Donna Uchizono premieres a new work at Gibney Dance's Agnes Varis Performance Center. “Donna Uchizono: Woman of Mystery.” Does that sound about right? No, it’s too much of a cliché to apply to a choreographer whose next step you can never anticipate and whose every new work adjusts your perceptions. Her 1995 Drinking Ivy, for instance, began with Levi Gonzalez standing alone at the rear of … [Read more...]
Dancing Down to the Bone
luciana achugar premieres An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love. It’s November, 2006, and I’m sitting on one of the highest carpeted risers in St. Mark’s Church watching Luciana Achugar’s Exhausting Love. Suddenly one of the performers (Hilary Clark) works her way toward me and my companion and wedges herself between us. Other cast members are also bridging the audience-performer divide. … [Read more...]
Three Veteran Adventurer-Choreographers Get Together
First time I’ve been to JACK, where Neil Greenberg, Yvonne Meier, and Jennifer Monson are sharing a program. The Brooklyn space reminds me of the original Dance Theater Workshop of the 1960s, when it sprang up in Jeff Duncan’s loft at 215 West 20th Street in Manhattan. Enough chairs for 50 or so spectators. Two small curtained dressing areas at one end. Two restrooms at the opposite end of the … [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...]
What Do You Mean By “Meaning?”
Neil Greenberg premieres This at New York Live Arts. Choreographer Neil Greenberg doesn’t like the word “about,” as in, “What is this dance about?” Having been a member of Merce Cunningham’s company between 1979 and 1986 and having read Susan Sontag’s influential 1966 Against Interpretation, he would prefer we not scramble to uncover “meaning” while watching what he puts onstage. The title … [Read more...]