Posts Tagged ‘intermedia performance’

Club Midnight: Spirit into Flesh

Amy Greenfield is an award-winning film-maker and cinedance pioneer. In her latest project, CLUB MIDNIGHT: FLESH INTO LIGHT she combines her films about erotic dancers with Leonard Nimoy’s  photography about the divine female presence and re-imagines it all for the stage with a cast of live dancers (featuring Andrea Beeman as the Enchantress of Bioluminosity, Bessie Award-winning dancer Tasha Taylor & Vittoria Maniglio). The result is a true multi-media feast for the senses.

If that isn’t enough to intrigue you, the music features John Zorn’s Masada, words are spoken by Emmy Award-winning actress, Maeve Kinkead, and Lyda Borelli is seen in a 1917 Italian Diva film.

I’m particularly excited to see how Amy, a master of the film image, is able to work with live dance and combine theatricality with the screen. The show has been specially designed for the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, which is intimate and cabaret-ish, but also allows her to project real 35mm film on a full screen. It’s rare to see a work of such  uncompromised vision. After my disappointment last year in Isaac Julien’s “Cast No Shadow” with Russell Maliphant at BAM, I’m hoping that Greenfield’s “Club Midnight: Flesh Into Light” will have a strong choreographic presence and the dancers will not be completely consumed by the seductive screens.

Still from Club Midnight

CLUB MIDNIGHT: FLESH INTO LIGHT
January 30 and 31, 7:30 and 9:30 Nightly
Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th Street, NYC

Reservations: 212-864-5400 or www.symphonyspace.org

More info: www.clubmidnight.net
www.cinemabody.wordpress.com

This week I was struck by two interesting initiatives for web audiences by NYC dance artists.

First, on Sunday December 14th at 8pm EST, Misnomer Dance Theater will have a live webcast of the final NYC performance of their premiere piece, Being Together choreographed by Chris Elam. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can tune in by going to their website: http://www.misnomer.org/live. In addition, online audiences can ask questions and interact during the show through a live moderated chat. According to their press, this is the first ever live webcast of a downtown dance show, and it could greatly expand the potential of the audience/choreographer relationship. I think it will be interesting to see if the webcam footage will be compelling enough to sit through a whole performance. As anyone who has watched a video of a dance show knows, the seeing the video is generally pretty inferior to sitting in the theater and viewing show live. The inclusion of live chat may make a big difference though, because you can “talk” during the performance and the interaction among the audience members may make the web-viewing experience more interesting. This is an experiment, and I look forward to seeing how it works out. Unfortunately I can only go to the Sunday show in person, so I won’t be able to observe the live online webcast. Hopefully there will be extensive follow-up on the Misnomer blog.

The second initiative worth noting is a new duet by Yanira Castro that is being choreographed, in part, on Twitter. The piece entitled Dark Horse/Black Forest is a private performance that can booked for a limited time through PS 122. According to the PS122 e-newletter, the piece is an “intensely performed love story in the most intimate of spaces: your bathroom.” This alone is pretty interesting, especially when ponders a dance piece taking place in your NYC apartment bathroom that is so small you can barely sit on the toilet… But the other interesting twist is how they are marketing the shows. Yanira Castro & Company has created two profiles on Twitter for the two characters in the show, written by Rozalia Jovanic, and their feeds are a blow by blow account of what each character is thinking with each move they make and word they say. The result is a disembodied conversation, part inner monologues, part dance duet, part reality. As those of you who Twitter know, you can only write comments of up to 140 characters on your feed, so the descriptions are short, pithy, and intense. Here is a sample of their two Twitter feeds

	doghebitedme She prevents my hand opening the door. Let me see your neck, I say and remove her scarf. I fill her mouth with my tongue muscle. 12:58 PM Dec 10th from web
	doghebitedme She comes into the bathroom where I am and shuts the door. I can see her in the mirror. I piss. She puts on lipstick. More, she says, More. 12:42 PM Dec 10th from web
	doghebitedme ‘Smolensk, Suzdal, Vitsebsk, Tver,’ I say. Those are words. A word is a container, empty or full, or half-full or clouded or spluttering 12:37 PM Dec 10th from web
	darkbloom8 His eyebrows lifted as in ‘knowing something.’ I follow him down the hall. His foot drags behind. ‘You don’t tell me anything,’ I say. 12:17 PM Dec 10th from web
	darkbloom8 What is popular is useful, a tool to jerk something with, ‘What do you mean?’ I say. ‘Your words?’ I realize how little know him. 12:13 PM Dec 10th from web

If you want to follow the piece on Twitter, here’s how:

1. Twitter is a free service and is easy to join. Go to Twitter.com and sign up.
2. Click on each of the following two links, and from their profile pages click the “follow” button:
   twitter.com/doghebitme
   twitter.com/darkbloom8
   You will now be able to follow their conversations from your home page on Twitter.

To be even more immersed: receive tweets on the go and instantaneously by connecting your cell phone to Twitter. (Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this, but be sure to know what your text plan looks like with your wireless carrier.)

1. Go to Settings. Go to Devices. Add your cell phone number.
2. You will be given a number to text to activate your phone.3. Then go to Profile. Click on “following” above Updates. Turn the device updates on for doghebitedme and darkbloom8.

For more information on how to book the show for your bathroom, email darkhorse@ps122.org for reservations and more information.

Post Script

Here is a follow-up post by Maria from A Time To Dance blog about her experience watching Misnomer’s show on UStream.

….and here is a link to Misnomer’s video archive of the stream: http://www.misnomer.org/live/archive.

Susan Marshall’s Cloudless, photo: Nancy Palmieri

Continuing with news from the New York videodance scene, I’m happy to share some exciting programs happening at two new spaces in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood: Galapagos Art Space and Music-Theatre Group.

FRAMEWORKS
Galapagos Art Space will be moving this summer from their original home on North 6th Street in Williamsburg to the space formerly known as “The Stable” in DUMBO. This will place them in proximity to the prestigious St. Ann’s Warehouse, and in alliance with BAM and other high class Brooklyn cultural institutions. I was sad to hear the old place was going, with its placid reflecting pool and scrappy backroom where I hosted and witnessed many a screening and performance, but my sadness quickly dissipated when I learned of their plans to have a new dance film screening series called FRAMEWORKS at their new venue. This series will be curated by a young dancer/filmmaker/puppeteer Michael Bodel, who is dedicated to showing current dance films that are creative, challenging, and boundary-defying regardless of budget size and professional polish. A particular focus, especially for the first screening on June 28th, later this summer, will be work by NYC-based artists. The current call for NYC artists’ submissions is June 1st, and then Work from all artists will be considered on a rolling basis after that. For more information, and to download an application click here.

FRAME DANCES
The second event is a special series of 8 workshop performances by Susan Marshall & Company May 28 – June 1, 2008 to inaugurate the opening of Music-Theatre Group’s new performing space in DUMBO. The company will be performing FRAME DANCES, a brand-new performance installation created by Susan Marshall with music by Peter Whitehead and live video. Each FRAME DANCE will be captured on video in live time, in full view, and the different perspectives will be presented side by side with the live dances.  Audiences become part of the work as they move freely through the space, making choices about how they view the various pieces. Composer Peter Whitehead has created a series of layered scores for this installation, which he will perform live.

Music-Theatre Group is located at 10 Jay Street in DUMBO.  This brand new workshop and performance space will serve as a platform to stimulate and advance the Group’s work, foster artistic exchange and community, and allow works-in-progress to be shared with the public on a regular basis.

DATES AND DETAILS
Wednesday, May 28, 6:30pm – Benefit Performance
Thursday, May 29, 6:30pm & 9:30pm
Friday, May 30, 6:30pm & 9:30pm
Saturday, May 31, 3pm & 6:30pm
Sunday, June 1, 3pm
 

Tickets: $15, available through Smart-Tix. 
Call 212.868.4444 or visit www.smarttix.com.

Free Shuttle Bus Service from Union Square to 10 Jay Street for select performances.  Call Music-Theatre Group at 212.366.2560, ext. 22 212-366-5260 x22 for details.

This weekend I was involved in a couple of showcase events for the APAP conference (Association of Performing Arts Presenters) here in New York. Every year presenters and performing artists from the U.S. and around the globe converge at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan to pitch and book performance engagements. It’s exciting and completely overwhelming. Every square inch of dance space in the city is used to showcase dance companies in the hopes of catching a presenter’s eye. My APAP involvement centers around my workplace, Pentacle, which is an arts service organization that among other things, provides booking services for dance companies. I’m not involved in the booking department, however around APAP time, all hands need to be on deck to help run the showcases.

We organized two showcases this year for two groups of artists we represent, and I was happy to see that there were several companies: Bridgman/Packer Dance, Kinodance, Jonah Bokaer, and Troika Ranch that are integrating media in highly effective ways in their work. A couple of them I had known for a long time but never seen live, so this was a great opportunity to look at intermedia performance again with fresh eyes.

Generally, I’m a purist when it comes to dance and media. I like what matt gough calls “screendance” – dance on screen only. This is because I feel like dance is so engaging when produced well for screen that I don’t want to be asked to look anywhere else when I watch it. However, I have experimented with using video projections in my own live dance pieces, and there are a few instances when I have been really impressed by media used in live work. Happily the performances I saw this weekend all expanded my views of media in live dance.

My usual gripe with intermedia performance is that the video projections tend to upstage the live action on stage. As soon as the video goes on, the dancers become dwarfed by the projection and seem to be little insects buzzing around the main event, which are the giant images on screen. Too few artists seem to understand the powerful pull video has on an audience’s eyes, and they don’t take this into account when designing their productions. For Bridgman/Packer and Kinodance however, this has been handled impeccably well.

Bridgman/Packer (Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer) is collaborative duo that began using video several years ago to multiply themselves on stage. In their performances, life size images of themselves appear and vanish just as the real them appear and vanish behind invisible curtains and hanging screens. The result is a moving tromp l’oeil (eye-trick) that is truly delightful. Their work is generally pretty light-hearted and fun, a welcome relief from the usual heavy modern dance fare. I have actually found myself smiling while watching their work, feeling the edges of my eyes crinkle, and and leaning forward in my seat to try to follow the dance better. It’s almost therapeutic to be entertained by a dance performance these days, and Bridgman/Packer can deliver the goods.
Photo: Bridgman/Packer’s Under the Skin by Paul B. Goode

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