"Ship of Fools" docks at HERE Arts Center

Scenes from Ship of Fools
at HERE Arts Center
(photos: Josiah Shelton)

Last evening, HERE launched its 2016-2017 season with Ship of Fools, a multidisciplinary production created by visual artist and puppeteer Jessica Scott with Anonymous Ensemble.  After some delay, we were waved into the tiny Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, filling seats atop what would prove to be our very own "ship of fools"--a platform slowly rotating us past various scenarios of puppetry, dance, music-making and video installation tucked along the perimeter of the space.

My first, innocent step onto this seating area made me fear I was having vertigo--or a heart attack! I stepped, immediately and inexplicably pitching sideways, somehow managing to keep my feet and reach an empty chair. Something probably jostled the platform--maybe even just my stepping onto it--but I didn't figure that out until, during the performance, the platform suddenly began to revolve. That realization would have been reassuring had this turning not felt unpleasant. So this is my trigger warning. But go. You'll eventually get used to the sensation and experience some striking artistry along the way.

Scott plunges us into a shifting terrain that evokes both mental instability and the irrational fear and exploitation of what she calls "women as a dark continent."

From France’s famous all-female asylum Saltpetriere, to the Mary Laundry’s of old England, the overwhelming incidence of modern female depression, to the recent attacks on women’s reproductive rights, diagnosing femininity has forged our modern psychology and politics sewing a seed of an insidious fear: a conviction that the fault line between woman and world lies not in the constructions of popular culture but instead somewhere rooted our inherent femaleness.

--from publicity for Ship of Fools 

Scott and her collaborators turn the theater into a combination wax museum, puppet theater, fun house and house of horrors brought to life by her performers--Kate Brehm, Liz Davito, Jacob Graham, Takemi Kitamura, Sarah Lafferty, Georgie Tisdale and Jessica Weinstein. We're trapped in a compelling nightmare--equal parts elusive imagery, numinous beauty, amusing absurdity, disorientation and looming terror. I must resist the temptation, here, to open this box of surprises, but I particularly enjoyed one famous, unmistakable article of clothing that undergoes a wardrobe malfunction of epic proportions. Its construction and puppet-like manipulation are just a taste of the wild imagination and detailed, painstaking craft on display in Ship of Fools.

The production does have some sluggish, awkward moments--including a few text passages spoken by the otherwise wonderful vocalist Liz Davito. But, no worries. This ship just keeps on turning, always delivering you to something new to discover.

Co-direction, puppetry, costume and set design: Jessica Scott
Co-direction, text and projection design: Eamonn Farrell
Original compositions: Alex Klimovitsky
Lighting design: Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa
Sound design: Gavin Price
Live music and vocals: Liz Davito

Ship of Fools runs through October 22. For schedule and ticketing information, click here.

HERE Arts Center

145 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan

Enter on Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street.

map/directions

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That new French magic from CIE 14:20

Shadow puppeteer Philippe Beau and his avian friend
(photo courtesy of CIE 14:20) 

What quiets a theater packed with boisterous kids and parents? Phillippe Beau's shadow puppetry, for one thing. I speak with confidence, having heard that with my own ears at French Institute Alliance Française's Florence Gould Hall, one of several city hosts for the new Tilt Kids Festival. Launched by FIAF and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the festival offers a wealth of family-oriented arts, ideas and fun at venues like BAM Fisher, The Invisible Dog Art Center and, of course, Time Square's New Victory Theater. It runs through April 3.

Accompanied by the wonderful pianist Madeleine Cazenave, Beau performed a segment in the magie nouvelle (new magic) production, Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle, presented by CIE 14:20. The Parisian troupe also featured renowned sleight-of-hand magician, Yann Frisch. If you missed these two masterful performers, I'm sad for you. Don't let that happen again.

My attempt to recreate Beau's tricks in order to describe them better for you has proven futile (and might require hand splints). Let me just say that this digital magician does not only pull a rabbit out of the "hat" of his imagination but produces a complete menagerie of animals--a stag with magnificent antlers; a snarling wolf; a galloping, rearing horse; a cat with swishing tail, licking its fur and scratching its ear. A bird feeds its young, later teaching the fledgling how to fly. A lover plants a kiss on a shyer, somewhat startled partner. Even the Devil himself makes an appearance. I'm not sure why but, hey, if you can form a Devil shape with your shadow puppetry, why the hell not?

If your notion of shadow puppetry has always been something amateurish and cheesy, please, get over yourself. This is new shadow puppetry. (I might as well follow the French trend of "new circus," "new magic," "new whatever.") As practiced by Beau, it is a razor-sharp storytelling skill and damned awesome.

Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle has closed, but there's much more Tilt up ahead through April 3, from the visual to the gastronomic arts, co-curated by Lili Chopra (FIAF) and Violaine Huisman (BAM). For information on the festival's lineup, click here.

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The political spectacle of Bread and Puppet Theater

Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater
returns to New York for a December season.
(photos courtesy of Bread and Puppet Theater)

The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police, and other problems of the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. The puppets grew bigger and bigger.

During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people. In 1974 Bread and Puppet moved to a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Read more and connect with Bread and Puppet Theater here. Volunteers are welcome for the theater's upcoming events in New York:

Upcoming shows and art auction 

at Theater for the New City

The Overtakelessness Circus
Saturdays-Sundays
December 12-13, 19-20 at 3pm

The Seditious Conspiracy Theater Presents: A monument to the Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera
Wednesday-Sunday
December 16-20 at 8pm

Bread and Puppet Theater Art Auction (live auctioneer and band)
Friday, December 18at 9:30pm

Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

I'm your puppet: Ronnie Burkett's marionettes at BAC

The actor Lovey Lunkhead (above)
and his creator, Ronnie Burkett (below)
in The Daisy Theatre
(photos: Hiroyuki Ito)

From the look and, especially, the sound of things at Baryshnikov Arts Center last evening, Canadian puppeteer extraordinaire Ronnie Burkett has a legion of south-of-the-border fans. And now he has one more, because I love him.

That's not too extreme a position to take, given how Burkett seeks to wring every bit of love and laughter out of audiences for his Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, putting a positive spin on the word manipulation.

The New York premiere of The Daisy Theatre stars a handful of Burkett's forty finely-designed creations--a motley crew who are impossible to resist--in acts ranging from burlesque to opera. Improvised around each marionette's personality and John Alcorn's loopy songs, the show has elastic tendencies. Performed without intermission, it can stretch from ninety minutes to two hours, depending upon how much fun Burkett is having with his marionettes, with volunteers from his audience and with the serendipity of any given moment.

Burkett indulges himself, and us, because he is a child. He is a happy child, standing up there on the bridge, deftly working the control bars and wires that give his marionettes uncanny, supple life. With his own marionette-like jaw, resplendent smile and maniacal, motormouth voice, he resembles someone from his nomadic tribe of performers. Or the Second Coming of Robin Williams. In fact, if you find yourself gazing up at Burkett about as much as you watch the marionettes acting out below, you would not be wrong--or alone. He's a huge, huge part of the show.

Burkett and his rotating cast of characters
(photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

Steeped in fearless queer attitude, profane language and racy innuendo, The Daisy Theatre ain't puppetry for tots, and anyone under 16 will not be admitted. But anyone over 16 will enjoy the likes of sweet, yearning "fairy child" Schnitzel (a stand-in for Burkett's inner child, I suspect) and Las Vegas belter Rosemary Focaccia, a-shimmy in fringe dress and knee-high boots, hair-trigger rage and foul mouth out of all proportion ("I know people, Baryshnikov! Don't cross me!!"). An eerie segment featuring marionette Meyer Lemon--an ancient master ventriloquist--and his dummy stood out for near-literary, surreal quality and Burkett's exacting skill.

Acclaimed ventriloquist Meyer Lemon takes the spotlight.
(photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

I have no idea who--among all forty of the possible players--will perform when you see The Daisy Theatre and what they'll be up to. You'll be, in Burkett's words, one of the "poor bastards sitting in the dark not knowing what happens next."

How exhilarating!

Remaining performances:

Tonight, October 1, 7:30pm
Friday-Saturday, October 2-3, 8pm
Wednesday-Saturday, October 7-10, 8pm

Ronnie Burkett in Conversation:

A conversation with Ronnie Burkett and Kristy Edmunds of Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will be held in BAC's Jerome Robbins Theater on Monday, October 5 at 6:30pm. Reservations are not required.

Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

La MaMa: birthing a new downstairs theater

La MaMa to Open New Theater
Andrew R. Chow, The New York Times, August 23, 2015

After the fire: Puppet artist displaced by East Village explosion

A Puppet Master Loses Life's Work in East Village Fire
by Stephen Nessen, WNYC News, May 19, 2015

Saving New York: James Godwin's "The Flatiron Hex"

James Godwin in The Flatiron Hex
(photo: Jim Moore)

The pipe is the underworld of NYORG. The main section is what’s left of an old pipeline. Nobody knows what used to flow through it or even who built it.. Some of the old tech still works and the L train still makes its run across the island. Granted, it’s only 4 times a month. AND NEVER ON WEEKENDS.

--James Godwin, The Flatiron Hex

One of Manhattan's most distinctive, most photographed structures, the Flatiron Building certainly captures the imagination. But did you know that it also holds the key to our salvation?

Okay, neither did I. Something about opening the right windows in the right order to create just the right Aeolian harp-like tone and vibration. But you can try figuring it out with hilarious James Godwin at The Flatiron Hex, his new puppet/performance art/visual art extravaganza, a Dixon Place commission directed by his co-writer and sound designer, Tom Burnett.

This is a supernaturalhexacalifragilistic tale of one Wylie Walker, a sorcerer-shaman hired to protect a futuristic, plague-ravaged New York City (now called NYORG) from an impending superstorm. We meet the nonsense chant-spouting Walker--"Most of what I do is flim flam..."--and Godwin surreptitiously controls and visibly speaks for a host of some of the creepiest, most pointless puppets you've ever seen. Favorites include an elegant rat queen and The Tongue--security firm owner and mayoral candidate--who makes exits in a certain way that, for no reason at all, leaves people in stitches.

Godwin's super-power appears to be the ability to creep and gross us out while keeping us tethered to his charm. Last night, that charm got tested to the max by equipment malfunction, a situation Godwin milked and milked productively and quite winningly.

Just avoid the front row because...well, there will be blood.

Remaining shows are tonight; May 22-23; and May 29-30--all at 7:30pm. I suspect this will sell out. So hurry to get more information and tickets here.

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

Beautiful, beastly and renegade: Muz and Fraser at Abrons

Julie Atlas Muz as Beauty
At rear, Mat Fraser as The Beast,
flanked by Jonny Dixon (l) and Jess Mabel Jones
(photo by Sin Bozkurt)

Mat Fraser
with puppeteers Dixon and Jones
(photo by Sheila Burnett)

To be sure, the Playhouse stage at Abrons Arts Center is set up for a fairy tale--here, Beauty and the Beast--with an ornate, antique-y, rose-strewn set drenched in crimson light and gently breathing mist. And so, on a rainy evening perfect for storytelling, begins not one but two uncommon love stories. The familiar one we came for--in which a lovely daughter, having staved off family disaster by agreeing to go away to live in a beast-man's castle--gets charmingly, seamlessly interwoven with real-life details about the show's charismatic stars, Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser.

Muz, former beauty queen and a multi-talented artist best-known for neo-burlesque, and Fraser, a British actor, writer and rock musician, are a married couple who met and fell in love when they were Coney Island sideshow performers and married to other people. Fraser, whose mom took Thalidomide for morning sickness, has the congenital deformation phocomelia with, in his case, missing forearms and thumbs. When these two artists dreamed up a collaborative project, "Beauty and the Beast" immediately sprung to mind. But because they are who they are--both kickass provocateurs, one whose visible disability has long been integral to his art--this "Beauty and the Beast" would have to be a "Beauty and the Beast" like no other.

And so it is.

A very sexy "Beauty and the Beast," indeed, with frequent, matter-of-fact nudity, erotic food play and joyous sexual simulation where even paper puppets get it on. And a hilarious "Beauty and the Beast" in which Muz's sharp talent for comedy--along with Jonny Dixon and Jess Mabel Jones's skillful, innovative puppetry--give extra dimension and brightness to every scene. And a tender "Beauty and the Beast" which, without hesitation, welcomes us into the love that this couple shares. I don't believe I have ever seen this much love (genuine love) in a work on stage.

So, if you think all that might be too much to handle, stay home...or, go anyway, take a chance and see if it changes you.

Directed by Phelim McDermott (Satyagraha, Shockheaded Peter) of the British theater troupe, Improbable

Beauty and the Beast runs through March 30. For information and tickets, click here.

The Playhouse
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/direction)

*******

Of related interest

Access All Areas--Live Art & Disability (NYC edition), a free, all-day event looking at some of the radical approaches to the representation of disability by contemporary performance artists.

March 29, 10-6pm at Abrons Arts Center

For information, click here.

La MaMa's Puppet Series opens with "The Orphan Circus"

Quebec's Les Sage Fous troupe opened La MaMa's latest Puppet Series with a curious number called The Orphan Circus, directed by South Miller.

Monsieur P. T. Issimo, mysterious circus impresario
(photo by Cinthia Chouinard)

We begin this hour in the company of two rough-looking customers--actor/puppeteers Jacob Brindamour and Olivia Faye Lathuillière--who creep around a dark alley filled with corrugated gates, trash barrels, old oil cans and other debris. After our initial impulse to hug our belongings closer, we watch the pair go about recycling trash--"orphaned objects"--into treasure, asserting the siren-like beauty in a discarded, ratty-looking doll, training a fish skeleton to be a champion acrobat, and more.

Brindamour (l) and Lathuillière with friend(photo by Theo Cote)

Christian Laflamme's score, in its pleasantly jazzy way, belies the grim surroundings and the grotesque appearance of the puppets and says "New Age Magic Act." I got the point--see loveliness and wonder everywhere and anything is possible!--but never warmed up to these puppet characters or to the slight work itself. Perhaps something more meaningful and effective could have been done with the perfunctory contact between puppets and audience (first row only).

Brindamour and Lathuillière very skillfully control their puppets via little black sticks and strings, the dim lighting and our cooperative minds rendering those maneuvers nearly invisible. Yet the grand transformation these puppeteers seek to achieve is more announced than convincingly displayed.

The Orphan Circus repeats tonight and Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm. The La MaMa Puppet Series runs through November 24, including a curated "puppet slam" on Friday, November 15 at 7pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theatre)
74A East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Asia Society to host Indonesian performance troupes

Nan Jombang Dance Company

As part of its Creative Voices of Muslim Asia initiative, Asia Society will present two innovative performance companies from Indonesia:

Nan Jombang Dance Company (Saturday, October 6, 8pm) will show work that combines the Minangkabau (West Sumatra) traditions of martial arts, dance, folk theater and body percussion. (video clip and tickets)

Papermoon Puppet Theatre's Mwathirika (photo by Indra Wicaksono)

Papermoon Puppet Theatre (Monday, October 1, 8pm) presents Mwathirika--a non-verbal, puppet-theater experience set in 1965, when thousands of Indonesians were jailed and murdered. (video clip and tickets)

Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

OWS: Boo! to the 1%

A Playful Occupy Halloween Trots Out the Puppets
by Melena Ryzik, The New York Times, October 28, 2011

***
Support Occupy Wall Street with your donations of warm clothing and other necessities. It's easy. Just drop them off at the UFT building, 52 Broadway (a few blocks south of Wall Street), ground floor. Walk around to the right of the reception area until you come to some glass doors, and you'll find OWS' storage room where you can leave your donated items.

If you prefer, you can also ship your items. See the link below for the shipping address.
 
Click here for a list of what's needed and how to get your donations to OWS. 

Thanks!

Tales of Japan's indigenous Ainu

Ralph Lee 

presents

THE OLD BOAT GODDESS - SONGS OF THE AINU

 

Friday-Sunday, September 16, 17, 18 at 7:30pm

Free

Outdoor Garden 
Cathedral of St. John the Divine

111th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan

for weather reports: 212-929-4777

                        "In the outdoor garden of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine,

                          Mettawee River Theatre Company employs Ralph Lee's

                          gorgeous puppets to tell traditional stories about the

                          indigenous Ainu people of Japan."

                                                                 The New Yorker, September 19, 2011

                        "The puppeteer Ralph Lee delves into strange worlds, both

                          physical and metaphysical, in his inspired productions."

                                                          The New York Times, September 9, 2011

Renowned puppet and mask maker Ralph Lee presents his Mettawee River Theatre Company in the New York premiere of  The Old Boat Goddess - Songs of the Ainu, three entertaining traditional tales from the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan.  A company of actor/singers handle the superb giant figures, puppets and masks to tell these adventurous tales of interactions between humans, gods and the natural world.

More information

Oy to the world: "Baby Universe"

What if some remnant of human civilization were to survive way, way, way into the future only to face the imminent death of our solar system? That's the premise of theater troupe Wakka Wakka's Baby Universe (A Puppet Odyssey), running now at Baruch Performing Arts Center through January 9.

Not your standard holiday season fare, for sure, and not intended for very young kids. (A program note advises parents refrain from bringing children under 7.) With a tone that varies from sardonic to poignant, from apocalyptic to bittersweet, Baby Universe is the stuff of environmental nightmares. This mythic sci-fi tale is enacted by dozens of puppets (created by Wakka Wakka's Kirjan Waage) ranging from the very tiny to the larger-than-life and very scary.

With the lurching, dying Sun bearing down on its planets, we find Earth gravely ill, her inhabitants sheltering in bunkers, eating one another and mourning the loss of the natural world. Earth is in line to die along with her neighbors who passively resign themselves to their fate, even seem to welcome it. Closest to the Sun, poor Mercury--soon to come out of retrograde, btw, just as a note to you astrology fans--becomes crazed with heat. The Moon's desperate loyalty to the Sun nearly leads to disastrous ends.

Meanwhile, Earth's scientists experiment with developing numerous "baby universes," hoping to create one that will form a new solar system with an Earth-like planet to house Earth's refugees. Raised by spinsters--puppets clad in white habits with halo-like disks on their heads--these babes don't always make it. But one--#7001--ah! That's the one. Bug-eyed, mewling, jet black as deep space and speckled with tiny stars, he's a feisty brat. And a good thing, too. He's got the whole world riding on his shoulders.

Will 7001 make it? Will he survive and expand and create a new home for humankind?

Directed by Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock
Written by Waage and Warnock with the Baby Universe Ensemble, which also includes Melissa Creighton, Andrew Manjuck and Peter Russo

Schedule of remaining performances
Ticket information online or 212-352-3101

Baruch Performing Arts Center
Baruch College
55 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan (map/directions)
(Enter on 25th Street, between 3rd and Lexington Avenues)

You are what you remember

In Retrospect, created by Federico Restrepo and Denise Greber of LOCO7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company, riffles through the contents of an archetypal box of memories and reveries meant to elicit our own. The multidisciplinary puppet theater piece, concluding its run tomorrow afternoon at La MaMa, lasts less than an hour, just enough time to awaken the child within each of us.

It's a curious mingling of, on one hand, broad gestures and haunting delicacy. Just because my critical Adult Self responds far more readily to the latter doesn't mean that, as far as my Inner Child is concerned, they are not both effective, each in its distinct way. If you go tonight (8pm) or tomorrow (2:30pm), you'll likely discover elements that will appeal to you. For me, there are a few moments of simple beauty yet resonant feeling--Restrepo gently and gracefully whirling a skeletal puppet; Restrepo again, nestling against two giant puppet feet descended from the flies. The piece is dedicated to his late mother, recently lost.

Federico Restrepo dances with life-sized puppet. 
(photo: Lee Wexler)

The performance and production teams are headed by Restrepo (performance, choreography, puppets, set, video, lighting and construction) and Greber (costumes, video performance and voice overs) with fanciful music by Restrepo's longtime collaborator, Elizabeth Swados.

Information and ticketing

La MaMa (First Floor Theatre)
74 East 4th Street

between 2nd Avenue and Bowery, Manhattan

(map and directions)

Puppet theater of the damned

If you've never seen Phantom Limb's brilliant, acerbic marionette show The Fortune Teller, HERE Arts Center is giving you through December 4 to find some place to slap this on your calendar.

Premiered in 2006 at HERE through its Dream Music Puppetry Program, this smartly-written, compact piece--about 50 minutes--recounts the tale of a fateful gathering of seven men who believe they might inherit money from a deceased millionaire, one Nathaniel Ax. Each of these men represent "a rogue's gallery of our city's finest lowlifes," says the narrating crocodile (wonderful urbane voice by Gavin Friday). As you might suspect, they're all in for the surprise of their lives.

Instead of a reading of the will, each of the attendees is subjected to a reading by a mysterious fortune teller who doesn't mince words. Each vignette offers a view into the life and character of one of the seven and a certain little forecast. A hunter, a miser, a snoop, a self-absorbed actor and more--all of these grotesque, creepy guys have it coming to them. Revenge is a dish best served by a persistent butterfly or a manic roasted chicken or...what? Okay, well, if you go, you'll see what I mean.

Creator/directors Erik Sanko (who also designed the outstanding marionettes) and Jessica Grindstaff lead a crackerjack team including puppeteers Honey Goodenough, Anne Posluszny, Ian Sweetman and Sabrina D'Angelo who, in short order, make some of the weirdest, least-lovable puppets come alive in convincingly off-putting ways. Sanko also teamed up with famed film/television composer Danny Elfman for the score--a suitably over-the-top mix of florid oompah-pah and chiming tickytock. Kudos, in particular, to Andy Green for his chillingly rich sound design. It's dreadful--and I mean that in a good way!

Phantom Limb's The Fortune Teller, now at HERE through December 4

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan
Entrance on Dominick Street (directions)

Schedule and ticketing

Toying around with theater

Last evening, the good folks from Great Small Works--hosts of the 9th International Toy Theater Festival--devoted time to teaching their audience the fundamental qualities of Toy Theater. It seemed critical that we actually absorb these fundamental qualities in a visceral way. Unfortunately, I cannot recreate that experience for you here, but I will list them.

Toy Theater is:

1. performed within a proscenium arch
2. small
3. made of paper
4. flat
5. something you can do yourself

Well, from what I saw at St. Ann's Warehouse--where the fest runs through Sunday--that definition doesn't always hold true. You can break free of the frame, use other materials besides paper and go 3D to the max. But the part that really gets me is this nice, democratic notion that you and your kids can do this at home.

Oh, sure you can.

Okay, maybe you can...do something...somewhat...like this. But, I can tell you, it will not be easy for the vast majority of us to recreate the visual wonders, heart, wit and surprising sophistication of this theater form at its most effective.

For inspiration, though, go tonight, your last chance to see Who's Hungry--West Hollywood, three lovely, poignant puppet plays by Dan Froot and Dan Hurlin, derived from interviews with homeless LA residents from their Who's Hungry project. The Froot/Hurlin pieces are running in a long, awkwardly-arranged and intermission-less program with works by Concrete Temple Theatre and Marsian, but they're worth the bother.

The Toy Theater Festival's Program 3 (with Froot and Hurlin and others) concludes tonight, with a 7:30pm curtain, at St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn. The festival continues through Sunday.


Also, go early and view THE TEMPORARY TOY THEATER MUSEUM:

"the finest examples of historical and contemporary toy theaters, representing visual artists reinterpreting the Toy Theater form, and collectors, including a group of classic Spanish stages from the collection of Lucia Contreras of Valencia. FREE and open to the public one hour before showtimes."

Complete festival information and schedule

Ticketing or (718) 254-8779

Directions to St. Ann's Warehouse

Some DNA discoveries

With its choreography series, OB-ject-ob-JECT, Dance New Amsterdam fosters innovative collaboration among women artists working in various disciplines. This season--which ends tomorrow with a 3pm performance--offers a few good reasons to head to DNA now and to keep watch for more notable developments from its current roster of artists.

I'm most intrigued by the Italian, Amsterdam-based choreographer Giulia Mureddu. In Bava (US premiere), Mureddu duets with a squealing, mewling, man-sized puppet with spongey, bulging cloth flesh and hard, glassy eyes that sparkle under the lights. The puppet (designed by collaborator Ulrike Quade) seems to be fused with the dancer's body and with her soul. Her precise, sensitive manipulation of this figure not only creates an poignant, at times frightening illusion that it is alive but also displays alternating facets of a relationship both tender and terribly dark in nature. Bava is a kaleidoscopic, disturbing dream--and a brilliant execution of Mureddu and Quade's concept.

Soloist Marýa Wethers and choreographer Daria Faïn have made good on the promise of a work-in-progress I saw, last December, at 92nd Street Y. TARGET::furnace (phase one) seems to have clarified its purpose as a fantasy of the iconic woman hero/superhero/martial artist--She possessed of indomitable physical and mental acuity. In the opening segment, Wethers--wrapped in an oversized, thick terry cloth robe, with matching bath towels draped over her head, an amazing, sculptural costume--strides round and around with her game face on and her arms and fists raised in the gesture of a prize fighter. In another high-energy passage, Wethers unleashes her superpowers, spinning this way and that as she throws darts at Robert Kocik's wooden "target-objects." At times, TARGET (otherwise oddly titled, but Faïn and poet Kocik are noted for intricate investigation and word play) feels a little loose-thready. But its interesting conclusion hints at breakthrough to a consciousness beyond strength and heroism. Katherine Young's luscious score--performed live by Young (bassoon), Christine Bard (percussion) and Erica Dicker (violin)--contributes a fragrant, haunting sound bouquet.

In Mariangela Lopez's Accidental #5 (world premiere), a lone woman holding a pose I'd readily call "the kneeling Isadora Duncan" eventually gives way to a floor-full of women and men in weird-ass costumes, no two alike, who flail and jerk their bodies long and hard. Suddenly stopping, they pant, looking around in that way that you do when you're standing still and managing to hold yourself up but your brain seems to spinning in its skull. If Accidental #5, as it progresses, comes off looking like amateurish good-time romping--hey, let's all mass together and boogie down and hoot and holler!--I guess we can trace that back this ecstatic opening. There's a hella lotta energy here, which clearly sparked the audience around me last night; rousing hoots greeted the sixteen dancers and Lopez as they lined up for their bows. Hella lotta energy doesn't quite substitute for innovation, but Lopez does introduce a few unexpected ways of addressing space--by tucking a pocket of hot activity in a far corner, partly obscured by the wings or having her sixteen dancers form a many-headed, multi-faceted organism slowly crawling the rear of the space. A marvelous dancer herself, she's got an interesting eye for visual effects and a playful spirit bordering on the rebellious, and I just want her to totally cross that border and go there.

For more information on OB-ject-ob-JECT and ticketing for tonight (8pm) or tomorrow (3pm), click here.

Horses of War

Making Horses Gallop and Audiences Cry
by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, July 14, 2009

Vandenbroucke reflects on Hurlin

Disfarmer by Dan Hurlin
by Aynsley Vandenbroucke, Reflections on Dance, February 6, 2009