Tag: Gender / Sexuality Issues

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Jock!

I saw a documentary last night at New York City Ballet’s State Theater that I really really loved. AND it’s going to air on PBS on April 8th, so everyone can see it! Don’t worry, I will definitely be reminding you all closer to April 🙂 It’s called WATER FLOWING TOGETHER and is about the life of recently retired and widely beloved New York City Ballet dancer Jock Soto (pictured above after the showing speaking with photographer / filmmaker Gwendolen Cates — whom I’m told is related to Phoebe, though I don’t know if it’s true — and a moderator whose name I didn’t get).

There was some real hype over this, and I’m always ready to pounce in such instances, but in this case the hype was deserved. Although the film gets off to a slow start, it quickly gains momentum. I think what makes it so engaging is Soto’s interesting background and wonderful personality. He’s part Navajo, part Puerto Rican, and he grew up on a reservation in New Mexico, before moving to Phoenix (!) for ballet school. The film’s title is the name of his mother’s clan. There’s some great footage of the West, and my favorite parts of the film are (in addition to clips of his rehearsing Christopher Wheeldon’s tear-jerking duet “After the Rain” with the equally engaging Wendy Whelan, who is interviewed as well) those about his Native-American roots. (This could be partly because I have a Native American great-grandmother — Blackfoot to be exact — though I know next to nothing about her since, sadly, she’s been all but erased from my family history). Anyway, Jock’s mother was an artist and used to make Katchina dolls (how I miss Arizona…) and ceramic bowls, and he and his brother used to make and sell Indian Fry Bread (how I SO miss Arizona…) when they were kids. After he retired from NYCB in 2005 he went to culinary school and he and his partner, professional chef Luis Fuentes, have just begun a catering business, so I guess those foodie roots were always there!

Another thing that struck me: Jock’s homosexuality has always been accepted by his mother’s side of the family. American Indian culture, she says, holds homosexuals in high esteem because of their difference. (His paternal Latin side: not so accepting; aunts and grandmas keep asking when he’s gonna get married and, because his father hasn’t said anything, he feels uncomfortable revealing his sexuality to them). But interestingly, Indian society is also matriarchal. So, where women are valued, so are gay men.

 

And, like his longtime partner Wendy Whelan, Jock has such a sweetly endearing personality and a great sense of humor. He laughs easily at himself. Upon entering his apartment (which he openly tells you is a typical NYC dancer shoebox that he nevertheless pays $1,850 for) there’s a sign that reads, “No liquor served to Indians after 6:00 p.m.” Later, while preparing for a performance, he says, “as I put on my makeup and my costume and do my hair, I think, what a strange occupation for a 40-year-old man,” and at another point, trying hard to conceal his fear of and heartache about permanently leaving the stage says, “well, June 19, 2005 will be the last time I’ll ever have to dress in drag.” At one point, he actually lets loose and cries over his eternally pained body and his pending retirement. The scene makes him human and vulnerable and it really drives home that it must be so awful for a dancer to have to leave what he’s lived his entire life for at such a young age.

Anyway, it’s an excellent film and I left out a lot: his meeting and befriending Andy Warhol (I wish Cates had actually gone into a bit more detail on this); his ruminations on his coming to NY at only age 14, living without his family and dropping out of school in the 7th grade; and a lot of amazing dancing, including some great footage of him flying all over stage with his young little sprightly teenage body! Please do watch it on PBS in April, though they have to chop a good twenty minutes off for TV, which seriously frightens me since PBS seems to have a knack for making everything they show as bland as possible. If they cut any of the parts I just mentioned, there will be hell to pay!

It already seems this film is a slightly different version than that others have seen. In her lengthy review, Tobi Tobias mentions several classroom scenes where he’s teaching students at the School of American Ballet (from which aspiring NYCB dancers must graduate), which seemed to be missing from last night’s version. And smartly so, I think: “Classical ballet being the last bastion of chivalry in our disheveled era, Soto works continually to encourage a worshipful attitude in the gentlemen toward their ladies.” Considered the quintessential “manly” dancer though he may be, something about that line kind of makes me want to vomit.

Sometimes it can start to feel a bit stiflingly cliquish inside the State Theater if I’m there for too long, but I had a nice time hanging out before and after with Philip and Ariel, whose reports are here and here.

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Castration, Female Genital Mutilation, and Male Spanish Choreographers Making Sexist, Un-American Faux Pas!!!

Yep, rollicking great fun in Brooklyn the other night! On Thursday night I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato‘s modern dance troupe, Compania Nacional de Danza, which I have been wanting to see ever since I saw a brief piece he’d choreographed for ABT a couple years ago. On the program were three pieces: “Por Vos Muero,” a beautiful work celebrating the variety of social dance in 15th and 16th Century Spain, set to lovely Baroque music and spoken word by pop musician Miguel Bose (whom I used to have a big crush on when I was first introduced to him in Spanish class); “Castrati,” an absolutely breathtaking all-male piece about the centuries-old Italian practice of castrating male opera singers so they could perform soprano roles, set to Vivaldi; and “White Darkness,” a dance that illustrated the effect of drug use through movement, at times spasmodic and violent, at times euphoric.

All three works were filled with beautiful movement that alternated between dark and heavy and light and lyrical to show different moods or states of being. The pieces were all gorgeously danced and Duato has a very strong, athletic, good-looking company. My favorite piece, though, was the second, “Castrati.” It began with one group of men all wearing these very interesting, almost foreboding, dark brown, monk-looking robes, which opened to reveal a muscular chest, then were buttoned tightly at the waist, and then flared into a skirt which was open in the front to reveal nude-colored footless tights. These men also wore these heavy black wrist-bands which added to the virility to the costume. This ensemble produced lots of high, heavily-landed jumps, hard kicks, fists pounding in the air, and crotch-grabbing, almost in Eminem fashion. So, it was very virtuostic, puissant, very manly. Yet, the way the skirts flared seemed to contrast sharply with all this “manliness”; it added a lyrical, more feminine quality. I guess you could read this group as either the ‘male’ men of the opera (the baritones and tenors), or as the pre-castrated version of the sopranos, or perhaps the sopranos’ lost masculine selves.

Then that group of men exited and a man wearing only skin-toned shorts danced a sad, lonely, frightened-looking solo, as he crouched on the floor in a fetal ball, shuddering. I was really scared for him.

His solo was followed by two men wearing powdery face makeup, white corsets and tights — so, the castrati, or the sopranos. This duet was obviously meant to evoke effeminacy, their dancing very feathery light and tightly controlled, their movements very small and slight, rather dainty, I guess, but in a beautiful, not silly, way. It was both sublime and immensely fake, like modern men in drag, as their built chest muscles popped out over the upper ties of the corsets. They looked sad, but was that because their painted-on faces were meant to be so, or because of what they had endured?

The three groups alternated, at times the baritone / ‘masculine’ men danced alongside the feminine men, sometimes partnering them, and in the end both groups hovered over the poor sole man wearing only the nude shorts, who ended up devoured and then, ultimately, bloodied by the group (fake blood of course). When the three groups danced together, the movement all became fluid and lyrical to me — making it both beautiful and violent and frightening. It seemed at times the ‘manly’ men would take on some of the more lyrical charms of the sopranos, symbolizing the fluid nature of masculinity, of gender, perhaps. Basically, what I loved about this piece was that it both made me think about the nature of masculinity and the issue of castration — it produced beauty but at what cost? — and it stimulated my visual and aural senses with the beauty of the movement and music. So, it engaged me both intellectually and sensually, which, to me, is what the best art does.

Anyway, according to the rather detailed program notes, the practice of castrating men to perform the soprano roles was borne of the Church’s forbidding women to speak in church, or in a theater. Opera, originating from church choir, was thus was forbidden from using women singers. “Castration,” the program says, “produced extraordinary vocal skills and a rather peculiar color to the voices, which meant castrati were in great demand and highly paid.” The program notes also give a brief history of castration in general, asserting that Egyptians used it as punishment, Arabs for religious reasons, and Turks to create a group of men with no sexual urgings to guard their harems. The program didn’t need to go into all of this detail, but it’s interesting that it did.

After the second show of every run, BAM holds an audience Q & A with the choreographer. There were a few interesting moments at this BAM dialog. One man approached the audience mike, and in a very agitated tone, asked Duato who was responsible for making the audience understand the meaning of the work. Duato looked confused and asked him to repeat his question. The man again asked whether it was the dancers who were supposed to impart meaning, the choreographer, or how the audiences were supposed to understand what was going on. Who decided the meaning? He seemed very frustrated; he sounded like I felt after the Wheeldon! Duato thought about it a bit, then told us how he worked: he went into the studio with music and a thematic idea; he did not go into the studio with any movement in mind, the dancers were responsible for that, and he worked out the movement together with them, to the music, after telling them his themes and ideas. So, everyone was responsible. He also likened dance to poetry, said his dances had no narrative, but he tried to give his audiences images to reflect and express his ideas, and if the viewer got something from it, even if it wasn’t what he had in mind, then he is happy with that. He gave an anecdote: a woman once told him she hadn’t read the program notes and thought the drug piece was about the passage of time, the salt thrown down from above onto the dances not a powder drug, but the sands of an hourglass. She was really shocked to discover it was intended to be about drugs. But Duato was happy because she loved the exploration of the passage of time that she saw. He was happy that his work spoke to her in that way, in a way that had meaning to her.

A little later, two young women, very Barnard-looking (but possibly young graduate students), approached the microphone. One asked, reading from her notebook, whether he ever considered setting the “Castrati” theme on women, and if so, how would that look. Murmurs sounded throughout the (rather packed, for a discussion) theater. Duato looked thoroughly confused. “No, but this is about the men, can’t be women,” he said frowning.

“No, I mean, in the context of female castration in general..” she began to clarify… But he didn’t seem to hear. “To have women jumping around aggressively like that,” he continued, “no, women can’t do those kinds of things.” At this, “Ooooohs” reverberated through the auditorium. Elizabeth Streb, where are you when we need you!?

“No, she means female genital mutilation” someone, a male voice, said.

“But… wait, why not?” Barnard woman said, now looking rather dejected at his answer to her misunderstood question.

“No, no,” Duato said now realizing, with her expression and all the “ooooooohs,” he’d said something very wrong but not really knowing what. “I mean, those jumping, it doesn’t look right on women. Too much. Women are beautiful.” More, louder “oooooooooooooohs!” “No,” he continued now getting flustered. “Women … I LOVE women,” he said spreading his arms out, He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands style. “Women, they are beautiful, but they are delicate,” he said, open-mouthed and flailing about. Many many more ooooooooohs. Duato looked flummoxed.

“But but but … that’s not … right…” Barnard started.

“No, she doesn’t even mean that,” another male voice called out. “She means female genital mutilation,” someone else said. Pandemonium was starting to happen, papers shuffled, people sat up, whispered to each other. “Ask your question again,” another male voice (all were male voices!) said. “Go back to you question, ask it again,” said another.

Barnard, now visibly upset from Duato’s women can’t do the same things as men faux pas said, “Yeah, I meant female castration, how would you show that?”

Duato looked even more befuddled. “Female… what? No, no, it can’t be,” he nervously laughed. “I mean, how can it be? These are men this happened to, the castrati, can’t be women?”

“No, female genital mutilation, female genital mutilation,” audience members started shouting. Poor Mr. Duato. First it was a sea of “ooooooooohs,” now a chorus of people chanting “female genital mutilation” at him. He looked horrified. Looking back it was rather funny.

Eventually, the moderator had to close the discussion and send us all home because it was so late, but as people began to gather their things and put on their jackets, several men approached the young women. “You just didn’t ask your question properly,” one said to her. “Yeah, he didn’t understand what you were trying to ask,” another agreed. I wanted to stay around and listen to their conversation but ushers were now walking up and down the rows asking people to leave and I had a long commute home. If I would have thought, I would have given her my card and asked her to email me or comment on my blog. Sometimes I just don’t think!

Anyway, I found the whole experience interesting, from the question itself, to some of Duato’s answers, to his misunderstanding of her, to all of the men who were trying to help her get her question across, obviously taking great interest in it. I thought it was a rather odd question to ask an artist, though I think I understand why she asked it. I think because the program notes went into such detail about the history of castration, she probably thought he was speaking to the entire history of the practice and not just the sopranos. Duato clearly didn’t seem to understand what she was saying, though I wasn’t sure whether he thought she was asking how would women look dancing exactly as the men had danced including the masculinity of the baritones, whether he didn’t understand that she was asking him to think of castration in an entirely different context, or whether he really didn’t even know what female genital mutilation was. It could have even been a language barrier issue with his Spanish, who knows. But I found her question interesting in that, to her, dance spoke at least in part on socio-cultural terms. On my way home I thought, well, what was she asking, and how could he have answered? If female genital mutilation in the places where it is still practiced stems from the belief that women are not entitled to their sexuality, which must be quelled in order to avoid a supposedly chaotic society, and the practice is so deadly dangerous, then where is the beauty, which was a huge element of Duato’s dance. The contrast of the violence with the beauty was part of what made the piece work for me. But then I realized that these sopranos were pre-pubescent boys when they were castrated and their fate was someone else’s decision. Certainly from the perspective of the young boy, what happened to him was not only through his own volition, but rather violent as well. So, where was the beauty in that? Maybe those corseted sopranos were only sad and it was my superimposed notion of beauty that made me think of them as such, that they weren’t like men in drag at all and I shouldn’t be thinking of the work in terms of its challenging gender assumptions.

Anyway, in the end, the whole evening from performance to discussion made me aware of what I look for in dance, and taught me that others share some of the same issues I do — others have a hard time deciphering meaning in abstract forms and don’t understand how the process many choreographers use aids in that; and others look for social relevance in art and don’t always focus on the visuals and the beauty of the movement and music. It also taught me that very good art provokes discussion, makes people more curious, and is ultimtely a dialog, a give and take, between the creator and the receiver. I hope Duato thinks about that question she asked even if just for the same reasons I did and not to construct another dance out of it.

And as for those notions of what female dancers are and aren’t capable of or what will or will not look good on them, I think Mr. Duato needs to be taught a thing or two!

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What What What?

Okay, what bumblehead recommended this movie?! I have got to stop doing this — going to see a movie or play based on the fact that there’s supposed to be some miniscule amount of dancing. (Did the same with Gypsy, knowing only that the production I was to see contained original Jerome Robbins choreography and therefore expecting West Side Story, not realizing “choreography” can sometimes mean simply placement of actors on a stage). Someone — I think it was Dance Magazine in one of their e-newsletters — mentioned that the brilliant Desmond Richardson was to be in this movie (Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe” — could they have come up with just a slightly more imaginative title??), which, according to the credits, he was, but I have no idea where. Probably in the one scene that looked like it was trying incredibly hard to be something out of The Wall, with cartoonish block-headed military goons doing some kind of group number that looked like it required people slightly more skilled with body movement than actors, but cannot under any circumstances be called dance. Why someone of Desmond’s stature would take on something that amounted to extra work I have no idea.

Anyway, lack of dance and the beautiful Desmond aside, this movie in a word sucked. It was full of cliches, bad acting, an utterly boring and predictable narrative, cheesy cameos (could anyone make Bono look creepier than Taymor), and renditions of the greatest songs of our time that somehow, obscenely sucked the life right out of them (the sole exception to this being “Let it Be” which begins with a young African American boy cowering in the entrails of a burned-out car during a race riot and climaxes with a black choir belting out the lyrics during the slain boy’s funeral).

The only way I made it through the whole thing was this guy. I guess you can’t really blame actors for crappy material; perhaps the fact Joe Anderson gave all the scenes he was in an actual heartbeat attests to his skill. I’ll have to see more of him. Dana Fuchs‘s Janis Joplin-esque diva was fun at the start but somehow began to drain you, likely because of the predictability of her character. I enjoyed her performance far more in the original, off-Broadway play, “Love, Janis.”

Interestingly, there’s a split-second Butoh sequence during one of the Vietnam scenes that failed only semi-miserably because of, once again, the cliched way in which it’s used. Of course, unlike with real Butoh, the dancers here are all women instead of a combo of sexes since male nudity in movies might spook the fifteen-year-old straight boy who it’s assumed is their main patron, or maybe his parents, or whoever … the powers that be who need to maintain for whatever reason the sexist, homophobic status quo. Anyway, I guess kudos to Taymor for even trying to inject a bit of multiculturalism into her film.

The twenty-somethings in my audience cheered wildly at the film’s end, so maybe it’s just that I am just too old for it 🙂 What gets me is, gasp and moan though these young people did during the scenes involving the Vietnam war and the violent police crackdown on campus protesters, do these people see any relevance whatsoever to what is going on in the world today? What’s the difference between the 60s and today? No baby-boom-produced generation gap? Is it because those who are serving in the current war are largely not white and from middle-class families?

So, to the young people who happen to read my blog: perhaps you will really enjoy this movie. If you do see it, though, please please please please please think when you see those aforementioned scenes of all the people coming home in body bags today. Just because they are black and Latino and working-class, unlike the characters in the film, they are still human.

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Hey Man, Where Are My Peeps Tonight???

Okay, I guess I should check my local Fox listings more often 🙂 I specifically came home from work early tonight (8 p.m. — eh) to watch my favorite show and instead there are all of these men grunting like beasts and ramming their helmeted heads into each other’s bodies??? Where’s my dance!!!

Haha, it’s funny though, because the advertising is sooo different. Has anyone noticed? I don’t know what the commercials during SYTYCD usually consist of because I’ve never really paid much attention, but I know there aren’t all of these bikini-clad women and Bud adverts that seem to me to appeal to the lowest common denominator! It’s kind of sad; I guess there are real gender differences between men and women, or at least the kind of men and women who watch these respective shows. But also interesting to me is that the Fox people seem to know that most SYTYCD-watchers are women and arty, intellectual-type men, no?

Anyway, I was going to blog about this last night but got lazy and tired and had to go to bed after the show, but I’m just so proud of Pasha. I just think he’s doing so well. My favorite Latin dancer in the world has long been Slavik Kryklyvyy — and during my lessons with Pasha, I’d always bring tapes of Slavik dancing with his former partner, Karina, to the studio and ask Pasha if we could try to re-enact some of their lifts and fancy dips. He’d always be the sport and say sure, but I could tell inside he was kind of rolling his eyes — either because they were far above me and he knew he’d be struggling to hold me up 🙂 or because it’s probably just annoying for any dancer to hear how someone worships another 🙂 Pasha’s so great though for letting me drool on and on over Slavik!

Anyway, last night, during the very beginning of the show when they did their little opening half-of-a-second solos, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. He moved just like Slavik. I really think this competition has improved his dancing so much. He’s worked so hard to master all the different kinds of dance styles and choreography to the best of his ability and he now moves in ways that are just breathtaking, so beyond what he did before. I’m just so floored. And, I mean, last night’s hip hop just looked so cute on him. He’s not going to ever be some down-home, bad-ass, hipper than thou, totally hot African-American guy doing hip-hop, but he did his own cute Pasha thing with it, and it was so him and so sweet and so brilliant. And that’s what dance is all about: interpreting something in your own way, adding your style and technique, doing it to the best of your ability, and just owning it. The waltz, as well, was beautiful, as expected. And his solo: I mean, people are saying it was weird (see the comments to this post), and I totally understand what they mean, but I think it was rather ironic: I think he was saying to the judges, “Okay, you say Latin ballroom dancers suck at solos because we’re essentially partner-dancers, so here, here’s a partner-dance for you — I’ll dance with a damn mannequin.” That’s my take anyway…

And, you just never know how someone is going to hold up under pressure. Ballroom dancers dance to normally relatively small audiences — I think the biggest — definitely at Blackpool — must consist of a couple thousand??? I mean, nowhere near the millions who are scrutinizing his every move now. So, I just worry that someone will just crack under the pressure. But not any of these pros 🙂

Okay, I’m done fawning! Oh, but just one more thing: Claudia sent a link to the Blogging SYTYCD blog to some pics she found of Pasha and Anya — these are the photos of them dancing at Blackpool 2005 that I was referring to earlier! Is Anya not absolutely gorgeous!! How much do I want that black dress! Yes, Anya used to have blonde hair 🙂 She looks just bewitching with any color though, if you ask me.

Okay, in other news: I’m excited because I just received in the mail a flyer for the Martha Graham Dance Company, who will perform at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea in a couple of weeks.

I’ve only seen this company a couple of times, but what is so cool is that on the flyer is a picture of Miki Orihara, a newish contributor to my favorite dance blog, The Winger. I’m so excited to see her perform! I personally think blogs are a great way for dancers to communicate with audiences and make new fans. From her Winger posts, Miki seems so incredibly sweet. So, I can’t wait!

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I Am Goin’ to Nationals!

Just got my plane ticket for Nationals, coming up at the beginning of September, in Orlando, Florida, where I’ve never been! I was actually pondering saving money and not going this year, but my friend, Michele, blasted some sense into me: it’s going to be far too exciting a year to miss. Am now trying to fill out above form to reserve my event tickets — $70 for Saturday night comp and $60 for Thursday and Friday night each — I do wish it wasn’t so expensive, but at least they’ve moved the competition to a cheaper hotel; last year it was in swanky Palm Beach, and the only hotel in the vicinity was the, basically, ten–star one in which the competition was held.

So, no alligators this year 🙂 (Last year, I took a brief excursion from competition madness to visit the Everglades)

Anyway, this is going to be a big year. Because of a couple of important retirements, new champions will be crowned in two events: American Rhythm and American Smooth.

I’m hoping Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine, my former teacher and an excellent dancer, will do well in Rhythm. Well, I know he’ll do WELL, but will he win is my big question?!

 

Or will the king and queen of rhythm be Emmanuel’s former partner, Joanna Zacharewicz and the super cute Jose deCamps?

 

We’ll know Thursday, September 6th, late late LATE night (these competitions are definitely for night owls)

The highlight for me though is always the International Latin. It’s always a showdown between these two:

current national champs Andrei Gavriline (my favorite American man) and Elena Kruyshkova, and

 

my favorite American woman, Yulia Zagoruychenko, and her partner Max Kozhevnikov.

They also have an open-to-the-world category, in which dancers who are not American residents or citizens can compete. Last year I was just in heaven — my two favorite Latin dancers in the world competed in that category: Slavik Kryklyvyy, who is just about my favorite dancer period (excepting this one of course of course:) ) (Slavik’s dancing here with Elena Khvorova)

and Sergey Surkov (parterning Melia).

 

Oh, I hope so so SO much they compete again this year. I’m thinking Slavik may not, may have only competed last year because he’d just broken up with his old partner, Karina Smirnoff and was testing out a new partnership before the really important world comps, but I really do hope he shows at this one. Otherwise, I’m stuck waiting until next May for Blackpool to see him again…

Two people I’m fairly sure who won’t be there are the couple I always long to see of course: Pasha and Anya, who are, sigh, off to bigger and better things these days… Of course I’m so happy for them, but it is sad knowing I’ll likely not see them compete at one of these events again. I’m thrilled though that so many opportunities are opening up for professional ballroom dancers. The same couples win these competitions year after year after year. And, while it’s always fun for us spectators to watch, I can imagine how frustrating it must be to be a professional dancer knowing you’re likely going to place exactly where you have been for the past umpteenth years.

Anyway, unrelated to the USDSC, here’s some interesting stuff I found on the net:

1) Boris Willis has created a funny little “manly dance” for me, apropos of all my blogging on Bad Boys of Dance and Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers, etc. etc. etc. Thanks Boris!

2) The artist David Michalek, who made those Slow Dancing films I was going on about forever, has linked on his site to a bunch of us bloggers who covered the exhibit. So very cool to see artists taking bloggers so seriously and considering us to be our own little form of press! And, I noticed by reading down his list of bloggers that Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, posted a couple of pictures of the event on his blog, one of which intentionally includes both Midsummer Night Swing and Slow Dancing together like many of mine do. I’m glad someone else found the two events coinciding with each other interesting. He describes them, though, as “juxtaposed surreally” with each other in the photo. I’m still interested in why people think it’s odd that an exhibit of filmed dancers should coexist with people actually dancing, that people could enjoy both the physical experience of dancing themselves and of watching dance. To me it seems ideal, not surreal, to have these two events co-occur.

3) Root Magazine, based in San Francisco, is having a little thing on burlesque right now. There’s a write-up on a group that has its origins in Samba, which I found interesting. Root’s editor also deals with the feminist issue, which makes me happy.

4) And, finally, as I’m sure most people already know but I was a bit late to discover (oops 🙂 ), there’s a blog devoted to SYTYCD called, appropriately, Blogging So You Think You Can Dance. It’s really pretty good: they have links to practically everything extant on the internet dealing with the show, and they give detailed, fairly objective write-ups of what happened each night (which is great for me since I’m always out and missing it!) Thanks guys 🙂

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Flouting Genre Boundaries and Stereotypes of Stereotypes (and Just Creating a Fun Time!): Bad Boys of Dance and Mimulus at Jacob’s Pillow

Okay, here are my reviews, finally. Sorry it took so long!

The word Dance can be political, as I’ve discovered lately. A certain TV show combined with a current local exhibit (which is, sob sob, no longer local) have caused a bit of a stir here over what constitutes dance, and who, if anyone owns its definition. I thought when I left my job at night to go to my ballroom studio or a ballet performance I was leaving the world of politics behind 🙂 Don’t get me wrong: I’m very glad people are becoming more aware of diversity in dance and are thinking and speaking more critically about it, but if you’re a lover of both ballet and Latin, you can feel kind of caught in the middle sometimes.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying how wonderful it was to get away for a couple of short days and head up to Jacob’s Pillow, the oldest dance festival in the country now celebrating its 75th Anniversary with a host of diverse dance programs ranging from ballet to social to hip hop to world dance. The festival, which this year includes 21 companies from four continents and 10 countries, takes place in the idyllic Berkshire Hills on a farm that dance pioneer Ted Shawn bought in 1931 to house his Men Dancers, a company he created to showcase male talent, foster respect for dance as a suitable occupation for men, and combat stereotypes of male dancers as effeminate (which we know nothing about these days right!! — oh and thanks so much you guys for those excellent comments on my homophobia post!). The farm also served during the 1850s as a safe house on the Underground Railroad. With this history, it’s only fitting then that the festival, the only one to be declared a National Historic Landmark, encompass as it does the virtues of democracy, internationalism, and diversity. For a powerful, personal account of the history of the land and the festival from the perspective of one of last year’s dancers, go here.

So, I saw Mimulus, a Brazilian social / contemporary troupe on Wednesday night, and Rasta Thomas‘s Bad Boys of Dance, created with a nod (but just a nod!) to Shawn’s Men Dancers, on Thursday.

Okay, first Mimulus:

So fun! Their program, entitled “Do Lado Esquerdo De Quem Sobe” which translates from the Portuguese to “On the Left-Hand Side of Those Who Go Up,” was a splendid blend of social Latin and “contemporary” dance. Since I know there’s some confusion over what “contemporary” means — and I don’t profess to know myself — I’ll just say that to me it’s ballet without toe shoes or the themes and ‘pyrotechnics’ of classical ballet (like the 10,000 fouette turns performed by women or big walloping barrel turns all around the circumference of the stage done by men). And, to me, contemporary is not “modern” because modern has a certain look and feel to it — perfectly parallel, almost inwardly pointed toes, Martha Graham-ish arms appearing to emanate directly from the back as if they’re wings, etc. etc. Modern is interesting, but it has a certain quality about it to me that is dated, the same way modern art or modernist literature (Picasso, Matisse, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, etc.) has a time period. Although… the woman who taught our modern dance class at the Pillow taught us a routine she learned from Urban Bush Women, which is not dated… So, okay, I don’t really know anything about all of this nomenclature, but contemporary dance to me (and the way I’m using it here) means updated, modernized ballet that can easily be blended with other dance forms like social Latin (as in Mimulus) or jazz and hip hop and gymnastics (as in Bad Boys) to create new movement that contemporary audiences can identify with and relate to.

Okay, back to Mimulus… I love this company, from their name to the title of their program to their blend of dance styles! A “mimulus” is a genus of fauna known as the “monkey flower,” which, supposedly when squeezed, resembles a monkey. It is also, in medicinal folklore, a remedy for fear, any fear, so long as it’s named. The title of their piece, as they explain, refers to “those who go up the hills, who go up through history, who go up the body” (the heart, they point out, is located on the left side of the body). It has literal meaning: on the left-hand side of Ituiutaba Street in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, there is a group of sheds in which company members gather each day to practice, and to follow “the pulse of the city, stretching and shrinking in its confusing occupation of urban spaces.” The left also has political meaning, as the group aims to “construct and deconstruct, subvert, re-read dance and life.” Slavery was abolished in 1888 in Brazil, making it longer-lasting there than elsewhere. Social dance and music served to integrate newly freed slaves into the culture, which was then already a blend of Portuguese and indigenous peoples, resulting first in Choro, an eclectic, urban form of music and dance, then Samba (yay!!!), the national dance, a mix of African, Latin, and European. I feel like, ironically, and maybe I’m totally wrong about this, but from the people I’ve met and films and videos I’ve seen, it seems that, though slavery lasted longer in Brazil than here and elsewhere, there’s more integration there. Here for example, whites are not integrated at all with Native Americans, who remain confined to their reservations..

Anyway, I’m not sure I saw all the “subversion” and “deconstruction” and “re-reading dance and life” that they referred to in the program, but what I did see I loved nonetheless! What I definitely liked about Mimulus was that the combination of contemporary and Latin social dance worked so very well for me. There was just enough abstraction and enigma in the contemporary, balletic movement and the use of some of the props — giant rubber bands, shoes, plastic bags — to keep me curious and wondering what the piece was all about, while the Latin social dance — movement understandable to me and to most, I’d think — created an atmosphere of fun flirtiness, romance, harmony, elegant partnership, and just overall happy togetherness. The social dances themselves were all merged together into a unique blend of samba, salsa, tango, and even American-based swing. There would be several couples dancing this melange of Latin and American social dances, and then a balletic couple would emerge performing more abstract, lyrical movements with beautiful lifts, etc. But the social and balletic actually melted together here, rather than being on some kind of continuum. To me, this contrasted with, for example, Twyla Tharp’s Deuce Coupe from 1973, in which a classical ballerina, dancing on pointe would be center stage, surrounded by dancers doing more swingy jazzy movement, then the poppy social dance of the time. Tharp, I thought, was saying, classical ballet is my origin, the basis for all dance, but there are other, more popular forms of dance I’m interested in as well that stem from ballet, and they can all take up space on the stage at once. But here, it was as if the contemporary was more part and parcel of the social.

The running theme of the piece was symbolized by shoes: at the beginning, there are several pairs of unfilled lyrical shoes setting on the edge of the stage. Dancers would put them on, take them off, dance barefoot, dance with one foot bare the other shoed, and one dancer (usually male) would, at points, lift a female dancer who ran along the side of the stage, creating foot impressions right onto the set! These sets were really cool too. Symbolizing Brazilian urban architecture, at first they looked like they were made of some kind of boring, mundane metal. But you soon realized, when the dancers leaned against them (either from the front or back of the stage), or walked against them, they were completely pliable, so were actually made of silver-colored styrofoam or something. At one point, dancers from the wings would throw little blocks at the dancers onstage, and when the playfully humorous “block tossing” ended, you’d see little missing squares from the back wall, creating very interestingly abstract designs. The dancers offstage were clearly running along behind the set, taking blocks from it, then running into the wings and throwing them at the dancers onstage. So, architecture, as public space, is made for, and reflects, the needs of the community, and it grows and evolves right along with it.

And, regarding the shoes: when newly-freed slaves walked for the first time as free people, the program notes, shoes were a symbol of freedom, of status. Even if shoes were not constructed to fit the wearer’s feet correctly, they hung from the owner’s shoulder, a symbol of consumption. I’m not sure if the trajectory of the shoes, unworn, then worn by some, then taken off and worn by another, then one pair shared between a couple, then taken off and the foot freed, etc. completely made sense, but it was evocative and funny and fun to try to figure out. And all of the beautiful partner dancing was a delight!

At one point, as I noted in my photo essay, a male dancer took out a plastic bag (the same kind inserted into our programs), then, with a music-less background, rubbed it, creating beats of sound for the center-stage sambista to dance to. He motioned for us to do the same with our bags. Who knew what a plastic bag could do?! To me, this said that dance in Brazil, and anywhere, stems from the people, along with sound. One doesn’t need an orchestra or stereospeakers to create music; danceable music can easily be human-made right on the spot.

Okay, on to Bad Boys of Dance, which we saw, first in snippets at an outdoor production on Wednesday afternoon, then in whole in the Doris Duke theater on Thursday night. What fun, as I knew it would be 🙂 Like Mimulus, the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, very multi-talented group blended ballet with contemporary social dances — here not ballroom, but jazz, hip hop, capoeira / martial arts, gymnastics, and, as danced by guest artists, the cute Argentinian Lombard twins, bluesy tap and hip hop. The four-man group is led by probably the most famous contemporary dancer with ballet origins, Arab-American heartthrob Rasta Thomas. The others include Filipino-Canadian Bennyroyce Royon (a Winger contributor without whom I wouldn’t have heard of the group – thanks Bennyroyce!); Bryan Arias, a ballet dancer from Puerto Rico; and Broadway and competitive dancer Robbie Nicholson. Here are some pictures from their outdoor performance (which I posted in the album but am posting again here because I can’t help myself 🙂 ):

This was such a fun, juicy hodge-podge of dance that, like Mimulus, interfused together well. It was such a medley of movement it’s a little hard to describe, with most of the pieces containing within themselves several different types of dance. There was a lot of contemporary ballet (most of the men have extensive ballet training). But the ballet was combined, to fun, thrillingly unpredictable effect with gymnastics, capoeira / martial-arts-like movement, jazz, hip hop and even silly poppy social dances, like — I kid you not — in a piece choreographed by the dancers themelves, the Macarena! To be honest, I thought that was a bit corny, but Alyssa ate it right up! The mood would go from cutely funny to raucous and brazen to silly to beautifully serene and lyrical, to bluesy, to fast-paced, to techno and robotic- looking and so on. At one point, ballet’s classical vocabulary might be ridiculed (along with opera, as in “Figaro”, that piece choreographed by the dancers themselves that included Macarena), but in the next breath, ballet’s beauty and grandeur would be upheld. My favorite pieces were “Steel Visions,” a fast-paced jazzy number choreographed by Darrell Moultrie and set to Astor Piazzolla music; Robert C. Jeffrey’s “Heartbreak on Repeat,” a bluesy, beautifully lyrical piece danced by all, but containing a solo by Rasta that left me and Alyssa nearly on the floor; and “Take 4” choreographed by dancer Bennyroyce Royon, a fun, fast, rhythmic, at times techno and robotic-like, very imaginative combination of ballet, hip hop and jazz. I was also blown away by the guest artists, the very hot Martin and Facundo Lombard — “the Lombard Twins” — from Argentina who were able somehow to combine hip hop, swingy blues and tap dance to mad fun, very sexy effect.

The funny thing is, what led me to the production, I have to confess, was the troupe’s name 🙂 I am such a sucker for those crazy sky-high leaps and jumps and turn / jump / leaps, etc. that only male dancers are capable of 🙂 Sorry, I can’t help it!!! But, besides the very first, very short number, in which Rasta did some of those aforesaid leaps from the classical ballet Le Corsaire — and then it’s only to show what the night is NOT going to consist of — no such thing existed here. I felt like, personality-wise there was a certain cockiness (albeit cute) to the Lombard twins that seemed very male, but, other than that, this program didn’t really showcase any type of dance strengths that were essentially male. Which ended up being brilliant.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to see any archival footage of Shawn’s original Men Dancers, but, according to the resident Pillow scholar, Philip Szporer, who wrote a little note of commentary on the program, Shawn’s purpose with his troupe was, as I said above, to counter the then stereotype of male dancers as effeminate. So he often showed his male dancers in heroic, athletic poses, going out of his way to depict them as macho and ruggedly virile.

But here, there was no goofy crazy he-man posturing, no ‘look at me, I am man, I can lift my fellow man high above my head and toss him clear across the floor,’ no crazy stage-length leaps; it was just a bunch of guys dancing, dancing really really well. So, maybe Rasta is making fun of stereotypes with his naming of the troupe? Maybe his “Boys” are “Bad” because they don’t give a crap how they’re perceived; they’re dancers and they should be accepted as such, nothing more nothing less. It’s like he’s giving a big ‘screw you’ to all the homophobes. And how much do we love him for that!!! At the end, he has an emcee introduce the dancers by name, as if they’re heavyweight champions: “Ladies and gentlemen, weighing in at — pounds, from the Philippines is Bennyroyce Royon,” etc. It’s hilarious. And don’t get me wrong, what Szporer calls “the swoon factor” is most definitely there; if female dancers would have performed the same roles, Alyssa and I wouldn’t have been drooling all over the floor like we were, but we still would have been awed at the eclecticism, the excitingly unpredictable versatility, the talent.

Just a little note on Mr. Thomas, for people unfamiliar with him: I guess it makes perfect sense that this program was such a mouthwateringly savory stew of contemporary dance since Rasta himself is virtually a one-man amalgam of different dance genres. After being told by doctors he’d never walk properly following a horrible car accident at age 2, he threw himself first into martial arts, winning bizillions of black belt titles, then gymnastics, placing in the junior Olympics. When his plethora of championships led to serious cockiness problems 🙂 , his father threatened to take his hubris down a notch by forcing him into a tutu. Not one to resist a challenge, Thomas took his first ballet lesson. At first, he hated it, but admitted that after he reached puberty and began to take an interest in girls, that all changed. After going on to, of course, win a bunch of ballet competitions, Thomas danced with Kirov Ballet, then began guesting at a slew of prestigious ballet companies. But he’s most known as the star of Twyla Tharp’s Broadway hit, “Movin’ Out,” and as an actor in the Patrick Swayze film “One Last Dance.” Anyway, Thomas now says he loves ballet, it’s his heart and soul, but its vocabulary is limited and there’s only so much you can do with it. The classics are at least 50 years old now, he says. He’s hungry for more.

I guess I both agree and disagree with him about ballet having limits. While certain classics’ ability to speak to the human condition, to provide poetry for the soul, to entertain and move audiences, make them timeless, like a Shakespeare play, ballet, like literature, will die as an art, will become only a historical artifact if the classics are relied on too heavily and there’s never anything new. But new doesn’t mean that balletic movement has to be abandoned, that it can’t be expanded, its vocabulary broadened, and its boundaries with other forms of dance tested to bring new meaning and vigor to the dance form. Isn’t that what he did here???

I’m sorry this ‘review’ goes on and on and on — they give you so much info at the Pillow — with their elaborate program notes, pre-show lectures by resident Pillow scholars and post-show talks with the artists themselves, there’s just so much you wanna talk about! Sorry!

For Ms. Dunning’s much more compact and far less sprawling take on these programs, go here for Mimulus, and here for Bad Boys.

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Dance of The Best Kind — Provocative, Evocative and Meaning-Laden: Ohad Naharin’s DecaDance

Wednesday night I went to contemporary ballet company Cedar Lake‘s performance space in west Chelsea to see “DecaDance,” a new work comprised of pieces from the past 20 years choreographed by Israeli dancemaker Ohad Naharin for his Tel Aviv-based company, Batsheva.

Still a bit disoriented from jet lag, a long drawn-out meds-laden TAC headache, and coming down from my ballroom high, I was worried I just wouldn’t be into a small, modern dance performance enough to appreciate it (I’d ordered the ticket a while ago). But, happily, I was very wrong! “DecaDance” was just what the doctor ordered to get me out of my Blackpool-withdrawal depression and back into the ever-alive NYC dance scene.

To me, this is the best kind of dance: movement creating images that, combined with provocative words and/or exhilarating, exotic, or evocative music, unsettle, evoke, just compel you stop, look, and think. I remember Joan Acocella reviewing in the New Yorker Telophaza, the work Batsheva performed nearly a year ago at last year’s Lincoln Center Festival. I remember her saying she wished with all the goings-on in the world at the time, Israel’s premier dance company would have put on a program infused with some kind of political meaning. I understood her sentiment, mainly because I like that kind of work as well and am always immensely interested in knowing what it’s like to be a citizen of another country, to exist in a world completely different from my own, but I thought it unfair to demand dance containing some kind of meaning about world politics from a troupe simply because of the geopolitical situation of its country. But the funny thing is that, watching Wednesday night, though none of the pieces made any kind of simplistic statement, I think my brain just naturally infused everything I saw with a socio-political undertone, perhaps because of that geopolitical situation.

The program began with a line of dancers, dressed in white leotards and black tights. The dancers shouted chants whose meaning I couldn’t understand, then one by one, each dancer took a couple of steps forward and danced, then stepped back into line while another dancer took a turn. Then, after each dancer had his or her piece, the line stepped backward together, fading into the background shadows. The way the light reflected only the bright white leotards had the effect of making their legs fade into the dark, so that they looked like limbless torsos. The chanting made me think of a military regime, and the legless bodies of the effect of war. I have no idea if that was what Naharin had in mind, but that’s what I got.

That scene led to a very brief pas de deux between two women (or was it a woman and a man … can’t remember) dressed in black corsets lifting, scratching at, bouncing off of each other, and that blended into a scene with several men engaging either in a monk-like ritual cleansing involving a bucket of dark, muddied water, or else splashing themselves with war paint. About three-quarters of the way through that scene a scantily-clad yet virile-looking woman wearing a feathery headdress and a face-full of garish make-up (perhaps another kind of war paint) walked sexily across stage on low stilts. After the men left, she returned with a free-standing microphone atop a giant pitchfork and, in the manner of a cabaret performer, lip-synced the words to an industrial techno-aria. Because of her raunchy garb, gawdy makeup and the manly yet sexy way she walked on the body-distorting stilts, she evoked for me a frightening vision from the late Weimar Republic or perhaps a contemporary Russian sex slave (thanks to Blackpool, I have Russia on the mind lately: anytime there’s a ballroom dance competition, the environs are tranformed into a “little Russia”) — either way, a grotesque reminder of the way a time of uninhibited freedom can turn into a reign of terror or how one person’s idea of fun is another’s hell.

My favorite piece involved several women who danced to a spoken word accompaniment. In all of the reviews I’ve read where this program or different versions of it have been performed elsewhere, none mention this piece, so I have no idea what it’s called and unfortunately can’t remember the words of the voice-over perfectly. One of the annoying things about this program is that the playbill doesn’t specify which piece is from which longer work, and which musical number accompanies which work, so I couldn’t figure out what each piece was called or research it very well. Naharin says, the playbill notes, that he enjoys “breaking down and reconstructing” his work, “enabl[ing him] to look at many elements in the works from a new angle,” so he obviously doesn’t want us to get bogged down in trying to figure out which piece is from which larger work, but wants us to see it as a new whole. The ‘problem’ or maybe I should say ‘challenge’ with this for me is, I’m unfamiliar with his work and so have no idea if I’m totally reading anything completely wrong. I may have a wholly different interpretation if I saw, for example, the Weimar / Russian slave woman in the context of the whole “Sabotage Baby.” It made me want to see his other works so I could compare, see if I “got it right” or see how my interpretation shifted depending on context.

Anyway, back to my favorite piece, about which I couldn’t research since I couldn’t figure out it’s title, longer whole, or sound accompaniment …: the male (if memory serves correctly) voice-over, issues forth various orders to the women dancers, and perhaps to the audience, providing, as I saw it, an ironic commentary on living female. The voice orders you / them to play the game enough to be able to own a house and car, resist working or thinking too hard so as to over-stress their fragile compositions, reject big ideas or philosophies, reject too much beauty so as not get carried away with art, and my favorite line — always wipe your ass really well because it’s uncouth to let others know you just shit. The piece – both the lyrics of the voice-over and the dance movements, was repetitive: the speaker repeated each line before adding a new one. And each woman had a certain movement corresponding with each word. Everytime the phrase repeated, so did each woman’s dance phrase. It was really interesting seeing the way the dance phrase corresponded to the written, and the way the movement added to the meaning of the words. For example, when the voice-over dictated, “reject Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust,” a phrase near the beginning of the piece and thus repeated many many times, it was interesting to see each dancer’s interpretation of “spider,” “Beethoven,” and “damnation of Faust.” Some movements were unique to each dancer; others universal. It definitely didn’t speak to the state of Israel or have any huge overarching meaning for world affairs in the way the Acocella article wished for, but sometimes I find those quietly ‘personal-is-political’ pieces to have the most profundity.

Then there are a couple of pieces that “break the fourth wall”– ie: involve audience participation. One female dancer tried to pull me onstage with her to participate in this group jumpy hip hop – turned tango-y number, but I had to refuse because I was still woozy from the meds and, perhaps, ridiculously, still jet lag. Anyway, I never feel comfortable doing such things. She was nice and let me go, found someone else to get up there with her!

There are some other compelling pieces that I left out. I’m really interested to hear what others think about this. I found it very evocative, thought-provoking, very open to interpretation, and just a lot of fun. It’s showing through July 1st at Cedar Lake. Go!

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Chunnels Chunnels Everywhere…

Ha ha, now that I’ve calmed down a bit, looking at my last post, I was pretty harsh! It’s fun to be angry though … the truth often comes out when you’ve just come from something that impassioned you and you’re writing at 1:30 in the morning all cranky because of all the work you have to get through the next day to go on your dance vacation the following day — under such circumstances you’re not bothering to edit yourself and you’re just more honest… Anyway, I was basically trying to ponder ways to make ballet more popular. I feel that some of the reasons young people are turned off is because of the melodramatic acting and the story-lines that they can’t relate to either because they are too silly and not relevant or because they’re too abstract and don’t make sense. Everyone knows Shakespeare, everyone can relate to Shakespeare, he is timeless… I feel that if you do Shakespeare you can’t go wrong, and, even though I would most definitely go see Lubovitch’s Othello again and again and again, because that’s just how I am, it was still far from perfect, and I don’t know that a non-obsessed ABT-o-mane would do the same…

Anyway, apropos of all this, I had asked Apollinaire Scherr why she thinks opera is so much more popular than dance, and she and some other critics and readers responded. Go here to see that discussion.

By the way, not a whole lot of people went to Othello. There’s hardly any chatting on BalletTalk, not many pro reviews. And where is Alastair Macaulay’s NY Times review? Shouldn’t it be online by now? The audience Tuesday night wasn’t very full — I’d say 1/2 to 2/3 seats filled, which upsets me, especially given that this was the NY debut… We have to make younger audiences understand how great ballet is, how relevant and exciting and profound and moving and beautiful and poetic…

Speaking of which … Apollinaire has great hopes for ABT’s Sleeping Beauty! (Yay!!) … the debut of which I’m unfortunately going to be missing because of my trip. But I’ll be back for one of the later performances… I will also, horribly, be missing “Essential Balanchine” at New York City Ballet …

why oh why oh why does Blackpool have to come at this time of year! Can’t someone re-schedule it to coincide with opera season for cry-eye????

And why oh why can’t I take some other form of transportation … I love travel, I love trains, I love cars, and I LOVE ships — can’t I take a ship across the Atlantic?… like in the Titanic? I mean, not the Titanic per se of course, but a big huge ship — so romantic to travel in 19th Century fashion! Or why can’t there be underwater Chunnels everywhere like that between London and Paris? That would be soooo cool to take a big long Chunnel train to England, or Australia or Thailand or Japan… chunnels everywhere… who decided to create air travel instead of underwater transit…

Anyway, packing is oh so much fun:

 

I’ve been packing all week little by little, as I always do so it’s not so overwhelming all at once… I tend to forget less this way. Everyone makes fun of me because I’m so anal, but who was the only American at the dance festival last year who could use her cell phone and palm pilot and re-charge her digital camera???? — because who was the only one who remembered to bring, not just all of her chargers, but U.K. / Hong Kong electrical converters as well! I was very popular last dance festival…

 

I always go through my money belts as well scrounging around for any pounds and pence I can find. England does still use English money, right; they didn’t switch to the Euro yet? Look at all this pre-Euro European money I have (on the right) — I hope it’s worth something someday!

And look at all this Russian cash. I have so much left over because when I was in St. Petersberg, I met up with friends who were going on to Moscow while I was (traveling alone) returning to Helsinki. Since I was planning on giving my leftover cash to them, I didn’t exchange or spend it, but then whilst trying to catch my train at Finlandia Station, I couldn’t find my proper track because I was spelling Helsinki with a Cyrillic first letter that looks like our “E” instead of the letter that looks like our “X” – (the Russian alphabet doesn’t contain our “H”). So, I almost missed my train and forgot to hand over my cash! What am I gonna do with it now?!…

Packing my Winger t, for dance-y comfort 🙂

Aw, a pic from packing last year. My dear little Najma passed away last October from congestive heart failure. I miss her so much. Packing is just not the same without her…

Anyway, on one last dance note:

hehehe, I was joking around earlier about a male Bayadere and Marcelo Gomes dancing the lead. Then I saw in this week’s Time Out New York Gay and Lesbian section that there actually are some gay bars with male bellydancers!!!

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Is The Ability To Express Oneself Through Dance An Issue of Free Speech?: The First Annual New York Dance Parade!

Yesterday marked the first annual New York Dance Parade, held as both a celebration of social dance and a protest against the city’s increasingly infamous Cabaret Laws, which sharply restrict the number of clubs and restaurants that allow dancing. In order to allow more than two people to dance simultaneously, an establishment must apply for a cabaret license, which is apparently incredibly difficult to obtain. According to Time Out New York (read their article here), this obscure law was enacted in 1926 in order to restrict public lewdness and racial intermingling, then was given new vigor during Guiliani’s reign, though I’m not sure of his ostensible reasons for that. The issue of whether such laws are unconstitutional and should be struck revolves around whether dance is viewed as a form of expression important enough to deserve First Amendment protection, an issue recently addressed by the State Supreme Court, which held that it was not. I haven’t followed this litigation, but apparently the test case has made its way to through the Appellate Division (where it likewise failed), and is hoping for consideration by the high court. I think it’s an interesting issue. According to the TONY article, the law has affected more than just people who want to dance: some bands, such as a Zydecko one, have trouble finding locales who will even allow them to play since that music, with it’s fast fun rhythmic beat leads naturally to the forbidden activity.

The parade, which began at 31st Street and snaked downtown to Washington Square Park in the Village, where it culminated in a little party, was a lot of fun. Above are some hula dancers.


Some break-dancing guys doing some crazy overhead lifts!


This girl was amazing; she could really move on those stilts!

This guy was fun too — rocking out to some techno music!

Now in the park, where Samba New York, a super fun Brazilian percussion band entertained the crowd, compelling people to really get down…

… before taking to a small stage, set up below the arches, where they added this gorgeous Samba dancer donning a brilliant costume and very elaborate feathery headgear.


There was a pretty good crowd, though I think the turn-out would have been better had the weather not been so miserable (cold, rainy and windy — worst combination possible — and for mid-late-May — totally unjustified!!)

I think the issue is really interestesing and something I’ll definitely think more about and will keep my eyes open for the litigation. But I feel that there’s always two sides to every story. I’d moved into a lovely apatment in Astoria a few years ago only to undergo a stupidly difficult ordeal of breaking my lease after realizing my apartment, in the back of the building, abutted the back room of this rather tucked away Greek nightclub (not visible from the street) that stayed open until 5:00 a.m. every night but Monday and had singers and music. I’m a lawyer, though, and have to sleep at night; perhaps someone who either worked nights or was just a very heavy sleeper would have been fine with the apartment, but there was simply no way I could stay. Maybe the answer is either some kind of zoning or just apartment buildings being forced to be up front about something like that, but I can see the issue. Also, even if the law changes restaurants may have to increase their security, which is a very unfortunate stupid pain in the butt but may be necessary. At the park, I noticed one older guy was a little out of control really kind of grabbing this female dancer, and thrusting his pelvis into hers a bit too much. It seemed to make her uncomfortable but she was young and didn’t really know how to handle it and didn’t want to be rude. Unfortunately, there are guys who still don’t seem to get that a woman’s dancing is not an invitation to sex and doesn’t entitle them to grab and grope and do whatever else they want. Of course professional female dancers sometimes get harassed as well so that’s not at all an issue specific to social dancing… Dance is most definitely an invaluable form of expression, but very unfortunately, it’s not always the law that vitiates it.

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Not Strictly Ballroom: The First Ever 5-Boro Dance Challenge For Same Sex Ballroom Couples

Last weekend my friend invited me to this new ballroom dance competition held here in NY: the 5-Boro Challenge, a competition for same-sex ballroom dance couples. I couldn’t go and now I’m kicking myself because it looks like it was a total blast. And, it got a write-up in the City section of this Sunday’s New York Times!

I can’t seem to find a link to the Times — they don’t seem to have their City section online. But if you’re in the New York area, look for the article in hard copy at your local newsstand 🙂 (Edit: Jennifer found the link – it’s here — thanks Jen!) And, read about the Challenge at the above link. Also, I am told that this photographer was at the event — it doesn’t look like she has pics up yet from the 5-Boro, but she has some other great photos from Hungary, where there is apparently the largest same-sex ballroom dancing comp in the world!

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Where Does the "Queen" End and the "Woman" Begin?: Alexis Arquette. And, Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet

Last night, I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival a documentary about the journey of Alexis Arquette, of the famous acting family, from man to woman.

I’m glad I pre-ordered tickets; door sales lines were long:

Entitled “Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother,” this was one of the most fascinating documentaries I’ve seen, but not for the reasons touted by the filmmakers, who, unfortunately, had to return to L.A. and England and were unable to stay for an after-show Q&A. Will teach me not to wait until the end of the festival to see a movie — that’s one of the reasons I go to festival films, argh. And how much I would have LOVED to meet Alexis — a true character! Anyway, the press release stated that, though filled with celebrities, drag queens and Hollywood glitterati, the film was a serious look at transgendered life. I felt like it was actually more about the former, and regarding the latter, it left me with more questions than it answered — neither of which made it at all a disappointment. To the contrary, it was absolutely mesmerizing.

My only other experiences with the subject of transgender life come from Jeffrey Eugenides’s profound, brilliant novel Middlesex, one of the greatest American novels, ever, I think. And that story differered from this because the main character was hermaphrodic and, without an operation, decided to re-define himself as a man after being raised female. I missed the Felicity Huffman movie, which Oberon blogged about in detail. Other than that, I remember a person in college, who called herself Tatiana. My school was huge, though, and I never knew her; I only knew she tried out for both male and female parts on the cheer squad, freaking out many a male cheerleader, including my lovely then boyfriend. I felt sorry for her.

But this, I found to be more a very sympathetic portrait of a younger sibling lost in the shadows of his very famous sisters and searching desperately for his own voice. It drove home the point, without necessarily meaning to, that growing up in the light of the cameras with a large family and many flamboyant, big-personalitied drag queen friends, can, ironically, make for a very lonely life.

Of course he doesn’t seem lonely, having adopted that same ‘huge personality’ as his sisters and drag companions. It’s a self-made documentary, so his face and voice are everpresent, and, while his incessant whining can really grate on your nerves at times, overall he’s just simply fascinating. By the way, I’m very aware that some would say it’s wrong to use masculine pronouns to refer to him since he sees himself as a woman, but this was the crux of my problem here. Unlike Cal in Middlesex, who begins life as a girl but narrates his story from his older, male point of view which compels the reader to envision him as a man, Alexis, who changed his name in his teens but, interestingly, never says what from, for the vast majority of the film actually is a man and seems, to me, essentially masculine — a total preening Queen, who loves dressing in drag and wearing makeup and continuously changing hair colors, but definitely a man. The film includes several clips of him growing up, and spending his teens, twenties and early thirties as a gay man, and a really good-looking one at that — in fact, he kind of reminded me of Evan McKie on the Winger 🙂

A gay man, he seemed to know little of women’s bodies. When he goes to the plastic surgeon, of course he wants humongous breasts, with nipples practically at chin-level. The surgeon can only laugh. “What, you can’t do that?” Alexis asks dejectedly. Forced to undergo psychiatric therapy in order to gain the right to have the surgery — understandably humiliatingly aggravating (is this mandatory for people having breast enhancement or lyposuction?) — Alexis brings his therapist a self-made drawing of how he envisions his future vagina: it resembles a sweet, tiny peach core. First thing though, he is quick to assert, the nose has got to go. His nose, he tells his surgeon, is that of a man — the type of man he is attracted to for sure — but it’s just not a female nose. So, he has a very idealized notion of the exact female body he wants. It wasn’t surprising to me that many of his friends began to accuse him of making the film not because he actually wants the reassignment surgery, but for attention.

For a film about changing one’s sex organs, it dealt very little with actual sexuality. There are some really interesting interviews with doctors about how far male to female reassignment surgery has come in the last few years: parts of the penis are maintained and used to construct the clitoris, making the new clitoris nearly as sensitive as a real one — but that’s more physical than sexual. As a gay man attracted to and used to sleeping with other gay men, if he became a woman he would need to turn to straight men for romantic partnership, with whom he seemed to have little experience. That’s just so completely mind-boggling to me. I’d think it would take a very open-minded straight man to go for someone who was once another man. At one point, he does film himself with a very young boyfriend, but he is still male then, and it’s unclear whether this shy, untalkative young man, so different from Arquette, is gay, straight, or bi.

Unlike in Middlesex, where I felt myself vehemently hating any character who wanted Cal to remain female, here I found myself wanting so badly for Alexis NOT to get the surgery. Maybe it was just that I kept thinking of that young Alexis as so Evan-y and such a beautiful man, or maybe it’s that I was just so scared for him, as I would be for anyone, to have such a serious surgery. I won’t reveal the end, but he begins to freak out a little as well after he “passes” his psych exam.

All in all, I found it an absolutely fascinating portrait of a preening but confused, emotionally needy, but very human person whose need to feel comfortable in his skin, though taken to another level here, is ultimately something everyone can relate to. If he was trying to gain celebrity, and I DON’T think he was, I have to say, he is as unforgettable as Cal, Eugenides’s main character. From here on, I think every time I see anything starring any Arquette, I will definitely think of him. I highly highly highly recommend it when it hits the theaters.

On Thurday night, Dea and I, used Dance Link’s two-for-one ticket offer (you’ll get a one-year subcription to their discount program if you attend the Fall For Dance Festival), and went to see the fabulous Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet at the Joyce in Chelsea. They danced two pieces, “Migration” (about “the hierarchical migration of birds and mammals”), and our favorite, “The Moroccan Project,” a gorgeous contemporary ballet danced to beautifully rhythmic and melodious African, Moroccan, Arabic, and Andalusian Flamenco music. To me, it epitomized what I love in contemporary ballet — dance ripe with possibilities for taking traditional ballet and fusing it with other kinds of beautiful movement from around the world — here, African, Spanish, Moroccan, Indian — to create something really sublime and worldly.

The piece consisted of a combination of beautiful duets — some romantic, some playful, some fraught with discontent — solos, and ensemble work. During the group parts, the dancers would never dance alone but always worked with and off of each other, looking closely at each other, reacting to each other’s movement, at one point literally bouncing off of each other: during one of my favorite parts, four men laced arms and turned away from a lone woman who, in “Red Rover” fashion, thrashed and hurled her body at them desperately attempting to convince them to allow her into their fraternal circle.

Another favorite part of mine were the “solos” — where only one dancer is actually moving on one part of the stage, but other dancers are onstage as well, very closely watching the moving dancer, examining his or her movement, their facial expressions and tilted heads intently trying to understand the statement that moving dancer was making with her or his body. Visually, it had the effect of being an exercise in learning another language: the moving dancer was definitely speaking to the stationary dancers, and they were surely listening and understanding. With the music bearing foreign lyrics beating in the background, the point is compellingly made that dance is another language as vibrant, complex and meaningful as any spoken.

Dea and I also noticed that the dancers — all wearing matching costumes of understated peach dresses for the women, tan gaucho-styled pants for the men — somehow blended in with each other, though they had varying skin color: no one person stood out as being, for example, “the African American dancer” or “the Latino dancer.” Because it was a truly multi-ethnic company, it did not look at all out of the ordinary for, for example, a red-haired freckled man to be doing intense African-based movements to Gnawan percussive instruments. How awesome is that!! “If I could be a ballet dancer,” Dea said, “this is the kind of company I’d want to be in!”

Also, Dea brought this for me from Brazil:

 

It’s a CD by a Brazilian singer named Marisa Monte, with lots of really pretty samba songs. I’ve never heard of her and I love the music — how sweet is Dea 🙂

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Final Thoughts on The Nothing Festival With a Focus on Luciana Achugar

For the past two weeks, choreographer Tere O’Connor’s “The Nothing Festival” which took place at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea and just concluded this weekend has been the talk of the town. Basically, in an effort to explore how meaning is produced in dance, O’Connor asked eight modern / post-modern choreographers to choreograph a 30-minute piece starting from “nothing” — that is, with no preconceived concept. The first set of four choreographers — Douglas Dunn, HIJACK, Sam Kim, and Dean Moss — showed their work during the first week’s performances; the second set of four — Jon Kinzel, Luciana Achugar, Susan Rethorst, and Walter Dundervill — the second week; and sandwiched in between, on the afternoon of the 21st, was a four-hour-long panel discussion moderated by O’Connor and including all eight choreographers (which is pictured above). O’Connor also led shorter discussions following each weekday performance with the choreographers whose work was being shown on that night. Doug Fox from the Great Dance blog and I attended the April 21st discussion and the first set of performances that night, and I attended the second set on the 25th.

As I said, this festival has been the talk of the dance town, and so much has already been said, that I don’t have a tremendous amount to add. But since no one has talked at length about Achugar’s work, and since it was my personal favorite, I’m going to focus on that piece. First, though, for anyone who doesn’t know about the festival and wishes to explore the ideas and bit of controversy it engendered, I’ll be a good blogger and try to point to everything that’s already been said:

First, go here for TONY dance editor Gia Kourlas’s very useful interview with O’Connor; critic Roslyn Sulcas wrote an early and much debated critique of the idea behind the festival but that is unfortunately no longer available to non-NYTimes subscribers so linking is pointless; for Newsday critic Apollinaire Scherr’s initial write-up, go here; for a first set of responses to that, including O’Connor’s, go here; for Doug’s comments to Apollinaire, go here; for my own musings to Apollinaire on the April 21st discussion, go here; for critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s analysis, go here; for Doug Fox’s coverage on his own blog, go here and here; for Village Voice’s Deborah Jowitt’s very thorough review, go here; and finally, for Jennifer Dunning’s NYTimes review of the whole festival, go here. I think I got it all; if I didn’t, I apologize!

As a relative newcomer to the post-modern dance scene, my only expectation going into this festival was that I was going to learn something about the relation between dance and meaning. This festival definitely met my expectations on that front. Although I often felt during the April 21st discussion that I was kind of eavesdropping on a debate already well underway and some of the language used (while giving me a certain nostalgia for my grad school days 🙂 ) was a bit foreign to me, I still got the overall sense of great frustration dance-makers feel when trying to apply for grants to funders focused on the commercial value of the project and their need to know details of what the piece is about before it is even begun, as well as their deep annoyance at dance critics who, some choreographers feel, impose their own pre-conceived notions of what dance is and is not in determining, and recommending, whether something is worth seeing. I had some strong feelings about the discussion, which I posted as a comment on Scherr’s blog, and which she responded to (which I linked to above but will again), so am not going to repeat that here. In general, several critics were in attendance and it was really interesting to see them interact with the choreographers; at one point things got heated, but I appreciated that because I felt like serious frustrations were vented and deeper discussion came out of it. O’Connor had just embarked on a dialog with former Village Voice writer Elizabeth Zimmer on what is important in viewing a dance — is it just the beauty of the movement or is there more? — when time limitations forced an abrupt end. In the end, I love the discussion that the festival engendered, both on April 21st and in all of the newspapers and blogs, and I hope there can be more like it.

So, the performances: overall, my favorite piece — which is not at all to say it was “the best” but just that it spoke to me the most — was Luciana Achugar’s “Franny and Zooey” (not a direct relation to the book by Salinger, as the choreographer explained at the post-show discussion). I’m not sure exactly why it was my favorite — it just seemed to have the most going on in it that I could relate to. It began with spotlights jumping around, shining out on various places on the stage and in the audience. At points, while focused on the audience, it was rather blinding. The spotlight ended on a woman who ran out onstage and collapsed to the ground, where she lay, seemingly unconscious. The focus then changed to a video projected on the back wall showing a woman — Achugar — in a studio warming up, then trying to organize her movements into a dance. Unexpectedly, two cats, named Franny and Zooey, pets of the studio owner, entered, plopped down on the floor and began doing cat things — bathing, sleeping, curiously human-watching… Achugar tried to shoo them away, since, as she revealed post-show, she was allergic, but for the most part, the cats were oblivious. Slowly, the focus — both Achugar’s and the viewer’s, came to be on them. I noticed as they got up, shifted in space, and pranced around, how balletic and dancer-like the cats were balancing as they did toward the balls of their paws (if paws have balls that is!), looking all weightless and feathery, and the dramatic things they can do with those tails, waving them about in the air. I remember when my cat was still alive how much I wanted a tail 🙂 — such an instrument of expression! Anyway, Achugar seemed to share my thought, as soon she crouched down on all fours and began imitating the cats. Throughout this videotaped activity, female dancers — four in all besides Achugar — took the stage and danced. At one point, the video was turned off and the women approached the audience, the tops of their dresses unbuttoned provocatively. As they took to the aisles, walking very slowly, they looked directly at audience members in each row, making sure to make eye contact. It was slightly uncomfortable for me, and I thought of this activity along with the initial blinding spotlights shined out on the audience, as turning the spectator / looked at, viewer / viewed relationship on its head — now the gaze of the women, provocatively dressed and soon to be naked — was turned on us, making us complicit in their world, kind of in the manner of Manet’s Olympie… Achugar, on the video, soon disrobed as she crawled around, cat–like on the studio floor. In the end, the women lift up the real Achugar, lying on the stage floor, all engage in a playful romp in which clothes wind up being shed, then dance around the stage naked, jovially and “unashamed” to use Dunning’s word. While there may have been no fully fledged story, I felt like there were hints of body image issues overcome, exploration of range of human movement and notions of beauty through casting a watchful eye on another species, and, as I said, challenging the dichotomy of the (traditionally female) watched versus watcher.

Parts of other pieces caught my eye too (but I won’t go into as much detail or this post would be 100,000 words long): the contrast both literally and stylistically between Walter Dundervill’s movement (that man can really dance and he’s very sexy — I wish I could move like him!) and the constricting, corseted 18th Century costumes — it was a spectacle just to watch him dress his dancers; Susan Rethorst’s depiction of a large group of women humorously vying for space in the tiny apartment she is now forced to work from after losing her studio to skyrocketing rents, and her ability as a dancer to evoke profundity from such a simple, very human, everyday gesture as shoulder shrugging — Dunning remarked on this too; and, as I mentioned in my comment to Apollinaire, I was struck visually by Sam Kim’s piece in which two women, wearing lacey white dresses, inch-long darkly polished fingernails, and their hair long and unruly — sometimes prettily feminine, sometimes montrously out-of-control, by turns caress, madly fight, then placate each other nearly rendering each other catatonic at times, which was titled “Cult” and I surmised could have denoted a kind of cult of femininity and its potential destructiveness.

I knew I was going to see experimental pieces, none of which would be fully formed, and so I didn’t judge them on those grounds. I enjoyed the process of simply sitting in the audience watching, thinking about the movement, the interactions between the dancers, the visuals, the progression of the piece, and arriving at my own conclusions about the meaning of each work, or what I took from it.

Last, in her article Jowitt talks about the artwork on display in the lobby.

Doug and I found it fascinating as well. A video camera surreptitiously set up on the wall near the street records patrons’ images and projects them onto a screen on the opposite wall. Movement of outside passersby triggers this little skeletal figure to begin dancing on the screen. Very amusing to look up at the screen and see this little bouncing skeleton guy “dancing” with you 🙂