I can’t believe it’s already Labor Day weekend. Whoa. Where did the summer go??

Here are some pictures I took of the Downtown Dance Festival last Sunday in Battery Park. When it ended a brief wave of sadness swept over me. This festival kind of marks the end of summer. I feel like I was just returning from the Caribbean deeply annoyed that it was still in the 50s here…

Anyway, the first company on was Figures in Flight, which is a Modern dance school for kids.

One very cool thing about this school / company, as Artistic Director Susan Slotnick spoke about, is that they also teach Modern dance to men in prison. One of Ms. Slotnick’s former students who was just released from Woodburne Correctional Facility was there. The crowd went nuts with applause for him. Made the longtime former public defender in me very happy. I know there are many prison literacy programs, but haven’t heard of a dance program until now.

The kids of Figures in Flight. Slotnick said one thing she does is try to teach kids nonviolence through dance, teaching them choreography addressing or acting / dancing out issues they may be experiencing, like bullying at school. You could see some of that in the choreography. I met someone in an acting class I took years ago who taught drama therapy to mental patients at Bellevue Hospital here in NY. He basically helped patients learn to act out their problems, to use creativity to solve them rather than internalizing or using violence toward themselves and others. I can see Slotnick doing the same thing with dance and I love it.

Next on was Battleworks Dance Company, which presented Robert Battle’s energetic, mad fun Ella, set to Ella Fitzgerald and danced by Marlena Wolfe.

And Wolfe ends her frenzied fit of a solo by collapsing backwards, completely out of breath! This is the first time I’ve seen Battleworks at this festival. So cool to see what you normally only view in a large, distancing theater just feet before you.

Axis Danz’s Mermaids.

Dancewave’s Kids Company, whom I’d never heard of, did an excellent dance — a combination of African, Modern, and Samba. It was mesmerizing. One of my favorites of the day. And man can those dancers MOVE.

isadoraNOW presented Isadora Duncan’s lovely Southern Roses.

This was an interesting company, called Undertoe Dance Project. They combined Tap with Modern, having two dancers representing each style dancing onstage at the same time. Don’t think I’ve seen that done before. It worked.

On last, ending the festival, was Battery Dance Company, headed by Jonathan Hollander, the festival’s organizer. They performed his lyrical, beatific Where There’s Smoke.

Very pretty, very spiritual.

At the end, the Battery Dance Company dancers invited audience members onstage to learn some of their just-performed choreography.

exhibiting, as Hollander announced, that dance is for everyone…

Also, here are some more pictures I took of Hostile Takeover by Richard Move’s MoveOpolis! which was performed as part of the Sitelines series of downtown site-specific works, which I briefly mentioned earlier.

They held the performance at five different Financial District-area locations. The one I saw was at the Jeff Koons sculpture in the small park at 7 World Trade Center.

The dancer, dressed as you can see in a red lacey negligee, red ballet-like diaphanous chiffon skirt, long lacey gloves, patent leather red stilettos, and a clear plastic Butoh mask and platinum blonde wig, moved in extreme slow Butoh-style motion making various poses — some sexy, some more balletic (arms held wreath-like over head, toe pointed forward in tendu). She was very unbalanced on the heels — at several points went to do a low arabesque and couldn’t lift her back leg very high or it seemed like she’d clearly fall — and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was moving so slowly, if she wasn’t used to dancing in heels (so, not a Latin dancer ), or if she was faking it, only pretending nearly to fall so as to question the beauty and/or stability of a certain kind of hyper-femininity.

After a series of poses in front of the Koons statue — and beside a small plastic red teddy bear propped up before a red umbrella and holding a little bright blue Jeff Koons ’sculpturette’ — the dancer turned toward the large sculpture. It’s funny but at this point I noticed how sexual that sculpture is, with the little orifice in the middle surrounded by the three others, and then the stamen-like arm shooting up to the side. It’s like an industrial Georgia O’Keefe figure.

She approached the little teddy bear, seemed to delight over his little toy, seemed to ask him if she could hold his “baby-doll.”

She did a little dance with the small Koons dog/doll…

… then took him to his larger cousin, and eventually placed him in its middle orifice.

The whole thing took nearly an hour, the movement was so slow. It was weirdly poetic, and rather entrancing, not only catching but holding the attention of many passersby. I wish I could have made it to some of the other locations because I liked the performance but thought it would have been more of a “Hostile Takeover” had this hyper-sexy, hyper-’feminine’, hyper-artful, hyper-slow-moving dancer been in the midst of all the crazed besuited Wall Street dudes. This little park was not only already arty but kind of removed from the hustle and bustle. Could have better illustrated the contrast between art and commerce, calm and fast-paced, perhaps masculine and feminine (the program describes the performance as a “glamorous collision of sexual desire with masculinity and femininity and real and imagined worlds”; I’d perhaps question the essentialist nature of words like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’).

Anyway, there’s one more Sitelines performance, in early/mid September. And then that’s it. Summer dance season in NY is officially over.

Happy Labor Day everyone!

“His mother was a dancer. This meant that she could be found on certain afternoons on the second floor of a building on Eighty-ninth Street and Broadway, standing barefoot and in a leotard on a vast wooden floor, often in some strange position. His father had taken him a couple of times to the empty room with an upright piano in the corner. Together they walked up a long narrow flight of dimly lit stairs, at the top of which was a large sunlit space. Sweating men and women in leotards were either jumping around or standing and watching some other person jump around. Their leotards gave them the quality of something encased, like M&M’s. His mother always stood in their midst, panting.

She was also a choreographer. Alex understood this word to mean that she could tell people what to do, and they would listen. Once, when she told him he had to take a bath, he responded, ‘You’re not my choreographer,’ which had the desired effect of shocking her into a kind of marveling silence and therefore postponing, if only for another ten minutes, the bath.

She was a modern dancer. This distinction confused him. He asked his father about it.

‘It means she’s not a member of the Rockettes,’ he said.

One day, when he was seven, she told him that she would soon be having a concert.

‘What’s a concert?’ he said.

‘It’s when I perform in front of many people with my company.’

‘What does your company make?’ he said.

‘It’s a dance company,’ she said. ‘We make dance.’

‘Can people buy dance?’ he asked. At the age of seven he was demonstrating certain capitalist proclivities that had the effect of making his parents look at him with concern, as though he might be coming down with a fever.”

From The Sleep-Over Artist, by Thomas Beller (all italics in the original). I seem to be on a Thomas Beller kick lately and found the passage rather amusing; thought I’d share. I used to take Flamenco lessons at Alex’s mother’s studio, by the way. I think anyway… unless Steps used to be up at 89th Street…

1) Grammy winner Lance Bass;

2) TV Chef Rocco DiSpirito;

3) Olympic Gold Medalist (just crowned) Misty May Treanor;

4) Gold medalist sprinter Maurice Green;

5) Broadway star and singer Toni Braxton;

6) Reality TV star Kim Kardashian (who seems to have just injured her foot);

7) Hannah Montana star (and youngest ever to be on the show; will be paired with Julianne Hough) Cody Linley;

* Actress (fabulous, I might add, and excellent comedian, and the oldest star ever on the show) Cloris Leachman;

9) Actor Ted McGinley (to be paired with new dancer Inna Brayer);

10) “Everything woman” (whatever that means) Brooke Burke;

11) Supposedly more raucous than Adam Carolla, Comedian Jeffrey Ross (who will be paired with Edyta Sliwinska);

12) Footballer Warren Sapp (paired with Kym Johnson, whom the annoyingly ingratiating Good Morning America host kept pronouncing “gorgeous, gorgeous”); and

13) (first time contestants number over 12 btw), the most famous actress in all of daytime, Susan Lucci. After making a big deal of her numerous unsuccessful Emmy nominations, said annoying GMA host pronounced being accepted to DWTS “better than any award.” Yeah, okay…

Anyway, it appears DWTS producers have tried to cover every demographic base conceivable: young Hannah Montana guy should appeal to the teenagers, while Leachman and Lucci older women (though Leachman really should appeal to EVERYONE — for people who may not know her, the woman quite simply rocks). And with the football and Olympic stars they’ve got the sports fans covered. Braxton appeals to Broadway lovers, the reality TV stars to the twenty-something crowd. And, in an attempt at creating nostalgic continuity, McGinley should remind viewers of Steve Guttenberg and Ross, the lovely Carolla.

Best thing about the Good Morning America broadcast by far: the mention of Maks Chmerkovskiy’s return. At least the silly TV talking heads haven’t forgotten the pro dancers make this show.

The new season begins September 22nd, the day after the Emmys in which host Tom Bergeron is apparently nominated for an award in the newly-created category of reality TV show host.

So, my review of The Copier: I arrived a bit early last Wednesday evening, walked into Cedar Lake’s giant warehouse-like space, where they had a “stage” constructed of two large mats arranged in a T-shape, surrounded by a few box-like stools and three long, rectangular riser-like boxes for spectators to sit on. There wasn’t anywhere near enough seating, which was fine since the audience wasn’t actually supposed to sit, although I did. Found I had the perfect view of the whole seated right at the top of the T. I didn’t really see how my view could have been that different had I walked about.

Anyway, I really had an ideal space:a few minutes after I arrived, an air shaft above me began blowing strips of shredded paper down our way. It was like snow. The girl sitting next to me, who I initially thought was a performer here although I’m pretty sure in retrospect I was wrong, took off her shoes and began playing with the shredder copy. The dancers came out and began warming up, as nature sounds played over the speakers — mainly the sounds of chirping birds. The girl next to me imitated the dancers, stretching and pointing her toes herself, even getting off the sitting block to roll around in the hay-like mounds of paper. I nearly gave her seat away thinking she was eventually going to take to the stage.

(my favorite dancer in the company, Jon Bond, is center in my little abstract photo above, and lying on the floor warming up in the picture above that)

Soon, the ticket-takers called for all spectators to come in and find a viewing space and shortly thereafter the large garage doors slammed down, darkening the place, creating a rather eerie effect. Bars of light began to shine one at a time on the sides of the stage, looking initially like the heating rods of a just-lit oven.

All dancers lay down at various spots on the stage as the music turned more mechanical: cell phone rings, landline buzzes, cars honking. The dancers then rose and moved about in units. A dancer would begin a phrase, an expression, another would join him, in imitation, another would join, and so on. Eventually, one from the group would break free and pursue individual movement, followed by the others, the group disbanding, making the stage would look a bit cacophonous.

At one point, one person began walking toward the edge of the T, another followed, yet another, and another, until all dancers walked toward that side of the stage, exhibiting herd mentality. Once at the edge of the stage, dancers looked back and forth, this way and that, trying to figure out why their randomly-seeming designated “leader” had led them there, as there was clearly nothing to see. They began making their way back to center, again pursuing individual movement, eventually meeting up with one another, forming groups, one beginning a movement phrase, it catching on, a whole square of dancers moving in unison.

At another attention-catching moment, an entire bar on the loft’s exposed ceiling would move across the T part of the stage, carrying with it a horizontal series of lights, As all other lights were turned off and the one bar made it’s way across the top of the loft, it lit the stage just like a copier machine. At first the dancers looked confused and frightened, like they were within the machine itself, not knowing how to escape. Many dancers walked offstage, leaving a few who stayed on the T mat looking, by turns up at the light bar, and at the movement of shadow it made across the stage. By trying to walk away from the shadow, they ended up moving in a line, pretty much in unison, captured by the light rod, its movement across the ceiling completely dictating theirs on the stage. Little captured humans. You imagined if a giant hand pulled off the ceiling like a copier’s cover, the paper copy would bear the exact imprints the human bodies made trying to run from the light.

Following this, the other dancers took the stage again, some now running its length, both horizontally and vertically. At times a dancer would interact with the spectators by, for example, sitting next to us on the block, or parting a couple of standing viewers, to make their way through the crowd. Evan and Philip describe this as well.

More dancing solitary, then in unison, followed. The music turned more melodious, and dancers would dance in twos and threes. At times a dancer would emulate the actions of his or her partners, at times, the dancer originating the actions would reach out and grab the “emulator’s” hand, caressing it, drawing it to him, brushing it against his face, stopping all imitation, achieving human connection. But just for a fleeting moment.

I also noticed that at least one dancer, my favorite Jon Bond, had a coiled black telephone cord snaking down his back, connected by the neckline of his shirt and the waist of his pants. At times he looked entangled, his movements writhing on the floor, flexed feet, contorted center, so awkward.

In the end, a single female dancer, the mesmerizing Acacia Schachte, is left onstage alone, making soft, feathery shapes with her arms, to the equally soft, mellifluous sounds of a solitary piano.

Choreographer Jill Johnson has said that with the piece she seeks to ask what is “the impact of our culture of repetition and routine and what happens when we break from it … Now that we can create perfect duplicates of photographs, music, livestock, do we put a greater value on things that are organic and made by hand, or do we prefer the perfection of a seamless copy?” To me, she posed these questions beautifully. While the idea that unthinking imitation may lead to herd mentality is a bit of a cliche, the light bar going across the ceiling with the dancers running from, struggling to make their own imprint yet dictated by that all-encompassing machine, was strikingly original, as were the attempts to begin new movement patterns, run from the group, strike out on one’s own, violently grab the hand of a fellow dancer doing as you are and caress it. Not only are creativity and originality lost by mindless replication and repetition, so is what it means to be human.

Here is Claudia La Rocco’s NYTimes review.

Did anyone else get a chance to see it? I mean besides the people who wrote about it?

For New Yorkers who don’t know, the Strand downtown — Fulton Street location — lost its lease and is moving out. They’re having a 50% off sale through, according to Galley Cat, the end of September. Above are some of my purchases — spent about three hours there and would have bought a lot more if the Joan Acocella and Balanchine hadn’t been so blasted heavy. I could barely carry my double bag-full home!

I bought The Dud Avocado because I remembered Terry Teachout had posted about it (and saw he’s written this edition’s intro.), and the White Swan, Black Swan looked interesting. It’s a collection of short stories written by dancer turned fiction writer, Adrienne Sharp.

There isn’t a whole lot left, but in the Dance section there are a couple more old-ish hardcover copies of the Balanchine for $7.50 apiece, an unused-looking copy of the newish Lincoln Kirstein bio for $9.00, and a bunch of huge photo books, some for as low as $2.50. The section doesn’t have its own label (what else is new?) but is within Opera and Classical Music.

Just researching a bit on Japanese Butoh before I write more about this intriguing site-specific work of performance art that took place as part of the Sitelines series. Fun thing about writing about dance — at least to me — is learning about so many different dance / art forms.

And write-up of Cedar Lake’s The Copier coming in a sec. I just want to think a bit more about it first. Overall I liked it, and definitely recommend it. It’s good for discussion. It’s only showing through the 23rd though so act fast if you plan to go.

Enjoying jeff koons sculpture

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.

T-Mobile

And nice NYC day while awaiting a “Hostile Takeover“.

above photo from Fox News.

Sorry for the posting hiatus! It’s been a long time since I’ve gone half a week without blogging… There’s just nothing much going on in New York right now, and I’m trying to get a couple of writing projects done before the fall is officially underway.

Anyway, this post is about a piece of installation art that I didn’t actually get to see, but just read about via Claudia’s latest Culturist post. Apparently, artist Steve Powers had a small exhibit, called Waterboard Thrill Ride, out on the Coney Island boardwalk, among all the amusement rides and hot dog and cotton candy stalls. Like a peep show, you put a dollar into a slot and peeked through a small window covered with bars to see a couple of hooded “interrogator” robots perform waterboard torture to a robot dressed in orange prisoner garb, in imitation of a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The interrogators pour water onto the prisoner’s head for a number of seconds while his body convulses and he yells out things like, “I think I’m dying.” On the outer wall of the exhibit is a cartoon of Sponge Bob having water poured onto his head saying, “it don’t Gitmo better.” Powers said he created the installation in part to make people aware of the controversial form of torture currently used by our military. The writer of this NYTimes article went out to Coney Island on the day the installation premiered and describes onlooker response.

Most annoying thing to me is that it only seemed to be up — by design not because of public response — for one week, from August 6-15. On the 15th, apparently Powers and a couple of lawyer friends subjected themselves to waterboard torture conducted by actual trained officers, in front of the exhibit. This is just the kind of thing I would love to have seen — both in terms of the art itself, how it makes its presentation, how it questions, how it fits within its surroundings — particularly these surroundings — and how the public reacts. It’s now moved to the Park Avenue Armory on the upper east-side, a private museum and collection of antiques that you need an appointment to visit. Seems kind of ridiculous to have a public art exhibit in a private collection, but apparently it is to be part of a larger exhibition at the Armory called Democracy in America, sponsored by the public art fund Creative Time, which will take place September 21-27. Go here for deets. Unfortunately, I likely won’t be in town that week. So, looks like I’m going to miss out. But if anyone goes, or if anyone saw it on Coney Island, please give your thoughts!

How I managed to miss the exhibit while it was here is another issue, for which I’m royally pissed at myself. I have GOT to stop relying on blogs and websites for all my info; I must return to good old fashion newspapers and magazines… And I mean hard copy. You don’t always see everything on the website; you’ve got to make sure you click on every heading, every subheading, every little box. It’s just not the same as flipping through actual, physical pages.

Next week, Wednesday through Saturday, August 20-23, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet will present its next work, The Copier, an installation piece by Jill Johnson. I have high hopes for this one, as Johnson is a protege of William Forsythe, one of contemporary dance’s most forward-looking, innovative, thought-provoking masters (imho of course), and former dancer with his company, Frankfurt Ballet.

The dance, the final of Cedar Lake’s installation projects, is intended, in Johnson’s words, to examine “the impact of our culture of repetition and routine and what happens when we break from it… Now that we can create perfect duplicates of photographs, music, even livestock,” she asks, “do we put a greater value on things that are organic and made by hand, or do we prefer the perfection of a seamless copy?”

Yesterday, the company invited bloggers to a rehearsal where I took these pictures.

Bottom one is of Johnson herself talking to the dancers; sorry so blurry — I didn’t want to disturb anyone with my flash.

Since it wasn’t a full dress rehearsal, but dancers practicing on their own and being coached by Johnson in groups one at a time, it was hard to get a sense of how it will look when performed, but we’ll see next week.

Evan (Dancing Perfectly Free) attended several practice sessions and blogged about them here, here, and here. There’s also an interesting back and forth between her and Doug Fox of Great Dance on the meaning and forms of audience participation in such an installation. Here’s Doug’s post, and here’s Evan’s response.

To receive a blog-reader discount to next week’s performances, visit Smartix and use code “BLOGCP”.

One of China’s most revered classical dancers was seriously injured during rehearsals for Olympics opening night ceremonies when she leaped onto a floorboard that collapsed. She’s currently in the hospital unable to feel anything below her chest and is told she may never walk again. Here’s the Times article. (via Jolene)

On a side note, the NYTimes website can be rather ridiculous at times. They seem to have a policy that their writers are supposed to link only to articles within the Times’ own site. So, when this writer, David Barboza, tells you Liu Yan has become very popular on YouTube, you click on his (or his editor’s) link thinking you’re going to be led to a YouTube clip of her performing. But what do you get instead: a completely irrelevant article from the Times’ Business archive on the YouTube phenomenon. Why even link if it has nothing to do with the issue? I’m pretty sure everyone knows what YouTube is by now.

Anyway, since I’m a blogger and can link to websites other than my own, here, here, and here are some YouTube clips I found of her performing. And she’s listed as the main soloist in this beautiful piece. There are many more. Hopefully she’ll recover.

There’s a really good discussion going on over at Claudia La Rocco’s The Culturist about the Olympic coverage — people are even likening it to porn!

I couldn’t help get off on a tangent about male versus female gymnastics. During the last Olympics I remember going out to dinner with a group of my feminist friends and they were bemoaning how women’s sports are taken so unseriously by the public, giving as an example the prominence of the ’silly’ ‘girl-child’ sport of female gymnastics over the more ‘real’ sports of women’s softball, etc. — the team sports. I thought the criticism was so unfair given how incredibly hard those gymnasts work, and I couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t be in absolute awe of them as they did those impossible-looking tumbling passes and balance beam maneouvers and flying-through-the-air vaults. On the other hand, I’d played girls softball when I was young and felt there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do that the women players were doing without practice. So, why were they privileging team sports — so popular in men’s athletics — over individual sports, which women tend toward?

These friends were all lawyers and feminist legal scholars and I thought it was in large part my love of ballet and dance that made me at odds with them over this, so when I read Claudia (NYTimes dance critic, if you don’t know her) liken the female gymnasts to Jean Benet Ramsey, I thought, oh no!

After watching the women’s gymnastics last night in comparison to the men’s the night before, I did see a difference. The men do tend to be older (20-25), the women younger (16-20). And of course for anyone who watched last night, there seems to be a controversy over the actual ages of the Chinese female gymnasts. The cut-off age is 16 in the Olympic year (so you can be 15 now as long as you turn 16 by December 31, 2008), but no younger, and Bela Karolyi, among others, is questioning that some of those Chinese girls are that old. They did look quite young, but Asians are generally smaller-boned than Caucasians, and, as commenter Meg on Claudia’s blog pointed out, intense athletic training can delay the onset of puberty.

Of course the issue with the delayed onset of puberty caused by intense athletic training (which I hadn’t thought of) is an issue in itself. I’d think that’d be the case with any sport though, including Ballet. Maybe that’s one reason why ballerinas tend to be so thin, and not anorexia… And of course you don’t want to discourage female athleticism; wouldn’t that be sexist if you didn’t say the same for males? Does intense athleticism delay puberty for males though?…

And why favor female athletes so young anyway? Because they’re smaller and won’t go out of bounds on the tumbling passes? Because smaller bodies can tumble higher and get around those uneven bars at more astounding speeds, without fear of hitting the floor? Because as Karolyi said last night, youth doesn’t have as much fear of failure? Why isn’t all this the same for the men then?

The Chinese girls did seem to have more makeup on than the Americans, and they did seem to be jutting their hips and pelvises out and making poses on the floor that we might deem too sexy for their young-looking ages. But Jolene pointed out that that may be a cultural bias, and I agree. I went to an African dance performance with a Ballet friend the other night and she couldn’t stop laughing embarrasingly at the hip and pelvic movement; she’d never seen African before and didn’t know what to make of it, other than laugh at it and feel embarrassment for the dancers. Maybe their style just isn’t something we’re used to. Jolene also pointed out that the makeup seems to be an American thing, and I agree. I rarely see Asian women wearing that harsh bright aqua eyeshadow, yet that was a real fashion statement here in prior decades. They know they’re on TV, the Olympics are heavily dominated by the American press, and they’re trying to be like us. Ironically, it’s backfiring.

Finally, we’re also hearing all these stories about how awful the Chinese are to their children — forcing them into the sport, making them stay away from their families when the little girls really just want to come home, in comparison to the American stories, where the families always insist they’ve let their children decide how much dedication they wanted to give to their sport. Let’s just keep in mind that we’re hearing this all from the perspective of the American press. They assume we’ll feel better about ourselves, about our losing gold medals to the Chinese if we believe our society is so much more just. Not that I don’t believe in being critical at all of other governments; I didn’t have time to write about it, but I attended a reading organized by the PEN American Center of works by imprisoned Chinese dissident writers on the night before the Olympics began. But let’s just remember that our press exercises its own form of propaganda.

Okay, I’m done blabbering! Have a look at Claudia’s post and the responses.

I love this post by Counter Critic. Jacob’s Pillow (the esteemed summer dance festival held in Massachusetts) accepted his friend’s work but then asked her to delete some parts because the venue at which the company was to perform was deemed “for family.” CC covers all the bases: what is “family,” why accept a work then ask the artist to censor herself, why are adults even so hysterical over their children hearing the word “sex,” etc. Taylor mentioned she was attending a discussion tonight held as part of the New York Fringe Festival on issues involved in gearing dance performances to “families.” I wonder if this kind of thing will be discussed…

I found this short story by Alfred Doblin about a ballerina’s struggle with her body in Words Without Borders, whose current issue is devoted to psychiatric themes. (via Maud)

I won’t spoil it for people on the west coast, but I’m so immensely over-the-top ecstatically thrilled for that one

Update: My HuffPost piece on the finale is now up.

I thought tonight’s finale was rather eh. Nothing blew me away; last week was so much better. Well, that’s not entirely true — I loved Twitch and Joshua’s Hip Hop / Russian thing choreographed by Youri Nelzine. At first I thought the choreographer was calling it a Chekhov dance; I was like, Chekhov choreographed? Then I realized he was saying “Trepak,” as in the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker. I thought it was actually pretty ingenious of him to combine Russian folk and Hip Hop like that, playing on both dancers’ strengths — Twitch’s amazing thigh muscles and all that movement close to the floor, and Joshua’s crazy jumps. Loved the splits jumps, that twisting corkscrew of a jump. I wonder if we’re going to see a Nutcracker this year somewhere with those two performing that dance, like we saw Sabra and Neil do last winter…

Anyway, too much fun, those guys. I really want one of them to win. Twitch grew on me this week, so now I’m divided between him and Josh.

I was also impressed by Courtney, who I think has improved tremendously. She’s standing out so much more now. She really has become so theatrical. She’s become a real actor, and her movements are so much sharper than before. I don’t think she’ll win — I think the others still have more overall clout by this point, but I think she should be very proud of herself.

The two last dances were the worst, unfortunately. The Jive totally lacked energy and bounce and height. The kicks and the sailor shuffles, and just all the fancy footwork — not there at all. That’s what’s so fantastic about jive — the lightening-fast footwork, the crazy fun, the electric charge of the dance, not the aerials — which were excellent by the way, but it’s like they saved their energy for those. And what was that Mia Michaels number in the end? It looked like Shakers who’ve been kept from society for a little too long and have gone a bit haywire. I liked the very beginning though, with the unfolding of the satiny-looking crimson sheets. But that’s the only part I liked…

Anyway, my post on the results should be up on HuffPost on Friday.

Who do you guys think will win??? I predict Josh or Katee.

When I was downtown on Monday I finally had a chance to walk over to the eastern seaport to see the newish public art installation by Olafur Eliasson, Waterfalls. It’s a series of four man-made waterfalls set up at various points on the East River.

There’s been some controversy over the high expense of the project, whether it’s a waste of a precious natural resource, and even what the purpose of public art is, for example, how the installation compares to The Gates in Central Park a couple years ago. Go here for a good discussion of those issues led by blogger / NYTimes writer Claudia LaRocco.

And go here for Claudia’s updated post on the falls in which she sites some other artists’ “ironic” responses to Eliasson’s work.

I actually found them pretty breathtaking. Above are the two I could see from where I stood on the Manhattan side of the river. There are two more, one further uptown, and another by Governor’s Island. Of the two I saw, the one under the Brooklyn Bridge was shorter and wider, its proportions made to fit right underneath the structure of the bridge as if it was an outgrowth of its architecture. The other one, along the Brooklyn side of the river, was taller and more narrow, also seemingly in alignment with the height of the buildings behind it.

What was interesting to me was how the waterfalls are obviously man-made, obviously fake, yet they completely blend in with their environment, almost in a Frank Lloyd Wright-ish way. Or maybe it’s kind of a reverse of Lloyd Wright: his buildings blended in with the natural environment — the desert, the surrounding rock formations; whereas these supposedly naturally-occuring phenomena are artificially constructed to be part and parcel of our vast steel high-rises, what we’ve come to know as our “natural” environment.

And they complement the environment not just visually but figuratively as well. Practically all of New York is man-made, including even the very land most Manhattanites live and work on. Ralph Fiennes (don’t ask me how in the world I know, or remember this) once gushed about this city, on his first viewing of it, as being this breathtaking visual testament to what human beings are capable of building, and the British actor is not exactly known for his love of America. So, sure they’re industrial-looking, but why not celebrate that? Ingenuity in industry and commerce are what NYC is, right?

And I think there is a certain natural beauty, particularly the way the water falls. With the high structure, the water looked almost like feathers at the top, foam near the bottom.

And the shorter one looked really cool when a breeze picked up; looked almost like a head of long, cascading hair billowing about in the wind.

As for the argument that the falls are destroying a precious natural resource, maybe I don’t understand the machinery very well, but it seems that they’re only recycling the river water (and according to the information on the website, there are nets to keep fish from getting caught in the spokes).

Anyway, if you’re in NY and happen to go out and see them, let me know what you think. They’re on display through October 13. If you want an up-close view, there are Circle Line boats that are giving little tours, complete with headsets bearing the artist’s mission statement and other information. Or, if you’re a ‘traveler’ and not a ‘tourist’ , according to the press release, the free Staten Island and Governor’s Island ferries will take you pretty close to the southernmost two falls.

Yesterday I went to see Monica Bill Barnes’ site-specific dance Game Face, showing as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Sitelines series. I’ve seen Barnes’ work before and have liked her in the past, and I found this one very amusing — along with the rest of the audience (comprised both of people who’d come for the show and unsuspecting tourists in the area to catch an optimal view of the Statue of Liberty), but I’m not sure if she met her stated aim.

The flyer states that the dance “compares the show business motto of ‘the show must go on’ with the current perception of finance as being an all-consuming self-sacrificing business. Exploring a performer’s endurance and ‘do or die’ attitude as an illustration of Wall Street’s reputation for tireless work, this new work is bizarre, exhausting, and boldly funny…”

I thought it was bizarre and funny, but I couldn’t see what it really had to do with Wall Street or the financial industry. It took place at the Robert Wagner Park, which is in the northeast corner of Battery Park, sandwiched between a restaurant and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The park, as I said, offers a lovely view of the Statue of Liberty, and a large grassy area for children to play, so it’s a good area for tourists, especially with kids.

If she’d wanted to make a statement about Wall Street and financial workers, it might have been better placed at the little cobblestoned, pedestrian-only intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. Or, if that was too crowded and they couldn’t get a permit, there’s a spacious area in front of the Chase Manhattan building, where I’ve seen other dance performances; they could have even had it in Liberty Park, where another Sitelines performance was held last year — all of which are centrally located in the Financial District, set among the high buildings and rushed business people. Held here, it seemed to be making more of a statement about tourism.

First, two dancers, Deborah Lohse (wearing the green Statue of Liberty cap) and Barnes, holding her up, asked a woman — presumably a tourist — to take their picture with the Statue of Liberty in the background, in typical tourist fashion. The woman complied, not knowing she was part of the performance, as it was just about to begin.

Next, some Elvis music began playing over a couple of speakers, while four women dressed either as tourists or in athletic work-out garb danced in unison along a back wall, while Lohse began to lean on Barnes in various poses. At first, she leaned due sideways, the two women making an interesting triangular shape. Then Lohse began to lose her form, becoming almost a bag of bones, while Barnes struggled to hold her up. Eventually, Barnes picked her up and carried her off. The whole time, Lohse was facing the Statue of Liberty, and her expressions of awe at it, along with her touristy hat, indicated she was mesmerized, entranced. But too much so. Like Barnes was saying people get carried away with their worship of landmarks, of a meaningless idol, of what New York stands for, without considering what really goes on here, what Lady Liberty stands for. It could also have been making a statement of the collapsing of the American dream or something, but I think it was too light-hearted for that.

Then, the dancers all disappeared through an archway, behind a building, and emerged out on the little plaza area in front of the park. They danced briefly, to Elvis, then disappeared again, and emerged

on top of the walkway connecting a restaurant with the museum. At points they looked out at the water, standing shock still, and at points they broke into dance, all the while Elvis crooning his iconic songs. Ridiculously, the music being so iconic, I can’t even remember which songs they were; I don’t even know the names of most. One where he keeps pleading, “Believe Me, believe me…” I think “Heartbreak Hotel” was in there; the only one I remember for sure is the one they ended with, “Fools Rush In.” Anyway, this part of the dance was kind of funny in a Where’s Waldo way, losing sight of the dancers, looking around for them, seeing them pop up in a new, unexpected place.

But the best part was when a waiter at the restaurant and a seemingly random guy on a bike got in on the action, grabbing microphones and singing along with Elvis, their voices overtaking his on the speakers. I don’t know if they were officially part of the act or if Barnes had convinced them on the spot to join in, but the waiter guy looked pretty much like a genuine waiter at that restaurant.

They eventually climbed onto some benches where onlookers were seated, really belting it out. The audience went nuts with laughter.

The dancers disappeared again and re-emerged, most of them now wearing white gauzy, almost wedding-gown-looking dresses. I wasn’t sure what the significance of this was, but here they are on the little plaza again, seeming to wave at a tourist bus pulling into Battery Park.

Then they took to the grassy area.

And ended dancing, then running along the park’s cement perimeter. They disappeared and of course we continued to look for them, only knowing for certain the show was over when the words “Elvis has left the building,” came on over the speakers.

The performance was about 20 minutes altogether and it definitely had a certain charm and humor. But as a whole, I wasn’t sure what it all meant, whether it had any cohesive meaning.

If you want to check it out, it’s showing again tomorrow, Wednesday the 6th, at noon and again at 1 p.m., and Thursday the 7th at the same times, and next Monday through Thursday, Aug. 11-14, at noon and 1. It’s in the Robert Wagner park, located just north and east of Battery Park. Go here for more details.

Because my TAC headaches have not been responding so well to my regular medication, my neurologist wants me to try something different for a while. I went to the pharmacy today to pick up my new prescription. It cost $100 after my insurance copay, for 6 doses. Six doses. I hope Glaxo Wellcome are happy with themselves for finding a way to make big bucks off of human pain and suffering.

And I know I’m hardly the only one who struggles to pay for prescription meds. I know older, retired people who have credit card debt because the only way they can pay for necessary medication is to charge it. Medicare apparently covers very little.

I hope Obama makes healthcare reform a very top priority when he becomes president. One of the reasons — the main reason actually — I’d been such a Hillary supporter is that I knew healthcare was her biggest issue. I trusted that she would work tirelessly for change, as she did when her husband was in office. I really hope we can expect the same from Obama.

My review of Keigwin & Co, which I saw last week at the Joyce, is now up at Explore Dance.

I absolutely loved this novel and highly recommend it. It’s about three generations of sufferers of early-onset Alzheimer’s (which can come on as early as 30, which I didn’t know). It’s partly a portrayal of the disease itself, partly a meditation on memory and its ramifications, but mostly it’s just a beautifully-written story about the need for human connection. I won’t be forgetting Abel Haggard for a long time.

Here is the author’s website. And here’s a short autobiographical piece, equally compelling, that he wrote the Guardian.

I went to Dance Brazil and RumbaTap at Central Park’s Summer Stage last night and damn was it crowded. The most crowded I’ve ever seen Summer Stage. I ended up only staying for RumbaTap; left before Dance Brazil because I was just too claustrophobic (in my mind they let way too many people in; I was near the top in the bleachers, my knees jutting into the guy’s back in front of me, my own back being probed by the knees of the guy behind me, serried between the man next to me and the woman on my other side illegally sitting on a bleacher step because there was nowhere to stand. They really need to turn people away next time for safety purposes). I’d already seen Dance Brazil anyway (which I wrote about here) and they were performing the same program — Ritmo — so I figured I’d let someone else get squeezed all to bits.

(sorry so blurry; I’m one of the few who actually obeyed the “no flash photography” rule)

Anyway, Max Pollack’s RumbaTap was good (and I recognized one of the dancers, Matt’s sister, Carson Murphy, right off the bat because of the big hair!). They danced to a variety of Latin rhythms — Salsa, Merengue, traditional Afro-Cuban, and even some Bulgarian (which is Mr. Pollack’s heritage). It was a bit hard, though, to see from so far away (one thing that annoys me greatly about Summer Stage is that no matter how early you get there, it’s hard to get a seat up front because they reserve practically all of them), and it was very hard not to be distracted by the hordes of people trying to find a seat, buying food, talking to each other and paying no attention to the dancing, etc. etc. etc. I think tap, like ballet, is probably too small, the movement too subtle and soft, to work well on a big, open-air stage like this where you don’t have crowd control. I’m thinking Dance Brazil’s Capoeira, with all the big, flashy acrobatics, probably captivated the crowd, especially in the back, much more successfully.

The crowd waiting for Dance Brazil…

Anyway, there’s one more Summer Stage dance event, next Friday, when Jennifer Muller and Erica Essners perform. Go here for info on Muller and Essners, and go here for the rest of the Summer Stage schedule (most of which consists of music events).

One of the great things about New York in August is the abundance of free outdoor events, most of which include dance: Lincoln Center Out of Doors, held in Damrosch Park, just behind the State Theater and facing Fordham Law School, is showcasing Armitage Gone! and Noche Flamenca, among other dance companies; the Lower Manhattan Culture Council’s Sitelines is a series of site-specific dance performances all taking place in lower Manhattan which are usually pretty good; the Downtown Dance Festival, sponsored by Battery Dance Company, takes place August 16-24 also at various Financial District-area locations; and, finally, my beloved Alvin Ailey continues celebrations of their 50th anniversary with several free performances and dance workshops throughout all five boroughs, including an all-day outdoor street festival on Saturday, August 9th in front of City Center in midtown Manhattan, with free performances inside that theater throughout the day.

Speaking of City Center, don’t forget Fall For Dance coming up September 17-27. Tickets for these $10 multi-company performances go on sale at 11:00 a.m. on September 7th and sell out in days if not hours. It doesn’t appear this year’s schedule is up yet (it’s on my mind because they were passing out flyers for it last night), but I’ll post it when it is. For those who don’t yet know about FFD, I don’t think there’s any greater value– you see a variety of top-notch dance companies for only $10 a ticket ($15 if you buy online, but STILL!)

Finally, as my art historian friend alerted me to, if you’re lucky enough to be in Paris in the near future, Sotheby’s is presenting what appears to be a magnificent collection of Ballet Russes material in celebration of that dance company’s 100th birthday. Looks fabulous.