Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer get together at Saint Mark's Church. “It is better to have loved and lost than to have put linoleum on your living room floor.” Yvonne Rainer read that aloud during her 2016 The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project— Altered Annually. And she read it again from one of the sheets of paper taped to the pillars in Saint Mark’s Church during Danspace … [Read more...]
Dark Matters from Finland
Tero Saarinen Company performs at the Joyce Theater. Who are these men? I can tell you their names: Ima Iduozee, Leo Kirjonen, Mikko Lampinen, Jarkko Lehmus, David Scarantino, Eero Vesterinen, Heikki Vienola (have you guessed that almost all of them are Finnish?). However, seeing them onstage at the Joyce Theater in Morphed (2014) by the fascinating choreographer Tero Saarinen, you would … [Read more...]
Dancing on Water, Making Waves Onstage
The Trisha Brown Dance Company performs at the Clark Art Institute and at Jacob's Pillow. I’ve never watched a work of Trisha Brown’s without saying to myself, “How did she ever think of that?” I still marvel that an artist so rigorous could be so playful. I’ve envied her rambunctious way with words too. Yesterday, feeling foggy-headed, I went to the refrigerator and screwed the cap off a … [Read more...]
Home, Where the Heart Is
Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion at Jacob's Pillow, August 2 through 6 Kyle Abraham has always treated his own life and times as soil on which to build dances: his family, the Pittsburgh he grew up in, racism, gender bias, politics. Hip-hop introduced him to dancing; ballet, modern, and postmodern styles followed. Film and text clarified ideas. Yet his works have never seemed didactic—partly … [Read more...]
From Montreal to Massachusetts
Compagnie Marie Chouinard performs at Jacob's Pillow, July 19 through 23 The immaculately groomed women in the above photograph don’t look much like the dancers who took over the Ted Shawn Theater at Jacob’s Pillow to perform Marie Chouinard’s 24 Preludes by Chopin (1999). The six female members of her Montreal-based company still wear Liz Vandel’s translucent black leotards with what looks … [Read more...]
Artifacts Reinvented
Sally Silvers' three new works at Roulette, June 15 through 17. I love pondering the palimpsest that is New York City. Sometimes when a building’s skeleton is all that’s left, you lay what you know of its past over its present. The eye-level, horizontal strip of a Bleecker Street window that once displayed antique toys has vanished under the big-deal plate glass that’s there now, fronting … [Read more...]
Circles of Life
Tamar Rogoff's Grand Rounds at La MaMa, April 27 through May 14. Choreographer Tamar Rogoff grew up in the 1950s reading Helen Wells’ mystery novels about a nurse named Cherry Ames, who’d risk the wrath of the doctors she served by resourcefully breaking the rules in order to save a patient’s life, if no one else was around. From Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (1943), Nurse Ames went on being … [Read more...]
Seeing the World Upside Down
doug elkins choreography, etc. performs in Montclair State University's Peak Performances series. All that I’ve seen on the campus of Montclair State University until now is what I happen on while walking between the Alexander Kasser Theater and the Au Bon Pain. I have also, on a warm evening, sat in the miniature stone equivalent of a Greek theater where I-don’t-know-what takes place and … [Read more...]
Acknowledging the Past, Moving On
The Stephen Petronio Company revives works by those who have influenced him and offers a world premiere. Once upon a time, a choreographer of “modern dance” was expected to create his/her unique style—a difficult task, since human bodies are the material, and human bodies inevitably become imprinted with their histories. I think I would know a dance by Stephen Petronio if I met it in a dark … [Read more...]
A Museum Exhibit That Keeps Moving
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Work/Travail/Arbeid at the Museum of Modern Art, March 29-April 2. Decades ago, I could visit the Museum of Modern Art free whenever I wanted (it was a privilege granted to those of us who lived a bit west of MOMA at the Rehearsal Club, a residence for “young women in the theater”). In warm weather, I could drop in and prowl the Sculpture Garden—eyeing, if I … [Read more...]