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Morris, the Night, and the Music

August 30, 2011 by 2 Comments
Fox attacks Cock, all react. Photo: Stephanie Berger

When it comes to selecting music to spark choreography, Mark Morris is an omnivore. He gives loving, uncondescending attention to popular songs like George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Jerome Kern’s “Two Little Bluebirds, or (once) Yoko Ono’s “Dogtown,” as well as digging into scores by Bach, Stravinsky, Schumann and other musical giants. To Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, from August 18 through 20, the Mark Morris Dance Group brought new and recent dances set to compositions by Stravinsky (Renard), … [Read more...]

08/30/11 4:26 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Forty Years of Magical Thinking

August 24, 2011 by 4 Comments
Building a Bower: Les Yeux et l'âme. Photo: Deen van Meer

Labels like “ordinary” and “everyday” have often been pasted onto Trisha Brown’s movement, especially when someone is alluding to her early work as a member of the iconoclastic Judson Dance Theater. But when has anything she’s ever made been ordinary? Walking may be ordinary, but getting a dancer (to whom she was married at the time) to walk down the side of a very tall building is not your usual stroll (Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, 1970). Many people have rummage sales, but what choreographer stages one underneath a … [Read more...]

08/24/11 12:36 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Being Together

August 17, 2011 by 1 Comment
Jodi Melnick and David Neumann in "July." Photo: Cherylynn Tsushima

  When is a shadow not a shadow?  That’s one of the mysteries of Jodi Melnick’s solo Fanfare(2009). Wearing a little black dress, her red hair fiery in Joe Levasseur’s lighting, Melnick inhabits a world within the Doris Duke Studio Theater at Jacob’s Pillow that’s otherwise all black and white, darkness and gleaming silver. Burt Barr’s set design consists of two double fans set on squared-edged pillars about four feet tall. Little projectors on adjoining pillars glance bright beams off the fans as they swing from side to … [Read more...]

08/17/11 12:37 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

What Shape Are You In?

August 8, 2011 by 4 Comments
Jonah Bokaer in his "Recess," Photo: Cherylynn Tsushima

Is Jonah Bokaer 30 yet? During the silent beginning of his solo Recess, a woman in the audience of Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater whispered to her companion “he’s so young!” He may look like a tall, self-possessed boy, but he has accomplished as much or more than many 40-year-old performer-choreographers. He spent eight years dancing in Merce Cunningham’s company; picked up a degree in Visual and Media Studies; spearheaded the establishment of the innovative organization and venue Chez Bushwick: founded the Center for … [Read more...]

08/8/11 11:35 AM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

To Hell and Back

August 6, 2011 by 2 Comments
Herakles (Pete Simpson rescuing Alkestis (Tymberly Canale), Photo: Christopher Duggan

To be and not to be.  That is a different question. It hovers above Big Dance Theater’s The Supernatural Wife, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar’s absorbing re-envisioning of the myth behind Euripedes’ Alkestis. Already seen in Europe and appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’ Next Wave Festival in November, the work’s U.S. premiere took place in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater from July 27 through 31. As is always the case with Big Dance Theater productions, The Supernatural Wife bounces apparently dissimilar texts … [Read more...]

08/6/11 3:27 PM | filed under: dance theater |

Korean Dancing: Ancient and Very New

August 1, 2011 by 9 Comments
Jinyuk Ryu (L.) and Insoo Lee in Lee’s Modern Feelings Photo: Christopher Duggan

Fifteen years ago, I decided that the Korean salpuri was one of the world’s great dances. For some time, smitten by a performance in an early black and white film, I had corralled graduate students from Korea to perform a salpurifor the dance history class I taught. They managed it with varying degrees of skill and spirituality. Then, in 1996, in Seoul, I saw a version of this solo (which derives from a shaman ritual) danced by a small, quite aged woman with the status—as I remember—of a Living National Treasure. That was the … [Read more...]

08/1/11 3:16 PM | filed under: New Dance from Abroad |

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