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Hiding in Plain Sight, Becoming the Other

May 12, 2012 by 1 Comment
Luke Murphy and Giulia Carotenuto. Photo: Paula Lobo

In November, 2010, I saw Bastard, the first part of Pavel Zustiak’s extraordinary trilogy, The Painted Bird, inspired by Jerzy Kozinski’s novel of that name.  In June, 2011, I saw the second installment, Amidst. From May 3 through 13, 2012, Zustiak’s group, Palissimo, is performing the final work, Strange Cargo. The novel’s passage over time and distances, as well as its themes of displacement, concealment, identity and transformation are embedded in all three structures and what they ask of spectators. Bastard premiered in … [Read more...]

05/12/12 3:42 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Knowing How Your Dinner Sees The World

May 3, 2012 by 3 Comments
Carrie Ahearn in her "Barrowed Prey"

When writing about art with a message, critics tend to soft-pedal and back-pedal. Perhaps their hearts are with the messenger, yet they have reservations about the forms in which the ideas are delivered. Perhaps, for some, the message doesn’t come through strongly enough.  There’s little doubt as to what Carrie Ahern wants to put across in in her provocative and deeply felt Borrowed Prey: If we eat animals, we should be willing to face what they endure between untroubled life in a pasture and becoming chops on a plate. She herself has … [Read more...]

05/3/12 11:24 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

What Can I Tell You?

April 23, 2012 by 1 Comment
(L to R) Molly Lieber, Marilyn Maywald, Katy Pyle, and Weena Pauly. Photo: Christopher Duggan

Once upon a time there were program notes—maybe a provocative line of poetry would serve. Then there were no program notes; all you needed to know about a dance was there for the looking. Recently, programs for dance events outside the mainstream have begun to publish short essays by choreographers and/or seasoned non-dancing thinkers. In terms of theorizing and probing into the ideas behind the work about to unfold onstage, these writings go way beyond, for example, the excellent program material written by Jacob’s Pillow’s resident … [Read more...]

04/23/12 1:45 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Testing Realness

April 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Faye Driscoll and Jesse Zaritt in Driscoll's You're Me. Photo: Paula Court

You’re Me. That’s the name of Faye Driscoll’s duet for herself and Jesse Zaritt. And the chosen title is a pretty blunt way of putting out an idea that longtime couples acknowledge in more honeyed syntax—possibly with damp eyes. I hope it won’t turn you off, dear reader, if I note that this no-holds barred encounter between a man and a woman is about identity and gender roles. You’re Me tackles these pardon-the-yawn issues with such savagery and convoluted wit that an evening at the Kitchen, where the piece continues through April … [Read more...]

04/14/12 5:29 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Deconstructing Fame

April 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
LeeSaar The Company in Fame, Jye-Hwei Lin foreground. Photo: Mark Garvin

You wouldn’t expect LeeSaar The Company’s new piece, Fame, to re-create the eyes-on-stardom world of the two movies and the television show that bear that name. Teenagers in New York’s High School of Performing Arts striving, bitching, and shining their way to success and successful hookups?  No. The fascinating Fame choreographed by Lee Scher and Saar Harari—and premiered by Peak Performances at Montclair State University, March 28 through 31— deals with its subject obliquely, through the dramas of the body, rather than dramatic … [Read more...]

04/1/12 10:46 AM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

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 |

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 |

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 |

To Dance in the Sky

February 22, 2012 by 2 Comments
Pat Catterson's To Lie in the Sky, Jesse Dunham (foreground,Timothy Emmett Ward (leaping). Photo: Steven Schreiber

At the very end of Pat Catterson’s gentle, beautifully crafted new dance, To Lie in the Sky, a voice recites the plangent opening lines of May Swenson’s “The Question”— “Body my house/ my horse my hound/ what will I do when you are fallen.” Catterson took her title from that poem’s penultimate query: “How will it be/ to lie in the sky/ without roof or door/ and wind for an eye.” These are not thoughts a young person might be drawn to. Catterson—whose piece was shown at La Guardia High School’s Little Flower Theater, … [Read more...]

02/22/12 12:45 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Take Them Disappearing

February 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Amanda Loulaki laboring in her Untitled. Photo: Paula Court

What are we seeing? We’re seeing a woman kneel beside a large potted tree, and root around in its soil; she is nicely dressed in black pants, a ruched white top held up by tiny black straps, and high-heeled, little brown boots. That was an easy question. But, wait. How are we seeing it and through how many possible layers of meaning? (Is she cultivating the soil a bit, hunting for something—maybe a lost ring, or a memory?) How will this relate to other actions she may perform? Or consider this. A man, clearly the choreographer, tells a … [Read more...]

02/15/12 8:24 AM | filed under: Postmodern New York |
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