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.”