Tag Archives: abrons arts center

AMERICAN REALNESS — HEATHER KRAVAS: DEAD, DISAPPEARS

Heather Kravas battles a pillow and more in angry, provocative DEAD, DISAPPEARS

Abrons Arts Center, Studio 1
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 7-11, $20
Festival continues through January 17
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org

In a 2011 Movement Research conversation with Jodi Bender, choreographer and performer Heather Kravas said, “I’ll work on a solo because I feel like I need to ask a pretty intimate question. Not even one that is necessarily something I can articulate. But, I need to go to a pretty internal place or I need to investigate something that is not as defined.” It does not get a whole lot more intimate and undefined than dead, disappears, a solo work making its New York premiere at the American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center. The sixty-minute piece takes place in Studio 1, a rehearsal room for dancers that includes barres at two levels along one wall and mirrors of varying size on the other walls. Using Richard Serra’s “Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself” as a jumping-off point, Kravas, a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Artist, incorporates spoken word, dance, music, technology, and performance art to create often uncomfortable, sometimes very funny situations in which she covers herself with a plastic garbage bag and walks on her tiptoes shouting out such words as “bimbo” and “peephole”; rolls around the floor attacking a pillow; asks an audience member for help when trying to pull off a particularly difficult body position; and puts a small bucket near the center of the room, hovers over it, and — well, we’ll let you experience that yourself. It’s an angry, emotional, provocative work with a lot of loud, violent acts resulting in nervous laughter, a little fear, and plenty of unexpected twists. Sitting in folding chairs on three sides of the room, the crowd of forty — including many dance professionals at the 5:30 show on January 9 — ate it all up, celebrating the bold, raw nature of the work and Kravas’s brave performance, putting herself out there as both subject and object. Perhaps what was most impressive is that Kravas was scheduled to do it all over again at 8:30.

AMERICAN REALNESS

Keyon Gaskin’s IT’S NOT A THING is part of American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Duncan Gray)

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 7-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.abronsartscenter.org

The seventh American Realness festival consists of twenty cutting-edge theatrical presentations ($20 each), a movement workshop ($90), and four free lectures and discussions over the course of eleven days, January 7-17, almost exclusively at Abrons Arts Center. There’s so much going on that every day features between six and ten events spread throughout the venue, which includes the Experimental Theater, the Playhouse, the Underground Theater, and room 201. Two performances take place at other venues: The great Jack Ferver, who has a well-deserved rabid fan base for his deeply personal and intimate, often confessional multidisciplinary works, returns to American Realness with Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité) at Gibney Dance (January 13-16), an updated version of a piece that debuted in 2012 at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival and in which the audience becomes part of the action. And Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen also employs interactivity in her multimedia 69 Positions (January 15-17, $15), which connects sexuality and public space in MoMA PS1’s VW Dome. Back at Abrons, the New York premiere of Heather Kravas’s dead, disappears (January 7-11) integrates Richard Serra’s Verb List into a solo work about words and movement, woman and object. In choreographer Larissa Velez-Jackson’s Star Crap Method (January 9-17), performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein, and Velez-Jackson and lighting designer Kathy Kaufman improvise as they examine the role of sound, light, music, and movement. In the world premiere of Erin Markey’s A Ride on the Irish Cream (January 13-17), Markey and Becca Blackwell bring to life the love between a girl and a pontoon boat/horse. M. Lamar’s Destruction (January 13-16) investigates the white supremacist world order using Negro spirituals. Sadness is at the heart of the New York premiere of Ligia Lewis’s Sorrow Swag (January 7-10), performed by Brian Getnick with live musical accompaniment by George Lewis Jr. Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, and Brendan Dougherty collaborate on Culture Administration & Trembling (January 7-8), which explores the nature of spectatorship.

The festival also includes Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia (January 8-17), Keyon Gaskin’s it’s not a thing (January 8-11), Fernando Belfiore’s AL13FB<3 (January 9-12), Keith Hennessy and Jassem Hindi’s future friend/ships (January 9-12), Sara Shelton Mann, Hennessy, and Norman Rutherford’s Sara (The Smuggler) (January 11-13), Yvonne Meier’s Durch Nacht und Nebel (January 11-16), Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers’ Mira El! (January 12-15), choreographer Milka Djordjevich and composer Chris Peck’s Mass (January 13-15), the world premiere of the Bureau for the Future of Choreography’s Score for a Lecture, and James & Jen | McGinn & Again’s Over the River | Through the Woods diptych (January 16-17). In addition, Kravas, Lewis, Jenn Joy, and Kelly Kivland will discuss “Melancholia and Precarious Virtuosity” on January 8 at 3:30, Claudia La Rocco, Lane Czaplinski, Annie Dorsen, Yelena Gluzman, Katherine Profeta, and others will explore the question “How Should the Present Think About the Future?” on January 9 at noon, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Thomas J. Lax, Soyoung Yoon, and Cassie Mey will delve into “A Charming Uproar: On Documenting Dance” on January 10 at 3:30, Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz will lecture on “I Am Black (You Have to Be Willing to Not Know)” on January 17 at 11:00 am, and Movement Research will host the workshop “Creative Differences” with La Rocco on January 7, 10, and 12 ($90).

COIL 2016

Ranters Theatre’s SONG kicks off COIL 2016 festival (photo by Jorge Lizalde)

Multiple venues
January 5-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
www.ps122.org

Every January, New York City is home to a handful of performance festivals that feature cutting-edge and experimental theater, dance, music, and installation art. PS122’s home at 150 First Ave. is scheduled to reopen this summer following a major renovation, but in the meantime you can experience its innovative programming at COIL 2016, taking place at various venues in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. “COIL 2016 attacks the very concept of boundaries and of limits. The boundaries between ideologies, life and death, the contemporary and historic, human and machine, light and darkness, audience and performer,” PS122 artistic director Vallejo Gantner explains on the event website. “Limitations of time, identity, age, and geography disappear. The work we will see this year deals with evolutionary transformation — personal, social, and artistic.” COIL begins on January 5 with Ranters Theatre’s Song (January 5-8), a sixty-minute immersive sound and visual installation at the New Ohio Theatre in which the audience can sit or lie down on the floor. Composer and vocalist Samita Sinha collaborates with Red Baarat percussionist Sunny Jain, guitarist and sound designer Greg Mcmurray, lighting designer Devin Cameron, visual artist Dani Leventhal, and director Ain Gordon on bewilderment and other queer lions (January 6-10, Invisible Dog Art Center), an intimate investigation of ritual and mythology through music, text, and image. Choreographer Jillian Peña’s Panopticon (January 9-17, Abrons Arts Center), a copresentation with American Realness, uses reflections to give a kaleidoscopic effect to a duet by Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin.

At the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Australians Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham team up for Morphia Series (January 12-16), an eighteen-minute phantasmal environment for twelve audience members at a time. Annie Dorsen, whose Magical with Anne Juren was a highlight of COIL 2013, is back with Yesterday Tomorrow (January 13-16, La MaMa), in which Hai-Ting Chinn, Jeffrey Gavett, and Natalie Raybould go on a multimedia musical journey from the Beatles’ “Yesterday” to Annie’s “Tomorrow.” Asia Society will be hosting Xi Ban and Po Huang Club’s one-night only Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2 (January 13, free with RSVP, 7:00 & 9:30), which melds Peking Opera with southern blues. The festival also includes niv Acosta’s Discotropic (January 6-10, Westbeth Artists Community), Frank Boyd’s The Holler Sessions (January 6-17, Paradise Factory), Kaneza Schaal’s Go Forth (January 7-12, Westbeth), David Neumann’s I Understand Everything Better (January 10-16, the Chocolate Factory), Ranters Theatre’s Intimacy (January 11-16, New Ohio Theatre), Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin’s Confirmation (January 13-17, Invisible Dog), Jonathan Capdevielle’s Adishatz / Adieu (January 15-17, Abrons Arts Center), and Michael Kliën’s Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. (January 15, Martha Graham Studios, 3:00 – 7:00).

TRAVELOGUES: RUTH DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

Lionel Popkin’s RUTH DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE makes its New York City premiere at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Cristal Jones)

Who: Lionel Popkin
What: Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, part of Travelogues series
Where: Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, Experimental Theater, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St., 212-352-3101
When: October 29 – November 1, $20
Why: Bloomington-born, Santa Monica-based dancer, choreographer, and UCLA professor Lionel Popkin returns to New York City with his most recent evening-length piece, Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, inspired by legendary dancer and choreographer Ruth St. Denis’s fascination with “Oriental” culture, as exemplified by such works as Radha. “Was St. Denis’s Orientalism an act of cultural appropriation or a legitimate examination of sources of dance?” the half-Jewish, half-Indian Popkin asks. “Can a century of perspective help a contemporary choreographer reach his own point of equilibrium?” Danced by Popkin, Emily Beattie, and Carolyn Hall, Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore features a score by composer Guy Klucevsek, performed live by avant-garde accordionist Klucevsek and violinist Mary Rowell, a bevy of fanciful costumes by set designer Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, lighting by Christopher Kuhl, and video design by Cari Ann Shim Sham, as well as the use of microphones, text-based projections, and a leaf blower. “Popkin’s talent lies in his ability to seamlessly blend his intellectual, personal, and kinetic approaches,” explains Travelogues series curator Laurie Uprichard. “He alternates between disarmingly informal narrator and highly structured creator of movement. The intermittent ‘pure dance’ sections are solidly constructed yet the audience is never at a loss for finding its place within the humorous texts.” Popkin’s previous works include There Is an Elephant in This Dance, Miniature Fantasies, and And Then We Eat, all at Danspace Project; he is currently in development with Inflatable Trio, which is set in an inflatable plastic living room.

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Social Health Performance Club will explore the framing of work as queer at the fourth annual Queer New York International Arts Festival (photo by Laura Bleür)

Abrons Arts Center (unless otherwise noted)
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
September 16-26, $15-$25
212-598-0400
www.queerny.org

Curated and produced by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović, the fourth annual Queer New York International Arts Festival consists of more than a dozen performances in multiple venues over eleven days. The program, which expands the idea of just what queer art is and can be, begins on September 16 with the legendary Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens leading an EcoSex Walking Tour of Central Park ($25, 3:00), focusing on SexEcology and including a water toast, Ecosexercises, a search for the E-spot, and other sex and environmental issues. Sprinkle and Stephens will then head over to festival hub Abrons Arts Center to present the New York City premiere of their 2014 film, Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story ($25, 8:00). Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev returns to QNYIAF with two shows, the interactive Facebook Theater (9/17, suggested donation $25, 8:00), in which the audience creates the text, and the concert 15 songs from my shows (9/18, suggested donation $25, 8:00). On September 19, John Moletress pays tribute to Derek Jarman with the multimedia one-man piece Jarman (all this maddening beauty) ($15, 8:00), while on September 20, Max Steele explores power and gender in the solo cabaret show The Good Daughter ($20, 8:00). One of the festival highlights should be the world premiere of Bruno Isaković’s Disclosures (9/22-26, suggested donation $20), in which people are invited to expose themselves both through words and the removal of clothing. Also on the bill are the Social Health Performance Club, Joshua Monten’s Doggy Style, Mmakgosi Kgabi’s Shades of a Queen, Kaia Gilje and Lorene Bouboushian’s Know What Smokes, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s Stupidité contrôleé or jump jump baby jump jump at the Merton D. Simpson Gallery, and Michael Breslin’s Kiss me just once more at Dixon Place.

IDEAS CITY: THE INVISIBLE CITY

Drone painting is part of three-day Ideas City festival on the Lower East Side

NEW YORK CITY FESTIVAL FOR THE FUTURE
New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Aula, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, the Cooper Union, and other Lower East Side locations
May 28-30, free – $50
www.ideas-city.org

In his 1972 novel Invisible Cities, Cuban-born Italian journalist and author Italo Calvino wrote, “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” That quote is the inspiration for this year’s Ideas City festival, three days of panel discussions, debates, lectures, interactive art projects, music and theater, and other special presentations about the future of New York and other cosmopolitan areas. Founded by the New Museum, the festival begins on May 28 with an all-day ticketed conference, but most everything else is free, with many events requiring advance registration. On Friday, “A Performative Conference in Nine Acts” ($20) consists of nine performances at the Aula on Mulberry St. by such artists as Jordi Enrich Jorba, Penny Arcade, and Danny Hoch, while Saturday’s Street Program features outdoor projects in and around Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Below are only some of the highlights of what should be an intriguing and fascinating look at civic responsibility and how you can make a difference.

Thursday, May 28
Ideas City Conference, with screening by Rivane Neuenschwander, welcome address by Lisa Phillips and Joseph Grima, “Seeing through the Noise” keynote by Lawrence Lessig, “Hope and Unrest in the Invisible City” panel discussion with Jonathas de Andrade, Rosanne Haggerty, Yto Barrada, Micah White, and moderator Jonathan Bowles, “Make No Little Plans: Towards a Plausible Utopia” conversation with Bjarke Ingels and Kim Stanley Robinson, screening of Joshua Frankel’s Mannahatta: Studies for an Opera about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, “Make No Little Plans: Policy and the Invisible City” conversation with Rohit Aggarwala and Connie Hedegaard, “Full Disclosure and the Morality of Information” panel discussion with Trevor Paglen, Christopher Soghoian, Jillian C. York, and moderator Gabriella Coleman, screening of OpenStreetMap’s 2008, a Year of Edits, “Maps for the Invisible City” panel discussion with Steve Coast, William Rankin, and moderator Laura Kurgan, screening of Adam Magyar’s Stainless, 42 Street, introduction by Richard Flood, and “Finding the Invisible City” mayoral panel discussion with Annise Parker, Carmen Yulín Cruz, Svante Myrick, and moderator Kurt Andersen, Great Hall, the Cooper Union, 7 East Seventh St., free – $50, 9:30 am – 7:30 pm

ETH Zurich, Block Research Group, and others: Pop-Up Workshop + Gallery, ETH Zurich Future Garden and Pavilion, 34 East First St., 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

ETH Zurich Alumni — New York Chapter: The Invisible Feedback Loop: Architects, Infrastructure, and Public Space, ETH Zurich Future Garden and Pavilion, First Street Garden, 6:30

NEW INC and Deep Lab: Drone Painting Performance, 231 Bowery, 8:00

Social Innovation in the Data Age: Inventing a Truly Smart City takes place May 29 in the First Street Garden

Friday, May 29
PareUp, miLES, and others — Wasted Food x Wasted Space: A Morning Dialogue over Breakfast, ETH Zurich Future Garden and Pavilion, First Street Garden, yoga at 8:00, roundtable dialogues at 9:00

Swiss Think Tank W.I.R.E., SAVIDA, and others — Social Innovation in the Data Age: Inventing a Truly Smart City, ETH Zurich Future Garden and Pavilion, First Street Garden, 12 noon

Jordi Enrich Jorba: Nomadic Place, A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the Aula, 268 Mulberry St., 7:30

NEW INC and Deep Lab: EMA Performance, 231 Bowery, 8:00

Urban Word, Ministry of Endangered Language, and others — The POEMobile: Quechua Poetry & Projections, with Doris Loayza, Inti Jimbo, and Inkarayku, Mulberry St. between Houston & Prince Sts., 8:00 pm – 12 midnight

United States Department of Arts and Culture — People’s State of the Union: “2015 Poetic Address to the Nation,” A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the Aula, 268 Mulberry St., 8:10

Penny Arcade: Longing Lasts Longer, A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the Aula, 268 Mulberry St., 8:40

Danny Hoch: Excerpt from Taking Over, A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the Aula, 268 Mulberry St., 10:45

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Michael Henry Adams, and others: Last Dance, A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the Aula, 268 Mulberry St., 11:00 pm

Ursula Scherrer with Brian Chase and Kato Hideki: afloat, A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the Aula, 268 Mulberry St., 11:59 pm – 3:00 am

Abrons Arts Center invites The City of the Lost and Found (photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre)

Abrons Arts Center invites visitors to “re-create an item, a feeling, or an idea they have lost in the city” (photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre)

Saturday, May 30
Abrons Arts Center: The City of the Lost and Found, Street Program, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, 12 noon – 3:00 pm

Art in Odd Places: Recall, Street Program, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Arte Institute, Albanian Institute New York: Surface Markers and I will play your soul, Street Program, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP): Sewer in a Suitcase, Street Program, Bowery between Houston & Stanton Sts., 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Circus for Construction, Austin + Mergold: The Wall Inside, Street Program, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Davidson Rafailidis: “MirrorMirror,” Street Program, Sara D. Roosevelt Park at Stanton St., 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Emily Johnson/Catalyst: Conjuring Future Joy, Street Program, Bowery between Stanton & Rivington Sts., 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Hester Street Fair: Ideas City Food Court, with Brooklyn Soda Works, Doughnut Plant, Khao Man Gai NY, Luke’s Lobster, Meat Hook Sandwich, Mindful Juice, Oddfellows Ice Cream, Petee’s Pies, Red Star Sandwich Shop, and
Roberta’s, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

US Department of Arts and Culture, Endangered Language Alliance, and others: Ministry of Endangered Language, Street Program, Stanton St. & Bowery, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Wojciech Gilewicz, Artists Alliance Inc. — RRRC: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Compost, Street Program, multiple locations, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

TRAVELOGUES: KIMBERLY BARTOSIK AND DYLAN CROSSMAN

Dylan Crossman and Kimberly Bartosik will present world premieres in Travelogues series at Abrons Arts Center

Who: Kimberly Bartosik and Dylan Crossman
What: Travelogues
Where: Abrons Arts Center Experimental Theater, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
When: May 20-23, $20, 8:00
Why: Abrons Arts Center’s new Travelogues series, which debuted earlier this year with a presentation by Daniel Léveillé Danse, continues May 20-23 with a shared program featuring the world premieres of Kimberly Bartosik’s Ecsteriority4 (Part 2) and Dylan Crossman’s Bound. Both works, by former Merce Cunningham dancers, are constructed around borders and boundaries; the former is a trio for Marc Mann, Melissa Toogood, and Crossman in which a wall plays a key component, while the latter is a solo by Crossman, performed while tied to rope, limiting his movement. (The two parts of Ecsteriority4 will come together at the Chocolate Factory in September 2016.) The Travelogues series, which is curated by Laurie Uprichard, continues in the fall with ponydance’s Anybody Waitin’? and Lionel Popkin’s Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.