InfiniteBody

Jason Samuels Smith: On time!

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:37:56 PST

The fabulous Jason Samuels Smith--along with Ohad Naharin, Sara Rudner and Allegra Kent--will be picking up a Dance Magazine Award tonight. Make some noisssse!

Check out "The Time Step with Jason Samuels Smith."

Israel's Yasmin Levy

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:07:16 PST

Yasmin Levy--innovative singer of Sephardic culture's endangered language, Ladino--performed on Saturday evening at Symphony Space, presented by World Music Institute. Her show was perfection--from Levy's own romantic, dramatic elegance to the exhilarating lilt of her skillful band. If you enjoy fado or flamenco, you will find much to admire in her stylistic approach and musical arrangements. Go here to sample songs from her new CD, Sentir, and her most recent North American release, Mano Suave; and check the schedule of remaining tour dates (North America and France). Be sure to give yourself a generous gift and catch her next time.

Interview with Yasmin Levy on FLY Global Music Culture

Interview with Yasmin Levy in The Independent

South Africa's great elder

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:22:08 PST

Mandela Endures as South Africa’s Ideal
by Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, November 9, 2009

Gerstler: poetic abundance

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:38:44 PST

Animal Planet: review of Amy Gerstler's 'Dearest Creature'
by David Kirby, The New York Times, November 8, 2009

Deconstructing Lévi-Strauss

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:33:19 PST

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Two-Part Harmonies
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, November 8, 2009

Without Merce

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:29:09 PST

Can Modern Dance Be Preserved?
by Arthur Lubow, The New York Times, November 8, 2009

Meg Stuart lays it out on the table

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:49:17 PST

I hope Meg Stuart and Performa 09 will not mind my quoting a bit of the promotion for Auf den Tisch! (At the Table!) which I attended, last night, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. It's really the best way to get the concept right:

Picture this: you enter a room and can take a seat at an enormous table, with four microphones at the ready, as if in a conference situation. From your chair you can see how the table becomes a platform for action and reflection. Or something of the kind. You see performers sing, play, dance, and talk about performance issues, fragility, and territories. Or not. Meeting and improvising at an oversized table such as this one, it is no wonder that things get out of proportion. “Auf den Tisch!” (At the Table!) is a curatorial improvisation-project by Meg Stuart. Upon her invitation and initiation, a changing cast of performers, thinkers, writers, musicians, actors, and dancers confer about their pressing issues while presenting a performance of negotiations.

If you manage to get a reservation for tonight's final performance (7:30pm), you too can witness--or, as you wish, more directly participate in--this conference of sorts.

The table--a huge, blond wood beauty with a couple of unimaginatively used trap doors--is a total performer magnet. Who wouldn't look at this spacious, brightly lit thing and want to clamber on and act out? Combining the likes of Stuart, David Thomson, Yvonne Meier, George Emilio Sanchez, Trajal Harrell, Keith Hennessy and others, you certainly have the makings of a major act of acting out. Audience folk sit to table with the performers or occupy a few rows of chairs that ring it. As Stuart settles down in front of her microphone and gazes around the room, there's a sense of something momentous about to happen.

She starts by reading text. It sounds sensitive, fragile and quiet, a kind of table-like base for what will follow, and might represent Stuart's essential nature as the dreamer and generator of the entire project. The performance I saw contained a repeating motif of a heavy body or bodies piling on top of or rolling over a body underneath. Stuart's opening words are followed by other voices around the table that accumulate and spill over one another, swelling, eventually subsiding.

Stuff happens. Lots of it. Anything can happen, since improvisation is in the room. Thomson, dressed in a comic-strip hoodie and jeans, prowled the

space between table and outer chairs. Later, he was the first to bust out dancing, top and center, in loose-limbed, splayed-out movements.

Meier--challenged by Stuart at one point-- retorted, "I'm sorry. I'm not sitting on my mouth." Someone, to clunky effect, alluded to the Fort Hood shooting: "I'm still stuck on the psychiatrist with a machine gun. Was he improvising?"

A parlor game broke out, and the possible fucking of pineapples and righteous politics of pineapples were contemplated. Thomson and Harrell engaged in a cross-table Q&A about forgiveness. A belligerent Janez Jansa somewhat reluctantly performed the history of Richard Schechner's "putting off of clothes." This "getting close to history" made Meier at last "sit on her mouth."

The spectacular "Floral Cat"--the spectacular Hennessy in costume--touched off a segment of leftover Halloween shenanigans. Sanchez--in a kind of Soupy Sales act flipped upside down and turned psychological--encouraged all of us to take a piece of paper money from our own wallets and simply rip it up. Amid more scampering, a few words were carefully added to a flipchart and just left there, meaninglessly, until someone gave the equally meaningless order for the flipchart to be flattened to the floor.

There were dashes of chemistry, untethered patches of the jazz of delicious movement (Thomson, Harrell) and wide-awake humor (Sanchez), and not a little mystification and diminishing returns. The performers seemed unwilling to acknowledge signs that energy and interest had dropped. What I had been told would last "maybe a little over an hour," stretched towards two hours before, having had more than enough, I rose to leave.

You have to know when to push back from the table.

At that point, Stuart, having just asked the audience if it had any questions, was answered by a heavy silence. For an interesting moment, we were left with her standing rather defenselessly before us in all her original sensitivity, fragility and quiet. Okay. Matters could have ended there, and quite reasonably.

But then, Performa founder and director RoseLee Goldberg took the mic and asked something on the order of "Do you think improvisation is still alive?"

I'm not really sure what she was going for with that question but, in light of the overall lack of surprise, challenge or revelation in the performance, I'd rephrase the question, maybe split it into two parts:

"Do you think there's still life in your improvisation?" and "Can improvisation still matter?"

Performa 09 information and resources

Baryshnikov Art Center

450 West 37th Street, Manhattan

Max Cleland on military PTSD

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:44:50 PST

Op-Ed Contributor--The Forever War of the Mind
by Max Cleland, The New York Times, November 6, 2009

"Red Shoes" forever

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:17:36 PST

'Red Shoes,' Newly Restored, Opens at Film Forum
by Manohla Dargis, The New York Times, November 5, 2009

Art D’Lugoff, Village Gate Impresario, 85

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:17:25 PST

Art D’Lugoff, Village Gate Impresario, Dies at 85
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, November 6, 2009

Topaz Arts welcomes you to its Open House

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:41:40 PST

TOPAZ ARTS celebrates nine years of providing a creative space for the performing and visual arts on Saturday, November 21, 4pm-8pm.

4pm: “Cabaret Solitaire,” a dance performance featuring solo works by choreographers Molissa Fenley, Nicholas Leichter, and Paz Tanjuaquio. Admission: $15. Seating is limited. Tickets at http://www.topazarts.org.

6pm: opening reception for “Footnotes For Revelation,” a solo exhibition of new work by visual artist Roger Rothstein. Free admission to the gallery after 6pm.

For full details on program and artists, click here or contact rsvp@topazarts.org or 718-505-0440.

Topaz Arts
55-03 39th Avenue
Woodside, Queens

Subways: #7 to 61 Street or R, V, G to Northern Boulevard

Jerome Robbins Bogliasco Fellowship in Dance

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:43:55 PST

The Bogliasco Foundation is pleased to announce that, thanks to a generous grant from the Jerome Robbins Foundation, it will offer its sixth annual Special Fellowship in Dance to an American choreographer during the 2010-11 academic year at the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities, near Genoa, Italy. The one-month residency is intended for a single choreographer working on material for a future piece or on a solo work. Bogliasco Fellows in Dance have access to a private studio with a sprung dance floor. Applicants are expected to demonstrate significant achievement commensurate with age and experience.

Under the terms of this award, the recipients travel expenses of up to $1,000 will be paid and s/he will also receive a stipend of $1,000. Bogliasco Fellows are provided with full room and board, and given studios/offices with computers and internet access.

The Bogliasco Foundation grants approximately 50 residential Fellowships during the academic year to qualified persons doing advanced creative work or scholarly research in the various disciplines of the arts and humanities. Fellows come from many different countries and may be accompanied by spouses or spouse-equivalent companions for all or part of their stay. They are housed in three villas, all of which offer spectacular views of the Mediterranean and Ligurian coastline, an inspiring setting that has proved to be a powerful stimulant for reflection and creativity. Any choreographer who is interested in being considered for this special Fellowship needs to submit an application by January 15, 2010 for the fall/winter semester and April 15, 2010 for the winter/spring semester. Announcements as to the recipients of all Special Fellowships are made on July 1.

We encourage interested candidates to visit the Foundations website for more detailed information about how to apply to the Bogliasco Foundation’s Fellowship program.

Scott on "La Danse"

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:50:32 PST

Creating Dialogue from Body Language
by A. O. Scott, The New York Times, November 4, 2009

For the love of Judson

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:25:25 PST

Join Judson Memorial Church, Movement Research and the entire New York dance and performance community for a benefit party to raise money for renovation of the church's bathrooms.

Friday November 6, 6-8:30 pm

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South, Greenwich Village

$20 available online (Scroll down.)

Auctions, free food, drink and live performances

The live auction, beginning at 7pm, will feature treasures from the Judson archive and tons of fun goods and services. Bring you checkbook!

Karen Williams performs to benefit Astraea

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:07:02 PST

Join Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice for a one-night-only performance with extraordinary comedian Karen Williams in honor of Astraea's Lynn Campbell Memorial Fund.

Whether as an organizer of the first Take Back the Night, or through her work with the Funding Exchange, or as co-founder of Funders for Lesbian & Gay Issues -- Lynn's legacy serves a reminder to us that justice is sweet, and worth the fight. Karen, known for her quick repartee, insightful commentary and audience rapport starred in LAUGHING MATTERS, the award-winning documentary film and also has her own Logo Network comedy showcase, “I NEED A SNACK.” She is currently on her national comedy tour, “HEALING WITH HUMOR – FREEDOM FROM FEAR,” which she dedicates to victory over sexual violence. Let's share and locate those essential moments of joy, humor and activism together.

Tuesday, November 10
6:30 PM - Wine Reception
7:30 PM - Program

Comix
353 West 14th Street, Manhattan

Tickets $60 (Limited income tickets available)
Tickets and sponsorships available here or call 212.529.8021 x14

Sponsoring Partner: Olivia Cruises

Host Committee: Katherine Acey, Carol Alpert, Marion Banzhaf, Alexa Birdsong, Jill Campbell, Mary & Warren Campbell, Cheryl Clarke & Barbara Balliet, Constance Cohrt & Amy Reichman, Steve Fahrer & Monona Yin, Tucker Farley, Kim Ford & Avril Dass, Ellen Gurzinsky, Ileana Jiménez, Terry Lawler, June Makela, Nancy Meyer & Mark Weiss, Shaheen Nazerali, Cheri Pies, Achebe Powell, Sarina Scialabba, Michael Seltzer & Ralph Tachuk, Carmen Vázquez, Karen Zelermyer

The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice is the world's only foundation solely dedicated to funding LGBTI organizations in both the United States and internationally. For more than 30 years, Astraea has been raising funds and distributing grants based on the belief that all people can participate in the philanthropic process-from giving to grantmaking. Today, Astraea grantee and donor partners are fueling the movement for social, racial, economic and gender justice in villages, cities and towns around the world.

Always have Paris

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:22:05 PST

Wiseman's Lens on Dance
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com, November 3, 2009

Woetzel named to President's arts council

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:15:18 PST

President's Arts Committee Names 25 Members
by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, November 3, 2009

The genius of Anna Deavere Smith

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:07:25 PST

Just a quick note: You're going to Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy, aren't you? The only right answer--unless you've already seen the show--is a resounding Yes!

Everyone should see this piece, especially since much of the heated debate around health care reform has been devoid of heart and soul. This brilliant performance--perhaps Smith's best, certainly her most affecting--reminds us of what's so often missing.

Let Me Down Easy runs through December 6 at 2econdStageTheatre.

Thorson: Taken to "Heaven"

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:10:03 PDT

Heaven--the lacerating ensemble piece by Minnesota's Morgan Thorson, presented at P.S. 122--was just the thing for a chilly night and a cold, frostily-lit performance space. Not that Heaven managed to heat things up, not even when pushing dancers' ecstatic rituals to manic extremes.

With its white and shiny decor, its hive-mind drone and eerily-beautiful slowcore score, played live by Low's Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, Heaven delivered a sense of driven longing for a place and state of being way, way north of here, something as close to austere, rigorous purity and perfection as humans can manage. The work is inhabited by several dancers who, initially, keep their eyes lowered and huddle together while slowly trodding a repetitive path with simple steps. They're a repressed--and self-repressed--community.

They're not only dressed in white, they are themselves all white--at least, I'm assuming by appearance alone. Whether or not this apparent racial purity was intentional--and it might well have been--it proved to be a fascinating theatrical element and one perhaps fully justified by the cultural specificity of the work's electrifying conclusion. Transformative religious practices of varying kinds can come from a similar place of searing extremes--and here, I'm thinking of the role of possession in African and Afro-Atlantic spiritual culture--but they ultimately produce different phenomena.

Thorson grips us in that place of extremes where beauty and madness overlap. I'm intrigued by one of Thorson's statements about the work's relationship to "our love for the theater and its parallels to worship." This puts me in mind of the ancient origins of theater, very much connected to that place of wild extremes meant to shock the viewer out of his or her habitual condition.

While watching Heaven, though, I never felt totally sure that the perfection sought is ultimately worth the repression and pain. Thorson, I think, lands on the fence and perches there. But the performers make a vivid, unforgettable experiment of it. They are the aforementioned Sparhawk and Parker, Karen Sherman, Justin Jones, Jessica Cressey, Elliott Lynch, Max Wirsing, Chris Schlichting, Hannah Kramer and Renee Copeland--all sometimes scary and always scarily good.

Heaven closed last evening but deserves an encore. Let us pray...

Zollar and Chipaumire: A beautiful "City" is born (UPDATED)

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:59:29 PST

A thrilling journey began yesterday at Harlem Stage with the public launch of "Naked City," part of larger conceptual work, visible/invisible, being developed by choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Nora Chipaumire. Commissioned by Harlem Stage for its WaterWorks Program, the piece honors Harlem's people and their stories and is strongly rooted in the aesthetics and practice of jazz.

Naked City was performed by an international cast of exciting dancers, including several members of Zollar's Urban Bush Women troupe. Hard to believe that these folks did not thoroughly rehearse this piece forwards and backwards for weeks and that they'd only come together earlier in the day to figure out what they were going to present to us! I mean, really!

Since it's truly a baby work-in-progress--one that will continue growing through many more exploratory events like last night's showing and feedback session--I certainly won't offer a review of what I saw. But I will urge you to get on Harlem Stage's mailing list so that you can follow "Baby" as she grows and perhaps, if you take part in one of these events, help her along her way.

Congratulations to Zollar and Chipaumire and their dancers and thanks to Harlem Stage's Patricia Cruz (Executive Director) and Brad Learmonth (Director of Programming) for welcoming us to partake in this auspicious beginning.

Special Update: "Naked City" will be performed by the members of Urban Bush Women at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), November 21-22.

Ground Zero arts plans in jeopardy

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:03:47 PDT

City Pushes for Action on Performing Arts Center at Ground Zero
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, October 30, 2009

Posted via email from Eva Yaa Asantewaa's posterous

Classical TV interviews Meredith Monk

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:52:06 PDT

Interview with Meredith Monk
ClassicalTV: The greatest performing arts online

Posted via email from Eva Yaa Asantewaa's posterous

Circle of Voices explores "Issues Through Art"

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:49:27 PDT

Circle of Voices Inc. presents

"Issues Through Art"

An evening of Social Expressionism:

Community Artists Addressing Community Issues

Pre-Holiday Benefit. Market Place. Gallery (with Silent Auction)

Poetry. Singing. Book Readings. And more!

Saturday, November 21, 7pm-10pm

The LGBT Community Center

208 West 13th Street, Manhattan (3rd Floor)

Program features:

G. Winston James--Author of Shaming the Devil
Renair--Spoken Word Artist
Mildred--Artist formally know as "Dred"
Devin Christy--Vocalist
Stefon Royce--Impersonator and more
Charly Dominguez and John Hanning--Gallery Artists

Vendors and exhibitors wanted now. $40 special Early Bird Rate expires November 10 after 12am. For information, call 718-975-0141 or email info@covinc.org

Ticketing information

Advance: $10
Online:    $12.05 (includes processing/service fees)
Door:      $15

Group ticket special: Buy 10/Get 1 free! Available only through email order. Offer expires November 10, 12am.

For complete information, visit the Circle of Voices Web site here.

Circle of Voices, Inc. is a public charity (501c(3) that offers opportunities to foster a collaborative and supportive environment where Womyn artists and friends of the community can have the opportunity to increase their appreciation of the arts through performances, seminars and workshops given by Womyn of African Descent and Womyn of Color. We believe in utilizing art as a means of expression for a variety of community concerns such as the importance of recycling, the green environment initiative, HIV/AIDS, and more.   Performers affiliated with Circle of Voices, Inc. use their art forms to convey issues of significance that speak to the souls of the community at large.

Japan's Salsa Sensation

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:55:17 PDT

Japan's Salsa Sensation
by Ashleigh Braggs, The Root, October 28, 2009

How a black American dance enthusiast created a name for herself as a salsa teacher in Japan

Posted via email from Eva Yaa Asantewaa's posterous

Abrams: True enough

hummingwitch@gmail.com (Eva Yaa Asantewaa) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:44:33 PDT

For Most of This Is True, choreographer Jen Abrams has reconfigured and minimized audience seating at WOW Café Theater. The performance area opens up invitingly yet stays intimate--like a second-coming of the beloved old Dixon Place, perhaps a tad roomier. WOW rarely features dance, but maybe Abrams's example will give that stalwart theater collective a few ambitious ideas. I'm hoping.

Certainly, Most of This Is True makes a case for Abrams as an artist pushing herself into uncomfortable territory and, as a result, growing in vision and skill. In this jigsaw puzzle of a narrative dance, she's joined by fellow performers Ariel Polonsky, Jessica Ames and Ariel Cohen, depicting relationships that are specifically lesbian but filled with the just-plain-human stuff of vulnerability, tenderness, boredom, restlessness and eccentricity. Their characters bear specific names, placing their movements squarely in the realm of story and humanity--two things that have always mattered to Abrams.

Movement, then, serves story. It's not movement for movement's sake, although, in True, it remains an odd, tough-to-decipher code and an often harsh, tough-to-speak language within a fractured, jumbled history. We are meant, I think, to connect to and work with these fragments in whatever ways we can as individuals. For me, the takeaway was the performance of Ariel Cohen (Dana), a rangy woman with a simmering demeanor and explosive physical bravery that rendered her character's disturbing qualities absolutely convincing. To see her throw and bang herself against the floor or crouch miserably beneath a table might make you want to draw back or it might make you want to find out how she got that way.

Although seating is extremely limited, Most of This Is True has an unusually generous run: 12 days, through Sunday, November 8. For a detailed schedule and ticketing, click here.