Artists Reach Out: Lynn Neuman

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

Lynn Neuman

Lynn Neuman
(photo: Joshua Davis)

Lynn Neuman is a choreographer, director, educator and organizer who serves as Artistic Director of Artichoke Dance Company based in Brooklyn, NY. She is known for her multi-year programs to mitigate plastic pollution on Coney Island and to pass plastic bag legislation in New York State, dancing in plastic bag costumes and collecting petition signatures for over three years. She has created 40 works for Artichoke Dance, been commissioned to create 20 works for other companies and schools, and has directed eight operas. Her site-specific work has been commissioned by the DUMBO Improvement District to enliven public spaces, The Waterfront Alliance to celebrate the Bicentennial of the Erie Canal, and The Soraya to connect the campus of California State University with Los Angeles River restoration. Stage commissions include the National Gallery of Art, Dixon Place and the Joffrey Ballet School. Lynn is an Association of Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow and the only choreographer to date to receive a Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts. Recently, her work has been featured in Broadway World, Inside Arts Magazine, Dance Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. Lynn has taught at Peridance, Joffrey Ballet School, and Ballet Arts in NYC, was a Lincoln Center Teaching Artist for ten years, and has been a guest artist at universities and arts programs across the country. She serves as a volunteer coastal cleanup coordinator, is on the Steering Committee of 350Brooklyn, is a regional organizer for Global Water Dances, and a member of the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice.

Lynn Neuman
(photo: John Priola)

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

At the time of the shelter-in-place order, I was working on a dance for the gardens of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL that was to be performed on Earth Day. We, Artichoke Dance, were also scheduled to perform and offer trashion--fashion from trash--workshops at Car-Free Earth Dance in New York and had a series of events, including a workshop using movement to model environmental justice principles, scheduled at Interference Archive in conjunction with their climate justice exhibit. All these were canceled or postponed.

In order to keep working, I shifted gears and am creating a dance for a videoconference format. The dancers are in their hallways, and it’s evolving to serve as a metaphor for the isolation and need for connection we are all experiencing. I’ve transitioned the community engagement components of my work into #MoveWithMe, short online videos and livestreaming sessions using movement to connect us to our bodies and ground us in this time of uncertainty and anxiety.

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

When I was a kid, I couldn’t sit still. My parents enrolled me in gymnastics, and I was a competitive gymnast into my teens. At 16, I took a dance class and didn’t look back. I feel fortunate to have had the support of my parents. Everyone in my immediate family is a musician and educator of some sort, so these two things are very naturally part of who I’ve come to be. Now I’m working at the intersection of arts, community activation and climate change. The variety of environments in which I’ve taught is definitely useful. What I’ve learned from my experience enables me to work with a wide range of populations, often simultaneously.

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

I am practicing and envisioning co-created and sustainable ways of being both in an individual body and in a community or system. For the individual body, I work with proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation patterns, which are regenerative integrative movements, and mesh these with more traditional dance actions. My hypothesis is that this will support sustained dancing in my aging body.

Choreographically, my work often begins by examining an environmentally-compromised geography or a place in transition, though many times these are synonymous. Locally, Gowanus is a focus. The canal is New York City’s first named Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency and is also targeted for the largest scale rezoning in NYC in 20 years, meaning the population will both change and explode.

After I’ve come to understand the issues present and proposed methods to address them, I devise improvisational approaches to model these in movement and then ask, does this reveal anything? If it does, I continue to pursue it. If it doesn’t, I move on to the next strategy. Several themes have emerged in this work, including hypersensitive listening, interconnectedness, and complexity in patterns and actions.

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

I don’t see how these couldn’t align. And I think this would be true across the board for creatively generative artists, and by that I mean people who are conceptually devising their work, as opposed to being an artist for hire, which I have also done, working in opera. Even there, my values are imposed into both the working methodology and the creative product, even if it is not topically what I would address. I supposed if someone is following a trend, as opposed to their own interests and values, this would not be true. But, sometimes those two things miraculously align.

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

Right now, in a time of self-isolation at the currently-perceived height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, my work exists online but energetically in the air. I think about, and imagine, what other people need. I reflect on my own situation and what I’m experiencing. I ask friends and neighbors from afar. Then I put something into the world with as much care and grounding as I can and send my energy along with it. I’m thinking about what people will need in the future and am reading a lot of psychology, because I think we’ll be holding a lot in our bodies and psyches from this experience for some time.

Self-Care Tip

I spend at least a half hour every day solely petting my dog. She is a very social creature, so it’s helping us both.

******

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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Katie Lee, 98

Katie Lee, Folk Singer Who Fought to Protect a Canyon, Dies at 98
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, November 10, 2017

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Mrinalini Sarabhai, 97

Mrinalini Sarabhai, Renowned Indian Classical Dancer, Dies at 97
by Nida Najar, The New York Times, January 27, 2016

Ecosexuals Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens marry that mountain

Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens
remake environmental activism for a sexy new era.

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle stand before all the world--tall in their funky platform boots--as proud, passionate ecosexuals. And they recruit. With those two, you're well aware, surely, of the sexual part. But what's with that eco prefix?

The couple answered that question--and more--last night at the New York City premiere screening of Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story, their 2014 documentary film about mountain-top removal mining in the Appalachians where Stephens was born and raised and has family. That's the eco part. We'll get to sex in a minute.

Hosted by Abrons Arts Center, the event helped launch the 2015 Queer New York International Arts Festival in partnership with MixNYC, the queer experimental film festival. The cheerful pair greeted the audience after having led an EcoSex walking tour of Central Park earlier in the day. They shared a list of "25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth."

"Talk dirty to her plants" and "Love her unconditionally even when she's angry and cruel" were two standout suggestions. So, if you have not pieced it together already, ecosexuality--a state of mind, identity and practice open to anyone regardless of gender or orientation--derives from the notion that Earth is not Earth, Our Mother but Earth, Our Lover.

"Mommy's not going to take care of us," Stephens warns. "Mommy's tired." We have much work to do.

Through giddy imagination and wit, Sprinkle and Stephens shift the balance of power to inspire us to take a more direct role in the well-being of our planet. As they see it, the key to this new form of activism is bonding with nature through enlivened senses and pleasure--the sensation of slippery mud and gnarly tree bark and chlorophyll on one's skin. The pair have traveled around, staging weddings in which they get married to mountains and snow and the moon and what have you. And, you know what? I have no idea what "cloud sex" is, but I'm all for it.

In Spain, they married coal. In Stephens's West Virginia, they married a mountain and helped local activists draw awareness to the coal mining technique that imperils natural beauty, biodiversity, health, community and heritage. Goodbye Gauley Mountain shows what they're up against--a powerful industry holding the whip hand of steady employment over many workers who envision no other way to feed their families. But Stephens interviews others who know all too well what's going on, and their intellectual resistance--and deep love of the land--is most clear and ultimately moving.

To learn how you can see Goodbye Gauley Mountain, contact Stephens and Sprinkle here.

Closed.

Queer New York International Arts Festival continues events at Abrons through September 26. For information and tickets for other QNYIAF events, click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Honoring Hayao Miyazaki, Japan's master of animation

A Master of Childhood Dreams
Miyazaki Wins Again, After 11 Animated Features
by Mike Hale, The New York Times, January 2, 2015

Farley Mowat, 92

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

Souleymane Badolo's "Benon" premieres at Danspace Project

Souleymane Badolo
(photo by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan)

In a manner of speaking, Benon, the new hour-long duet from Souleymane Badolo at Danspace Project, has a foot in one world and another foot entirely elsewhere. Yes, Badolo, originally from the West African nation of Burkina Faso, flourishes at an intersection of strong cultural tradition and searching innovation. He has done so for a few decades within his own choreography as well as the work of Nora Chipaumire, Reggie Wilson and other artists. But what I'm thinking about now has nothing to do with what's age-old and what's contemporary but rather the crucial difference between what's extraordinary and what's merely ordinary.

The title of the piece alludes to the harvest celebrations of Badolo's homeland. But the piece begins not with displays of abundance and communal joy but with the ominous sight and grating sound of discarded commercial plastic. Crates crammed with empty spring water bottles occupy polar corners of the space. Scrunched-up lengths of plastic trash bags form a vest-like mesh around Badolo's bare torso, and he clutches a stack of plastic cups in his arms. Charmaine Warren wears a full, flowing hooded cape of translucent plastic with a trailing skirt made of black trash bags, a costume of surprising regal beauty. She wears it well. With Warren firmly attached to his back and following his every move, Badolo gravely treads the space, dropping or tossing cups onto the floor.

This, then, is our harvest, our plenitude. The thought arises: "You will reap what you sow." Badolo has turned the idea of harvest upside down and ventures into the realm of the prophetic, the extraordinary.

Warren's extended solo work in this duet is indeed extraordinary, her severe manner and gaze perfectly recalling Symbolist portraiture. From the placement of her feet to the raptor-like expanse and dry, decisive swirls of her arms, she brings focus and grandeur and a compelling weirdness to each movement in the space and each moment. And the returning Badolo, donning braces of blond straw that extend from his back like a body halo, seems ready to set a new, solemn phase of action and meaning in motion.

But as the work continues, the spell breaks. Once broken, there's no return. Badolo appears to move farther from his purpose and farther from the extraordinary into a regrettably ordinary plane.

Why walk up and stare into an audience member's eyes, as Badolo does, twice? Those stares should pack more power than they do here. The gesture recalls the way a ritual dancer, possessed of a god or spirit, might transmit the energy of that ethereal being to the gathered assembly. But here the jump of electricity from dancer to watcher goes missing. We don't feel it. We don't learn from it. We merely wonder, Why did he do that? What does it serve?

Overall, the presence and contributions of saxophonist Jeff Hudgins do not appear to be well defined. Why layer his bleats and honks over recordings of Burkinabé songs? Why, as the dance moves into its later passages, have him drift into the space and around the dancers? He is not dancing, nor is he adding anything to the dancing. This maneuver, in itself not especially fresh, reveals no significance unique or essential to Badolo's project.

Benon's initially tight coil loosens, and--rather than presenting a definitive ending--the end dancing becomes engulfed by darkness in a way that suggests an artist's resignation rather than choice.

Lighting: Carol Mullins
Costumes: Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya
Set design and construction: Tony Turner

Benon concludes tonight at 8pm. For program and ticket information, click here.

Danspace Project

131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), Manhattan

(directions)

Reflections: Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger’s Last Night on Stage
by Jesse Wegman, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

For Seeger, Years of Singing and Sailing to Save His Hudson River
by Joseph Berger, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger, 94

Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 28, 2014

Toshi Seeger, 91

Toshi Seeger, Wife of Folk-Singing Legend, Dies at 91
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, July 11, 2013

Wetlands' Larry Bloch, 59

Larry Bloch, Built the Wetlands Club, Dies at 59
by James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times, November 3, 2012

Job Opening: work for iLAND

Part-Time Managing & Program Director Sought

Application deadline: July 15

iLAND is seeking a part-time Managing & Program Director to lead the organization into its next phase of programmatic growth. A perfect opportunity for an enthusiastic and motivated not-for-profit manager interested in contemporary dance and environmental issues, the position will involve working with renowned choreographer Jennifer Monson as well as support staff. The ideal candidate will be able to work independently and take initiative, yet work within a strong team to expand the organization's programs and services in the areas of rural residencies, international residencies, mentorship, environmental justice, interdisciplinary collaboration, and partnerships with both cultural and environmental organizations. This is an exceptional chance for someone with a long-term view to create a strong platform for an organization poised to expand its visibility and impact. The position will initially be part-time with the goal of increasing the budget significantly towards a full time role.

Responsibilities:
    Oversight of organizational operations including fundraising, budgeting and financial management and communications;
    Management of the annual iLAB residency program;
    Development and management of the annual iLAND symposium;
    Production of the creative work of Artistic Director Jennifer Monson.

Qualifications:

    Minimum 2-3 years training and experience in management in the performing arts and/or environmental science;
    Excellent organizational, administrative and computer skills;
    Ability to work both independently and as part of a team;
    Passion for and/or work experience in the area of environmental activism, research, science or policy;
    Excellent oral and written communication skills;
    Ability to initiate and nurture relationships with a variety of people from different backgrounds and fields;including but not limited to scientists, artists and advocacy groups;
    Proficiency with a range of MAC-based computer software;
    Communication skills via social media;
    A great sense of humor.

For additional information on iLAND's programs, visit www.ilandart.org.

Salary commensurate with experience.

Application deadline: July 15th

Please email a resume, three references and cover letter with Managing Director as the subject of your email to info@ilandart.org

Interviews will take place between July 20-22 with final candidates' interviews on August 6-7.

Getting "Out There" with iLAND

iLAND
presents


Moving Into the Out There

Indeterminacy & Improvisation

in Performance & Environmental Practice

at The New School

A symposium on movement, science, and the environment 

in New York City

March 23, Noon to 8pm and March 24, 10am to 7pm

Moving Into the Out There is iLAND’s fourth annual symposium on dance, movement, and the environment. The two-day event in the heart of New York City brings together dancers, choreographers, designers, ecologists, advocates, and scientists for interactive panel discussions, field workshops, and networking opportunities. This year’s symposium features an in-depth review of PARK, an environmental performance project at Fresh Kills Landfill supported by the 2011 iLAB Residency. Moving Into the Out There will also highlight iLAND’s recent efforts to synthesize insights and discoveries from the past seven years of iLAB collaborative residencies. Detailed event descriptions are attached.

Moving Into the Out There is an open forum for exploring new methods of understanding urban ecosystems through innovative collaborations between practitioners of movement, dance, science, and environmental management. iLAND cultivates a deeper engagement with urban environmental issues through its cross-disciplinary approach, and the annual symposium invites the general public to experience and explore recent works emerging from the iLAND community.

Moving Into the Out There features the work of iLAND’s 2011 iLAB Residency, opening up the results of that collaborative experience to a wider audience for discussion.

Throughout the Symposium, participants share in the process of searching for shared language and collaborative processes that cut across the arts and sciences, focusing on dance and the body as primary mediators of experience, imagination, and knowing. Through Moving Into the Out There, iLAND aims to generate conversation about collaborative practice throughout communities of art and science, instigating new ways of understanding and intervening in contemporary environmental problems – particularly those related to over-development and climate change.

Admission is $5-25 sliding scale. For complete programming and schedule information--and to reserve your ticket--click here, call (347) 573-5547 or email info@ilandart.org.

The New School (Wollman Hall)

65 West 11th Street, Manhattan

(directions)

UK: arts and environmental sustainability

Speaking at the Tipping Point conference in Newcastle, Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England has today announced that the Arts Council is the first arts funding body in the world to embed environmental sustainability into the funding agreements of its major programmes.

Read more:

Arts Council England to embed environmental sustainability into funding

Rays of light

My body is a halfway house for a ray of light. -- Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Last evening, 651 Arts brought together the fabulous Ntozake Shange and Marc Bamuthi Joseph--"fabulous" modifies both of them, thank you--for a conversation that could have, should have gone on all night. From the outset--with Joseph explaining that his middle name means "of the trees" and Shange acknowledging that "trees carry spirits"--everyone could feel that these two charming, multi-talented, politically astute artists ride the same wavelength and have much to share. I'm still buoyed and buzzing from this one-time-only, one-of-a-kind, event, which took place before a full and fully mesmerized audience at the Mark Morris Dance Center as part of 651 Arts' Live & Outspoken series.

 

Joseph opened by offering excerpts from Word Becomes Flesh, a solo that takes the familiar concept of spoken word and pumps it up into super-embodied word--a steady roll of movement, narrative and allegorical characterization treating historical and societal realities. Later, as Shange interviewed him, Joseph cited the world-renowned Tap God. "The way Savion Glover hears rhythm and channels it through his body is the way I aspire to hear language and channel it through my body," he said. "The body is the primary mechanism for carrying a story and for the making of ritual." He certainly has come a long way from the nine-year-old who--auditioning for Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk--did not know how to dance. Unimaginable!

Like Joseph, we were all beguiled by the presence of the author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Shange, as interviewer, brought insightful questions and an effervescent spirit of generosity and wit. Imagine Shange--"she who walks like a lion"--wondering about the distinction between Ruby Keeler (of the hard-charging feet) and Ginger Rogers (of the light-skimming feet) and Joseph answering with a juicily word-embodied elucidation of the Afro-Haitian snake god, Damballah. Pure joy, pure joy. The two of them should really take this act on the road.

For Colored Girls deeply influenced the young Joseph, to be sure, and clearly directed his sense of compassion towards women and his commitment to playing a positive role as educator and activist. It would have been great to hear a little about his concern for environmental issues and eco-equity, described as "the radically democratic position that poor communities and communities of color are logistically and psychologically included in the new, clean and green economy." But if this interests you, keep watch for his upcoming performance project--red black and green: a blues. You can find out more about it at Life is Living.

To keep pace with 651 Arts, click here. Next up: poet-activist Amiri Baraka interviews actor-director Stephen Henderson, April 5, 7pm. (Information and ticketing)

"Global Water Dances" action announced

Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere 

Time-Zone Spanning Performances to Motivate Action

On June 25, 2011, Global Water Dances will celebrate the importance of water in human life with a 24-hour series of performances moving across the time zones of the world. 

“On July 25, 2011, we will be using dance and music to blend our local water issues with the global struggle to insure safe water for every human being” said Marylee Hardenbergh, artistic director for Global Water Dances. “Dancers and choreographers in more than 33 countries are already at work, and new countries are joining us every week.” 

Global Water Dances will start with performances in countries in the South Pacific, rolling westward through the time zones. Each group will produce a 3-part performance. The first two parts will be site-specific, locally produced and locally choreographed, using local musicians and dancers. But in the final part, all groups will use a common theme, using the same piece of music.

“Global Water Dances will give people a new and unique way to express our deepening concern about the growing world-wide water crisis,” said Hardenbergh. “More than 1 billion people right now do not have access to safe water. By moving together on this special day, we will mobilize people to develop and demand solutions to water problems at every level.” 

*****

Global Water Dances artistic director Marylee Hardenbergh has choreographed site-specific dances in settings as varied as the bombed-out Parliament Building in Sarajevo to 2006’s One River Mississippi, a one-day celebration of the Mississippi with events from the river’s headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. 

For more information, visit Global Water Dances here.

Holt Webb's "Vanishing America"

Barbara Ann Levy introduces us to the work of photographer Holt Webb with this striking online exhibit at her BAL Gallery (click here to view):

BAL Gallery's exhibit of photography from Holt Webb's series Vanishing America has been launched to honor Gulf of Mexico residents who suffered enormous losses related to the Horizon oil rig explosion in April 2010, the spill and its aftermath; chronic illness, MRSA-like rashes, upper respiratory illness and unemployment due to the death of oyster beds and pollution of shrimping waters.

The recent report of the National Commission on the BP Oil Disaster scapegoated CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, accusing him of encouraging residents' outrage. But even without Cooper's reports, Gulf Coast residents have plenty to be angry about!

I can assure readers that residents are outraged by the tragic effects of the oil rig explosion. It has been called the most serious environmental disaster in US history. Eleven oil rig workers, female dolphins with calves in seasonal calving grounds, pelicans and countless seabirds died.

In January 2011, barrier reef beaches like Blood Beach and coastal communities in Mississippi seem toxic to residents. They report that once pristine white beaches are now muddied composites of sand and buried layers of oil. They report continued difficulty breathing near shorelines in Mississippi coastal areas. A toxic dispersant was used by BP even in the face of orders not to use it by our Coast Guard.

Please support Holt Webb's artwork from his Vanishing America series. Visit his website. His work is available for sale and also for exhibition. You may e-mail me at barbaraannlevy1@mac.com for more information about how to purchase or exhibit the work.

The great (crocheted) reef

How to Crochet a Coral Reef

by Jess Righthand, Smithsonian.com, December 2010

Imagining Seneca Village

Announced by iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance)

From the iLAND community:

Imagining Seneca Village

September 25, 6-7:30pm 

Choreographer and 2007 iLAB Resident Lise Brenner has partnered with Tenement Museum Education and tour guide Emily Gallagher and composer/performer Imani Uzuri to create a tour of an imagined Seneca Village, a New York City semi-rural, woodland settlement that flourished in the early-mid 19th century. Populated by predominantly African-American and Irish landholders, Seneca Village was located on the West side of the Park, from approximately 83rd-88th Streets, and was torn down in 1858, when Central Park was created.

Location: Summit Rock, Central Park. 

All ages welcomed! Free, Rain or Shine! Hold the date!

"Sorry" don't cut the oil

"Sorry Ain't Enough No More"

posted by Barbara Ann Levy, WPB/NYC and Anything Else