Archive for the 'Dance' Category

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Dec 6, 8—10 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 45, 55
Apx. 70min, no intermission

BAMdialogue with Sasha Waltz
Dec 8, post-show
(free for ticket holders)

BAM Ticket Services
718.636.4100
tickets@BAM.org

In 2002, Sasha Waltz’s “Körper” created a sensation when it premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her energetically physical dance works incorporate strong visual and aural imagery coupled with intense partnering and a microscopic look at body perceptions. Her new work, “Impromptus,” continues her dynamic group interactions, with dancers that assemble in organic formations that seem to tumble, melt and jettison forth. The 70-minute work is set to piano music by Shubert which will be played live onstage. Waltz is often compared to the genius German choreographer Pina Bausch, but her territory is her own, with a grab bag of experiences in dance that combines American postmodern sensibilities and German Expressionism. Preview a video clip HERE. –Tom Pearson

photo: “Impromptus,” Festival d’Avignon 2004, by Cathy Peylan

NYC DECOMPRESSION 2005
by Tom Pearson

Sculpture by Paige Bradley Gallery; photo by Tom Pearson

This year’s NYC Decompression party, a celebration of art and alternative culture that serves as a cool down for New York area burners, was one of the best in years. The thirteen-hour interactive carnival held on the rooftop of Brookyln Sugar in Williamsburg brought the playa to the tar, replete with art installations, sculpture, performing artists, a dance floor, a costume trading post, free popcorn, cotton candy, a kissing booth, and of course, the fabulous annual resident creatures of Black Rock City. Smaller in scale than past parties, the contained atmosphere focused its energy instead on cultivating quality. The dance party was always kicking. The hula hoopers, with their own play area, were on hand to perform and share advice. Tip: a simple back and forth motion of the torso (with one foot planted slightly in front) is better for hooping than trying to circle with your waist.

The fire spinners were extraordinary as they showed their virtuosity to a vibrating but hushed crowd (we had to cheer quietly to keep the NYPD from closing us down). Two silvery acrobats performed circus-type fabric drops from the ceiling inside, while the dance party paused to watch. Outside, freezing party-goers crowded around a burn barrel situated between a sculpture of a horse made from rebar and tire treads and a sculpture by Paige Bradley Gallery of a woman emitting light from her torso.

Last year’s party, held at Spirit in Chelsea, attracted the club-goers and failed to satisfy, but the party on Saturday night was filled with true burners, who live the playa year-round and generously share their spirits and gifts. And, the few pieces of art and occasional performances were like nuggets of gold against the chilly skyline of Manhattan and a city preparing for a long cold winter.

© 2005 Tom Pearson

BETWEEN COMPOSURE AND OUTBURST:
“Puppy-Skills” at PS122
by Tom Pearson

In an evening of old and new works by Sally Silvers & Dancers Thursday night at PS122, the choreographer celebrated 25 years of dance-making with long-time collaborators, a few fresh faces, and an audience of die-hard fans.

The premieres of the evening offered Silvers at her best. In her closing solo, “Oven Rack,” Silvers wafted between sweet composure and surprising moments of movement Tourret’s. Perhaps a better opener than a closer, this solo epitomized the quirky quality and whimsical intelligence that Silvers has built her dance reputation around.

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Wonder Women Rock Merce Cunningham Studio

By Guest Reviewer: Shannon Jowett

There’s nothing I love more than the sound of performers tromping to their places on a dark stage. It’s a moment of anticipation both tendered by trepidation (could this be the most painful 70 minutes of my life?) and rife with hope for something fresh, pleasurable, and engaging.

The ladies of Esse Aficionado did not disappoint with their recent program, Readymade, at the Merce Cunningham Studio.

In History, lights came up on 9 women of all different sizes and shapes. Uniformed by considerable skill and Gina Graham’s punchy choreography, they barked the occasional count and worked themselves into near-testosterone aggression while dressed in black, trunk-cut panties and clear plastic, hip-length smocks that rustled furiously with every gesture. Their blocky-solidness–most of it straight-backed with a hearty tilt from the torso–gave way to a recurrent hunching inward dive cut occasionally by broad scissor steps. Hard-edged with lots of stops and starts, the movement was chunky but never clunky (except a brief moment of unison circle work that struck me as that other Graham’s “Primitive Mysteries” for the Jazzercise set.)

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In order to celebrate their 40th anniversary on Monday night, Dance Theatre Workshop transformed their offices into a four-story performance space. Every 10 minutes from 5pm to 9pm a performance began somewhere in the building. No corner was unused, from the box office to the conference room. People lined up outside for the free event after the place filled to capacity (rumored to be 1,800 at one point).

The highlight of the evening was Beehive, a piece performed by Third Rail Projects and Productions in DTW’s tiny kitchen. Audiences crowded around, curious to see why a bee was standing in the doorway holding up a tape cassette recorder. What followed was clever, innovative and delightfully campy. Members of the troupe made cookies while wrapped in blue cellophane, donning bright blue beehive wigs and climbing all over the kitchen in a way that evoked synchronized swimming, with space-age lounge music playing in the background.

Tonight at 7pm, Wednesday through Friday at 7pm Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers Pier 61 - 23rd Street and the Hudson River Tickets: $20; $15 for senior citizens. Call (212) 929-5811. www.icetheatre.org

Celebrate the 2005 season of the Ice Theatre of New York, the country’s finest artistic ice dance ensemble, featuring visionary choreography and special guest artists, including Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov, two-time World Ice Dance Champions. With works by Peter Di Falco, Heather Harrington, David Liu, Joanna Mendl Shaw, Elisa Monte and Douglas Webster.

This week is one for the adventurous, starting with choreographer Ann Liv Young’s “Michael” at Dance Theater Workshop, October 19–22 at 7:30pm. “Michael” is the story of four women, one man and a choreographer which takes place inside a 42-foot mobile home, decorated with Victorian furniture. The content is explicit: full frontal nudity, male masturbation and racially provocative text. Presenters and critics seem apprehensive. This choreographer has a reputation for taking no prisoners, but let’s hope audiences that go to DTW will judge the work for its content and not its shock value. After all, what’s really shocking about any of that? You don’t have to look too far to find that sort of thing in Chelsea. Read Claudia La Rocca’s preview at nytimes.com

Taking it further downtown to a crowd that takes raunch much less seriously, we have the opportunity to catch Reverend Jen’s “Mr. Lower East Side Pageant,” this friday, from 7-10pm at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery. Considered a holy day for art stars, expect singing, dancing, indecent exposure and episodes of schizozendria (that’s embarrasment for others). Lauded as “the kind of event that you moved to New York for,” there will be a swimsuit competition and an award for best “man tits.” All women and gay men get a ballot at the door. All men that show up in time are eligible to compete.

October 11, 12 8:00 and 10:00pm $15($10 Members)

Buy Tickets online at TheaterMania

What if contemporary dance was fun? Terry Dean Bartlett and Katie Workum continue their highly-acclaimed around town DanceOff series tonight and tomorrow at PS122. The co-conspirators have a reputation for curating an evening both accessible and smart, from showy circusy acrobatics and cabaret to experimental movement and comic antics. Come see what the fuss is all about with this non-competitive “not really a contest” contest. If the roster of talent is any indication, it should be an evening well spent. The line-up includes David Neumann and Andrew Dinwiddie, Workum, Bartlett, Leigh Garrett, Tehreema Mitha Dance, and Julian Barnett. Also performing are the ever-energetic and often fabulously psychotic Nicholasleichterdance, the sublime Christopher Williams, and the incomparably imagistic and intelligent Pig Iron Theatre of Philadelphia. More info at PSS122.

DANCE IN THE DEEP END:
Site-specific Artist Reopens Public Space in Brooklyn

photo by Richard Termine

Noemie LaFrance’s new site-specific “Agora,” is an arts festival unto itself, unexpectedly charming and whimsical with brooding moments interspersed. On Tuesday night, a ribbon cutting (of yellow police tape) and performance of “Agora” reopened the 50,000 square-foot McCarren pool in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint/Williamsburg neighborhood for the first time since 1983. LaFrance’s work inaugurates the site as an interim performance venue and laboratory for site-specific artists that will keep the pool open to the public as funds are raised to renovate. It also opens a new debate regarding the pool’s future and the role of local artists in shaping policy surrounding public space.

The McCarren pool, a project of the WPA, was built in 1936 to accommodate 6,800 swimmers, but LaFrance filled the crumbling relic with her moveable art installations, 30 dancers, and guest performers who wailed away on the vast stretch of concrete pool bottom—tracing abstract narrative threads that overlapped and intersected. The shifting scenes evoked antagonism, self-adsorption, exhibitionism, eroticism, playfulness, and celebration—many ghosts from the pool’s past. Throughout the work, these apparitions came to us as conversations with the architecture’s history—but also spoke of a much larger notion of public space and inter-activity and the utter engagement of people with place.

photo by Richard Termine

The team of skillful performers dove in and out of the action in furious flashes of fully-invested movement—from large, recognizable dance that filled the space to more nuanced gestures focused by careful staging. Occasionally, the performers would converge to serve up a hefty helping of expansive unison movement, which proved to be restful to the eye and mind before the action fragmented and scattered once again, leaving us to reconcile and prioritize our perceptions. In all of LaFrance’s choices, the results seemed determined by a response to the demands of the site; and therefore, overly precious experimentalism—all too often privileged in contemporary dance—bowed to the integrity of overall design.

Lighting by Thomas Dunn made use of the pool’s original lighting for night swimming, and together with a multi-channel sound score by Brooks Williams and Norm Scott, amplified the palate of movement textures and motley tableaus: a riotous disco; a rolling bed scene, high-impact antics in an inflatable pool, hula-hoopers atop raised islands, a Flamenco pilgrimage, and preening junkies in the deep end. These scenes and more manifested and dissolved, only to be replaced by a multiplicity of others. As women carrying baskets fell into the pool and made their way center to pick up fallen oranges, the piece resolved itself as the scene of a marketplace (or “Agora” in Greek, which has several connotations for the public sphere). Two casually dressed figures from the audience joined in to survey the possibilities, and we were left to ponder whether they were spectators or part of the spectacle.

“Agora” runs through October 1 at 8pm.

For tickets, directions and further information visit sensproduction.org or call 718-302-5024.

by Tom Pearson (September 15, 2005)