The Brooklyn Rail

In Conversation

ALEXANDER KARGALTSEV with Ivan Talijancic

The award-winning Moscow-born filmmaker and photographer Alexander “Sasha” Kargaltsev has lived in Brooklyn for the past seven years.

GEOFFREY CHADSEY:
THAT’S NOT IT

ver the past decade, Brooklyn-based visual artist Geoffrey Chadsey has crafted a prolific body of work comprised of fictional portraits of ambiguously gendered subjects, rendered in astonishingly vivid detail, and exacted by obsessively precise colored-pencil and crayon strokes.

In Conversation

THIERRY THIEÛ NIANG with Ivan Talijancic

On May 11, 2014, Invisible Dog Art Center’s founder, Lucien Zayan, invited French dancer and choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang to stage his response to “The Rite of Spring” with a cast of local senior citizens.

Realness Revisited

For the better part of this decade, New York audiences have kick-started each new year with their senses and intellects stimulated, challenged, teased, and even assaulted at the American Realness festival, curated by the indomitable Ben Pryor at the Lower East Side’s Abrons Arts Center.

End of Party
Ionesco Meets Beckett

Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Play, a raucous, unbridled performance presented last month in its New York premiere at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s 2016 Next Wave Festival, has quite a few things going for it. One of the strongest may be the uninhibited sense of joyous play, the likes of which you may not have experienced since childhood.

Re-performing Images of Violence and Beauty

“An artist’s duty, as far as I am concerned, is to reflect the times,” said the legendary Nina Simone some decades ago, referencing, among other things, the civil rights movement that fomented America at the time.

Mr. Gaga’s (not quite) Last Work

Seeing the Batsheva Dance Company, under the leadership of the iconic Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, always feels like a treat. Not surprisingly, I find the troupe in excellent form on the occasion of the New York premiere of their 2015 production, Last Work, presented at BAM in early February.

Empowerment Waltz: Patricia Noworol's TREMENDOUS

A Karenina, a Cleopatra, an exotic dancer, a southern belle in S&M boots, a lady in a bare-bone hoopskirt, all gingerly shimmy across the stage, while making eye contact with audience members with “come hither” expressions on their faces. Moments later, the dancers gradually shed this bizarre veneer of seductiveness and begin to adopt an increasingly aggressive and animalistic stance, eventually sneering at the spectators like a pack of rabid dogs. Later still, they interrupt the barking fit abruptly, laughing it off dismissively.

In Conversation

YANIRA CASTRO with Ivan Talijancic

Director/choreographer Yanira Castro is no stranger to creating works that are large in size and/or scope.

In Conversation

Art and science of the unraveling mind: A My Name Is… STEFANIE NELSON and DAVID SHENK with Ivan Talijancic

Stefanie Nelson’s choreography has been presented extensively within New York’s contemporary dance circuits, including such venues as Dance Theater Workshop, 92nd Street Y, Joyce SoHo, Dance New Amsterdam, and Triskelion Arts.

In Conversation

Misfiring synapses: a conversation with Gabri Christa about her stage comeback with Magdalena

This fall Christa is reconnecting to her roots—both artistic and familial—making her comeback as a stage performer in a cross-media solo, named after her elderly mother, Magdalena.

In Conversation

CONJURING FUTURE JOY
EMILY JOHNSON with Ivan Talijancic

Earlier this spring, the performer and choreographer Emily Johnson presented SHORE, the culminating event in a trilogy of works she had been pursuing since early 2010 “in response to displacement, to feeling disconnected from place, people, ceremony, and tradition.”

Family as a Battlefield
nora chipaumire at the Brooklyn Academy of Music

The summer may be on its way out, but things are really just revving up in nora chipaumire’s fantasy boxing ring. Decked out in all manner of protective gear—from imposing shoulder pads borrowed from American football paraphernalia to African medicine belts snaking their way around her waist—she is ready to duke it out with the superhero avatar of her absentee father, conjured up from scarce evidence: elusive childhood recollections, an old identity card, and hearsay.

Divining the Shadows
Okwui Okpokwasili’s Poor People’s TV Room

For a moment, Okpokwasili’s ruminations on the transformative power of poetry transport me to a visceral experience of my own. Last June, I ventured out to Governor’s Island to witness an iteration of her current work, presented as part of the River To River Festival.

SUNSETTING COIL (AND PS122)

Last fall, when I agreed to write about the final edition of the annual Coil festival, I could not have imagined that come mid-January the festival’s mother ship—the organization formerly known as Performance Space 122—would find itself rocked by some seriously choppy seas.

In Conversation

JACK FERVER with Ivan Talijancic

Never the one to shy away from difficult subject matter, Jack Ferver has created an idiosyncratic body of work over the past decade, managing to pull off an audacious feat of making his audience flinch and laugh simultaneously. In the press, his contemporary performance works have been referred to as “darkly humorous” (The New York Times), while The New Yorker went so far as to declare that they “look and feel like exorcisms”

Choreographic Wizardry of Yanira Castro

A Brooklynite by way of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Yanira Castro began dancing and choreographing shortly after graduating college in 1994. The Rail spoke with Yanira as her company gears up for a world premiere at Danspace Project later this month.

Additional Dancers of Note

A note from the Editor: In the same spirit of the Music section’s Undiscovered Lands, we’ve dedicated October to dancers who we believe deserve greater recognition. Spotlighted here are 16 artists who have captivated us with their virtuosity and inventiveness, their vulnerability and grace. By no means an exhaustive list, we’re excited to begin the conversation.

JAMES THIERRÉE with Ivan Talijancic

James Thierrée is certainly no stranger to the New York theater cognoscenti, and beyond, appearing on stage since the age of four with his parents’ company Le Cirque Imaginaire.

In Conversation

IVO VAN HOVE with Ivan Talijancic

The iconoclastic Flemish director Ivo van Hove is hardly a stranger to New York theatergoers—downtown, uptown, and Broadway alike.

In Conversation

JIM FINDLAY with Ivan Talijancic

If you have had any exposure to New York’s downtown theater scene, chances are you are familiar with Jim Findlay’s work.

In Conversation

The Marathon Muse of Blessed Unrest: JESSICA BURR and IDRIS GOODWIN with Ivan Talijancic

For the downtown theater cognoscenti, Blessed Unrest hardly requires an introduction. The perspicacious theater ensemble has made a name for itself owing to its boldly physical interpretations of theatrical classics as well as incisive takes on new writing, garnering awards along the way both in the U.S. and abroad.

In Conversation

The Art of Capturing the Ephemeral
Maria Baranova’s performance photography

Whether you are a regular in the experimental theater circuit or an occasional downtown denizen, chances are you have been exposed to some of the most memorable performance images around, as captured by the impeccable eye (and camera) of the Russian-born photographer Maria Baranova.