TONY review: Abraham.In.Motion at The Joyce Theater

Here's the link to my Time Out New York online review of Kyle Abraham's first full season at The Joyce Theater, featuring the New York premiere of Absent Matter.

TONY review: afroFUTUREqu##r

Hey, gang! I reviewed the Friday program of afroFUTUREqu##r (curated by Thomas DeFrantz and niv Acosta) at JACK for Time Out New York, and TONY had a delay in posting it. But you can find it now at this link.

Theater critic Catherine Rampell on previewing and reviewing

Not quite sure why, but I'm tickled to read this from Catherine Rampell of The New York Times:

In addition to covering economics, I also write theater reviews for the Arts section.

In any case, here's her recent column on the business of theater previews and reviews.

Theater Review Economics
by Catherine Rampell, The New York Times, July 30, 2012

Sherri Kronfeld: Should theater makers critique theater?

Many thanks to my colleague in Philadelphia, Lisa Kraus of thINKingDANCE, for recommending this piece. 

Where is our Tiki Barber? Theater Makers As Theater Critics
by Sherri Kronfeld, HowlRound, July 22, 2012

Met Opera won't ban reviews by Opera News

Met Reverses Itself on Ban of Reviews by Opera News
by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, May 22, 2012

In step with writer Ennis Smith

Ennis Smith

I'm enjoying this amazing, dynamic new multifaceted arts site created by one of my former Writing on Dance students, Ennis Smith. Be sure to check it out!

Flamenco yesterday, today and tomorrow

Dance Magazine Editor-in-Chief Wendy Perron and I both have our say on the entertaining Flamenco Hoy by Carlos Saura (New York City Center). Check out our reviews here.

Dance Magazine invites feedback

Dance Magazine invites you to Talk Back to Critics: Join the Dialogue. Send in your feedback on Dance Magazine's dance reviews.

It seems a bit clunky--making you send an email rather than use a more convenient Comments system right on the page--but at least it's something.

Click here to read some current and archived Dance Magazine reviews and get started.

Choreography or ELSE!

dance-techTV announces its new online performance series, Choreography or ELSE, featuring:

International choreographers, dance artist or directors that continue to challenge traditional and contextual notions of choreography. They problematize the performance of movement with their on-going experimentation with compositional and aesthetic strategies, dramaturgic approaches, non-conventional spaces, appropriating uses of the new technologies, crossing disciplinary boundaries and dwelling on cultural hybridity.

In this series, the bi-monthly broadcast of the selected works will be accompanied with the publication of rich media supporting material about that specific performance and choreographer such as: reviews, interviews, essays and other references.

The platform dance-tech.net will offer a interactive space of on-line dialogue with the featured artist.

The series will launch with While we were holding it together by Ivana Muller (Croatia/Holland/France) on January 8. The following three programs will be devoted to Mette Ingvarsten (Denmark), Gilles Jobin (Switzerland) and Tere O'Connor (USA).

The content will be globally available and featured for a month on dance-techTV. 

This project is only possible by the collaboration of the artists. 

Series artists (confirmed)

David Zambrano (Venezuela/Holland) 

Emio Greco | PC (Holland) 

Gilles Jobin (Switzerland) 

Ivana Muller (Croatia/Holland/France) 

Jose Navas (Venezuela/Canada) 

Kate Weare (Canada/USA) 

Kettly Noel (Mali) 

Mette Ingvarsten (Denmark) 

Milka Djordjevich and Dragana Bulut (Serbia/USA) 

Miguel Gutierrez (USA) 

La Ribot (Spain/Switzerland) 

Rachid Ouramdane (France) 

Radhuane El Meddeb (Tunisia/France) 

Roger Bernat (Spain) 

Sasa Asentic (Serbia) 

Sol Pico (Spain) 

Tamara Cubas (Uruguay)

Oliver Dubois (France) 

Tere O'Connor (USA) 

Yanira Castro (USA) 

and others!

For further information on dance-techTV and this series, click here or email marlon@dance-tech.net.

William Kentridge at MOMA & the Met

Multimedia Master William Kentridge Animates the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Opera

by Deborah Feller, DeborahFeller.com, May 16, 2010

Woman power in the ancient world

Art Review: The Lost World of Old Europe

by Deborah Feller, DeborahFeller.com, March 16, 2010

Theater reviews by Ennis Smith: Don't Pass Go

Don't Pass Go

by Ennis Smith, Smokin' Room, March 16, 2010

reviews of A View from the Bridge and The Pride

Bush and Helstroffer: To dream without cease

The Himalayan imagery on display in Chelsea's classy Rubin Museum of Art has found a champion in Nadine Helstroffer, a French-born dancer-choreographer with a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Helstroffer's commissioned solo, Absence Presence, was premiered in the Rubin's special exhibition gallery, surrounded by Eternal Presence: Handprints and Footprints in Buddhist Art. The record of that performance--filmed by John Bush, edited with exquisite sensitivity by Brent Felker--received its world premiere last night at the Rubin along with another Bush film scored by Felker, the quite enchanting Dream on Me.

Helstroffer's snaky dancing evokes the couple's shared spirituality and pleasure in nature; her perpetually inward expression gives a poetic, even solemn flavor to her work. But she is not just Bush's ethereal muse but also his anchor. Like the hyper-energized, exalted beings at the center of the Tibetan images that flicker through Absence Presence, Helstroffer acts as the radiant core from which Bush's loveliest light can flow in the dream-inspired Dream on Me. The ripples of reflections in water; the deep, resonant clang of super-saturated color; the languorous bobbing of blossom-laden trees in lingering moments of drowsy beauty and gentle humor: They all seem sourced and grounded in this iconic performer.

A flowing composite of the four seasons, Dream on Me hits a jarring, undreamy note only when surf-side passages too closely resemble slick, New Age magazine ads for yoga retreats. But, overall, strategies for overlapping color-bearing dancers with natural or manufactured environments speak to the complexity of notions of permanence and impermanence. What is eternal? What is fleeting? Rigid skyscrapers? Mounds of snow? Wafting saffron banners? Elusively drifting bodies of flesh and bone?

A Q&A followed the screening in which Helstroffer and Bush were joined on stage by Michael Vincent Miller, PhD, a Buddhist psychotherapist. Miller offered thoughtful insights--about engagement with and consideration of art, about empathetic surrender in the moment, about the similarities between wellness in health and in art--that he made me wonder if the future of really useful dance criticism might not actually lie in Buddhist psychotherapy!

For more information on the work of John Bush and Nadine Helstroffer, click here and here.

For more information on the Rubin Museum of Art and a schedule of upcoming events--including the impressive BRAINWAVE series, pairing artists with neuroscientists and astrophysicists--click here.