this week in dance

SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS AT THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY

RITE OF SPRING kicks off Shen Wei triptych at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
November 29 – December 4, $35, 7:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.shenweidancearts.org

Since its founding ten years ago, Shen Wei Dance Arts has been touring around the world, in traditional venues as well as unique indoor and outdoor locations. Based in New York City, SWDA has performed at the Joyce and the Lincoln Center Festival while also staging site-specific pieces for Judson Memorial Church, the Guggenheim Rotunda, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Engelhard Court, and, last fall, a two-day marathon of Re-(Part III) in Duffy Square, Grand Central Terminal, several parks, outside the New York Public Library, at Columbia, and in the 42nd St. subway station. This week they return to the Park Avenue Armory, where in 2009 artistic director Shen Wei created Behind Resonance, an exciting, involving work set in and around Ernesto Neto’s massive “Anthropodino” sculptural installation. As part of its tenth anniversary celebration, SWDA will perform 2003’s Rite of Spring (with music by Igor Stravinsky), 2000’s Folding (set to music by John Tavener along with Tibetan Buddhist chants), and the new site-specific multimedia commission Undivided Divided (scored by Sō Percussion), created specifically for the armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall. All choreography is by Shen Wei and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, with ten lead dancers (Cecily Campbell, Sarah Lisette Chiesa, Evan Copeland, Andrew Cowan, James Healey, Kate Jewett, Cynthia Koppe, Sara Procopio, Joan Wadopian, and Brandon Whited) and nearly two dozen additional dancers (including Shen Wei). Shen Wei favors slow, precise movement and elegant nudity, resulting in intoxicating works that lure you in with their sheer beauty. She Wei’s performances are the first of a triple play of dance at the Park Avenue Armory, followed December 14-22 by STREB’s Kiss the Air and concluding December 29-31 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s grand finale, a series of site-specific Events that will mark the last performances ever by the noted company.

FOLDING brings origami to life in elegant dance (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Update: As he did with Behind Resonance two years ago, New York City-based dancer-choreographer Shen Wei again turns the Park Avenue Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall into an intimate gathering that celebrates his unique movement language, presenting two repertory works and a new site-specific piece as part of Shen Wei Dance Arts’ tenth anniversary. The evening begins with a restaging of 2003’s Rite of Spring, set to Fazil Say’s version of Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet, in which as many as sixteen dancers make their way in and around a crooked chalked grid, running to the edges, moving in formation, pausing for long moments of inactivity, and rolling on the floor, their black and gray costumes streaked with white. That is followed by 2000’s Folding, in which the dancers first appear in long red skirts and odd head extensions (evoking Robert Wilson and Matthew Barney), gliding slowly across a white reflective surface, soon evolving into duets with the performers in black, their powdered bodies folding into each other, leading to a finale that recalls, of all things, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

UNDIVIDED DIVIDED is sure to get the audience’s undivided attention (photo by Stephanie Berger)

After a thirty-minute intermission in which the audience must leave the drill hall, everyone returns for the grand finale, the specially commissioned Undivided Divided, a whirlwind tour-de-force featuring thirty topless male and female dancers situated throughout the space, rolling around in paint on a long canvas, throwing themselves against the walls of a plexiglass box, climbing atop and inside a set of plastic cubes, performing intimate duets confined to a small rectangular area, amid other unique and unusual set-ups enhanced by visual projections on the floor. The audience can remain in their seats but are encouraged to remove their shoes and walk up and down pathways that allow them to come face-to-face with the dancers as they writhe about, some making eye contact, others lost in fantasy, like living sculptures in a museum. Undivided Divided is an exhilarating experience, seemingly for the dancers as much as for the crowd, an exuberant display of physicality that goes beyond mere sexuality and voyeurism, offering an energizing and thrillingly different relationship between audience and performer.

TWI-NY TALK: ROBERT BATTLE

New Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic director Robert Battle (c.) poses with dancers he has invited to join the company (photo by Andrew Eccles)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 30 – January 1, $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Founded in 1958, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater had only two artistic directors over the course of its first fifty-two years, beginning with Ailey himself, who led the company until his death from AIDS in 1989, followed by Judith Jamison, who continued in the role through this summer, when in July she named her successor, Robert Battle. The thirty-eight-year-old Miami native has had a long affiliation with AAADT, having been an artist-in-residence since 1999, and he has had several works performed by the company, including “The Hunt,” “In/Side,” and “Love Stories,” a collaboration with Jamison and Rennie Harris.

Battle, who studied at Juilliard, danced with Parsons Dance Company, started his own group, Battleworks Dance Company, and was named a “Master of African American Choreography” by the Kennedy Center in 2005, is presenting his inaugural City Center season as AAADT artistic director from November 30 through January 1. The annual five-week event will feature Paul Taylor’s “Arden Court” (in his Ailey debut), Ohad Naharin’s interactive “Minus 16,” Jamison’s “Forgotten Time,” the world premiere of Harris’s AIDS-related “Home,” new productions of Joyce Trisler’s “Journey” and Alvin Ailey’s “Streams,” and several pieces by Battle, most notably the Ailey premiere of “Takademe.” Select performances of a number of works will include live music by such special guests as John Legend, Naren Budhkar, the Knights, and others. With the City Center season just a few weeks away, Battle talked with twi-ny about legacy, responsibility, and the precipice of discovery.

twi-ny: You are now only the third artistic director in the history of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. What is your greatest fear?

Robert Battle: I think that’s an unknown. Fear is not for me something that I turn on and off. Anybody, especially an artist, always has a healthy dose of fear mixed with optimism, because those two opposing forces is what creates energy, the energy that is the creative force. So I think it’s a healthy mixture of both of those things.

twi-ny: What are you looking forward to the most?

Robert Battle: I’m looking forward to watching and reveling at the dancers and the delights of the work that is coming in to the repertory and watching and being a part of taking the company into the future. That’s what I look forward to the most.

twi-ny: How did you go about selecting and grouping the dances for this year’s City Center season, which includes the company premiere of your own “Takademe”? Were you looking for an overriding theme?

Robert Battle has taken over the reins of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from Judith Jamison (photo by Andrew Eccles)

Robert Battle: Yes, the overriding theme is past, present, and future. We’re a repertory company — in a way, we’re a repository for great modern dance works — so, of course, looking back at Mr. Ailey’s work, Joyce Trisler’s “Journey,” created in 1958, all of these works are part of looking back and new productions of those works. Being in the present, looking at Rennie Harris’s work and his commission [“Home”] — he’s a hip-hop choreographer, so he uses hip-hop as his language. That is a part of the present; hip-hop is on everybody’s mind, radio, whatever it may be, but dealing with hip-hop to tell the stories of people who are surviving and thriving with HIV/AIDS is a wonderful tribute because it’s about the celebration of life. And then looking at works to me that echo the future, like Ohad Naharin’s “Minus 16,” which breaks the fourth wall: It invites the audience onto the stage, it has audience participation, it has a whole new way of moving for the dancers. So in that way we’re looking at the future. So we’re looking at all three of those things.

twi-ny: Who are some of the new choreographers you’d like to bring into the extended Ailey family?

Robert Battle: Aha — that, I cannot say [laughs], with deference to all choreographers who may want to be a part of this. I can’t just list one or two, but I really want the work to express the complexity of the world, society. It should be a reflection of that, so that you have choreographers of different races and backgrounds and approaches and themes bringing their voice to our voice. That’s what Mr. Ailey wanted, what Ms. Jamison continued, and what I will continue, to look far and wide, and to keep the audience and the dancers on that precipice of discovery.

twi-ny: With that in mind, how are you balancing the Ailey tradition with, perhaps, the urge to bust things wide open and initiate potential change under your leadership?

Robert Battle: I think that question could have a period at the end. That is what I am doing, balancing the traditional with the sometimes nontraditional. I think the notion of doing something without it having some connection to what is already here is not something I’m interested in. I’m really interested in blending the two. And that’s because this is a repertory company; that’s why I’m able to do that. If it’s one choreographer’s work, it’s harder to do that, but when you’re choosing works from many different choreographers in one season you get the sense of that yin and yang, that stretching forward of busting the whole thing wide open but yet keeping the traditional so that the company stays rooted. That’s why it began in the first place; celebrating the African American tradition and culture and experience in this country but also expanding on that idea is what I’m trying to do.

JOHN JASPERSE: CANYON

John Jasperse’s CANYON should delight audiences at BAM this week

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 16-19, $16-$45, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In works such as Becky, Jodi and John at Dance Theater Workshop, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies at the Joyce, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution at BAM’s 2007 Next Wave Festival, New York City–based choreographer John Jasperse has shared intimate moments with the audience in creating unusual and often challenging evenings of dance theater. This week Jasperse and his Thin Man Dance company return to BAM to present the New York premiere of Canyon, which deals with “the transformative power of losing oneself in visceral experience.” Running November 16-19, the seventy-minute piece features dancers Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn, a live score by Hahn Rowe, visual design by Tony Orrico, and lighting by James Clotfelter. There will be an artist talk with Jasperse and his collaborators following Thursday night’s performance, moderated by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, whose book Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe influenced the making of Canyon.

John Jasperse’s CANYON celebrates the thrill of the dance (photo by Tony Orrico)

Updated: Dance does not always have to be about something. In such previous works as Becky, Jodi and John, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution, John Jasperse dealt with a number of themes, from personal relationships and environmentalism to the fine line between fantasy and reality. In his latest evening-length piece, Jasperse eschews high concept in favor of, quite simply, the thrill of the dance. The seventy-minute Canyon puts Jasperse’s breathtaking choreography front and center, a celebration of the joy of movement, with Jasperse, Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn running, jumping, twisting, and rolling to an exciting score composed by Hahn Rowe and performed live by Olivia De Prato on violin, Ha-Yang Kim on cello, Doug Wieselman on bass clarinet, and Rowe on violin, guitar, and electronics. Because this is Jasperse, there are odd elements as well, courtesy of visual designer Tony Orrico, that include yellow tape that begins outside on the street and wends its way through the BAM Harvey lobby and bathrooms and into the theater, down the steps, across the stage, and onto the back wall, where they resemble an abstract map. Meanwhile, a large white box continually roams the space, adding to the fun. And what fun it is.

LAURA PETERSON CHOREOGRAPHY: WOODEN

Laura Peterson finds splendor in the grass in WOODEN (photo by Steven Schreiber)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Through November 12, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org
www.lpchoreography.com

This month several dancer/choreographers have been putting on unique performances in transformed spaces. In SHOW, Maria Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas wound their way across the floor of the Kitchen, right in the middle of the audience. In The Thank-you Bar at New York Live Arts, Emily Johnson/Catalyst invites people through a long corridor into a dark room where they can sit on small cushions and later gather around a kiddie pool filled with leaves. And in Wooden at HERE, Laura Peterson has cut the usual stage in half, with one side covered by live grass that has been turning brown since the run began November 4. Instead of the usual rafters, the audience sits on long wooden benches on a hard white surface amid thick tree branches hanging from the ceiling. Peterson, Kate Martel, Edward Rice, and Janna Diamond move slowly on the grass, gently falling and rolling, Amanda K. Ringger’s lighting casting multiple shadows on the walls. The natural beauty of the piece is enhanced by the intoxicating smell of the outdoors and interstitial, animalistic solos by rotating guest artists Shannon Gillen, Meredith Fages, Luke Gutgsell, and Asimina Chremos in a makeshift hallway. Following an intermission in which the audience must leave the theater, the space is reversed, the benches now on the soft grass, the dancers performing on the harder floor. Whereas the first half, “Ground,” featured beautifully mellifluous organic movement, the second half, “Trees,” is much harsher, the choreography more robotic, the dancers wearing kneepads to protect them as they fall hard to the floor. Soichiro Migita’s sound design changes as well, now more techno-based, blips and beeps replacing the smoother sounds of the first section. Although the general comparison might be obvious, setting the warm, organic environment against a cold, computerized soulless society, and it occasionally does get repetitive, Wooden is a compelling work whose elements are, appropriately, biodegradable. To read our twi-ny talk with Peterson, click here.

EMILY JOHNSON/CATALYST: THE THANK-YOU BAR

Emily Johnson offers the audience glowing surprises in THE THANK-YOU BAR (photo by Ian Douglas)

New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through November 12, $15-$20
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.catalystdance.com

Every once in a while, something comes along that’s so delightfully fresh and invigorating, so new, that you want to shout about it from the rooftop and out windows so everyone can know about it. (Well, at least in the old days. Now you can just write about it on your blog.) Emily Johnson’s The Thank-you Bar is just such an experience. To say too much about it would be giving it away, but for about an hour, Johnson and composers James Everest and Joel Pickard of BLACKFISH put on a dazzlingly original display of dance, video, live music, storytelling, and performance art, filled with surprises that at times engage the audience in the offbeat goings-on. Johnson is a charming performer and ringleader with a sly sense of humor, beaming with a contagious smile as she comments directly and indirectly on the very serious concepts of home and individual identity. A native Alaskan of Yup’ik descent, the Minneapolis-based Johnson has reconfigured the piece specifically for New York Live Arts, where it continues through Saturday night. We won’t say any more about it, but you can read Johnson discuss it in our twi-ny talk here.

TWI-NY TALK: EMILY JOHNSON

Emily Johnson explores home and heritage in THE THANK-YOU BAR (photo by Cameron Wittig)

THE THANK-YOU BAR
New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 9-12, $15-$20
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.catalystdance.com

“I want to make work that looks at identity and cultural responsibility — that is beautiful and powerful — full of myth and truth at the same time,” choreographer Emily Johnson explains in her mission statement. “I want to be grounded in my heritage, supported by my community, and giving back — always.” Born in Alaska of Yup’ik descent and based in Minneapolis, Johnson has been creating site-specific dance installations in collaboration with visual artists and musicians since 1998, exploring ideas of home, identity, and the natural world through different modes of storytelling. Her latest multimedia performance piece is The Thank-you Bar, running at New York Live Arts from November 9 to 12. A collaboration with musicians James Everest and Joel Pickard of BLACKFISH, who will play a special set on the final night, the performance installation also includes beadwork by Karen Beaver and paper sculptures by Krista Kelley Walsh. The extremely eloquent and thoughtful Johnson carefully considered our questions for our latest twi-ny talk; she will also participate in a preshow chat on November 9 with NYLA artistic director Carla Peterson as well as a discussion on November 11 with dancer-choreographer Reggie Wilson following the 9:30 show.

twi-ny: In her Context Notes about The Thank-you Bar on the New York Live Arts blog, Biba Bell is taken by your voiceover “What is becoming more clear to me is what I’m missing,” asking the questions “How many moments are passed, paused or pregnant with the sense of what is missed — something, someone, someplace? What do they sound like, smell like, and how do they feel?” What are some of the things you are missing, and how do they drive your artistic creation?

Emily Johnson: I said that — about the missing — because I am feeling years accumulate. What is absent is becoming an acute pain and it makes me feel old, most simply because of what has already gone by. I have missed my niece and nephew growing up because I was in Minneapolis, making dance, while they were in Alaska. I miss many, many mornings with my grandma — casual mornings of coffee, where we sit around, she doing crosswords until a story comes out. If I’m not around, I simply miss the story and I miss the time. And this creates the yearning — or heightens it, at the very least. I long for these stories. I long for the time with my elders, the time with my niece and nephew and rest of my family. And it points to what might not be: How much longer can I wait to learn the Yup’ik language, helped along by my grandma — the only one in my family who speaks it? How much longer can my body make do without feeling the ground of Alaska beneath my feet on a regular, day in and day out basis? What disservice do I do my life when I let these things pass me by?

Eventually, time runs out. Every summer I go home for the salmon run and I am trying to imprint the process of putting the salmon up (cleaning, smoking, kippuring, freezing . . .) into my brain so that when it comes my time to take charge of making it happen I will be able to do so. These are some of the things I am missing, and the absence and the longing are so real that it creates a new version of life. Biba’s questions about sounds, smell, feel — this is exactly what drives me. As I created The Thank-you Bar, a work very much about missing home/land, I thought about how our bodies miss, how our minds remember — not a scientific how, but a how related to our own perceptions of our experiences. When a thread of a Crystal Gayle song comes on, I am brought back to the jukebox at my grandma’s bar; when I think about the mountains near my Alaskan home, my chest aches and for some reason it also feels like I am diving into a very cold lake, exhilarating my being. And the thoughts about where and when also make me think of the future.

When I make dances, I try to imagine the future. I get curious about what images, reactions, or stories the audience might remember four days after seeing a performance. This leads me to structure dances with a focused attention on the smallest of details: what the audience might walk on as they enter the space, what they might smell during a particular story. . . . It makes me consider what I can leave out of the equation so as to let conjecture and interpretation have a role in the room.

Emily Johnson has teamed up with James Everest and Joel Pickard of BLACKFISH and others in THE THANK-YOU BAR (photo by Cameron Wittig)

twi-ny: The Thank-you Bar and its companion exhibit, “This Is Displacement,” explore the idea of home. You were born in Alaska, you’re based in Minneapolis, and you’re now presenting the New York premiere of a work that has previously been performed in Oklahoma, Houston, and other locations. Where is home for you?

Emily Johnson: The most specific, locating answer is that I have two homes: one in Minneapolis, the other in Alaska. I love both places, and the home in Minneapolis is actually more concrete: it has my stuff in it. The home in Alaska feels expansive and like it goes on for thousands of years, probably because it doesn’t actually have any walls. I don’t have a living space in Alaska, but it’s where I come from and where I continually return to.

To be honest, I try to build another home for myself and audiences in The Thank-you Bar. Does this mean I am searching? Does this mean I believe we can adapt to any longing, and dislocation? I build the home by trying to bring attention to the building we are in and the people who are gathered in the room. I try to imagine the walls gone; I try to imagine what was here before the current incarnation. I want the feeling of “home” to lead to a kind of intimacy so that people feel comfortable, responsible even, for it. I think we tend to look at things as static when, in reality, our bodies and places house past, present, and future, at once. It’s anything but static and it’s kind of exciting to tap into.

twi-ny: You collaborated with James Everest and Joel Pickard of BLACKFISH on The Thank-you Bar, and the duo will be playing a special concert on November 12. What is it about their music that draws you to them and made you want to work with them?

Emily Johnson: BLACKFISH music is dramatically mind altering for me. When James [Everest], Joel [Pickard], and I started work, part of our process was to improvise together in a room, daily. We’ve continued that process, as much as we can when we tour, and out of it James and Joel created their project, BLACKFISH. As BLACKFISH, they perform improvised concerts in conjunction with our tours. I love their concerts — and I love that they’ve developed this entire project out of The Thank-you Bar. On the twelfth, they’re releasing a gorgeous limited edition, letter-pressed, eight-CD collection of some of the concerts they’ve recorded over the past two years. John Scott heard their concert in Vermont this summer and has since worked with them for music for his new work. He very endearingly asked my permission first.

In The Thank-you Bar, they don’t play as BLACKFISH; they play as James and Joel. What I most appreciate about them is their specificity and dedication to improvisation. The music they composed for The Thank-you Bar is set; it came from improvisations, from bouts of memory and discussions of the jukebox I mentioned (that at my grandma’s was filled with classic country). The sound of dislocation and rerouting to find home is what they built for The Thank-you Bar. It makes me want to work with them again and again.

One day, early in the process, I was rehearsing in a separate studio. I came down and they told me to sit on the floor. They proceeded to play music that layered inch by inch and sound by sound, as they appeared and disappeared, until a reverberating chorus echoed off the walls. I remember slapping the floor and exclaiming/laughing at the genius of it. Them: missing. Music: building. We’ve kept it. They basically choreographed the beginning of the dance.

TWI-NY TALK: LAURA PETERSON

Laura Peterson goes environmental with WOODEN (photo by Steven Schreiber)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
November 4-12, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org
www.lpchoreography.com

Last January, Laura Peterson Choreography presented Wooden as part of HERE’s annual Culturemart festival. The work-in-progress, which uses real grass and trees in creating living environments in which a quartet of dancers — Peterson, Kate Martel, Edward Rice, and Janna Diamond — perform, officially opened this past Friday, beginning an eight-show run that continues at HERE through November 12. Consisting of three parts, “Ground,” “Trees,” and “Corridor,” Wooden examines time and nature, inspired by earthworks and taking place on a biodegradable set. There will be a special panel discussion, “Dance, Installation, and Repurposing,” following the November 9 performance, in which Peterson will talk about her creative process. Just as she prepared for opening night, Peterson, who teaches classes at Dance New Amsterdam, answered some questions for twi-ny as curtain time beckoned.

Edward Rice, Laura Peterson, and Janna Diamond in WOODEN (photo by Steven Schreiber)

twi-ny: When we first met back in January, you were extremely nervous, putting together Wooden for Culturemart. How are the nerves as the piece is ready for its first official performances this week at HERE?

Laura Peterson: I am so happy with Wooden. When we performed the dance on the grass at Culturemart in January, I had no idea how it would behave, what it would be like to install a living lawn or what it would feel like for our bodies to dance on. We learned that it lives and grows and needs water every night. Dancing on the grass is so much more difficult that dancing on a normal floor. Sliding doesn’t really happen, turning is very precarious, and the effort of moving on an uneven terrain is very intense. We figured all of these things out through Culturemart and everyone is much calmer.

twi-ny: How has Wooden changed since then?

Laura Peterson: Most of the choreography that we performed in January 2011 has been reworked. Because HERE provides the opportunity of the Culturemart festival to workshop the pieces by members of the HERE Artist Residency Program, we are able to see the problems in a piece before full production and address them. The sound score is very different, the costumes are a little different, and we are also performing part of the dance we developed in 2010. This section is performed in a barren landscape with hanging driftwood trees while the audience is sitting on the lawn in the second half of Wooden. There is an installation and a soloist as the audience enters, which is brand new as well. It’s called “Corridor,” and it is performed by several different dancers throughout the performance run.

twi-ny: You incorporate environmentally friendly earthwork into Wooden. How did you go about selecting the material? Did you have any primary influences when designing the installation itself?

Laura Peterson: I was first inspired to create this dance in 2009 when I was looking at outdoor installation work and natural architecture. I am often influenced by visual art, and I started seriously looking at earthwork and pieces made from natural materials. I found myself thinking that those pieces are meant to change, as they are subject to time and weather. This was around the time that my dance called Forever was being performed on a large set consisting of a white circular platform made from forty-eight triangles. After the performances of Forever ended and we were loading out, I thought about how much I was throwing away after a show closes and it really bothered me. Luckily, some of those triangles became tables in our friend’s restaurant, but only using something for a week and letting it go into a Dumpster stuck with me. I decided that using biodegradable materials was going to be part of my concept in Wooden. I wonder if the audience will consciously realize they are sitting on and among natural and ecologically sensitive materials. We are going to find out.