Posts Tagged ‘Dance Theater Workshop’

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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Men at Work: Adam Barruch, Philippe Saire, and Wally Cardona

Monday, January 10th, 2011

by Rachel Straus

Sometimes it helps to be overtly theatrical. Take Adam Barruch. At Dance Theater Workshop (January 5 and 6), the choreographer-performer opened the Emerging Artists showcase as though he were hit by lightening. Barruch’s ferociously physical attack belies his boyish, slight-of-hip appearance. Under a pool of light, he slammed his fist like a meat cleaver into a table, channeling the voice of Mrs. Lovett (Angela Lansbury) in the 1979 Broadway hit “Sweeney Todd.” Barruch’s 2008 solo, named after Stephen Sondheim’s tune “The Worst Pies in London,” was the highlight of the evening. His whirling dervish arms, maniacal facial expressions, and dead-stop gestures drilled down to the essence of Sondheim’s hunger-leading-to-violence lyrics. While Lansbury blurts out words like squirting blood, Barruch’s fast-firing synapses camped a famous tune with the finesse of an old-time Broadway hand.

Barruch’s “Worst Pies” signals that he is a chef to watch. In contrast, the two other choreographers, on the Gotham Arts Exchange presented program, demonstrated how difficult it is to concoct imaginative movement and collaborate effectively with music. With respect to their emerging choreographer status, it’s best not to dwell on their shortcomings.

Gillis in “Chalice.” Photo: Virginia Rollison

Barruch’s second offering of the evening—to Bach’s aria “Erbarme Dich” from “St Matthew Passion, BWV 244″—possessed a jewel-like focus. Called “Chalice,” the solo physicalizes the lyrics of Bach’s aria, regarding betrayal and its subsequent feelings of guilt. In a blood-red dress, veteran performer Margie Gillis reaches and recoils from an alcohol-filled chalice. Her unbound, hip-length hair weeps over the drink—her undoing. Like Martha Graham’s solo “Lamentation” (1930), “Chalice” never feels saccharin. Like a painting, it captures a moment in time. It’s consistently intense. But the third piece by Barruch failed to harness the previous solos’ succinctness. In the world premiere of “Wane,” narrative elements surfaced and dissolved; seven dancers came and went in lush, spiraling phrases; black cargo pants and aggressive partnering hinted at a warring world.

**

Warring (or wrestling) was the featured movement motif in Cie. Philippe Saire’s “Lonesome Cowboy,” which held its U.S. premiere at the Joyce Theater (Jan 6-9). In the Swiss-Algerian choreographer’s universe, comprised of five men in a gravel pit, aggression became the departure point for displaying how the male species becomes defined by their life’s station (whether it’s in the military, on Wall Street, or on a stoop guzzling beer in a kilt sans underwear).

This narrow self-definition renders these guys—surprise, surprise—lost, dazed, and confused. At the end of the 80-minute production to Christopher Bollondi’s alternatively heavy hitting and soporific sound score, the five performers took a bow like they didn’t know what hit them.

Their antics during the performance reminded me of the blockbuster film “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989), where two time-traveling teenagers survive Napoleon and Genghis Khan’s violence because they are ignorant, daring dudes. In “Lonesome Cowboy,” the men nail each other’s faces to the floor with their heels, suck face, and drag each other around to no lasting positive or negative effect. They are pawns in Saire’s clichéd psychodrama, divorced from any movement material that would identify them as individuals.

**

“A Slow Week in the Dance Studio with Strangers” would be my suggestion as the working title for Wally Cardona’s latest dance, presented January 8 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Titled “Intervention #4: Robert Sember,” the hour-long piece was “Slow” because the performers (Cardona, Sember, and Francis A. Stansky) moved about as I do in my apartment: They sat, stood, and lied prone. The work involved a “Week” because on Monday, January 3, the sound artist and social activist Robert Sember met the choreographer Wally Cardona; by Saturday they had to create something for the ever-critical New York crowd. Cardona and Sember’s experience occurred in a “Dance Studio,” in this case room 6A of the BAC. And, yes, the artists were initially “Strangers” to each other. Like my working title, the overall piece felt strung together.

If creating a dance for consumption in five days sounds like a doleful plan, you’re correct. Nonetheless, my hopes for “Intervention” ran high for four reasons: One, in tough economic times it’s best to be honest with your audiences. If there is only enough money to make a work in a week, why not advertise it as just that? Two, Cardona’s “Intervention” concept—an artist intervenes and catapults him in new directions—is an intriguing idea. Three, Cardona is on the fourth of seven “Intervention” series; he may be getting the hang of this format. Four, the couple seated to my left really liked “Intervention #3: Karina Lyons,” which premiered in December at the Joyce Soho. In that work, the intervener was a sommelier and wine consultant who lubricated the audience with wine while Cardona, a fascinatingly quirky mover, danced.

Sound artist Sember, however, is no Merlot wine. He is tall and serious; he’s not particularly nimble. Did he create a pall over Cardona’s creativity? Only Cardona can say.

Cardona is prone to exploring multiple layers of meaning. With Sember at his side, Cardona created a concept that read better on paper than on stage. At the 40-minute mark, I believe I got its gist: How do three people interpret the same verbal directions?

“Intervention #4” began with Cardona, standing stock still in square space, flanked by the audience seated around him. Cardona walked purposefully, closed his eyes, and covered his ears. A timer rang; he left. Then Sember entered. He accomplished similar movements, but this time a voiceover (via overhead speakers) directed his actions, as though a mild-mannered choreographer was in his head. Later, a duet with Sember and Stansky unfolded where two voices directed their tasks: “turn your head to the left,” “sit on your left side.” The work’s climax came when all three men took the same verbal cues from the same voice. Each performer interpreted the same words—“twist,” “reach,” “fall”—in different ways.

“Intervention #4” called to mind Roland Barthes’s S/Z (1970). The French semiotician argued that a text has no fixed meaning. There are only interpretations. This is a founding principle of post-modern dance. If it sounds doleful, you are correct.

 

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Post-modern Dance Competition

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010


Seven minutes can feel like an eternity. Or at least that was my thought halfway through the second night of “Festival Twenty Ten” at Dance Theater Workshop. Now in its 16th year, the September 8-11 event featured ten pieces per night. Curated by Robin Staff, the artistic director of Dance/NOW [NYC], it gave 40 choreographers the opportunity to make concise works less than seven minutes long. Yet only three of the ten choreographers, who presented dances on September 9, rose to the occasion. And they, unlike the others, didn’t push it by going to the 6:59-minute mark.

The festival organizers also asked the audience to vote for their favorite number. Called the DanceNOW Challenge (no, I’m not kidding), this participatory process will culminate with one choreographer winning a week-long creative residency in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (the home of the festival’s artistic director), a $1000 stipend, a temporary, paid teaching position at DeSales University, and 20 hours of Manhattan rehearsal space.

Voting, however, is never what it’s cracked up to be. On Thursday night certain works received rousing hands, despite these dances ho hum choreographic and/or performed qualities. The audience, filled with friends and family, was not an impartial lot. I wonder whether the Dance/NOW people will address this papering-the-house problematic. How will the votes be weighed?

My favorite work was Throwaway. Choreographed by John Heginbotham, a Mark Morris dancer, the work wooed as it made fun of the festival’s implicit challenge: to demonstrate craft and deliver an understandable message in seven minutes. In a white bolero jacket, spandex pants, and lacy socks, Brian Lawson appeared like a 1980s suburban teen enamored with Michael Jackson. Lawson Vogued with deadpan demeanor and with the ennui of a TV channel surfer. The music by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo was appropriately canned and grooveless. When Maile Okamura joined Lawson under his spotlight, complementing his gestural dis-earnestness and retro costume, Throwaway felt like a cross between Amateur Night at The Apollo and a post-modern dance purification rite.

My runner-up favorite works were A Revolution by Jim Carroll by Iain Rowe and Some Enchanted Believin’ by Maura Nguyen Donohue. But the only connection I could make with Rowe’s work and his Jim Carroll title was the costuming. Carroll, whose Basketball Diaries describes his adolescent descent into heroine and prostitution, appeared to be referenced in Rowe’s choice of a thick, black leather belt that looked vaguely punk or S&M or both. Rowe’s snippet of a solo proved mesmerizing  because he never faced the audience and he never moved. Instead his long, expressive torso and arms undulated like a flame above that black belt, or (but this is pushing it) like a soul seeking to ascend from the blackness of hell.

Donohue’s work, which closed the program, also mined the homage vein. Her spoof on South Pacific was negligible in dance terms. But as a faux musical number it included the following integrated elements: the earnest strumming of guitarist Perry Yung with the joyful vocalizations of Rick Ebihara (who also played the accordian), the marriage of ballet to pseudo Polynesian dance, and four roped-in audience members (who were lassoed at the waist). This number was and looked like a finale.

Addendum: Ellis Wood won the DanceNOW Challenge for her piece titled MOM, which was performed on September 10. The press release stated that the voters did not include the audience, but a panel of choreographers, educators, administrators, critics, and the organizer’s directors. Audience voting participation got the boot.

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