New life for Ohio Theater

SoHo Theater Is Reborn in the West Village
by Rachel Lee Harris, The New York Times, February 20, 2011

Egypt: The Cultural Revolution

Egypt: The Cultural Revolution

by Robyn Creswell, The New York Times, February 10, 2011

From tears to action

A heartbreaking performance

by Paul Nagle, ICISCS blog, January 23, 2011

Facebook de-friends figurative art?

Art School Runs Afoul of Facebook's Nudity Police

by Miguel Helft, The New York Times, February 18, 2011

A piece of East Village cultural history threatened

Preservationists Focus on a Little Brick House

by Suzanne Rozdeba, The New York Times, February 18, 2011

Bonnefoux and McBride to receive Ilona Copen Award

On March 22, at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, New York International Ballet Competition (NYIBC) will celebrate the life and achievements of Ilona Copen, late Founder and Executive Director Emerita. The evening will feature performances by dancers from American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble, Joffrey Ballet, Limón Dance Company, New Jersey Ballet and North Carolina Dance Theatre, including several NYIBC alumni, followed by a Dinner/Dance.

A highlight of the event will be the presentation of the first Ilona Copen Award to Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride, in honor of their contributions to the lives and artistry of young dancers, and to the world of dance in general. The Award will be presented by Virginia Johnson, Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Click here for more information on this event and ticketing. 

Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux
(photo courtesy of NYIBC)

Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux was born in France and began his dance training at the age of 10 at the School of the Paris Opera Ballet. At age 14 he joined the company, and by age 21 was named Danseur Etoile. Bonnefoux danced with the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets before being invited by George Balanchine to dance with New York City Ballet. After 10 years with NYCB, Bonnefoux joined the School of Music at Indiana University as chairman and artistic director of the ballet department. Since 1983 he has been the artistic director of the ballet company and school at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua NY. In 1996 he joined North Carolina Dance Theatre as artistic director and was named president in 2003.  He and his wife, Patricia McBride, have added new works to NCDT's repertoire, have attracted talented dancers from all over the world, and championed the effort to build a new facility for the company. In June of 2010, NCDT opened the Patricia McBride & Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance.

Patricia McBride began her ballet training in her hometown of Teaneck NJ, before receiving a scholarship to the School of American Ballet. Within a year of joining the company, she danced a solo in The Figure in the Carpet, created for her by Balanchine. McBride attained the rank of soloist in 1960 and by 1961, at age 18, she became the youngest principal dancer in NYCB. She spent 3 decades with the company, and created leading roles in many memorable ballets, including Harlequinade, Tarantella, the "Rubies" section of Jewels, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Coppelia, Union Jack, Who Cares?, and Vienna Waltzes. Jerome Robbins choreographed principal roles for her in his Dances at a Gathering, In the Night, The Goldberg Variations, Dybbuk, Opus 19 and The Four Seasons. Her years of performing under Balanchine's direction have gained her the expertise necessary to restage many of his master works. McBride has been associate artistic director of NCDT since 1996 and also serves as a master teacher at NC Dance Theatre School of Dance and Chautauqua Ballet's School of Dance. She is married to Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and they have two children.

New York International Ballet Competition

Educating, mentoring and providing performance and career advancement opportunities since 1984.

Founded by Ilona Copen and Igor Youskevitch

New York International Ballet Competition (NYIBC) is a three-week intensive professional training, performance and artistic education program for forty-eight talented young dancers from countries around the world, all of whom receive full scholarships. NYIBC nurtures promising dancers aged 17 to 24 from all ethnicities, providing them with an exceptional opportunity to completely focus on training to perform at their highest artistic level. The contemporary duet form and the classical pas de deux are the core of the repertory NYIBC participants learn from world renowned coaches under high standards of fairness. In addition, NYIBC attracts hiring artistic directors and choreographers who are confident that a dancer who has been mentored and trained at NYIBC can endure the rhythm of work and life in a ballet company. Beyond having access to extraordinary performance and career advancement opportunities, during their time at NYIBC the dancers form a versatile international company in which lifelong associations are born.

For more information, visit the NYIBC website.

Looking at "Madness," again

It's that nutty Danspace Project again, presenting PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness, Part 1 - Absurdity & Wit, curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor, this time with New York's Ursula Eagly and Minneapolis's Chris Schlichting sharing a show. Okay, now that's out of the way.

I really think you should encounter the Eagly team's Group Dynamics and Visual Sensitivity without a lot of preparation. So I'm only going to say that I loved it for the way it flips and shuffles two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality. Its guided imagery approach is a presentational, storytelling idea that works, perhaps to a scary degree, and we're invited to join the artists in making it work. It can be an amazing experience. (Created by Eagly in collaboration with Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Jesse Harold, Abby Harris Holmes and Jeremy Holmes).

In the solo Public Hair, Schlichting's immediate advantage is that he looks and moves like the kind of guy whose face might end up on the front page of a tabloid newspaper for all the wrong reasons. Bursting through the front door, he looms in the silent space, a figure with no discernible standout features, his arms hanging listlessly at his sides, his buttoned-down shirt and pullover sweater and plain dark slacks containing him but saying nothing at all about him.

And yet, as you watch Schlichting trace the air around his lips--as if he's applying Chapstick or even lipstick--he gives you the creeps. The circling gesture grows larger, jerkier, taking in the entire head. Just as it becomes quite violent in force, he retracts his energy and simply drifts away to other unusually odd and suspicious postures and gestures.

Schlichting is a maker of images bent and broken, an interesting crafter of tiny and big things. He relates to the church's space quite well, in unexpected ways, as well as ways that make you want to get out the cleaning supplies and scrub it down.

But the weirdest thing for me was leaving St. Mark's and having a stranger approach me at the door.

"Is the early show over?" he asked.

"Well, yes, the show's over," I replied.

"What was it about?"

A combination of my exhaustion from an unexpectedly demanding day and the effects of Eagly's piece had left me desperately sleepy and less than articulate. And besides, how was I even to begin explaining "PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness, Part 1 - Absurdity & Wit, curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor, this time with New York's Ursula Eagly and Minneapolis's Chris Schlichting sharing a show" to some guy lurking outside the door?

(Earlier in the day, I had struggled to explain "PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness, Part 1 - Absurdity & Wit, curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor, this time with New York's Ursula Eagly and Minneapolis's Chris Schlichting sharing a show" to my sister-in-law. But don't worry: My sister-in-law's a smart cookie, and that eventually worked out well.)

I looked at this guy and mumbled something vague, and that seemed to be enough. But then he asked me:

"Would it be appropriate for a small child?"

I'm ashamed to say that, just to get away from him, I quickly told him yes.

In truth, I couldn't figure out if this show would be appropriate for a small child. Most likely not, but that might depend on the child and, really, how small are we talking?

It was all way too much for me.

Racing away from him, I thought about it: Geeze, I'm not even sure this show was appropriate for me, let alone a small child. (I'm not kidding: I woke up from a quite frightening dream in the middle of the night....)

Later, I wondered if this guy wasn't part of the show...

If you happen to encounter him outside St. Mark's, do let me know.

Ursula Eagly and Chris Schlichting: A Shared Evening continues tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
Second Avenue and Tenth Street, Manhattan
(directions)