Volunteer with Wendy Osserman Dance Company

Wendy Osserman Dance Company requests a volunteer to assist with promotion and all aspects of the production of her new Gertrude Stein piece, more is more is more is less, May 21-24, presented in association with the Joyce SoHo. The volunteer would be needed one or two half-days per week.

Osserman's project includes four dancers and Czech singer/violinist/composer, Iva Bittová. Songs are composed and played live by Bittová, inspired by Gertrude Stein whose writing continues to sound avant garde. Osserman, the dancers and Bittová explore how that can be: they trade identities, avoid narrative and recall paintings by Stein's friends Picasso and Matisse.

Osserman's choreography for last year's collaboration with Bittová was described as "provocative precisely because it feels like a new amalgam of some indefinible kind." NEW YORK TIMES, 3/29/08.

Contact Wendy Osserman at wodanceco@aol.com.

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For instructions on how to submit your own request for arts volunteers, please click here.

Parr's "Everybody Dance Now"

British photographer Martin Parr's large-format paperback of shots of folks dancing--Everybody Dance Now (editions2wice, 2009)--comes wrapped in a dazzling foil rainbow. It's that kind of book: brash and dizzying photos of party people, from around the globe and in a variety of informal and formal settings (with the interesting omission of street dance), doing their thing.

At first glance, the practical Virgo in me thought, "Okay, what's the need for this?" But the more I flipped through it--the best way to take it in--the more I found myself getting into the spirit of the thing.

In their introductory note, editor Patsy Tarr and graphic designer Abbott Miller contest that "dancing allows people to simultaneously become truer to who they really are, but also to try on an exaggerated version of themselves: cooler, hotter, groovier, sexier." But, as I see it, that "exaggerated version" is actually a strong aspect of the truer self. Social dancing helps us strip off the masks and shields that hide us from others and blind us to ourselves as well.

There are some shots of self-conscious and highly-stylized ballroom dancers in action or waiting their turn, and a few glimpses of Highland dancers at the ready but, by and large, this book attends to dance in its sweatier, goofier and often booze-propelled forms. Parr documents release of human energy, the human spirit at play.

2wice Arts Foundation is the publisher of rather glamourous dance books--False Start: Jonah Bokaer and Green World: Merce Cunningham, among other quality "performances-in-print." You can find out more about these and Parr's Everybody Dance Now at 2wice's site and place orders there or through Amazon.com.

And, while you're at it, don't forget dance!

Psst! Spend Your Regards to Broadway
by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, January 30, 2009

Brian Rogers: Body and Soul podcast

Brian Rogers talks about The Chocolate Factory--an influential multidisciplinary arts space and gallery in Long Island City, Queens--and about his new full-evening work redevelop (death valley).

Brian Rogers, a graduate of Bennington College, is the co-founder and Artistic Director of The Chocolate Factory Theater. His works for the company include 2 Husbands (2007), a collaboration with playwright Ken Urban; GUN PLAY (2006); and AUDIT (2004). Brian curates The Chocolate Factory's Visiting Artist Program and has collaborated as a sound, video and performance artist on numerous projects. He is also Director of Operations for Dance Theater Workshop and curator of the newly-renovated cabaret space at Queens Theatre in the Park.

See redevelop (death valley) on Thursday-Saturday, February 12-28 and Monday, February 24, all at 8pm.

Directions and further information

Ticketing or at 212-352-3101

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

The dance underground

Subway Break Dancers - Making Money Foot Over Hand
by J. David Goodman, The New York Times, January 28, 2009

Against the grain

My job as an artist isn’t to satisfy the public. That’s not what I do. I don’t necessarily make people happy. I think the job of an artist is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception, prejudice, and convention. A big flaw in some public art schemes is that they seem to be about trying to find an artist who’s going to please everyone. That’s not interesting to me. I think it’s really important that artists have an agitational function in culture. No one else seems to.

Mark Dion, Neukom Vivarium
Art in the 21st Century, PBS

Eva's Book Club

Dance folks, what are you reading?

Latest on my nightstand:

Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West by Erin Hogan (The University of Chicago Press, 2008)

This is an engaging, personal account of a drive through several western states in search of famous earthworks such as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Walter De Maria's Lightning Field.

Use the Comments feature to tell us what you're reading!