Farley Mowat, 92

Farley Mowat, Canadian Writer and Wildlife Advocate, Dies at 92
by Ian Austen, The New York Times, May 7, 2014

Jeremy Crutchley brings "Sacred Elephant" to La MaMa

Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant(photo by Rob Keith)

Fine-boned and mercurial, the British/South African actor Jeremy Crutchley has the litheness of a dancer. His masterful orientation to space makes you think there's much, much more of it than, in reality, La MaMa's First Floor Theater has to offer. His performance of Sacred Elephant--a stage adaptation of a poem by Heathcote Williams about these often exploited and endangered animals--dances as much as it vocally interprets an equally masterful, intense torrent of language, a blend of scientific observation, spiritual resonance and polemics. 

From its first inviting words and the first mad glance of the actor's red-rimmed eyes, you're roped into an experience you cannot escape: a wondrous encounter with beings of great power, intelligence, unexpected sensitivity and altruism followed by a reminder of the selfish destructiveness of that insecure "piece of work" Hamlet called "the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

photo by Rob Keith

Directed by Geoffrey Hyland, who adapted the Williams poem with Crutchley, this all-giving, 75-minute monologue never fails to engage and trouble the mind, senses or conscience.

Sacred Elephant runs through September 22, Wednesday-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm. Call 212-868-4444 or visit Smarttix.

For more information, visit the play's Web site here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theater)
74 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Body and Soul podcast: Listen.: JoAnna Mendl Shaw

JoAnna Mendl Shaw

Subscribe to Body and Soul podcast* and listen to JoAnna Mendl Shaw, choreographer and artistic director of The Equus Projects, as she talks about how an Arabian horse named Hamlet influenced her creative process.

The Equus Projects

JoAnna Mendl Shaw bio

*Subscribe to Body and Soul podcast (free!) here:

http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml

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)

Sue Coe: Anger to Art

Art Review: Sue Coe at Galerie St. Etienne
by Deborah Feller, News and Views, June 17, 2012

Google honors Martha Graham

Martha Graham Google doodle celebrates the dancer and choreographer's 117th birthday
by Laura Roberts, The Telegraph, May 11, 2011

An interview with painter Sibel Kocabasi

Sibel Kocabasi

interviewed by Barbara Ann Levy

BALGallery.com

Dance in flight

How starling flocks create their aerobatic displays

by Matt Walker, Earth News, BBC.co.uk, November 11, 2010

She dances with dolphins

Together: Dancing with Spinner Dolphins

directed and performed by Chisa Hidaka, founder and director, Dolphin Dance Project, "dedicated to a true collaboration between equal minds."

Support the work of the Dolphin Dance Project. Download Together or purchase a DVD here.

For further information about Together and the DDP, click here.

Holly is Hot!

It's so great to be in the presence of Holly Hughes again that the simple awareness that she has stepped into Dixon Place's darkened space gets some wolf whistles going even before we actually see those lemon-yellow, open-toed spike heels she's rocking. When the lights finally go up, there's our free speech hero, our culture warrior, sporting a multi-colored, feathery haircut that only underscores how much of a voluble, little tropical bird she is. A wound-up, high-pitched, smart-as-hell and very funny tropical bird and one who works her butt off over the hour-long course of her demanding monologue, The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony), directed by Dan Hurlin.

My best guess is that, just as last night's Hot! Festival performance took some moments to heat up and make sense, the entire multifaceted monologue took a while in development to shape into some semblance of direction and coherence. I've seen different blurbs forecasting the piece, and none of them exactly square with the others or seem to have much to do with what turned up at Dixon Place. But what turned up--a meditation, by way of barely-controlled chaos, on the close relationship between humans and dogs--is both entertaining and, in the end, touching. Go and see it, even if you're a cat dyke or if you're allergic or irritable or you think you don't give a damn one way or the other.

If you can still get a ticket, visit with Holly tonight, 7:30pm, at Dixon Place.

Hot! Festival at Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
212-219-0736

Honk!

Honk if You Love the Canada Goose

by James Gorman, The New York Times, July 16, 2010

My "Moment in Time"

(c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

At 11am EST today, I took this photo and submitted it to the New York Times's A Moment in Time project. It contains images of Mary of the wounded sacred heart; Yemaya, the Afro-Atlantic goddess of the sea; and endangered animals. Mindful of the oil spill tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, I call this assemblage The Wounded Heart of Mother Earth.

Dances with dolphins

Dancer-choreographer Chisa Hidaka's Dolphin Dance Project releases its first underwater dance video clip.

A Woman Among Wolves

Click arrow to begin. Scroll down and click Full Screen.
And do not miss the final 10 or so minutes.

Not putting the best foot forward

In Lots of Animal Art, Wrong Foot Is Forward
by Henry Fountain, The New York Times, January 26, 2009