this week in dance

HOWL! FESTIVAL 2012

Street artists will surround Tompkins Square Park with colorful murals during the Howl! Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tompkins Square Park
Ave. A to Ave. B between Seventh & Tenth Sts.
June 2-3, free
www.howlfestival.com

The Howl! Festival returned last night to Tompkins Square Park, where it continues this weekend with a flurry of music, poetry, dance, theater, art, and “madness.” Today, as 140 artists create murals on canvases that surround the park, such groups as the Disco Monkeys and the Bowery Tones will play on the south stag. On the north stage, Honeybee House, the TriBattery Pops, Tap City, and Lydon will perform for children. Also for little ones, the Great Howl! Out Loud Kids’ Carnival will feature carnival games, arts and crafts, storytelling, and other activities. At the basketball court area, Bandera Fever! celebrates Puerto Rican heritage with Dao Y El Grupo Cemi, BombaYo, Elani Rodriguez, John Acevedo AKA Chance, J. F. Seary, Dinamicas, Senior Bomba & Plena Dancers from Grand Street Settlement, and a domino tournament. Super DJ Johnny Dynell will lead the Hot Howl! Disco Tea Dance near the General Slocum Memorial from 2:00 to 5:00, the Vangeline Theatre will perform The Raft of the Medusa, and Derrick Pendavis Xtravaganza will lead the unpredictable “Men in Skirts” dance presentation at 5:30. On Sunday, Hip Hop Howl, the Deans of Discipline, the Sic Fucks, and Bear 54, will be on the main stage, Rosie’s Theater Kids, Danny Hartig, Honeybee House, and Jack Skuller will be on the kids’ north stage, Bandera Fever! will continue with a Cultural Rumba Jam, and the festival will conclude with “Low Life 6: East Village Others,” paying tribute to the Fugs song “Nova Slum Goddess (from the Lower East Side),” Jack Smith, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the Fillmore East, Allen Ginsberg, and other old standards from the East Village circa 1966-72.

GOTHAM DANCE FESTIVAL

Gallim Dance will present the world premiere of SIT, KNEEL, STAND at the Joyce’s annual Gotham Dance Festival (photo by Franziska Strauss)

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
May 30 – June 10, $10-$39, 2:00
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org

Organized by the Gotham Arts Exchange, whose motto is “Think • Innovate • Promote • Develop • Produce • Dance,” this year’s Gotham Dance Festival features five programs by emerging, cutting-edge, and established choreographers at the Joyce. The Brian Brooks Moving Company, which made its Joyce debut at the festival last year, returns with the New York premiere of Big City, about destruction and reconstruction, set within a dynamic aluminum installation. On June 2-3, Canadian choreographer Peter Quanz’s Q Dance makes its Joyce debut with the Hong Kong Ballet commission Luminous and the Guggenheim commission In Tandem, set to music by Steve Reich, on a shared bill with two works by Jodie Gates, Embellish performed by Colorado Ballet and Delicate Balance danced by BalletX. On June 5, the Gotham Arts Exchange benefit “Working Women” will celebrate American choreographers Pam Tanowitz, Camille A. Brown, Carolyn Dorfman, Loni Landon, Jane Comfort, Monica Bill Barnes, and Gates with an evening of solos, duets, excerpts, and world premieres. L.A’s BODYTRAFFIC will take over June 6-7 with new works by Barak Marshall and Richard Siegal as well as Stijn Celis’s Fragile Dwellings. The festival concludes June 8-10 with Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance performing the world premiere of the evening-length Sit, Kneel, Stand, which explores artistic barriers and borders, set to original music by Jerome Begin and Christopher Lancaster.

DANCEAFRICA: ONE AFRICA/MANY RHYTHMS

The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will once again lead the BAM DanceAfrica celebration on Memorial Day Weekend (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 25-28, free – $50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

For some people, it isn’t summer in New York City until the beaches and pools open, or half-day Fridays begin, or the free outdoor music series kick off all over town. For us, summer doesn’t get under way until BAM’s annual DanceAfrica returns, four days of dance, film, music, fashion, food, and one of the best street fairs of the year. The thirty-fifth annual cultural celebration starts in the Howard Gilman Opera House on May 25 with performances by the Adanfo Ensemble, Farafina Kan: The Sound of Africa, United African Dance Troupe, and the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. On Saturday, Adanfo and Restoration will be joined by the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre and the Oyu Oro Afro-Cuban Dance Company, on Sunday by Illstyle Peace Productions and Creative Outlet, and on Monday by Hamalali Wayunagu Garifuna and Asase Yaa. The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will participate in an Iconic Artist Talk on May 27 at 6:00 with Kariamu Welsh in the Hillman Attic Studio. The Mason-Jam-Ja Band will play BAMcafé Live on Friday night at 10:00, while the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra Salute to Don Cornelius & Soul Train takes place on Saturday night, followed by a late-night dance party with DJ Idlemind. BAMcinématek will be screening such films as Fabio Caramaschi’s One Way, a Tuareg Journey, Zelalem Woldemariam Ezare’s Lezare (For Today), Abdelkrim Bahloul’s A Trip to Algiers, Akin Omotoso’s Man on Ground, Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back, Africa, Andy Amadi Okoroafor’s Relentless, Daniel Daniel Cattier’s 50 Years of Independence of Congo, Claus Wischmann & Martin Baer’s Kinshasa Symphony, and Michel Ocelot’s Tales of the Night, with Omotoso, Cattier, and Okoroafor on hand for Q&As. Through June 3, BAM will be hosting the exhibition “Waiting for the Queen,” highlighting works on paper by U.S.-based Nigerian artists Njideka Akunyili and Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, curated by Dexter Wimberly. And on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the DanceAfrica 2012 Bazaar will transform Ashland Pl. into a global marketplace rich with African and Caribbean cultural heritage, including great food, clothes, art, jewelry, books, music, and so much more. “Ago!” “Amée!!”

ADRIENNE WESTWOOD: RECORD

Adrienne Westwood’s RECORD uses the LP to explore time, space, and memory (photo by Seth Easter)

One Arm Red
10 Jay St., ninth floor
May 24-27, $15
718-222-1601
www.onearmred.com
www.adriennewestwood.com

Adrienne Westwood’s evening-length multimedia dance piece Record explores memory, much as the joy of listening to vinyl LPs is a memory to many (and a mystery to others). Collaborating with sound artist Jim Briggs III and designer Seth Easter, Westwood, the Brooklyn-based cofounder of VIA Dance Collaboration (Lullaby in Surrealism, Beside: Ourselves), says of Record, “When you enter the room with the record player, it is playing a song you have never heard. Yet, it sounds familiar. The tone of it tells you it is old. The scratchiness tells you of its history. And since none of us know the song, we know the record wasn’t ours. It never belonged to us. It has brought with it the traces of those we don’t know.” Conceived and choreographed by Westwood, the work, running May 24-27 at Brooklyn’s One Arm Red, incorporates live video, projected images, directional audio, childhood toys, and, yes, a record player; the show is performed by Jung-eun Kim, Lauren Bakst, Julia Kelly, Kathryn Logan, Helen Simoneau, Jacob Slominski, and Katie Swords. On Friday and Saturday, One Arm Red will also present 3 Sticks Theatre Company’s Paper Plane,, along with special performances by AH! HA! Physical Theater and the Iris Ensemble; admission is pay-what-you-can.

NEW YORK DANCE PARADE

Myriad forms of dance are celebrated at annual parade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Parade: Broadway & 21st St. to Tompkins Square Park, 1:00
DanceFest: Tompkins Square Park, 3:00 – 7:00
Saturday, May 19, free
www.danceparade.org
dance parade 2011 slideshow

The sixth annual New York Dance Parade gets its groove on this Saturday, when some six thousand dancers will perform sixty different movement styles beginning at 1:00 at Broadway and 21st St. and continuing down to Tompkins Square Park, where DanceFest takes over from 3:00 to 7:00, with live performances, workshops, demonstrations, information booths, special presentations, and other activities, followed by an after-party at Webster Hall. This year’s grand marshals are former ABT prima ballerina Ashley Tuttle, innovative choreographer Elisa Monte, “disability-based utilitarianism” mastermind Bill Shannon, and DJ and music producer Jonathan “JP” Peters. The parade started as a response to New York’s antiquated Cabaret Law, which in 1926 held that dance was not a form of artistic expression and was not protected by the Second Amendment. The event’s mission is “to promote dance as an expressive and unifying art form by showcasing all forms of dance, educating the general public about the opportunities to experience dance, and celebrating diversity of dance in New York City.” Among this year’s participants are Argentine Tango Dancers of Greater New York City, Bellydance America’s Bellydance Raks Stars, Body & Pole/Pole Riders, Brasileirando, Broadway Bodies, Carmen Caceres & Unsteady Collective, Cheer New York, Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance, Dance New Amsterdam, Dhoonya Dance, El Teatro Rodante Hispanico, Elea Gorana Dance, Hoboken Hip Hop, Inner Spirit Dance Company, Korean Traditional Music and Dance Institute, Liberated Movement, Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company, Metropolidance, Mortal Beasts & Deities, NY Hustle Flash Mob, Smoothskate Entertainment, Sophisticated Veil Dancers, SwiShwiSh Dance, Warriors, Xquisite Cadavers, Zouk Nation, and many more.

NEVER STAND STILL

Documentary celebrates the long history of Jacob’s Pillow as a mecca for dance (photo by Christopher Duggan)

NEVER STAND STILL: DANCING AT JACOB’S PILLOW (Ron Honsa, 2011)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
May 18-24
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
firstrunfeatures.com

In conjunction with the eightieth anniversary of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Ron Honsa has made Never Stand Still, a documentary that celebrates the long history of the national historic landmark dedicated to the art of movement. Narrated by Bill T. Jones, the seventy-five-minute documentary looks back at the founding of the Pillow, located in Becket, Massachusetts, through exciting archival footage of Ted Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, Shawn’s all-male troupe, and the construction of the first American theater dedicated specifically to dance. Honsa speaks with such legendary dancers and choreographers as Merce Cunningham, Suzanne Farrell, Mark Morris, Judith Jamison, Paul Taylor, and Marge Champion, who all discuss the importance of the Pillow as a nurturing creative mecca that continues to bring performers and audiences together from all over the world. “It was a place where people could, quietly or not, think differently and act differently,” Cunningham says in one of his last interviews. Gideon Obarzanek calls the Pillow “one of the few places you can come and really feel and understand the past in order to move into the future.” Honsa focuses on a series of companies and creators as they rehearse and perform at Jacob’s Pillow, including Obarzanek’s Chunky Move, Rasta Thomas and Bad Boy Dance, solo artist Shivantala Shivalingappa, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Jens Rosén and Stockholm 59° North, Nikolaj Hübbe and the Royal Danish Ballet, and Bill Irwin, who pays tribute to the movement skills of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Honsa (The Men Who Danced) gives equal time to the past, present, and future of dance, incorporating classical, modern, contemporary, hip-hop, experimental, ballet, and other styles and genres, playing no favorites. The film runs May 18-24 at the Quad; Honsa and special guests will participate in a Q&A following the 6:15 screening on opening night.

TWI-NY TALK: JACK FERVER

Jack Ferver’s latest show, TWO ALIKE, examines the plight of abused queer youth (photo by RicOrnel Productions)

JACK FERVER & MARC SWANSON: TWO ALIKE
The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
May 17-19, $15, 8:00
212-255-5793 ext11
www.thekitchen.org
jackferver.org

“Jack’s an extremely, if obsessively, dedicated creator,” says composer and sound artist Roarke Menzies of dancer, writer, and choreographer Jack Ferver. “There’s an exacting quality to what he makes.” In such works as Rumble Ghost, A Movie Star Needs a Movie, Swann!!!, and I Am Trying to Hear Myself, the New York City-based Ferver has explored obsession, gender and sexuality, the cult of celebrity, the American dream, and the creative process itself through an inspired mix of text, music, movement, and humor. His latest piece, Two Alike, a collaboration with visual artist Marc Swanson that features an electronic score by Menzies, is a solo performance that examines abused queer youth from the perspective of both a child and an adult. Originally a copresentation of the nonprofit DiverseWorks Art Space and the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Two Alike is now being presented at the Kitchen May 17-19. We corresponded with the amiable and personable Ferver shortly after meeting him at New York Live Arts, where he was seeing his friend John Jasperse’s Fort Blossom revisited 2000/2012.

twi-ny: Two Alike arrives at a time when the abuse of queer youth and bullying in general is front and center in the news. How did the show come about?

Jack Ferver: Marc and I met in 2008 and he saw some of my work (he has pretty much seen all of it by now) and told me he loved it and I did a studio visit and fell in love with his work. It opened a dialogue for us about how we make our work, why we make our work. Of course, that question led back to our childhoods, which seemed to be the best first collaboration. As I worked on the piece, however, the lonely quality of being in a room by myself for hours every day brought up all those early fantasy acts from a very isolated childhood. I was intensely abused by my peers growing up and it was lonely and terrifying. I created worlds by myself to escape and/or confront what was happening to me. And so that early quality of “play” came up and out as I worked on the solo. It was organic and honest and indeed does come at a good time for me to say something about this issue that I feel strongly about as an artist.

twi-ny: At NYLA last week, we spoke briefly about the It Gets Better Project and the responsibility LGBT adults have to LGBT youth. What do you see as the critical issues in that dynamic?

Jack Ferver: What I was talking about was hope, and when you get to have it. Children get to have hope. I had to believe there was somewhere better I would get to when I was a child. I wouldn’t have survived if I didn’t have that. However, I don’t believe in hope as an adult. Adults need to be in reality. Children are killing themselves as a result of ignorance and hatred. Adults who have suffered as children may not be doing so well themselves. That’s the reality. As adults we are responsible, so what are we going to do about it?

Ferver collaborated with visual artist Marc Swanson on TWO ALIKE (photo by Marc Swanson)

twi-ny: We were at NYLA to see John Jasperse’s remarkable restaging of Fort Blossom. Both of you regularly challenge audiences in the way you explore issues of gender identity and sexuality. Would you agree?

Jack Ferver: I can see that. I donʼt function in categorical thought. Martha Graham (my dance mom) quotes Empedocles in [her autobiography] Blood Memory: “For I have been, ere now, a boy and a girl, a bush, a bird, a dumb fish in the sea.” Artists are the stomachs of society. We digest the indigestible. That means we explore all terrains. Gender and sexuality roles are assigned or taken in hopes of a sense of self, as a branch of the ego. And the ego begins with “Me, not me.” As an artist I make my work so that people donʼt feel as lonely as I have felt. Therefore my work expands into something more akin to “I am you.”

twi-ny: You have a wickedly delicious sense of humor. Where does that come from?

Jack Ferver: My mother.

twi-ny: You have playfully skewered such popular films as Poltergeist, Notes on a Scandal, and Black Swan. Do you have plans to take on any other movies or pop-culture icons?

Jack Ferver: Actually, I leave a few days after closing Two Alike for the MANCC residency to start work on All of a Sudden, which I am creating with my dramaturg/associate director Joshua Lubin-Levy. It is loosely inspired by Tennessee Williamsʼs Suddenly Last Summer and explores the similarities between the artist/dramaturg and the patient/therapist relationship. It will go up in 2013 at Abrons Arts Center. Of course, it was a play before the film, but having played Cleopatra this past year [in Me, Michelle], I feel I am being haunted by Liz in some way.