The Whiz: Obamaland
June 13, 2010
Photo by Steven Schreiber
Ease on down the road to recession and back from the brink of fantasy in Nicholas Leichter and Monstah Black’s take on “The Wiz/ard of Oz” for the Obama generation. Featuring choreography by Leichter and a commissioned score by Black with added musical selections, The Whiz: Obamaland is a full-spectrum original show of song, dance, and theatrical extravaganza that revisits The Wizard of Oz and its black version, The Wiz, through the prism of American euphoria, expectation, disappointment, and acceptance of the imagined promise of a post-racial society. The 75-minute work showcases an array of different dance, performance, and music styles – house, funk, postmodern, drag, hip-hop, contemporary, and psychedelic – which traverse a landscape of hopes, fears, dreams, and home.
Performances take place Wednesday through Saturday, June 16th thorough 19th at 8 PM at Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street) in New York City. Tickets are $20 at Ovationtix or by calling 212.352.3101.
YelleB Dance Ensemble Presents Pericardium
May 26, 2010
This weekend at Joyce SoHo, YelleB Dance Ensemble presents the premiere of Pericardium, a multicultural, multidisciplinary work that reveals human stories of physical and emotional walls.
Since 2006, NYC-based choreographer Ella Ben-Aharon has engaged in an artistic collaboration with Israeli video artist Adi Shniderman and German architect Matthias Neumann, continually exploring the use of portable walls as means of reconfiguring space while finding the delicacy of influences between body, virtual, and physical spaces. In Israel, Edo Ceder has started creating a video dance with British filmmaker Dan Farberoff to be filmed at the Separation Wall (also called the Israeli West Bank Barrier or Security Fence) in an attempt to screen it on both sides and spark a dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis who live daily by the wall.
The essence of Pericardium lays in the ambiguous consequences of building a wall: Protection vs. Isolation, Visible vs. Invisible, Unity vs. Separation, Support vs. Obstacle, and Inside vs. Outside. Does building a defense wall bring familiar comfort? Who does it really enclose? Who does it protect? Pericardium strips political agendas and reveals personal stories within.
Pericardium will be performed at Joyce SoHo, May 27th through 29th, at 8 PM. Tickets can be ordered online or by calling 212.242.0800.
National Arts Advocacy Day: What You Can Do
April 13, 2010
Americans for the Arts has declared today the 23rd Annual National Arts Advocacy Day. More than 500 arts, education, entertainment, and policy leaders have gathered at The National Arts Action Summit in Washington to develop strong public policies and support for increased public funding for the arts.
Meanwhile, there are several ways that you can be a part of Arts Advocacy Day without traveling to DC. If you’re on Twitter (I am!), you can make “arts” into one of Twitter’s trending topics today by creating a tweet with the hashtag #arts or joining the Tweet Arts Day campaign. This is a fast and efficient way to spread the message through the constantly growing Twittersphere that the arts vital to our communities.
You can also participate in Why Dance Matters, a virtual event that rallies the online dance community by encouraging everyone to answer the question, Why does dance matter to you, your community, your country, etc? For more information, check out the Facebook event.
While thinking about why dance matters, I remembered Rachel Maddow’s inspiring talk on dance, art, and society last summer at Jacob’s Pillow. She had a lot of smart, witty things to say, but here’s one particularly powerful statement:
“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ‘sissy’. Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, it is essential; you are, in [Jacob’s Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.”
I also encourage you to check out Joanna Chin’s post on ARTSblog, which makes a compelling, straightforward argument for the value of the arts. She says, “Arts = Arts; Arts = Humanity; Arts = Health/Quality of Life; Arts = Civic Engagement and Social Change; Arts = Economic Vitality; Arts = Creativity/Innovation = Growth/Vitality; Arts = Cultural Tourism = Economic Vitality; Arts = Jobs & Industry; Arts = Shared Benefit.” Yet, Chin wonders if there are other ways to argue for the arts and communicate them to an audience, and invites readers to share their comments on her post.
Taking action does not – and should not – be limited to today. Arts Advocacy Day is a reminder that advocating for the arts is an ongoing activity, whether by attending a performance, learning how to advocate and influence decision makers, networking with artists and arts leaders in your community, participating in an arts event, or reflecting on how your own arts education (or lack of arts education) has affected your life. No matter how you get involved, Arts Advocacy Day serves as a reminder that being an arts advocate is empowering and crucial to the future of the arts.
Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion: The Radio Show
March 1, 2010
Kyle Abraham
St. Mark’s Church, the home of Danspace Project, was packed on Saturday evening for the closing performance of Kyle Abraham’s The Radio Show – and with good reason. Abraham is an incredibly talented, young choreographer overflowing with lush movement and ideas that he beautifully crafted in collaboration with his company, Abraham.In.Motion, for their first evening-length work.
The Radio Show was broken into two halves, called “AM 860” and “106.7 FM”, sister stations that Abraham remembers listening to while growing up in Pittsburgh. The latter station went off air this past September, raising questions for Abraham about communication and the role of radio – more specifically, black radio – during troubling times. Throughout the work, the choreography and sound score continually seemed to ask, “Are we still listening?” Fluid bursts of kinetic movement were interspersed with slow walks or abrupt pauses, often echoing the static that interrupted excerpts from myriad well-known songs that spanned from the 70s to present day. The cast of seven, including Abraham, was so in tune with one another and the vision for this work that you could feel the airwaves vibrating through their well-trained, agile bodies.
Excerpts from call-in radio brought up gender, sexuality, and relationships – themes that were also evident in many of the trios and duets throughout the second half of the performance. Three women strutted competitively; two men longed for each other, separated by a diagonal stretch of light; and a tender duet for a man and woman indicated pain beyond their control. Dancers entered and exited from the wing-less sides of St. Mark’s Church (they sat and watched each other when not performing), allowing various scenarios to blend into one another, often building as another one disintegrated. The layering effect spoke volumes about the ebb and flow of communication, and again reflected the rapidly changing medley of songs, static, and radio talk. Trousers and backless shirts designed by Sarah Cubbage accentuated the dancers’ fluid torsos, while Dan Scully’s lighting illustrated a dim, melancholy atmosphere and brighter moments that aligned with the radio excerpts.
Early in the piece, Abraham quivered uncontrollably as he conveyed a range of emotions. His evolving reactions to socio-political situations, along with the rest of the cast’s, flowed through The Radio Show in a smart, compelling way. The combination of lush, structured movement and a thorough exploration of ideas created an engaging, sophisticated work.
Damian Woetzel and Tiler Peck at the Guggenheim Museum, photo by Erin Baiano
Last Sunday evening, audience members of the intimate Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim Museum learned and performed George Balanchine’s Serenade, with piano accompaniment by Cameron Grant. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, but former New York City Ballet principal dancer Damian Woetzel started this rare Works & Process event, called “The Art of Teaching: Participation & Perception”, by teaching everyone the ballet’s opening movements. It was the first of many examples of audience engagement, which was a focal point for Woetzel – coming from the world of performing – and Michael Sandel, a political philosopher, Harvard professor of government, and Rhodes Scholar whose widely popular undergraduate class “Justice” is now part of a public television series. By presenting their own areas of expertise in an interactive manner, Woetzel and Sandel explored the relationship between performing and teaching. How does a performer engage the audience? How is teaching a performing art? What does it mean for the audience to participate in a work of art? In addition to insight from Woetzel and Sandel, there were many opinions from audience members, who eagerly crossed the line from spectators to participants during the event.
Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild in an excerpt from Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun, photo by Erin Baiano
With assistance and input from current New York City Ballet principal dancers Tiler Peck, Robert Fairchild, and Joaquin De Luz, who performed excerpts from Balanchine’s Serenade and The Nutcracker and Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances, Afternoon of a Faun, and Fancy Free, Woetzel discussed the process of learning a role in a ballet and how the process evolves from studio to stage. Using Afternoon of a Faun as an example, he explained how the male character in that ballet is in a studio, dancing in front of a mirror and later with a woman. While that may be easy while rehearsing the ballet in a studio, it becomes challenging to engage the audience while performing the ballet on stage, yet still convey the intimacy of rehearsing alone in a studio (which is what the character is doing). According to both Woetzel and Fairchild, learning this role is slightly different for each dancer. After Fairchild, De Luz, and Woetzel portrayed the three sailors from Fancy Free, they discussed the character development that occurred as they performed. Fairchild said he felt like a guy from Kansas just arriving in NYC for the first time. The ballet is silent, so the dancers aim to convey their fictional stories to the audience through movement.
Sandel immediately sparked debate upon entering the stage by asking, “What is the relationship between justice and equality?” More specifically, he was interested in the audience’s opinions on taxing bonuses for bankers. After hearing from many lively participants, Sandel showed wealth disparities by sharing the average salary of a public school teacher and David Letterman, and the salaries of Chief Justice John Roberts and Judge Judy. The question seemed to be, what is the value of the contribution to society? And is it just for an entertainer to make drastically more money than a public servant?
Michael Sandel and Damian Woetzel, photo by Erin Baiano
Damian Woetzel and Tiler Peck in an excerpt from George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, photo by Erin Baiano
While it might seem as though there was little in common between Sandel’s discussion of justice and equality and Woetzel’s ballet demonstrations, both served as models for audience engagement. And both were remarkably effective. Yet, they had a frank discussion about what to do when an audience isn’t engaged. Woetzel hoped that by learning a small excerpt from Serenade – blocking an imaginary sun with the right hand, bringing the hand to the head as if in pain, slowly opening the feet to first position and “becoming a dancer” – the audience was able to more deeply appreciate Tiler Peck’s polished performance. Jokingly, he added that when dancers perform, “We know when you cough”, which led to a conversation about how to reinvigorate a bored audience. How does one do that when performing in front of a darkened theater? Or when teaching a class of a few thousand? Sandel suggested that the shuffling of papers and even coughing, which he believes can be involuntary, are signs that he’s lost his audience and has to do something different to gain their attention. Woetzel pointed out that, while performing with NYCB, he was fortunate to have a few performances that transported him to another place, which hopefully meant that he transported the audience with him, as well. At other times, pausing to internalize the silence in the theater can indicate if the audience is engaged. Surely it takes a skilled performer to be able to interpret silence.
Works & Process at the Guggenheim should have more thought-provoking events like this one that are both physically and intellectually engaging. Who would have thought that a political philosopher and a former professional dancer would join forces to spark enthusiasm, participation, and vibrant debate?
