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.

Let's go see some dance...at the movies!

Maria Kochetkova dances as Juliet
in San Francisco Ballet's Romeo & Juliet
Photo ©Erik Tomasson

Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance (GAD) series launches September 24 with San Francisco Ballet's production of Romeo & Juliet by the company's artistic director and principal choreographer, Helgi Tomasson.
 

Cast:

Maria Kochetkova (Juliet)

Davit Karapetyan (Romeo)

Pascal Molat (Mercutio)

Joseph Walsh (Benvolio)

Luke Ingham (Tybalt)

"LIVE with Kelly and Michael" stars Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan are the hosts of the new cinema series, Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance, which brings spectacular dance performances by four of America’s leading dance companies to more than 600 movie theaters throughout the US--including 22 in the New York metro area--in fall and winter of 2015.

Upcoming screenings include works by Alvin Ailey, Wayne McGregor and Ronald K. Brown.

Tickets for Romeo & Juliet and all Lincoln Center at the Movies screenings are available at FathomEvents.com and at participating theater box offices. For a complete list of theater locations visit the Fathom Events website (theaters and participating box offices are subject to change).

For more information visit LincolnCenterattheMovies.org.

They're making it right HERE.

New York Performing Artists Share Inspiration on ‘Made Here’
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, March 13, 2013

La MaMa to host 2nd Contemporary Israeli Dance Week

From white Wash by Gil C. Harush (photos by Eyal Resh)

La MaMa will host the second Contemporary Israeli Dance Week, curated by Michal Gamily and Hila Gamily-Kaplan. Contemporary Israeli Dance Week features five Israeli-based choreographers and five New York City-based Israeli choreographers and will include performances, master classes, dance video screenings and more at La MaMa and other participating organizations.

Renana Raz (photo by Noam Hamo )

La MaMa information and ticketing

La MaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (2nd Floor), Manhattan

"Say, do you happen to have the time?" See Marclay's "The Clock"

Christian Marclay. Detail of The Clock. 2010. Single-channel video with sound, 24 hours. © Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, proudly declared Christian Marclay's The Clock to be "one of the most coveted works of art anywhere in the world." This unique, 24-hour video installation, winner of the Golden Lion Award at the 2011 Venice Biennale, now belongs to MoMA's collection. The two men sat in conversation at MoMA's second-floor atrium to introduce a two-hour press preview of the installation.

A fast-paced montage of film clips--some obscure, others easily recognizable--The Clock draws from an international array of film, from the silent through contemporary eras, from Charlie Chaplin to Christopher Walken. This work of sly visual and sound editing unfolds real time before our eyes, each minute synced to our actual time and announced in exact order, each scene or image bearing literal and/or metaphoric connection to time and timepieces.

If you missed The Clock in its European presentations, in Boston or at last summer's Lincoln Center Festival, you've got another chance to catch it this winter from Decemer 21 through January 21, 2013. In addition to showings during public hours as well as some continuous screenings (see schedule here), MoMA will offer a special presentation of The Clock in its Contemporary Galleries on New Year's Eve beginning at 10:30am and running continuously through 5:30pm on New Year's Day. (Click here for information on after-hours admission.)

Marclay--an American-born multimedia artist, now based in London--edited film material, collected by assistants, over a three-year process he describes as "tedious but simple." He used sound to facilitate his enchanting transitions from clip to clip. For instance, for an illusion of continuity, he might overlap the native sound of one scene--say, the resonance of church bells--with the opening of the following scene.

How many discrete clips does The Clock contain? Marclay hasn't a clue and does not care.

"After I was done with the project, I didn't want to sit there and count them," he says. "All those statistics are less important than the actual experience."

That experience can be heady and surreal as well as richly entertaining. Images of clocks and watches, the ordinary and the ornate, alternate with motifs that suggest movement and speed (various types of vehicles) or the fluid possibilities of transition (entrances and exits; sleeping and waking; crossing a street; walking or playing on the sand at water's edge.)

Repeat viewers can tell you their favorite times of day. Moments of wit and humor or gripping suspense abound. Familiar actors and film scenes pop up, here and there, triggering memories that call up your personal experiences of time. Tension builds to a crescendo as the video approaches noon (as I witnessed today) and, reportedly, midnight. Around about the witching hours of three or four in the morning, Marclay says, "things get kind of weird."

Marclay suggests that The Clock is best approached and appreciated not as a marathon event but, rather, a work each viewer can tailor to the rhythm of his or her own life.

"You don't have to see it from beginning to end," he advises. "There is no beginning, and there is no end."

It took me a half-hour to figure out how The Clock was messing with my head--dazzling me while also making me feel antsy. Here's a video installation using bits of film to break amorphous time into its components, lining up each of those bits, one after the next, and insisting on giving each its visualized or spoken time-stamp. While cleverly celebrating the legacy and magic of cinema, The Clock resists acting like film--that is, it does not help us swoon and forget. It keeps us focused on the literal, linear passage of time. In that way it is, like Marclay's editing process, intermittently "tedious but simple," creating, even regimenting, a form of order out of chaos.

Arrive when you can, watch as much as you care to, and leave when it suits you. Each regular showing--free with museum admission--can accommodate 130 visitors and up to 170, if you include standing room.

A few important notes of caution, though. Prepare for a long wait to get in. MoMA promises live online reports on the state of the queue here and via Twitter @TheClockatMoMA.

Also, MoMA's sofas aren't particularly comfy--inadequate back support--but if you race in and grab a corner of a sofa, as I did, you might be able to angle your body in a way that will suffice for an hour or two. Sit on the floor, if you like. You can't bring drinks or snacks. Use the restroom before you enter the gallery; if you go out for a break, you forfeit your place. To re-enter, you'll have to stand on line again. Your youngsters might enjoy The Clock in intervals of reasonable length, but be aware that there is some profanity and nudity. 

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Wellfleet, MA set to welcome new dance fest

Fleet Moves Dance Festival by The Movement Party

Pioneering dancers Zena Bibler and Katie Schetlick plan to bring a new dance festival to the little fishing town of Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Bibler writes, "We are serving a community that has little to no dance programming, but we are also benefiting from the opportunity to create singular dance experiences out in nature--dunes, kettle ponds, broken down railroad bridges...."

We are bringing a really great team of dancers (mostly from New York City) to engage in a residency for the first four days in order to create new work and class structures for the festival over the following four days. Some collaborators include Brandin Steffensen, Jeremy Finch, Abigail Levine, Stephanie Fungsang, members of the Yaa Samar Dance Company, and more. Plus we'll be teaming up with local teachers and performers to create a festival that really is in, around, and for the town of Wellfleet.

Fleet Moves, the co-directors promise, will "set the town in motion with all-day programming that includes daily classes, indoor and outdoor performances, a visual art exhibition, film screenings, and a closing night dance party."

To learn more about Fleet Moves and to support its Kickstarter campaign, click here and here.