Tere O'Connor's Bleed, premiering on BAM's Next Wave Festival, is built on the bones of three previous works. Writing about Tere O’Connor’s work is always a challenge (he himself does it very well). Watching his marvelous new Bleed in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fishman Space is akin to recalling a night of dreaming. In it, as in dreams, events pour into one another, places morph into … [Read more...]
Archives for 2013
Pina Bausch Returns to Juilliard
Juilliard students appear in premieres by Takehiro Ueyama, Brian Brooks, and Darrell Grand Moultrie, plus a reconstruction of a work by Pina Bausch. Every winter, the Juilliard School presents its dance students in four new works. All its dance students. Although—since some pieces are double cast—you might have to attend two performances to see every single talented dancer on stage. This … [Read more...]
Just What Are We Celebrating?
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premieres Aszure Barton's Lift at City Center. Any choreographer invited to make a piece for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater must come to the first rehearsal with both elation and trepidation. The Ailey dancers are like racehorses—sleek, swift, eager, ablaze with temperament. What can you feed them? How do you groom them? Are you up to the … [Read more...]
Fire Burning at Both Ends
Donna Uchizono Company premieres Fire Underground at New York Live Arts. The title of Donna Uchizono’s harrowing new work is Fire Underground. The words evoke flames smoldering, unable to break through. Fire under the skin. Fire heating up the brain. Anger that has to be restrained. Uchizono makes no secret of the dance’s source. She spent twelve years adopting a child in Nepal and … [Read more...]
Dissecting Pop Culture
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...]
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...]