Tag Archives: Madeline Best

JULIANA F. MAY: FOLK INCEST

Juliana May’s Folk Incest makes its world premiere this week at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Chris Cameron)

Abrons Arts Center, Studio G05
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Tuesday – Saturday, October 9-20, $20, 7:30
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.maydance.org

New York City native Juliana F. May creates complex, challenging works that take on heavy social issues while exploring the boundaries of dance. Referring to such pieces as Gutter Gate, Adult Documentary, and Commentary=not thing, she states on her website, “I have become increasingly interested in the relationship between feeling, form, and, most recently, in the Aristotelian notion of Necessity. . . . This notion of necessity came to the forefront of the work as I began to wonder how abstraction could be necessary. . . . I manipulate text, song, dialogue and vocalization in an effort to expose the chaotic, conflictual and conversely innocent mode of communication between people.” From October 9 to 20 at Abrons Arts Center, May and her company, MAYDANCE, will present the world premiere of the evening-length piece Folk Incest, a work for five women performers that explores form, sexual trauma, the Holocaust, and the fetishization of young girls; among its pop-culture inspirations are the music of Joan Baez along with John Waters’s Cry Baby, with ample doses of humor added to the seriousness. May wrote, directed, and choreographed the work, which will be performed by Leslie Cuyjet, Tess Dworman, Lucy Kaminsky, Molly Poerstel, and Rebecca Wender, with music by Tatyana Tenanbaum, lighting by Madeline Best, and costumes by Mariana Valencia. Several nights are already sold out, so get your tickets now to see the latest from one of the city’s most fascinating movement artists.

SHAUN IRONS & LAUREN PETTY: WHY WHY ALWAYS

Lemmy Caution (Jim Fletcher) and Natacha Von Braun (Elizabeth Carena) get caught up in mysterious intrigue in Why Why Always (photo by Paula Court)

Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 29, $25
212-352-3101
www.abronsartscenter.org
whywhyalways.automaticrelease.org

Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville meets the ASMR phenomenon in Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty’s multimedia futuristic sci-fi noir, Why Why Always, continuing at Abrons Arts Center’s Underground Theater through October 29. The prescient 1965 man vs. machine film starred Eddie Constantine as secret agent Lemmy Caution, who leaves the Outerlands and enters Alphaville posing as reporter Ivan Johnson in order to find out what happened to fellow agent Henry Dickson and to track down mysterious scientist Professor Von Braun. Irons and Petty reimagine the story using multiple monitors and cameras, live feeds and prerecorded scenes, overlapping dialogue, disembodied voices, mirrors and scrims, and more, in black-and-white and color. Longtime New York City Players member Jim Fletcher (Isolde, The Evening) stars as Caution, driving through darkness and moving through Alphaville in his trench coat, gun at the ready. Natacha (Elizabeth Carena), the professor’s daughter, is assigned to accompany him, making sure he doesn’t break any of Alpha 60’s rules, while a pair of seductresses (Laura Bartczak and Marion Spencer) hover around to take care of his more private needs. Wooster Group and Elevator Repair Service veteran Scott Shepherd (who currently can be seen in Measure for Measure at the Public) appears with Madeline Best on video, and Irons and Petty (Keep Your Electric Eye on Me, Standing By: Gatz Backstage) handle the technological aspects and live processing, including going onstage to reposition the cameras as necessary.

Meanwhile, Carena, Bartczak, and Spencer occasionally break out of character and engage in ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), slow, repetitive movements that have little to do with the plot but create both calm and stimulating atmospheres. Christina Campanella does the narration, with voiceovers by Olivier Conan and Irons, additional music by the Chocolate Factory’s Brian Rogers, costumes and props by Amy Mascena (clothing changes are made at front stage right, visible to some of the audience), complex sound design by Irons and Petty and implemented by Ian Douglas-Moore, and moody lighting courtesy of Jon Harper, referencing Raoul Coutard’s cinematography from the film. The production style of Why Why Always evokes such works as Reid and Sara Farrington’s Casablancabox and Big Dance Theater’s Comme Toujours Here I Stand, tech-heavy, complicated re-creations of Casablanca and Cléo from 5 to 7, respectively. What does it all mean? “That’s always how it is,” Caution says. “You never understand anything. And in the end, it kills you.” It won’t kill you, but it will keep you calmly stimulated and entertained throughout its ninety-minute running time.

COIL 2015 — MOLLY LIEBER + ELEANOR SMITH: RUDE WORLD

Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith come together as one in revealing new work (photo by Maria Baranova)

The Chocolate Factory Theater
5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City
January 7-12, $20
718-482-7069
www.ps122.org/rude-world
www.chocolatefactorytheater.org

With Rude World, Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith conclude their intimate trilogy that started with 2012’s Beautiful Bone and continued with 2013’s Tulip, a trio of works danced and choreographed by the two women, who have been collaborating since 2006. Part of PS122’s COIL festival, Rude World takes place in the black box space at Long Island City’s Chocolate Factory, with two rows of folding chairs at the north and south ends and black curtains forming the east and west sides. The forty-five-minute improvisation-based performance begins as Lieber and Smith, both naked, enter the small, dark room. Lieber sits on a reserved chair as Smith stands right in front of her. Over the course of several minutes, Lieber slowly caresses Smith’s body, from shoulder blades to calves, while her face moves into Smith’s backside. The only sound heard is that of a far-off ventilation system, barely audible, as well as the soft gulps of the audience members. The opening sets the tone for the rest of the show, as each dancer gets a solo in which they embrace the space with runs and jumps; in between, the central section features their bodies entwining, virtually becoming one as they twist, turn, and roll, pushing and pulling each other, using various body parts in a creative vocabulary of movement bordering on the sexual. They also stand face-first against the black curtain, slowly moving up and down as if trying to merge with the barrier. Through it all, Madeline Best’s lighting shifts ever so subtly, melding with the silence, which is interrupted only by Lieber’s and Smith’s heavy breathing — and yet more audience gulps.

Developed during a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Rude World is a mesmerizing work that gently tantalizes and taunts the audience. Lieber, who has danced for luciana achugar, Neil Greenberg, Maria Hassabi, Juliette Mapp, and Melinda Ring, and Smith, who has performed with Ivy Baldwin, Katie Workum, Juliana F. May, Vanessa Anspaugh, and Molly Poerstel, boldly reveal themselves, daring the crowd to look at them and their bodies. The piece gets confusing when each dancer puts on at least one article of clothing, perhaps emphasizing the nudity too much. But the brief wardrobe changes also tell the audience that the dancers know that they’re being examined in a way costumed dancers aren’t, with usually hidden body parts on view and moving along with hands, legs, heads, etc. Of course, nudity in contemporary dance is nothing new, but it can still be bold and thrilling when used in intelligent, unique ways.

KEEP YOUR ELECTRIC EYE ON ME

KEEP YOUR ELECTRIC EYE ON ME is a mind-numbing conceptual multimedia work running at HERE May 7-10 (photo by Paula Court)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
May 7-10, $20, 8:30
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Originally presented at CultureMart 2013 as part of HARP (the Here Artist Residency Program), Keep Your Electric Eye on Me is a mind-numbingly dull multimedia foray into the making of a tuna melt (or something like that). Conceived, created, and directed by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty, the seventy-minute, two-character show features Madeline Best as a woman who can’t keep her top on and Carlton Ward as a bald voyeur who assists her, collecting the meth-like green candies her body creates after drinking something like absinthe and cleaning up her white throw-up (or something like that). Brad Kisicki’s interesting set includes three large screens in the back, numerous monitors, and a table covered with Amy Mascena’s unusual props, a grouping of glass elements that evoke a lab. To the right of the audience, Irons and Petty mix live and prerecorded sounds and images, ranging from the beautiful (shots of the sea) to the confounding (just about everything else). The music is by the Chocolate Factory’s Brian Rogers, featuring such songs as “Moon (Sitting in the Room Every Day Like a Mustard)” and “I’m Sorry My Face.” According to an Artists’ Note in the program, Keep Your Electric Eye on Me is meant to “conjure notions of transformation, liminality, hysteria, and the desire for the unattainable.” Maybe the cast and crew can explain how in a talkback following the May 7 show, although we won’t be there to find out.

MOLLY LIEBER + ELEANOR SMITH: BEAUTIFUL BONE

Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith team up for BEAUTIFUL BONE at the Chocolate Factory

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City
February 29 – March 3, $15, 8:00
718-482-7069
www.chocolatefactorytheater.org

Pittsburgh native Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, who hails from North Carolina, have been teaming up to present their own works since 2006 while also dancing for many other companies. Their latest collaboration, Beautiful Bone, which premieres at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City this week, examines shame and love through imagination and feeling. The evening-length piece features sound design by James Lo, costume design and construction by Shelley Smith, and lighting by Madeline Best, who performed with Smith in a reprise of Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE’s Gutter Gate at New York Live Arts in January as part of APAP/NYC. Smith will also be presenting a Studio Series work at NYLA in June that will include an In Process Talk with May.

LIVE ARTERY

Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE will present GUTTER GATE during Live Artery festival at New York Live Arts

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 6-8, advance reservations required
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org

In conjunction with this week’s APAP/NYC 2012 Conference, New York Live Arts is hosting “Live Artery,” an exciting series of performances consisting of previously featured pieces and works in progress. Taking place January 6-8 in the David R. White Studio, Jerome Robbins Studio, and Bessie Schönberg Theater, the mini-festival includes Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE’s Gutter Gate, Jodi Melnick’s Solo, Deluxe version, Reggie Wilson’s theREVISITATION, Yasuko Yokoshi’s Bell,, David Neumann’s Restless Eye,, Levi Gonzalez’s intimacy, and Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company presenting excerpts from Story/Time, Body Against the Body, and D-Man in the Waters. During the weekend, the Live Lounge in the lobby will offer complimentary wine and snacks, free WiFi, and a place for performers, presenters, fans, and others to congregate.

Update: First presented at Dance Theater Workshop in February 2011, Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE’s Gutter Gate made an extremely welcome return January 6-7 to the space, now known as New York Live Arts, as part of the annual APAP/NYC Conference. With the audience sitting in a single row of folding chairs on three sides of the stage, Ben Asriel, Madeline Best, Anna Carapetyan, Eleanor Smith, and Maggie Thom emerge in the center with chairs of their own, Joan Baez’s rollicking country cover of Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” playing on the soundtrack, begining a thrilling sixty minutes of abstract movement inspired by Aristotle’s theories of causality and necessity. The dancers remove the chairs and run around the floor individually and in unison, removing parts of their clothing as they stop, pause, approach the audience, break off into pairs, put their clothing back on, then take it off again. Soon they are making guttural sounds that threaten to cross the line into questionable performance art but always manage to stay on track as the dancers’ communicate with one another and the audience via different forms of verbal and physical language, including flopping breasts and penis and Thom’s darting eyes, which perform a dance all their own. The movements are beautiful, devolving into ever-more elemental gestures, coinciding with Chris Seeds’s electronic score, which eventually fades into silence.