this week in dance

SYMPHONIC BALANCHINE

New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center between West 62nd & 65th Sts. and Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.
Saturday, February 9, 2:00, and Sunday, February 10, 3:00, $29-$155
212-496-0600
www.nycballet.com

This week the New York City Ballet is presenting its Symphonic Balanchine program, comprising Western Symphony, featuring traditional American tunes orchestrated by Hershy Kay, Symphony in Three Movements, set to music by Igor Stravinsky, and Symphony in C, with music by Georges Bizet, all choreographed by NYCB founder George Balanchine, creator of the American classical ballet tradition. Demonstrating Balanchine’s love of music and mastery of multiple genres, from Stravinsky’s twentieth-century modernism to Bizet’s nineteenth-century Romanticism, the program showcases NYCB’s particularly strong corps du ballet this season as well as a well-rounded group of soloists and principals. Western Symphony is a lively production, with fanciful costumes by Karinska; the men wear cowboy hats and western shirts, while the women are beribboned, tightly encased in satin with showgirl flounces. Energetic and fast-paced, the piece is as American as Broadway, which is fitting, since Kay also did the orchestrations for On the Town, Once Upon a Mattress, A Chorus Line, and Evita, among many other musicals. Megan Fairchild and Jared Angle are among the high-spirited pairs who prance and twirl playfully against the western backdrop. The stark stage of Symphony in Three Movements could not be more different; with nary a prop in sight, the dancers wear plain white or black leotards, executing Balanchine’s precise choreographic architecture to Stravinsky’s stark modernism with grave precision. The evening concludes with a longtime favorite, Balanchine’s glittering tour de force for the corps du ballet, Symphony in C. Originally titled “The Crystal Palace,” Symphony in C sparkles this year in brand-new costumes liberally set with Swarovski crystals. With a cast of more than fifty dancers and a stunningly intricate finale featuring some three dozen dancers onstage at the same time, Symphony in C is, as Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins says in the above video, “arguably our signature piece . . . perhaps the most challenging ballet for the company.” The two-hour Symphonic Balanchine program continues on February 9-10 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

CULTUREMART 2013

Bora Yoon collaborates with Adam Larsen and R. Luke DuBois in surreal WEIGHTS AND BALANCES (photo by James Chung)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Through February 10, $10 in advance, $15 within twenty-four hours of show
212-647-0202
www.here.org

The HERE Artist Residency Program, known as HARP, is now in the second week of its annual Culturemart festival, consisting of unique, experimental works, often in double features, from emerging presenters in such disciplines as dance, theater, music, visual arts, and puppetry as well as a melding of several of them. On February 4-5, Mei-Yin Ng’s Lost Property Unit explores loneliness and solitude in the digital age, referencing television and movies through dance, live and prerecorded music, and robot sculptures, while in Hai-Ting Chinn’s Science Fair the mezzo-soprano combines opera with science in a multimedia performance. On February 6-7, Robin Frohardt’s The Pigeoning uses music and puppets to look at the end of the world, while Joseph Silovsky’s Send for the Million Men is a solo piece that reexamines the Sacco and Vanzettti case with puppets and handmade projectors. Also on February 6-7, Bora Yoon’s Weights and Balances is a surreal opera featuring an interactive performance design by R. Luke DuBois. On February 8-9, Stein / Holum Projects’ The Wholehearted is a work in progress about a woman boxer looking back at her glory days. On February 9 at 2:00, there will be a free performance of David T. Little’s opera-theater piece Artaud in the Black Lodge, which links Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, and David Lynch through a libretto by Anne Waldman. The festival, which also celebrates HERE’s twentieth anniversary, concludes February 9-10 with HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and David Morris’s Trade Practices, a live, interactive market in which audience members become participants in the event.

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY: PROSCENIUM WORKS, 1979-2011

LES YEUX ET L’ÂME is one of two New York premieres by Trisha Brown at BAM (photo by Stephanie Berger)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Through February 2, $20-$70, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.trishabrowncompany.org

The Trisha Brown Dance Company’s “Proscenium Works, 1979-2011” tour kicked off at BAM this week with the New York premiere of Brown’s final two works, along with several repertory classics, as Brown announced her retirement as choreographer from the troupe she founded in 1970. On January 31, the program focused on Brown’s revolutionary use of silence and experimental music and avoidance of narrative structure; none of the pieces featured traditional songs or told a dramatic story. The show began with the thirtieth anniversary presentation of the seminal Set and Reset, a stirring collaboration with Laurie Anderson and Robert Rauschenberg. As Anderson’s hypnotic, repetitive “Long Time, No See” plays, seven dancers take the stage under a three-part geometric construction on which Rauschenberg projects newsreel-style black-and-white footage. (On the other nights, 2011’s Les Yeux et l’âme, opened the program.) For 1966’s Homemade, former TBDC member Vicky Shick returned for the short solo work in which she wears an old-fashioned projector that displays a film (by Babette Mangolte, based on Robert Whitman’s original) of Shick dancing wearing an old-fashioned projector. As she slowly moves around the stage, the film appears on the back wall, on the ceiling, and on the audience itself. Different-colored wall screens by artist Donald Judd occasionally descend from above and divide the stage into claustrophobic spaces in Newark (Niweweorce), set to Judd’s minimalist score that combines silence with bolts of loud noises that resemble the sounds of an MRI, which didn’t exist when the piece debuted in 1987. And in the new I’m going to toss my arms—if you catch them they’re yours, eight dancers in loose-fitting white costumes interact with large industrial fans that blow their clothes off, revealing colorful briefs and bathing suits as Alvin Curran plays “Toss and Find” on the piano in the far corner. The informal yet elegant movement throughout all four works is slow and steady, emphasizing form and function in compelling ways, paying tribute to Brown’s profound influence on the world of postmodern dance. At the beginning of the evening, an offstage voice announced that the night will honor the “past, present, and future” of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and the troupe will indeed continue, with Brown, now seventy-six, taking on the official title of founding artistic director and choreographer. Following the tour of “Proscenium Works, 1979-2011,” TBDC will return to its roots, concentrating on presenting multimedia works in unusual spaces beginning in 2015.

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY

New York premiere of “I’m going to toss my arms—if you catch them they’re yours” is part of Trisha Brown Dance Company program at BAM (photo by Laurent Philippe)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
January 30 – February 2, $20-$70, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.trishabrowncompany.org

This past fall, BAM bid farewell to Pina Bausch as Tanztheater Wuppertal presented the final work by the legendary German choreographer, “…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…” (Like moss on a stone), who died in 2009 at the age of sixty-nine. Now BAM is saying goodbye to another dance master as Trisha Brown brings her last two pieces to the Howard Gilman Opera House from January 30 to February 2. Now seventy-six, the Washington State-born Brown has been presenting dance at BAM since January 1976. How to describe her eclectic style? In fall 1993, influential multimedia artist and choreographer Yvonne Rainer wrote in BOMB magazine, “The task of describing Trisha Brown’s unique form of dancing is daunting. Its inscrutable blend of zaniness, athleticism, delicacy, and logic, always evading mimetic clichés, similarly eludes language, like a half-forgotten word or phrase that can’t quite roll off the tip of the tongue.” The Trisha Brown Dance Company will be performing two programs at BAM. The first (January 30, February 1-2) consists of 1987’s Newark (Niweweorce), featuring audiovisual elements by minimalist Donald Judd and Peter Zummo and lighting by Ken Tabachnick; the New York premiere of Les Yeux et l’âme, set to music by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion, with lighting by Jennifer Tipton and costumes by Elizabeth Cannon; the New York premiere of I’m going to toss my arms—if you catch them they’re yours, with video by Burt Barr, costumes by Kaye Voyce, and lighting by John Torres, set to Alvin Curran’s “Toss and Find”; and 1966’s Homemade, a solo danced by Vicky Shick, with an original film by theatrical happenings mainstay Robert Whitman. The second program (January 31) comprises Newark (Niweweorce), I’m going to toss my arms—if you catch them they’re yours, Homemade, and the thirtieth-anniversary presentation of the 1983 BAM commission Set and Reset, a collaboration with Laurie Anderson, Robert Rauschenberg, and Beverly Emmons. The company features Neal Beasley, Cecily Campbell, Tara Lorenzen, Megan Madorin, Leah Morrison, Tamara Riewe, Jamie Scott, Stuart Shugg, Nicholas Strafaccia, and Samuel Wentz. In conjunction with the performances, John Rockwell, Wendy Perron, and Stephen Petronio will participate in an “Iconic Artist Talk: On Trisha Brown” on February 2 at 5:00 at the BAM Fisher Fishman Space.

EIKO & KOMA: THE CARAVAN PROJECT

Eiko and Koma will be performing THE CARAVAN PROJECT through January 21 at MoMA (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PERFORMING HISTORIES: LIVE ARTWORKS EXAMINING THE PAST
Museum of Modern Art, Agnes Gund Garden Lobby
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through January 21
Museum admission: $25 ($12 can be applied to the purchase of a film ticket within thirty days)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.eikoandkoma.org

Although Eiko & Koma refer to their 1999 work, The Caravan Project, as “a vehicle for art activism,” it does not seek to make any comments on political or social issues. Instead, it was created to help promote art, particularly bringing it to those who either don’t have access to it or don’t know much about it. Reconfigured as part of their ongoing Retrospective Project, the 2012 version of Caravan has pulled into the MoMA lobby in front of Rodin’s “Monument to Balzac,” where the New York-based Japanese couple are performing during all hours the museum is open, through January 21. Placed right by the entrance, it forces people to see it on their way into MoMA as well as on their way out, so even if visitors intend to make a beeline straight for a specific exhibit, it is hard to miss an unhooked trailer that opens on all four sides, with a man and a woman either inside it or walking around outside, wearing decrepit white material that seems to be molting off their bodies as they move ever so slowly. It also can be seen without having to pay the $25 admission charge, furthering the dancers’ desire to bring the project to people who might not be able to afford hefty museum fees.

Koma emerges from the trailer and takes a slow walk in MoMA lobby (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Koma emerges from trailer and takes slow walk in MoMA lobby (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Held in conjunction with the “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde” show, the “Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema, 1960–1986” film series, and the “Performing Histories: Live Artworks Examining the Past” exhibition, The Caravan Project is for the first time being presented indoors without the Jeep that drives them to the site at the beginning and takes them away at the end. Instead, Eiko and Koma have become one with the museum, much as their work throughout the years has seen them merge with the natural environment, either real or constructed, in works such as Naked and Water. With The Caravan Project, at times they’ll be playing to a large crowd surrounding the trailer, where visitors are allowed to get within three feet of them, while at other moments there might be no one watching, just museumgoers passing by without even glancing their way, but that is all part of this compelling living installation. The trailer itself is filled with bare tree branches and beehive-like detritus above and below, with Eiko and Koma, in all white, emerging in between as if coming out of cocoons following an apocalyptic nightmare. Spiderwebs are wrapped around their faces, making it appear that they’ve been dormant for a long time before rising again. Their Butoh-like movements are painstakingly slow; it is electrifying when they actually touch each other, appearing to be so desperately in need of human contact in this barren, desolate scene, the only sound coming from the crowd itself. “Performing Histories” continues through May 25 with such upcoming programs as Kelly Nipper’s Tessa Pattern Takes a Picture, Fabian Barba’s A Mary Wigman Dance Evening, and El Arakawa’s Paris & Wizard: The Musical.

COIL: MAGICAL

Anne Juren exposes her body and more in MAGICAL collaboration with Annie Dorsen at New York Live Arts

ANNE JUREN AND ANNIE DORSEN: MAGICAL
New York Live Arts, Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 17-18, 7:30, and January 19, 6:00, $30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org

In Magical, Anne Juren and Annie Dorsen recontextualize five seminal works in the history of feminist performance art, restaging them as theatrical entertainment for the twenty-first century. New Yorker Dorsen (cocreator of Passing Strange) and the Vienna-based Juren (founder of Wiener Tanz-und Kunstbewegung), who previously collaborated on Pièce Sans Paroles, explore ideas of illusion and transformation as Juren brings together the five radical pieces, which all date from between 1964 and 1975, taking them out of the avant-garde art gallery world and into a respected performance venue dedicated to movement artistry. They also add numerous magic tricks, designed by Steve Cuiffo, that play with reality and spectators’ perception. “Perhaps our generation has gotten a little comfortable inside the trap,” Dorsen tells Olivia Jane Smith in the program notes. “Have we won the right to self-exploit? Or self-objectivize?” The solo piece examines these questions and more in five re-creations, beginning with Carolee Schneeman’s Interior Scroll, in which Schneeman’s voice can be heard in a moving gold box, reading text that, back in 1975, came out of her vagina. Juren next appears in a kitchen as she reimagines Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen, picking up a knife and making violent motions and exposing a breast and filling a cup with milk. She then takes on Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, using scissors to snip away pieces of her dress and undergarments until she is naked, then wraps part of the dress around her face and, as Marina Abramović did in Freeing the Body, starts dancing wildly, but this time to loud music that includes Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” in which Robert Plant famously screams, “Way down inside.”

After a film clip of Schneeman’s Meat Joy, Juren returns to Interior Scroll, pulling surprising things out of her vagina that deal with power, further exerting her control over the proceedings. It’s a tour-de-force sixty minutes that both honors those performance artists who came before her and forces the audience to consider issues of voyeurism, nudity, and the continually changing role of women in society. Back in the ’60s, Virginia Slims might have proclaimed, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” but Magical confirms what we all know: There’s still a long way to go. Magical continues at New York Live Arts through January 19 as part of PS 122’s Coil festival. The January 17 performance will be proceeded at 6:30 by the Come Early Conversation “The Feminist Performance Art Canon,” while the January 18 show will be followed by the Stay Late Discussion “Strategies of Illusion and Transformation in Modern Performance,” with Vallejo Gantner and Carla Peterson. Juren and Dorsen will also host a Shared Practice class on January 19 at 1:30 involving trance and improvisation in choreography.

AMERICAN REALNESS — FAYE DRISCOLL: YOU’RE ME

Faye Driscoll will perform YOU’RE ME at American Realness festival this weekend (photo by Stephen Schreiber)

Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Friday, January 18, 7:00; Saturday, January 19, 9:00; Sunday, January 20, 4:00
Tickets: $20
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.fayedriscoll.com

Bessie-award-winning choreographer Faye Driscoll creates inventive, unpredictable works that mix a sly sense of humor with serious social commentary, resulting in such engaging pieces of dance theater as There Is So Much Mad in Me, 837 Venice Blvd. and WOW, MOM, WOW. This weekend she is bringing back last year’s vastly entertaining You’re Me, which ran at the Kitchen in April 2012 and will now be presented at the Abrons Arts Center as part of the American Realness festival. In You’re Me, the New York-based Driscoll examines the complicated, ever-changing nature of interpersonal relationships. As the audience enters the space, Driscoll and a male dancer (Jesse Zaritt at the Kitchen, Aaron Mattocks at Abrons) are standing still and ridiculously tall at the back of the stage, wearing a bevy of costumes that reference Lewis Carroll’s Red and White Queens as well as Winnie from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, combining humor with absurdity. Pieces of their outfits start to fall off until the performers are reduced to their basic selves and begin exploring each other through a series of awkward movements as if on a first date, feeling out the possibilities as they touch, squirm, hug, eat, and experiment with their bodies, learning about themselves and their partner. This first section, which is performed with little or no background music and evokes silent films at times, goes on slightly too long but eventually morphs into a middle piece in which the duo goes crazy with spray paint before ending with an exhilarating display of props and costumes (courtesy of Emily Roysdon) changing at a furious pace. You’re Me is another strong, intricately conceived work from a talented choreographer who is not afraid to take chances and challenge both her audience and her dancers. Here she delves into the very essence of art and creativity as she and her partner keep going for ninety breathless minutes that allow plenty of room for improvisation, so you never can guess quite what is going to happen next. American Realness runs through January 20 and also features works by Jeanine Durning, BodyCartography Project, Miguel Gutierrez, and others. Look for Driscoll again in March, when she’ll be presenting new work at the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival.