelujah, hosanna & hero, campana & chorus?

Although severely restricted by narrowed space and limited time, Ordaz manages to convey a flight of freedom.

From Program 2:

Baile de Cuarentena
Briseyda Zárate
https://briseydazarateflamenco.wordpress.com
https://instagram.com/briseydazarate

One of a few festival entries centered in the art of flamenco, Baile de Cuarentena (quarantine dance) approaches pandemic apocalypse with a mask but no filters. Also, no costuming and no heavy footwork that might disturb Zárate's downstairs neighbors. You can feel the energy of frustration along with determination to keep flamenco--and hope--alive.

Time up the River
Alan Pérez
film: Christopher Lopez
@alan.lperez

Shelter-in-place can be unsafe for LGBTQ+ folx forced to share space with homophobic/transphobic families. Choreographer Pérez took that reality as the premise for this duet with Robert Gomez dancing in a tight spot of liminal domestic space with some mirrors for self-reflection and a bit of light from the outside world.

From Program 4:

What the Hell is Going On
Rubí Danielle Morales 
Videography: Crystal Morales 
IG: rubi_so_oh
FB: https://m.facebook.com/rubi.morales.37?ref=bookmarks

Hemmed in by the stark angles of a kitchen space, Morales responds with similar starkness and angularity of movement in this disturbing solo before a restless, intrusive camera.


Dancing on the Edge choreographers:

Anthony Aceves
Bernard Brown
Sofia Carreras
Joshua Estrada-Romero
Regina Ferguson
Kassy Francis
Michelle Funderburk
Primera Generación
Nancy Rivera Gomez
Vannia Ibargüen
Irishia Hubbard
Brigette Dunn-Korpela
Keilah Glover-Lomotey
Amber Morales
Rubi Morales
Andrea Ordaz
Yarrow Perea
Alan Perez
Dorcas Román
Eluza Santos
Stacey Strickland
Maura Townsend
Shantel Ureña
Sadie Yarrington
Briseyda Zárate

For more information about LA's Bootleg Theater, click here.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Your Christmas alternative: "Gemini Stars/Scorpio Stars"

 Daniel Diaz (above) and Fleur Voorn on video (below)
in Gemini Stars/Scorpio Stars
(photos: Theo Cote)

Pull up a chair, sip some white wine and kick back with Gemini Stars/Scorpio Stars, your all-queer Christmas fête from writer/director Gian Marco Lo Forte and the Pioneers Go East Collective at La MaMa/The Downstairs. This 70-minute music-theater show dips into YouTube's vlogging trend to explore LGBTQ identity, culture, struggles, triumphs and the joy--and sheer relief--of being surrounded by family-of-choice at holiday time.

Our technology grows slicker by the minute, but humans remain a species eager to tell and consume stories--a truth manifest in phenomena like StoryCorps, The Moth and YouTube vlogs. Gemini Stars//Scorpio Stars features personal stories contributed and shared by its performers--Daniel Diaz, Jess Barbagallo, Fleur Voorn, Michaela Reggio, Niko Tsocanos and Ryan Leach, all live; Julia Dobner-Pereira and Chloe Li Piazza on video. Not all of its tales land with equal effectiveness. But there is often charm, humor and poignancy enhanced by spirited, if easy-going, presentation along with music, movement and decor.

Best of the batch: The hilarious Diaz has vivid recall of meeting a hunky firefighter near the muumuu racks in the musty basement of a vintage clothing store; Barbagallo and Reggio amusingly and affectionately reflect on a road trip that sounds like their relationship in microcosm. And you probably shouldn't miss the tender ballad performed by musical guest Ombro de Oro and dedicated to one "Blanca Ivanka."

Perversely, all of this made me flash back to those Andy Williams  Christmas tv shows in the 1960s. You remember Williams, right? Smooth-singing Republican who, nevertheless, championed Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern? Whose politics corroded with age--foe of Obama ("a Marxist!"), fan of Limbaugh and Beck? I'm trying to imagine what might have been--some alternative much like Gemini Stars/Scorpio Stars.

Gemini Stars/Scorpio Stars continues through December 17 with performances tonight and Saturday at 7pm and on Sunday at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa (The Downstairs)
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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"To our next...." A letter from Bill T. Jones and company

Last night, I walked away from Bill T. Jones's A Letter to My Nephew with a palpable sense of the man's unwavering concern and love for an individual as well as an entire community. Danced by the brilliant Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the work takes inspiration from the life and personal struggles of the choreographer's nephew, dancer Lance T. Briggs. Jones reaches beyond this single relationship--described elsewhere as "complicated"--to embrace the culture and resistance of today's youth as they confront our violent, racist, homophobic society...and themselves.

This New York premiere of this 70-minute work for BAM Next Wave, presented in association with New York Live Arts, will run through this Saturday evening at BAM Harvey.

Jones keeps current--even adding the words "Las Vegas" to his acknowledgments of settings of atrocity, displacement and natural devastation. One feels two realities continuously entwine--the pain of life and the raw energy life offers us to make art and meaning. Jones and his team walk a perilous edge yet craft a meaningful world out of exhilarating energy.

Radiating across the marked-off intersection of performance space, their work blends street, ball and contemporary dance with the ingenious manipulation of a large prop. Movement within the body and among bodies flows with silky sophistication. The dance might be a hospitalized patient's fever dream of turf fights and catwalks in an environment changing so swiftly, so unpredictably, that one must shapeshift in order to survive. The poise and malleability of Jones's dancers--as individuals and as an ensemble--make this idea spring to life. Along with Jones and associate artistic director Janet Wong, the nine dancers contributed to the choreography and are given due credit. Let's celebrate them here, too: Vinson Fraley, Jr., Barrington Hinds, Shane Larson, I-Ling Liu, Penda N'Diaye, Jenna Riegel, Christina Robson, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Huiwang Zhang.

Original score: Nick Hallett
Live vocals: Matthew Gamble
Set design: Bjorn Amelan
Lighting design: Robert Wierzel
Costume design: Liz Prince
Projection design: Janet Wong
Sound design: Samuel Crawford

A Letter to My Nephew runs through Saturday, October 7 with performances at 7:30pm. For information on other BAM Next Wave events, click here.

BAM Harvey
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Arnold sisters tap, make dreams at Lincoln Center OOD

Chloe Arnold (left) and Maud Arnold
(photo: Vaughn Dabney)

In the field of tap, dancer-choreographers Chloe Arnold and Maud Arnold stake out territory in a place of contemporary sound and attack, aiming to take the art of tap to folks whose tastes run to music styles like R'n'B, rock, funk, rap and Latin pop. Did you make it to last evening's Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors performance of Where Dreams Are Made in Hearst Plaza, featuring the Arnold sisters and their Apt. 33 troupe? If so, you heard, among other things, Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You," Sean Paul's "So Fine," John Legend's "Ordinary People" and "Glory," Beyoncé's "Run the World," Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk," Andra Day's "I Rise Up," Eminem's "Not Afraid," Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind" and a trio of Prince bestsellers. You also heard, from one song to the next, the troupe layering on a fairly uniform staccato, hard-heeled, hard-charging tap in their rangy, loose-limbed style. Power tap for the people!

Apt. 33 re-envisions Eminem's "Not Afraid" in Charles Renato's 2016 video, featuring is That Asha.

Where Dreams Are Made seemed overly segmented, each bit limited by the length of its popular song and encouraged to lock itself within a certain forceful register (even if, as in "Ordinary People," the song seemed to call for a more vulnerable approach). The sisters' in-between patter advocated more love and unity and sisterhood/brotherhood and exhortations to affirm ourselves as "amazing." I can appreciate that; the Arnolds absolutely do physical and psychic upbeat like nobody's business. Their entire project is the dance equivalent of an energy drink. But as a fan of tap (and, maybe, because I'm an introvert), I also have a longing for some of the other things tap has always done well--softness, juicy lyricism and fine, adroit detail, soulful reflection and nuance, sound that goes on walkabout, winding us through diverse terrains where new, unprecedented things await discovery. I love, sometimes, to hear "I love you" whispered, not always a shout.

Where Dreams Are Made has concluded, but you will find a world of interesting, free events at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, now through August 13, by clicking here.

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Amy Krouse Rosenthal, 51

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Children’s Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 51
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, March 13, 2017

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Works by Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e, Caleb Teicher and Company at Gibney

Last night, at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, curator David Parker introduced his Double Plus evening as "a utopian event" and "not an ordinary combination of artists." Here we have Dylan Crossman (Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e), with his elite Cunningham/post-Cunningham pedigree. And then there's Caleb Teicher (Caleb Teicher and Company), a young Bessie-winning prince of tap collaborating with swing dance champion Nathan Bugh. Combining these disparate sensibilities and styles into one show is far from your everday New York programming. But what makes sense to Parker is that these artists take what we've come to expect from their respective art forms and ask more of them.

But first, Crossman asks something of us. The opening of [Insert Title] makes us crane our necks to see him and three fellow dancers--Sumi Clements, Jason Collins and Sarah Harrmann--lined up off to the far right of Gibney's theater space in light that both catches their flesh and surrounds it in murk. It's a theatrical attention-getter, though beyond that effect, its purpose remains unclear. When the dancers soon swarm into the central space directly in front of us, there's nothing reserved or shadowy about them. Squatting, lunging, cantilevering, they readily take the measure of a space now theirs to inhabit.

I'd been contemplating Lois Weaver's Long Table discussion format and had just watched Antonia's Line, the 1995 Dutch film where scenes of a dinner table teeming with various and sundry characters served as Weaver's inspiration. So I was amused to see a long table set up behind Crossman and his dancers. Dark, plain, bare and sturdy, it seemed to represent home or, at least, a base to touch, slouch upon, back up against, even mount and dance across in the encounters and confrontations that would ensue as a muddy audio recording--a speaking voice run backwards?--rambled on unhelpfully.

Left-right: Sumi Clements, Sarah Harrmann and Jason Collins
in Dylan Crossman's [Insert Title]
(photo: Scott Shaw)

This long table is the one constant in a variation of interpersonal arrangements. Encircling it, dancers move right up into or back away from one another's personal space. They gaze into one another's eyes as we both project what we think is happening and shy away from those projections. In fact, our own back-and-forth can render us watchers transparent to ourselves. We see ourselves seeing something that might or might not be there. And doesn't that feel odd? Shouldn't we mind our business? Well, if we should mind our business, what are we doing at a dance concert watching bodies in motion?

Well, Crossman and crew, especially feline Clements, are adroit postmodern movers. They master clean form while suggesting human narrative when bodies are in proximity to other bodies.

Meet Ella, then, makes the perfect follow-up--all about two male bodies in near-constant and joyous proximity, along for the swooping, sliding fun ride of recordings of Ella Fitzgerald singing live. And, yes, as a friend noted, the late great jazz vocalist gets a bio in the program notes. Rightly so. Her agile voice--with all its daredevil technique, its silky warmth and delectable playfulness--is an essential and equal partner here, in high form, as are Teicher and Bugh.

I had only ever seen the mercurial Teicher tap dance, a wonderful thing in itself. I had never seen Bugh; Meet Ella was my introduction to this lighthearted charmer. The two men, wearing regular two-toned oxford shoes, not tap shoes, make nonstop rhythmic "music" throughout their bodies. Swing dance, jitterbug, ballroom, even dashes of Nicholas Brothers virtuosity flow though the duet, powered by standards like "Our Love is Here to Stay," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and--so lusciously--the Lionel Hampton/Sonny Burke/Johnny Mercer "Midnight Sun."

Was there such a night?

It's still a thrill I don't quite believe;

But after you were gone

There was still some stardust on my sleeve!

Nobody sings it like Ella....

Saucy, sexy Meet Ella leaves us with stardust--a great performance and an instant classic.

Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e and Caleb Teicher and Company continue through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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Meet Mix’d Ingrdnts, Oakland's all-women street dance troupe

‪Women Dancers Redefine Oakland’s Street Dancing Scene
by Emma Silvers, KQED Arts, November 12, 2015

Film review: Dean Hargrove's "Tap World"

New York-born tap star Jason Samuels Smith (left)
 and the late Kathak guru Pandit Chitresh Das forged an unexpected and electrifying
cross-cultural partnership, as noted in Dean Hargrove's new feature film, Tap World.
(photo courtesy of tapworldfilm.com)

Tap World's run at New York's Village East Cinema has been extended through next Thursday, July 23. Hooray, and let's talk about the important thing that this award-winning documentary from Tap Heat's Dean Hargrove does absolutely right.

No, Tap World does not offer an intellectual primer on tap history or tap technique or how hard tap dancers train, as the New York Times critic appears to have needed. It does allude to tap's origins in the African-Irish encounter in colonial America. And the mad skills necessary for its proper execution should be crystal clear to everybody--just try it--as should the discipline and loving dedication.

So if Hargrove's 72 minutes--largely derived from footage submitted by dancers from many nations--focus on how much joy, and soul healing, these dancers get from this art and how much joy they give, what of it?

Tap World does what the rest of U.S. dance could and should do. It shows why dance matters to this society and to our world. It reaches past the official arbiters of what's important about dance and instantly, solidly connects with the public. It moves people. Just like the best tap does.

"Rhythm is the language of life, the international language," says acclaimed dancer/actor Ted Louis Levy, one of numerous tap artists and teachers sharing thoughts and personal narratives here. "The simple things--rhythm and love--transcend difference," says Chloé Arnold, the dynamic performer and dancemaker who, along with sister Maud Arnold, is one of the film's producers. That philosophy informs the entire film. We're treated to a virtual world tour watching how this once uniquely American art form has enchanted and fulfilled dancers of one country after another--from France to Taiwan, from Brazil to India. Dancers the world 'round use tap to expand and express themselves.

Yet, as Kathak soloist Rachna Nivas lucidly explained in last evening's post-screening Q&A, tap remains itself, never blending in a "fusion" with other cultural forms. Hargrove includes a tantalizing sample of one such intercultural moment, an excerpt from a shared performance by two greats in their respective fields--Jason Samuels Smith and Nivas's teacher, Kathak guru Pandit Chitresh Das, who died this past January. When these two live wires connect, the energy will rock you right out of your seat.

See Tap World in New York City--now through July 23--
at Village East Cinema (directions).
Click here for times and tickets.

Now playing

at select theaters nationwide

Click here for scheduled screenings,
live performances and Q&As.

Watch for the DVD release this November.

Tap. Coming to a world near you.

Opening July 10 

at select theaters nationwide.

Attend a Tap World screening and artists talk

Tuesday, July 14 at 7:25pm

Village East Cinema (directions)

Click here 

for information and tickets.

Upper Manhattan's dance advocates speak out

Look who's speaking out for dance!
Above: Nia Love
Below: Charmaine Warren

47 notable leaders and local residents of Upper Manhattan--including choreographer Nia Love, Yuien Chin of Harlem One Stop, Mikki Shephard of the Apollo Theater, Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation--tell what they value about the art of dance in Dance/NYC’s NEW YORKERS FOR DANCE video campaign.

Here are a few samples from the series: 

Nia Love

Charmaine Warren

Mikki Shepard

All videos are now live on DanceNYC.org website and YouTube channel.

Poet as witness: Claudia Rankine reads from "Citizen: An American Lyric"

On October 30, 2014 Claudia Rankine gave this reading from Citizen: An American Lyric (2014 National Book Award) and discussed American racism, police violence, and responsibility at the Williams College Museum of Art. Her words, of course, remain fresh, relevant and insightful.

Cori Kresge's poetry in motion

Cori Kresge and Hiroki Ichinose's duet in Do You Like This Title?
(photo: Ryan Reich)

In Wendy Ossserman's Do You Like This Title?, presented in March at Theater for The New City, four dancers struggle to be three-dimensional in a 2D world and two-dimensional in 3D space. Additional movement sources include Hokusai’s manga, Matisse’s cut-outs, 3D printing and the anatomy of the mouth.

Kresge

(photo: Liz Magic Laser)

Wendy Osserman writes of her dancer Cori Kresge,

Cori Kresge first started dancing with me eleven years ago when she was still an undergrad at SUNY Purchase. After a long movement session one day, I suggested she sit and write for awhile. Ever since, Cori has been astounding us all with her dancing as well as her writing.

Enjoy samples of both below!

DO YOU LIKE THIS GARDEN?

by Cori Kresge

In the beginning
there were two howls in the barren black velvet.

There was dust, lots of it,
and an old screen door flapping on its hinge in the white wind.

Turn around and see spring,
budding It's pink tongue.

In fact, spring makes tongues of us all.
A wrist also wants to eat the amber light.

A breast bone wants to lick the hyacinth from the dewy air.
And here is where it gets interesting:

when the pair of mantises quibbles about who said what,
whose turn it is to be fig leafed,

which limbs to keep or discard,
they go for an evening walk as one.

A walk on the air perhaps.

This spring, stem cells in bloom
are sold in tidy bundles.

Kinkos makes kidneys in a gyrating cube,
ready-to-wear in translucent pinks and grays.

Soon nature will pulse with new mechanical precision;
Swatch brand bromeliads that promise to be better than real.

New guns full of hope for making the world a better place,
new knives for carving the air into roses.

At the drawing board of obsessive doodling
where ideas are piling up in crisp new shapes,

squeezed from the minds of Apple and Google,
we wait to pour through into the next dimension.

Like the goo in a 3D printer
in a silicon dream, waiting to join the pulse of life

without beginning/without end. Amen.

CORI  KRESGE is a NYC based dancer and writer. She was a member of the Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group and part of the Cunningham teaching faculty. Cori graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in dance and the Dean’s Award for "breaking the mould." She was a recipient of the Darmasiswa International Scholarship to travel to Indonesia and study traditional Balinese dance. Cori is thrilled to be dancing with Wendy Osserman for over 10 years. She also currently works with Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Reiner, Ellen Cornfield, Rebecca Lazier, and film maker Zuzka Kurtz. In recent years she has worked with Jose Navas/Compagnie Flak, Sarah Skaggs, and performance artist Liz Magic Laser.

Carole Johnson: Journeys in dance and culture

Carole Johnson: Dance: A Legend's Journey

Published on Dec 22, 2014 by Dr. Tracie O'Keefe, DCH

Carole Johnson is a legend in the Australian Contemporary Dance history. The African-American Juilliard graduate is the founding director of the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Council (NAISDA) Dance College and founder of the world-famous Bangarra Dance Theatre.

In this interview with Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH, Carole Johnson, choreographer, dancer and dance administrator takes us on a journey from her beginnings in the 1950s where black dancers were not allowed to attend white ballet schools, through to her groundbreaking work in black dance history.

Carole was inducted into the Australian Dance Awards Hall of Fame in 1999 and in 2003 was awarded the Australian Government Centenary medal in recognition of the contribution she has made to the Australian Indigenous community.

Remembering house dance pioneer Marjory Smarth

Remembering House Dance Pioneer Marjory Smarth
by Czarina Mirani, 5 Magazine, February 13, 2015

First Native American sci-fi film in the works

Navajo Sci-Fi Film 'Legends From the Sky' Is in a Race Against Time
Indian Country Today Media Network.com, January 8, 2015

Legends from the Sky Facebook page

Happy Winter Solstice: Here comes the sun!

How's that Ailey troupe looking?

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
performing Ronald K. Brown's Four Corners
(photo: Paul Kolnik)

Holiday time has come again. As we ask each year, then, how's the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater looking?

Looking good! That is not news. That is pretty much what they do.

I have no news for you in this post.

And I really won't be able to tell you much about the 2014 New York City Center season, because I'm making only one dip into it, and that happened last night in the company of loyal fans of America's cherished dance ambassadors to the world.

Antonio Douthit-Boyd
in Ulysses Dove's Bad Blood
(photo: Steve Wilson)

The troupe performed Bad Blood (Ulysses Dove, 1984), Four Corners (Ronald K. Brown, 2013) and After the Rain (Christopher Wheeldon, 2005), capping the evening off with Ailey's Revelations (1960). I wouldn't call this slate a program of radical experimentation or risk on the part of Robert Battle. I'd say it maintains the status of Ailey as filled with expertly sculpted performers whose bodies are the point and the meaning behind whole stretches of movement of any kind in any season. Give Ailey audiences this beauty, this technical facility, this passionate physicality to behold, and the job is done. We go to kick back and drink in these marvelous stars and stars-in-waiting, maybe to feel a little better about the potential of the human race, and they give us their all.

This is not all I look for in an experience of dance. Far from it. But it's not nothing either. It is what it is.

Ailey dancers in Four Corners
above: Belen Pereyra
below: Kervin Douthit-Boyd

Last night's marquee item might have been the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain, danced by Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims. Anything coming from the world of ballet has a certain built-in sheen to it, and this is Wheeldon, after all. Safe choice. But, for me, Brown's Four Corners was the evening's knockout. The piece stirs Brown's eclectic (and perennial) movement elements and embodied spirituality to silky perfection. And look at its primary inspiration--a song by poet Carl Hancock Rux with grief for the fallen, angels seeking to bestoy healing peace and a ringing exhortation to the people:

Yours is simply this

Command and stand up

Stand

You are beautiful

And lovely

Beautiful and lovely

In this time of pain and despair, could there really be anything more in the spirit of Ailey?

an excerpt from Four Corners

The 2014 Ailey season at New York City Center continues through January 4. For schedule and ticket information, click here.

Dancing before the Lord with all his might...RIP, Bunny Briggs

Bunny Briggs

February 26, 1922 - November 15, 2014

This week, Cynthia Oliver goes BOOM!

R-l: Leslie Cuyjet and Cynthia Oliver in Boom!
(photos by Julieta Cervantes)

Acclaimed dancer, choreographer and educator Cynthia Oliver presents the world premiere of Boom!--a duet with Leslie Cuyjet--at New York Live Arts this Thursday evening. Yesterday, she put up with some of my "really provocative questions," as she called them.

EYA: Who are you? What elements make up who you are as a dancemaker?

CO: That's a question I've been asking myself since I was a teenager. For many years, I worked hard to think about it outside of what I do. In some ways, I am what I do in terms of how I move in the world. But first: a person, a woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an artist. Not that the order of it shows any priority, but it's a humble mix.

EYA: What do you most value? What do you find non-negotiable?

CO: Being honest with myself, my relationships--my family, my friends--and being human and humane. Those guideposts in my work have never, ever led me wrong. They helped me steer the course of each piece clearly.

EYA: What challenges you?

CO: Fear. I feel like I push through fear every day. It's there. I acknowledge it. But I know that I'm not going to accomplish anything by buckling to it. I have to do what it is that's inspiring me anyway, and once I get on the other side of it, it's like a whole other world opens up.

I feel like fear has always been my biggest challenge. I'm not a very outward person, although I love people. I have some wonderful friends and enjoy social situations, but my husband is the real social butterfly. I am not at all. I push through that and see what happens. I feel that I have done okay with that.

EYA: Through what perceptual channels do you best perceive things?

CO: I think of my intuition as my strongest perceptual channel. I've learned how to trust it, listen to it and act on it. Because when I don't, I pay. I remember early on in my tenure [at University of Illinois], I created a piece with a large gospel group with the Black Chorus out there. I had never worked with more than five people in a piece. This was a chorus of forty-five. I was choreographing them and eight dancers.

The piece was called Whisper to Shout, and it addressed this very thing: I had started to realize that if I don't listen to the whisper, the shout was going to be a humdinger. The shout was going to kick my behind. So I had to attune my ear to the whisper and be much more sensitive and much more aware of the whisper. And that's just a matter of trust and not saying, Oh, no, I couldn't possibly be right with that feeling that I should act on. That's my strongest perceptual channel.

EYA: What audience would you most like to reach?

Honestly, I just want humans there. On so many different levels, I feel that the work can speak to a lot of different people. On the obvious level, yes, women audiences, Caribbean audiences, people of color. But at the same time, all of the concerns that I address--those that are both obvious and blatant and those that are layered and more subtle--are universal concerns that we all, as humans, negotiate. I want as many kinds of folks in the room as possible sitting right next to each other.

I think my audience is a reflection of my own life. I have always had a very diverse group of people around me. I grew up in an international community in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. When I moved to the states to be a professional dancer, that is something I continued. When I went to college, I found that the African American community in the states tended to be more segregated than where I came from. Not that there is not segregation there. But it's one of those things where you'd still see a lot of mixing, especially in those heady days of the '70s, when I was in high school. Less so now. It's much more polarized now [due to economic disparity, changes wrought by disasters such as Hurricane Hugo and other factors.] But at that time, it was very different. That's how I got exposed to a certain kind of experimental dance there, that breadth of experience across communities.

EYA: Do you need an outside eye on your work? Or are you able to be objective about what you do?

CO: I do both. I trust my own eye and my own sensibilities about what needs to happen--what kinds of sequence, what kinds of material, what kinds of language. And because I do a lot of research in the work, I trust that. I also strongly believe that none of us can be objective, and it helps to have a trusted eye in the room. The key word there is trusted. I make sure that the person I ask to come and watch, while the work is in that delicate state, is someone who can put aside their own aesthetic, their own agenda, and look at what I'm trying to do and ask me questions that will help me clarify what I'm trying to do, not what they want. I find that that combination--knowing when to bring people in, going back and revising, and then bringing folks in again--that's been really helpful to me.

EYA: What do you consider to be the most important qualities of a serious or professional artist?

CO: Openness. Sensitivity. A willingness to see beyond where you are and what your work is, to see the broader relationship to your field, to the world, to folks around you. Mostly, openness.

EYA: Why is dance your focus?

CO: The full embodiment. I actually didn't start out as a dancer. My sisters danced and, I think since I was the last of six kids, my parents just said, Go on with your sisters!, to get me out of the house.

I was a visual artist. My parents let me try a lot of things. I tried music. I was terrible at music. But painting, drawing, was my arena. I thought I'd make my living as an architect. I took courses in physics and calculus in high school thinking I was going to go in that direction. Dance was really a hobby early on.

And then I had this mentor who fell in love with me and I with her. She was from Kurt Jooss [the German choreographer] and had been in the Caribbean for decades and had a dance school. I would go there and study Afro-Caribbean dance during the week, and she invited me to start taking ballet and improvisation with her. Then she kept putting me onstage, and she encouraged me to move in this direction. And I loved it! I loved the physicality of dance. I'm a swimmer. So, moving on land was really nice too! She would bring dance companies to the island to expose young people to these companies. So, I saw George Faison's Universal Dance Experience; that really blew my mind. I saw a lot of different companies from Europe, South America, the Caribbean.

Recruiters came at the end of high school, and I thought, I really should do this! This feels like something I could really sink my teeth into. A big concern for my dad was, "How're you going to afford to live?" My mom--a brilliant artist and a seamstress--was different. She was like, "Take your wings and fly, girl. Do that art."

See the world premiere of Cynthia Oliver's BOOM! 

at New York Live Arts, Oct 23-25. 

Click here for details and tickets.

Related events:

October 23 at 6:30pm: Come Early Conversation: Sequencing Non-Linear Narratives, choreographer and educator Nia Love discusses the creative practice of Cynthia Oliver

October 24: Stay Late Discussion: Her History - Her Present - Her Future, Cynthia Oliver and Leslie Cuyjet in conversation with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Cynthia Oliver’s work is the visceral evidence of an incongruous mixture of aesthetics. Steeped in the everyday sounds of black voices and bodies moving in time and space in the Caribbean of her youth, Ms. Oliver was encouraged to explore ballet, dance dramas and site specific improvisational experiments led by Atti van den Berg - a former Kurt Jooss dance drama company member/performer. All the while she absorbed both the informal and formal of the Afro-Caribbean dance canons in the US Virgin Islands and elsewhere in the region. These vastly differing experiences defined her childhood coming into art. Moving in this way led her to an eclectic career in New York City and abroad in the world of performance art and experimental dancing with folks as diverse as The Caribbean Dance Company, Theatre Dance Inc., the David Gordon/Pick Up Company, Ronald Kevin Brown/EVIDENCE and Bebe Miller. She currently performs in Tere O’Connor’s Sister and BLEED dance works. Oliver has studied and been a part of the black avant garde theatre world, performing in the works of numerous playwrights, most notably, Laurie Carlos’ White Chocolate for my Father, and Vanquished by Voodoo, and Ntozake Shange’s A Photograph Lover’s In Motion, also directed by Ms. Carlos; Greg Tate’s My Darling Gremlin; and choreographing for theatrical productions like The University of Illinois’ theatre company production of George C. Wolff’s Colored Museum directed by Lisa Gaye Dixon. Her choreography for theater has been performed at Minnesota’s Penumbra and Pillsbury House Theaters, New York’s La MaMa Etc., Syncronicity Space and Aaron Davis Hall.

Oliver has been creating dance works since 1991. A mélange of dance, theatre and the spoken word, her pieces reflect her background and interests, incorporating the textures of Caribbean performance with African and American sensibilities. Named “Outstanding Young Choreographer” by reviewer Frank Werner in German Magazine Ballet Tanz early in her career, Oliver has since received numerous grants and awards including most notably, a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, two Illinois Arts Council Choreography Fellowships, a Creative Capital award, a Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production grant, NEFA Touring support, NPN Creation Funds, a CalArts Alpert Award nomination and a prestigious University Scholar Award from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is a Professor of dance. In addition to her performance credits, Oliver holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University. She has published widely and is the author of Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean (University Press of Mississippi. 2009).

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay and artist Kara Walker in conversation

Filmmaker Ava Duvernay and Artist Kara Walker In Conversation
by Michelle Denise Jackson, Shine at ForHarriet.com, October 12, 2014

On Saturday, October 11, The Broad Museum brought together director Ava Duvernay with artist Kara Walker, for an hour-long conversation on creating artistic work based on the experiences of women of color—focusing on Walker's artwork, including her recent installation "A Subtlety…", and the complexities of telling Black women's narratives.