“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!" howls Shakespeare’s King Lear, defying the storm that crashes around him, as he wanders into outer reaches of his former kingdom. Thrust out by his two conniving daughters and their accomplices, accompanied by his faithful Fool and later by his youngest daughter, Cordelia (whom he had, in his erstwhile pride, gravely wronged), he is losing his wits. But at … [Read more...]
The Tales They Tell
Big Dance Theater and Noche Flamenca dissect and reconnect narratives. Once upon a time, dances told their stories the way fairytales and plays did|; they began at the beginning, charted the conflicts that led to a climax, and slid into a denouement. Martha Graham with her Cubist deconstructions of space and time was among the first choreographers to alter the expected narrative flow. After … [Read more...]
Twyla Tharp: Fifty Years of Making Dances
Twyla Tharp ends her 50th Anniversary Tour in New York City. Twyla Tharp premiered her first work, Tank Dive, on April 29, 1965, in room 1604 of Hunter College’s Art Department (where she was not a student). It was the only dance on the program and lasted four minutes, which she considered to be the longest amount of time she thought she could fill to perfection. Besides, she noted in a … [Read more...]
Not a Dance? Are You Sure?
I plan to iron out the creases and frame the flyer for The Kitchen’s fall season. It’s an art work by Ralph Lemon that also appears in Lemon’s installation and performance there, Scaffold Room. Tiny, brightly painted figures cross the sheet of paper in rows that disguise their parallel underpinnings. There are also words, so tiny as to be difficult to read. I spot images from Scaffold Room: a man … [Read more...]
From Vaudeville to the Streets
Spectrum Dance Theater brings Donald Byrd's The Minstrel Show Revisited to NYU Skirball Center. Eleven dancers take the stage at NYU Skirball Center in Donald Byrd’s The Minstrel Show Revisited. They’re strutting, prancing, raising white-gloved hands. How come I don’t recognize any faces? I can hardly tell which are women and which are men. Byrd has already made a point about racial … [Read more...]
Shirley MacLaine, Meet Omar Sharif
Every time I see a work by Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater, I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall while they were dreaming it up (although, since the collaborators are married, brainstorming gusts may happen erratically, at any hour of the day or night). Their constructions are so intricately layered, their often highly dissimilar ingredients stirred together so startlingly … [Read more...]
You Read It Here
DANCENOW presents Mark Dendy's NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place in Joe's Pub. The very small stage at Joe’s Pub is bursting with people, and I’m not talking about the eight real performers. I mean the many others they personify and the many they refer to in the interpenetrating layers of Mark Dendy’s NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place, a DANCENOW commission. Leslie Cuyjet, for example, appears as a real … [Read more...]
A Union of Four Unalikes
Patricia Noworol Dance Theater performs at New York Live Arts. After I had seen Patricia Noworol’s ?Culture in 2013, when it was performed at St. Mark’s church, I wrote that the piece meshed “scrupulous designs with brashness, virtuosity, colloquial manners, outrage, and satiric political incorrectness.” The situation was volatile: Noworol, a violently skillful woman with a mane of blond … [Read more...]
Dancing Communities
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...]
Dreams and Journeys, Destination Uncertain
Keely Garfield Dance premieres Wow at St. Mark's Church (a Danspace Project presentation). I’m pretty sure that Keely Garfield does what most of us do: mop the floor, rustle up some dinner, move close to the other person in the bed, tell the kids what they can do and what they shouldn’t do. Garfield, however, is a yoga teacher and a Donna Karan/Urban Zen Integrative Therapist (working in … [Read more...]