Ballez: La MaMa Moves presents ballet on the wild side

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

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

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

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

--some statements from www.ballez.org

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

How big, you ask?

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

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

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

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

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

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

That big. Historic. Meaningful. Moving.

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

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

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

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Tyler Ashley premieres "KIDNAP ME" at Dixon Place

Spaciousness and freedom are at the core of dancer Tyler Ashley's artistic and genderqueer quest. His new ensemble work KIDNAP ME cries out for escape from regulation that might come only from being "rescued" in the suggested way. When I looked at this piece, danced last night at Dixon Place's 23rd annual HOT! Festival with extraordinary stamina, I flashed back to medieval diagrams of the cosmos, every single object and being set in its place and its pace within concentric circles in eternal whirl according to the direction of some offstage, unseen force. (In this case, the Great Offstage Director is visible, operating a mic and a Mac, and her name is Gillian Walsh.)

Ashley and his collaborating performers--Aranzazu Araujo, McSherry, Diego Montoya, Shane Shane, Rakia Seaborn and Walsh--could not be more different from one another in appearance. But each occupies a place and fulfills a function within KIDNAP ME's well-regulated system. What unfolds over ninety minutes is repetitive, driven and most frequently circular--sweeping, prancing or backpedaling in front of our eyes in a way that, in the viewer's experience, can go from acceptable to interesting to head-swimming to mind-numbing to skin-crawling.

At times, one or another part of this grand pattern splits off into a central space or its own time frame as if to give us zoomed-in views of particular specimens. In another moment, though, the surge of bodies might bunch up, the stream of movement becoming a little raggedy and collision-prone as the carousel-like music momentarily stammers.

As it proceeds, KIDNAP ME can come off as giddy and a little childish, but it builds. Follow it and, before you know it, you're in the holy, manic presence of the Maid of Orléans (via Julius Eastman's stark, declamatory vocal music) or watching Ashley draw black-marker portraits of his dancers' genitals on plywood boards or having his naked flesh whacked by the boards as, under Walsh's direction, he carefully works his delicate, willowy limbs into various ballet positions. "You can hit him harder," Walsh instructs, and sometimes the dancers do just that.

Influenced not only by Eastman's music but also Bela Tarr's acclaimed film, The Turin Horse, KIDNAP ME is a big, ambitious project in a little frame--and a reminder that most contemporary dance gets short shrift in terms of opportunities to be seen and carefully absorbed. It's good that Dixon Place found a night to include this work in its slate of queer programs, but let's hope Ashley will secure more venues and more time.

For more HOT! Festival shows--now through August 2--click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Study Adult Ballez with Katy Pyle

Dancers from Katy Pyle's The Firebird

Admit it: You saw Katy Pyle's gender-fabulous Firebird at Danspace Project and got inspired, right? Well, here's a workshop for you!

Adult Ballez 

with Katy Pyle and guests

Mondays at BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange  

September 30 through December 16 (7:30-9:00 pm)

$12 Drop-in | $60 for workshop

Katy Pyle

Adult Ballez is a dance class to explore the historically gendered and Imperialist movements of Ballet, and to radically re-imagine those potentially oppressive tools into a physicalized site of play, freedom, strength, and liberation. We will shift the focus away from athletic virtuosity and towards the virtuosity of genderqueer embodiment, and seek active engagement with classmates (aka cruising), as opposed to the typically endless shame spirals of self-loathing based upon an unattainable ideal! We'll play with ballet's traditionally gendered form, learning and practicing the steps of both ballerinas and danseurs. We'll warm-up at the barre, practice codified postures and movements, and then move into center to turn, jump and learn short movement phrases. We'll learn techniques for, and practice, partnering that is not based on size, but rather on weight-sharing, listening, and cooperation, all with the accompaniment of oft-embarassing music by queer icons. 

For more information about Adult Ballez and Katy Pyle visit accessbax.bax.org/adult-ballez.

BAX (Brookly Arts Exchange)
421 Fifth Avenue (and 8th Street) in Park Slope, Brooklyn
(map/directions)