Name: Greg Manley
Title/Occupation: Commissioner of the Circle Rules Federation
URL: Culturebot
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Thursday, June 24, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
“Uugghh!” to the Opera: Christopher Williams unzips “Hen’s Teeth” at DNA
below (from left): Storme Sundberg, Emily Stone, Ursula Eagly, Jennifer Lafferty, Hope Davis, and Adam Weinert
All photos by Paula Court
“Uugghh!”
says the “prince” as he lands, more or less in a heap, on the stage.
And then again, “Uugghh!”
Each entrance brings titters, giggles and outright laughs from the audience in the theater at Dance New Amsterdam. But not from the six half naked young women who continue craning their necks and torsos and cooing and squawking in swan or goose like warbles. In their meandering line behind which this somewhat startled individual male interloper arrives now and later, each time as if having fallen down a hole. Storme Sundberg, Jennifer Lafferty, Kira Blazek, Hope Davis,
Emily Stone and Ursula Eagly remain unruffled, regal; one might say serene if not for the frank and focused intensity of their demeanor.
Above: Hope Davis and Ursula Eagly twist and squawk
The women have assembled after entering in a procession marked by repeated backward arabesque leg extensions; a procession that recalls, twists and tweaks that of the 32 ballerinas in the “Kingdom of the Shades,” scene from the ballet La Bayadere. Bedecked in gold tinged costumes embellished with feathers, they have preened open
and plucked off their long sleeved bodices with their teeth revealing the shapeliest breathing collection of breasts, torsos and backs I think I have ever seen.
Above: Ursula Eagly and Hope Davis in opening sequence
Gaining his feet, the primary color clad courtier (Adam H. Weinert) makes his way in balletic lunges and leg extensions from his fallen entrance towards the front of stage where he locks eyes with the feathered femme fatale who has led the procession (Sundberg). Facing downstage toward the audience, she lights up with the electricity of their connection, and the two find themselves carried into an exhilarating extended flying duet by the other five bird-women. The swoops and twists of the swirling lifts culminate as the three supporting the swain execute a deft fly-under between the bridging pair holding high his swan,
then vanish all into the wing pursued by audience applause.
Right: Adam H. Weinert with his prince on
Had Christopher Williams’ world premiere of “Hen’s Teeth” ended here, I feel certain that we would have all gone home happy. But the choreographer/costumer/ringmaster and, in this case, troubadour harp player’s vision and ambition demands almost as much of his audience as it does of his artistic collaborators. I find it necessary to slow down my theatrical rate of expectation to that of his more measured medieval sense of time.
As if to reinforce this, the work has been set to a moody score by composer and conductor Gregory Spears, who triples as the electric organ player in the 10 piece ensemble who perform, live and visible, in the large offstage area to the right of the two fluted columns that delimit the stage space in front of the audience.
That score takes the form of a Requiem Mass sung in Breton, Middle French and Latin by the likes of half the cast of Anonymous 4 (Ruth Cunningham and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek) and 4 members of the acclaimed male a cappella vocal group Lionheart (Michael Wenger, John Olud, Lawrence Lipnik, and Kurt-Owen Richards.
Above: Ursula Eagly plucks off her top
Williams’ work requires patience. He do go on. The choreography from him that I have seen to date lives on the edge of wearing out its welcome, and in this concert it often steps over the line, challenging, perhaps taxing, the audience to remain engaged. Yet I appreciate the time and space he gives us to think and associate under the inspiration of his just–as-provocative imagery. The ephemeral nature of youth, youthful beauty and prowess, of love, of all life lies at the heart of this meditative pageant.
As he has done with past shows, Williams has included Requiem’s lyric in the program. The prelude intimates narrative. The translation reads:
A very long time ago
When hens had teeth…
Listen, if you will,
And you will hear a pretty tale.
As realized by the exquisite ensemble, the music bespeaks the mastery and majesty of human heart and mind as it rises to the constant occasion of loss.
If the tale of the lovers carries the sensation of flight in sensual beauty and hope, the rejoinder comes in the form three crones, powerfully embodied by Joan Arnold, Grazia Della Terza , and Alison Granucci. These heavily costumed apparitions, with their bald pates and their beard-like masks that, like an Islamic niqab, leave only the eyes uncovered, dance as if through mist and mud or clinch their entire bodies around the stage’s columns, their long crooked green fingernails seeming to claw the flesh of fluted steel.
Joan Arnold, Alison Granucci, and Grazia Della Terza as the crones based on the ancient Greek Graeae
The denouement of these contending tableaux comes in an extended counterpoint, as first three of the “swans” return, their torsos now swaddled in rope-mesh tunics. From behind their line, the swain re-enters with his “uugghh” and thud, as love inevitably falls to earth. The finale finds the crones displacing this quartet. They enter encased in stiff reliquary-like sarcophagi of various lengths, each of which has a different devotional door that they one at a time swing open exposing a human and vulnerable face, a breast, a forearm.
As striking, vivid and fastidiously fashioned images such as the reliquaries can be – reminiscent in their communicative quality of the Scout-encasing ham in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird -- Williams’ creativity with costuming can sometimes get in his way. The crones’ masking and headpieces limit movement and expressive possibilities, as do the tunics on Sundberg, Eagly, and Lafferty. (The program lists Andy Jordan as the designer of the evening's costuming, with additional elements by Williams and Carol Binion.)
I admire Williams’ thematic mash-ups even when they don’t quite cohere cogently. I see this as less the case with “Hen’s Teeth”, than I did with the program’s opening work-in-progress tentatively titled “Gobbledygook.” Here the stark naked and brilliantly choreographed Weinert meets a black painted plywood wall at the back of one side of the stage space before he is met with the bare chested, hakama pants wearing Eikazu Nakamura.
Nakamura sidles in near the back of the stage at the audience’s right while the blue-lit Weinert, starting prone at our feet, probes gravity and his wall like caterpillar seeking a chrysalis hook. In their single stark moment of interaction the Japanese dancer helps his hapless partner find his sticking place by pinning him to the wall with a hand around the throat.
Above: Adam H. Weinert in "Gobbledygook." All photos by Paula Court
The two intensely introverted solo sequences that follow for Nakamura have the feel of esoteric ritual, the second adding an armor-like vest made of woven reeds over the hakama.
Only had you picked up press material, consulted DNA’s web site, or had the time and sense to ask the choreographer or one of the dancers post-show, would you be likely to know that the ritual incarnates an imaginary version of the Buddhist segaki rite that concerns itself with personal atonement and easing the suffering of the wandering (slithering?) dead.
You might further have discovered, perusing these same sources, that “Hen’s Teeth” incorporates imagery inspired by the mysterious flying women found in a Breton fairytale preserved by 19th century folklorist François-Marie Luzel, the Graeae, or three swan-like crones of ancient Greek myth who share only one eye and one tooth between them, and that associated with the display of holy relics in the middle ages. Who knew?
When does such elucidating information become t.m.i. (too much information)? I ask simply because Williams generous and admirable inclination to edify his audience can sometimes backfire to limit the literal minded. I, for one, enjoy not knowing until I want to know. I then enjoy using the tools that the creator has placed within easy reach, including himself. In the meantime, I have not been prevented from intuiting a reference to Matisse’s La Danse in the midst of the topless sextet, or the choreographer’s wicked way of tilting with Petipa’s Swan Lake imagery.
In the program credits, Williams can seem to be everywhere at once. But I find it intriguing that only the press notes for “Gobbledygook” mention him alongside the program-credited David Griffin as the source for the piece’s intricate electronic sound score. This artist belongs in the opera house, and I predict that it will only be a matter of time until he lands there. That seems the only place that his production values and vision can live in uncomfortable equilibrium with the support; artistic, technical, production and financial, that will allow them all to reasonably complement or at least successfully co-exist in creative competition.
If the creator’s obsession as a medievalist may initially obscure this path to the stage, his devotion to music and spectacle makes his breakthrough, for me, a matter of when and not if. Given his ability to render, he can, like the young Robert Wilson, devise collaborative operas of his own. His vast visual frame of reference, and his dexterity in presenting both male and female form, often startlingly yet insouciantly nude in ways that allow us to recover our endless fascination and sense of humor surrounding this mortal coil, point to a future on today’s big screen performance stage.
Jacqui Kerrod, on pedal harp and Elizabeth Weinfield on baroque viola performed admirably along with the rest of the music ensemble. The excellent lighting across the board can be credited to Amanda K. Ringer. DNA’s Artist in Residence program continues to impress.
All photos by Paula Court
“Uugghh!” says the “prince” as he lands, more or less in a heap, on the stage.
And then again, “Uugghh!”
Each entrance brings titters, giggles and outright laughs from the audience in the theater at Dance New Amsterdam. But not from the six half naked young women who continue craning their necks and torsos and cooing and squawking in swan or goose like warbles. In their meandering line behind which this somewhat startled individual male interloper arrives now and later, each time as if having fallen down a hole. Storme Sundberg, Jennifer Lafferty, Kira Blazek, Hope Davis,
Emily Stone and Ursula Eagly remain unruffled, regal; one might say serene if not for the frank and focused intensity of their demeanor.Above: Hope Davis and Ursula Eagly twist and squawk
The women have assembled after entering in a procession marked by repeated backward arabesque leg extensions; a procession that recalls, twists and tweaks that of the 32 ballerinas in the “Kingdom of the Shades,” scene from the ballet La Bayadere. Bedecked in gold tinged costumes embellished with feathers, they have preened open
and plucked off their long sleeved bodices with their teeth revealing the shapeliest breathing collection of breasts, torsos and backs I think I have ever seen.Above: Ursula Eagly and Hope Davis in opening sequence
Gaining his feet, the primary color clad courtier (Adam H. Weinert) makes his way in balletic lunges and leg extensions from his fallen entrance towards the front of stage where he locks eyes with the feathered femme fatale who has led the procession (Sundberg). Facing downstage toward the audience, she lights up with the electricity of their connection, and the two find themselves carried into an exhilarating extended flying duet by the other five bird-women. The swoops and twists of the swirling lifts culminate as the three supporting the swain execute a deft fly-under between the bridging pair holding high his swan,
then vanish all into the wing pursued by audience applause.Right: Adam H. Weinert with his prince on
Had Christopher Williams’ world premiere of “Hen’s Teeth” ended here, I feel certain that we would have all gone home happy. But the choreographer/costumer/ringmaster and, in this case, troubadour harp player’s vision and ambition demands almost as much of his audience as it does of his artistic collaborators. I find it necessary to slow down my theatrical rate of expectation to that of his more measured medieval sense of time.
As if to reinforce this, the work has been set to a moody score by composer and conductor Gregory Spears, who triples as the electric organ player in the 10 piece ensemble who perform, live and visible, in the large offstage area to the right of the two fluted columns that delimit the stage space in front of the audience.
That score takes the form of a Requiem Mass sung in Breton, Middle French and Latin by the likes of half the cast of Anonymous 4 (Ruth Cunningham and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek) and 4 members of the acclaimed male a cappella vocal group Lionheart (Michael Wenger, John Olud, Lawrence Lipnik, and Kurt-Owen Richards.Above: Ursula Eagly plucks off her top
Williams’ work requires patience. He do go on. The choreography from him that I have seen to date lives on the edge of wearing out its welcome, and in this concert it often steps over the line, challenging, perhaps taxing, the audience to remain engaged. Yet I appreciate the time and space he gives us to think and associate under the inspiration of his just–as-provocative imagery. The ephemeral nature of youth, youthful beauty and prowess, of love, of all life lies at the heart of this meditative pageant.
As he has done with past shows, Williams has included Requiem’s lyric in the program. The prelude intimates narrative. The translation reads:
A very long time ago
When hens had teeth…
Listen, if you will,
And you will hear a pretty tale.
As realized by the exquisite ensemble, the music bespeaks the mastery and majesty of human heart and mind as it rises to the constant occasion of loss.
If the tale of the lovers carries the sensation of flight in sensual beauty and hope, the rejoinder comes in the form three crones, powerfully embodied by Joan Arnold, Grazia Della Terza , and Alison Granucci. These heavily costumed apparitions, with their bald pates and their beard-like masks that, like an Islamic niqab, leave only the eyes uncovered, dance as if through mist and mud or clinch their entire bodies around the stage’s columns, their long crooked green fingernails seeming to claw the flesh of fluted steel.
Joan Arnold, Alison Granucci, and Grazia Della Terza as the crones based on the ancient Greek GraeaeThe denouement of these contending tableaux comes in an extended counterpoint, as first three of the “swans” return, their torsos now swaddled in rope-mesh tunics. From behind their line, the swain re-enters with his “uugghh” and thud, as love inevitably falls to earth. The finale finds the crones displacing this quartet. They enter encased in stiff reliquary-like sarcophagi of various lengths, each of which has a different devotional door that they one at a time swing open exposing a human and vulnerable face, a breast, a forearm.
As striking, vivid and fastidiously fashioned images such as the reliquaries can be – reminiscent in their communicative quality of the Scout-encasing ham in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird -- Williams’ creativity with costuming can sometimes get in his way. The crones’ masking and headpieces limit movement and expressive possibilities, as do the tunics on Sundberg, Eagly, and Lafferty. (The program lists Andy Jordan as the designer of the evening's costuming, with additional elements by Williams and Carol Binion.)
I admire Williams’ thematic mash-ups even when they don’t quite cohere cogently. I see this as less the case with “Hen’s Teeth”, than I did with the program’s opening work-in-progress tentatively titled “Gobbledygook.” Here the stark naked and brilliantly choreographed Weinert meets a black painted plywood wall at the back of one side of the stage space before he is met with the bare chested, hakama pants wearing Eikazu Nakamura.
Nakamura sidles in near the back of the stage at the audience’s right while the blue-lit Weinert, starting prone at our feet, probes gravity and his wall like caterpillar seeking a chrysalis hook. In their single stark moment of interaction the Japanese dancer helps his hapless partner find his sticking place by pinning him to the wall with a hand around the throat.Above: Adam H. Weinert in "Gobbledygook." All photos by Paula Court
The two intensely introverted solo sequences that follow for Nakamura have the feel of esoteric ritual, the second adding an armor-like vest made of woven reeds over the hakama.
Only had you picked up press material, consulted DNA’s web site, or had the time and sense to ask the choreographer or one of the dancers post-show, would you be likely to know that the ritual incarnates an imaginary version of the Buddhist segaki rite that concerns itself with personal atonement and easing the suffering of the wandering (slithering?) dead. You might further have discovered, perusing these same sources, that “Hen’s Teeth” incorporates imagery inspired by the mysterious flying women found in a Breton fairytale preserved by 19th century folklorist François-Marie Luzel, the Graeae, or three swan-like crones of ancient Greek myth who share only one eye and one tooth between them, and that associated with the display of holy relics in the middle ages. Who knew?
When does such elucidating information become t.m.i. (too much information)? I ask simply because Williams generous and admirable inclination to edify his audience can sometimes backfire to limit the literal minded. I, for one, enjoy not knowing until I want to know. I then enjoy using the tools that the creator has placed within easy reach, including himself. In the meantime, I have not been prevented from intuiting a reference to Matisse’s La Danse in the midst of the topless sextet, or the choreographer’s wicked way of tilting with Petipa’s Swan Lake imagery.
In the program credits, Williams can seem to be everywhere at once. But I find it intriguing that only the press notes for “Gobbledygook” mention him alongside the program-credited David Griffin as the source for the piece’s intricate electronic sound score. This artist belongs in the opera house, and I predict that it will only be a matter of time until he lands there. That seems the only place that his production values and vision can live in uncomfortable equilibrium with the support; artistic, technical, production and financial, that will allow them all to reasonably complement or at least successfully co-exist in creative competition.
If the creator’s obsession as a medievalist may initially obscure this path to the stage, his devotion to music and spectacle makes his breakthrough, for me, a matter of when and not if. Given his ability to render, he can, like the young Robert Wilson, devise collaborative operas of his own. His vast visual frame of reference, and his dexterity in presenting both male and female form, often startlingly yet insouciantly nude in ways that allow us to recover our endless fascination and sense of humor surrounding this mortal coil, point to a future on today’s big screen performance stage.
Jacqui Kerrod, on pedal harp and Elizabeth Weinfield on baroque viola performed admirably along with the rest of the music ensemble. The excellent lighting across the board can be credited to Amanda K. Ringer. DNA’s Artist in Residence program continues to impress.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Stretch it! Flaunt It! LaMaMa takes Tisch around the corner for fun and profundity
Stretch. And be smart about it.
Translate into Latin (Tendo, Quod operor is purpureus?), and that might become a motto for NYU Tisch School of the Arts Dance Program.
standing (l to r): Jamie Graham, Rebecca Woll, Moses Kaplan, Alex Schell, Maggie Ronan, Jessica Thomas; seated (l):Penny Dannenberg. Photo by Eric Bandiero
Over the past several months I have encountered Department Chair Cherylyn Lavagnino, and faculty member Jaclynn Villamil with graduate students in tow both at DIA Beacon for the dress rehearsal of the Trisha Brown Dance Company‘s performances there in February, and at Danspace St. Mark’s. Granted, the latter happens to be just up Second Avenue from the Department’s home at 6th St. But wouldn’t that be a smart stretch?
Last Friday, those two along with faculty project facilitator Jim Sutton could be found in the first and second rows of La MaMa Annex around the corner on E. 4th St. And some of the graduate students, along with a number of newly minted BFA’s and MFA’s could be found on the stage. There, in the evening’s most intriguing and compelling spectacle four of them found themselves fully integrated into Naomi Goldberg Haas’ “Uprooting,” a piece that incorporates three generations of performers to suggest passages both physical and metaphysical.
at rear: (l to r) Moses Kaplan, Jamie Graham, Maggie Ronan, Jackie Ferrara. front: Penny Dannenberg, Ani Javian. Photo by Eric Bandiero
Goldberg Haas has been directing her Dances For A Variable Population since 2005, with professional company members ranging in age from 25 to 81. The seamless addition of NYU dancers Moses Kaplan, Maggie Ronan, Alex Schell and Jessica Thomas highlights one of the choreography’s strengths. Set to several propulsive folk-inspired recordings by the Polish combo Warsaw Village Band, “Uprooting” manages to find and challenge each of its 13 performers at or near the limit of her/his technical and expressive potential, and to transcend this challenge by suggesting the existential humanity of yearning, striving, transformation, and reflection from youth to age and memory back to immediate experience.
The performances of senior members Penny Dannenberg, Jackie Ferrara, Judith Chazen Walsh and Betty Williams, while remarkable in their own right, create a frame of dimension and depth for those of their youthful collaborators. Their regard of the youngsters manages to encompass a mixture of dispassionate assessment with intimations of mentoring, longing, and sassy competitiveness and even one-upmanship that leavens the poignancy of both the music and the dancing with pith and wit. In one exquisitely simple and memorable moment Dannenberg and Geraldine Bartlett slowly sit down back to back to share one of the folding chairs that has been brought on to the stage. Their mirror images present in such a way as to leave open the question, expertly poised, of who might be a reflection of whom.
below (l to r) M. Lindsay Smith, Jackie Ferrara Photo by Eric Bandiero
Add to this interplay the lusty way in which Goldberg Haas’ young professionals Jamie Graham, Ani Javian, M. Lindsay Smith and Rebecca Woll bite into the music and movement as if to both throw down a challenge and lead the way among their younger and older counterparts, and you have a work that begins to transform the creative potential energy of Dances For A Variable Population into a power to move and inspire its audience as much as its own members. In this, rehearsal director Smith, of the high-arched and articulate feet and whip-smart torso, and the equally fiery Graham set the tone as firsts among equals. With any luck, this cross-generational ensemble, including its new-found Tisch quartet, will manage to hold together long enough to re-present an outdoor version of this work at the end of September in cooperation with Hudson Guild Fulton Senior Center along the High Line Park in Chelsea.
below (l to r): Ani Javian, M. Lindsay Smith, Jamie Graham, Rebecca Woll. Photo by Eric Bandiero
One can only wish as much for Selina Chau’s “The New York Exchange.” This witty, cheeky, extremely well crafted send up of everything from dance style pretensions to kung fu movies features fine performances by Monica Barbaro as a wayward ballet princess, Austin J. Diaz and Gierre J. Godley, as various NY dance, street and martial arts types, and Mandarin Wu as the archetypal femme fatale with the fan.
Mandarin Wu (with fan) Gierre J. Godley, and Monica Barbaro photo by Tony Dougherty
Chau displays a sharp eye and a supple mind for theatrical type and form, fable, kitsch, and the way pop culture co-opts all of the above. Set to an ingenious score by Kyle Olson that mashes up his own “New York Exchange” with passages from Adolphe Adams’ score for Giselle and Romani and Bellini’s “Costa Diva” from Norma, interrupted by Chinese text passages written by Chau and comically delivered by co-writer Wu, the work sets up and then undermines expectations in a way that satisfyingly compliments that of Goldberg Haas. Like the latter dance maker, Chau has keen sense of theatrical and, especially in her case, comic timing and the delicacy of gesture that allows us the comfort of recognition just as she twists to tickle and subvert our prejudice.
Such rare gifts more than justify Tisch’s repeated presence in the annual LaMaMa Moves Festival. When you’ve got it, why not go the extra mile -- or two blocks – beyond your building and perhaps your comfort zone to flaunt it?
Translate into Latin (Tendo, Quod operor is purpureus?), and that might become a motto for NYU Tisch School of the Arts Dance Program.
standing (l to r): Jamie Graham, Rebecca Woll, Moses Kaplan, Alex Schell, Maggie Ronan, Jessica Thomas; seated (l):Penny Dannenberg. Photo by Eric BandieroOver the past several months I have encountered Department Chair Cherylyn Lavagnino, and faculty member Jaclynn Villamil with graduate students in tow both at DIA Beacon for the dress rehearsal of the Trisha Brown Dance Company‘s performances there in February, and at Danspace St. Mark’s. Granted, the latter happens to be just up Second Avenue from the Department’s home at 6th St. But wouldn’t that be a smart stretch?
Last Friday, those two along with faculty project facilitator Jim Sutton could be found in the first and second rows of La MaMa Annex around the corner on E. 4th St. And some of the graduate students, along with a number of newly minted BFA’s and MFA’s could be found on the stage. There, in the evening’s most intriguing and compelling spectacle four of them found themselves fully integrated into Naomi Goldberg Haas’ “Uprooting,” a piece that incorporates three generations of performers to suggest passages both physical and metaphysical.
at rear: (l to r) Moses Kaplan, Jamie Graham, Maggie Ronan, Jackie Ferrara. front: Penny Dannenberg, Ani Javian. Photo by Eric BandieroGoldberg Haas has been directing her Dances For A Variable Population since 2005, with professional company members ranging in age from 25 to 81. The seamless addition of NYU dancers Moses Kaplan, Maggie Ronan, Alex Schell and Jessica Thomas highlights one of the choreography’s strengths. Set to several propulsive folk-inspired recordings by the Polish combo Warsaw Village Band, “Uprooting” manages to find and challenge each of its 13 performers at or near the limit of her/his technical and expressive potential, and to transcend this challenge by suggesting the existential humanity of yearning, striving, transformation, and reflection from youth to age and memory back to immediate experience.
The performances of senior members Penny Dannenberg, Jackie Ferrara, Judith Chazen Walsh and Betty Williams, while remarkable in their own right, create a frame of dimension and depth for those of their youthful collaborators. Their regard of the youngsters manages to encompass a mixture of dispassionate assessment with intimations of mentoring, longing, and sassy competitiveness and even one-upmanship that leavens the poignancy of both the music and the dancing with pith and wit. In one exquisitely simple and memorable moment Dannenberg and Geraldine Bartlett slowly sit down back to back to share one of the folding chairs that has been brought on to the stage. Their mirror images present in such a way as to leave open the question, expertly poised, of who might be a reflection of whom.
below (l to r) M. Lindsay Smith, Jackie Ferrara Photo by Eric Bandiero
Add to this interplay the lusty way in which Goldberg Haas’ young professionals Jamie Graham, Ani Javian, M. Lindsay Smith and Rebecca Woll bite into the music and movement as if to both throw down a challenge and lead the way among their younger and older counterparts, and you have a work that begins to transform the creative potential energy of Dances For A Variable Population into a power to move and inspire its audience as much as its own members. In this, rehearsal director Smith, of the high-arched and articulate feet and whip-smart torso, and the equally fiery Graham set the tone as firsts among equals. With any luck, this cross-generational ensemble, including its new-found Tisch quartet, will manage to hold together long enough to re-present an outdoor version of this work at the end of September in cooperation with Hudson Guild Fulton Senior Center along the High Line Park in Chelsea.below (l to r): Ani Javian, M. Lindsay Smith, Jamie Graham, Rebecca Woll. Photo by Eric Bandiero
One can only wish as much for Selina Chau’s “The New York Exchange.” This witty, cheeky, extremely well crafted send up of everything from dance style pretensions to kung fu movies features fine performances by Monica Barbaro as a wayward ballet princess, Austin J. Diaz and Gierre J. Godley, as various NY dance, street and martial arts types, and Mandarin Wu as the archetypal femme fatale with the fan.
Mandarin Wu (with fan) Gierre J. Godley, and Monica Barbaro photo by Tony Dougherty Chau displays a sharp eye and a supple mind for theatrical type and form, fable, kitsch, and the way pop culture co-opts all of the above. Set to an ingenious score by Kyle Olson that mashes up his own “New York Exchange” with passages from Adolphe Adams’ score for Giselle and Romani and Bellini’s “Costa Diva” from Norma, interrupted by Chinese text passages written by Chau and comically delivered by co-writer Wu, the work sets up and then undermines expectations in a way that satisfyingly compliments that of Goldberg Haas. Like the latter dance maker, Chau has keen sense of theatrical and, especially in her case, comic timing and the delicacy of gesture that allows us the comfort of recognition just as she twists to tickle and subvert our prejudice.
Such rare gifts more than justify Tisch’s repeated presence in the annual LaMaMa Moves Festival. When you’ve got it, why not go the extra mile -- or two blocks – beyond your building and perhaps your comfort zone to flaunt it?
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Call Me Leamhsi: Bill Shannon circumnavigates the Financial District
Bill Shannon and "Rejected Skin" at 77 Water St. photo by Catherine Peila
Bill Shannon has gone ¾ of the way around the tip of Manhattan, retracing in retrograde the route famously described by the narrator Ishmael in the opening paragraphs of Moby-Dick. And, like his fellow traveler, he pauses to wax philosophical.
Shannon perches on his crutches atop the white painted concrete platform that frames Rudolph de Harak and William Tarr’s public sculpture Rejected Skin, (1969) beneath one cantilevered corner of 77 Water St. at Old Slip. He begins a slow descent to an almost prone suspension. Having rested a found (presented by a construction worker, actually) gallon bottle of commercial iced tea on part of the artwork, he twirls and flashes first one specially made round-ended crutch then the other as he embodies the tension between flesh and rigid exoskeletar form at the heart of his unique dancing technique. The entire time he suspends and descends, he continues to discuss the challenges inherent in matching mind and muscle to metal and gravity and the constant risk in his exploration of new form and expression.
“Sometimes,” he says, his nose finally flush with the pavement, “it can look like failure.”
right: Bill Shannon caught in a "wall stall." photo by BC
And suddenly, the 40 minutes we have spent following Shannon through Traffic -
A Transient Specific Performance, suggest a larger simulacrum for human endeavor. Think Mideast peace, perhaps, or the Obama presidency.
Episodically, mesmericly, our Pequod of a chartered bus has been trying to keep up with his skiff of a skateboard as the tiny crutch powered craft buffets the tempests of rush hour traffic, and waves of tourist and commuter crowds down Broadway from Dance New Amsterdam, at Chambers, to the edge of the Battery, and back north along Water. The mother ship carries its captive audience in its hold, along with all necessary equipment and expertise -- a DJ, a VJ and two videographers -- to render the quarry. We can hear the music being pumped into Shannon’s radio headset, which, equipped with a microphone, intermittently feeds back to us his voice and the sound of his wheels. Those outside the bus can hear only the latter.
This extends to skateboarder Mike Wright, an old friend of Shannon’s, who has happened into the mix near the beginning of the performance. Signing on for the rest of the journey, he becomes the Queequeg/Daggoo of the piece, participating in encounters with passersby, cops and construction workers. Such happenstances, but perhaps without Wright, promise to mark each of the remaining performances, which continue each afternoon through Friday, June 4, beginning at 4:30 pm.
“How do you make the [members of an] audience feel like they are on a skateboard?” the event’s press release asks.
I don’t know about others, but Shannon’s fluid meanderings through these madding crowds took me back to my high school days. Whenever bored of a winter’s class, I would escape to the frozen puddle that covered much of the school’s roof, don my hockey skates, and glide above the unsuspecting heads of my classmates.
Watching Shannon now, I become acutely aware of the three-dimensionality of his art, space opening and closing across the “blab of the pave,” mind calculating with intuitive speed the warping of space time all around its body. Pausing abreast of a curbside advertisement, he suspends almost horizontally on his crutches in one of his signature "wall stalls," creating a flesh and blood bas relief against the commercial grain.
Shannon scouts the route of "Traffic" by winter light
Three years in the making, Traffic’s metaphorically rich, imaginatively provocative and downright audacious adventurousness augurs well for the revitalizing Artist in Residence Program at DNA. Not to be missed, the 20 accompanying videos by the same artist that play along DNA’s gallery walls add another dimension to Shannon’s chess game with the laws of physics and those of Downtown Manhattan traffic.
In the clip playing out into Chambers St. adjacent to DNA’s entrance east of Broadway, the artist appears in jacket, tie and jaunty hat traversing the plazas around Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. In dress, manner and movement he recalls, in his own unique style, the pizzaz and allure of another Pittsburgh native, the late Gene Kelly. Such talents do not mark all generations. When such a one, at the peak of his powers, wheels before you, you owe it to yourself and your children to catch him if you can.
Bill Shannon has gone ¾ of the way around the tip of Manhattan, retracing in retrograde the route famously described by the narrator Ishmael in the opening paragraphs of Moby-Dick. And, like his fellow traveler, he pauses to wax philosophical.Shannon perches on his crutches atop the white painted concrete platform that frames Rudolph de Harak and William Tarr’s public sculpture Rejected Skin, (1969) beneath one cantilevered corner of 77 Water St. at Old Slip. He begins a slow descent to an almost prone suspension. Having rested a found (presented by a construction worker, actually) gallon bottle of commercial iced tea on part of the artwork, he twirls and flashes first one specially made round-ended crutch then the other as he embodies the tension between flesh and rigid exoskeletar form at the heart of his unique dancing technique. The entire time he suspends and descends, he continues to discuss the challenges inherent in matching mind and muscle to metal and gravity and the constant risk in his exploration of new form and expression.
“Sometimes,” he says, his nose finally flush with the pavement, “it can look like failure.”right: Bill Shannon caught in a "wall stall." photo by BC
And suddenly, the 40 minutes we have spent following Shannon through Traffic -
A Transient Specific Performance, suggest a larger simulacrum for human endeavor. Think Mideast peace, perhaps, or the Obama presidency.
Episodically, mesmericly, our Pequod of a chartered bus has been trying to keep up with his skiff of a skateboard as the tiny crutch powered craft buffets the tempests of rush hour traffic, and waves of tourist and commuter crowds down Broadway from Dance New Amsterdam, at Chambers, to the edge of the Battery, and back north along Water. The mother ship carries its captive audience in its hold, along with all necessary equipment and expertise -- a DJ, a VJ and two videographers -- to render the quarry. We can hear the music being pumped into Shannon’s radio headset, which, equipped with a microphone, intermittently feeds back to us his voice and the sound of his wheels. Those outside the bus can hear only the latter.
This extends to skateboarder Mike Wright, an old friend of Shannon’s, who has happened into the mix near the beginning of the performance. Signing on for the rest of the journey, he becomes the Queequeg/Daggoo of the piece, participating in encounters with passersby, cops and construction workers. Such happenstances, but perhaps without Wright, promise to mark each of the remaining performances, which continue each afternoon through Friday, June 4, beginning at 4:30 pm.
“How do you make the [members of an] audience feel like they are on a skateboard?” the event’s press release asks.
I don’t know about others, but Shannon’s fluid meanderings through these madding crowds took me back to my high school days. Whenever bored of a winter’s class, I would escape to the frozen puddle that covered much of the school’s roof, don my hockey skates, and glide above the unsuspecting heads of my classmates.
Watching Shannon now, I become acutely aware of the three-dimensionality of his art, space opening and closing across the “blab of the pave,” mind calculating with intuitive speed the warping of space time all around its body. Pausing abreast of a curbside advertisement, he suspends almost horizontally on his crutches in one of his signature "wall stalls," creating a flesh and blood bas relief against the commercial grain.
Shannon scouts the route of "Traffic" by winter light
Three years in the making, Traffic’s metaphorically rich, imaginatively provocative and downright audacious adventurousness augurs well for the revitalizing Artist in Residence Program at DNA. Not to be missed, the 20 accompanying videos by the same artist that play along DNA’s gallery walls add another dimension to Shannon’s chess game with the laws of physics and those of Downtown Manhattan traffic.In the clip playing out into Chambers St. adjacent to DNA’s entrance east of Broadway, the artist appears in jacket, tie and jaunty hat traversing the plazas around Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. In dress, manner and movement he recalls, in his own unique style, the pizzaz and allure of another Pittsburgh native, the late Gene Kelly. Such talents do not mark all generations. When such a one, at the peak of his powers, wheels before you, you owe it to yourself and your children to catch him if you can.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Painting the Town Rocha: Mad Men meet the Ladies @ Galapagos
Jenny Rocha rides into view.
photo by Melody Mudd
Jenny Rocha and her Painted Ladies have developed a following in this town since their debut in 2006. So has trumpeter, singer and bandleader Brian Newman. The two have each featured for some time now as performers in the intermittent Floating Kabarette productions of the Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, and both, in at least a part of their individual oeuvres, exhibit an interest in reclaiming and revitalizing the production values and styles of a bygone era of swanky supper clubs and New York nightlife.
So when the two teamed up at Galapagos on May 20, for their first ever shared evening of song and dance, you might have been forgiven for expecting a collaboration. As it turned out, Rocha’s production alternated segments like half-innings in a gender-specific ball game; the visiting boys of Newman’s jazz trio batting first.
Brian Newman. photo by Mark Pierson
Newman proved a genial host, except when beset by a recurring short in the microphone cord as he fondled his boxy 50’s style stand mic. Ahead of his polished side men -- Paul Francis on drums and Alex Smith on electronic keyboard -- he took the “pit,” what would normally serve as the audience left “pod” closest to the stage in Galapagos’ pool-bridging orchestra level seating scheme. Nattily tailored in a single-breasted dark suit complete with pocket square, a black pinstriped shirt with a white pointed collar and a white silk tie – Saville Row meets Bugsy Malone -- Newman welcomed the audience before turning his warm baritone, fiery trumpet and band mates loose on Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” He then introduced his hosts:
The red velour curtain parted on the home girls half of the inning to introduce all five black bra attired Painted Ladies astride white stage boxes from which they launched into a rhythm dance to recorded music by the Black Eyed Peas. Four minutes later, the jazz trio picked up to cover the set and costume changes before the Painted Ladies next number, playing a version of Marks & Simons’ popular standard “All of Me,” followed by the trio’s take on Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” The evening’s pattern had been established.
photo by Melody Mudd
Rocha’s pieces, kitschy, sometimes witty amalgamations of modern and jazz dance styles in vaudeville frames with burlesque accents, lean heavily on their props as well as on their often creative, always well executed costumes. In her own dancing she welds a fierce attack to a sexy sensibility and a sense of humor. Her company: Shevaun Smythe Hiler, Jillian Hollis, Molly Merkler, and Jessy Smith, while obviously well-trained and accomplished, only rarely exhibit the same commitment and pizzaz.
This does not hold true for the rousing tap trio in which Hollis and Smith match the choreographer flap for heel, all while keeping their pastie-crowned boobs from flopping out from beneath cropped faux fur vests until the proper moment for the big titillation. The choreography often builds to such peeks and distributes 28 flavors of fan kicks and pelvic thrusts among its compositionally classic canons and counterpoints.
photo by Dmitri Wildfong Nishman
For me this happy hoofer pas de trois proved the movement highlight of the evening, save for the offhanded instant in which Rachel Prescott, a member of the wait staff, found herself momentarily suspended in action and spotlight, her back to us, in front of the red velour and the jazz trio’s rendition of Porter’s “In the Still of the Night.” For all the Karole Armitage like intensity and artisanal stage craftiness of Rocha’s creations, this haphazard moment of vulnerability and human indecision sang out as truly arresting.
Meanwhile, back at the sangspiel, Newman and his merry band kept up their half of the bargain, toodling through samples of the Great American Song Book with a quick sidetrip through a Jobim Bossa Nova. Newman’s approach to his music defies easy categorization: In his singing he channels a little Tony Bennett, a little more Mel Torme, a little less Harry Connick, Jr. He attacks his trumpet solos with be-bop like flourishes and flying fingers.
Rocha likes to fly, too. One fondly hopes that these Painted Ladies and mad tailored men will someday find “a little old place where we can get together. Love shack, baby.”
photo by Melody Mudd
Jenny Rocha and her Painted Ladies have developed a following in this town since their debut in 2006. So has trumpeter, singer and bandleader Brian Newman. The two have each featured for some time now as performers in the intermittent Floating Kabarette productions of the Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, and both, in at least a part of their individual oeuvres, exhibit an interest in reclaiming and revitalizing the production values and styles of a bygone era of swanky supper clubs and New York nightlife. So when the two teamed up at Galapagos on May 20, for their first ever shared evening of song and dance, you might have been forgiven for expecting a collaboration. As it turned out, Rocha’s production alternated segments like half-innings in a gender-specific ball game; the visiting boys of Newman’s jazz trio batting first.
Brian Newman. photo by Mark Pierson
Newman proved a genial host, except when beset by a recurring short in the microphone cord as he fondled his boxy 50’s style stand mic. Ahead of his polished side men -- Paul Francis on drums and Alex Smith on electronic keyboard -- he took the “pit,” what would normally serve as the audience left “pod” closest to the stage in Galapagos’ pool-bridging orchestra level seating scheme. Nattily tailored in a single-breasted dark suit complete with pocket square, a black pinstriped shirt with a white pointed collar and a white silk tie – Saville Row meets Bugsy Malone -- Newman welcomed the audience before turning his warm baritone, fiery trumpet and band mates loose on Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” He then introduced his hosts: The red velour curtain parted on the home girls half of the inning to introduce all five black bra attired Painted Ladies astride white stage boxes from which they launched into a rhythm dance to recorded music by the Black Eyed Peas. Four minutes later, the jazz trio picked up to cover the set and costume changes before the Painted Ladies next number, playing a version of Marks & Simons’ popular standard “All of Me,” followed by the trio’s take on Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” The evening’s pattern had been established.
photo by Melody Mudd
Rocha’s pieces, kitschy, sometimes witty amalgamations of modern and jazz dance styles in vaudeville frames with burlesque accents, lean heavily on their props as well as on their often creative, always well executed costumes. In her own dancing she welds a fierce attack to a sexy sensibility and a sense of humor. Her company: Shevaun Smythe Hiler, Jillian Hollis, Molly Merkler, and Jessy Smith, while obviously well-trained and accomplished, only rarely exhibit the same commitment and pizzaz.
This does not hold true for the rousing tap trio in which Hollis and Smith match the choreographer flap for heel, all while keeping their pastie-crowned boobs from flopping out from beneath cropped faux fur vests until the proper moment for the big titillation. The choreography often builds to such peeks
photo by Dmitri Wildfong NishmanFor me this happy hoofer pas de trois proved the movement highlight of the evening, save for the offhanded instant in which Rachel Prescott, a member of the wait staff, found herself momentarily suspended in action and spotlight, her back to us, in front of the red velour and the jazz trio’s rendition of Porter’s “In the Still of the Night.” For all the Karole Armitage like intensity and artisanal stage craftiness of Rocha’s creations, this haphazard moment of vulnerability and human indecision sang out as truly arresting.
Meanwhile, back at the sangspiel, Newman and his merry band kept up their half of the bargain, toodling through samples of the Great American Song Book with a quick sidetrip through a Jobim Bossa Nova. Newman’s approach to his music defies easy categorization: In his singing he channels a little Tony Bennett, a little more Mel Torme, a little less Harry Connick, Jr. He attacks his trumpet solos with be-bop like flourishes and flying fingers.
Rocha likes to fly, too. One fondly hopes that these Painted Ladies and mad tailored men will someday find
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