Emily Johnson/Catalyst creates communities in our city. Emily Johnson’s Shore, the third part of a trilogy that was preceded by the Bessie-award-winning The Thank-You Bar and Nicugni, did not consist only of the performance that appeared at New York Live Arts from April 23-25. Beginning April 19, there were related community action events (land, water, and dune restoration) in the … [Read more...]
Archives for 2015
Come Spring!
The Mark Morris Dance Group performs at BAM. Was it George Balanchine who said he wanted us to see the music and hear the dancing when we were watching his ballets? Maybe he said only the first part of that. Mark Morris, I think, hopes for something similar when we see his choreography—not meaning that we should hear feet hit the floor, but that the dancers carry the music in their bodies, … [Read more...]
The Long Journey
How do you comprehend/contend with/survive death and upheaval? A hurricane topples structures and scatters hoarded mementos; memories blow through the minds of the dying. How to control those, how to hold your world together? David Neumann, actor-dancer extraordinaire, head of David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, makes a piece and titles it I Understand Everything Better. The facts are these. … [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...]
A Variety Show from Myanmar
[Shwe Man Thabin performs a Zat Pwe program at Asia Society.] One of the many things that struck me about the splendid exhibit Buddhist Art of Myanmar (at Asia Society through May 10) is the smile on the face of the many statues of Buddha on display. It’s a smile you sometimes see on dancers in traditional South Asian forms; no teeth are visible, and the slightly upturned corners of the … [Read more...]
Eyes: Open and Shut
[Katie Workum's Black Lakes at St. Mark's Church, April 9 through 11] I didn’t read the note that Katie Workum added to the program for her Black Lakes. This was not because I heeded her spoiler alert, which warned spectators who liked to approach a work with fresh eyes not to read further. I didn’t see even see the alert. I came to the Danspace Project presentation in St. Mark’s church … [Read more...]
Running Backward, Looking Ahead
The Stephen Petronio Company performs a new Petronio work at the Joyce and remounts Merce Cunningham's "RainForest." Decades ago, when Twyla Tharp was a feisty young choreographer, she said that maintaining and presenting dances from her repertory was just not something she wanted to do. It would be like chewing gum, she said, and who wanted to keep on chewing it after the initial flavor … [Read more...]
Travelling through Inner Space and Beyond
Rashaun Mitchell premieres his Light Years at New York Live Arts, April 1 through 4. Here are some of the thoughts that popped up when I was watching Rashaun Mitchell’s Light Years at New York Live Arts: evolution, planetary orbits, outer space, Adam and Eve, video-game warriors, science fiction. These images continue to pursue their separate, but sometimes related paths through my … [Read more...]
Ice Floes Meet and Part
The Liz Gerring Dance Company brings her Glacier to the Joyce Theater. Liz Gerring graciously titles her Glacier after the piece of music by Michael J. Schumacher to which it’s set. His score for guitar, piano, harp, cello, clarinet also contains recordings he made near Glacier Lake in Colorado, and it is these sounds that are prominent during the beginning of the dance: a rattle of little … [Read more...]
Juilliard Dance Tackles Masterworks
Martha Graham's Dark Meadow and Merce Cunningham's Biped are performed by Juilliard students. Every Spring, Juilliard’s dance students pass through a compelling ordeal and emerge as artists just beginning to come into full bloom. The ordeal is really an awakening. A work by a major choreographer is auditioned for, learned, rehearsed, and performed. The dancers come to understand how great … [Read more...]