Gibney's DoublePlus: Wesley Chavis and Cori Olinghouse

Wesley Chavis in his solo, Ku In Tuo Muah,
a DoublePlus presentation of Gibney Dance,
curated by Dean Moss
(photos: Scott Shaw)

In Ku In Tuo Muah, soloist Wesley Chavis's "physicalizing [of] his worship"--to use Gibney DoublePlus curator Dean Moss's words--adopts a widespread human practice with ancient origins, still active, for example, in the Black churches of Chavis's own Southern upbringing. Worship of higher, disembodied powers is often a practice of the body, and extreme, transcendent states of mind have always been powerfully accessed through the body, say in ritual dancing or ingestion of sacred hallucinogens. 

Ku In Tuo Muah, like most dance works I get to see, might have many behind-the-scenes influencers and supporters. But the few program credits--for "concept, audio/visual design and, of course, performance--go to Chavis solely, no stated collaborators. For the audience, this solo offers a privileged, if complicated, view of a path engaged upon decidedly alone. It's an internal, private, abstract exploration with challenges only one man can know.

Even the sounds that arise from this exploration are sounds of the breathing and gasping (and maybe unseen crying) of a human body. The emphasis on peeling off and shedding articles of clothing suggests continuous self-transformation and digging down to the person beneath persona beyond the grip and labeling of an outside world.

Stopping to remove his shoes and shirt is the first thing Chavis does as he walks through the door into the theater called Studio H at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center. It's like watching a weary man come home.

At first, he does not enter the portion of the space directly in front of the audience seats and will not for a long time. Instead, he occupies that stage-left area near the mirrors. So we must look over, slightly sideways, to watch him. It's a brilliant distancing device. You see me, but you have to work a little for it. I'm still over here in my somewhat private space, and I'm going to make you feel like the voyeurs you are.

So we watch as he proceeds to disturb and distort the functional harmony of his body, and we watch the wrenching and shedding and listen to the ragged gasps. His entrance to the main section of the space, which is covered in shiny, black plastic introduces more sound--the noise of him scrunching that floor covering as he continues to contort and scrunch up his body.

At the end, Chavis simply gathers up his clothing and exits the theater, remaining someone seen with the physical eyes but not really known--an impressive, even beautiful, but remote performer. His dance, his ritual, remained--for me, at least--a journey monitored but not truly shared, and I note that with acceptance and respect.

Cori Olinghouse (above and below)
in GRANDMA
(photos: Scott Shaw)

What Cori Olinghouse calls Clown Therapy draws from The Fool's power to look at things sideways upside down and dismantle the everyday mundane and how we habitually see it. Her GRANDMA--an interdisciplinary piece for herself, Martita Abril and Kate Watson Wallace--is wacky without (for the most part) being funny. It really isn't clowning in the conventional manner. Its pace is most often glacial with stiff, stooped, dazed dancers shambling about a space littered with cheap snack food. Their overpowering, face-obscuring wigs and lipstick pink costumes, the recognizable snack food product placement, though--that's where the funny would normally be situated. The clown proffering little plastic-wrapped cupcakes could not be more pathetic as she apparently cannot bring herself to approach more than two people in the audience, her feet repeatedly colliding with the plastic cups that earlier exploded onto the floor right in front of us.

My sympathetic attention cleaves to one performer momentarily and sadly stuck facing a corner, as if in shame, confusion or both. The old-fashioned tv screen at the center of it all gives back nothing but static. Attempts to mop up the mess--or stuff slices of Wonderbread under one's wig--are futile, half-hearted and soon abandoned. The overall ineptitude and visual disarray speak to a growing upheaval at the core of something, and that must be the therapy Olinghouse chooses to agitate.

Olinghouse's inclusion of two pop hits--George Michael's "Father Figure" and Wham!'s "Everything She Wants"--will launch an army of earworms, I can attest. The songs underscore a displeasure with warped values, excess consumption and the detritus it generates.

Wesley Chavis + Cori Olinghouse concludes tonight with a performance at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (entrance: 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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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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Interview with Korean dancer-shaman Hi-ah Park

At the initiation ceremony, the minyong was placed leading onto the upstage portion of the house as a bridge between the heaven and the earth. To test my psychic ability and to determine if I could identify the deities who had descended on me, my Godmother and her assistant shaman, who serves as a messenger, sat at the end of the minyong, in a sense ending in heaven. A straw mat was placed downstage. Each question asked by the head shaman was repeated by her assistant. Instead of answering the questions directly, I began dancing. Then, kneeling down on the straw mat, I answered the questions orally. The dance seemed to heighten the trance state so that my answer came without thinking as if I know everything already.

The first question was, “If you become a shaman, through which gate will you enter?”

I started singing in an occult nature, previously unknown to me. Again I danced until possessed and knelt down to wait for the next question.

--Hi-ah Park as interviewed by Lauren W. Deutsch

Read more at:

Meeting With Sanshin:
An Interview with Hiah Park, Lover of the Mountain God
by Lauren W. Deutsch, Kyoto Journal, 1993

Last workshops of the year with Eva: NYC and PA

Upcoming Workshops 

with Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Ace of Cups from World Spirit Tarot
by Lauren O'Leary and Jessica Sczuka Godino
Llewellyn Publications, 2001

Saturday, October 25 

• When Bad Dreams Happen to Good People (Fort Washington, PA)

Join Eva at Diane Brandt Wilkes's Northeastern Tarot Conclave 2014 for a demonstration of the use of Tarot symbols in harnessing and directing the power of the nightmare. Other workshop facilitators include Rachel Pollack ("Mirroring the Dream") and Paula Chaffee Scardamalia (From Dreams to Tarot and Back Again").

Get complete program, schedule and registration information here.

Saturday, November 8

• Image & Psyche: Through the Portal (Brooklyn, NY)

Guided by Eva in safe community space, take a shamanic journey into the realm of Tarot and other oracular symbols to discover your own wellspring of creativity, wisdom, healing and transformation. Open to participants at all levels of experience with Tarot--from newbies to experts.

Listen to an audio preview here.

To inquire about registration, use Eva's Contact form here.

luciana achugar and the uses of the erotic

A day or two before the opening of luciana achugar's OTRO TEATRO at New York Live Arts, I received an email from the theater's publicist, requesting that critics not divulge sensitive information about the "surprises" in the production. Not only will I abide by that request, I'm not going to tell you much at all.

I think it fair, though, that you know the work lasts around three hours without a break, just in case you have, say, a babysitter issue, like a dance artist in last night's audience. But don't worry; you can come and go for pit stops as you please. You can even get up for a drink in the lobby and bring it back to your seat.

Why you'd actually need a drink to sit with something as sense-filling, dizzying and sometimes impactful as OTRO TEATRO, something meant to get you high, is a serious question.

A ritual of shamanic transformation, OTRO TEATRO unfolds as...

solo/network/field

whirling dervish crossed with Sheela na gig

sights and sounds of varying amplitudes

darkness and light

being and performing

Body standing in for body and body standing in for Body

breaking and building

vagina punk and hippie apocalypse

OTRO TEATRO continues nightly through Saturday at 7:30pm. For ticket information, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

MELT...with you

A sampler of the many imaginative workshops

from Movement Research's MELT Winter 2012 

(January 2-20)

Chris Aiken
An Eco-poetic Approach to Dance Improvisation and Performance

In this movement workshop we will explore awareness and intention through the development of perceptual acuity in relationship to our inner and outer landscapes. We will examine the delicate relationships between our poetic imagination and our sensory systems. The basis of my approach is that composition and performance are ecologically rooted acts. Our imagination grows from where and how we exist. Movement, story, image and gesture are imbedded in the relationships that are evolving all around us.  Come ready to dance, perceive, perform and imagine.

Keith Hennessy
Improvisation as Potential Shamanism     SOLD OUT/WAIT LIST OPEN

Five days of contemplative embodiment, intensive breathwork, fake healing, endurance shaking, post-contact, disco and séance, all in the attempt to invigorate improvisation practice for dancers, choreographers, and performance makers. Shamanism, in a general usage, refers to the ritual/spiritual practices of working with forces and energies, unseen and poetic, of transforming space and time to shift meaning and perspective, of communicating with the dead or not-human. Contemporary improvisation and performance practices often engages the same intentions. Let's dance in the borderlands of anti-systemic knowledge, magic, real and fiction, contagion and exchange, and various states of presence. Dance class is a ritual, potentially.

DD Dorvillier
Touch Move Talk Write: open studio practices

This workshop focuses on generating new practices through touching, moving, talking, and writing. We will shape each practice with simple rules and apply different sequences and durations, giving equal time to all four aspects. By pushing the notion of practice to extremes, one begins to understand assumptions about style, body, self, technique, unspoken rules, expertise, etc. etc... The aim is to proliferate unexpected results, to try many things quickly, and to foment revolution. Please don't come without a notebook and a pen.

Miguel Gutierrez
INEFFABLE INTANGIBLE SENSATIONAL

This workshop looks at some of the ways in which Miguel Gutierrez approaches a practice of movement and improvisation in his work. Working from the proposition that dance is a mode of perceptual inquiry, and working against the idea of dance as a non-verbal "language," students will be led through a series of movement explorations that prioritize sensation, non-rational action, and that trigger automatic, unprepared physical response. Some of the questions that guide this workshop are: What does movement "do" and how does it operate as a framework for complicated, nuanced, embodied meaning?

For full program, schedule and registration details about these and other MELT Winter workshops, click here.

Spotlight on: Shamanic Movement

Sonali Sultana performing at Rakkasah, October, 2011 (photo: Carl Sermon)

Shamanic Movement
by Sunny Chapman/Sonali Sultana

At age 61, I am strong and flexible, full of energy, and look younger than I did fifteen years ago. It's all due to the healing movement that I practice, developed from my studies of many dance styles and energy healing modalities. I call it Shamanic movement, and I want to share it with you.

In 1998, my life ground to a complete halt. I'd always been very active-- dancing, biking, practicing martial arts. I was something of a workaholic, but now I found myself totally disabled. It started with getting hit by a car, an accident from which I never quite recovered.

At first, I dealt with constant pain that seemed unrelated to the accident. I noticed I was always tired. A few doctor visits revealed slight  hypothyroidism but nothing that would explain how I felt. Things seemed to slide downhill. Finally, one morning, I woke up and found that I could not walk. I could not straighten my back. If I tried to stand up, searing pain shot up my legs.

There began a much more intense round of ER visits, doctor visits, medical tests, MRIs and CT scans. Lupus and MS were ruled out, and I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. For the next five years, I walked with a cane-- when I walked, which was as little as possible. I couldn't sit upright. The only way to keep the pain bearable was by taking medications so strong I slept twelve or more hours a day, and when I was awake, I really wasn't. I no longer had a life. I became very depressed and gained a lot of weight.  My friends drifted away one by one, tired of my endless misery. My world became very small and sad.

One day, lying in bed and really wanting to take a shower but too exhausted to move I thought, "I can't live like this anymore.” I decided I had to try to find a way to make myself well--something doctors hadn't been able to do in all these years.

The first thing I did was contact a Reiki master and ask her to come to my home. She did, and the result of her Reiki treatment was amazing. I got up after the treatment, walked downstairs and ate a meal sitting in a chair for the first time in years. Next I asked her to train me so that I could treat myself, which I do to this day.

I knew I needed to move my body, but I still couldn't walk without a cane. I found a hospital that had water aerobics classes and began to attend, first once a week, then twice a week. I started to regain enough strength to get out and walk a bit, beginning to reconnect with the natural world. I changed my diet and started to lose the weight I'd gained.

Then came the really big change. I left my marriage. As a result, my insurance coverage changed, and I gained access to a new network of doctors. The first one I saw said that she agreed that I had Fibromyalgia but that the severe pain in my legs had another source. An MRI of my lumbar spine revealed one herniated and one fully ruptured disk that I'd been living with for six years!

Now my recovery moved much more rapidly. That doctor, Lisa Bartoli at The Continuum Center For Health And Healing, treated my disk injuries non-surgically, sent me for months of physical therapy and then said to me, "Now you need to start Pilates and do it for the rest of your life."

I began taking Pilates at Greenhouse Holistic and later added yoga. One day I took a bellydance class, and I was instantly hooked. I loved it. Within a couple of years I was dancing in a troupe and, not long after that, I began solo performance. Along the way, I was lucky enough to study with many wonderful, world-renowned teachers, and study related forms like trance dances from North Africa–zaar and guedra. I learned Sufi whirling, studied Tibetan Yoga, learning poses that are supposed to be the secret of eternal youth and applied all of the forms of movement to my daily practice of spiritual, healthful movement.

Having subbed for many teachers, I began teaching bellydance classes in the Liberated Movement program at Battery Dance. I completed a  teacher training program with Tamalyn Dallal and was certified to teach bellydance. At the same time I was developing the new practice I'm teaching at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn, Shamanic Movement. Shamanic Movement combines all of the various practices that contributed to my recovery and current state of high energy and healthy well-being. It's a style of movement that draws a lot from bellydance but is more attuned to the spiritual elements of bellydance than stage performance.

Shamanic Movement is designed to bring the mind, body and soul into harmony and help people to look and feel their very best. It's a movement style that is gentle on the body and allows the practitioner to move at her or his own pace. It's the reason I look as good as I do at age 61 and feel great.  Meditative dance promotes good health, stress reduction, strength and flexibility, and generally improves well-being in all areas of life. I want to share it with the world.

The work involves stretching, practicing the basic steps and isolations of Oriental Dance, accessing Reiki energy and exploring different types of movement, all in a friendly, supportive atmosphere. It’s suitable for all ages and every level, from beginner to advanced dancer, and those who believe they aren't dancers.

Mondays, 6:30pm-8pm

Drop-in fee: $15   Five-class card: $60

Wear comfortable clothing, go barefoot or wear dance sandals. If you have a veil, please bring it. There will be veils to borrow but possibly not enough for everyone.

If you have questions, please click here to email me.

Triskelion Arts
118 North 11th Street Studio B
http://www.triskelionarts.org/?page_id=2473
(map/directions)

BIO

Sunny Chapman (aka Sonali Sultana) is a visual artist, Reiki healer and dancer living in Brooklyn NY. Chapman studied Cechetti method ballet and modern dance in Chicago in the 70's and later taught ballet at a Chicago City College and performed in numerous venues.

Later in life, she discovered Arabic/Middle Eastern dance, also know as Bellydance, and embarked on an intensive study of the ancient art form, studying not only the theatrical and nightclub styles of performance such as Raqs Sharqi but also healing trance dances of North Africa. She has studied with many notable teachers including Dalia Carella, Rachel Brice, Elena Lentini, Ranya Renee, Anahid Sofian, Andrea Anwar, and several members of the legendary Ibrahim Farrah's Near East Dance Company. In 2011, she completed a teacher training and teacher certification course with Tamalyn Dallall.

Chapman performed in the NYC troupe PURE (Public Urban Ritual Experiment) for 2-1/2 years and helped to create and performed in a theater show called Pure Reflections: Re-imagining Beauty that was staged at The University Settlement Theater and elsewhere.

Chapman currently performs with Andrea Anwar's Dancing Rubies troupe and has presented solo work in many theater shows and dance festivals. She brings training as a Reiki healer into her dance and approaches teaching dance as a healing art form. She presently teaches Arabic/Middle Eastern dance in the Liberated Movement program at Battery Dance Company studios  and teaches Shamanic Movement at Triskelion Arts  in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.