this week in dance

DOUGLAS DUNN + DANCERS: GARDEN PARTY

Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston, and Christopher Williams rehearse Douglas Dunn’s Garden Party (photo by Mimi Gross)

GARDEN PARTY
Douglas Dunn Studio
541 Broadway between Spring & Prince Sts., third floor
April 24-30, $15-$20
www.douglasdunndance.com
www.mimigross.com

All dancer and choreographer Douglas Dunn needed to do was give Mimi Gross the title of his new production and the painter, set and costume designer, installation artist, and teacher was off to the races.

Born in California in 1942, Dunn has been collaborating with Gross, a native New Yorker born in 1940, since Dunn presented Foot Rules in 1979; they’ve worked together some two dozen times since, including on 1980’s Echo, 1981’s Skid, 1988’s Matches, 1995’s Caracole, 2007’s Zorn’s Lemma, and 2017’s Antipodes. They met quite serendipitously.

“I’d been working with Charles Atlas on film, video, and costumes for several years. Being then in a moment unavailable, he suggested Mimi,” Dunn explained via email. “She made wonderful apparel for an hour-long duet for Deborah Riley and me called Foot Rules. What I noticed right away was her love of color.”

“Charlie Atlas was presenting live performances which he made up and directed. That is how I first met Charlie, and then I met Douglas,” Gross added. “They had been making dances and videos together. When Douglas asked Charlie if he could make some costumes for a new dance he was choreographing with Deborah Riley, Charlie was super busy — he was working with Merce Cunningham full-time — and recommended me to do it. I had made many costumes for movies with cardboard and hot glue . . . nothing to be washed! Or worn many times! Quite a challenge. Of course, I said sure. And then through the decades on and off we have shared many projects, sets and costumes, sometimes sets, sometimes costumes, sometimes both — very open, warm, clear mutual caring to work within our shared possibilities, never knowing how it will come out.”

Douglas Dunn emerges from his pulpit in Mimi Gross’s fantastical Garden Party installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Dunn and Gross are currently at work on their latest project, Garden Party, which runs April 24-30 at Douglas Dunn + Dancers’ SoHo loft studio. Last week I attended a rehearsal of the sixty-minute piece, which features Dunn, Grazia Della-Terza, Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston, Vanessa Knouse, Emily Pope, Paul Singh, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Timothy Ward, and Christopher Williams moving through the spectacular space created by Gross, consisting of lushly painted trompe l’oeil walls and ceiling and a long horizontal mirror, covered with pink, yellow, and green flowers, plants and trees, clouds, raindrops, and more. While the plants at the right are fake — Dunn told me at the rehearsal that he had “planted” some of them himself — the greenery at the left is real, repurposing the plants that were already in the studio.

There’s also a colorful pulpit where Dunn spends much of the show; he had specifically requested it, asking for it to be based on the design at Grace Church on Broadway. The dancers glide across the floor like blossoming flowers, in solos, pas de deux, and trios, celebrating birth, life, and growth; however, the soundtrack of pop and classical songs (Robert de Visée, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Bach, Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, more), birdsong, and poetry (by John Keats, Anne Waldman, Molière, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Milton, Stephanie Jacco, and others, read by Dunn, Waldman, Jacco, and Della-Terza) touch on loss and loneliness. A few of the dancers occasionally sit on an inviting white park bench, and Dunn clutches a plush bird named April.

“Mimi always helps me see color; I always see line first,” Dunn explained. “We got along just fine and knew right away how much to interact and how much to let the other alone. She often saw historical references in the dancing and she’d take off from there. We’re both dead serious but also insistent on having a good warm time relating when preparing for a new dance show. The feel of this evening was clear to me the day the title hit me (about three years ago, the pandemic postponing the project). The lavish beauty of Mimi’s set completely fulfills my initial intuition . . . as if she’d read my dancing mind.”

Douglas Dunn’s Garden Party runs April 24-30 in SoHo loft studio (photo by Jacob Burckhardt, 2023)

“The new dance had been talked about a long while ago,” Gross noted. “All of 2021-22, I made many landscape drawings, and then, when the pandemic seemed to subside, I painted these flowers last summer and called them ‘Feel Good Flowers.’ When Douglas asked me if I would make a garden and sets about ‘Early Spring,’ he said, ‘Fill up the studio.’ That was just what I was doing anyway. I asked him if I could paint it with this stylization, and that I didn’t know exactly how I would do it. He was fine with that. I made a big drawing of a bird and discussed the texture and color with Sue Julien, who fabricated it. Both Sue and David Quinn made an amazing contribution fabricating the costumes from my drawings. Douglas wanted each dancer to be different, with different leg lengths. That is all he had said. I pored over my Ballet Russe books, and Charles James and I made drawings. The only common link is the fluorescent yellow in each costume.”

The collaboration extends to Lauren Parrish, who designed the lighting and projections, and sound designer Jacob Burckhardt. The show will be preceded by live music from guitarist and composer Tosh Sheridan, who has released such albums as Tosh, Tosh Sheridan Trio, and solo/duo.

“All of these plain facts are fine and good and relate our collaborating history, but it is the depth of poetic reality where we really collaborate,” Gross concluded, “by dance and by making an atmosphere for the dance.”

And what an atmosphere Dunn and Gross have created for Garden Party.

WEATHERING

Humanity gets caught up in the maelstrom in Faye Driscoll’s Weathering (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

WEATHERING
New York Live Arts
219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
April 5-8, 12-15, $32-$50, 7:30
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.fayedriscoll.com

Faye Driscoll’s latest work, Weathering, is, well, everything.

The seventy-minute piece, continuing at New York Live Arts through April 15, takes place on a squishy white movable platform raft designed by Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan. The audience sits on all four sides of the object. One by one, ten performers — James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, and Jo Warren, in Karen Boyer’s costumes of everyday dress, some with backpacks, bags, and other accoutrements — step on and off the platform, eventually all standing in place and freezing, becoming what Driscoll calls a flesh sculpture.

Stage managers Emily Vizina and Ryan Gamblin, in all black, go to opposite corners and gently push the platform so it spins around, extremely slowly at first. The dancers barely move a muscle, but as the platform rotates, you can start to tell that the performers have shifted ever so slightly, lowering a knee, reaching out a hand, turning a foot, almost imperceptibly; the effect is like you are watching a living, creeping flipbook. Soon they begin touching, the connections electrifying, as if the contact is life affirming, which is especially potent as we emerge from Covid restrictions that kept us physically apart from one another. As the bodies interweave, they close gaps, filling spaces of loss and absence.

Performers encounter all five senses while spinning around the New York Live Arts stage (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

Driscoll incorporates all five senses as she and the stage managers occasionally spray the performers (and the audience) with citrus-smelling water and some of the dancers let out small groans and grunts as they put their mouths on an arm, leg, or neck that approaches them, somewhere in between the hunger for sex and the hunger of zombies seeking sustenance.

As the score builds — the sound and music direction is by Sophia Brous, with live sound and sound design by Ryan Gamblin and composition, field recordings, and sound design by Guillaume Malaret — the raft is spun around faster and faster. Personal items fall haphazardly to the ground: keys, a wallet, cellphones. Clothes start coming off, revealing more of who these people are and challenging what we might have previously thought about them while harkening back to our primeval existence, equating the beginning and the end. Chaos ensues, as the audience tries to capture as much of the action as it possibly can, not wanting to miss a single thing, as if every little movement, every sound, every change could upset the balance of this mini-universe.

Driscoll is telling us to pay attention, letting us know that humanity is failing and we are destroying the planet. The raft, evoking Earth and its orbit, sometimes slides slightly out of control, nearly hitting the people in the first row.

Faye Driscoll’s Weathering continues at NYLA through April 15 (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

The faster the raft goes, the more the audience is overcome by an intoxicating joy mixed with impending doom; it is absolutely exhilarating to follow each of the performers’ journeys, ten individuals striving to survive on their own and as a group, just as we in the audience are.

The show is accompanied by the companion reader Durations of Short Detail, with short pieces by dramaturg Dages Juvelier Keates (“We Are So Close”), dancer and choreographer Jesse Zaritt (“To Hold and Be Held”), and Driscoll, whose poem “Chariots of Flesh” relates, “We’ve been trembling in the trench for / Days? / Weeks? / Years? / Lifetimes? / Despite thick fog / I am overcome / By the smell of your clean shaven skin / Face, eyes, gaze, nose, mouth, fear / I try to pound you out but you latch onto my arm, / wrap your leg around me and reverse position / You try to pound me out but I latch onto your arm, / wrap my leg around you and reverse position / We are desperate to know the outcome / Desperate to know the outcome / Desperate to know the outcome. . . .”

As she has in such previous pieces as the Thank You for Coming trilogy, You’re Me, and There is so much mad in me, Driscoll investigates the intrinsic relationship between performer and audience, the imperative bond, but there is a lot more at stake in Weathering, nothing less than the future of the human race.

I don’t know that we can save the world through art, but with creators such as Driscoll, we can have a hell of a lot of terrifying fun trying.

MOVEMENT AT THE STILL POINT: AN EVENING OF DANCE

Who: Mark Mann, Sara Mearns, Megan LeCrone, Georgina Pazcoguin, Lloyd Knight, Xin Ying, Terese Capucilli, Skye Mattox, Karla Garcia, David Guzman, Ricardo Zayas, Morgan Marcell, Ryan Vandenboom, Curtis Holland, Rena Butler, Amadeo “Remy” Mangano, Ousmane “Omari” Wiles, Dardo Galletto, Alonso Guzman, Evan Ruggiero, Jie-Hung Connie Shiau, Maleek Washington, Francesca Harper, Carmen de Lavallade, Gus Solomons Jr., more
What: Book launch with live performances
Where: The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
When: Monday, April 10, $81-$131, 7:30
Why: Photographer Mark Mann has assembled quite a group of all-stars to launch his coffee-table book, Still Point: An Ode to Dance (Rizzoli, March 2023, $60), at the Joyce on April 10. The book features photographs of more than 140 people in the dance world, several dozen of whom will be at the Joyce to celebrate with Mann, including New York City Ballet’s Sara Mearns, Martha Graham principals Lloyd Knight and Xin Ying, Broadway’s Skye Mattox and Ryan Vandenboom, voguers Amadeo “Remy” Mangano and Ousmane “Omari” Wiles, tango dancers Dardo Galletto and Alonso Guzman, tap dancer Evan Ruggiero, Ailey II artistic director Francesca Harper, and legends Carmen de Lavallade and Gus Solomons Jr. “Mark is one of a rare breed of photographers who understands dancers: how we move, the way we say things with our bodies that other people say in words, how much we love to perform for an audience — even an audience of one,” Chita Rivera writes in the foreword. “So I put on my top hat, white tie and tails, and we did our own little dance, and it shows in the images he made of me, and of all the dancers in this beautiful collection.”

Misty Copeland is among more than 140 dancers who posed for Mark Mann’s new book (photo courtesy Mark Mann / Rizzoli USA)

The Glasgow-born Mann, who had not photographed the dance community before, was inspired to do the project when commiserating with his sister-in-law, choreographer Loni Landon, about the pandemic lockdown, during which there were no live, in-person performances and Mann’s professional portraiture business had dried up. He accidentally discovered an empty warehouse space on the West Side, where he invited subjects to pose for him, with his beloved medium format Leica S that he calls Gretta. “When our first dancer, Rena Butler, came into the studio in February of 2021, I was speechless,” Mann explained in a statement. “I realized I was watching a performance tailored exclusively for my camera, and for the first few minutes I was so captivated that I actually forgot I was supposed to be taking photos. In that moment, as I began to photograph, my whole life as a photographer was turned upside down.”

In the book, many of the subjects contribute personal thoughts about their chosen discipline. “During the shoots, we spoke to the dancers about identity. The pandemic challenged a lot of us in terms of facing our true selves in a moment when we lost what had defined us,” Landon writes in the afterword. “Everyone figured out how to survive in their own way. It was astonishing to see perseverance paired with vulnerability — the resilience of these artists.” They now take the next step together on April 10 at the Joyce.

La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival ’23

Nela H. Kornetová and Lærke Grøntved star in T.I.T.S.’s US premiere of Forced Beauty (photo courtesy T.I.T.S.)

Who: Kari Hoaas Productions, Nela Kornetová and T.I.T.S., Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company, Nora Alami, Jadd Tank, Leyya Mona Tawil/Lime Rickey International, Baye & Asa, Wendy Perron and Morgan Griffin, Bobbi Jene Smith, Kayla Farrish, Kathryn Alter, Francesca Dominguez, Darvejon Jones, Cory “Supernova” Villegas/Soul Dance Co
What: Eighteenth annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
Where: La MaMa, 74A East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
When: April 6–30, free (with advance RSVP) – $30
Why: The eighteenth annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival runs April 6-30, consisting of ten programs featuring a dozen creators presenting a wide range of works exploring the theme “Research, Resilience, and Testimony.” Referring to the artists, curator Nicky Paraiso explains on the festival website, “They bear witness to the uncertain times we live in, with a deeply felt personal approach that our dance audiences will not easily forget. We are living, perhaps, in a not-yet-totally postpandemic world where emotional response continues to remain tender and raw.”

The festival opens with works by two Norwegian companies, beginning April 6-8 with the world premiere of Kari Hoaas Productions’ Shadowland, in which a group of soloists weave through a web of loss, and April 7-9 with the US premiere of T.I.T.S.’s Forced Beauty, in which choreographer Nela H. Kornetová and Lærke Grøntved, often topless, act out online hate and violence directed at women on the internet. The free panel discussion “Stop Calling Them Dangerous #5, Cinema Has Power” takes place April 8 at 2:00 at CRS (Center for Remembering and Sharing), with screenings of films by Yvonne Rainer and Charles Atlas, organized by Yoshiko Chuma and promising “surprise dance-filmmakers” in attendance.

The second week kicks off with Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company’s Lunch with Sonia (April 12-16), followed by a pair of shared programs: Nora Alami and Jadd Tank’s 3rd Body, inspired by VR technology, and Leyya Mona Tawil/Lime Rickey International’s Malayeen Voices, a futuristic look at folk songs and dance (April 13-16); and Baye & Asa’s duet Suck it Up, which delves into commercial imagery, with Wendy Perron and Morgan Griffin’s The Daily Mirror 1976/2022, in which teacher Perron revisits a 1976 work, now joined by one of her students, featuring film and photography by Babette Mangolte (April 14-16).

The third week is highlighted by the New York premiere of Bobbi Jene Smith’s multimedia dance-theater piece Broken Theater with AMOC* (April 20-30). Kayla Farrish’s Put Away the Fire, dear, pt.2 explores the relationship between live performance and cinema, with Farrish, Jessica Alexander, Tatiana Barber, James Barret, Alexander Diaz, Kerime Konur, and Curtis Thomas (April 21-23). The final program is Hunter College’s Emerging Choreographers Showcase with works by Kathryn Alter, Francesca Dominguez, Darvejon Jones, and Cory “Supernova” Villegas/Soul Dance Co.

FAYE DRISCOLL: WEATHERING

Faye Driscoll’s Weathering makes its world premiere this weekend at NYLA (photo by Maria Baranova)

Who: Faye Driscoll, James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Jo Warren
What: World premiere of Weathering
Where: New York Live Arts, 219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves., 212-924-0077
When: April 5-8, 13-15, $32-$50, 7:30
Why: “Weathering is a symphonically active, luminously living, breathing, leaking sculpture of flesh, materials, breath, sound, smell that is a study of momentums that are thrusting from just beyond the perceivable,” New York–based choreographer Faye Driscoll explains in an “Inside the Pillow Lab” video about her latest work, having its world premiere April 5-8 and 13-15 at New York Live Arts. “I think the work is often about making the senses super activated so that we might notice the way we’re making the world.”

In such pieces as the Thank You for Coming trilogy, You’re Me, There is so much mad in me, and Stripped/Dressed, Driscoll has challenged the relationship among performers themselves as well as between dancers and the audience, resulting in works that are unpredictable, constantly surprising, and endlessly inventive, from the choreography to costumes to staging.

Known as “Touch Piece” when it was in progress, Weathering is an exploration of the body and the senses, asking the question “Where is the body and how far does it extend?” It partially evolved during pandemic Zoom classes Driscoll taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We experimented with touching each other with words and sound via the screen,” Driscoll wrote on Instagram. It was further developed at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University and at Jacob’s Pillow. Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan’s set features a squishy square white raft/bed that can be spun around, where James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, and Jo Warren weave together, at times like they’re one being.

The costumes are by Karen Boyer, with lighting by Amanda K. Ringger, sound and music direction by Sophia Brous, live sound and sound design by Ryan Gamblin, and composition, field recordings, and sound design by Guillaume Malaret. Driscoll’s presentations have always gone beyond dance, incorporating performance art and interactivity, making them unique events unto themselves. The entire run is nearly sold out, so act fast to get tickets; in addition, there will be a waitlist starting at 1:00 on the day of each show (call 212-924-0077 to reserve your place in line).

ÁGUA

Performers enjoy a drink of water in Pina Bausch’s Água at BAM (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

ÁGUA
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave. between St. Felix St. & Ashland Pl.
March 3-19
www.bam.org
www.pina-bausch.de/en

Dance-theater pioneer Pina Bausch would probably agree with Nobel Prize–winning Hungarian biochemist Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi, who said “Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”

In such dazzling pieces as Vollmond (Full Moon), Nefés, and “…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…” (Like moss on a stone), Bausch repeatedly explored the role of this element, the elixir of life.

Water again takes center stage in the US premiere of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Brazil-inspired Água, which debuted in 2001 in Rio de Janeiro and has at last come to BAM, the company’s exclusive New York home since 1984. Água, which means “water,” is a nearly three-hour masterpiece (with a far too long intermission), combining music, comedy, storytelling, video, props, and, of course, sensational dance. Peter Pabst’s stark white stage features three large curved screens on which he projects footage of palm trees blowing in the wind, a team of drummers playing in the street, and adventures through the rainforest.

Men in everyday clothing and suits and women in gorgeous, colorful gowns — Marion Cito’s costumes are stunning — perform a series of vignettes to songs by a wide range of artists, including Mickey Hart, Tom Waits, the Tiger Lillies, PJ Harvey, Amon Tobin, Susana Baca, Caetano Veloso, David Byrne, Gilberto Gil, Bebel Gilberto, Nana Vasconcelos, and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Tsai-Wei Tien is lifted off the ground and passed hand to hand by Dean Biosca, Oleg Stepanov, and Denis Klimuk, clad only in bathing suits and platform shoes, Christopher Tandy rows across the stage in a palm leaf, Tsai-Chin Yu asks several people in the first row where they are from and then uses a boot to predict the weather there, and a dancer in a lush red dress falls to the ground and reveals her long legs as men pass by, ignoring her. Performers break out into sudden solos that meld with the projected images that envelop them. The screens rise to reveal a surprise behind them. The women all have long hair that they use inventively as an object of sex and power.

Fire plays a continuing function, as dancers light cigarettes and candles and original Água cast member Julie Shanahan tries to set the place ablaze, explaining, “I wanted to do something really beautiful for you, but I don’t know how. . . . I wanted to go crazy. But it’s not possible.” The cast, which also features Emma Barrowman, Naomi Brito, Maria Giovanna Delle Donne, Taylor Drury, Letizia Galloni, Nayoung Kim, Reginald Lefebvre, Alexander López Guerra, Nicholas Losada, Jan Möllmer, Milan Nowoitnick Kampfer, Franko Schmidt, Ekaterina Shushakova, Julian Stierle, and Sara Valenti, attends a cocktail party, pulls out white couches to take a break, and uses hilariously patterned towels at a beach resort. They bounce off walls. They spray water at each other. They use microphones as if they’re comedians.

A handful of scenes feel extraneous, and Bausch’s highly gendered choreography can be perceived as out of date in 2023, though the company has its first trans dancer (Brito). But Água is still hugely entertaining.

Bausch, who died in June 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, displayed a passion for life and all that it offers in her work, from light to dark, creating a mélange that ranged from Café Müller and The Rite of Spring to Kontakthof and Bamboo Blues. Artistic director Boris Charmatz continues her legacy with this international tour of Água, which is, contrary to what Shanahan said, “something really beautiful.”

ESTROGENIUS FESTIVAL: BAN(NED) TOGETHER

ESTROGENIUS FESTIVAL: BAN(NED) TOGETHER
The Kraine Theater, 85 East Fourth St.
UNDER St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Pl.
Arts on Site, 12 St. Marks Pl.
721 Decatur Street Community Garden, Bushwick
March 15 – April 2, sliding scale $20
www.estrogenius.nyc

Since 2000, the EstroGenius Festival has been celebrating “the artistry of femme, nonbinary, nonconforming, and trans womxn artists.” The 2023 edition, presented by FRIGID New York and Manhattan Theatre Source, launches March 15 with “Funny Women of a Certain Age,” an evening of comedy with Amanda Cohen, Jessie Baade, Laura Patton, and Carole Montgomery. The festival, curated by maura nguyễn donohue, Melissa Riker, and John C. Robinson, kicks into high gear March 18 through April 2 with nearly two dozen productions taking place at the Kraine Theater, UNDER St. Marks, Arts on Site, and the 721 Decatur Street Community Garden in Bushwick, from concerts and plays to discussions and burlesque.

On March 19 at 3:30, Joya Powell and Pele Bauch team up for the open dialogue “Who We Are | Ban(ned) Together,” getting to the heart of this year’s theme: “Ban(ned) Together,” a response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the violence being committed against trans and femme bodies.

Claire Ayoub heads down memory lane in her solo show The GynoKid. Marina Celander shares the family-friendly story The Tale of An-Noor, incorporating dance and puppets. In the duet Develop(ing) Together: BEAR, c/s movement projects investigates balance, exhaustion, and tolerance. Molly Kirschner’s BiPolar Brunch brings together four characters seeking connection. Alt-folkers Brokeneck Girls perform songs from The Murder Ballad Musical.

“An Evening with Peterson, Savarino & Wells” features Muriel “Murri-Lynette” Peterson’s Black Enough, Kim Savarino’s Blue Bardo, and Portia Wells’s Inside Flesh Mountain, Part II. Anabella Lenzu examines herself as a woman, a mother, and an immigrant in Solo Voce: The Night You Stopped Acting. Hip-hop takes center stage with Yvonne Chow’s #Unapologetically Asian and an excerpt from Janice Tomlinson’s PRN. There are also works by sj swilley, Emily Fury Daly, Vanessa Goodman, Donna Costello, Kayla Engeman, Leslie Goshko, Soul Dance Co., and Petra Zanki, among many others.