 |
At left, Duane Cyrus with Jonathan Gonzalez
in Cynthia Oliver's Virago-Man Dem
(photo: Chris Cameron) |
The Latin prefix “vir” means “man”; the suffix “-ago” indicates female. Thus, the term “virago” has, since ancient times, suggested that elusive flicker between genders we know so well and deny so violently.
--from promotional text for Cynthia Oliver's Virago-Man Dem
Dance artist
Cynthia Oliver centers the human body in her adroit
Virago-Man Dem, just opened at
BAM's Next Wave Festival. In fact, the four bodies centered here--
Duane Cyrus,
Jonathan Gonzalez,
Ni’Ja Whitson and
Niall Noel Jones--comprise one of the most cunning, most satisfying performance ensembles on hand this season. But
Virago-Man Dem also boasts visual and sonic design of strong-enough confidence to support its movement without distracting or detracting from it. Particularly impressive is the work of
Black Kirby (Afro-speculative comics artists
John Jennings and
Stacey Robinson) with projections and animations by
John Boesche and lighting designer
Amanda K. Ringger's rich imagination of place, time and mood. With costume designer
Susan Becker and composer
Jason Finkelman in the mix, Oliver directs a dream team of adepts at
BAM Fisher.
With this piece, Oliver cracks open masculinity as a fixed idea received and upheld by Black men. Inspired by her dancers' experiences as well as her dual sensibilities as a woman of Afro-Caribbean birth living and working in the US, she draws from observation of masculinit
ies, finding material in a deceptively easy stroll down the street, a clever dash on a basketball court, a sinuous sashay along imagined catwalks and more. What makes her resulting dance not merely a patchwork of a bunch of stuff done by three male-identified performers and one gender nonconforming performer is her taste and talent for connective flow and her eye for how being willfully or ecstatically off-center or molten or in-between uncovers the
more inside the person. More self, more capacity, more joy, more supple, resilient strength. It's this
more that, sadly, often threatens individuals, families, communities, religions and nations. It's this
more--isn't it?--that for which we secretly yearn and which artists brilliantly model for us.
It might not necessarily take a woman to watch these things from the outside and bring them to her canvas or stage, but it takes
this woman, perhaps, with apparently endless reserve of movement ideas to bring her concepts alive and keep us interested over 75 minutes. And from the work's beginning (in physical stillness and visual murkiness) through the hoodie-covered dancers' testing of bodies and selves and their growing clarity and enlivening, with Ringger enhancing the dimensions of Oliver's sculpted movement, we're kept on the edge of our seats.
Here's a journey ready to be taken more than once, but consider yourself lucky if you get to see
Virago-Man Dem even just one time.
Virago-Man Dem continues tonight through Saturday evening with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click
here.
Prior to tonight's performance, Cynthia Oliver will offer a free talk,
Examining Black Masculinity, at 6pm in Wendy's Subway Reading Room, downstairs at BAM Fisher.
BAM Fisher
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(
map/directions)
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