Antonio Ramos: For love of the body

L-r: Antonio Ramos, Darrin Wright and Alvaro Gonzalez
in Almodóvar Dystopia, premiering next month at Dixon Place
Below: l-r, Wright, Gonzalez, Luke Miller and Ramos
(photos: Peter Yesley)

When I read about Antonio Ramos and The Gangbangers planning a world-premiere Dixon Place commission described as "part Latinx-flavored 'asstravaganza,' part humorous celebration of queer culture, and part an outrageous political statement against the body-negative and repressed nature of the world we live in" and, btw, "the work is performed in the nude," I must admit I thought: 'Great. Queer. Check. POC. Check. Nude and body positive. Check and check. Dixon Place. But, of course." I envisioned the delightfully Tricksterish Ramos bringing coals to Newcastle or...whatever would be the appropriate metaphor in this case. The famously-inclusive, provocative Dixon Place is not exactly enemy territory for any of the communities or sensibilities Ramos represents.

The work's title, Almodóvar Dystopia, references Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar with whom Ramos feels creative kinship. Award-winning playwright/director/actor David Drake is onboard as dramaturg, and Ramos is joined in performance by Luke Miller, Darrin Wright, Alvaro Gonzalez Dupuy, Angie Pittman, Sarah White-Ayón and Awilda Rodriguez Lora--a diverse cast who "cull exaggerated personae from their personal backgrounds, exploring the challenges, anxieties, and neuroses entailed in the process of dance-making."

I asked Ramos, the self-identified "Queer-Puerto-Rican-Cha-Cha-Heels-Shaman," to share more about the mission and vulnerability behind the new work and how he hopes to relate to his audiences. Here are some excerpts from his remarks.

******

I wish an audience that is not used to seeing this kind of work would come to see it. I really want people to understand the importance of body respect and that, in my work, all bodies are beautiful. Right now, in society, there’s this whole thing about how the body should look and how the body should be. That’s affecting us on so many levels, even in the queer community. We call each other names, and I have a problem with that.

I’m actually doing a lot of work on genitals in Almodóvar Dystopia, about how society views genitals as disgusting, taboo, that we constantly have to cover them. It’s an issue I deal with myself: why, if we are made beautiful, we have to cover, and we treat people like they are perverts. To me, that’s the perversity–finding the nude body disgusting and sinful.

It has also been hard for me to find dancers who have that sense of freedom and to deal with photographers who have strict limits on what they can show in their photographs. They don’t have to be rude about it, though. If you’re a photographer, you should find a way to work with the nudity. Their discomfort can be funny, but it’s also offensive to me. Again, it’s the issue of how we deal with genitals in this country. For me, the body is sacred. This is the real thing. We’re real people who sweat. We’re real people who shit and fart.

I am grateful for my dancers' courage, for being vulnerable and naked with me, and for believing in the work.

When you look at Almodóvar’s work, I think he’s always been interested in Hollywood and how to copy Hollywood. I’m not interested in that. I’m more interested in his process and how that process of creating is very similar to mine. It’s almost like the meta of the meta of the meta. Kind of doing a play that is being recorded or making a film of and, at the same time, you see the inside of the film, and you see the actors showing you the process of making the film. I do that a lot--show you how the work is done. I have a collage of images--things happening right now, things happening to me, things happening in the world, in Latin America. I’m excited to work with David Drake as my dramaturg. He has been really great.

I’m using elements I haven’t used before, like green screen and livestream. My video designer Alex Romania has helped me with that. Live music. I wanted to make it like you’re in the studio making a film, making a dance and trying to make sense of this mess we live in.

I feel like I have to get my voice out there, and this is my practice to deal with how we are treating one another.

In terms of shamanism, it is my spiritual practice, and I’m trying to do it within my dance. It is my way of living, my way of breaking through. It’s not a dogma, not a religion, not a rule, but more things that come through nature. I feel related to that. A lot of the source material comes from my journey, connecting with nature. Some of this is connected to my mother’s illness and death.

I’ve always been interested in herbalism. I’m a massage therapist. I like energy work. I’m very involved with all that. This sustains the work and my practice as a shaman, as a healer. And I go in nature, I get undressed, and I do my little video in the sea, in the mountains. And somehow that material gets filtrated into the dance, and the dancers learn from these improvisations. The process keeps changing, but the process also keeps creating and setting things from that process.

I don't want to give too much away about the piece, but I always have food in my pieces, and it's a symbol of unity and family, getting people together--the warmth of the food, the sweetness of it. It's part of my Latin culture.

In Almodóvar Dystopia, it's a gift to the audience. I'm grateful to the audience for taking this journey with me. Regardless if you see me as dirty, nasty, queer, perverse, there's always the sweetness. 

I hope people laugh and have fun!

******

Antonio Ramos is a dancer, choreographer, and licenced massage therapist / Feldenkrais practitioner from Puerto Rico whose recent work has been presented at American Realness, The Center for Performance Research, JACK, and Museo del Barrio. He is currently a resident artist at Gibney Dance and Danspace Project. Ramos is the artistic director and choreographer for Antonio Ramos & the Gangbangers. As a performer, Antonio has danced with choreographers Mark Dendy, Neil Greenberg, Jeremy Nelson, Stephen Petronio, Merian Soto, Kevin Wynn, Ori Flomin, Donna Uchizono and Larissa Velez-Jackson/YACKEZ, among others.

 The Gangbangers find inspiration in pop music, queer identities,  shiny objects, all forms of dance, and the fabulous way a wig can enhance how one presents themselves to others.

Catch Almodóvar Dystopia at Dixon Place on Fridays and Saturdays, September 15-30 at 7:30pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Workshops: Dance Without Walls (the nia love underground)

Dance Without Walls (the nia love underground)

co-facilitators:

Nia Love, Jesse Phillips-Fein and Benin Ford

Nia Love
(photo: Nia Love)

Gestures are atoms that make up the sheets of our memory...tissue that travel with us from light years away...traveling on our trajectory biding us both greetings and farewells! 

-- Nia Love

Jesse Phillips-Fein
(photo: Jeca Rodriguez)

Benin Ford
(photo: Nia Love)

This movement-based, multimedia living art workshop creates space where “we the people” can study ways to perform meaningfully, powerfully and truthfully through improvisations at the intersections of dance, nature, and urban structures. With movement, discourse, journaling, drawing, and building small ecological sculptures, we manifest new ideas about about ourselves from which communal and global solidarity can radiate. This work is built on foundation of deep support and trust; we help each other to fertilize our thoughts clearly and to use our bodies as both a landscape and a tool that excavates our power as a people, activates our well-being, and engenders collectivism. Our aim is to create malleable networks that bond and aid us in on-going practices of liberating and reclaiming what lies dormant in our mind-bodies. 

Friday July 17, 6-9pm

Saturday, July 18, 10am-1pm

Sunday July 19, 10am-1pm

$50/1 day

$95/2 days 

$135/3 days

Sliding scale for parents available

Sign up a friend and receive a 25% discount!

We are especially interested in “non-dancers.”

Multiple outdoor locations throughout New York City:

Day 1: River Bank State Park, 145th and Riverside (Manhattan)

Day 2: 98 4th Street between Hoyt and Bond (Brooklyn)

Day 3: Ball Field at 214 Street (The Bronx)

To register, email: undergroundstudiesnyc@gmail.com

Note: the underground is a seasonal event.
there will be a Fall Edition, dates TBD.

Gather here: Walking Minetta Creek trail with Emily Johnson

Gathering at the basketball court of Chelsea's PS 11
for the opening passages of
Emily Johnson's SHORE in Lenapehoking (NYC)
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Dance artist Emily Johnson with audience member
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I view our bodies as EVERYTHING: our bodies are culture, history, present and future, all at once. Out of respect for and trust in our bodies and collective memories, I give equal weight to story and image, to movement and stillness, to what I imagine and to what I do not know.

-- Emily Johnson, Artist Statement

Emily Johnson (Emily Johnson/Catalyst), a Minneapolis-based dance artist born in South Central Alaska of Yup'ik descent, seeks to use her art and knowledge to reawaken people to their environment and to one another, to realize connections that offer meaning and dignity. Her mission springs from her own deep longing for the landscape of her native state and for its indigenous traditions.

She has taken up this healing work in a celebrated trilogy, including The Thank-You Bar, which won a 2012 Bessie, and Niicugni (2013). The trilogy concludes now with SHORE, originally presented in Minneapolis and now manifesting in our city as SHORE in Lenapehoking (NYC), a multifaceted ceremony spanning several days and venues, with multiple artistic and community partners. The project involves volunteer activities in the Rockaways and on Governors Island, storytelling and readings, bike rides and potluck feasts, and a silent procession to dance installation performances at New York Live Arts.*

All parts of SHORE engage with the larger world beyond theater space. According to Johnson, each bears equal importance. Certainly, total immersion in SHORE should offer not only the most complete understanding of the project but likely provide its intended benefits. Regrettably, I could only take part in last evening's event--a dance/vocal prelude and silent walk from the basketball court of Chelsea's PS 11 along a serpentine path, once the large Minetta Creek, to the New York Live Arts's theater for the rest of the performance. I'm glad I did at least this much.

A sliver of moon hung above the city, and a crow winged across 21st Street, quickly disappearing. Audience and performers gathered, greeting friends and colleagues in the sudden dramatic chill of this late April evening. Johnson provided heavy red blankets as wraps for several folks, and the rest of us made do with winter gear we thought we would have stored away by now.

Performers at PS 11 basketball court
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

A cluster of performers began an unhurried dispersal. Meanwhile, beyond the court's gate, other dancers took slow, intermittent strides along the sidewalk. Eventually, members of the inside group picked up their pace, even sprinting around us in a wide orbit. Through their movements, the ground seemed to come a little more alive, indeed provoking curiosity about who and what once coursed through this region.

Above and below: Emily Johnson at PS 11
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Johnson, her face sporting a band of red makeup across her eyes set with thick, jet-black false eyelashes, mounted a wooden stand to relate her dream of an eagle, a hawk and a baby. A dream that, in her impassioned telling, felt numinous and ecstatic and right for this stark weather. She then asked us to make our way to the theater, walking the creek trail together without talking.

We walked, guided by soothing, pulsing sounds from little portable speakers and human voices. We moved forward, united in purpose, as if part of an invisible watercourse, an invisible ceremony feeding through the busy, darkening Chelsea streets. We held no signs, wore no identifiable costumes. We could have been any stream of pedestrians making our way through traffic and street noise. In fact, outsiders unwittingly strode in and out of our procession. I'd like to think the sonic and kinetic energy reached them on a level just beneath everyday consciousness.

At New York Live Arts, SHORE performers
L-r: Krista Langberg, Emily Johnson and Aretha Aoki
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Johnson's stagecraft at New York Live Arts works boldly with the visual and kinetic energy. SHORE straddles a line between stark abstraction and subtle representation. Performers mass in large groups or lines that recall swaying, rustling trees or pound footfalls like earth tremors or recede like a damaged, vanishing habitat. Dancer Aretha Aoki makes no obvious bird-like moves, but the lash of her arms, jutting turns and impetuous attacks on air seem avian to me. Gasps, electronically amplified, connect human breath to the life force within all living beings. Pairs of dancers sometimes move right into each other's space, nose to nose, so close that they might breathe as one. Kettledrums blare out another potent voice of nature.

There is gracefulness and power, a sense of empty distances, quiet and loneliness as well as a certain homeyness and intimacy--the presence of houseplants at the edge of the space, sounds of a televised basketball game, the flicker of false eyelashes in the otherwise stillness of a hunched over body. Late in the performance, you might become aware that the theater's houselights have gotten a little brighter because, really, you're not just watching from over there, are you? You're part of the story and the song, too.

*****

The SHORE Choir: Margot Bassett, Pareena Lim, Jules Skloot, Erika Banks, K.J. Holmes, Emma Brown, Lisa Loew, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Peter Sciscioli, Michael Becker, Carime Santa-Coloma, Jack Gray

The Physical Choir: Marýa Wethers, Ben Weaver, Madeline Sayet, Koliane Rochon, Tara Willis, Erica Ricketts, Pavel Machuca, Mary Kate Sickle, Monica Gonzalez, Steph Lee, Maré Hieronimus, Erica Chen, Brooke Wheeler, Greer Dworman, Tyler Rai, Lariza Reyes, Gavino Limon

Concept, choreography and writing: Emily Johnson
Direction: Ain Gordon
Soundscore: James Everest and Nona Marie Invie with Fletcher Barnhill
Lighting: Heidi Eckwall
Costumes: Angie Vo
Scenic design: Johnson, Gordon, Everest, Ecwall

*****

REMINDER

It's going to be another cold night. If you're planning to see SHORE tonight, wear sufficiently warm clothing for standing around at the school and walking to the theater.

Do not arrive at New York Live Arts. Performances--tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm--begin in the basketball court of PS 11: The William T. Harris School at 320 West 21st Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues), Manhattan.

GET TICKETS HERE

*Additional SHORE events this Sunday

SHORE: FEAST Group Bike Ride*

Sunday, April 26 at 12:30pm
Red Lantern Bicycles, 345 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn

Bicycling songwriter, poet, and SHORE cast member Ben Weaver, will lead a group bike ride starting at Red Lantern Bicycles in Brooklyn and ending 6 miles later at the North Brooklyn Boat Club where SHORE: FEAST will take place.

*Riders are responsible for getting themselves home from the feast.

Pre-register (FREE)

SHORE: FEAST (potluck celebration) at North Brooklyn Boat Club

Sunday, April 26, 2pm-6pm
North Brooklyn Boat Club, 49 Ash Street, Brooklyn
Under Pulaski Bridge, on Newtown Creek

Outdoor event: Please dress for the weather.

Pre-register (FREE)

For all information and tickets or RSVPs, click here.

On the nature of climate change: Karole Armitage at AMNH

Two scenes from On the Nature of Things by Karole Armitage
(photos: Julieta Cervantes)

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in Field Notes From A Catastrophe, "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Problems such as climate disruption, toxification of Earth, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services are solveable, but to do so human behavior must be basically altered.

In the twenty-first century we have created a civilization that is way out of step with the realities of our planet. 

--Paul Ehrlich, from text for On the Nature of Things

So our beloved American Museum of Natural History has funding from that climate change-denying Koch brother (click here). Well, last night's world premiere of On the Nature of Things, staged beneath the museum's iconic blue whale, felt like nothing short of an exorcism.

Choreographer Karole Armitage (Armitage Gone! Dance) filled Milstein Hall of Ocean Life with a multi-generational corps, including dancers from Manhattan Youth Ballet, as Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, performing live narration, laid down the science in layperson's terms. The message? Uncompromising: Climate is changing, we are responsible for it, and we are responsible for it.

And, no, I'm not merely repeating myself. We did it. Now we have to fix it.

Armitage and Ehrlich--a longtime friend of the choreographer's father, a biologist--fervently agree that the only way to engage most people with the complex science around climate and environment is through the heart, hence through the power of the arts. In that light, On the Nature of Things serves more as a supportive underscore, I think, than as educator or motivator--at least, up there on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The piece was made for the museum, but imagine the public service Armitage could do by touring it around the heartland and southlands before our next elections.

As a visual phenomenon, the work benefits, first, from its unique setting which places its uniformly-costumed dancers--a subliminal message in that coral color scheme?--in the midst of the museum's displays, encircled by onlookers there and on balconies. Armitage handles the hall's broad open floor with dramatic force, her deployment of dancers suggesting rising population, mounting tensions, collisions, competition for space and dominance. Her movement technique--a fusion of modern and ballet, meticulous, often showy--can hold the eye without necessarily spelling out matters spoken by Dr. Ehrlich. Unfortunately, the narration-dance overlay does not work. Luckily, I had the script and time to read it beforehand.

One wonders at the presence of a few dancers en pointe, especially when they use those pointe shoes for the clever but weirdly distracting trick of a quick slip across the floor. The dancers, though, are all in. They accomplish a handsome, coherent performance culminating in the choreographer's vision of serenity, hope and healing that we have yet to earn.

On the Nature of Things will continue with performances tonight and tomorrow at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West and 79th Street, Manhattan
(Enter at 79th Street underneath staircase.)
(map/directions)

******

Other American Museum of Natural History presentations of interest:


Our Earth’s Future: One-Day Course
Saturday, April 11, 9am–4pm
Free with application, available on amnh.org

In a special one-day offering, Dr. Debra Tillinger will lead an in-depth exploration of the science of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and how changes in these two critical areas of Earth indicate and catalyze the impacts of climate change. Participants will hear from guest speakers on the geology, biology, and cultures of these beautiful and fragile parts of the world. They will also engage in discussions, take Museum hall tours, and enjoy a challenging game of geopolitics—SMARTIC, in which players must enact real-life solutions to the potential large-scale problems anticipated by the impact of climate change in the polar regions. Refreshments will be served.

Milstein Science Series: Sea Turtles

Sunday, May 3, 11am–4:30pm 

Free for Members or with Museum admission

Sea turtles are simply astounding! They lived alongside dinosaurs 150 million years ago, and still survive today. Playing a crucial role in our oceans’ ecosystems, this incredible animal group is now endangered due to climate change, poaching, habitat destruction, and accidental capture in fishing gear. Learn more about these resilient aquatic creatures and the conservation efforts in place to protect them with Eleanor Sterling, Chief Conservation Scientist, Center for Biodiversity & Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History; Wallace J. Nichols, scientist and New York Times-bestselling author of Blue Mind; and Michael Coyne, executive director of seaturtle.org. The event includes a live music performance by Bash the Trash, playing instruments made out of reused and repurposed materials.

For additional information, call 212-769-5100 or visit the Museum’s website at amnh.org.

Otto Piene, 85

Otto Piene, German Artist of New Modes, Dies at 85
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, July 18, 2014

Indigenous dance and music of Black Cockatoo at Asia Society

Dancer Albert David of Black Cockatoo Dance Company

Australia's indigenous peoples are a culture so old that it takes us through history but is also current.
These artists are about the present and the future...about what it means to be human and what it means to be on the Earth.

-- Rachel Cooper, Director of Global Performing Arts and Cultural Initiatives, Asia Society

Black Cockatoo Dance Company: Indigenous Australian Song and Dance, presented on Friday night by Asia Society in partnership with Australia's Consulate General, was one of the finest concerts I've seen this season. But that's not all. The personable members of Black Cockatoo also gave us one of the best post-show Q&A sessions of all time--informative and charming in equal measure.

Company founder Sean Choolburra and colleagues Albert David, Smilar Sinak and Vivian Anderson first cleansed the theater's energy with percussive didgeridoo music and chant. They followed this opener with a brisk-paced sample of ceremonial dances and songs from mainland aborigines and people of the Torres Strait islands (which lie between Queensland, Australia and Papua New Guinea). The earliest of the cultures represented here stretches back more than 50,000 years. Indigenous Australians are elders to the world; their artists preserve foundational stories necessary for the cohesion, survival and well-being of their communities. What's thrilling is the blend of seriousness and lightheartedness with which Choolburra and his compatriots carry these stories and discharge their responsibilities to their people and to our shared planet and its precarious future.

These mainland and islander cultures were severely impacted by European encroachment and violence. Choolburra's troupe dedicates itself to seeding the future through their many educational programs and upholding the value of kinship. It's there in every turn of phrase the artists used in the lengthy Q&A. Everyone is brother, auntie; everyone interconnected with land, sea and the abundance of animal life. Infused with this respect and love, many of the ceremonial dances portray animal totems of key importance to clans and individuals--the emu, the kitehawks and sea eagles, each fondly mimicked through characteristic details like the kangaroo's flipping ears and short front legs held close to the breast. Black Cockatoo derives its name from the fabulous totem of Choolburra's clan.

Black Cockatoo pair
(photo by Snowmanradio)

In the sunny mainland dances, the performers strike the floor with lively, articulated feet, almost pawing it, and easily skim about. By contrast, some island dances seem stern and minimalist, but there's subtle, eerie poetry in the Welub Batayrik feather dance and crackling electricity in David's performance of a warrior's bow-and-arrow dance. Hey, bro! Watch where you point that arrow!

New York City got only one night to witness these dedicated artists. I hope Asia Society is already working on ways to bring them back.

For more information about Asia Society's arts programs, click here.

Apply for choreographic commission at Temple University

The Dance Department at Temple University invites choreographers to submit proposals for its 2014 Reflection:Response choreographic commission. THE FUTURE OF THE BODY & DANCE: WITHIN & BEYOND CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE. 

Whether you locate your work in somatic investigation or socio-political inquiry, we welcome dance- makers from all backgrounds. For further information about the Reflection:Response series, this year’s theme, or the proposal guidelines, please see the accompanying sheet.

The Commission Brief:

You are asked to create a new work that speaks to the theme of Reflection:Response/ THE FUTURE OF THE BODY & DANCE: WITHIN & BEYOND CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE that will be presented on October 24 and 25 at 7:30 PM.

Although it is not obligatory, we welcome any opportunities to include Temple students as part of this choreographic commission. Students may be selected through audition and numbers included are entirely at the discretion of the choreographer.

You will be given a $5000 grant and you will have regular access to rehearsal space in Temple University Department of Dance studios throughout June-August 2014. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to offer travel, accommodation or per diem.

You have the option to stage the work in the Conwell Theater at Temple University Main  Campus, or at an alternative site within the Main Campus or North Philadelphia area. We can provide stage management, lighting and sound technicians if you choose to present the work in Conwell Theater. In addition to the performance, you will also be asked to offer a master class and lecture demonstration to students in the Dance Department in mid October 2014.

New this year, we are offering an exciting opportunity to connect with a dance scholar from Boyer College of Music and Dance. A dance scholar/theorist will be assigned to work with the commissioned choreographer in a mutually agreed upon capacity which could range from dramaturgy to writing a critical text on the artist's work. Choreographers should note in the proposal how they might envision working with an author.

Proposal Guidelines: 

Please submit a 2-page application as an email attachment (with your full name in the subject heading) that states:

    Name, address, telephone and e-mail address 

    A short performance biography 

    A brief description of the artistic aims of your proposed work with a clear articulation of how it speaks to the theme of Reflection: Response/ THE FUTURE OF THE BODY & DANCE: WITHIN & BEYOND CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE 

    A brief description of how you might envision working with an author. 

    A breakdown of your budget (include expenses and projected income) 

    Anticipated technical requirements 

In addition to the written application, you are asked to provide a 5-minute sample of your work (please send a link to You Tube or Vimeo - No DVDs) with a brief statement outlining why you would like us to look at this particular section (150-word max). 

Deadline for proposals: MARCH 24, 2014 

Please send your proposal to:

Julie B. Johnson: reflectionresponse@gmail.com 

Please note that the Selection Committee will meet to review applications in mid-April and you will be notified about the outcome of your application by: April 28, 2014. 

2014 Reflection:Response

Merián Soto, Committee Chair

Julie B. Johnson, Graduate Assistant 

Please send any questions to reflectionresponse@gmail.com
-- 
Merián Soto, Professor 
Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance 
Temple University

The fabulous bugs of Bernard Durin

Big Bugs Too Lovely to Squish

The French Painter Bernard Durin’s Close Look at Insect Life

by Dana Jennings, The New York Times, December 2, 2013

New York dancer's migration to Kansas on behalf of butterflies

A story and slide show from this past summer about New York ballerina Gwynedd Vetter-Drusch's dance project in the butterfly research gardens at the University of Kansas for Monarch Watch

Concern For Monarch Butterflies Inspires Dancer To Action

by Julie Denesha, KCUR.org, June 23, 2013

Jeremy Crutchley brings "Sacred Elephant" to La MaMa

Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant(photo by Rob Keith)

Fine-boned and mercurial, the British/South African actor Jeremy Crutchley has the litheness of a dancer. His masterful orientation to space makes you think there's much, much more of it than, in reality, La MaMa's First Floor Theater has to offer. His performance of Sacred Elephant--a stage adaptation of a poem by Heathcote Williams about these often exploited and endangered animals--dances as much as it vocally interprets an equally masterful, intense torrent of language, a blend of scientific observation, spiritual resonance and polemics. 

From its first inviting words and the first mad glance of the actor's red-rimmed eyes, you're roped into an experience you cannot escape: a wondrous encounter with beings of great power, intelligence, unexpected sensitivity and altruism followed by a reminder of the selfish destructiveness of that insecure "piece of work" Hamlet called "the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

photo by Rob Keith

Directed by Geoffrey Hyland, who adapted the Williams poem with Crutchley, this all-giving, 75-minute monologue never fails to engage and trouble the mind, senses or conscience.

Sacred Elephant runs through September 22, Wednesday-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm. Call 212-868-4444 or visit Smarttix.

For more information, visit the play's Web site here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theater)
74 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Open your eyes, find your way

For me, the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy led in an unpredictable direction, but the end result was an enriched view of the world. -- John Edward Huth, author, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way

Losing Our Way in the World
by John Edward Huth, The New York Times, July 20, 2013

Treehugging Judith Z. Miller makes wearable art

Meet Judith Z. Miller, the artist behind the primal, nature-based Sticks & Stones Wearable Art. Click here for information about her one-of-a-kind craft and a video interview by Donna Drake.

Jennifer Monson premieres "Live Dancing Archive" at The Kitchen

At the outset of Jennifer Monson/iLAND's Live Dancing Archive, the audience sits without benefit of light for a very long time. We hear tiny, ambient sounds of one another breathing, shifting, rustling, settling into an alive, soft darkness. Recalling that Monson recently told me that she had come to think of her audience as the ocean, I'm also remembering a time when I sat and watched the open sea at night, its awesomeness shading into something even more mysterious and compelling than usual and more than a little scary. What's in there? What's down there? 

Jennifer Monson (photo by Valerie Oliveiro)

Live Dancing Archive, presented at The Kitchen, serves as a way for Monson to embody a decade of her history of research and making, her sensitive and searching relationship with ecological systems of environments and communities, and her understanding of herself within all of this as a queer woman, activist and artist. It includes not only her hour-long performance--a collaboration with two brilliant artists, lighting designer Joe Levasseur and composer Jeff Kolar--but also a video installation by Robin Vachal and a digital archive designed by Youngjae Josephine Bae.  Levasseur and Kolar accompany her live for the journey, shaping and toning her austere surroundings: Levasseur striding here and there, adjusting the position and varying intensity of portable lights; Kolar sitting at his table of wonders, manipulating "external weather phenomena, wireless technology systems and human activity" through an array of handmade radio transmitters and receivers. If all of this seems like a pretty packed package, it is indeed, necessarily, packed and yet rendered with elegance.

Having seen a preview of part of the video last year, I limited myself to Monson's live show last evening. Even so, I came away feeling full and privileged to witness the skill and authority of this performance.

Jennifer Monson (photo by Ian Douglas)

In Live Dancing Archive, Monson presents herself as a hybrid creature of fur (fake pelt strapped to her torso, concealing her breasts) and human, womanly flesh (the wide mesh of her translucently pale, footless tights enclosing while revealing the nudity of her lower body). She initiates her dancing by pawing and pushing through the air, unfurling into and swimming into it. She endlessly channels organic forms, many presences coming and going in her movement and aspect. An inner wildness becomes external, and vice versa, all with precise control and calibration of pace, effort and coordination. A brief femme-drag sequence/lipsync to singer Antony's "Bird Gerhl" (with Monson ritually adorned by her costume designer, Susan Becker, in a completely uncharacteristic platinum wig, scarlet lipstick and saffron chiffon sleeves) serves as a solemn moment of vulnerability shortly before we experience, along with her, violent disturbance in the surrounding field of energy and sound.

There's so much more that transpires, in this ferocious, profoundly beautiful presentation, than I can say here. I hope you will jump at your chance to take it all in before Live Dancing Archive ends its run at The Kitchen tomorrow night.

Remaining performances: tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm. For more information and tickets, click here.

Vachal's video installation will be on view in the theater today (noon-6pm) and tomorrow (11am-6pm) for free viewing.

Browse, enjoy and subscribe to the Live Dancing Archive site: Click here.

The Kitchen
519 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Body and Soul: Listen.: Imani Uzuri

Imani Uzuri (photo by Petra Richterova)

Click here to subscribe to Body and Soul podcast in iTunes and listen to vocalist/composer Imani Uzuri talk about deep listening to the ocean and her own need, as an artist and a woman, for meditative time alone.

Innovative vocalist and composer Imani Uzuri is an eclectic artist who travels internationally from Morocco to Moscow creating and performing across various genres including concerts, recordings, experimental theater, performance art and sound installations. Uzuri’s work has been called “stunning” by New York Magazine and incorporates her interests in world culture, experimentation and sacred music. She has earned critical acclaim for her debut album, Her Holy Water: A Black Girl’s Rock Opera as well as for her collaborations with diverse artists such as Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Wangechi Mutu, Sandford Biggers and Vijay Iyer. Her new album The Gypsy Diaries which also features sitar, acoustic guitar, cello, violin, Japanese shinobue flute and world percussion, is a vibrant lyrical and spiritual sound scape and was named #2 on Rhapsody's World Top 10 List Summer 2012. She is currently composing a new musical GIRL Shakes Lose Her Skin that she is developing with playwright Zakiyyah Alexander inspired by the works of Philadelphia Poet Laureate Sonia Sanchez.

Click here to visit with Imani Uzuri and hear tracks from The Gypsy Diaries.

To subscribe to Body and Soul podcast, click here.

Your donation will help keep Body and Soul together. Please get in touch, and I'll happily send instructions. Thanks!

(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)

Antony and the Johnsons: Cut the World

Antony and the Johnsons: Cut the World
by Enio Chiola, PopMatters, August 6, 2012

Antony Hegarty on "Swanlights"

It's "Eva, naturally!"

Inviting you to Eva, naturally on tumblr!

Rampant (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Visit, follow, enjoy! Thanks!

What if the dance dances us?

Lake Lowell, Idaho (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

"...perhaps the most vital task of the sleight-of-hand magician is precisely to startle the senses from their slumber, to shake our eyes and our ears free from the static, habitual ways of seeing and hearing into which these senses have fallen and the deadening influence of abstract and overly-objectified ways of speaking and thinking.

"Yet perhaps such magic is also, now, the province of all the arts..."

--David Abram, Ph.D., Alliance for Wild Ethics

A wonder: Do we find ourselves caught up within and experienced by the dancing that we see?

Does the dance we see also see us?

And, if so, how might that make awareness and transformation available to us?

I welcome you to read an essay by David Abram--"Animism, Perception, and Earthly Craft of the Magician"--and to consider his thoughts as well as my questions and how they might relate to our experience with dance.

Please feel free to post your responses as comments here and/or on this post as it appears on my Facebook wall.

Thank you!

The Dancers Tarot

Check out Moti Zemelman's great Kickstarter project, which brings together dance, photography and Tarot. As you might imagine, it certainly makes all the sense in The World to me! :-)

The Dancers Tarot by Moti Mark Zemelman

Thanks to Facebook friend Francine Blackwell for drawing my attention to this project!

Commit to being present

Earthworms Deserve More Poems!
by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Global Swarming Honeybees, January 25, 2011