Performance Now Exhibition at Wesleyan University's Zilkha Gallery

Katrina De Wees on Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla

Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, Philadelphia, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971, Havana, Cuba) began the collaborative, activist, conceptual art duo Allora and Calzadilla in 1995 and currently live and work together in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Their visual art practice stretches between video, sound, installation, performance, sculpture, and social intervention, as they utilize inquiry-driven experiments to broaden awareness on historical and contemporary social conditions, especially around militarism and political violence. Their works evoke a rich sense of place often achieved through extensive research and site-specificity.

Materials are critical for Allora and Calzadilla. Each object they employ is scrutinized for its practical function and symbolism. Chalk (2002-Peru) for instance, is an artistic social intervention by way of material objects. The artists placed 24 enormous pieces of chalk in Lima, Peru’s central square where protesters often gather daily adjacent to the parliament building and the President’s mansion. The protesters—generally only permitted during a specific hour—used the chalk to write temporary messages on the plaza’s pavement thereby expanding their visual and ideological presence. The ground became a sounding board for individuals to develop collective messages and ideas. The writing became a form of resistance, with a “potential to actively disrupt what are the norms of a particular setting;”* resulting in the ‘arrest’ of the chalk which was taken away by police in a vehicle.

Alternatively, Allora and Calzadilla’s video Returning a Sound (2004) employs sound objects primarily as symbolic tools. They consider the sonic violence in Vieques, Puerto Rico; a community that witnessed constant detonations—250 days out of the year—where the U.S. Navy tested bombs and as revealed in 2002, secretly tested chemical warfare agents on the islands people in 1969. The video features Homar, a young civil disobedient and activist, riding a moped across the now abandoned military-occupied territory with a trumpet attached to the bikes exhaust pipe. A trumpet often commemorates victory on land, typically playing an anthem. Breaking ‘anthem’ down to its Greek origin, Allora and Calzadilla found ‘sounding an answer.’ The trumpet became “a counter-instrument whose emissions follow not from a preconceived score, but from the jolts of the road and discontinuous acceleration of the bike’s engine as Homar acoustically reterritorializes areas of the island.”† Returning a Sound literally returns and reflects on the constant, omnipresent sounds of violence filling the region until the U.S. Navy’s departure in 2003.

In the Fall 2009 issue of BOMB Magazine, Carlos Motto claims Stop, Repair, Prepare (2008) represents Allora and Calzadilla’s “greatest synthesis of conceptual rigor, political awareness, and sensitivity to form.” The critically acclaimed installation and performance involves a performer standing in the center of a grand piano that has been cut through its center, laboriously moving throughout the space, struggling to play the song Ode to Joy by Ludwig van Beethoven, which was both the anthem to the European Union and the inauguration song for a Nazi propaganda building. Stop, Repair, Prepare, Returning a Sound, and Chalk are only a few examples of Allora and Calzadilla’s extensive body of work that spans almost two decades. Their practice addresses ‘conflict as an aesthetic force,’ continually birthing new works through their interest in the ‘excessive potential of metaphor.’

*Jennifer Allora on Art 21: Paradox: Allora and Calzadilla (2007)
† Jennifer Allora. Bomb Magazine Fall 2009 Interview with Guillermo Calzadilla and Carlos Motto

A Polyphony of Politically Engaged Art: Interview with Benjamin Barson, Friday June 22nd 2012 at The Studio Museum's Atrium Cafe

(Left) Benjamin Barson. Photo by Shelly Woodson


(Right) Arturo O'Farrill. Photo by Joshua Bright for The New York Times

On Friday, June 22^nd, I sat down with Benjamin Barson, Production Manager at Ginny’s Supper Club Red Rooster Harlem, to discuss his most recent project, in collaboration with Arturo O’Farrill’s Grammy Award Winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and El Museo Del Barrio.

Katrina De Wees: Can you start with an introduction of yourself?


Benjamin Barson: Sure, my name is Benjamin Barson; I’m a baritone saxophonist, producer, activist and intellectual. I am currently employed by The Red Rooster in Harlem, where I’m the production manager of all of the music and live events, which is more of a liaising with the artists, and making sure their technical and hospitality needs are met.  But I also have a role in shaping the curatorial element, what bands should be booked, and the message we are trying to communicate in our programming. And I share that responsibility with another individual named Andre Torres, who is the Editor-In-Chief of Wax Poetics, which is a really hot magazine. When I’m not at Red Rooster, I’m also participating in a number of events which I would describe as political. For instance, Salim Washington who is a Saxophonist and is the head of Jazz studies and Brooklyn College, and I, are playing for Colia Clark, an African-American, female, Green Party candidate tomorrow evening. We are also playing tonight for a benefit at The Maysles for a political prisoner Sekou Odinga. And before that, we also played with the same configuration at a benefit and a launch of an international campaign around a political prisoner named Russell Maroon Shoats, who is a former Black Panther party member who’s been in solitary for thirty years. So I’m trying to find the sort of fragile and fertile ground between activism and art, because especially in music it has a really rich tradition that has been somewhat obscured within Jazz recently, and that is something that I feel really strong about bringing back to the forefront of musical and political movements. And, on that note I also work with a collective of artists and activists, who call our meetings scientific soul sessions, and we put on these sorts of events that combine radical politics and avant-garde art.

KD: And who else is involved with the scientific soul?


BB: Scientific Soul is comprised of this gentleman I just mentioned: Salim Washington, Fred Ho, who’s an internationally renowned Baritone Saxophonist, and activist who among other things helped found the Asian-American Arts movement, but more specifically the Asian-American Jazz Movement which was really prominent in the 80’s. And he also was involved with the I Wor Kuen, which was sort of the Asian American Articulation of the Black Panther party. They organized Chinatown and fought successfully for a hospital there and then he sort of has the movement experience, and music experience. He’s also a Guggenheim recipient. Joel Kovel, who I believe is a MacArthur recipient, but more importantly he’s a long term anti-racist, anti-Zionist eco-socialist activist and intellectual who was actually dismissed from Bard [College] for writing a book that was critical of Israeli policies of Palestine. A woman named Day Star who’s a Native American activist and also an activist in the green party. My Friend Quincy Saul, an intellectual and clarinet player and also an activist around eco-socialism. So it’s a polyphony of different voices, but it’s a majority people of color, majority women and tries to confuse art and politics into a dynamic whole. So that’s really where the core of my political identity is.

KD: Awesome. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. So Ben, How did you get involved with Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra? How did it all come together?


BB: All these different spheres happened on their own, and then moved together in this really interesting way.  So for instance, I met Arturo as a student, I was attending Hampshire College but I took a Jazz Improv and ensemble class at The University of Massachusetts Amherst. Arturo was the visiting professor of Jazz and he was such a great teacher, he was so alive and dynamic and really knew how to get to the heart of what made the music speak, and it wasn’t about… you know it’s interesting, I was just speaking to someone about music theory, and they were like: “Isn’t theory like cultural theory, and isn’t that what theory is? Understanding what is the relationship between oppression and politics and art, and how does modernity and capitalism shape art?” You know, these kind of larger historical questions, and their relationship to art. Where in music, music theory is a very European derived concept of the physics of sound, and what makes music, which is very narrow, and specific and came about a specific point of history of Europe, and so, in many ways, my experience of music theory was really alienated because I didn’t really feel like I fit into that paradigm, and really, really famous African-American musicians like Charlie Parker have been turned into a new theory as opposed to a living expression of a history of people, right!

So Arturo brought it back to that living thing. Even if he didn’t really articulate it like that, you really could feel that. He was like, man, I’m playing  a minor chord, look, I’m playing a major third on it, you know, which you can’t do, but he was doing it in this crazy line, that was really rhythmic and intense and really beautiful, and it was really hot. And it was cool. It didn’t mean don’t listen, and throw all your sensitivity out the window; but it means, you don’t have to imprison yourself to this concept of aesthetic perfection, which is a really European concept, which isn’t so much routed in the actual people that actually created what we call Jazz. So, Arturo was great, and you know, we didn’t really know each other that well, but I expressed an interest in working with him, and actually coincidently, he played frequently near my really good friends house Julian Litwack, in Park Slope [Brooklyn]. He played at this club called Puppets, which was really intimate and is now closed, it was a really cool hang. It was him [Arturo O’Farrill], every week, with this trio. You would get to see this amazing pianist, blending classical, and jazz, and rumba and all these Latin traditions in this really postmodern synthesis, but not pretentiously postmodern. Like very much, matter of factly, really cool. And, you know, it took some time before I was able to approach him as a college graduate, and I expressed interest, in helping out with his nonprofit, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance.

So, essentially what Arturo did was he took his Grammy-winning, esteemed Latin Jazz ensemble called the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, which plays the sort of repertory of the music and also expands it, he took that and he turned the whole thing into a non-profit organization; which not only does performances, but also does cultural exchange with Cuba, and advocates for the end of the blockade, and teaches lower income students of color in the Bronx and Manhattan and hopefully soon Brooklyn, the legacy of this music, and instrumental music more generally, since music programs in New York City public schools are basically non-existent, and certainly don’t afford instruments; which is another reason why this music is increasingly played by children of the middle class, and mostly white. And so he’s trying to reverse that trend, I think it’s a really noble thing. So I reached out to him. I said, I’m really interested in what you do, and we sort of built a relationship out of that, and we sort of progressed. Is that sufficient? I mean, I could keep going…

KD: That’s definitely sufficient. Thank you. In your introduction, you spoke a bit about the work you do at Red Rooster, but how did you get involved specifically with Ginny’s Supper Club?

BB: Well, I was speaking about Fred Ho, previously, and Fred has really been this north star for me, in terms of how to have this politically engaged artistic life, and how to have an artistically engaged political life, and one of the artist’s he’s really interested in as a historical figure and as an influence in his music is Cal Massey. Cal Massey was a 1960’s jazz composer and political activist and radical who wore his militant politics on his sleeve. And even though he was hanging out with Coltrane and even though Charlie Parker recorded a lot of his music, and actually Charlie Parker’s first Latin tune, Fiesta, was a Cal Massey composition, and even though Coltrane’s first Album had a Cal Massey composition named Bakai, even though he taught Lee Morgan, and gave McCoy Tyner his first professional gig at 17, and all these greats that really went on to make history, he’s nowhere in the history books, or the Jazz anthologies. He’s nowhere in the Ken Burns documentary on Jazz, he’s just not even mentioned as a footnote. And, the reason is instead of being recorded by Blue Note [Records], he was being commissioned by Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther party to write works such as the Black Liberation Movement Suite, which was a nine movement suite that paid homage to, in addition to Eldridge, (which maybe was just a reflection of his commissioning of the suite), Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, etc.

And Cal Massey actually also played at the original Red Rooster, which the contemporary Red Rooster is sort of a historical imaginative recreation. So I brought this to the attention of Marcus Samuelsson, who is the Chef and Owner, and is really interested in bringing back this history and music and culture to the community through the vehicle of a restaurant, which has a certain prominence in contemporary life.  But also as a person of Ethiopian descent who was raised in Sweden and has now immigrated to Harlem, saw in Fred a really brave and imaginative intervention in Black culture and history since Fred is Chinese-American. So we put this work together, and with a lot of gracious support from Red Rooster, and what would become Ginny’s (at that time it was called the Red Rooster downstairs), we premiered this work with a 16 piece big band, and I was playing baritone saxophone for it, but I was also producing it, I also did a lot of the publicity for it, I brought a lot of different communities out, people from the movement, people from the political prisoner movement, and people from the art world; people that were just Red Rooster customers, who had a lot of interesting experiences on their own, and tried to create this really lush, continuum of people and life through that music. That was great, because it showed that we can do this really important work, and it can still be popular and can still bring revenue to the restaurant which is ultimately how it survives. And so it’s not a dichotomy between supporting important art that has a progressive message and history and is also progressive in terms of its own aesthetic, and the intelligence created behind it, and also creating buzz and revenue. So that’s the beginning of Ginny’s.

Since then, they’ve gone on, and they’ve had Roberta Flack there, and other acts of this nature. But the next piece that I helped produce was this work with Arturo O’Farrill, and he produced and composed a new suite called The Offense of the Drum which we just premiered at Red Rooster Ginny’s.

KD: On Tuesday [June 19^th, 2012]

BB: Yes.

KD: Can you explain, in brief, the ideas behind The Offense of the Drum, and your experience inside the work?

BB: Arturo came to the Cal Massey show, and really liked what he saw, and we spoke on the phone and had a relationship, I’ve taught for his non-profit, I’ve done fundraising, I’ve done media outreach on his behalf, and we are very close, and he was telling me about how he’s been thinking about similar themes, partly as a result of Occupy Wall Street, and partly as a result of the stop and frisk activities, partly on the part of the actions of the police and partly on the campaign around it, and he’s become more interested in politics. He’s always been interested in politics, but now it’s becoming more integrated into his artistic life, and he said:

“I’m thinking about writing this suite. I’m thinking about drumming, and how drumming was used in Zuccotti Park. All the libraries and all the health care stuff is on the east side, but on the west side there were a lot of anarchists and a lot of drumming. And I was thinking about [Mayor] Giuliani cracking down on the drumming circle, and I was thinking about the drumming there, and I was thinking about the drums 400 years ago, used amongst the slaves to communicate resistance, and create a common culture and common language, and that’s where this music comes from.”

And I was so moved to hear he not only was working in the direction, but he wanted to bring that to Ginny’s Red Rooster and have me be a part of it. So I set it up, Marcus and Andy Chapman, the other owner of Red Rooster, and Arturo and Arturo’s manager Eric Oberstein and I sat down and started discussing different ways we could work this into the Supper Club environment; and maybe specifically have a Cuban menu and cocktails to evoke that experience, but also, could we collaborate with a visual arts institution that was doing similar work. And immediately what came to my mind was El Museo Del Barrio, since they are the representatives, culturally speaking of East Harlem, and the Puerto Rican Diaspora, and Latin Americans more generally in the United States. And coincidentally enough, they were doing this exhibit with The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Queens Museum of Art called Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, which was exploring a lot of these same themes.

The Caribbean was a site of struggle and resistance with Maroon communities that actually survived for hundreds of years, and became independent as a site of drumming. And drumming as a site of really rich evocative experience, but also had something that was social and historical. So, for instance, in the English colonies, drumming was banned. Because, In 1739, in South Carolina there was an event called The Stono Rebellion when 20 slaves overpowered their master of the plantation and escaped and got their drums and weapons, and went to a hilltop outside Charleston, and started drumming, and they summoned dozens, and their ranks raised to more than one hundred. And that’s really intense, because they all heard this drum, and we might all be from West Africa, and we might all have these different cultures and histories that don’t necessarily overlap, but we all know what that [drumming] means.  Obviously the revolt/revolution [Stono Rebellion] didn’t succeed otherwise we would have had a different history, but what it spoke to was not only the drum as a weapon, but the fact why the English actually banned the drum, under the American colonialist. They clearly saw a threat, whereas in the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, like Brazil and Cuba, they weren’t as adamant about banning this music, and that’s why in Cuba and all these music’s you have all these rich polyrhythmic expressions. Robin [D. G.] Kelley and other people have written about this, about [how] polyrhythm represents a unity in the diaspora. So you have all these different identities that are being articulated within these overlapping rhythms because really that speaks to a differentiated and split concept of self which… but not one that is antagonistic, but one that is fusing all these rhythms together into a beautiful song. And that’s really what it means to be a modern human being. More so than being a European sovereign identity, but being this split subject with multiple histories and multiple experiences. And that’s what Caribbean: Crossroads really spoke to, that difference, that unity, the experience of racism and imperialism and colonialism, and how that was overcome, and how that was internalized in the subject. And to me music represents all those things and the drum specifically. And so The Offense of the Drum, is looking at the drum now as a political tool in Zuccotti Park, it’s looking at the drum historically as a metaphor and an actuality of African diasporic culture and history, and how it brought all these different people together. And so, I was so excited to bring this work to Ginny’s because I thought that this is really what the community of Harlem needs, this is what the music community needs, and this is what we need to be talking about right now in 2012.

KD: Thank you so much for breaking that down so eloquently.

BB: I’m just seeing if I can find that…

KD: The [Édouard Glissant] quote?

BB: Yes.

KD: So, were you saying, [just before our interview began that] Édouard Glissant, an actual quote of his was a work of art on view, or was there a work that was referencing that quote?

BB: No, well, one of the works [at El Museo Del Barrio] that was in a glass box was his book, but it was illustrated by a great artist (that I don’t know the name of), but I thought it was so cool that his work was featured…

KD: I don’t know if you know, but Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich curated a show [Be Black Baby, June 16^th 2011] that took place last summer, at a small gallery called Recess, and it was kind of looking at Haiti, [and the larger Caribbean], and she invited a few scholars to speak specifically about Glissant’s work, and that was how I was first introduced to him, and after that I was reading some of his stuff. He was an incredible theorist that I think is certainly under discussed.

BB: Yea, well, because the Caribbean is not acknowledged, which is why it’s so cool you guys [Studio Museum, El Museo and Queens Museum] did this work, because it’s not really seen as a site of historical importance, or cultural production, and the cool thing about Glissant is he’s not really writing theory, which is why he can kind of get away from saying really cool things, but he’s writing poetry. And that’s his whole thing; I’m not saying it’s not theoretical... I’m actually really close to it [the quote]…

Okay, here we go: this is so deep. I love this, you know, music and drumming were so important to the enslaved experience, because they had prohibited language and writing. You know, and so within the kind of European enlightenment Hegelian framework, poetry is the highest form of knowledge, and art, and music is only sensuous, it’s not anything rational, it doesn’t appeal to that deeper sense of ‘whatever’ art, and the unity of reason and non-reason, but for the slaves, music was truth. Music was the social experience embodied. It was a historical document, and, for hundreds of millions of the people who labored to construct the modern world, and died, meaningful but quick deaths, this was their Charles Dickens, this was their Shakespeare, and it was a collective book, it wasn’t like a book written by a single person. And Glissant writes about this site at the plantation, and he writes about it so provocatively:

 “It is understandable that in this universe every cry was an event. Night in the cabins gave birth to this other enormous silence from which music, inescapable, a murmur at first, finally burst out into this long shout—a music of reserved spirituality through which the body suddenly expresses itself. Monotonous chants, syncopated, broken by prohibitions, set free by the entire thrust of bodies, produced their language from one end of this world to the other. These musical expressions born of silence: Negro spirituals and blues, persisting in towns and growing cities; jazz, biguines, and calypsos, bursting into barrios and shantytowns, salsas and reggaes, assembled everything blunt and direct, painfully stifled, and patiently differed into this varied speech. This was the cry of the Plantation, transfigured into the speech of the world.  

For three centuries of constraint had borne down so hard that, when this speech took root, it sprouted in the very midst of the field of modernity; that is, it grew for everyone. This is the only sort of universality there is: when, from a specific enclosure, the deepest voice cries out."

 – Édouard Glissant. Poetics of Relation pp. 73-74

KD: Thank you for sharing that quote. You answered many of my questions; I did not even need to ask them out loud. Thank you for taking the time to read them in advance!

BB: Yes, and thank you for letting me drift into this sort-of Meta thing.

Movement or Dance or Performance: An interview with multidisciplinary performance artist Patricia Faolli, conducted by Katrina De Wees

Katrina De Wees: What spaces excite you most about dance? By this, I mean are there any specific spaces that inspire your creative mind? Or are there specific dance venues that you tend to find stimulating and exciting? And if so, why?

Patricia Faolli: The streets are my main place of inspiration. I don't see my projects being performed on stage anymore, I like to think of spaces that have character and also bring history, details and new elements to the performance itself. Looking around the city, noticing the everyday choreographs of people walking by, the sounds of the subway, the colors of concrete. I believe the best inspirations come from the environments that surround any artist, being able to look at the simple and everyday things, but seeing beyond.

KD: How often do you find yourself in a dance studio?

PF: Five days a week.

KD: Do you identify as a dancer? Do other people identify you as a dancer?

PF: I do not. I identify myself as a performance artist. Although movement and the body are a big focus of my work, I like to use as much forms of art as I can.

KD: How often do you see works of live dance on stage?

PF: Not as much as I would like.

KD: When did you begin dancing?

PF: If you consider dance as movement I believe we begin dancing as soon as we are born, the difference is how people pursue, study and try to understand movement in their own bodies. I started studying theories and technique a few years ago but I've been interested in the possibilities of movement of my own body since I first started drama classes in 1998.

KD:  Why do you keep dancing or what keeps you going?

PF: New possibilities and ideas.

KD:  Where do you live currently? Or what spaces have you lived between this past year?

PF: Brooklyn

TRANSPORT MY MIND THROUGH TIME, THROUGH IDEAS, THROUGH SHAPE, SIZE, RHYME : A Matter of Practice, Danspace Project Thursday May 17th, 8pm

TRANSPORT MY MIND THROUGH TIME, THROUGH IDEAS, THROUGH SHAPE, SIZE, RHYME

a response in three parts

by Katrina De Wees

Wednesday May 30^th, 2012

PART I: initial thoughts

On Thursday May 17^th I attended Food for Thought at Danspace Project, a benefit series supporting the St. Marks Church food program. The three night series was curated by recent graduates of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University. The exchange was glorious, emerging curators, food for the hungry and live performance!

I attended the first evening curated by Lydia Bell. The evening called A Matter of Practice explored the notion of transposition by exploring works of four artists: Yve Laris Cohen, Xaviera Simmons, Arturo Vidich and Larissa Velez-Jackson. Bell describes transposition referencing the work of Adrian Piper’s Funk Lessons where “By flipping the context, and putting a ‘black’ social dance form in a ‘white’ visual art space, Piper made a powerful statement about what gets historicized and for whom. Through the act of transposition, Piper exposed choreography as a mode of thought and production, a way of investigating social, cultural and aesthetic concerns.” Bell goes on to explain transposition is not only a tool for choreographic production where there is a change is relative position, order or sequence. Transposition in the work by Piper and the chosen artists is instead utilized as a mode of inquiry.

The evening, in my experience, highlighted the work of the curator. The ideas presented through the artists works I found compelling as they related to the curator’s said theme. The curatorial statement was succinct and rich in content, and brought new ideas into my ways of seeing the artists work. As someone who works at a museum, and is constantly seeing, discussing and thinking about thematic trends between artists, I appreciated the layering and context in the evening’s didactic materials.  With emphasis on the ideas behind placing artists side by side, the effect became educational. Consequentially, I am most fascinated with how a curatorial practice, in this instance, became a practice in arts education. The curatorial statement became a frame by which I began to see and understand the work on stage.

Often times, artists are grouped under general themes of “emerging” or “all new work,” but how can we see work and understand it in new ways through its programmatic placement? I have not seen such thoughtful practice in the act of curating performance. The goals of the ICPP program are quite compelling, and in this instance demonstrated success.

PART II: thoughts on 2 of the curator’s subjects:

+

PART III: thoughts on the work of 2 of the curator’s subjects:

Larissa Velez-Jackson:

She calls it Star Crap in Progress. Fainting almost, close to, out of breath, trip, dragging flip flop sound beat score flailing arms, grabbing the pole of amplification. Will she speak into this microphone? No, instead it’s more fun to hit and make loud unpredictable sounds, and drag the mic at her feet. As if the sound of her flip flops were not already obvious, now we understand the artist’s intention. Or do we? Amplify the audible. Mute the subtlety. I see what I see. I hear what I see. I imagine what I see based on what I hear, as well. In a rainbow striped leotard, bright red lipstick, and microphone wires for days, I enter this comical post modern infused puzzle, of glamour ridden irony.  From the testing of shoes, and removal of pants to walk, and dance, run and slide, I found a deep admiration for the artist’s willingness to take me to a place outside a common boundary of beauty for the stage. Lip singing to her own voice, I was with her all the way through.

Dear Auturo Vidich,

All I needed was you, and your sound score, and the beginning twitch of your fingertips upside down. I am familiar with this story of wilting nerves. The sound was a telling environment. I heard the echo of the city landscape of our dreams, us city dwellers. This was your dream. An endless presence of other beings, perhaps spirits who visit even on the dance floor underneath blue light. Melting and morphing between water and human form, sometimes you are a tree stump. Sturdy, solid, and fixed in the earth. Your limbs illustrate the roots beneath the wooden floor. I am only viewing the surface, what is the world beneath your stump? You fly high, invert our expectations, and satisfy the mission.

Simone Forti : Huddle

Finding your place

leaning on ground on limb or shoulder

never fall down

rearrange each time

bottom top bottom is ABC

elbow sheilding neck head tucked in armpit

twirl around the world on top of your head

SPLIT up down

all sides every side all round all around

mind shifts blankets cloth friction against

falling. FLOAT ABOVE THE HUDDLE

no rush. Go for it. no fear. support every

where. Time to let go. Shy rush

away - there is time to beat. Maturity

Frantic puddles. Calm down. Live -

anything can happen in the quiet.

nothing - no one - no suger no diatribe

no make-up, always costume. Built

for comfort, for execution. for painting

for construction. to let go. Camera

always. documentation always. nothing.

anywhere. always. somewhere. simple.

tell the cirlce. like a hawk. Watching.

graceful circle. watching - you. Watching

them, watching their placement, aware

of those on the far line in the back

watching everything on one side.

Community. Tender. Trust.

Community is so simple.

so easy. Huddle.

Reggie Wilson First and Heel: Introduction - A virtual witnessing response

The following is a writing response on Introduction observed in my writing on dance workshop at NYLA's with eva yaa asentewaa

How can you introduce yourself and your work? Why not admit an introduction is also a performance and perhaps choreograph or layer the process of body-sound-art into a sycocpated text of desctipion. Perhaps the space we stand is all we need to perform. Reggie remained stationary, and the auidence was still - so we can fixate our focus on his one place. But, how much repetition can the mind endure - while processing text? The longer we notice the same movement the louder it becomes, as we anticipate its shift or ending. When does it become effective to pull focus from body to voice - and can we predict what tools will work for what audiences? Can a performance inside the center of center stage allow us to a see a body in all ways a dance viewing audience may expect?

What did I notice? My own resistance to this style of lecture presetnation. Why did - or how did this 4th wall not present at the beginning grow? or situate itself mid-pont? When the performer continued revealing facts about himself? Was it the stomp/marching beat?

Where does this work go? How does it affect people? Can there be a call and response if dancing/motion is still taking place? Can storytelling with a body in silence not overpower the/ still leave room for voices from an audience?

Reggie does not dance because of his injuries/knees according to his text in Introduction, but he danced here/there on that . Maybe his introduction provides context for dance w/o text to come.

Antigone Sr./Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (L) Thursday April 26th 7:30pm

i rarely see art that allows me to fall in love with the performers. 20 looks was one of these enjoyable moments.

the two and half hour performance choreographed by trajal harrell and performed with an all male cast left me mesmerized. as a queer femme, secure in my sexual identity most would understand as lesbian, by the end i found myself confessing my love for the performers in the lobby over the complimentary wine. the elements at play were all extremely varied, humored, and inventive. trajal took me. i fell for the language he used to tell his story, and all of the characters the performers sucesfully embodied in the process. toward the end of the show, especially one of such length, its common to find your focus waning often similar to the energy at the end of a late night dance party. my energy began to fade to that  frequency often found in a dimly lit space, and trajal brought us to this place visually and physically on stage with his performers. on white rectangular platforms, the lights dimmed and reached equilibriums with the lit negatives spaces between, duplicating their presence. i began to wonder, how did they pull out new platforms front and center stage, without the audience catching a glimpse? dancers pulled their energy from deep within to dance through the air. i had known all along i was in love with the the first performer to move with the blue jacket. i was taken, to a dark cloudy night ballroom, i traveled through history to the voguing hall, i watched the runway. trajal created something of visual performance magik.

Subject to Change: Division III Dance Concert at Hampshire College. Saturday March 31st 2012

I went to western massachusetts to visit Hampshire College. As a recent graduate of the school, I often danced around the department, enriching my studies with summer dance studies with african-american choreographers and dance/theater artists. I wouldn't say that I had the average dance experience of a hampshire dancer.

Much of the technique is recycled through student compositions. I often see work that looks similar to the year before. A unique playful, contact improvisationalish, mis-matched gym clothing looking scattered exploration of space, with no overt or concrete meaning. These projects are often art for arts sake.

Beyond the Horizon at the Irish Repertory Theater Thur March 15 2012 8pm

I saw the Irish Repertory Theater's rendition of Eugene O'Neil's beyond the Horizon on Thursday Night with my dad. It was an eventful evening, of imaginative narrative based theater. I had not had the pleasure of reading the play beforehand, so I was excited by the introduction to the work.

The evening length play staged a family in distress over finances and the managemet of a family business: a farm in the rural midwestern united states. The idea of love as a floating dream between two brothers and one women unraveled, dreams of travel and reading and ideas juxtaposed with the realities of manual labor and income. It's quite interesting. I am glad I went to see the play, and look forward to reading some more of the political works of Eugene O'Neal. Thanks dad, for the suggestion, the company, and the meal.

New Work: Dean Moss and Reggie Wilson. Danspace Project, Saturday March 10th, 8pm

I went to see new work by Dean Moss and Reggie Wilson, two black choreographers I was interested in for some time, but had not before had the pleasure of witnessing live. The evening began with Reggie Wilson's work, a solo performed by Souleymane Badolo. I found the solo to be lenghtly. The work was introduced by Reggie Wilson, as he explained the history of the work and where it is currently in development. Souleymane has incredible articulation of his spine, in additional to the rest of his body. Slow, and extremely articulate he transposed between robing, disrobing, and work across one section of the floor stage right.

Dean Moss also introduced his work, a collaboration with visual artist Laylah Ali. The work featured a playful run around emotion, with the perpetual picking up and throwing of mirrors. When they hit a performer, that person would collapse on the floor and other people would cover that person in mirrors until they began to stand back up. At that point, everyone would run away and begin throwing mirrors to the center again. The work seemed to still be in development, which I found to be relieving as a young choreographer with perfectionist tendencies. Even the more experienced professional still exhibits work that is in progress.

Stephen Petronio at The Joyce Theater Tuesday March 6th 7:30pm

I saw Stephen Petronio's company perform live for the first time at the Joyce Theater. I volunteered that night as an usher for an incredible evening of dance and celebrity appearances.

Stephen began the evening with a structured improvisation by Steve Paxton: intravenous lecture i believe it was called. Interestingly enough, the work felt dated. The content of the conversation was of course unique, as Stephen spoke autobiographically of his experience going to Hampshire college, on to an arrest in London, and a blossoming career as an American choreographer.

The second piece was an exciting departure from the first. There was a special guest appearance by a new york city ballet dancer Wendy Whelan. (see image below).





I found myself most drawn to the final performance, where the costumes innovation spoke for itself, creating a distinct visual world where movement and action became as dignified as the poise and dress of the performer reached quite a remarkable alignment. See the video below for a wonderful sneak peak into the Architecture of Loss, which premiered the the Joyce this March.

Darrell Jones, Niall Noel Jones, Nicholas Leichter, and Regina Rocke FROM THE STREETS, FROM THE CLUBS, FROM THE HOUSES. Saturday February 25th 7:45pm

I saw the final evening of From the Streets, etc at Danspace, and was very glad to be in attendance. Unfortunately I missed the film and the first dance by Regina Rocke whom I met recently at the MIX experimental Film Festival in November '11. I walked in during Nicholas Leicheter, and I will begin by discussing each artist in a various section.

Nicolas Leicheter

Surprizingly bold, Nicolas framed his movement in a common 4/4 signature. The choreography most often moved with the music, with a comercial music video feeling. The dancer he cast was technically superb, and blew me away with his syncopated flare dancing to whitney houston's "im every woman." Not only was this incredible to watch, this white man dancing to whitney's rendition of the song, but there was finally a break from the boaring 4/4 predicatable movement.

Nicolas had a solo which I found quite incredible. I love site specific dance, and Danspace is based at St Marks Church, providing quite provocative architecuture for stories with moral implications, representations of good and evil and the church. Nicolas pulled of his pants, while standing at the alter. Underneath the central arch, he pressed his body face against the wall flaunting his backside, referencing gay male culture. I found the gesture so bold, and satisfying with a sacriligious glare.

Niall Noel Jones

Positioning Niall after Nicolas was a extreme relief for my aesthetic eye. Niall's movement vocabulary, pulling from what i saw as the roots of postmodern dance, with cunningham and rainer as deep influence. He began with a sincere momemnt of experiencing, looking at the audience looking at him. We were looking at him, looking at us. I thought that was a strong choice.

The movement continued in such a way, that I was not certain if it was all choreographed. perhaps structured improvisation? The aesthetic seemed messy. After watching a fascination with hitting the right movement, that in some ways illustrated a deep ego, Nial brought me instantly to the polar oppositite. Pedistrian movement. Then he would create dynamic change through skillfully executed pulling and pushing movments, which appeared as a fight. There was an element of play and curiosity I appreciated. I also thought the ending was a bit strange. He had Regina Rocke walk across the stage, walk through the door, and then come back, in uncertainty. As if she was not clearly directed. I appreciate ambiguiety on stage. The beginning was a strong moment. However, the ending trivalized the efforts made, as unclear walking, unclear intention, polite or shy ambiguety takes away from the unabashful frightening unknown so clearly illustrated in other moments, and less so later on. The work could use some more time to develop. I am however more curious about Niall's other work. It is not common to find black choregraphy working in such movement vocabulary.

Darrell Jones

Perhaps my favorite in the evening, Darrell began with a trio, and ended with a trio. The performers began with nude stockings covering their faces, with long black hair extensions switching from side to side as they walked across the floor in their sexiest strut walk. Ambugiously framing their face, the gender of their expressions was also ambigous, and perhaps mostly feminine. They then conclude this segment by pulling off thier stockings, and reformulating their positions. They continue with distinct movements of voguing, often facing toward eachother rather than frontward to the audience. The staging broke traditional western modes of dance, and not only reference the cypher and other african american routes of dance, but mostly cited the dancefloor and the club in its most realistic portrayal.

Darrell's lasting visual moment (for me) was the transition to laying out flower petals throughout the floor. He had two men sit down before the audience in the church. First they faced one another, playfully slaping one another, secondly they turned, nealing down before the audience hand in hand. Next they began to vomit. I found this image to be so visually rich, and provokative as it evoked the symbols of marriage, and I found this social commentary to be quite interesting at this particular momemnt in history, where we may be at the height of the debate on gay marriage.

Mother Tongue: Monologues for Black Girls and Stolen Women Reclaiming Our Bodies, Our Selves, Our Lives. Friday February 24 2012 8pm

I witnessed an amazing performance at the National Black Theater. Mother Tounge: Monologues for Black Girls and Stolen Women Reclaiming Our Bodies, Our Selves, Our Lives began with a pre-event at 6:30 including fresh food, silky wine and a very interesting audience. Its not often we get to prepare ourselves for a ritual peformance with offerings of food and drink, to meet the others we are about to embark on the journey of witnessing. It was well recieved. The pre-event definitely set me up for the experience about to take place. I had no idea it was actually 12am when I walked out the door.

Another wonderful treat was finding the 2nd day event advertised in the program: Catharsis. Many of the performers and other people involved seemed to not know about it taking place. But I definitely enjoyed the event! A day dedicated to healing and recovery. What an important, too often overlooked component.

The event was put on by the Black Women's Blueprint, and I am now convinced I need to join the organization.

La Traviatta, Sunday February 12th 1:30pm

I saw La Traviatta's opening performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this past sunday. The story began with its music, playing a mildly melencholy rift which is repeated throughout the main characters plight throughout the 3 hour performance.

Richard the III, Sunday February 5th 3pm

I saw Richard the III this past Sunday, and was not very impressed. The epic 3 1/2 hour performance caught me off gaurd with its unruly visciousnessness and length. Perhaps if the set design did not drone me out with its horrificly bland symetrical arragements of small furniture in oversided rooms with endless doors, perhaps I would have watched more closely. The actors were in fact tallented, although the accents would make one think they appeared from a range of locations throught the english speaking colonies. I was not conviced. Kevin space's physicality was convincing, most of all, and perhaps justified his horrific acts with the pain he was perhaps experiencing internally. I attended this show with family, as part of Bam's Fall/Winter season which I will see 5 all together. Between my grandmothers occasional snoring, and the siloute of my dads head dropping between acts, I decided to join for one short moment. Listening with closed eyes is a great experience. It lets me know that the text is working, but there is a disconnect with the visual arrangement on stage. The harvey theater is a medium sized theater, and in its 2nd teir orchestra i felt distant due to the long hallway on stage. The visual projections of clouds and text announcing scene changes felt like broadway tricks and did not enhance the story at all. I felt like these are things that would land me a bad grade in an undergraduate course, but I somehow cast a brillant array of characters.

Lastly, I thought it was intereting the director chose to cast two women as the twin boys, as the presence of women in drag was appropriate of course in context of the time, but with men dressing as women. Perhaps this was a political statement I can read into our current age in theater. My brain was interested mostly in this small detail.

Phantom of the Opera: February 1st 2012 8pm

So I went to see the Phantom of the Opera. It was a longtime goal of mine. Something mysterious lay in the name of the show. I didn't quite know why I wanted to see it, but since I was a young girl I seemed to know about its existence.

I've been on a pathway, quenching my curiosty of theater. Why do shows exist on broadway? Does that mean they are incredible? In the case of the phantom of the opera, I entered without already understanding the story. I didn't understand why there was a phantom, his presence was alluded to as if the audience should already expect him to be there although the characters constantly doubted his presence. Apparently, I should expect to fill in all the blanks with the 5 words in the title. By the second act, I came to understand the phantom was in fact the instructor of the young opera singer he haunted, and I could not be less interested in thier love affair or her fear, and the protective male boyfriend.

However, I went for the music, which was quite incredible. I closed me eyes at the male/female embracing love song, because i've just seen toooooo much of that lameness, and I was surprized such a week story made it to broadway. The singing was incredible. And perhaps stories that are well known don't need to be told well. Perhaps the audience is entering with an understanding of the action, and we instead are looking at the lighting design, costumes and stage settings. I was happy with my eyes closed. No choreography, or physicality to design interested me to the point i was particuarly compelled.

The phantoms riding of the chandelier was perhaps quite interesting to observe, as that does not happen in the small off broadway theaters i frequent. But for the 40 or so dollars I spent, I think i would have prefered a $20 ticket with an intimate small downtown crowd. perhaps that is where my true theater heart lives.

Word Becomes Flesh. Sunday January 15 4pm.

Presented in collaboration with 651 Arts (a fav), Marc Bamuthi Joseph/ The Living Word Project created an amazing hip hop theater piece that was a throwback to the early 2000 poetry scene. Movement contextualized into words, and/or vise versa I got a sense of the momentum of the men's stories. Exploring notions of black masculinty, adulthood, and fatherhood, we (the audience) witness an intimate portrayal of tough decisions a young black male faces coming of age and beginning adulthood, all which appears to happen without much space in between.

time acellerates.

I saw the final showing at the Public Theater during the Under the Radar Festival.

Emma Alabaster and Captain for Dark Mornings on Tuesday 1.10.12

I walked up Vanderbilt avenue to Bergen St last Tuesday night to attend Emma Alabasters new trio Captain for Dark Morning at Branded Saloon. I was first greeted by two familiar faces, and sat at a booth with new aquaintances. We then walked to the back, where we sat on high stools and benches and the performers stood on a stage about eye level with us seated. Emma Alabaster introduced the show and herself as the vocalist and bassist, as well as her collaborators: Zach Dunham on drums, and Charlie Rauh on guitar.

She started us off with a clever introduction to her first song. She stated "This song is about growing up in Brooklyn." She continued on to play an inventive bass line with a compelling voal repepition of "I don't know this place anymore." Very clearly (as someone who know's Emma and her politics) I understood the song to be a powerful statement on gentrification.

Visually, I loved her purple sweater dress and asymetrical gold earrings. Not often do muscians take notice to the fact they are in fact performers with bodies on stage. Emma has definitely taken note and her costume choices rang brooklyn all the way through, (allowing me to really believe her as she sang for an insightful hour in the night at the Branded Saloon in Prospect Heights).

I don't often have the pleasure of listening to original scores, and seldom have the opportunity to write about my experience. As someone who dances, and is heavily affected by sound I have limited experience with music. I however, do love experimental compositions, and I was fortunate to find myself at this show. Where melody sunk between by predictive brain, and continually caught me by surpize. Every moment I heard something new and my head found an unique pattern to grove. I look forward to hearing Emma's next compositions. I was definitely satisfied with my Tuesday night adventure down Vanderbilt.

The Millennium Series

I took some time last week to watch the Millennium Series, the trilogy the begins with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Of course, I watched the original Swedish version. I LOVED it. I have not seen a film with such a strong feminist message in such a long time. I am taking advantage of my netflix subscription to catch up with pop culture. A story line where a female is deemed crazy for stopping the sexual and physical abuse of her mother, only to be locked inside of a mental facility where she is raped by her doctors and written up as delusional and crazy. This treatment continues throughout her young adult life, where she continues to face sexual abuse in the system of mental health care. By the end of the trilogy, I am delighted to see that justice was in this case brought about in the criminal justice system.

Priscilla: Queen of the Dessert: Thursday January 5th 8pm

I just returned from a most mediocre evening of glam and glitter. Intending to see the soon to close showing of Billy Elliot, only to discover the holiday schedule interrupted its thursday night showing, and all remaining shows have sold out with the exception of 200 dollar plus tickets. I walked around in my least favorite place: time square to find an alternate show amongst the many. As a non-frequenter of broadway I was not sure what to expect. I saw the mountaintop on my birthday in September. That was across the street from Billy. So i kept on my journey, dodging the comedy show promoters on every corner along with the swarms of tourists. Then i came across the sign for Priscilla. I remember seeing snippets on NY1 News back when I had cable, and I felt like it was something I wanted to check out. How often do you get to see a broadway show full of drag queens and glitter? I was forewarned by the gently NY1 critics the show was very much a pun filled lighthearted comedy. After watching the original swedish girl with a dragon tatoo last evening on netflix, I was prepared for serious theater. For drama. Instead, i found the least dense show on broadway. The characters really had no depth beyond a journey to reconnect with the main queen's former marriage and child. He loures two queens to journey in a femmed out mini van to the town with his ex wife as his son askes him to come meet him. They are invited to perform a few numbers. En route, they encounter some gay bashing in the rural towns, and pic up a mechanic to ensure they arrive at their desitination. Beyond this we really are not able to connect much with any of the characters, and pretty much before any meaningful dialogue can take place the chorus comes in with another pop disco song the audience cant help but sing along with confetti and a disco ball to top the number off. The costumes were incredible, and the choreography was perhaps too tounge and cheek for me.

The atmosphere definitely alluded to some of my historical curiosity of theater. To show girls, and glitter and glam. When a performance was very much about the physical tallent of your body, and the spectacle created. Here, i felt the vocals were not in harmony, and thus the glam did more work when i wanted the bodies to match up to the expensive adorments they lay within. The supporting character had incredible energy, which fit his young and restless modality. He definitely carried the story for me, rounding it off with a remarakable solo performance in the semi-finalie. But most importantly was the presence of the elder queen, who marked her presence with the utmost brilliance in manner and speach. I think she had the most lines, and really showed true character in form and performance. I was impressed.

Lastly, the energy of the ensemble carried through such that I could not help but smile, clap and do a short sway of head and hips on my way out as the rest of the audience continued to dance. The music carried with me all the way home, and I could definitely due with some donna summer this week.

Priscilla, I felt your characters were so shallow because their true stories were not yet able to be heard or written perhaps. Why not, can a transexual m to f individual have a personal journey beyond being shammed by his identity and profession as a performer? What other goals, and aspirations and challenges does this individual face. Can we hear their voice? This performance felt like the glorfied white male articulation of gay culture. Of the brilliant, glittery fabulous rich life with luxurious fabrics and exciting performance. But what are their real stories. What do these individuals face in reality? That would be my interest. And they can have a story with their club music. Oh yes they can. Prisicilla, i am waiting for day when your script contains more text than pop song lyrics.

And the annoying girls in the bathroom afterward set the tone for the audience interpretation for me. A group of 4 white skinned woman were chatting and laughing int he bathroom about how one of their mothers only told them it was a comedy, not that it was about drag queens. And thier friends said yea she probably didnt tell you that because than you probably wouldn't go. And they proceeded to make plans to go to a bar in the village....

sigh...