Kyle Marshall (right) has a busy June with Stellar at BAC (above) and two live performances at the Shed
Who: Kyle Marshall, Charmaine Warren
What: Dance film, virtual discussion, live performance
Where: BAC online, the Shed
When: BAC Zoom talk Wednesday, June 16, free with RSVP, 7:00; Shed performances Friday, June 25, 7:00, and Saturday, June 26, 8:00, free with RSVP
Why: In a May 2018 Movement Research Critical Correspondence talk with performer, historian, consultant, and dance writer Charmaine Warren, dancer, teacher, and choreographer Kyle Marshall said about working with Myssi Robinson, Mimi Gabriel, Nick Sciscione and Dare Ayorinde, “So it’s the five of us and we’ve known each other for a long time and so coming together, that sense of community I’m realizing is important to my work. The people in the room and that personal investment has to be there and that’s something I’m realizing going into new projects. But with Wage as opposed to Colored, which was a celebration of a black identity, I think with Wage I’m looking at white supremacy and capitalism and how it kind of fits within our bodies and how our bodies are victims of that cycle and perpetrators of that cycle. And how through making Colored I realized I had white supremacist thinking in my own body, about myself, about other people. And so this work came out of that thinking. I’m working with two male-identified dancers, two female-identified dancers, two black dancers, and two white dancers. I’m interested in how these binary things collide and the tension of these things. I’m curious about how bodies are seen and how bodies learn things, and how that history and learning comes into the room and also as a viewer, how do you see a performer as an archetype, as a stereotype. And also themselves because we’re both but we see each other as both and that kind of messy gray area, it’s a lot.”
Marshall continues to explore “that kind of messy gray area” in his Baryshnikov Arts Center commission Stellar, streaming for free through June 21. In the twenty-two-minute piece filmed at BAC’s Jerome Robbins Theater, Marshall, Bree Breeden, and Ariana Speight, in colorful, artistically designed hoodies (by Malcolm-x Betts), float about the space, lifting their arms, kneeling on the ground, clapping, running in circles, and staring into an ominous darkness, set to an electronic score that incorporates jazz, Afrofuturism, and percussive and other sounds by Kwami Winfield. Filmed and edited by Tatyana Tenenbaum, who previously shot Holland Andrews’s meditative Museum of Calm at BAC, it’s a poignant piece that furthers what Marshall was talking about with Warren three years ago.
Marshall and Warren, who last July spoke about creating dance during the pandemic in a “Black Dance Stories” episode, will be back in conversation on June 16 at 7:00 in a BAC Zoom discussion about Stellar. Marshall, who released the dance film Hudson in January, is also part of the Shed’s “Open Call” exhibition, performing live at the Hudson Yards venue on June 25-26, presenting a “dance honoring the spirit of humanity and sacredness of gathering”; limited free tickets are available, and the first show will be livestreamed as well.