Megan Sprenger continues her ongoing examination of the relationship between audience and performer with free sneak peek at the 92nd St. Y (photo by Yi-chun Wu)
92nd St. Y, Buttenwieser Hall
395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St.
Friday, February 11, free, 12 noon
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
Back in May 2009, Megan Sprenger and her mvworks company presented …WITHIN US. at P.S. 122, a show that we called “a brilliant evening-length piece of confrontational dance theater that gets right in the audience’s face — literally.” Sprenger will be at the 92nd St. Y on February 11 as part of the Harkness Dance Center’s free Fridays at Noon series, discussing the ever-present question “Am I too close?” with fellow choreographers Sarah Maxfield, who runs the web-based performance relay One-Shot, and Yanira Castro, whose latest project is called a canary torsi. The trio will offer sneak peeks at works-in-progress, including Sprenger’s HOLD MY HAND, and will also participate in a Q&A with the audience, with whom they cannot promise that they won’t get too close.
Written and directed by first-time feature filmmakers Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor, ME, TOO is a beautifully told story about a man with Down syndrome trying to make it in the so-called normal world. When Daniel (Pablo Pineda) first shows up for work at a government disability agency in Sevilla, Laura (Lola Dueñas) mistakes him for someone who has come seeking help, not the person who will be occupying the desk next to hers on a daily basis. Daniel does not see himself as a victim, and he is clearly not a charity case; instead, he has earned a university degree and refuses to allow his disease — or, more important, the way his disease is viewed by others — to limit the things he can accomplish in life. Soon Daniel and Laura grow very close, but she is unable to let their relationship reach the next level, regardless of how much they care for each other — and how many times she instead goes to a local bar and picks up strangers. Meanwhile, Luisa (Lourdes Naharro) and Pedro (Daniel Parejo), who both have Down syndrome and are members of the Danza Mobile dance company, which works with people suffering from intellectual disabilities, have fallen in love, but they feel free to express it, even in public, which gets them in trouble with Luisa’s mother (Catalina Lladó). The contrast between the two romances, one of which is “mixed” but both of which are complicated, is well handled by Naharro (who also plays Daniel’s older brother in the film) and Pastor, steering clear of the kind of sappy melodrama that could have compromised the film’s point of view. They deal with the issue of the infantilization and stereotyping of people with Down syndrome with just the right amount of honesty and subtlety to avoid becoming a pedantic message movie. Both Dueñas, an Almodóvar regular, and Pineda, making his cinematic debut, won Silver Shells for their acting at the 2009 San Sebastian Film Festival. Pineda is in fact the first person with Down syndrome in Europe to earn a major university degree, and he is endearing in the lead role, never overly sentimental, and the script avoids treacly moments, as does Guille Milkyway’s soundtrack. ME, TOO will be screening as part of the ReelAbilities NY Disabilities Film Festival on February 5 at the JCC in Manhattan and on February 6 at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington.