iLAB 2007 Artist in Residence Program

iLAND- interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance announces the public engagement of the iLAB 2007 Artist in Residence Program: The City From a Plants Perspective: Mapping NYC as Native Flora.

Collaborators:
Lise Brenner, Choreographer, NYC
Ulrich Lorimer, Curator, Native Plants, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, NYC
Katrina Simon, Landscape architect and visual artist, Sydney, Australia
Jonathan Zalben, Composer and sound artist, NYC.

iLAB 2007 is based on the concepts that most people organize their activities via mental maps (wait for the train here; get off in front of the stairs at 14th Street) and that maps are creative projects, capable of uncovering unseen aspects of even the most well-traveled landscape. Tracking native plants in New York City makes for an exponential rise in perceiving (and valuing) vacant lots, wind and migratory bird patterns, and some of the city’s many obscured histories. iLAB 2007 uses the presence of poplars, pokeweed, and Indian hemp as the horticultural trigger for movement-based, sound-based, and design-based data collection about the urban habitats of these and other native plants. Join iLAB 2007 on one or both excursions to the outermost edges of the outer boroughs for creative field study and collective map-making.

Dates, Times, Location:

12 – 5pm Sunday, September 30, 2007 at Floyd Bennett Field / Ryan Visitor’s Center and 4 – 7pm Friday, October 5, 2007 at Coney Island / Nathan’s

Events are FREE and open to the general public and will happen rain or shine.

Directions and Transportation:

Floyd Bennett Field: 2 to Flatbush Avenue/Brooklyn College, then Q35 bus to the Ryan Visitor’s Center/Aviator Sports Complex. We will meet inside the Ryan Visitor’s Center. For more information on Floyd Bennett Field, see www.nyharborparks.org/visit/flbe.html

BIKE: Greenway (Class I bike route) along Flatbush Ave.

CAR: Take Belt Parkway to Exit 11S, then Flatbush Ave south.

Coney Island: D, F, N, Q to Stillwell Avenue. Follow the exit signs to Surf Avenue. You will see Nathan’s across the street. We will gather at the seating to the right of the food services.

For more information, click here or call 212-375-8283.

iLAND is a not for profit organization conceived and formed by choreographer Jennifer Monson in 2004. The organization’s mission is to investigate the power of dance, in collaboration with other fields, to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world. iLAND, a dance research organization with a fundamental commitment to environmental sustainability as it relates to art and the urban context, cultivates cross-disciplinary research among artists, environmentalists, scientists, urban designers and other fields.

iLAB 2007 is supported in part by the Robison Foundation.

Jennifer Monson
Artistic Director
iLAND-interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance

We oughta be in pictures!

An announcement from Chez Bushwick

Do you consider yourself a part of the New York City dance community?

Attend a photoshoot on Sunday, September 23, 2007, 2pm SHARP, at Bryant Park, Northeast Quadrant.

Dancers, Choreographers, Teachers, Administrators, Producers, Critics, Audience Members, Patrons, Technicians, Composers, Collaborators, AND ANYONE INVOLVED WITH DANCE

For further information, click on Chez Bushwick (USA) or Sarma (Belgium), the event's co-producers.

Support for Chez Bushwick's 2007-2008 season is supported, in part, by the Cultural Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

With the support of The Flemish Ministry of culture, sports and media, department arts and heritage.

Congratulations are in order!

clipped from www.dtw.org

Congratulations to all of our 2007 New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards winners. You do us proud! (Click here for list of recipients as well as links to full citation and bio details and a list of prior winners.)

And big hugs to my fellow Bessie Awards nomination committee members* for being such a smart and remarkably congenial team this year. Serving on this dynamic committee for my second year has been a stimulating experience, and I look forward to my coming year of service, which will conclude my term.

The sight of everyone last night at the Joyce Theater gave me good cheer. And now to everyone who makes dance or loves dance, I wish a very happy, rewarding new season.

Love,

Eva :-)

(*Co-chairs: Carla Peterson, Laurie Uprichard and Martin Wechsler; Wayne Ashley, Elise Bernhardt, Lili Chopra, Rachel Cooper, Joan Finklestein, Vallejo Gantner, Stephen Greco, Iréne Hultman, Nicky Paraiso, David Parker, Georgianna Pickett, Yoko Shioya, Sally Sommer, Ivan Sygoda, Charmaine Warren, Marýa Wethers, Eva Yaa Asantewaa and Susan Yung.)

Wade and Twist go for the gut

Jeremy Wade's new show in the close quarters of Joyce SoHo this week (...and pulled out their hair) got me in the gut. That's nothing new. Most people find Wade's unrelentingly spastic, grotesque choreography viscerally wrenching. But what really set me off this time was one dancer's horrendous, nearly endless sobbing wail. Humans must be hardwired to respond at gut level to an enormous expression of distress like this--or perhaps it was just me. It was inescapably horrifying and exhausting to listen to her. It's important for certain artists to show us anti-beauty and rip us out of our security, and Wade has brilliantly devised ways to do so. As others have noted, his own uprooting from the U.S.--he now lives and works in Berlin--seems to fit what he's about. The season concludes this Sunday with an 8pm performance.

Master puppet theater artist Basil Twist's Bessie Award-winning Dogugaeshi has returned to Japan Society, running now through September 22. I was entranced by layer after layer after layer of painted screens, each one parting and sliding and revealing the next layer behind it, seemingly without end. I was charmed by the tilting, dancing candles and the all-too-elusive white fox with the huge, almond-shaped eyes. But what really got me in the gut was the twist at the end--which I won't give away, on the chance that it might just grip you the way that it gripped me and move you to tears. I am in awe of this artist.

Let's be indulgent

Dance critic Tobi Tobias reminisces about her early encounter with two of her first loves--ballet and sewing thread--in Thread: Personal Indulgences No. 2, part of a series running monthly for a year on her SEEING THINGS blog site.

Funny thing: As a child, I had the same fascination with and fondness for the gleaming colors of sewing thread collections--not individual spools--and the same lack of interest in sewing itself!

Check back periodically for more of Tobi's writing on indulgences and--what is it? dance?--at ArtsJournal.com.

Only the great know Brooklyn

In this video interview, Jonah Bokaer of Chez Bushwick talks with blogger Doug Fox of GreatDance.com.

Dancing Tableaux Vivants

Literature and art scholar Arden Reed and Bill T. Jones will present "Dancing Tableaux Vivants" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Wednesday, January 16, 2008. Time: 6pm
Admission: $23

In a speed-driven and visually saturated culture, how do we slow down long enough to have meaningful encounters with aesthetic objects? This presentation examines strategies visual artists use to prolong our gaze. An accompanying performance will explore the spaces between motion and stillness.