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April Dance Happenings: New York City

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

 March 29 – April 9

Eiko & Koma

The Japanese avant-garde artists, whose home has been the U.S. since 1976, present the New York premiere of Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. They will be intermittently naked, but what will stand out are their glacially slow movement tableaus that change one’s perception of time. Come with your patience, but know that you don’t have to stay the whole evening. The duo is offering Naked as an art installation. Audience members can come and go.

April 2

Dance of the Enchantress

At the Peter Norton Symphony Space, the South Indian classical dancer Vijayalakshmi will present herself in the dance style Mohiniyattam, which translates as “the Dance of the Enchantress.” According to ancient Indian legend, Vishnu the Preserver transformed himself into Mohini, an enchantress, in order to protect the universe from evil. Femininity and grace pervade the codified movements that alternate between pure dance and story telling. Performing along side Vijayalakshmi will be Palakal Rajagopalan (vocal), Muralee Krishnan (veena – lute), Sreekumar Kadampatt (edakka – hourglass-shaped drum), and Jayan Das (maddalam and mrdangam – double-headed tuned drums).

April 4

Merce Cunningham

On a monthly basis, the the Baryshnikov Arts Center has been showing Charles Atlas’ films of Merce Cunningham’s dances. Seeing Cunningham’s out-of-repertory works on a big screen is a boon to dance lovers. The next BAC flicks is eyeSpace (2006), which features music by David Behrman, costumes and sets by Daniel Arsham, and performances by the Cunningham dancers. The event begins with the webcast series called Mondays with Merce, which gives viewers deeper insight into Cunningham’s choreographic process. Valda Setterfield, a Cunningham performer from 1964-1974, will narrate and comment.

April 5-10

Stephen Petronio Dance Company

At the Joyce Theater, Stephen Petronio Company will present the New York premiere of Underland (2003). The work premiered with the Sydney Dance Company. It’s set to 14 songs by Australian rocker Nick Cave. It features multi-media projections by Mike Daly, another Down Under artist. Petronio’s evening-length work, now set on his 11 company members, is thick with movement and hipness.

April 8

“Ballet with a Modern Sensibility”

The 92nd St. Y’s “Fridays at Noon” free performance series continues with “Ballet with a Modern Sensibility.” Three choreographers—Christopher Caines, Brian Carey Chung, and Helen Heineman—will present excerpts of their new works, set to Italian Baroque music, and composers Meredith Monk, Arnold Schoenberg, Frédéric Mompou, Debussy, Beethoven, and Lou Harrison.

April 6-17

Ailey II

At The Ailey Citigroup Theater (the black box in the dance organization’s west 55 St. home), the second company will hold a two-week season. Six works and two programs will be danced by the 14-member Ailey II troupe, which travels the world almost as much as the parent company. The premieres include The Corner, a full ensemble work by Kyle Abraham—known for his fusion of popping, locking and post-modern dance—Doscongio by Robert Moses, set to two movements of Chopin’s Sonata for cello and piano (op. 65), and Shards by Donald Byrd, with music by Mio Morales.

April 14 – 16

Paradigm

At St. Mark’s Church, the pick-up troupe—comprised of dancers whose stage careers span several decades—will present two world premieres by its founding members, Carmen de Lavallade and Gus Solomons, Jr. The opening night performance will be followed by a celebration of Paradigm’s 15th anniversary and Carmen de Lavallade’s 80th birthday at Lautrec Bistro. You can join them, for a price, or just go to the show, which features a cast of eight veteran dancers, and a solo performance by Kyle Abraham, Solomon’s former student.

April 11

Dance Theatre of Harlem

At City Center Studio 5, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s artistic director Virginia Johnson and former New York City Ballet principal dancer Damian Woetzel will host an informal evening, focusing on the history of the first American black ballet company, founded at the height of the Civil Rights movement by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook. The pared-down company of dancers will perform excerpts from the repertoire.

April 12-24

DanceBrazil

DanceBrazil returns to The Joyce Theater with A Jornada (The Path), the high-octane 2001 work by artistic director Jelon Vieira. The evening-length piece is said the chart the path of Africans to Brazil. The Afro-Brazilian martial arts form Capoeira is used to express the emergence of Afro-Brazilian culture.

April 13-16

Juliette Mapp

At Dance Theater Workshop, Juliette Mapp will present her newest work, The Making of the Americans. Based on Gertrude Stein’s namesake novel about being from two worlds, Mapp’s evening-length, multi-media piece will investigate her mother’s family who emigrated from Albania to Gary, Indiana. The most famous citizen of Gary was Michael Jackson. He too will be part of Mapp’s dance theater work performed by eight dancers.

April 13

Ron Brown, Sean Curran, and Nelida Tirado

At the Museum of Art & Design’s black box subterranean theater, Ron Brown, Sean Curran, and Nelida Tirado will present works of whose content remains unknown. Fear not. Brown choreographs delightful concoctions drawn from West African and modern dance. Sean Curran does the same with Irish step dancing and contemporary concert dance movement. Tirado approaches the Flamenco tradition through her wide-ranging, eclectic performing experience.

April 15

Weidman, Maslow, Dudley, and Yuriko

At the 92nd St. Y, the free “Fridays at Noon” performance series continues with “Legacy Performance: Weidman, Maslow, Dudley, Yuriko.” Performed by students and professionals, the event will offer four works by three choreographers, who represented American modern dance’s second generation, interested in political activism. Weidman’s masterwork Lynchtown (1936) remains a powerful, seminal dance work.

April 15-30

John Kelly

At P.S. 122, performance and visual artist John Kelly will present The Escape Artist (2010), which “traces the story of a man who has a trapeze accident while rehearsing a theatre piece based on the life of Italian Baroque painter, Caravaggio. Stranded on a gurney with a broken neck in the hospital emergency room, he finds refuge in the images that flood his mind—the sinners and saints, prostitutes and gods that populate Caravaggio’s paintings. The Escape Artist contains seven original songs by John Kelly & Carol Lipnik, as well as covers of songs by Claudio Monteverdi and John Barry.” (from P.S. 122 website)

April 17

Swan Lake

At the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, the Russian National Ballet Theatre will present their version of Swan Lake. The company was founded in Moscow in the 1980s, when many artists from Soviet Union’s ballet institutions were forming new companies. Former Bolshoi Ballet principal dancer Elena Radchenko helms the company, known for performing works from the full-length, late 19th-century ballet repertoire.

April 25

Dance Against Cancer

At Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, the benefit performance “Dance Against Cancer” will offer performances by New York City Ballet dancers Daniel Ulbricht, Robert Fairchild, Amar Ramasar, Tyler Angle, Craig Hall, Wendy Whelan, Maria Kowroski, and Sterling Hyltin, as well as appearances by other well-known New York-based dancers. There will be three world premieres, created by fledgling ballet choreographers, and six short dance works created by George Balanchine, Christopher Wheeldon, Benjamin Millepied, Larry Keigwin, Lar Lubovitch, and Earl Mosley.

April 26-May 8

Armitage Gone! Dance

At The Joyce Theater, the company called Armitage Gone! Dance is back with a world premiere called GAGA-Gaku. It inspired by Cambodian Court dance and includes performances by Dance Theater of Harlem dancers. The two-week season features two programs, the second of which is a full-evening length dance based on Einstein’s theories of relativity and matter.

April 28–29

Valley of the Dolls

At Joe’s Pub, Nicole Wolcott and Vanessa Walters present their new cabaret piece, Alley of the Dolls (This is not a sequel). Inspired by the characters from Valley of the Dolls and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the dance ladies and their cohorts will likely spoof the B movies’ clichés about femininity with their popular brand of athleticism and tongue-and-cheek vulgarity.

April 29

World Dance Day

April 29 is World Dance Day, according to the International Dance Council CID, UNESCO.

April 29

Pearl Primus

At the 92nd St. Y, the free “Fridays at Noon” series continues with “Legacy Performance: Celebrating Pearl Primus.” One of the most important black American modern dance choreographers, Primus made three groundbreaking solos The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Strange Fruit, and Hard Time Blues. Students will perform the dances. A new book, The Dance Claimed Me (Yale University Press), will be on sale. The authors will read passages from their biography.

 

 

 

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Curating Currents: Robert Wilson at The Guggenheim

Monday, March 21st, 2011

By Rachel Straus

The mot du moment in the New York dance scene is “curate.” Dances are usually presented, but museums—From the Whitney to the Museum of Arts & Design—are getting in on the fun. Museums, however, don’t present. And so the fifth “Works & Process” program at the Guggenheim Museum was called “Watermill Quintet—Robert Wilson Curates New Performances” (March 13-14)

With a sold-out audience on March 14, the Peter B. Lewis Theater hummed with excitement. Then began Andrew Ondrejcak’s Veneration #1: The Young Heir Takes Possession of the Master’s Effects. What a title! But the headline bore little relationship to the stage action. Ondrejcak ran in his underwear on a treadmill for about 15 minutes. An excerpt of composer-violinist Michael Galasso’s Les Fables de la Fontaine (a 2004 co-commission with Wilson from the Comédie-Française) created a suitably intense, modernist musical landscape.

Like Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach (1976), the work that put the Texas-born director on the international avant-garde theater map, Veneration included repetition (running), dramatic lighting (by Wilson and John Torres), and a recognizable tone (deadly seriousness). When Ondrejcak fell off the treadmill, I looked at my program notes to find:

“Leading up to the death of his father in 2010, Ondrejcak devised Veneration #1: The Young Heir Takes Possession of the Master’s Effects, in which he isolates and observes the body’s process of physical weakening (and eventual failure)…”

This reviewer did a double take, unsure of whether the program notes corresponded to the stage proceedings. But they did. And so the serious study of the program notes (throughout the show) became part of the performance. Connecting the moving images on stage with the long descriptions of four 15-minute works and six video interludes—created by five artists who had been mentored by Wilson in 2010 at his Watermill Center—became the elusive goal.

Some works seemed to be about so much, as in the case of The Dorothy K.: Shorter Are the Prayers in Bed, but More Heartfelt, which included blood soaked costumes by Anna Telcs. Another seemed to be about so little, as with MOMENT-a duet for one, which involved the choreographer Marianna Kavallieratos and Thanassis Akokkalidis’ moving and sitting across from each other in chairs.

The works bore little relationship to each other. The press release stated that Wilson had made a “visual and performative framework.” In the end, the event felt like subterfuge for the obvious: The star of the show was Wilson. The curator is the new rock star. Performance theory jargon isn’t just for academics. Artists can spin profundities about their creations with mots mysteres. If this approach fostered intellectual stimulation or comedy, that would have been fabulous. But on March 14 at the Guggenheim it created consternation, and multiple departures by formerly excited audience members.

 

 

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Club Kids Don’t Cry: A New Work by Keigwin + Company

Monday, March 14th, 2011

The first generation of American concert choreographers distanced themselves from the dance club and fashion world. They wanted to elevate dance, not point out its relationship to entertainment and consumerism. Not Larry Keigwin, who came of age in the late 1980s. The New York-born choreographer’s world premiere of Exit at The Joyce Theater (March 8-13) takes the underground club world, with all its narcissism, nihilism and fashion-ism as its subject matter. Known for his embrace of popular culture (working with The Radio City Rockettes and more recently for New York Fashion Week), Keigwin’s evening-length work for his seven-member pickup troupe is a significant departure. It’s serious. And that is its greatest weakness. Take seriously preening and posing clubbers? Come on. Dancer Liz Riga was sporting retro-inspired makeup reminiscent of the rock band Kiss.

Friend and fellow dance critic Marina Harss commented that Exit, seen on March 9, isn’t dark enough. “They look like such good kids,” she said. Keigwin probably hoped to create a self-destructive vision of club culture, choreographing his athletic performers to repeatedly fall to the floor and pulverize each other. But because these dancers always sauntered to and slithered against a black wall (designed by Dane Laffrey), a message of safety first (exhibitionism second) reigned. The desire to create danger, even with Burke Wilmore’s Blade Runner style lighting, didn’t develop. So, Exit bordered between the mundane and the simulacrum silly. When Aaron Carr appeared in a white mesh top, a black thong, and silver stilettos, lip synching Sammy Davis Jr.’s rendition of the 1967 song I’ve Got to be Me, he looked less like a transvestite and more like a teenager strutting for his pals in the safety of his dorm room. Carr, a succinct and luscious mover, is just too clean cut looking to convincingly play the outsider.

The composer Jerome Begin—who performed on a keyboard synthesizer and weaved layers of beats and sounds like a wizard at his cauldron—was the most believable member of the crew. Playing below and stage right of the dancers, Begin did exactly what DJs are revered for: Keeping the club mood subtly changing and increasing in intensity. Also of note were the final moments of Exit, when Keigwin’s choreography echoed Begin’s ricocheting sound riffs. At this moment, Carr’s tossing spiraling limbs influenced the next dancer’s movements, and then the next. Like a wave of energy, the dancers became united as they cascaded toward the wings to their final exit. It was a beautiful moment. Hopefully, Keigwin will have the opportunity to develop more transcendence in Exit as it tours the country in the coming year. Because Keigwin isn’t just a 1980s club kid. Like most interesting artists, he’s moving forward.

 

 

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Do What Thou Wilt: Modern dance, John Cage and the Guggenheim Museum

Monday, March 7th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

John Cage died in 1992, but his influence on modern dance lives on. Take the Guggenheim Museum Works & Process February 27 and 28 program: “John Zorn’s Music Interpreted: New Choreography by Donald Byrd and Pam Tanowitz.” During the moderated part of the event on the 28th, Byrd said to composer Charles Wuorinen, “We will not have music dominate us.” Then Byrd thanked John Cage, attributing his statement to the composer philosopher whose long-time collaboration with Merce Cunningham transformed the landscape of modern dance.

Considering the fact that this Works & Process series was devoted to examining the relationship between music and dance and that Cage might have taken issue with the word “dominate” to describe any musical-choreographic relationship, Byrd’s comment was oddly aggressive. However John Zorn—whose music Byrd choreographed to and who was seated to Byrd’s right—looked merely amused by the exchange. Bracketing Byrd’s cagey reference to Cage was two world premieres: Byrd’s (fay çe que vouldras) or “do what thou wilt” and Tanowitz’s Femina, created respectively to Zorn’s unnamed 2005 and 2008 compositions.

Being that Byrd and Tanowitz recognize John Cage and Merce Cunningham as major influences, it might be good to revisit their artistic approach. The composer and choreographer believed that music and dance could occur simultaneously, but need not directly respond to each other. Their works created an alliance of sound and sight. Both were disinterested in narrative, but their mainly abstract landscapes did foster interpretations. What dominated their collaborations were a sense of play, where there appeared to exist a multiplicity of choices, both for the dancers and the musicians.

Byrd isn’t much for playing. His approach in vouldras was about as light as an avalanche. He trafficked in exactingly obscure messages. His dancers (especially the women) were too often featured as splayed-leg pawns of another’s manipulations. As Stephen Drury played Zorn’s alternatively minimalist and thunderous-sounding piano composition, angst reigned. The two male dancers went into seizures on the floor. After performing aerobic ballet steps on pointe, two women whispered to the pained-looking men. All the dancers breathed heavily, as though they were scaling a treacherous mountain.

In Femina, Pam Tanowitz did a better job revealing how Cunningham and Cage influenced her artistic career. As a former student of Viola Farber, a founding member of the Cunningham Company, Tanowitz’s movement vocabulary bore the mark of the Cunningham technique: The dancers moved through space with no facial expressions and applied their bodies to tasks (rather than expressive emoting and gesturing). Their limbs transformed into design elements.

Tanowitz isn’t, however, a strict Cunningham-ian. In this case, she’s interested in gender. By choosing the title, Femina, seven women (and one man) appeared to focus on a female sensibility. In two solos for Banu Ogan and Ashley Tuttle—formerly with the Cunningham Company and American Ballet Theatre, respectively—two portraits of women emerged. In the first, Tuttle appeared in a ballet skirt, leotard, and pointe shoes. She danced steps lifted from a typical ballet class: chainé turns, tendus, port de bras. She faced the back of the stage, as though seeing herself in a rehearsal studio mirror. Toward the end, she took off a pointe shoe off and banged it on the floor. Bad pointe shoe! She seemed to be saying. Was this a Black Swan moment? Who knows, but it might have something to do with Tanowitz’s preference for modern dance.

In the second solo, Ogan didn’t flagellate any objects. She danced facing the audience. The recorded music—a mélange of spoken word, violin, harp, piano, percussion, natural sounds, with metered and unmetered sections—was vastly more digestible than the 2005 work used by Byrd. Ogan’s fluid motions corresponded to the music in one moment and against it in another. The solo possessed playful mystery, perhaps because none of the theatrical elements seemed to dominate.

 


 

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The Powerful P’s: Paco Peña and Paul Taylor

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

By Rachel Straus

A dance work that can express a rainbow’s spectrum of emotions is a marvel. More mysterious is that an identical set of motions—done softly and then forcefully—can convey opposite meanings. Last week’s New York performances by Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company (Town Hall, February 24) and the Paul Taylor Dance Company (City Center, February 25) became a dance primer for how emotional interpretations, delivered through a minimal movement vocabulary, effect perception, much like a landscape drenched in sunlight, and then under storm clouds.

Among Paul Taylor’s gargantuan repertory, the most pointed exploration of contrasting emotions is his Polaris (1976). Made the year that the space shuttle named itself The Enterprise (after the Star Trek vessel), this sleek, space-age work takes place in Alex Katz’s cube, which resembles the Star Trek Transporter room.

Polaris is structured in two parts. “Part I” and “Part II” possess the exact same steps. The difference is in the dynamic approach of ten dancers. Like mirror images of each other, they are dressed in Katz’s black and white Mondrian-style briefs (and bras tops for the women).

In “Part I,” the dynamic quality of five dancers is buoyant, energetic, and bubbly. In “Part II” the same steps, as performed by five different dancers, is done with sharp, muscular force and steely expressions. The repetition of steps feels like a trick on the eyes: “Am I really seeing the same dance? It looks so different,” one asks. What is not surprising is that “Part II” is more interesting (and Donald York’s moribund electronic score improves when it is played in a minor key).

Celebrated for his pretty pas de deux and all-American frolicking dances, Taylor is a choreographer who makes consistently engaging works about the dark side. When he paints movement pictures tinged with violence, his work also feels more authentic. This is a subjective statement, but considering how dancers live with hardship (physical and otherwise), it’s an arguable position. Dancers’ bodies experience adversity continuously. They know how to channel it.

Also on the program was the New York premiere of Phantasmagoria. To anonymous Renaissance composers, the dance begins with AnnMaria Mazzini sinking her body into the floor and then slamming her fist like a nail into a coffin. Her serious mood is upended by Amy Young and the cast, dressed as “Flemish villagers,” who hop and skip about like medieval characters in Monty Python’s satire The Meaning of Life (1983).

Taylor’s new work is a lark. Divided into seven sections, it includes comic send-ups of Irish step dancing (as performed flawlessly by the black dancer Michelle Fleet), of an “East Indian Adam and Eve” (whose point of contact is a gargantuan phallus in the shape of a green snake), and of the Isadorables (the fey young dancers trained by Isadora Duncan). The staggering presence of a drunken “Bowery Bum,” as performed by Mr. Kleinendorst, continually destroys the Isadorables practiced mystique of coming from ancient Greece.

Very much an homage to the vaudeville circuit, where performers did anything and everything to get a laugh, Phantasmagoria is minor Taylor, but good Taylor nonetheless. However, the work’s subtitle—“Life, what is it but a dream?”—by Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carol doesn’t hit the mark. Here is a dance better described by Caroll’s opening chapter, “Down the Rabbit Hole.” The tunnel in this case is comprised of dances of the ages.

**

Then there was the performance of the Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company, which polyphonically pulsated through Town Hall’s cavernous space for one powerful performance. Angel Muñoz performed a flamenco style marked by restraint and the imaginative interpretation of traditional dances learned from his predecessors. Muñoz’s austere quaity is reflective of the historic architecture of Cordoba, which is his hometown and Peña’s.  

Performing along side his wife Charo Espino and the relative newcomer Ramón Martinez, Muñoz’s understated sex appeal and musicality is mesmerizing. Neither a grandstander nor an introvert, Muñoz transformed the rectangular performing space in front of three guitarists (Peña, Paco Arriaga, Rafael Montilla), two vocalists (Inmaculada Rivero, Jesús Corbacho) and one percussionist (Diego Alvarez). As he struck stuck the floor with his feet, encircled his arms, and developed polyrhythms with the musicians, Muñoz’s dancing created a sea of emotions that could be describes as landscapes: Torrential rain, urban grit, mirages.

While Munoz possesses simultaneous ease and unswerving concentration in his body and face, Charo Espino’s presentation of self is more baroque. Her eyes dramatically contract to express her passion. Her stage persona is aggressive, cat like, haughty. However, when Espino sat next to Peña and a duet between her castanets and his guitar ensued, she dropped her dramatics to focus on her rhythmic chops, which are masterful. Like Martinez, who pulled off five elegant pirouettes, Espino’s talent is undeniable. It’s her approach, and some of her dresses, which are unnecessarily flashy.

The evening ended with singer Inmaculada Rivero dancing an improvised, playful encore for the company. Without the instruments accompanying her footwork, it was one of the few times where a dancer’s sound was not drowned out by the cajon. Perhaps the World Music Institute, which presented the company, will mike the floor next time, so that these powerful dancers can not only be seen but also heard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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March Dance Happenings in New York City

Monday, February 21st, 2011

By Rachel Straus

Guggenheim Museum Works + Process: “How Judges Judge—Youth America Grand Prix”

March 6 and 7

Youth America Grand Prix is America’s first and the world’s largest student ballet scholarship competition. JYAGP jury members Gailene Stock, Director of the Royal Ballet School; Franco de Vita, Director of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre; and Adam Sklute, Artistic Director of Ballet West, will offer insight into the selection process as they critique dancers’ performances during an impromptu ballet competition on stage.

Keigwin + Company at The Joyce Theater

March 8 – 13

The cabaret-oriented, bawdy choreographer Larry Keigwin premieres Dark Habits, which examines fashion and drama (and of course sex). The score features original music by cellist Chris Lancaster and pianist Jerome Begin as well as familiar rock tunes.

Guggenheim Museum Works + Process: “Watermill Quintet—Robert Wilson Curates New Performances”

March 13 and 14

Robert Wilson will present his newest work in process. Combining dance, performance art, theater, video, and music, Wilson’s piece is created in collaboration with five young emerging directors and choreographers, and the composer Michael Galasso.

Martha Graham Dance Company’s 85th Anniversary Season at the Rose Theater

March 15 -20

America’s oldest modern dance company will offer four programs, featuring Graham’s master works, a world premiere by Taiwanese choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava, a revival of Robert Wilson’s Snow on the Mesa, and “The Political Dance Project,” a montage of dances by 1930s female choreographers of the political left.

Trisha Brown Dance Company at Dance Theater Workshop

Mar 16 – 19, 22 – 26

The company will present four works, including Foray Forêt, (1990), the last of a series of works created in collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg; and Watermotor (1978), Brown’s solo dance that will be performed for the first time by a dancer other than herself.

Miro Magloire, Ben Munisteri and Michele Wiles at the Museum of Art and Design

March 16

Magloire and Munisteri’ solos for American Ballet Theater principal dancer Michele Wiles will show off her versatility in an intimate, tabula rasa-like gallery space of this new museum.

Guggenheim Museum Works + Process: “Royal Danish Ballet”

March 21 and 22

Prior to their American tour in May and June 2011, the Royal Danish Ballet dancers will perform excerpts from the repertory. Newly appointed artistic director Nikolaj Hübbe (a former New York City Ballet principal) will discuss his vision for the company with John Meehan, Professor of Dance at Vassar College. Dancers will perform highlights from August Bournonville’s The Jockey Dance, La Sylphide, A Folk Tale, and Bournonville Variations, plus Nikolaj Hübbe’s new staging of Napoli, and Jorma Elo’s Lost on Slow.

“Dances From The Heart” at Cedar Lake Theater

March 21 and 22

Now in its sixth year, the event will offer four performances over two days and feature 19 dance companies in benefit of Dancers Responding to AIDS, a program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Juilliard School Spring Dance Concert at Peter Jay Sharp Theater

March 23-27

Dance division students will perform Bronislava Nijinska’s masterwork Les Noces (1923), Eliot Feld’s Skara Brae (1986) and Mark Morris’s Grand Duo (1993)

Merce Cunningham Dance Company at The Joyce Theater

Mar 22-27

Before disbanding in December 2011, the company will present at The Joyce CRWDSPCR, Quartet, and Antic Meet. This trio of dances has not been seen in New York for decades. Performing Cunningham’s works are the final group of dancers he personally trained.

Guggenheim Museum Works + Process: “Celebrating David Del Tredici—With New Choreography by Lynne Taylor-Corbett”

March 27 and 28

Lynne Taylor-Corbett presents a dance to David Del Tredici’s Grosse Tarantella. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City, directed by Francisco J. Núñez, will sing Del Tredici’s Four Heartfelt Anthems. A moderated discussion with the composer and choreographer will follow the performance.

Dance Theater Workshop: Richard Move and MoveOpolis!

March 30 – April 2

Martha Graham impersonator extraordinaire Richard Move will perform alongside Graham principal dancers in ways that pay homage and poke fun at the first lady of modern dance.

Compañía Nacional de Danza at the Skirball Center

March 31- April 2

Madrid-based contemporary ballet company CND2 makes its New York City premiere. The performance is part of the company’s final tour with artistic director Nacho Duato, who took over the directorship of the ballet company of St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theater in January.

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Valentine Dances

Monday, February 14th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

When the pressure is on to be romantic, delivering the goods is a challenge. The week before Valentine’s Day, four dance events intentionally (and unintentionally) dabbled in matters of the heart.  Merce Cunningham’s 1998 Pond Way—as filmed by Charles Atlas—was surprisingly the most romantic. (It was screened at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on February 7 as part of “BAC Flicks: Mondays with Merce.”)

Dressed in Scheherazade-meets-minimalist costumes (by Suzanne Gallo), the dancers circumnavigated each other with the aplomb and gentleness of amphibious courtiers. Roy Lichtenstein’s pointillist Landscape with a Boat served as the backdrop and Brian Eno’s New Ikebukkuro (For 3 CD Players) proved subtle and serene. As Banu Ogan traversed the length of the downstage space, a male dancer gently stopped her. Cunningham’s reference to The Rose Adagio in Sleeping Beauty is unmistakable. But instead of being given a flower and striking a virtuoso balance on pointe (as is the case in Beauty), Ogan was neither held nor presented. One by one, a male dancer appeared, placed his palm on a different part of her body, and then evaporated into the wings. Each touch was delicate, almost unobtrusive, like a soft breeze that comes out of nowhere and gives one pause.

**

Mark Morris is not known for his high-flown treatment of heterosexual love. His 2007 Romeo and Juliet (to Prokofiev’s original score with a happy ending) lacked romantic fire. In his choreography for John Adams’ Nixon in China (1987), which is making its Metropolitan Opera House debut (and which I saw on February 12), Morris reinterpreted the propagandist Chinese ballet The Red Detachment of Women (1964). Under Peter Sellers’ direction, Morris choreographed a ballet within a ballet in which President Nixon (James Maddalena) and Mrs. Nixon (Janis Kelly) leave their opera house seats and become involved in the ballet’s action: A peasant girl (Haruno Yamazaki) is whipped to a pulp, then given the Little Red Book. She becomes a rifle-wielding revolutionary comrade. In Act III, she dances with a soldier (Kanji Segawa), once a “decadent” in a European white suit.

Their final pas de deux occurs behind the Nixons (Pat and Richard) and the Tse-Tungs (Mr. and Mrs. Mao), as performed by Robert Brubaker and Kathleen Kim. The singers describe their early years in which sex and love played a greater part in their lives. The fact that Peter Sellers obstructs Morris’ choreography—placing the formidable dancers behind six beds and five singers—says a lot about Sellers’ opinion of Morris’s duet, which does little to support the lyrics about love and loss.

**

Martha Graham wasn’t exactly a romantic, but she sure knew how to choreograph sex. In preparation for the Martha Graham Dance Company’s 85th season at New York’s Rose Theater (March 15-20), the troupe presented their second informal showing on February 9 at DANY Studios. Graham dancers excel in staring each other down with an intensity of gaze only a bull could countenance. When Tadej Brdnik and Xiaochuan Xie locked eyes during an excerpt from Robert Wilson’s Snow on the Mesa (1995), it became clear that their relationship was not the PG variety. That said neither Mesa nor these dancers’ interpretations were overwrought. Brdnik and Xie’s physical beauty and technical command will make this Wilson ballet worth seeing. The other excerpts presented included Graham’s Appalachian Spring (1944), Cave of the Heart (1947), and Deaths and Entrances (1943)—as well as Bulareyang Pagarlava’s work in progress, based on Deaths. It is neither sexy nor romantic. It seems to poke fun at Graham’s seriousness.

**

Seriousness and silliness shared equal billing at Joe’s Pub on February 11, with the kickoff of Dancemopolitan’s 2011 season. Called  “Kyle Abraham and Friends: Heartbreaks and Homies,” the cabaret-style event  (produced by DanceNOW [NYC]) featured seven works by Kyle Abraham and one by three guest choreographers: David Dorfman, Faye Driscoll, and Alex Escalante. On the Pub’s kitchen-size stage, the costuming placed the dances squarely in the retro past. Hot pants prevailed. Afros and beards were in the house. However, when Abraham began short-circuiting his body to the music of Love Me by Sam Cooke—a pioneer of soul music who was shot dead at the height of his career—the evening lost its playful tone.

Like an electric switch, Abraham altered his mood. This fast-firing, dancer-actor expressed heartbreak, rage, innocence, bawdiness in moment-to-moment slices of bodily action. Abraham also shape shifted into a lover because “Heartbreak and Homies” was made with Valentine’s Day in mind. Abraham intermittently mingled among the audience (and in his last solo he curled up in some of their laps). Upon returning to the stage, Abraham flicked his emotional switch down to a dark place: He silently wailed. His body sputtered. It was shocking, its pathos mesmerizing.

Less shocking but equal absorbing was Alex Escalante’s solo about getting dumped via cell phone. As the dancer repeatedly mouthed his disappointment into a microphone, his words looped back into the sound system. An echo chamber of voices chaotically intermingled, in which  Escalante’s laments, his conversation with his lover, and the crooning lyrics of Kiss and Say Goodbye by the Manhattans developed a three-way conversation. At the work’s beginning, Escalante asked the audience: Have you ever been in a relationship that had a total communication breakdown?

Broken down by too many voices, Escalante eventually staggered away from the microphone. His gait resembled a boozer’s drawl. He never fell down. Any amateur who loosened their limbs like Escalante’s would be on the floor, nursing his knees, crying for help.

 

 

 

 

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Musical Pointe Shoes: New Chamber Ballet

Monday, February 7th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

When a ballet dancer runs, the box of her pointe shoe hits the floor. The sound is unmistakable: low in timber, dense, much like a percussion instrument. Most choreographers don’t want the audience to hear dancers’ feet. But in Miro Magloire’s Night Music, which had its world premiere at City Center Studio 4 on February 4, the German-born choreographer made percussion the subject of his ballet. Reminiscent of Kabuki for its formalism and pregnant pauses, Night was the second of five works presented by Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet.

In Night, Madeline Deavenport, Katie Gibson and Lauren Toole become multi-instrumentalists, thanks to the black claves they grasped in their hands. Unlike the majority of works on the evening’s program, Night did not present the dancers in conventionally feminine ways. In black velvet tunics, the women engaged in abstract combat (lunging into each other’s space, circling like birds of prey). When one dancer struck her claves together, the others dropped to the floor, as though felled by the force of the sound. This was dramatic, but occurred midway through the dance. And when the performers rose from the floor as though nothing had happened, Night lost some of its edge.

The other two premieres on the program also possessed striking moments. But in the bare bones environment of Studio 4 (no lighting, no wings), the works’ choreographic weaknesses became more glaring. New Chamber Ballet (lead by Magloire) spends its funds engaging live musicians and highly trained ballet dancers rather than renting formal theaters. It’s too bad that a presenter (like Joyce Soho) hasn’t offered this small but ambitious troupe a better performing space.

In Emery LeCrone’s premiere Virtuoso, Alexandra Blacker’s wingspan and suppleness was exceptional, but her close proximity to the audience made her appear more vulnerable than wondrously superior. Then there was the choreography. Against Camille Saint-Saëns’ melodically torrential Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor—played live by Erik Carlson (violin) and Steven Becker (piano)—choreographer LeCrone failed (or chose not) to develop cascading phrases reflective of the composer’s first movement, Allegro Agitato. Consequently, the music and dance felt at odds with each other.

The last premiere on the program was Constantine Baecher’s Sketches of Woman Remembering. A dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, Baecher has contributed five works to New Chamber Ballet. His sixth ballet takes its inspiration from Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun (1912) in which a Faun’s sexual advances are rejected by three nymphs. In Sketches, three women—Alexandra Blacker, Victoria North, and Lauren Toole—dance solos of regret. It’s important to know that back in 1912 the Faun was Nijinsky, who was the non plus ultra of sexuality on the ballet stage.

Sketches begins with the barefoot dancers standing upstage like Greek columns (instead of togas the women wear pink leotards and are covered in a diaphanous fabric). One by one each walks forward. Each solo involves the manipulation of their floor-length veil. In Nijinsky’s ballet, a similarly translucent piece of fabric is stolen from the lead nymph. It becomes the surrogate for the nymph’s body. In the ballet’s scandalous finale, Nijinsky (legend has it) simulated climaxing into the scarf.

Nothing so sexual occurs in Baecher’s ballet, which is also choreographed to music by Claude Debussy. Against Preludes – Book 1, Nos. 6, 3 and 1 (as performed by Steven Becker), the fabric becomes a symbol of mourning. But dancing about a lost sexual opportunity isn’t easy to convey. The strongest moment was when Katie Gibson wrung her shroud out in time to the music’s trilling, as though attempting to wash away her regret.

All three new works have the potential to become dances worthy of seeing again, especially if they are presented with some theatrical distance and more dramatic lighting.

The other works on the two-night program were Magloire’s Klavierstück, to Karlheinz Stockhausen, and his Sculpture Garden, to George Frederick Handel’s Violin Sonatas in A Major.

 

 

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February Dance Happenings in New York City

Monday, January 31st, 2011

By Rachel Straus


February 4 and 5 @ 8:00 p.m.

Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet at City Center

Magloire’s choreographic inspiration is music. Lately, the German-born, composer-choreographer has been inviting emerging dance makers to his evenings at City Center’s studio. The program will include three world premieres: Constantine Baecher’s Sketches Of A Woman Remembering (a trio to music by Debussy), Emery LeCrone’s solo to a violin sonata by Saint-Saens, and another trio by Magloire, which will uncharacteristically be performed in near silence.

 

 

February 7 @ 7 p.m.

BAC Flics: Mondays with Merce

Two films by former Cunningham filmmaker-in-residence Charles Atlas will be screened at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. The first, Sounddance (1975), includes a percussive score by David Tudor. The second, Pond Way (1998), features a pointillist backdrop by Roy Lichtenstein and a Brian Eno score, said to be mesmerizing. Regardless of the sounds, the Cunningham dancers possess a physicality found nowhere else. Think panther meets machine.  

 

 

February 8-13 (curtain times vary)

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence at the Joyce Theater

Brown’s 25th anniversary season will include the world premiere of On Earth Together, set to music by Stevie Wonder (program A only). The Brooklyn-born choreographer grew up performing modern dance, but he found his choreographic voice through Cuban, Caribbean, and West African dance vocabularies. His work is joyous and thoughtful, a rare combination.

 


February 11 and 12 @ 7 p.m.

Dancemopolitan presents Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and Friends (Joe’s Pub)

Called Heartbreak and Homies, this cabaret-style, laidback Valentine’s day-inspired event should be sweetly sly and definitely silly, thanks to the invited dancers, which include Alex Escalante and Faye Driscoll. Out Magazine recently called Abraham, who will perform, one of New York’s 100 most eligible gay bachelors.

 

 

February 15-20 (curtain times vary)

Buglisi Dance Theatre at the Joyce Theater

Artistic Director Jacqulyn Buglisi made a name performing principal roles with the Martha Graham Dance Company. Her 17-year-old troupe offers highly dramatic dances that feature strong women. Buglisi’s choreography is painterly, occasionally overwrought, but always beautifully performed. For her New York season, she will present two world premieres: Letters of Love on Ripped Paper and Requiem.

 

 

February 22 – March 6 (curtain times vary)

Paul Taylor Dance Company at City Center

In 12 days, the company will unfurl 16 dances by its namesake choreographer. Two works—Phantasmagoria and Three Dubious Memories—are New York premieres. One—Orbs (set to Beethoven’s late string quartets)—is a revival. The tickets for March 1 have been slashed to “Great Depression Special Prices:” $19.29 for all seats normally $25-$150, $5 for all seats normally $10.

 

February 19 @ 2 p.m., 
February 23 @ 7:30 p.m.
, February 25 @ 8 p.m., and 
February 26 @ 8 p.m.

New New York City Ballet work by Benjamin Millepied (David H. Koch Theater)

With a commissioned score by David Lang, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Millepied’s Plainspoken promises to be a well-attended City Ballet event. The work premiered last summer at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, months before Millepied became renowned as the ballet consultant for Darren Aronofsky’s vampire film Black Swan. Plainspoken, says Millepied, is inspired by the personalities of the dancers who helped realize the ballet.

 

 

February 24 @ 8 p.m.

Paco Pena at Town Hall

Guitar maestro Paco Peña and his Flamenco Dance Company will present their new production Flamenco Vivo, which includes a cast of guitarists, percussionists, vocalists and three male dancers—Ángel Muñoz, Ramón Martinez, and Charo Espino. This should be a Gypsy-style, testosterone-fueled, must-see event. Ole!

 

 

 

February 25 and 26 at 8 p.m. and at 3 p.m. on the 27th

Christopher Williams premiere of “Mumbo-jumbo and Other Works” at 92nd St. Y’s Harkness Dance Festival

As indicated by the title of Williams’ latest work, this dance-theater choreographer isn’t into minimalism. Mumbo-jumbo will reference controversial 19th century juvenile literature, which traffics in xenophobia and racism. It might pack a punch.

 

February 27 and 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Guggenheim Museum’s Works + Process: John Zorn, Donald Byrd, Pam Tamowitz

Choreographers Donald Byrd and Pam Tanowitz each create new works, commissioned by Works & Process, set to the music of composer John Zorn. Byrd, known for his beautiful yet volatile work, will choreograph a piece with his Seattle-based company Spectrum Dance Theater set to Zorn’s ∴ played by pianist Stephen Drury. Tanowitz, known for her unflinchingly postmodern treatment of classical dance, sets a work to Zorn’s Femina, written as a tribute to the rich legacy of women in the arts. (Taken verbatim from Guggenheim website)

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The Orchid of New York City Ballet

Monday, January 24th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

If you’re a ballet lover, you know her name.

Sara Mearns.

New York Times senior dance critic Alastair MacAulay recently called her “the greatest American ballerina of our time.” On January 21, she performed in Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering (1969) and Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH (2008) with the New York City Ballet at the David Koch H. Theater.

She was stunning.

But Mearns, 24, doesn’t look like a City Ballet ballerina. Since George Balanchine increasingly promoted female dancers that resembled Twiggy (and his successor Peter Martins followed suit), she is a departure for the company. Zaftig, Mearns is not. Instead her swan neck, wide back, and strong legs endow her with the potential for enormous physical range. She eats up space. She can spiral like a cyclone. She finishes her pirouettes with a plié that is as pliant as melting wax. This dynamic flexibility in addition to her emotional gravitas makes her a powerhouse.

Despite this power, Mearns doesn’t come across as a bruiser—all emotion, no subtlety. Like Greta Garbo or Lauren Bacall, she possesses a proto-feminist confidence. She has a glamour and maturity that recalls the French City Ballet principal dancer Violette Verdy. In an art form modeled on medieval courtship, Mearns consistently embodies queenlyness. Whether she is being propelled aloft or lassoed by her partner, these less-than luxuriant moments look like part of her grand design. These vertiginous thrills seem to embolden her.

In Dances at a Gathering, in which Susan Walters performed 18 Chopin piano pieces, Mearns was given one of the last solos. Like a racecar at the starting gate, the emotional tenor of Mearns’s solo escalated from 0 to 60 rpm. Mearns’s transformation—from statuesque to scythe-like—made me sit back in my seat. In Concerto DSCH, to Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1957 Piano Concerto No. 2, Mearns’s partnering with the emerging, lyrical dancer Tyler Angle was seamless, as though they had been dancing together for years.

The well-constructed program, which began with Balanchine’s Walpurgisacht Ballet (1980), possessed an overarched theme: Community. Balanchine’s community featured mauve-costumed women whose unfurled hair in the ballet’s last section suggested a sisterhood of wild lilacs who had sprung legs. Robbins’s community in Dances felt very American, resembling a group of enlightened youth, pondering their past and future. Ratmansky’s community in DSCH felt unmistakably Soviet. (Think utopian workers on holiday at a merry-go-round). In the last two dances, Mearns’s engagement wasn’t just with her partner and her steps, but with those around her. She may be a queen, but she is no snob. She’s more like an orchid, sprung out of ground normally reserved for less exotic flora.

 

 

 

 

 


* “The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.”—George Balanchine


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