BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
April 2-5, $16-$27, 8:00
www.summationdance.org
www.bam.org
The all-woman, New York City-based Summation Dance, which was founded in 2010 by Sumi Clements and Taryn Vander Hoop after they received their MFAs in dance performance and choreography from NYU, returns to BAM for its fourth season April 2-5, presenting two world premieres at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space. The company, whose stated mission “is to find the beauty in struggle and the humor in the mundane,” has previously created such dynamic pieces as 2013’s Shift and 2012’s Deep End. At BAM, Summation will debut artistic director Clements’s Updating Route, Please Standby, which explores the unexpected roads life can take, featuring a score by Lorn, and Hunt, which delves into the persecution of witches throughout history, with original music by Kyle Olson. The dancers consist of Clements, Vander Hoop, Angela Curotto, Allie Lochary, Dani McIntosh, Julie McMillan, Devin Oshiro, Meg Weeks, and Megan Wubbenhorst; the costumes are by Brigitte Vosse. VIP tickets ($100) are available for the April 2 performance, which include beer, wine, and dinner on the rooftop; Saturday night’s show is already sold out.
In his 2011 Sundance award-winning Like Crazy, Drake Doremus intimately explored the intense relationship between a British exchange student (Felicity Jones) and an American classmate (Anton Yelchin) who meet at an L.A. college. Director Doremus, cowriter Ben York Jones, and Felicity Jones have teamed up again for another poignant love story, Breathe In. This time Jones (The Invisible Woman) stars as high school senior and pianist Sophie Williams, who comes to upstate New York as part of a semester abroad program. She is staying with the Reynolds family — Keith (Guy Pearce), a music teacher and part-time cellist who dreams of getting a chair at the symphony; his devoted wife, Megan (Amy Ryan), who collects cookie jars; and their daughter, high school senior Lauren (Mackenzie Davis). It doesn’t take long before a serious attraction develops between Keith and Sophie, one that builds slowly and organically while threatening to upend what had apparently been a stable, happy family. Doremus handles his purposely clichéd setup with a tender intelligence that prevents Breathe In from turning into what could have been yet another film about a frustrated older man risking everything to get in bed with a much younger woman. Doremus builds believable situations in the sensitively drawn story, in which the actors often improvise as their characters search for their place in life. Jones is alluring as the complex Sophie, Davis is impressive in her film debut, and Ryan makes the most of a relatively one-note part, but the film belongs to Pearce (The Hurt Locker, L.A. Confidential, Prometheus), an underrated actor who reinvents himself once again, playing Keith with a brittle hesitancy and understated vulnerability that intimately evoke the inner struggles and temptations we all experience. Breathe In is a poignant family drama that feels like a slice of real life.
By their very nature, street photographers take pictures of anonymous individuals, capturing a moment in time in which viewers can fill in their own details. In the wonderful documentary Finding Vivian Maier, codirectors John Maloof and Charlie Siskel turn the lens around on a street photographer herself, attempting to fill in the details of the curious life and times of Vivian Maier, about whom very little was known. “I find the mystery of it more interesting than her work itself,” says one woman for whom Vivian Maier served as a nanny decades earlier. “I’d love to know more about this person, and I don’t think you can do that through her work.” In 2007, while looking for historical photos for a book on the Portage Park section of Chicago, Maloof purchased a box of negatives at an auction. Upon discovering that they were high-quality, museum-worthy photographs, he set off on a mission to learn more about the photographer. Playing detective — while also developing hundreds of rolls of film, with thousands more to go — Maloof meets with men and women who knew Maier as an oddball, hoarding nanny who went everywhere with her camera and shared little, if anything, about her personal life. “I’m the mystery woman,” Maier says in a color home movie. Her former employers and charges, including talk-show host Phil Donahue, debate her background, the spelling and pronunciation of her name, her accent, and how she might have felt about a documentary delving into her secretive life.
