Where do we fit? 92Y Harkness Dance explores identity

Dancer-choreographer Aimee Rials
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Dance artist Aimee Rials curated Where do we fit? for 92Y Harkness Dance Center's Fridays at Noon, choosing five choreographers to question "identity and sexuality, personhood and power, inclusion and exclusion and the universal desire to belong." With the exception of an ethereal Jasmine Hearn duet from shook-- performed with care by Dominica Greene and Angie Pittman--the hour-long showcase focused on solos danced by their creators. It explored everything from dexterous physicality, quirky and rash in its expression (Chuck Wilt's Cadet) to the mystery and spirituality of gender fluidity (Trebien Pollard's She Gives Birth to Stone). Through a dream-like relationship to costuming, Pamela Pietro worked clear contrasts between a woman's determined self-protection and her vulnerability in everything I thought I Knew but....

Rials's solo--"The Quiet We Keep," a compelling excerpt from Modifi(her)--had dramatic impact, drawn from her experience as an androgynous white lesbian with roots in the rural south. In a post-show Q&A, she noted her caution and self-vigilance on visits home, her need to protect her kin from scrutiny and danger by altering her appearance and behavior. Rials did not discuss the formal qualities of her solo, but I had taken note of intriguing similarities to ritual--the formation and interactions with a circle of empty folding chairs possibly representing absent and recalled family members; tremulous movement that could signal "catching the spirit" or resolutely engaging old pain and trauma. The Quiet We Keep, without being obvious, powerfully evokes place, people and psyche.

Closed. For information on future 92Y Harkness Dance Center Friday at Noon events, click here.

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Lumberyard: Japan's Kei Takei returns with "LIGHT"

Kei Takei solo in LIGHT, Part 8
(photos: Kate Enman)

I remember Japanese choreographer Kei Takei from back in the 1970s when her company made its home in New York, and I used to think of her as "that woman who dances in diapers." Her vision seemed to arise from an earthly environment--she called her troupe Kei Takei's Moving Earth--but also from the humility and scrappiness inspired by watching and feeling and loving the elements of Earth. And, she's no different now at age whatever--which I hear she does not reveal--after many years of being off the New York scene.

Kei Takei's Moving Earth Orient Sphere has opened a season at New York Live Arts, launching this year's Lumberyard in the City Winter Festival. (BTW, while we debate PS 122's re-branding, surely it's time for Lumberyard to retire this festival's clumsy name.)  I was excited to reacquaint myself with Takei's work, which I recalled from the early days of my dance writing career. It felt amazing to revisit her solo from LIGHT, PART 8 (1974) in which this small, scampering character continuously ties fresh white garments to her body, growing into a bulbous, immobile mess that must be carried away by stagehands. The direct, naked lighting on all that white fabric--layered on so thickly--made my eyes sting. Honestly, I don't remember what I made of this absurd, caustic solo back in the day, but last night I wanted to burst out laughing. The opening night audience gazed at it quietly and responded to it, and the ensemble work LIGHT, Part 44 (Bamboo Forest), with reserve and polite applause.

Takei is as funny as a clown...with purpose. Like a clown, she puts her whole body into it. This physical investment you can't help but feel--or, at least, I can't--and that's what made me want to laugh. At the same time, I realize that here she is, an artist of movement, tying herself up and weighing herself down with things she does not need--whether they are material objects or useless ideas or restrictions. Fill in the blank, as I'm sure she'd want us to do. We've all been there. We could be there today, as could our world.

Takei, center, and members of her troupe
in LIGHT, Part 44
(photo: Kate Enman)

LIGHT, Part 44 (Bamboo Forest), a work from 2016 making its US premiere, opened the evening, danced here by Takei and eleven others. About this work, Takei has written:

To me, a bamboo forest is a mystical place. In it something is born, grows, and then vanishes. I am not trying to express anything in particular in "BAMBOO FOREST." It is simply that bamboo, whether it is giant or small, enchants and entices me. I follow it into its world.

And so she does, and so do we, something that we come to understand as the work concludes after a full hour of watching dancers mass, split apart, reorganize themselves into separate organic segments each with its focus, drive and rhythm, turning the single stage space into a tapestry of distinct and changeable dimensions, a living, breathing, regenerating forest. The work--with a minimalist set by Renta Kochi and rich music by Seiichiro Sou--deals with nature's cycles in which we, as mortal beings, partake.

Takei has been bringing to the stage her magnum opus LIGHT--in its numerous autonomous sections, now up to 45--since the late 1960s. She's an impressive elder and shows no sign of any interest, or need, to slow down or break focus.

Kei Takei's Moving Earth Orient Sphere continues tonight and Saturday night with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets for this and other Lumberyard in the City Winter Festival shows at New York Live Arts through February 10, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Mark E. Smith, 60

Mark E. Smith, Uncompromising Leader of the Fall, Dies at 60
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 25, 2018

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Bob Smith, 59

Bob Smith, Groundbreaking Gay Comedian, Is Dead at 59
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, January 25, 2018

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Olivia Cole, 75

Olivia Cole, Award-Winning ‘Roots’ Actress, Is Dead at 75
by Christina Caron, The New York Times, January 24, 2018

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A.M. Weaver (1954–2018)

A.M. Weaver (1954–2018)
by ARTFORUM, January 24, 2018

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COIL: Dean Moss premieres "Petra" at Performance Space New York

Dean Moss fuses a notorious Fassbinder character
with headless, blood-spurting Hindu goddess Chinnamasta
in his new work, Petra, at Performance Space New York.
(photo courtesy of COIL Festival)

APAP might be long gone, but COIL keeps on coiling, offering new chances to take the measure of Performance Space New York, this new--or, I should say, renovated and blandly re-branded--East Village entity. There's not a bit bland, though, about the current PSNY occupant, Dean Moss, and his newest interdisciplinary piece, Petra. Here's this world premiere production has been described:

A masochistic autobiographical meditation on desire, Petra examines race, sex, and power through the lens of service and unrequited love. Directed by Dean Moss, with music performed live by Composer Samita Sinha, and inspired by the Rainer Fassbinder film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant”, Petra merges the imagined and real lives of its all women immigrant cast, drawing parallels between theirs, his, and the film’s queer, anxiety-laced explorations of ambition, subjection and dispossession. Simultaneously, (taking inspiration from “She whose head is severed” - a Hindu goddess associated with self-sacrifice, spiritual awakening, and the power of the erotic - Moss questions the institutional processes of diversity management, highlighting not only its aspirational goals, but also its self-serving strategies, the implementation of which both support and undermine projects not unlike his own.

I remembered it was mischievous Moss--invited into Parallels, Ishmael Houston-Jones's 2012 Black avant-garde platform for Danspace Project--who raised eyebrows by titling his curated program Black Dance though his selected artists were actually Korean-American, Latinx and white. Petra's adoption and adaptations of characters and visual and narrative elements from Fassbinder's film provide a striking framework for Moss's agenda. Here he battles assumptions and restrictions in arts support and presenting that, as he sees it, can manipulate and hamstring creativity.

Much of Petra contains clues about how Moss feels about his complicated place as a Black artist in a white-dominated downtown performance community where, nevertheless, he has gained recognition and respect. He surrounds his imperious alter-ego, Petra (theater artist Kaneza Schaal), with efficient minions--dancers Mina Nishimura, Sari Nordman and Paz Tanjuaquio. (The women represent different cultural backgrounds: Schaal is of Rwandan ancestry; composer/performer Samita Sinha is Indian; Nishimura, born in Japan; Nordman, in Finland; Tanjuaquio, in the Philippines.) Moss's three "Marlenes"--Nishimura, Nordman and Tanjuaquio--snap to fulfill the stately, glamorous Petra's every barked order. They quietly submit as she towers over them, pulling one after another into a smothering slow dance. The way Schaal clasps and carefully positions that first head (Tanjuaquio's) at her bosom tells us everything we need to know about power imbalance. Sinha, glittering in gold, is Petra's much-desired "Karin," everything an artist’s ego longs for and is often denied. You can't always get what you want.

The numerous Fassbinder parallels can be fascinating, but the work turns far more pointed as it winds down with a solo for Tanjuaquio with Sinha leading three audience members in a vocal chorus. Their text, intoned in unison, rolls out familiar lines of institutional interrogation meant to discern an artist's or cultural project's degree of attention to programming diversity and community engagement. Tanjuaquio's dance--saying nothing particularly translatable to the linear, anxious mind--pushes ever onward. The dancer skims right over the surface of this score just as, I suspect, Moss wants us to know he will always prefer to do.

Concept, Direction, Choreography, Audio/Visual Design: Dean Moss

Performing Collaborators: Mina Nishimura, Sari Nordman, Kaneza Schaal, Samita Sinha and Paz Tanjuaquio

Video Collaborators: Julia Cumming, Cassie Mey, Marya Warshaw and Asher Woodworth

Lighting Design: Zack Tinkelman

Original Music: Samita Sinha

Petra continues with 7:30pm performances tonight through Saturday, January 27. For information and tickets for this and other COIL events, click here.

Performance Space New York
150 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets, 4th Floor), Manhattan
(directions)

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