Discounted Tickets to Batsheva at BAM
February 18, 2009
From March 4th to 7th, Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company and artistic director Ohad Naharin will return to Brooklyn Academy of Music with the NYC premiere of Max. Performed by ten dancers to original music by Maxim Waratt (Naharin’s musical pseudonym), Max is an exploration of the pains and pleasures of being alive.
BAM is offering all tickets to Batsheva’s performances at 30% off regular prices, so tickets that were originally $20 are now just $13.50. To take advantage of the discount, mention code 10700 when you order tickets. Call 718.636.4100, visit the BAM box office, or enter the code when you buy online. Please note that this offer expires on March 1st at 11:59 PM, so be sure to order soon.
Naharin and a group of Batsheva dancers will also be presenting a special artist talk on March 3rd at 7 PM, discussing Max and providing a live demonstration of Naharin’s “Gaga” movement language. This is a unique opportunity to see Gaga demonstrated by the creator himself.
Glass Pieces at New York City Ballet
February 17, 2009
This week, New York City Ballet will perform Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces on its “Founding Choreographers II” program. Named after the work’s composer (Philip Glass), Glass Pieces is memorable for its pulsating rhythms and urban streetscape created by a large corps of dancers. Georgina Pazcoguin and Adrian Danchig-Waring, a newly promoted soloist, discuss the three sections of the work in the above video. Last June I singled out Danchig-Waring in my review of the piece, which was performed as part of the Jerome Robbins Celebration, saying, “Percussive rhythms of Akhnaten were the focal point of the third section. My eyes were continually drawn to Adrian Danchig-Waring, the clear leader of the cluster of men who moved as a pack, stomping and making distinct changes in direction.”
NYCB’s Founding Choreographers II program will be performed on February 18, 21, and 22. Tickets can be ordered online or by calling 212.870.5570.
Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey at DTW
February 14, 2009
Christiana Axelsen and Zoe Scofield, photo by Juniper Shuey
On Thursday evening, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t made its NYC premiere at Dance Theater Workshop. This seventy-minute collaboration between Seattle-based choreographer Zoe Scofield and her husband, visual and video designer Juniper Shuey, premiered at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in 2007. the devil you know is simultaneously refined and raging, guided not by a narrative, but rather by an accumulation of emotions. Hidden beneath the wildly explosive movement and ghostly stares is a vulnerability that runs its course throughout this stunning piece.
The opening projection of rapidly falling snow creates a pressured atmosphere – one in which the audience is weighed down while feeling as if they are rising above it. The pressure mounts as Morgan Henderson’s crackling electronic score grows louder and a corps of dancers, students from Barnard College, twitches and trembles. What starts as a delicate image of snow becomes frighteningly chilling, setting the stage for the types of transformations throughout the work. Scofield draws upon her solid training in ballet to show rigorous technique, clear lines, formations, and patterns. But the balletic foundation is often distorted. Torsos curl, hips jut out, and arms are more spidery than swan-like. Grace is counterbalanced by ferocity. The satisfying rawness of the devil you know is not only apparent in the movement, but also in the embodied emotions emanating from the dancers’ cells. Scofield, in particular, is possessed by a force that overwhelms her soul, causing her to wildly convulse and gasp without warning. Yet, she succeeds at breaking down the theater’s fourth wall by sucking the audience into her emotional state with the subtlest of glances.
Photo by Ken Aaron
Emotional depth is also visible among the dancers’ interactions. In a duet for a woman and the only man in the piece, the dancers violently grab at each other’s necks, but in the end, she supports his neck with the top of her foot as he slowly rolls across the floor in silence. Another couple imitates this mesmerizing image. It is one of the tenderest moments in the work.
Charcoal-colored confetti falls throughout the last third of the piece, creating a murkier setting than at the piece’s opening. After another round of vicious stomping and leaping to a repetitive, rhythmic score that combines percussion and electronics, the pace mellows and the dancers return to their starting positions, with squares of yellow light cast from above. The rich emotional history embedded and revealed in Scofield’s movement comes full circle, but along the journey, the dancers reach a heightened consciousness of their surroundings and selves.
the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t continues this evening at DTW. Tickets can be ordered online, at the box office, or by calling 212.924.0077.
Read an interview with Juniper Shuey at DTW’s blog, and learn more about Scofield and Shuey at their website.
Cedar Lake Checks Into a Library
February 12, 2009
This week’s Project 52 shows clips of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s recent installation at the Salt Lake City Public Library.
LAVA to Perform at the Brooklyn Lyceum
February 10, 2009
Beginning this Thursday, the all-female Brooklyn-based movement ensemble LAVA will premiere we become at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Directed by LAVA’s founder and Artistic Director Sarah East Johnson, we become builds upon LAVA’s signature themes – women’s strength and power, the nature of relationships, and our connection to both urban and natural environments – while exploring concepts of neighborhood, harmony, separatism, and revolution. The piece will showcase the ensemble’s unique movement vocabulary: an athletic combination of acrobatics, wrestling, improvisation, and trapeze. Other elements such as meditation, capoeira, rope climbing, and movements observed on NYC sidewalks have also been incorporated into this evening-length work.
The ensemble has collaborated with singer-composer Toshi Reagon to create a musical score that includes text, vocals, arrangements, and harmonies inspired by the show’s themes. Additionally, longtime LAVA collaborator Nancy Brooks Brody has created a visual design that spans the color spectrum.
we become opens on February 12th with a benefit to support LAVA, and performances continue through March 1st. Tickets can be ordered online.
LAVA’s we become, February 12-March 1
Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays and Sundays at 7 PM
The Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Avenue, Brooklyn
M/R to Union Street
