"Confusing times" call for clarity: Discuss!

Judy Hussie-Taylor
Exective Director and Chief Curator
Danspace Project
(photo: Michael Kirby)

In these confusing times, why and how do performing arts presenters and curators decide what work to present in their season? What is the interplay of determining factors – sociopolitical climate, curatorial vision, audience trends, diversity, the bottom line?

--publicity text for "Commissioning and Presenting in Confusing Times," an Open Spectrum Community Dialogue presented by New York Live Arts and co-curated with Brian Tate of The Tate Group

"For some reason, I kept calling this panel Presenting in A Crisis," said moderator Judy Hussie-Taylor, introducing Commissioning and Presenting in Confusing Times, hosted by New York Live Arts last week. Her alternate title made more sense, really, since most of us in the arts are not at all confused. We're clearheaded enough to be damned angry.

That sense of specific, political outrage seemed elusive at this gathering of five of New York's most powerful curators and presenters--Lili Chopra (French Institute Alliance Française), Tim Griffin (The Kitchen), Kamilah Forbes (Apollo Theater), Jay Wegman (NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts) and Hussie-Taylor herself, an innovator who has made space for award-winning "Platform" programming at historic Danspace Project.

Referring to our current American moment as "a crisis, the turning point in a disease," Hussie-Taylor suggested that her panelists might tackle four questions:

• What needs to be explored?
• What or who needs to be honored?
• What or who needs to be challenged?
• What needs to be jettisoned?

Relatively new to their positions, Forbes and Wegman are both clearly still researching, experimenting and seeking their best path at institutions with, respectively, formidable cultural legacy (the Apollo) and conventional, somewhat muddled programming (NYU Skirball). Wegman--formerly, and famously, artistic director of Abrons Arts Center--was forthcoming about challenges he faces in replacing stodgy Skirball fare with something actually attractive to NYU students. To do so, he has let go of familiar acts that, as he put it, tend to do little but recycle their material. The 2016 election re-energized his focus, inspiring him to produce more adventurous events such as an appearance by author Ta-Nehisi Coates and the U.S. premiere of a controversial Palestinian play, The Siege.

All the panelists expressed, to one degree or another, dedication to supporting artists and putting artists' needs and concerns at the center of operations--with all the practical complications that can entail. Forbes argued that the job of the institution is to be the locus of transformation and a vehicle for creating the "21st Century canon." But, for the most part, I must say I walked away still questioning how this might be achieved, not just at the Apollo, but elsewhere in what is arguably the arts capital and most progressive city of our nation.

Even in New York's dance and performance community, we are still looking at citadels of power in need of the knowledge, skill, insight and visionary courage of more women and more people of color. The expertise and talent, which I witness regularly, are out here in abundance....and not in the least in a state of confusion. 

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First home season for the Gibney Dance Company

Amy Miller and Brandon Welch
in The Short-Cut by Hilary Easton
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Choreographer Gina Gibney took a moment to reassure fans that "I'm not going anywhere" as her Gibney Dance Company launched its first downtown home season as a showcase for two other artists. Work by Women, running now at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, is an act of stepping back to help other talented women step forward. The shared program features just two works, neither by Gibney. There's a commissioned premiere from Amy Miller, the company's Associate Artistic Director and its most fascinating dancer, as well as a revival from colleague Hilary Easton.

It plays out in the center's modest and compact Studio C, which I'm coming to prefer to the broad, more complicated space of Gibney's theater. Studio C helps me--and maybe choreographers, too--focus more on the dance matters at hand.

In both works, this compression of space nicely crops and foregrounds the luster and dynamism of Gibney's five-member ensemble--Natsuki Arai, Javier Baca, Jennifer McQuiston Lott, Miller and newcomer Brandon Welch. This is a tight, intuitive crew--Gibney trains for interrelationship--which appears to have folded Welch into its mix with ease.

Peter Swendsen's music opens Miller's Still and Still Moving with somewhat harsh, reverberating string notes that shoot Miller and Welch into the space. Slender and spongey, the dancers twist and bend and oscillate. Miller is her usual articulate, quicksilver self, but Welch is no slouch. A clean, limber mover, he will, on occasion, grip her to his torso and swing her around or catch and hook her to himself by one arm. When Arai, Baca and Lott spill into the space, the group repeatedly clusters then unfurls along discrete patches of space, dipping low then arching high. One notices an interesting detail: connections, hand to hand, and exchanges often performed with the efficiency of circus performers whose lives depend upon that sort of thing, being safe while looking good. Images pass very quickly.

A dancer--Arai, for instance--might slip out a few paces to solo a bit while a trio stands just north of her, as her frame. They've got her back.

Miller's images and energies offer a subtle synesthesia with the visual sense triggering simultaneous experience of the sonic. When the word "synesthesia" popped into my mind, it opened up the entire dance. I started to see how dancers ring themselves like massive church bells, arms pulling their own cables and metal shivering and tolling in wider and wider circles of sound.

Easton's The Short-Cut, an hour-long ensemble piece, premiered at Danspace Project in 2005. In the half-hour excerpt for Gibney, actor Steven Rattazzi reprises his original role as an efficiency expert studying and timing the five busy dancers. Perhaps appropriately, his first subject of analysis is Miller--the sharp flicks of her legs, her twirls and flares, gradually streamlined into a model worker bee's routine. "That's the beauty of efficiency," says Rattazzi. "No one has to think."

"In the past, man came first. In the future, it is the system that must take precedence," Rattazzi declares from writer Helen Schulman's text. For Easton, though, the system seems quite vulnerable to everything human--confusion, orneriness, competition, irrepressible sense of fun. The audience's favorite parts of The Short-Cut happen when things go against plan--an often amusing and rather healthy state of affairs.

Work by Women continues each evening through Saturday at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

U Cal Berkeley gets a new kind of radical

Cal Performances Takes On a New Mission
by Michael Cooper, The New York Times, February 9, 2015

Emerging New Jersey dancemakers wanted for Montclair concert

Christopher Taylor in Gone but Never Forgotten by emerging choreographer LaQua L. Hall
Dance on the Lawn 2014

Participate in 

Dance on the Lawn 2015!

One emerging commissioned choreographer will be selected and awarded $1,000 to create a new work for final presentation at Dance on the Lawn 2015.
 
Application deadline: Wednesday, January 14, 2015*
Choreographer announced: February 16, 2015*
 
Panelists:

Randy James (10 Hairy Legs)

Paul McRae (New Jersey Ballet)

Donna Scro (Free Space Dance)

Marlies Yearby (Director/choreographer)

 
 
RESPONSIBILITIES:
 
1) Open Rehearsal - Saturday, May 9 @ St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (Assembly Hall) 6-9pm.  Present a work-in-progress in an informal setting. A question and answer (Q & A) will follow the presentation for an invited audience.
 
2) Present the final work during "Dance on the Lawn 2015" -Saturday, September 12 on the lawn of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church  4:30-6:30pm.

To apply for the Dance on the Lawn 2015 commission, click here.

Apply for choreographic commission at Temple University

The Dance Department at Temple University invites choreographers to submit proposals for its 2014 Reflection:Response choreographic commission. THE FUTURE OF THE BODY & DANCE: WITHIN & BEYOND CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE. 

Whether you locate your work in somatic investigation or socio-political inquiry, we welcome dance- makers from all backgrounds. For further information about the Reflection:Response series, this year’s theme, or the proposal guidelines, please see the accompanying sheet.

The Commission Brief:

You are asked to create a new work that speaks to the theme of Reflection:Response/ THE FUTURE OF THE BODY & DANCE: WITHIN & BEYOND CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE that will be presented on October 24 and 25 at 7:30 PM.

Although it is not obligatory, we welcome any opportunities to include Temple students as part of this choreographic commission. Students may be selected through audition and numbers included are entirely at the discretion of the choreographer.

You will be given a $5000 grant and you will have regular access to rehearsal space in Temple University Department of Dance studios throughout June-August 2014. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to offer travel, accommodation or per diem.

You have the option to stage the work in the Conwell Theater at Temple University Main  Campus, or at an alternative site within the Main Campus or North Philadelphia area. We can provide stage management, lighting and sound technicians if you choose to present the work in Conwell Theater. In addition to the performance, you will also be asked to offer a master class and lecture demonstration to students in the Dance Department in mid October 2014.

New this year, we are offering an exciting opportunity to connect with a dance scholar from Boyer College of Music and Dance. A dance scholar/theorist will be assigned to work with the commissioned choreographer in a mutually agreed upon capacity which could range from dramaturgy to writing a critical text on the artist's work. Choreographers should note in the proposal how they might envision working with an author.

Proposal Guidelines: 

Please submit a 2-page application as an email attachment (with your full name in the subject heading) that states:

    Name, address, telephone and e-mail address 

    A short performance biography 

    A brief description of the artistic aims of your proposed work with a clear articulation of how it speaks to the theme of Reflection: Response/ THE FUTURE OF THE BODY & DANCE: WITHIN & BEYOND CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE 

    A brief description of how you might envision working with an author. 

    A breakdown of your budget (include expenses and projected income) 

    Anticipated technical requirements 

In addition to the written application, you are asked to provide a 5-minute sample of your work (please send a link to You Tube or Vimeo - No DVDs) with a brief statement outlining why you would like us to look at this particular section (150-word max). 

Deadline for proposals: MARCH 24, 2014 

Please send your proposal to:

Julie B. Johnson: reflectionresponse@gmail.com 

Please note that the Selection Committee will meet to review applications in mid-April and you will be notified about the outcome of your application by: April 28, 2014. 

2014 Reflection:Response

Merián Soto, Committee Chair

Julie B. Johnson, Graduate Assistant 

Please send any questions to reflectionresponse@gmail.com
-- 
Merián Soto, Professor 
Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance 
Temple University

Opera America announces grants for women composers

New Program to Support Operas by Women
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, December 26, 2013

Reflect, respond: a choreographic commission from Temple University

Reflection:Response

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

2013 Choreographic Commission

The Dance Department at Temple University invites choreographers to submit proposals for its 2013 choreographic commission that speaks to the theme of Reflection:Response.

As dance artists, our embodied learning and creative practice demands that we are able to think and react through multiple intelligences and we invite you to explore this through the concept of Reflection:Response. Whether you locate your work in somatic investigation or socio-political inquiry, we welcome dance-makers from all backgrounds. For further information about the Reflection:Response series, please see the accompanying sheet.

The Commission Brief:

You are asked to create a new work that speaks to the theme of Reflection:Response that will be presented on October 25 & 26, 2013.

Although it is not obligatory, we welcome any opportunities to include Temple students as part of this choreographic commission. Students may be selected through audition and numbers included are entirely at the discretion of the choreographer.

You will be given a $5000 grant towards this and you will have regular access to rehearsal space throughout June-August 2103. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to offer travel, accommodation or per diems.

You have the option to stage the work in the Conwell Theater at Temple University Main Campus or at an alternative site within the Main Campus or North Philadelphia area. We can provide stage management, lighting and sound technicians if you choose to present the work in Conwell Theater.

In addition to the performance, you will also be asked to offer a master class and lecture-demonstration to students in the Dance Department in mid October 2013.

Proposal Guidelines:

Please submit a 2-page application as an email attachment (with the email subject heading Reflection:Response 2013 Commission) that states:

·      Name, address, telephone and e-mail address
·      A short performance biography
·      A brief description of the artistic aims of your proposed work with a clear articulation of how it speaks to the theme of Reflection:Response
·      A breakdown of your budget
·      Anticipated technical requirements

In addition to the written application, you are asked to provide a 10-minute sample of your work (please send a link to You Tube or Vimeo) outlining why you would like us to look at this particular section.

Deadline for proposals: MARCH 15, 2013

Please send your proposal to:

Dr Sherril Dodds: sherril.dodds@temple.edu

Please note that the Selection Committee will meet to review applications in late-March and you will be notified about the outcome of your application by: April 8, 2013.

The Kronos Quartet invites young composers

Click here to read about The Kronos Quartet's Under 30 Project, a commissioning program designed to support the creation of new music by young artists.

The deadline is November 16. Grab an application and guidelines here.