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Krishna to Krishna: “Damn You!”

March 30, 2012 by 3 Comments
Surupa Sen in Krishna's Lament. Photo: Nan Melville

The Hindu god Shiva is sometimes pictured in Indian art and philosophy as half-man, half-woman. One beguiling interpretation of this vision is that he ceded half of his body to his beloved consort, Parvati, to show how much he loved her. In Hinduism, the union—or desired union—between masculine god and desirous female soul is the subject of many ravishing poems and dances. But as the three members of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble so beautifully demonstrated during the company’s season at the Joyce Theater (March 20 through 25), a single … [Read more...]

03/30/12 1:42 PM | filed under: non-western dance |

Two Black Women, Two Dark Journeys

March 26, 2012 by 1 Comment
Chipaumire, journeying. Photo: Ian Douglas

In 1982, Ishmael Houston-Jones asked himself some questions about Black Dance (a term embraced at the time by those who considered themselves part of it) and how that aesthetic related to the work that he and some of his African American colleagues on the downtown New York scene were interested in creating. The result: two weekends of performances produced that year by Danspace Project at Saint Mark’s Church, under the title Parallels. On those programs, Houston-Jones was joined by Blondell Cummings, Fred Holland, Rrata Christine Jones, Ralph … [Read more...]

03/26/12 10:11 AM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Taylor: Then, Now, and Forever

March 24, 2012 by 2 Comments
Eran Bugge, Robert Kleinendorst, and Aileen Roehl in The Uncommitted. Photo: Rick McCullough

Happy 50th birthday, Aureole!  Sorry I missed the celebration. You certainly don’t look your age. When I think of all the ideas you spawned for your boss, Paul Taylor, I’m amazed at your daisy-freshness. This is some season for the Taylor company: three weeks at the capacious, formerly named New York State Theater, instead of the usual two at the smaller New York City Center. Twenty-two works and repetitions of each stuffed into 21 performances that began March 13 and end April 1. Is Taylor trying to kill his dancers? Probably not. But … [Read more...]

03/24/12 7:44 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Re-entering Martha’s Inner Landscapes

March 22, 2012 by 6 Comments
AJ CIRCUS Lloyd Knight Xiaochuan Xie3

The program that the Martha Graham Dance Company presented on the opening night of its Joyce Theater season (March 13 through 18) concluded with a gripping performance of Graham’s 1947 masterwork Night Journey. The audience clapped and cheered and rose to its feet. In my heart, I muttered, “That’ll show them.”  Show whom what?  Show the world? Show the directors of the company that audiences can take their Graham neat, that they don’t need explanations and works by others that riff off Graham’s themes? But is that last true? … [Read more...]

03/22/12 2:51 PM | filed under: classic modern dance |

Three Women, Three Styles

March 16, 2012 by 1 Comment
ChristinaNoel Reaves, Jessica Weiss, Lonnie Poupard, Jake Szczypek in Jody Oberfelder's Sung Heroes. Photo: Christopher Duggan

College basketball has nothing on the March Madness that seems to overtake the New York dance season just as spring is trying to inch in. I find myself momentarily mixing up dancers and works in my mind and trying to read notes scribbled on top of one another in a dense, black blob. Then there’s the pen that ran out of ink. . . . Three performances have been running around in my mind on separate tracks—all by New York choreographers with very dissimilar styles and preoccupations: Jody Oberfelder, Pam Tanowitz, and Jodi … [Read more...]

03/16/12 2:59 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Living in a Green World

March 11, 2012 by 5 Comments
Ia'ara Moses and Chen-Wei Lee (at back Rachel Osborne, Matan David) in Ohad Naharin's Hora. Photo: Stephanie Berger

When Ohad Naharin left New York for Israel, his homeland, in 1990 and took over Batsheva Dance Company, he developed a distinctive movement style. In all his dances, the performers are muscular in unconventional ways. Watching them, I imagine elements of the inner apparatus that moves the human body trying to find new conduits into motion. Sometimes a dancer’s hip or a shoulder is impelled to trace a path on the air; sometimes the residue of an experience flutters out his fingers. Gaga, the training technique that Naharin devised, treats the … [Read more...]

03/11/12 12:12 PM | filed under: New Dance from Abroad |

Contending with Loss

March 9, 2012 by 9 Comments
Davalois Fearon, Emily Stone (center back), Natalie McKessy, and men in Stephen Petronio's The Architecture of Loss. Photo: Julie Lemberger.

Stephen Petronio’s melancholy, disturbingly beautiful new Architecture of Loss is, I’m pretty sure, fraught with more stillness and more silence than any of the works he’s made over the last couple of decades. The word “architecture” in the title tells us that he’s not trying to show us mourning as a response to loss; he’s showing us loss as absence and the evanescence of supporting structures. Except for visual designer Ken Tabachnik and Ravi Rajan, who created the slides, Petronio’s collaborators are all Icelanders: … [Read more...]

03/9/12 12:39 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

So, Ludwig. . .

March 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
(L to R) Amber Star Merkens, Lesley Garrison, Chelsea Lynn Acree leaping. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Ludwig van Beethoven must have had more stamina than he’s usually credited with. If you research his Fantasy in C Minor for Piano, Orchestra, and Chorus, Op. 80, you find that its first public performance in 1808 ended a program that lasted four hours and included among its nine items the premieres of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies (conducted by the 38-year-old composer), his Fourth Piano Concerto (played by the composer), and three movements of his C major Mass. No wonder he forgot that he had cancelled a repeat in the Fantasy’s … [Read more...]

03/7/12 5:02 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Walking Backward in Devotion

March 3, 2012 by 5 Comments
Nicole Mannarino in Sarah Michelson's Devotion Study #1—The American Dancer. Photo: Paula Court

The first time I saw dancing at the Whitney Museum of American Art, it was 1971 and Trisha Brown’s dancers were walking on two walls of one of the huge galleries, via ropes, pulleys, and tracks mounted on the ceilings. The last time I saw dancing at the Whitney, it was 2012 (March 1 to be exact), and Sarah Michelson’s Devotion Study #1—The American Dancer had taken over most of the museum’s fourth floor, as one of the many elements on view in the 67th edition of the Whitney Biennial. Brown skewed the viewers’ sense of gravity and … [Read more...]

03/3/12 2:29 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

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