Dance 3, Presence 10

She’s not all that technically brilliant, according to my Middle Eastern Dance Research Team (yes, I have one, doesn’t everyone?). But what she has is presence – she’s obviously having a great time as she dances and entertains, and it’s contagious.

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It’s only a preview, but it’s a breath of great things to come: the review of the premiere of “Another Evening: Serenade/The Proposition,” by Bill T. Jones seems to hint at a magnificent work to come. Commissioned to create a work celebrating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, it’s a pretty tall order for anyone but Mr. Jones.

He assembled, along with his usual fantastically talented company, an amazing creative team: Janet Wong on video, singer Lisa Komara, score by Jerome Begin and Christopher Antonio William Lancaster, Liz Prince’s amazing costume design and a set consisting of moveable columns by Bjorn G. Amelan.

The review describes some tricks not working so well – video flames on the columns, for example – but on the whole it sounds like Jones once again is exploring a subject that seems so incredibly overdone in new and amazing ways. It’s a disjointed but serious look at war, racism, and other themes of the day, and his choreography, always pushing the limits of the human form, addresses it like a hologram – in pieces, but each piece containing suggestions of the whole.

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I feel that – it warms my heart, actually. At age 18 I started on what I thought was going to be a career in musical theatre, but got a bit sidetracked, and didn’t end up getting my degree in dance until the venerable age of 29. Ten years later, I have taught ballet to three year olds and the rumba to 70 year olds, worked with world-class dancers like Heidi Latsky, presented before World Dance Symposiums, and danced on stage to “Let’s Get Physical” with Foxy Veronica’s Peach Pies at a goth club.

Because in the end it’s not about the movements or the technique, Milia. It’s about your movement, your technique, and your body moving. You want to dance? Dance, then. If you make the movement authentic, it will be good.

Pina Bausch and Tanztheatre Wuppertal

I’m having trouble finding the documented evidence, so this is anecdotal, but when I was at one point doubting my ability to dance when compared with the 18 and 19 year olds I was training with, my mentor Douglas Rosenberg told me about Pina Bausch. Aside from being a fantastic dancer and choreographer herself, he told me that at certain points in her career she’d refused to have any dancers younger than…oh, 35 or 40, I don’t remember which…in her company. They hadn’t lived enough life to put the meaning that she wanted into the movements.

Now, this may be an unfair comparison – many young dancers are exquisitely expressive, and age is no virtue – but it has served as inspiration to me as my movements change with age. The legs do not lift me as high, but the intention behind the leap has more depth now than it did before. And in the end, there is always a new Spring in my step.

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Making the Dream Real

Much to my joy, I find that Jeanne is making the dream real, putting Stardance into movie form. The complications of choreography in zero gee are immense, and not the least of it is the problem of, well, getting into zero gee in the first place. However, she and her main choreographer, Kathleen McDonagh, managed to get up in one of the zero gee planes and…well, they did it. They danced. They began a zero-gee movement vocabulary. And I can’t tell you how amazing I find that. It’s the most inspirational thing I’ve seen…well, ever.

Thank you, Jeanne, for making me believe in dreams yet again.

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Twyla’s Interpretation of Heaven & Hell

Ethan works with Herman Cornejo and other dancers from American Ballet Theater at Lincoln Center’s Opera House to convey a balletic journey through a “post-modern idea of the world.” Bloomberg News called the latter part of the ballet “too long and too diffuse” and concluded there was “nothing new.” Worse, the score is by Danny Elfman, who is really not my favorite.

But who cares? Even the same old Twyla Tharp is still Twyla Tharp, and even an Ethan “no longer Mr. Perfect” is still Ethan frikkin’ Steifel. As I’m going to be in the NYC area over the July 4th weekend, I plan on going – so stay tuned for my own review!

image courtesy of Newscom

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Li Chiao-Ping is a choreographer and dancer originally from San Francisco, now living in Wisconsin. Her dance company has toured all over the world, and she has dedicated her company to “offering programs of emotionally charged and athletic works, with striking visual design and the music of contemporary composers.” She has been the chair of several dance departments and is the wife of award-winning video artist Douglas Rosenberg.

The auditions will be held June 6 from 9-11am at Dance New Amsterdam, Studio 4, which is at 280 Broadway (2nd Floor) in New York, NY. Dancers need to have strong contemporary dance skills and be willing to relocate to Madison WI – which is not so bad, as it’s only a couple of hours from Chicago, and the home of a very friendly performing arts blogger.

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Alexei Ratmansky

In the New York Times Chip Brown has written a piece about the very young artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Alexei Ratmansky. At 39 he has become “one of the most sought after choreographers in the world.” Instead of plotting his escape from totalitarianism, the article describes how he calmly waits for visa approval in order to bring his style to America.

The piece is in-depth, not only describing his creative process but also the environment that he lives in – like some other brave performers, the new Russia is sometimes a quite tumultuous place to be an artist.

Carlos Acosta

For those looking for more thorough summer reading, one of the greats of the ballet world has written a memoir that has movie written all over it. Carlos Acosta is a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet – and like other greats such as Nureyev, he was born under a communist regime: Cuba.

The story of his fantastic rise from street urchin breakdancing to Michael Jackson bootlegs all the way to premiere ballerino makes for fascinating (if at times hyperbolic) reading, according to the New York Times book review. Still, it might be just the thing for those of us recovering from the end of Dancing with the Stars…

images courtesy of Newscom

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Those Who Can, Teach

One of the performers there is Arielle, a teacher at the Madison Multicultural Dance Center with Mona N’wal and others. Though very young, Arielle’s been dancing since she was fourteen, and that leads to quite a bit of experience as well as talent.

That evening she did a three-part set, starting with two traditional songs and then a blended hip-hop/bellydance routine of her own choreography. The ability of her body to isolate and move independently of attached parts was incredible, and though I found out later that most of the moves were “improvisography” she never seemed to miss a beat.

When I learned that she’d also competed in the local So You Think You Can Dance competition, I cornered her after the set for an interview. What I learned was that for an Emmy-award winning show, it’s a pretty down-to-earth process.

How did you hear about the competition?

Word of mouth, actually. Through the local dance community. And only the day before the auditions, actually. The prize was a trip for two to Vegas.

Who would you have taken to Vegas with you?

(small smile) Bill. Definitely Bill. (referring to a young man who’d also been at the dinner).

Tell me about the auditions.

They happened on Wednesday, and you got one minute. One minute, that’s all, which is kind of hard to do when you’re used to 15 minute sets. I decided to do a piece to “Belladi Ya Wad”, which is what we affectionately call our “wiggly songs.”

Were you nervous?

Not after the auditions. (she shook her head and made a face). There were…well, let’s just say I wasn’t worried after I saw the other dancers. They brought it down to twelve dancers, of various styles – lyrical jazz, ballet, hip hop…

What criteria were they judging on?

I’ve no idea. (she laughs) but they sure weren’t familiar with belly dance!

Actually, they did say, they were looking ofr musicality, technique, crowd reaction…

How was that?

Honestly, not that good. It was a mixed crowed of older and younger people, but it was your typical Wisconsin kind of crowd…

Who were the judges?

There were two, one the owner of a local dance studio, and the other one (she grins) was Hok, from the show!

How do you think you did?

(shrug) Well…I don’t think I won. But I did get a really good contact with the best hip hop dancer there, so it was worthwhile. And I’m not surprised – the general American populace doesn’t really get belly dancing. Next time, I’ll put in more hip hop.

So there’ll be a next time?

Definitely! But first I have to get ready for the Midwest Bellydance Challenge…

Thanks for your time!

Always a pleasure…

Arielle actually came in second in the competition – losing to the hip hop dancer she mentioned. So she didn’t get to go on to Vegas and get a chance to continue in the process to get in the show – not this year, anyway. She took it as a learning experience, though, and plans on competing more every chance she gets.

Image used by permission from Arielle

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A large part of that piece dealt with John Henry’s experiences as a combat soldier in Vietnam. He integrated those experiences into the piece, combining video of combat footage with live onstage dancing. You can see several videos of the stage performance here; as the piece toured, however, the performance was required to change to accommodate John Henry’s declining health as AIDS took his body.

While they knew that the live performance piece would die along with John Henry, Rosenberg and Bromberg wanted his legacy to live on, and therefore began working on a documentary (also titled Singing Myself a Lullaby) that would talk about the creation of the stage piece and the issues as he prepared himself for death.

Here’s the kicker: after he died, in the process of doing research the documentarians discovered that John Henry had never actually served in Vietnam. All of his stories, his richly evocative dancing, the tremendous emotion he engendered in others as they heard his tale and watched the videos with the movement – all of it was a lie.

At the same time…there is something to be said about the fact taht when one touches that many people, when such a powerful work is created, it takes on its own kind of truth. And that ends up being the subject of the documentary, which has excerpts here and can be purchased here.

I’m more interested in the fact that John Henry found it necessary to take on the trappings of his generations’ biggest tragedy. He didn’t pretend to be a fireman or a doctor or a speedboat racer. No, he found something in the miasma of war that seemed necessary to him as he performed in the final days of his life. He’s not around to ask if he’d convinced himself of what happened. Isn’t it interesting, though, that out of all the common experiences that our culture shares, we keep coming back to war as the defining factor? Even me – I spent two years as a Marine, twenty as a father, ten as a dancer – yet when I talk about my life, it’s the Marine that people latch on, assuming that it changed me and formed me more than anything else.

And the thing is, I can’t really argue that. I didn’t even serve in combat, but every day I think about something I did in the Marines, and as recently as six years ago I was walking out of a grocery store as a colonel in uniform was walking in, and my hand was halfway up in salute before I caught myself. Perhaps because it’s such a movement-based discipline, it resonates with dancers, who also find things burned into their bodies as they perform.

Whatever the reason, while not the truth he was telling, John Henry’s story tells a deeper truth about us all, I believe.

images used courtesy of Dziga Vertov Performance Group

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Why not up close and personal? Why not a special show, every now and then, when we could get to watch one or two Ailey marvels dancing something small and intimate in a setting where we might actually be able to track the thoughts crossing their brows, the nerve synapses firing in their muscles, the divine flow of their breathing?” This quote by Eva Yaa Asantewaa got my brain working today.

She was talking about the unfortunate necessity of dance companies such as Alvin Ailey to book large venues to get huge audiences in – to then see the tiny ants on the stage. It limits choreographers, it limits audiences’ ability to appreciate the dance, and it limits the number of performances due to the cost of actually dealing with the sizeable venues.

Alternative Spaces, Alternative Audiences

A few years ago I was a part of a performance called “50 Chairs” by dancer/ choreographer Jin-Wen Yu. He has always been something of an unusual choreographer (I’ll never forget the ethical dilemma of whether the goldfish he was dancing in the tank with could really consent to participate) but for this particular evening he had a fun idea: To sell 100 tickets to the performance (in the Spotlight room of the Madison Civic Center) but only provide 50 seats.

Where would the rest sit? Well, that’s their problem! Actually, we did seed each audience with a few people who knew that the floor, the walls, the rest of the room was available. Only a few brave souls (myself included) actually sat on the floor as the dancers moved around – and oh, what a magical experience it was.

Intimate Arts

I could see the folds and texture of the costumes. I could see the flex of foot as it hit the floorboards, sometimes next to me, I could hear the sound of the panting breath as the dancers moved around and beyond me. I was also a part of the performance, and so I got to feel the heightened tension as I juggled close by the audience members, twirling flags in a purple light.

Most of all, what I remember was the eyes. Both in the performers and the audience, there was a heightened awareness of the space we were in, of the fact that we were a limited run, an ephemeral quality, and that this performance would not be known by many – but would be more appreciated by the few who were there.

That, in my view, is the benefit of the intimate spaces. More than just the increased richness of the experience – it is the creation of a magical space, hearkening back to the first social storytellers in the firelight.

What are your favorite up-close performances? A friend of mine who reads this blog got a chanceto see Suzanne Vega in the same space…but I can’t think of many more that I’ve been privy to.

Image Courtesy of Newscom

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