Meredith Monk's Cellular Songs at the BAM Harvey Theater, March 14 through 18. When I began to search the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s website for images of Meredith Monk’s Cellular Songs, I went astray. I couldn’t categorize the work the way the site expected me to. If I clicked on “theater,” I couldn’t also click on “music.” When, with help, I found the photographs I sought, “theater,” … [Read more...]
Life in a Whirlwind
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company presents a new work. In October, almost a year ago, I wrote about one of two pieces that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company premiered at the Joyce Theater. Lance: Pretty AKA The Escape Artist told through movement, speech, music, movable set pieces, and props the story of Lance T. Briggs, a nephew of Bill T. Jones, who began as a promising ballet … [Read more...]
Celebrating Thirty Years, Moving On
Doug Varone and Dancers shows old and new works at the BAM Harvey Theater. Doug Varone and Dancers is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and during the past three decades, Varone has also choreographed dances for other companies, as well as directing and choreographing operas. Knowing that about him, you might expect that his style is not a static one, and you would be correct. In … [Read more...]
Re-envisioning Shreds of Memory
John Jasperse presents a new work at BAM Harvey, September 21-24. John Jasperse’s new Remains has a clarity so exquisite that images from it have pasted themselves into my memory. The piece, which premiered at the BAM Harvey this past week, shows some of these images to us many times, but in different ways; imagine a painted group scene, from which someone has clipped individual figures and … [Read more...]
Celebrating 50 Years of Artistry
Meredith Monk's new On Behalf of Nature at the BAM Harvey. “I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema.” Meredith Monk said that in 1981. And although many of us knew her first as a startlingly original downtown 1960s choreographer, she has since composed music that interweaves various modes of performance and … [Read more...]