LCOOD: Summer fun with Liza, Teicher and talented teens

Ella Fitzgerald

Poster for Bob Fosse's Cabaret with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles

Here's a note about my one foray out, this season, to Lincoln Center Out of Doors, a free arts festival that, for many years, I used to haunt. Why only once this time? Well, I am now far less weather-tolerant than ever and quite over Gotham's punishing version of summer. This summer, I happen to be stuck in New York and not without whining. Considering that my notion of staycation definitely includes a ton of outdoor activities, I've been miserable.

But it turned out to be reasonably pleasant last evening as the sun vanished and students from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts--the Fame school--brought the Fosse in an all-out presentation of the jazz dance master's Sing, Sing, Sing number from DANCIN' (1978). Sanctioned by The Verdon Fosse Legacy, this ensemble performed as if sanctioned by God Herself. Which drew cheers and a standing-O from an army of buddies and family. Which brought unexpected tears to my eyes because young artists with supportive families.

The inspiring Caleb Teicher (Caleb Teicher & Company) followed with a trio of his dance pieces. This snappy size matters duet Small & Tall--Christine Flores and Lindsey Jones, respectively--showed off Teicher's penchant for goofy physical comedy. He's gifted at this himself with a studied finesse to the timing of movements and unique, offbeat detail--all of that making him the unmatched standout in his charming swing piece, Meet Ella. Originally a long, flowing duet with Nathan Bugh, it was presented last night as a quartet incorporating two women dancers, Macy Sullivan and Evita Arce. Sullivan and Arce have carefree gusto and were employed well throughout, but I was a little sorry to see them granted the tender, whirling, orbiting same-sex duet I had originally seen where Teicher partnered co-choreographer Bugh to Ella Fitzgerald's recording of "Midnight Sun." (I'm going to link to that song once again, as I've done before, because if you youngsters don't know it, you're missing something pretty great.) It's not that I don't want to ever see two women tackle this duet. It's that I specifically want Teicher + Bugh + Fitzgerald to dazzle me again.

If you get a chance to see this troupe, may it be in a closer, smaller setting. The Damrosch Park Bandshell isn't the best place for these dancers, though the Bzzz ensemble number--particularly a rousing duet between beatboxer Chris Celiz and tap improviser Jabu Graybeal--overrode the distance.

It was a long night, and I stayed only a few songs into the screening of Bob Fosse's television special for Liza Minnelli, Liza With A "Z" (1972). I ducked out while Liza took on "Son of A Preacher Man," a hit for English pop singer Dusty Springfield four years prior. But that and the first few numbers were enough to remind me of beloved Liza's big heart and underscore just how much freedom of expression white artists gained from studying Black people.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors concludes on August 11 and, in the meantime, wants to bring you several more cool performances for FREE. Click here for schedule details.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Kick those blues: Glatzer's "Alive & Kicking" helps brighten our dark time

When it previews next month at the 45th Annual Dance on Camera, a festival co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Dance Films Association, Susan Glatzer's Alive & Kicking (2016/USA) is sure to be a crowd-pleasing highlight. An expansive yet intimate look at contemporary swing dancing, the 84-minute documentary celebrates this practice and its community of freewheelers with their rollicking swing dance camps and competitions. Swing dancers depend on a network of international competitions to display their talents and build teaching careers, the only way they can monetize their artistry. The film depicts swing dance as a healing force in a society that has lost touch with touch itself--except where touch involves a fingertip and a screen. Glatzer eagerly argues for swing dance as a low-risk way to foster openness and trust between people of all kinds, a natural bridge across divides of race, ethnicity, gender, religion and politics.

The earliest moments of the film made me worry that Glatzer would confine her focus to young white people reclaiming a historic dance phenomenon that originated in Harlem's Black community, the product of Black genius and skill. But I'm glad I hung in with Alive & Kicking. Not only does this film respectfully address the Black roots of swing dance in Harlem's Lindy hop, but this history is often spoken for by Black dancers themselves, and the film lovingly includes clips of Frankie Manning, Lindy hop's great authority and ambassador, who passed in 2009. Glatzer's interviewees also note the scarcity of young Black swing dance students and performers today. They recognize the need to make their community an attractive, accessible source of opportunities for Black students and performers, an issue contemporary tap dance has also faced.

And, like tap, swing dance has a strong tradition of improv, of connecting with a new partner at one of those fun gatherings and the creative surprises those moments can hold. "You're sharing your imagination with someone else," says one of the dancers, and Glatzer shows us examples of first-time interplay between skilled dancers leading to mutual awe, gratitude and something quite a bit like love.

Alive & Kicking screens on Monday, February 6 (8:30pm) with Kristen Lauth Shaeffer's animated short, 349 (3 min). There will be a Q&A with Susan Glatzer. For tickets, click here.

For information about the complete Dance on Camera 2017 schedule of screenings and public events, click here.

Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street (north side, upper level), Manhattan
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Works by Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e, Caleb Teicher and Company at Gibney

Last night, at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, curator David Parker introduced his Double Plus evening as "a utopian event" and "not an ordinary combination of artists." Here we have Dylan Crossman (Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e), with his elite Cunningham/post-Cunningham pedigree. And then there's Caleb Teicher (Caleb Teicher and Company), a young Bessie-winning prince of tap collaborating with swing dance champion Nathan Bugh. Combining these disparate sensibilities and styles into one show is far from your everday New York programming. But what makes sense to Parker is that these artists take what we've come to expect from their respective art forms and ask more of them.

But first, Crossman asks something of us. The opening of [Insert Title] makes us crane our necks to see him and three fellow dancers--Sumi Clements, Jason Collins and Sarah Harrmann--lined up off to the far right of Gibney's theater space in light that both catches their flesh and surrounds it in murk. It's a theatrical attention-getter, though beyond that effect, its purpose remains unclear. When the dancers soon swarm into the central space directly in front of us, there's nothing reserved or shadowy about them. Squatting, lunging, cantilevering, they readily take the measure of a space now theirs to inhabit.

I'd been contemplating Lois Weaver's Long Table discussion format and had just watched Antonia's Line, the 1995 Dutch film where scenes of a dinner table teeming with various and sundry characters served as Weaver's inspiration. So I was amused to see a long table set up behind Crossman and his dancers. Dark, plain, bare and sturdy, it seemed to represent home or, at least, a base to touch, slouch upon, back up against, even mount and dance across in the encounters and confrontations that would ensue as a muddy audio recording--a speaking voice run backwards?--rambled on unhelpfully.

Left-right: Sumi Clements, Sarah Harrmann and Jason Collins
in Dylan Crossman's [Insert Title]
(photo: Scott Shaw)

This long table is the one constant in a variation of interpersonal arrangements. Encircling it, dancers move right up into or back away from one another's personal space. They gaze into one another's eyes as we both project what we think is happening and shy away from those projections. In fact, our own back-and-forth can render us watchers transparent to ourselves. We see ourselves seeing something that might or might not be there. And doesn't that feel odd? Shouldn't we mind our business? Well, if we should mind our business, what are we doing at a dance concert watching bodies in motion?

Well, Crossman and crew, especially feline Clements, are adroit postmodern movers. They master clean form while suggesting human narrative when bodies are in proximity to other bodies.

Meet Ella, then, makes the perfect follow-up--all about two male bodies in near-constant and joyous proximity, along for the swooping, sliding fun ride of recordings of Ella Fitzgerald singing live. And, yes, as a friend noted, the late great jazz vocalist gets a bio in the program notes. Rightly so. Her agile voice--with all its daredevil technique, its silky warmth and delectable playfulness--is an essential and equal partner here, in high form, as are Teicher and Bugh.

I had only ever seen the mercurial Teicher tap dance, a wonderful thing in itself. I had never seen Bugh; Meet Ella was my introduction to this lighthearted charmer. The two men, wearing regular two-toned oxford shoes, not tap shoes, make nonstop rhythmic "music" throughout their bodies. Swing dance, jitterbug, ballroom, even dashes of Nicholas Brothers virtuosity flow though the duet, powered by standards like "Our Love is Here to Stay," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and--so lusciously--the Lionel Hampton/Sonny Burke/Johnny Mercer "Midnight Sun."

Was there such a night?

It's still a thrill I don't quite believe;

But after you were gone

There was still some stardust on my sleeve!

Nobody sings it like Ella....

Saucy, sexy Meet Ella leaves us with stardust--a great performance and an instant classic.

Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e and Caleb Teicher and Company continue through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

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Swingin' New York

Swing Dance Clubs Go Retro in New York City
by Shira Dicker, The New York Times, December 22, 2011

Tribute to Frankie Manning, May 21

Tribute: Frankie Manning

PBS (WNET Channel 13, New York City) will broadcast a special tribute show about Lindy Hop master dancer Frankie Manning on May 21 at 10:30pm.

The documentary features the last major interview of Frankie Manning before his death, as well as precious archival footage of his dancing from the 1930s to 2009 in New York and other spots around the world. The legendary and phenomenal Swing dance scene from “Hellzapoppin” and a
phenomenal duet with his 76-year-old son Chazz will also be featured.