Saturday, May 31, 2008

Starr Street Projects: "Catch 30"

Yesterday's "Catch 30" comprised 10 different dance pieces performed over an hour and a half evening. The scene at Starr Street Projects was quite a performance in itself: the space is situated in the middle of Bushwick and before the show began, an island of hipster dance spectators gathered around the entrance of the space. The general whiteness of the audience struck me, particularly in contrast with the darker faces of the neighbourhood's residents.

I was similarly surprised by the homogeneity of the dance on show: although artists worked with different media and genres (from pure dance without sound, to mix-media puppetry and video, to more classical theatrical work) the pieces felt very close to each other in aesthetic choices. 80's white pop culture was referenced again and again, in the choice of movement, sound and costumes. There was a large and very supportive audience and, in general, the event felt like the casual gathering of a community of friends, coming together for beers and to support artists they knew.

Shitheads on Dynamite! presented one of the most interesting pieces in the evening. The work consisted of a musician on live drums and two dancers moving in response to an edited version of "A Date With Your Family", a 10 minute instructional film on family relations released in 1950. The piece built up slowly, the beats of the drum and the frenetic dancing of the performers eventually turning the experience of the video into a ritualistic family gathering.

Overall, "Catch 30" gave one a glimpse of a very specific scene in the contemporary dance world of NYC. In the future, it would be great to see more difference in a program that brings together so many artists.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

PS122: "Oedipus Loves You".

Until June 1, 2008, the Dublin based Pan Pan Theatre company will perform Oedipus Loves You at PS122. According to Wikipedia, “a call of pan-pan means there is an emergency on board a boat, ship, aircraft or other vehicle but that, for the time being at least, there is no immediate danger to any one’s life or to the vessel itself. This is referred to as a state of urgency”. Whether or not Aedin Cosgrove and Gavin Quinn were thinking of this definition when they founded Pan Pan in 1991, Oedipus Loves You successfully breathes urgency and immediateness into the familiar story of Oedipus.

Pan Pan’s production follows the traditional form of Greek tragedy: events take place over the arc of a day, all violence happens off stage, characters sometimes wear masks and, most importantly, there is music and dancing. While the plot follows that of Oedipus (by Seneca) and Oedipus Rex (by Sophocles), there is nothing traditionally classical about the characters in Oedipus Loves You. Tiresias, the blind prophet played by Ned Dennehy (who also plays a naked sphinx on platforms for the opening scene of the play), is a retired rock star who wants to play percussion in Antigone’s and Creon’s indie-rock band called “Gordon Is A Mime”. Antigone, smartly played by Aoife Duffin, is a melancholic teenager divided between her love for her family and the deep desire to be left-the-fuck-alone. Uncle Creon (Dylan Tighe) sniffs coke and can hardly contain his own incestuous impulses towards Antigone. Jocasta (Gina Moxley) does not mind the plague at all- in fact, it makes her sleep better. And Oedipus…well, Oedipus can’t even cook meat right for the family barbecue. Played by Bush Moukarzel, Pan Pan’s Oedipus can hardly contain his own self-pity after he gushes his eyes out. In one of the highlights of the performance, his button down shirt completely drenched in blood, Oedipus remembers the lyrics of his own favorite childhood song: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird. He actually breaks down and cries after singing a few of the first verses.

Playing off of Freud’s writings as well as on contemporary notions of postdramatic theater, Pan Pan’s Oedipus Loves You brings wit and a healthy amount of distance to the theatrical Oedipal “super-plot”. The production is defined by a subtle dark humor that allows for the heavy tragic elements of the plot to exist in tandem with the lightness of irony and detachment. The production is also interesting in terms of set, light and sound design, all of which support the notion of a theater conscious of its theatricality yet fully entertaining, (a)live, and aware of its audience. If you have not seen it yet, don’t miss it!

Pan Pan Theatre’s
Oedipus Loves You

May 21 - June 1
Wednesdays - Sundays at 8
Saturdays at 8 and 11
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Movement Research Festival: "80's and 90's On Screen - Dance Relics".


On Tuesday, May 27th, Christine Elmo and Jmy Leary presented “80’s and 90’s on Screen - Dance Relics”, an evening of dance videos from the NYC dance scene in the 80’s and 90’s. Elmo and Leary put together about 4 hours (!!!) of rarely seen videos that included performances, films, rehearsal and interviews. Although I could not make it through the whole evening, I made it through enough of the night to enjoy Elmo’s and Leary’s curatorial endeavour. Some of the first films showed a very young Steve Paxton and a ridiculously sexy Bill T. Jones experimenting with their bodies before they became established pillars of the dance community. The videos documented works by Ishmael Houston-Jones and John Jasperse (both of whom where in the audience), as well as by Meredith Monk, Scott Heron, and other exciting artists from the NYC dance community. The evening took place in the gymnasium of the Judson Memorial Church and the energy felt electric- the gym was filled with artists, dancers, musicians and, in general, people curious and interested in the rare opportunity of seeing so many dance videos from such a recent period in history. It was great to be part of an event that paid tribute to artists who are still young and working, while recognizing the importance of two decades of modern dance still too often overshadowed by the 60’s and 70’s.

“80’s and 90’s on Screen” was part of the Movement Research Spring Festival 2008, with events/performances/classes running up to June 9, 2008.

Ontological Hysteric Theater: "Tiny Theater! Festival".

Thursday, May 22, I attended the first evening of the Incubator's Tiny Theater! Festival at the Ontological Hysteric Theater. Curated by Michael Gardner, of The Brick, and Shannon Sindelar and Brendan Regimbal of the Ontological, last night's show included a line up of 6 different performances all taking place in a 6'x6'x6' space in 10 minutes or less: a very focused emergent theater marathon!

By the end of the evening I felt elated: curators for Tiny Theater! have brought together an interesting and diverse group of performance artists. From puppetry to neo-futurism, the 6'x6'x6' metal cage on the stage was inhabited by very different performances: sometimes the cube looked spacious and empty, as in SPi Company's "They Are Bad People", where two actors simply sat on chairs for the entire performance. At other times, the cube felt crowded (see the very sexual "Five (Eduardinos)") or extremely constraining, as in 6-Speed, the New York Neo-Futurist piece in which actors toasted cookies and swayed on metal bars like children in a jungle gym. Each performance used the space more or less effectively, but overall the evening had a wonderful rhythm and energy.

Curators of Tiny Theater! have also successfully brought together different kinds of performances. For the most part, the tiny performances were entertaining: filled with humorous characters (such as the she-Kermit-the-Frog in "The Barber of Saskatoon") and ironic props (as The Angel of Repose's spinning halo in "The Alternative Lifestyle Fair"). Yet there were also more sobering pieces. In Portrait of JB, for instance, a woman dressed in white walked around the stage carrying the bleeding severed head of a pig, while a man smoked a cigarette in the back of the theater. Overall the evening was gracefully crafted and the differences among the pieces worked well within the rhythm of the festival.

I highly recommend seeing one of the three remaining performances. Here's more information:

TINY THEATER 8p.m. Thursday--Saturday, May 22--24. Additional 11p.m. performance Saturday May 24. $15 cash at the door, or reserve in advance here or by calling 212-352-3101.

Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue)

In case you can't make any of these shows, look out for upcoming Summer Residencies at the Incubator.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Skirball Center of Performing Arts: "Ancient Songs of South Africa. Ngqoko Cultural Group".

If you have never been to the Skirball Center for Performing Arts, keep an eye out for anything presented there by the World Music Institute! Last night, an ensemble of 6 women and 1 man offered an exciting and rare experience of traditional music and singing from the rural Xhosa communities of South Africa.

The only man on stage, Tsolwana B. Mpayipheli, acted as presenter as well as translator, associating each of the songs with a particular story or social ritual. The music of the Xhosa is deeply rooted in social customs and communal living. At night, the same bows which during the day are used for hunting, turn into mouth bows (a mix between a string instrument and a flute) or percussion bows with calabash resonators. During the Aparthaid, Tsolwana explained, men from rural areas left their villages to go work in urban centers such as Johannesburg and Cape Town. The men’s emigration left women in charge of passing down culture within their own villages, a phenomenon which might account for the majority of women musicians on stage!

Overall, Ngqoko’s performance offered spectators a wide range of the sounds and styles indigenous to the Xhosa tribe. From lullabies, to initiation songs, to performances of overtone singing, (which these women are well known for), the harmonies and rhythms of the Ngqoko were both soothing and energizing. The songs began and ended very organically, as voices joined or faded according to the mood of the performers. Some songs never went beyond humming and quiet strumming, while others exploded in dance, clapping, and heavy stomping on the stage. For the entire performance, the bodies of the musicians swayed and stomped, elbows close to the waist with arms bent at 90 degrees, their whole body keeping to the rhythm and creating a subtle dance that made you want to get up from your chair and participate on the stage!

At the end of the performance, as the women and the man left the stage clapping and waving, I was somewhat saddened that this special event had not received more attention and a larger audience. But the World Music Institute continues to organize special musical events of excellent quality, so there will hopefully be another chance in the future! For more information on their programming, follow this link.

Skirball Center of Performing Arts
http://www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu/

World Music Institute
http://www.worldmusicinstitute.org/

Mitchell Algus Gallery: “Martha Wilson. Photo/Text Works, 1971-1974.”

The receptionist at the Mitchell Algus gallery informed me that before doing performances “for people sitting in chairs,” Martha Wilson’s performances used to focus on one spectator only: her Pentax camera. Wilson’s show at the gallery, her first solo show ever, focuses on exactly this pre-live performance period, when she began to explore gender, identity, expression and perception while studying at the Nove Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. From 1971 to 1974, Wilson created a series of photo/text works that have never been exhibited before this time. Wilson’s show at Mitchell Algus feels like an intimate exposure of archival material, with images always accompanied by text, almost like an ethnographic study of the artist.

Overall, the show is rather small: between the anteroom and the main room, a total of 16 works hang on the walls of the gallery. While small, the exhibition also offers a wide range of Wilson’s work. A large part of the text-photo pieces focuses on Wilson playing different roles. Whether as a lesbian woman who fails to pass in a men’s bathroom (Posturing: Mae Impersonator (Butch), 1973), or as each of the models offered her by society as a woman (A Portfolio of Models, 1974), Wilson’s impersonations are among the first performances that overtly dealt with social expectations of gender and sexuality. Wilson also explores these issues in the studies of her own body/self, such as in I Make Up the Image of My Perfection/I Make Up the Image of My Deformity (1974), where she focuses on her face to explore the extremes of beauty and ugliness. Some of the works, however, deal more generally with the female body, as in Breast Forms Permutated (1972), or with overtly political issues, such as in Chauvinistic Pieces (1971), moving in a different direction from Wilson’s impersonations.

In these solo performances for her Pentax, Wilson gets naked, both metaphorically and literally, using the camera as a tool to break down traditional notions of objectivity and to explore how the self is created in performance. But the exhibition is not made of images alone. In the 16 works on exhibit, Wilson skillfully brings together images and text to complicate the meaning of her performances. The text serves as a commentary on each piece as well as a tool to communicate directly with the audience. As viewers, through the text we are introduced to the artist’s thought process as well as to her personal perspective. By creating a window into the inner processes of Wilson’s creative mind, the text establishes an intimate relationship between the works and the spectator. Simultaneously, the text makes up for the extent to which Wilson exposes her self in some of the images, reminding us that what might appear as vulnerability is, in fact, a very deliberate gesture on the part of the artist (see, for instance, the piece where she plays an older woman trying to look like a younger woman, or the one in which she stages a perfect suicide).

Wilson’s exhibit at the Mitchell Algus offers an unexpected glimpse into the early photographic work of an artist who is mainly known for her live performances. The result is a precious collection of artistic works that show the early experimentation of a woman before she arrived in New York and joined the ranks with other feminist artists. Wilson’s solo reminds us that before Cindy Sherman, and before the great boom of feminist art in the mid and late 1970’s, individual artists were already asking important questions about the politics of gender, sex, sexuality and identity. In light of the present presidential campaign, so enmeshed with identity politics and questions of identity performance, Wilson’s show seems most appropriate, asking us to think again about representation and self-creation in the present social context.

Mitchell Algus Gallery
http://www.mitchellalgus.com/