Archive for dance theater workshop
August 18, 2008 at 3:22 pm · Filed under dance, dancers, KATE, choreographer, dance theater workshop, contemporary dance, dance culture, dance companies, improvisation, dance spirit, KATE-M, SYREN, kate mehan, SYREN modern dance, dtw, dancenow NYC
Lynn and I have been back in the studio… Just “jamming” right now. Doing a bit of barre together, then she teaches me some new class excercises and combinations she has been creating…which feels great to be told what to do a bit! This week we did a pretty long imrov together to some Brahams mostly (Sonatos for Cello and piano Opp. 38, 99 and 108… and some work by James Newton Howard). Felt AWESOME to just move that BIG and free! Can’t believe we will be in studio with new company members in a few weeks re-staging “Pelleas” and getting “Abravanel” back up and running (we just booked a gig at Ethel Walker School in CT for November) and “Dig” excerpts ready for DanceNow Festival at DTW. Oh and somewhere in that I am starting a new piece for the company that we are trying to have the Artemis Chamber Ensemble play live for!!! So so excited.
And, I have yet to see a copy, but I hear there is a little mention of us in Dance Spirit Magazine for September. Page 150 to be exact!
Lots of really great stuff… But for the 3 hours in the studio, it sure did feel good to forget about running a company and remember where this whole thing started… Just dancing in a studio with Lynn…
Just doesn’t get much better than that.
www.syrendance.org
Recent Posts by kate mehan
July 23, 2008 at 6:05 pm · Filed under dance, dance theater workshop, city center, KATE-M, SYREN modern dance, dtw, auditions, dancenow NYC, residency, greenspace
SYREN held its first open call last month at City Center. It was alot of fun, we taught phrasework from “Abravanel” and “Dig” as well leading some improvisation. Lynn and I met a TON of really talented dancers. We were blown away by ther talent and joked about how we need to start making work for 100 people!
As it stands, we only needed five! After quite the week of auditions and callbacks, we hired the lovely and talented Aleyse Bradford, Heidi D’Alessandro, Chanelle Lagacé, Brigitte Mitchell, and the very handsome Quincy Junor.
We are really excited to get back into the studio! The first thing on the calendar is the Dancenow NYC festival. We are performing excerpts of “Dig” at DTW, so the company will be back in the studio beginning in September. That gives Lynn and I some more time to keep going with these grant deadlines and foundation proposals. Its a tough nut to crack… funding from the city and state. But with the help of some outstanding feedback from a few different sources, we are hoping that this is the year we break though a bit more from a grant perspective.
We are thrilled to begin our residency next month awarded by DTW. The Outer Space Grant allows us to rehearse in Long Island City’s beautiful Greenspace studio for a generous number of hours for free. WAHOO!!!
Pentacle also approached us recently about representation in their Gallery, which is really great for the company. More visibility and more possibility…
One step at a time.. For the moment we are just thrilled with the new talented dancers on board for the journey!
Recent Posts by kate mehan
June 18, 2008 at 5:23 pm · Filed under dance, TONY, dance theater workshop, Neil Greenberg, queer dance
“La Gaya Scienza,” of that union of singer, knight, and free spirit…
Ecce Homo
Photo by Erin Baiano for The New York Times
The rest of this week, Dance Theater Workshop continues its two week showing of Dance by Neil Greenberg. Closing out the spring season are two pieces, the 2006 Quartet with Three Gay Men and premiere of Really Queer Dance with Harps. The work has been well reviewed in the Times and TONY among others. Artforum published an interview with Greenberg and the DTW website has some great images and a clip from Quartet.
Opening night last Wednesday included a post-show talk with the DTW’s artistic director Carla Peterson, Neil Greenberg and the co-creators of the work. Performers: Colin Stilwell, Antonio Ramos, Luke Miller, Ellen Barnaby, Nicholas Duran, Christine Elmo, Paige Martin and the adorably disruptive Johnni Durango. Musicians: Shelley Burgon, Kristen Theriault and (composer) Zeena Parkins. Lighting designer Michael Stiller.
The talk, as most of the writing on the dance, focused on process. Over the past sixteen years Neil has been creating work through a process of taping improvisations, analyzing and remixing the movement, and attempting to reconstitute the captured/curated material “verbatim.” These pieces represent a development in his process as Neil, for the first time, is recording the movement of all of his dancers to generate the primordial vocabulary from which he fashions the final pieces. Neil and I have a common interest in remixing the dance graph.
The titles are curious as they intentionally provoke questions the asking of which only lead to more questions. As Sulcas points out in the Times, the dances have “an evenness of tone that can sometimes lead the mind to wander.” Perhaps this free space is given by Greenberg to interrogate the questions.
In Quartet with Three Gay Men the initial question is “who?” In a dance with four men, three of which are announced gay, who is the odd man out? And there is no easy answer. Immediately our reflexes fire with additional questions, “why can’t I identify the straight dancer?”, “how does one identify a straight dancer?” and “why does it matter?” Much like pulling loose thread on a garment, this train of thought unstitches itself, disrupting its own chain of signification. The question is brought into question.
Really Queer Dance with Harps presents its own matrix of questions, the first of which is, “what is queer dance?” Throughout the dance Neil teases us with seemingly stable landmarks for identifying this category. We might recognize flowers behind the ear, limp wristed bounding and and languid excursions into the hip as “queer”. But as this movement plays on both male and female bodies and intertwines with brisk, stiff wristed hetero-normative gestures the boundary terms begin to blur.
For Neil, queer dance is anti-censorship. “Dance is such a censored event for men,” Gia quotes Neil “We think of it as both an effeminate activity and a queer activity and, first of all, so what? Why would either of those things be bad?” If dance is, as Neil writes, “a space for living with the question of the body” and “for attending to the information living in the body” then what knowledge is the hetero-norm hiding? Inquiring minds want to know; I want to know.
Interrogating the question “what is queer dance?” elicits more questions/instabilities. Isnt all dance a little queer? What is it in dance, what is the ingredient that is queer? If dance is, according to the popular conception, a queer activity what is it that makes it so?
We owe something to Neil Greenberg for developing work that plays this beautifully while unasking so many important questions. Performances run tonight through Saturday.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
October 22, 2007 at 12:23 am · Filed under dance, dance event, DAVID, dance and technology, butoh, apple, brooklyn academy of music, david hallberg, dance theater workshop, dance culture, dance companies, ohad naharin, jeroma bel
After reading Kristin’s questions about performances and the aspect of relevance in dance to today’s Apple audience, I thought I would take a moment to tell you all what has been inspiring me lately…
And hope this sheds some light on curious readers to get out and see some performances.
Jerome Bel
Bel’s “Show Must Go On”
This choreographer is coming to Dance Theatre Workshop on Nov 7-11.
I caught his “Show Must Go On” two years ago here in NYC and LOVED it. He does such a great job of showing the audience a real part of performance, not just lights and tutu’s.
Japan Society’s Butoh Festival
October 9-27
Butoh is another form of dance that transcends classical ballet and brings you into another form of understanding of movement. It takes some patience but rewards the viewer with a new understanding of movement.
Ohad Naharin
Brooklyn Academy of Music November 13-17
This choreographer from Israel, whom I’ve written about before, is action packed and always takes such advantage of the aspect of theater. Never shy of the physical side of dance, I have always left the theater from his shows completely inspired and in pain from what I saw!
What have you seen that you loved lately?
Shows, Movies, Etc.?
Recent Posts by david hallberg
April 4, 2007 at 4:10 pm · Filed under dancers, GIA, GIA PICKS, recommendation, john jasperse, becky hilton, jodi melnick, dance theater workshop, contemporary dance, new york dance
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| Posted by Gia Kourlas
John Jasperse is a name you should know: his cerebral dances, acclaimed in New York and throughout Europe (William Forsythe is a fan) transformed contemporary dance beginning with 1995’s Excessories. He returns to Dance Theater Workshop this week with a trio, Becky, Jodi and John, featuring himself and two of downtown dance’s most riveting performers: Becky Hilton and Jodi Melnick.
I recommend this for the opportunity to witness extremely high-quality performers. There’s live music by Hawn Rowe (he’s a genius). But the main reason is that this dance is about dancers (the three met in New York in the mid-’80s). There’s nudity, but it’s not like Ann Liv. I won’t say anything else. Just go.
Recent Posts by gia
