"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

Brown gives "Evidence" at The Joyce

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence looks better than ever. For his season at The Joyce Theater (now through Sunday), Brown has carefully selected a retrospective of works that represent him, his unique aesthetic and his current lineup of dancers with clarity and power.

Program A, which I attended last evening, includes two confident works from 2005--the Order My Steps ensemble and the rapturous solo Ife/My Heart, with guest artist Matthew Rushing absolutely on fire--as well as the 1998 Incidents and the world premiere of Torch. Program B, which I will miss, focuses on Walking Out The Dark from 2001 and Upside Down from 1998.

This most satisfying season offers evidence of this artist's diligent and joyful exploration of texture and time in music, brushing past the strict outer lines of movement to uncover more of what's possible to the dancing body, doing so from a place of mindfulness of the travels of African peoples throughout our history. Brown's through-line, his sustenance--and the fuel for his dancers--comes from the history of Black people uplifted by their connection to a spiritual source and to one another. His dancers help me see this as an experience of being filled to bursting with energies and identities. We carry so many stories and ancestors within our bodies, hence, so many impulses clamoring to be remembered, honored, expressed. The individual body must fragment, loosen, release, become its own orchestra. Yet, at times, Brown's troupe falls into smooth, disciplined harmony. I have always loved the way Brown chooses and reveals the diverse, rich music of the Black diaspora--from spirituals to Marley to house--and, for that, I view him as my teacher.

Torch, a tribute to Beth Young--Brown's friend and student, lost to cancer--opens with a cluster of dancers, wearing costumes of a fabric and color reminiscent of hospital scrubs, elevating then engulfing and concealing Annique S. Roberts while Otis Donovan Herring dances alone. But this obvious setup gives way to jaunty celebration of a relationship and a life, set to South African house music. Roberts, Herring and the entire company shine, and it is fun and moving to see Brown participate in the dancing as well.

See Ronald K. Brown/Evidence at The Joyce Theater through Sunday night. For a complete schedule and ticket information, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

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)

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.

"Alice" in The House of Eminence

NewFest and HarlemStage present

a screening of filmmaker Sheldon Larry's

Leave It on The Floor

Monday, July 25, 7:30pm

Leave It On the Floor tells the story of Brad, our hero, who is thrown out of his dysfunctional home by his mother, Deondra. He steals his mother's car and travels into Los Angeles where, through a chance encounter, Brad, a little like Alice in Wonderland, stumbles into a noisy raucous, chaotic event and meets the ragtag members of the struggling House of Eminence. Initially only looking for a place to sleep(and perhaps someone to sleep with), Brad ends up engaging with the colorful members of the house led by the indomitable house mother Queef Latina, herself an aging ball-legend and the fierce protectrice of her family. Laughter, tears, sex sirens, and butch queens up in pumps ensue and remarkably, Brad ends up finding an extraordinary home and loving, caring family in this, the strangest of places.

Watch the trailer.

Buy tickets.

HarlemStage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue
at West 135th Street across from Aaron Davis Hall
(directions)

Workin' it: Niles Ford/Urban Dance Collective

Here's my Dance Magazine review of Niles Ford/Urban Dance Collective in In Search of the Invisible People at Dixon Place.