92Y presents a tribute to Arthur Mitchell

Arthur Mitchell
dancing in George Balanchine's Agon
(photo: Martha Swope)

Arthur Mitchell with Darren Walker: 

A Stellar Life in Dance

presented by

92Y Harkness Dance Center

Fridays@Noon

Arthur Mitchell--who, in 1955, brought Black excellence to Balanchine's New York City Ballet as a principal dancer and, in 1969, founded historic Dance Theatre of Harlem--is, at age 84, a stone-cold hoot. Sure, it took a couple of folks to help the man to his chair at 92Y's Buttenweiser Hall today but, as soon as he took that seat, he took control. Just ripped control right out of the hands of Donna Walker-Kuhne, veteran arts marketer, billed as moderator of his conversation with Ford Foundation president Darren Walker. Make no mistake, Walker-Kuhne can handle herself. But, at least for the moment, there was no handling Mr. Arthur Mitchell.

There was so much he wanted to tell us, you see. And he wasted no opportunity to admonish the young students lining the floor in front of the first row of audience seating at this sold-out event.

"Pull your feet back!" he ordered a few.

"Don't upstage me, dear!" he warned a scurrying Catherine Tharin, Fridays@Noon's curator.

"Darren is one of my role models," he told us. "I need someone to educate me in the business part of dance."

Well, thank goodness there's a reason to keep Darren Walker around!

When Walker-Kuhne finally took the reins, posing a question about diversity in the dance field, Mitchell held to what seems to always be his primary focus--discipline.

"Very few people know what [diversity] means," he said.

To Mitchell, it brings thoughts of the multitude of dance techniques and performance skills today's dancer must possess--everything from ballet and tap to a strong, projecting voice.  Speaking of projection, everyone--from audience members with mumbly questions to the moderator of the concluding panel--got a tongue lashing for not speaking up!

Next up, Darren Walker offered that "diversity is about excellence" and that excellence has the potential to lift everthing from dance troupes to major corporations and foundations like Ford.

"It does not correlate with a loss of quality," he argued. Rectifying the chronic inequality in our society and establishing social justice should be the ultimate goal of philanthropy. However, today's philanthropists, many of them flush with Silicon Valley success, have not yet turned attention to the arts.

"But the arts are what make it possible for us to be empathetic," Walker said. "Without empathy, we won't have justice."

Both men lamented the decline of arts education in our nation's schools, and Walker offered the example of how pressuring New York mayor Bill de Blasio led to his establishment of universal pre-K. Why can't we have a similar push for more arts activities in all our schools?

"You've just implemented the most complicated thing you can do--add on a new population of students," Walker said. "But we lack the political will for an arts policy that puts arts education in every classroom. We have to hold our political leaders accountable to get to that goal."

The program stretched Fridays@Noon's usual ninety minutes to a full two hours. It included an enjoyable slate of performances: Paunika Jones (Mitchell's Balm in Gilead), Rasta Thomas (Flight of the Bumble Bee by Vladamir Angelov after Milton Myers), Jones and Jamal Story (Doina by Royston Maldoom), and Maria Kowroski and Amar Ramasar (the duet from Agon by George Balanchine, made famous by the extraordinary Mitchell and Diana Adams and controversial for that interracial casting). A panel, facilitated by archivist Gillian Lipton, featured remarks by Anna Kisselgoff (former chief dance critic of The New York Times) and remembrances from Lydia Abarca Mitchell (DTH's first prima ballerina), Sheila Rohan (soloist) and Tania León (conductor and composer).

For information on upcoming 92Y Harkness Dance Center and Fridays@Noon events, click here.

92Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 91st and 92nd Streets), Manhattan
Subways: #6 to 86th or 96th Streets

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Sean Lavery, 61

Sean Lavery, Ballet Star in a Shortened Career, Dies at 61
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, February 28, 2018

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Karin von Aroldingen, 76

Karin von Aroldingen, a Major Dancer for Balanchine, Is Dead at 76
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 9, 2018

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Those rebellious Trocks, now on film!

REBELS ON POINTE

(2017, 90 minutes)

A film by Bobbi Jo Hart

An Icarus Films Release

This month, Icarus Films and director Bobbi Jo Hart will celebrate the US theatrical release of Hart's Rebels on Pointe, the first documentary devoted to the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. For more than four decades, the New York-based Trocks have strapped on pointe shoes, delighting world-wide audiences with irreverent, accessible interpretations of ballet's classics. While the gender-bending is all in fun, their dancing also demonstrates serious technical capability and attention to detail.Artistic director Tory Dobrin sees no reason, he says, to choose between joke or no joke. The Trocks, says ABT's James Whiteside, an ardent admirer, strike "an incredible balance between high art and clever camp."

Generous with samples of the troupe on stage, Hart's film is also lavish with clips of interviews with and about the dancers. We come to appreciate their work ethic, their drive to perform and the joys and challenges of day-to-day life within and outside of dance.

I only wish Hart had delved a little deeper, seizing an opportunity to contextualize the Trocks's achievements. Dance fans can now explore an exciting landscape in which openly queer, trans and gender non-conforming artists expand how we see, read and respond to dance, both classical and contemporary. It would have been interesting to hear from out-lesbian dance artist and educator Katy Pyle whose Ballez--a philosophy, practice and company--is designed to re-write "the narratives of Story Ballets to tell the history of our lineage, as dancers, and as queers" and re-imagine "Archetypal characters to reflect multiplicity: of identity, desire and expression." And Pyle is only one of many artists upending conventional roles and affirming more gender fluidity in dance today.

Rebels on Pointe leans more personal than political, though, of course, these things glide along a spectrum. It's more of a glance behind the scenes and the dressing room door but, if you love people, love dancers, love the Trocks, that might be enough.

See Rebels on Pointe 

in the following theaters:

New York City: opening November 15 at Quad Cinema

Los Angeles: opening November 24 at Laemmle Music Hall

Chicago: opening November 24 at Gene Siskel Film Center

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Yvette Chauviré, 99

Yvette Chauviré, Ballerina and Symbol of French Culture, Dies at 99
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, October 19, 2016

Memorial celebration for Kazuko Hirabayashi, November 7

Kazuko Hirabayashi
(photo courtesy of Daniel Madoff)

Organized by Daniel Madoff, Stephanie Tooman and Terese Capucilli, a memorial celebration for legendary dance teacher and choreographer Kazuko Hirabayashi has been set for Monday, November 7 (7:30pm) at New York's Symphony Space.

Ms. Hirabayashi, born in Japan, was an influential mentor to numerous leading dance artists. She died in March at her home in Harrison, New York. She was 82.

Featured performers include a stellar lineup from American Ballet Theater, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Batsheva Dance Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, Doug Varone and Dancers, Abraham.In.Motion and Limón Dance Company as well as students from The Juilliard School, The Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, SUNY, The Ailey School and The Martha Graham School.

Choreographers represented will include:

Kazuko Hirabayashi
Merce Cunningham
Martha Graham
Antony Tudor
Robert Battle
Ohad Naharin
Doug Varone
Kyle Abraham
Takehiro Ueyama
Alberto Estébanez Rodriguez
George Faison

Tickets are free with your RSVP by email to

kazmemorial2016@gmail.com

Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Queer NY presents Mamela Nyamza's "HATCHED"

South African dance artist Mamela Nyamza
in her solo, HATCHED, at Abrons Arts Center
 (photos: John Hogg)

Did I hear right?

It took several years of effort for Shay Wafer's 651 Arts--now co-presenting with Queer New York International Arts Festival--to finally bring South African dancer Mamela Nyamza to New York?

And for only one night?

Curated by Marýa Wethers, Nyamza's HATCHED introduced an artist I wish more New Yorkers could have experienced. Attendance was sparse. Every seat in Abrons Arts Center's Playhouse theater should have been claimed.

(photo: John Hogg)

Abrons has smaller, less formal and more flexible spaces well-suited to alternative dance and performance. But Nyamza pointedly mixed the classically formal (tutu, pointe work, port de bras, Saint-Saëns) with the unexpected (blood-red laundry, looking, for all the world, like flayed flesh or butcher cuts, that she hung to dry on a line strung between the wings). She needed honest-to-god proscenium space for the razzle dazzle of her visual imagery and lighting. She created a jarring, split-awareness for audience members first to take their seats before the show began. We listened to The Dying Swan and gazed out on Nyamza's bare back, shaved head, waves of crimson fabric engulfing her white tulle as, beyond the hall's flung-open doors, stragglers continued their loud chatter.

From the outset, HATCHED announces itself as both forbidding and irresistible--and sacred--very much in its own space, which we must focus to approach.

And it was no surprise when, during the post-show Q&A with Wethers, Nyamza revealed that, in performance, she goes into her "zone," communing with her deceased mother and other ancestors, and that she aims to welcome us into the work while maintaining an unbreachable distance.

Dramatically reflecting the tension between Nyamza's ballet training--with which she maintains a complicated relationship--and her Xhosa heritage and artistry, the solo suggests a search for her true self beyond all external structures, expectations, appearances. Her work is sourced in her life. Married and a mother, Nyamza left her husband for a woman and now exults in her life as an out lesbian. The personal is the political is the poetic.

Let's hope for more chances to see what Nyamza, an artist of arresting skill and a woman of much charm, might have to offer. I hope it will not take long for her to return to New York's venues.

HATCHED is closed, but for other events in the 2016 Queer New York International Arts Festival--running through October 2 at various venues--click here.

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Ballez: La MaMa Moves presents ballet on the wild side

Khadija Griffith (left) and Deborah Lohse in
Sleeping Beauty & The Beast,
a Ballez world premiere
(photo: Theo Coté)

Ballez is performance, company, class and community, that invites everyone to witness and celebrate the history and performances of lesbian, queer, and transgender people.

Ballez dancers claim our inherent nobility and belonging within, around, and on top of a form that has historically excluded us. 

Ballez celebrates the virtuosity of complexly gendered embodiment, energetic eloquence, queer coding, and the magical adaptability of expression that Ballez dancers have cultivated through their lives as a way to survive and thrive.

--some statements from www.ballez.org

Sleeping Beauty & the Beast--the latest project of Katy Pyle (with Jules Skloot and members of Pyle's Ballez troupe) is big.

How big, you ask?

So big, it requires more than two hours and two--not one--theater at La MaMa to tell its story.

So big, it's really telling multiple stories, mashing up classical ballets and fairy tale archetypes with Lower East Side labor organizing history and with L.E.S. queer culture--resulting in a hot mess that is and isn't.

So big, Pyle needs two dozen versatile, well-trained and coached dancers (most playing multiple roles) and eighteen classical musicians (New York's Queer Urban Orchestra playing straight-up Tchaikovsky for Act 1) plus a DJ JD Samson's house music (Act 2) and even that's not enough.

So big, it Occupies the Ballet Canon; big enough for a look-in from Graham and Loie Fuller; too big for the gender binary; too big to behave.

So big, it can embrace sweetness, humor, revolutionary fervor, sexual heat of diverse and ever-shifting varieties, and the pain of loss.

So big that--well, you know those old timers who regale you with stories about being there when so-and-so made her stunning debut or first danced with Nureyev and knocked their socks off in that difficult role? One day, if you're lucky, you will be that old timer, unable to shut up about how you saw Ballez premiere Sleeping Beauty & The Beast at La MaMa Moves.

That big. Historic. Meaningful. Moving.

Pyle and company get so much joyfully right, starting with the complex precision work of Act 1's opening yarn weaving dance. But I'm going to let you discover the best of Sleeping Beauty & The Beast for yourself, because you're going, right?  You're going.

Sleeping Beauty & the Beast continues tonight and through May 8--Wednesday to Saturday at 7pm; Sunday at 4pm. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa
at Ellen Stewart Theatre and The Downstairs
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between Bowery and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Fabian Barnes, 56

Fabian Barnes, founder/director of Dance Institute of Washington, dies at 56
by Sarah L. Kaufman, The Washington Post, April 12, 2016

Violette Verdy, 82

Violette Verdy, Ballerina With Flair, Dies at 82
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 9, 2016

Dada Masilo's swans of a feather flock to the Joyce

Songezo Mcilizeli as Prince Siegfried
with Dada Masilo as Odette
(photo: John Hogg)

some Masilo swans swanning about
(photo: John Hogg)

That blaring Tchaikovsky processional set the tone right away. Those barefoot dancers, flouncy and twitching in their gender-nonspecific tutus on The Joyce Theater stage, simulated the flight of a flock of swans while encoding every point along the movement spectrum from ballet to African. But not seamlessly, never the sort of contemporary ballet where every last element is blended out, airbrushed and...Kumbaya! We've got exotic perfection for ya!  Instead, you can see the separate techniques of dancing smacking up against each other, visibly diced, sliced and spliced by the exacting mind and sharp hand of Dada Masilo. Without question, this extraordinary work is Dada Masilo's Swan Lake.

I only became aware of Masilo when she choreographed and performed in William Kentridge's Refuse the Hour at last fall's BAM Next Wave. But, for several years, this talented Black South African woman has been turning heads all over Europe, making works called I Just Want To Be a Princess for One Day and The World My Butt and Other Big Round Things, and training her wry eye on classical icons like Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake.

Well, why not use the classical ballets she dearly loves to tell contemporary stories of top importance to her?

Her take on Swan Lake puts me in mind of Camille A. Brown. Fans of that American dance artist will find Masilo's narrative work and her own piquant, bravura performance style similar in nature and appeal. In addition, both artists draw from aspects of Black culture and artistry, have well-honed, character-driven comedic skills and an interest in showing the full range of human experience and feeling. They both step up to address challenging issues, mixing entertaining performance with social relevance. For Masilo, the story of Swan Lake sets the stage for a look at the consequences of homophobia and the devastation of losing generations of South Africans to AIDS.

This turbo-charged, enormously charming Swan Lake pairs, against his will, a closeted Prince Siegfried (Songezo Mcilizeli) with Masilo's eager bride-to-be Odette. Siegfried's parents--especially Mom--freak out when they learn that their son is in love with a man named Odile--yes, I know, usually, the sinister doppelganger of the dancer playing Odette--here danced by tall, graceful Thamsanqa Tshabalala, the only cast member rocking pointe shoes, and beautifully, thank you.

The piece--lit with true magic by Suzette le Sueur--flies by in just an hour. In that hour, nearly everything moves at a speedy, insistent pace. Group scenes are tightly-organized delirium, usually some hooplah over the expected nuptials. Which brings me back to the loud, nearly martial selections from Tchaikovsky. With this music, Masilo seems to underscore how the private life, and will, of the individual can get pounded down by the heedless force of society. This comes in sharp contrast to the tranquility of Siegfried's time alone with Odile. Without the crowd mashing him, Siegfried can get to know himself and his desires.

Because humor has such prominence in the dance, its conclusion can seem either jarring or poignant. Masilo lost her aunt to AIDS, and this work was made in memory of her. Performers in long, black skirts dance against a dark, starry backdrop. Some slump to the floor. Eventually, just two remain, each delicately rubbing fingers together as if sprinkling a handful of dirt on the coffins of loved ones until there's no one left to perform this final rite.

Swan Lake continues tonight through Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

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Yvonne Chouteau, 86

Yvonne Chouteau, Native American Ballerina, Dies at 86
by Jack Anderson, The New York Times, January 29, 2016

Anna Laerkesen, 73

Anna Laerkesen, Danish Ballerina With Poetic Originality, Dies at 73
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 27, 2016

"Dance on Camera" at Film Society of Lincoln Center, February 12-16

Above: Dance artist and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer in
Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer
Below: Cuban ballerina Viengsay Valdés in
Horizons/Horizontes
These two documentaries will be screened
at Film Society of Lincoln Center
in the 2016 Dance on Camera festival.

Curated by Liz Woolf and Joanna Ney, the 2016 edition of Dance on Camera once again explores the multifaceted histories and expressions of dance through film documentaries, shorts, features, experimental works, and music videos. You won't want to miss Jack Walsh's Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer, an engrossing collage of interviews and footage in which radical dance artist Rainer, now 81, reveals "I love existing in front of spectators" and traces her adventurous, eccentric pathway from the Judson revolution to her filmmaking work and subsequent return to choreography. Why not subtitle this The Lives of Yvonne Rainer? She's had as many as any wily cat.

See Feelings Are Facts (82 min) on the festival's closing night, Friday, February 16 at 8pm, including a Rainer/Walsh Q&A. (Click for details and tickets.)

I also got advance look at two films with a Cuban connection:

My body is in Cuba, but my soul is in Africa, and it is my African soul that nourishes my Cuban body.

--Alfredo Duquesne Mora (El Duque), Cuban artist, woodcarver and stonemason, in They Are We

They Are We: In this affecting film, anthropologist and first-time director Emma Christopher documents how she united people from an Afro-Cuban ethnic group, Ganga-Longoba, with their counterparts across the Atlantic in a Sierra Leone village. Learning that these Cubans, descendants of African slaves, know and regularly practice their traditional songs and dances, the Africans react with surprise, keen interest and generosity. Despite notable redundancy, Christopher's film has genuine emotional impact.

See The Are We (77 min) on Monday, February 15 at 3:15pm, including a Q&A with Emma Christopher. (Click for details and tickets.)

All along, I knew there's an easy life I could have chosen but did not.

--lyrics from "With My Heart" by Heidi Happy, in Horizons/Horizonte 

Horizons/Horizontes: Eileen Hofer connects intimate and ultimately poignant portraits of three generations of Cuban ballet dancers. The film opens with vintage footage of Cuba's queen of classical dance, the now nonagenarian Alicia Alonso, flawlessly performing multiple fouettes. Then Hofer quickly introduces us to two younger women aspiring to follow in Alonso's footsteps at Ballet Nacional de Cuba--Viengsay Valdés, a rising star, and Amanda de Jesús Pérez Duarte, a student hoping to join the company. Their stories demonstrate how much ballet requires--a sacrificial investment of body and psyche to create the illusion of effortless grace, an art both sensual and brutal. Cuba keeps ballet and its stellar dancers tied closely to the glory of its revolution--a political relationship completely unimaginable on the US scene.

See Horizons/Horizontes (71 min) on Saturday, February 13, 1pm. (Click for details and tickets.)

For a complete lineup of 

Dance on Camera screenings

and associated events, click here.

Screenings will be held at:

Walter Reade Theater
16 West 65th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Panels and free events will be held at:

Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Auditorium
144 West 65th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Bryony Brind, 55

Bryony Brind Dies at 55; Nureyev Lifted Ballerina’s Career
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, December 11, 2015

Gloria Contreras, 81

Gloria Contreras, a Leading Mexican Choreographer, Dies at 81
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, December 10, 2015

Yolanda Sonnabend,80

Yolanda Sonnabend, Designer Who Influenced Choreographer, Dies at 80
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, November 29, 2015

TONY review: Patricia Hoffbauer's "Dances for Intimate Spaces and Friendly People"

So many thoughts and feelings still aswirl, but I had to get this recommendation posted punchy quick for Time Out New York's purposes, since Hoffbauer's show is closing tonight. In any case, here's the link!

Daniel Levins, 62

Daniel Levins teaching at Ballet Tech
(photo: Jim Varriale)

My gratitude to Audrey Ross for sharing this sad news on the passing of the multifaceted dance artist Daniel Levins.

***

DANIEL LEVINS (1953-2015)

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Daniel Levins of a lung infection on September 15, 2015 in New York City.   Raised in the Adirondack Mountain area of New York State, Daniel began Irish and tap dancing lessons at age five, and initiated his performing career with a touring carnival at age nine.   His dance studies continued in the Vaganova and Graham traditions at the High School of Performing Arts, and in the Cecchetti and Imperial Russian Ballet School traditions with Vincenzo Celli, Barbara Fallis, Vera Nemchinova, and Richard Thomas in NYC.

 In 1969, at age fifteen, Levins became a charter member of Eliot Feld's American Ballet Company for its debut at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.  He joined American Ballet Theatre in 1971, where his versatility actuated leading roles in works by Tudor, Balanchine, de Mille, Robbins, Fokine, Ailey, Neumier and others, as well as the classics.  Noted for his performances within the dramatic repertory, Mr. Levins rose to the rank of Principal Dancer at age eighteen.

Joining New York City Ballet in 1975, Levins danced under Balanchine and Robbins until a chronic knee condition forced his retirement from the ballet stage one year later.

 Mr. Levins also appeared in films, TV and stage productions, including Turning Point, Grease, Red Badge of Courage, Goodbye Girl, The Waltons, and Street Scene with New York City Opera.   He choreographed musical theater productions of Miss Liberty and Bloomer Girl for Goodspeed Opera House, Brimstone for Stockbridge Theater and the workshops of Hal Prince and Musical Theater Works, and directed and choreographed productions for the Smithsonian Institute, the King Cole Loves Broadway series at the St. Regis hotel as well as Off-Broadway productions of Oh Boy!, The Gorey Details and Amphigorey, which received an Obie nomination for best musical.
 His ballets have appeared in the repertories of American Ballet Theater, Cincinnati Ballet, Ballet Oklahoma, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Universal Ballet, Seoul Ballet Theatre, Miami City Ballet, and Ballet's Galaxy of Stars.

 Mr. Levins began his teaching career in 1974 at Barbara Fallis and Richard Thomas' New York School of Ballet, and has taught and coached for ballet companies and schools, universities and colleges, as well as Broadway music theatre productions.  He was a longtime master teacher at Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech, which remarked that "he imbued generations of students with his passion for the rigor, technique, epaulement, elegance and continuity of classical ballet.  Yes, part of him goes on in those he trained."

--Audrey Ross

Let's go see some dance...at the movies!

Maria Kochetkova dances as Juliet
in San Francisco Ballet's Romeo & Juliet
Photo ©Erik Tomasson

Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance (GAD) series launches September 24 with San Francisco Ballet's production of Romeo & Juliet by the company's artistic director and principal choreographer, Helgi Tomasson.
 

Cast:

Maria Kochetkova (Juliet)

Davit Karapetyan (Romeo)

Pascal Molat (Mercutio)

Joseph Walsh (Benvolio)

Luke Ingham (Tybalt)

"LIVE with Kelly and Michael" stars Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan are the hosts of the new cinema series, Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance, which brings spectacular dance performances by four of America’s leading dance companies to more than 600 movie theaters throughout the US--including 22 in the New York metro area--in fall and winter of 2015.

Upcoming screenings include works by Alvin Ailey, Wayne McGregor and Ronald K. Brown.

Tickets for Romeo & Juliet and all Lincoln Center at the Movies screenings are available at FathomEvents.com and at participating theater box offices. For a complete list of theater locations visit the Fathom Events website (theaters and participating box offices are subject to change).

For more information visit LincolnCenterattheMovies.org.