"Shanghai Tango"
Jin Xing Dance Theatre Shanghai
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
January 31, 2012
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman
The most compelling aspect of the Jin Xing Dance Theatre Shanghai is the magnetic presence and story of its choreographer and star—and that’s not faint praise. Jin Xing was born a boy in China, rose to be a colonel in the Chinese army, danced and choreographed throughout that time – and struggled with her sexual identity. She eventually won approval for gender reassignment surgery in the mid-90s (particularly difficult in China.) She has returned to the Joyce to dance in the United States after twenty years, for the first time as a woman.
February 06, 2012
January 09, 2012
Me, Myself, and I
"Too shy to stare"
Davis Freeman
2012 COIL Festival, PS 122
The Old School
New York, NY
January 5, 2012
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman
“Too shy to stare” was all about Me. Davis Freeman’s mind-twisting performance installation, opening PS 122’s COIL Festival at the Old School this year, put me front and center in each of seven scenes. Dancers wearing my photograph on their faces did private performances in rooms lining two eerie corridors. Each scene evoked different states – loneliness, sensuality, the animal natures of being human. Although the dancers’ bodies provided a medium for approaching each state, in every performance, the lens – for me -- was my own face.
December 26, 2011
One May Smile and Be a Villain
"newyou: I think you might be in deep denial"
Johannes Wieland
Merce Cunningham Studio
New York, NY
December 21, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
Don’t trust these smiles. As if to claim a new day, the johannes wieland company brought back a 2008 work “newyou” to the Merce Cunningham Studio, but the work was still filled with the same old cynicism. More a performance piece than a dance, Wieland told the tale with five dancers and a score of walk-on redheads, all grinning enthusiastically. It’s all lies; not a smile – or a statement – is true. This is a lonely, flashy crowd of performers, hoping to con yet another audience, or maybe to fool themselves for a little while.
December 15, 2011
All the Pretty Boys
"Cover Boy"
Tere O’Connor
Danspace Project
St. Mark’s Church
New York, NY
December 11, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
Who would have thought the old man had so much tender in him? Tender isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind about the work of Tere O’Connor. But in the world premiere of “Cover Boy,” at Danspace Project, the sharp edges were softened, and the loveliness and vulnerability of four young men was both haunting and enlightening.
November 18, 2011
Flagged
"Canyon"
John Jasperse
BAM Harvey Theater
Brooklyn, NY
November 16, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
The premiere at BAM of John Jasperse’s latest work, “Canyon,” is an homage to wonder. An artist whose work is subtle and implicit has used the grand, crumbling 19th Century Harvey Theater, a richly textured score by Hahn Rowe, and the collaboration of his five dancers to build a compelling dense work. That it somehow started with an idea of the Grand Canyon is both believable and irrelevant. Jasperse’s work has always been mysterious, hard to pin down. This work continued in that inscrutable tradition – the audience’s role was not to understand, but to watch and enter.
November 14, 2011
Light as a Feather
"Angels of Swedenborg"
Ping Chong and the Great Jones Repertory
Ellen Stewart Theater at LaMama
New York, NY
November 10, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
LaMama’s 50th anniversary season opened in a flurry of wings - and 600 pounds of feathers. Ping Chong’s revival of the 1985 production “Angels of Swedenborg” has been updated to include references to iPods and flat screens, but Emanuel Swedenborg’s underlying exploration of angels above and below resonates in any era. To the entering audience, a downstage electronic ticker shared a repeating loop of news from Swedenborg, an 18th Century scientist and mystic, “The Lord has graciously opened the sight of my spirit. He has raised me into heaven and lowered me into hell, and has shown me visually what each is like.” Ping Chong’s visually rich dance theater used Swedenborg’s images to honor LaMama’s own guiding spirit. He turned the space named for her -- the Ellen Stewart Theater -- into a shimmering, billowing swirl of white, as angels danced among us.
November 04, 2011
Fall for Dance Program 2
"Mana," "Bloom," "Among the Stars," "Roughcut"
Vertigo Dance Company/Drew Jacoby/Jessica Lang Dance/Richard Alston Dance Company
City Center
New York, NY
October 30, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
Fall for Dance played it safe on Program 2. The Festival offered a familiar-tasting sandwich of two slight pieces nestled in two larger, more dramatic ones. Navigating the expected and predictable interplay between national and international troupes, large and small casts, classical and contemporary movement, this evening of four works pushed the required buttons. What it didn’t do was demand much from the willing, ever-appreciative festival audience.
October 20, 2011
Escher Enacted
"The Rehearsal"
Cuqui Jerez
The Performing Garage
FIAF Crossing the Line 2011
New York, NY
October 15, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
For “The Rehearsal,” Cuqui Jerez mixed relentless repetition with laughter and boredom -- just as rehearsals often do. Presented as part of the FIAF’s Crossing the Line 2011 Festival, Jerez and her four collaborators claimed that their goal was not to connect their disciplines (choreography, performance, video) but to walk a line among them all. “The Rehearsal” was neither dance, nor theater, but Jerez’s idea enacted: “The curtain rises and we see the fiction within the fiction within the fiction within the fiction. The curtain falls.” The artists wandered, chatted, argued, got distracted by irrelevant things, tried things out, did them over. Interrupted by directors (also each of the performers) who coached from theater seats, each scene, was repeated -- including the irrelevant interruptions – multiple times.
October 10, 2011
Full Exposure
"The Smell of Want"
Fitzgerald and Stapleton
Abrons Arts Center
New York, NY
October 3, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
The wending, mysterious shapelessness of “The Smell of Fear” was both its strength and weakness -- it was never boring, but it was a head-scratcher. The audience was in thrall to Irish choreographers Emma Fitzgerald and Áine Stapleton and the dancers who populated the stage with them and moved to murmured stories and hummed or breathed vocalizations. In the upstairs black box theater of Abrons Arts Center, the six naked dancers were already moving their arms and shifting their weight as the audience entered the small, brightly lit house.
September 28, 2011
How To Make Art
"i like penises: a little something in 24 acts"
Kimberly Bartosik/daela
FIAF: Crossing the Line 2011
Danspace
New York, NY
September 23, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
Kimberly Bartosik cloaked robust dance and art-making in piles of junk and a provocative title, but “i like penises: a little something in 24 acts” wasn’t as trivial as the title claimed. Set at Danspace as part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line 2011 Festival, the rapidly played acts slid from one to another. Three disciplined dancers and a graphic artist partner moved in and out of rapid solos and groupings in movement that was much more than a little something. For the record, the title was a red herring, and there was not a penis in sight.
