Deganit Shemy & Company at Danspace
February 15, 2010
Deganit Shemy dancers, photo by Yi-Chun Wu
Israel-born choreographer Deganit Shemy presented two premieres at Danspace Project over the weekend. Aggression, vulnerability, desire, and power were evident in both all-female works. In Blink, a trio for Erika Eichelberger, Denisa Musilova, and Savina Theodorou, the dancers were frequently silenced by others’ actions. Words were muffled as a dancer spoke into the stomach of another, and Tei Blow’s sound design created industrial noise that drowned out the dancers’ voices. Legs slapped brutally against the wood floor, or became entangled with other limbs. There was common pain, but the women’s varying costumes and distinct facial expressions – though they all, at one point or another, stared fiercely at the audience – distinguished them as individuals.
round 2, a longer piece for five women, built on the themes in Blink, but was less convincing and eventually numbing. Wearing colorful athletic attire and working around and within a square space defined by red tape, there were more muffled words and violence. The sound included cheers, street noise, and onstage metronomes set at varying speeds. Sporadic fits of laughter were insincere, but the wrestling was not. As the dancers violently slammed into one another, it was clear that this was not just a match to determine winners from losers. Within the confines of the red tape, these women fulfilled their most primitive and destructive urges. Yet round 2 still felt restricted – both physically and emotionally – and uncertain of its intent. The ending was richly textured as the dancers created waves of tranquil, undulating movement spread across the floor, but the audience never learned the outcome of the match. Round 3, it seems, is inevitable.
Actors Learn Gaga for The Miracle Worker
February 12, 2010
photo by John Dugdale
William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker opens on Broadway today – the first revival in nearly fifty years. A recent New York Times profile of Abigail Breslin, who plays Helen, revealed that the actors trained in Ohad Naharin’s movement language, Gaga, in order to prepare for the physical demands of their roles. Lee Sher, who cofounded LeeSaar The Company in 2000, oversaw their training throughout the production. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
One key to Ms. Breslin’s preparation has been Lee Sher, the production’s physical-training adviser, who works with Ms. Breslin and Ms. [Alison] Pill [who plays Annie Sullivan] for an hour before each rehearsal. An Israeli dancer and actress, Ms. Sher has trained the two women in the art of Gaga movement, in which performers tap into energies and emotions to develop a physical language that circumvents habits of communication based on dialogue. Ms. Sher said these movement techniques are well suited to Helen, noting, for instance, the crucial scene when Annie and Helen match strength and wits at the breakfast table. The scene runs to four pages of dialogue-free stage directions in the script.
“For scenes like that we have to help Abby’s body find a new way of being — the way she moves, the way she sits, the way she reacts to Annie — so that the audience will not feel so familiar with the ways that Abby’s Helen acts and reacts,” Ms. Sher said. “Abby, Kate [Whoriskey, the play’s director] and I want the audience to feel that Helen could do something unpredictable, wild or scary at any moment.”
It’s wonderful to see artists outside of dance embracing Gaga and recognizing how it can strengthen the body and raise awareness of conscious and subconscious movement. In preparation for the non-seeing, non-hearing role of Helen Keller and the other characters who interact with her, Gaga is undoubtedly beneficial.
The BodyCartography Project: ½ Life
February 10, 2010
photo by Sean Smuda
From tonight through Sunday, PS122 presents The BodyCartography Project’s ½ Life. The description of the piece, created by dance and video artists Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad, sounds harrowing and mesmerizing:
“This evening length work investigates the survival of the body amidst a world of scientific research, data, and control. The performance hovers geographically at the edges of the Pacific Ocean – connecting nuclear super power USA, atomic survivor Japan, and nuclear free New Zealand. Performers from these three countries team up with a physicist to pursue experiments in objectification, understand the physics of nuclear power through interpretive dance, build contemporary folk dances, translate data into movement, and distill reality into a series of marks on a chalkboard.”
Tickets to ½ Life can be ordered online, and you can learn more about The BodyCartography Project at their website. Here’s an excerpt from their intriguing mission statement:
“Our site-specific work invites participants to enter their animal-like appetites and childlike curiosities for physical investigation through engagement of the sensorial body. We activate space and challenge social and perceptual limitations of physical freedom and imagination. We investigate the relationships between body systems and earth systems as a way to build empathy and understanding of the planet and to build movement with meaning for individuals and communities.”
New Ballet in Yale’s “Prokofiev Rediscovered”
February 8, 2010
Adam Hendrickson, photo by Joe Anderson
Tonight at 8 PM, New York City Ballet soloist Adam Hendrickson’s newest ballet will premiere at the Yale School of Music’s program Prokofiev Rediscovered. The event will be streamed live from Yale, and also performed tomorrow night, February 9th, at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. Tickets are available online. Hendrickson’s ballet, commissioned by the Yale School of Music, is part of a program that will feature recently discovered Prokofiev work, all played by pianist and Prokofiev specialist Boris Berman. The ballet is set to Prokofiev’s 1939 Music for Athletic Exercises – a piece that has never been performed in New York – and features dancers Elysia Dawn, Colby Damon, and Matthew Renko, with costumes by NYCB principal Janie Taylor. Hendrickson’s last ballet was performed in 2008 as part of the New York City Ballet Dancers’ Choice event. He is also one of the dancers in the forthcoming premiere of Opus Jazz: The Film.
Dance Films at the Rubin Museum
February 7, 2010
A still shot from Dream On Me, Nadine Helstroffer and Mark Taylor
Last Wednesday evening, two dance films by director John Bush and French-born choreographer Nadine Helstroffer premiered at the Rubin Museum of Art. Absence Presence, a solo for Helstroffer commissioned by the museum and filmed on the gallery floor of the exhibit “Eternal Presence: Handprints and Footprints in Buddhist Art”, attempted to evoke spirituality and enlightenment through Tibetan paintings and spiraling, fluid movement. The heavily edited film featured close-up shots of the artwork that frequently faded to show Helstroffer on the gallery floor. Her otherworldly, slightly spacey expression and graceful presence were permanent fixtures in the film. It would have been interesting, and perhaps more powerful, to view this work live, as a site-specific piece in the museum. As a film, the dancer’s connection to the paintings and setting never fully came to fruition.
Dream On Me was even less successful. The overly glossy work journeyed through a variety of outdoor locations in New York City that highlighted contrasts between human-made structures and natural environments. A shifting ensemble of eight men and women danced on the rooftop of a building in midtown, on the shores of the Hudson, and through a snowy Central Park with The Gates art installation (2005) visible in the background. More often than not, the film looked like an instructional yoga video. The dancers dramatically posed on rocks in front of sparkling water, and at another point, three women frolicked around blossoming trees while wearing puffy pink dresses that were more appropriate for a three-year-old in a spring dance recital. Dream On Me came across as corny and insincere. The shift from one setting to the next was incoherent and meaningless.
