Happy 90th birthday, Jasper Johns! Many thanks for sharing your present with who knows how many thousands of people. Most of them honor you as a superb and radical visual artist, but you may be less well known to them as artistic advisor to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1967 to 1976. And not just an advisor, but the guy who, like his partner Robert Rauschenberg, designed and … [Read more...]
Hunger Appeased? Maybe Not
Kimberly Bartosik/daela premieres I hunger for you at Lumberyard. Lumberyard first appeared in Maryland in 2011, providing residencies for dance artists who were preparing new work. It resurfaced this past summer in stunning new quarters in Catskill, New York as a center for performances and film showings and opened its inaugural season at the end of September. On October 12 and 13, … [Read more...]
How Many People in a One-Woman Show?
I love going to shows at Joe’s Pub for Dance Now’s Dance-mopolitan’s Commissioned Artist Series. But doing so takes a kind of expertise that I may lack. Did I manage to cut the sticky burrata that topped my little salad while keeping clean the blank paper on which I intended to take notes? Check. Did I really order a second beer? Yes, I did. Did I actually take some notes on top of previous notes … [Read more...]
Two for One
Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e shares a program with Caleb Teicher & Company at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center. Gibney Dance’s “DoublePlus” series at its Agnes Varis Dance Center invited three choreographers to each curate a double bill and serve as mentors. You might legitimately wonder what Dylan Crossman, formerly with Merce Cunningham, and tap artists Caleb Teicher and Nathan … [Read more...]
Mysterious Beauty
Pam Tanowitz Dance kicks off "NY Quadrille," a two-week season masterminded by Lar Lubovitch. Over the years, dance has acquired a reputation for mysteriousness. This vexes many people, enchants others, and confuses others still more. After seeing Pam Tanowitz’s Sequenzas in Quadrilles at the Joyce Theater, I walked along the sidewalk a bit ahead of two women who were energetically … [Read more...]
Dance Builds Its Own Worlds
Pam Tanowitz Dance and the FLUX Quartet opens Bard SummerSpace 2105. The featured composer at Bard SummerScape 2015 is Carlos Chavez (1899-1979), and in July and August, the 26th annual Bard Music Festival will devote its performances and symposia to him and his contemporaries. On June 27, Summerscape opened at Bard College in Anandale-on-Hudson with a taste of his music. Choreographer Pam … [Read more...]
The Beautiful Complications of Simplicity
Brian Brooks Moving Company brings new and old works to the Joyce Theater If I were asked to put choreographer Brian Brooks into a category, I’d have to coin a term: maximinimalist. His works are economical in terms of material and/or structure, but enriched into expressiveness by the ways in which he builds them. Take his 2010 Motor, which made an unexpected appearance on Brian Brooks … [Read more...]
Against the Wall
Kimberly Bartosik and Dylan Crossman share a program in a confined space. Kimberly Bartosik, Dylan Crossman, and Melissa Toogood all danced in Merce Cunningham’s company—Bartosik for nine years a few decades ago, Crossman and Toogood in the company that was finally disbanded in 2011. What perhaps should not surprise us is the emotional resonance and implications of drama that imbue the … [Read more...]
How Many Sallys Does It Take . . .?
Sally Silvers, Sally Gross, and Sally Bowden share a program. “Sally.” Seldom has an evening of dance been more appropriately titled. The performances presented by the Construction Company at the University Settlement on Eldridge Street showcased choreography by three vintage Sallys: Sally Gross, who was involved with Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s; Sally Bowden, who emerged in the … [Read more...]
New Trails for Traditions
Pam Tanowitz makes her Joyce debut February 4-5 with two premieres. If Pam Tanowitz had been baptized into dance as an infant, Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine would surely have been standing on either side of the font, ready to serve as godfathers. Tanowitz’s choreographic works, like those shown on her recent program at the Joyce Theater, tell no stories. Nor do they seethe with … [Read more...]