Marta Becket, 92

Marta Becket, Dancer in the Desert, Dies at 92
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, February 3, 2017

Dore Ashton, 88

Dore Ashton, Art Critic Who Embraced and Inhabited Modernism, Dies at 88
by William Grimes, The New York Times, February 3, 2017

We always win: Marguerite Hemmings and friends at JACK

Marguerite Hemmings
(photo: Delwin Kamara)

Look and see. Black women make and hold space within dance for everything to come through.

The latest example of this is To Make Ready Again, an evening of performance and discussion offered by Jamaica-born dance artist Marguerite Hemmings, four dance colleagues, singer/musician Solo Woods and drummer Themba Mkhatshwa. It opened at JACK, the small Brooklyn venue famously decorated with crinkly aluminum foil; its run concludes tonight at 8pm.

Inspired by the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, JACK plans a year-long focus on exploring and expansively defining concepts of reparations in a program entitled Reparations365: From Memory to Movement (February 2017-January 2018). One primary insight already surfaced in community discussions is that monetary value cannot be placed on historic trauma, true justice and healing. It's hard to imagine and calculate in any realistic, satisfying way. Repair and restoration come not from the outside but from within vulnerable yet profoundly resourceful individuals and their communities.

Hemmings's we free multimedia series, of which To Make Ready Again is a part, draws from her knowledge of African diasporan street dance styles, social dancing, hip hop and dancehall, and her work, she says, centers around liberation. In TMRA, she's joined by powerhouse dancers--Courtney J. Cook, Jaimé Dzandu, Katrina Reid and Italy Welton--who whisper and conspire, laugh and vocalize, activating the space in ways both protectively intimate and boldly assertive. A loving circle, a sinuous warrior force, a reservoir of care and uncomplicated joy, they channel and filter even the male vocal energy of hip hop through grounded bodies. Their frequent broad stance roots them into the floor and earth below, freeing up torsos, shoulders and arms for hair-trigger action whenever, wherever necessary. They dance the ancestors through and make their mark on a world they wish to manifest.

Black women like Hemmings--a founding member of the emerging Black women and gender non-conforming collective The Skeleton Architecture--are dancing liberation and reparation. "Bring it down, and spread it all around." And remember, "We always win."

Lighting design: Nikita Maturine
Set design: Zunnania Anderson

To Make Ready Again concludes with a performance this evening at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Batsheva: "Last Work" at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

Above and below:
Batsheva Dance Company
performs Last Work
by Ohad Naharin
(photos: Gadi Dagon)

Last Work, performed in its New York premiere at BAM by Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, runs for about 65 minutes. And so does Rani Lebzelter, placed upstage right, her royal blue gown flowing around her shins for that entire time as she pumps away on an unseen treadmill. Her look at once heedless and heroic, she comes to represent a figure of privilege and athletic glamour. Never once does she break stride or even turn her head to gaze at her fellow performers who, after all, stay hellabusy for that same hour-and-change creating an entire Ohad Naharin fantasy world and all that implies. At one point, a blob of these dancers congeals center stage right, obstructing the audience's view of the Lebzelter's body. You can see only her disembodied head continuously bobbing above them.

She's Naharin's ostinato. A few times, the soundscape fades, allowing the perfect, rhythmic clopping of her shoes to resound. She is ground and context--even visually, the watery blue against the stage's dark surround, a pop of color amid other white and skimpy costumes, dark, monk-like cloaks, grey, accordion-like screens rigidly guarding the wings. Avi Yona Bueno's lighting makes the stage and all its creatures look like pricey abstract art in motion.

After Naharin first introduces this vision of Nakamura, another dancer advances from center stage left, hunched over and pedaling across on bent knees. To be sure, nothing as silly as a simple walk will ever do. This is the famous Gaga. More and more dancers accumulate, all with untamed bodies that have long figured out how to do things their own way. The contortion and force of it will often look uncomfortable, reckless, much less than human. But it will also mesmerize. That first man, for instance, takes his sweet time demonstrating a deep, repetitive undulation that flows from one raised knee all the way through the shoulder on that side of his body, sometimes slow, sometimes speedy. It's a sensuous yet deceptive seduction into a world where you will probably find yourself alarmed and repelled.

 A scene from Last Work
(photo: Gadi Dagon)

As it develops, Last Work comes across the most as a dire warning--and, hence, political and timely. (Naharin has openly criticized policies of the Israeli government and, I'd bet, would not look kindly on our own mess in Washington.) The community he builds and reveals in this dance is less unruly than you might first think, more likely to mold itself into tight, locked groups, engage in reassuring rituals or--and this is where the women dancers' bodies carry the heaviest symbolic burden--throw itself wide open for the taking.

It's all heading towards dubious celebration. An orgasmic barrage of rifle shots. A burst of metallic confetti. The rippling satin of a huge, white flag of.... Of what? Of national purity? Or is it, ultimately, a flag of surrender?

Affixed to their spots and firmly connected to one another by packing tape, the once hyperactive dancers come to a standstill. Not our runner, though. She wears the tape and now grasps that gleaming flag in one hand but, somehow still unaware of what has happened, keeps running in place.

Batsheva Dance Company

William Barry

Yael Ben Ezer

Matan Cohen

Omri Drumlevich

Bret Easterling

Hsin-Yi Hsiang

Rani Lebzelter

Eri Nakamura

Ori Moshe Ofri

Rachael Osborne

Nitzan Ressler

Ian Robinson

Kyle Scheurich

Or Meir Schraiber

Maayan Sheinfeld

Yoni Simon

Bobbi Jene Smith

Zina (Natalya) Zinchenko

Lighting design: Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi)
Soundtrack design and edit: Maxim Warratt
Original music: Grischa Lichtenberger
Stage design: Zohar Shoef
Costume design: Eri Nakamura

Last Work continues nightly through Saturday, February 4 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Click here!

Bharati Mukherjee, 76

Bharati Mukherjee, Writer of Immigrant Life, Dies at 76
by William Grimes, The New York Times, February 1, 2017

Emmanuelle Riva, 89

Emmanuelle Riva, Star of ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ and ‘Amour,’ Dies at 89
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, January 31, 2017

John Wetton, 67

John Wetton, Rocker With King Crimson and Asia, Dies at 67
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, January 31, 2017