Out and about: Vermont Performance Lab's September festival

Dahlia Nayar
(photo courtesy of Vermont Performance Lab)

Vermont Performance Lab's Progressive Performance Festival (September 4-6) welcomes Lab resident artists Martin Chaput and Martial Chazallon, presenting the US premiere of The Round, "a 90-minute experimental site work that combines movement, media technology, theatricality and sound installation with community involvement."

Audiences members, each equipped with ear-buds and their own smartphone, follow instructions for individual choreographed journeys around downtown Brattleboro. These experiences, the artists suggest, "will interrogate and alter our relationship with a familiar mobile phone technology, raising questions about the uses and potentials implicit in its ubiquitous presence in our lives."

Other festival events include:

Schwanze-Beast by Cuban-American feminist performers Carmelita Tropicana + Ela Troyano--"equal parts performance, scientific lecture and installation...the future becomes a lens through which to examine our present cultural landscape. The status of the animal species and their civil rights is closely tied to climate change and the preservation of all species, as well as class issues, immigration, sexual preference, race and gender."

Dahlia Nayar's dance and sound installation, 2125 Stanley Street, "influenced in part by her experiences growing up outside of Chicago with parents from India and the Philippines."

Vermont Performance Lab is a new type of performance incubator in the foothills of Vermont. VPL takes creation of new work beyond the walls of the studio and into the community by fostering experimental approaches to research and performance.

For a complete description and schedule of VPL's Progressive Performance Festival events, click here.

Whitney V. Hunter: Open Practice in Harlem

Whitney V. Hunter at Chasama in Harlem
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Whitney V. Hunter

1st American Shapist House for the Practice of Performance/Ritual

Open Practice

a seven-day public performance/installation 

at chasama

Activate The Materials
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Hunter, activating
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persistence Is Resistance
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Soil platform for Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persisting
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Daily Public Participation 5-9pm

remaining dates: May 8-9

May 9: 
5-6pm -- closing solo performance & reception
7pm -- artist talk with guests, Manbo Dowoti Desir, Samita Sinha and Andre M. Zachery

Admission: free

chasama
1351 Amsterdam Avenue (at 126th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Presenting dance now: panel on new venues, new approaches

Movement Research Studies Project

presents

NEW MODELS FOR PRESENTING DANCE 

IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Tuesday, February 4, 6pm

Gibney Dance Center

890 Broadway, 5th Floor (between 19th and 20th Streets)

(map/directions)

The landscape of dance presentation in NYC has undergone a dynamic shift over the last five years. New spaces for showing work have opened. Museums and galleries are regularly programming performance, and several venues that present multiple artistic genres have become specifically interested in presenting dance. This conversation, with a sampling of voices from these venues, will create a layered portrait of the constantly shifting field of dance presentation and examine its new directions. How do these shifts in presenting spaces and structures address the current condition of the arts and artists in NYC, how do they affect the way artists make work and how that work is seen?

panelists 

(as of 1/26)

Brian Rogers (The Chocolate Factory)

Sally Silvers (Roulette)

Lucien Zayan (The Invisible Dog)

(others TBA)

City says No to House of Yes

Curtain Falls on a Club for Clowns and Comics
by Marc Santora and Julie Turkewitz, The New York Times, August 20, 2013

Allison Orr: from trash to treasure

Trash Dance, a luminous and fun film by Andrew Garrison, follows choreographer Allison Orr's progress as she befriends Black and Latino sanitation workers in Austin, Texas, and--in her gutsy, hands-on way--learns about the diversity and intricate details of their labor. Her project? To guide these men and women as they turn equipment and everyday actions into the stuff of art. How can you take a garbage truck, something that we commonly see--and, yet, don't really see--and make it expressive? Orr--who, as Artistic Director of Forklift Danceworks, has crafted projects with Austin firefighters and the gondoliers of Venice--steps up to this fresh challenge with surprising and moving results.

Meet Orr and Garrison this Wednesday, May 1 (7:30) for a special screening of the multiple award-winning Trash Dance, with moderator Aviva Davidson (Executive and Artistic Director, Dancing in the Streets), or catch the last New York screening on May 2.

1FP reRun GastropubTheater
147 Front Street, Brooklyn (DUMBO)
(map/directions)

For tickets, click here.

For information on other screenings of Trash Dance, click here

News from the Trisha Brown Dance Company

Opal Loop / Cloud Installation #72503 -- photo (c) Babette Mangolte 1980

Health Troubles Cause Trisha Brown to Leave Her Dance Company
by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, January 31, 2013 

Official release on the Trisha Brown Dance Company's future plans

“Proscenium Works, 1979-2011” Tour Kicks off at BAM; TBDC will Pioneer New Model for Presenting Choreographic Works of Art

New York, NY, January 31, 2013— Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) today announced plans for the future course of the company and of Trisha Brown’s oeuvre.

TBDC’s plan offers a new vision for extending the life of a single-artist dance company.  It includes the Board’s plans for artistic succession; a farewell tour of works made for the stage, seen one last time in their original context; the company’s plans for the ongoing presentation of Brown’s masterworks in both site-specific and museum contexts; and the preservation of Brown’s papers, film and video archive, sets, and costumes.

“As we considered how to keep Trisha’s work alive in the world, we were compelled to ask, ‘How can we innovate in a way that is worthy of a revolutionary artist like Trisha?’” said Kirk Radke, President of the TBDC Board. “We had to find a new model: one that honors Trisha’s spirit, her playfulness, her continual rethinking of her work, her stature as a visual artist. This plan does that. It is a bold reimagining of how the public experiences the work of a great choreographer.”

As previously announced, Brown has choreographed her last two works for the company.  Effective February 1, 2013 she will take the title of Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer.   Brown has named Diane Madden and Carolyn Lucas as Associate Artistic Directors.

“Diane and Carolyn have worked with Trisha since 1980 and 1984, respectively,” said Barbara Dufty, Executive Director of TBDC.  “They are the ideal people to reconstruct Trisha’s work for the tour and to repurpose her works for life beyond the stage.  As we move into our next phase, they provide continuity and impassioned leadership for the company.”

The company kicks off its three-year, international “Proscenium Works, 1979-2011” tour with its 2013 BAM season (January 30-February 2).  The tour will showcase Brown’s major stage works for one final time in the proscenium format, complete with the significant  components created by Brown’s collaborators including Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, Laurie Anderson, Terry Winters, Elizabeth Murray, Nancy Graves and others.

In April 2013, as part of the tour, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will present “Trisha Brown: The Retrospective Project,” engaging numerous platforms to explore Brown’s past and current work. The project includes site-specific works (Roof Piece at the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Getty Center, Floor of the Forest at the Hammer Museum, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, location TBA); eight proscenium choreographies; the innovative use of archival materials; and dancer-to-dancer education programs. Collaborating with the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Hammer Museum, local performers and several university entities, the CAP UCLA project exemplifies the potential for the dynamic interplay of Brown’s seminal works and methodology within public and museum settings.

In 2015, TBDC will shift toward a new model of presentation.  The artistic team will create a blueprint for institutions to present TBDC in a highly curated, interactive context. Non-proscenium-based performances, screenings, dance education, exhibitions, and dialogues will be programmed with the goal of engaging a broader audience than the theatrical dance audience alone.  Museums and institutions will extend Brown’s legacy as a choreographer and visual artist.  Institutional partners for TBDC’s next phase will be announced in late 2013.

“The visual art world has long had a model for sharing its master works with the public—and for re-engaging with those works, investigating them anew, so that they remain vital,” said Diane Madden. “We hope to forge a similar model for choreographic works. Given her profound connection to the visual arts, Trisha is at the very forefront of this approach, as well she should be.  Her work in particular can be curated in much the same way as a visual art exhibition, with the goal of engaging and educating the public on how to see the work’s contexts and influences.”

As the new artistic team, Madden and Lucas will program and reconstruct Brown’s works for the “Proscenium Works, 1979-2011” tour.   In dialogue with other artists and institutions, they will also re-imagine and re-position Brown’s choreographies in site-specific and non-proscenium spaces. They will undertake the necessary and exciting work of gradually transforming the company from a dance-creation and touring company to the integral source for carrying Brown’s legacy forward—as dancers, historians, interpreters, curators, and educators.

The artistic team will also oversee the preservation and utilization of TBDC’s vast archive. Since the early 1980s, Brown has documented every step in her creative process on video; this archive will provide an abundance of material for curators.  The archive includes sets, costumes, and scores by some of the pre-eminent artists of the era as well as Brown’s notebooks and sketchbooks.

In addition, TBDC will also channel select archival materials into an interactive online media library.  Significant funding has already been secured for this project.  To be curated in the style of a museum exhibition, the media archive’s express purpose is to engage users in creative dialogue with the work in yet another non-theatrical space.

“Throughout her career, Trisha has been very concerned about space,” said Carolyn Lucas.  “She has continually questioned the conventions she feels are ‘hanging all over a theater space.’ It’s going to be incredibly exciting to start taking these works outdoors and into galleries—and very true to Trisha.”

Trisha Brown Dance Company Web site

A house is not a home: David Levine's "Habit"

"This is so wild--the semiotics of it! Do you even know what semotics means?"

--David Levine, Habit

David Levine's theater/installation piece, Habit--co-presented by the currently nomadic Performance Space 122 and FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival--inhabits several rooms of an unremarkable ranch house. What is remarkable, though, is that this house and all of its dismal furnishings have been painstakingly assembled within the bare, unused confines of the original Essex Street Market near Rivington Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The audience views the action by peering through or parting several diaphanous curtains and gazing in on dusty Halloween decor dispiritedly strewn around and the typical hipster mess of well-worn electronics, cheap living room furniture and empty beer cans. Kudos to scenic designer Marsha Ginsberg for the cheesy, fascinating macro- and micro-details of all of this, right down to the food-stained menu stuck to the refrigerator and the fine layer of undisturbed dust. Achoo!

Sure, pull the curtains aside, if you wish. No one stops you. If you want to reach past the window and slap some sense into one or another of Levine's characters, you're often close enough to do so. Lucky for the actors, I restrained myself, and I trust most other people will, too, though the temptation lingers through the hour-plus of increasing intrigue and tension.

It all starts off banal enough. "Nobody likes Frank Zappa," argues the curiously snide, menacing Doug (well played, in the cast I saw today, by shark-eyed Ben Mehl). "Nobody likes Captain Fucking Beefheart," he harangues his brother and housemate Mitch (Brian Bickerstaff). In return, the rangy, hapless Mitch can only offer a feeble retort, "But The Grateful Dead are okay?"

The (unwanted--by Doug, vaguely-wanted--by Mitch) presence of a blowsy cokehead named Viv (Eliza Baldi) introduces a few more critical areas of hostility between the brothers, which I will not reveal. Not that revealing any of this story would make a difference one way or another. That the plot of this thing is not really the point of this thing will become obvious once you experience it.

Your experience as a watcher is the point. Looking through those windows, figuring out where and how quickly to trot in order to catch the next batch of action, wondering if the "sleeping" Doug--one hand resting in a suspect location under the bedcovers--will start masturbating in front of your very eyes...all of this is the point. Getting to a place where you find yourself also looking hard at your fellow voyeurs as they gaze through windows on the opposite side of the house--that, too, might be the point.

If you lose interest--and you don't opt for reaching in and slapping--you can always keep an eye on the Animal Science show running on the characters' unwatched television. You know: wolves, bears, salmon swimming upstream. Wholesome family fare.

Habit runs through Sunday, September 30, open 1pm-9pm daily, featuring alternating casts. It's free and open to the public. Come and go as you please.

Essex Street Market (not the new one, though)
130 Essex Street (near Rivington Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Zuštiak's "Strange Cargo"

Sitting in the darkened, looming Synod House--a side building of the world's largest cathedral, St. John the Divine, rarely opened to the public--you're left with the bluish glow from narrow, distant stained-glass windows. The blue emits a vague comfort, but the lead strips crossing, connecting, restraining the blue snatches that meager comfort away. You shrink back, feeling small, a bit threatened. A man creeps across the floor on his knees, passes a table, pivots, hesitates, gingerly touches the heel of one hand to the floor before skittering around. Other people creep in, one by one, building into a quintet of loners who make actions and sounds of motorized, robotic toys or figures from violent video games. Don't look for the remote control; there is none--and no controller--in sight. There is no God. Only the body and the impossibility of two or more bodies occupying the same space at the same time. And, as we will see, the inevitability of trouble.

Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo concludes Zuštiak's Painted Bird Trilogy with Strange Cargo--a interdisciplinary production presented by the currently, and interestingly, nomadic Performance Space 122. (The entire trilogy will play out, in September, at Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts.) Those who have followed this journey, from La MaMa (Bastard, 2010) to Baryshnikov Arts Center (Amidst, 2011) to this ecclesiastical assembly hall, might agree with me that what unfolds here now bumps the dark intensity up several notches and calls up the most grueling and risk-taking performances from its extraordinary crew. At one point, sweat pours down dancer Jeremy Xido's face, but Zuštiak sweats not only body but mind and soul, too.

Aside from Xido and his quietly-menaced prey Luke Murphy, Strange Cargo boasts astonishing work from Lindsey Dietz-Marchant (the most memorable presence in Amidst), Giulia Carotenuto and Denisa Musilova. The rest of Zuštiak's team of collaborators are also tight, and they once again include Joe Levasseur (innovative lighting techniques) and Christian Frederickson and Ryan Rumery (superb original music, performed live). You must see this one.

Strange Cargo continues at Synod House through May 13: Thursday and Sunday at 8pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm and 9:30pm. Space is limited, and there will be no late seating. For program and ticket information, click here.

Synod House
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue at West 110th Street, Manhattan
(map and directions)

Watch this space!

BMW Guggenheim Lab to Open as Pop-Up in East Village
by Carol Vogel, The New York Times, August 1, 2011

BMW Guggenheim Lab Web site

No Space Too Dilapidated for a Show
by Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, August 3, 2011

Tobias on the allure of Trisha Brown

Mining the Past

by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com, January 14, 2011

"seNSATE' in The Vaults

Carrie Ahern rehearsing seNSATE 

(c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Choreographer Carrie Ahern reprises seNSATE, her acclaimed dance installation, at The Vaults (14 Wall Street) for six Swing Space performances, beginning this Saturday at 8pm.


             all photos (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Premiered at the Brooklyn Lyceum in November 2009, Ahern's seNSATE runs for three hours in a cyclical loop. Viewers may drop in and leave at any point during those times, and they will freely move around to follow the flow of action in various pockets of space beneath Wall Street.

Click here for audio interview with Carrie Ahern

Carrie Ahern Dance

The Vaults

14 Wall Street (Level B), Manhattan

Performance schedule, directions and ticketing

Swing Space is a residency program and presentation of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Invisible Dog, Off Leash and Reimagined

Invisible Dog, Off Leash and Reimagined
by Melena Ryzik, The New York Times, September 13, 2010

Shemy's "2 kilos of sea"

UPDATE: Since the rain forced Shemy to cancel a few performances last week, she's adding two more this Wednesday--12:30pm and 5pm.

***

The John Street United Methodist Church--a city landmark, nestled among lower Manhattan's financial-district towers--is the home of the country's oldest Methodist congregation, established in 1766. (The current building was erected in 1841.) Its people are proud of their history of service to the city--from the Revolutionary War to the Depression to 9/11. And now, its tiny outdoors courtyard is serving art, playing host to a Sitelines project that features Deganit Shemy and Company (continuing today through Thursday).

Israeli-born Shemy inserts her seven dancers into this confined, austere setting, turning it into a theater of sorts in which soft, human flesh conforms to (and messes with) rigid structure and takes on mechanical behavior. You become aware of the vulnerability of bare feet in a narrow patch of wood chips and on thin carpets of Astroturf. But the dancers, dressed in tacky polyester vintage-store clothing,  seem blasted beyond vulnerability--trapped in dissociated or pathologically elated states of mind.


Shemy--remember her Arena and its similarly driven, dissociated, often brutal women athletes?--has an endless well of invention of this sort of stuff. She puts it to use, once again, in this site-specific piece, 2 kilos of sea. Her dancers--the excellent Denisa Musilova, Savina Theodorou, Erika Eichelberger, Nicholas Bruder, Christina Robson, Leah Nelson and Michael Ingle--turn the courtyard into the most grotesque musical jewelry box or Swiss clock ever. Jim Dawson's soundscape gets under your skin.


Mysterious, fragmented, deeply weird and sometimes perplexing, 2 kilos of sea might send some Wall Street area workers back from lunch break with queasy stomachs.

Take your own chances, today through Thursday, at 12:30pm and 5pm; Thursday, only at 12:30. Free!

A co-presentation of the River to River Festival and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Directions

Located at 44 John Street, John Street United Methodist Church is 1.5 blocks east of Broadway between Nassau and William Streets.

Subway: Broadway/Nassau (A & C lines) and Fulton Street (2, 3, 4, and 5 lines). John Street is one block south of Fulton Street.

Bus service: #15 to John Street, #6 to Fulton Street, or The Downtown Connection to South Street Seaport and Fulton Street

Swing out with Swing Space

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space program (project-based arts residencies) announces its next application deadline: July 22.

For this open call, LMCC is accepting applications for Studio Space at Building 110: LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island, and Rehearsal Space at The Vaults at 14 Wall Street.

Learn more and apply here.

Evidence of things unseen

This afternoon, I ferried over to Governors Island to check out choreographer Dana Salisbury's Unseen Dances, a presentation of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space program.


All photos (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

While big crowds arrived to take in the numerous, fun-looking offerings of a arts-and-public-creativity festival called Figment, I slipped into a small room at the back of Building 110 (LMCC's arts residency outpost) and joined a small group of people being de-shoed, separated from our belongings, blindfolded and guided around. Salisbury and the No-See-Ums provided a sightless experience of heightened aural, tactile and kinetic awareness, ranging from the amusing (when I briefly got snared in something plastic that failed to give way) to the amazing (a mini-earthquake of rapid, heavy footfalls; outside conversations from two opposing directions, simultaneously hitting each of my ears in a startling demonstration of brain hemispheres).


Unseen Dances comes in two flavors: improvised and choreographed. Feel free to visit anytime during open hours (12-4 tomorrow; 1-5 on Sunday) and sign up to go with the improvised flow. Come at 2pm tomorrow or 3pm on Sunday for the choreographed performance, which lasts 45 minutes. There's no charge.

You'll find Building 110 as soon as you come off the ferry. Look for it to the right of the path, past the building housing the new cafe. 110 is a long brick building with a sign for Figment. Stop in there for restrooms, then exit again and walk around to the building's left side.

Walk down to the far end of the building where you'll find LMCC's special entrance as well as a rather adorable sign for Unseen Dances.

Directions to and schedule for the Governors Island ferry

More on Dana Salisbury

Artists colonize Governors Island

Exotic Isle for Artists, Right in City

by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, June 1 2010