A week after seeing a preview performance of Einstein on the Beach and there’s still this feeling of having taken a trip to a 1976 sci-fi time capsule. An operatic spaceship. It was a four-hour train ride from Chicago to the Power Center at the University of Michigan, a venue that in mid-January was home to epic rehearsals of the show. “There’s no doubt about it,” wrote the University Musical Society in fervent pre-show emails. “This is a seriously historic moment.” Historic, yes, but like visiting a sepia-colored dream of some NASA engineer–after a particularly long day pushing buttons in big glasses and a comb-over. Smart, beautiful, disorienting, dated.

A lot of that has to do with the set. The biggest pieces roll onstage in grey plywood slabs, from the wings, with haze and smoke billowing out around them. Prison bars made of ribbons dangle from the battens and billow slightly from the gust of passing performers. Most of the color is flat shades of white, black and grey, with very little blending, and even when we are presented with the representation of an actual building, there’s no attempt to, say, carve a faux stone façade from Styrofoam. We’re very obviously looking at a painted backdrop. Even a giant wall of chasing light bulbs is literally made of old-school yellow globes, not something more modern like LEDs. And yet, that the setting looks like it came out of a Theater History Textbook contributes to its other-worldliness, and its modern meaning.

The scenic accuracy is deliberate. It’s been 20 years since the last re-staging of Einstein on the Beach. There was one in 1984, and again in 1992, when I was 5 and 13, respectively. Creators Robert Wilson, Phillip Glass and Lucinda Childs collaborated to ensure the creation of an accurate re-staging of the original. The work has been the subject of a PBS documentary and is said to have changed perception of modern opera.

This is clear from the production in a number of ways. That the endurance required from the performers is astounding. That aspects of its composition seem tired at this point, having been aggressively adopted into modern opera. That the whole piece is basically a 4.5 hour mental workout, demanding that you stay engaged while challenging you with endless looping chants of numbers, non-narrative speeches, robotic gestures, and straight-out goofiness.

In one of the strongest sequences of the piece, featured performer Kate Moran repeats a line describing an experience in a supermarket: “There were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them,” while slowly moving through space, changing costumes. In the original production, Childs was the featured performer who recited these lines on loop. In this production, Moran owns the text. I never got tired of hearing those lines–with every repetition, the inflection and meaning would change. Sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, always engaging.

The same is true, to a certain extent, of Glass’ music, in which choruses sing numbers that blend into sentences and words. It’s a little bit like listening to a kaleidoscope. The chorus sings from the pit, from a jury box onstage, in amorphous groups. Everyone wears suspenders, a white dress shirt, and slacks—an outfit stereotypical for Einstein and absolutely ridiculous for anyone else.

So here I am, sitting in a theater of a marathon length of time, watching a work with sets that look like they came out of a vault, everyone’s wearing suspenders and singing numbers, and the lead violinist is actually dressed like Einstein. People are puffing their cheeks out and reciting nonsensical phrases. There is a court scene. There is a caboose scene. There are several dance sequences. There is a visual theme of a bright white line. And all throughout, people are getting up to go to the bathroom as is necessary, because there isn’t any intermission.

It feels both glorious and totally insane—like a dream.

Which is kind of the point. In the PBS documentary, Wilson speaks of the work as depicting character, not narrative. Glass talks about trusting visual and psychological associations with Einstein as a basis for the work. Both acknowledge the German physicist as a powerful, almost godlike presence in their culture. With this devoted re-staging of Einstein on the Beach, Glass and Wilson claim their own territory within the word “godlike,” and the production celebrates not Einstein but the machinations and developments of its lead artists.

With just cause. Ever watch an old movie and think “Well, this is kind of cliché,” and then realize “Wait a minute—this is the thing that MADE the clichés”? That’s what watching Einstein on the Beach is like, for some of us who didn’t grow up in the atomic age, but are instead living in its hangover. For some of us who are familiar with the visual machinations of contemporary opera. For some of us who read about Wilson in our college textbooks and have seen Phillip Glass become the subject of sketch comedy. It comes with a kind of smirking respect. Like when you’re grateful for the incredible sacrifice your grandparents made but wish they’d stop talking about themselves at the dinner table.

So if coming back from this opera is like emerging from a 1976 Time Spaceship, it’s worth the trip, if only to appreciate the contributions of works past and the developments in the field since then. Makes you want to kiss the ground. A little.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I love Two-Headed Calf. Brendan Connelly, Brooke O’Harra and their rotating cast of collaborators are always making work that is adventurous, challenging and usually pretty fun. For “You, My Mother” they’ve brought together some super-duper stars of downtown including Bessie-winning playwright/choreographer Karinne Keithley Syers, Obie Award-winning composer Rick Burkhardt and Obie-winning playwright Kristen Kosmas to make what is sure to be a fascinating adventure in contemporary opera. Performed by the talented Yarn/Wire + Strings ensemble, this should be very compelling stuff.

“You, My Mother” is a chamber opera project in two parts exploring the elusive and ever-shifting relationships between mothers and their adult children. The piece is performed by Two-Headed Calf regulars Laryssa Husiak and Mike Mikos, along with new music vocalists Kate Soper (Wet Ink Ensemble) and Beth Griffith (musical affiliations include John Cage, Morton Feldman and Karlheinz Stockhausen). Accompanying them is the acclaimed new music ensemble Yarn/Wire + Strings, consisting of Ian Antonio (percussion), Laura Barger (piano), Russell Greenberg (percussion), Joshua Modney (violin), Mariel Roberts (cello) and Ning Yu (keyboard).

Here’s a sample of the music:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The creative team also includes Barbara Lanciers (Choreography), Ahram Jeong (Projection Design), Chris Kuhl (Scenic and Light Design), Yoonkyung Lim (Projection Design), Alice Taverner (Costume Design) and Justin Townsend (Scenic and Light Design).

You, My Mother runs Off-Broadway from February 9 – 20, 2012 in a limited engagement at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, located at 66 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue & the Bowery in New York City. Performances are Thursdays – Sundays at 7:30pm, along with Saturdays matinees at 2:30pm and an additional performance on Monday, February 20 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students/seniors and can be purchased online at LaMaMa.org, in person at the box office or by calling 212-475-7710.

The running time is 70 minutes.

Popularity: 2% [?]

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with Brad Learmonth, Director of Programming at Harlem Stage, to talk about their upcoming season and get a peek into the future.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got to Harlem Stage and what you do?

Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll be here twenty-four years in February. It’s kind of a ground-up story for me. I started as an assistant to what was the executive producer at the time and within three years became Director of Education. For a decade I grew that initiative while working on other programming with the Director of Programming. I eventually became the Assistant Director of Programming and in 1998 became Director of Programming. There was a big transition – Patricia Cruz came on as Executive Director and Laura Greer, my predecessor, left that year.

Essentially what I do is oversee all of the programming of the institution. So I do the long-term planning, creation, development and implementation of programs, including education. Now, though, my program and arts education manager, Simone Eccleston, has really taken over the direction of the education program, much as I did in the 90′s. She’s really brought it back up to a good level and increased its growth.

Twenty-four years is a long time, you must have seen a lot of change. What is Harlem Stage doing now?

Well, it’s a very exciting time for us. We had a bit of an economic challenge when we moved over to the Gatehouse in 2006 after a two-year, $26 million renovation of our building, the Harlem Stage Gatehouse. As happens with a lot of organizations when they undertake something that big, we stepped out a little too far on our programming and had to pull back a bit. So we went through this turnaround and under Pat Cruz’s leadership it was a huge success. We are now in a really good place, especially given the situation in the economy. We’ve been doing extremely well for the past couple of years, not just surviving but even, I would say, in some ways thriving notwithstanding the challenges that everyone is facing, the tremendous challenges in fundraising We’ve launched a new series that has had huge success that targets young people and brought other programs back into their full realization – the film program, the Waterworks program, which is our signature commissioning initiative.

And we’re about to go into our 30^th Anniversary season! We incorporated as an institution in 1982/1983, the paperwork was filed in 1982 and it was signed, sealed and delivered in 1983. So we’re going to have kind of a soft launch of our 30^th anniversary season starting in January 2012 and go into a hard launch when we have our 30^th anniversary gala on May 21^st,. Starting in September 2012 we’ll go into a full campaign of 30^th anniversary programming which will focus on the institution, highlighted by three world premieres from our Waterworks program, along with quite a number of other significant presentations and projects.

We’re also embarking on an ambitious five-year plan. For the last year we’ve really been looking at our programming, institution and mission and honing our vision so we can really distinguish ourselves in what has become, locally – and I mean immediately locally – a very healthily competitive field in Harlem.

Where we were sort of the reigning presenting institution in Harlem for decades, there is now a real scene being created now in Harlem, again; one that’s bringing people back in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time. Harlem’s always been a vibrant community, but it tends to be under-represented in the media. While it has never lost its vibrancy, it is definitely coming back in a big way. So as we look at the immediate landscape, and the national and international landscape as well, we’re looking at ourselves as an institution and really trying to hone in on what really distinguishes us.

We’ve been working to identify what we’re going to focus on more fully as we define the future of the Harlem Stage.

What are the implications of that in terms of programming?

Well one of the ideas that we’re working with, something that we’ve identified as central to what we do, is the notion of “Dig Deeper.”

Harlem Stage presents programming that is, by its nature, investigating the deepest part of the creative process, the most expansive and innovative thinking that artists do. We also investigate issues that resonate for people in the culture today – particularly artists and people of color, because that’s what our mission represents. All of the artists we work with are in some way or another activists both in their communities, through their art and in the world. Often they’re addressing very challenging and difficult issues in their work.

So we support the creation of work that takes a deeper look, that is both socially and artistically bold and adventurous. At the same time the artists are doing it in a way that not only transmits great information but also offers the possibility of digging deeper and, dare I say, entertains you or transforms you, the way art should.

So we’re using that idea of Dig Deeper to look at how we can broaden our offerings and our activities All of our humanities components are going to be looked at more closely and marketed more visibly. They’ve always existed but sometimes it seems like it’s the best kept secret. So we’re going to be working on really letting people know what we do and giving them a way in.

You said this spring is a “soft launch” of the 30^th Anniversary. What does that mean?

Well, what you’re going to see starting in the spring is programming that reflects the “Dig Deeper” idea that came out of the focused thinking that is part of our strategic planning process, and as we move forward that’s going to get even sharper and sharper.

We begin the season with – and we actually end the season – with two vocalists who are extraordinary innovators in their field. One is Jose James who opens the season for two nights and four sets on February 10^th and 11^th.

Its kind of a pre-Valentine’s thing if you wanna look at it that way because he’s very smooth and sexy and he sings a lot about that kind of thing. But he’s an extraordinary artist with an exceptional voice and incredible vocal and stylistic range. He spans the worlds of hip-hop and soul and is very much in the jazz world as well. He’s worked with great jazz people like McCoy Tyner – he’s got several albums under his belt and with us he’s going to be doing all new material from his upcoming album. Jose’s an exceptional artist that we’ve recently discovered and we’re very excited to be presenting him.

At the end of the season in June we’re going to be presenting an artist we’ve worked with for over a decade: Tamar-kali. She comes more from the Afro-Punk movement but is also an extraordinary composer and singer who tackles everything from Nina Simone to jazz standards. We’re going to be presenting a program called Voices, which over the course of three nights will feature the three ensembles that represent different strains of her creativity. One of evenings will feature an acoustic string ensemble, then she has another project called the Pseudo-Acoustic Sirens and finally she has a group called 5ive Piece, which is a pretty hard-hitting blow-the-roof off rock band. So we’re going to be doing all three of those, for the first time for her, in one program. We’ve worked with her many times over the years. Exceptional artist.

I’m just curious – how did Tamar-kali get her name? Does she have an Indian background?

No she is African-American, I think she might be from Brooklyn but her family is largely from the Gullah community off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Tamar-kali is her created name. It has a lot of various meanings. Tamar was a very powerful female figure in the Old Testament and Kali, of course, is the creator-destroyer deity of Hindu mythology. There’s a lot of stuff going on in that name and there’s a lot going on in that artist, that person. She’s a phenomenon.

Harlem Stage has a penchant for identifying artists who, like Sekou [Sundiata], we really stick with over the years. Artists who we feel are exceptional voices with exceptional vision in their particular craft and in the field in general. We try to develop a relationship with them that nurtures them and gives them visibility while celebrating what we try to do as an institution. Tamar-kali is one of those people that we’ve really stuck with for over a decade now and we’re really trying to sit down with her to figure out what’s next. “What have you got up your sleeve that we can help you move into the world?” Same with Vijay Iyer. Jason Moran is someone we’ve worked with for over a decade, we gave him his first platform as a band leader and he’s been a great friend to Harlem Stage every since, creating great things. Of course Sekou was probably the exemplar of that relationship with us over a twenty year period, and there are others. We really try to nurture artists that gives them a platform to discover who they are or further that discovery and we just join in with them.

Great. Sorry for the digression! So back to the season – after you open with Jose James, what’s next?

Following Jose James we’re doing a four-part program, called “A Tribe Called Quest: Innovations and Legacies – A Movement in Four Parts”. That was created by Simone, our program manager, and it’s going to be really looking deeply at A Tribe Called Quest’s contribution to and influence on the whole hip-hop movement of the last decade, plus. Tribe not only created incredible. [positive, music in the genre of hip-hop, but they were really innovators in terms of blending it with jazz. They just took the genre and created a new language for the music that has been hugely influential.

That will kick off with a panel discussion called “Footprints: A Discussion on the Innovation and Impact of A Tribe Called Quest”. The next night will feature a Tribe Called Quest Tribute from the Revive The Live Big Band headed by the trumpeter Igmar Thomas with special guests. That will be followed, on the same night, by an after-party called “SPIT: Speaking In Tongues”. DJ Cosi will be playing the music of, and inspired, by the Native Tongues Collective which was comprised of the groups De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, Leaders of the New School, Black Sheep, as well as individual artists Monie Love and Queen Latifah. The final night will be a concert called “Beats, Rhymes and Beyond” featuring The J. Dilla Ensemble. J-Dilla was a producer and DJ and musician that died very young of lupus but was instrumental in moving the Tribe legacy forward. The J. Dilla Ensemble is an ensemble out of Berklee College of Music in Boston that celebrates his music.

For us this is not only a celebration of great music but it also helps us advance the idea of contextualizing these younger generations of musicians not just as songwriters or DJs but as composers. People are re-thinking what classical music is – understanding that it is not just Western European-based music but that there are classical musics around the world which are different for everybody. That’s something we’re looking at in various ways – we’re working with the Cuban composer Tania Leon and Symphony Space on their annual February series called Composers Now and Jose James fits into that as well.

But in that context the Tribe Called Quest program really represents a much deeper look at a particular movement, elevating the idea of looking at hip-hop and its innovations in a way that people like myself who aren’t really of the hip-hop generation but appreciate it – to have a greater understanding and appreciation of the work. Also we could offer a platform for Simone, whose a younger programmer, to do her thing and present it to audiences – which is important to what we do as organization.

Then in March we’ll start our monthly film series that we do with our primary partner, Black Documentary Collective, and a new partner, Media That Matters. They bring in great short films that get paired with these great documentaries.

At the end of March we’ll be presenting the Afro-Peruvian singer Eva Ayllon across the street at Aaron Davis Hall. She’s been in the business for over 40 years, celebrating Afro-Peruvian music. She’s an amazing vocalist and it’s a free concert – so that’s very exciting. We’ll be presenting that with our long-time partner, for twenty-five years, the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert program

In April we have our annual dance series, E-Moves which is in its thirteenth season of showcasing emerging and evolving choreographers. We’ll have eight emerging choreographers who are, in many cases, presenting their very first works some of which have been supported by grants from our Fund For New Work grant program.

The E-Moves program has grown into kind of a university, that’s how we think of it. We audition artists and then we set them up with a mentor that they work with for a period of six to eight months while they create their works. They have open rehearsals where they come into Harlem Stage and present the works-in-progress with their mentors and we give them feedback and then they go on to present the full work in E-moves.

The evolving choreographers that we’re working with this year are an Indian-American choreographer from L.A. named Sheetal Ghandi and Souleymane Badolo who is from Burkina-Faso, and they’re both presenting new works. We’re very excited about that because it brings more of an international dialogue to the series.

Then in May we really concentrate on our jazz programming which includes the second annual Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival which we do in consortium with The Apollo and JazzMobile. There are between 30 and 40 events over a week’s period, they’re all $10 and the three organizations work together to celebrate the Jazz Shrines of the last 100 years. We identify the places in Harlem that were seminal in creating or providing a platform for creating the music we know as jazz.

Each of the organizations takes three or more of the shrines and celebrates them either literally, because they still exist, like the Lenox Lounge, or we recreate some idea of the shrine such as the Savoy Ballroom, and we bring in artists that pay tribute to it, though not necessarily literally, because the idea of the program is both to look back and move forward.

This year we’re celebrating Cecil Taylor with three pianists: Vijay Iyer, Amina Claudine Myers and Craig Taborn. We are also bringing Cecil in the week after the festival to perform himself, which will be an amazing experience.

We’re bringing in The Mosaic Project by Terri Lyne Carrington which is a project celebrating women in Jazz – women in music, really. She created this project a couple of years ago and I think they’re up for a Grammy this year. That will feature Terry Lyne, Nona Hendryx, Lizz Wright and a host of other artists performing with them. After that we’re going to be presenting a “Tribute to Club Havana San Juan” with The Havana San Juan Orchestra led by Louis Bauzo, then our gala is on the 21^st and we end with Tamar-kali. So we’re bookending the season, as it happens, not really by design, with these two amazing vocalists.

The program is a great mix of disciplines and has a strong intergenerational component. How is that going to play out in the humanities programs?

Well, the Tribe Called Quest program starts with a panel that will include at least one member of the original Tribe and other people that are important to the movement. The reason I’m not telling you them yet is that they’re still being confirmed and Simone is really working on that project, so I’m going to give her all the credit on that one. But that will be really looking at and understanding what Tribe’s impact was, which is why the panel is called “Footprints”. These are the tracks that these artists laid down that other people have since followed. And then the other three movements then not only celebrate their music but the people that followed them directly – Native Tongues, J.Dilla Ensemble.

With Jose James we’re trying to formulate a humanities program that is specific to him. What we try to do is work with the artists to see what’s going to resonate for them and what’s going to get their voice heard in the best possible way.

We’re going to have a much more interactive component on our website and for some of these artists the Dig Deeper aspect may only be there, but for everybody there’ll be something there. You’ll always have the opportunity to dig deeper by going to our website and seeing film clips or audio clips or reading or hearing interviews, and exploring a variety of ideas.

With our E-moves program we have discussions with the artists and the mentors that will follow two of the programs. And we’re going to be showing films this year that will highlight some of the programming that we’re doing. One of the films we’ll be showing is the 2007 film Movement (R)evolution Africa which talks about contemporary African choreographers and features Souleymane Badolo. And we’re showing a new film by David Rousseve, a short film called Two Seconds After Laughter which was filmed in Java. It doesn’t directly relate to Sheetal’s work but David Rousseve is Sheetal’s mentor and there’s some connection to the movement because of the Indian connection in Indonesia, so we’ll find a way in there. But it does give another look at a more international scope of dance and how its being interpreted from the traditional into the contemporary.

With the Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival there will be whole week of humanities components around that. We work very closely with the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and they are a collaborating partner in the festival. They will be creating a series of humanities events on their own and we’re going to do symposia. We’re talking about possibly doing symposia at Columbia around Cecil Taylor and have scholars present papers that will then get published. We’re really trying to celebrate Cecil Taylor in a way that he really has not been celebrated and really deserves.

As part of celebrating Cecil we will we have the three pianists in a wonderful set-up, where we’re going to have two pianos. Each of the pianists is going to do a solo and then they’re going to do duets with each other in combinations. So some of the humanities may be artist talks where we discuss not only Cecil’s influence on them but also on the music itself. He’s one of the geniuses of the last century so he needs to be recognized.

And every film presentation is followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and a wine and cheese reception. We’re very big on receptions, because we believe that breaking bread with artists and audiences is a wonderful way to complete the experience. It also gives people an opportunity to have a little bit of one-on-one, not only with each other, but with the artists.

I was going to ask about that. It seems that you do have a lot of opportunities for people to engage in other ways beyond just being an audience member.

It’s really about building a family for Harlem Stage. We tend to look at it more in terms of family and friends – but it all amounts to community. For us it really is about creating this living organism that is more than just: “We’re the presenters and you’re the audience and you buy a ticket and come see the work and isn’t that lovely.: It’s a much more in-depth experience. And its not just about “here’s a great lecture” either – its really about rubbing elbows with people and breaking bread, and having a reception is certainly a way to always do that. We also have great dance parties – The Uptown Nights series – and we have a lot of events that begin and end with a DJ set: there’s a bar, there’s food and it’s cabaret style seating. We try to create an atmosphere, where appropriate, that’s not just a proscenium look at art.

With the Cecil tribute we’re going to put a platform in the middle of the space and we’re going to surround it with seats, probably cabaret style seating, and serve wine and some food (that doesn’t make noise!) and really celebrate this evening and celebrate this artist. We want to give people an opportunity before and after the show to mingle with themselves and mingle with the artists. That will also provide a way into the context and the content of the work whether its that night or later, online.

Another project we’re launching is the Harlem Stage Reading Circle which is more than a book club, because a lot of the works we present are inspired by literature or historical material. So we’ll be reading in groups of people and then we’ll have a potluck dinner or some kind of gathering – always with food – to explore the content and context of the work.

For instance we’re working on developing an opera called Makandal by Carl Hancock Rux that was originally inspired by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World. So we’ll offer an opportunity for people to read the book and then gather – it could be a dozen people, just a half-dozen people – twith Carl and other artists connected with the work in question. We’ll discuss the book, discuss the work, discuss the content and the context of it as it relates to the work that’s been created or is being created along with how it resonates with the world today.

We’re also developing a project with with Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd that looks at veterans of color in conflicts. We’ll be looking at what it means to be a veteran of color in this day and age in the United States military. What does it mean to go over to another country, be shooting at people of color and then come home to the challenges of being a person of color here.

These are all things that are resonating in the world as we speak, and that move through the art that we’re creating. Makandal deals with freedom, immigration, revolution – all these things that couldn’t be more appropriate or poignant to be creating a major work now that deals with those issues.

So we’re interested in finding ways to engage those people who want to be engaged in a deeper conversation and discover how that can be a further transformative experience beyond just coming to the show. The performance can be an extraordinary experience in and of itself – but how do we take it deeper and offer something to people that choose to take that journey, encourage those people that are on the fence and drag the rest…

These sound like big projects. Are these Waterworks commissions?

Yes, Makandal and Vijay Iyer’s project Holding It Down – The Veteran’s Dream Project are Waterworks commissions. The 30^th Anniversary season will start in September 2012 with Holding It Down, which has been in development for several years now. It is being created by Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd with Maurice Decaul who is a veteran poet. Patricia McGregor is directing and it has a wonderful ensemble including Guillermo Brown, Pamela Z. and Kassa Overall.

Then we’ll close the year and the 30^th anniversary season with the world premiere of Makandal which we’re also producing, which is somewhat new for us. We produced one other project over ten years ago that was kind of a “trial by fire” experience. We have ventured into that land again a little by default – and that’s a really long story I won’t go into – but Makandal has been in the works for over four years. It was written and conceived by Carl and conceived of by Carl. It is composed by Yosvany Terry, the Cuban composer and saxophonist with the visual design is by Edouard Duval Carrie who is a celebrated Haitian-American artist. And now its being directed by Lars Jan, who is this kind of wunderkind out of CalArts and we’re going fully into the next phase of development beginning in January.

So these works – Holding it Down and Makandal in particular – will be in full development stages through the spring and in Makandal‘s case through next year.

And once again we’ll be creating “Dig Deeper” kinds of events so people are aware of these projects as they’re in development. While there will be some of the traditional show-and-tell work-in-progress showings or open rehearsals, we really want to use the Reading Circle to build awareness and engagement with the work. Its especially appropriate to Holding it Down in which they’ve taken the dreams of veterans and woven the poetry of veterans into an evening of music, text and video design – it’s a really powerful piece. So we’ll be looking at veteran poetry and other relevant works.

Makandal deals with Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba in contemporary, historical and mythical settings. So for that the Reading Circle might engage with any number of works that inform the process – the writing of Alejo Carpentier, Isabel Allende’s recent book Island Beneath the Sea, the works of Maya Deren which also includes film. All these things are sort of ripe for the picking for a reading circle that looks at the history of Haiti, its revolution and the consequences of that revolution. It provided and still provides a lot of inspiration to the world. And of course there’s the complicated relationship between Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba – not to mention the rest of the world – and how those intertwined histories inform those islands and those cultures – and how they’ve informed our culture. You know when the Haitian revolution happened a lot of those slaves came to New Orleans and that’s one of the reasons you have vodun in New Orleans. And how the music came from Cuba to New York. I mean, there are so many connections and so much information that we just don’t know – we certainly don’t know the details. We know broad swipes of information if we’re into the music or the culture, but there’s so much detail there, so much complexity. And its really rich material.

So we want to find ways to investigate all that information because Carl certainly does, if you know his writing. He’s a brilliant writer with a wealth of knowledge and in that libretto is buried a treasure of historical and mythological information. Unpacking that a little bit is not only fun but allows you to enjoy the piece even more.

What’s the history of Waterworks?

Waterworks was created as the signature commissioning program for Harlem Stage when we re-branded the institution and moved over to The Gatehouse in 2006. We had previously been Aaron Davis Hall, Inc. – that still is our legal name – but now we’re Harlem Stage. Waterworks looks at master artists who are really exemplary in the field, giving them larger commissions and extended development periods to create new work that has artistic merit but also looks at issues of social justice, arts and activism. Four works were created to open the building, including one by Sekou – 51^st Dream State, Roger Guenveur Smith, Tania Leon and Bill T. Jones were the other three artists that created work. And its gone on to be our most significant commissioning program.

I remember coming up to meet you when Bill T. was loading in. I remember a lot of red drapes.

That was the piece he created for Waterworks and it was created specifically for the Gatehouse. He was very inspired by the space. He saw the space when it was completely gutted and empty four stories down. It was magnificent. We’re going to be celebrating that renovation more as we move forward. He created Chapel/Chapter for the space and he completely wrapped the inside in red drapery and it was all done in the round. It was a great piece.

The Gatehouse is a historic landmark building that was part of the aqueduct system of New York State in the 1800′s. It literally fed the first clean drinking water to New York City in the 1890′s. It was the gatehouse where the water was gated as it flowed down from Croton Aqueduct. So we work with that water imagery/metaphor a lot and it definitely feeds the institution in many ways. Not the least of which is…. Well, you know, if you believe in such things, there’s a real kind of spiritual connection when you come into the Gatehouse building. A lot of artists feel that. They feel very – they feel a real energy in there that’s powerful to them and allows them to embrace their creativity. So a number of works have been created for it.

What are the other commissioning programs beyond Waterworks?

Commissioning is something that is really significant to what we do, and from what I’ve gathered in the field we seem to be one of the few organizations who are trying to hang on to the idea of being major commissioners.

We also have a commissioning program called the Fund For New Work, that gives emerging artists their very first commissions and opportunities to develop new work. And we’re looking more deeply at giving mid-career or evolving artists more support. That’s an area where we haven’t had funding. We’ve had funding for emerging from the Jerome Foundation and for the Waterworks program primarily from Time-Warner but also other organizations like Nathan Cummings, but the evolving part has been elusive. We’re going to be more aggressively looking at that because that’s a huge bunch of artists that need support.

One examples of that is we’re commissioning Kyle Abraham for his new work Boys In The Hood which will have its premiere at Harlem Stage next November. He’s an artist we gave his first emerging artist grants to, and we’ve been working with him ever since and he’s come up to be a really celebrated choreographer. We’re going to be giving him his own week of presentation in November. He’s an amazing young artist who’s really grown a lot and I really love working with him, he’s a great spirit.

So Waterworks is our major, signature commissioning program but commissioning overall is a big thing for us. We’ve actually created a Commissioning Circle which is another way of allowing individuals to support work – you can become a commissioner of a work or a co-commissioner of a work at different levels. So we’re giving people an opportunity to invest in work in multiple ways, including financially.

That’s an interesting idea – letting donors target their donations to a specific project.

Well, it’s a way of offering people a form of targeted giving that may resonate more for them. And they have a personal investment in the creation of a work that gives them access to to the creative process in a way that not everyone will have – special meetings with artists, and things like that.

But moving commissioning front-and-center seems pretty innovative, or at least it sends a message about the organization.

A lot of organizations have very creative ways of parsing out ways of donating. You know. you can buy a year’s worth of toe shoes for this much money. A lot of dance companies have been innovative in that way – but this is specifically toward commissioning, and really letting people know what that means and what’s involved in bringing a work from concept to presentation.

We want to get supporters involved in the process in a way that works not only for them, but for the artist. It works very differently for each artist: their process is different, their comfort level at being exposed while they’re in the creative process is different. And there’s a dialogue that goes on there. Some artists become more comfortable and find ways that really inform the work for them. You know, they discover that being a little more vulnerable or open in the creative process can be a win-win. So it’s a wonderful opportunity for audiences and it opens up the dialogue for artists to find new ways to connect through their art.

One of the things we’re really looking at as we move forward is the fact that not enough people – especially people that are, in theory, really close to us either geographically or in the arts field – really know the breadth and scope of what we do. So we’re looking to find ways to make ourselves more visible and to let people really know what’s going on at Harlem Stage. And we’re really going to be looking at that as we move into the 30^th anniversary and the future. We’re doing a lot of great work and we want people to know about it and be a part of it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

It is Sunday night and time to recap this past week’s adventures in performance.

WEDNESDAY took us to The Jazz Gallery to see John Ellis and Andy Bragen’s jazz opera (that’s what I’m calling it, anyway) Mobro. First off, I’ve lived in NYC since 1995 and can’t believe I’ve never been to The Jazz Gallery! It is a cozy loft space on Hudson just below Spring and it is fantastic. It definitely reminds me of what NYC was when I first got here, when you could still taste the bohemian, downtown history of Manhattan in a tangible way. You walk up the stairs to the loft and check in at the door, there’s a table with some bottles of wine and plastic cups with a donation jar, the walls are covered in posters and paintings of jazz greats, there are a bunch of benches and folding chairs in front of a tiny stage. For Mobro, the stage was packed with 9 musicians and 4 vocalists. I started sitting in the front but was soon overwhelmed, eventually going to stand in the back. But even from the back the space has this wonderful warmth and intimacy – you can really hear the music well and you can see the musicians getting into the music, communicating with each other and riffing off of each other as they launch into this dynamic, swinging, complex composition.

The story of Mobro is this: In March 1987 a garbage barge, The Mobro 4000, set out from Islip, New York with 3,168 tons of industrial waste headed for a methane farm in North Carolina. North Carolina rejected the cargo and the Mobro set out for New Orleans, Mexico and Belize, rejected each time, before finally returning to Brooklyn where the garbage was incinerated and returned to Islip. The journey took 5 months and covered 6000 miles.

Composer John Ellis and playwright Andy Bragen approach the story as an epic journey, an Odyssey that unfolds across twelve sections moving from Anticipation to Doldrums and culminating in Celebration. I don’t know a whole lot about jazz, so I don’t feel qualified to critique it in that framework. But as an audience member and music lover, I was bowled over. Ellis is facile in a number of different forms and style – Mobro starts out in a kind of traditional modern jazz mode, moves into a more musical/song genre and into this really interesting electronic/computer/noise section before returning to jazz mode and culminating in a New Orleans-style jazz epilogue. It is kind of a jazz opera that you want to dance to. And the musicians were fantastic – a really interesting multiculti ensemble of great players all of whom took a turn soloing and just blowing our minds with their talent and inventiveness. The space-y noise jam during the Doldrums section was created by Roberto Carlos Lange and it was freakin’ great. I don’t know if it was coincidental, but I saw him sitting at his laptop rocking a Grateful Dead t-shirt, and his electronic composition definitely reminded me of the trippy feedback “space” section that was the centerpiece of every Dead show. Ellis is also a dynamic bandleader, getting out there and bopping along to the music, giving direction and every once in awhile stepping front and center to solo.

The sound system was not totally up to the task of dealing with the vocals, so it was a little hard to understand the lyrics. But the vocalists all sounded great and, from what I could hear and understand, Bragen’s writing was evocative and compelling.

Sadly the run at the Jazz Gallery is over, but the piece could definitely translate well to a bigger venue in its present form. What would be really great would be for some savvy producer to pick it up, attach a director, dramaturg and some set/lighting/video designers and blow this thing up into a full-on show. It has, as they say, sea legs.

THURSDAY night took us to The Kitchen to see Kyle Abraham‘s Live! The Realest MC which was absolutely stunning. I already tweeted about it and wrote a short blurb on Facebook but I’ll expand a bit here.

On its most basic level, Live! The Realest MC is about trying to be gay in the ‘hood. But to reduce it to only that would be vastly understating the importance of the work and its remarkable technical and artistic accomplishment. Abraham’s investigations have frequently been about taking movement vocabulary from “street” and “hip-hop”, abstracting it, re-contextualizing it, and infusing it with contemporary choreography. This show takes this investigation to an entirely new level, getting into the emotional and cultural resonance of these movements, digging deep and coming back from the depths with vision, insight, passion and conviction. Abraham finds what these movements mean, how they are meant to represent power – or a relationship to power – and masculinity, social status, gender, psychology. He seamlessly interweaves and juxtaposes these movements in a way that we watch one simple gesture – a hip roll, for instance – transform from an expression of machismo and masculine privilege into a sensuous and effeminate expression of queer identity. All within one sequence.

I tried to track the exact series of sequences – the show starts with Abraham on the floor downstage right in a glittery shirt and glitter-trimmed Adidas track pants – but I didn’t want to look down too often to write. There are a series of interactions between Abraham and his two male dancers, Chalvar Monteiro and Maleek Malaki Washington, that could be read alternately as hetero “fronting” and gay cruising. The girls enter shortly after that: two African-American girls (Rena Butler and Elyse Morris), an Asian girl (Hsiao-Jou Tang) and a white(?) girl (Rachelle Rafailedes). The show alternates between group sequences and smaller trios and duets, punctuated with solos by Abraham. During one sequence Abraham comes up to the mic and has this incredible moment as an actor (a dancer who can really act!! OMG!) where he starts out posturing as a kind of thug or rapper, honing in on the phrase, “They held me down” and repeating it with different inflections until it shifts from being a statement against “the man” holding a brother down, to a brutalized gay boy who has been held down, beaten and abused by his peers. It is riveting and heartbreaking.

The whole show is not all pathos and heartbreak – there is a lot of humor in there. A particularly hilarious video sequence features an instructional video of a middle-aged southern white woman teaching a class in hip-hop dance. Funny and absurd but also remarkably sharp and insightful into how this movement has been decontextualized, commodified and misunderstood to the point of absurdity.

All of Abraham’s dancers are topnotch and they have the skills to really deliver his vision as a choreographer. Each has their own strengths and as the evening goes on I started to notice little distinctions between the dancers. Chalvar Monteiro seemed a little more sensitive where Maleek Malaki Washington seemed to be comfortable playing the tough. Rena Butler had the most intense and expressive gaze – her eyes were focused and wide and bright, almost supernatural. Elyse Morris brought a kind of grounded, humorous, sensual presence to all of her sequences – but one that seemed like it could go tough and angry at any minute. Hsiao-Jou Tang definitely rocked the “modern dancer” thing, very centered and fluid but with occasional flashes of the cerebral. And I may be a bit obsessive – or this may be because she was the only white girl – but I kept being drawn to Rafailedes’ point and extension. She must have been a ballerina at some point, because it was, like, crazy how far she could extend and how sharp her point was.

The multicultural casting brought a layer of sociological complication to the work, while the ability of each performer to embody Abraham’s movement while maintaining their individuality just made it deeper and richer and more engaging. The soundtrack, the lighting, the video – all of it came together perfectly.

That night I was with a friend of a friend who is a doctor in the Bronx. She works with disadvantaged teens, many of whom are struggling with their sexuality in a neighborhood and culture where homophobia is the norm. After the show she was in tears and she kept saying about the show, “Those are my kids! Those are my kids!”

Damn. That’s good stuff.

FRIDAY we went to Danspace Project to see Tere O’Connor‘s Cover Boy, a different take on gay identity. O’Connor’s work is a lot looser and lighter than Abraham’s. He has brought together four men - Michael Ingle, Niall Jones, Paul Monaghan, and Matthew Rogers – and placed them in a series of different vignettes and situations, riffing on the idea of closeted gay experience. We see various scenarios – two men paired with a third man looking longingly at them as an outsider, interactions that start as “ambiguously gay” and transform, a “catwalk” type sequence that plays with the idea of presentation and identity. In this context “Cover Boy” takes on a double meaning – it is both referring to the prettiness of the dancers, as in a model on the cover of a magazine, and the idea of “taking cover” – living in the closet.

The dancers have a great rapport that lends the piece an informal and improvisatory feel. While it is obviously meticulously structured and choreographed, the interplay of the dancers – the way they talk and whisper to each other, the way they move from sequence to sequence – brings us into a conversation or discussion that feels intimate, like a late-night confession or a “morning-after” recap of the previous night’s misadventures to a close friend.

Once again, each of the dancers has a unique presence, each one bringing a different attitude and tone to the ensemble. Michael Ingle brings a kind of effortless athleticism and gentle wit, Niall Jones brings – and I mean this in the best possible way – a hint of quirky, artsy, awkwardness. He is at home in his body but projects a hint of uncertainty and ambivalence, a gentle outsiderness. Matthew Rogers is like your fun gay hipster younger brother while Paul Monaghan, of slender frame and golden ringlets, is like some ephemeral androgyne from a magickal forest.

I don’t know much about O’Connor’s process, but a note in the program says that portions of the movement material for the work was made in collaboration with the performers. It shows. While O’Connor’s overarching vision for the work is ever-present, it feels as if he made room for each dancer to bring a part of themselves to the process, and the intermingling of these subjectivities joins together to make a fascinating whole.

Speaking of “overarching” – the set was this interesting canopy designed by Aptum Architecture, which, I think, was subtly raised and lowered at different points during the show. I couldn’t quite tell – but I occasionally looked up at the balcony and thought I saw the crew pulling on the ropes and levers that held the canopy aloft.

The music by James Baker and the lighting by Michael O’Connor were well integrated into the work. Together with the canopy they created a kind of intellectual/aesthetic frame for the the embodied emotionality of the performers. It was really wonderful how all the different elements came together into an enjoyable, engaging and satisfying whole.

It continues on 12/13 and 12/15 at Danspace Project, 8PM.  Check it out.

SATURDAY took us to LaMama for the Mini Teater Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Novo Kazaliste Zagreb (Croatia) presentation of Ivica Buljan‘s staging of Macbeth After Shakespeare, from a text by Heiner Muller. Extremely physical, muscular and loud, Buljan’s minimal production places Macbeth in a bleak, bloody and amoral wasteland where violence begets violence with no end in sight. Muller adds characters and scenes, most notably a peasant killed for not paying rent, his body eaten by dogs as his widow and son attempt to retrieve him. We are brought into a world where the violence perpetrated by the ruling class trickles down to the common man, where the brutal and brutish warrior class indulges in orgies, drink and debauchery between bouts of frenzied blood lust. No one is innocent, no one untouched.

Buljan’s cast is mostly strapping young men who wrestle and shout and beat each other up, loudly declaiming their lines as they cast about the stage or run up and down the aisles. Banquo is played by a middle-aged woman (Polona Vetrih Distefani) who serves as a kind of thoughtful counterweight. No less invested in the culture of violence, Banquo is still not quite as heinous as the others and, when returning as a ghost, offers the only intimation of the consequences of murder. Lady Macbeth is also played by a middle aged woman, film actress Milena Zupancic, who wields her scheming sexuality as a weapon in the world of men.

At first I was a little put off by the Grotowski-esque presentation. It was so loud, rough and monotone that I found it difficult to engage. Also the supertitles, projected on the back wall, were frequently obscured by the actors and went by so quickly they were difficult to read. I started thinking about the multiple layers of translation – Shakespeare’s English adapted and interpreted by Muller’s German, translated and performed in Slovenian and then re-translated back into modern English, projected on a wall.

Soon I gave over to the experience and found myself being drawn into its relentless assault. The characters are one-dimensional without inner life, they are the embodiment of our animal nature, unfettered and unchecked. The cruelty and violence of this world is the reality of a world always at war, where introspection, over-thinking and sensitivity are seen as weaknesses leading to death.

I also started thinking about the experience of the performers. Coming from a part of the world that has, for the better part of the last 100 years, experienced ongoing political turmoil, oppression, violence and civil war. Even the youngest of the actors must have memories – or at least immediate, close family members who have memories and stories – of life during wartime. The brutality of a society constantly at war is embodied in their physicality, their emotions, their experiences. This kind of theater reflects that. At times, to the cynical American eye, it looks dated and less than subtle. But it represents a reality and perspective that most Americans are fortunate enough not to have experienced firsthand – though have been responsible for spreading abroad. So it is important for us to see this work, hear these voices, be exposed to these perspectives and reminded of the consequences of our actions. Be reminded how underneath all the high-minded rhetoric and professed ideals there is just blood, brutality and death, that when we foment war we risk, as does Macbeth, losing our humanity entirely and becoming mindless killing machines, bereft of moral compass or redemption.

I was going to go the Immediate Medium party after the show but was too drained and tired. Sorry guys! Hope it went well!

SUNDAY we went to The Joyce to go see Martha Clarke‘s Angel Reapers. Written by Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy), Angel Reapers is inspired by the life of Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker movement. As one might imagine, the show is about the effect of sexual repression, which was kind of what Ann Lee was all about, but it was pretty tame except for the brief glimpse of breasts and a moment of dangly man-bits.

Alfred Uhry has won a bunch of awards and Clarke is a revered, MacArthur Genius Award-winning icon of American Dance, the choreography, the text, the dancing, lighting, music, etc. was the embodiment of professionalism and excellence.  I enjoyed it, especially the rhythmic footwork and the singing. That being said, it was definitely a little less experimental and edgy than my tastes usually run. Good mainstream stuff.

FINALLY, just a few hours ago, before I came home to write this article, I went to the Angelika with a friend of mine to see the new movie The Artist. It was absolutely, totally, beautiful and amazing. If I wasn’t so tired and achey and it weren’t so late I would write a whole huge essay about it. It is just a wonderful work of cinema – so smart and well-made. I’m sorry. I’m just too tired, my head hurts and so do my fingers. Go see the movie. And if you want to discuss it further, offer to buy me dinner and drinks. I’m a fun and witty companion who loves good company and free food at nice restaurants. Especially during holiday time and especially in the middle of the month when I’m between paychecks.

Popularity: 3% [?]

1994:

2011:

The aesthetics of the these music videos are, let’s face it, identical. And musically they’re in a very similar space, expanding rock stylings into the pop realm. But what these two pieces are saying about gender, relationships, sexuality, the body…truly an epic contrast.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Wow. I apologize – I’ve been so busy  that I’m completely behind on writing up reviews. So here are a few of the things I saw over the past two weeks.

On Saturday, November 19th I had a really fun and interesting night. First stop was The Kitchen for Robert Ashley’s “opera” That Morning Thing. I had no idea what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was really enjoyable. I had assumed that, given that it was originally created in 1967 and rarely performed, it would be some kind of dissonant, atonal, cacophonous assault on the senses. What it turned out to be was a very interesting, slightly surreal, music-performance-movement-lecture hybrid unfolding in three acts and an epilogue. I’ll be honest – I sat down to watch the show and dropped my pen, thus prohibiting my note-taking process. If I had written this up that night, like I intended to, this would be an in-depth thoughtful review. But time has passed and its all a bit fuzzy. As I recall, the first act, “Frogs”, was a lecture given by “The Speaker”, basically dealing with the difficulty of communication and somehow tying this together with frogs. The men – a chorus of men – sang a repeated refrain of “one, two” in a limited range of tones, the women – a chorus of women – moved in deliberate patterns across the stage. They were dressed almost identically and wore glasses that lit up with LEDs. It was a beautiful and kind of funny stage picture.

Act II, “a Cool, Well-Lighted Room” was comprised of a synthesizer player who riffed throughout the scene, The Singer and The Dancer.  The Singer was performed by the ever-captivating Imani Uzuri who brought a soulful playfulness to the proceedings, even while intoning “one, two, three” across a limited range of pitches.

Act III was called “Four Ways” and a character named “The Director” – who was in fact performed by the actual director, a gentleman named “Fast Forward” – gave people directions. Literally. The Women would ask him for directions – “How do you get to Times Square?” and he would answer them, with commentary. But as it went on it got increasing absurd, out of control and funny.

Finally the piece concluded with an “Epilogue” in wich the chorus of women entered the audience and encouraged us to participate  in the performance by repeating a number of phonemes from the sentence “She was a visitor” broken down into bits. At first it felt a bit dated, but soon I grew to like it – there was something innocent and magical about it, the naive faith in the participatory, the breaking down of boundaries, the implication of the audience in the performative event. I imagine that it must have really freaked people out in the 60′s.

Overall it was a really great piece – a bit of a history lesson, but all the more satisfying because it held up over time and seemed to renew itself in the moment of being performed. It didn’t feel musty, just familiar, but in a good way.

After That Morning Thing I headed up to Harlem Stage to check out the 10^th anniversary of Jump n Funk Live, acclaimed DJ Rich Medina’s groundbreaking international Afrobeat dance party, featuring live music by the band Zozo Afro Beat with visuals by The Marksmen. I hadn’t been to the Gatehouse in ages and I was happy to realize how easy it is to get there. Usually I don’t get up to 135th St., but it is pretty easy to find and it is a great venue. We got to the Gatehouse and checked our coats, headed up to the main room where the party was in full swing. DJ Rich Medina was spinning great tunes – funk, soul, afrobeat – and soon the house – only about half-full but people were starting to arrive – was dancing and getting happy.

Brad Learmonth (prog. dir. for Harlem Stage) & Friend with DJ Rich Medina (background)

After about an hour Zozo Afro Beat came on. I counted at least 12 people onstage, not including dancers. They were amazing!!! The room kept filling up and soon everyone was jumping and jiving to the beat. I’m not that familiar with Afrobeat music in general, I had a friend in college who was really into Fela, and I used to really like this guy Foday Musa Suso, but generally it is not the first thing I turn to. I think that might have to change!! The hypnotic riffs, the syncopated beats, the punchy/funky horns – I couldn’t stop dancing even if I wanted to. I danced to the bar and back to the floor, I just had to get my groove on. And let me tell you, those of you who know me, I’m not exactly a dancing fool. But this was definitely a fun time and the real deal. I had a great time – the room is warm & welcoming, easily accommodating both dance and music performance, the drinks were inexpensive, the staff was super-friendly, the crowd was diverse in age, ethnicity, gender and everything else. It reminded me of the good old days of Body & Soul when it was at Vinyl – good music, good energy and good people.

Here’s the band, Zozo Afro Beat:

Zozo Afro Beat

And here’s one of the dancers:

After the show I was danced out and exhausted and I dragged myself home, still floating on the good times. I don’t know if Harlem Stage has any more of these events planned, but you should definitely sign up for their email list and check out what they’ve got coming up! In a weird, small-world kind of situation, I checked out a Harlem Stage flyer only to discover that Imani Uzuri, who I had just seen featured in the Robert Ashley opera at The Kitchen, will be performing at Harlem Stage on December 10th! It is called Imani Uzuri’s MOSAIC and it is a “sacred music extravaganza” featuring a line-up of kick-ass woman vocalists from  many world traditions. It looks like it is going to be really great – so mark  your calendars for that!!!

On Tuesday November 22nd I made it to the Elebash Theater at the Graduate Center at CUNY for the most recent installment of Live At 365, the world music series curated by my pal Isabel Soffer. The evening featured Persian vocalist and musician Azam Ali and her band. It was a really magical evening. Ali and her band wove together a concert of lullabies and folk songs from across the middle east, adding in some original compositions with digital effects, backbeat, electric guitar, etc. It as kind of trance-y and mystical, like the kind of music you might expect from an artist on 4AD back in the day when they were all Dead Can Dance spooky and stuff. (I  AM SO OLD!!!!) But anyway – it was a super great night. If you haven’t been you should definitely check it out. The Elebash is a really nice, intimate hall with a great sound system. And like I have said before, Isabel is one of the best programmers in this town. She’s been doing world music for over 20 years, she knows her stuff and she is always bringing it to NYC. Go to Livesounds.org and sign up for her email list so you know what is going on.

Then we had Thanksgiving (I saw the movie Margin Call! So awesome. Check it out) and I even had 2nd Thanksgiving (Thanks Derek and Mary!) and then it was the weekend and I saw another movie (Into The Abyss, also really good) and finished writing that essay that everyone has been reading (thank god!) until we got to Sunday when I went to the Storefront for Art and Architecture to see Harrison Atelier‘s Pharmacore: Architectural Placebo. Fascinating intersection of architecture, design, concept and and choreography (BTW  - who coined the phrase, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”?).  Anyway – the show was choreographed by Silas Riener and performed by Reiner along with other Merce Cunningham Dance Company members Rashaun Mitchell, Jamie Scott and Melissa Toogood. Cunningham dancers are just so darned good! Beautiful to watch, precise, focused, lithe and surprising. I’m not sure what the whole thing was about – something about placebos and the creation of a kind of test/lab environment, with the idea that perhaps the performance we’re watching was referencing an actual performance, but was just a placebo/simulation. Not sure. But it was very cool and the Storefront has all these door/sculpture things that spin around and open onto the street, so people kept stop and staring in. At one point two little girls wandered in, onto the stage, and started looking around trying to figure out what the heck was going on and why these strange people were dancing around! It was funny and added a wonderful layer of accidental intervention to the whole thing. OH! I remember – I wanted to give a special shout-out to Loren Dempster, who did the sound design/music, which was really, really good. He played cell and ran it through his laptop to process the sound and it turned into this lush, rhythmic, tuneful but also distance and sometime dissonant soundscape. Doubleplusgood.

Okay so then it was Monday and now it’s today and I’ve got a lot more work to do. And I’m going to try another big-ass essay on some big-ass idea. Maybe more reviews will come. This week is kind of light, but we’ll try and keep up.

Thanks for reading! Keep the comments coming!!

Popularity: 3% [?]

An animation still from "Brooklyn Babylon," by artist Danijel Zezelj

Usually doing a preview is tricky business, because–absent an interview–what you’re doing is writing about something you haven’t seen, made by artists you may or may not know much about, with the only information at your disposal the biased press release materials you’ve gotten, some only reviews and interviews, and grainy YouTube clips. But for the upcoming pair of offerings at BAM’s Next Wave Fest (which is picking up steam), a pair of my online colleagues have some great things worth checking out.

First, Phantom Limb. 69°S, which opens Wednesday (seating is limited; call the box-office), is one of the shows that has a lot of buzz, because the puppetry is, well, amazing. Seriously–check out the photos. But what’s more, Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, the husband-and-wife team behind the company, are well-known artists who’ve left their mark on people in the past, and Rob Weinert-Kendt has a lovely post over at the Wicked Stage recounting his own past interviewing the duo.

Phantom Limb. Photo by Sarah Walker.

“My wife to this day rolls her eyes a bit when I start to go on about the magical ‘puppet people’ and that text-less globe,” he writes. (You’ll have to read the piece to understand the part about the globe.) The occasion for the post is his interview with the pair in Time Out, which you can read here.

Second, and a bit more touching, is Parabasis’s Isaac Butler on Brooklyn Babylon (tickets here), which opens next week. A collaboration between artist Daniejl Zezelj and musician Darcy James Argue, the show is a live-art-meets-video-art performance by the artist supported by Argue’s steampunk jazz-band Secret Society. Not only does it sound cool, but for Butler, who was a “directorial consultant” on the piece, it marks completing a childhood dream.

It is also the culmination of a dream I’ve had since I was in college, to be involved in a directorial capactiy on a show that performs in Next Wave. I’ve had a romantic association with the Brooklyn Academy of Music ever since I was a little kid, when my freaky grandparents gave me Philip Glass cassettes and took me to see The Hard Nut and Twyla Tharp and told me over and over again of this world in New York City. A world where these curious, unclassifiable works of performance happened. A world at that time dominated in their minds by The Kitchen and BAM. As I grew up and got into Steve Reich and Laurie Anderson and all sorts of other performing artists of that period, I realized that all of them connected at some point to BAM.

It became– privately– my brass ring. I never talked about it. In fact, this is the first time I’m disclosing it to anyone, but having a show at BAM has been my idea of what success would mean ever since I was a sophomore in college.

Anyway, both shows look visually fantastic and feature collaborations with great musicians (69°S was developed with Kronos Quartet and features live music from Skeleton Key), so check them out, and read both Rob’s and Isaac’s previews of them: when people like that have such a personal interest in the work, it’s wise to take note.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Last week I went to see Antonio Zambujo on CUNY’s new Live @ 365 series, curated by Isabel Soffer. We don’t cover a lot of music here at Culturebot, but I loved this concert and I wanted to let people know about this great new series.

Antonio Zambujo is one of the most well-regarded performers of Portuguese Fado in the world. I’m not familiar with the form but it is really beautiful. Zambujo’s voice is stirring and passionate, I have no idea what he was singing about – I don’t speak Portuguese – but he could sing about cheese and I’d be thrilled. His ensemble of musicians is also incredible – Luis Guerreiro plays the Portuguese guitar which is like a small steel 12-string, and it just rings out with these bright, crisp tones; it is very rhythmic but Luis would occasionally cut loose with snake-y solos and little trills and frills here and there that popped up and surprised you. Ricardo Cruz, music director and stand-up double bass player, totally held the whole thing together at the bottom end, also occasionally cutting loose with runs and solos that could be moody or funky, depending on the song. And what really took the whole thing to a new place was Jon Luz on cavaquinho, a small guitar-like instrument mostly used in Brazilian music. He was just out there, making everything from kind of feedback-y tone washes to funky up-beat counter-rhythms. It was incredible.

The Elebash Recital Hall at the Graduate Center at CUNY is a tricky space but it worked really well. It was intimate but spacious and the sound was really clean, clear, well-mixed and well-balanced. I’ve known Isabel Soffer for awhile now and she has great taste and an encyclopedic knowledge of world music. The program she has put together for the new Live@365 series looks stellar and I would encourage you to check out the upcoming shows.

Here’s a video of Antonio Zambujo:

Popularity: 6% [?]

I went to see Karen O.’s Stop The Virgens at St. Ann’s Warehouse with some trepidation. Friends of mine on the crew told me that the load-in had been a clusterfuck and that major design decisions were made last minute, on the fly. They said the show was kind a glorious mess – too much money, not enough focus or dramaturgy. I have to admit, I was expecting a train wreck. I’m relieved to say that this was not the case. If anything, Stop The Virgens is a fun and exciting, if flawed, early work from an artist who, should she choose to continue this field of exploration, has a lot to say and a lot of talent to share.

I’ll start with the good things – the music was really fantastic. I have only been a casual observer to the rise of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and while I’ve enjoyed what I’ve heard, I’m not by any means a knowledgeable fan. I guess I kind of aged out of the demographic. But the music for this show was delightful – a tuneful mix of post-punk rock-n-roll, sprawling operatic balladry and hip song craft. Karen O. is a great performer – welcoming, engaging, entertaining and emotive, and the chorus of “virgens” added depth and texture to the score. The video design was beautiful, the costumes were well-designed and the overall aesthetic of the experience was, in its own way, immersive and interesting. Yes, the entrance to the event was, I felt, derivative (walking through labyrinthine corridors with “virgens” spookily lurking behind curtains reminded me of Les Freres Corbusier’s Hell House, also at St. Ann’s) and the trope of a collection of young women in blonde wigs felt familiar, if not readily placed. But overall – and especially for this show’s target audience – the environment was moody and intriguing.

For the intended audience of rock fans, unfamiliar with the tropes of contemporary performance, this was a unique and different experience. For those of us who regularly see contemporary performance, new opera and experimental theater, it was familiar territory and from that perspective it raised some interesting questions, not least of which is why do people from other disciplines think that experimental contemporary performance – or New Opera – is somehow easy to create? Maybe that’s not fair, maybe “easy” isn’t the right terminology. What I’m trying to say is that contemporary performance and new opera are legitimate, complicated forms in their own right, and I wonder if the artists involved in this project considered its aesthetic context and precedents.

On the one hand, it was exciting to see a young artist from a mainstream discipline spread her wings into a new form. Karen O. is a rock singer and songwriter with a clear and compelling aesthetic sensibility. I applaud her courage in taking on a new challenge. From my perspective, having seen Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Ridge Theater, etc. etc. etc. with their high profile, high-concept gigs at BAM, it was refreshing to see someone from a new generation venturing into this high art territory. I felt hopeful that a new generation of artists might be positioned to replace the old guard in merging contemporary music and art with performance. There have not been many artists of recent vintage who have managed to breach the walls of the high art castle and Karen O. seems to be leading the charge.

At the same time I was disappointed that the work itself fell so short of my expectations. There was no discernible narrative to speak of  (not that I require narrative, but there was no suggestion that the lack of narrative was intended), the direction and choreography didn’t seem to rise to the level of the music. I found myself wishing that Karen O. had chosen better collaborators, and wondering what her process was in choosing her co-creators. The musicians were great and the band – including Money Mark and a host of others – rocked. They delivered a score that was dynamic, compelling, tuneful and dramatic. As I said the videos and the costumes were imaginative and entertaining. But the directing wasn’t very thoughtful and there was no unifying dramaturgical conceit that allowed the disparate creative elements to exist next to each other in a meaningful, resonant way.

I wonder why an artist known for her stylistic innovation and who is creating a work with a female-centered story would choose to work with such a straightforward, conventional playwright in the Mamet/Shepard vein as a director. I have no animosity to Adam Rapp personally, but I’ve never found his work to be particularly interesting or insightful, I’m kind of under the impression that he’s the “flavor of the month” in a long line of “dudes”, making plays for “dudes”  - another straight white guy with a point to prove.

And I’m curious about the choice of Mariangela Lopez as choreographer. I’ve seen Mariangela’s work before and from my previous experience – and the last show of hers that I saw at Danspace – her style is theatrical in concept but not rigorous in execution. It seems like an odd choice for a project like this.

I would be curious to see what would happen if Karen  O. worked with people who have a track record of developing and producing compelling, cutting-edge, contemporary performance. I imagine her working with directors such as Annie Dorsen, Jay Scheib, Daniel Fish, Lear DeBessonet,  or even  Diane Paulus or Alex Timbers or any of their contemporaries/proteges that are creating work in the space between popular and experimental theater. What if she worked with Faye Driscoll (who has done wonderful choreography for Young Jean Lee, among many others) or Sarah Michelson or Maria Hassabi or Luciana Achugar…I don’t know. There  a lot of adventurous, cutting edge, contemporary choreographers. I’m not slagging Mariangela, I’m just saying that there are other choreographers who are pushing the form a little further, who are a little more rigorous.

And that’s where I return to this question about why people in different disciplines – visual art, popular music – think that making contemporary performance is easy? Once again, I wouldn’t presume to know what any artist is thinking, and I would hope that they don’t think it’s “easy”. But I think about visual art performance from folks like Shana Moulton who make a big splash doing performance in a visual art context but seem to consider choreography, dramaturgy, direction and presentational aesthetics as an afterthought.

If I started a band and didn’t know my influences or anything that came before me, I’d be laughed out of the room. If I were a visual artist who didn’t situate my work in the larger context of contemporary visual art, I wouldn’t be given the time of day. But it seems like artists are willing to make theater, or new opera, or contemporary performance, with inadequate knowledge of the history of the forms or the current talent pool and expect that it will be equally compelling.

If you want to make new opera or contemporary performance – and if you call your work an opera, then that is pretty clearly your goal – if you want to translate your work as a popular musician into a new field of endeavor, then it behooves you to do your research, to think about what you are trying to create and how it fits into a musical, theatrical and historical lineage. It behooves you to dream big, to imagine contextualizing your work in the tradition of the Grand Investigations with Big Ideas – learn what has preceded you, play off of it, and collaborate with people who are playing on the same level as you.

I’d be curious to know how this collaborative team was developed, what the dramaturgical and development process was and whether they felt that they achieved what they set out to do.

Like I said, I was excited to see a young artist like Karen O. stretch her wings, push her boundaries and take on an ambitious new project. The music – the part she knows best – was a big success, and I hope she does more. But I would be even more excited for her to take it really seriously, to collaborate with a dramaturg and sophisticated, knowledgeable practitioners who are already creating work in a contemporary context and who would be able to push her beyond the bounds of the known.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Last Wednesday took us to The Kitchen for Faustin Linyekula’s powerful new work more more more…future. The piece explores the sociopolitical landscape of Linyekula’s native Democratic Republic of Congo by juxtaposing visceral, muscular choreography with revolutionary poems by Antoine Vumilia Muhindo and an aggressive, layered score by Flamme Kapaya – a major star in his home country – which is played live by his band.

The piece takes as its starting place the native pop/party music of Congo, known as Ndomobolo. It is high-energy, melodic and celebratory, known for inspiring dancers to states of intoxication and transport. Linyekula establishes early on, by projecting Muhindo’s apocalyptic poetry onto the back wall, that this music is the soundtrack of a people dancing on the edge of destruction.

The music is really what propels this piece and creates the context for everything else that unfolds. Kapaya is an amazingly talented guitarist and composer, he and his band do an incredible job of transitioning between diverse musical styles and creating sonic environments for the dancer/actors. Starting with the light, nimble fretwork of Ndomobolo, they gradually move into a single, heavy metal repeated power chord that turns into an aggressive assault bordering on punk rock. This transitions into a propulsive jazz/funk kind of bass and drums rhythm with trippy guitar soloing on top – and then back again into the heavy metal/punk sound. The singers, too, move from style to style seamlessly – and it is exciting to hear them move from soulful singing to full-on growling spoken word. We feel intuitively how these seemingly disparate forms tap into similar impulses. You can groove to the sounds and rhythms of the whole show but you also feel the intensity and power driving you forward.

The dancers feel it too. They enter shirtless in basic black  but soon put on these strangely-shaped puffy shirts, one fabricated from shopping bags, one from what looks like Euros, and the other one I couldn’t quite make out. They start with simple, smallish moves but gradually expand out into sinuous, athletic and aggressive movement patterns. They seem to be blending little bits of “traditional” dance with popular dance and contemporary movement, embodying the tension between worlds that is The Congo. They look like they are dancing at the apocalypse, summoning up the spirits of the End Times and struggling against forces much stronger than them and beyond their control.

The poems projected on the back wall are broken into sections – many of them titled after Nietzche, “Twilight of the Idols”, “Thus Sang Zarathustra” – which lends a certain structure and point of reference. Sometimes, to me, it seemed a little heavy handed, but overall it spoke to the ideological and political ambition of the work – they’re shooting to engage with big ideas and create an epic experience, tying the plight of Congo into the wider tide of history.

Towards the end of the piece the words projected onto the wall read, “You Deserve A Future” – and this is the point of the piece. Congo doesn’t need media-generated pity, it doesn’t need false promises and it shouldn’t ignore its situation by just dancing. The people of Congo need a future, a vision to live towards, they deserve it. It is interesting, then, that at this point the ensemble make their way upstage to a corner in a dim pool of light where they perform an extended sequence of what I believe was traditional a capella Congolese folk song, complete with guttural interjections and syncopated handclaps. At the same time they are calling out for a future they are referencing the past, something original, something unique, something culturally specific and tied to their heritage. It is a beautiful moment.

After that section they return to the main part of the stage for, almost, a reprise of the Zarathustra section which leads into a film projected on the back wall of clouds floating by on a bright blue sky. Faces emerge from the clouds and we eventually see a group portrait of the artists themselves, which fades back into the blue, leaving us looking at the sky and dreaming. Thus ends this intense dance/music journey.

I didn’t know what to expect going into the show, having never seen Linyekula’s work before. I was surprised and delighted to be so moved and engaged. Really amazing work from a too-little known part of the world.

Popularity: 3% [?]