this week in dance

BATTERY DANCE FESTIVAL 2017

battery park dance schedule

Who: Akerman/Jansen, Battery Dance, Danuka Ariyawansa + Behri Drums and Dance Ensemble, Janis Brenner & Dancers, Martha Graham School, Cía. Elías Aguirre, Compañía Nacional de Danza Contemporánea de República Dominicana, Fadi J. Khoury’s FJK Dance, Mari Meade Dance Collective (MMDC), Nadine Bommer Dance Company, SLK Ballet, Trezon Dancy, Aakansha Maheshwari, Dimple Saikia, Kalanidhi Dance, Kalamandir Dance, Sruthi Mohan, Viraja and Shyamjith Kiran, Ballet Inc., Buglisi Dance Theatre, Cía. Elías Aguirre, Maxine Steinman & Dancers, Tina Croll + Company, Wilder Project, Mophato Dance Theatre, Amy Marshall Dance Company, Ariel Rivka Dance, Bollylicious, Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, SYnC Dance Company, the Movement Playground, Trainor Dance
What: Thirty-sixth annual Battery Park Dance Festival
Where: Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park, 20 Battery Pl., Battery Park City
When: August 13-19, free, 7:00 – 9:00
Why: Continuing its mission to connect the world through dance, Battery Dance, which was founded in Lower Manhattan in 1976, is hosting the thirty-sixth annual Battery Dance Festival, held outside August 13-18 in Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park in Battery City. Thirty companies from around the world are participating, with troupes from Sri Lanka, Spain, the Dominican Republic, India, Belgium, Botswana, and the United States. The always popular IAAC Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance takes place on August 15, while the closing event, including reception, is set for August 19 at 6:00 in the Michael Schimmel Center, with free tickets and $50 VIP admission available in advance here. That finale will feature Battery Dance’s On Foot, Bollylicious’s Yatra, and Mophato Dance Theatre’s Pula. In addition, there will be daily free morning workshops at 10:30 at Battery Dance Studios on the fifth floor of 380 Broadway, with Battery Dance on August 14, Compañía Nacional de Danza Contemporánea de República Dominicana on August 15, Cía. Elías Aguirre on August 16, Bollylicious on August 17, and Mophato Dance Theatre on August 18; advance RSVP is required here.

CHILLIN’ WITH CHIHULY

Special musical programs enhance Chihuly exhibition at New York Botanic Garden

The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Chillin’ with Chihuly: Saturday, August 12, and Sunday, August 13, 1:00 – 4:00
Chihuly Nights: Thursday, August 10, 17, 24, $35, 6:30
Jazz & Chihuly: Friday, August 18, $40, 6:00
Exhibition continues Tuesday – Sunday through October 29, $10-$28
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org
www.chihuly.com

The New York Botanical Garden’s “CHIHULY” exhibition, his first new show in New York in a decade, features colorful and extravagant site-specific glass-blown works by Dale Chihuly spread throughout the grounds, including at the Native Plant Garden, the Lillian and Amy Goldman Fountain of Life, the Leon Levy Visitor Center, the Arthur and Janet Ross Conifer Arboretum, and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyard’s Tropical Pool, as well as works on paper and early works on view in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Building. There are special bonuses during the month of August to enhance the oeuvre of the Washington State native, whose NYBG pieces were partially inspired by a 1975 Niagara Falls group show he participated in. On August 12 and 13 from 1:00 to 4:00, accordionist Tony Kovatch, Spanish guitarist David Galvez, and saxophonist Keith Marreth will play acoustic music at various locations in the garden, joined by steel drummer Earl Brooks Jr. and cellist Laura Bontrager on Saturday and steel drummer Mustafa Alexander and oboist Keve Wilson on Sunday. Meanwhile, Brooklyn-based UrbanGlass will host flame-work demonstrations at Conservatory Plaza and the visitor center. There will also be ice-cold treats available for purchase to keep everyone cool. On August 19, the NYBG Summer Concert Series presents “Jazz & Chihuly: Songs of Protest & Reconciliation,” with live music by pianist Damien Sneed and an all-star ensemble, along with special guest trumpeter Keyon Harrold, followed by a late-night viewing of the exhibition. You can also see short films about Chihuly’s creative process on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm or check out “Chihuly Nights,” with Fulaso, Richard & Ashlee, and Mustafa Alexander on April 10, Mandingo Ambassadors, Almanac Dance Circus Theater, and Alexander on August 17, and Samba New York! and Alice Farley on August 24. “I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in a way they have never experienced,” Chihuly says about his work; these programs enhance that experience in unique ways.

TICKET ALERT: THEN A CUNNING VOICE AND A NIGHT WE SPEND GAZING AT STARS

Emily Johnson’s Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars will take place overnight on Randall’s Island on August 19 (photo by Chris Cameron)

Who: Emily Johnson / Catalyst
What: All-night outdoor performance gathering
Where: Randall’s Island Park
When: Saturday, August 19, $50, dusk to after sunrise
Why: You don’t just go to a show by Emily Johnson / Catalyst; you become part of an experience. In such presentations as Niicugni and Shore, Johnson builds a sense of community for all involved, including cast, crew, and audience. On August 19, her multiyear project Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars reaches its next level on Randall’s Island, where people will gather for an evening of song, dance, storytelling, quilting, ritual, and more under the night sky. The world premiere, presented by Performance Space 122, is directed by three-time Obie winner Ain Gordon (The Family Business, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell) and features performers Tania Isaac, twelve-year-old Georgia Lucas, and Johnson, with visual design by textile artist Maggie Thompson, lighting by Lenore Doxsee, and quilt construction by volunteers from around the country. The ten-to-twelve-hour piece explores such questions as “What do you want for your well-being? For the well-being of your chosen friends and family? For your neighborhood? For your town, city, reserve, tribal nation, world?” You can participate as much as you want as the audience is led into discussions and programs about engaged citizenship, safety, Indigenous people, and making connections. Four thousand square feet of quilts will serve as home base for performances, resting, and just hanging out. Supper, breakfast, and snacks will be served as well. Johnson is a magnetic personality who cares very deeply about the future of all the people and animals living on this planet, so Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars should be a powerful and moving experience, in addition to being a lot of fun. Look for our interview with Johnson about the project coming soon; in the meantime, you can contribute to the Kickstarter campaign to help fund this project here.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: CaribBEING IN BROOKLYN

“Doria Dee Johnson at her home in Chicago, Illinois, 2017” (photo by Melissa Bunni Elian for the Equal Justice Initiative)

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

The Brooklyn Museum starts preparing for the West Indian American Day Carnival events over Labor Day weekend with the August edition of its free First Saturday program. (First Saturdays is skipped in September.) There will be live performances by RIVA & Bohio Music and the Drums and Bugles International Bands Association; the mobile art center caribBEING House, where visitors can share their own stories; a gallery tour of “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85” with Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art curatorial assistant Allie Rickard; pop-up gallery talks of “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas” with teen apprentices; a screening of Matt Ruskin’s Sundance Audience Award winner Crown Heights, introduced by actress Natalie Paul and followed by a Q&A with film subject Colin Warner, community activist Rick Jones, and attorney Ames Grawert; a sneak peek of Cori Wapnowska’s documentary Bruk Out!, followed by a talkback with Wapnowska and Dancehall Queen Famous Red, moderated by Hyperallergic editor Seph Rodney; a Book Club event with Oneka LaBennett reading and discussing her new book, She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn, followed by a signing; an Artist’s Eye talk by Melissa Bunni Elian on her contribution to “The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America”; a wukkout! movement workshop based on high-energy soca dancing; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make paintings with watercolor and salt; and a Flag Fete in which visitors can bring their own national flag, joined by female-identified Caribbean artists Sol Nova, Young Devyn, and Ting & Ting featuring Kitty Cash and special guests.

PRISMATIC PARK: NETTA YERUSHALMY

Netta Yerushalmy continues her site-specific Paramodernities series in Madison Square Park in conjunction with Josiah McElheny installation (photo by Paula Lobo)

PARAMODERNITIES #5/FOSSE/EXPERIMENTS
Madison Square Park Oval Lawn
Twenty-Fourth St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday, August 1-13, free, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.madisonsquarepark.org
www.nettay.com

From August 1 to 13, New York City–based dancer and choreographer Netta Yerushalmy will continue her ambitious Paramodernities series in Madison Square Park, inhabiting Josiah McElheny’s “Prismatic Park” installation. In June at the National Museum of the American Indian, Yerushalmy presented the second and third parts of the series, in which she reinterprets classic works of dance in multidisciplinary programs: Paramodernities #2 / Trauma, Interdiction, and Agency in “The House of Pelvic Truth,” collaborating with dancer Taryn Griggs and art historian Carol Ockman and featuring a video of Martha Graham’s Night Journey ballet (with Graham as Jocasta, Bertram Ross as Oedipus, and Paul Taylor as Tiresias), and Paramodernities #3 / Revelations — The Afterlives of Slavery, exploring Alvin Ailey’s classic work, joined by Stanley Gambucci, Jeremy Jae Neal, Nicholas Leichter, and Duke University professor Thomas DeFrantz. “Paramodernities is a series of dance experiments that I generate through systematically deconstructing landmark modern dance choreographies,” Yerushalmy, who was born in South Carolina and raised there and in Israel, explained in a statement. “Performed alongside contributions by scholars from different fields in the humanities, who situate these iconic works within the larger project of modernity, Paramodernities explores foundational tenants of modern discourse — such as sovereignty, race, feminism, and nihilism — and includes public discussions as integral parts of each installment.”

Netta Yerushalmy will inhabit Josiah McElhenys Prismatic Park August 1-13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Sponsored by Danspace Project, Yerushalmy’s “Prismatic Park” residency will begin each day (starting at different times) with Paramodernities #5, examining the movement in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, with Megan Williams, Michael Blake, Hsiao-Jou Tang, J’nae Simmons, and Joyce Edwards. That will be followed in the late afternoon or early evening by an experimental group dance with Emily Rose Cannon, Marc Crousillat, Brittany Engel-Adams, Maddie Schimmel, and Gambucci that focuses on the choreographers Yerushalmy has researched for Paramodernities so far (Vaslav Nijinsky, Merce Cunningham, Graham, and Ailey). “For this track, I am choosing to inhabit the park in a way that is perhaps more attuned to the modernist gestures of Josiah’s sculptures and to the park as architecture than to the organic matter there. I’ll be thinking of the determined shape of the lawn as the container for a layered dance-object filled with traces of legacy, gesture, culture,” she explained. And on August 12 at 6:00, the park will host the panel discussion “How Many Modernities Are There?” with McElheny, DeFrantz, Ockman, David Kishik, Judy Hussie-Taylor, and others. All events are free and first come, first served. “Prismatic Park,” which comprises an open red vaulted-roof pavilion, a reflective green dance floor, and a blue sound wall, continues with concerts by Shelley Hirsch (August 22-27), Matana Roberts (September 5-10), and Limpe Fuchs with poet Patrick Rosal (October 3-8), dance by Jodi Melnick (September 12-17, 19-24), and poetry by Joshua Bennett (August 15-20), Donna Masini (August 29 – September 3), and Mónica de la Torre (September 26 – October 1).

PRISMATIC PARK: CACONRAD

Poet CAConrad will be giving personalized (Soma)tic poetry rituals in Madison Square Park through July 23 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Poet CAConrad will be offering free personalized (Soma)tic poetry rituals in Madison Square Park through July 23 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

(SOMA)TIC POETRY RITUALS
Madison Square Park Oval Lawn
Twenty-Fourth St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Through July 23, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm (workshops nightly at 6:00)
www.madisonsquarepark.org
caconrad.blogspot.com

“Every single human being is creative. When we commit ourselves to nurturing our artistic capacities we improve our ability to more deeply discern the world around us and make the constructive decisions needed in order to thrive in this world,” fifty-one-year-old poet CAConrad writes in his (Soma)tic Manifesto. Through July 23, Conrad will be performing “(Soma)tic Poetry Rituals” in Madison Square Park, under one of American artist and MacArthur Fellow Josiah McElheny’s three sculptures that comprise “Prismatic Park,” a collaborative public art project that is hosting free dance, music, and poetry through October 8, sponsored by Danspace Project, Blank Forms, and Poets House. Born in Kansas and raised in Pennsylvania, Conrad is the author of such books as The City Real & Imagined, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, and the upcoming While Standing in Line for Death. In 1998, Conrad’s boyfriend, AIDS activist Earth (Mark Holmes), was brutally raped, tortured, and murdered in Tennessee at the age of thirty-six. In order to break out of his subsequent depression and his inability to break away from a factorylike existence that had been with him since childhood when his family ran a casket company, Conrad developed rituals that helped respark his creative energy and his life in general. He is currently in the midst of a six-day residency in Madison Square Park, sitting (in the shade) at a small table under McElheny’s open red vaulted-roof pavilion (with red and yellow glass), where the public is invited to join him for approximately twenty minutes as Conrad develops a personalized (Soma)tic poetry ritual for each individual participant, involving crystals, liquids, and writing. The rituals are meant to help anyone seeking new ways to cope with today’s world; they are not limited to writers. The personalized rituals — bring pen and paper to take copious notes — are first come, first served, from 12 noon to 5:00, followed by workshops from 6:00 to 8:00; on July 22, Conrad delves into crystal trees, while on July 23 he will read tarot cards. “Prismatic Park,” which also features a blue sound wall and a reflective green dance floor, continues with concerts by Joe McPhee & Graham Lambkin (July 25-30), Shelley Hirsch (August 22-27), Matana Roberts (September 5-10), and Limpe Fuchs with poet Patrick Rosal (October 3-8), dance by Netta Yerushalmy (August 1-6) and Jodi Melnick (September 12-17, 19-24), and poetry by Joshua Bennett (August 15-20), Donna Masini (August 29 – September 3), and Mónica de la Torre (September 26 – October 1).

SECRETS AND SEAWALLS

Kinesis Project’s Secrets and Seawalls takes place on board the Wavertree July 20, 27, and 30

A DANCE PERFORMANCE ABOARD SHIP WAVERTREE
South Street Seaport Museum
12 Fulton St.
July 20, 27, 30, $30 (VIP $45), 7:00
southstreetseaportmuseum.org
www.kinesisproject.com

The South Street Seaport Museum and Kinesis Project dance theatre have teamed up to present Secrets and Seawalls, a site-specific performance taking place on board the 1885 full-rigged cargo ship Wavertree. Inspired by such devastating storms as Hurricane Sandy, Kinesis Project artistic director Melissa Riker and architect Lee H. Skolnick explore notions of power and vulnerability, particularly in regard to the weather and New York City’s seawalls, in the piece, which was previously performed in 2015 on the beach at Fort Tilden in Gateway National Park in the Rockaways, an area that was severely hit by Sandy. Divided into two acts, the immersive work features dancers Cassandra Cotta, Zachary Denison, Michelle Amara Micca, and Zoe Allocco, with costumes by Asa Thornton and live music by Katie Down, Helen Yee, and Michael Evans. VIP tickets include a tour of the Wavertree, which was built in Southampton, Great Britain, became part of the museum’s Street of Ships in 1968, and was restored in 2015-16, in addition to a postshow meet-and-greet with the performers. Riker has noted that Secrets and Seawalls was also influenced by Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone,” which says, “I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection, / never be blind or too old / to uphold your weighty wavering reflection. I want to unfold.”