Pam Tanowitz's The Spectators at New York Live Arts, May 15 through 18; Bill Young and Colleen Thomas's A Place in France at 100 Grand Street, May 16 through 19. Pam Tanowitz’s new The Spectators at New York Live Arts is so clean you could eat off it. Pristine patterns control the six dancers she deploys, and no move they make is blurred or loose. One of Tanowitz’s talents is making cool … [Read more...]
Life Eats On
Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Baryshnikov Arts Center, April 18 and 19, 2013 Anyone who has ever felt fragile or off balance might be heartened by Rosie Herrera’s Dining Alone. Here’s one of many memorable passages. A woman (Ivonne Batanero) holds a stack of white dinner plates; a man (Liony Garcia), crouching beside her, takes the plates, one by one, from the pile and places them on the … [Read more...]
Face as Fact
I remember years ago attending a evening of solos by an Indian dancer; it could have been Balasaraswati or Ritha Devi, and shortly after that, going to a performance by (maybe) American Ballet Theatre’s Bayadère. My friend and colleague, Marcia B. Siegel also saw both performances. When we spoke later, we both remembered how the familiar classical arm and hand movements of ballet had suddenly … [Read more...]
Dancing around the Bride
“May I have the next dance, Marcel?” “But of course, John!” “Thank you. By the way, Bob and Jap hope to have a chance too. Merce, of course, is already leaping about somewhere.” Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg and Duchamp, the stunning exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (through January 21), affirms the close artistic and personal connections among John … [Read more...]