Traditional Japanese theater celebrated

Katayama Shingo (c)Kashu-juku Noh Theater

From March 24-26, Japan Society--in conjunction with Carnegie Hall's JapanNYC Festival--will present the New York debut of Kyoto's Kashu-juku Noh Theater in a special program offering "a rare opportunity to experience the 600-year-old tradition of noh and kyogen performed in one exceptional evening."

Performed in Japanese with English subtitles along with live music, the two-hour program will include:

MAI-BAYASHI: Literally translated as "dance and music," a mai-bayashi is a form of noh theater in which a principal character appears and performs a solo dance without a mask or costume and is accompanied by a group of chanters and musicians. A furious dance depicting the climactic battle scene from the famous noh play Yashima will be presented.

KYOGEN: Boshibari (Tied to a Pole) is one of the most popular plays in the kyogen repertoire. Two servants are tied up by their master in a cunning scheme to keep them from drinking his sake while he is away. They soon thirst for his wine. How will the two obtain their beloved beverage again?

NOH: Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi). One of the most famous noh plays, Lady Aoi is an adaptation of a chapter from the classic Japanese novel, The Tale of Genji. The story follows Lady Rokujo (the jealous former-mistress of Genji), who sent an evil spirit to possess Genji's wife Lady Aoi, as she is confronted in combat by a Buddhist monk intent on saving her soul.

For complete information on this and related programming, as well as ticketing, click here.

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street, (between 1st and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Deep turf

© YAK 2009

R.I.P. June
You will be missed.
May 1st 2009
East Oakland, CA
Featuring eNinja, Chonkie and NoNoise of TURF FEINZ
More at www.turffeinz.com

Filmed and edited by Yoram Savion of YAKfilms
Music by 1Tyme

The entertainment industry: three powerful reads

The Day the Movies Died
by Mark Harris, GQ, February 2011

No, Hollywood films aren't going to get better anytime soon. Mark Harris on the (potential) death of the great American art form

Oscars' Red Carpet (Parallel Universe)
by Manohla Dargis, The New York Times, March 1, 2011

Was it good for you — the Academy Awards that is, which last Sunday continued its long tradition of getting it wrong? It was for me, even if the Academy’s habit of rewarding mediocrity, especially if it comes with a British accent, remains intact. -- Manohla Dargis

Insulting Chuck Lorre, Not Abuse, Gets Sheen Sidelined
by David Carr, The New York Times, February 27, 2011 

In addition to wreaking all manner of havoc on himself with drugs and alcohol that has put him in the hospital and the show on hiatus, Mr. Sheen has done a lot of damage to the people around him, women in particular. -- David Carr

David Barclay Moore: image and realness

Talks @ the Schomburg: Image Makers: David Barclay Moore

Friday, May 6 (6pm)

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, Manhattan
(map and directions)
Not accessible to wheelchairs

Filmmaker David Barclay Moore will screen three of his short films, Realness, Dr. Al's Rebels and Race & Sex, and speak about the importance of black gay filmmaking. Hosted by Steven G Fullwood, project director for the Black Gay & Lesbian Archive. Q & A will follow the presentation.

Free admission. For more details, click here.

The Afro-future is now

Cauleen Smith's video exhibition, REMOTE VIEWING, curated by Rashida Bumbray, continues through this Saturday at The Kitchen. While I have yet to see that show, I did go to last evening's special presentation of Smith's Carousel Microcinema: GLOSSALALIA 5.0.

Naming something Carousel Microcinema...well, the inherent musicality of it, the visual intimations of it, the irresistible charm of it, all of that works for me right away. Here Smith compiles numerous short videos and clips harvested online, or acquired in other ways, to create a dreamlike, even hypnotic, serial collage. One technique Smith enjoys involves “using Google as an oracle,” as she calls it--posing a question to the Sacred Search Engine, often divining obscure gems.

Including seventeen artfully arranged works, Carousel Microcinema: GLOSSALALIA 5.0 demonstrates the range of Smith’s curiousity, sensibilities and sensitivity. Dutch photojournalist Jan-Joseph Stok’s disturbing footage from a rebel soldier camp in Darfur (2009) abuts samples of Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic fieldwork films from Florida (1928-29), contrasting his professional voyeurism with her engaging intimacy and empathy. Director Wendy Morgan’s wondrous music video for Gnarls Barkley’s “Going On” (2009)--now, for me, “on serious repeat,” as Smith would say--echoes the juicy, life-affirming hip hop dance of Yak Films’ Turf Feinz: Dancing in The Rain. Head-spinning psychedelic visions abound in Jabari Hall-Smith’s sci-fi mythic Lil’ Big Hed (2006) and Ulysses Jenkins’ Planet X (2006), but from an audaciously Black perspective with lacerating social critique. And there’s much, much more.

It’s an amazing visual mixtape and magical mystery tour around Smith’s bustling mind. Back in 2008, blogger audioblog wrote about Smith, “Seriously, if I had to be stuck on a film set for the rest of my life, I would want to be on her set--I'd always be seeing, hearing, and learning something new. If someone told me she'd made a film about paint drying, I'd be first in line to get a seat.”

Here's some information on Smith's REMOTE VIEWING installation:

California-based filmmaker, screenwriter, and video installation artist, Cauleen Smith is best known for Afro-futurist cinematic works that weave intimate narratives of love, yearning, and the dream-world with known histories, imagined landscapes, and cultural symbolism to activate collective memory. For her first New York solo exhibition, Smith presents three new distinct but interrelated video works that draw from abstracted historical narratives of absence, loss, displacement, burial, and excavation—not only exposing that which has disappeared, but also investigating the gestures and traumas associated with the violence of erasure. Smith’s new works triangulate these re-enactments with iconic site-specific land art practices of the seventies to reveal nuances of contemporary shifts in the displacement of people and of the natural landscape.

Exhibition hours for REMOTE VIEWING are Tuesday through Friday, noon to 6pm; Saturday 11-6pm. Admission is free. For more information, click here.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Dance/NYC: advocating arts activism

From Dance/NYC -- February 24, 2011

Dear Friend,

It is up to us - dancers, managers and audiences - to explain the value of dance in NYC to public policy makers not only locally but nationally. Strengthen your grant agencies:

National Endowment for the Arts

The urgency for federal advocacy was heightened this past week when the House of Representatives approved an amendment offered by Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI-7) to cut FY11 funding to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) by $20.6 million. This was on top of the $22.5 million funding reduction already recommended by the House Appropriations Committee.

The wide majority of New York State Representatives voted against the amendment - see list below. The vote was extremely close (217-209) and only five additional votes would have made the difference.

Please visit our partners at the Performing Arts Alliance to learn more and send a personal message to your Representative. Sending thank you notes to the Representatives who voted against the amendment is also helpful for securing their support going forward.

New York State Council on the Arts

Joining the New York City Arts coalition and sister groups statewide, Dance/NYC continues to advocate a restoration of $2.8 million of a cut to New York State Council on the Arts' (NYSCA) Aid to Localities, which is the source of its grants funding to arts groups. Visit the new Arts NYS Coalition Web site (www.ArtsNYS.org) to see the proposal, write your legislators and learn more about how you can make your voice heard in State budget proceedings.

How to Be an Advocate

Dance/NYC will address the role of dance advocacy at our annual symposium this Saturday, February 26. We are offering a free breakout session on How to Be an Advocate with Amy Fitterer, Executive Director of Dance/USA and Brandon Gryde, Director of Government Affairs; as well as a panel on Dance and Diplomacy with Maura Pally of the US Department of State. For more: http://dancenyc.org/news-room/news-and-announcements.php?id=159
Hoping to see you this weekend, and onward for dance in NYC!

 Lane

Lane Harwell
Director
Dance/NYC

NEW YORK

Timothy Bishop (D-NY-01) N
Steve Israel (D-NY-02) N
Peter King (R-NY-03) Y
Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY-04) N
Gary Ackerman (D-NY-05) N
Gregory Meeks (D-NY-06) N
Joseph Crowley (D-NY-07) N
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY-08) N
Anthony Weiner (D-NY-09) N
Edolphus Towns (D-NY-10) N
Yvette Clarke (D-NY-11) N
Nydia Velázquez (D-NY-12) N
Michael Grimm (R-NY-13) N
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-14) N
Charles Rangel (D-NY-15) N
José Serrano (D-NY-16) N
Eliot Engel (D-NY-17) N

Nita Lowey (D-NY-18) N
Nan Hayworth (R-NY-19) Y
Christopher Gibson (R-NY-20) N
Paul Tonko (D-NY-21) N
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY-22) N
William Owens (D-NY-23) N
Richard Hanna (R-NY-24) N
Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY-25) Y

-VACANT- (NY-26) --

Brian Higgins (D-NY-27) N
Louise Slaughter (D-NY-28) N
Tom Reed (R-NY-29) Y

Dance/NYC's mission is to sustain and advance the professional dance field in New York City-serving as the voice, guide and infrastructure architect for all local dance artists and managers. The organization achieves this mission through three core program areas: advocacy and research, audience engagement and professional development. Visit www.dancenyc.org to learn more about our programs.

Ghosts in the machine

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing might be the most extravagant experience Dance Theater Workshop has ever hosted. The hour-long, enigmatic fantasia of theater, music and visual and sound art, created by Norway’s Bessie-winning Verdensteatret collective, commandeers nearly every surface of DTW’s performance space and explodes throughout its air.

DTW’s theater has been transformed into a complex machine that generates and splatters not only sounds but muted light, intense shadows and the roving, wall-high animations of ghostly imagery. In this highly functional display, the most prominent features are revolving wheels (bare or decorated in what appears to be dried flowers, leaves and/or feathers) that emit amplified bleats, thrums and other sounds as if hooked up to the shattered remains of a jazz band. Handlers--Hai Nguyen Dinh, Ali Djabbary, Gjertrud Jynge and Øyvind B. Lyse--manually spin some of these wheels and carefully attend to other matters. Sometimes they contribute vocalizations to the sonic layers.

While this is not officially a dance-oriented piece, movement looms large, quite literally, although I’m not talking about anything typically associated with the performing body. Rather, these human bodies serve the machine, and the machine and its effects dance without cease.

I found, nevertheless, an unmistakable dancerliness at moments when Jynge grasped one of the wheel stands and rose on her toes to vocalize into its crackling microphone. It seemed obvious that that stand could have been made short enough so that she wouldn’t have to strain to reach the mic. However, the clutching and the straining and the plastering of her torso against the stand and particular arch of her feet in her little boots seemed to be an essential part of the design. In other words, dance.

A co-presentation of Dance Theater Workshop, FuturePerfect and Performance Space 122, And All the Question Marks Started to Sing, with its multitude of recycled mechanical parts and contraptions, has a charming old-fashioned feel. And just look at those those angelic pigeons, that crazy little breeding gull, that accordion squeezing all by itself, the prayer beads clicking away in Djabbary’s hands. This baby is a machine, all right, but not from our slick, digital age. It’s made by artists. The beauty, the wit, the ingenuity go on forever.

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing continues tonight (7:30pm) and tomorrow (5pm) at DTW, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Hurry for your tickets! (information and ticketing)

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing is the inaugural event of FuturePerfect 2011, a new performance, art & technology initiative in New York City. Produced in partnership with leading national and international cultural institutions, FuturePerfect highlights new hybrid performance practices, media forms, and artistic ideas that emerge as digital technologies evolve and become ubiquitous in contemporary culture. And All the Question Marks Started to Sing is also presented as part of PS122’s 30th Anniversary Season.