Defying Expectations in Life and Dance

Brooklyn-based dance artist Miguel Gutierrez explores our nation’s unrealistic expectations through cultural icon James Dean
by Mary Staub
www.encoremag.com

Many of our nation’s most enticing artists refuse to be boxed in. They work hard to defy the roles society ascribes them, by which they are marked, categorized, classified, and tied down. James Dean—who died 54 years ago this September—is one artist who tried, but didn’t live long enough to succeed. The Brooklyn-based dance artist Miguel Gutierrez is one who has thus far succeeded. This September, the two artists come together in Gutierrez’s newest work, Last Meadow, September 15–19 at the Dance Theater Workshop.

Shortly after Dean’s death at age 24, he was widely cited as having told his friend and co-star Dennis Hopper that he had had enough of acting and wanted to direct. Hopper was oft-quoted recalling that Dean couldn’t stand “being treated like a puppet. We had pretty much seen the end of James Dean on the screen, even if he had lived. He couldn’t stand being interrupted every five seconds by some idiot behind the camera. He was too caught up in the role to be stopped abruptly and made to start again.”

Dean wanted to define who he was, and not be told. As it stands, though, any desires he had to cut loose were halted by the freak car accident that ended his life and he lives on in our nation’s cultural imagination as the rebellious youth he played in Rebel Without a Cause.

It is this iconic image that Gutierrez makes use of in Last Meadow. Inspired by Dean’s classic films and the emblem we have made of him, Gutierrez explores how we, as a nation, cast unrealistic expectations upon our own identity as a nation. Together with long-time collaborators Michelle Boulé and Tarek Halaby, Gutierrez takes us to an America in a state of collapse and confronts us with the perpetual state of waiting, where what you need never comes.

By no means new to exploring existential questions in the theatrical realm, Gutierrez’s work is often fraught with questions about who we are and why we are here. It is these questions, and also the exploration of how a dance performance might give insight into them, that drive Gutierrez’s work. The Powerful People—the name by which Gutierrez and his collaborators are known—explore these complexities with a sense of urgency that both captivates and disconcerts.

Part of what makes Gutierrez’s work so enticing is that each project pulsates with a fresh urgency and Gutierrez, who refers to himself as a dance and music artist, seems to rediscover his own identity each time anew.

For more information dancetheaterworkshop.org or miguelgutierrez.org.

An Exploration of Love

Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan launch BAM’s Next Wave Festival
by Mary Staub
www.encoremag.com

Juliette Binoche is one of France’s most celebrated actresses. She’s recognized world-wide and has worked with a disparate array of directors including Anthony Minghella, Louis Malle and Michael Haneke. Across the English Channel, Akram Khan, an award-winning British choreographer and dancer, has worked with his own disparate set of artists, including ballerina Sylvie Guillem and pop-singer Kylie Minogue.

Neither of them shies away from unconventional collaborations. But they both broach new waters in a full-evening dance work, In-I, in which they jointly explore the boundless territories of love. In it, Khan dives into emotion with singing and acting, while Binoche explores movement. The result, In-I, which premiered in London in 2008, kicks off the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival September 15–26.

In-I, in many ways, is about risks. Risks in life and risks in love. Both artists dared to delve into new creative territories and got to know their own expressivity anew. Khan, known for choreography that mixes contemporary dance and classical Indian khatak, had to put himself in Binoche’s body, untrained as a dancer, and explore a whole new movement vocabulary which would allow them to seamlessly communicate with one another onstage. Also, he had to take on more overtly emotional stances than he’s accustomed to, and work with words. Binoche, therewhile, had to dance.

In In-I they both bring to life a couple who confront the pains and pleasures—the risks—of love. A high, free-standing wall of shifting colors and moods, part of a set design by the Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor, seems to symbolize a constant divider between self and other.

“How do you dare to love, how do you find the courage to love?” Khan commented in a short video about the piece. And Binoche said: “When two people love each other, there’s a way of reaching yourself more than in any other circumstance because the other one pushes you in places you’ve never been before. The purpose of being in a couple is to meet yourself, to understand yourself.”

It seems appropriate, then, that these two artists should both have explored new expressive terrain for In-I. In this exploration they, too, were pushed to places they’d never been before. “We had to let go of a lot of things,” Binoche commented. “In fact, it created some conflict and some doors were slammed. But we gained a lot of trust.”

Their collaboration sounds not unlike any partnership of love, wherein exploration precedes conflict, precedes understanding, precedes trust.

A Communal Spirit of Hope

The 28th annual Downtown Dance Festival is a platform for everything dance
by Mary Staub
www.encoremag.com

During nine days this August, dance companies from near and far will blur some of the boundaries between performer and viewer, one dance form and another, and bring the expressivity of movement to workers, tourists, families, residents and passersby in Battery Park, Chase Plaza and on Governor’s Island. The 28th annual Downtown Dance Festival, hosted by Battery Dance Company, serves as a platform for everything from classical Indian, to contemporary ballet, and, like in previous years, audiences will have the opportunity to learn segments of the choreographies they’ve just watched. Jonathan Hollander, Battery Dance’s founder and artistic director, hopes that this year’s festival, which, as always, is free, will evoke a communal spirit of hope.

Is there a particular company you’re especially excited about introducing to New Yorkers?
We hope to present a folk dance ensemble, Kolkha, from the Republic of Georgia. It’s tantalizing because we’re still worried about the immigration aspect. This company has 30 dancers and it’s notable because of New York’s relationship with Georgia due to Balanchine’s Georgian roots. Also, from a political standpoint, I think it would be interesting to put a human face on what was front page news on the political side just a year ago.

What is the DDF’s overall focus this year?
People have been so depressed about the economy, the state of the world, and the state of the government for eight years. Now the Obama administration has ushered in a new era and people are embracing a communal sense of hope. I felt this at the opening of BAM’s Muslim Voices festival in June where people of all colors and economic brackets were shoulder to shoulder under the spell of music and world peace; everyone from patrons to people who scraped together the money for low-priced tickets. I just hope that same spirit carries through in our festival where there are companies from many ethnic backgrounds and there’s a similar diversity in the audience.

How did you select the participating companies?
We received over 90 applications this year. That’s up from 70 last year and the most we’ve received ever. We love to present international groups because we feel there is never enough cultural exchange. A curatorial panel, which I’m not a part of, selects based on our mission of wanting to broaden the experience all New Yorkers can have of dance, not just the cognoscenti.

August 15–23: Battery Park, Chase Plaza, Governor’s Island.

Taking Ballet Beyond the Bunhead

Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company brings dance to the people in three outdoor performances
by Mary Staub
www.encoremag.com

When Christopher Wheeldon and Lourdes Lopez founded Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company in 2007, they made it their mission to expand the reach of classical ballet through innovative, collaborative work, and underscore its pertinence in society today. This year, three outdoor performances in August promise to carry out this mission fully.

Wheeldon, a former resident choreographer of New York City Ballet, is creating a new work to new music by Martha Wainwright, both commissioned by City Parks Foundation, for the company’s first two outdoor performances, August 14 and 15 at Central Park SummerStage. Not only is SummerStage a venue where dance events typically attract a more varied audience than would a typical proscenium theater dance concert, but the collaborative nature of the performance—Wainwright will perform live—also suggests that not only ballet bunheads will come out to watch and listen.

The next day, August 16, Wheeldon and Morphoses’ dancers will bring a more interactive event to East River Park as part of City Parks Dance. During the afternoon, they will supplement a short performance with an educational session and reach out to audience members through discussions about the choreography.

A Landlocked Company With a Worldly Feel

Tulsa Ballet brings its global talent to the Joyce Theater
by Mary Staub
www.encoremag.com

Not all things Midwestern are bound by their landlocked location and limited to regional reach. The Oklahoman Tulsa Ballet, founded in 1956 and now comprising dancers from 15 different countries, is one exquisite example of an organization—here, ballet company—which has achieved national, perhaps even global, significance from within its interior setting.

Featured on the cover of Pointe Magazine last March, the company has made recent appearances in Dance Magazine, the New York Times and was described as “One of the best in the world” by the Portuguese national magazine Semanario when it made its international debut in Sintra, Portugal, in 2002. The company first came to New York, to Brooklyn College’s Whitman Hall, some 26 years ago and now, August 10–15, makes its Joyce Theater debut with a spectrum of works that, again, speak for its encompassing range.

Nacho Duato’s Por Vos Muero is set to old Spanish music from the 15th and 16th centuries and pays tribute to the social importance of dance during that time. Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s light-hearted Elite Syncopations, to Scott Joplin, demands an entirely different set sensibilities. And Korean choreographer Young Soon Hue’s This Is Your Life comes with Astor Piazolla’s tango and is inspired by the television program of the same name.

Since day one, Tulsa Ballet has both preserved classical 19th and 20th century repertoire and presented works by leading contemporary choreographers. Artistic director Marcello Angelini has successfully kept with this mission since his appointment in 1995 and thus guaranteed that Tulsa’s recognition continues to grow, year after year.

Living to Tell the Tale

By Mary Staub, New York Daily News, August 2009

Tap City Coming Full Circle

American Tap Dance Foundation co-founder Brenda Bufalino’s works restaged at New York’s annual tap dance festival
by Mary Staub
Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?

In 1986 Tony Waag co-founded the American Tap Dance Foundation together with Brenda Bufalino and the late Charles ‘Honi’ Coles. Fifteen years later, he launched New York’s annual tap dance festival, Tap City (runs July 6–11). This year, he received an NEA grant to revive two of Bufalino’s works—The Haitian Fight Song and Buff Loves Basie Blues. Waag’s work comes full circle this July, when the two pieces will be performed at Tap City’s main event at Symphony Space on July 10. Waag recently shed light on Tap City, from past to present.

How did Tap City come about?
I had just come back to New York after doing a sixty-city tour. At the time there were tap festivals in Brazil, Germany, Helsinki, Chicago, and there was nothing going on here in New York. It was like a revelation. I called Gregory [Hines, one of Waag’s mentors] and he said if I did a tap festival in New York, he would help. “What do I gotta do to help?” he asked. I said “just be there and perform and teach.” I needed his stamp of approval. With that sort of support everyone else just fell into line.

What has Tap City achieved since then?
It spearheaded a whole new movement of activity. It inspired people to do similar things. A lot of people have realized that they can create an event. A kind of festival circuit is starting to mobilize and things are moving in a much bigger sphere. People are connecting internationally.

How does this reflect on tap overall?
Tap is starting to get more support as a legitimate art form. People in general aren’t exposed to it like they were in the 30s and 40s, but slowly people are seeing more. Critics have gotten much better, too. They have more knowledge going in than before, but I wish people were writing more about tap so that people know more about it.

What are some common misperceptions about tap?
That it’s not serious and is just for fun. Then people think, “Oh, it’s really easy,” because the whole art is to make it look easy. Also people do think of it as male art form in general. They think it’s a black, old, male art form. When Savion [Glover] and Gregory [Hines] came along, people thought, oh maybe it’s a young black art form. But there are a lot of female practitioners, too, who never get acknowledgement. It’s communal and it’s open to anybody at any time. You can start when you’re 90. You can weigh 300 pounds and be an excellent tap dancer. You can mix it with any style and people won’t say it’s not tap dance. It’s a social dance with music, dance, singing—the world needs that. Tap brings people together.

See www.atdf.org for details on classes, workshops, performances, tap jams, and more.

TAKE Dance Company at Dance Theater Workshop

The age-old struggle with life’s impermanence successfully inspires dance
by Mary Staub
Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?q=article&id=483

In 2002 Takehiro Ueyama, a former Paul Taylor dancer, was among those singled out by Jennifer Dunning in the New York Times as “a dancers to watch.” “Mr. Ueyema brings a soft and silky calm and sunny sweetness to everything he does,” Dunning wrote. Today, Ueyama, who is originally from Japan, brings that same silky calm and a mixture of Eastern and Western sensibilities to his choreography. His newest work, Footsteps in the Snow, premieres at Dance Theater Workshop when his now five-year-old TAKE Dance Company begins its fifth New York season on July 30th.

At a preview showing last May, Jill Echo, a TAKE dancer, introduced the piece saying, “It’s about trying to believe that after you leave this life there’s an imprint left behind.” Footsteps, though, plays with transience and permanence on more levels than one—impermanence in snow, impermanence in life, impermanence in death.

Although an age-old struggle and a subject which has inspired infinite works of art, Footsteps commands one’s attention once more and offers a complete, engrossing glimpse of what this struggle can mean. In it dancers glide, slide and softly step through snow, seemingly trying to make a mark in their transient terrain. They faintly, sadly roll, kneel and glance skyward, palms faceup, trying to catch every fleeting moment. Even in mismatched warm-up clothes, the nine dancers in Footsteps bring to life an engulfing landscape which visibly affects both those onstage and off. Music by Arvo Pärt further augments the mood of subtle sadness.

‘“We would come into rehearsal upbeat and chatty and every time we’d leave we’d feel all depressed,” Echo warned before the showing. But depressed is too strong a word. The figures in Footsteps emit a persevering hopefulness, never letting the transience of one moment prevent them from seeking permanence in the next. Again and again, they traverse the snow sweepingly and smoothly, sometimes in solitary searches, sometimes with the support and strength of others.

Also on the program at Dance Theater Workshop will be the New York premiere of Shabon, set to music by Steve Reich, and the creation of which was documented by filmmaker Damian Eckstein in A Year with TAKE Dance. Ueyama’s carefree Linked (2008) and Love Stories (2008), a three movement pas de deux, will complete the programs.
Through August 2nd.

Trey McIntyre Project: A Nourishing Breath of Fresh Air from Boise

By Mary Staub
Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/07/dance/trey-mcintyre-project-a-nourishing-breath-of-fresh-air-from-boise

When Trey McIntyre’s young Boise, Idaho-based dance company Trey McIntyre Project (TMP) made its New York City debut at the Joyce Theater in June, the works they brought to life gave a welcome nod to the fact that New York by no means has an exclusive hold on dance. McIntyre’s Leatherwing Bat, (serious), and Ma Maison carried both soul and substance and could make one wonder why more promising young choreographers don’t look to landlocked
locales when setting up shop.

Although McIntyre has been on the national dance radar since 1995, when he was appointed choreographic associate at the Houston Ballet, and he’s created work for companies ranging from American Ballet Theatre to Ballet Memphis to Ballet de Santiago in Chile, it wasn’t until last year that he formed his own company. He based it, after careful consideration, in Boise. After evaluating eight U.S. cities, Boise came out on top because of what McIntyre saw as its openness and support for creative culture. The city wasn’t yet “saturated” with art, yet supported the arts, and had recently created a Department of Arts and History. TMP began as a summer pick-up company in 2004, but this year marks the first in which McIntyre has worked with the same dancers year-round. The results are promising and indicate that his intuitive approach is thus far exactly right.

Leatherwing Bat, which opens the program, is set to songs by Peter, Paul and Mary, the lyrics about everything from being swallowed by a boa constrictor to a day at the zoo to Puff the Magic Dragon. The dancers—in solos, duets and groups—move through space with a bouncy, but weighty energy. Arms and legs hinge angularly and heads jerk quickly. Woven into this world of full-bodied bounce are silky extensions in second, pas de chats and other elements of classical ballet, but all executed with the same energy and attitude to create a fully captivating, uninterrupted narrative.

The near 20-minute piece is character-driven. At times, we recognize mother, father and son; at others, we see a group of kids at the zoo, or animals at play. The specifics are at most tangentially relevant. Part of what makes this piece work is that all six dancers fully embody the character of their parts, whether animal, mineral or idea. In their gestures and attitudes, they emit a childlike vibrancy which seems to relish the immediate, but they are also colored by solemnity, like older versions of themselves longing for what was. The dancer John Michael Schert, who is also the company’s executive director, captivates completely when simply standing in second position, arms outstretched, front stage center, as “Puff the Magic Dragon” slowly and sadly ends and the lights and music fade. You ache for Schert to stand just a little longer.

In (serious), which follows, two men and one woman, dressed in unisex grey slacks and white button-up shirts, seem to question the very meaning of “serious.” To Henry Cowell’s unpredictable score of lamenting strings and broken piano chords, the dancers travel with precision through a flurry of movement, only to stop suddenly in passé relevé, arms in forth. Then they move again, as though persecuted by an inescapable force—internal or external?—which presses them to go on, only to stop again in strong second extensions. Perfect split leaps in second land nonchalantly in reclined repose as the dancers seem to waver between determination and mockery of it. Nothing here is straight: just funny or sad, sombre or bright.

The program ends with Ma Maison, which is inspired by New Orleans and New Orleanians’ treatment of death. To music by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the masses come out with faces masked behind grinning skulls—either with menace or with glee—and saunter gaily in a vibrant funereal procession. Their bodies ripple disjointedly as they walk walks of exaggerated heel-first jauntiness. But, although these carnivalesque characters come with exaggerated traits, they never give way to caricature.

McIntyre’s choreography is entirely musical, but the dancers don’t merely dance to the music, nor does the music merely accompany the movement. The lighting doesn’t merely illuminate the dancers, just like the dancers don’t merely cast shadows in the light. These dancers seem to know who they are and why they move the way they do, and they bring a captivating presence to the story. Their roles, just like the worlds they evoke, feel complete, and the movement, lighting, sound, and space coalesce to give life to a captivating reality.

McIntyre’s vision is thorough and thoroughly organic. As he said in a short video documentary about his creative process, “I feel the piece exists already and it’s out there somewhere in the back of my head or in the world. I try to get out of the way of it and be a conduit, and not let my own ego or sense of aesthetic or insecurity get in the way.” Let us hope, then, that McIntyre continues to keep his channel open to translate the vitality, life force, or quickening that he perceives into action.

Das liebe Geld - Die Macht der Misere (german)

tanz (der-theaterverlag.de ) 

Mary Staub, Juli 2009

Wie New Yorker Choreografen mit der Wirtschaftskrise umgehen? Schizophren. Aber es bleibt ihnen nichts anderes übrig.

Wir könnten feiern. Ein Jahr Wirtschaftskrise. Sie begann hier in den USA und trifft rund 1000 Choreografen und geschätzte 5000 Tänzer allein in New York. Seit Jahren schon haben Firmensponsoren ihre Beiträge an Tanzkompanien und freischaffende Choreografen reduziert. Die Banken- und Wirtschaftskrise gab ihnen perfekte Argumente, die Zuwendungen nahezu gen null schrumpfen zu lassen.

Schlimmer noch wirken Sparmaßnahmen des staatlichen Kulturfonds.

Hier greift das Argument, trotz der Ernennung des Broadway-Produzenten Rocco Landesman beim National Endowment of the Arts, dass Sozialeinrichtungen wie Obdachlosenheime und Lebensmittelprogramme dem «Luxusgut» Tanz vorzuziehen seien. Wie kann man auch nur gegen soziale Hilfsprogramme wie «Mehr Nahrung für Kinder in benachteiligten Schulen» konkurrieren (wollen)? «Es ist wie ein Nieselregen, der zum Regenguss wird», sagt Michelle Bukhart, Direktorin von dance/NYC, einer Organisation, die seit Jahren den Tanz in New York unterstützt.

Laut ihrer jüngsten Umfrage haben seit September 2008 beinah die Hälfte aller befragten Tanzschaffenden ihre für 2009 geplanten Aufführungen wegen unzureichender finanzieller Unterstützung absagen müssen. Der immer schon starke Kampf um Anerkennung in der Tanzwelt New Yorks wird zum Kampf um die Existenz.
Die meisten Choreografen arbeiten projektweise und müssen im Durchschnitt mit weniger als 25 000 Dollar pro Jahr auskommen. «Ich arbeite normalerweise sechs bis acht Monate an einem Projekt, aber das kann ich mir nicht mehr leisten», sagte Lynn Neuman von der Artichoke Dance Company, die Tänzern fünf Dollar pro Probe, hundert Dollar pro Aufführung zahlt, zuletzt für das Stück «Recession Dances, and So Can You!» mit Tanzformen der 1930er wie Lindy Hop und Hustle. «Ich zwang mich, das Stück in einer Woche zu stemmen. Jetzt gefällt es mir, so schnell zu arbeiten.»

Andere ziehen sich dagegen «vorübergehend zurück». Ohne ihren uramerikanischen Optimismus zu verlieren: «Ich brauche die Atempause, um mein Oeuvre neu zu überdenken», heißt es, und das verarmt so bis zur Unsichtbarkeit, alle rechnen aber weiter fest damit, dass die Choreografen ihre zwangskreative Pause perfekt nutzen werden. Denn die Stimmung ist wie immer: pragmatisch-erfinderisch. Kostüme werden recycelt, Proben auf ein Minimum reduziert, der Tauschhandel wiederbelebt.

Proberaum gegen Marketing, Beleuchtung gegen Videodokumentation, Kostümgestaltung gegen Flyerentwurf. Dance/NYC hat eine Gratis-Hotline für disponible Proberäume in New York eingerichtet. Ein Feed ist online, der kurzfristig freigewordene Proberäume «tweetet». Aber das sind Heftpflaster auf einer stark blutenden Wunde.

Um längerfristige Lösungen aus der Misere zu finden, unternehmen eine Handvoll Foren wie New Economy Smack Down («Bringt die New Economy unter Kontrolle») oder Programme, die Titel tragen wie Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists («Wirtschaftliche Revitalisierung für Darstellende Künstler») Versuche zu einer Kur.Vielversprechend ist Modell LoMAL (für: Lower Manhattan Arts Leaders), ein Zusammenschluss von elf Kunstvereinen, an dem auch die Battery Dance Company beteiligt ist. Sie beantragt ihren Fonds unter einer Dachorganisation, um Gelder effizienter zu verwenden, durch zentrales Marketing, gemeinsame Presse- und Lobbyarbeit. Ein Beauftragter für alle elf steht mit Regierungsvertretern in ständigem Gespräch.

Selbst eine gut dotierte Tanzkompanie wie die von Merce Cunningham geriet soeben in den Geruch der Krise, als sie die Verträge von drei besser bezahlten Tänzern nicht erneuerte. Es scheint, die künstlerische Integrität sei als solche bedroht. Wie oft in schweren Zeiten ist es die populäre Kunst, auf die nun die Veranstalter setzen. Das könnte selbst urbane Kompanien dazu verleiten, ihr Marketing, ihre Repertoirewahl und das Niveau ihrer Kreationen provinziellen Vorlieben anzupassen: Pop statt Provokation. Schulklassen-Ballett statt Neuinterpretationen. Folklore statt Fortschritt.

«Die größte Bedrohung ist die rezessive Mentalität», bestätigt Brett Egan, Geschäftsführer von Shen Wei Dance Arts mit einem Jahresbudget von mehr als einer Million Dollar: «Kompanien, die jetzt aufhören, interessante Werke zu kreieren, werden 2010 oder ‘11, wenn es der Wirtschaft wieder besser geht, eine höllische Zeit haben, sich bei Sponsoren zu beweisen.» Auch beim Partytalk in New York dreht sich alles nur darum: Kann ich der eigenen Kunst treu bleiben? Muss ich nicht gerade jetzt gegen die Normen und Ästhetiken rebellieren, wenn alle Welt bloß noch seichte Unterhaltung will?

Dreht man sich auf derselben Party nur einmal um, hört man diese Seite: Wie kann der «Wert des Tanzes» in Zukunft dem Wert von Sozialprogrammen gleichgestellt werden? Wie gelingt ein Schulterschluss, damit Tanz «nützlich» wirkt, um Firmensponsoren, Privatpersonen und staatliche Unterstützer zurückzugewinnen?

Man verbiegt sich in New York also ganz ordentlich. Und muss es wohl auch, falls man nicht für eine Weile in die innere Emigration gehen will.

Dancer Magazine Backstage

by Mary Staub — Jun 27, 2008

Naoko Nagato entered the world of costumes and dance fully by chance ten years ago when her sister-in-law needed a last-minute costume designer. At the time, Nagato worked in the pharmaceutical industry translating documents and laboring in labs. She had designed some of her own clothes, even made doll dresses as a child in Japan, but had no formal training in fashion. “I used to make my own clothes, but was never interested in the fashion industry,” Nagato said from her home and studio in downtown Manhattan. “I agreed to help my sister-in-law just to see what would happen.”

What happened was a review in The New York Times that commended her creations. Soon thereafter, Nagato’s phone started ringing with costume queries from others, and within just three years she quit her job in pharmaceuticals to focus fully on costumes. Initially, the hardest component of her new creative career was asking for money. “At first I didn’t think what I made was worthy of others, just good for myself,” Nagato said with a laugh. “To one client I said an amount of money that I thought was fine for the work, and they gave me double.”

Though chemistry may seem far removed from costuming, Nagato sees at least one clear connection. “Both places you have to believe somehow that what you envision is going to work,” she said. “With costumes you know what you want it to look like, and then you try to make it work. In chemistry you believe there’s a treasure in the liquid, and you must find out whether it’s true.”

Photo by Naoko Nagato

When Nagato watches dancers during rehearsal, the movement and meaning of the piece paint images in her mind of what fabric, shape or shade of color ought to adorn them. This past March she worked with the Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire in New York and costumed a piece of hers which spoke of some of her struggles living in that country. Nagato saw a combination of African-American street wear combined with subtle flavoring from Zimbabwe.

“When Nora was rehearsing I knew I wanted to see one of her legs – I wanted to see skin – but I knew the other leg should be in a regular pant,” Nagato explained. “I wanted something like the big hooded jackets you see on the street but not store-bought from Gap because that wouldn’t be Nora. I wanted one sleeve longer, the back open, the hood very styled; it had to say ‘Nora’.”

The key to any successful collaboration, Nagato claims, is communication: she includes her clients throughout the course of creation by deciphering the choreographers’ often seemingly conflicting verbal input and translates that into textile, tone and shape. “The choreographer hires me because she doesn’t know what to do – she knows she wants a purple look, but she doesn’t want purple,” Nagato said. “They’ll say things like ‘stay away from an African image, but still it should have an African image.”

After designing initial drafts using a mannequin in her home, Nagato brings in the dancers themselves for alterations and adjustments. This is one of the aspects she enjoys most. “One inch here makes a dancer look good, one inch there makes her look bad,” Nagato said. “I can tell when a dancer is becoming happier and happier with what she wears and I love to see that. Dancers work so hard in rehearsal and deserve to look good and feel good onstage.”

Nagato’s respect for and admiration of dancers and choreographers resonates throughout her work and words. The dance community, she says, where people are so determined to achieve so much with so little is vastly different from her past work in biochemistry. “The people are what make it so interesting,” Nagato said. “In the other industry I didn’t have anyone I wanted to talk to for hours on end. There, we work in the lab right next to each other, but nobody cares what happens beyond those walls. In dance, communication is still as important as dancing and I’m fascinated by how nicely, humanly, people grow up in this community.”

The Growth and Expansion of a Confident Choreographic Voice

Veteran dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown back at Joyce SoHo with new work
by Mary Staub
Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?q=article&id=458

Every time the 29 year-old dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown sets out on a new creative voyage she embarks from a different challenge. For her latest work, which premiers at the Joyce SoHo on June 4, Brown’s challenge was love.

“I’m always trying to push myself and I was thinking about everything I have created,” Brown said this past April. “I realized that I hadn’t really done a piece about love, except for a solo, but never anything with partnering. Also, the dancers are speaking in this piece. A lot of what I do is pedestrian and sometimes I ask the dancers to speak during the creative process because it’s important that they hold on to their real reactions. This time what they were saying really made sense, so now the process is in the actual performance. I think of them as people who happen to be dancing, not dancers dancing.”

Brown, a veteran dancer of Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, self-produced her first solo show at the Joyce SoHo just two and a half years ago and has evolved considerably, both in breadth and intensity, since then. Not only can her voice now reach farther thanks to commissions by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard II and Philadanco, among others, but her voice itself is more defined.

“I can see my own voice when I’m creating and I know what I want,” Brown said. “And I always pray that people see my voice come out. I do ask for input from people whom I trust. Sometimes I take their suggestions and a lot of times I now don’t. I have to have confidence in my work, without being cocky.”

Cocky is the last thing Brown comes across as. The dancers she works with, for example, are all long-time friends and acquaintances whose participation it becomes clear she appreciates immensely. “We were friends before we were in this situation [of choreographer and dancers] and that helps a lot because as choreographer you put yourself in place of vulnerability,” Brown said. “I have to be able to ask ‘can you try this?’ without wondering what they’ll think. I think about it like a community. When you have great space things will flow, whether or not they work, things are still flowing.

Her modesty is equally apparent in her approach to audiences. “People are gonna take what they take from my work,” Brown said. “I try not to force people. It’s important that they get a story, but if they have a different interpretation, that’s cool.”

Through June 7.

DanceAfrica and the Wisdom of Tradition at BAM

Encore discusses the legacy of DanceAfrica with founder and artistic director Chuck Davis
by Mary Staub
Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?q=article&id=451

When DanceAfrica first came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music more than three decades ago it brought together numerous New York-based dance companies that previously had rarely intermingled. “There were several African dance companies in New York and there was much talk of this one don’t like that one,” says Chuck Davis, founder and artistic director of DanceAfrica. “When BAM asked my company [Chuck Davis Dance Company] to do a season, I said why don’t we open it up to other companies and have it together and support one another?”

What began as an occasion to share African dance traditions as developed by distinct companies from within New York has grown considerably. It is now an inter-continental, inter-generational celebration of dance, music, and culture that takes place in cities across the nation including Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Dallas. For example, every year since 1997 Davis has brought children from a youth arts academy in Bedford-Stuyvesant to the stage alongside professionals, who this year include Brooklyn’s Evidence: A Dance Company, the D.C.-based percussion orchestra Farafina Kan, and New York’s SeeWe African Dance Company. Every year, too, he brings back traditions straight from the source, from Africa and the Diaspora, to enhance understanding and further communication. “The very first companies we brought in were just that—very traditional,” says Davis. “It was about preservation of their tradition straight from the soil. I personally visit the soil from each company to see how they maintain traditions in these countries. Almost always it’s through dance that they keep tradition alive.”

Clearly, a major part of what DanceAfrica is about is tradition. But some of the festival’s most quintessential customs often go unnoticed. “We have a memorial where dedicated candle burners pay homage to ancestors who have passed on; whether blue, black, green or orange, the room is dedicated to ancestors,” Davis explains, giving one of many examples. And although DanceAfrica now typically falls on Memorial Day weekend, and many New Yorkers associate the multi-day festival with the ringing in of summer, one important tenet transpires in near obscurity a week prior.

“The week before anything can begin the council of elders pays homage at the burial grounds,” Davis says. “This is based on the traditions of countries in Africa. We have created our council of elders who oversee each performance. It’s about maintaining harmony, maintaining tradition and making sure that our house is built on firm foundations so it doesn’t crumble. African dance is about more than just jumping across the stage.”

The Meaning of Mozart

Dancer Pascal Rioult’s Great Mass in C Minor
by Mary Staub
Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?q=article&id=418

In recent years the French-born choreographer Pascal Rioult has choreographed mainly early 20th-century composers like Ravel and Stravinsky. For his newest and first evening-length work, though, Rioult, a former Graham-dancer with his own now fifteen-year-old company, has tackled one of the great choral works, Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor. Rioult recently explained why working to Mozart is a return to his own roots, why Mozart represents hope for mankind, and what distinguished working with such a monumental composition.

What drew you to Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor?
I’ve been thinking about doing a mass for a long time. I’ve always been partial to choral music. My mother was a singer in a choir. From my most tender age I would go to bed and fall asleep with her singing in her beautiful soprano voice. Mozart has always been very important music to me because I always felt you go to him when you have a bit of a down; you put Mozart music on and most of his work just kind of cheers you up.

What is it like moving from more modern composers back to an 18th century work?
It’s true that in the past few years I’ve been working mainly with major pieces of classical music. Many from the early 20th century. One reason I’ve done that is not only because their music is great, but I wanted to learn my craft from their craft. You learn a lot by listening and working with their music. It really prepared me to go backwards. In a sense it’s back to the future. After learning so much from these 20th-century composers I’m prepared to tackle this kind of difficult and monumental piece.

What distinguished working on an evening-length work?
You need to have this sense of continuity in what you create from beginning to end. You want to keep the variety that’s in the music, but also have a strong sense of unity. You’re taking the audience on a journey and you have to make sure you don’t lose anyone along the way. On top of that, add that you want it to be a spiritual journey. If you have a story to tell it’s different than if you just want to touch people and think and feel things.

And what is this particular piece about for you?
It is a celebration of human nature and hope. There is something divine and glorious in all of us that we only touch once in a while. We all have that inside of us. That’s the only reason why there’s hope in humanity. And this piece shows that.

Rioult’s new work runs April 14th–19th at the Joyce Theater and will alternate with a program featuring older works of his to Bach, Stravinsky and Ravel.

Searching for Duende in New York

http://brooklynrail.org/2009/04/dance/in-search-of-duende-in-new-york
By Mary Staub


During ten days this February, flamenco artists born and bred in Andalusia, Spain, filled several concert halls throughout New York for the Ninth Annual Flamenco Festival. New Yorkers could once more get a taste of flamenco straight from the source, from the heart of its very existence, from where it continues to live, breathe and evolve on a daily basis.


Judging by the audience of the festival’s opening night performance, “Noche de Sevilla,” however, few non-Spaniards got to see it.


Not that opening night wasn’t well attended. On the contrary. New York University’s Skirball Center seemed filled to capacity. But, as acknowledged by the mayor of Seville before the show, flamenco was a foreign culture for only few audience members.


“I know all of you understand my language [meaning Spanish], but I want to say something in English, too: thank you all for coming,” he addressed the audience and exaggerated only slightly.
There was no doubt a sprinkling of flamenco devotees of non-Spanish origin who sat silently in the concert hall, but not enough to make a mark. Before the show, the lobby upstairs resounded with the soft sounds of Andalusian Spanish and it seemed like a Spanish homecoming of sorts. The city’s entire Andalusian community had come to replenish their souls with the living duende (or soul force) of flamenco.


Duende evades precise definition, but in the words of Federico García Lorca, who wrote a 100-page tract in search of duende, it “is a power and not a construct, it is a struggle and not a concept. That is to say, it is not a question of aptitude, but of a true and viable style—of blood, in other words; of what is oldest in culture: of creation made act.”


By all measures, “Noche de Sevilla” contained the duende New York is in dire need of. The cantaor (flamenco singer) Arcángel and his entourage of two palmeros (clappers), one tocaor (guitarist), a bailaora (dancer), a pianist and percussionist filled the room not only with heart-felt song, dance and music, but also with an infectiously spontaneous creative camaraderie. This was palpable especially between those representing the more traditional pillars of flamenco—cantaor, bailaora, tocaor, and palmeros.


Although Arcángel was rightly billed as the show’s star, (I’m sure many have swooned over a man with such vocal emotional dexterity), no one artist took the lead. At one point it was the two palmeros who clapped with such unpredictably varying textures that they seemed to reroute a song’s course. The rest of the entourage spontaneously cheered and followed suit. At another point the tocaor pushed his own limits in an exploration of just how dexterously a guitar can be strummed, fingered, and knocked. Again, the others nodded heads appreciatively. The bailaora, Rosario Toledo, too, seemed to taunt her male colleagues into varying emotional qualities of music–she tempted, seduced, discarded, loved, and yearned. Toledo subtly snaked her way through the semi-circle of surrounding men, surprising the tocaor with an explosion of rhythmic taconeos (stomps) to his left, stunning Arcángel with sweeping arms and contorted body to his right.


These artists exuded remarkable spontaneity and delight throughout the whole proscenium theater. It is one thing to indulge in artistic whims and flourishes in a backroom bar. It is an entirely different matter to carry the delight of letting these whims take their course into a traditional concert hall. To do so, I would argue, requires duende. And here it was present.


This duende, however, did not transcend some of the ensemble’s more “Western” flourishes. For example, the pianist, Dorantes, had less of a collaborative role. Piano, not traditionally part of flamenco’s musical base, is harder to integrate, even logistically speaking. Collaborations between Dorantes and Toledo were less of a dialogue and more like two monologues. Here Toledo again and again left behind the fierceness of flamenco—aggressive taconeos, clearly carving arms—to indulge in softer, more fluid, “generic” turns and sways. When Toledo broke the rhythm of her stomps and interrupted the viscous flow of passion visible in her body, her energy and expressivity sunk at once and her previously weighted presence became elusive.


Although these adornments sometimes diminished the overall force of “Noche de Sevilla,” they did shed a welcome light on what some of Spain’s more innovative artists are doing today. Diversity in style, it seems, is part of what living, breathing flamenco has produced. Even odder, then, that “Noche de Sevilla” didn’t attract a more diverse audience.


But New Yorkers will soon have another opportunity to search for duende in Spanish flamenco when Soledad Barrio comes to the New Victory Theatre with Noche Flamenca later this month (April 24 - May 3). Based on Ms. Barrio’s previous New York appearances, the audience should expect to be engulfed by the raw soul force that is the bedrock of flamenco, but that not all artists possess. The program includes existing repertory pieces and the world premiere of Camino, a work inspired by stories and poems written by United Nations refugees, souls whose spirits overcome hardship on a daily basis. Their vigor, in addition to Ms. Barrio’s and Noche Flamenca’s, will surely nourish the souls of those who are there.

Savion Glover’s Solo in Time

Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk star in new season at the Joyce
by Mary Staub
Encore Magazine
http://www.encoremag.com/?q=article&id=394

Savion Glover is perhaps best known for his tap work on Broadway. After all, he made his Broadway debut at age ten, in The Tap Dance Kid, and won two Obie Awards for his Broadway show Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk about a decade later.

But Savion Glover’s dedication to tap reaches far beyond the flashiness of Broadway shows. It began when he was just seven years old and would take weekend trips to New York City for tap lessons. Around that same time, Glover caught glimpses of such legendary tappers as Chuck Green and was immediately taken. It was the notion of tap as music, more so than dance, that captivated and continues to fascinate Glover. And it is this, the sound of tap, rather than only its look, that he’s most passionate about.

“I was introduced to tap as its being music,” Glover says in a phone interview. “People like Chuck Green and Jimmy Slyde were great musicians because of their approach to tap. In the style of tap I do, tap is the leading instrument and I like to make audiences aware of that.”

This is the central theme of Glover’s multi-week season at the Joyce Theater this month. Although tap is usually associated with jazz or Broadway music, Glover decided many years ago that tap can flavor any musical style. For his current production, Savion Glover’s Solo in Time, tap and flamenco will come together.

“The connection of what I do to flamenco lies in the whole lament, whole cry, whole pouring back into the earth and giving energy back to the earth,” says Glover. “It’s a cry and a celebration. That’s what music, sound, vibration should do. It should spark energy in someone.”

For audiences wanting a narrative performance with the glitz and glamour of a Broadway show, Glover’s Joyce production may not be the ticket. Just like in most Joyce shows, in Savion Glover’s Solo in Time, narration is clearly beside the point. It’s a concert; not purely or primarily a dance concert, but a concert of sound and rhythm.

“One of the great things about a concert-style project is that it’s not Broadway and there isn’t a thematic thread throughout the evening,” says Glover. “The only story here is tap. Tap is music. Tap is song. It’s free expression, emotional expression, and I hope it allows the audience to be moved by what is on stage.”

Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company

GaGa technique of strength and restraint featured in BAM run
Encore Magazine
http://www.encoremag.com/?q=article&id=396
by Mary Staub

Countless methodologies maintain they will bring on a healthier, more natural, effortless way of moving. The Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, and Ideokinesis are just a few that come to mind. Most of these encourage practitioners to become aware of their own existent movement patterns by focusing on the minutiae: the muscle used to curl a finger, whether one breathes in or out when raising an arm.

Once awareness of these details has been gained, patterns can be broken and new, more natural pathways can be nurtured by professionals—i.e., dancers, actors—and amateurs alike. However, in order for these methods to have significant effect, the miniscule must first be translated into the grand. This is no easy feat, and changes in posture and movement are often unrecognizable to the untrained eye.

One methodology whose effects are easily recognizable is GaGa. The technique was developed more than twenty years ago by Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of Israel’s powerful Batsheva Dance Company, which is revisiting the Brooklyn Academy of Music this month. Naharin developed GaGa after he was forced to find new ways of movement for himself due to a back injury.

GaGa has more to do with discovering a certain quality, texture, and intention of movement than a specific technique. “The first thing we do is cover the mirrors and we try to get the dancers to really start sensing their bodies,” Naharin told me on a past visit to New York. “So many dancers dance with just one idea; their school’s idea, a strength idea, an idea of line, or form, or drama.

But there’s always more than just one idea that you can work with.”
The outcome, among Naharin’s dancers at least, is a captivating mix of seemingly conflicting expressive qualities. Batsheva dancers exhibit an extraordinary combination of power and softness, energy and suppleness.

These textures will no doubt be on view in the company’s New York City premiere of Naharin’s Max at BAM. In Max, Naharin plays with extreme notions of pain and happiness, solitude and sharing, individuality and community. Batsheva dancers, with their seemingly innate command of the soft and stark, powerful and meek, are expertly equipped to deal with these inherently interlinked polar opposites.

2009 Flamenco Festival

Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?q=article&id=378
Rhythm, passion and dexterity at City Center, Skirball Center and Carnegie Hall
by Mary Staub

Flamenco is best experienced in intimate surroundings, in dimly lit Andalusian bodegas with wood tables and chairs, hidden away in narrow side streets, tapas and red wine flowing until morning. Here, the duende (soul force) of flamenco is inescapable and permeates an audience fully. Here, the rhythm of the bailaores (flamenco dancers) sends your heart racing, the passion of the cantaores (singers) takes your breath away, the dexterity of the tocaores (flamenco guitarists) sends chills down your spine.

But not everyone can go to Spain.

Thus the Flamenco Festival is bringing Andalusian artists to large-scale New York theaters, including to City Center and NYU’s Skirball Center, for the ninth year in a row this February. Although flamenco often appears more distant, deliberate and orderly in the proscenium theater, this year’s artists—who hail from rich flamenco backgrounds and include the flamenco dynasty of
Los Farruco—promise to transcend the barrier the stage setting often creates.

Antonio Montoya Flores (El Farruco), the patriarch of Los Farruco until his death, came from a traditional Spanish gypsy background and began performing gypsy dances at markets as a child.
Later, when performing flamenco from his gypsy tradition in more typical theater settings, he was disinterested in ostentatious showmanship, and together with his family focused fully on embodying the passion the art form demands. Farruquito, El Farruco’s grandson, conceived and directed this year’s program, which features multiple family members who are well-known in their own right.

Antonio Gades, also from a flamenco family, is a flamenco legend of a different sort. He created and brought popular shows to major theaters worldwide, and is said to have made flamenco palatable to a wider audience. His “Carmen,” which began as Carlos Saura’s award-winning film by the same name (in which Gades collaborated and starred), is here being re-staged by the Antonio Gades Company, a company established shortly after Gades’s death to continue his legacy.

Smaller festival productions include “La Puerta Abierta,” in which dancer Isabel Bayón, born in Seville, Spain, responds to the cantaor Terremoto. And in the concert “Noche de Sevilla” the cantaor Arcángel represents a new generation of flamenco masters and incorporates jazz and international elements in his music. He’s appearing alongside the dancer Rosario Toledo and pianist Dorantes.

For each of these artists, flamenco is a deep-seated family tradition, and what they bring to the stage is nourished by those who came before them. And, as with most family traditions, flamenco takes on a unique flavor—and duende—dependent upon what lineage an artist is from. Enjoy sampling them all this month!

State of Change

Encore Magazine
http://www.encoremag.com
New work from the prolific Paul Taylor Dance Co. at City Center
by Mary Staub

Since his company’s inception more than five decades ago, Paul Taylor has choreographed two new dance works almost every year—and 2008 was no exception. Starting February 25th, during a three-week City Center season, the Paul Taylor Dance Company will perform the New York premieres of Mr. Taylor’s two newest works, Changes and Beloved Renegade, both created in 2008. The works are Mr. Taylor’s 128th and 129th, respectively.

That’s a lot of dances.

The number of cities the company has appeared in is equally impressive: more than 520. The number of countries, too: 62. Paul Taylor has been honored as a leader of modern dance with awards including a MacArthur “Genius” Award and a National Medal of the Arts. Almost everything about this modern dance company hints at greatness, and one might assume that its course for continued creativity has been perfectly paved.

But in the world of modern dance obstacles always occur and force detours. Global success, artistically, doesn’t necessarily translate into success financially; especially when measured in terms of Manhattan money.

Because of rising rents in SoHo, the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation—comprised of the Taylor Company, Taylor 2, and Taylor School—is moving to new quarters on the Lower East Side this year after making the second floor of a SoHo building its home for more than two decades. The new 20-year lease will take effect on March 1st, during the company’s City Center season.
Despite this rerouting, though, Mr. Taylor has stuck to his long-standing schedule of creating two new dances per year.

For his latest works, Mr. Taylor has again collaborated with Jennifer Tipton for lighting (more than eighty collaborations to date) and Santo Loquasto for costumes (more than 35). In the first, Changes, Mr. Taylor revisits the 1960s and youth’s yearning. The second, Beloved Renegade, is inspired by the life and work of Walt Whitman and is set to Francis Poulenc’s Gloria.

The season’s repertoire includes Scudorama, which hasn’t come to City Center in forty years, De Sueños, De Sueños que se Repiten (both 2007), Promethean Fire (2002), Esplanade (1975), and many more.

Mr. Taylor has pointedly noted (in the words of French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr), “The more things change the more they stay the same.”

It's Her Party: Four Decades of Meredith Monk

Encore Magazine
http://encoremag.com/?q=article&id=374
Underground music’s matriarch throws herself a live retrospective at the Whitney
by Mary Staub



Since early childhood, sound and movement have been interlinked for Meredith Monk. Coming from a tradition of singers—her mother sang in soap commercials in the 40s, her grandfather was a bass-baritone—song was first nature to Monk. Movement, on the other hand, came less naturally. As a child, Monk was physically uncoordinated due to an eye challenge and so, starting at age three, she took Dalcroze Eurythmics classes to learn to get in touch with movement through music.



Years later, in the mid-1960s, after studying both voice and movement at Sarah Lawrence College, and performing gesture-based works in New York City churches and galleries, it was Monk’s more arduously developed language, movement, that taught her something about her mother tongue, voice.






“In working with my physical limitations I was able to find a movement style that was very much my own,” says Monk. “I think coming from physical limitations is a blessing in disguise because it forces you to find a personal style. I applied the same working process to my voice, where I had a more virtuosic instrument from the start, and found I had a huge range to work with.”



Monk has since then developed an eerily unique voice vocabulary that works in rhythms and tonalities atypical of Western musical traditions, and which oftentimes cannot be reproduced by others.



“Some of the vocabulary you really have to have in your bones, intuitive details, that even my ensemble [doesn’t] replicate,” Monk says. “But I don’t try to make other people sound like me; I write music that tries to use their individual color and texture of voice or music.”



Monk’s resulting compositions are highly textured arrangements that convey different colors, genders, ages, characters, landscapes, realities. Furthermore, already from day one, much of Monk’s work has been site-specific, adding yet another dimension to her creations. Monk’s one-woman performances in galleries and churches from the 1960s have since evolved into richly layered spatial and musical compositions, sometimes involving more than 100 artists.



On February 1st, Monk’s voice, and many others, will resonate through the Whitney Museum of American Art in a celebration of Monk’s artistic work past, present and future. Probable participants include Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, which brings together artists whose backgrounds range from Chinese to Western opera, from Broadway to musical theater. Slated to join the Ensemble are The M6: Meredith Monk Music Third Generation, a newly formed ensemble dedicated to continuing Monk’s legacy with younger vocalists, Todd Reynolds’s String Quartet and the Claudia Quintet.