this week in dance

WALLS AND BRIDGES: HUMAN BEAUTY AND ITS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

Clarina Bezzola’s “When I Walk Alone in the Streets” greets visitors at the Austrian Cultural Forum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Austrian Cultural Forum
11 East 52nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Wednesday, October 19, free, RSVP required at 212-319-5300 ext222, 6:30
Walls and Bridges festival continues through October 28
Beauty Contest exhibition continues daily through January 3, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.acfny.org
www.wallsandbridges.net/en

Featuring works by twenty international artists, “Beauty Contest” examines the ever-evolving nature of what is considered beautiful in today’s society. Pieces by Cindy Sherman, Kalup Linzy, Rashaad Newsome, Anna Jermolaewa, Katarina Schmidl, Evangelia Kraniot, and others look at the concept of beauty from a multitude of different angles, often incorporating humor to make their point. For example, it’s hard not to initially smile upon first encountering Clarina Bezzola’s “When I Walk Alone in the Streets,” which greets visitors to the Austrian Cultural Forum with an enormous hand and teeth, but there’s more to it than just its big, bold colors. On October 19, dance writer Gia Kourlas will host the panel discussion “Human Beauty and Its Social Construction” at ACFNY, with François Chaignaud, Jon-Jon Goulian, Silke Grabinger, and Gressett Salette talking about beauty and its preconceptions, followed by a performance by Chaignaud and Grabinger. The event is part of the semiannual Walls and Bridges festival, ten days of “transatlantic insights” gathered this time under the theme of “Infinite Affinities.” The festival continues through October 28 with such programs as “The Actual Lives of Catherine Millet and Robert Storr” at FIAF on October 20 (free, 7:30), “Screening Identities: Danny Glover in Conversation with Manthia Diawara” at the Invisible Dog on October 22 (free, 3:30), “Please Kill Me: A Punk Musical Show” by Mathieu Bauer at the Invisible Dog on October 23 (free, 6:30), “Sonic Affinities: A Piano Performance by Jay Gottlieb” at the New School on October 24 (free, 8:30), and “The Space-Time Continuum: What the Future Has in Store for Human Beings” with Étienne Klein at the New York Public Library on October 26 ($15-$25, 7:00).

DanceNOW 2011 JOE’S PUB FESTIVAL

Annual DanceNOW festival will take place in newly renovated Joe’s Pub

Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St. between East Fourth St. & Astor Pl.
October 19-22, $15-$20, 7:00
212-967-7555
www.joespub.com
www.dancenownyc.org

Encouraging innovative dance by giving companies five minutes on a tiny stage, DanceNOW returns to a newly redesigned Joe’s Pub this week for four nights of specially created presentations from some forty choreographers. The ninth season features new names as well as more familiar groups offering unique, intimate experiences; the lineup includes, among others, Camille A. Brown, Dash/Gregory Dolbashian, Sean Curran, and Sidra Bell Dance on Wednesday, Jamal Jackson Dance Company, Luke Murphy/Movement Underground, binbinFactory, and small apple co. on Thursday, Hilary Easton + Company, Gina Gibney Dance, Nicholas Leichter Dance, Amber Sloan, and TAKE Dance on Friday, and BANGdance, Jane Comfort and Company, Doug Elkins Choreography, Liberation Dance Theater, Ellis Wood Dance, and zvidance on Saturday. The companies will be competing in a nightly DanceNOW Challenge, complete with audience voting, with the winners receiving $1,000 for development, a week-long residency, and a twenty-hour space grant.

CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE OF TAIWAN: WATER STAINS ON THE WALL

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre returns to BAM with WATER STAINS ON THE WALL (photo by Liu Chen-hsiang)

BAM Next Wave Festival
Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
October 12-15, $16-$50, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.cloudgate.org

Since 1973, company founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min and the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre have been presenting elegant, exquisitely choreographed shows centered around meditative movement inspired by Taoist and Buddhist philosophy and ancient culture, incorporating traditional, contemporary, and classical dance in mesmerizing ways. The company has been appearing at BAM’s Next Wave Festival since 1995, in such elegant productions as Moon Water and Wild Cursive. This week they’re back in Brooklyn with the international premiere of Water Stains on the Wall, a seventy-minute multimedia work that explores Chinese calligraphy, with music by Toshio Hosokawa, lighting design by Lulu W. L. Lee, projections by Ethan Wang, costumes by Lin Ching-ju, and set design and choreography by Lin. Lin will also give an Iconic Artist Talk on Thursday night at BAM Rose Cinemas at 6:00 ($20), moderated by Rachel Cooper, as part of BAM’s 150th anniversary celebration.

Dancers appear to float on clouds in WATER STAINS ON THE WALL (photo by Liu Chen-hsiang)

Update: On a slightly tilted white stage resembling Japanese rice paper, sixteen dancers slowly move about, sometimes in unison, sometimes individually, as black and gray inky, shadowy splotches drift across the floor like clouds. All of the dancers but one exit, leaving Su I-Ping to perform a brief solo, soon joined by Yang I-Chun. Through a prologue and seven sections over the course of seventy minutes, dancers slowly come and go, at times breaking out into smooth, fluid movements, waving their arms, lifting their legs, almost as if they are calligraphic letters come to life. Identically garbed in diaphanous, translucent, floor-length billowing pants and either bare-chested (seven men) or in flesh-colored leotards (nine women), the performers never once come into contact with one another, each a single, individual part of the whole, floating on the formations below them — which often evoke memory and the past as much as clouds — as Toshio Hosokawa’s compelling score shifts from electronic noise to minimalist percussion and piano. The Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan’s Water Stains on the Wall, inspired by a legendary Tang Dynasty tale about calligraphy, is another breathtaking presentation from one of that country’s most popular companies, which has been bringing their mesmerizing works to BAM’s Next Wave Festival since 1995. “Brooklyn in late autumn can be freezing and wet, especially in comparison to Taipei,” company founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min explains in a program note, “but to all of us in Cloud Gate — BAM is a center of warmth.”

CROSSING THE LINE: FAUSTIN LINYEKULA STUDIOS KABAKO: MORE MORE MORE… FUTURE

Faustin Linyekula’s MORE MORE MORE… FUTURE has its New York premiere at the Kitchen this week as part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival (photo © Agathe Poupeney)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
October 12-15, $15, 8:00
212-255-5793
www.fiaf.org

Part of the “Endurance/Resistance/Inspiration” section of FIAF’s ninth annual Crossing the Line Festival, dancer/choreographer Faustin Linyekula’s more more more… future examines the past, present, and future of life in his native Democratic Republic of Congo. “We deserve more than the vanishing shadows of delusions. We deserve more than headlines and media compassion,” he writes about the evening-length piece, having its New York premiere October 12-15 at the Kitchen. “More than the false happiness that blinds our minds. More than assistance, we deserve justice. More than money, we deserve dignity. More than a glorious past, we long for a future.” Wearing colorful, oversized, enveloping costumes created by Lamine Badian Kouyaté/Xuly Bët at the very last minute, three dancers, including Linyekula, move to live music played onstage by a five-piece band led by music director and guitarist Flamme Kapaya, set to poems by political prisoner Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, a childhood friend of Linyekula’s. “To be positive is the most subversive. Celebrating is a way of resisting,” Linyekula notes.

CROSSING THE LINE: RACHID OURAMDANE

Rachid Ouramdane will explore political ideology and torture in two presentations at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival (photo © Patrick Imbert)

New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
ORDINARY WITNESSES: Tuesday, October 11, $24-$30, 6:30, and Wednesday, October 12, $15, 7:30
WORLD FAIR: Thursday, October 14, and Friday, October 15, $24-$30, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.rachidouramdane.com

Paris-based dancer-choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, who founded the L’A company in 2007, will be presenting a pair of fascinating programs at New York Live Arts as part of the “Endurance/Resistance/Inspiration” section of the French Institute Alliance Française’s fifth annual Crossing the Line Festival. On October 11 & 12, Ordinary Witnesses examines torture, memory, and identity in a violent world. Ouramdane, who interviewed victims of torture in putting together the evening-length piece, writes that Ordinary Witnesses takes place “at the edges of civilization and the gateways to barbarity. The instant where people exit humanity to be cast into the jaws of torture.” He continues, “Doing a portrait of people who lived through torture is an attempt to depict the unpresentable. . . . It is about trying to grasp the imagination of those who experienced such atrocities, so that this experience does not remain hushed up. It is also about awareness of history’s repeated violence now that torture seems to be tolerated and even legitimate at the very core of our democracies.” Ouramdane will give a preshow talk on October 11 and participate in a conversation with the PEN American Center’s Larry Siems following the October 12 show. On October 14 & 15, Ouramdane will stage World Fair, an exploration of the human body as it relates to social and political ideology, performed by Ouramdane and multi-instrumentalist Jean-Baptiste Julien, with an artist talk following the October 14 show.

Rachid Ouramdane’s ORDINARY WITNESSES offers an extraordinary look at torture

Update: The son of an Algerian father who was tortured, Rachid Ouramdane has been making the sociopolitical physical in such works as Cover, Discreet Death, and Far . . . , examining memory and identity through multimedia presentations involving progressive movement. On October 11 he and his Paris-based L’A company performed the mesmerizing Ordinary Witnesses at New York Live Arts, part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line interdisciplinary international arts festival. The show begins with a man’s voice detailing his emotions — or lack thereof — as he describes his reaction to having been the victim of torture. He speaks in French, his words translated on the back wall. After several minutes, Lora Juodkaite, Mille Lundt, Jean-Claude Nelson, Georgina Vila-Bruch, and Jean-Baptiste André emerge onto Sylvain Giraudeau’s dark, bare stage, their faces blank as they walk slowly around a rectangular video frame lying flat on the floor and, in one corner, a grid of sixty spotlights that go on and off at various intervals and at different levels of brightness (at times evoking interrogation lights). The dancers occasionally stop, fall to the floor, adopt yogalike poses, and then move on as Jean-Baptiste Julien’s subtle electronic score, including the low buzz of feedback from an onstage electric guitar, hovers ominously above them. At one point a female dancer breaks into a nearly endless twirl, spinning around and around in a dizzying display of agility and sheer breathlessness; watching her, one wonders just how long she can continue, the audience wanting to call out and stop the torture but too amazed to do so. Although it does get repetitive and goes on slightly too long — perhaps echoing the repetitiveness of torture itself — Ordinary Witnesses is an emotionally powerful work that makes its purposes very clear, right from the start. There are still tickets left for the second and final performance on October 12, which will be followed by a discussion between Ouramdane and Larry Siems. Ouramdane will also be presenting his solo work, World Fair, at New York Live Arts October 14-15.

ATLANTIC ANTIC

Atlantic Ave. between Hicks St. & Fourth Ave.
Sunday, October 2, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
www.atlanticave.org

It looks like it should be quite a beautiful day for the thirty-seventh annual Atlantic Antic, where more than one million people are expected to enjoy food, art, music, dance, and more along Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, from Hicks St. to Fourth Ave. On outdoor stages and inside bars and restaurants, you’ll be able to catch live performances by the Winsor Terrors, Les Sans Culottes, Charanga Soleil, the Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band, the Jack Grace Band, BR and Timebomb, the Black Coffee Blues Band, Alex Battles’ Whisky Rebellion, the Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues, and many more. The afternoon also includes lots of family-friendly activities between Boerum Pl. & Smith St,, with pony rides, magicians, puppet shows, kids’ bands, face painting, inflatable rides, and plenty more. Among the participating establishments are the Chip Shop, the Waterfront Ale House, the Brazen Head, the Flying Saucer, Gumbo, and Hank’s Saloon, and there will be local booths galore selling all kinds of items you won’t find at standard street fairs. And for the eighteenth year, the New York Transit Museum is hosting the Bus Festival on Boerum Pl. between State St. & Atlantic Ave., featuring vintage buses, workshops, free tours, and other fun things.

FIRST SATURDAYS: LATINO HERITAGE

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, October 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum will be celebrating Latino heritage at its October First Saturday program, centered on the exhibition “Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The Latino List,” in which the photographer behind “The Black List” turns his camera on such Latino figures as Marta Moreno Vega, Pitbull, Eva Longoria, Cesar Conde, Robert Menendez, and John Leguizamo. Greenfield-Sanders will screen the HBO documentary The Latino List at 7:30 and participate in a discussion following the film. The evening will also include live performances by ABAKUÁ Afro-Latin Dance Company, Jerry Hernandez y La Orquesta Dee Jay, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jose Conde, a book-club talk by Moreno Vega about her memoir When the Spirits Dance Mambo, a curator talk on “Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk — An Introspective,” an art workshop, and more. Also on view are such exhibits as “Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior,” “Raw/Cooked: Kristof Wickman,” “Eva Hesse Spectres 1960,” “Matthew Buckingham: ‘The Spirit and the Letter,’” “reOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio,” and “Ten Years Later: Ground Zero Remembered.”