this week in dance

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.

PARSONS DANCE

The world premiere of former Parsons dancer Kate Skarpetowska’s BLACK FLOWERS is part of winter season at the Joyce (photo by Jill Orschel)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 15-27, $10-$59
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org
www.parsonsdance.org

Parsons Dance returns to the Joyce this week for its annual winter season, running January 15-27, during which the New York–based company will present new works in addition to selections from its repertory. The program is highlighted by the world premiere of Black Flowers by guest choreographer and former Parsons dancer Kate Skarpetowska as well as the new Dawn to Dusk, a multimedia piece that is part of Wolf Trap’s Face of America: Spirit of South Florida series. For Black Flowers, Skarpetowska, who contributed A Stray’s Lullaby to last year’s program, goes back to her native Poland, using the music of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin in depicting sacred trios of women in the midst of mourning rituals. Created during a specially commissioned trip to the Sunshine State, Dawn to Dusk features music by Andrew Bird and Tiempo Libre, photographs by Clyde Butcher, and video by Blue Land Media, transporting audiences to the natural environments of Big Cypress National Preserve, Biscayne National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park, and Everglades National Park. Also on the bill are Wolfgang, an elegant ballet for three male-female duos set to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the 2007 ensemble piece In the End, set to such Dave Matthews Band songs as “When the World Ends,” “Satellite,” and “Out of My Hands”; and 1982 company favorite Caught, in which a solo dancer moves to the music of Robert Fripp while seemingly being trapped in midair by stroboscopic lights. There will also be a special family matinee on January 26 at 2:00 that consisting of Dawn to Dusk, Wolfgang, and In the End. The current troupe who will perform at the Joyce includes Abby Silva Gavezzoli, Eric Bourne, Steven Vaughn, Melissa Ullom, Christina Ilisije, Jason Macdonald, Ian Spring, Elena D’Amario, Lauren Garson, and apprentice Leeann Ramsey.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE SHOWCASE 2013: JAPAN + EAST ASIA

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 11, and Saturday, January 12, $28, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society gathers together dancers and choreographers from Tokyo, Kyoto, and Taipei this weekend for the fifteenth annual Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + East Asia. Makotocluv founder Makoto Enda, who specializes in environmental performances, teams up with former Dairakudakan dancer Kumotaro Mukai on Misshitsu: Secret Honey Room – Duo Version, what is being called “post-post-post-butoh.” The officially stated goal of Tokyo-based hip-hop superstar Kentaro!! and his company, Tokyo Electrock Stairs, is “to touch your heart and break through it,” and they’ll attempt to do just that with Send It, Mr. Monster, a work set to Japanese pop songs and standards. In Kyoto-based choreographer Kosei Sakamoto’s elegiac Haigafuru~Ash is falling, five members of his Monochrome Circus company move very slowly over a stage continually changing color; the piece was inspired by his personal reaction to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And in the multimedia, interactive Seventh Sense, Taipei-based choreographer Chieh-hua Hsieh blends sound, movement, and color as his Anarchy Dance Theatre and the audience itself influence motion sensors that reconfigure the space and alter perception. The January 11 show will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists reception.

COIL: NIICUGNI

Emily Johnson and Aretha Aoki bring a sense of shared community and responsibility to NIICUGNI (photo by Chris Cameron)

EMILY JOHNSON / CATALYST: NIICUGNI
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
January 9-12, $20, 7:30
212-811-4111
www.bacnyc.org
www.ps122.org

Alaska native Emily Johnson has titled her latest performance installation Niicugni, which means “to listen, to pay attention to,” and the Minneapolis-based choreographer once again proves she’s someone to pay attention to with the complex multimedia piece. Johnson incorporates themes of community and narrative in the immersive work, pronounced “nee-CHOOG-nee,” exploring people’s interconnectedness with the land, animals, and humanity itself in the past, present, and future. In a space filled with fish-skin lanterns hung at varying heights (and some containing speakers), Johnson and Aretha Aoki, wearing masks of their faces, move toward the audience like salmon swimming upstream, preparing to reproduce. Aoki tears up her mask, then puts the scraps awkwardly back on her face, introducing one of Niicugni’s central themes — the act of cutting things apart and putting them back together. “Do you remember the story I told you about the tree? I’ll tell it again,” Johnson says near the start of the show. “There was a monster that bit off my ear. Then, he cut off my arms, every branch. He cut my leg at the knee. He cut my belly and head. He kept cutting and cutting. . . . My mother stitched back my arms, my aunties sang back my legs, I poured by own blood back in.”

NIICUGNI examines interconnectedness and identity in immersive multimedia performance installation (photo by Ves Pitts)

Inspired by seeing a gallery exhibit of fish-skin art in 2009, Johnson had volunteers around the country create the lanterns, taking the dried salmon skin and sewing the pieces back together to make something new, building useful objects as well as a sense of community. Later, her father, a Yupik, received land from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which took a large section of earth and divided it up. Niicugni contains several stories relating to these ideas as it delves into the art of storytelling itself. Over the course of seventy minutes, Johnson and Aoki eagerly share tales of a duck, a bear, and a fox; are joined by men, women, and children who emerge from the crowd and backstage; interact with lighting designer Heidi Eckwall, violinist Bethany Lacktorin, and guitarist-composer James Everest (who is also Johnson’s husband); and perform pas de deux that range from the abstract to the surreal to the self-referential. Niicugni began with birth, and it ends with a discussion of death, but Johnson does so, as always, with a sly, knowing grin. Now part of a trilogy that will conclude with Shore in 2014, Niicugni can be compelling and confusing, captivating and, at times, clunky. Not all of the individual sections work, but they come together to form another of Johnson’s engaging and involving examinations of personal and collective identity and humanity’s responsibility to the planet. In November 2011, Johnson and her Catalyst company presented The Thank-You Bar at New York Live Arts, winning an Outstanding Production award at the 2012 Bessies “for gently and deftly coaxing an audience into a community, holding them spellbound with stories spoken and unspoken. . . . for reminding us that we all come from a place unknowable, yet known.” Niicugni continues those ideas more than admirably. A very hot ticket, Niicugni runs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center through January 12 as part of PS122’s Coil festival; Johnson will participate in a free SPAN conversation on January 16 at 12 noon at the COIL hub at Dixon Place.

AMERICAN REALNESS — MARIA HASSABI: SHOW

Maria Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas will take SHOW back indoors for “American Realness” festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Thursday, January 10, 7:00; Friday, January 11, 7:00; Saturday, January 12, 4:30; Sunday, January 13, 7:00
Tickets: $20
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.mariahassabi.com

In November 2011, Maria Hassabi presented SHOW at the Kitchen, where she and longtime collaborator Hristoula Harakas slowly weaved, wiggled, and wound their way across the floor amid the audience, which was allowed to go wherever they wanted, whether standing in the back or sitting right next to the performers. This past June, Hassabi and Harakas took the fab gathering outdoors on Broad St. as part of the free River to River Festival, where they interacted not only with an audience specifically there to see them but with passersby who had no idea what was going on. Intricately connected with its surroundings, SHOW can next be seen January 10-13 at Abrons Arts Center as part of the “American Realness” festival. Featuring sound design by Alex Waterman that incorporates freshly recorded noise and voices, including those of the audience itself, SHOW is an intimate experience in which Hassabi and Harakas do amazing things with their bodies, displaying remarkable elegance and strength as they move incredibly slowly, staring deep into each other’s eyes, crawling over their bodies, and holding their legs in the air in breathtaking positions. But SHOW breaks down the wall between audience and performer only so much as the crowd separates like a human Red Sea to let Hassabi and Harakas dance through. “American Realness” runs January 10-20 and also features works by Trajal Harrell, Faye Driscoll, Jack Ferver, Jeanine Durning, Tere O’Connor, Juliana May, and others.

AMERICAN REALNESS 2013: MON MA MES

Jack Ferver examines his life and his work in self-analytical MON MA MES at Abrons Arts Center and FIAF (photo by Yaniv Schulman)

Thursday, January 10, Le Skyroom, French Institute Alliance Française, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves., free with RSVP, 212-355-6160, 7:30
Friday, January 11, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St., $20, 5:30
Saturday, January 12, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St., $20, 3:00

In such engaging works as Rumble Ghost, Swann!, and Two Alike, dancer, writer, and choreographer Jack Ferver digs deep within himself while telling stories inspired by familiar pop-culture tales. He goes a few steps further with Mon Ma Mes, in which he explores the nature of fiction and reality in an extremely intimate and revealing performance about his life and work. Mon Ma Mes premiered at the French Institute Alliance Française’s 2012 Crossing the Line festival, and it is now being presented again at FIAF as well as the Abrons Arts Center January 10-12. In the sixty-minute piece, Ferver takes “questions” from not-necessarily-random people in the audience, pulls individuals out of the crowd to join him, and breaks out into painstaking movements as he relates deeply personal tales from his younger days. As with most of his works, Ferver infuses Mon Ma Mes with intentionally uncomfortable moments in which the audience is not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. An exquisitely talented dancer, Ferver, at times accompanied by Reid Bartelme, moves to Schubert and Chopin as well as a commissioned piece by electronic music artist Roarke Menzies, twirling, jumping, and doing push-ups in tight shorts while John Fireman films everything as part of a documentary he is making about him. Mon Ma Mes is another compelling, self-analytical evening-length work by one of New York’s most inventive performers.

(The performances are part of the annual American Realness series, held in conjunction with the APAP conference. ”American Realness” runs January 10-20 with such other events as Maria Hassabi’s Show, Trajal Harrell’s Antigone Sr. / Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church [L], Jeanine Durning’s inging, and Faye Driscoll’s You’re Me.)