this week in dance

MLK DAY 2011

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have turned eighty-one this month

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Arizona congresswoman Gabrilelle Giffords, today’s many tributes to the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., should take on added meaning. At BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, the twenty-fifth annual free event, beginning at 10:30 am, features a keynote address by writer Walter Mosley, live performances by the Persuasions and the Reverend Timothy Wright Memorial Choir of the Grace Tabernacle Christian Center, and a screening of NESHOBA: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM (Micki Dickoff & Tony Pagano, 2010). The Children’s Museum of Manhattan continues its Martin Luther King. Jr., Festival with “Raising Citizens: Make a Difference Medal” at 12 noon. At the newly reopened Museum of the Moving Image, associate producer Richard Kaplan will introduce a free screening of KING: A FILMED RECORD . . . MONTGOMERY TO MEMPHIS at 3:00. At Symphony Space, the fourth annual JCC in Manhattan program, “Artists Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” includes a keynote address by the Rev. Dr. Suzan D. Johnson Cook, live jazz from Craig Harris, Juel Lane performing choreographer Bridget Moore’s REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, and singers Neshama Carlebach and Reverend Hambrick with members of the Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir, emceed by Ruth Messinger (free, 6:30). Tonight Jazz at Lincoln Center will present a Jazz Celebration featuring the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble, Cyrus Chestnut, and special guests ($20, 7:30 & 9:30).

PERFORMANCE 11: ON LINE/TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY

Trisha Brown Dance Company, STICKS, 1973 (photograph by Alfredo Anceschi)

Museum of Modern Art
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, January 15, and Sunday, January 16, 2:00 & 4:00
Free with museum admission of $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.trishabrowncompany.org

Last fall the Trisha Brown Dance Company continued its fortieth anniversary celebration with a number of site-specific performances at the Whitney. Now it leaps into its fifth decade with a group of shows in MoMA’s atrium as part of the museum’s Performance Exhibition Series, being staged in conjunction with “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century,” which examines how drawing has changed in the last hundred years, featuring works by such artists as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alexander Calder, Eva Hesse, Richard Tuttle, Mona Hatoum, and many others. On January 15 and 16 at 2:00 and 4:00, Brown will be presenting STICKS (1973), SCALLOPS (1973), and LOCUS SOLO (1975) as well as the premiere of ROOF PIECE RE-LAYED (2011), adapted from her original 1971 ROOF PIECE. MoMA will continue to explore the intimate connection between dance and drawings with Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci January 17-20, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker January 22-23, Ralph Lemon January 26-30, and Xavier Le Roy February 2-6.

WALLY CARDONA: INTERVENTION #4: ROBERT SEMBER

Wally Cardona will team up with Robert Sember for INTERVENTION #4 at BAC on January 8

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th St.
Saturday, January 8, $15, 8:30
www.bacnyc.org
www.wcvismorphing.org

In such widely praised works as REALLY REAL, A LIGHT CONVERSATION, SITE, and EVERYWHERE, Brooklyn-based dancer and choreographer Wally Cardona has continued to investigate the architecture of space as well as human emotion and interaction. In 2005’s EVERYWHERE, commissioned for BAM’s Next Wave Festival, he placed barriers across the floor as dancers made their way through an ever-changing maze that led to a thrilling and surprising conclusion. In 2007’s site-specific SITE at DTW, Cardona again used objects to deconstruct and reconstruct the stage set in another of his “landscape” works. In addition to often incorporating physical objects into his pieces, Cardona also regularly collaborates with a diverse array of individuals, including sound artist Phil Kline, teacher and dancer Rahel Vonmoos, the music groups ETHEL and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, video artist Maya Ciarrocchi, and interior designer Douglas Fanning. For his current project, INTERVENTION, Cardona is holding residencies in several cities, where the host institution selects a local expert not from the field of dance for him to work with for five days, creating a single, unique performance. This past week Cardona has teamed up with Robert Sember, part of the Ultra-red activist art collective, a former researcher for Columbia’s Department of Sociomedical Sciences, and a Vera List Center Fellow at the New School, for INTERVENTION #4, which will take place tonight at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on West 37th St. Cardona will be back at BAC on February 12 for INTERVENTION #5 and March 26 for INTERVENTION #6 before heading to Washington, DC, with the fascinating project. Meanwhile, Paris-based choreographer Jennifer Lacey is participating in similar residencies, called MY FIRST TIME WITH A DRAMATURGE, which will eventually come together with Cardona’s INTERVENTION and music by Berlin-based composer Jonathan Bepler for the more expansive TOOL IS LOOT. Tickets are only $15 to see one of Brooklyn’s most innovative and creative choreographers in a one-time only performance tonight, so don’t miss it.

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.