Emily Nasrallah, 86

Emily Nasrallah, Lebanese Novelist and Activist, Dies at 86
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, March 16, 2018

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Aharon Appelfeld, 85

Aharon Appelfeld, Israeli Novelist Haunted by the Holocaust, Dies at 85
by Joseph Berger, The New York Times, January 4, 2017

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Hiep Thi Le, 46

Hiep Thi Le, Vietnamese Refugee Who Became Film Star, Dies at 46
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, December 23, 2017

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Kronos Quartet brings "My Lai" to BAM Next Wave

Tenor Rinde Eckert (left) as Hugh Thompson, Jr.
and musician Vân-Ánh Võ in My Lai
(photo: Richard Termine)

On the morning of March 16, 1968, U.S. army soldiers fired upon more than 500 unarmed civilians--elders, children, infants, women, some raped and mutilated--in the South Vietnamese hamlets of My Lai and My Khe. More innocents would have been slaughtered in this Vietnam War atrocity--since known as the My Lai Massacre--were it not for the witness and persistent intervention of a young American helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, Jr. His three descents into the chaos, though futile as attempts to halt the killing, ultimately saved lives, including, on his final landing, a young boy rescued from his dead mother's arms.

For Thompson's courageous efforts and his official reports of the massacre, he at first became a pariah in Nixon's America, as much a non-surprise as it is heartbreaking. His story inspired a concise, deeply affecting opera, My Lai, now in its New York premiere run at BAM Harvey Theater for BAM Next Wave. It was composed by Jonathan Berger with a libretto by fiction writer Harriet Scott Chessman for Kronos Quartet, tenor Rinde Eckert and Vân-Ánh Võ, a master performer of traditional Vietnamese string and percussion instruments.

Running at 70 minutes, the work suggests the dissonance between cultures--the flare-ups and gusts of Western strings set against Vân-Ánh Võ's measured, airy and delicate tones. Sounds converge and diverge; their players become factions physically separated by Eckert and the set the way Thompson's chopper, on its second descent, kept murderous soldiers from reaching potential victims. The set at the center of it all depicts a sterile hospital room: ceiling-to-floor white curtains, a couple of chairs, a table covered in prescription bottles. The curtains serve as screens for the ghostly shadowplay of helicopter blades and the gleam of wind-blown grasses. Here Eckert gives voice to an aging Thompson consumed by ugly memories and dying of cancer. The heroic pilot died in 2006.

Once Eckert parts the curtain and emerges before us, haunted and restless, the work maintains tight focus on him; the singer maintains his own tight grip in a performance of exacting force and endurance. He is almost never not singing, compulsively remembering, compulsively reporting, dreaming, desiring escape from the body, desiring, ironically, to share with his remembered young son the beauty of flight. He hallucinates his testimony as a game show.

Once you land, there's no turning back.... You can't just hover.

At one point, the bewildered Thompson asks, "How has this happened?" It's a question with no one good answer--or far too many. It resonates and disturbs as much today, in the Age of Trump, as then, in the Age of Nixon.

Kronos Quartet:
David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola) and Sunny Yang (cello)

Direction, set design: Mark DeChiazza and Rinde Eckert
Video projection design: Mark DeChiazza
Lighting design: Brian H. Scott

My Lai has one final performance, tonight at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here. For information on other BAM Next Wave events, click here.

BAM Harvey
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Women and trauma: Munyaneza's "Unwanted" comes to New York

Above: Holland Andrews (left) and Dorothée Munyaneza
perform the New York premiere of Unwanted
at Baryshnikov Arts Center.
Below: Munyaneza
(photos: Maria Baranova)

When women rise to speak difficult truths, we are told to sit down and shut up. When Black women rise to speak difficult truths, we are told to sit down and shut up. When Black African women....

Now here comes Dorothée Munyaneza (Compagnie Kadidi) who, as a child, escaped conflict-torn Rwanda, speaking of what men do to women and girls in war, same as it ever was. This woman will not comply. She will tell terrible stories told and entrusted to her by Tutsi women survivors and their children. In Unwanted, she joins American singer Holland Andrews, raising lacerating banshee voices against genocide and rape, raising angelic voices to embrace all in need of comforting.

The two figures emerged like shamans from the grim darkness of the theater at Baryshnikov Arts Center where Unwanted had its New York premiere over, sadly, just two evenings. Audience members had reached BAC, walking streets with views of the imposing towers of a newly glittery midtown West. Taking the elevator up to BAC's third floor and entering the theater felt like being sealed deep in a cave with healers intent on confronting you with everything you try best not to see. And sounds--Andrews' looping electronic artistry--came to you from all directions and temporal dimensions.

Many observers, it seems, are surprised to find the multi-talented Munyaneza so grounded and assured in her physical presence, so sophisticated in her aesthetic vision. Unwanted is only her second work of choreography; she was the talk of last year's Under the Radar festival for her first, Samedi Détente. But she is clearly an artist who knows her mission, mind and powers. There's more to come from this one, and in singer-musician Andrews--who cites Aretha Franklin, Björk and Diamanda Galás among her dearest influences--she has a fierce partner of equal authority and efficacy.

Choreography, in this case, covers all the ways the body reacts and responds in an environment of impossibility and possibility. Munyaneza's head and torso sharply recoiling from the words she has just hurled into a microphone as if receiving an answering blow. Or her body flattening itself against the portrait of a woman affixed to a tall slab of corrugated tin, like the metal sheeting of a humble roof. Or her fingers feverishly clawing that same painted image into shards of paper waste, needing to destroy every patch, every trace, before she can rest. Or the performers' bodies mobilizing their entire force, lashing phallic clubs against the ground or rhythmically, violently pounding them into vessels. It is, yes, also the breath traveling from its home in the chest to receiving air, carrying histories of violation, humiliation, refusal and isolation. Channeling stories of women who tell themselves they are alive and look around, each day, for something to laugh about. It is in the story of that laughter which, surrounded by unquestionable sadness, still declares "I am here. I stand my ground."

Music: Holland Andrews, Alain Mahé, Dorothée Munyaneza
Visual design: Bruce Clarke
Set design: Vincent Gadras
Lighting Design: Christian Dubet
Costume Design: Stéphanie Coudert

Unwanted is closed. For information on other Baryshnikov Arts Center fall season events, click here.

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Listen to their stories: women and the trauma of war

Im Heung-soon Explores the Horrors Women Endure in War
by Jason Farago, The New York Times, July 30, 2015

Sierra Leone-born ballerina Michaela DePrince featured in Glamour

Michaela DePrince
(photo: Alique for GLAMOUR)

BALLERINA MICHAELA DEPRINCE 

ON ACHIEVING HER DREAMS

GLAMOUR, August 2015

I Was Orphan Number 27:
Ballerina Michaela DePrince's Inspiring Story

by Erika Hayasaki

Michaela DePrince lost her family as a girl in Sierra Leone during the brutal civil war; now she’s a world-class ballerina, her triumph soon to be a Hollywood movie, Taking Flight. But her biggest goal? To inspire young girls through working with the Girl Scouts and War Child, a group that helps children in conflict zones. DePrince shares her journey in Glamour’s August issue, on national newsstands now and available digitally at glamour.com/app.

Despina Stamos: Dancing the immigrant experience

passTRESpass (2011)

directed by Jill Woodward

filmed in Athens, Greece 2009

20 minutes -- in English, French and Greek with English subtitles

Tens of thousands of immigrants and refugees make their way across the porous borders of Greece every year. Despina Stamos, a Greek American dancer, connects with a diverse group of immigrants in Athens and proposes a community dance performance. Their collaboration bridges communities from four continents and culminates in an experience that will touch their lives profoundly.

Support the work of Despina Stamos and the modern dance awareness society at their 2015 Benefit Gala (Monday, May 11, 6pm), including a "transcontinental live-stream dance performance" with Athen collaborators and silent auction.

Proceeds make possible a three-week movement workshop, performance and film project with refugees in Greece.

For complete information and tickets, click here.

Robert Stone, 77

Robert Stone, Novelist Inspired by War, Dies at 77
by Ashley Southall, The New York Times, January 10, 2015

Siegfried Lenz, 88

Siegfried Lenz, Novelist of Germany’s Past, Dies at 88
by William Yardley, The New York Times, October 10, 2014

Ana María Matute, 88

Ana María Matute, Spanish Novelist Marked by Civil War, Dies at 88
by William Yardley, The New York Times, June 30, 2014

Artists advocate Creative Time boycott

Over 100 Artists and Intellectuals Call for Withdrawal from Creative Time Exhibition
by Mostafa Heddaya, hyperallergic.com, June 10, 2014

Remembering photojournalist Camille Lepage

Bearing Witness, Losing Her Life
by Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times, May 13, 2014

Syrian refugee youth explore "King Lear"

Behind Barbed Wire, Shakespeare Inspires a Cast of Young Syrians
by Ben Hubbard, The New York Times, March 31, 2014

Miklos Jancso, 92

Miklos Jancso, Who Directed Stylized Films of War and Tyranny in Hungary, Dies at 92
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, February 1, 2014

A photo archive of the Palestinian experience

Photographs Tell a History of Palestinians Unmoored

by Isabel Kershner, The New York Times, November 28, 2013

Megan Kendzior calls us to "Witness"

Scenes from Witness by Megan Kendzior
Top photo by Crystal Edwards
Bottom photo by Victoria Sendra

Choreographer Megan Kendzior will present a new, full-length version of her ensemble work Witness, a Danspace Project commission, December 19-21. Although inspired by her visit to Auschwitz, Witness has broad and ongoing relevance. Kendzior considers it her form of protest against indifference. Its title can serve both as a noun and a command, a call to empathy and responsibility.

I began this piece in 2009 after I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, and it has had many different incarnations. For this commission by Danspace Project, I created a new work under the same name.

It's a form of research that involves specific first-hand accounts of Holocaust experiences that we then translate through our bodies and our voices to provide an embodied historical depiction through the memory of one woman, referencing trauma in her past. She summons these other beings into the space.

I'm questioning the role of the spectator. With full respect and honor to victims of genocide and trauma, I want to continue to tell stories that challenge our current behaviors. I'm asking you to watch what's hard to watch and to go through it.

Witness will be performed at 8pm, Thursday-Saturday, December 19-21. On Friday, December 20, Kendzior plans to offer an afternoon performance of a shortened version including some of her young students from Harlem and a talk with one of the very few Latvian survivors of the Holocaust. For complete information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (corner Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Arts careers for US veterans

War Theater, RepurposedVeterans Pursue Careers in the Arts

by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, November 10, 2013

Photojournalist studies roots of violence in men

A Congolese Rebellion Routed, a Photographer’s Work Continues

by Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times, November 5, 2013

Matiullah Turab: Afghan poet of defiance

An Afghan Poet Shapes Metal and Hard Words
by Azam Ahmed, The New York Times, August 18, 2013