The Boards of both DTW and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company voted unanimously to merge this afternoon. The new organization will be called New York Live Arts. See here for more from the Times.

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Yasuko Yokoshi’s work has long been engaged in questions around cultural authenticity and identity – as impacted in a mobile and fluid world where the merging of cultures is increasingly prevalent.  As an artist she has been called both “unruly” and “enigmatic,” revealing the thorny process of assessing her cultural bonds.  Her exquisite 2006 what we when we sheltered Raymond Carver’s spare and fundamentally American short stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love within the placid frame of Japanese traditional, Kabuki Su-Odori dance.

Su-Odori is the stripped down form of Kabuki dance, devoid of its intense costume make-up, and exaggerated gestures.  Yokoshi has now spent many years training with Masumi Seyama VI, the direct disciple of Kanjyuro Fuji who is celebrated for refining Su-Odori into its own art.  For her recent Tyler, Tyler at Dance Theater Workshop this past Wednesday – Saturday, she brought in three celebrated dancers from Japan including Kayo Seyama, a woman who has spent over 50 years assisting Masumi Seyama in preserving this traditional dance form and the witty Naoki Asaji.  While complemented well by his Japanese and NYC counterparts, Julie Alexander and Kayvon Pourazar, the night most often belongs to Kuniya Sawamura, a rising star of Kabuki.  From his first calculated stumble, while Alexander plays on a tiny, toy grand piano and sings in Japanese, we are being primed for the subtle refined amiguity that will play out over the course of the work.  This and the section that follows, with Asaji playing the mini piano and singing “every Sha-La-La-La-La, every Whoa-o-o-o” from the Carpenters Yesterday Once More complete with merged phonemes, serve as primers letting the audience in on the challenge and joke of cultural confusions.  There is a clash of cultures, there is a merging of mores, and while at moments light and delightful, it is never trite.

The evening allows a ruminations on large motor movements versus subtle refinements – when a 1-inch difference in arm posture is highly noticeable – or, considerations of what it means to command an audience’s attention in our ADHD landscape.   Through her engagement of a traditional Japanese performing art, Yokoshi voluntarily makes the deeply integrated nature of a Japanese aesthetic explicit in this work.  The concern towards order, beauty and a sophisticated type of subtlety is a deeply rooted component of Japanese society.  Almost any aspect of daily life can be enacted with conscious grace and can serve as opportunity for aesthetic satisfaction.  This aesthetic egalitarianism may bring attention to every aspect of even the seemingly most mundane activity.  But then, when in the midst of a minimal dance sequence and dramatic monologue about journeying “deeper and deeper into the snow,” Alexander states “but, what the hell… I’ve got to take this shit.”  In Yokoshi’s hands, extreme formality and today’s hyper-irony meet in the classic, medieval The Tale of Heike, and several other traditional repertories.  Under her direction, the pleasure of watching Pourzan and Sawamura dancing together – first in simultaneous solos and then in a partnered sequence – is potent.  They arrive at a cohesion that so often in cross-cultural collaborations falls flat.

Popularity: 1% [?]

they wanna check my papers see what I carry around, credentials are boring i burnt them at the burial ground… – M.I.A. birdflu

Sahar Javendani is showing her newest work-in-progress as part of DTW’s Studio Series.  The Studio Series is meant as a research laboratory for physical explorations and new movement investigations with a focus on process, not final performance/product. The “performances” are intended to be informal public showings to share ideas with an audience in the intimate working space of the studio.  I’d first seen Sahar’s work on DTW’s 2009 Fresh Tracks and then again as part of Danspace @BRIC’s “Home” program.  Her theatrical, witty and poignant takes on issues of gender representation, cultural mores, and national ties made her an artist I was immediately enamored with.  Having spent decades digging into the ever-shifting conflicts among an ad nauseum list of expected personal allegiance (flags, aesthetics, communities, sexual orientations,  blah blah blah blah blah), I value watching someone else tackle it with a hearty dose of ribaldry. 

“The Turquoise Lounge” is in very early stages so I can understand to a point why the performative heart of the work still only resideds in the body of its creator.  However, for a work that aims to look at the intricacies of personal politics amidst the reality of global identities (the work is set in an airport customs lounge), the remaining cast seems noticeably tied to an Ellis Island lineage lacking the breadth that its bellydancing and bhangra teaching choreographer carries with her.

See Culturebot’s 5 Questions for Sahar from last year.

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If I could, I would go back to DTW for the next 3 nights with someone new to see Bruno Beltrao/Grupa de Rua’s “H3″ each time.  I want to watch this work work.  And work it does, on so many levels.  It’s a physically brutal investigation of time, space, and energy.  It’s a collapse of discrete systems and a rebirth for hip hop and contemporary dance performance.  It’s compelling, frustrating and rousing.  Beltrao is doing something for hip hop that Forsythe did for ballet.  He’s moving it to new ground and getting it in front of new audiences.  He’s also providing contemporary performance with a fast and furious injection of what is probably the most common global movement practice of our times.  He’s beyond appropriation, fusion, migration or transmission.  He is full-on synthesis and he is banging apart the borders for the rest of us.

Beltrao has received substantial recognition in Brazil and Europe, but this is his first time to the US.  You do not want to miss it, though I’ll admit that I might opt for late seating for my own return visit as the first 20 minutes gets a bit tedious.   It begins compellingly enough but what starts as movement investigation begins to feel like filler (perhaps to achieve evening length status).  I have much more to say, but as I spent at least an hour and half (most of it freezing on a street corner) debating the merits of the work and the merits of contemporary dance with my b-girl/American Studies scholar/Dance and Journalism degreed/recovering former member of the “poverty circuit” (as she tells me the B’way dancers call it) guest, I’m now tired and chilled.

But, I had to first say GO! What else do you have to do on a Sunday night?

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Put on my wellies and slogged through the slushfest last night to attend Dance Theater Workshop’s “Fresh Tracks” benefit.  It was well worth it. If this particular program (for this 45-year old series) is an accurate barometer of our current artistic atmosphere, I’d forecast rich days ahead for dance.  I’ll admit, despite being a loyal and supportive board member at DTW with my own FT story, I’ve not often walked away from this emerging choreographer showcase cheering a hokey “hooray for dance!”  But, last night I did.  The works by Vanessa Anspaugh, Jen McGinn, Liz Santoro, Eleanor Smith, Makiko Tamura, and Enrico Wey were each singularly strong and all exceptionally vibrant.  There was crackle, craft, poignancy, provocation, form, presence, thought, and wit running rampant throughout the show.

It’s incredible to feel charged and challenged by a rising generation of creative voices and to feel a particular kind of hopefulness, knowing that these artists are now only beginning the substantial component of their Fresh Tracks experience.  Besides presentation at DTW the artists are provided with a 50-hour creative residency and professional development workshops in marketing and fundraising strategies.  They’re also participating in dialogue sessions with Artistic Advisor Levi Gonzalez, facilitating open discussion about their creative process and providing a valuable opportunity to build community and discourse.  This all comes after this performance week, speaking to the need for artists to get more than just a gig and providing the field with a few better prepared members.

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I’m moderating a follow up to last year’s “Relevance of the University” Lobby Talk. It’s this Tuesday, 7:30 at Dance Theater Workshop – 219 W. 19th St. Panelists include Juliana May, David Neumann, Jana Feinman, Gerald Casel, and hopefully… Susan Marshall. Lobby Talks are more round table than panel, so come and plan to join in.

My notes from last year: http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog/2009/04/20/the-conversation-continuesdtw-lobby-talk-the-relevance-of-the-university/

The transcriptions from last year on Critical Correspondence – as part of the University Project I guest edited:

http://www.movementresearch.org/publishing/?q=node/542

http://movementresearch.org/publishing/?q=node/544

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I promised Andy I’d send a bio months ago and instead posted a bunch of APAP blog responses. Since I’m in the midst of prepping and touring to Hawaii (yessss), I’m not seeing anything for the next week and half and can take the moment to add some background. I’m a NYC choreographer, artistic director of Maura Nguyen Donohue/inmixedcompany, assistant professor of dance at Hunter College (please excuse the site, since coming on board in Sep. I’ve taken on revamping – but it’s not published yet) and member of the board for Dance Theater Workshop, where I also served as one of the first DTW/Digital Fellows and as artistic advisor for The Mekong Project, a multi-year exchange and residency program in the US and SE Asia. I wrote for The Dance Insider from the spring of 2000 – fall of 2009, serving as Asian Bureau Chief and senior artistic advisor and covering dance and live performance in NYC, HK, India, Japan and SE Asia.  I also wrote for Dance Magazine, American Theater Journal, NY State Danceforce, and the HK Dance Journal. I was guest editor for Critical Correspondence’s University Project, a series of interviews with dance faculty across the country. Academically, I write about intersections of race, gender, and technology in live movement-based performance and serve on the board of directors for the Congress on Research in Dance. I have both a BA in Anthropology and Dance (’92) and MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College where I’ve served as visiting guest artist and teaching fellow. I’ve also been on faculty at Hampshire and Mt. Holyoke Colleges. I have two children.

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Its June and that means there’s lots of queertastic entertainment coming your way. For instance:

Neil Greenberg’s ” Really Queer Dance with Harps and Quartet with Three Gay Men”

June 11-14, 18-21 at 7:30pm

$25/$15(Discount) at Dance Theater Workshop

http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/greenberg

And also the HOT FEST at Dixon Place! Woo-hoo!!

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