this week in dance

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.

HILARY EASTON + COMPANY: THE CONSTRUCTORS

Hilary Easton celebrates her twentieth anniversary this week with two new shows at BAC

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
May 17-20, $20
212-868-4444
www.bacnyc.org
www.hilaryeaston.com

Native New Yorker Hilary Easton is celebrating her company’s twentieth anniversary in style this week at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. The Manhattan-based dancer and choreographer will be presenting the world premiere of the evening-length piece The Constructors, which will be performed by Alexandra Albrecht, Michael Ingle, Joshua Palmer, Emily Pope-Blackman, and Sarah Young, with music by Mike Rugnetta, lighting by Kathy Kaufmann, and costumes by Madeleine Walach. The Constructors delves into the nature of collaboration through a series of kinetic tasks that break down the barrier between audience and performer. In addition, as a special bonus, on Thursday and Friday Easton will be performing a new solo, The Heart Is Like a Toboggan, with a costume by fashion designer Cynthia Rowley. An artists’ dialogue will follow the Sunday matinee, with Easton and her company discussing the making of The Constructors; ticket holders from any of the performances can attend the presentation for free.

BIG DANCE THEATER: COMME TOUJOURS HERE I STAND

Big Dance Theater reinvents Varda classic onstage in multimedia production

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
May 16-19, $15-$30, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.bigdancetheater.org

Agnès Varda’s 1961 Nouvelle Vague classic, Cléo from 5 to 7, is as much about filmmaking as it is about its subject, a small-time chanteuse wandering the streets of Paris as she fearfully awaits the results of a biopsy. New York-based Big Dance Theater, under the artistic direction of husband-and-wife team Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, reinvents the seminal real-time film onstage in the vastly entertaining Comme Toujours Here I Stand. Turning the process itself into the narrative, BDT creates a multimedia mix of dance, music, and video centered around the making of the film, with a diva star playing the diva star. Parson and Lazar, who based the production on Varda’s screenplay — they didn’t watch the movie itself until things were well under way — brilliantly incorporate a wonderful set featuring three vertical multipurpose screens and a rolling staircase, along with original songs by Robyn Hitchcock. Evoking New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard, much of the action takes place in between shots, “off camera,” involving the cast and crew, focusing on Cléo’s ever-more-frustrated costars, one of whom is in a continuing phone drama with her boyfriend. Fans of the film won’t be disappointed — BDT includes all the familiar scenes, from visits to a fortune-teller and a hat shop to a musical interlude with Cléo’s pianist and a walk in the park with a poetic soldier. Refreshingly, Comme Toujours Here I Stand, which was first presented at the Kitchen in October 2009 and will now be performed May 16-19 at New York Live Arts, also maintains Varda’s focus on women’s experience and interaction with each other. (There will be a preshow talk on May 16 with Brian Rogers and a postshow talk May 18 with Cathy Edwards.)

BELLA GAIA

Art and science converge in multimedia BELLA GAIA

BEAUTIFUL EARTH: A POETIC VISION OF EARTH FROM SPACE
Eyebeam Art & Technology Center
540 West 21st St. between 10th & 11th Aves.
May 15-16, $25-$30, 8:00
www.bellagaia.com
eyebeam.org

Composer, director, and violinist Kenji Williams has been touring the world with Bella Gaia: A Poetic Vision of Earth from Space an immersive multimedia exploration of the planet as seen by astronauts. Produced in association with NASA, Bella Gaia, which translates as “Beautiful Earth,” features an eight-piece ensemble performing live in front of a large-screen backdrop showing views of Earth, with Deep Singh on tabla, vocals, and percussion, Yumi Kurosawa on koto, Lety Ellaggar on nay and sax, Kristin Hoffmann on vocals and keyboards, and Williams on violin and laptop, with dance by Irina Akulenko, Lale Sayoko, and Kaeshi Chai. Bella Gaia comes to Eyebeam Art & Technology Center for two shows on May 15 and 16 at 8:00, taking viewers on a fantastical and environmental journey across land, sea, and sky, a “living atlas” that travels from the Amazon to the Arctic, revealing natural beauty and man-made wonders as the Anthropocene continues. “Bella Gaia shows you how humans and nature are connected, and how art and science are connected,” Williams explains. “Itʼs an exploration of the relationship between human civilization and our ecosystem.”

FORT BLOSSOM REVISITED (2000/2012)

John Jasperse revisits FORT BLOSSOM at New York Live Arts this week

FORT BLOSSOM REVISITED (2000/2012)
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
May 9-12, $15-$30, 7:30
May 11, 10:00 pm show added by popular demand
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.johnjasperse.org

John Jasperse once again turns expectations inside out and upside down with Fort Blossom revisited. An updated, expanded version of a 2000 work he appeared in, the piece features two clothed women, Lindsay Clark and Erika Hand, and two nude men, Ben Asriel and Burr Johnson. (The 2000 piece was performed by Jasperse, Miguel Gutierrez, Parker Lutz, and Juliette Mapp.) The quartet interacts with one another and a group of plastic inflatables, using them as furniture, toys, costumes, and sexual barriers. Moving on and off a rolled vertical canvas while experimental noise by Ryoji Ikeda rumbles in the background or goes silent for extended moments, the dancers, paired off by gender for most of the show, bring their bodies together in mesmerizing, breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and taboo-busting ways, particularly Asriel and Johnson, who examine every nook and cranny of their bodies, every crevice, rubbing, pumping, and melding into architectural and sculptural forms rarely seen onstage in such bare glory. Fort Blossom revisited is a spectacular achievement, a brutally honest and challenging work from one of the dance world’s most innovative choreographers. (For more on Jasperse and Fort Blossom revisited, read our twi-ny talk with him here.)