Critics Page
Performa 2021
By RoseLee GoldbergSince the first Performa Biennial in 2005 New York City has always been the star of the show. We dedicated all our efforts to commissioning and supporting artists to create startling new work for the new century, and to collaborating with curators in cultural venues up, down, and across Manhattan, and boroughs beyond, with the firm intention of putting a spotlight on the city as the performance capital of the world.
Live from New York
By Charles AubinPerformance today in no way escapes this contemporary condition of customized reality; it exists in a constant state of arbitration between live experience and documentation. Through phone video recording and ricochets of likes and shares, performance no longer stands fully apart from our endless deluge of social media.
The Real World
By Kathy NobleIn a recent conversation, the artist Tschabalala Self told me that the best performances she’d ever seen were on the New York City subway. Freestyle subway dancers are my personal favorite in this genre. Groups of mostly young Black men glide up and down the thin space of the carriage with athletic dexterity in between commuters sitting on plastic seats, swinging off the ceiling rails and spinning around the poles to music.
In Conversation
Amazon (Proxy)
By Danielle DeanDanielle Dean collaborates with online gig workers to create a live performance that revisits the history of Fordlândia, a short-lived rubber plantation established by Henry Ford in the Amazon in the 1920s.
Stalk
By Ericka BeckmanEricka Beckman reimagines the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk as a contemporary anti-capitalist proposition that relates to the current situation around industrial farming.
The Stage
By Tschabalala SelfSounding Board is an experimental play about performativity—performativity in this context relating to all actions that are done for the edification of others or for the social advancement of one’s public facing self.
notes towards becoming a spill
By Shikeithnotes towards becoming a spill is a semi-autobiographical, experimental opera performed at the shore of the Atlantic ocean. It is a narrative revealed through the dancing body about transformation and the histories that haunt Black queer men.
Review
By Madeline HollanderBefore the pandemic hit I had been in production creating a large-scale performance featuring dancers from companies all over New York City who would come together on one stage to present works that were just about to premiere—future choreographies that they were in the process of rehearsing but had not yet reached the stage or a public audience.
Down at the Arcade
By Sara CwynarSara Cwynar’s Down at the Arcade is a stream-of-consciousness performance of different tasks leading to the construction of a big new image. The piece features photographs and objects moving on conveyor belts and pulleys, mixed with voiceover and musical interludes.
In Conversation
Being Silica
By Andrés JaqueArchitect Andrés Jaque presents a sound performance that invites spectators to sensorially experience the interconnection of New York with its neighboring territories.
The Sound of Morning
By Kathy NobleKevin Beasley’s The Sound of Morning combines every aspect of his work to date—sculpture, sound, performance, and site specificity—in one totality. Staged at the crossroads of two Manhattan streets on the Lower East Side, Beasley plays the sounds of movement, object, and site—inserting sculptures made using everyday and industrial materials and objects, and performers—by using contact mics to magnify the faint noises that usually disappear into the white noise of Manhattan, creating a sonic sculpture.
