Category: Etcetera
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What happens in the pause? PAGEANT Presents: Cavity by Amelia Heintzelman with Dorothy Carlos
Last November, after dancing together in Alexa West’s Occasion, occasion, occasion at the 2023 Performa Biennial, Amelia Hientzelman asked me if I’d like to do some dramaturgy for her. We sat at a bar in Ridgewood and had a conversation, most of which I have forgotten, but I do remember her saying when creating dance,…
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Gaps and Loops: Richard Foreman in conversation with Travis Just and Kara Feely (Object Collection)
Richard: Loops are mankind’s greatest invention. [laughs]
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The Rites of Night: When Dance Heals in Communion
In the dark, anticipatory hush after the house lights go down, five male performers enter the stage at New York Live Arts and sit in a circle – an ancient configuration for ritual and the primary form for choreographer Ismaël Mouaraki’s Le sacre de Lila. The performance, presented in partnership with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing…
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New York City’s God-Shaped Holes in Ian Reid’s “Heaven is a place in the sky”
Purchase tickets to Ian Reid’s Heaven is a Place in the Sky, running September 3-8 at The Tank! Friends premiered almost 30 years ago exactly, on September 22nd, 1994. Its omnipresence is well-documented. My boyfriend’s parents used to live within walking distance of The FRIENDS Experience, the tourist trap that seems to consist entirely of…
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A Conversation with “Sex and the Abbey” Playwright Diana Ly
Recently, the playwright Diana Ly and I spoke about her philosophical, funny, tender, deeply felt, “medieval miniature” (Helen Shaw, The New Yorker) play Sex and the Abbey, which runs at The Brick through September 7th. Directed by Emily Lyon and produced by The Brick, The Omnivores, and The Sống Collective in association with Wiley Water…
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The Inner-Inarticulate of KARA & EMMA & BARBARA & MIRANDA
Through their inner-experience, we see that the women’s profound losses and fears are surrounded by decidedly mundane and glancing frustrations – the very kind that eat away at all of our sense of agency but are the stuff of the everyday absurd
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Highly Produced Punk Chaos in Alex Romania’s FACE EATERS
One of the work’s most shocking accomplishments is that, despite the intense volume, confounding poetic ramblings, disturbing vibes, and depressing inspiration, the audience loves it.
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Some Thoughts on Cultural Asset Mapping
Building arts and culture infrastructure? Here are some lessons learned from a community-based cultural asset mapping initiative in South Los Angeles.
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The Alchemy of Small Groups (Part 6 of 6)
If the human world is organized in small groups, what are the qualities and conditions that make small groups work best?
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From Storefront to Stadium
That time I saw Nirvana in 1991. Or, what happens to an artist and their music on the journey from small clubs to stadiums and how are these experiences different? Essay #2 in a series about the unique power of live performance in small venues.
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ON HOLDING AND (UN)LOCKING: CHOREOGRAPHING THE IRISH DANCE ARCHIVE IN Jean Butler’s What We Hold
There is a photograph of my grandad and three of his brothers taken in Dublin in the early 1930s; the brothers stand in a row and pose with their arms firmly placed by their sides or their hands on their hips. They wear what are known as “hard shoes” in Irish dance, made of black…
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Kinding Sindaw Shines a Light on History
Complexity often frightens people from engaging with the critical context and history that informs our current realities. So, what you will read is [not] complex. It is current and quite easy to understand: Colonizing powers have a problem with Indigeneity.