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Unknown Dancer at Japan Society

"The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood"
Written and Directed by Suguru Yamamoto
Wataru Kitao, Performer 
Japan Society, New York 
January 10, 2020

-- By Tom Phillips 
Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips 

                                       
Mayday! Mayday! Is a cry that comes up repeatedly in Suguru Yamamoto’s dance/drama “The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood.” It means “help me” in French, but it seems to fall on deaf ears in Tokyo, the setting for this theater piece by and for a new generation of Japanese artists. 

Despairing dramas about alienated people were a staple of the last century.  What makes this fresh is that it suggests alienation is only the other side of human community. We feel disconnected because we are connected.

Photograph by Ayumi Sakamoto

Butoh a la Vangeline

"Hijikata Mon Amour"
Vangeline
NY Butoh Institute Festival 2019
Theater for the New City, New York
October 26, 2019

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips                                               

Japan and France have long been yoked together by their mutual obsession with each others' elegant style. The US and Japan are connected forever by the atom bomb. "Hijikata Mon Amour" is a bridge connecting those three cultures, and -- in the subversive, twisted way of Butoh -- an attack on each of them.

Photo: Michael Blase

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki

Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki)
Sugimoto Bunraku Puppet Theater
Rose Theater, Lincoln Center, New York
October 19, 2019

by Tom Phillips

copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips 

"The Love Suicides at Sonezaki," which opened Lincoln's Center's tenth annual White Light Festival, tells the tale of a young Osaka shop clerk and a teenage prostitute who kill themselves rather than face life apart. It was banned in Japan in 1723 after a wave of copycat love suicides, and not performed again until 1955. The US premiere of this production showed us nothing so much as the chasm between the worlds of 18th-century Japan and 21st-century America.

Where Butoh Lives

"Void and Vessel," "Mogari," "Hildergardis”
The New York Butoh Institute Festival 2019
Theater for the New City, New York
October 19, 2019

by Tom Phillips
copyright  2019 by Tom Phillips 

Butoh is an art form that rose from the ruins of the atom bombing of Japan -- an event that recalled the Big Bang at the beginning of time, and presaged the Resurrection of the Dead. Both were evoked last night at the second annual New York Butoh Institute Festival.

This year’s festival features 14 performers, all female, from all over the world. While Butoh is a Japanese art form, it lacks the strict formal traditions of Kabuki or Noh theatre. Instead it has a spirit, available to any culture that has survived destruction. New York, which constantly destroys and rebuilds itself, is a perfect venue.

Biennial Buzz

2019 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, New York
May 14, 2019 

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips 

Neck-deep in controversy even before it began, the 79th Whitney Biennial opened today –- organized by two adventurous young women, showcasing emerging artists and artists of color, many of them under 40 years old. Curators Jane Panetta and Ru Hockney set out to reflect the current American turmoil in both social and aesthetic issues. Their show delivers with a panoply of objects d’art from the purely beautiful to the politically explosive.

On the aesthetic end of the spectrum is a live installation by Brendan Fernandes called “The Master and Form,” which examines the relation of ballet to sculpture. This occupies a spacious room with props including a large jungle gym structure, used like a barre by a half-dozen well-trained New York ballet dancers. It’s a black leotard ballet without dancing, static poses rather than movement. More interesting for sculpture buffs than balletomanes, probably, but physically bracing and fun to walk around in. 

Photo by Tom Phillips

Beatledom without the Beat

Pepperland 
Mark Morris Dance Group 
Brooklyn Academy of Music 
Brooklyn, New York
May 11, 2019 

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips 

Great artists know where they shouldn't go. George Balanchine, for example, never choreographed to Beethoven, because he said Beethoven's works  were complete in themselves, nothing to add. Mark Morris could have used that kind of discernment when he accepted a commission for a 50^th-anniversary tribute to the Beatles’ masterpiece “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The resulting “Pepperland” is an uncharacteristically shallow work that does worse than add nothing. It subtracts much of the album's content, substituting original segments by composer Ethan Iverson that have only fleeting connections to the Beatles. Beyond that, the whole project completely misses the spirit and the style of "Sgt. Pepper." 

Photo: Mark Morris Dance Group in Pepperland. Photo by Mat Hayward.

Parable of the Plant Kingdom

"Estado Vegetal" 
Manuela Infante 
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York 
May 3, 2019

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips 

In medical Spanish, "Estado Vegetal" means a vegetative state, where basic life functions go on but consciousness and thought are absent. Politically, a "Vegetative State" could mean rule by the plant kingdom. This intense theatrical piece, starring a young Chilean woman and an array of potted plants, suggests such a state is exactly where humanity is headed.  

Photo: Estado Vegetal, by Maria Baranova.

Holy Ground, Dirty Dancing

"One. One & One"
Vertigo Dance Company 
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
March 6, 2019

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips 

Except for a neat row of dirt at the front of the stage, the opening section of “One. One & One” by Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company looks much like the closing elegy of George Balanchine’s “Serenade.” It’s a solemn communal idyll, to sonorous cellos in a minor key, with a motif of dancers leaning on each other for balance and support. They seem to be a close-knit group, working out complex tasks together –- as when three men braid the hair of a woman while she uses her long tresses to pull them across the stage. 

Photo by Stephanie Berger.

Hip-hop Round-trip: London to New York

"Blak Whyte Gray"
Boy Blue
Michael "Mikey J" Asante, Creative Direction and Music 
Kenrick "H2O" Sandy, Choreography
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College 
Lincoln Center White Light Festival 
November 16, 2018

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips 

Members of Boy Blue held a post-performance chat last night after the US premiere of "Blak Whyte Gray," and it was a shock to hear their British accents. Their intense and acrobatic hip-hop dancing was straight from the streets of New York -- having made a round trip from east London.  

Flipping the usual progression from darkness to light, this young British troupe gives us a three-part journey of liberation that starts with "Whyte" and ends with "Blak." The progress is upward, from a kind of enslavement to a celebration of strength and freedom.  But the opening depiction of present-day slavery seemed the most relevant to an American audience.

Photo by Carl Fox. 

Godot and Warhol in New York

"Waiting for Godot"
By Samuel Beckett, directed by Garry Hynes   
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, Lincoln Center, New York 
November 5, 2018 

"Andy Warhol -- From A to B and Back Again"
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 
Opening November 12, 2018 

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips

In the mid-20^th century, Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” seemed like an end game. Two vagabonds meet daily by a tree, and hope for a deliverance that never comes. In Act One they decide to hang themselves, but can’t decide on the best method: 

ESTRAGON:  Use your intelligence, can't you?                            

Vladimir puts hand to head, uses his intelligence. 

VLADIMIR: (finally) I remain in the dark. 

Diversion arrives in the form of a master and slave, but they seem to be regressing towards doom. Pozzo oppresses his lackey Lucky, who babbles theology on demand. Pozzo goes blind as they exit in Act Two.  Vladimir and Estragon remain waiting, but Godot never shows.    

Aaron Monaghan and Marty Rea in "Waiting for Godot"   Photo by Richard Termine