Here.
Hehehe, I already “tweeted” Sharon, who runs the BDC discussion of the show that I was kidding about the little remark at the beginning of my Cloris Leachman assessment. I’d gone to bed Wednesday night, only to have my cell phone start beeping off the hook with angry tweets from West Coast BDCers annoyed about McGinley getting the boot over Leachman. Very 21st Century π
Anyway, happy Friday everyone!
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
T-Mobile
are becoming so common these days! I remember giggling at my mom’s old photos and home movies from the 60s of family members walking up the wobbly narrow airplane steps, grabbing the hand rail for dear life to steady themselves for turning and waving to my mom, sometimes even with an infant in one arm, and thinking, wow how much more civilized we’ve become with the little inside hallways that make it seem like you’re not even leaving the airport. And now I’ve done just as my “ancestors” several times in the past couple years, even including international flights…
Hmmm, this is turning out to be a bit of a drama. NYTimes chief Sir Alastair weighs in on Alexei Ratmansky’s joining ABT, as does Apollinaire Scherr, who points to this piece of commentary, one of the most interesting in my opinion, by Robert Johnson in the New Jersey Star Ledger.
Johnson is the first critic I’ve read who’s not head over heels in love with the choreographer, but one of his reasons for so being is that he seems to think Ratmansky has somewhat of a Communist streak. He says that during his directorship of the Bolshoi, Ratmansky tried to revive the company, suffering in the wake of Perestroika, by re-staging some successful Soviet-era ballets. Johnson asks what “red eminence” this programming might have. Ratmansky’s own work “Bright Stream,” set to music by Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, and praised by many dance critics here (the ballet, that is, was praised, not Shostakovitch), Johnson calls “a disingenuous frolic on a Soviet collective farm,” then interprets Ratmansky’s latest “Concerto DSCH” which recently premiered at the New York City Ballet as a mockery of Imperial Russia, with Soviet revival style triumphing.
I unfortunately haven’t seen “Bright Stream” or any of these other Soviet era ballets, but of course am now dying to. I did see “Concerto DSCH” and didn’t interpret it at all the way Johnson does.
But, even if you can attribute these underlying, subconscious politicized ideas to the choreographer, which is a huge if, so what? Can’t someone critique the Imperial period without being considered pro-Stalinist? (Johnson reminds of the bloody atrocities committed by the Soviet regime) Has anyone ever seen Peterhof? It looks just like Versailles. Your first thought is, whoa, look at all this opulence, no wonder there was a rebellion. But in any event, can an aesthetic critique be interpreted as a political critique? I personally think not, but even if so, is this reason for threat? Aren’t we post-Cold War now?
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I found that part of the article a bit shocking in a McCarthyist kind of way. But I do have to say, I applaud Johnson for resisting herd mentality and offering the first real Ratmansky criticism. (He does have more bases for criticism; this is just the one that seemed most prominent to me. And, by reading James Wolcott, Laura Jacobs seems critical as well — I’ve got to get a subscription to the New Criterion!) In the end, I do have to say, with all I’ve read on Ratmansky this past week, Johnson most makes me want to run out and see everything I can by the man…
Oh and, somewhat apropos of the critics jumping on the bandwagon thing, I just want to point people to an interesting discussion, begun by Claudia La Rocco (who is so awesome to comment here π ) on fans versus critics down in the comments section of this post.
So, the big news in New York for the past couple of days is that Alexei Ratmansky, currently artistic director of the Bolshoi, and beloved choreographer of many a dance critic here, will be the new resident choreographer for American Ballet Theater. Story is a bit of a soap opera as well since he was recently asked to fill that position with the New York City Ballet and declined. It appears to have been a timing issue.
Anyway, this is a most exciting move for ABT, who desperately need to electrify their contemporary repertoire. Ratmansky’s an almost absurdly prolific creator, churning out new ballets practically monthly it seems, and from what everyone seems to think, never sacrificing quality. I personally have seen four of his works: one I really liked (actually, there are two in that post, one I liked, one I didn’t, so I’ve seen five of his altogether), another I really liked and wanted to see more of, one about which I could only say hmmmm, and one I couldn’t figure out what all the critics were going hog wild over but am willing to give it a few more viewings to see.
Honestly, I’m really excited, really excited, to see what ABT’s magnificent dancers will do with his work. It appears his post won’t officially begin until next spring. We have a lot to look forward to.
Only thing is, he’s recently said Swan Lake is dead (thanks to Evan for finding that article), which, before Labor Day weekend, wouldn’t have made me all that upset. But thanks to a writer from Ballet.co who told me at the end of ABT’s production of that ballet to make sure I saw …blahblahblah… ‘s for comparison (I couldn’t hear the name because this was during curtain call applause), I went to the library and ended up checking out every single copy of Swan Lake they had. This is a post for another day, but I really fell in love with it, and with Tchaikovsky. It can’t be dead, Mr. Ratmansky…
Also, check out ABT’s principal dancer page. There appears to be a new face… (thanks to Philip for the heads up).
Blogging will resume as soon as a Wednesday deadline passes, I promise!
In the meantime, here are a few things to keep you entertained:
1) Christopher Wheeldon (choreographer and artistic director of Morphoses — upcoming next month at City Center) talks ballet and creativity on Big Think here, here, and here; general Wheeldon link here. (Also, read some Morphoses dancer and choreographer blogs here);
2) check out Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet‘s Project 52, a year-long documentary on the company in weekly video installments;
3) Claudia La Rocco discusses the new Broadway musical Fela!;
4) a discussion I found interesting about whether J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye should still be required reading for high schoolers, or whether it no longer has adequate “currency” so as to resonate with young people today, here, here, and here;
and
5) if you’re interested in the writing life, guest blogger Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony, turned The Elegant Variation into a crash course on creative writing last week. His entries begin here.
Okay, wish me luck!
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 π ), 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.Γ 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!
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 Γ’β¬Εthe 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?Γ’β¬Β 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?
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.
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”.
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.
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.