this week in dance

ART IN ODD PLACES: CHANCE

Paul Notzold’s “TXTual Healing” will project audience texts onto a 14th St. building as part of Art in Odd Places public art festival

14th St. between the Hudson & East Rivers
October 1-10
Admission: free
www.artinoddplaces.org

Everyday life in New York City is built around the idea of chance — risk as well as luck, both good and bad — as residents, tourists, workers, and other visitors are all part of a daily maelstrom filled with expected and unexpected encounters with friends and strangers, taxis and buses, parks and skyscrapers. If the city is its own massive museum, then its streets are like individual galleries, and with that in mind, curators Yaelle Amir and Petrushka Bazin have taken over 14th St. from October 1 to 10. “Chance” is the latest presentation from Art in Odd Places, which seeks to stretch the limits of public art. Playing off the themes of “proposition, luck, randomness, risk, and opportunity,” Amir and Bazin have gathered together more than two dozen site-specific projects that run the length of 14th St. from the Hudson to the East River, as passersby will come upon live music, dance, sound installations, interactive sculpture, and other participatory events. Perhaps you’ll find one of Sheryl Oring’s “To a Young Poet” envelopes, inside of which is an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke and a request for you to respond. Or maybe your movement will be incorporated into Simonetta Moro’s “Chance Drawing: Reverse Window Shopping” at Rags-a-Gogo. Make sure you have proper identification if you want to take one of notary public Carrie Dashow’s “Great Oaths.” Go ahead and answer that ringing phone, as it could be Christopher Dameron and Annika Newell’s “Silent Call” on the other end. Be brave and enter Einat Amir’s “Enough About You,” in which you’ll be put in a room with a stranger and then have a conversation. Although it might be raining anyway, you won’t want to get wet from BroLab Collective’s “Pump 14,” which will be transporting water down 14th St. via a manual bucket filtration system. Watch to see if Irvin Morazan, munching on Cheez Doodles while dressed in a Mayan-inspired headdress, is able to hail a cab in “Taxi!! Taxi!! Taxii!!” If someone is waving at you from across the street, be sure to wave back, because it’s probably part of Flux Factory’s “Sign a Waver.” And if three women suddenly start telling you stories on a street corner, it could very well be Jessica Ann Peavy’s “Two Lies and a Truth,” and it’s up to you to decide which rumor is real. Some of the events will continue all week, while others will take place only tonight, so check the schedule at the above website if you’re interested in a specific performance.

SEVEN WORKS BY TRISHA BROWN

Stephen Petronio walks down the outside of the Whitney as part of Trisha Brown “Off the Wall” show at the Whitney (photo by twi-ny/mdr)



OFF THE WALL: PART 2
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
September 30 – October 3, free with museum admission of $12-$18
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
Stephen Petronio: “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building” slideshow

The Trisha Brown Dance Company continues its fortieth anniversary celebration with four days of live performance art at the Whitney, re-creating seminal works inside a second-floor gallery, in the museum’s outdoor sculpture court, and down the side of the building. The exciting weekend begins Thursday afternoon at 3:30 with “Falling Duet I,” “Leaning Duets I,” “Walking on the Wall,” and “Spanish Dance” in the Mildred & Herbert Lee Galleries, along with films and the sound installation “Skymap,” and will be repeated on October 1 at 3:30 & 7:00 and October 2-3 at 12 noon and 3:30. “Floor of the Forest” will be staged by members of the 2010-11 Second Avenue Dance Company at 4:30 in the sculpture court on Thursday and repeated numerous times through Sunday. Yesterday people marveled as a woman made her way down the outside facade of the Whitney, but that was no mere daredevil; it was choreographer Elizabeth Streb rehearsing Brown’s “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building,” which will be performed by Stephen Petronio Thursday at 5:00 and Saturday at 1:30 and 5:00 and by Streb Friday at 5:00 and Sunday at 1:30 and 5:00.

VOLLMOND (FULL MOON)

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch returns to BAM without their fearless leader (photo by Jan Szito)

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
September 29 – October 9, $25 – $85
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.pina-bausch.de

Back in 1984, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch performed at BAM for the first time, presenting DAS FRÜHLINGSOPFER and LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS, and over the years the insanely entertaining German troupe has returned with such memorable evening-length pieces as DANZÓN, MASURCA FOGO, NEFÉS, and last year’s BAMBOO BLUES. And for Bausch, evening-length really means evening-length, as many of her productions run between two and a half and three hours, and they rarely if ever lag. Instead they’re filled with offbeat humor, playful dialogue, unusual props, wild stage designs, and, of course, creative movement. Bausch died in June 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, so this will mark Tanztheater Wuppertal’s first BAM appearance without their endlessly innovative and always elegant director and choreographer. VOLLMOND (FULL MOON) will run at the Howard Gilman Opera House from September 29 through October 9, but tickets are already scarce, so act quickly, whether you’re a fan of contemporary dance or not, because you’ll find lots to love regardless. Bausch’s twelfth show at BAM features set design by Peter Pabst, costumes by Marion Cito, and musical collaboration by Matthias Burkert and Andreas Eisenschneider, with an eclectic score that includes songs by Magyar Posse, Cat Power, Amon Tobin, René Aubry, Alexander Balanescu, Tom Waits, Siegfried Ganhör and to rococo rot, Jun Miyake and Sublime, and others. There will also be a lot of water.

WILLI DORNER: BODIES IN URBAN SPACES

Willi Dorner will lead audiences on a free tour of site-specific dance installations on Monday at sunset

Crossing the Line Festival
Central Plaza at Coenties Slip Park at Pearl St.
Between Broad St. & Hanover Sq.
Monday, September 27, free, 5:46 pm
www.fiaf.org

On Sunday morning at sunrise, multimedia choreographer Willi Dorner led people on a walk through the Wall Street area, encountering human sculptures who performed site-specific dances for the traveling audience. On Monday afternoon at sunset, the Vienna-based Dorner will lead another group on a free tour, once again filled with surprise performances incorporated into the urban design of Lower Manhattan. The two-part moving installation brings to a close FIAF’s annual Crossing the Line Festival, consisting of music, dance, art, literature, theater, forums, film, and more.

ATLANTIC ANTIC

Annual Atlantic Antic street festival winds through the brownstones of Brooklyn

Atlantic Ave. from Hicks St. to Fourth Ave.
Sunday, September 26, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Admission: free
www.atlanticave.org

The thirty-sixth annual Atlantic Antic will fill Atlantic Ave. with frantic festivalgoers eager for the latest in art, music, food, and other forms of culture. Some one million people will be wandering among the six hundred vendors, buying tchotchkes, getting a bite to eat (look out for lobster rolls from the Red Hook Lobster Pound and desserts from Whimsy and Spice), taking their kids on pony rides, and checking out dozens of bands across ten stages; we heartily recommend the Demolition String Band at Hank’s, Shark? at Roebling Inn / Future Sounds at 2:55, Les Sans Culottes at Last Exit at 4:00, and Dinosaur Feathers at Roebling Inn / Future Sounds at 5:00. There will also be storytelling, face painting, belly-dancing lessons, drum circles, balloon sculptures, and much more. In conjunction with the Atlantic Antic, the MTA will be hosting the seventeenth annual Transit Museum Bus Festival, held on Boerum Pl. between State St. and Atlantic Ave., with newly restored vehicles, the Patcher, the AutoCar, the MetroCard Bus, the Tunnel Wrecker, children’s workshops, and free admission to the New York Transit Museum.

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL

“Sushi” is performed in the windows of the BoConcept furniture store at 79 Front St. hourly between 2:00 & 5:00 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations
September 24-26
www.dumboartsfestival.com

The 2010 DUMBO Arts Festival will feature hundreds of events Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, three days of open studios, juried exhibitions and installations, concerts, dance, a digital summit, book signings, walking tours, performance art, a visual poetry marathon, children’s activities, and more, much of it free. The New York Photo Festival is premiering “Capture Brooklyn” at the powerHouse Arena, No Longer Empty will take over a suite in 111 Front St. as well as scaffolding outside 25 Washington St., Tom Verlaine will be playing at Galapagos with Billy Ficca and Patrick Derivaz, and Jonathan Lethem will be celebrating the launch of the paperback version of CHRONIC CITY. Among the other myriad participants and special events are the Brooklyn Ballet, Jane’s Carousel, storyteller LuAnn Adams, E. J. Antonio, the Strung Out String Band, Daniel Fishkin, Crystal Gregory, Mighty Tanaka, Bubby’s seventh annual Pie Social, a Steampunk Salon Saloon, and a bug-eating discussion with chef and artists Marc Dennis.

Anyone can be a star in Nelson Hancock’s two-part “That’s (not) Me” at DUMBO Arts Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

We particularly recommend Nelson Hancock’s “That’s (not) Me” outside on Main St. and inside at 55 Washington St., an August Sander-inspired project in which you can take a photograph of a friend or stranger, then switch places, then take a self-portrait, and you get to take home each photo of yourself; “Sushi,” in which Felisia Tandiono, Kashimi Asai, and Nung-Hsin Hu perform as three pieces of sushi in the windows of BoConcept at 79 Front St.; Andrea Cote and Michael Drisgula’s “Clay,” in which Cote will sculpt your head in clay while Drisgula documents it on video, with the same piece of clay used for all sitters; Fountain Art Fair favorite Allison Berkoy’s creepy projection “Asleep #3,” hidden away in a loading dock at 30 Washington St.; eteam’s “Gallery Cruise” at Smack Mellon on 92 Plymouth St., where you can relax at a table in the Tea Room, which offers a view of the Atlantic Ocean through a pair of windows; and Demetria Mazria’s “Take-Less” at 30 Washington St., composed of plastic take-out containers that form the number 2629, representing the number of such containers used (and then thrown out) every second in the United States. (We were looking forward to Janet Biggs’s “Wet Exit,” but it was canceled at the last minute.)

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: PROJECT 5

Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company will alternate between an all-female and all-male cast for PROJECT 5 at the Joyce (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
September 21 – October 3, $10-$69
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.batsheva.co.il

The dazzling PROJECT 5, an hour-long four-piece show that features either an all-male or all-female cast depending on the night, marks the return of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company to the Joyce after more than a quarter-century and the first time longtime artistic director Ohad Naharin has presented work at the dance mecca. The two-week run began with the women on Sept. 21, with Iyar Elezera, Shani Garfinkel, Bosmat Nossan, Michal Sayfan, and Bobbi Smith taking the stage in “George & Zalman,” a 2006 work that combines text by Charles Bukowski and Arvo Pärt’s sparse tintinnabuli piano solo “Für Alina.” As a recording of Smith’s voice intones the lyrics — “Ignore / Ignore all / Ignore all possible concepts and possibilities” — which build in repetitive, cumulative phrases, the five dancers express their own movement phrases to accompany the words, only at certain times coming together in the same movement. Wearing black knee-length dresses, they each perform a solo at the end, temporarily breaking them away from the group dynamic. Naharin’s offbeat choice to use a Bukowski text, which as expected includes language not generally found in contemporary dance, threatens to be shocking but ends up being rather poetic. (It also led to the older couple next to us asking, “What is the difference between fucking and copulating?” while the woman behind us wondered aloud who Bukowski was.) “George & Zalman” is followed by the gorgeous pas de deux “Bolero,” with Elezra and Nossan building in intensity to Isao Tomita’s electronic version of the Maurice Ravel standard. Sayfan, Smith, and Garfinkel form a kind of avant-garde girl group in “Park,” a short excerpt from the longer 1999 work “Moshe.” The trio, behind microphones, sing in Hebrew, incorporating sharp, angular movements between verses. Following a five-minute video pause, all five women perform the breathtaking “Black Milk.” Now wearing off-white two-piece costumes with flowing skirts that recall Middle Eastern dress, the dancers wipe mud on their faces and bodies and form into pairs, depicting a more physical language of romance and violence, featuring holds, pushes, and embraces, the first time they have actually touched one another all night. PROJECT 5 is another superior display from one of the world’s most inventive and talented companies. (PROJECT 5 continues through Oct. 3, with the women performing Sept. 22-23, 25, and 26 and the men Sept. 24-25, 28-30, and Oct. 2-3.)