this week in dance

CHÉRI

ABT veterans Alessandra Ferri and Herman Cornejo play passionate lovers in Martha Clarke’s unique adaptation of Colette’s CHÉRI (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through December 29, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

In 1920, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette published the short novel Chéri, the story of a love affair between a young man and an older woman that she had first told in a series of short stories for Le Matin. Baltimore-born director and choreographer Martha Clarke (The Garden of Earthly Delights) has now transformed the beloved tale into a minimalist performance piece that is the first of her three Residency Five productions for the Signature Theatre. Chéri stars current American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Herman Cornejo as the title character, a twenty-four-year-old man in the midst of a torrid six-year affair with Lea (former ABT principal dancer Alessandra Ferri), the forty-nine-year-old best friend of his mother, Charlotte (Amy Irving); both women are courtesans in Belle Époque France. “Was he my gift to her? Or did she take him from me?” Charlotte says to the audience in one of four monologues adapted by Tina Howe (Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances) from Colette’s Chéri and its sequel, The Last of Chéri. Over the course of sixty-five minutes, Cornejo and Ferri perform a series of solos and pas de deux that display their fiery emotions, which grow ever more complicated when Charlotte marries her son off to a virgin from a wealthy family. Chéri and Lea move passionately in rhythm, as if they are the only two people in the world, but when he comes back from fighting in WWI, nothing is quite the same. Although much of the dancing is splendid, particularly when Cornejo lifts Ferri against a wall and his face makes its way down her body, it becomes repetitive, an at-times confounding mix of silent-film acting and operatic panache. Irving is calm and steady as Charlotte, but her words feel unnecessary, as if they could have been trimmed down to spare surtitles instead. Set and costume designer David Zinn’s stage melds the colorful lightness of Bonnard with a Caligari-like German Expressionism, highlighted by long, slanted doorways and mirrors that more than hint at an approaching darkness. The gentle, tender score is played live by pianist Sarah Rothenberg and features selections from Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Richard Wagner, Morton Feldman, and, most prominently, Federico Mompou. Unfortunately, Clarke’s Chéri winds up being less than the sum of its parts, a collaboration that never reaches its potential.

FIRST SATURDAY: WANGECHI MUTU

Wangechi Mutu (Kenyan, b. 1972). The End of eating Everything (still), 2013. Animated video, color, sound, 8 min. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. © Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu, still from “The End of eating Everything,” animated video, color, sound, 8 min., 2013 (courtesy of the artist / © Wangechi Mutu)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, December 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The December edition of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturdays program takes a look at Brooklyn-based Kenyan visual artist Wangechi Mutu in conjunction with the midcareer survey “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey.” The evening will include a curator talk by Saisha Grayson on the Mutu show, an arts workshop demonstrating how to make Mutu-inspired collages, pop-up gallery talks, an artist talk by Nigerian-born Njideka Akunyili, a screening of Arthur Jafa and Kahlil Joseph’s 2013 documentary Dreams Are Colder Than Death about being black in America, live music by Pegasus Warning and Rebellum, a spoken-word performance by Saul Williams, and book club readings by Kiini Ibura Salaam and Bridgett M. Davis, followed by a discussion examining their work in the context of Mutu’s art, moderated by Tayari Jones and presented by Bold as Love magazine. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “War / Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath,” “Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to ‘The Ladder,’” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” and other exhibits.

TWI-NY TALK: MATTHEW RUSHING

Matthew Rushing will be celebrated in special Alvin Ailey program at City Center on December 17

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Celebrating Matthew Rushing: Tuesday, December 17, 7:30
Season runs December 4 – January 5, $25-$135
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Born and raised in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Matthew Rushing has now spent more than half his life with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He joined the company in 1992, when he was just seventeen, and he quickly became a featured dancer. In 2008, artistic director Judith Jamison asked Rushing to choreograph a piece as part of her twentieth anniversary celebration, and he created Uptown, about the Harlem Renaissance, as a tribute for her. In 2010, Jamison named Rushing rehearsal director, a job he continues under artistic director Robert Battle, who took over the reins in 2011. Rushing also performs regularly as a guest artist with the company. It is still a thrill to see him take the stage, his every movement filled with emotion and the intense joy of the dance. In an August 2012 Dance magazine article entitled “Why I Dance,” Rushing wrote, “I don’t dance out of obligation, I dance out of an overwhelming feeling of necessity. Dance is literally a form of life to me, and I can’t imagine functioning without it!”

On December 17, as part of AAADT’s annual season at City Center, Rushing will be honored with the special program “Celebrating Matthew Rushing,” which will include Rushing performing in Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, excerpts from Ailey’s Love Songs and Pas de Duke and Rennie Harris’s Home, and the classic Ailey finale, Revelations. A gentle, soft-spoken man, Rushing recently spoke with twi-ny, answering questions about his storied career with great care, as if choreographing every thoughtful, carefully composed sentence.

twi-ny: On December 17, AAADT will be honoring you at City Center with a special tribute. Are you more nervous, scared, or excited about the evening?

Matthew Rushing: I think I would be more excited. There will be a little bit of nerves, because I think there’s a responsibility. This evening will be different from any other performance, because the way I see it, in any other performance, the audience is coming to see the Ailey company, but I would say that because it’s an evening celebrating the years I’ve been with the company, [laughs] the majority of the company will be coming to see me. So I would kind of feel like throughout the whole evening, all eyes will be on me, or at least the majority of the eyes. So I guess I would feel a certain responsibility that I normally wouldn’t feel. But I would also feel excited because I would feel support. I know that as well as the audience coming to see me, hopefully they will be coming to support me, so how special will that be to have a theater full of audience members coming to actually support you and celebrate you. So at the same time it’ll be exciting.

twi-ny: You’ll also be performing that night in Grace and what is being called “Matthew Rushing Highlights”; how did you go about choosing which pieces and excerpts you will perform at the event?

Matthew Rushing: The associate artistic director, Masazumi Chaya, came up with the initial program and presented it to me and asked me if there was anything that I wanted to change. I think the first change was, originally we were going to do Four Corners by Ronald K. Brown, and I requested that we do Grace. Chaya knew that I wanted to do a work by Brown because he’s one of these choreographers who has had a huge impact on my dance career and also me as a person. Chaya knew that Ron would have to be a part of this program, but I requested Grace because Grace was the first time I was introduced to working with Ron, and I’ve just had an incredible history with that ballet — what it’s taught me, the experiences I’ve had actually performing it, and even watching it. So that had to be part of the program.

The other highlights are works that I feel have been pivotal in my career, like A Song for You, which was originally choreographed for Dudley Williams, and I had the privilege and opportunity to be coached by Dudley Williams in A Song for You, as well as Pas de Duke, which was a huge turning point in my career because I was challenged with this role that was originally created for Mikhail Baryshnikov, and it taught me how to rely upon my own strengths and not try to imitate or be anyone else but actually really realize who I am as a dancer, what gifts I have to offer, and really focus and concentrate on those to help me articulate and communicate and have impact on the audience. And as well as the piece’s being choreographed by Mr. Ailey, that has a lot to do with it as well. The other piece is Home, which was choreographed by Rennie Harris. One of the reasons why I wanted to do this piece was because I was honored that he created this role for me when he created the ballet, and there’s something about the hip-hop, house culture that’s also had a huge impact on my life, growing up in New York, and for all these elements to come together — me respecting Rennie Harris as a choreographer, respecting the art form of hip-hop, and being honored that he would create a role for me, all that went into including this work in the evening.

Of course, Revelations has to be a part of it, because Revelations, I always tell people, this piece is kind of like part of who I am. It’s not just a work that I perform at the end of an Ailey evening. It’s something that I have a very close connection to and that feeds me, that inspires me, that changes me from performance to performance, so it just had to be a part of the evening as well.

twi-ny: You’ve now been with AAADT for more than twenty years and are currently the rehearsal director and a guest artist. How has that transition been?

Matthew Rushing: The transition has been very difficult. I think I’ve told anybody that asked me that question, I’ve always said that it’s difficult. I have yet to get to the point where I can say, “Oh yeah, I’m very comfortable, I’m thoroughly enjoying it.” No, not right now. It’s still a challenge. It’s stretching me in so many ways as far as being compassionate, leadership skills — it’s forcing me to organize my time better, it’s stretching me as an artist because I don’t have as much time as I used to to focus on my work and my dance, and I have to still be responsible for my work as far as the roles that I dance, but I have less time because the other time is devoted to the dancers and rehearsing the dancers and taking care of the dancers and making sure that they have what they need to be artists.

So I feel like I’m switching my hat a lot, and also my energy, time, and focus is split, much more than it used to be, so I feel like I’m never in a comfortable place. I often feel like I’ve missed the mark that I’ve set for myself, but I try not to get frustrated; I try to kind of dust myself off and give it another try, but, like I said, I think I’m still finding myself in it. That would be the most honest answer, that I’m still trying to find myself in this rehearsal director slash guest artist role.

twi-ny: In August 2012 you wrote, “I dance out of an overwhelming feeling of necessity,” while also pointing out your age, as forty approaches. Are you anticipating any further changes?

Matthew Rushing: At this point, because of how things have developed, I’m at a point where I can’t make any assumptions. Things have happened in ways that I would never expect them to, so therefore I’m at a point where I’m just making myself open and available to whatever comes my way. I’m trying to make sure that I’m prepared for whatever comes my way by doing whatever work that’s given to me at the present moment, and I’m hoping that that work will help prepare me for the next step, but I have no idea . . . I do know it’s gonna be within this Ailey organization. This is my home. This is where I was birthed artistically. And I know this is where I want to end my dance career. So I just know I’m here at Ailey. Ailey is it for me. That’s my only definite. Everything else is just open, and I’m ready to receive whatever’s coming next.

Matthew Rushing will perform an excerpt from Alvin Ailey’s LOVE SONGS at program honoring his ongoing career with the company

twi-ny: You’ve choreographed Acceptance in Surrender and Uptown for AAADT and, more recently, Moan for Philadanco. Do you have any more pieces coming up either for Ailey or another company? Do you get a different kind of satisfaction out of choreographing a work than dancing?

Matthew Rushing: Choreography is another struggle of mine, that I don’t feel absolutely comfortable in, so again, it’s just another thing that stretches me and I feel helps me grow. One of the reasons why I like to choreograph is I like to be creative. I usually get ideas that are motivated by music or themes or ideas and I like the work of trying to make them happen. Sometimes it doesn’t come as easily as I would like, and that’s where I get frustrated. Often I feel like I can’t come up with enough steps to articulate the ideas that I have. I usually can come up with ideas easily, but the articulation and coming up with the movement and style is very difficult for me. So the choreography, I feel, is more of a struggle than dance. Dance is something that I have always felt comfortable in, and I think I always will, so there is a huge difference between choreography and dance, and I feel much more comfortable in dancing than I do choreography, but I feel that choreography is another voice that I’m developing, as far as me having an impact on people and being creative.

twi-ny: In September 2011, you were one of a large group of dance people who performed in Continuous Replay with Bill T. Jones at New York Live Arts. What was that experience like? Many of the performers, including Mr. Jones, went au naturel, but you kept your shorts on. Were you tempted to take it all off?

Matthew Rushing: The experience of dancing with Bill T. Jones was absolutely awesome. The man is a genius. He inspired me, he opened my eyes to new ways of choreography. He taught me how to think differently, without even talking to me directly. It was me being able to be around his work and his process and his dancers that totally changed me. I love being around people who can say things that you’ve never heard before or be able to articulate things that you feel cannot be expressed through words. But somehow this man, this genius of a man, knows how to do that. I love him dearly, and I’m so excited that he’s choreographing D-Man in the Waters in the company, because he recently came to rehearsal and did the exact same thing to the other dancers as far as inspiring them and speaking into their lives. So the experience was awesome.

Um, dancing in the nude? No, I wouldn’t go there. I wasn’t even tempted. And I was so happy that he was accommodating enough [laughs] to allow me not to go nude. Even though I work hard on looking the best I possibly can . . . Nude? In front of thousands of people? No, not me. That’s just not me. I’m so glad that I’ve never had to do it here at Ailey as well.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL OF THE DAY: ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER AT CITY CENTER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Antonio Douthit-Boyd and Linda Celeste Sims perform in a new production of Alvin Ailey’s THE RIVER (photo by Paul Kolnik)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 4 – January 5, $25-$135; 40% off select performances with code ALYFRI
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Next week, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to City Center for its annual holiday season, its twenty-fifth since Alvin Ailey passed away on December 1, 1989. As a special one-day-only Black Friday special, tickets for select performances are being discounted up to forty percent by using the promo code ALYFRI, available online from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, by phone 11:00 am to 8:00 pm, and at the box office 12 noon to 8:00 (where there is no service charge). Running December 4 to January 5, the 2013-14 season, the third under artistic director Robert Battle, is chock-full of company classics and exciting new commissions. Back again are such recent additions as Rennie Harris’s Home, Ohad Naharin’s dazzling Minus 16, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, Kyle Abraham’s Another Night, Ronald K. Brown’s breathtaking Grace, Battle’s Strange Humors and In/Side, and Paul Taylor’s Arden Court. This year’s world premieres include Aszure Barton’s LIFT, Wayne McGregor’s Chroma (featuring music by Jack White), Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters (Part I), and Brown’s Four Corners, along with new productions of Ailey’s Pas De Duke and The River. Most performances conclude, of course, with the Ailey mainstay Revelations, several with live music.

DONNA UCHIZONO: FIRE UNDERGROUND AND STATE OF HEADS

Donna Uchizono’s revisited STATE OF HEADS will precede world premiere of FIRE UNDERGROUND

FIRE UNDERGROUND / STATE OF HEADS
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
December 4-7, $30, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.donnauchizono.org

In 2010, New York City-based dancer and choreographer Donna Uchizono performed in longing two, the first time in ten years she had taken the stage, convinced by dancer Hristoula Harakas to do so in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Donna Uchizono Company. Uchizono (Thin Air) will be back onstage again next week for the deeply personal Fire Underground, a New York Live Arts commission that relates the tremendous difficulties she encountered when trying to adopt a child. The piece, which examines the idea of performance itself, is a collaboration with dancer Becky Serrrell-Cyr, lighting designer Joe Levasseur, composer David Shively and photographer Michael Grimaldi and will feature five dancers. The piece will be preceded by an updated version of 1999’s State of Heads, which Uchizono brought back for the recent Oliver Sacks festival at NYLA and will be performed by Serrell-Cyr, Levi Gonzalez, and Harakas, set to music by James Lo and lighting by Stan Pressner. “State of Heads explores the feeling of waiting and the passage of time in the state of hiatus where familiar time and scale are pushed,” she told us in an April twi-ny talk. “Using the separation of the head from the body as a point of departure, in an exploration of disjointedness and the sense of a will apart from the mind driving the movement, surprisingly created a world of endearingly odd characters.” The double bill runs December 4-7 at NYLA; the December 4 performance will be followed by the Stay Late Discussion “Behind Fire Underground” with members of the company, moderated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and the December 5 show will be preceded by the Come Early Panel Conversation “Making Dances in the ’90s Though Today’s Lens” with choreographers Tere O’Connor, John Jasperse, RoseAnne Spradlin, and Uchizono, moderated by Carla Peterson. In addition, Uchizono will lead a Shared Practice workshop on November 30 from 1:00 to 4:00, sharing her creative process with a small class; registration is $20.

THE LINE KING’S LIBRARY: AL HIRSCHFELD AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Al Hirschfeld’s long relationship with the New York Public Library is explored in exhibit at Lincoln Center

Al Hirschfeld’s long relationship with the New York Public Library and the arts is celebrated in exhibit at Lincoln Center

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
Exhibition continues through January 4
Film screening: Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave., Monday, November 18, free, 6:00
212-642-0142
www.nypl.org/lpa

Twelve years ago, New York celebrated the life and eighty-plus-year career of legendary artist Al Hirschfeld with a major retrospective at the Museum of the City of New York and an exhibit of his celebrity caricatures at the New York Public Library’s main branch; in addition, Abrams released two books of his work, one focusing on New York, the other on Hollywood, and Hirschfeld made appearances to promote the publications. Nearly eleven years after his passing in January 2003 at the age of ninety-nine, the New York Public Library is honoring Hirschfeld again with a lovely exhibit at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, “The Line King’s Library: Al Hirschfeld at the New York Public Library.” Visitors can first stop by a re-creation of Hirschfeld’s work area, complete with his drawing table and barber chair, which is on permanent view at the library entrance. The exhibition is straight ahead, consisting of more than one hundred color and black-and-white drawings and lithographs, posters, books, letters, video, newspaper and magazine clippings, and various other ephemera, divided by the discipline of Hirschfeld’s subjects: theater, music, dance, and film, in addition to a section on those artists who influenced the man known as the Line King.

Oscar-winning documentary on Al Hirschfeld screens for free at NYPL on November 18

“My contribution is to take the character — created by the playwright and acted out by the actor — and reinvent it for the theater,” Hirschfeld once explained, and the evidence is on the walls, including works depicting Jack Lemmon in Tribute, Lee J. Cobb in Death of a Salesman, Christopher Plummer in Macbeth, Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, Alan Cumming in Cabaret, and Jackie Mason in The World According to Me, among so many more. There are also caricatures of Marcel Marceau, S. J. Perelman, George Bernard Shaw, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, and a dazzling, rarely shown 1969 print of Martha Graham. Another highlight is the original drawing for “Broadway First Nighters,” along with a key identifying the dozens of celebrities gathered in a packed room, and paraphernalia from Hirschfeld’s musical comedy Sweet Bye and Bye, a collaboration with Perelman, Vernon Duke, and Ogden Nash. And for those fans who have spent years trying to find all the inclusions of “Nina” in Hirschfeld’s drawings, “Nina’s Revenge” features his daughter holding a brush and smiling, the names “Al” and “Dolly” (for Dolly Haas, her mother and Hirschfeld’s second wife) in her long hair. In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a free screening of the Oscar-winning 1996 documentary The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story, introduced by the director, Susan W. Dryfoos, on November 18 at 6:00 in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

MARIA HASSABI: PREMIERE

Choreographer Maria Hassabi is joined by four other dancers as they redefine the relationship between audience and performer in PREMIERE (photo © Paula Court)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 6-9, $12-$15, 8:00
Performa 13 continues through November 24
212-255-5793
www.thekitchen.org
www.13.performa-arts.org

In the November 2011 premiere of Maria Hassabi’s Show at the Kitchen, the audience stood or sat on the black floor as the Cyprus-born, New York–based choreographer and regular cohort Hristoula Harakas weaved ever so slowly through the crowd to a soundtrack that incorporated the audience’s preshow chatter. Hassabi has redefined the relationship between performer and audience once again in Premiere, which premiered at the Kitchen on November 6 and continues through Saturday. When the doors open, Hassabi, Harakas, Robert Steijn, Biba Bell, and Andros Zins-Browne are already carefully positioned on the floor, three sitting, two standing, facing the empty seats as ticket holders enter and walk around them to sit down. Blazing lights on either side illuminate the stock-still performers, who are soon bracketed by semicircles of fresh shoe prints. Once everyone is seated, the doors are closed, and for the next eighty minutes, the five performers, wearing different-colored denim pants, tucked-in button-down shirts with minute but strange extra details, and black shoes or boots, eventually begin moving nearly imperceptibly, slow enough to make Butoh look like the Indy 500. The only sounds are the squeaks made by hands and feet pressing against the floor, except for occasional electronic noise coming out of the speakers (as well as every stomach grumble, cough, and shift from the audience). Never making contact with one another, Hassabi, Harakas, Steijn, Bell, and Zins-Browne perform deeply pensive and carefully choreographed simultaneous solos, fiercely focused, never smiling or breaking concentration, creating a nervous energy between audience and dancer, filled with both trepidation and anticipation. Once you figure out how the performance will end, sheer elation takes over. And then, indeed, it comes to a close, and the audience exits much as it entered. A copresentation of Performa 13, Premiere is another fabulously creative, involving, and challenging piece by Hassabi in her continuing exploration of movement, expectation, personal connection, the nature of performance itself, and the endless intricacies of the human mind and body.