Chen Dance Center: "newsteps choreographers series".

If you are in the mood for dance this weekend, make your way to the Chen Dance Center at 7.30pm (Fri-Sat) for a real treat. The center, formerly the Mulberry St. Theater, curates newsteps: "a semi-annual dance series dedicated to providing support and performance opportunities for choreographers who are creating innovative and risk-taking works". Tonight and tomorrow, among the six performances that share the evening, there is a little gem: a duet performed by Makiko Tamura and Ryoji Sasamoto (both members of Ellis Wood Dance) entitled Order Made. Tamura, who choreographed the piece, was inspired by her grandmother's struggle with Parkinson's disease, as well as by photographs of the same grandmother in her lively youth. The result is a mesmerizing, poetic dance, an abstract and expressive ten minutes of precise gestural movement, intimate physical (mis)communication, and overall beautiful dancing. Tamura's choreography begins slowly, mechanically, and soon builds to a faster pace, exploring the many possible relations between the dancers on stage. Throughout the piece both performers maintain a puppet like quality that keeps their dancing unemotional, their eyes looking distant like those of wax sculptures - this is particularly powerful, as their dance does not demand empathy or sympathy, and develops out of what appears to be a strict necessity to move. Tamura and Sasamoto are wonderful dancers, at once powerful and contained in their energy, totally committed and present in their performance: it is a delight to see their work in the intimate space of the Chen Dance Center.

While Order Made is definitely the highlight of this newsteps series, other pieces in the evening deserve attention. Young choreographer Catherine Galasso's The Passion of A Hillbilly Greaser, for instance, is a fun dance theater piece that plays with the contrasts between the two performers: Brandt Adams and Yoko Mitsuishi. In an unexpected turn of events, we are serenaded by Mitsuishi's questionable karaoke skills, while being magically transformed into the audience of some kind of Japanese show. Galasso is particluarly skillfull in establishing an ominous mood, only to subvert it and shake the audience with uneasy humor. Galasso's piece stands out in the evening, rejecting the claim to "serious dance" that some of the other works attempt (like the somewhat overly dramatic and repetitive last piece entitled Unibody).

Choreographers' series like newsteps give you a chance to sample many different styles of work. Of course, it is also the case that pieces showcased at events like this one are not always...ripe. Overall, however, it is exciting to see that there are still dance spaces willing to make room for new, non-commercial, dance. Stepping into Chen Dance Center felt like entering a place from New York before the 1980's economic boom and the general commercialization of the arts. If you miss this series, keep your ears and eyes out for Tamura - I wouldn't be surprised to see her work showcased somewhere else soon.

PS 122: "The Jester of Tonga"

At PS122 this weekend through November 23, Joseph Silovsky presents a wonderfully sweet and quirky one-man performance that tells the story of the mysterious jester of the Pacific island of Tonga. Beginning in 2001, inspired by a New York Times article entitled “The Money Is All Gone in Tonga and the Jester’s Role Was No Joke”, Silovsky set out on a mission to discover for himself the details of how $23 million dollars theoretically belonging to the people of Tonga were claimed by the island’s king (on the grounds that the people would spend it on silly things like “roads”), placed in an American savings account, made to profit and increase by $11 million dollars, and then completely lost in a bad investment.

While the events that took place in Tonga in themselves make for an interesting and unusual plot, what really works in Silovsky’s piece is his poetic and unusual approach to telling the story. On a stage crowded with suitcases of different sizes and colors, microphones, and functional technological sculpture, Silovsky walks about, turning on little cameras, opening screens, awkwardly displaying a 1:1 map of the island of Tonga, claiming that he wants to make the story as clear and accurate as possible for us. His narration is made up of a series of vignettes, memory bubbles that he presents to the audience with the aid of paper-cut puppets, video and audio recordings, and Stanley, Silovsky’s robotic invention through whom we first hear the perspective of the jester of Tonga himself.

The irony in Jester of Tonga lies in the juxtaposition of the potential for precision and accuracy offered by the technology on stage, and the softer and more overtly interpretative story telling strategies used by Silovsky to share his own subjective understanding of Tonga and the events that took place in the small Pacific island. Silovsky, throwing suitcases out of his way and stumbling over his own lines, exposes the narrator’s struggle in piecing together a story that begins as something foreign and surreal, but eventually turns into an intimate and personal interpretative exercise dealing with recollection and memory. Part comical detective, part compassionate self-conscious anthropologist, and part nerdy techy artist, Silovsky’s character gently offers his research work to his audience and leads us through a humorous evening and a story that painfully echoes the recent economic developments on this side of the Pacific.

PS122

Nov 13-23
Wed-Sat 8pm
Sun 6:30pm
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Dance New Amsterdam: "Carlisle"

This weekend, Katie Workum presented Carlisle at Dance New Amsterdam. The piece’s opening is promising: three open doors stage right flood the stage with light from the offstage rooms. A few leafless tree branches and some bark glued onto a column suggest a desolate outdoors landscape, making the unadorned columns in the space potential trees rather than obstructions to our gaze. The stage left mirror, usually concealed during performances, is left exposed and used to reflect glaring light from stage right, a trick that increases the volume of the space and creates the illusion of another dimension. Onto this bare stage, four dancers crawl like creatures from a different evolutionary stage, slithering onto the ground and testing the solidity of the floor.
Unfortunately, the clarity of the opening scene and of the mood suggested by the lighting and set, quickly dissipate into a piece with unclear structure and concept. In particular, the relationships among the performers on stage remain vague: there are a couple of more developed interactions (such as the arm and hand wordless duets that take place on two occasions), but the different scenes in the work do not connect, and it is not clear what the dancers are here to do.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the performance is the unresolved relationship between two distinct bodies of dancers: the initial quartet of young, white women (two blondes and two brunettes), and a group of six Asian women (all Korean, as we learn in the program) who on five separate occasions enter the stage and perform movement sequences reminiscent of traditional Indonesian dancing. The Korean women wear glittery tight dresses that differentiate them from the white dancers, who are dressed in short, loose fitting, cotton jumpsuits. While on several occasions the quartet directly addresses the audience with words and songs, the Korean performers only join the quartet for a final song and dance phrase. There is no clear relationship between the two groups of dancers, or between the movement phrases that they perform. The secondary role played by the Asian dancers is almost offensive, containing an implied passivity without any trace of commentary on the part of the choreographer. Why are these dancers in the same space?

Carlisle is an ambitious project that could benefit from some rigorous editing and refocusing of intention. It appears like the choreographer wants to tackle many different ideas, but in the process forgets the common thread that ties them all together. Workum is most successful when she deals directly with abstract movement, and focuses on a particular relationship—such as the performers’ relationship to the floor in the first part of the piece. Overall, however, Carlisle feels more like a composit of choreographic experiments than a coherent full-length performance, and Workum should consider a revision, particularly in consideration of her international cast.

La Mama: "Atomic City"

There is a visually stunning and not very well publicized production at La Mama that will be running through September 28. Atomic City is a clever composit of dance, theater and live music that takes spectators into the lives of two neighboring families whose troubled patres familias both work as physicists in the town’s laboratory. The plot of the performance unravels slowly, as we learn about the characters’ relationships to each other, and observe them interacting through dance, words and song. Indeed, one of the strongest aspects of the piece lies in the balance of different performance forms that take turns at telling the story. For example, just as a spoken introduction to the piece seems to point us in the direction of a wordy theatrical work, the nimble bodied orator (Karl Sørensen) ends his prologue and throws himself into an extremely physical dance phrase filled with suspensions and inversions, all emphasized by a spotlight that gives his dance a dramatic twist.

The cast for Atomic City is also a combination, a mix of artists with different backgrounds and nationalities: there are two musicians from Sweden, two Danish dancers, a physical theatre performer from Guatemala, and an acrobatic dancer and mover from the US. More generally, the work is a collaboration between the Danish company Terranova and US performer and producer Jon Morris (Fuerzabruta, Cirque du Soleil). They produced the piece in an intensive residency this summer at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, and this in New York is their premiere. Probably because the piece is so new, there is a raw quality to it that makes the work exciting: these artists are taking risks with their bodies and their voices, in a collaboration that has pushed each one of them to a new place in their artistic practice.

When something does not run so smoothly (some of the harmonizing could use a little more practice!) the visuals of the piece by and large make up for it. The set for Atomic City beautifully contrasts the darkness of the performance space with white panels of waxed paper and a green square of fake grass. Spectators sit on opposite sides of the square, a choice that is elegantly exploited several times during the performance by movable wall divisions and the different facings of the performers. Apart from one character, “the gatekeeper”, soberly dressed in grey shades, all the performers wear white costumes. The result is a bright and clean look, easily associated with snow or the stark light of an atomic explosion.

Atomic City is at once readable and abstract: “a recipe for pie and one for destruction”, as described in the flyers for the show. This young group of international artists from different disciplines has created a unique world within the La Mama Annex theatre, a white city in which, as one of the physicists claims, “we are suspended in language”, as well as in sound and movement. In this secret place, human relations unfold playfully and painfully through beautifully physical phrases of movement and broken fragments of language. With its light humor and poetic aesthetic, Atomic City is a promising collaboration, one that should not be overlooked.

The Annex

September 11 - 28, 2008
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm
Sunday at 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Tickets $25
purchase tickets online

French Institute Alliance Française: “While We Were Holding It Together”.

Ivana Müller’s While We Were Holding It Together is a very still dance piece currently showing at FIAF (French Institute Alliance Française). In this work, the Croatian born choreographer has brought together a cast of five performers whose central task for the piece is to remain immobile, living sculptures posing in a tableau in the middle of an empty, black stage. The minimalistic design for the stage, combined with the stark lighting and every day wear of the performers, is meant to free the imagination of the spectator, opening up interpretation as to what these characters are actually doing. As becomes clear very early in the piece, While We Were Holding It Together centers primarily on the experience of the spectator in the theater and the process of perception involved in participating in a theatrical event. The performers seem to tell us that we, the audience members, are responsible for “holding it together”: without our contribution, there could be no performance.

For over an hour, the five performers involve the audience in a process of constant re-imagination, as they describe alternative scenarios to explain their physical condition. Seemingly caught in the stillness of their bodies, the performers speak: “I imagine we are in a forest”, “I imagine I am sick”, “I imagine we are stored into a large container”, “I imagine a family weekend”, and so on. The vignettes that ensue are at times funny, at times touching, and at one point even attempt to be erotic. Müller and her performers successfully maintain a light touch throughout what, we imagine, might otherwise be a tedious experiment. Unfortunately the humor involved in the piece is often predictable: the whole performance plays off of the endless exploration and absurd creations of the imagination, leveraging on the inexplicable stillness of the performers for contrast. This direct juxtaposition does not take many risks and openly aims at seducing the audience into collaborating with the performers: each humorous moment seeks to keep spectators from drifting away from the piece.

In the post-performance talk following Wednesday’s performance, Müller mentioned that three main questions served as the focus for the improvisation exercises that gave rise to the piece. Each performer had to ask themselves: “Who am I? What am I doing? Why am I here?” At times, it seems like those questions have been exhausted in the process of making the piece. Indeed, there is a limitless number of stories that could be tailored around the conditions of the five performers, but what next? While the solutions created for the performance are satisfying, the piece does not succeed in pushing the boundaries of a well-designed improvisation exercise.

While We Were Holding It Together is a strongly cerebral piece, not surprisingly considering Müller’s background in literature and her interest in conceptual dance. The questions addressed in the work speak directly to contemporary critical theory in the field of audience reception, making Müller’s exploration echo existing academic writing on theatre and performance. Overall, however, Müller addresses these issues with clarity, and the empathetic experience of observing the performers’ impossible attempt at stillness remains with you even after you have left the theater.

While We Were Holding It Together

FIAF

Wednesday–Friday, September 24–26, 2008 at 8pm

The Kitchen: "Anger/Nation"

Photo by Paula Court.

On entering The Kitchen this Saturday, I was curious to see how Radiohole had dealt with Chelsea's sizable performance space for the staging of ANGER/NATION, their latest production. The company usually performs at the Collapsable Hole, a theater made from two neighboring garages in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and a space they share with fellow experimental theater company Collapsable Giraffe. The Collapsable Hole is cozy and a little claustrophobic. There are no chairs, just large steps with movable pillows, which do not seat more than fifty people. Watching Radiohole in their own performance space is raw and intimate, their ultra technological sets making it feel as though you just entered a post-apocalyptic underground world: red lights, monitors every where, exposed bricks, and familiar objects used for unfamiliar purposes. It was difficult to imagine their work in the clean and fashionable Chelsea space.

Yet for their performance at The Kitchen , Radiohole successfully recreated that sense of intimacy and technological overload by using only about a third of the stage’s depth, and building a fiberglass firework-like structure that bursts towards the audience, mini monitors attached to the end of each rod, physically breaking the imaginary fourth wall between audience and stage. In this production, a large, bluish-grey, cardboard moon hangs above stage right, and the set is dissected through the middle by a ramp that ascends to a darkened backstage. Horizontal, color-changing panels act as a back drop, while on the sides and the front of the stage are visible various light and sound switches: Radiohole members usually operate all the cues in their performances.

ANGER/NATION’s set alone is like a sculpture, and could survive as an installation even when not inhabited by its performers. It is a little like a space ship, filled with light switches and monitors, almost breathing, with its changing colors and tiny movements. Yet the performers are there, all the way from the beginning: pouring beer for the audience, talking to each other, attempting drunken speeches, some of them wearing adjusted German folk dresses complete with embroidered edelweiss. For this show, Radiohole has centered around the historical character of Mrs. Carrie A. Nation (Maggie Hoffman), the “Bar Room Smasher” born in “Garrard farm, Kentucky” in 1846. After loosing her husband to drinking and sailors, Mrs. Nation takes on the quest of cleansing America of "sin and degradation" by destroying every bar she sets foot in. Like in other Radiohole productions, narrative is non-linear, and Mrs. Nation’s story appears at intervals between songs, disturbing tableaux, and violent repetitive acts, as when two of the men on stage repeatedly shoot each other’s buttocks with air guns.

About half way through the performance, pink American flags make their appearance on the background monitors, and Mrs. Nation declares that all will participate in her crusade: more specifically “if they are women, they will join [her], and if they are boys, they will follow [her] unwillingly”. Mrs. Nation’s crusade, with its conservative thrust and Born-Again Christian overtones, brings to mind the real world, and at one time Miss Alaska runner-up, Governor Sarah Palin. In fact, Radiohole’s emphasis on questions of gender and sexuality, as well as their dissection of religious zealotism, could not come at a more salient time in the history of American politics.

Mrs. Nation's crusade eventually takes on an unexpected turn, and the pregnant actress finally appears to us in a radically different attire from the widow like costume in which she first descends onto the stage. The conclusion of the performance is at once surprising and thought-provoking: disclosing it would decrease its efficacy.

ANGER/NATION deals with sex, alcohol, queerness and decadence, with great irony and without sparing the macabre and the gruesome. Filled with chauvinistic jokes, beer smashing, and unexpected props, such as the prehensile penis on actor Eric Dyer, ANGER/NATION is a visceral experience, often overwhelming, sometimes digressive, and always provocative and challenging. Radiohole’s latest production proves once again their unique position as a company on the cutting edge of performance, one taking risks and, on this occasion, breathing fresh air into the now fashionable Chelsea district. There is no one like them in New York.

Radiohole: ANGER/NATION

The Kitchen

September 24-27, 8pm

Here Arts Center: "Arias With A Twist"

A red velvet curtain slowly opens…to reveal a dark hanging curtain. After a few moments, this layer peels off as well, onto a screen of faux leopard skin. The audience laughs. We are so close to the stage and the small theater makes me hungry for more space. Every time the curtain lifts, I hope it will open up to the stage. Yet even when the leopard skin unfolds, another layer of sheer material divides the performance space from the audience. The suspense created by the peeling of all these layers is repeated in the long wait before Joey Arias, the drag star of “Arias With a Twist“, actually appears on stage. The audience is teased, our gaze at once disappointed and pleased with the repeated delay of satisfaction. We are here to see Arias, we want her, want to hear and see her performance. After all, the reviews have been raving about the show, and Here Arts has decided to extend the performance (originally planned as a four week run between June and July) all the way to December 31.

Finally Arias appears, and what ensues is a series of acts, reminiscent of a cabaret/circus hybrid, full of sex, sensuality, humor and song. And although we might be here to see Arias, Arias is not alone. She has been surrounded by the playful creations of Basil Twist, a third generation puppeteer whose imaginative use of scale, style and color well complements Arias’ performance. Simultaneously loud and intimate, “Arias With a Twist” relies on the talent of Arias and Twist to create a series of scenes loosely tied together by an intricate plot. After being abducted by aliens, Arias is dropped back on earth, where she embarks on a search for a mythical prophet. Arias’ search begins when she takes a bite off of a magic mushroom, and from here on the performance exists on the edge of hallucination. So Arias floats across the stage, while large white hands caress her and eventually dive fingers first into her vagina; she goes to hell and dances with her “boys”, two devils (puppets) endowed with ridiculously large phalluses; and finally, she reaches New York City, where she walks across Manhattan from neighborhood to neighborhood like a human Godzilla in search for a cab.

The hallucinatory quality of the performance ends in the last part of the show, when Arias returns to us as a more classic drag diva in performance. In her closing acts, Arias sings, tap dances while flossing her teeth, and finally appears on a large rotating wedding cake decorated with legs in stockings. Twists’ puppets keep her company until the end, contrasting and complementing Arias’ human presence. These performing objects work both as extensions and amplifiers of Arias’ performance, and as reminders of Arias’ uniqueness (and loneliness, as suggested by Arias’ rendition of the pop classic “All By Myself”).

In a world of puppets and play, Arias is both the human exception and the driving force behind the performance, her audacity and flaunting of all matters sex related both provocative and exhilarating. Arias’ performance pushes the boundaries of the small theater at Here Arts Center, making the space feel too tight for her masterful singing and explosive sexuality. At the same time, there is something powerful about the containment of Arias’ performance, a reminder of the contemporary political and social circumstances, not as willing to play with Arias as the spectators in the audience. Hopefully, someday Arias won’t be “all by [her] self” on the stage, a strange specimen of the human species studied by aliens from another world, and work like “Arias With a Twist” will abound outside New York City’s performance scene.