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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

Humanity in Splitsville

"Split"
Lucy Guerin Inc 
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York 
October 13, 2018 

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips 

Two women -- one naked, one in a modest blue dress -- dance parallel figures to the sound of drums, on a bare stage marked off by a square of white tape. The gestures suggest a range of human activities: play, sport, religious ritual, repetitive work, rest, sex, sleep, and dance itself, ballet and modern and folk. The moves are identical but look different, articulate and sensuous in the flesh, hidden or suggested in the folds of a dress. The two dancers have plenty of room to share, and seem to co-exist peacefully. After 15 minutes or so, they pause and divide the square in two, laying a line of tape straight down the center. 

Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti

Beyond Butoh

"Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination" 
Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York December 14, 2017

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips 

Five dancers take part in Kota Yamazaki’s “Darkness Odyssey Part 2: I or Hallucination,” but for the most part each dances on his or her own, on a shiny floor, with a diaphanous rectangle of silver fabric hanging overhead. The overall feeling is one of slow, liquid movement -- but with fits and starts troubling the surface calm.     

Photo: (L-R): Julian Barnett, Mina Nishimura, Raja Feather Kelly, and Joanna Kotze. Photo by Stephanie Berger.

Monk on Monk

"Dancing Voices" 
Meredith Monk and the Young People's Chorus of New York 
Lincoln Center White Light Festival
New York 
October 20, 2017 

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips 

As an artist Meredith Monk has never done just one thing at a time. With “Dancing Voices,” which helped kick off Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival this weekend, she attempts both a retrospective of her own career as composer-choreographer and a transmission of her dharma to a new generation of artists.  

“Dancing Voices” is divided into two parts. Part One is a selection of her early experiments, from the Sixties to the early Nineties, performed with a chorus of young kids. Part Two is more recent, reflective works, with older children joining in. The first part was the most fun, and the most moving.

Meredith  Monk, photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Noh Now

"Left-Right-Left"
Luca Veggetti, Director/Choreographer
Japan Society, New York
October 13, 2017

by Tom Phillips 
Copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips 

"Left-Right-Left" describes the basic act of walking, or dancing. It also might describe a historical or dramatic dialectic: a movement from hope to despair, to new hope. Taken together, this is the material for an experimental drama combining western contemporary dance with the 600-year-old Japanese Noh Theater. It's a tall order, a joint project of Japan Society in New York and the Yokohama Noh Theater. Italian choreographer Luca Veggetti, whose career has taken him from La Scala to Tokyo and New York, is bold enough to take it on. 

All photos:  Yoichi Tsukada.

 

The Body Speaks

"Unwanted" 
Dorothee Munyaneza/Compagnie Kadidi 
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York 
September 22, 2017

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips 

Midway through "Unwanted," a woman steps forward and begins to sing "Ave Maria," in a sweet, clear soprano -- then suddenly rips the name of Mary into a horrific shriek. It's a heart-stopping moment that encapsulates the theme of this piece: the trauma of women raped in war, and the horror they experience bearing the children of their tormentors.   

Urns, Mearns, and Isadora

The Art of Isadora
Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company 
Joyce Theater
New York 
June 19, 2017

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips 

A prophet is always without honor in her home country, but Isadora Duncan may finally have come into her glory. It happened last night at a jam-packed Joyce Theater, where a world-famous ballerina gave a boost to an infamous enemy of ballet. Isadora would have been amazed.

 

 Sara Mearns rehearsing "Narcissus"  New York Times photo. 

Circus with a Purpose

"Limits"
Cirkus Cirkor
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, New York
June 7, 2017 

by Tom Phillips 
copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips 

Midway through "Limits," aerial acrobat Saara Ahola asks the audience to join her in a little trick: stand up with your feet together, close your eyes, and remain standing. Be careful in the balcony, she says, with good reason. We immediately feel ourselves swaying, shifting our weight to stay upright.  The lesson is this: the world cannot keep its balance by holding still, it constantly needs to shift its weight, to allow movement. She asks: what happens when the world is in a great upheaval, and suddenly borders are closed, people arrested, stranded, abandoned, drowned? Will the whole world lose its balance and fall? 

Failure: An Interview with Laura Peterson, Part 2

--  By Tom Phillips

In Part One of this conversation, Laura Peterson talked about the sea-changes in her art over the years - from satire, through abstraction, to a complex vehicle for personal, emotional expression.  

After years of being cast as microscopic bugs and atomic particles, Peterson and her dancers emerged as human beings in 2012, in a full-length piece called “Failure.” It addresses a universal human experience, but you’ve never seen failure quite this way. The unique touch is the scenery - a huge kite-like construction, designed to collapse during the performance.   

Peterson’s style has always been demanding, punishing – pushing beyond the limits of human stamina, almost like the Wilis in "Giselle," doomed to dance forever. But unlike Wilis, we mortals have limits beyond our limits, and at some point we have to give up. In “Failure” she addresses those outer limits.  

Laura Peterson is the daughter of an academic philosopher, but as an artist she is also a child of the Judson School – drawing on the ideas incubated at Judson Memorial Church in the 1960s – among them minimalism, repetition, unusual settings and collaborations with other arts, and chance combinations. In “Failure,” it all comes together.  We see choreography as philosophy – a working out of the paradoxical relationships of determinism, chance, and human will. And in a satisfying twist, we can see it this summer at Judson Memorial Church. “Failure” makes its New York debut in that sacred space, June 29 through July 1.

In March we talked about the history of the work, and what may happen in its new, post-election incarnation: