Days of Black Future Past: Black Rock Coalition at The Met

Above: Sandra St. Victor
Below: Shelley Nicole
Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future
Metropolitan Museum of Art
photos: Paula Lobo

"Black music has been the taproot of every significant movement in rock music. Sadly, the vast majority of Black artists in rock have been erased from the historical narrative or relegated to footnotes."

--Darrell M. McNeill

When you imagine venues to host one of the badbadbadass-iest rock concerts of all times, do you think of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Mmmhmmm.

Well, think again, because you missed Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future, a MetLiveArts show designed to demonstrate that Black people not only did rock first but they did it best, do it now and have no intention of stopping. Under Darrell M. McNeill's creative and musical direction, the famed Black Rock Coalition Orchestra and featured guests rocked that house last night with a steady roll. All walls and pedestals should be checked for damage.

Named for BRC Orchestra's 1991 album, the two-hour show started off with the pumping Sly Stone hit "Dance to the Music." That funk functioned here like it did when it was new back in 1967--a sure-fire commercial success for David Geffen's CBS Records and, in 2019, an icebreaker like no other. Though the predominantly white Met Museum audience needed the initial permission to dance to the music, as the evening sped along, folks required little prompting to get up on their feet.

The stage of the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium was packed, side to side and front to back, with instruments and artists including a revolving cast of standout featured performers--among them, Nona Hendryx, Toshi Reagon, Stew, Carl Hancock Rux, Living Colour's Vernon Reid and Corey Glover and, led by a commanding Sandra St. Victor, The Family Stand reunited. Yoruba chants and drumming, spoken word, jazz vocals, traditional work songs, gospel tunes, rock and roll and straight-up rock presented a stream of Black genius, all telling a story of determination, improvisation, spiritual depth and lust for life in the face of a long, long stretch of rough times under white supremacy. Times are still rough; the music persists and continues to do its work.

"So what is rock and roll?" Hancock Rux asked, "We begin with juke joints, and women loving women...." He went on to say it's rooted in "trying to find our way home."

Each performance--like vocalist Everett Bradley's unquestionable authority on both "Dance to the Music" and Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie"--felt like a sturdy home and one connected, at the foundation, to every other home. Places of rest and reflection, generous nourishment, everyday miracles and jubilation. Hendryx, above all others, took all my heart with witchy renditions of the jazz classic "Afro Blue" and, later, an unexpectedly expanded and capacious "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." She enters a song at unusual angles, spies just the right, clear path, then guides you through as intensity builds. Reagon quietly took up and met the challenges of Curtis Mayfield's bleak "When Seasons Change" with agility of voice and soul. Stew, with David Barnes on harmonica, updated Bo Diddley's "I'm A Man," making a statement on toxic masculinity from the White House to the church house, from FOX News to NPR. And it was just pure fun to watch Glover rock out again to "Cult of Personality," the show's closer.

An historic one-night only event. So, if you didn't catch it, bummer! But if you love rock, you can still check out Play It Loud: The Instruments of Rock & Roll, at the Met through October 1. Plan your Met visit here.

*****

Featured Artists:

Nona Hendryx
Fantastic Negrito
Vernon Reid, Corey Glover (Living Colour)
Toshi Reagon
Stew (The Negro Problem)
The Family Stand
"Captain" Kirk Douglas (The Roots, Hundred Watt Heart)
Carl Hancock Rux
Ronny Drayton

Black Rock Coalition Orchestra:

Darrell M. McNeill (bass)
LaFrae Sci (drums)
Howie Robbins (keyboards)
Elenna Canlas (keyboards)
Marcus Machado (guitar)
Marvin Sewell (guitar)
Gordon "Nappy G" Clay (percussion)
V. Jeffrey Smith (saxophone, flute)
Don Byron (clarinet, saxophone)
Bruce Harris (trumpet)
JS Williams (trombone)
Sophia Ramos (vocals)
Shelley Nicole (vocals)
Bruce Mack (vocals)
Everett Bradley (vocals, percussion)
Kelsey Warren (vocals)
David Barnes (harmonica)
Mikal Amin (vocals)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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The Bessies: honors to Joan Myers Brown and Louis Mofsie

Joan Myers Brown

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, has announced the recipients of two special awards to be given out at its 35th annual ceremony on October 14.

2019 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance:

Joan Myers Brown, Founder and Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO), in recognition of decades of choreographic influence on and support of the work of Black American dance artists.

Louis Mofsie

2019 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance:

Louis Mofsie, Director of Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, whose work has kept Native American dance forms alive for generations of young people.

Join the celebration at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on Monday, October 14 (7:30pm). Get information and tickets here.

See the full list of nominees and previously-announced awards here.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Disabled Arts on Camera, Part 2: "Vision Portraits" by Rodney Evans

Dancer Kayla Hamilton,
one of four artists featured in Vision Portraits
(photo: Kjerstin Rossi)

Writer Ryan Knighton telling his story at The Moth
(photo courtesy of Vision Portraits)

Vision Portraits

(2019, USA/Canada/Germany; 78 min.)

written and directed by Rodney Evans

The documentary Vision Portraits introduces us to four dedicated artists whose lives, careers and creative approaches have been profoundly impacted by diminished or lost sight. They include art photographer John Dugdale, our beloved dance colleague Kayla Hamilton, Canadian writer Ryan Knighton and the award-winning filmmaker himself, Rodney Evans, best known for his 2004 narrative feature, Brother To Brother.

filmmaker Rodney Evans
(photo: Kjerstin Rossi)

We visit with these appealing and thoughtful people, the stories and glimpses of the work of the first three interspersed with the story of Evans's attempts to reverse the degeneration of his vision from Retinitis pigmentosa. Evans also wants to share with us how impairment affects vision through occasional images simulating fuzzy or dim sight, narrowed visual range or--as in the case of Dugdale--a nonstop internal light show of spectacular colors and effects.

Self-portrait of photographer John Dugdale

Dugdale's photography, achieved with assistants who adjust lens focus, is deeply poetic, melancholic and moving. When a stroke befell him at the age of 30, taking all but a crescent-like sliver of his sight, he told his mother "What makes you think I'm not going to be taking pictures anymore? I'm going to be taking pictures like crazy now!" I am grateful for that indomitable spirit; the work is so beautiful.

It was also fun to get to know a little about Knighton (author of the memoir Cockeyed), who considers his blindness to be a door onto "a different way of living, a different point of view." His blindness opened a portal to deeper honesty and a wicked sense of humor. If you watch this documentary for no other reason, you will value it for the concise yet uproarious story of the trip he took with his brother to a snake rodeo in Texas. It's a safe bet you'll never set foot at a snake rodeo in Texas or any other state but also a safe bet you'd enjoy hanging out with these guys.

Vision Portraits opens in New York City at Metrograph on August 9 and in Los Angeles at Laemmle Royal on August 23.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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LCOOD: Summer fun with Liza, Teicher and talented teens

Ella Fitzgerald

Poster for Bob Fosse's Cabaret with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles

Here's a note about my one foray out, this season, to Lincoln Center Out of Doors, a free arts festival that, for many years, I used to haunt. Why only once this time? Well, I am now far less weather-tolerant than ever and quite over Gotham's punishing version of summer. This summer, I happen to be stuck in New York and not without whining. Considering that my notion of staycation definitely includes a ton of outdoor activities, I've been miserable.

But it turned out to be reasonably pleasant last evening as the sun vanished and students from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts--the Fame school--brought the Fosse in an all-out presentation of the jazz dance master's Sing, Sing, Sing number from DANCIN' (1978). Sanctioned by The Verdon Fosse Legacy, this ensemble performed as if sanctioned by God Herself. Which drew cheers and a standing-O from an army of buddies and family. Which brought unexpected tears to my eyes because young artists with supportive families.

The inspiring Caleb Teicher (Caleb Teicher & Company) followed with a trio of his dance pieces. This snappy size matters duet Small & Tall--Christine Flores and Lindsey Jones, respectively--showed off Teicher's penchant for goofy physical comedy. He's gifted at this himself with a studied finesse to the timing of movements and unique, offbeat detail--all of that making him the unmatched standout in his charming swing piece, Meet Ella. Originally a long, flowing duet with Nathan Bugh, it was presented last night as a quartet incorporating two women dancers, Macy Sullivan and Evita Arce. Sullivan and Arce have carefree gusto and were employed well throughout, but I was a little sorry to see them granted the tender, whirling, orbiting same-sex duet I had originally seen where Teicher partnered co-choreographer Bugh to Ella Fitzgerald's recording of "Midnight Sun." (I'm going to link to that song once again, as I've done before, because if you youngsters don't know it, you're missing something pretty great.) It's not that I don't want to ever see two women tackle this duet. It's that I specifically want Teicher + Bugh + Fitzgerald to dazzle me again.

If you get a chance to see this troupe, may it be in a closer, smaller setting. The Damrosch Park Bandshell isn't the best place for these dancers, though the Bzzz ensemble number--particularly a rousing duet between beatboxer Chris Celiz and tap improviser Jabu Graybeal--overrode the distance.

It was a long night, and I stayed only a few songs into the screening of Bob Fosse's television special for Liza Minnelli, Liza With A "Z" (1972). I ducked out while Liza took on "Son of A Preacher Man," a hit for English pop singer Dusty Springfield four years prior. But that and the first few numbers were enough to remind me of beloved Liza's big heart and underscore just how much freedom of expression white artists gained from studying Black people.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors concludes on August 11 and, in the meantime, wants to bring you several more cool performances for FREE. Click here for schedule details.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Disabled Arts on Camera, Part 1: Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson

Film short Revel in Your Body, directed by Katherine Helen Fisher,
features a duet by disabled artists Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson.
It received its NYC premiere this month at Dance on Camera.

Revel in Your Body

(USA, 2018; 5:18)

directed by Katherine Helen Fisher

Top and bottom, left to right: Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson
Center: Laurel Lawson
(photos: Jared Serfozo)

Here's a taste of the audio description (click) of dance and film artist Katherine Helen Fisher's exhilarating short featuring two dance superstars, Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson of the disabled arts troupe Kinetic Light.

Sheppard and Lawson's collaborative work have always represented, for me, innovation, expansiveness and possibility, powerful expressions of sensuality and joy. In just a little over five minutes, this film captures all of that and in abundance.

The music of composer Missy Mazzoli, deliciously vocalized in the film by Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth, welcomes you, the observer, to a percolating and buoyant space. Shimmy Boyle's heady, slow-motion cinematography offers time to appreciate the spatial relationship of body to body, to enjoy the creamy flow of movement of two bodies in wheelchairs. It enters the hidden depths of time and works its way into your system, too.

From Fisher's Director's Statement:

REVEL IN YOUR BODY originated as a creative concept when the dancers shared online a slow-motion iPhone video of them jumping on a trampoline while strapped into their wheelchairs. This was AFTER being told by a well-known editorial photographer that the trampoline frequently used for other dancer photoshoots was off limits to them. This 'no' led these dancers to get their own damn trampoline and find another collaborator… me.

See, it's that #GetOurOwnDamnTrampoline spirit that gets me every single time!

For further information on Revel in Your Body, including future screenings, click here.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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The Bessies: Announcing winners and October's nominees

Celebrating 35 extraordinary years, The New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) organization held its annual reception and press conference yesterday at Gibney. With community luminaries pressed into Gibney's theater at 280 Broadway, the event was so buoyed with feeling that time-conscious announcers repeatedly (sometimes hilariously) cautioned the assembled to wait for all category nominees to be named before applauding. Still and all, we whooped and hollered for each of our faves, proving that nothing can hold back this dance/performance community!

Plan to be at the legendary award ceremony itself on Monday, October 14 at NYU Skirball Center. In the meantime, here's what you need to know about the announced awards and exciting nominations.

2019 Juried Bessie Award

(Jury: Carlota Santana, Pam Tanowitz and Abby Zbikowski)

Alice Sheppard

for boldly and authentically inventing new movement vocabularies full of supercharged physicality and nuanced detail. Working with gravity, mechanics, human connection, and momentum, she creates work of power and empowerment.

2019 Outstanding Breakout Choreographer Award 

Daina Ashbee

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The 2019 Bessie Awards Nominations

Outstanding Production

600 HIGHWAYMEN
The Fever
Co-presented by La MaMa, The Public Theater, and Onassis USA

Kyle Abraham
The Runaway
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater

Nick Cave
The Let Go
Park Avenue Armory

Nora Chipaumire
#Punk 100% POP* N!GGA
The Kitchen

Merce Cunningham with stager Patricia Lent
Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event
BAM Opera House

Tania El Khoury
As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
Under the Radar/The Public Theater

Juliana F. May
Folk Incest
Abrons Arts Center and American Realness

Alexei Ratmansky
The Seasons 
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House

Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (ROKE)
The Art of Luv (Part 6): Awesome Grotto!
Abrons Arts Center

Caleb Teicher
More Forever
Guggenheim Works & Process

Noa Wertheim
One. One & One
Vertigo Dance Company
Baryshnikov Arts Center

Ni'ja Whitson
Oba Qween Baba King Baba
Co-commissioned by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center

Outstanding Performer

Xianix Barrera
in Latido by Xianix Barrera
Emerging Choreographers Series at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center

Warren Craft
in Harlequin and Pantalone by Bill Irwin
Dorrance Dance
New York City Center

Leslie Cuyjet
Sustained Achievement with Jane Comfort, Niall Jones, Juliana F. May, Cynthia Oliver, and Will Rawls

Kirsten Davis
in Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson
Co-commissioned by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center

Gabrielle Hamilton
in Oklahoma! choreographed by John Heginbotham
St. Ann’s Warehouse

Samantha Hines
in Attractor by Dancenorth Australia, Lucy Guerin Inc., Gideon Obarzanek, and Senyawa
The Joyce Theater

Tiler Peck
Sustained Achievement with New York City Ballet

Molly Poerstal
Sustained Achievement with Hilary Clark, David Dorfman, Jeanine Durning, Alex Escalante, Juliana F. May, Susan Rethorst, Roseanne Spradlin, and Larissa Velez-Jackson

Nola Sporn Smith
in metamorphosis by Stacy Grossfield
The Kitchen, Dance and Process

Taylor Stanley
in The Runaway by Kyle Abraham
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater

Shamar Watt
Sustained Achievement in the work of Nora Chipaumire

Takaomi Yoshino (aka Varvara Laptopova)
in ChopEniana by Alexandre Minz
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
The Joyce Theater

Outstanding Revival

Deuce Coupe
By Twyla Tharp
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House

Hex
By Eleo Pomare, performed by Dyane Harvey
American Dance Guild Performance Festival, Ailey Citigroup Theater

Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done
By Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Lucinda Childs, David Gordon, Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, Simone Forti
Museum of Modern Art

Outstanding Sound Design/Musical Composition

Joseph Kubera and Adam Tendler for interpretation of music of Julius Eastman, and M. Lamar for original composition inspired by Eastman
for Rambler, Worlds Worlds A Part by Kathy Westwater
New York Live Arts

Leyya Mona Tawil
for Future Faith by Lime Rickey International
Abrons Arts Center

Conrad Tao and Caleb Teicher
for More Forever by Caleb Teicher
Guggenheim Works & Process

Outstanding Visual Design

Design Team: Tei Blow, Sean McElroy, Eben Hoffer, and Hyung Seok Jeon for The Art of Luv (Part 6): Awesome Grotto! by Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (ROKE). Abrons Arts Center

Design Team: Jeanne Medina and Ni’ja Whitson (Costumes), Gil Sperling, featuring art works by Wangech Mutu and Galvin Jantejes (Video), and Tuçe Yasak (Lighting) for Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson. Co-commissioned by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center

Mirella Weingarten (Set Design) for Xenos by Akram Khan. Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival at Rose Theater

Outstanding Breakout Choreographer

(* indicates award recipient)

Daina Ashbee*
Jonathan González
Stacy Grossfield
Caleb Teicher

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The 2019 Bessie Awards Steering Committee, responsible for setting policy and providing oversight for the Bessie Awards throughout the year, is comprised of Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Jeanne Linnes, Stanford Makishi, Nicky Paraiso, Carla Peterson, Gus Solomons jr, Paz Tanjuaquio, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Laurie Uprichard, and Martin Wechsler.

The 2018–2019 Bessie Awards Selection Committee: Ronald Alexander, Elise Bernhardt, Charles Vincent Burwell, Diana Byer, Tymberly Canale, Alexis Convento, Parijat Desai, Maura Donohue, Boo Froebel, Angela Fatou Gittens, Diane Grumet, Brinda Guha, Joseph Hall, Mai Lê Hô, Iréne Hultman, Celia Ipiotis, Koosil-ja, Fernando Maneca, Lydia Mokdessi, Harold Norris, Craig Peterson, Doug Post, Rajika Puri, Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Susan Reiter, Walter Rutledge, George Emilio Sanchez, Andrea Snyder, Sally Sommer, Risa Steinberg, Carrie Stern, Catherine Tharin, Tony Waag, and William Whitener.

ABOUT THE BESSIES

The NY Dance and Performance Awards have saluted outstanding and groundbreaking creative work in the dance field in New York City for 35 years. Known as “The Bessies” in honor of revered dance teacher Bessie Schönberg, the awards were established in 1984 by David R. White at Dance Theater Workshop. They recognize outstanding work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. Nominees are chosen by a selection committee composed of artists, presenters, producers, and writers. All those working in the dance field are invited to join the NY Dance and Performance League as members and participate in annual discussions on the direction of the awards and nominate members to serve on the selection committee. For more information about The Bessies, visit www.bessies.org.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Savion Glover returns to The Joyce!

Tony-winning tap great Savion Glover
has a new show at The Joyce Theater.

LADY 5

@

SAVION GLoVER's

BARoQUE'BLAK

TaP Café

by Savion Glover
at The Joyce Theater
July 2-7, 2019

The letters flip up and down--kind of like hoofers' heels and toes--in the titles tap icon Savion Glover gives things. The off-kilter rhythm of the letters jingles and jangles...and jars. Skim across a program page, and your eyes might get snagged on a particular letter or the oddly-true sound a whimsical word makes inside your head. What, exactly, is Half-Our or I Can Here Myself? Tell me there's no part of you smiling at this thought: "Well, I kinda know what that might mean!"

As noted above, the title of Glover's new ensemble production--running now through Sunday at The Joyce Theater--is rendered in his program notes precisely this way:

LADY 5

@

SAVION GLoVER's

BARoQUE'BLAK

TaP Café

It has been several years since Glover, a popular man at The Joyce, has brought a show there. (The Joyce, by the way, is on a roll with tap--now through early January--with luminaries like Ayodele Casel, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and Michelle Dorrance waiting in the wings. And a tip of the hat to my dear colleague Aaron Mattocks for that programming.) LADY 5 looks nothing like your conventional tap extravaganza. It's so many things and soooo much. It's an illustrative tribute to a wide range of music genres and artists. It's a way of proving to us that dancers are musicians--and that we see through hearing and hear through seeing, or something like that. And it's a transparently messy, headlong plunge into an artist's overflowing psyche.

I count almost twenty sections in the 90-minute show, including one where a male tap shoe foot puppet (yes, you read that right) chats up a female footless-tight foot puppet (yes...) at a café table, and another binary-boosting segment (What Kind of MaNz) where aggressive male tap dancers seem to be all but literally humping their slithering female jazz dancing partners. I need to scold Glover for engaging superb dancers like Natrea Blake, Samantha Berger, Monique Smith and Megan Gessner (the last introduced by Glover as "our token white person") in cheesy moments like this. A finale set to Stevie Wonder's "Another Star" ends up slaughtering poor Stevie under Glover, Marshall Davis Jr. and Darrell Grand Moultrie's jet-propelled and amplified drilling. Maybe a single dancer--or these three without amplification--would have been kinder to the singer and his gorgeous song.

As noted before, with LADY 5 one must push aside any longing for the conventional. Glover takes you on a journey that, for reasons not exactly or convincingly clear, opens with a display of antique costumes arranged along a metal walkway above a café-like setting. Along the way, you'll see Smith dancing to spoken word (the brilliant Jae Nichelle on recording) about what it's like to live with anxiety; various and sundry face-offs between ballet and tap or ballet and jazz; and surrealistic vignettes with Glover apparently haunted, obsessed and traumatized by a ballerina's disembodied tutu descending from above. A dancer might be doing her thing downstage while a shadowy figure creeps along the high walkway in the background. The Dalai Lama makes an appearance. (Just dropping that here. Don't fret about it.) There was an impressive, spiky contemporary solo (PHuQSPaCE) performed by Gessner to the stylings of Bjork, and there is the lovely warmth of Blake's solo work in Everything Must Change.

So...a lot. And, although I am far from the kind of critic who needs the conventional, I must say I was grateful for a segment with fabulous, straight-up tap dance to Latin jazz that met percussion with percussion, fire with fire, spotlighting virtuosity in a way nothing else in the show really touched.

A show with turbo-charged ambitions and oddities, and not everything works. But, hey...Savion Glover at The Joyce. It took several years for that to happen again.

LADY 5 @ SAVION GLoVER's BARoQUE'BLAK TaP Café continues through this Sunday with matinee and evening performances. For schedule and ticket information, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue (between 18th and 19th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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