this week in dance

SUMMER STREETS 2013

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive “Voice Tunnel” is a highlight of this year’s free Summer Streets programming

Park Ave. & 72nd St. to Foley Square
Saturday, August 3, 10, 17, free, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
www.nyc.gov

Good luck trying to find one of those blue Citi Bikes for the next three Saturday mornings, as Summer Streets returns for the fourth year. On August 3, 10, and 17 from 7:00 am to 1:00 pm, Park Ave. will be closed to vehicular traffic from 72nd St. to Foley Square and the Brooklyn Bridge, encouraging people to walk, run, jog, blade, skate, and bike down the famous thoroughfare, getting exercise and enjoying the great outdoors without car exhaust, speeding taxis, and slow-moving buses. There are five rest stops along the route (Uptown at 52nd St., Midtown at 25th, Astor Pl. at Lafayette St., SoHo at Spring & Lafayette, and Foley Square at Duane & Centre), where people can stop for some food and drink, live performances, restorative yoga and meditation, fitness classes, bicycle and parkour workshops, ziplining, rock-wall climbing, and other activities, all of which are free. In addition, there are four site-specific art installations, including Risa Puno’s “The Course of Emotions: a mini-golf experience” at the Uptown Rest Stop, Chat Travieso’s “CoolStop” water mister at Foley Square, Bundith Phunsombatlert’s “Art within One Mile” self-guided adventure consisting of eighty signs from Central Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s “Voice Tunnel,” an interactive sound and light work that will allow pedestrians into the Park Ave. Tunnel for the first time ever. It’s quite a sight to see Park Ave. filled with only extremely happy men, women, children, and dogs; don’t miss it.

A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM

U.S. Grant National Memorial Park
West 122nd St. at Riverside Dr.
Sunday, July 28, free, 12 noon – 8:30 pm
877-427-5364
www.harlemweek.com

On Sunday, July 28, “A Great Day in Harlem” kicks off the annual Harlem Week festivities, a month of free events including live music, film screenings, community fairs, a college expo, and more. This year’s theme is “Living the Dream: Celebrating History,” paying tribute to the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. “A Great Day in Harlem” takes place in U.S. Grant National Memorial Park, featuring a cultural showcase with music and dance at 1:00, a gospel caravan at 3:00, and a fashion fusion showcase at 5:00, followed by “A Concert under the Stars: Songs in the Key of Life,” a salute to Stevie Wonder’s seminal 1976 Motown classic, led by Ray Chew & the Harlem Music Festival All-Stars with special guests. Harlem Week continues through August 24 with such other events as Great Jazz on the Great Hill in Central Park, the Tri-State Junior Tennis Classic in Mill Pond Park, Summer in the City with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Contours, and the ImageNation Outdoor Film Festival in St. Nicholas Park, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Marcus Garvey Park, the 5K Anti-Gun Violence Walk for Peace, and much more.

CEDAR LAKE 360º INSTALLATION

Cedar Lake summer intensive offers dance fans a unique, immersive experience

SUMMER INTENSIVE
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
547 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
July 24-26, $25, 7:30 & 9:00
212-244-0015
www.cedarlakedance.com
2011 360º slideshow

From July 24 to 26, Chelsea-based Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet will present its summer intensive, Cedar Lake 360°, in an immersive installation at their home on West 26th St. For the last three weeks, thirty-three advanced students have been training with interim artistic director Alexandra Damiani — former artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer left this past May to pursue other opportunities — and members of the talented company. They will team up Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for two performances a night, at 7:30 and 9:00, that will include excerpts from Andonis Foniadakis’s Horizons, which had its premiere at the Joyce two months ago, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s spectacular Orbo Novo, which we said back in October 2009 “is not just good — it’s mind-blowingly good.” Each show will also feature original choreography by Cedar Lake members Jason Kittelberger & Acacia Schachte, Jon Bond, Rachelle Scott, and Ebony Williams. The 2011 360° summer intensive was a fun, exciting event, as fifty student dancers and the Cedar Lake crew wove in and around the audience, which was encouraged to move through the space as the performers lined up on mats, leaped onto concrete blocks, and dangled from the ceiling. This year the dancers are organized into two groups, the red cast (Skylar Boykin, Emma Bradley, Tessa Crawford, Spencer Davis, Kellie Drobnick, Daphne Fernberger, Evan Fisk, Evan Flood, Allison Gee, Einar Nikkerud, Deidre Rogan, Whitney Schmanski, Katherine Sprudz, Kevin Tate, Jacob Thoman, and Lukasz Zieba) and the blue cast (Tara Bellardini, Patrick Coker, Shelby Colona, Claudia Germuga, Karly Gillespie, Madi Hicks, Nathaniel Hunt, Mason Manning, Michael Marquez, Jenna Mitchell, Courtney Spears, Stephanie Stricker, Michael Stromile, Stephanie Terasaki, Anthony Tiedeman, and Maggie Westerfield), mixing it up with company members. Tickets for each forty-five-minute show are $25, well worth such a unique experience.

ARTERIES OF A NATION

ARTERIES OF A NATION reinvestigates the America of 1863 in site-specific, interactive performance in Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park, Squibb Park & Pier 1
Sunday, July 23, free, 7:00
www.renegadepg.com

Brooklyn-based Renegade Performance Group looks back to a terrible time 150 years ago in their site-specific piece Arteries of a Nation. Using sound and movement, RPG artistic director and choreographer André M. Zachery, composer Vincent Burwell, and writer Brook Stephenson examine three events that took place in July 1863: the Battle of Gettysburg, the New York City Draft Riots, and the attack of the all-black 54th Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry Regiment on Fort Wagner. The immersive work will be performed July 21 at 7:30 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, traveling from Squibb Playground to Pier 1, exploring such concepts as race and equality, still so central, and controversial in light of the Trayvon Martin case and the recent fight over the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The interactive piece, which also features the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Youth Ensemble, takes on added significance by being held on the Brooklyn pier, which played a role in the draft riots and the Civil War.

4CHAMBERS: A SENSORIAL JOURNEY INTO THE HUMAN HEART

Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects explores the human heart in immersive, interactive work on Governors Island (photo by Julie Lemberger)

Governors Island, Officers House #15
Saturday, July 20, and Sunday, July 21, free with advance RSVP, 11:30 am, 1:00 pm. 2:30, 4:00, 5:30
www.govisland.com
www.jodyoberfelder.com

New York City-based choreographer and filmmaker Jody Oberfelder takes twelve lucky people on a fascinating trip in and around the human heart in her wonderful new multimedia, interactive work, 4Chambers. The immersive, site-specific piece takes place inside Officers’ House #15 on Governors Island, where six dancers (Michele Jongeneel, Mary Madsen, Zachary Denison, Jake Szczypek, Joey Kipp, and Mercedes Searer) lead a dozen people through a series of rooms (Film Chamber, Physical Chamber, Synapse Chamber, Pulsing Chamber), each one examining a different aspect of the body’s central organ. Using film, movement, sound, visual art, and touch, Oberfelder investigates the many functions of the heart, from its core responsibility as a blood-pumping muscle to its romantic relationship with love. The sixty-minute piece also gets educational in an “Artery of Knowledge” section where text and video offer further insight. The show is beautifully paced, echoing the work done by the heart itself, going from a restful period to one filled with frantic activity as the dancers run around, bounce off walls, and fall to the ground. Be warned: You will be touched by the performers, both literally and figuratively, particularly in a pas-de-deux in which you can become as involved as you are comfortable with being. It’s amazing to consider that the same dancers are doing this five times a day, but that also reveals the vast capabilities of the heart. Admission is free, but advance RSVP is required; 4Chambers continues this Saturday and Sunday at 11:30, 1:00, 2:30, 4:00, and 5:30. (While you’re on Governors Island, be sure to also check out the always fun Figment art project, LMCC’s Terrerform ONE: Governors Hook Urbaneering exhibit, the charming Fête Paradiso: A Festival of Vintage Carousels and Carnival Rides, the New-York Historical Society’s “WWII & NYC: Photography and Propaganda,” and other special art shows, family-friendly activities, and live performances, most of which are free.)

LUCIANA ACHUGAR: FEELING IS BELIEVING

River to River Festival / LMCC
Interactive walk begins at 100 Wall St.
July 9, 10, 11, free with advance reservation, 7:00
www.rivertorivernyc.com
www.lachugar.org

Brooklyn-based choreographer Luciana Achugar, a two-time Bessie Award winner whose work is familiar to New York audiences from performances at the Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, and Abrons Arts Center, among other venues, has developed a fascinating multisensory movement experience to share with a dozen participants on an indoor/outdoor journey through downtown New York’s Wall Street district. Using touch, sight, coordinated movement, voice prompts, and more, the Uruguayan-born Achugar (The Sublime Is Us, Puro Deseo) leads the group on an offbeat exploration of an area of the city that is usually ignored, hurried past, or even denigrated, in order to discover the delights of absolute absorption in a place, a moment, and our own internal and external being. Elastic City, which copresents these participatory walks with a group of artists in other locations as well, including Todd Shalom’s Host in Nakameguro, Nina Katchadourian and Andrew Zarou’s The Lesser-Known Sounds of Times Square, and Michelle Boulé and Niegel Smith’s Admission through the New Museum, promises to bring “each audience member closer to a more sensual, connected, magical, deeper-than-the-marrow-of-the-bone, vibrational body.” The unexpected vibrations between participants, outdoor diners, the summer heat, bicyclists, spouting fountains, and the occasional curious security guard are all part of the event to be savored. Feeling Is Believing, which continues July 9-11 at 7:00, is fully reserved at this point, but you should check the River to River website for instructions about first-come, first-served wait-list possibilities; as we can attest from the July 2 opening, it’s well worth it.

FIRST SATURDAY: REMIXING THE AMERICAN STORY

Valerie Hegarty, “Still Life with Peaches, Pear, Grapes and Crows”; “Still Life with Watermelon, Peaches and Crows”; and “Table Cloth with Fruit and Crows,” canvas, stretcher, paper, acrylic paint, foam, papier-mâché, wire, glue, gold foil, epoxy, fabric, thread, dimensions variable, in “Dining Room, Cane Acres Plantation, Summerville, South Carolina” (photo by Brooklyn Museum)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, July 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For its free First Saturday program during the July 4 weekend, the Brooklyn Museum looks back at American history through dance, music, art, literature, and film. “Remixing the American Story” includes live performances by the Hungry March Band, Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, Frankie Rose, the Brown Bag All Stars, and the Redhawk Native American Arts Council, pop-up gallery talks, a dance workshop, a Forum Project discussion on current events, a poetry slam with the Nuyorican Poets Café, a photo booth, sketching of live models based on portraits in the “American Identities: A New Look” exhibition, and screenings of Michael and Timothy Rauch’s StoryCorps’ animated shorts, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the organization that is collecting an oral history of the country. In addition, artist Valerie Hegarty will give a talk about “Alternative Histories,” her fascinating interventions into three of the museum’s period rooms, which have been seemingly destroyed by a murder of crows. The galleries will remain open late so visitors can also check out “John Singer Sargent Watercolors,” “The Bruce High Quality Foundation: Ode to Joy,” “LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “‘Workt by Hand’: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts,” “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” “Raw/Cooked: Caitlin Cherry,” and other exhibitions.