Dance
Dancing on the Rail: May Brooklyn-based and Beyond
Photograph of Sarah Edgars’ Courtesan.May offers a chance to see both works honed in Brooklyn neighborhoods and other works by choreographers far outside of New York—Australia to be exact. I hope the performances featured here serve as a small testament to the bevy of choreographers and dancers who’ve been working outside of Manhattan, once the seeming nexus of cutting-edge dance. Brooklyn-based choreographers present new works at two Brooklyn-based venues, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) in Park Slope and Soundance at the Stable in Williamsburg. Australian-based company Chunky Move kicks off Dance Theater Workshop’s 2005 Guest Artist series, which runs through late July, and Julian Barnett presents his latest dance-theater work at La MaMa.
Chunky Move’s Tense Dave, May 25–June 11
Australian company Chunky Move presents Tense Dave, which features a rotating stage that, together with the dance, follows the tormented character Dave through the depths of his subconscious. In addition to Chunky Move, other companies featured at DTW for the Guest Artist series include H.T. Chen & Dancers, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, Washington Reflections Dance Company, Battleworks Dance Company, Myung Soo Kim Dance Project, Tere O’Connor Dance, and Brooklyn’s own Eva Dean Dance.
Chunky Move, May 25–28, May 31–June 4, June 7–11, 7:30 pm, DTW, 19 West 19th Street, www.dtw.org
Kimberly Brandt’s something we can both be proud of, May 6–7
As part of the Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s First Weekends New Performance and Discussion Series, Brooklyn-based choreographer Kimberly Brandt presents a new work, something we can both be proud of. It’s no secret that the dance world is competitive, as is the competition between dancers. Brandt examines this within the context of a performance and questions what it means to “win.” The dancers—Brandt and Dawn Ravine—are opposites in terms of physique and their interpretation of the movement. At times one is frenetic, while the other is more aloof and calm. Which performer will viewers be drawn to, and why? Who wins? something we can both be proud of attempts to answer such questions.
May 6 at 8:00 pm and May 7 at 7:00 pm.
Tickets: $15 general/$10 members/$8 low-income
BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 Fifth Ave, Brooklyn,
tel. 718-832-0018, www.bax.org
Julian Barnett’s Dub a Hole in the Ground, May 19–29
Tokyo-born Barnett came to dance through break dancing in California, where he grew up, eventually moving on to dance with Doug Elkins, Larry Keigwin, and Mark Dendy, to name a few. Barnett brings his most recent dance-theater work to La MaMa’s The Club. Dub a Hole in the Ground promises to be a challenging work that pushes the boundaries of more conventional performance. Viewers will be confronted with an aesthetic that looks at the fine line between “grace and violence.”
La MaMa’s The Club, 74A East 4th Street
May 19–29, Thurs.–Sat, 10:00 pm, Sun., 5:30 pm.
Tickets: $15. www.lamama.org
Sarah Edgar/Dance, Courtesan, May 20–May 22
Sarah Edgar, a member of the New York Baroque Dance Company who has reconstructed baroque dance for performance, adds a modern dance sensibility to her first evening-length work, Courtesan. Composed of six vignettes, Courtesan takes both a serious and humorous look at the world’s oldest profession, featuring contra dances of the 18th century polished up for the present; here Edgar conflates contra and contemporary dance for an update of the seemingly stuffy but quite steamy 18th-century social dances. A parody of parlor games is promised too.
Soundance at the Stable
281 N. 7th St. (between Havemeyer and Meeker), Williamsburg
tel. 917-379-2609
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Leiko Ikemura: Anima Alma - Works 1981–2022
By Jonathan GoodmanDEC 22–JAN 23 | ArtSeen
Born in Japan, Leiko Ikemura left for Spain to study language and art before moving to Switzerland and eventually to Germany, where she currently works. An artist of subtle feminist assertion, Ikemura has chosen in most paintings to represent women and in some instances children. Ikemura is well known in Europe and has shown extensively there, but this is her first exhibition in America. Her painting style tends to be diffuse and sensuous, in a manner not so distant from the art of someone like Marlene Dumas. Her training directed her toward a compelling mixture of figuration bordering on abstraction, even when she is rendering people.
Dewey Crumpler: The Complete Hoodie Works, 1993–Present
By Maddie KlettNOV 2021 | ArtSeen
Dewey Crumpler is a painter living in the Bay Area. His solo exhibition The Complete Hoodie Works, 1993–Present at Cushion Works in San Francisco’s Mission District features over 100 small paintings on canvas made over the past 28 years.
Cora Cohen: Works from the 1980’s
By Alfred Mac AdamOCT 2022 | ArtSeen
Cora Cohen: Works from the 1980’s is a time capsule, and like all time capsules it is an enigma. Time capsules are supposed to provide people of the future a sample of things typical of the moment when they are buried. Which raises the critical issue of perspective: are we to understand these eight glorious pieces according to what we think they meant thirty-five years ago, or should we understand them according to what they say to us today? Even if we lived through them, the 1980s are as irrecoverable as the 1880s: an abyss separates us from that decade even if human time—memory—may trick us into thinking we actually know that remote moment perfectly.
Wood Works: Raw, Cut, Carved, Covered
By Alfred Mac AdamJUL-AUG 2021 | ArtSeen
Works by 20 artists are included in this wood-themed show.
