[Katie Workum's Black Lakes at St. Mark's Church, April 9 through 11] I didn’t read the note that Katie Workum added to the program for her Black Lakes. This was not because I heeded her spoiler alert, which warned spectators who liked to approach a work with fresh eyes not to read further. I didn’t see even see the alert. I came to the Danspace Project presentation in St. Mark’s church … [Read more...]
Two Becoming One Remaining Two
My introduction to the work of Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith was a more intimate one than I would have expected. I had missed—my loss—their Beautiful Bone (2012) and Tulip (2013) and trekked to the Chocolate Factory to see the Rude World, with my eyes and mind wide open and my ears pricked. For the third part of this triptych (a co-commission and co-presentation of the Chocolate Factory and … [Read more...]
To Each Her Own With Others
Ivy Baldwin Dance at BAM Fisher and Hilary Easton + Co. at Danspace St. Mark's. Every now and then, I sift through a horde of ancestral photographs, puzzling over how some of the images fit into the structure I call “my family.” Some from the 20th century are impulsive and particular. A solitary child wearing a bib (me) squints at a small birthday cake with two candles on it. Generations … [Read more...]
Islands Meet Underwater
Vanessa Anspaugh presents a new work at Danspace St. Marks. “No man is an island,/ Entire of itself,/ Every man is a piece of the continent,/A part of the main.” John Donne knew that in 1623 when, in bed with an undetermined illness, he wrote “Meditation XVII” of his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Choreographer Vanessa Anspaugh may have had something similar in mind when she titled her … [Read more...]