Naharin's ‘Hora’

Ohad Naharin and Batsheva Come to BAM With ‘Hora’
by Brian Schaefer, The New York Times, March 2 2012

What's wrong with writing about architecture?

Why Don't We Read About Architecture?
by Allison Arieff, The New York Times, March 2, 2012

A tale of Tanaquil Le Clercq

Dancing Around the Truth
by Holly Brubach, The New York Times, February 15, 2012

Those roots-working Carolina Chocolate Drops

If I live to be 100, I'll never forget the show I saw last night at Schimmel Center for the Arts (Pace University). And if I do live to be 100, it will be, in part, thanks to the joy I get from the Grammy-winning Black roots music group Carolina Chocolate Drops.

On tour to promote their brand new CD for Nonesuch, Leaving Eden, the Drops offered up two hours of astonishing talent, skill, charisma and generosity. If you've only heard them on recording, you really need to get in the same room with them.

Late last month, the Drops lost their mentor, Joe Thompson, a master of the old-time Black string band tradition of the Carolinas, who died at the age of 93. Co-founder Rhiannon Giddens acknowledged the loss, but it became clear that the Drops have one guiding philosophy: Get on with it. The exuberance of their concert performance was all the tribute Thompson would ever need.

Besides Giddens (fiddles, minstrel banjo, kazoo and vocals), the other remaining Drops veteran is co-founder Dom Flemons (banjo, guitar, bones, jug, harmonica and vocals). Former bandmate Justin Robinson departed for other projects. But there are some newcomers: Leyla McCalla, a wonderful cellist, and Hubby Jenkins (guitar, banjo, mandolin, bones and vocals). Everybody's go-to human beatbox guy Adam Matta also appears on the new CD and joined the Drops for a few numbers last evening.

Flemons and colleagues have focused on a pre-blues melange of sounds from southern Black string band traditions that easily find welcome with today's fans of folk, country and Celtic music. They're also lighting out for blues territory now, too--a place that will be particularly fertile for Giddens. "West End Blues"--an homage to North Carolina blues guitarist/singer Etta Baker, who influenced the likes of Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal--showcased not only the rich fluidity of Giddens' opera-trained soprano but its expressive, affecting power. I think her finger-popping "Country Girl" on Leaving Eden, is going to do for the Drops what her sassy rendition of Blu Cantrell's revenge tune, "Hit 'Em Up Style," did for their Grammy-winning Genuine Negro Jig. Much as I hope the beautiful, self-assured Giddens will be Carolina Chocolate Dropping well into her distinguished 90s, I think some smart movie folks should write her a few acting projects worthy of her talents.

Here she is, in 2010, singing a Scottish song...

...and dueting with her sister, Lalenja Giddens Harrington...

...and leading her original bandmates--Flemons with banjo; Robinson doing beatbox at the mic--at Mass MoCa in 2010:

But then, all the Drops are radiant. You easily see that Flemons, in particular, lives to entertain. This man will find every last way to do it--crack the jokes, flip the guitar, break into dance. He loves performing and is impossible to resist. ("If you give to us, we can give it back," he said, needlessly, to the already-smitten, willing audience. "We can make this happen.") But it's also clear that Flemons' consummate facility with instruments and his eagerness to please get their drive from rigorous research and grounding in tradition. Jenkins, who hails from Brooklyn, is also a find--as fast and flashy-of-hand as any Drop, as personable and bearing a voice of substance and authority.

So, ladies...and gentlemen, if the Drops are headed your way--Hello, New England! You're next!--don't hesitate. Get a ticket. In the meantime, hit 'em up for the new CD.

Carolina Chocolate Drops Web site

Leaving Eden on Nonesuch Records

Carolina Chocolate Drops Facebook page

Erwin Frankel, 76

Erwin Frankel Dies at 76; Brought World Music to U.S.
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, March 1, 2012

Sometimes you do need a weatherman

Former Merce Cunningham dancers Silas Riener and Rashaun Mitchell on developing a new piece, post-Cunningham, on Fortnight Journal.

Beautiful dancers. Beautiful.

weathervane (4:31)

dancer bios (6:46)

Streb, Dalva, Morris

She left this phosphorescent contrail of energy behind her

, said Nancy, remembering Elizabeth, young and dancing.

I have an interest in doing only real moves

, Elizabeth had said.

What's an unreal move?

, Nancy remembers asking.

Today, I know the answer to this question.
It only took me three decades, but I got here!

says Nancy.

I read her book as we would read the Tao Te Ching
--as a book of philosophy

, says Nancy.

When I was about two years old,
I trapped a fly in a mason jar

, says Elizabeth.

Smudgy, wiggly, dirty things leaving smudges on the end of the jar. 
I identified with that.

17, dance class, SUNY Brockport:

I was obsessed with extreme action, 
which is what I thought that fly was doing.

Easy Rider. Off to San Francisco, motorcycle.

What content does movement hold that nothing else contains?

, Elizabeth asked herself.

Dangerous?

A condition that establishes a forcefield...,
says the motion anthropologist, as she calls herself,  
searching for what is true about action, 
what everyone could respond to, 
not just dance people.

I think dancers are holy people.

My dancers...they're spatial artists,
people who can take a hit.

It was important that you heard the sounds we made.

I'm looking for what is the rhythm of action.

In the dance world, we have not developed
a vocabulary for movement; 
we've borrowed from the music world.

Space is not lateral or vertical. 
It's incomprehensible, really.

Starting with questions like...
(and here, Trisha Brown is briefly invoked,
her and her dances from Atlantis).


Looking at dancers,
I wondered why
their base of support was always the soles of their feet, 
why they were always upright

, says the action scientist.

There is some talk of dancers throwing up in the wings,
wiping their mouths,
coming back onstage for more.

In dance, they conceal the exaction of every moment

, says the writer.

Elizabeth reveals what this art form exacts.

What STREB does is really action, 
not dance

, says the action hero.

I believe in virtuosity...
to do something that no one else has been able to do.

Excerpts from a conversation between dance critic Nancy Dalva and action architect Elizabeth Streb of Brooklyn's STREB Extreme Action Company on Leap Year Day, appropriately, at Barnard College

*** 

Nancy Dalva is amusing to listen to, an interviewer who brings her own irrepressible dramatics to the proceedings. As a result, you learn as much about her, really, as about the interviewee, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Watching Dalva and Streb work together--Streb staying very rooted and crystal clear--was quite interesting. I'd say they made an instructive team.

After the talk, I greeted and chatted with Dalva briefly, and she reminded me that passion is what keeps us all committed to this art. "If your heart isn't in it, you might as well pack it in," she said. If you heart isn't in it, there's nothing, we both agreed. And Streb, an exemplar, clearly has never backed down from giving her heart what it most wants.

I thought about Nancy's words again last night when I watched Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM Opera House. MMDG made its audience not just applaud but roar. They roarrr! for Four Saints in Three Acts (2000), Morris' vision of the Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein confection and for the singers and the dancers, his fantastic technicians, like perfect porcelain figurines come to life, deployed with precision, surprising intricacy and buoyancy. And there's Maira Kalman's warm, merry set design that would make anyone--saintly or otherwise--break into dance. 

They roarrr! again at the end of A Choral Fantasy, where Morris applies his sharp ear and wily craft to Beethoven's Fantasia in C minor for Piano, Chorus and Ochestra, Op.80. There were moments in A Choral Fantasy that made me want to say, Wait. What exactly just happened? Can I see that again, please? There's that whirlpool, for instance, that suddenly forms in the middle of streaming lateral lines of dancing, disappears, then manifests again. I drew a rough sketch of this in my notebook, perhaps to be able to convince myself later that it actually did exist. The zippy slipperiness of Morris' arrangements and interactions of dancers can dazzle.

I have to admit, though--at risk of bringing wrath down upon my head--that I've yet to feel personally drawn to Morris' work. That's a matter of the heart, and I seem not to be able to do anything about it. Perhaps there are others who would not connect to the dance and performance that make my heart pound.

Mark Morris Dance Group continues tonight and tomorrow night with 7:30pm performances, likely sold out. Get information here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn

(map/directions)