Glenn Ligon and Samora Pinderhughes will discuss pivotal moments at YoungArts event at New York Live Arts on March 5
Who: Glenn Ligon, Samora Pinderhughes What:National YoungArts Foundation Salon Series Where:New York Live Arts Theater, 219 West 19th St., 212-691-6500 When: Sunday, March 5, $10, 2:00 Why: In 2011, New York City–based visual artist Glenn Ligon had a major midcareer retrospective, “Glenn Ligon: America,” at the Whitney. In 2009, Berkeley high school pianist and composer Samora Pinderhughes was named a YoungArts Winner in Jazz Keyboard. On March 5 at 2:00 at New York Live Arts, the two will take part in the latest edition of the National YoungArts Foundation Salon Series, “Critical Junctures: Glenn Ligon,” as they look at pivotal moments in their creative process while placing it in sociohistorical context. The Salon Series, which “brings together creative alumni voices and offers audiences an opportunity to engage with internationally renowned and emerging artists,” will be back at New York Live Arts on May 14 with “Critical Junctures: Alexei Ratmansky,” in which the Russian-American choreographer will be in conversation with 2011 YoungArts Dance Winner and ABT soloist Cassandra Trenary.
Jane Comfort and Company will be performing January 9 at Lumberyard showcase at New York Live Arts
Who: Dan Hurlin, Vicky Shick, the feath3r theory, Cynthia Hopkins, Jane Comfort and Company, Steven Reker/Open House, LMnO3 What:Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts APAP showcase Where:New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th St., 212-727-7476 When: Monday, January 9, free with advance RSVP, 2:00 & 5:00 Why: Formerly known as American Dance Institute, the newly rechristened Lumberyard is presenting a pair of free showcases on January 9 at New York Live Arts in conjunction with the annual APAP|NYC performance festival. The two-hour showcases of fifteen-minute pieces take place at 2:00 and 5:00 with the following lineup and times: Dan Hurlin (2:00, 5:00), Vicky Shick (2:20, 5:20), the feath3r theory (2:40), Cynthia Hopkins (3:00, 6:00), Jane Comfort and Company (3:20, 5:40), Steven Reker/Open House (3:40, 6:40), and LMnO3 (6:20).
Director Richard Raymond will be at NYLA on April 3 for screening of DESERT DANCER and reception as part of Live Ideas festival
Who: Richard Raymond What: Screening of Richard Raymond’s 2014 film, Desert Dancer, followed by a reception with the director Where:New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves., 212-924-0077 When: Sunday, April 3, $10, 3:00 Why: New York Live Arts’ 2016 Live Ideas multidisciplinary festival concludes this weekend with several unique programs, including a screening of Desert Dancer, a biopic about Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian, portrayed by Reece Ritchie; the film also features Freida Pinto as Elaheh, Nazanin Boniadi as Parisa Ghaffarian, and Tom Cullen as Ardavan, with choreography by Akram Khan. The theme of this year’s Live Ideas is “MENA/Future — Cultural Transformations in the Middle East North Africa Region.” Also on tap this weekend at NYLA are Adham Hafez Company’s 2065 BC, Radouan Mriziga’s ~55, and the conversation “Dance & the New Politic” with Adham Hafez, Andre Lepecki, and guests.
On the back cover of the new book There Might Be Others, which contains the music and dance score for Rebecca Lazier’s New York Live Arts commission along with collaborator notes, instructions, principles, and more, NYLA director of programs Tommy Kreigsmann says, “Seminal works of the avant-garde become so when the inherent risk at the heart of the experiment catalyzing the vision to its fruition pushes the work’s sphere of influence beyond its original form and often its intended meaning. Intrepid choreographer Rebecca Lazier [has a] penchant for musical interpretation and the infinite aesthetic and physical languages in its breadth, making her among the very best of her generation.” New York-based dancer, choreographer, and teacher Lazier will be making her NYLA debut with the world premiere of There Might Be Others on March 16-19, inspired by Terry Riley’s 1964, fifty-three-part composition, “In C,” one of the first major minimalist works. The live score will be performed by fiddler Dan Trueman and SŌ Percussion and Mobius Percussion (March 16-18) and members of Mantra Percussion (March 19). The piece features dramaturgy and design by Naomi Leonard, Davison Scandrett, and Mary Jo Mecca and will be danced by Simon Courchel, Natalie Green, raja feather kelly, Cori Kresge, Christopher Ralph, Anna Schön, Saúl Ulerio, Agnieszka Kryst, Jan Lorys, Ramona Nagabczynska, Pawel Sakowicz Rhonda Baker, Sara Coffin, and Tan Temel. On March 13 ($20, 1:30), Lazier (Coming Together/Attica, Terminal) and Trueman will host the Shared Practice workshop “Choreographing Being in Action — Staging Negotiation and Interaction,” while the March 17 show will be followed by a Stay Late Discussion with Neil Greenberg.
Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson will present the glittering CHAMBRE as part of FIAF’s annual Crossing the Line festival (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 10 – October 4, free – $35
212-355-6160 www.fiaf.org
Tickets are now available for FIAF’s ninth annual late summer/early fall multidisciplinary arts festival, and you better act fast if you want to see some of this year’s most intriguing programs. For us, the highlight is Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson’s Chambre, an installation and performance piece at the New Museum inspired by Jean Genet’s The Maids and pop-culture elements, with extravagant costumes by Reid Bartelme and experimental sound and music by twi-ny fave Roarke Menzies. British artist Ant Hampton’s Autoteatro series continues with The Extra People, in which participants will go on an individual adventure through FIAF’s Florence Gould Theater. The U.S. premiere of Brazilian artist Gustavo Ciriaco and Austrian artist Andrea Sonnberger’s Here whilst we walk will take small groups, bound by a giant rubber band, on a silent trip through Red Hook. Elana Langer’s free What I Live By will pop up at three locations, examining brand identification and personal values. Iranian artist Ali Moini searches for freedom in the multimedia dance work Lives at New York Live Arts (NYLA). Miguel Gutierrez will present the New York City premiere of all three parts of his Age & Beauty series, Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/; Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@&; and Dancer or You can make whatever the fuck you want but you’ll only tour solos or The Powerful People or We are strong/We are powerful/We are beautiful/We are divine or &:’////, at NYLA, featuring such collaborators as Mickey Mahar, Michelle Boulé, Jen Rosenblit, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Alex Rodabaugh. Italian artist Alessandro Sciarroni asks Folk-s, will you still love me tomorrow? in his unique interpretation of Bavarian folk dance at NYLA. French director Joris Lacoste investigates multiple languages and human spoken expression in Suite n°2 in Florence Gould Hall. Also on the bill are Shezad Dawood’s “It was a time that was a time” exhibition at Pioneer Works, a photography show by Mazaccio & Drowilal in the FIAF Gallery, Olivia Bransbourg’s ICONOfly magazine, and Adrian Heathfield and André Lepecki’s three-day symposium, “Afterlives: The Persistence of Performance,” at FIAF and MoMA.
SLEEP NO MORE’s Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Nick Bruder and Troy Ogilvie, are together again in REPLACEMENT PLACE (photo by Aeric Merideth-Goujon)
REPLACEMENT PLACE
Patricia Noworol Dance Theater
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
April 30 – May 2, $20-$30
212-924-0077 newyorklivearts.org pndance.com
Numerous memorable pairs have portrayed Macbeth and Lady Macbeth onstage and onscreen over the years, in various interpretations, including Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, Orson Welles and Jeanette Nolan, Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada, Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston, and Liev Schreiber and Jennifer Ehle. Nick Bruder and Troy Ogilvie might not be quite the same household names, but they appeared as the ill-fated king and his devious wife in one of the most memorable and certainly unusual versions of Macbeth you’re ever likely to see, Sleep No More, in which the action unfolds throughout the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea. The two are back together again in Replacement Place, being presented by Patricia Noworol Dance Theater at New York Live Arts April 30 to May 2. Bruder, who won the 2011 Falstaff Award for Best Principal Performance in Sleep No More, and Ogilvie, a Juilliard graduate, New Jersey native, and Dance magazine “25 to Watch” pick in 2011, recently discussed working together and their personal and professional ideas of “place.”
twi-ny: Sleep No More has been quite a phenomenon. What was it like being part of that experience? Had you been involved in any type of interactive, participatory performances before?
Troy Ogilvie: Performing in Sleep No More was a gritty, fun, sexy ride. It was an ego trip as well as an exercise in vigilant attention. No, I had never been involved in a performance that was as immersive as SNM. My other nontraditional performance experiences were more “site specific,” as in an installation in a gallery or work done in the outdoors.
Nick Bruder: I cannot express how much I’ve learned from working with punchdrunk and Sleep No More. Mainly, I’m always going to know more about the character and the work than the audience will. And that’s okay. It’s my job to know more. If I have a clear perspective and perform with the understanding that I developed this weird alchemical-like process that actually opens up room and context for the audience to engage with — that’s imperative in Sleep No More, since it’s more likely that an audience member will catch a character’s story from unordered snippets. But this still holds true to a linear performance as well. As for other work, I’ve done a bunch of other immersive or audience-integrated work. In Los Angeles I worked with visual artist Brody Condon on two of his durational performance pieces consisting of wearing a full suit of armor and slowly falling into the floor à la a video game character’s death. Whew.
twi-ny: You played Lady Macbeth and Macbeth in Sleep No More, although you never did so at the same time. Now that you’re both in Replacement Place, do you wonder what it would have been like to have played the devious husband and wife together in Chelsea?
TO: Actually, we did fight, plot, conspire, tease, and descend into madness together for over a year as “husband” and “wife.”
twi-ny: Oops. Sorry about that.
NB: Hah. We actually ended both of our runs with Sleep No More as each other’s Macbeths. And I couldn’t think of anything better.
TO: Our bond that developed at SNM spilled over into our life outside the McKittrick Hotel, and we are always dreaming up ways to continue to work with one another.
twi-ny: Troy, you’ve worked with such choreographers as Sidra Bell, Andrea Miller, Idan Sharabi, Austin McCormick, and Margie Gillis. Do you find yourself working any differently with different choreographers, and specifically with Patricia Noworol? Do the different choreographers test you in different ways, both physically and mentally?
TO: Yes. Every choreographer has their boundary that they are — to use your word — testing. There’s something that has to stretch in the dancer in order to accommodate the weakened border, something that has to stretch but not break. The stretch is a pleasure, the skill is knowing when the boundary can be re-formed and its new shape celebrated. That moment has to do with the specific chemistry between choreographer and dancer. Patricia has a lot of openness in her process, which can be frustrating but in the end is absolutely freeing and brilliant. Anything is an option, which is a relief and a stress, but it’s exactly where I want to be right now. Pat has a great sense of timing, texture, and emotional build that we can’t wait to share with audiences.
twi-ny: Nick, you’ve appeared in opera at the Met, in a dance piece at BAC, in a mobile production at the McKittrick Hotel, in Shakespeare at the Harman Center, and now you will be at NYLA for Replacement Place. How does the concept of place inform how you approach a performance?
NB: Logistically, each site where performance is presented has its benefits: audience capacity, how close they are to the performers, size of the space, etc. Even the type of audience they attract. When one is performing in so many venues, it can begin to get exhausting adapting a changing performance approach. So I have to be confident that my understanding of character and all the tools I have collected, and some that I’ve thrown away throughout the years, can aid in helping the piece I’m in to be applicable to the venue. This may sound too heady, but I think a formula of audience + performers + space = something that happened in a place. Thinking about that, I hope, relieves the pressure of me having to adapt properly to the site and let the space and work influence the type of place it is to become.
Patricia Noworol’s REPLACEMENT PLACE is a collaboration between Troy Ogilvie, Nick Bruder, AJ “the Animal” Jonez, and Chris Lancaster (photo by Aeric Merideth-Goujon)
twi-ny: Troy, in September 2012 you wrote in Dance magazine, “I dance because it is fun. I dance because I love to perform. I dance because I always have. These clichés were all accurate at one point, but none apply today.” Do you still feel the same way?
TO: Yes, but wow, so dramatic! I mean, yes, “fun,” “love,” and “always” are not the words I would use to describe my relationship to dance, but not because it is not-fun, not-love, and not-always. I have less confusion about it now, so there’s more room to actually work and less time spent on proving myself.
twi-ny: Replacement Place features quite an eccentric collection of collaborators, from the two of you to AJ “the Animal” Jonez to electro-cellist Chris Lancaster and designer Vita Tzykun. What have the rehearsals been like? The online videos have been rather tantalizing.
TO: Rehearsals have been a blast. AJ, Chris, and Vita are experts in their fields and are also so generous with their information. We all trust each other and have fun trying on each others’ shoes — sometimes literally. I am really so pleased to be working with this group; kudos for Pat for throwing us all in a room together!
NB: They’ve been like a super-condensed story of the universe. A big bang of inspiration happens which sets ideas in motion which then leads to cool and amazing organisms to exist and grow and diversify with sunshine feeding and warming all the beautiful animals and plants when all of a sudden a little dark rain cloud comes overhead and starts spilling out its watery guts until you notice that it’s actually a black hole that is sucking you and everything you know into its gullet while you lose hope by the minute only to spit you out on the other side with a new big bang and then you’re like hmm . . . must have been a wormhole. Pretty typical artistic process. It’s awesome.
twi-ny: Whew is right. In regard to place, do each of you have somewhere you go in order to get away from it all?
Emily Johnson’s Shore is another beautifully organic participatory event that brings audience and performer together with the local surroundings. The last part of a trilogy that began with The Thank-you Bar and Niicugni,Shore opens in the outdoor playground of PS 11 on West Twenty-First St., where people gather near the large-scale mural by Os Gemeos and Futura of a cartoonish character wearing shorts covered in flags of the world, which is representative of the four-part work’s inclusiveness. (There are also separate volunteer, feast, and story sections of Shore.) Attendees can go on the slide, commune with a coop of chickens, shoot some hoops, or grab one of the red blankets and huddle for warmth in these cold late-April days. (Note: Get there early if you want a blanket, as there aren’t enough for everyone.) Various performers start humming and singing on the street, confusing passersby, then run around in a circle inside the playground. Johnson, wearing a masklike swipe of red ceremonial makeup over her eyes, gets atop a shaky makeshift podium and tells a story about a dream of birds and Minetta Creek, an underground stream that once snaked its way from Chelsea to the Hudson River.
Emily Johnson has quite a story to tell in SHORE (photo by twi-ny/ees)
Johnson then leads her large cast, including the Shore Choir, and the audience on a silent journey (except for music boxes, carried by some cast members, that play a lovely tune) following the stream’s path to New York Live Arts on Nineteenth St., where Shore continues in the theater, beginning amid dry-ice mist rising from the stage as the audience takes its seats. (Be sure to pick up a program when leaving the playground, as it contains a special treat.) Soon Aretha Aoki in red, Krista Langberg in orange, and Johnson in yellow, the first three colors of the rainbow, are moving across the stage, feet pounding hard, approaching the rest of the performers, who first line up against the back wall, then make their way to the sides. The interplay among the three dancers ranges from strong and determined to tender and intimate, set to a score that goes from stark bursts of sound to acoustic guitar playing to Marv Albert calling a Bulls-Lakers game. Never at a loss for creativity and ingenuity, Johnson has one final gift for the audience as they exit the theater, one that will touch your already soaring heart. Yes, you’ll be very cold at PS11, and the indoors NYLA section goes on a bit too long, but Shore will challenge you, captivate you, and constantly remind you that you are part of something much bigger than just yourself.
