Some of the organizers of Time Share relate the background on how and why this collaboration came to be. 

Tatyana describing Time Share to Buck Wanner, Siobhan Burke and Tara Willis in preparation for devising their “panels” :

This past fall, some previous organizers of both CCC and AUNTS (including Jmy Leary, Anna Sperber, Jen Rosenblit, Laurie Berg, myself, Lili Dirks-Goodman, Tess Dworman, Laurel Atwell and Irfana Jetha) had an ad hoc “board meeting” assessing impact that both of these platforms have on the community. With each model, what are the strongest parts, and what are the weakest parts? Where do we feel excited, and where do we feel frustrated? How do we go forward each year with minimal effort, maximal enjoyment and benefit, without becoming this set-in-stone institutional model?

There were concrete issues concerning money. In both cases, a fiscal conduit was needed to receive support. In AUNTS case it was an individual artist’s own fiscal sponsorship. In past years for CCC we used Movement Research, but that relationship seemed to have some implicit difficulties and even competing interests. We talked about pros and cons of forming a joint nonprofit. But generally all agreed that we didn’t have an interest in birthing a new organization to take care of for the next 10 years. There is something freeing in our rebel nature, and also something of a burden.

Moving forward it was the generally agreed that some sort of strategic partnership between AUNTS and CCC made sense. That’s when a sub-committee of me, Jen, Laurie and Lili broke off to discuss something more “radical.” We were talking about localization and visibility. Jen had this crazy idea to rent Danspace for a week! We briefly discussed how we often felt that the festival structure was more work than it was worth, but with our two organizations, we possibly had a leg up because everyone already knows what we do. All we have to do is localize it and create visibility. That’s when Lili and Laurie found the call for proposals for St. Nick’s Alliance, for 3-month residencies where we would have 24-hour access…a dream!

We applied and got the residency. We’re hoping to create a structure for things to be more localized, reliable, communal, casual, etc. The way it’s set up now is that there will be an AUNTS chain curation each Saturday night. During the week, M-F from 10-12 and 12:30-2:30pm there will be CLASS. The afternoons are group open rehearsals. The ideas for the monthly community dinners is to give people yet another opportunity to socialize. And what better way to lead into that, but with stimulating participatory discussion?

This little slogan popped out in our discussions “It’s not a hole, we made it.” Meaning, no one asked us to do this. This was not an existing model, but one we forged together for a joint purpose.

Liliana Dirks-Goodman adds:

One thing that has been interesting about the process for me is how organic our collaborative working process has been. Tatyana, Jen, Laurie and I separated out because of our shared interests and motivation, then things progressed with Tatyana, Laurie and I because of that same reason as well as a certain level of comfort and trust that was being developed. In those beginning stages where we were coming to actualize the idea and flush out what the “project” was going to be it seemed amazing how well we worked together and how diverse our talents were, I felt like we each had a special thing we were good at. We are where we are not because we set out to do something specific, we are where we are simply because we set out.

In the first “board meeting” we also talked a lot about the way we all occupy spaces and our current and past transient nature and if we need/want in the future to establish a home base, another step in formalizing our “organizations.” AUNTS had a sort of home base when I lived in the loft and that was great for providing the flexibility to just do a quick and cheap event but it also kind of locked us into a specific kind of show that performers and audience could get used to and come to expect. We went back and forth on this a lot, liking the ease of doing our business in a known environment but not liking the boringness that comes from being a known. I think the pop-up idea came from this, we could experiment with a partnership between AUNTS and CCC as well as have an established home base for a set amount of time.

Attached photos are of the floor construction last week. Lili was the head engineer on this thing, with construction help from Laurie, Tatyana, Tess, Meredith Boggia and Jim Byrne. Otto (the baby) was there too. We built our own sprung floor for about $1000 and covered it with re-purposed vinyl from Build it Green. It’s almost ready to go!

Check out the various events Time Share is hosting over the next three months at the websites of AUNTS and CCC. The first event is this Saturday, May 11! Next week, Buck Wanner hosts the first Dinner and Discussion with Anna Sperber, Donna Uchizono and Jodi Melnick on Wednesday, May 15.

600 HIGHWAYMEN “Everyone Was Chanting Your Name”

The Culturebot Team brings you the latest Scanner, putting performance on your radar. Here’s what we’re looking forward to seeing/doing over the next two weeks:

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8 – SATURDAY, MAY 25

The Hotel Colors written by Eliza Bent opens this week at THE BUSHWICK STARR. Again we’re super excited about the kick-ass design team that has been assembled to match Bent’s theatrical imagination. Director Anna Brenner, set designer Blanca Añón costume designer Ásta Bennie Hostetter, lighting designer Yi Zhao, sound designer Ken Goodwin, and composer Joshua Chang come together to play with an amazing ensemble of actors. Together they combine their talents to share an adventure that can only be birthed from travel and translation. “Welcome to The Hotel Colors. Would Formal You like to take a coffee with me? Can I control my email now? I ask excuse of you!”

Make sure to check out the cool social events happening around the play as well, including Singles Night at The Hotel Colors May 10th and Bike to The Hotel Colors Night May 19th.

@ Bushwick Starr 207 Starr St., Brooklyn. 8pm, Tickets $18.

THURSDAY, MAY 9 – SUNDAY, MAY 19

600 HIGHWAYMEN premiers their production Everyone Was Chanting Your Name “a living portrait of eight individuals whose lives span six decades” to Abrons Arts Center. Directors Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone gave NYC a sneak-peak of Everyone Was Chanting Your Name at last year’s Prelude Festival. We’re super excited to see how the performance has developed and for audiences to experience the liveness that Browde and Silverstone bring forward in their work.

@ Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand St., New York. 8pm, Tickets $20.

SATURDAY, MAY 11

Time Share launches this weekend with the first link in a 5-weekend AUNTS chain-curation series.

Time Share is a 3-month long residency resulting from a collaboration between AUNTS and CLASSCLASSCLASS, two groups that for several years now have been stirring things up in the way the dance community learns, teaches, performs, and parties. Check out each group’s respective website for more information on the many events planned for this residency.

In the meanwhile, just come to the opening event, an AUNTS performance on May 8, 8pm. Admission is donation to the Free Bar or Free Boutique.

@ Arts@Renaissance 2 Kingsland Ave., Brooklyn.

SUNDAY, MAY 12

Culturebot and The Invisible Dog present the second installation of The Brooklyn Commune. (Check out this write-up of the first!)

The Brooklyn Commune is an artist-driven collaborative public visioning project to investigate the economics of cultural production in the United States and propose sustainable economic models for artists, independent producers and the system as a whole.

@ Invisible Dog 51 Bergen St., Brooklyn. 2-6pm, FREE

MONDAY, MAY 13

The always provocative Little Theater returns to Dixon Place next Monday night with four (4) new, extremely collaborative sounding, works-in-progress by Young Jean Lee/Morgan Gould, Claire Moodey/Lacy Post, Joseph Silovsky/Victor Morales/Catherine McRae, and Joshua William Gelb/Katherine Brook/Katie Rose McLaughlin/Dan O’Neil.

@ Dixon Place 161A Chrystie St. New York, NY 7:30pm Tickets: $12/15.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15

And…next week at Time Share, Culturebot’s Buck Wanner will be leading a discussion with Donna Uchizono, Jodi Melnick, and Anna Sperber, talking about artistic commitment, satisfaction, and responsibility in the dance community. We don’t have money, so how do each of us, in our various roles, figure out and learn to respect the only things that could possibly sustain us: a valuable artistic process? That’s the starting point, at least. Everyone who shows up will be part of the discussion, so come if you are interested to hear about this or have something to say about it.

@ Arts@Renaissance 2 Kingsland Ave., Brooklyn. Panel runs 6-7:30pm. A Community Dinner will follow the discussion at 8pm, main course designed by a guest chef, the community fills in. Admission to the dinner is a side dish or beverage. Come for one or both!

WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY, MAY 15-18

Choreographer Pam Tanowitz premiers The Spectators next week at NYLA, a work continuing her investigation of “dance steps as objects” and re-imaging classical ballet in a post-modern framework. Tanowitz has long been interested in revealing the mechanics of dance-making, and her work exists in a progression, with each piece continuing the work of the last. We’re interested to see what’s in store in this iteration, which deals with the pairing of utilitarian and ornate movements.

@ New York Live Arts 219 West 19th St., New York. 7:30pm, Tickets $30

Photo by Anjola Toro

While watching Vicky Shick’s Everything You See recently at Danspace Project, I was reminded of a Robert Altman film, a work full of well-known faces performing stylized naturalism along multiple threads for us to follow. It was something I would have liked to return to again and watch for different individual journeys and from alternate perspectives. It was rich, subtle and lush at different moments, but very often just delightfully passing me by. The moments of detail or when a dancer landed right in front of me felt like the camera lens sharpening its focus, while the gathering and running and rounding of corners felt like the rush of a fresh water stream. The multiple currents would sometimes converge into rapids and then channel out into brilliant little pools of dancing.

Photo by Anjola Toro

Knowing this was a much larger group than she usually works with (and that she only assembled the whole cast close to opening), I was struck by Vicky’s ability to move so many small groupings in and out of one another and across two spaces with such delicate skill. It was exquisitely organized, beautifully danced and, quite simply, a model of craft and style. I wanted to know how she did it and how it felt from the inside. In the way that Altman is sometimes called “an actor’s director,” I felt the generosity of Vicky’s process with her cast in each dancer’s individualism. As I said to the cast, it just looked so “yummy” to me. I wanted to be in there dancing too. So, I asked Vicky and her cast about their experiences with the process.

Photo by Anjola Toro

Wendy Perron had already offered a first person perspective in her blog for Dance Magazine, but with so many individual streams, I expected that the solo experience inside of the strong ensemble would have some variance. As a prompt I offered some questions. What follows reminds me that we should ask dancers about their place inside the choreographic work more often. The standard dialogue of choreographer with audience (or critic) and back again sometimes excludes the material reality of the primary instruments of the work -  the humans that inhabit and execute the larger vision.

From DONNA COSTELLO:

Donna Costello – Photo by Anjola Toro

It looked like one of those works that would be so yummy to be in. The material and tone seemed very generous to the dancers. Does it feel that way from the inside?

The movement was very precise and Vicky has an incredible eye with details of the body and how to find the right nuanced timing of it all.  She also always wanted us to be dancing fully as ourselves and I got comments in the beginning of the process to dance to my true volume and not disappear within a duet or trio.   Each night in the dressing room before the show began she would quote Deborah Hay and remind us to “invite yourself to be seen.”

What was that like, once you all gathered in the space?

My experience is that Vicky built the piece incrementally with dancers in the studio.  I first began with her one on one in the studio for a good amount of time as I know she did with most.  This was intimate, fun, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time.  I had to write notes on the volume of material we made together as well as the editing and refining she would do immediately while I was still working on sequence and/or mechanics.  Then there were times with one or two other dancers in the space and duets were created, then there was a solid chunk of rehearsals with four of us and then it kept growing.  Vicky was working with everyone simultaneously (if not in the same studio) and so this was my own personal trajectory in the process, others may have had a different sequence. When we all came together, what happened so naturally was the way we all worked together and were a connected group in a seamless way.  Wendy in her blog spoke of the intimacy that happens dancing together even when you don’t know someone, which is so true, connections are made and they are deep as you share in this kind of process.  I also can’t help but think Vicky sets a tone in the studio that also allowed for us to come together naturally.  I don’t think she would admit to doing that but I believe she did in her natural way.  It may have even been the simple act of setting up a snack area in the rehearsal space that acted like the kitchen at a party where we could gather and chat during breaks.

There was a shift as we began rehearsals in St. Marks and I could tell that Vicky could finally “see” the work.  I craved for more time in the space with the set, the lights, the sound and the dancers as I know Vicky shared.  It all happened quicker because it needed to and I was fascinated with how Vicky worked the week of show making the necessary changes and tweaks that were big and small.  They always made sense to me even when I may not have seen the need before.

How do you relate to the material and your progression through the work?

It was funny, the first time we put it all together from start to finish, I remember noticing a movement that kept reappearing.  I am high on a forced arch, knees bent, tucked together and I am hunched over.  I am sometimes balancing, sometimes scurrying in varying directions and sometimes wobbling them in and out.   I came to really own this repeated movement pattern that turned into a little something.

I also had this moment with Olsi, where I don’t see him at first but towards the beginning of the piece we really see each other and I put my leg through his arm.  It feels like an intimate moment only because we are face to face for a good amount of time and this then repeats at the end of the dance.  It became such a marker for me, like here we are at the beginning and I see you and now here we are at the end…are we different? I love this kind of personal discovery in a work.

Do you all dance with each other or do some of you never engage directly?

In Everything You See, I never saw Vicky and Wendy’s duet on the floor. I know where it happened and when it happened, but due to what I was doing at the same time on the opposite side and how rehearsals played out, I just never saw it. I don’t feel disengaged from that floor duet, knowing it was happening was enough and I saw the ends of it when we made the long dance line far downstage and when it happened again I noticed when Wendy left it and exited off stage. Selfishly I would have liked to see it, but it was just that the piece didn’t allow me to and that was okay. I also decided on my own that I did indeed have a duet with Jon even though we never created something together. It was when he was on one side dancing a solo (that went before his duet with Marilyn) and I was on the other side facing him through the fabric. I was circling my arm and playing with timing based on his own movements and then Lily and Jodi’s movements which were on the same side of me. Maybe then it was a quartet?

Last musings:

Usually as I am reflecting and remembering the experience of a performance I think about moments I performed, danced or inhabited and the relationships that manifested with the other dancers, the audience or myself. As I thought back on Everything You See I realized I also have the moments I watched and realized they were as present as the times I was moving. Watching Vicky perform her solo and watching the audience watch her through the fabric. Watching the end of the table trio and then seeing Marilyn cross side A in movements that made me think of her tracing her movement residue left in the space like a Fourth of July sparkler. Resting in what we called Rock Garden and watching the audience watch what was happening behind me, between me or on the other side.  And then there were the moving parts that I think back to, like when Elise’s music stopped right at the moment that Lily and I went into what we called Pony and all you heard was the rhythmic pattern of our feet against the wood. Vicky each night giving me a wink as she exited from her solo.

From OLSI GJECI:

Olsi Gjeci and Laurel Tentindo – Photo by Anjola Toro

What was that like, once you all gathered in the space?

There was individual movement, there was the individual moving into the space, and there also was the individual moving into groups as groups moved in the space. A myriad of simple and complex movements. I felt I was always moving even when I remained in one spot on stage or on the sides of the space. The coming together of all small duets, trios, solos into this cohesive whole was as ‘crazy’ as it was mysterious, revealing of a great mastermind behind this work, hugely fun and a real aesthetic treat for the eyes, body and soul.

How do you relate to the material and your progression through the work?

I missed Vicky’s class during these past few years. That attention to detail, to small movements, that breath and fresh air of everything moving and the awareness of it all is fantastic. You enter in the process in ‘pieces’ and you become one magically.  Somehow, Vicky extracted whatever she needed out of me and I took whatever helped me realize myself physically and mentally into Vicky’s vision. It is very hard to be feel individuality in the process of materializing someone else’s vision, but with Vicky it is so easy to feel unique on stage.

Do you all dance with each other or do some of you never engage directly?

Not with everyone. With Vicky I had only one moment when we walked toward each other as she exited the dancing space and I entered. We looked at each other and depending on the night, we’d either smile at each other or we just see each other. For me moments like this (because of the person and the attention every little thing gets in this piece) are meaningful moments and they count as much as direct movement exchanges do. I feel that somehow the essence of this piece is related to this little example.

The material and tone seemed very generous to the dancers. Does it feel that way from the inside? What’s happening for you on the sidelines? How much do you get to see?

I delighted in finding myself within this complex world of sensibilities. The experience changes as I observe from the sides. There’s a lot to see. A blink can direct your attention somewhere else every night and the piece changes accordingly. The more I got comfortable with myself in it, the more I could see. It was like my eyes were getting bigger, my attention was becoming sharper, or my ability to memorize and see was increasing somehow.

Do you have personal favorite moments?

Hard to select. All the duets, trios and group moments were great! I could select the ‘soulful’ men’s duet w/ Jon after the swirl and another duet with Jon on side A during the women’s Rock Garden on side B, but that’s because others commented on so much about these to me.

What did you learn from observing Vicky in this process?

How to value the person, the individual, the artist as a unique individual before anything else and how the individual and whatever we create are so intertwined that if you forget and ignore one, you are ignoring the other.

How calmness, patience, respect, and artistry of a high caliber can make the work what it is without too much fabrication or arbitrary FORCE.

How one should let the piece become what it becomes once one has given it a place to live in!

A great artist has courage, simplicity, honesty, love for others and the work, is devoid of the need for certainty, working with the simplest goal of discovering and experimenting.

How human relationships clearly and directly effect the artist’s performance spirit and his/her ability to connect with the piece.

How did you meet Vicky?

She was my Tech 2 teacher here at Hunter. So lucky.

How did you begin working with her?

3-4 weeks before show she asked me if I was interested because she needed another man. Interested? Well, DEFINITELY of course… but I couldn’t believe it!

From LILY GOLD:

Lily Gold – Photo by Anjola Toro

Vicky is delicious.  The beginning of the process had a few unforgettable months of just us, one-on-one in the studio. There was, of course, the later richness of getting to know and work with the other performers, but one-on-one… what a gift.  We spent a lot of time laughing. She would usually throw out a disclaimer like, I don’t know what to do…shall we just dance?  I would say, Let’s!  After a couple of hours of me dancing around and Vicky saying what was most exciting to watch, we’d repeat that back and forth, collage things together, and then eventually she’d offer direction about timing and specificity in my body. We would have a mini mountain of material that we felt invested in. Sometimes the sequences just grew and grew. Sometimes we would start fresh. Over time, this became ritual. The things that we knew, could return to, grow within, and then perform. Whatever qualitative direction she would give me, once metabolized, would consistently enhance my experience inside my own movement.  She was so generous with the freedom she gave to us in performance. She truly sees who she is working with.

From MARILYN MAYWALD:

Heather Olson and Marilyn Maywald – Photo by Anjola Toro

I started working with Vicky in 2010 in preparation for Not Entirely Herself at the Kitchen (March 2011). We continued working together in the studio in the fall of 2011 through spring of 2012, and what came of that was So be it- Not a Piece- Miniatures for Five, which ended up at La Mama (with you!) in May 2012. We continued rehearsing in the fall of 2012 for this piece, Everything You See. I guess for me these three years have felt like a long continuation of one process, since Vicky and I have mostly been rehearsing together, on rather than off, mostly taking breaks for the summer and major holidays. My main experience is being in the studio with Vicky and working on a movement language or dexterity or fluency, which ends up being channeled through specific phrases or motifs for each specific piece. I know that every process has a ton of discarded or unused material, but Vicky and I joke that we have hours and hours of material that didn’t make it into any dances. I think I really hold all of those phrases or improvisation ideas or duets or solos, etc, in my mind; and it feels like what ends up on the stage kind of holds all of that play time and investigation… so the actual piece feels like a kind of distilled facet version of all of the different movement ideas that we made together.

I think that the studio dialogue and really getting to know someone as a dancer and person is extremely essential to Vicky’s process, and so she sets aside time to do that. She also loves to create and work material really specifically and detailed-ly with individuals or duets, trios; getting a specific rhythm and timing and shape to the material is really important to her, and I think that’s how we spend most of our time, especially in the beginning. I love this. I love having Vicky’s eye on my dancing and receiving her “coaching” because it is such precious insight into the mystery of what makes HER so special. A lot of times I would never have guessed or anticipated the kinds of modifications or edits or changes that she makes to the material itself, or to larger phrases or duet/trio/group dances, and this is so thrilling for me because I get to see what her priorities are. She really really cares about the material, and the way that we do it. I love that because I am fascinated with detail in dancing and why/how a movement and sensibility is achieved through the body. Vicky’s choices really surprise me; I’ll be doing a phrase and feel like, oh those arms are boring, they need to be bigger and then Vicky will make the total opposite edit, a choice I NEVER would have made on my own, and then in doing it I feel how specifically Vicky the movement feels with that modification. It’s like a Vicky lens. She has such history and mastery and idiosyncrasy to her movement, and getting to interface with that is really thrilling.

In this process, she operated that way as long as she could. Donna, Lily and Jodi and I all started rehearsing together at some point in the fall, in overlapping rehearsals. Jon was around on and off, but they had a lot of material already established from La Mama, and I think they have a much longer working relationship too. Jon and Heather joined more intensely in the spring. Olsi joined a bit later. Vicky rehearsed with Wendy on the weekends, totally separate from everyone else. Laurel lives in California and came for a week during her spring break, and then for the week of the show. So it was really a mixed bag in terms of who was at rehearsal when – which was just a much more extreme and inflated version of Vicky’s tendency to work with small groups. In Not Entirely Herself Maggie Thom, Jimena Paz and I rehearsed together a lot, especially for the few months before the show. Vicky had a lot of time to compose and craft that piece as a trio.

For this, I think Vick was very stressed by the lack of cohesion in scheduling and cast, but she really just kept plugging away and making it work with whoever was there. I think that the circumstances really pushed Vicky out of her comfort zone, because she simply wasn’t able to do the kind of composing and detailing that she prefers. Out of necessity she absolutely had to let go of certain desires and work in a different way, and I think she really tried to make the best compositional choices she could, and she pulled it off! I think the piece ended up feeling very much like Vicky because she really does invest so much time and energy into the individuals and small groups, so when you put everything together there is some kind of overarching logic that definitely has Vicky’s stamp on it.

I didn’t dance with Laurel or Wendy, and very little with Olsi. Everyone is seen all of the time, so there was a lot of standing or sitting and watching each other. This happened at La Mama too, and I think it brings forth some kind of seamlessness between dancing and being the “object” and watching, and this feels very whole and complete as a performer because you’re not only responsible for yourself and being “on” but also for supporting each other and enriching the space as a little community. I loved this at La Mama, and I loved it in Everything You See too. It somehow feels generous and undercuts hierarchies of value around who’s on “stage” and who’s not because everyone is on stage and everyone can be seen. I also loooooved the proximity to the audience that La Mama demanded and that Barbara was trying to emulate in the Everything You See setup. Performing close to people allows a certain demystifying of what’s going on, and textures are more available.

Especially in this process, I think Vicky really made room for each dancer to “be themselves” inside the material. If anything because she absolutely had to, it was too much to keep track of, but I think she had her finger on everything and that her sensibilities and preferences informed everyone’s dancing. In terms of favorite moments, there is a part where Vicky and I are dancing together and then we separate, walk in a circle and then pass each other, and she starts her only solo in the piece. I love walking past her as she makes that transition.

Some of the most enjoyable moments in this performance were those transitions between being active and watching. Having three-dimensional placement within this world and not being able to keep track of everything, knowing just enough about what’s going on that you’re “on cue”, but also genuinely discovering new relationships and moments across the curtain, etc. I also loved running around in the big group- being over the top and goofy within that setting, and knowing that it didn’t really matter because it was the larger energetic picture that was the priority.

I began working with Vicky after I took a Set and Reset workshop she gave at Peridance in 2009. I think I was one of the only people there over 21, and we hit it off.

Lily Gold and Donna Costello – Photo by Anjola Toro

And, finally… a few “basic facts” from VICKY:

Most everyone I met in classes – Olsi at Hunter College, the others through Movement Research or Trisha Brown Company classes- but not, Heather, Jon or Wendy. I had the privilege of being in one of Jon’s pieces – loved hanging around him and

Jon Kinzel – Photo by Anjola Toro

dancing with him and related to his changing the minutest of details a thousand times. I have had a long shared dance history with Wendy and I’d seen Heather in performances and hadn’t connected before due to scheduling.

Working in small bits – solos, duets and trios – is my favorite thing to do – to be in a studio with one or two or three other people. It feels so manageable that way – and definitely easier to see.  I love non- sequitors and intimacies between people. I always say try not to do it like choreography even though I damn well know that’s what it is. Or I ask them to suck “dance phrasing” out of the movement. I would love it to feel/seem/look like thought or words or stream of consciousness or just daily action. I would love the performers to find their individual and human phrasing and sure sometimes (probably most often) I force my sense of what that phrasing is.

I would say that is what I care about most – trying to find the phrasing that feels like life or like humans or, just, genuine.

I also love things that are formal and have some sort of cohesiveness or structure. I can’t seem to rid myself of needing some order – getting lost without it – even if that order is invisible to others.

My favorite moments are little accidents, weird gestures that someone might do or a movement I would never in a million years come up with – but even more, the real favorite moments are in rehearsal and feeling the comradery and generosity and support and appreciation and laughter that goes back and forth among everyone. Ain’t nothing like that! Right? And, there’s also the embarrassment/chaos of not knowing what to do or say while everyone is there looking at you, waiting for some solution/answer that you don’t have and then, realizing that’s okay with everyone too.

Photo by Rafael Gamo

Jill Sigman can’t really go anywhere, it seems, without being described as the choreographer with a PhD in Philosophy. It’s not an epithet she seeks to shed—her company is called thinkdance. And though she abandoned her career as analytic philosopher after completing her dissertation, her involvement in both disciplines grew, she says, from the same kernel of desire: “Thinking about a way to live.”

Sigman’s latest work, last days/first field, will premiere May 7-9 at Invisible Dog Theater in Brooklyn; in it Sigman continues to find ways to connect dance to the ways we live outside the theater. The piece, which involves the real-time planting of a field of seedlings on the floor of the stage, follows on the heels of The Hut Project, a multi-year endeavor involving a series of structures built from discarded and repurposed material. These were then used as catalysts for site-specific performance, conversation, artistic collaboration, and communal meals in Troy, New York; Bushwick; and Oslo, Norway; among other places.

After years of site-specific work, says Sigman, “It feels like the most radical thing I can do is a piece for a theater.” “I missed people all being together in a dark room,” she says. Continuing her investigation of sustainability through guided experiences of shared practice, she plans to utilize the intensified focus required for an evening-length piece of dance—as opposed to the few minutes one can spend wandering in and out of an installation. After an hour of dancing, the planting of the field will act as a kind of durational performance. Sigman’s version of durational performance is a nurturing one; the long moment of watching dancers plant will culminate (in traditional Sigman fashion) with tea. “I just like serving people,” she told me.

In Sigman’s mini-documentary about The Hut Project shot shortly after Hut #5, one audience-member is captured describing the “beautiful communal moment”, when Sigman invited her audience inside the hut and served them a salad made of vegetables she had grown there. The hushed, private experience of theater-viewing gently swelled to include the patter of conversation; a satisfying, gently-edifying kind of expanding of art into a practice of living. At the end of last days/first field, the audience will again be invited to dine. Sigman chose two crops, kale and basil, to raise with her dancers as part of the rehearsal process.

Sigman is adamant about the work not being “a commercial for urban agriculture,” but the show tantalizes with the thought of being able to opt-out of the busy present into something better—a time in which we slow down, grow more deliberate, and eat well. Sigman says she hopes to impart a feeling of affection for place, and perhaps trust in place, as well. Inspired by the work of Wendell Berry, agriculture, like dance, is for Sigman an act of placing faith in gradual accrual. Visually, the green of the seedlings will amass until the stage is filled with a new color; meanwhile, viewers have the chance to be bored, to be moved, or to wonder—how do we move forward with care?

Sigman also calls the work “apocalyptic.” The end of the show will be “this post-apocalyptic tea party occupy moment,” she says, continuing, “My work is a rehearsal for the future. We’re on a crash-course.” Despite her sense of foreboding, last days/first field feels more like an homage to a potential future than a eulogy for a lost one. Perhaps this is because last days/first field engages extensively with the current field of those working for ecological change. Sigman’s rehearsal process incorporated input from urban farmers, permaculture practitioners, a geologist, and gardeners. She asked each: “If you were planting the last field, what would you plant? If you were planting the first field, what would you plant?”

Answers, she said, ranged from “flowers!” to suggestions of practical crops that would enhance the soil’s nitrogen content, to “Okra, because I like okra.” There’s something fantastical and whimsical to Sigman’s choreographic practice that feels especially exemplary of the reasons she prefers dance over philosophy. It’s not just the somatic over the intellectual. “I didn’t want to play analytic games about how language functions,” she says. “Philosophy started as thinking about a way to live and evolved into a professional form, the way everything does”—dance included.

But this doesn’t mean Sigman doesn’t want to argue something. “I’m a choreographer. That’s what I do,” she states emphatically—a statement she often repeats, as though reinforcing the main thrust of an argument. “I stick my finger up in the air and then translate that feeling into movement.”

Because, she points out wisely, “people don’t know what they believe, physically.” In other words, dance circumvents not only what a philosopher could argue, but the position an audience or interlocutor could take in verbal defense. Sigman’s dance pushes, gently, for a somatic route towards a better life, but also maybe better philosophy. With dance, says Sigman, “You get in the back door.”

Brighton Beach boardwalk at dawn, April 4, 2010.

Just before dawn on April 4, 2010, I landed at JFK. Bedraggled and bleary-eyed, I tossed in the back of a cab the two suitcases that contained all my worldly possessions not consigned to a storage unit, and then did my best to guide the cabbie to my new home with my iPhone. A rented room in a townhouse owned by a friend-of-a-friend, it was pinched between Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay. A few wrong turns later we arrived on a narrow side street; I plucked the keys from the mailbox, dumped my possessions in the room on top of the tiny, sheetless bed and, with nothing else to do, Googled the nearest Starbucks half a mile away on Brighton Beach Avenue, underneath the elevated Q train tracks that lead to Coney Island. It was barely past dawn by the time I left the cafe, uncomfortable and out of place among the Russian cabbies decompressing at the end of their shift, so I walked up to the boardwalk, sat down, and looked at the ocean. It was still bloody early, and everyone I knew was on the west coast, three hours earlier still, so I had no one to text or call. I just sat, smoked a cigarette, and snapped the above photo of dawn breaking over far south Brooklyn.

It was nominally a surprise job offer that brought me to New York, and indeed, it was the job that made it comfortably possible in a way most people don’t enjoy. But the reason I was willing to pull up stakes at 30, and leave behind friends and books and pets to move across the country to a place where I didn’t really know anyone, was art.

I’d been writing about the arts for eight years at that point, since I moved to Seattle in 2003 after studying theater and comparative literature. I had burned out on theater before I left the university, and I was surprised to find myself working as a technical director and master carpenter within three months of moving to Seattle. My career as a theater technician lasted about two years, until nasty politics and bad, bad art caused me to walk away. By that point I’d graduated from writing for the free monthly alternative rags that collect dust inside the front windows of bars and pizza shops to being…a blogger. For Seattlest.com, Gothamist’s Seattle outpost. And in the mid-Aughts, I indulged in all the bad tendencies bloggers were guilty of back then, which is to say, mainly writing snarky crap for the purpose of drawing attention to myself. I was ready to quit by 2008, having realized how terrible and pointless the whole thing was, when I was offered the chance–by way of an editorial shuffle–to become the performing arts editor. I’d always been hesitant to write about theater, since I imagined that I might one day work in the theater again. But it’d been a good couple of years at that point since I’d last taken a job, so I jumped in.

It took all of a year and a half to burn out on theater again. After months of seeing two or three plays a week, I began to notice I was seeing the same thing over and over again. Hackneyed actorly attempts at psychological realism, the production of “Geometric characters.” Plays that read like op-eds arguing their “big point.” Glib attempts to make classics (mainly Shakespeare) play as relevant by imposing an aesthetic scheme on them that made them read like op-eds…arguing their “big point.” And then there were the flogging-a-dead-horse revivals of museum pieces like You Can’t Take It With You. I have a horrid memory of suffering through that play on opening night at one of the big houses, seated next to a gray-haired couple who showed up tipsy, pointedly sought themselves out in the back pages of the program to ensure they were identified under the right donor level, and then prompty began dozing within ten minutes of curtain. The only genuinely funny moment I had that evening was when gray-haired husband got caught looking down my date’s blouse by gray-haired wife coming back from intermission.

Spend enough time watching and thinking about theater, and eventually you’ll probably come to the conclusion that theater is something theater people do to entertain themselves. If it wasn’t for On the Boards, I probably would have shifted back to writing about indie rock and books. Seeing a Toshiki Okada or Young Jean Lee or Radiohole, to name but three that immediately come to mind, was revelatory. It reminded me of the spring of 1998, when–directionless in my supposed freshman year of college and working at a bookstore–I read Beckett, who first suggested to me that theater could truly do something that film or television or fiction couldn’t. And exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see the theater doing, but which so many artists were unwilling to risk, limiting themselves to received traditions. I also discovered dance at On the Boards, too, which consumed much of my last year in Seattle. Dance, by its very nature, rejected the most objectionable thing I found about theater: namely, its privileging of the text above all else.

So when I moved to New York in April 2010–for art–my first destination wasn’t Broadway or The Public or any of that. It was Performance Space 122. Within a week I dutifully bought a ticket to my first show. To Avant-Garde-Arama, because it seemed like a more social event where I could meet people.

Now, the first thing to understand is that I’d never been to PS122 before, so I knew the name but didn’t grasp the double-entendre; I was actually surprised to show up at an old school. Second, I didn’t really note that “doors at 8″ implied the show didn’t start at 8. So I arrived maybe 7:40-ish expecting something approaching a proper lobby and instead found myself sitting alone in the hallway in front of the upstairs theater, more and more convinced with each passing minute that I’d made some sort of ridiculous mistake. At some point I grabbed someone who looked like he worked there (a then-intern by the name of Phillip Gulley) and asked what was up and whether anyone else was coming. He just nodded and pointed to a conference room (the Mabou Mines space) and said: “Oh yeah, go on in, have a beer, they’ll be here in a minute.”

Confused but with nothing else to do, I went in where, indeed, there was a bucket of beer on the table, and sat down awkwardly and waited. A few minutes later, a veritable crowd walked in, led by a tall, long-haired blonde woman (who I quickly learned was Carleigh Welsh) who was orienting PS122′s volunteers for the upcoming gala. An orientation I was crashing.

It was clear I was out of place, but I hurriedly began texting anyone on the west coast who could offer an ice-breaking introduction. Pretty quick she introduced herself and, determining at least part of the situation, took pity on me (or decided to make me someone else’s problem) and pawned me off onto one of the volunteers to take me into the show.

A long-time East Village resident (as I recall), I have no idea the woman’s name. She was gregarious and kind, and identified herself as an artist, though when asked about her work she referenced only taking part as a community member in Phillipe Quesne’s  L’Effet de Serge. I have no idea what her name is. All I remember is that at some point that evening–which was hosted by Eric Dyer, curated by the Wooster Group, and line-produced by Mashinka Firunts, who I also met that night and who also sensed I was painfully out of place–I asked my erstwhile host how I could keep abreast of work like this.

Meeting with Andy in Williamsburg, summer 2010

She quickly responded: “Have you ever heard of Culturebot? You should read Culturebot.”

So in the end, I really owe it all to some woman whose name I don’t know. Or to Carleigh. Or Phillip, maybe. Whatever the case, within a couple of weeks I wrote Andy Horwitz an email, and a couple of weeks after that we met for dinner near Columbus Circle, and he took me along to ERS’s gala where they were raising money to bring Gatz to the Public. And a few weeks after that we met at the Alligator Lounge in Williamsburg, because you get a pizza with every beer and that seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t remember exactly when I started writing for Culturebot, but I do remember I missed my first show because I got lost on my way to what was still the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Because I was new to town and can be forgiven for thinking for some reason that St. Mark’s Church would be on St. Mark’s Place. All I know is that by the time I went to Portland that September for the TBA Festival, I was covering it for Culturebot.

The rest is basically the last three years of my life. And not really worth recounting since anyone reading this knows a fair bit about it. Andy has occasionally described me as the only person crazy enough to go to four shows a week and write about them for no money. Which I suppose helped him a bit in trying to realize what he’d imagined all along: A new form of criticism for an era where all the high-falutin’ encomia to the importance of “serious criticism” in newspapers and magazines ain’t saving those jobs. A criticism to support the sort of work those “serious critics” have more often than not given short-shrift to.

The amount I’ve learned from doing this–and from Andy in particular–is immense. As many would attest, Andy can be one of the best and most helpful people to know in this town. In addition to Culturebot, he hooked me up with my current roommate and I’m fairly certain was responsible for a date or two along the way.

But as Cuiturebot has grown, it’s become difficult to manage my own interests and projects along with the editorial and other responsibilities, so sadly I’m moving on. I’m sure this won’t be my last byline, but my days as editor have come to an end. For those interested, you can keep up with what else I’m working on over at “Deeply Fascinating,” my own little home on the web. I don’t actually promise its content will always live up to the name; it’s more a joke at my own expense, a thorough text analysis revealing my overuse of those two words.

Otherwise, keep calm and carry on. Next Brooklyn Commune is May 12 at the Invisible Dog.

Brooklyn Commune Mother’s Day Edition

Please join in the second convening of the Brooklyn Commune* on May 12, 2013 from 2PM – 6PM at The Invisible Dog. For more info check out the event on Facebook. And to keep the conversation going, join the FB group!

THIS EVENT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!

Don’t miss the keynote presentation by writer, artist, teacher and all around super genius Amy Whitaker talking about art and economics. Guaranteed to blow your mind!

Then dive into the Research Team Fair where you can join a BK Commune Research Team or start your own. Research Teams are self-organized investigative pods to research specific subtopics of the overall Brooklyn Commune Project.

After the last event a few people self-identified as coordinators for the following teams:

• Independent Creative Producers (coordinator: Dorit Avganim)
• Foundations, Funding and Philanthropy (coordinator: Kimberly Bartosik)
• Economics & Finance (coordinator: Max Dana)
• Labor, Value and New Models for Social Organization (coordinator: Nick Benacerraf)

The following teams were suggested when reviewing notes from the last event but no-one yet has self-identified as coordinator, could it be you??:

• Diversity and Inclusion
• Aesthetics of Performance

Any of this stuff float your boat? Something burning a hole in your brain and soul that you’ve got to get out into the world? Bring it, share it and find others who want to collaborate.

And then, as if that weren’t already enough, after the Research Team Fair there will be a Mother’s Day Long Table on “The Art of Making Work/The Work Of Making Art” from the perspective of pioneering women arts leaders. Join in a conversation with artists, producers, curators and administrators who have made an impact and a statement through their lives and work. Special invited guests include Shay Wafer, Cynthia Hedstrom, Jane Comfort, Elise Bernhardt and others TBC.

The Long Table is a horizontal participatory format. So it is going to be awesome and you don’t want to miss it! Bring your mother! Or your non-biological mentor mother to share her experience and insight!

*The Brooklyn Commune is an artist-driven collaborative public visioning project to investigate the economics of cultural production in the United States and propose sustainable economic models for artists, independent producers and the system as a whole.

Four convenings over the next 8 months will culminate in a weekend-long congress in late November to develop an artist-driven platform and vision for the future of the performing arts that will be shared with our colleagues in January 2014.

The Brooklyn Commune takes its inspiration from the iconic Paris Commune of 1871. While sited in Brooklyn, the project is inclusive of all NYC and aspires to develop a vision with national relevance.

The Brooklyn Commune is organized by Culturebot.org and The Invisible Dog.

Timothy Braun, Editor-In-Chief of New and Social Media for The Fusebox Festival,  reporting from Austin, TX.

Three days before he arrived in Austin, I sent Mac Wellman an email. I wondered if he remembered me. I met Wellman in the summer on 1998 in Northern Ireland. He was the playwriting instructor in a fellowship program I was attending that jammed together a collection of college-aged students from across the States, England, Ireland, and Germany. There, Wellman showed me his ideas on bad theatre, how to salvage a corked bottle of wine, and the importance of find the right collaborator. Wellman emphasized I could work as hard as I wanted on a play, but I needed to find the right collaborators for my plays to work the way I wanted. That summer he introduced to director David Levine. We worked on an adaptation of “Alice In Wonderland” set at the Oklahoma City bombing.” I’ve collaborated with Levine a few times since, but he lives in Berlin now and we just don’t get see each other anymore. However, he is still the first person I think of when I finish a play.

Wellman came to Austin for the 9th annual Fusebox Festival. He brought “Muazzez” a play derived from a collection of short stories entitled “A Chronicle Of The Madness Of Small Worlds.” All of the stories in the book take place on various asteroids, and Muazzez is an asteroid that is home to an abandoned cigar factory. This cigar factory is in an existential crisis, this “twelve acres of crumbling brick and mortar” has always assumed he is human, or at least humanoid, but now isn’t certain. He has dug too deep, and “what I had taken for bedrock now seemed sand.” By the way, I’m not missing a word in there. That is the actual line, and in the hands of the wrong collaborator I can see how it would sound like a mistake, but it didn’t.

“Muazzez” features Steve Mellor, Wellman’s longtime collaborator, as the concerned cigar factory, sitting at a table, drinking water, simply talking with the audience. Wellman’s work is unique and precise in language, more than other writers I’ve come across, and his work goes in two different directions; either extremely good, or extremely odd, depending on the production. The result of Mellor on the asteroid is an intimate story, a good collaboration between a writer, an actor, and their audience.

When Wellman and Mellor came to Austin, Fusebox Artistic Director Ron Berry, TCG’s Eliza Bent (a current student of Wellman’s), and I had lunch for what we thought was going to be an interview about the piece, but over mushroom sandwiches, bloody marys, and biscuits and gravy the afternoon quickly dissipated into watching two friends, two long time collaborators, tell stories of their adventures in the theater world. Wellman started with talking about BACA, the short lived but legendary Brooklyn site known for producing three of Erik Ehn’s Saint Plays, and how there just aren’t many places like BACA anymore, but the afternoon was mostly spent with Mellor telling stories of their adventures in London and Italy where “Terminally Hip” did well, and musing over a New York City that has changed over the years. Things are much more expensive now. It is harder to produce work in the Big Apple. My favorite story involved a site-specific piece in Central Park in which a passer-by yelped “Bourgeois Pretensions” at their show as Jeff Jones of The Little Theater barked on a blow horn. I hope I’m getting this story right. I was laughing rather hard.

As the lunch went on I began to think that collaboration for these two is less a way of looking at work, and more a way of looking at life and all the adventures they’ve had, a way of looking at “things”. Collaborating on work is a lens through which we see ourselves, our own places together, and our own time together. I wonder if Wellman and Mellor see themselves in each other, in the words the write and speak. As the lunch ended I stopped worrying if Wellman remembered me, and I thought about texting Levine. I have an idea for an adaptation of “The Cherry Orchard” with robots and toasters. It would work well in Berlin, and I wanted to tell my old friend watching Wellman and Mellor musing over bourgeois pretension was as nice a combination as biscuits and gravy.

Muazzez
This performance was part of Fusebox’s 2013 Featured Projects series.

Photo of Gino Grenek and Joshua Green by Sarah Silver

Stephen Petronio Company presents Like Lazarus Did at The Joyce Theater, running April 30 through May 5. The work is inspired by the mythology of resurrection, and the title refers to the biblical story of Lazarus, who was raised by Jesus four days after his death (the act that is supposed to have given Jesus god-like status). “It’s kind of a weird story,” Stephen says, “what did Lazarus think? Nobody knows what he saw when he was dead, and no one knows what he felt when he came back. There’s a leap of faith when you’re pursuing the intangible, and a relationship to suspending belief when you’re pursuing the unknown in the body…It’s that magic that keeps me interested.”

Stephen comes across as highly instinctive. On falling into the dance world in college he says: “I thought, ‘well, I’ll be a doctor,’ because the one thing we didn’t have growing up was money. I took one dance class and the thunderbolt struck. It seemed like the choice was made for me intuitively.”

He has spent the bulk of his 30 year choreographic career in Europe, and says “it was just recently that Europe collapsed” for him. “There are many cycles in a career, work goes in and out of fashion, economies shift, and America has really taken me under it’s wing in my middle career and I’m excited about that, although its not enough to sustain a company.” He was named the first artist-in-residence at The Joyce in October, which has been “a great, great asset to me and a great support emotionally. It’s always the company against the world, and to feel like we have that support has been a great feeling for all of us.” Despite the relative stability the residency provides, between leaving the European circuit and phasing out his own performance (“I’m in my mid 50s and I’m not dancing anymore, it’s not about that anymore, although my body is working at a deeper level than ever”), his career has been through some major transitions of late, but his priorities have remained more or less constant: “I make exactly what I want. My tastes are perversely complicated, and I have to be satisfied with the stage picture, which is usually much more complicated than what people want to see. I have to ride the line of what is going to sink me or not, in terms of density, and I generally love to go too far.”

The task of reconceptualizing his place in the community as a mid-career artist is far from clear, and he is just starting to think of himself in terms of lineage and leaving an imprint — “‘what does it mean to be an artist making work for 30 years? What is my presence and what effect have I had on this community?’ I didn’t ever think of that before, I just blew in and did whatever I wanted. It has to do with consistent teaching, lecturing, that kind of thing.”

On his own training and lineage (he calls himself “the bastard child of Steve Paxton and Trisha Brown”), he talks about moving “from Paxton’s 360, spherical, improvisational” world to “memorizing highly personal improvisations” with Trisha Brown as the first male in her company — “Steve was doing similar, continuous flow, snaky things with his body, so I was perfect for her.” He learned from both of his mentors “that you can develop a personal language that is intuitive and not prescribed by your logic, and you can memorize it.” His vocabulary is virtuosic, carnal, lots of rolling torsos and thrashing limbs, and his dancers are impeccably trained emoters and physical risk-takers.

On deviating from his mentors’ Judson Church roots, he acknowledges his understanding of post-modernism and Steve and Trisha’s deconstruction of language, but asserts the necessity of personal language in his own process. He talks about receiving criticism for his showmanship, and feels that his work has sometimes been misinterpreted as shallow.

“I always come from a place of somatic intuitive improvisation, but I stretch that energetic investigation out into space which makes it look maximal or superficial to some people. They are unconscious mental states that we improvise in — they are coming from a deep somatic place, but I am not afraid to construct them in an external way, because the surface is important to me. I feel that I can’t have a surface without an inside, they are part of the same continuum and I don’t want to deny one. But it comes from the body. It always comes from the body.”

Improvisation for him is about “catching unconscious material and shaping it — not about the rational mind,” and I’m curious how he facilitates that altered state for others. “It’s hard to teach a 21-year-old dancer to understand the unconscious state that leads to the energetic pathway when they are often fixated on just the mechanics and pyrotechnics of their bodies. By the time I get to that energetic illusive point with the dancers it often looks stupid and superficial and noodly, so then those studies get cut out.” He refers to this experience as an ongoing challenge in his career, and constantly negotiates what his dancers do well with his interest in deeper somatic investigations.

In one section of Like Lazarus Did he conducted a “childlike exercise about the energy between the surface of the skin and the palm of the hands which creates a certain look and feel,” and began to build work while taking the dancers with him into that state. He says that some dancers have slipped in and some haven’t yet located the sensation, but he is nonetheless pleased with what came up and considers that process to be a rich discovery.

The content of the work began with text from early American slave songs. “My work in improvisation is about escaping my conscious rational body interests and sinking into a more reflexive self to get deeper, or higher. I thought that was an interesting parallel with the function music had for that slave population that was using it. A kind of escaping the physical world.” He has worked with composer Ryan Lott (aka Son Lux) on three works in the past, and LLD’s electroacoustic score draws from diverse spiritual music and texts, filtered through Stephen’s signature lens — “I said to him, ‘everything seems so serious, can you send me something that’s just much hipper than everything else?’”

Stephen’s other major collaborator is visual/performance artist Janine Antoni. Her contribution has been deeper than just providing a still meditation counterpoint (a living sculpture that she inhabits) to his moving one: “Janine sees energy — that’s her interest in dance. She’s been asking lots of questions, she can see when it’s in my body and when it’s not in their bodies. She has been talking to me about it which is making me talk to them.”

In terms of structure, LLD “is something of an arc from a death to a rebirth; classic in a way.” His thinking about resurrection “was all getting a little too hippy,” so he began to employ more rational structural devices like accumulations and retrograde, “tools that allow revisiting, going back and forward in time.” He feels that he was “hiding behind structure in a way, or using it as a motor,” and he considered implementing elaborate set pieces to allow extreme level changes, but it ended up becoming “more about energy ascending or descending in the body.” The idea of resurrection extends also to the source of the material — he worked with reviving and reworking choreography from past pieces, and says that solos are often “written on the dancers and their particular-ness,” allowing him to see “the soul of the original dancer in the new body bringing it back. That’s always touching and beautiful.”

His multilayered interest in resurrection seems timely given this new chapter in his career, but he frames it more as a daily resurrection: “every time you walk into the studio you’re a new person, and you can’t escape your old person.” I ask him, “why this dance now?,” and he responds:

“It took me 25 years to build a language, and I began building pieces that were some kind of afterburn of that language — Ghostown, how do you build a dance that’s not there anymore? The Architecture of Loss, how do you build something that’s slipping away? So it’s not about defining and hammering a language but about removing it so you can see what’s left. My motor is very angry and sexual so to erase that, what are you left with? I wanted to be able do everything I’ve been able to do well AND the other thing I’ve been experimenting with, and resurrection, death, rebirth gave me the arena. The music came at the right time, and it felt like the right thing to do.”

I caught Gwen Welliver’s newest work at New York Live Arts on Saturday night. Beasts and Plots deals with the human form through group dancing, live drawing, campy theatrics, performed music and a few elaborate costume pieces. I found the experience to be totally engrossing but mystifying — equal parts bracing and soothing, scary and funny. It starts with Stuart Singer, solo, arms encased in long spools of brown paper, the ends dragging along the floor as he shifts his posture in his seat. This opening sequence feels like an attention warm-up, priming us to pick up subtle sounds (helpful, as most of the accompaniment is provided by the cracking, jostling, and grinding of small objects into microphones) and the body’s ability to extend motion into space (Singer’s paper arms give small gestures big visual imprint).

A pensive-looking Beth Gill watches him as his stillness turns to melodrama; gesticulating, babbling inaudibly, and marking dance phrases that escalate to full-on across-the-floor leaping while she half-listens/half-daydreams. She eventually begins moving through a dance of her own, stoically hinging her joints and shifting facings against the white paper backdrop. Other performers meander through, change clothing, move props, and our attention returns to Singer, this time laying face down on the brown paper, tracing himself with charcoal.

The rest of Beasts and Plots is similarly episodic. There is a recurring bit in which the five performers move together in a clump, dancing individual variations on the theme of constant and arbitrary-seeming adjustments. This group choreography reads like a chain reaction; an elbow folding in causes a knee to swing up which causes the head to fall back, even though it makes no physiological sense. Phrases are built around loose bending, swinging, and curving of the upper body. The lower body determines orientation and trajectory, creating pathways of travel while the arms carve pathways in three dimensions. It seems less concerned with visual composition or emotional state as much as tracing directions of energy in the body and how they intercept/intersect each other.

The imprint of the body is somehow equally resonant in three dimensions as in the drawn self-portraits. Just as drawing also functions as a movement practice for Welliver, here dancing is treated as a parallel method of tracing the body, except that it leaves no record. The dance exists mostly in human-scale, the movement neither contained nor peripheral, and dimension changes are a relief. The moment when it shrinks from medium-sized and medium-paced dancing to barely-perceptible shaking, stomping and gyrating in place is one of the most memorable.

Periods of dramatic substance are also a welcome respite from the cold formalism. Julia Burrer’s white unicorn horn and Welliver’s black hockey mask release us from the rigor of the vocabulary and prompt us to concoct fantastical scenarios that turn sinister when Singer’s throat is slit while straddling Kayvon Pourazar’s knee. Duets start off tender, turn malicious, and somehow end up funny. Beasts and Plots‘ ability to hold our attention is rather uneven, and it starts to resemble a collection of research findings about halfway through, which I actually kind of enjoy. It’s a little baffling and the sequencing feels jagged, but it taps into some valuable investigations of possibilities for translating information between media and what it means to make a self-portrait.

Jack Ferver, “All of a Sudden”

Newest installment of Culturebot Scanner to get the word out about what we’re excited to see over the next two weeks:

THURSDAY-SATURDAY, APRIL 25-27

Solos & Solitudes is an presentation of solos guest-curated by Jenn Joy and Noemie Solomon, performance scholars who have also co-edited a catalogue of writings and conversations with choreographers Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, and Taisha Paggett. The three have been invited to create work related to Georges Didi-Huberman’s Le Danseur des solitudes (2006), and the evening promises “melancholic magic,” ”bodystorming,” and investigation of Zumba and Autotune.

@ Danspace Project 131 E. 10th St., New York. 8pm, Tickets $18.

SUNDAY, APRIL 28

Emerging wunderkind terrible New Saloon premieres Cooking to me is Poetry at DUMBO’s Galapagos Art Space this Sunday. The Brooklyn-based theater collective’s new play fuzzes the Persephone myth to pose questions into agency, absence, and the Apollonian. Original music, indoor lakes, real family letters, real feelings, and the subtitles “fear / marriage / communication / failure of communication / fear.” + Post-theater dream pop by Sticklips.

@ Galapagos Art Space 16 Main St., Brooklyn. 7pm (Doors at 6pm), Tickets: $20.

MONDAY, APRIL 29

The Kitchen’s new series L.A.B (language, art and bodies) brings artists from different fields of contemporary performance together to share and respond to each others methods of making work. This hybrid event of conversation and artwork illuminates ways we share vocabularies as well as the very real differences that exist between our fields. The series should be of interest to those curious about cross-disciplinary collaboration (and who shouldn’t be?). The upcoming event will feature Sam Green, Maria Hassabi, Tina Satter and Alex Waterman.

@ The Kitchen 512 W. 19th St., New York. 7pm, Free.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY, MAY 2-4

All of a Sudden is a new collaboration between choreographer Jack Ferver and dramaturg Joshua Lubin-Levy using Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer as source material to probe concepts of “play-acting, role playing, and friendship.”  With performer Jacob Slominski the three will use Williams’ brilliantly tragic and funny fault-lines to expose the limits of one’s self and the needs (whether real or imaginary) one has to shoulder the burden of existence.

@ Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand St., New York. 8pm, Tickets $20.

SUNDAY, MAY 5

Anyone interested in dramaturgy? Check out the roundtable discussion Movement Research is hosting with practicing dramaturgs Thomas F. DeFrantz, Susan Mar Landau, André Lepecki and Katherine Profeta. One of MR’s Studies Project’s, this one is titled “Dramaturgy as Practice/Dramaturgy in Practice”, conceived by Amanda Loulaki and Susan Mar Landau.

@ Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn. 2:30pm, Free.