Susan Marshall & Company turn music videos inside out in Play/Pause Did it begin with the advent of the remote? Mute the commercial from the comfort of your easy chair. Push the buttons; surely there’s something on another channel that’s better than the something you’re watching. Fast forward through a video. Oops, did the cat knock something over? Press pause. Bored during intermission … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2013
How Many Ways In?
Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener collaborate on Way In. I wasn’t hung up on pink when I was a little girl. Much later, I read that studies had shown the color to have a calming effect on people in need of calming, such as jail inmates. And, sure enough, when I found myself sharing a pinkish bedroom for a year or so with another dancer, I frequently slept until 11 A.M. Entering St. … [Read more...]
Performing Yourself
Members of Switzerland's Theater Hora perform Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater at New York Live Arts, November 12-17. Ten empty chairs wait in a semi-circle on New York Live Arts’ stage, a plastic bottle of water beside each seat. Simone Truong takes her place at a table holding audio equipment and in a soft, noncommittal voice announces the performers’ first task of the evening. She begins—as … [Read more...]
How Many Lines to Cross?
Gina Gibney Dance premieres Dividing Line at Florence Gould Hall. November 14-16. Gina Gibney is a force on the New York dance scene. The force behind Gibney Dance Community Action, a program that stages workshops (over 500 annually) for survivors of domestic violence . The force behind the Gibney Dance Center at 19th Street and Broadway, where Barbara Matera’s immense theatrical costume … [Read more...]
Good News from Rochester
Garth Fagan Dance brings two new works to the Joyce Theater, November 12 through 17. Why is it that I always want to begin writing about Garth Fagan’s Rochester-based company by hymning the dancers? Maybe because he evidently feels the same way about them that I do. His Prelude (1981, revised 1983), which opens one of the group’s two programs at the Joyce, introduces them to us—old-timers … [Read more...]
Moving Pictures
The Kitchen and Performa present Maria Hassabi's dance installation, Premiere. The lobby of The Kitchen opens onto far-west 19th Street. Trucks could—and perhaps once did—drive right in. The night I go there to see Maria Hassabi’s Premiere, that area is as packed with people as the place’s full name (The Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film, and Literature) is packed … [Read more...]
Sea Spirits and Spirited Dancing
American Ballet Theatre premieres Alexei Ratmansky's The Tempest and revives Twyla Tharp's Bach Partita. Had Shakespeare happened upon American Ballet Theater’s production of Alexei Ratmansky’s The Tempest, he might have recognized the characters of his eponymous play, but been bewildered by the absence of words—wondering how on earth audiences in this vast Lincoln Center theater could … [Read more...]
How Comfortable Are You?
Anneke Hansen Dance performs a new work at the Martha Graham Studio. I pondered the title of Anneke Hansen’s new, full-evening dance before I saw the piece and again as I was walking home from what is now the Martha Graham Studio Theater. she is not a comfortable thing. What can that mean? That being a woman sometimes means not being comfortable with your body? That the way some people … [Read more...]
Two Masters of Improvisation
Two stellar improvisers, Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson, recreate a 2004 work at Dia: Chelsea, October 10-12, 17-19. Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson came to improvisation from different directions. She was a member of Daniel Nagrin’s Workgroup in the 1970s, the same decade during which Paxton developed contact improvisation. While he was investigating the dynamics of body against body, she was … [Read more...]
Life as Disorder, Order as Life
David Dorfman and Brian Brooks present new works in two of BAM's theaters. Choreographer David Dorfman wears his heart on his sleeve. As his newest work Come, and Back Again shows, it’s a very big heart and an imaginatively tailored sleeve. His past works have tackled political, historical, and social topics, but always in warmly personal ways. He’s not shy about friendship as a topic … [Read more...]