this week in dance

PERFORATIONS FESTIVAL NEW YORK

Via Negativa’s INVALID is part of Perforations Festival at La MaMa (photo by Marcandrea)

Club La MaMa
74A East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
March 11-20, $15
212-475-7710
www.perforationsny.com
www.lamama.org

Held in conjunction with the Perforacije Festival in Croatia, the first Perforations Festival New York will take place March 11-20 at Club La MaMa, consisting of twelve productions from the Eastern European nations of Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Macedonia. Curated by Zvonimir Dobrovic, who also organizes the Croatian festival, Perforations focuses on works by independent artists in such disciplines as performance art, theater, and dance. “State-subsidized venues receive the majority of available arts funding in the Balkans, but some of the most exciting and compelling work in the region is being developed by independent artists working outside of these institutions,” Dobrovic said in a statement. “It is this group of artists that Perforations supports and presents, in part, to counter established funding and cultural policy that has not created a sustainable working environment for these more progressive artists.” The festival begins March 11 with Ivo Dimchev’s Lili Handel: blood, poetry, and music from the white boudoir of a whore…, about the end of the line for a variety show diva. Other productions include BADco.’s Semi-interpretations or How to Explain Contemporary Dance to an Undead Hare, Sanja Mitrović’s Will You Ever Be Happy Again?, Mladinsko Theater’s Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland, and Via Negativa’s Out. On March 14, Petra Kovačić and Željko Zorica will present the performance installations Act(ing) and Digitalization of Monumental Heritage and Its Commercial Exploitation, respectively, at La MaMa, free with advance RSVP, and on March 21 the New School for Social Research will host a wrap-up panel discussion, “Transgressing Borders in the Balkans: The State of Art,” with Dobrovic and Perforations participants Ivica Buljan, Igor Josifov, and Kovačić, moderated by Croatian journalist Vesna Kesic.

TWI-NY TALK: EIKO & KOMA

Eiko & Koma will be in New York City this month presenting three very different projects

Tuesday, March 8, Art Work: An Evening with Eiko Otake, the New School, Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th St., free, 6:00
Tuesday, March 15, and Wednesday, March 16, Delicious Movement Workshop, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $65 with preregistration, 7:00
March 29 – April 9, Baryshnikov Arts Center, free with advance RSVP, Tuesday – Friday 6:00 – 10:00 pm, Saturday 3:00 – 9:00 pm
www.eikoandkoma.org

Shortly after meeting as students in Japan in 1971 at the Tatsumi Hijikata dance studio, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake formed a partnership that is now in its fifth decade. Based in New York City since 1976, Eiko & Koma have presented experimental modern dance and installation indoors and outdoors all over the world, including such highly praised works as White Dance (1976), Grain (1983), Memory (1989), River (1995), The Caravan Project (1999), and Hunger (2008). Having studied with such innovative choreographers as Kazuo Ohno, Lucas Hoving, and Anna Halprin, their own pieces, for which they generally design all elements, including sets, sound scores, and costumes, have earned them NEA, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, two Bessies, and other prestigious awards.

On March 8, Eiko & Koma will give a free illustrated lecture at the New School on their Retrospective Project (2009-12), in which they are looking back over the course of their storied career. On March 15-16, they’ll be holding two Delicious Movement Workshops at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, inviting participants to “move/dance to actively forget the clutter of our lives so to fully ‘taste’ body and mind.” And from March 29 through April 9 they will present the two-week performance piece Naked at BAC, a movement/visual art installation that explores time, desire, and nakedness that was created during a three-month residency at the Park Avenue Armory and first presented at the Walker Art Center last year. Part of Carnegie Hall’s JapanNYC Festival, Naked is free with advance tickets that allow the audience to come and go as they please during specific time periods, watching Eiko & Koma in an organic environment that will be accompanied by a video retrospective. As they prepare for their New York blitz, Eiko discussed the audience-performer dynamic, nakedness, and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: You will be giving an Art Work talk at the New School on March 8, focusing on the Retrospective Project. What has the experience been like looking back at your long career while you’re still creating fascinating works for the future?

Eiko: We can remember what we were thinking of, about and how. We are sometimes surprised to find so much of what we do now has started long ago. We did not become wiser or better with age. That is a sort of myth. Instead we see more continuity in what we have done and what we are doing now.

twi-ny: That will be followed March 15-16 with your Delicious Movement Workshop at BAC, targeted not at professional dancers but everyone and anyone. What would you tell someone who knows very little, if anything, about dance about the program? Essentially, why should a dance novice not be scared of taking part in the workshop?

Eiko: Of course they should not be scared, because we have developed a way to make the workshop very inclusive and tasty. It is not so much about dance. it is more about moving in a way that is not too difficult and find a pleasure in it.

Eiko & Koma will perform NAKED at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (photo by Anna Lee Campbell)

twi-ny: Your living installation, Naked, will be presented March 29 – April 9 at BAC, where audiences will come and go as they please. You previously performed the piece at the Walker Art Center. How did the unusual staging affect the performer-audience dynamic?

Eiko: We were very close to people, which created the sense of intimacy. There was no beginning or end but purely entries and exits of people, which audience decided themselves. So there was more of an individual act of seeing and feeling on their own accord.

twi-ny: How did the audience react to the piece, which was not staged like a regular dance performance?

Eiko: Unlike a theater event, people in the museum did not know who we are or what we do. So there was a lot of surprise in seeing human naked bodies moving in a gallery. Some people, of course, did not get into it but surprisingly many people stayed longer than we or they expected. Many people also came back to see it again or bring friends. Some people cried. Some people said it was hard for them to leave us since we did not end anything but we just went on.

twi-ny: What was it like performing to an ever-changing, moving audience, with you and Koma on view as maybe more of a spectacle?

Eiko: I did not feel it was a spectacle. We really enjoyed performing for just a few people since we feel their emotions. It was a special experience for both sides. But when there was no one in the room, it was hard to continue with the same intensity. At the same time we could not stop or rest since at any time people might come in.

twi-ny: You’ve appeared naked in previous productions, but this one you even title Naked. What is it that draws you to the nakedness you reveal in your work?

Eiko: Nakedness is a bottom line . . . nothing to lose, nothing to protect us, where we become both more human and more like any other creatures.

SITE Fest and IonSound Music Festival

You never know what you’ll walk into at Bushwick’s Site Fest (photo: Sidewalk Dances)

Multiple venues in Bushwick
March 5-6, suggested donation $5 per event, $10 day pass, $15 weekend pass
www.artsinbushwick.org

Celebrating the burgeoning art, music, dance, and film scene in Bushwick, the third annual Site Fest will feature a bevy of performances Saturday and Sunday in conjunction with Armory Arts Week. Held at Chez Bushwick, Grace Exhibition Space, the Bushwick Starr, 3rd Ward, and numerous satellite venues, the festival will feature such participatory events at 3rd Ward as Gavin Campbell’s “Documentation of Flag,” which deals with his growing up on the Irish border; Hoyun Son’s “Social Shredding,” centered on a garment made of Korean funereal fiber; Stefan Adamski’s “Induction,” involving audience hypnosis; and Michael Freeman’s “Part 3: The Mnemonic Fool Series,” in which he interacts with the public while naked. The Bushwick Starr will host a series of text-based performances and installations (Jeremy Finch’s “Sketchbook,” Ari and Friends’ “Shake,” “vvitalny shares her thoughts w/ birds”), while Chez Bushwick will concentrate on experimental dance, including Laurel and Aya’s “Hand in Glove,” CJ Holm/Creature Theater’s “The Salad of the Bad Café,” and Michele Torino Hower’s “Merengue, as in Pie.” At Grace, Dr. Lisa will offer “Psychotherapy Live!,” Polaroica will be tattooing in “Tiempofaga,” and Meatspace will stage an interactive multimedia “Frankenstein Sweater Party,” where sewers can join in. Goodbye Blue Monday will be home to the IonSound Music Festival, with performances by Aimee Norwich, Bombs Making Bombs, Dear Comrade, Pezzettino, the Controversy, Rarefaction, Emilyis, and other music groups. The suggested donation for all hub space events and performances is a mere five bucks, with proceeds benefiting the nonprofit organization Arts in Bushwick. Our choice for best title: Kate Berlant’s “An Illustrative Colonoscopy into an Epistemological Kitty Cat.”

FIRST SATURDAYS — TIPI: HERITAGE OF THE GREAT PLAINS

Lyle Heavy Runner (Blackfeet), design owner and painter; Naomi Crawford (Blackfeet), tipi maker, “Blackfeet Tipi,” canvas, latex paint, wood, Great Falls, Montana, 2010 (photo: Jenny Steven)

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

The new Brooklyn Museum exhibit “Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains” is the focus of the institution’s March First Saturdays program, a free night of art, music, talk, film, literature, and dance. The party begins at 5:00 with singer/songwriter/activist Martha Redbone’s unique blend of soul, R&B, and traditional Native American music. At 5:30, the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers will perform. James McDaniel’s 2003 film, Edge of America, set at a high school reservation, will screen at 6:00, the same time Brooklyn artist Yatika Fields will discuss the “Tipi” exhibit. The Hands-On Art workshop (6:30-8:30) will teach children and adults how to make the Native American pouch called a parfleche. At 7:00, Nancy Rosoff will lead a tour of “Tipi,” followed at 8:00 by a Young Voices talk in which student guides will venture through the exhibit. DJ Frame of the Redhawk Arts Council will be behind the turntables for the always smokin’ Dance Party (8:00 – 10:00). At 9:00, visitors have the choice of continuing to dance up a storm, checking out Joseph Marshall III talking about his latest book, To You We Shall Return, or participating in an interactive dance performance with the Redhawk Arts Council. In addition, the galleries remain open until 11:00, giving everyone ample time to check out such exhibits as “reOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio,” “Thinking Big: Recent Design Acquisitions,” “Lorna Simpson: Gathered,” “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” “Sam Taylor-Wood: Ghosts,” and “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets.”

WORKS & PROCESS: JOHN ZORN’S MUSIC INTERPRETED

NEW CHOREOGRAPHY BY DONALD BYRD AND PAM TANOWITZ
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
February 27-28, $30, 7:30
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

One of the legends of the experimental music scene, John Zorn will be featured in the latest Works & Process event at the Guggenheim, the series in which artists go behind the scenes to reveal their creative process. For this two-night program, Donald Byrd, who has been choreographing work for thirty-five years for such companies as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dallas Black Dance Theater, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Philadanco, will present the world premiere of a piece set to Zorn’s “4,” performed by Byrd’s Seattle-based Spectrum Dance Theater and accompanied by Stephen Drury on piano. New York City-based Pam Tanowitz, who has been staging pieces that comment on the complexities of dance itself since 2000, will take on Zorn’s “Femina,” a project dedicated to women artists and composed for an all-female ensemble. Zorn, Byrd, and Tanowitz will be on hand to talk about the works during interspersed discussions moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Charles Wuorinen. The February 27 performance is sold out, although stand-by tickets might become available the day of the show, but there are still a few seats left for February 28.

ADG PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL 2011

Jane Dudley’s HARMONICA BREAKDOWN will be featured at ADG Festival (photo by Irven Lewis)

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center
248 West 60th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
February 24-27, $22 (Festival Pass $50, Thursday gala $30)
646-385-8493
www.americandanceguild.org
www.manhattanmovement.com

Founded in 1956 at the 92nd St. Y, the American Dance Guild, originally called the Dance Teachers Guild, has been supporting the art of dance for more than fifty years. This week the organization will be holding its annual ADG Performance Festival at the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, consisting of works by more than three dozen emerging and established choreographers. The festivities begin on Thursday night with the opening-night gala “Past to Present,” honoring dancer Jane Dudley, choreographer Paul Sanasardo, and writer and professor Linda Tarnay with an all-star presentation of Tina Croll and Jamie Cunningham’s From the Horse’s Mouth, featuring such special guests as Mary Anthony, Janis Brenner, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Diana Byer, Christine Dakin, Carmen deLavallade, Douglas Dunn, Deborah Jowitt, Don Redlich, Gus Solomons jr, and Martine van Hamel. Friday night includes pieces by Michele Cuccaro, Mariah Maloney, Amy Cova, Judith Moss, Bill Evans, and others in addition to a tribute to Dudley with performances of her Time Is Money and Harmonica Breakdown solos and a new work by Sanasardo, who will participate in a postperformance discussion with writer Mark Franko. Saturday and Sunday’s programs include works by Andrew Jannetti, Sally Hess, Hyonok Kim Dance Art, Claire Porter, Linda Lehovec, Kathy Diehl, Einy Am, Rebecca McArthur, and others, with Betsy Fisher performing Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz, Verb Ballet taking on Sophie Maslow’s Dust Bowl Ballads, and encores of Time Is Money and Harmonica Breakdown.

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS is part of annual Paul Taylor season at City Center (photo by Paul B. Goode)

City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
February 22 – March 6, $10-$150
www.ptdc.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Called the “naughty boy” of dance by Martha Graham more than fifty years ago, Paul Taylor has been pushing the envelope for some six decades. The Washington, DC, native has taken his company to more than five hundred cities in sixty-two countries, and today the Paul Taylor Dance Company kicks off its annual season at City Center with a gala performance and dinner at Cipriani 42nd St. with a bill that includes Esplanade, the New York premiere of Three Dubious Memories, and Oh, You Kid!, with live music by Rick Benjamin’s Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The season continues through March 6 with another New York premiere, Phantasmagoria, in addition to such repertory pieces as The Word, Brief Encounters, Cloven Kingdom, Promethean Fire, Company B, Orbs, Also Playing, and Dust. On March 1, they will present a Great Depression Special, pairing Black Tuesday with Speaking in Tongues; tickets are still available in the $5 and $19.29 seats. While most of the post-1987 works feature costumes by longtime Woody Allen set designer Santo Loquasto, Alex Katz designed the set and costumes for 1966’s Orbs, while John Rawlings handled the costumes for 1975’s Esplanade, Rawlings and Scott Barrie were responsible for 1976’s Cloven Kingdom, and Gene Moore took care of Dust. The lighting is by the inimitable Jennifer Tipton, with the pieces set to a wide range of music, from Beethoven, Bach, and Donizetti to Poulenc, Debussy, and the Andrews Sisters.