I have been seeing your “Google ME” signs since the beginning of the summer and am real happy I can help make the winger a place where the people can find out more about you share their own stories about you. The chickens make this sign next to the gas station on 125th my favorite. Hello to all the people in the cars who followed the sign. I looked at your myspace page. The pictures are great. This one really shows what you are about: living in peace and being healthy.
Artists depend on others to chronicle their work. The 2003 times article by Alan Feuer is a good start but nowhere near a complete story. My posts arent bad either but there needs to be more. I think people need to know more about how rich your life is before they can really understand what you got to say. Lots of folks think you are crazy or homeless. People should see your paintings and hear your music and read your poetry. If you could share the view from your terrace or inside your art studio the people would really know and want to help support your work.
I think we should create something together with images, music, video, books, wisdom, technology and people. We should continue to use the internet and signs to communicate to each other and with the people. It was great to meet with you on tuesday thanks for giving me a call on my birthday. Let me know next time you are putting up an installation so we can artifact it. I am in the neighborhood.
Tony
I dont know what you know and you don’t know what I do but together we got a whole lot of know.
Otis Houston Jr.
I just wanted to share some photos and the press release of a show I put up last week-and-a-few here in Montreal with Kyra Jean Green, my friend and collaborator who graduated with me from the Juilliard School in 2006. This was my first evening show… ever! The evening was composed of little dances that we both choreographed individually. We linked them all with interesting transitions and made it a cohesive program lasting less than an hour. We received lots of compliments and great comments. We plan to do the show again sometime soon because of the enthusiastic demand for the show to happen again. Both Kyra and I were very happy and thankful for all who made the show possible. The dancers, volunteers, and the audience. Merci!
We performed at a studio loft for the first night and ran into the problem of figuring out how to seat the audience. So Kyra decided that we should buy blow up mini-inner-tubes and have the audience use them as seat cushions. The audience loved it! They particularly loved the blown up dolphin and Dalmatian dog. It was a really fun evening!
PRESS RELEASE
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Kyra Jean Green and Bennyroyce Royon present MUSIC DANCE FUN WOW !, an exciting collaborative dance show between two talented choreographers. Both graduated from the Juilliard School and currently dance with Cas Public. The event will be presented on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 9PM at STUDIO SPACE and on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 9PM at THE POUND. They have enlisted a stunning group of Montréal-based dancers. The program, which is a little less than an hour, includes several new works by both choreographers. Musical selections include music by Dani Siciliano, Cocoa Rosie, Archive, Venetian Snares, Ellen Alien, Autechre, and Animal Collective. Ms. Green’s talents have been praised by The Washington Times stating that “CityDance Ensemble is impressive. [One of] its greatest strength[s] is new dancer Kyra Jean Green…” She has also been acclaimed by Lisa Traiger a member of the Dance Critics Association, Carmel Morgan of “Ballet Dance Magazine, and by DC dance blogger Amanda Abrams who expressed that “Kyra Jean Green was terrific… clean movements, beautiful and a compelling presence.” Likewise, Mr. Royon’s dance and choreographic talents have been applauded by the Boston Globe, the Berkshire Eagle, and by Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times who expressed that Mr. Royon’s “keenly focused, succinct way with movement” was a pleasure to watch. Kyra Jean Green was born in France and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. She received her B.F.A. in dance from Juilliard in May 2006. Upon leaving Juilliard she danced and choreographed for City Dance Ensemble of Washington, D.C. Ms. Green was one of three winners selected from a pool of 114 applicants to participate in a one-week residency to create an original work for Hubbard Street II. She has also choreographed for Bosma Dance of Washington, D.C. and had an evening of her work presented at the Kennedy Center. In September, Ms. Green will be choreographing a new piece for the Michigan based company Eisenhower Dance Ensemble. Mr. Royon was born in the Philippines. He started professional dance training at age 16 with the Evergreen City Ballet Academy and received his BFA degree at the Juilliard School in 2006. Mr. Royon joined the Metropolitan Opera Ballet for its 2006/2007 season where he performed in the new production of Madama Butterfly, choreographed by Carolyn Choa and directed by Anthony Minghella. He also appeared in other MET Opera productions. In summer of 2007, he joined Rasta Thomas’ new all male company “Bad Boys of Dance” with a debut performance at Jacob’s Pillow as part of its 75th anniversary season. Mr. Royon’s choreographic works have been presented in Montréal, Maryland, Seattle, New York City, and at Jacob’s Pillow in Beckett, Massachussetts.
(Happy to tell friends about the successful evening!)
The roundtable discussion, “Approaches to Collaboration: Choreographers and Visual Artists,” took place on Saturday, September 8th at The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, on the upper east side. Collaborative models for performance were discussed.
Complete description of event and panelist bios: http://www.philoctetes.org/Event_Archive/Approaches_to_Collaboration_Choreographers_and_Visual_Artists
Following are my notes from the panel, as discussed by Noel Carroll, Roger Copeland, Mary Fleischer, Lynn Garafola, and Yvonne Rainer.
Ballet Russes’ collaborative model exemplified the Wagnerian idea of Gesamtkunswerk, or “total work of art,” via a synthesis of poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music.
The ballet Parade was cited as a very early example of artistic collaboration, composed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes 1916-1917. Choreography by Léonide Massine (who was also dancing), music by Erik Satie, a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau, costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso, and the orchestra conducted by Ernest Ansermet. Painter Henri Matisse also did sets and costumes for another of Ballet Russes Le Chant du Rossignol 1920 (or The Song of the Nightingale).
Parade Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade_
Apparently, George Balanchine (one of the founders of New York City Ballet), was not so interested in visual aspects such as costuming and sets, but he was interested in lighting. Another choreographer who was very involved with lighting was Louie Fuller. She is considered a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.
Info about Louie Fuller: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/current-loie.html
There was a good time spent on the Cage/Cunningham collaborative model. Both artists were in favor of “disillusion,” but for different reasons.
While Cunningham is a defender of the autonomy of the art form (in his case it would be dance), Cage is more of an integrationist, a descendant of Marcel Duchamp’s ideas who also wanted to dissolve the distance between art and life. Where Cage and Cunningham agree is on strategy: the use of aleatoric methods.
Yvonne Rainer called this collaborative model “mechanical,” where there is no apparent conversation between the collaborators. She cites a piece by choreographer John Jasperse, whose name she didn’t say but because of her description I suspect she meant California, as a good example of the integration of the stage elements (that set was designed by Ammar Eloueini).
Info about John Jasperse’s California: http://www.johnjasperse.org/index.php?name=rep8 Image of Set Design by Ammar Eloueini: http://www.digit-all.net
Choreographer: Jérôme Bel Production: The show must go on (2001) Photo: Laurent Philippe
I propose livening up this Reading Group through conversation – where we all participate in defining this field. I would like to start this conversation by inviting all of you (whether you’ve read Lepecki’s Exhausting Dance or not) to share your viewpoint on this critique of representation/virtuosity through stillness and reduction…
When Jérôme Bel had one of his performers ask this question – “To be … or not to be” – in The Last Performance (1998), he set up a critique of representation. Re-Read this famous Shakespearean quote from Hamlet as:
To represent … or not to represent … that is the question in contemporary dance.
Jérôme Bel critiques representation through stillness … or reduction … as Lepecki points out in Concept and Presence (A chapter in Carter’s book Rethinking Dance History, 2004):
“The contemporary European dance scene can be qualified by one term: ‘reduction’ – of expansiveness, of the spectacular, of the unessential…”
Pirko Husemann points out “on the level of dance an evident fading-away of dance itself prevails. Contemporary European dance becomes less and less danced in the usual sense. Admittedly, this tendency within dance history is no singular occurrence – here mentioned would be only the minimalism of American 1960s postmodern dance.”
This critique of representation is certainly not new. The lineage of this rejection of virtuosity and representation includes amongst others:
Five Ballerinas in Manhattan is a public art piece by Jonathan Monk, based on the original work Seven Ballets in Manhattan, by Daniel Buren. It is being presented by Creative Time, and uses seven different locations in Manhattan.
From Creative Time:
JONATHAN MONK
Five Ballerinas in Manhattan
May 27 - June 2
Chinatown, East Village, Greenwich Village,
Times Square, SoHo, Central Park, Wall Street
WHERE AND WHEN
Sunday, May 27, 2-4pm: CHINATOWN beginning at Walker and Centre Streets
Monday, May 28, 2-4pm: EAST VILLAGE beginning near 8th Street and 3rd Avenue
Tuesday, May 29, 2-4pm: GREENWICH VILLAGE beginning near West Houston Street and 6th Avenue
Wednesday, May 30, 11am-12pm and 9-10pm: TIMES SQUARE beginning near 42nd Street and 7th Avenue
Thursday, May 31, 1-4pm: SOHO beginning at 420 West Broadway
Friday, June 1, 2-3pm: CENTRAL PARK beginning near Rockefeller Center @ 5th Ave and 50th Street
Saturday, June 2, 12-2pm: WALL STREET beginning near Greenwich and Fulton Street
“Jonathan Monk is restaging Daniel Buren’s key performance work, Seven Ballets in Manhattan, on its 32nd anniversary. Re-titling the work, Five Ballerinas in Manhattan, five performers dressed in dance rehearsal clothes will attempt to perform Buren’s choreography at the identical locations on the same days and times of the original performances. In 1975, the dancers carried placards featuring the striped work of Buren; for this rendition, Monk will have the dancers distribute an adaptation of Buren’s brochure featuring illustrations of the choreography for each site.
This enigmatic work in its original presentation prompted questions regarding the status of art in the public realm and how such confrontations are defined. For example, audiences in SoHo, then the center of the commercial gallery scene in New York, accepted the work as art, but audiences on Wall Street interpreted the parade of placards as a protest and a potential unidentifiable threat. By re-phrasing and re-presenting works from the Modernist Canon of the 1960s and 1970s, Monk aims to test their continued strength and validity, in part through demystifying the process. Part homage, part parody, the work suggests alternative outcomes, differing audience responses and new-routes for the cultural producer and artist of today.
This is conceptual artist Jonathan Monk’s first non-gallery based work in New York. Born in Britain in 1969, and now based in Berlin, Monk works in a wide range of media including installations, photography, film, sculpture and performance. His tongue-in-cheek methods often recall procedural approaches typical of 1960’s Conceptualism, but without sharing their utopian ideals and notions of artistic genius. Monk, like Buren, is a key practitioner in the “art into life” debate.”
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