Tag Archives: brooklyn bridge park

DanceAfrica 2024: CAMEROON

Who: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, DJ YB, more
What: DanceAfrica Festival 2024
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave.
When: May 24-27, many events free, Gilman dances $22-$95, film screenings $16
Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-seventh annual iteration focuses on Cameroon, with four companies performing “The Origin of Communities / A Calabash of Cultures” in BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, and Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, highlighting movement and music from the Central African nation. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, Salifou Lindou’s art installation La course 2, the Council of Elders Roundtable: Legacy & Preservation, and a late night dance party with DJ YB.

This year’s FilmAfrica screenings and cinema conversations range from Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa’s 1975 Muna Moto and Mohamed Challouf’s The Many Moods of Muna Moto to Jean-Marie Téno’s Colonial Misunderstanding, Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s 2005 Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes), and Gordon Main’s 2023 London Recruits, all followed by Q&As with the directors.

“This year’s DanceAfrica is a journey into the heart of Cameroon, driven by a quest to explore the ancient roots of African culture and answer profound questions about humanity’s earliest origins,” Salaam said in his mission statement. “How timeless is Africa, and was it the land of the most ancient beings? What were the origins of humanity, thought, consciousness, art, culture, creativity, and civilization?”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LAURA ORTMAN & RAVEN CHACON LIVE IN BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK

Raven Chacon and Laura Ortman will perform a free show in Brooklyn Bridge Park on November 5

Who: Laura Ortman & Raven Chacon
What: Live concert presented by Public Art Fund
Where: Empire Fulton Ferry Lawn, Brooklyn Bridge Park
When: Sunday, November 5, free (advance RSVP recommended), 4:00
Why: Following an earlier rainout, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) and Raven Chacon (Navajo) will activate Nicholas Galanin’s Brooklyn Bridge Park sculpture, In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra, with a free concert on November 5 at 5:00. Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, performer, and installation artist based in Red Hook and Albuquerque, while Ortman is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who has collaborated with Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, New Red Order, and many others.

Discussing the large-scale immersive piece, Galanin, who is based in Sitka, Alaska, said in a promotional video, “Creative sovereignty and creating work is a form of reclamation of our ideas, our knowledge, our language, our place, while including other perspectives and other ideas and other people’s experiences to be accessed through that work too.”

Ortman and Chacon have worked together previously, including at Ende Tymes X in Brooklyn, the American Academy in Berlin, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, and other locations. In Brooklyn Bridge Park, they will present an improvisational site-specific performance incorporating local field recordings and a mix of instruments. Admission is free, though advance registration is recommended, and attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket to sit on.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CANCELED: MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP IN BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK

Mark Morris Dance Group will perform Water and more at Brooklyn Bridge Park on October 1 (photo by John Eng)

Who: Mark Morris Dance Group
What: Free outdoor performances
Where: Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 1, Harbor View Lawn
When: Saturday, October 1, free, 2:00 & 4:00, workshop at 3:00 {ed. note: This event is now canceled because of the weather]
Why: Brooklyn-based favorites Mark Morris Dance Group will be in Brooklyn Bridge Park on Saturday, October 1, to present a pair of free programs on the Harbor View Lawn at Pier 1, at 2:00 and 4:00, with an all-ages workshop at 3:00. The troupe, founded in 1980 by Morris, will perform Water, a nine-minute 2021 piece for fourteen dancers set to music by George Frideric Handel; Greek to Me, a five-minute solo from 1998 set to Harry Partch’s “Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales” from “Eleven Intrusions”; the twenty-two-minute 2007 Suite from Orfeo ed Euridice set to the score by Christoph Willibald Gluck; and the eighteen-minute 1998 work Dancing Honeymoon, featuring seven dancers in yellow and music by Ethan Iverson.

JEPPE HEIN: CHANGING SPACES

Changing Spaces gets people wet and keeps them dry at Rockefeller Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

CHANGING SPACES
Rockefeller Center
Forty-Ninth to Fiftieth Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Daily through September 9, free
www.rockefellercenter.com
www.jeppehein.net
changing spaces slideshow

In 2015, Jeppe Hein installed the three-part interactive Please Touch the Art across Brooklyn Bridge Park, consisting of a water sculpture, social climbing bench, and circular mirrored maze. This summer, the Berlin-based Danish artist’s Changing Spaces has been delighting adults and children of all ages in Rockefeller Center. In the plaza right above the roller skating rink, Hein has placed “liquid architecture,” four intersecting circles that shoot up water at different times and heights. Visitors are encouraged to step into the circles before the jets shoot up and stay until they go down, which will not make you get wet. However, you can get as drenched as you want to if you run through the circles willy-nilly. But unlike rAndom International’s Rain Room at MoMA, Changing Spaces is not motion activated.

The installation, in which you will certainly end up touching the art, continues through September 9; it is open seven am to eleven pm daily and till midnight on Saturday and Sunday. “My aim is to exhibit artworks that approach visitors on different levels, awaken their senses, and touch their hearts, activate various emotions, and encourage mutual exchange,” Hein said in a statement. “Ideally, my work fosters communication and empathy that people will pass on to others. The shape was meant to contrast the rectangular layout of New York, embracing people in a circle of water.”

DanceAfrica 2022: HOMEGROWN

Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater will perform at BAM’s annual DanceAfrica festival

Who: Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Farafina Kan, Harambe Dance Company, LaRocque Bey School of Dance, BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble, DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, more
What: DanceAfrica Festival 2022
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
When: May 21 – June 2, many events free, Gilman dances $12.50 – $85, film screenings $16
Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-fifth annual event features the theme “Homegrown,” with five companies making return visits to BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Farafina Kan, Harambe Dance Company, and LaRocque Bey School of Dance, along with the BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble and DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, highlighting movement and music from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and the Caribbean, accompanied by Arkestra Africa. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the Tribute to the Ancestors, Community Day, a Memorial Room, the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, the Water Your Roots Youth Dance Expo & Talent Show, the Council of Elders Roundtable “Legacy & Preservation,” Christopher Myers’s stained-glass work Be Lost Well (Stay in the House All Day), and a late night dance party with DJ YB.

FilmAfrica runs May 27 to June 2, consisting of more than two dozen films, from Moussa Touré’s 1997 TGV (followed by a Q&A with Touré and Amy Andrieux), Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s 1996 When the Stars Meet the Sea, and Amleset Muchie’s 2019 Min Alesh! to Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2008 Sex, Okra, and Salted Butter, Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda’s 2006 Juju Factory, and Dumisani Phakathi’s Don’t F*** with Me, I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters.

OPEN AIR: LONI LANDON AND MARY LATTIMORE AT GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY

Mary Lattimore and Loni Landon team up for site-specific performance in Green-Wood Cemetery

OPEN AIR
Green-Wood Cemetery
Fifth Ave. and 25th St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, July 14, and Thursday, July 15, $25, 7:00
www.green-wood.com
www.fourfourpresents.com

Developed during the pandemic, the curatorial platform four/four presents continues its monthly site-specific “Open Air” performance series with a new piece about mourning, healing, rebirth, and renewal, taking place July 14-15 in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Founded by dancer and choreographer Loni Landon and producer Rachael Pazdan, four/four has brought us “Tethered,” a ten-part multidisciplinary video project featuring collaborations with Kassa Overall, slowdanger, Gus Solomons, Zoey Anderson, Rafiq Bhatia, Ian Chang, Jacqueline Green, Jon Batiste, Lloyd Knight, and many others, which can be watched here.

For Green-Wood, Landon has choreographed a work for seven dancers, with live music by experimental harpist Mary Lattimore, performed in Cedar Dell, the one-acre bowl-shaped natural amphitheater with graves dating back to the eighteenth century. The evening will conclude with a participatory meditative sound bath. “Open Air” began June 9 with Madison McFerrin, Samantha Figgins, and Jessica Pinkett teaming up at the Jackie Robinson Park Bandshell; up next are Melanie Charles and Kayla Farrish at the Bushwick Playground Basketball Court on August 8, followed by Moor Mother and Rena Butler at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 on September 21.

BIRDS OF BROOKLYN WITH HEATHER WOLF

Who: Heather Wolf
What: Webinar on the birds of Brooklyn
Where: Brooklyn Bridge Park YouTube
When: Friday, February 26, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: If you missed the initial broadcast of Heather Wolf’s virtual discussion “Birds of Brooklyn,” you’ll get another chance on February 26 at 7:00, when the event is repeated by Brooklyn Bridge Park on its new YouTube channel. The California-born, Brooklyn-based Wolf, a former circus guitarist and current juggling teacher, maintains “The Birds of Brooklyn Bridge Park” blog, where she posts photos and avian observations. She is also the author of the 2016 book Birding at the Bridge: In Search of Every Bird on the Brooklyn Waterfront (Workman, $14.95) and, in the before times, led birding walks in the park. Among her most recent photos are of a ring-billed gull, a red-throated loon, a double-crested cormorant, a northern cardinal, and three brant in midair.