Tag Archives: New York Live Arts

SHORE IN LENAPEHOKING (NYC)

Emily Johnson / Catalyst’s SHORE consists of dance, story, volunteerism, and feast

April 23-25, New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th St., 212-691-6500, $15-$30, 7:30
April 24-26, multiple locations, free with preregistration
newyorklivearts.org
www.catalystdance.com

In our 2011 twi-ny talk with Emily Johnson, the Alaska-born, Minneapolis-based choreographer, performer, and director said, “I want the feeling of ‘home’ to lead to a kind of intimacy so that people feel comfortable, responsible even, for it. I think we tend to look at things as static when, in reality, our bodies and places house past, present, and future, at once. It’s anything but static.” The concluding piece of the trilogy Johnson was referring to, which began with The Thank-you Bar and continued with Niicugni, is happening this week: Shore is a multiday four-part work that brings together people and the land, performer and audience, art and community, celebrating the interdependence of all living things and emphasizing our responsibility to the planet and one another. (It seems particularly fitting that Johnson and her Catalyst company are here in New York during Earth Week.) Shore began on April 19 with a volunteer community action program in the Rockaways, helping restore dunes, as well as a curated reading with Ben Weaver, Sahar Muradi, Chris Moore, Emmanuel Iduma, Tim Carrier, and Live Linesat at the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council on Rutgers Slip. On April 24, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, Gibney Dance, the Lenape Center, and the Billion Oyster Project will team up for another community action volunteer initiative, restoring an estuary on Governors Island to reintroduce oysters (and eat some as well).

On April 23-25, the performance aspect of Shore will begin on the outdoor basketball court at PS 11 on West Twenty-First St. and make its way into New York Live Arts; the piece is conceived, choreographed, and written by Johnson, with direction by Ain Gordon, music direction and lead collaboration by James Everest (who composed the soundscore with Nona Marie Invie and Fletcher Barnhill), costumes by Angie Vo, and a cast that includes Johnson, Invie, Barnhill, Aretha Aoki, Krista Langberg, Christina Courtin, Julia Bither, the Shore Choir, and twenty local dancers. The Thank-you Bar and Niicugni were both unusual, unpredictable works that challenged traditional relationships between performer and audience while making creative use of light, sound, and space, so we’re expecting this piece to be rather unique and special as well. Shore comes to a close April 26 with a potluck feast at the North Brooklyn Boat Club, where preregistered participants will bring dishes and stories to share, listen to live music by Weaver, go on a guided canoe trip on Newtown Creek under the Pulaski Bridge, and learn about ecology and the environment. Bicyclists can meet up earlier and ride over to the feast together. Another part of Shore, which was previously presented last June in Minneapolis, are essays that are being posted on the Catalyst website. “At each event, our attention was redirected back to the earth, to our relationship with the land, with plants and animals, with water and air,” writes Diane Wilson. “I imagined Shore as a place where all of these elements were brought back together in harmony with people, just as they were when our ancestors used the ceremony of art to convey our relationship with the natural world. On the podium set up on the grass, Emily asked, ‘What was the most joyful day of my life? It just might be today.’” Shore should be another memorable performance from a dazzlingly gifted talent.

LIVE IDEAS: S K Y — FORCE AND WISDOM IN AMERICA TODAY

Laurie Anderson and Bill T. Jones will join forces for third annual Live Ideas festival at NYLA

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
April 15-19
212-691-6500
newyorklivearts.org

In April 2013, New York Live Arts held its inaugural Live Ideas multidisciplinary festival, celebrating the life and career of Oliver Sachs through dance, music, film, theater, panel discussions, and scientific investigation, with Sachs participating in multiple events. Last year, Live Ideas paid tribute to writer James Baldwin, whom NYLA artistic director Bill T. Jones called “another multifaceted generator of and magnet for ideas.” This year, NYLA has handed the reins over to Laurie Anderson, who is curating the third Live Ideas festival, “S K Y – Force and Wisdom in America Today.” From April 15 to 19, more than two dozen programs will examine social, political, artistic, and environmental issues, taking stock of the state of the country in the twenty-first century. The free Noon-Time Talk Series consists of “Timothy Ferris: Beyond Belief”; “Arvo Pärt, Journeys in Silence,” with Anderson, Peter Bouteneff, James Jordan, and William Robin; “Marjorie Morrison: Proactive Military Mental Health,” with Marjorie Morrison, Mateo H. Romero, and Joseph Mauricio; the multimedia presentation “Vito Acconci: WORD/ACT/SIGN/DE-SIGN”; and the three-hour installation “Lou Reed: DRONES,” introduced and operated by Reed’s longtime guitar tech, Stewart Hurwood. Every evening will conclude with the free “Blue Room” DJ party either in the NYLA lobby or G Lounge right down the street, with King Britt, Drew Daniel, Glasser, Yuka C. Honda, and Jonathan Toubin and Geo Wyeth.

Vittorio De Sica’s MIRACLE IN MILAN will help shed some light on NYLA Live Ideas festival

Film will play an important role, with Robert Milazzo introducing Chris Marker’s seminal La Jetée; Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls, followed by a conversation with Anderson and Schnabel; Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan; Dorian Supin’s 24 Preludes for a Fugue, introduced by Bouteneff; and a selection of Anderson’s films, including Hidden Inside Mountains, What You Mean We?, Carmen, and excerpts from The Personal Service Announcements, with Anderson on hand to talk about the works. Among the live musical events are Eyvind Kang’s “Time Medicine,” with Kang and Anderson; John Zorn’s “Music for Piano, Strings and Percussion,” with “In the Hall of Mirrors” performed by pianist Steve Gosling, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey and “CERBERUS” featuring Kinan Idnawi on oud, Erik Friedlander on cello, Cohen on bass, and Cyro Baptista on percussion; a pop-up show by the Symptoms (John Colpitts, Tony Diodore, and Anderson); a concert of chamber works by Pärt including Solfeggio, Da Pacem, Fratres, Spiegel im Spiegel, and Für Alina; and a two-part evening starting with a performance by Reverend Billy & the Stop Shopping Choir and ending with Hal Willner and Chloe Webb’s “Doing the Things We Want To,” a tribute to the late Reed and Kathy Acker.

Beth Gill and Deborah Hay will present new works on April 15 at multidisciplinary NYLA festival

Dance, NYLA’s bread and butter, will be represented by New York choreographer Beth Gill’s specially commissioned Portrait Study, paired with an advance look at legendary experimental choreographer Deborah Hay and Anderson’s Figure a Sea. The former is built around short autobiographical solos by such dancers as Neal Beasley, Eleanor Hullihan, John Jasperse, Jodi Melnick, Stuart Singer, David Thomson, Meg Weeks, and Emily Wexler, set to live music by Eliot Krimsky and Ryan Seaton, with a transitioning lighting and color design by Thomas Dunn. The latter is a sneak peek at Hay and Anderson’s evening-length piece for the Cullberg Ballet, premiering in Stockholm in September. There’s a whole lot to take in at the 2015 Live Ideas festival, but Anderson and Jones will get right to the point — and explain how they came up with the name “S K Y – Force and Wisdom in America Today” — in their opening-day discussion, aptly titled “Where Are We Going?” To Jones, the sky is “a multidimensional symbol of aspiration, vastness, change, threat, and now information storage,” while Anderson will explore why we live in “a society that is deeply divided, unjust, and often toxic.” And if all of that isn’t wide ranging enough for you, on April 17, Master Ren will lead a Taijiquan martial arts demonstration, accompanied by Lou Reed’s DRONES.

LIVE IDEAS: JAMES BALDWIN, THIS TIME!

The life and career of James Baldwin will be celebrated at second annual Live Ideas festival at New York Live Arts this week

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
April 23-27
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org

Last year, New York Live Arts presented its inaugural Live Ideas festival, honoring Dr. Oliver Sacks with a series of dance performances, special talks, and other programs. For the 2014 edition, as part of the citywide Year of James Baldwin celebration, NYLA is hosting “Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!,” which runs April 23-27 at its home on West Nineteenth St. Every day at twelve o’clock, “Jimmy at High Noon” (free with advance RSVP) will feature actors, musicians, artists, and others reading from Baldwin’s works, which include Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, The Amen Corner, Another Country, and Jimmy’s Blues; among those scheduled to participate are Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Laurie Anderson, André DeShields, Kathleen Chalfant, Jesse L. Martin, Tonya Pinkins, Vijay Isher, and Toshi Reagon. In addition, Hank Willis Thomas’s free video installation, A person is more important than anything else…, will play continuously in the lobby, where the mural “Letter from a Region of My Mind,” incorporating the text of a piece Baldwin wrote for the November 17, 1962, issue of the New Yorker, will be on view. On April 23 at 2:30 ($15), Live Ideas curator Lawrence Weschler will moderate the discussion “Baldwin’s Capacious Imagination & Influence” with Roberta Uno and Margo Jefferson. That night the Opening Keynote Conversation ($40-$70, 8:00) brings together the impressive trio of choreographer and NYLA executive artistic director Bill T. Jones, photographer Carrie Mae Weems, and author Jamaica Kincaid. On April 23 at 5:00 and April 24 at 8:00 ($15-$40), director Patricia McGregor and actor Colman Domingo will premiere Nothing Personal, a stage adaptation of the collaboration between Baldwin and Richard Avedon, who went to high school together. The festival also includes “Baldwin & Delaney” (April 24, $10, 2:00), consisting of a reading by Rachel Cohen and a panel discussion about Baldwin’s encounter with painter Beauford Delaney; the multidisciplinary conversation “After Giovanni’s Room: Baldwin and Queer Futurity” (April 25, $10, 2:00) with Kyle Abraham, Rich Blint, Matthew Brim, Laura Flanders, and Jones; and “Jimmy’s Blues: Discussing the Poetry of James Baldwin,” comprising discussion and readings by poets Nikky Finney, Edward Hirsch, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ed Pavlić, Meghan O’Rourke, and Nathalie Handal.

BALLETNEXT: THREE WORKS BY BRIAN REEDER

Michele Wiles and Jens Weber will perform in an updated version of Brian Reeder’s PICNIC as part of BalletNext season at NYLA this week (photo by Nisian Hughes)

SURMISABLE UNITS / DIFFERENT HOMES / PICNIC
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 14-18, $15-$30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.balletnext.com

Founded in 2011 by longtime ABT dancer Michele Wiles, BalletNext is a platform for the Baltimore-born Wiles to collaborate with a wide range of dancers, choreographers, and musicians, encouraging risk-taking as the company explores the future of classical ballet. From January 14 to 18, BalletNext will be at New York Live Arts, presenting three works choreographed by former NYCB and ABT dancer Brian Reeder. The world premiere of Surmisable Units, set to Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase,” opens with a solo by Wiles, who is then joined by the rest of the company. In the New York premiere of Different Homes, Wiles and former Ballet Nacional de Monte Carlo principal Jens Weber perform a pas de deux to music by Benjamin Britten, their hands never touching. The program also includes an updated version of the 2012 work Picnic, based on Peter Weir’s 1975 film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, about young girls who go missing during a school outing in Australia; the piece features Edwardian costumes and music by Dmitri Shostakovich. The music to all three works will be performed live by the BalletNext Ensemble, led by Israeli cellist Elad Kabilio and featuring Juilliard pianist Ben Laude; the well-pedigreed company consists of Wiles, Weber, former NYCB dancer Kaitlyn Gilliland, NYBT principal Steven Melendez, former Morphoses dancer Sarah Atkins, BalletNext dancer Tiffany Mangulabnan, and Manhattan Youth Ballet alumna Brittany Cioce, now a BalletNext apprentice.

DONNA UCHIZONO: FIRE UNDERGROUND AND STATE OF HEADS

Donna Uchizono’s revisited STATE OF HEADS will precede world premiere of FIRE UNDERGROUND

FIRE UNDERGROUND / STATE OF HEADS
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
December 4-7, $30, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.donnauchizono.org

In 2010, New York City-based dancer and choreographer Donna Uchizono performed in longing two, the first time in ten years she had taken the stage, convinced by dancer Hristoula Harakas to do so in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Donna Uchizono Company. Uchizono (Thin Air) will be back onstage again next week for the deeply personal Fire Underground, a New York Live Arts commission that relates the tremendous difficulties she encountered when trying to adopt a child. The piece, which examines the idea of performance itself, is a collaboration with dancer Becky Serrrell-Cyr, lighting designer Joe Levasseur, composer David Shively and photographer Michael Grimaldi and will feature five dancers. The piece will be preceded by an updated version of 1999’s State of Heads, which Uchizono brought back for the recent Oliver Sacks festival at NYLA and will be performed by Serrell-Cyr, Levi Gonzalez, and Harakas, set to music by James Lo and lighting by Stan Pressner. “State of Heads explores the feeling of waiting and the passage of time in the state of hiatus where familiar time and scale are pushed,” she told us in an April twi-ny talk. “Using the separation of the head from the body as a point of departure, in an exploration of disjointedness and the sense of a will apart from the mind driving the movement, surprisingly created a world of endearingly odd characters.” The double bill runs December 4-7 at NYLA; the December 4 performance will be followed by the Stay Late Discussion “Behind Fire Underground” with members of the company, moderated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and the December 5 show will be preceded by the Come Early Panel Conversation “Making Dances in the ’90s Though Today’s Lens” with choreographers Tere O’Connor, John Jasperse, RoseAnne Spradlin, and Uchizono, moderated by Carla Peterson. In addition, Uchizono will lead a Shared Practice workshop on November 30 from 1:00 to 4:00, sharing her creative process with a small class; registration is $20.

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Sineglossa’s REMEMBER ME is part of second Queer New York International Arts Festival

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
October 23 – November 3, free – $18 (many shows $10 suggested donation)
212-598-0400
www.queerny.org
www.abronsartscenter.org

In a 2012 Huffington Post blog about the first Queer New York International Arts Festival, artistic codirector André von Ah wrote, “Queerness, in perhaps its barest and most basic concept, is about breaking the rules, shaking things up, and challenging preconceived ideas.” The second QNYIA continues to shake things up with twelve days and nights of performances, panel discussions, film screenings, workshops, and other events at such venues as Abrons Arts Center, the Invisible Dog, La MaMa, Joe’s Pub, and New York Live Arts, but sadly, it will be proceeding without von Ah, who curated this year’s programming with artistic director Zvonimir Dobrović but sadly passed away suddenly last month, still only in his mid-twenties. This year’s festival, which is dedicated to von Ah, opens October 23 with the U.S. premiere of Ivo Dimchev’s P-Project at Abrons Arts Center, the Bulgarian artist’s interactive piece that uses words that begin with the letter P to investigate societal taboos. Italy’s Sineglossa uses mirrored screens in Remember Me, based on Henry Purcell’s opera about Dido and Aeneas. Audience favorite Raimund Hoghe pays special tribute to von Ah with An Evening with Judy, in which he channels Judy Garland, Maria Callas, and others. Poland’s SUKA OFF investigates skin shedding in its multimedia Red Dragon. Brazil’s Ângelo Madureira plays “the dreamer” in his contemporary dance piece Delírio. Croatia’s Room 100 presents the U.S. premiere of its dark, experimental C8H11NO2. Dan Fishback offers a concert reading of The Material World at Joe’s Pub, the sequel to You Will Experience Silence; Fishback will also participate in the October 26 panel discussion “Creating Queer / Curating Queer” at the New School with Carla Peterson, Tere O’Connor, TL Cowan, Susana Cook, and Dobrović. The Club at La MaMa will host the New Music Series, featuring M Lamar, Shane Shane, Enid Ellen, Nath Ann Carrera, and Max Steele. The festival also includes works by Bojana Radulović, Elisa Jocson, Guillermo Riveros, Daniel Duford, Bruno Isaković, Gabriela Mureb, Heather Litteer, CHOKRA, Antonia Baehr, and Antoni Karwowski, with most shows requiring advance RSVPs and requesting a $10 suggested donation.

FIAF FALL FSTVL: CROSSING THE LINE

Eliane Radigue and Xavier Veilhan’s SYSTEMA OCCAM kicks off FIAF’s seventh annual Crossing the Line festival

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 19 – October 13, free – $30
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Curators Lili Chopra, Simon Dove, and Gideon Lester have once again put together an impressive, wide-ranging program for the Crossing the Line festival, now in its seventh year. Sponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française and taking place there as well as at other venues around the city, CTL features cutting-edge art, dance, music, theater, discussion, and more from an international collection of multidisciplinary performers, with many events free and nothing costing more than $30. The twenty-five-day festival begins September 19 with electronic music composer Eliane Radigue and artist Xavier Veilhan collaborating on Systema Occam (Florence Gould Hall, $30), a multimedia performance installation that is part of CTL’s “New Settings” series, a joint venture with Hermès; the fashion company will be hosting Martine Fougeron’s “Teen Tribe” photo exhibition at the Gallery at Hermès from September 20 to November 8. In Capitalism Works for Me! True/False (September 20, October 6-9, free), Steve Lambert will keep score in Times Square as people vote on whether capitalism indeed works for them. The award-winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma presents episodes 4.5 and 5 at FIAF of their massive undertaking, Life and Times (September 20-21, $30), accompanied by the FIAF Gallery show “10fps,” consisting of 1,343 hand-colored drawings (September 21 – November 2, free). For “The Library,” Fanny de Chaillé invites people to FIAF’s Haskell Library on September 24 and 26 and the NYPL’s Jefferson Market Branch on September 27 (free), where they can choose books that are actually men and women who will share their stories verbally one on one.

Boyzie Cekwana and Panaibra Canda look at postcolonial Africa in THE INKOMATI (DIS)CORD

In The Inkomati (dis)cord (September 25-26, New York Live Arts, $20), Boyzie Cekwana and Panaibra Canda use contemporary dance to examine postcolonial Africa. De Chaillé teams up with Philippe Ramette for Passage à l’acte / Acting Out (September 26-28, Invisible Dog, $30), using absurdist human sculpture to “rationalize the irrational.” Dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire will perform the CTL-commissioned solo piece rite riot (October 3-5, Le Skyroom, $30), exploring African stereotypes, collaborating with writer Teju Cole and visual artist Wangechi Mutu. Pascal Rembert’s large-scale A (micro) history of world economics, danced (October 11-13, La MaMa, $20) features New Yorkers discussing how the financial crisis impacted their lives. The festival also includes works by Annie Dorsen, Ernesto Pujol and Carol Becker, Bouchra Ouizguen, Tim Etchells, and Kyle deCamp and Joshua Thorson, in addition to a series of talks and conversations.