this week in dance

NELLY VAN BOMMEL / NØA DANCE: PINGULI, PINGULI

Nelly van Bommel explores community culture and ritual in PINGULI, PINGULI, playing this week at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
April 18-19, $20, 7:30
866-811-4111
www.bacnyc.org

Born and raised in France by Dutch parents and now based in Mamaroneck, Nelly van Bommel uses her diverse background in dance, dance theater, musicals, improvisation, and athletics to create eclectic pieces inspired by folk culture, as evidenced by such works as Pax Aeterna, Fanfarnèta, and Addio Amore. Van Bommel and her talented NØA Dance troupe will explore community ritual and practice in Pinguli, Pinguli, a fifty-minute piece that will be performed at the Baryshnikov Arts Center April 18 and 19. Set to music by Savina Yannatou, a popular Greek singer and songwriter who has composed works for the National Theatre of Greece and the Theatre of Silence, Pinguli, Pinguli mixes in a playful sense of humor with classical ballet movement in its choreography. Tickets are $20, but if you combine it with the May 2 or 4 Orchestra of St. Luke’s presentation of “Life Stories” — an evening of Mozart, Marshall, and Glière that is part of the Morgan Library’s Chamber Music Series and costs $45 by itself — you can get two tickets to each event for a total of $50.

TWI-NY TALK: LEIMAY (XIMENA GARNICA AND SHIGE MORIYA)

Ximena Garnica reflects on the return of FLOATING POINT WAVES to HERE (photo by Piotr Redliński)

FLOATING POINT WAVES
HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
April 10-14, 8:30, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Artistic directors of LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival, dancer-choreographer Ximena Garnica and video installation artist Shige Moriya collaborate on works that beautifully integrate sound, movement, and image. In such pieces as Furnace, Trace of Purple Sadness, and Becoming, they’ve created immersive, meditative environments that subtly dazzle the mind. They’re currently in the midst of a two-week run of Floating Point Waves, an evening-length show they first presented in January 2011 at HERE’s Culturemart festival as part of the downtown institution’s Artist Residency Program. In between working on Floating Point Waves and preparing for the inaugural SOAK Festival, which begins April 25, they answered some questions for our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: We saw Floating Point Waves when it was presented as a work-in-progress at HERE’s Culturemart festival last year. How has it evolved since then?

LEIMAY: The Floating Point Waves process has been a bit like the formation of those things inside a limestone cave called stalagmites. That kind of formation rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions over long periods of time. Last year the piece itself needed more time for the dripping to carve new forms and uncover new colors. Last year we had found new elements, such as two new kinetic systems — the point sculpture and the tulle tubes — but had not fully integrated them to the level of the other two (pool & string sculpture). The pool and the string sculpture had been worked longer. In the creative process and especially in Floating Point Waves, time is very important. There is something about cooking on a small flame, no?

twi-ny: Indeed. The two of you have been collaborating now as LEIMAY for many years. What is the best thing about working together?

LEIMAY: We were born in very different places, Japan [Moriya] and Colombia [Garnica]. We speak very different languages and communicate in a third language. We were educated very differently, and growing up we studied different things, but somehow we share similar values. So the best thing is when through the work we make together, despite all our differences, somehow we can connect and find the essence of whatever it is we are creating. This might sound vague, but think about those so called “aha moments”; if you have them alone it is great, but when you have them together it is beyond words! However, sometimes those “aha moments” don’t come and one of us is stuck but the other can keep going — that is great too; there is some generosity involved and lots of love.

twi-ny: What is the worst thing about working together?

LEIMAY: When we are totally disagreeing about something and the more we talk the more we disagree but then suddenly we realize that we actually agree but our English is so off that it all seems like a disagreement . . . but in fact it was a lost-in-translation moment. It is awful.

twi-ny: Much of what you do is rooted in the butoh discipline. What is the most misunderstood aspect of butoh?

LEIMAY: Well, we like to say that our work ranges from photography to video art, art installations, interdisciplinary performances, and training projects. And although it is true that Ximena has been training with butoh artists and masters for the past twelve years, our performances and training projects are rooted in the body. What is really at stake is the body. Our contact with butoh has opened our mind to thinking about and questioning the meaning of the dancing body and its possible relationships with space and time.

For audiences, perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of butoh is the expectation of white body-painted people moving slow with grotesque faces and a bit of drooling. For performers, perhaps the most misunderstood aspects are 1.) the mystification of master teachers and of butoh itself and 2.) the view of butoh as a codified form.

FLOATING POINT WAVES is another subtly dazzling collaboration between Ximena Garnica and Shige Moirya (photo by Piotr Redliński)

twi-ny: You’ve been organizing the New York Butoh Festival since 2003, and this year you’re staging the first SOAK Festival. What can people expect to see in this new festival?

LEIMAY: Actually, the SOAK Festival is taking over the New York Butoh Festival. In the spirit of the interdisciplinary nature of our creations and of the ecology from which our work sprouts, we are launching the first annual SOAK Festival. People can expect nothing. Yes, it is true: We want people to come without expectation. They are invited to our home to meet our friends. We have a good sense for assembling acts and we have an eclectic group of friends and colleagues and, most importantly, we want to share their work with those who make it out to Williamsburg.

This year we will have a deluge of acts and workshops from April 25 to May 13. Opening the festival are an experimental guitarist from Sicily, Ninni Morgia, and his partner, vocalist Silvia Kastel. Next is an unplugged version of a collaboration between butoh legend Ko Murobushi and San Francisco’s Shinichi Iova-Koga of inkBoat. The festival will continue with work from CAVE resident artists such as Russian theater innovator and international master teacher Polina Klimovitskaya and choreographer Rachel Cohen. Former Fulbright Fellow and Movement Research resident Ben Spatz and his theater partner Maximilian Balduzzi are also among those performing. The SOAK Festival workshops are equally eclectic, such as a drawing mural narrative workshop by Tijuana-born, Brooklyn-based draftsman artist Hugo Crosthwaite, an augmented reality lecture/demonstration by NYU teacher and activist Mark Skwarek, a sonoric voice workshop by Uruguayan vocal virtuoso Sabrina Lastman, as well as our own workshop led by Ximena on our training and performance technique called Ludus.

It seems to us like we all see life and performances and things with our own frame. Through our work and the production of the SOAK Festival we challenge ourselves and our audiences to make these frames as malleable as possible so we can expand our understanding of the body and our experience and understanding of daily life. Consequently, we enlarge the realms of perception and creation and discover the possibilities for interaction therein. We hope all of you reading this will make it out to CAVE for the first SOAK Festival.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: FLOATING POINT WAVES

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
April 10-14, 8:30, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org

In January 2011, HERE presented a workshop production of LEIMAY’s Floating Point Waves as part of its annual Culturemart festival. The experimental evening-length piece, which is now having its official premiere at HERE, continuing April 10-14, was conceived and designed by dancer-choreographer Ximena Garnica and video artist Shige Moriya, the duo that runs the New York Butoh Festival, the upcoming inaugural SOAK Festival, and CAVE. Garnica and Moriya are also the masterminds behind LEIMAY, the performance installation company whose previous works include Furnace, Trace of Purple Sadness, and Becoming. In Floating Point Waves, Garnica and Moriya, collaborating with sound composer Jeremy D. Slater and lighting designer Solomon Weisbard, create an immersive, meditative environment that shimmers with shadows and reflections, splashes of color in the darkness, and slow movement through strings and water as a live electronic score plays along with real-time video, coming together to create a mesmerizing experience. Garnica and Moriya will participate in the discussion “Tracing the Art” after the April 10 performance, while the April 11 show will be followed by an audience roundtable.

FIRST SATURDAYS: PARTY OF LIFE

Keith Haring, “Untitled,” Sumi ink on Bristol board, 1980 (© Keith Haring Foundation)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Pennsylvania-born Keith Haring was one of the most influential street artists and activists of his generation. Known for his drawings and sculpture of cartoony characters, Haring redefined public art in New York City, where he moved when he was nineteen in 1978. In conjunction with the recent opening of its exhibit “Keith Haring: 1978-1982,” the Brooklyn Museum is dedicating its free April First Saturday programming to the life and career of Haring, who died in 1990 of AIDS-related complications. There will be guided tours of the exhibition, a break-dance performance by Floor Royalty Crew, workshops where visitors can make Haring-inspired buttons and Pop art prints, an artist talk by photographer Christopher Makos, who documented the street art scene in the 1970s and ’80s, a talk by Will Hermes about his new book, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, and a dance party hosted by legendary DJ Junior Vasquez. In addition, there will be concerts by the Library Is on Fire and Comandante Zero (with live video) and a screening of Jacob Krupnick’s Girl Walk // All Day (followed by a Q&A with the director and some of the dancers in the film). As always, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out the Keith Haring exhibit as well as “Playing House,” “Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin,” “Raw/Cooked: Shura Chernozatonskaya,” “Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919,” “Question Bridge: Black Males,” and “19th-Century Modern.”

GERTRUDE’S PARIS FESTIVAL

Symphony Space will celebrate American ex-pat Gertrude Stein and Paris with springtime festival

Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
April 1 – May 5, free – $95
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org

“America is my country and Paris is my hometown,” Gertrude Stein famously said about the City of Lights. Symphony Space is celebrating the Lost Generation writer’s longtime love affair with the romantic French city with five weeks of special programming, including film screenings, jazz concerts, literary discussions, wine tastings, and dancing. Held in conjunction with the Met’s current exhibit “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” (running through June 3), “Gertrude’s Paris” begins on April 1 with Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris, a free reception for the “My Paris!” and “La Revue Nègre” photo exhibitions, a free jazz cabaret with the Nick Finzer Trio, and Perry Miller Adato’s documentary Paris: The Luminous Years. The festival continues with such events as “Wearing the Lost Generation: A Musical/Sartorial Salon” on April 5, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso on April 8, “Great Taste! Red Wines of France” on April 10, “Tin Hat Takes on E. E. Cummings” on April 13, Arne Glimcher’s Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies on April 22, “Josephine Baker/Archival Footage” on April 29, and the free, all-day “Wall to Wall: Gertrude’s Paris” party on May 5. The series also offers a great chance to catch up on the work of Jean Renoir, with Sunday screenings of Beauty and the Beast (April 8), Boudu Saved from Drowning (April 15), and The Rules of the Game (April 22).

SAKURA — SPRING RENEWS, BEAUTY BLOOMS: KABUKI DANCE

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
March 29-31,
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

For more than five hundred years, Japan has been telling stories using the art form known as kabuki, a highly stylized dance play that features ornate costumes, intricately choreographed movement, heavy makeup, and extreme facial gestures. As part of Japan Society’s “Sakura — Spring Renews, Beauty Blooms” festival, nihon buyo (Japanese classical dance) master Bando Kotoji will lead his troupe through four kabuki works March 29-31. Accompanied by live music, the program includes Sanbaso, Cho no Michiyuki (“The Last Journey of Two Butterflies”), Tamatori Ama (“The Pearl Diver”), and Yoshino-yama (“Yoshino Mountain”). All performances will be preceded by a lecture on shamisen music and kabuki dance by Dr. Sachiyo Ito. Japan Society will also be hosting a kabuki workshop on Saturday morning at 10:15 led by Bando; although participant tickets are sold out, you can still attend as an observer for eight dollars. Japan Society’s spring festival continues through April 14 with such films as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Hana: The Tale of a Reluctant Samurai, a haiku workshop led by Sho Otaka and John Stevenson, and “J-Cation 2012,” an all-day event that includes live music, dance, art, film, food, storytelling, demonstrations, and more.

DANCE CONVERSATIONS 2012

David Appel will present “a boat makes its way across the water” on Saturday night at free festival at the Flea (photo by Jim Willet)

The Flea Theater
41 White St. between Broadway & Church St.
Through March 25, free
212-226-2407
www.theflea.org

The annual free Dance Conversations festival runs through Sunday at the Flea Theater, combining dance, film, and discussion. This year’s program, curated by Nina Winthrop and Taimi Strehlow, continues Thursday night with performances by Jessica Ray, Movement of the People Dance Company, Vangeline, and Megan Sipe, moderated by Gina Gibney. Friday night’s show includes Molissa Fenley, Maggie Bennett, Caliince Dance, and binbinFactory, moderated by Carol Ostrow. Pele Bauch moderates Saturday night’s program, with Alaine Handa/A.H. Dance Company, David Appel, Beau Hancock, and Talya Epstein. The festival concludes on Sunday afternoon with presentations by Luke Murphy, BARKIN/SELISSEN PROJECT, Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, and Peggy and Murray Schwartz celebrating Pearl Primus, moderated by Jonah Bokaer.