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Taking Down the House

May 2, 2012 by 3 Comments
Thibault Lac (L) and Trajal Harrell talk of famous pairs. Photo: Ian Douglas

What would it be like to travel around in Trajal Harrell’s squirrelly postmodern brain? Circuits must crisscross, merge, restructure. Destination? Don’t ask. Enjoy the ride.  The title of the latest entry in Harrell’s series, Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church is prefaced by Antigone Sr./ and followed by its size: (L). Those who have seen the (XS), (S), (M), and (Jr.) versions will know that the enterprise began with a question that Harrell asked himself in 2009: What kind of work would have ensued had some voguers … [Read more...]

05/2/12 10:20 PM | filed under: postmodern views |

Feeding the Animals

April 11, 2012 by 1 Comment
Oxana Panchenko in black and white. Photo: Paula Court

“I'm gonna make you howl like a wolf Scream like a pig Go through the roof Lie down with the lion But to tell you the truth I'm thinking about starting a zoo.” So sings Jarvis Cocker, while, Jason Buckle, his mate in the Britpop duo Relaxed Muscle, pounds out a ripe, percussive smear of sound. Is this some red-lit, clinking- glasses club?  No, it’s the Olympic-pool-sized, fourth floor gallery of the Whitney Museum of American Art. And partway through British choreographer Michael Clark’s Who’s Zoo?, the two musicians of both … [Read more...]

04/11/12 5:17 PM | filed under: postmodern views |

Bill T. Jones Takes a Stroll with John Cage

January 29, 2012 by 4 Comments
Erick Montes, Jennifer Nugent, and Bill T. Jones in Story/Time. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Artists inevitably reveal themselves in their work, but some do it more overtly than others. Over the course of his career, Bill T. Jones has told us a lot about himself—not only in his choices of subject matter and his wonderfully poetic memoir Last Night on Earth, but while onstage dancing. Watching his solos, we learned about the large family he grew up in—about his mother Estella, his beautiful sister Rhodessa, his boyhood escapades. We knew from the dances that he and Arnie Zane made together that the two were lovers who had met as … [Read more...]

01/29/12 1:10 PM | filed under: postmodern views |

Covering Ground with Cage and Glass

January 19, 2012 by 2 Comments
Fenley and Kao fill "100 Vessels." Photo: Tony Powell

In 2010, Molissa Fenley explored a new path, commissioning a number of artists to design props that could be manipulated by her and two additional dancers. Sometimes the results were striking, sometimes contrived. The newer Credo in Us, shown at Judson Church on January 9, goes way beyond The Prop Dance into a disciplined wildness and playfulness you might not have expected of Fenley—perhaps because this bold dancer-choreographer’s reputation rests in large part on the elegantly arduous, repetitively patterned solos she created for herself … [Read more...]

01/19/12 9:47 AM | filed under: postmodern views |

Pairs Made in Heaven: Reitz & Rudner, Burrows & Fargion

November 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Sarah Rudner (left) and Dana Reitz in Necessary Weather. Photo: Stephanie Berger

In 1994, we were all younger. Yet in the photo accompanying the review I wrote that year of Necessary Weather, the luminous collaboration by Dana Reitz, Sara Rudner, and Jennifer Tipton, Reitz and Rudner look almost exactly the way they do performing the piece at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in late October, 2011. They wear the same white pants and flowing, diaphanous white shirts. Reitz’s hair is shorter now. Of course, the women aren’t the same, nor am I. They’re not even the “same” women they were at the first revival of … [Read more...]

11/6/11 7:45 PM | filed under: postmodern views |
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