this week in dance

PARSONS DANCE

Parsons Dance will update REMEMBER ME with the East Village Opera Company at the Joyce

REMEMBER ME AND MORE
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
February 2-21, $10-$49
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org

Choreographer David Parsons and the East Village Opera Company bring an updated version of their collaboration, REMEMBER ME, back to New York City with a two-week stay at the Joyce. The multimedia show about a love triangle includes fourteen songs by the rock opera band, which rocks out to opera classics, with Tyler Ross and AnnMarie Milazzo performing live onstage; costumes are by PROJECT RUNWAY’s Austin Scarlett and lighting by Tony winner Howell Binkley. The stroboscopic solo CAUGHT, set to music by Robert Fripp, will be part of all programs. In addition, the season features family –friendly matinees on Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 consisting of WOLFGANG, EBBEN, NASCIMENTO NOVO, HAND DANCE, CAUGHT, and SCRUTINY as well as a third program, on February 17-18, comprising WOLFGANG, BROTHERS, SWING SHIFT, KIND OF BLUE, CAUGHT, and IN THE END.

KIMBERLY BARTOSIK / daela

Kimberly Bartosik makes her DTW debut with the world premiere of THE MATERIALITY OF IMPERMANENCE

THE MATERIALITY OF IMPERMANENCE
Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th St.
Wednesday, February 3, through Saturday, February 6, $15, 7:30
212-924-0077
www.dtw.org
www.daela.org

Evoking memory and the passage of time, Kimberly Bartosik / daela’s THE MATERIALITY OF IMPERMANENCE will have its world premiere this week at DTW’s Bessie Schönberg Theater, on a set dotted with LED lights designed by lighting expert Roderick Murray. The evening-length piece will be performed by Bartosik, Joanna Kotze, and Marc Mann, with music by Luke Fasano. The daela company “is dedicated to rigorous exploration of movement, sound and visual design towards the creation of performances in space-specific environments.” The February 3 show will be preceded by Coffee and Conversation at 6:30, while the February 5 performance will be followed by a discussion with the cast and crew.

February 4 performance reviewed: The oxymoronically titled THE MATERIALITY OF IMPERMANENCE is an existential examination of home and the human psyche. As the audience enters the theater, lighting designer Roderick Murray and composer Luke Fasano are playing Scrabble in the middle of the stage. Once everyone is seated — including in rows to the right and left of the stage, creating a more intimate feel — choreographer and longtime Merce Cunningham dancer Kimberly Bartosik starts making her way downstairs backwards from the back of the crowd while reciting quotes that soon devolve into random word jumbles. Meanwhile, Marc Mann enters, swings a microphone that is dangling from the ceiling, and attempts to talk into it as it passes by, barely missing his head. Bartosik and Mann then spend the next forty-five minutes or so moving around a mazelike stage divided into compartments by LED lights that turn on and off on the floor, being careful to never step directly over them, as if they were walls. They make their way through the “rooms” with sudden, harsh movements, not light on their feet, as occasional snippets of music appear and disappear and they take off their clothes and then put them back on, over and over again. At one point they meet at center stage and maneuver into an erotic position as Bartosik feeds a torn piece of paper to Mann, once again incorporating words and language into the evening-length piece. Then the couple departs, taking seats in the audience as long-legged Joanna Kotze performs a striking dance, paying no attention to the barriers that constrained Bartosik and Mann.

An abstract, avant-garde work that encounters plenty of bumps along the way, THE MATERIALITY OF IMPERMANENCE, commissioned by DTW, is a curiously compelling piece of dance theater. It can go from cold and confusing to warming and inviting in a heartbeat, a visual representation of the word jumble, low-tech music, and mostly unintelligible dialogue that tease the audience. The words might not make sense, but Bartosik hides little else; both she and Mann disrobe several times, Murray (who is married to the choreographer) gives lighting cues from the stage, and Fasano walks around holding up small speakers and placing microphones on the floor that the dancers struggle to talk into.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Become a Brooklyn Museum 1stfan for $20 and receive a free limited-edition print of Valerie Hegarty’s “First Harvest in the Wilderness with Pileated Woodpecker,” inspired by Asher Durand

Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, February 6, free after 5:00 (some events require advance free tickets available an hour or two before showtime)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s monthly First Saturdays program celebrates Black History Month with another evening of free activities, featuring live performances by the Igmar Thomas Group, Impact Repertory Theatre, and Dja-rara, screenings of Jeremy Robins and Magali Damas’s 2008 Haitian documentary THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WATER and Mel Stuart’s 1973 classic WATTSTAX, a Hands-On wearable art workshop, gallery tours, a book club meeting discussing THE BLACK BODY, and a Mardi Gras dance party hosted by DJ Ian Friday. Also, 1stfans will receive a free print by Valerie Hegarty. In addition, all of the exhibitions will be open, including “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864,” “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets,” and “From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith.”

MEDEA AND ITS DOUBLE

Medea is split in two in South Korean reinterpretation (photo by Zita Bradley)

La MaMa First Floor Theatre
74A East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Thursday – Sunday through January 24
Tickets: $18
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org
www.seoulfactory.co.kr

Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts, under artistic director and founder Limb Hyoung-taek, has brought its own unique twist to Euripides’ classic Greek tragedy of a woman scorned in MEDEA AND ITS DOUBLE, playing Thursdays through Sundays through January 24 at La MaMa. Mixing in Shakespearean bravura, contemporary dance, and even some emotive Korean soap opera, Limb divides Medea into two characters: mother (Koo See-yeon) and lover (Lee Kyoung). The work begins with a way-too-long textual introduction projected onto a bloodred scrim, summarizing the tale of Medea, the heartbreaking story of the tragic marriage between Medea and Jason, of Argonauts and Golden Fleece fame. After learning of her husband’s betrayal with a wealthy princess, Medea takes out her vengeance on her two children and Jason, leaving behind a bloody mess. The introduction does set up the drama, which is performed in Korean without subtitles, but it also tries to prime the audience as to how they should react to what they’re about to see.

Medea the mother comforts Medea the lover as bloody conclusion looms (photo by Zita Bradley)

The two Medeas first appear as children, playing with Jason (Lee Do-yup) and other friends; marriage and children ensue, beautifully communicated in evocative dance. Rectangular pools with floating candles flank the stage, offering beauty and life, but once Jason returns from his dalliance, Medea divides: The lover, wearing a devilish red coat, tries to suppress Medea the mother, robed in pure flowing white, and exact her brutal revenge. Limb’s inventive production includes singers and musicians behind the scrim, adding a foreboding mood to the proceedings even though, once again, everything is in Korean. And just wait till you see how he handles the two babies. The lead actors are all excellent, particularly Koo as Medea the lover, who evolves from sexy to dangerous to psychotic while moving skillfully around the stage, incorporating Asian martial arts and Beijing Opera elements into her portrayal. This strong, emotional production deserves a bigger venue, where it can really show off its bold and inventive attributes.

CULTUREMART ’10

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya will reprise FLOATING POINT WAVES as part of CultureMart at HERE Arts

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
January 11-31, $15
212-647-0202
www.here.org

The tenth annual CultureMart festival takes place at HERE Arts January 11-31, featuring twelve workshop productions and a postshow discussion series making up three weeks of experimental opera and dance, avant-garde theater and puppetry. Michael Bodel reimagines Bellini’s LA SONNAMBULA, Toni Dove examines virtual multiple personality in LUCID POSSESSION, Yoav Gal goes multimedia to retell the story of Moses in MOSHEH, and Erin Orr and Rima Fand follow DON CRISTOBAL, BILLY-CLUB MAN onstage and off with hand, large, and shadow puppets, inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca. Laura Peterson’s WOODEN takes place in a naturalistic environment of sculpted trees and metal, while Johari Mayfield’s THE VENUS RIFF looks at science and religion in regard to the stereotyping of women over the last few hundred years. We’re particularly looking forward to FLOATING POINT WAVES by dancer/choreographer Ximena Garnica and video artist Shige Moriya, who collaborated on FURNACE at last month’s Cave Butoh Festival. Tickets for all events are $15 and go fast.

RIOULT

Great masses will flock to RIOULT’s season at the Joyce (photo by Nina Alovert)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 19-24, $10-$49
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org
www.rioult.org

New York-based choreographer and former French track-and-field star Pascal Rioult, who was a principal dancer with Martha Graham and formed his own company, RIOULT, in 1994, has an exciting season planned for the Joyce, two programs that include world premieres and a return to his beginnings. Program A, “Folk, Ravel, and Bach,” begins with Rioult’s very first piece, 1992’s HARVEST, which was inspired by the look and feel of Millet’s paintings of peasant life, with music by Scottish singer-songwriter Dougie MacLean and Irish traditional group Altan, followed by 2005’s BOLERO. The program concludes with two new dances set to a pair of Bach piano solos (completing the trilogy that Rioult began with VIEWS OF THE FLEETING WORLD) and featuring video animation by Brian Beasley. Program B consists of the evening-length work THE GREAT MASS (2008), danced to Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” The January 21 performance of Program A will be followed by a discussion with Rioult, who gives back to his adopted city through numerous arts-in-education initiatives.

COIL

Performance Space 122
150 First Ave. at Ninth St.
January 6-17, $20 per performance, $55 passport for any five shows
www.ps122.org

The COIL festival is back at P.S. 122, featuring fourteen companies performing over twelve days, some in conjunction with the Under the Radar festival running concurrently at the Public Theater. Among this year’s presentations are Richard Maxwell’s ADS, which looks at the theater itself; Gisèle Vienne’s hard-hitting JERK, based on text by Dennis Cooper; Morgan Thorson’s HEAVEN, with live music by LOW; and the return of Temporary Distortion’s AMERICANA KAMIKAZE, which ran at P.S. 122 last fall. We can’t recommend Megan V. Sprenger / mvworks’ “…within us.” highly enough; when we caught the show last May at P.S. 122, we called it “a brilliant evening-length piece of confrontational dance theater that gets right in the audience’s face — literally. . . . a thoroughly involving hour that leaves the talented dancers and the brave audience feeling energized and alive.” Several off-site COIL productions include LeeSaar the Company’s PRIMA at the JCC, WaxFactory’s BLIND.NESS at the Abrons Arts Center, and Maria Hassabi’s SoloShow at a private studio in Chelsea; when we saw SoloShow at P.S. 122 in November, we referred to is as “a highlight of the Performa 09 biennial,” a beautifully constructed piece that displays Hassabi’s awe-inspiring athleticism and strong body.