Artists Reach Out: Kendall Cornell

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody


Kendall Cornell

Kendall Cornell
(photo: Peter Hurley)

At the helm of the all-women clown troupe Clowns Ex Machina, Kendall Cornell has created, directed and performed in the full-length shows, The Bad’uns: Clown Acts of Contagion (“an opus of clowning mastery”);  Oil of Olé! (a collaboration with flamenco artists); Clowns Full-Tilt:  A Musing on Aesthetics  (“kaleidoscopically-dizzying physical theater of the absurd with a wicked steel edge” which was nominated for an Innovative Theater award for Outstanding Set Design); Clown Axioms: a gory, romantic tale (told by clowns); Clowns By Dead Reckoning (a semi-sophisticated cabaret), and the troupe’s debut production, Not Just for Shock Value. Kendall has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Backstage, Spectacle Journal for the Circus Arts, Attitude Dance Magazine and elsewhere. She has a background in acting and modern dance and has studied clown with David Shiner and Philippe Gaulier among many others. Currently Kendall teaches clown workshops for women and she recently organized a panel discussion on “Clowning While Female” for Howlround TV. www.ClownsExMachina.com

Kendall Cornell's Clowns Ex Machina
(photos: Vanessa Lenz)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I feel so grateful that my most recent clown project (The Bad’uns: Clown Acts of Contagion) was brought to fruition in November, 2019 when we premiered at LaMaMa, so I was now in my quiet, thinking, waiting phase of the next creative cycle during the start of this pandemic. Luckily for me and the clown troupe, there was nothing major to cancel or postpone or reorganize. I was planning to teach some workshops, but they can easily be put off until later.

In fact, I had noticed in February that I was surprisingly empty of ideas for the next project--and now I expect that it was some deeper wisdom that was clever enough to hold off until society gets well underway with its pandemic transformation. I’m sitting with all these issues brought to the surface as the world is revising itself--and the many relevant topics for clowning will likely reveal themselves soon.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I am a clown and physical comedian making clown-theatre. I have a background in acting and dance--and when I discovered clowning it seemed to bring together all my other practices in an amazing and resonant way. My interest is in women clowns and what they uniquely offer. I have a troupe of all-women clowns (Clowns Ex Machina), and I lead/direct the ensemble-creation process, and perform as well.

These days, I am also devoted to making a space conducive to working artist-parents, which is a constant improvisation. I am happy to work with so many folks who are creative improvisers and jugglers!

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

During our last show, we had two women with brand new babies they were nursing at the time we got to performance. And our set designer also had a new baby at home. As a troupe, we needed to commit ourselves to a work-family juggle to have the babies on site, and LaMaMa worked with us to help make it all possible.

Every person on the project had to commit to a different and patient way of working--and luckily there is so much compassion, respect, authenticity, humor, and admiration already in the process. We did a great job. It was such a meaningful process and contributed to an amazing show.

At this pandemic moment, when so many more people are having to discard the illusion that there is a barrier between work and home life, I am glad we have provided a model and experience for how we can fold all of these elements together. It takes a village.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about? 

Clowning humor relies on lots of truth-telling and lots of vulnerability.  As a director and as a performer, I am having to over and over again come back to that deep authenticity. At the same time, there is the wonderful illusion of performance that re-creates a moment of truth and gives expression to a specific voice, while keeping the improvisational aspects of interacting with the here and now and audience. It’s maintaining the inner life while balancing the outer life.

I care about giving voice to women’s experience and reframing historical conditioning--and making sure social commentary is delivered with vitality and life-affirming and deep humor. I’m grateful for all the moments I am able to make that happen. I was very happy to hear from audience after our last show that they were having the deeply fulfilling experience of laughing and crying at the same time.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

At this moment of extreme slow-down and social distancing and isolation, I am very interested in getting in touch with the Land, the ground, and the potential to change trajectory. I notice how changing the space between people (6 ft) changes our subtle body language of connection. How can we play together in this structure? Is it possible?

I watch the dogs in the street who are looking for friendly interaction from passers-by. Are we open to others, or in our own bubbles? When do I deeply gut-laugh in these tough times? What are the issues that come to the surface that we as a society need to find a way process?

Sitting with the extremes of life and death seems to be my main practice at the moment.

Self-care tip:

I’ve been doing much self-care during the weeks of this pandemic isolation. One small thing I’ve been doing is making the effort to find cut flowers to have in my apartment. I’ve been getting them at the Farmer’s Market (daffodils or ranunculus or anemones), and they have helped bring springtime beauty in my life when I feel cut off from spending easy time outdoors in the parks and gardens.

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

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The circus comes to town: Cirque Mechanics at New Victory

Battulga Battogtokh of Cirque Mechanics
in 42 Ft.--A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels

42 Ft.--A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels
by Cirque Mechanics
The New Victory Theater
December 6-January 5

Hailing from Las Vegas, Chris Lashua and Aloysia Gavre's Cirque Mechanics troupe has arrived at our city's family-friendly New Victory Theater with a production called 42 Ft.--A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels. (The measurement refers to the standard diameter of a circus ring.) Retrograde and wholesome, the show is a modest affair though, at nearly two hours with intermission, it might stretch beyond what most young kids would happily sit through, even some adults. Despite my own occasional squirming, I was charmed through most of the show and re-energized by fright at some of the dexterous aerial and slack wire work.

Impersonating a 1930s touring group named Circus Magnificus, the company eliminates the frills we might have come to expect from contemporary circus and just goes for feel-good basics, all the old-school sights and nostalgic sounds, but not without imagination. One of my favorite acts involved Tatiana Vasilenko dreamily juggling numerous balls while perched atop a wheeled chariot slowly "drawn" around the stage by a fetching cut-out horse--just one, and certainly the most benign, of the mechanical apparatuses alluded to the show's title and the company's name and reputation.

Justin Therrien combines low-key demeanor with exquisite physical skill as a wandering clown the troupe will eventually adopt. Mongolian strongman Battulga Battogtokh makes a believer out of the toughest skeptic when he handles weighty props with gusto and unexpected grace. There's even a lion tamer of sorts, though, in the blessed absence of trained animals, we must imagine a lion we will never see while Austin Bradley takes center stage, flourishing a stool and bullwhip. The show's only Black performer, Bradley otherwise has a minor presence in the lineup of acts. I was jarred by the crack of the bullwhip and the sight of it snapping and wrapping around his own body.

42 Ft.: A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels is recommended for ages 5 and up and continues through January 5 on a diverse time schedule. For information and tickets, click here.

The New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (Times Square), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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

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Gibney's DoublePlus: Wesley Chavis and Cori Olinghouse

Wesley Chavis in his solo, Ku In Tuo Muah,
a DoublePlus presentation of Gibney Dance,
curated by Dean Moss
(photos: Scott Shaw)

In Ku In Tuo Muah, soloist Wesley Chavis's "physicalizing [of] his worship"--to use Gibney DoublePlus curator Dean Moss's words--adopts a widespread human practice with ancient origins, still active, for example, in the Black churches of Chavis's own Southern upbringing. Worship of higher, disembodied powers is often a practice of the body, and extreme, transcendent states of mind have always been powerfully accessed through the body, say in ritual dancing or ingestion of sacred hallucinogens. 

Ku In Tuo Muah, like most dance works I get to see, might have many behind-the-scenes influencers and supporters. But the few program credits--for "concept, audio/visual design and, of course, performance--go to Chavis solely, no stated collaborators. For the audience, this solo offers a privileged, if complicated, view of a path engaged upon decidedly alone. It's an internal, private, abstract exploration with challenges only one man can know.

Even the sounds that arise from this exploration are sounds of the breathing and gasping (and maybe unseen crying) of a human body. The emphasis on peeling off and shedding articles of clothing suggests continuous self-transformation and digging down to the person beneath persona beyond the grip and labeling of an outside world.

Stopping to remove his shoes and shirt is the first thing Chavis does as he walks through the door into the theater called Studio H at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center. It's like watching a weary man come home.

At first, he does not enter the portion of the space directly in front of the audience seats and will not for a long time. Instead, he occupies that stage-left area near the mirrors. So we must look over, slightly sideways, to watch him. It's a brilliant distancing device. You see me, but you have to work a little for it. I'm still over here in my somewhat private space, and I'm going to make you feel like the voyeurs you are.

So we watch as he proceeds to disturb and distort the functional harmony of his body, and we watch the wrenching and shedding and listen to the ragged gasps. His entrance to the main section of the space, which is covered in shiny, black plastic introduces more sound--the noise of him scrunching that floor covering as he continues to contort and scrunch up his body.

At the end, Chavis simply gathers up his clothing and exits the theater, remaining someone seen with the physical eyes but not really known--an impressive, even beautiful, but remote performer. His dance, his ritual, remained--for me, at least--a journey monitored but not truly shared, and I note that with acceptance and respect.

Cori Olinghouse (above and below)
in GRANDMA
(photos: Scott Shaw)

What Cori Olinghouse calls Clown Therapy draws from The Fool's power to look at things sideways upside down and dismantle the everyday mundane and how we habitually see it. Her GRANDMA--an interdisciplinary piece for herself, Martita Abril and Kate Watson Wallace--is wacky without (for the most part) being funny. It really isn't clowning in the conventional manner. Its pace is most often glacial with stiff, stooped, dazed dancers shambling about a space littered with cheap snack food. Their overpowering, face-obscuring wigs and lipstick pink costumes, the recognizable snack food product placement, though--that's where the funny would normally be situated. The clown proffering little plastic-wrapped cupcakes could not be more pathetic as she apparently cannot bring herself to approach more than two people in the audience, her feet repeatedly colliding with the plastic cups that earlier exploded onto the floor right in front of us.

My sympathetic attention cleaves to one performer momentarily and sadly stuck facing a corner, as if in shame, confusion or both. The old-fashioned tv screen at the center of it all gives back nothing but static. Attempts to mop up the mess--or stuff slices of Wonderbread under one's wig--are futile, half-hearted and soon abandoned. The overall ineptitude and visual disarray speak to a growing upheaval at the core of something, and that must be the therapy Olinghouse chooses to agitate.

Olinghouse's inclusion of two pop hits--George Michael's "Father Figure" and Wham!'s "Everything She Wants"--will launch an army of earworms, I can attest. The songs underscore a displeasure with warped values, excess consumption and the detritus it generates.

Wesley Chavis + Cori Olinghouse concludes tonight with a performance at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (entrance: 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Clowning around with Kendall Cornell: Get your ha-has out!

Clowns Ex Machina's Kendall Cornell will teach a 2-day clowning workshop for women, Saturday-Sunday, April 5-6.

"I'm not funny. What I am is brave." -- Lucille Ball

Come and unleash your inner Delightmaker. Find the truth, the open heart, the freedom, and the physical vitality of the clown. Laugh 'til you pee.

In this 2 day workshop for clowns, actors, performers, and all adventurous women we will explore: 

play, physical improvisation,
spontaneity & imagination,
character & clown psychology, comic timing,
the joyful truth of failure and more...

Saturday, April 5 (3-7pm)
Sunday, April 6 (3:30-8:30pm)

Flamenco Latino Studios
244-250 West 54th Street (between Broadway and 8th Avenue), Ste. 404 Manhattan
(map/directions)

Fee: $175

For more info or to register: kendall@ClownsExMachina.com or 646-729-1188

Kendall Cornell has been creating, directing and performing clown work since falling in love with it in 1993. At the helm of the all-women clown troupe, Clowns Ex Machina, Kendall has created and directed the shows Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics, (described as “kaleidoscopically-dizzying physical theater of the absurd with a wicked steel edge"), Clown Axioms and Clowns By Dead Reckoning, all of which played to sold-out audiences at LaMaMa. In 2007, the troupe’s Not Just for Shock Value: A Femmes-Clowns Assemblage, was called “one of the funniest and best-assembled shows in town.” Most recently, her flamenco-clown show Oil of Ole! played to sold-out crowds at LaMaMa. She and her work have been profiled in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Backstage and Spectacle Journal for the Circus Arts. Her solo clown pieces, such as The Maneater, Glamourpuss, P.S. de la Resistance, and The Wallflower have been presented at LaMaMa, The New York Clown Theatre Festival, the International Festival de Pallasses, Dixon Place, 92nd Street Y and elsewhere in New York City and abroad. Kendall was nominated for “Clown of the Year” by the New York Downtown Clown Revue. Kendall has taught clown, dance and performance in Europe and NYC, and assisted director David Shiner on the U.S. version of the circus-theatre spectacle, Pomp, Duck and Circumstance. In 2006, Kendall was commissioned to create a special clown extravaganza with her women clowns for Cirque du Soleil. Check out www.ClownsExMachina.com for more info.

An ordinary acrobat's extraordinary tale

I've just finished Duncan Wall's The Ordinary Acrobat (Random House, 2013), which interweaves two engrossing narratives: the often elusive history of circus and this young American's sojourn to France to explore contemporary circus as an increasingly enamored student, scholar and advocate. (Wall currently serves as National Director of Circus Now, the American advocacy organization, and teaches circus history and criticism at the National Circus School of Montreal.) While some of Wall's swings between past and present, personal and historical, might dizzy a few readers, I hung on for the whole vicarious, mental ride, coming away with a thirst for seeing more contemporary/interdisciplinary--and even traditional--circus and turning my skills as an arts writer to this stimulating challenge. If you think you know everything that circus is and can be--Ringling Bros. over here; Cirque du Soleil over there--this book will give you a peek at unexpected possibilities and may inspire you to search out more. Good stories, good ideas, good company.

And on Thursday, October 24 (6pm), meet Duncan Wall at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fisher Hillman Studio for a talk on the rise of contemporary circus and the state of the art today. This event is presented as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival in conjunction with the American premiere of Hans was Heiri by Swiss circus innovators, Zimmerman & de Perrot.

For complete information and tickets for Wall's talk, click here.

BAM Fisher Hillman Studio
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Attempting, and achieving, the absurd

Scenes from Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics. All photos (c)2011, Marina Levitskaya

"Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible," reads one fortune cookie particularly beloved by Kendall Cornell, brilliant clown and instigator of the international, all-women Clowns Ex Machina ensemble. This Sisterhood of the Red Ball Nose specializes in kaleidoscopically-dizzying physical theater of the absurd with a wicked steel edge that organizes itself just below an insinuating charm that you can't, for the life of you, escape; so don't even try it.

Cornell's Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics--a jumble of vignettes exploring beauty through the filter of high and low culture--has invaded La Mama's First Floor Theater with a boatload of debris, color and funny, and there should be no end to this occupation. But don't count on that: See this troupe soon!

Scenes from Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics. All photos (c)2011, Marina Levitskaya

 

Created and directed by Kendall Cornell with performances by Cornell, Amanda Barron, Carla T Bosnjak, Julie Kinkle, Michaela Lind, Diana Lovrin, Lucia Rich, Maria Smushkovich and Virgina Venk. Also with wonderful lighting by Carla T Bosnjak. 

Clowns Ex Machina in Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics, now through November 20. Click here for schedule information and ticketing.

La Mama (First Floor Theatre)
74A East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), Manhattan
(map and directions)

New York, New York, a wonderful clown!

At the New York Clown Theater Festival, Classes on How to Be Silly
by April Dembosky, The New York Times, September 11, 2008

We're all bozos on this bus

Exploring the Bozo Mystique, and Defining Funny on Their Own Feminine Terms
by April Dembosky, The New York Times, July 29, 2008