Let’s hear it for dancers! They can’t not dance. And they all have i-phones or the equivalent—and maybe obliging friends to operate these. However, I confess that after a while of sitting at my laptop watching, say, six performers dancing in their bedrooms, I can get too interested in the sites themselves. A lot of books! What pictures hang on their walls? Dig that cookstove. But what if … [Read more...]
Homeward Bound
Jonah Bokaer Choreography at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. August 24, 2017. It’s one of Manhattan’s best summer days—hot enough to encourage many of its citizens to don amazingly skimpy outfits, but graced by a balmy breeze. This is the last day that Jonah Bokaer performs site-specific solos in the garden of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. I’m disoriented from … [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...]
Across the Water, into the Past
Colleen Thomas Dance performs a site-specific work on Governors Island, September 16-18. Visiting Governors Island for the first time (yes, really), I look at the fine old wooden houses ranged around the grassy expanse known as Nolan Park—some of them quite grand—and wish I could have grown up there. Probably not when its cannons, facing the scant 800 yards of water that separate the island … [Read more...]