Tag Archives: next wave festival

BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE: ECLIPSE

Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall present the first production in new BAM black-box space (photo by Stephanie Berger)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
Through Sunday, September 9, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

BAM has inaugurated its new black-box theater, the 250-seat Fishman Space in the Fisher Building, with the illuminating Eclipse. Part of BAM’s thirtieth Next Wave Festival, the seventy-minute piece is a collaboration between thirty-year-old Ithaca-born choreographer and Chez Bushwick founder Jonah Bokaer and sixty-six-year-old “solid-light” British installation artist Anthony McCall, commissioned by BAM specifically for the Fishman. Performed by Tal Adler-Arieli, Sara Procopio, CC Chang, and Julie Seitel, with Bokaer soloing at the beginning and the end, Eclipse takes place on a soft, dark floor, with the audience sitting two or three rows deep on all four sides, in addition to balcony seats. (All seating is general admission for this show.) Thirty-six lightbulbs hang from the ceiling in diagonal rows and at different heights, going on and off at timed intervals as the dancers move under and around them to the whirr of an old-fashioned movie projector, courtesy of sound designer David Grubbs. Wearing socks, button-down white shirts, and either white or gray cuffed pants — as well as, at times, a vest that is part school crossing guard, part airport ramp agent — the four main dancers walk to the four corners of the stage, stand face-to-face with the audience, and meet at the center, where they perform slow duets and trios. Shadows cast by the lightbulbs and spotlights cast geometric patterns on the floor, particularly triangles at the corners and a square at the center, where much of the more intricate, sculptural choreography occurs. The overall effect is supposed to evoke a live, three-dimensional, four-sided cinematic experience, with close-ups and long shots all in deep focus, but some of those aspects seem to get lost, at least for those audience members seated downstairs. Perhaps the people sitting in the balcony get a better angle of the pathways and changing geography created by the bulbs, supervised by lighting designer Aaron Copp. Still, Eclipse shines a fascinating light on BAM’s new venue, which will feature more experimental productions, with all tickets $20. Also playing the Fishman this month are Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam, Derrick Adams’s The Channel, and Ian and Chad’s Next Wave of Song.

TICKET ALERT: BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE

Tickets go on sale August 13 for inaugural Next Wave season in Fishman Space at new BAM Fisher center

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
All tickets $20; on sale Monday, August 13
Season runs September 5 – December 23
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Bigger isn’t necessarily better these days as BAM gets into the low-price, small-theater game for its thirtieth Next Wave festival. Earlier this year, the Signature Theatre opened its new Pershing Square Center on West 42nd St., comprising three venues that seat between 191 and 294 people and with all ticket prices for the initial run a mere $25. Then, in May, Lincoln Center raised the curtain on its new space, the Claire Tow Theater, which resides above the Mitzi E. Newhouse and has room for 112 customers, who pay only $20 per performance. And today, $20 tickets go on sale for BAM’s new venue, BAM Fisher on Ashland Pl., which features the 250-seat Fishman Space. Focusing on short-run experimental presentations, BAM Fisher will host dance, film, music, theater, talks, and more. The inaugural season opens with Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall’s site-specific Eclipse, an intimate four-character dance with the audience on all four sides, and continues with such works as The Shooting Gallery, a collaboration between video artist Bill Morrison and composer Richard Einhorn; Brooklyn Bred, consisting of performance art by Coco Fusco, Dread Scott, and Jennifer Miller, curated by Martha Wilson; Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Living Word Project’s sociopolitical red, black & GREEN: a blues, which promises something for all five senses; and dance pieces by Lucy Guerin (Untrained) and Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (And lose the name of action). Expect the phone lines to be jammed, because tickets ($28-$144) also go on sale today for a new production of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs’s four-and-a-half-hour Einstein on the Beach at the Howard Gilman Opera House.

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

John Hurt listens to his past in KRAPP’S LAST TAPE, running at BAM through December 18 (photo by Richard Termine)

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through December 18, $25-$90
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Originally written in 1958 for British actor Patrick Magee, Samuel Beckett’s autobiographical Krapp’s Last Tape is a haunting examination of time, memory, and the futility of language. Performed over the years by the likes of Magee, Harold Pinter, Brian Dennehy, and Michael Gambon, the fifty-five-minute one-act is perhaps most closely identified today with John Hurt, who first appeared in the play at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 1999, starred in Atom Egoyan’s 2001 film version, and is now giving a bravura command performance at BAM through December 18. Making his New York stage debut, Hurt (Midnight Express, 10 Rillington Place) plays a failed writer named Krapp who, when first seen, is sitting at a table in silence, an old lamp dangling overhead. He says nothing for several minutes and then eventually gets up, walks around in squeaky white shoes, consumes two bananas, slips on a peel he dropped on the floor, and carefully approaches the darkness on either side of him, deciding not to venture out of the lighted area, as if something unknown and dangerous awaits outside his very private, solitary comfort zone. It is a critical moment in the play, establishing the precipice of life and death that Krapp is balancing on while also reminding the audience that this is a staged production. As he does every year on his birthday, Krapp listens to reel-to-reel recordings of messages he left on previous birthdays and makes a new one; in this case, the sixty-nine-year-old shabbily dressed man is looking for the tape he made on his thirty-ninth, which, according to his dusty old ledger, can be found in “box five, spool three.” Krapp takes delight in drawing out the word spool like he is a child. As he listens to his old self discuss the past, present, and future as he saw it thirty years before, he starts and stops the tape, remembering some moments that elicit strong emotions while clearly having no memory of others, the fractured narrative tantalizing and teasing the audience. “Thirty-nine today,” the recorded Krapp says. “Sound as a bell.” But alas, the sixty-nine-year-old Krapp is not sound as a bell, with little but death to look forward to.

Director Michael Colgan and lighting designer James McConnell have placed Krapp in a masterfully minimalist black-and-white world, surrounded by darkness, the only colors the yellow of the bananas and the green in Krapp’s description of a former love’s coat. Hurt, now seventy-one, is a less angry, more fragile and perhaps desperate Krapp than he portrayed in previous versions, cupping his ear tighter as he leans his head to hear the tape, shuffling to the back — through a minefield of his past, the boxes of tapes strewn across the floor — to steal a drink, staring straight ahead, wondering what happened to the ambitious youth he once was. (He even resembles Beckett himself this time around.) Krapp’s Last Tape is an extraordinarily complex work that delves deep into the human psyche, a challenge for both the actor and the audience, a play that will stay with you for a long time, eliciting thoughts of where you’ve been, who you are, and what awaits you in the future. Hurt will participate in a post-show artist talk on December 15; in addition, BAMcinématek will be highlighting four of the British actor’s best films in “John Hurt Quartet,” including The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) on December 12, Scandal (Michael Caton-Jones, 1989) on December 13 (followed by a Q&A with Hurt), Love and Death on Long Island (Richard Kwietniowski, 1997) on December 14, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (Michael Radford, 1984) on December 15.

JOHN JASPERSE: CANYON

John Jasperse’s CANYON should delight audiences at BAM this week

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 16-19, $16-$45, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In works such as Becky, Jodi and John at Dance Theater Workshop, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies at the Joyce, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution at BAM’s 2007 Next Wave Festival, New York City–based choreographer John Jasperse has shared intimate moments with the audience in creating unusual and often challenging evenings of dance theater. This week Jasperse and his Thin Man Dance company return to BAM to present the New York premiere of Canyon, which deals with “the transformative power of losing oneself in visceral experience.” Running November 16-19, the seventy-minute piece features dancers Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn, a live score by Hahn Rowe, visual design by Tony Orrico, and lighting by James Clotfelter. There will be an artist talk with Jasperse and his collaborators following Thursday night’s performance, moderated by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, whose book Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe influenced the making of Canyon.

John Jasperse’s CANYON celebrates the thrill of the dance (photo by Tony Orrico)

Updated: Dance does not always have to be about something. In such previous works as Becky, Jodi and John, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution, John Jasperse dealt with a number of themes, from personal relationships and environmentalism to the fine line between fantasy and reality. In his latest evening-length piece, Jasperse eschews high concept in favor of, quite simply, the thrill of the dance. The seventy-minute Canyon puts Jasperse’s breathtaking choreography front and center, a celebration of the joy of movement, with Jasperse, Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn running, jumping, twisting, and rolling to an exciting score composed by Hahn Rowe and performed live by Olivia De Prato on violin, Ha-Yang Kim on cello, Doug Wieselman on bass clarinet, and Rowe on violin, guitar, and electronics. Because this is Jasperse, there are odd elements as well, courtesy of visual designer Tony Orrico, that include yellow tape that begins outside on the street and wends its way through the BAM Harvey lobby and bathrooms and into the theater, down the steps, across the stage, and onto the back wall, where they resemble an abstract map. Meanwhile, a large white box continually roams the space, adding to the fun. And what fun it is.

BEIJING DANCE THEATER: HAZE

Beijing Dance Theater makes its U.S. debut at BAM’s Next Wave Festival with HAZE (photo by Tan Shaoyuan)

BAM Next Wave Festival
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
October 19-22, $16-$50, 7:30 (October 20 performance reviewed)
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In October 2005, the BAM Next Wave Festival presented Zhang Yimou’s lush transformation of his 1991 film, Raise the Red Lantern, into a sumptuous ballet choreographed by Wang Xinpeng and Wang Yuanyuan. A former resident choreographer for the National Ballet of China who also participated in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (with Zhang), Yuanyuan is now back at the Next Wave Festival with the U.S. premiere of Haze, performed by Beijing Dance Theater, which she began in December 2008 with lighting designer Han Jiang and set designer Tan Shaoyuan. BJD seeks to meld traditional ballet, Chinese folklore and history, and contemporary dance into a more modern experience. Running approximately seventy minutes, Haze is a piece for fourteen dancers, set to music by Henryk Górecki and Biosphere.

Dancers evoke Socialist imagery in Beijing Dance Theater’s HAZE at BAM (photo by Jack Vartoogian)

Update: Beijing Dance Theater made its U.S. debut with Haze, an often beautiful but repetitive and dispassionate abstract exploration of the current environmental and economic crises facing China. The production is set on a spongy surface that allows the company of seventeen dancers to jump, roll, and dive in unusual ways but also limits other type of more traditional movements; the result is that the performers are often slightly but noticeably out of sync. The soundtrack, by Henryk Górecki and Biosphere, primarily consists of overbearing, overly emotional electronic drones that hover over the dancers like a thick cloud, battling it out with a smoke machine that creates a constant haze. Choreographer Wang Yuanyuan has come up with some wonderfully creative moves, and watching the dancers’ feet submerge into the floor evokes a visceral feeling, adding a shared physicality between performer and audience. Wang has divided Haze into three sections, “Light,” “City,” and “Shore,” but never quite achieves the narrative flow she aspires to. Still, there is a lot to admire about Haze, which received a lengthy, rapturous standing ovation the night we attended.

METAMORPHOSIS

Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre returns to the Next Wave Festival with the U.S. premiere of METAMORPHOSIS (photo by Eddi Jonsson)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 30 – December 5, $25-$65
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 2008, Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre, under the leadership of director and star Gísli Örn Gardarsson, made its U.S. debut with their visually arresting production of WOYZECK, and they are returning to BAM’s Next Wave Festival this week for a multimedia interpretation of Franz Kafka’s creepy short story METAMORPHOSIS. Billed as “a six-legged nightmare,” the show, directed and adapted by Gardarsson and David Farr, will once again feature a score composed by Australian madman Nick Cave and his longtime Bad Seed Warren Ellis, with set design by Börkur Jónsson, lighting design by Björn Helgason, costumes by Brenda Murphy, and sound design by Nick Manning. Gardarsson and some of his collaborators will participate in an artist talk following the December 2 performance.

SASHA WALTZ AND GUESTS: GEZEITEN

Sasha Waltz returns to BAM with U.S. premiere of GEZEITEN (photo by Gert Weigelt)

Next Wave Festival
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
November 3, 5, 6, $20-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.sashawaltz.de

As Sasha Waltz’s mesmerizing, metaphysical triptych, GEZEITEN (TIDES), opens, barefoot men and women in regular street clothes walk slowly through a dilapidated room, occasionally pausing to form pairs and trios that balance on one another, cantilevered and pivoting in dazzling architectural displays, as if building something that then comes down, the only sound the wind, soon joined by Bach cello suites played live by Martin Seemann just offstage. The room, paint peeling off the walls, has three open doors that the dazed people move through. An elegiac feeling pervades as the dancers seem unable or unwilling to leave, not wanting to face whatever devastation has occurred outside. In the evening-length piece’s second section, the doors are closed and chaos eventually takes over as the people fling chairs and tables and run around the room recklessly, nearly smashing into everything and everyone around them, until an erstwhile leader bursts through one of the doors, climbs above it, and precipitates a hierarchy of sorts. Increasingly menaced by loud rumblings outside and ominous sights and smells, the group picks out a random villain to blame and abuse, screaming out in various languages, the words themselves not as important as the intonations, a Tower of Babel of anger, aggression, and fear.

GEZEITEN examines apocalyptic devastation in deeply personal ways (photo by Gert Weigelt)

Inspired by such tragic events as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesian tsumami, and a dangerous fire her family experienced while on vacation in Greece, Berlin-based choreographer Waltz has created an intensely psychological and deeply personal experience in collaboration with artistic director Jochen Sandig (her husband), lighting technician Martin Hauk, stage designer Thomas Schenk, soundscape artist Jonathan Bepler, and her company of sixteen dancers, who helped develop much of the movement and whose own dreams and nightmares contribute to the surreal finale, in which bizarre creatures emerge as the stage is torn apart. The apocalyptic narrative is enhanced by clouds of smoke and actual fire, the smell adding to the threat level. At a postperformance discussion following the November 5 show, Waltz, Sandig, and three of the dancers talked about how nervous they were to present GEZEITEN in New York, where the memories of 9/11 are still so strong. Indeed, when one dancer is lifted up and then goes into a brief freefall, it is hard not to think of the people who jumped or fell out of the World Trade Center towers, but audiences in other cities might instead relate to natural or man-made tragedies that affected them more directly. Waltz needn’t have worried about her third production at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, following 2002’s KÖRPER and 2005’s IMPROMPTUS, as the rapt audience rose up with an instantaneous, prolonged, and well-deserved standing ovation at the conclusion of the show.