Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE will present GUTTER GATE during Live Artery festival at New York Live Arts
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 6-8, advance reservations required
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
In conjunction with this week’s APAP/NYC 2012 Conference, New York Live Arts is hosting “Live Artery,” an exciting series of performances consisting of previously featured pieces and works in progress. Taking place January 6-8 in the David R. White Studio, Jerome Robbins Studio, and Bessie Schönberg Theater, the mini-festival includes Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE’s Gutter Gate, Jodi Melnick’s Solo, Deluxe version, Reggie Wilson’s theREVISITATION, Yasuko Yokoshi’s Bell,, David Neumann’s Restless Eye,, Levi Gonzalez’s intimacy, and Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company presenting excerpts from Story/Time, Body Against the Body, and D-Man in the Waters. During the weekend, the Live Lounge in the lobby will offer complimentary wine and snacks, free WiFi, and a place for performers, presenters, fans, and others to congregate.
Update: First presented at Dance Theater Workshop in February 2011, Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE’s Gutter Gate made an extremely welcome return January 6-7 to the space, now known as New York Live Arts, as part of the annual APAP/NYC Conference. With the audience sitting in a single row of folding chairs on three sides of the stage, Ben Asriel, Madeline Best, Anna Carapetyan, Eleanor Smith, and Maggie Thom emerge in the center with chairs of their own, Joan Baez’s rollicking country cover of Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” playing on the soundtrack, begining a thrilling sixty minutes of abstract movement inspired by Aristotle’s theories of causality and necessity. The dancers remove the chairs and run around the floor individually and in unison, removing parts of their clothing as they stop, pause, approach the audience, break off into pairs, put their clothing back on, then take it off again. Soon they are making guttural sounds that threaten to cross the line into questionable performance art but always manage to stay on track as the dancers’ communicate with one another and the audience via different forms of verbal and physical language, including flopping breasts and penis and Thom’s darting eyes, which perform a dance all their own. The movements are beautiful, devolving into ever-more elemental gestures, coinciding with Chris Seeds’s electronic score, which eventually fades into silence.