A new year starts with APAP

Top, L-R: Bergen Wheeler, Douglas Gillespie, Leslie Kraus and Luke Murphy
in Kate Weare's Garden
Below, front: Leslie Kraus with Bergen Wheeler in Garden
Photos ©Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang

My illustrious guest for The Joyce Theater's second evening of Focus Dance, faced with no project to showcase for APAP this season, was jazzed about being able to run around seeing lots of stuff, just like the rest of us. "It's like New Year's Eve all over again!" she said--only one of many encouraging things she said--uttering what might be my motto for this APAP season and more. Every encounter, greeted with openness and genuine interest: Perhaps that could be a worthy New Year's resolution in dance and beyond dance.

If so, my first APAP event, Focus Dance--one of the latest in a cluster of APAP-related dance festivals--certainly snapped into focus with presentations by Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and Kate Weare Company on their shared program on Wednesdav evening.

Weare's Garden is a keen, satisfying journey into what could be an alternate universe's sexually-fluid, seductive and treacherous Eden crafted by an alternate, wilder-minded Martha Graham. Weare's dancers, as always, are all gems but, as always, it's impossible to take your eyes off the two women--Leslie Kraus and Bergen Wheeler--whose performances are larger than life.

Scene from Kyle Abraham's Live!: The Realest MC
Photos ©Steven Schreiber

Abraham's company opens the Focus Dance evening with excerpts from Live!: The Realest MC, a dazzling, emotionally affecting ensemble on the complications of Black masculinity. It is this young choreographer's best effort to date. From the glittery costumes by Abraham and Kristi Wood to the rich, gorgeous lighting design by Dan Scully, this production holds together in a seamless system and  shows evidence of a bright artist who knows who he is and has something worth saying. His movement scheme draws ideas from popular culture without settling for the easy, familiar image. He always wants to find out what else he can do with it, what's underneath it, how it might look on a different body. And he has not stopped exploring new ways to cut and shape space. A wizard of a dancer in his own right, Abraham is joined here by a snazzy, diverse group of performers--Rena Butler, Chalvar Monteiro, Elyse Morris, Rachelle Rafailedes, Hsiao-Jou Tang and Maleek Malaki Washington--who I hope will stay and continue to grow right along with him.

If tickets are still available, don't miss the second and last Kyle Abraham/Kate Weare evening, this Sunday at 7:30pm. For information, click here.

The Joyce Theater

Eighth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets, Manhattan

(directions)

Members of chelfitsch Theater Company
in Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech

Photos ©Julie Lemberger 2012

Below: Mari Ando and Taichi Yamagata

chelfitsch Theater Company's return to Japan Society--as part of The Public Theater's notable APAP fest, Under The Radar is cause for celebration. And that's true even though Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (2009)--a trio of nutty little workplace scenarios written and directed by Toshiki Okada--takes off from a boring, antiseptic environment that is anything but celebratory. I love the way these guys just smack woozy sound and banal, obsessive text up against fidgety, painfully askew movement in a depiction of a way of life that is seriously out of whack. Even so, their characters often have a charm that relieves the cartoonish abstraction. Trust me, it's all fun, and all expertly done--particularly the movement and particularly when Mari Ando and Taichi Yamagata do the Air Conditioner duet (photo above). Do not miss!

Seats are limited. Hurry to see chelfitsch at Japan Society now through January 14. For information, click here.

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

See my favorite things of 2011. Click here!

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

chelfitsch Theater Company at Japan Society

And while we're on the subject of Japan Society...

Toshiki Okada's movement-rich chelfitsch Theater Company closes its too-brief run tonight at Japan Society with a 7:30 performance of Five Days in March. Written and directed by Okada, this 2004 work fractures and complicates a banal, meandering narrative of clueless young Japanese hipsters and their five-day sexual marathon, set against the faint, distant backdrop of Bush's relentless drive towards invasion of Iraq.

The performance runs a longer-feeling 90 minutes with an intermission. It's spoken in Japanese with supertitles (translation by Aya Ogawa).

The slacker style of storytelling--as reproduced by Okada and Ogawa--is deeply lulling, and you might get a little lost as the actors continually flow in and out of character. I'd advise not getting terribly caught up in the supertitles and their flattened narrative and missing the sound of the Japanese or the remarkable accumulation of the physical elements of this theater. These are good reasons to stay alert.

The movement--starting so small, so naturalistic and subtle, you think it's just a few physical tics--gradually becomes riveting. After a long while of focusing on the words, I gave up and gave my attention over to the movement. Although it has no literal bearing on the storyline, it speaks for and of itself, depicting something of the bodily underpinning of character. It is lit in suitably shifting tones, luscious and perfect.

Okada's talented troupe includes Taichi Yamagata, Hiromasa Shimonishi, Kohei Matsueda, Tomomitsu Adachi, Riki Takeda and two women actors--the performers I found most interesting--Luchino Yamazaki and Izumi Aoyagi.

Five Days in March concludes tonight at 7:30pm. For ticketing, call 212-715-1258 or visit Japan Society.

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street (between First and Second Avenues)
Manhattan