this week in dance

MOHAU MODISAKENG: ZION

Mohau Modisakeng will lead a procession through the city for ZION (photo courtesy of Whatiftheworld, Ron Mandos, and Performa)

PERFORMA 17
Multiple locations
Saturday, November 11, free, 11:00 am – 5:15 pm
17.performa-arts.org
www.mohaumodisakeng.com

For Performa 17, South African multidisciplinary artist Mohau Modisakeng has created ZION, a procession through Manhattan invoking his native country’s history of colonialism, apartheid, and violent displacement. Beginning at 11:00 on November 11, Modisakeng and twenty dancers, carrying personal possessions, will make their way from Mother Zion Church in Harlem, zigzagging down Malcolm X Blvd. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. and to Hotel Theresa. At 2:00 the march stops at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and heads into Central Park, crossing the Great Lawn and Summit Rock. At 4:30, photographer, filmmaker, performance artist, and sculptor Modisakeng, whose previous work includes Passage, Metamorphosis, and Endabeni, will go from Anita’s Way public plaza to Times Square for a grand finale. The choreographed exodus equates what has happened in Cape Town’s District 6 and to Native Americans in Seneca Falls, New York, which was also the site of the first women’s rights convention, while also focusing on the current international refugee crisis.

ZVI DANCE: LIKE

ZviDance relies on the participation of the audience in new evening-length piece, Like (photo courtesy ZviDance)

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 8-11, $20-$25
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.zvidance.com

ZviDance founder and artistic director Zvi Gotheiner concludes his trilogy about social interaction and technology with Like, making its world premiere at New York Live Arts November 8-11. Following 2010’s Zoom and 2014’s Surveillance, the new evening-length piece allows the audience to participate in the proceedings by using their cell phones to vote in a reality-television dance competition to determine the course of events and dancers. Choreographed by the Israeli-born, New York City-based Gotheiner, the work features eight dancers, a score by Scott Killian, lighting by Mark London, and media design by Joshua Higgason, with numerous cameras, computers, and screens following the action and providing resampled live streams, prerecorded news footage, and real-time interviews with the performers as well as members of the audience.

PERFORMA / MetLiveArts — EIKO OTAKE: A BODY IN PLACES — THE MET EDITION

Eiko makes her way to the Fulton Center subway hub in June 2015 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eiko will make her way to all three Met Museum locations as part of Performa ’17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MetLiveArts / Performa ’17
Sunday, November 5, the Met Cloisters, 10:30 am to 4:45 pm
Sunday, November 12, the Met Breuer, 10:30 am to 5:15 pm
Sunday, November 19, the Met Fifth Avenue, 10:30 am to 5:15 pm
Free with museum admission
www.metmuseum.org
17.performa-arts.org

Eiko Otake began her “Body in Places” solo project shortly after her longtime partner, Takashi Koma, injured himself; the couple has performed as Eiko & Koma since the mid-1970s. The project has taken the Japan-born, New York City–based Eiko all around the world, where she moves in public spaces, both indoors and outdoors, wearing thick, heavy, ghostly makeup, dressed in a sackcloth-and-ashes-style kimono. She moves agonizingly slowly, a human intervention into the mass of humanity that swirls by such New York City locations as Wall Street, MoMA, St. John the Divine, the Fulton Center, St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, and Governors Island. The piece was inspired by the tragic events at Fukushima, Japan, where she has performed as well, but only for cameraman William Johnston. MetLiveArts and Performa ’17 have now teamed up to present the forty-third, forty-fourth, and forty-fifth iterations of this “living installation,” as Eiko makes her way through the Main Hall of the Met Cloisters on November 5, the fifth floor of the Met Breuer on November 12, and Galleries 963–965 (Robert Lehman Wing, court level) of the Met Fifth Avenue on November 19. “Each of the buildings in the Met is its own place, each with different opportunities and limitations on how I can carry Fukushima into the museum,” she explains in a statement. “Because of this, I use a different approach in projecting images, a different choreography, and a different gaze in each place. At the Cloisters, I can project the video onto the stone walls and can move the image negotiating with the architecture, art works, and a sense of history. At the Met Breuer, I work in a nearly empty space on the fifth floor that allows me to move the projector fracturing the images. It is the least museum-like space. At the Met Fifth Avenue, the projection must remain stationary. So, the structure will be more meditative. I hope my insistent gaze will make my witnessing palpable and invite others to linger in the space.” The piece has also been performed at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, the Wesleyan library, Hong Kong, Chile, the Chicago Art Institute, Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Tokyo. And don’t hesitate to see Eiko at the Met, even if you’ve seen her before; not only is each performance different, but she also notes, “I was invited to perform at the Met, but like any other engagement, I don’t want to make my performance about just accepting an invitation. I have been working in such a way to make it necessary and urgent for me. Please come if you can, and if you cannot, please imagine me doing this marathon.”

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: BEST OF THE BOROUGH

Sergei Eisenstein’s classic Strike will be screened at the Brooklyn Museum with a live score conducted by Hisham Akira Bharoocha

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates the world’s preeminent borough in its monthly free First Saturday program in November with “Best of the Borough.” There will be live music by Alsarah & the Nubatones, Phony Ppl, and DJ Ian Friday; a curator tour of “Arts of Korea” with Joan Cummins; a hands-on art workshop inspired by Mickalene Thomas’s extraordinary “A Little Taste Outside of Love”; a scholar talk and book signing with Chip Colwell, author of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture; a Brooklyn Dance Festival showcase with by the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, FLEXN, Kristin Sudeikis Dance, SynthesisDANCE, Concepts in Choreography, and the Francesca Harper Project; a pop-up gallery talk on Ancient Egyptian art; a book club reading with poet Tommy Pico from his latest book, Nature Poem; and a special screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 classic, Strike! with a live score conducted by Hisham Akira Bharoocha and featuring Angel Deradoorian, Jeremy Hyman, Nicos Kennedy, and Joe Williams. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Roots of ‘The Dinner Party’: History in the Making,” “Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt,” “Robert Longo: Untitled (Raft at Sea),” “Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” “Arts of Asia and the Middle East, “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more.

GALLIM: STONE SKIPPING

Gallim Dance will engage in a performance conversation with the Temple of Dendur at the Met this weekend (photo by Nikki Theroux)

MetLiveArts
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gallery 131, the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
October 28-29, $65 (includes same-day museum admission), 2:00
212-570-3949
www.metmuseum.org
www.gallimdance.com

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first-ever artist-in-residence choreographer, Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance, will debut her site-specific project, Stone Skipping, on October 28 and 29 at 2:00 at the Met Fifth Avenue, at the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing. The Salt Lake City-born, New York City-based choreographer, a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow who formed Gallim in 2007, created the piece as a conversation with the popular historical artifact, a Roman Period Egyptian temple completed in 10 BCE, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, who is depicted on one of the outer walls as a pharaoh. “I am curious to understand the capacity of the body, its anatomy, its power, and its instinct to connect with the space and events around us. In my work, I look for texture, a quality of energy, or a psychological pitch that surfaces in the doing of things,” Miller, whose previous pieces include W H A L E, Fold Here, Wonderland, and Blush, has said. That mission should resonate beautifully with the Temple of Dendur, a favorite of Met visitors. Stone Skipping features ten members of the Gallim company, joined by six guest dancers from Juilliard, with an original composition by Phil Kline (Unsilent Night, John the Revelator), performed live by the viola quartet Firewood, consisting of Ralph Farris, Stephanie Griffin, Jessica Meyer, and Lev Zhurbin; the costumes are by fashion designer Jose Solis. Stone Skipping will also touch upon the journey the Aeolian sandstone structure made from Egypt, which, in conjunction with the White House, awarded the institution the temple in 1967. “I am convinced that the Metropolitan’s plans for the temple will protect it and make it available to millions of Americans in a setting appropriate to its character,” President Lyndon B. Johnson wrote to museum director Thomas Hoving in April 1967. Exploring such universal themes as loss, preservation, and survival, Miller’s Stone Skipping should only add to the special nature of this extraordinary artifact. Tickets are $65 and include museum admission; for an addition dollar, you can bring a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to the performance, up to three kids per adult. Back in 2011, we saw Shen Wei give a gorgeous presentation in the Met’s Charles Engelhard Court, so we can’t wait to see what Gallim has in store for us.

SIMONE FORTI, STEVE PAXTON, YVONNE RAINER: TEA FOR THREE

Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer will join forces for three special evenings at Danspace Project (photos by Ian Douglas)

Danspace Project
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
131 East Tenth St. between Second & Third Aves.
October 26-28, $22
866-811-4111
www.danspaceproject.org

Danspace Project is bringing together a sensational trio for “Tea for Three,” as experimental dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, dancer, artist, and writer Simone Forti, and dancer, choreographer, writer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer come together for three nights of “performance, improvisation, and interaction.” The extraordinary threesome were part of Robert Dunn’s Judson Memorial Church workshops nearly sixty years ago, and these presentations are the first time Paxton, Forti, and Rainer have collaborated as a trio. “They each bring their doughty selves to the stage, making dance and performance conversation. No tea is served, but food for thought,” Paxton writes in a statement. Tickets are sold out, but there will be a wait list every night beginning at 7:15. Good luck!

NEW@GRAHAM: LAMENTATION VARIATIONS

Lloyd Mayor and Lloyd Knight rehearse the Abraham Variation, by Kyle Abraham (photo by Brigid Pierce)

LamVar10: A Festival for New Work
Martha Graham Studio Theater
55 Bethune St., eleventh floor
Tuesday, October 17, and Wednesday, October 18, $25-$30, 7:00
212-229-9200
www.marthagraham.org

In January 1930, Martha Graham first performed what became one of her signature works, Lamentations, described in the program as “a dance of sorrow. . . . It is not the sorrow of a specific person, time, or place but the personification of grief itself.” The piece, which you can see here, featured Graham in a costume she could stretch over her head and other parts of her body, dancing to Zoltán Kodály’s 1910 Piano Piece, Op. 3, No. 2. In 2007, Martha Graham Dance Company artistic director Janet Eilber conceived of Lamentation Variations, initially meant to be a one-time opportunity for contemporary choreographers to create their own take on Lamentations in commemoration of 9/11. However, the popularity of the program morphed it into an ongoing production that boasts a growing list of international choreographers contributing their own personal interpretation of the iconic work. In honor of the tenth anniversary of Lamentation Variations, MGDC is hosting LamVar10: A Festival for New Work, taking place October 17 and 18 at the Martha Graham Studio Theater. The first night comprises Lamentation Variations by Kyle Abraham (2015), Larry Keigwin (2007), and Bulareyaung Pagarlava (2009), a variation-in-progress by Gwen Welliver, and the New York premiere of a variation by Lil Buck, while the second night consists of variations by Aszure Barton (2007), Keigwin, Richard Move (2007), Doug Varone (2012), and Lil Buck again. Each evening will also include a discussion with several of the artists. A Festival for New Work is being held in conjunction with the establishment of the Fund for New York, which will expand MGDC’s repertoire with new creations.