this week in dance

FIVE POINTS: TAKE DANCE + PULSE — PART II

Merce Cunningham Dance Studios
55 Bethune St.
December 15-16 at 9:00, December 17 at 8:00, $20
800-838-3006
www.merce.org

As the Merce Cunningham Dance Company prepares for its farewell performances December 29-31 at the Park Avenue Armory, the troupe’s studios on Bethune St. will also be closing up shop. One of the last shows to take place there will be Five Points, in which TAKE Dance and the Pulse music collective pay tribute to Cunningham’s revolutionary synesthetic style by presenting five new works set to original post-classical jazz compositions. Touch and sound, science and art combine in unique ways in pieces by choreographer Takehiro Ueyama and composer Melissa Dunphy (“Summer Collection 2012”), Kile Hotchkiss and Pulse founder Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. (“The Substance of Things Unseen”), Milan Misko and Jamie Begian (“From Over Here”), Jill Echo and JC Sanford (“Views from the Inside”), and Kristen Arnold and Joshua Shneider (“unclearly departed”). The works will be performed by dancers Brynt Beitman, John Eirich, Jillian Hervey, Gina Ianni, Clinton Edward Martin, Sarah Mettin, Nana Tsuda Misko, Lynda Senisi, Kristi Tornga, Marie Zvosec, Misko, Hotchkiss, and Arnold and musicians Hannah Levinson (viola), Jacob Garchik (accordion, laptop, trombone), Ana Milosavljevic (violin/Viper), Chris Reza (woodwinds), Mariel Roberts (cello). Tickets must be reserved in advance; there will be no sales at the door.

STREB: KISS THE AIR!

ASCENSION is part of STREB Extreme Action’s special presentation at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by Tom Caravaglia)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 14-22, $35, 7:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.streb.org

There’s good reason New York-based choreographer Elizabeth Streb calls her company Extreme Action: The diversely talented troupe is known for performing daring acrobatic feats that push the boundaries of contemporary dance. From December 14 to 22, STREB Extreme Action will be at the Park Avenue Armory displaying their vast skills in Kiss the Air!, a program that includes two dazzling pieces that were previewed this summer in special free outdoor presentations. In “Ascension,” nine dancers take individual turns and team up on a twenty-one-foot moving ladder, risking life and limb as it circles around and around to a score by master percussionist David Van Tieghem. The breathtaking piece debuted this summer in Gansevoort Plaza as part of Whitney on Site: New Commissions Downtown; for the indoor version, Robert Wierzel’s lighting design will add another aspect to the work. This summer Streb, a MacArthur Genius, also premiered the eye-popping “Human Fountain” as part of the River to River Festival’s Extraordinary Moves program at the World Financial Center, in which sixteen daredevils — er, dancers — took swan dives off a thirty-foot, three-story structural installation. Inspired by the Bellagio fountain in Las Vegas, they fly through the air (with the greatest of ease?) in tandems, sometimes crossing one another’s path, landing on an inflatable mat that cushions their fall. “Human Fountain is another thrilling example of how STREB Extreme Action goes for, well, the extreme in its challenging repertoire. Streb and several of her dancers will participate in an artist talk following the December 15 performance, moderated by Kristy Edmunds. Kiss the Air! is the second of three dance presentations at the Park Avenue Armory, following Shen Wei Dance Arts and concluding with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s farewell December 29-31.

KISS THE AIR! is a one-of-a-kind experience at Park Avenue Armory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: The STREB Extreme Action Heroes announce their arrival in the Park Avenue Armory in typically extreme fashion, individually riding an overhead wire and slamming face-first into a vertical mat, letting the audience know right from the start that they are in for a very different kind of performance, one filled with impressive feats of daring and plenty of good humor. A unique melding of modern dance, ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading, aerial arts, and stunt work, Kiss the Air! is a five-ring circus that tests the limits of the human body over the course of seventy thrilling minutes, supplemented by large screens displaying live close-up footage and action architect and choreographer Elizabeth Streb’s original layouts. As the dancers make their way across five architectural set-ups, the crowd is encouraged to scream out with enthusiasm, take photographs and video, and tweet away, knocking down the barrier between viewer and performer. Action engineers Jackie Carlson, John Kasten, Sarah Callan, Zaire Baptiste, Samantha Jakas, Leonardo Giron Torres, Cassandre Joseph, Felix Hess, Daniel Rysak, and associate artistic director Fabio Tavares da Silva, along with seven additional performers, manipulate one another in swinging harnesses, climb over a moving ladder, bounce their bodies up and down on mats, dive off a thirty-foot structure, and splash about in a shallow pool, getting some audience members wet (ponchos are provided) as they run nonstop through eleven numbers, including “Swing,” “Popaction,” “Falling Sideways,” “Drop,” “Catch,” “Wave,” and “Kiss the Water.” The abovementioned showpieces, “Ascension” and “Human Fountain,” turn out to be not quite as dazzling in the armory as they were outside last summer, as the dancers (understandably) take longer pauses to catch their breath and the audience is seated farther away, but they still are impressive, enhanced by Robert Wierzel’s lighting and David Van Tieghem´s sound design and music. A one-of-a-kind experience for children and adults of all ages, Kiss the Air! continues through December 22.

FIRST SATURDAY: YOUTH AND BEAUTY

Luigi Lucioni, “Paul Cadmus,” oil on canvas, 1928, part of “Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties” (Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, December 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Don’t be fooled by the theme of this month’s First Saturday party at the Brooklyn Museum. It might be called “Youth and Beauty,” but you can expect an old-fashioned good time, as it refers to the Eastern Parkway institution’s new exhibit subtitled “Art of the American Twenties,” featuring works by such artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Gaston Lachaise, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz. On tap for the free evening is jazz and blues from Hazmat Modine (5:00 to 7:00), a 1920s costume contest (5:30), a collaboration between spoken-word artists and musicians and tap dancer Lisa La Touche that references the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance (5:30), curator Catherine Morris discussing “Eva Hesse Spectres 1960” (6:00), ballroom dance lessons from Nathan Bugh, including the Charleston and the Lindy Hop (6:00), a painting workshop (6:30 – 8:30), a tour of “Youth and Beauty” with museum guide Emily Sachar (7:00), a dance party hosted by the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra (8:00 – 10:00), Farah Griffin discussing Wallace Thurman’s 1929 book, The Blacker the Berry (9:00), and a bodybuilding showcase hosted by Phil Sottile (9:00). The young and the beautiful can always be found at the Brooklyn Museum on First Saturdays, but this month more than ever.

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.