this week in dance

HILARY EASTON + COMPANY

Hilary Easton will present a free performance of LIGHT AND SHADE at City Center Studios on Saturday morning

City Center Studios
130 West 56th St., fifth floor
Saturday, January 8, free with RSVP, 11:30 am
www.hilaryeaston.com

“I love dancing,” choreographer, dancer, teacher, and native New Yorker Hilary Easton explains in her artist’s statement. “I love inventing movement, watching it, doing it.” That joy comes through in her work, which has been presented since 1992 at such venues as PS122, Danspace Project, SummerStage, the American Dance Festival, and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. Back in October, the New York-based Hilary Easton + Company held the world premiere of their latest work, LIGHT AND SHADE, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and they’re bringing it back as part of this weekend’s APAP conference with a special free performance at City Center Studios. The forty-five-minute duet will be performed by Michael Ingle and Emily Pope-Blackman, set to a sound score by Mike Rugnetta, with lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann and costumes by Madeleine Walach. The piece explores the many ways of experiencing intimacy, between the dancers onstage as well as between the performers and the audience.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE SHOWCASE: JAPAN + EAST ASIA

Ku & Dancers (©You-Wei Chen), Ahn Ae-soon Dance Company (©LG Arts Center), and Maki Morishita (© Satoshi Watanabe) will all be part of annual Japan Society showcase

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 7, and Saturday, January 8, $23, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

All year long, Japan Society presents outstanding dance programs, primarily by Japanese and Japanese-American companies. But every January, they kick off the calendar with its highly anticipated Contemporay Dance Showcase, bringing together groups from throughout the Far East. The fourteenth annual two-day festival is scheduled for January 7-8, with another impressive roster of participants. Tokyo-based choreographer Ryohei Kondo, who leads the Condors, will be joined by J-pop star Miu Sakamoto, the progeny of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Akiko Yano, and a group of dancers for GOATS BLOCK THE ROAD, PART III: GOAT STAMPEDE. Japanese choreographer Maki Morishita specializes in solo dances, having toured with such works as DEBUTANTE, KOSHITSU (PRIVATE ROOM), and KOMA-INU-ILLUTSKY. For the Japan Society showcase, she will present the U.S. premiere of her latest solo piece, TOKYO FLAT. Seoul-based Ahn Ae-soon Dance Company brings a multitude of styles and forms to BUL-SSANG (PITY), which investigates Korea’s cultural identity through Buddhist imagery, incorporating Indian kathak, Korean Jindo drum dancing, Chinese martial arts, and Mongolian and Japanese traditional movement, along with contributions from DJ Soulscape and Pop artist Choi Jeongohwa. Taiwanese dancer, teacher, and choreographer Yu Yen-Fang will conclude the program with FROM HERE . . . TO THE END OF THE RAINBOW, described as an “endearingly oddball and intimate male-female duet.” (While at Japan Society, don’t miss Lewis Hyde and Max Gimblett’s “oxherding,” on view in the downstairs lobby gallery.)

CULTUREMART ’11

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya's FLOATING POINT WAVES is part of HERE's annual Culturemart festival

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
January 7-23, $15
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Culturemart, the annual festival of workshop productions by HERE’s resident artists, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with another slate of diverse experimental shows incorporating theater, dance, film, music, and audience interaction. Things get under way January 7-8 with Laura Peterson’s GROUND, the second part of her Wooden trilogy, in which a dance quartet performs within living grass and trees. Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, artistic directors of the New York Butoh Festival, will present the immersive, multimedia FLOATING POINT WAVES. Betty Shamieh makes the murdered Arab from Albert Camus’s THE STRANGER the main character in the mysterious THE STRANGEST. A community of artists — as well as the audience — are all part of the interactive LUSH VALLEY, which seeks to reclaim the American dream. THE VENUS RIFF riffs on the Venus Hottentot. Democracy takes center stage in Aaron Landsman’s participatory CITY COUNCIL MEETING. Deborah Stein and Suli Holum investigate a woman who is her own twin in CHIMERA. Kamala Sankaram’s chamber opera MIRANDA mixes reality television with hip-hop and Hindustani classical music. And Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith uses puppetry to look at the sacred in EPYLLION, among other shows running through January 23, with all tickets a mere $15.

EASY STREET — NYE

Dixon Place
161 A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Friday, December 31, $20, 9:00
212-219-0736
www.dixonplace.org

There’s plenty of good reason why this intimate New Year’s Eve party is for twenty-one and older only. Organized by cabaret kaiser Earl Dax and visual artist Liz Liguori, Easy Street at Dixon Place will feature avant-garde performance artist Penny Arcade and John (HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH) Cameron (SHORTBUS) Mitchell in addition to Glenn Marla, Carol Lipnik, Enid Ellen, Billy Pelt, and Will Larche. DJs Tusk, K!O, and Gant Johnson will keep things thumping, along with contributions from costume designer Machine (Pussy-on-My-Shoulder) Dazzle and designer Diego Montoya. Dixon Place is calling it “low-key . . . with the requisite glitz and glam,” so be ready for anything. Tickets are only twenty bucks, so it’s also one of the most affordable gatherings in town.

THE BOOTLEGGERS’ BALL

Irondale Performing Arts Center
85 South Oxford St., Fort Greene
Friday, December 31, $20-$35
www.geminiandscorpio.com

Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh and Larisa Fuchs, better known as Miss Gemini and Miss Scorpio, know how to throw parties. Throughout the year they put together unique, themed events in unusual locations, and they’ve got another crazy one planned for New Year’s Eve. “The contraband has been ordered, authorities paid off, and performers lined up for a New Year’s Eve speakeasy ball in a historic former church with soaring ceilings and wraparound balcony,” they explain on their website. “Expect the intimacy of a daring cabaret mixed with the intrigue of a vintage costumed ball, expansiveness of a warehouse dance party, excitement of live brass, a splash of fine cocktails, and just a dash of illicit adventure and unpredictable moments.” The party will feature the Dixieland steamboat soul of Roosevelt Dime, the circus-gypsy parlor-jazz of the Drunkard’s Wife, the saucy dance moves of Zahra Hashemian, the vintage visuals of Sebastian Patane Masuelli, and the awesome aerial stunts of Marisa Maffia and Dana Abrassart as well as music, dance, burlesque, magic, and numerology from Spiff Wiegand, Renata and Irina Kom, Kinetic Architecture, Crooked Disco DJs, Painteresse Elysabeth, Marcy Currier, Katelan Foisy, and others, hosted by GD Falksen. The dress code is “depression glamour, evening ball on the Titanic, hobo formal, desperation derring-do,” ensuring what should be a very different kind of New Year’s Eve spectacular.

COIL 2011

Amanda Loulaki and Short Mean Lady’s I AM SAYING GOODNIGHT bows down to morning coffee at 2011 COIL festival

Performance Space 122 (and other venues)
150 First Ave. at Ninth St.
January 5-15, $20 per performance, $55 passport for any five shows, $100 for any ten shows
www.ps122.org

The sixth annual COIL festival of contemporary experimental dance and theater runs January 5-15, consisting of ten shows at PS122 and seven at offsite venues, several of which are return hits or will continue past COIL. Audience members can become part of Kim Noble’s will and go home with a container of his sperm in KIM NOBLE WILL DIE. Annie Dorsen’s HELLO HI THERE filters the 1971 Michel Foucault / Noam Chomsky debate through a chatbot to create new, improvised dialogues every night. The BodyCartography Project, which re-created a nuclear holocaust at PS122 in February 2010, turns its attention on the human body for SYMPTOM. In STORIES LEFT TO TELL, Ain Gordon, Kathleen Chalfant, Hazelle Goodman, and Bob Holman perform excerpts from classic and unpublished texts by Spalding Gray. Jack Ferver brings back his recent success RUMBLE GHOST, which combines the horror film POLTERGEIST with a group therapy session. Travis Chamberlain’s site-adaptive GREEN EYES takes Tennessee Williams to the Hudson Hotel, while Radiohole melds Douglas Sirk with John Milton at the Collapsible Hole. THEM, the intense collaboration between director Ishmael Houston-Jones, guitarist Chris Cochrane, and writer Dennis Cooper, returns for three performances at the Abrons Arts Center, while Palissimo kicks off its PAINTED BIRD trilogy with BASTARD at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Tickets for most shows are $20, with a $55 passport for any five productions and $100 for ten.

UNDER THE RADAR 2011

GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN (YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD) will be at La Mama January 6-8 during the seventh annual Under the Radar festival (photo by David Baltzer)

The Public Theater (and other venues)
425 Lafayette St. between East Fourth St. & Astor Pl.
January 5-16, $15-$30
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The seventh annual Under the Radar: A Festival Tracking New Theater from Around the World features nineteen international productions, from the United States’ AMERIVILLE and LIVING IN EXILE to Belgium’s BONANZA, from Italy’s TOO LATE! ANTIGONE (CONTEST #2) to France’s VICE VERSA, from the UK’s THE INTERMINABLE SUICIDE OF GREGORY CHURCH to Slovenia/Latvia’s SHOW YOUR FACE! Several works investigate the nature of theater itself, including Vladimir Shcherban’s BEING HAROLD PINTER and Barry McGovern’s WATT BY SAMUEL BECKETT, while others feature such behind-the-scenes theater favorites as director JoAnne Akalaitis helming Nora York’s JUMP, about Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou’s TOSCA; Suzan-Lori Parks’s free WATCH ME WORK, in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright will literally work on her next project in the lobby of the Public Theater; and writer Taylor Mac’s THE WALK ACROSS AMERICA FOR MOTHER EARTH, a collaboration with the Talking Band that documents a cross-country antinuclear protest march. Other highlights include Reggie Watts’s multimedia collaboration with playwright Tommy Smith and journalist Brendan Kiley, DUTCH A/V; 2boys.tv’s PHOBOPHILIA, in which audiences will witness an interrogation in a secret location; and CORRESPONDENCES, a dance-theater piece in which Haitian/Malian Kettly Noël and South African Nelisiwe Xaba meet in person after having written to each other for a long time. While the Public Theater is home base for Under the Radar, there are also productions scheduled for HERE Arts Center, La MaMa, Dixon Place, the Abrons Arts Center, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and the Robert Moss Theater, in addition to several postshow discussions, a two-day symposium, festival lounges at the Chinatown Brasserie, and other special events.