this week in dance

CULTUREMART 2016

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEBMLED IDENTITY is part of the 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEMBLED IDENTITY is part of 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 2-12, $15
212-647-0202
here.org

We nearly forgot about HERE’s annual CULTUREMART performance festival, which usually is held in January/February, but fortunately we were reminded of this forward-thinking series just in time as March began. A project of the HERE Artist Residency Program, or HARP, the multidisciplinary festival features eleven workshop productions from March 2 to 12, with all tickets only $15. Things get under way March 2-3 with one of New York’s most innovative teams, Reid Farrington and Sara Farrington, who repurpose footage of old films to create something new with live actors. This year they are presenting CasablancaBox, in which they go behind the scenes of the making of Casablanca. In Things Fall Apart (March 5-6), Kate Brehm uses folding chairs to examine her place in the world; it’s on a double bill with Rob Roth’s audiovisual Soundstage. RADY&BLOOM Collective Playmaking explores the ocean in O (March 5-6), which is being shown with Adam J. Thompson / the Deconstructive Theatre Project’s live-cinema Venice Double Feature, which examines social media and voyeurism. Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard delve into the science behind identity in Assembled Identity, part of a March 8-9 double bill with Lanie Fefferman’s math-centric chamber opera, Elements. Also on March 8-9, Paul Pinto goes inside the mind of the political activist and philosopher in Thomas Paine in Violence; also on the bill is Leah Coloff’s ThisTree, stories and songs about family and legacy. CULTUREMART concludes March 11-12 with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a dance-theater work dealing withtalent and fame, teamed with Chris M. Green’s American Weather, which looks at our very questionable future.

THE MARIINSKY AT BAM: A TRIBUTE TO MAYA PLISETSKAYA

Mariinsky principal dancer Uliana Lopatkina is part of four-night tribute to Maya Plisetskaya at BAM (photo by Natasha Razina)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
February 24-28, $30-$175
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.mariinsky.ru/en

Last May, Maya Plisetskaya, who became an international star with the Bolshoi Ballet in the 1950s and ’60s, passed away at the age of eighty-nine. Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre will be honoring the legacy of the legendary prima ballerina in its second annual residency at BAM this week. “It has always seemed to me that books were written by people who were absolutely extraordinary. Supersmart. Superscholarly,” the absolutely extraordinary dancer and choreographer writes in the preface to her 2001 memoir, I, Maya Plisetskaya. “And here was a ballerina picking up the pen. It reminded me of an old joke. When a huge ship, practically the Titanic, sank in the ocean, only two passengers survived, because they could float: a government minister, because he was such a big turd, and a ballerina, because she was an airhead.” Running February 25-28, “A Tribute to Maya Plisetskaya” is divided into four programs, featuring current Mariinsky principals Uliana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva, neither of whom have been called airheads, performing live with the Mariinsky Orchestra, with musical direction by Mariinsky artistic and general director Valery Gergiev and either Gergiev or Alexei Repnikov conducting. (As a bonus, on February 24, Gergiev will conduct “Folk, Form, and Fire: The Prokofiev Piano Concertos,” with the Mariinsky Orchestra and soloists George Li, Alexander Toradze, Daniil Trifonov, Sergei Redkin, and Sergei Babayan.)

Woman in the Room (photo by Gene Schiavone)

Diana Vishneva will perform “Woman in a Room” as part of Mariinsky tribute to Maya Plisetskaya at BAM (photo by Gene Schiavone)

On February 25, Vishneva and other members of the Mariinsky Ballet Company will perform Carmen Suite, choreographed by Albert Alonso specifically for Plisetskaya and with music by Rodion Shchedrin after Georges Bizet; Lopatkina will dance Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Dying Swan, choreographed by Michel Fokine; and, on film from 1975, Plisetskaya will be seen in Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, choreographed by Maurice Béjart. The February 26 schedule consists of ten pieces honoring Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, who had profound effects on Plisetskaya’s career; the evening includes Valeriya Martinuk and Alexei Popov performing the pas de deux of Colombine and Harlequin from Robert Schumann’s Le Carnaval, choreographed by Michel Fokine; Maria Shirinkina and Vladimir Shklyarov joining in Carl Maria von Weber’s Le Spectre de la rose, also choreographed by Fokine; Lopatkina and Roman Belyakov teaming up in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Pavlova and Cecchetti, choreographed by John Neumeier; and Martinuk and Popov taking on Tchaikovsky’s pas de deux of Princess Florine and the Bluebird from The Sleeping Beauty, choreographed by Marius Petipa. Vishneva is the star attraction on February 27, performing Carmen Suite and 2013’s Woman in a Room, with choreography by Carolyn Carlson and music by Giovanni Sollima and René Aubry, inspired by the films of Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky. The tribute concludes February 28 with a dozen works celebrating Plisetskaya, Pavlova, and Galina Ulanova, with Ekaterina Osmolkina and Maxim Zyuzin performing the Maria and Vaslav adagio from Boris Asafyev’s The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, choreographed by Rostislav Zakharov; Lopatkina and Andrey Ermakov in Gustav Mahler’s La Rose Malade, choreographed by Roland Petit; Lopatkina and Shklyarov in an excerpt from Shchedrin’s The Little Humped Back Horse, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky; and Martinuk and Zyuzin performing the act III adagio from Farid Yarullin’s Shurale, choreographed by Leonid Yakobson. “I planned the book for a local, Russian audience,” Plisetskaya explains in her memoir. “But I was also thinking about a far-away Western audience. The far-away ones who know very little about the byways, the delirious fantasies, the masquerades of our strange, incredible, and unbelievable former Soviet life.” For four nights, all of that will be brought together in Brooklyn at BAM, where you can also currently see the Maly Drama Theatre’s marvelous version of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

SUPER SÁBADO: CARNAVAL!

carnaval

FREE THIRD SATURDAYS
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Saturday, February 20, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org

El Museo del Barrio celebrates carnaval with the February edition of its free third Saturdays Super Sábado program. There will be a Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert featuring Nation Beat; a meet-and-greet with NYC family ambassador Dora the Explorer; an arteXplorers Family Corner activity card; Colorín Colorado . . . with Something Positive Inc. bringing the story “Come Dance with Me” to life with carnaval characters Jab Molassie and Dame Lorraine and a participatory procession; a Movement Workshop with dancers from Conjunto Nuevo Milenio teaching traditional dances from El Palenque; a Manos a la Obra art workshop in which kids can make their own vejigante mask; and guided tours of the exhibitions “The Illusive Eye” and “Figure and Form: Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection.”

MARIA HASSABI: PLASTIC

(photo by Julieta Cervantes / (c) Museum of Modern Art)

Maria Hassabi rehearses PLASTIC at MoMA on October 30, 2015 (photo by Julieta Cervantes / © Museum of Modern Art)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
February 21 – March 20, free with museum admission ($14-$25)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
mariahassabi.com

In a 2011 twi-ny talk, Cyprus-born, New York City–based dancer and choreographer Maria Hassabi declared, “I was born flexible!” That statement is true not only of the remarkable things she can do with her body but also of where she performs her impressive, often painfully slow movement. We’ve seen her wrestle with a carpet at PS122, maneuver through a packed house seated on the floor at the Kitchen, and crawl down the cobblestoned path of Broad St. Ever investigating the relationship between performer and audience as well as dance and object — in 2012, Hassabi collaborated with Lutz Bacher and Tony Conrad on “Chandeliers,” in which more than a dozen light fixtures descended from floor to ceiling over the course of the day at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève — Hassabi next will set up shop at the Museum of Modern Art, where she will present Plastic for one month. Every day from February 21 to March 20, Hassabi and her team of dancers will be at several locations in MoMA, moving among the visitors, so watch out where you walk, because there will be no barriers separating them from you. You’ll find Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Neil Greenberg, Elizabeth Hart, Kennis Hawkins, Niall Jones, Shelley Senter, RoseAnne Spradlin, and David Thomson in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, Hassabi, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, Paige Martin, and Oisín Monaghan on the Marron Atrium and Agnes Gund Garden Lobby staircase, and Jones, Michael Helland, Tara Lorenzen, and Mickey Mahar on the staircase between the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries. The sound design is by Morten Norbye Halvorsen, with song fragments by Marina Rosenfeld. “Taking place underfoot in the transitional spaces of a museum known for its crowds, the work can be seen from multiple vantage points and inverts the typical relationship between performer and viewer so that it is the dancer who appears static and the onlooker who moves,” writes MoMA associate curator Thomas J. Lax in the brochure for the living installation, which was co-commissioned by MoMA, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. On February 24 at 7:00 ($8-$12) in the atrium, Hassabi will discuss the work with Philip Bither of the Walker Art Center.

TWI-NY TALK: EIKO / PLATFORM 2016

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

Eiko makes her way to the Fulton Center subway hub in June 2015 for “A Body in a Station” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PLATFORM 2016: A BODY IN PLACES
Danspace Project
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
131 East Tenth St. between Second & Third Aves.
February 17 – March 23, free – $20
866-811-4111
www.danspaceproject.org
www.eikoandkoma.org

Based in New York City since 1976, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma have been creating uniquely fragile and evocative dances and “living installations” for forty years, taking place on proscenium stages as well as site-specific indoor and outdoor locations around the world. Here in New York City, they’ve performed Grain in an East Village loft, Event Fission on the Hudson River landfill near the World Trade Center, Water in Lincoln Center’s reflecting pool on Hearst Plaza, and Offering, Tree Song, and Cambodian Stories Revisited in the graveyard of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. In 2014, Eiko began her solo project, A Body in Places, consisting of free, site-specific works in nontraditional venues, including the new Fulton Center subway hub.

The Tokyo-born Eiko is returning to St. Mark’s as the focal point of Danspace Project’s 2016 Platform series, consisting of live performances, discussions, art, movie screenings (at Anthology Film Archives), special duets, and more, curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor and Lydia Bell. This tenth Platform festival runs February 17 to March 23 and will include “Talking Duets” with such artists as Ishmael Houston-Jones, John Kelly, and Elizabeth Streb; “Precarious” guest solos by Eiko, Beth Gill, Donna Uchizono, Koma, and more; Delicious Movement Workshops for participants as well as observers; a book club examining works by such writers as Kenzaburō Ōe, Tamiki Hara, and C. D. Wright; an art installation and readings with writer Claudia La Rocco, visual artist Paul Chan, painter and rapper DonChristian Jones, and others; a twenty-four-hour remembrance on the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster; and weekday solos by Eiko in unannounced locations around St. Mark’s Church. Eiko recently discussed Platform with twi-ny as she prepared for this exciting month-long multidisciplinary program.

twi-ny: How did the idea of your being the centerpiece of Platform come about? It’s quite a major undertaking.

Eiko: A year ago, when Danspace’s executive director, Judy-Hussie Taylor, invited me to “the third Platform focused on a single choreographer,” I was surprised. First, I hardly consider myself as a choreographer and more a performer with a multidisciplinary practice. We had previously talked about Danspace possibly sponsoring a long and intimate run of my solo performance (and this does happen as a part of Platform). However, her proposal of the shift to a multifaceted project was unexpected. “Platform is all about relationships,” says Judy. But, while I have choreographer/dancer friends, I do not have the kind of dense relationship with the dance community that other choreographers have. While many choreographers work with dancers and each other and they frequent the same studios and classes, I have, for decades, worked with only Koma without a dance studio or classes.

But through many long and dense dialogues with the patient and persuasive Judy, as well as Lydia Bell, Danspace Project’s program director, who was Eiko & Koma’s Retrospective Project coordinator from 2009 to 2011, the Platform programs have evolved! Some were my ideas and some were Judy’s and/or Lydia’s. Together, the programs are now very expansive in scope, with many activities and participants. I am endlessly thankful and in awe of Judy, Lydia, the rest of the Danspace staff, and the participating artists.

Eiko & Koma perform at MoMA in 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eiko & Koma perform “The Caravan Project” at MoMA in 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: As you noted, the Platform series will focus on your recent solo work; what made you decide to do the solo project in the first place, and how did Koma take it when you first told him about it?

Eiko: After working as Eiko & Koma since 1972, we had four very intense years creating and touring the Retrospective Project, followed by the Archive Project. That made me see and remember so many works Eiko & Koma had created. So while I felt proud, I also started to look for ways that I can work differently. Teaching also encouraged me to think independently. I wanted to find ways to work outside of theaters. Koma happened to have suffered a series of injuries that required care, so it actually made sense that I work alone. He is now feeling better and working on his own solo project.

twi-ny: How did you go about choosing which dancers and choreographers you wanted to participate in “Precarious: Solos,” which was inspired by a quote Hussie-Taylor selected from Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence?

Eiko: “Precarious: Solos” was more or less Judy’s idea and it is a continuation of what she has done under the same title. My contribution was to encourage all artists to present not group works but solos with low tech.

twi-ny: What was it about the quote [“When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. . . .”] that made you and Judy want that to be the inspiration behind the solos?

Eiko: The Butler quote also came from Judy, and she thinks my work with Fukushima resonates with her thoughts.

twi-ny: What are some of the unique characteristics of St. Mark’s Church and the surrounding neighborhood that have gotten you excited about performing there again?

Eiko: St. Mark’s Church is a uniquely familiar and austere space with a rich history. I love to go there and I love to perform there. Because the church is open to so many activities, it is not easy to present heavy set pieces there, but that limitation served well with many choreographers. The East Village is also where we have hung around with friends. I love that diversity, and I owe to the memories. There have been many, many artists and activists in the area, some dead. And I had many, many nights of seeing and talking.

twi-ny: You’ve taken A Body in Places to Fukushima, Philadelphia, New York City, Hong Kong, and Chile. How did your performance change with each location? With the exception of Fukushima, where you had only one “witness,” did people react the same way to you, or does the response differ from city to city?

Eiko: You forgot Middletown, Connecticut! I teach one course a year at Wesleyan University, and its Center for the Arts has supported my experimentation since 2006. Wesleyan has been an incubator of many of the things Eiko & Koma and I have created. So for the Body in Places project, it helped me to create a photo exhibition, “A Body in Fukushima,” and it also presented my project at four different locations: a school library, a town library, an observatory, and an un-lived-in old house with a gallery. In general, I would say individual differences in response to my work are always bigger than city, country, and race differences. But performing in Middletown means I have young students as viewers who are invested in and interested in what I do. To perform there is a challenging practice, and I deliberately planned multiple performances in possible locations so as to train myself toward this platform through real performance practices.

In Hong Kong, I performed at the site where people who participated in the 2014 Umbrella Revolution had camped out for three months, stopping a major highway. Everyone who saw me perform there knew and remembered the place as a site with such important public memory. In Chile, my friends Forrest Gander and C. D. Wright came and invited Chilean poets to see me perform. [Ed. note: Wright, who was married to Gander, passed away last month at the age of sixty-seven.] Two poets recited poems each night as part of my performances. These and many more memories make each place I danced a very unique place for me and for viewers.

Eiko performs “A Body in Fukushima” in 2014 (photo by William Johnston)

twi-ny: You and Koma have lived in New York City for nearly forty years now. What is your impression of how the city has changed since 1976? How different might your edition of Platform have been if this were 1976, 1986, 1996, or 2006?

Eiko: Of course, the city is sooooo different. It is so much more expensive to live here, and because of that the city is bigger as friends now live in far places. But I love New York for its intensity. I would not be able to do this Platform any earlier than now.

twi-ny: Without giving away some of the locations where you will be performing your daily solos, what are some of your favorite public spots in New York City?

Eiko: I like many places I performed in this project and as Eiko & Koma. To name a few: St Mark’s Church graveyard, Bryant Park, community gardens, the Whitney Museum, the Fulton Center, Governors Island, etc., etc. But these are very different places from where I will perform for this Platform. It is winter and I need to be indoors and in intimate places.

twi-ny: You have written, “I fight without any potential to win but I fight because they should not stand unopposed.” Do you really see no way to win this fight?

Eiko: I meant I do not know really how to win, as I am not a political activist. But I think it is important for artists to know what you are against, whether you have a prospect to win or not.

twi-ny: Which battles are most important to you right now?

Eiko: I am against corporate greed and human arrogance.

twi-ny: Your movement is intensely slow, often set to silence or natural, environmental sounds. When you’re not performing in front of a crowd, do you ever just blast music and dance like crazy?

Eiko: No. I do not have the desire to do that now. But when I am really down I can listen to some special song, like Nina Simone’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.”

TRAVELOGUES: SARAH SKAGGS, THE NEW ECSTATIC 2.0

Sarak Skaggs and Corin Kresge will perform THE NEW ECSTATIC 2.0 at Abrons Arts Center this week (photo by Pierce Bounds )

Who: Sarah Skaggs and Cori Kresge
What: The New Ecstatic 2.0
Where: Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St., 212-598-0400
When: February 18-21, $20
Why: In 2013, Sarah Skaggs collaborated with Cori Kresge on The New Ecstatic, a duet set to Charles Ives’s “The Unanswered Question” and Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.” Skaggs, who founded Sarah Skaggs Dance in 1995, and Kresge will now bring an expanded version of the piece, renamed The New Ecstatic 2.0, to Abrons Arts Center February 18-21, examining traumatic and powerfully emotional out-of-body states following epic tragedies, partially inspired by Martha Graham’s Steps in the Street. Skaggs’s previous works include Paradise, Higher Ground, Dances for Disasters, and 9/11 Dance — A Roving Memorial. Skaggs and Kresge’s evening-length piece is part of the ongoing Travelogues series at Abrons, curated by Laurie Uprichard.

THE GRAND PARADISE

A mother (Tori Sparks) reevaluates her life in THE GRAND PARADISE (photo by Darial Sneed)

Third Rail Projects
383 Troutman St. between Wyckoff & Irving Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 4, $95-$150
718-374-5196
thegrandparadise.com

First and foremost, you need to understand that what happens at the Grand Paradise stays at the Grand Paradise. Over the course of your visit, you’re likely to be rubbed, grabbed, hugged, massaged, slow-danced, and led into private rooms, but it’s all in great fun. In 2013, Brooklyn dance-theater troupe Third Rail Projects introduced a set of characters, a traveling family, in the site-specific Roadside Attraction, which took place in and around a retrofitted 1970s camper. That nameless family has now made it to Florida, where they have gathered at the Grand Paradise, a New Age-y vacation resort that is the immersive offspring of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat (and partially inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s multiplatinum Rumours album). In a renovated one-story warehouse in Bushwick, sixty audience members join Mom (Tori Sparks), Dad (Tom Pearson), their younger daughter (Kate Ladenheim), their older daughter (Ashley Handel), and her boyfriend (Niko Tsocanos) for two hours of unpredictability with the singing Siren (Lily Ockwell), Midas (Roxanne Kidd), a cabana boy (Sebastiani Romagnolo), Venus (Emma Hoette), Jett (Rebekah Morin), the Libertine (Jeff Lyon), and the Lady (Lea Fulton) and the Gentleman (Brendan Duggan), among others, many of whom perform short dance pieces. At the beginning, you can wander through rooms at your own pace to familiarize yourself with the surroundings, but soon you will be guided by actors — and separated from whomever you came with — as the narrative starts to unfold, involving sexual freedom, the search for personal identity, the passage of time, fear of death, midlife crises, and the Fountain of Youth. Each of the five main characters (there are several casts for different performances) experiences a kind of reawakening — compelling, emotional stories we followed with great interest. But what they discover is not necessarily what they were initially after.

A possible Fountain of Youth beckons at the Grand Paradise (photo by Darial Sneed)

The Grand Paradise is directed, designed, written, and choreographed by Third Rail Projects artistic directors Zach Morris, Jennine Willett, and Pearson, the masterminds behind the popular immersive production Then She Fell, a multisensory takeoff of Alice in Wonderland that has been playing at the Kingsland Ward at St. Johns institutional facility in Williamsburg since 2012. Among the places you will encounter as you journey through the resort are a beach with a hunky lifeguard (Zach McNally), a disco, a motel room, and the Shipwreck Lounge, where you can buy a tropical drink. All through the night, Aqua Twin Girl (Elisa Davis) and Aqua Twin Boy (Joshua Reaver) swim in an aquarium while hustlers William (Robert Vail), Grace, (Katrina Reid), and Farrah (Lauren Muraski) and the activities director (Alberto Denis) keep you always occupied. (As opposed to immersive-theater standard-bearer Sleep No More, you are not left to your own devices quite as much in The Grand Paradise, although you certainly have more than an acceptable amount of free will.) Kudos go out to the cast, composer and sound designer Sean Hagerty, costumer Karen Young, and environment designer Elisabeth Svenningsen, who have gone full tilt in making sure your stay is a very pleasant one. The extremely specific rules include no cell phones or cameras, and you must check all coats and bags. Participants are told not to open any closed doors, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be adventurous, peering through windows, peeking into drawers, opening shutters, and following a character when they beckon you into the private unknown. But alas, we’ve already said too much. Bon voyage!