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...]
In the Heat of the Dance
The Kate Weare Dance Company celebrates its tenth anniversary at New York's BAM Fisher. Before the second performance of the Kate Weare Company’s season at BAM Fisher, Weare addressed the audience. The season marked her company’s tenth anniversary, and she wanted to praise the dancers. She mentioned their courage, their daring, and more. They were, she said, her heroes. They’re my heroes … [Read more...]
How Beautiful Can Age Be?
Miguel Gutierrez's Age & Beauty, Parts 1 and 2, presented during American Realness 2015. I didn’t see Miguel Gutierrez’s Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:/ when it was first performed as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Instead I saw it in Studio C of Gibney Dance’s Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center (the rescued and handsomely re-conceived former Dance … [Read more...]
Embedding a Life
Netta Yerushalmy presents Helga and The Three Sailors at Danspace St. Mark's Here are some thoughtful words that dancer Neal Beasley wrote about choreographic logic, especially as it pertains to Netta Yerushalmy’s new Helga and The Three Sailors: “There is a perverse solace in the inability to hold on to anything or make oneself understood. Such is the sweet white lie of dancing: Its beauty … [Read more...]
Choreographers Get Their Feet Wet
The Soaking Wet Festival at New York's West End Theater, October 2-5. Bored house guests. What does that mean to you? Unearthing the jigsaw puzzle because it’s raining and you can’t take them to the beach? The duet Bored House Guests, dreamed up and performed by Sara Hook and Paul Matteson as part of the Soaking Wet Festival, blasts open any of the usual images. Is the “house” in fact a … [Read more...]
Caution! Dancers Prowling
LeeSaar The Company brings its latest work to Jacob's Pillow, August 20 through 24 I have to believe that titles matter to Lee Scher and Saar Harari, the artistic directors of LeeSaar The Company. Their latest extraordinary piece of choreography is called Grass and Jackals. So I open my mind to tall grass that bends in the wind, lies flat under a hard rain, and can be a good hiding place. … [Read more...]
Comedy and Tragedy Dance a Duet
doug elkins choreography, etc. performs a new work and an old one at Jacob's Pillow. So what if you’re a nerd, and the woman you crave is a lot taller than you? Watch her and her bunch of friends; maybe you can pick up a few things that will make them accept you. Perhaps playing the clown will work? Mark Gindick really is a clown (as well as an actor and a dancer), and the clique that he … [Read more...]
Enter, Pursued by History
John Heginbotham premieres his full-evening Chalk and Soot at Jacob's Pillow. No artist can entirely escape history. Unacknowledged, it trails behind him/her. Occasionally it blows around the artist’s ankles, occasioning thoughts. What was that? Where did I get it? Is it something barely remembered or something better chopped off? John Heginbotham doesn’t deny the influences of his years … [Read more...]
Voyaging to a New Land
Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heels Performance Group presents Moses(es) at Jacob's Pillow. The first event you see in Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group's Moses(es) at Jacob’s Pillow is Reggie Wilson getting up the nerve to say something. He stands in the Doris Duke Studio Theater and looks the audience over—checking out the spectators, smiling nervously, waiting for. . .what? He pulls … [Read more...]