Tere O'Connor's The Goodbye Studies creates a world of hidden depths at The Kitchen. City dwellers know what it’s like to be part of a crowd. In Grand Central Station at rush hour, people speed along—dodging one another and laying down complex swerving paths. In a breadline or trying to push their way en masse through a single entrance or exit, they move toward their goal in small steps. … [Read more...]
Intimations of the Unseen Haunt the Seen
Pavel Zuštiak & Palissimo Company at New York Live Arts. It’s very dark down here. This is not how we’re used to entering New York Live Arts’ black-box theater: down the stairs, walking along a narrow corridor at the edge of the performing area. There are a couple of people with flashlights, but they don’t fully light the way. Is this a birth canal of sorts? And into what? The … [Read more...]
Playgrounds of the Mind
Andrea Miller's Gallim Dance at the Joyce 12/3-6; Anneke Hansen Dance at the Irondale Center, 12/2-5. Andrea Miller’s powerful dances always make me think of tribes pursuing their goals, whether spiritual or practical. What lies behind that fiercely arduous, sometimes bizarre way of life may remain mysterious. Take a passage from her momentous new Whale. Six of her eight marvelous dancers … [Read more...]
Dancing to Beat the Reaper
Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion brings three works to the Joyce Theater. Seated at a piano in a corner of the Joyce Theater, Kris Bowers begins to play a quiet, rippling tune—familiar yet unfamiliar. Beside the instrument and close to the front rows of spectators, Kyle Abraham performs a prelude to his company’s season, never moving outside a muted spotlight’s beam. Just as Bowers dreamily … [Read more...]
Not a Dance? Are You Sure?
I plan to iron out the creases and frame the flyer for The Kitchen’s fall season. It’s an art work by Ralph Lemon that also appears in Lemon’s installation and performance there, Scaffold Room. Tiny, brightly painted figures cross the sheet of paper in rows that disguise their parallel underpinnings. There are also words, so tiny as to be difficult to read. I spot images from Scaffold Room: a man … [Read more...]
Pat Graney and Colleen Thomas Explore Difference (Differently)
Two choreographers, Pat Graney and Colleen Thomas, tackle issues, such as gender roles, in very different ways. The 1960s weren’t all about Beatles, sit-ins, marches, pot, and communes. For many women, the post-war 1940s and the 1950s lingered on in spirit. Some of these women may have worn go-go boots and very short dresses, but they belonged to the unspoken club of wives who greeted their … [Read more...]
Step Quickly; Don’t Fall Off the World
Canadian dancer-choreographer Louise Lecavalier brings her "So Blue" to New York Live Arts. I’m not sure when and where I first saw Louise Lecavalier dance with Édouard Lock and La La La Human Steps, a company she worked with from 1981 to 1999. Perhaps it was during the late 1980s at the biennial Festival International de Nouvelle Danse in Montréal (1985-2003). I also saw her at Dance … [Read more...]
Against the Wall
Kimberly Bartosik and Dylan Crossman share a program in a confined space. Kimberly Bartosik, Dylan Crossman, and Melissa Toogood all danced in Merce Cunningham’s company—Bartosik for nine years a few decades ago, Crossman and Toogood in the company that was finally disbanded in 2011. What perhaps should not surprise us is the emotional resonance and implications of drama that imbue the … [Read more...]
A Union of Four Unalikes
Patricia Noworol Dance Theater performs at New York Live Arts. After I had seen Patricia Noworol’s ?Culture in 2013, when it was performed at St. Mark’s church, I wrote that the piece meshed “scrupulous designs with brashness, virtuosity, colloquial manners, outrage, and satiric political incorrectness.” The situation was volatile: Noworol, a violently skillful woman with a mane of blond … [Read more...]
Beauty All Around
Heidi Latsky Dance shows a new film and two dances at Montclair State University Alexander Kasser Theater, April 16 through 19. Ideal beauty has always been a slippery topic, certainly since Plato strolled the streets of Athens. We’re pretty clear about structural archetypes, despite nature’s occasional deviations and breeders’ genetic modifications: sheep are quadrupeds with woolly coats; … [Read more...]