Tag Archives: next wave festival

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: HELEN LAWRENCE

HELEN LAWRENCE tells an old-fashioned postwar noir tale using cutting-edge technology (photo by David Cooper)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
October 14-17, $24-$95, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Photographer and film and video installation artist Stan Douglas and screenwriter Chris Haddock have teamed up for the multimedia theatrical presentation Helen Lawrence, running October 14-17 at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House as part of the 2015 Next Wave Festival. Douglas, who won a 2012 ICP Infinity Award for career achievement, and Haddock, the writer and creator of such Canadian television series as Da Vinci’s Inquest and Intelligence, set the post-WWII noir tale in Vancouver, where Douglas was born and is based. He directs a cast of twelve, including Lisa Ryder as the title character, Nicholas Lea as Percy Walker, Crystal Balint as Mary Jackson, and Greg Ellwand as Inspector Leonard Perkins, who interact with green screens, live camera projections, and 3-D computer imagery to give the proceedings a fantastical, surreal element. The set is by Kevin McAllister, with costumes by Nancy Bryant, lighting by Robert Sondergaard, sound by John Gzowski (who plays guitar on the recorded soundtrack), cinematography by Brian Johnson, and video programming by Peter Courtemanche.

ANTIGONE

Juliette Binoche fights a chill wind in ANTIGONE at BAM (photo by Stephanie Berger)

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through October 4, $30-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

A chill runs through Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of Sophokles’s classic tragedy Antigone, continuing through October 4 at BAM’s Harvey Theater. The sizzling-hot van Hove, who has dazzled audiences and critics alike with his recent, unusual presentations of Scenes from a Marriage, Angels in America, and Cries and Whispers, has stripped down the tale of power, family, loyalty, and responsibility in a new translation by Canadian poet Anne Carson (Agamemnon, Electra) that emphasizes the story’s relevance to today’s politics. As the play opens, Antigone (Juliette Binoche, who was last at BAM in 2009 in In-I), clad in black, is fighting off a brisk wind with her sister, Ismene (Kirsty Bushell). Their two brothers have killed each other in the Theban civil war fighting on opposite sides, Eteocles a hero, Polyneices a traitor. The new king, Kreon (Patrick O’Kane), has decreed that Polyneices’s body should be left outside to rot, but Antigone is determined to give her sibling a proper burial, although the punishment for doing so is death. Upon discovering that his niece and future daughter-in-law — Antigone’s father was Kreon’s brother, and she is engaged to marry Kreon’s son, Haimon (Samuel Edward-Cook) — has indeed buried Polyneices, Kreon shows no mercy, commanding Antigone’s execution, as well as that of anyone who supports her. Kreon’s chief adviser, Teiresias (Finbar Lynch), wants him to rethink his position, but Kreon is just as stubborn as Antigone, and it doesn’t take long for the bodies to start piling up.

The guard (Obi Abili) and the king (Patrick O’Kane) look over Antigone (Juliette Binoche) at BAM (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Jan Versweyveld’s stage features a giant circle at the top of the back wall that rotates to reveal a projection of sky and clouds, as if the gods are looking down, judging the trials and tribulations of humanity. In the center of the floor is a rectangular platform that sinks to serve as a grave, lowering Polyneices and Antigone down toward hell and rising up again; it is perpendicular to a narrow walkway and opening used by Kreon, as if he is emerging from the lair of the gods. At the front of the stage is a leather couch, congruent with the costumes by An d’Huys — the men are mainly in suits and jackets as if attending a board meeting. Binoche and O’Kane make fine adversaries, though Antigone shouts too much, and Kreon changes moods a little too randomly. All of the actors except for O’Kane also double as the Greek chorus, who never speak as a unit. Carson’s script contains several contemporary phrases that elicit chuckles from the audience at inopportune moments, and Tal Yarden’s projections are hit-or-miss; the scenes of the vast desert work well, while video of ghostly figures making their way through a present-day city is confusing and feels out of place, though the last shot is effective. Meanwhile, the score weaves in and out of music by Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt, Henryk Gorecki, and Dmitri Shostakovich before concluding with a sonic blast from longtime BAM favorite Lou Reed as van Hove attempts to relate this story of the state vs. the individual to the twenty-first century. Overall, he only partly succeeds, but by never quite providing the audience with an emotional connection to the characters or narrative, this Antigone will leave you feeling a little too cold. (The September 29 performance will be followed by a talk with Binoche and other members of the company, free for same-day ticket holders.)

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL 2015

Juliette Binoche stars in new adaptation of ANTIGONE as part of BAM Next Wave Festival (photo by Jan Versweyveld)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.
BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl.
September 16 – December 20, $20-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Every fall, we practically move into BAM for its annual Next Wave Festival, three months of exciting, challenging, and cutting-edge dance, music, theater, and other arts. And this year is no exception, with a roster of events that has us salivating. The star attraction is Ivo van Hove’s Antigone, a multimedia adaptation of Sophokles’s classic Greek tragedy in a new colloquial translation by Anne Carson and featuring Oscar winner Juliette Binoche in the title role. Other theater highlights are Stan Douglas and Chris Haddock’s multimedia stage noir, Helen Lawrence; Carl Hancock Rux’s The Exalted, about German-Jewish writer and art historian Carl Einstein, genocide, and genealogy, directed by Anne Bogart and with live music by Theo Bleckman; Royal Shakespeare Company actor Paterson Joseph portraying Charles “Sancho” Ignatius in the one-man show Sancho: An Act of Remembrance; and John Jahnke and Hotel Savant’s Alas, the Nymphs, a modern reimagination of the story of Greek mythological figure Hylas.

Sankai Juku returns to BAM for the first time in ten years with UMUSUNA (photo courtesy of Sankai Juku)

Sankai Juku returns to BAM for the first time since 2006 with UMUSUNA (photo courtesy of Sankai Juku)

The dance lineup at the 2015 Next Wave Festival is extraordinary as always, led by the return of German choreographer Sasha Waltz with Continu, a wild piece of dance theater set to Edgard Varèse’s “Arcana,” and Japanese Butoh troupe Sankai Juku’s Umusuna: Memories Before History, Ushio Amagatsu’s meditative exploration of history through fire, water, air, and earth. The season also includes Finnish choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström’s experimental Tape, the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan’s Rice, U-Theatre’s Beyond Time, Souleymane Badolo’s Yimbégré, Urban Bush Women’s Walking with ’Trane, Mark Morris’s annual holiday favorite The Hard Nut, and Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto in David Michalek’s Hagoromo, with choreography by David Neumann, puppetry by Chris M. Green, and Nathan Davis’s score performed live by the International Contemporary Ensemble.

William Kentridge stars in his multimedia opera REFUSE THE HOUR (photo by John Hodgkiss)

The music program features one of the most unusual works, Kid Koala’s adaptation of his graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall, about a robot in love with an office mate, for which Kid Koala will be joined by the Afiara Quartet. In All Vows, cellist Maya Beiser teams up with bassist Jherek Bischoff, drummer Zachary Alford, and filmmaker Bill Morrison. Timur and the Dime Museum say a glam farewell to the environment in Collapse. In Real Enemies, Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society big band join forces with filmmaker Peter Nigrini, writer-director Isaac Butler, and designer Maruti Evans to delve into American conspiracy theories. South African genius William Kentridge is back at BAM with the multimedia opera Refuse the Hour, a companion piece to his immersive “Refusal of Time” installation recently acquired by the Met. Drummer Jim White and Sasha Waltz & Guests dancer Claudia de Serpa Soares perform on one side of a two-way mirror in More up a tree. And Steppenwolf cofounder Terry Kinney turns Portland indie group Other Lives’ stage show into a multimedia experience. Tickets are going fast — Miranda July’s participatory New Society is already sold out, as is Théâtre de l’Atelier’s Savannah Bay, both of which take place at the small BAM Fisher, where all tickets are always a mere $25 — so don’t hesitate if you want to catch some of these fab presentations.

IVY BALDWIN DANCE: OXBOW

Katie Workum, Eleanor Smith, Luke Miller, and Anna Carapetyan perform in Ivy Baldwin’s OXBOW (photo by Ian Douglas)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 13-16, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ivybaldwindance.org

Named for the U-shaped bend in a river, Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission, Oxbow, is an evocative five-person dance steeped in the language of Movement Research, where the New York-based choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow is an artist-in-residence (as she also is at the BAM Fisher). With the audience sitting on three sides of the stage, the sixty-minute piece opens with Ryan Tracy, dressed in black, playing an elegiac solo on a piano in one of the near corners of the stage. After finishing his composition, he walks to the back and lies down on his stomach as Eleanor Smith appears, shaking and stretching in a black top and white pants. She is soon joined by Luke Miller (replacing an ill Lawrence Cassella) in all white, Katie Workum in a red dress, the exquisite Anna Carapetyan in red and black (the costumes are by fashion designer Alice Ritter), and Tracy as they move about the stage in front of Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen’s massive horizontal installation of twisted paper, often in silence. The audience can often hear their heavy breathing and every squeak of their feet against the floor; Justin Jones’s live-mixed sound design also includes barely audible background music and unidentifiable crunching sounds, and at one point Smith bangs on the keyboards as well.

A moving duet by Katie Workum and Anna Carapetyan concludes Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission (photo by Ian Douglas)

A moving duet by Katie Workum and Anna Carapetyan is part of Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission (photo by Ian Douglas)

I don’t know if Baldwin has ever seen William A. Wellman’s classic 1943 Western, The Ox-Bow Incident, or read Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s original novel, but I couldn’t help but see a lot of narrative elements and referents from that famous story about a posse determined to hang three men who might or might not be cattle rustlers who murdered a rancher. Kavanaugh and Nguyen’s sculpture looks like a scorched fallen tree with ropes that could have been nooses, the black-and-white costumes could symbolize good and evil, and the two women in red could represent the potential death of innocent people (as do a series of sudden wailing screams). Regardless, Oxbow is a riveting dance performed by an extremely talented company highlighted by Smith and Carapetyan, who have danced together before in such works as Juliana F. May’s Gutter Gate at New York Live Arts in 2012, in addition to the elegant Workum, the agile Miller, and the surprisingly nimble Tracy. Throughout Oxbow, the performers keep a close watch on one another as they interact in a lovely piece by an imaginative choreographer who is always worth watching as well.

OXBOW

Ivy Baldwin Dance makes its BAM debut with OXBOW (photo by Andy Romer)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 13-16, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ivybaldwindance.org

Brooklyn-based choreographer Ivy Baldwin is having quite a year. While celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of her company, Ivy Baldwin Dance, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow, and this week she will make her BAM debut with Oxbow, an evening-length work she made as the 2014 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher. The work was created in collaboration with dancers Anna Carapetyan, Lawrence Cassella, Eleanor Smith, and Katie Workum and features a live-mixed score by Justin Jones and additional music by Ryan Tracy. The twisted-paper set is by installation artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, with lighting by Michael O’Connor and costumes by Alice Ritter. In such previous pieces as Ambient Cowboy and Here Rests Peggy, Baldwin has displayed a unique visual flair and compelling sense of narrative likely to continue with Oxbow, described as “exploring the inexorable nature of the two forces that contain us all: space and time, geology and chronology.” The piece runs November 13-16, with tickets only twenty dollars.

THE OBJECT LESSON

Geoff Sobelle uses stuff to look back at his life in THE OBJECT LESSON (photo by Jeremy Abrahams)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 5-8, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.geoffsobelle.com

Geoff Sobelle is a modern-day Buster Keaton in his one-man show The Object Lesson, which had its New York premiere at the BAM Fisher on Wednesday night and continues through Saturday. Once the doors to the intimate Fishman Space open, lucky ticket holders — the run is sold out, although there is a standby line — enter a room filled with hundreds and hundreds of cardboard boxes of all sizes, some scattered across the floor to be used as seats, others piled high to the ceiling. Many of the boxes are open, inviting people to peruse their contents. They contain the stuff of a lifetime, a hoarder’s fantasy, from footballs and photographs to stuffed animals and trophies, from Christmas decorations and clothing to papers and toys. There’s also a large card catalog with drawers and drawers of smaller items, many of which hold surprises that reveal a wry sense of humor. (Be sure to check out the Hamlet compartment.) Eventually, Sobelle enters the room and creates a central space consisting of a carpet, chair, side table, and lamps, magically pulling the items out of boxes while David Byrne’s “Glass, Concrete & Stone” plays on a turntable; “It is just a house, not a home,” the former Talking Head sings, differentiating between physical things and a more emotional concept. For the next seventy minutes or so, Sobelle rummages through boxes, interacts with the audience, has cleverly created telephone conversations, makes a salad like no one else ever has, and encounters memories that he can’t decide whether he wants to forget or remember, prompted by particular, tangible pieces of his past. He does all this in a mostly deadpan manner, with plenty of sly nods to the audience, who occasionally need to shift position when he builds his next set. (In addition to the “box seats” on the floor, a more standard row of theater chairs in the balcony accommodates those who might be otherwise uncomfortable, but the floor is clearly the place to be.) It all leads to a dazzling finale in which Sobelle, the co-artistic director of rainpan 43 and longtime member of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company, gathers everyone around him as he — well, you have to see it to believe it.

Each box Geoff Sobelle rummages through bring back memories, both fun and heartbreaking (photo by Jeremy Abrahams)

Every movement, every step, is wonderfully choreographed by Sobelle’s collaborators, director David Neumann, set designer Steven Dufala, lighting designer Christopher Kuhl, and sound designer Nick Kourtides, each contributing to the immersive illusion of it all. Winner of three major awards at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe, The Object Lesson is inspired in part by the wit and wisdom of George Carlin, who said in his famous “A Place for My Stuff” routine, “That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is — a place to keep your stuff.” Sobelle has turned BAM’s Fishman Space into his own house, his own storage facility, like the end of Citizen Kane, with boxes and boxes of the stuff he has accumulated over the years. (Yes, many of the items are actually his.) Call it what you want — junk, trash, flotsam and jetsam, garbage, debris, waste, crap — but each one has a particular meaning for him, each one a root that ties him down, and it will dredge up memories of your own as well, especially when you return home and look at your own stuff, opening that box at the back of your closet that you haven’t looked inside for years.

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Théâtre de la Ville production of Luigi Pirandello absurdist classic will search for the meaning of existence in Brooklyn (photo by Jean-Louis Fernandez)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
October 29 – November 2, $20-$75
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.theatredelaville-paris.com

“Unfortunately, there always has to be a third, unavoidable element that intrudes between the dramatic author and his creation in the material being of the performance: the actor,” playwright, novelist, and poet Luigi Pirandello wrote in his 1908 essay “Illustrators, Actors, and Translators.” That tenet is central to one of his most famous works, 1921’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, which is being presented at the BAM Harvey Theater October 29 to November 2 by Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, last at BAM in October 2012 with another absurdist classic, Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinocéros, Described by the playwright, who was born in Agrigento, Italy, in 1867, as a comedy “without acts or scenes,” Six Characters questions the very nature of its own being as a dramatic work as a half dozen abandoned characters appear onstage in need of a new author to define their existence. Adapted and translated by François Regnault and directed by Théâtre de la Ville head Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, with set and light design by Yves Collet, music by Jefferson Lembeye, and costumes by Corinne Baudelot, this production once again stars Hugues Quester, who won the Critics’ Award for Best Actor for his performance in the play back in 2001. In conjunction with the show, BAM is teaming up with the Onassis Cultural Center NY for the discussion “On Truth (and Lies) in Authorship,” with Demarcy-Mota and host Simon Critchley, being held on October 30 at 6:00 at BAM Fisher Hillman Studio ($15), as part of the Hellenic Humanities Program.