At Harlem Stage, e-Moves celebrates contemporary dance artists of Africa and diaspora

Nubian Néné, one of the pop-up performers
for this season's e-moves festival of dance at Harlem Stage
(photo: Alain Wong)

Omari Mizrahi on the move for e-moves
at Harlem Stage
(photo: Robert Bader)

OMG! How to decide what shows to see this season? There's an abundance of worthwhile--indeed, downright exciting--dance productions around the city. I know the struggle well! So, please don't start throwing things when I urge you to get to yet another one: Monique Martin's e-Moves dance festival at Harlem Stage, running only through this weekend.

Martin's focus for this season is on Africa-based or Africa-diasporan artists exploring contemporary dance, as opposed to more-expected folkloric work from the continent. She has chosen Zimbabwe-born Nora Chipaumire, Lacina Coulibaly (Burkina Faso) and Ousmane Wiles/Omari Mizrahi (Senegal). Each evening also highlights dances by women choreographers in pop-up performances curated by Adesola Osakalumi. Viewers will see new, commissioned works as well as pieces re-imagined for the unique (and uniquely beautiful) space at Harlem Stage.

Chipaumire has reset her famous solo, Dark Swan (2007), on Shamar Watt, a man. Years ago, I saw the choreographer dance it; quite recently, I was fortunate to see Watt show it in a tiny corner of Chelsea's Rubin Museum where I sat perhaps not more than a foot away from him. Both artists are electrifying. But the visual intensity of this iteration for Harlem Stage is enhanced by the meeting of the brooding darkness of the space and the stark, handheld light trained on Watt and his white shirt. Dark Swan re-purposes a Russian ballet archetype as a symbol and expression of resistance, paying tribute to the determination of Africa's women.

Coulibaly adapted to the loss of his partner, Ibrahim Zongo--due to visa issues--for this world premiere of his duet, Sen Koro la (The Rite of Initiates). He adapted so beautifully, in fact, that when the audience was later informed that the "solo" we had watched was meant to be a duet, some of us gasped in surprise. I can't say that I saw much of Coulibaly's stated intention to promote "the humanity and culture of Africa, compelling the audience to appreciate its great diversity and immense cultural wealth," and I doubt this particular audience was in need of that sort of prompting. But we were treated to a solo of poetic sensitivity around timing (inhabiting the lush, flowing music but finding its own inquiry, thoughtfulness and response within it) and its own validity as a work of art. I do look forward to seeing Zongo some day, though--and, of course, much more of what Coulibaly has to offer.

A group of performers, billed as Les Ballet Afrik and led by Wiles (who dances as Omari Mizrahi), brought the house down with the celebratory Sila Djiguba (A Path to Hope). Here, music and moves of West Africa, AfroBeat, House and Vogue styles seamlessly and joyfully intersect. The young dancers making their unforgettable debut as a troupe alongside Wiles were Craig D Washington, Eva Moore, Milerka Rodriguez, Shireen Rahimi, Algin Ford, Yuhee Yang, Yuki Sukezane. I also enjoyed the masterful "pop-up" performance by Nubian Néné (of A Lady in the House Dance Company) in her solo, S T A N C E, another tribute to the self-determination and courage of women of the Black diaspora.

e-Moves continues tonight, Friday and Saturday with all performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Harlem Stage
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Remembering house dance pioneer Marjory Smarth

Remembering House Dance Pioneer Marjory Smarth
by Czarina Mirani, 5 Magazine, February 13, 2015

"Check Your Body At The Door" and download this doc!

Check Your Body At The Door (2012)

now available for digital download

Download Check Your Body at the Door on iTunes 

Available in six languages and in over 20 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Australia

Check Your Body at the Door documents some remarkable underground House dancers and dancing in NYC’s golden decade, the 1990s. Featuring interviews and rare dance footage of the enduring legends of House dance, Check Your Body at the Door follows a group of master freestylists to the clubs, at their jobs and in their everyday lives. Filmed at the clubs, and in a studio against a white background or in silhouette and light pools, this one-hour documentary reveals the virtuosity of this eclectic urban dance style. In 2013, House is a music/dance craze practiced worldwide. Check Your Body at the Door is a significant historical record that contextualizes a wide variety of House dance forms and answers: What did house dancing look like? Who were the dancers? Why did they dance?

According to Executive Producer Sally R. Sommer the idea for Check Your Body at the Door began in 1982 at David Mancuso’s “Loft” where she first went with dancer Archie Burnett. As a dance journalist and social dance historian Sommer saw “amazing artists dancing in the dark.” At the time, club footage only glamorized torsos bouncing to loud music under multicolored lights. “I saw more. I wanted a film that featured dancers and illuminated the entire body in motion.”

Full Territory List: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ireland, Malta, Bulgaria, Latvia, Norway, Cyprus, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Hungary, Portugal, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Estonia

Panel: In praise of praise dance

Praisedance

a panel exploring the role of Black dance in Black spirituality

Thursday, May 24 (6:30-8:30pm)

Rashida Bumbray, Nafissa Shariff, Brian Polite and Michael Manswell wax kinetic as they explore the role of black dance forms, including ring shouts, traditional Old Mali folk dance, House Music dance, and Afro-Caribbean dance in Black worship and everyday transcendence. This salon is part of “Roots and Stars”, the Caribbean Cultural Center’s (CCCADI) newest program series exploring African Traditional Religions while illuminating Black spiritual practices.

Presented by Caribbean Cultural Center in association with International Communications Association

Admission: $10 at the door

Location:

Dwyer Cultural Arts Center
258 St. Nicholas Avenue, Manhattan
(Enter on 123rd Street between St. Nicholas Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard)
(directions)

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

What brings joy

The world is a fracking mess...

...and then, there's dance. And the people who make it. And so. much. more. But let's stay with dance for the moment.

On Monday night, New York's dance world celebrated a sample of its best. I say "sample" because, of course, there's still a lot of excellent territory out there that even the new and improved Bessie Awards have yet to cover. However, it was exhilarating to sit in Harlem's world-famous Apollo Theater (thank you, Mikki Shepard) with its grand history of Black American entertainment, and watch so many people of color presenting or receiving awards. It was a good visual, which made its point just by being there with no particular political fanfare. Just do it!

What grown-up glamor and fun, too--from the big opening by talented kids from Harlem School of the Arts (choreography by Aubrey Lynch) to MC Bebe Neuwirth channeling the crush everyone has on Marcelo Gomes to David White--who started it all, way back in 1984--reminding us that his muse, dance educator Bessie Schonberg advised us to "get wild." Good advice to this day.

Photos aren't posted yet, but The Bessies Web page, hosted by Dance/NYC (thank you, Lane Harwell), now lists all the presenters, nominees and recipients (among whom, I'm particularly thrilled to note, were the team of Ishmael Houston-Jones, Chris Cochrane and Dennis Cooper for the revival of Them; Walter Dundervill for Outstanding Visual Design in Aesthetic Destiny 1: Candy Mountain; young tap dancer Caleb Teicher; choreographer Beth Gill; Raushan Mitchell; Wendy Whalen; Violeta Galagarza; and Trisha Brown). But, really, I was happy for everyone and was having such a rollicking good time, that I feared I might just pitch out of my box seat. Look out below!

You'll find contact information for the Bessies' dynamic new producer Lucy Sexton, assistant Heather Robles and the entire current selection committee at this link. Get in touch and get involved with what Sexton is calling the New York Dance and Performance League.

Brahms "Bravo" LaFortune visits with Queensborough Community College students (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

QCC students entertained by Bravo (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The next day, I had the joy of welcoming Brahms "Bravo" LaFortune to each of my two classes in Introduction to the Art of Dance at Queensborough Community College. Bravo visited us to introduce and screen a new documentary on house dancing--Check Your Body At The Door--produced by my longtime colleague Sally Sommer, dance historian and critic, and directed by Charles Atlas and the late Michael Schwartz.

Bravo on the move (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Among many other spectacularly talented dancers like Archie Burnett and Brian "Footwork" Green, Bravo can be found in the doc, dancing his fool head off in underground clubs, dancing solo in empty elevators, mimicking and slyly do-si-do-ing with people on the street, and generally being the graceful, energetic, highly-opinionated charmer he proved to be in his almost non-stop interactions with my students and choreographer Emily Berry's dance majors. We all love Bravo and are grateful to Sommer for acknowledging the house dancing community and documenting this important cultural phenomenon.

L to r: Eva Yaa Asantewaa; Emily Berry (QCC Dance instructor/Dance Coordinator); Brahms "Bravo" LaFortune

Check it all out at Check Your Body At The Door where you can view photos and video clips, learn more about the dancers and certainly get yourself a copy of the DVD.

House of Olinghouse

Absolutely no advance tickets remain for Cori Olinghouse's voix de ville, but don't hesitate to get on the waiting list! You'd be mad to miss a chance to see this show, part of PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness, at Danspace Project.

Before I go further, let's get another layer of titling out of the way: DP ED Judy Hussie-Taylor--wearing her curator's hat this time--has labeled her chosen PLATFORM sequence "Part 1--Absurdity & Wit." All of this sounds impossibly clunky to my ears, but it really doesn't matter what Hussie-Taylor or her fellow PLATFORM curators call this or anything else. They have turned New York's contemporary dance scene upside down by radically expanding the nature of work we usually envision in the sanctuary of St. Mark's.

The lush jewel box of voix de ville ("voices of the city") contains three gems. Olinghouse's opener--The Animal Suite: Experiments in Vaudeville and Shapeshifting--deserves a more relaxed title. But its actual execution is pure, lapidarian grace. It lifts the audience away from time and into a fanciful world where vaudeville, eccentric, postmodern and house dance overlap, where gender identity ebbs and flows, and where fairytale birds and bears may coexist in peaceable spirit. The five-member cast is perfect--especially exquisite Olinghouse and Neal Beasley, whose Keatonesque-Chaplinesque dancing is a tasty joy.

(I think you'll enjoy this conversation between Olinghouse and MIT professor, writer and performer Thomas DeFrantz: Click here.)

The eccentrically-costumed Kota Yamazaki dances Itsuko san--part-Butoh, part-drag-from-hell, part fever dream--as splashes and splotches of music whimsically flare up and depart. His locomotion gets him from here to there but never through a straight path or with deliberate steps, and the dance just slips away, evaporates at the end. Quite right.

Elements of Vogue--created and performed by the truly legendary Archie Burnett (Olinghouse's master teacher) and Javier Ninja of the House of Ninja--ends the evening with a real house dance bang. Ninja is comically robotic and fussy to Burnett's sexy earthiness, but they both move with astonishing conviction and power.

Try to see voix de ville at Danspace Project tonight or tomorrow at 8pm. More information here and ticketing info here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
Second Avenue and 10th Street, Manhattan