Roger Rees, 71

Roger Rees, Actor Who Won Tony as Nicholas Nickleby, Dies at 71
Ashley Southall, The New York Times, July 11, 2015

James Tate, 71

James Tate, Prolific Pulitzer-Winning Poet, Dies at 71
by William Grimes, The New York Times, July 10, 2015

A wonderful afternoon with Barnard's Dance in the City!

An afternoon well spent at Barnard College
with Sydnie Mosley and her lucky group of Dance in the City students!
(photo: Christine Jowers)

Many thanks to the resourceful artist/educator Sydnie Mosley and all the students from her Dance in the City 2015 summer program at Barnard College for a warm welcome, interesting questions and discussion of issues and strategies in dance criticism and advocacy with my treasured colleagues, Marissa Perel and Christine Jowers!

I wish the students continued fun and revelations as they complete their stay in New York City. Please feel free to keep in touch!

For information on Dance in the City's multifaceted residency program, click here.

Marga Gomez has a big problem--and shares it in POUND!

Marga Gomez
(photo: Kent Taylor)

Now that Pride weekend is done and gone, and the USA women's soccer team has its way through New York's Canyon of (She)roes, what's left to do, people?

Opening night's standing ovation made the answer clear. The Dixon Place to be is at POUND, a presentation of the 2015 HOT! Festival and the latest one-lesbian show from Marga Gomez, directed by David Schweizer. You'll need some stamina; the monologue feels much longer than its advertised 75-minutes and could use a few scissor snips. But if you find Hollywood movies involving lesbians in any way absurd and surreal--and why wouldn't you?--you'll laugh your head off.

Gomez whip-blends encyclopedic knowledge of movies and culture, rambunctious physicality, and tireless ability to zip from character to character, decade to decade and gentrified coast to gentrified coast without much mussing her lumberjack flannel. If Bound is on your Favorites list, try POUND. If you agree with Gomez that Basic Instinct made America "a little afraid of lesbians," and that's a really good thing, try POUND. If, like Gomez back in the day, you relied upon the National Legion of Decency to actually be your dyke-flick recommender, try POUND.

POUND continues Fridays and Saturdays, July 11, 17, 18, 24 and 25 at 7:30pm. Click here for information and tickets.

Comic monologist Reno
performs free shows at Dixon Place
during the 2015 HOT! Festival.

Another HOT! tip: Also see Ignorance Is No Excuse, Reno, an hour with the matchless comic provocateuse at Dixon Place--free!--Mondays, now through August 3, at 7:30pm. Click here.

For more HOT! Festival events, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Chen's TRANSLATE: New voices, new dances

Some of Jen Roit's dancers in the comical and hyperkinetic Tropes,
curated by Jessica Chen for TRANSLATE (the voices of dance)
(photo: NYCreative Photography)

Below: Cody Potter in Shauna Sorensen's Circular Shift
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster)

Jessica Chen's dance festival, TRANSLATE (the voices of dance), offers developing choreographers ground to network with their peers, trade ideas and tools, build work and show it to a paying audience. A July 9th performance at Dixon Place, curated by Chen, gave us a look at what can come of these opportunities for creative exchange.

The show featured brief works by select troupes:

Simona De Tullio/Breathing Art Company

Ellen Sickenberger/Ellen&Artists

Jen Roit/Armada

Cleo Carol Knopf/Poemdance Co

Rachel M. Hettinger

Robert Moore

Shauna Sorensen and Dancers

with Chen's J Chen Project rounding out the evening in Training the Devil, the electric, contentious duet she choreographed with Chien-Hao Chang. A highlight of Chen's spring season at Ailey Citigroup Theater, it shines again, now with performances by Melissa Wu and Sean Nederlof. You can tell the sort of things that matter to Chen--character and feelings grounded, shaped and revealed in sharp imagery and rigorous, dynamic motion. Her curated artists hit those marks--or nearly so, clearly aspiring to them. They are all promising and worth encouragement, but I will note here two works that reached me and stick with me for two distinct reasons.

from Rachel M. Hettinger's Unfocused Blues
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster)

Rachel M. Hettinger's Unfocused Blues, with its many oddities, comes across like a smartly-designed calling card delivering just enough flair and mystery to make a viewer remember to seek out this artist in the future. New lifeforms erupting in motion, the ten dancers maneuver swift turns and scoops, with spongy knees and smoothly articulate torsos. A soloist can resemble tumbleweed, and a chorus splash movement like graffiti on concrete. The piece and its well-rehearsed corps--which includes the choreographer--have a steady, indeed brazen, confidence.

I'll admit I tried to resist Awakening Earth, a solo by and for Cleo Carol Knopf. An aerial dance set to "We Shall Overcome," sung by a Gay Men's Chorus, city undefined, and Holly Near's "Singing for Our Lives, a song I haven't heard in decades, sounds a bit much, a bit treacly. Yes, it almost is. Social justice anthems mixed with a circus act? I backpedaled. But Knopf grounded her sincerity in strong discipline, and that pulled me back. As she worked within her aerial hoop--ascending, coiling, stretching and yearning--it was impossible to not get carried along with her effort, skill and emotional momentum. Her dance, ultimately, is about giving one's all, one's best. A quest and a personal tribute to all who have struggled for social change we have seen and have yet to see.

Closed. To keep informed on future plans for Jessica Chen's TRANSLATE program, visit her Web site here. For Dixon Place's summer schedule, click here.

Omar Sharif, 83

Film star Omar Sharif dies aged 83
BBC News, July 10, 2015

Tap. Coming to a world near you.

Opening July 10 

at select theaters nationwide.

Attend a Tap World screening and artists talk

Tuesday, July 14 at 7:25pm

Village East Cinema (directions)

Click here 

for information and tickets.