Verdensteatret's latest show leaves question marks

Verdensteatret's Bridge Over Mud
(photo courtesy of Verdensteatret)

Having seen Verdensteatret's wondrous audiovisual fantasia, And All the Question Marks Started to Sing (Dance Theater Workshop, 2011, review posted here), I looked forward to Bridge Over Mud, the Norwegian art collective's US premiere at BAM Next Wave. First shown in 2014 in Oslo, this award-winning production has some of the enchantments of Question Mark. It boldly engulfs and transforms its space, filling it with a combination of cleverly re-purposed objects, looming video imagery and otherworldly sounds, some played or vocalized live. Viewers may feel as if they have pulled chairs up to the edge of a dream an intelligent, sleeping machine might be having as its brain processes the multitude of physical things and environments--humans, not so much--that it has dealt with throughout its day and down through time.

The hour seems long. Bridge Over Mud strikes me as far murkier and less inviting than Question Mark, if no less strange. The looming, advancing shadows, the massive sculpted sliding panels, the mysterious imagery in the background are items that we in the audience regard and check off from an emotionally-glazed distance. I did initially enjoy the model train engines snaking along 195 feet of track throughout the space but got distracted recalling that I never had model trains as a child. But, at least, that memory formed a momentary bridge to what I was seeing. Dangling from flies to floor, giant strands of Polynesian leis--apparently made of tiles simulating puka shells--seemed at variance with the overall funereal atmosphere. But then, this is the machine's dream, and maybe only the machine can sort it all out.

Presented here in association with Wayne Ashley's provocative FuturePerfect Productions, Verdensteatret is Asle Nilsen, Lisbeth J. Bodd, Piotr Pajchel, Eirik Blekesaune, Ali Djabbary, Martin Taxt, Espen Sommer Eide, Torgrim Torve, Elisabeth Gmeiner, Niklas Adam, Kristine Sandøy, Thorolf Thuestad, Janne Kruse, Laurent Ravot and Benjamin Nelson.

Bridge Over Mud concludes tonight but is sold out. For information and standby ticket details, click here.

BAM Fishman Space

BAM Fisher/Fishman Space
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Out and about: Vermont Performance Lab's September festival

Dahlia Nayar
(photo courtesy of Vermont Performance Lab)

Vermont Performance Lab's Progressive Performance Festival (September 4-6) welcomes Lab resident artists Martin Chaput and Martial Chazallon, presenting the US premiere of The Round, "a 90-minute experimental site work that combines movement, media technology, theatricality and sound installation with community involvement."

Audiences members, each equipped with ear-buds and their own smartphone, follow instructions for individual choreographed journeys around downtown Brattleboro. These experiences, the artists suggest, "will interrogate and alter our relationship with a familiar mobile phone technology, raising questions about the uses and potentials implicit in its ubiquitous presence in our lives."

Other festival events include:

Schwanze-Beast by Cuban-American feminist performers Carmelita Tropicana + Ela Troyano--"equal parts performance, scientific lecture and installation...the future becomes a lens through which to examine our present cultural landscape. The status of the animal species and their civil rights is closely tied to climate change and the preservation of all species, as well as class issues, immigration, sexual preference, race and gender."

Dahlia Nayar's dance and sound installation, 2125 Stanley Street, "influenced in part by her experiences growing up outside of Chicago with parents from India and the Philippines."

Vermont Performance Lab is a new type of performance incubator in the foothills of Vermont. VPL takes creation of new work beyond the walls of the studio and into the community by fostering experimental approaches to research and performance.

For a complete description and schedule of VPL's Progressive Performance Festival events, click here.

The powerful art of sound

Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller and the Power of Sound
by John Wray, The New York Times, July 26, 2012

Ghosts in the machine

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing might be the most extravagant experience Dance Theater Workshop has ever hosted. The hour-long, enigmatic fantasia of theater, music and visual and sound art, created by Norway’s Bessie-winning Verdensteatret collective, commandeers nearly every surface of DTW’s performance space and explodes throughout its air.

DTW’s theater has been transformed into a complex machine that generates and splatters not only sounds but muted light, intense shadows and the roving, wall-high animations of ghostly imagery. In this highly functional display, the most prominent features are revolving wheels (bare or decorated in what appears to be dried flowers, leaves and/or feathers) that emit amplified bleats, thrums and other sounds as if hooked up to the shattered remains of a jazz band. Handlers--Hai Nguyen Dinh, Ali Djabbary, Gjertrud Jynge and Øyvind B. Lyse--manually spin some of these wheels and carefully attend to other matters. Sometimes they contribute vocalizations to the sonic layers.

While this is not officially a dance-oriented piece, movement looms large, quite literally, although I’m not talking about anything typically associated with the performing body. Rather, these human bodies serve the machine, and the machine and its effects dance without cease.

I found, nevertheless, an unmistakable dancerliness at moments when Jynge grasped one of the wheel stands and rose on her toes to vocalize into its crackling microphone. It seemed obvious that that stand could have been made short enough so that she wouldn’t have to strain to reach the mic. However, the clutching and the straining and the plastering of her torso against the stand and particular arch of her feet in her little boots seemed to be an essential part of the design. In other words, dance.

A co-presentation of Dance Theater Workshop, FuturePerfect and Performance Space 122, And All the Question Marks Started to Sing, with its multitude of recycled mechanical parts and contraptions, has a charming old-fashioned feel. And just look at those those angelic pigeons, that crazy little breeding gull, that accordion squeezing all by itself, the prayer beads clicking away in Djabbary’s hands. This baby is a machine, all right, but not from our slick, digital age. It’s made by artists. The beauty, the wit, the ingenuity go on forever.

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing continues tonight (7:30pm) and tomorrow (5pm) at DTW, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Hurry for your tickets! (information and ticketing)

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing is the inaugural event of FuturePerfect 2011, a new performance, art & technology initiative in New York City. Produced in partnership with leading national and international cultural institutions, FuturePerfect highlights new hybrid performance practices, media forms, and artistic ideas that emerge as digital technologies evolve and become ubiquitous in contemporary culture. And All the Question Marks Started to Sing is also presented as part of PS122’s 30th Anniversary Season.

Go into the light!

TAGR.TV Interviews Ernesto Klar

July 30, 2010


ERNESTO KLAR: RELATIONAL LIGHTS

December 15-21

3LD Art and Technology Center

80 Greenwich Street (near Rector Street), Manhattan

Luzes relacionais (Relational Lights) is an interactive audio-visual installation that explores our relationship with the expressional-organic character of space. The installation uses light, sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements. The work functions as a living organism with or without the presence and interactions of spectators. When viewers step outside the projected light-space, the system begins its own dialogue with space by means of extruding and morphing sequences of geometric light forms. And when viewers penetrate and interact with the projected light-space, a collective and participatory expression of space unfolds. Luzes relacionais amplifies the three-dimensional fabric of space by making it visible, audible, and tangible to participants. The resulting aesthetic experience encourages an unending relational process of shaping space among participants. Luzes relacionais is a hommáge to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark.

Gallery Hours: 12PM to 8pm and by appointment

Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 15 (6-8pm)

Directions to 3LD

Nearest subway stations are 1/R/W to Rector Street; 4/5 to Wall Street; J/M/Z to Broad Street; A/C to Broadway-Nassau; E to World Trade Center

Sounds good to me

Sound Tunnel: Avant-Garde Park Portrait
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, July 6, 2009

A Calming Presence Amid the Groans and Screeches
by Michael M. Grynbaum, The New York Times, July 6, 2009

How the Thunder Sounds
by Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times, July 6, 2009