Artists Reach Out: Nelida Tirado

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

Nelida Tirado

Nelida Tirado
(photo: Antonio G. Gamboa)

Nelida Tirado hailed  “magnificent and utterly compelling” (The New York Times) began her formal training at Ballet Hispanico of New York at the age of six. Barely out of her teens, she was invited to tour the US with Jose Molina Bailes Espanoles and work as a soloist in Carlota Santana’s Flamenco Vivo, soloist/ dance captain of Compania Maria Pages and  Compania Antonio El Pipa, performing at prestigious flamenco festivals and television in Spain and throughout France, Italy, UK, Germany and Japan. She has performed in Carmen with the Metropolitan Opera of NY, World Music Institute’s Gypsy Caravan 1, Noche Flamenca and was featured flamenco star in Riverdance on Broadway and touring companies.

Ms. Tirado was recipient of the 2007 and 2010 BRIO Award for Artistic Excellence, and opened with her company Summer 2010 for Buena Vista Social Club featuring Omara Portoundo for the Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival.  Some highlights include HarlemStage E-Moves,  Amores Quebrados at the Repertorio Espanol, Valerie Gladstone’s Dance Under the Influence 2011 and 2012 in collaboration with the Flamenco Festival USA and collaboration with jazz great Wynton Marsalis at Harvard University and the 2016 premiere of her solo show Dime Quien Soy in the Flamenco Festival NY. She was currently the recipient of the 2017 Rosario Dawson Muse Fellow through BAAD!, featured in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch," 2018/2019 recipient of Gibney’s Dance in Process Residence and will be seen in the Warner Brother’s film adaption of Lin Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights, premiering Summer 2021.

Nelida Tirado
(photo: Chasi Annexy)

Do you have a current or planned project whose proress is affected by the pandemic?
Yes, all of my work has been put on pause which includes performance, teaching, arts-in-education work and one particular project I was excited about. May 2019 I was able to immerse myself into a project (thanks to a generous grant from Gibney as a DIP, Dance in Process artist) that kept presenting itself to me in various ways/places and experiences. The premiere of the work would have been this year.

Initially I was frustrated by what I thought was a standstill of time but, ultimately, it has appeared to be pivotal and given me more fuel to revisit the work and make adjustments. The pandemic has given me the time I wouldn’t normally have to reflect and stay still which has brought immense clarity. Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice. Dance and music was always a normal practice at home with family and in my culture. After a kindergarten graduation show, my teacher was impressed with my ability and suggested that I be enrolled in formal dance classes. That was the beginning of my mom’s journey to find what she thought was important--to learn Bomba/Plena, the traditional dance/music of my country to keep me connected to my cultural roots since I was born in New York City. However, during those years, that wasn’t easy to find. She opted instead to enroll me in a local dance program that offered classical ballet and Spanish dance from Spain. I continued with that program and the following year was bumped into the larger school of what is Ballet Hispánico. I continued my studies there, from 6 to 18 years old, following their curriculum at the time of ballet/Graham/classical Spanish dance/flamenco/Dunham technique, later leading me into the Apprentice Company without fully being aware entirely of what I was learning and its connection to me personally. And though it took me years to find which focus I would choose, Flamenco spoke to me more than any other form.

I loved the rhythms. I loved the feeling of beating my feet on the floor and being loud but was too young to find my voice. Then came an important phase in my life where I underwent significant difficulty on a personal level, and I dived into my art as refuge. I had a lot to say, but I found my power inside and out through Flamenco. As I kept searching, I was also able to make the connections with myself, my culture, my environment to Flamenco, and it has been life to me. In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning? In specific way, I am doing a lot of self-care practice which includes meditation, journaling, yoga/running and flamenco practice but, more so, I’m practicing being still and reflecting. Being still was difficult at first but has been necessary for me to remain grounded and calm amidst this uncertainty. Being still has also helped envision with clarity what I want and need to commit to at this present time. How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about? My practice is essential to who I am in the physical, psychological, and spiritual level. It is who I am as an artist onstage and that wellness is important to be able to continue to create, connect and reach audiences authentically and genuinely. As an artist of Puerto Rican heritage, I also need to keep showing up entirely as a worker and defender of an art form from Spain that is not always fully embraced in the general dance world, even less from a non-Spanish voice because of a lack of information or general misconceptions. Owning my authenticity is me confidently and unapologetically letting go of who the audience thinks I should be, owning my cultural reference/environment and experience of what has shaped me and committing to the art form honestly and wholeheartedly. How does your practice function within the world we have now? That’s a great question, and I’m eager to see how it will play out. There definitely is a need to be connected and see each other just as there is a burning desire to stomp out our quarantine emotion. So, we’ll see. Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now. I’ve always loved slow morning rituals but even more now. Quiet mornings, long coffee, meditating, being outdoors connecting with trees, the greenway where I live, sitting still and just breathing fill my heart and quiet my mind.

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

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Soles of Duende asks Can We Dance Here? Please do!

Left-to-right: Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales
and Brinda Guha of Soles of Duende
(photo: Spinkick Pictures)

Can We Dance Here?
Soles of Duende
Dixon Place
December 7-8, 14-15 and 20-21

I'm not sure I follow the progression of existence to seeking permission to gaining trust to arriving at freedom alluded to in program notes for Can We Dance Here? Something about the "Transtheoretical Stages of Change" as the underpinning of the story this new dance wants to tell. But while I'm not hip to all that, I do know the three grounded, skillful and vivacious dancers of Soles of Duende--Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales and Brinda Guha, 2018 Artists in Residence at Dixon Place--make a compelling argument for the power of women and the joy of women making really big sound together. Six pounding feet rattled the floor beneath our chairs like a tremblor. Anyone placing their bar drinks on that floor surely risked a spill.

Supported by the live music of Anjna Swarminathan (violin), Frank Malloy IV (drum) and JADALAREIGN (DJ), Castro brings tap; Rosales, flamenco; Guha, Kathak, all with great conviction that these three percussive dance forms belong in conversation. Can We Dance Here? is the perfect package for that exchange of life force--no more than an hour in length, superbly focused in structure, its staging of trios, duos and solos tight as a drum.

I caught the next-to-last evening of a show that has been running on weekends since December 7. So, you have one more shot--tonight. Can We Dance Here? is an offbeat holiday-season treat, but a treat it is.

Can We Dance Here? runs at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
171 Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

******

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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José Molina, 81

José Molina, 81, Who Brought Spanish Dance to U.S. Audiences, Dies
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, January 11, 2018

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Gibney presents Shamar Wayne Watt and Yinka Esi Graves

Shamar Wayne Watt (photo: Natalie Romero Marx)
Below: Yinka Esi Graves (photo: Camilla Greenwall)

DoublePlus presents three weeks of shared evenings for which established artist-curators each choose a pair of emerging artists and mentor them through the creative, production and audience development processes.

--Gibney Dance 

I am very excited about Yinka Esi Graves, a mature, serious thinker and flamenco artist. Shamar Watt is a strong physical performer with a nascent choreographic practice. These artists are both asking questions about the value of human life through different performance forms. What I care about most is how their aesthetics come through. 
Carrying the history and burden of blackness are relevant topics of discussion. But how do time, space and energy capture these issues? With little to no evolution in contemporary politics and economies of race, the body must become a weaponized agent of aesthetics for the artist. Graves’ and Watt’s performative explorations manifest the body as a site for these urgent concerns.

--Nora Chipaumire 

Nora Chipaumire--otherwise known as one of the most exhilarating dance performers of our times--writes that she prefers to avoid calling herself a curator. So let's call her, instead, a practiced eye that allows us all to see further and wider. Fulfilling her role as "eye" and one of the mentors for the DoublePlus fall series at Gibney Dance, she has now introduced us to two exciting emerging artists--Yinka Esi Graves and Shamar Wayne Watt. I attended Watt and Graves's final show in the theater at Gibney's Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center.

When the audience first entered, Watt's Gully spring: Di exhortation was already in motion. His gnarly shadow played across a canvas curtain enclosing him like a shower stall. His mother, Valerie Davis, sat nearby, waiting to sing, play her mini-tambourine and read pointed Scripture passages at certain times during the dance.

Jamaica-born Watt draws his aesthetic for Gully spring from a prophetic spirituality that is, indeed, exhortative, magnetic, formidable. He is both high priest of a religion of his own creation--insurgency, liberation--and its exemplary warrior. For most of the lengthy, engrossing performance, the muscular, dreadlocked dancer anchors himself at the center of a broad, low platform, under the periodic drip of a gallon jug of water, and slowly rotates on his axis, gathering tension and power. He speaks, imparting searing visions to us, his captive congregation. When he stamps, it shakes the ground beneath our chairs, and when he tells us to do something--yes, you just looking on as if this is mere spectacle--he means it.

I have watched dance artists address the frightening toxicity of our times with rituals of healing. I have never watched--and felt--anything that could match this hypnotic intensity.

Watt's sermon? Every valley--or gully, if you will--shall be exalted. It is written. It is coming. We make it happen.

An intermission gave Gibney's theater crew time to reset things for Yinka Esi Graves, but maybe also offered time for us to turn to one another, talk a bit, let some of that tension out.

Graves's Twitter bio reads:

In short: born in london, grew up in nicaragua, guadeloupe, london, part educated in french, studied art history, wanted to make films, now flamenco dancer...

Her dancing has been featured in M. Angel Rosales's film, Gurumbé: Canciones de tu Memoria Negra (2016), a documentary tracing the influence of Africans on Spain and flamenco. She is the first Black flamenco artist I have seen and one of the most exciting flamenco dancers in my experience. I am grateful to Chipaumire for opening my eyes to this artist, and I hope she will return to New York so that we can see more.

Her solea--The fine line por Solea--follows a wistful, delicately sensuous prelude by Guillermo Guilén (guitar) and Ismael Fernandez (vocals). Here the dancer's authority and intensity--which, as I see it, connects her to Watt--lies in the depth and exactitude of shape in her movements, right down to the specificity of each finger. She has her own chosen, deployed power. She sweeps us up in the follow-through of impulse through inclination and gesture. And there's nothing wasted. Nothing just for filler or flash. Such intelligence, such beauty I can only call regal and bow before.

This program has concluded. For information and tickets to the DoublePlus series, click here (Week Two) and here (Week Three).

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

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Films coming soon: Loïe and Isadora; the Afro-Andalusian influence in flamenco

French indie music star and actress Soko stars in The Dancer.
(above and below)

The biopic--which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival
and was first seen in New York at Lincoln Center Film Society's
Rendez-Vous with French Film Festival this past March--
receives its US theatrical release on December 1.

Lily-Rose Depp as a rivalous Isadora Duncan

The Dancer
directed by Stéphanie Di Giusto
(108 min/France/French with English subtitles)

With her first feature film, The Dancer, director Stéphanie Di Giusto helps us imagine what it must have felt like to see American fin-de-siècle phenom Loïe Fuller (1862-1928) mounting a stage, aswirl in billowing silk and saturating spotlights, a theatrical innovator of monumental spectacle. For her stubborn if put-upon Loïe, Di Giusto deploys the fascinating French indie singer/actress Soko--an early Malcolm MacDowell or Marc Bolan lookalike whose favored black bowler hat might also have you flashing back to Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) and Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) but just briefly. She's far more androgynous than that--one character euphemistically describes her to an ardent male admirer as "standoffish"--and her struggles around sexuality underlie what the director clearly sees as inability to cope with the heedless, cruel pace of a world about to race past her.

Our first sight of Soko shows her nearly smothered in yards of fabric. But, no, she's not performing her famous Serpentine Dance. Instead, she's being rushed by several running men from the stage to either a hotel room or a hospital room; I could not tell which. Although we later learn why, it's enough, in that first moment, to identify Loïe with calamity and vulnerability. The film rarely lets up from that initial impression of her.

Next, we flash back to her as a sturdily-built, gloomy Midwestern girl--a very emo Mary Louise Fuller--sharing rough beginnings with her French-born, alcoholic father. He quickly ends up dead, leaving her at the mercy of a religion-obsessed mother. The cinematography of these early scenes has a heavy, depressing murkiness that rarely lifts from the film even when it is actually better lit. A biopic about an artist who illuminated stages with eye-popping light and magic is taken up with an atmosphere of grim darkness. But, again, Di Giusto seems intent on showing Loïe in pain, insecurity and discouragement.

There's the brutal physical pain of maneuvering those yards and yards of fabric, a feat that leaves her gasping for breath. Despite diligent conditioning, Loïe's body breaks down, time and again, and performing at all becomes a risk. But there's also emotional pain throughout Di Giusto's story--from the loss of Fuller's father to the ultimate betrayal wrought by one Isadora Duncan (Lily-Rose Depp), a youngster more conventionally feminine, at once more graceful and choreographically adventurous in movement and more given to displaying her body before the male gaze.

Mélanie Thierry does fine, delicately nuanced work as Gabrielle Bloch, Fuller's compassionate champion at the Paris Opera. She gives their scenes life and reminds you of Fuller even when the dancer is elsewhere, because you feel how vividly present Fuller is in her thoughts.

Don't come looking for a documentary. As the film opens, we're told that it is "based on a true story." Bear that "based on" in mind, if you will, and grant Di Giusto a little running room with her creative narrative. I suppose an educational film about how the real-life Loïe Fuller first dreamt up the notion of turning silk costuming into both motile sculpture and extraordinary canvases for her unique lighting effects might satisfy some but not many. Actually, we don't get to learn a whole lot more about Isadora Duncan, significant pioneer in her own right, and Depp brings little of interest to her role.

I've long been drawn to both of these legendary artists. I really only perked up when Soko--well-trained by contemporary dance artist Jody Sperling, acclaimed Loïe Fuller specialist and choreographer for the film--dons her costumes and models the sort of transformational stagecraft for which Fuller became famous.

The Dancer opens in theaters Friday, December 1.

Also coming soon...

Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories
directed by Miguel Ángel Rosales
film screening and flamenco performance
Sunday, December 3, 7pm to 9:30pm

Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories, a feature-length documentary from anthropologist Miguel Ángel Rosales, explores the contribution of Afro-Andalusians to flamenco as the art form developed. Gurumbé (72 min, in Spanish with English subtitles) has won numerous awards in the festival circuit and it is currently premiering around the world.

Flamenco performance by dancer Yinka Ese Graves and live musicians

Roundtable with the performers and the director, moderated by
K. Meira Goldberg, author of Flamenco on the Global Stage and Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (forthcoming, Oxford University Press)

TICKETS

La Nacional
239 West 14th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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She walks her dark road: "Antigona"

Acclaimed flamenco artist Soledad Barrio
with members of Noche Flamenca in Antigona
(photo: Zarmik Moqtaderi)

Nothing prepares you for Antigona, classical Greek tragedy viewed and renewed through the Spanish art of flamenco.

Perhaps you've read the primary source (Sophocles) or a recent review of Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca's production, now in its second New York run (West Park Presbyterian Church). Perhaps you've long followed the careers of Barrio and her husband Martín Santangelo, Noche Flamenca's artistic director. In the end, none of that matters. This Antigona, this phenomenon, will make your eyes fly open in surprise.

Ninety-minutes in length, with no intermission, it is dense but swift-moving, integrative theater by artists originally noted for the intimate simplicity and transparency of their approach to flamenco. Although Noche Flamenca has previously experimented with characters and storytelling, the company has never risked as much nor won as much as it has with Antigona. And no one can say "At least, see this show for Barrio's dancing," since every aspect of the production is carefully, generously wrought and woven into the whole, each working towards overall excellence.

Like the Sophocles play, Antigona is a highly moral and political work of theater, dramatizing the conflict between conventional law and a private sense of family honor and justice. In short, Antigone/a--daughter of Oedipus, former King of Thebes--loves her rebel brother Polynieces as much as the brother, Eteocles, who remained loyal to the state. Both are now dead by each other's hand, and the new king, their uncle Creonte, orders a fine burial for Eteocles while denying burial to Polynieces. This is anathema to the gods, and Antigona's anguished intervention draws her and those around her towards a dark fate.

The static church setting at West Park presents visual limitations--including, for the audience, level rows of pew seating--but dynamic stagecraft and variable temperatures of light stir the drama to life. Even without the warrior brothers' pivotal, badass dance battle, accompanied by rocking percussion and electric guitar, that pits the flamencero Polyneices (Carlos Menchaca) against the hip hop of Eteocles (Robert Wilson), this production would work for the typical attention spans of today. Fifteen scenes quickly tumble after and into one another. Instrumental and vocal music ring out strong. Dashes of lyric poetry, enough to give the gist of a singer's lengthier expression, are projected above the action. And the placement and movement of players continuously mutate, neatly exploiting every level, angle and corner of the stage. All of it comes at you without cease and with equal respect and weight afforded each discipline--dance, music, singing, acting, visual design.

Barrio dances at the corpse of Polyneices in Antigona.
(photo: Zarmik Moqtaderi)

Just turning focus to dance alone, you have Barrio sweeping through like a storm cloud. Never before has she danced better, attacking with the directive force and fullness of mature authority and, late in the play, with searing abandon. You're convinced the great performer has taken up sorcery with no qualms about slipping between the here-and-now and the world of the dead. But Barrio, lioness though she is, must share essential duties with Menchaca, Wilson, frequent partner Juan Ogalla (as Haemon, Antigone's bethrothed) who dances up an earthquake, and all of the tightly-orchestrated cast.

Juan Ogalla (Haemon) with Barrio
(photo: Zarmik Moqtaderi)

Singer Emilio Florido also stands out as an adroit, sassy Master of Ceremonies, and Marina Elana displays concentration and finesse in her dancing as well as unexpected comedy in her role as Ismene, a chatty Valley Girl narrator blithely filing her nails as her sister Antigona leads blinded Oedipus across the stage. In another wry scene, Creonte (the wonderful singer Manuel Gago) gets crowned with a matador's montera hat and drives hot pink bandilleras towards Ismene as she charges him, bar stool flipped up to her head like threatening horns.

Yes, comedy in the midst of tragedy. Antigona frequently toys with irreverent humor and does so in successful balance with other modes and moods. The power of political satire is key to understanding why Santangelo and Barrio felt moved to revive this ancient story: Antigone/a can illuminate any moment of social repression. Their publicity has referenced, among other things, its relevance to the Victorian era, South African apartheid and Franco's Spain.

Antigone, then, continues to walk her dismal road in all places and throughout eternity. And here's a thought to make you shudder: If inclined, one could also draw a parallel between this heroine's resistance--her adherence to personal belief against the rule of law--and the stance of, say, county clerk Kim Davis or some Oregon militia seizing a wildlife refuge.

Antigona continues through January 23. Click here for schedule information and tickets.

West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street (between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Don't curb your dance enthusiasm! Join Christine Jowers, April 7!

The Dance Enthusiast

invites you to

Dance As Empowerment

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

Tuesday, April 7, 6:15pm

Christine Jowers
(photo: Jordan Matter)

Join Christine Jowers (Editor-in-Chief, The Dance Enthusiast) in welcoming Lucija Stojevic, (director-producer of La Chana) and David Leventhal (founding teacher/Program Director for Dance for PD®, a collaborative program of the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group) for an intimate discussion about dance as a force for empowerment.

See film clips from Stojevic's upcoming documentary, La Chana, which tells the story of Antonia Santiago Amador (La Chana), a brilliant, self-taught flamenco dancer who, after thirty years, resumed her career in triumph over victimization and physical limitation.

The evening includes a performance by flamenco dancers Sonia Olla and Ismael de la Ros Fernandez and food by Chef Babo.

6:15pm -- first course of food, drinks, socializing

7pm -- flamenco performance and conversation 

followed by second course of food and mingling

PURCHASE TICKETS
 HERE

The Dance Enthusiast, now in its 8th year, is a NYC-based dance news website, that brings the best of NYC dance writing, reporting, and communications to national and international audiences--boasting over 200,000 avid readers a year.

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

Manitas de Plata, 93

Manitas de Plata, Superstar of the Flamenco Guitar, Is Dead at 93
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, November 6, 2014

Bronx Museum welcomes dance artists in December

Among its many lively public programs in late fall, The Bronx Museum of the Arts will present three special dance-related events:

Anabella Lenzu
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Wednesday, December 3

5:30-7:30pm

Choreographer Anabella Lenzu reads from her book, Unveiling Motion and Emotion, exploring the importance of dance, community, choreography and pedagogy. FREE*

Christal Brown
(photo by Kimara Dixon)

Friday, December 5

6pm-10pm

First Fridays! presents Artful Health: Christal Brown and Bombazo Dance Co.

A night of dance at the Bronx Museum includes performances by contemporary dancer Christal Brown (recently reviewed here on InfiniteBody) and Bombazo Dance Co., a group fusing traditional Afro-Puerto Rican dance bomba with ballet and modern dance. The evening ends with a dance class taught by Bombazo's founder and artistic director, Milteri Tucker. FREE*

Wednesday, December 10

6:30-9pm

The museum's holiday party features Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana II's Navidad Flamenca with music, carols and dance. FREE*

*Bronx Museum admission is free every day!

For more information on these and all Bronx Museum public programs through December 12, click here.

Bronx Museum
1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx
(map/directions)

Flamenco great Farruquito comes to NYU Skirball, June 21-22

World Music Institute

presents

FARRUQUITO

in his first NYC performance in over ten years

at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

Saturday, June 21, 8pm

Sunday, June 22, 7pm

HOME from FARRUQUITO on Vimeo.

Son of the singer El Moreno and dancer La Farruca, Farruquito is the chief proponent of the unique dance style founded by his grandfather, El Farruco. Farruquito made his Broadway stage debut at age five, starred in Carlos Saura's film Flamenco at twelve, and was directing his own shows by fifteen. After years of successes—and some personal tragedies—he makes a ­triumphant return to NYC after more than a decade. He’ll present his new work, Déjà vu.

Ticket information

Farruquito Web site

NYU Skirball Center
566 LaGuardia Place (south of Washington Square Park), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Paco de Lucia, 66

Spanish Flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia dies at 66
BBC News, February 26, 2014

Paco de Lucia, Renowned Flamenco Guitarist, Dies at 66
Reuters, The New York Times, February 26, 2014

The great Soledad Barrio at The Joyce Theater

Martín Santangelo's vision for his renowned flamenco ensemble, Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca, continues to prove that superb music, dance and human voice, unadorned and with fidelity to tradition, can be enough, can archive and share rich experience. The stage at The Joyce Theater, the touring group's home through December 15, has been stripped to bare brick walls and several chairs for guitarists and vocalists. Apart from lighting designer S. Benjamin Farrar's moody poetry, everything needed is carried in the performers' skillful bodies, pulling us into the essence of human loneliness, attraction, pain and exuberance.

The current season reacquaints New York's fervent Noche Flamenca fans with the dreamy, sinuous beauty of Eugenio Iglesias's guitar work, sound quietly floating out to us like delicate incense and shaping images in the mind. Singer Manuel Gago's supple, buoyant way with his cante verses in Zambra Caracolera and guest dancer Antonio Jimenez's mischievous, in-the-moment freshness in Solea por Bulerías feel more authentic--meaning true to the actual person, not some persona--than much that passes for and is lionized as exciting flamenco performance.

I am, once again, delighted to see these three worthy performers surrounding the jewel in this company's crown, Soledad Barrio, Santangelo's wife and muse. She needs no dramatic froufrou. She is drama, so vibrantly alive as a body, even when merely stretching herself against the long line of partner Juan Ogalla in El Calzador, that you can imagine there's meaning, at least for her, in their connection.

What I notice in Barrio's Siguiriya, especially, is an active mind trained on something besides just performing. Not, What is the next step? How do I look right now? How does my footwork sound? (All of that has been well attended to and can be laid aside.) But rather, Who am I in this contained, gloom-threatened swath of light called my portion of life?

I notice a strong body determined to carve its singular mark in space and to exert magnetic--and enlivening--influence upon everyone within reach. Barrio's close interactions with the company's singers can be tender, or she can bear the sacred and humbling touch of a priestess. No conventional beauty and not possessed of meaningless charisma, she is a diva of flamenco by virtue of her willingness to reveal, as Teilhard de Chardin would have seen it, the spiritual being within as it has its human experience.

Choreography: Martín Santangelo, Gabriela Goldin Garcia

Dancers: Soledad Barrio, Juan Ogalla, Antonio Jimenez, Marina Elana
Guitarists: Salva de María, Eugenio Iglesias, Hamed Traore
Vocalists: Manuel Gago, Carmina Cortes, Jose Jimenez, Mayte Maya

See Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca at The Joyce Theater through December 15. For complete program and schedule information and to purchase tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue (corner of 19th Street)

(directions)

Where in the world is Eva Yaa Asantewaa?

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo by Deborah Feller)

Well, back home in New York City, for one thing!

But also look for me at...

This. Witness Relocation's Eterniday at La MaMa. Info/tickets here.

Bebe Miller Company: A History--co-presented by 651 Arts and New York Live Arts at Brooklyn's Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at LIU. I'll be moderating a "Stay Late" post-performance sit-down with Bebe and collaborators this Friday, April 12. For program and ticket information, click here and here.

I hope to attend Deirdre Towers' film screening and salute to the producers, artists and educators of the US flamenco community. Monday, April 15, 6pm, at Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. ​For information on this free event and the library's exhibit, 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, click here.

My project-driven Writing on Dance 2013 takes off at New York Live Arts next Wednesday afternoon with a full house of new students. Also, I'll pretty much be living at New York Live Arts on Wednesday for the opening of that visionary series, Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks ("A five-day festival of arts and ideas exploring the mind-body connection through the works of the acclaimed neurologist"). My first WOD session will be sandwiched between the panel on "Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioperception" and the evening keynote with two of my heroes--Dr. Sacks and Bill T. Jones. And the following day, I cannot afford to miss "Minding the Dancing Body" with Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë and Gwen Welliver, followed by the performance of RE: Awakenings by Donna Uchizono Company. While that's probably all I'll get to, that's not all that's happening. For details on the full series of special events here.

Speaking of Writing on Dance: Last year, I was delighted to have the accomplished, Argentinian dance artist and educator Anabella Lenzu in my workshop, and she will be returning for this year's series. Anabella has just self-published a book about her life and career--Unveiling Motion and Emotion--which includes her forthright thoughts on dance education, dance community and more (as well as some striking photography by her husband, Todd Carroll). So, you'll also find me dipping into this, now and then. Presented in English and in Spanish, her writing is just like her: warm and sincere with an underlying tenacity born of a drive to become the best she can be, as artist and as communicator, in the service of dance and dancers. For information on her book, click here.

I look forward to Miami-based choreographer Rosie Herrera's New York premiere of Dining Alone at Baryshnikov Arts Center (a surreal work of "immersive dance theater," somehow involving food and an opera singer...hmmm). It's running April 18-19, and a new show has been added. Find out more here.

My Image and Psyche workshops on Tarot and psychic development continue at our wonderful East Village location. On Saturday, April 27 (Image and Psyche, Part 2), we'll experiment with dynamic layouts and the intriguingly varied, Trickster-ish reversed cards. On Saturday, May 4, I plan to repeat Part 1. For complete information and to register for a place in these fun and enlightening workshops, see my listings on Facebook for April 27 and May 4.

On May 21, artists Larissa Velez-Jackson, iele paloumpis, Katy Pyle and others at Lobby Talks (New York Live Arts--in the lobby, natch) for "Identity Matters: Persona and Politics," curated by Marissa L. Perel.  ("Choreographers, directors, and critics discuss contemporary issues in identity politics, and how these issues shape perceptions of persona and embodiment.") Free. Just show up for the 7:30 start time and grab a chair.

Oh, there's bound to be more. But--whew!--that's enough news for now. See you around town!

Presenting flamenco in New York

FLAMENCO IN NEW YORK: A BOW TO AMERICAN PRODUCERS, ARTISTS, AND EDUCATORS

a free, celebratory video retrospective compiled, edited and presented by Deirdre Towers

Special Guests: Helene and Robert Browning, Maria Benitez, Jorge Navarro, Arturo Martinez and Clara Aich

Monday, April 15, 6pm

       Free admission with RSVP (deirdretowers@aol.com)

Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center (Amsterdam Ave entrance between 64th and 65th Street), Manhattan

This presentation, developed in conjunction with the exhibit "100 Years of Flamenco in New York," was woven with stills and videos assembled from the New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Collection archives, from producer/dancers Maria Benitez and Carlota Santana, producer/guitarist Arturo Martinez, producer/dancer Jorge Navarro, filmmakers Clara Aich, Paulina Camarena, and Sholeh Dalai, and photographers Angelica Escoto, Elaine Norman, Luis Pons, Antonio Gamboa, and Jack Vartoogian.

Flamenco tourism, flamenco export

Flamenco's Foreign Saviors
by Raphael Minder, The New York Times, March 16, 2013

See video here.

New York's love affair with flamenco

The New York Public Library 
for the Performing Arts

presents

Flamenco:

100 Years of Flamenco in New York 

March 13 through August 3

The multi-media exhibition is an integral part of collaboration between The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. Photographs, costumes and performance regalia, film, oral histories, and the sound of castanets and taconeo will entertain and educate the visitor. Performances, film screenings, panels, and educational programs will continue through the spring and summer in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium.

Free admission

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, Manhattan

(map/directions)

Globalfest producers announce multicultural music lineup

Zimbabwean to Headline Globalfest 2013
by James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times, November 13, 2012

Jake Shimabukuro, ukulele virtuoso, to play NYU Skirball

It is rare for a young musician to earn comparisons to the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis. It is even harder to find an artist who has entirely redefined an instrument by his early thirties. Jake Shimabukuro has already accomplished these feats and more on the ukulele. Yes, the ukulele.

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts will present An Evening with Jake Shimabukuro, the blazingly talented musician who has turned the traditional Hawaiian ukulele into a sensitive instrument capable of channeling any music thrown at it--from rock to jazz to flamenco.

If you're not already hip to Shimabukuro, here are some lovely YouTube videos:

Official Jake Shimabukuro EPK

Blue Roses Falling

Official Jake Shimabukuro YouTube channel
See him on Friday, November 30 (8pm). Click here for details and tickets.

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place, Manhattan
corner of LaGuardia Place and Washington Square South

(map/directions)

This luminous dance film won a 1984 Oscar!

Click to watch now: Flamenco at 5:15 (1983; 29 min.)

short documentary film directed by Cynthia Scott

Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject, 1984

featuring dancer Susana Robledo, composer Antonio Robledo, and students of the Canada's National Ballet School

Moving images

Breath Made Visible (2009)
directed by Reudi Gerber
Argot Pictures
English; 80 min.

Anna Halprin

"My greatest love is dancing in the natural world. The birds dance and the clouds dance. Everything is in motion all the time," says Anna Halprin--movement shaman, the subject of this affecting portrait and chronicle by filmmaker Reudi Gerber.

Through vintage and more recent footage of performances and workshops as well as interviews with Halprin, her colleagues, her late husband, the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, and daughter, the dancer and psychologist Daria Halprin, Gerber traces the arc of a life that remains, in this woman's ninth decade, open to the deep currents of the natural world, of society, of relationship and of the body.

Halprin's early-career decision to leave New York for California--to join Lawrence--removed her from the center of the dance world but presented intriguingly different environmental and social realties and rhythms to explore. Much later, a cancer diagnosis brought Halprin to another critical decision--to turn away from choreography and performance for the public and refocus her efforts on dance as a powerful modality for personal and societal healing.

Gerber has an eye for stunning imagery, a sensitivity for human feelings, and an awareness of the mythic quality of Halprin's narrative. He gives us a sweetly humble yet heroic woman whose concern for people and loving engagement with life are instructive and inspiring. Breath Made Visible brought me to tears.

Purchase Breath Made Visible here.

Find a theater screening of Breath Made Visible here.

*****

Lovers of dance film, hang on. Next year, shockingly, is not that far off! The 40th Annual Dance on Camera Festival will open at Lincoln Center, January 27-31, celebrating "the immediacy, energy, and mystery of dance combined with the intimacy of film."

Look for director Ron Honsa's Never Stand Still--a grand, kaleidoscopic exploration of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, down through the ages and up to the minute, narrated by Bill T. Jones and featuring...well, featuring just about everyone and every kind of dance you can imagine. It's a beauty. (2011. 74 min.)

If you've already enjoyed Check Your Body At The Door, producer Sally Sommer's fantastic documentary about underground house dancing, you might want to follow up with director Ina Sotirova's freedom2dance. Going to Dance on Camera Festival? See both on the same night--January 31. Far more conventional in structure than GYBATD, Sotirova's documentary puts the struggle around New York's nightlife culture and social dancing into historical and political context. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Rudolph Giuliani!) Check out the Facebook page for freedom2dance. (2011. 20 min.)

Mis Caminos a Través de la Danza (My Paths Through Dance), written, directed and produced by Daniel G. Cabrero, tells the story of a young Spanish girl's early training in classical ballet in 1920s Paris and the fortuitous diversion of her career from ballet towards the Bolero and diverse regional dances of her homeland. Influenced by the legendary Antonia Mercé "La Argentina," the youngster grew up to become Mariemma (1917-2008), performer, choreographer uncompromising educator and ensemble director of international renown. She was a dancer of great verve and warmth, dedicated to a dramatic, sculptural clarity of movement.

This film marks Cabrero's full-length feature debut, and he has a charming story to tell and a treasure trove of documentation--vintage photos, footage and prints--as well as contemporary interviews with colleagues, students and dance critics. Instead of injecting cutesy (and cringe-worthy) animated elements into the story's flow, Cabrero would have done well to place more trust in his wonderful historical materials. They are more than enough. If you can overlook these occasional lapses in taste, and the often awkward, sloppy English subtitles, there's a lot to learn and to enjoy. (2010. 90 min.)

For full information on the program and schedule of the 40th Annual Dance on Camera Festival, visit these links:

Dance Films Association

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Tendu TV's Dance on Camera channel on Hulu