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What Do You See? Look Again

December 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Paul Dunbar shows his stuff in Untrained. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fisher Space in its compact new building is proving to be dazzlingly adaptable. The seating has been configured differently for all four works that I’ve seen there as part of BAM’s 30th Next Wave Festival, and that design, in turn, influences scenic possibilities and alters the audience’s angle of vision and relationship with the performers. Lucy Guerin’s Untrained was designed for a more traditional set-up, so at the Fisher, we sat in twelve long, banked rows at one end of the space, which limited the … [Read more...]

12/12/12 5:01 PM | filed under: postmodern views |

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 |

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