The Buzz on Tere O'Connor and Deborah Hay

Here's the buzz today:
Alastair Macaulay has been bunching undies with his dance reviews at the New York Times for a bit now.  Here's the latest in undie-bunching.

D Foy's blog ranting about Macaulay and his own review of Hay's show

Macaulay's review of Hay

Macaulay's review of O'Connor

Tere O'Connor posted the following review from The New Yorker on his FB feed saying,
 "Wow, finally a review about my work that doesn't start from being perplexed! Thank you Andrew!!! 
I am so exhausted by some of these dilettante critics who have such an antagonistic relationship to any expanded idea of poetics in dance and 

continue to force their anachronistic value systems on the work- systems that many artists have clearly discarded years ago. Another thing to point out about Andrew's writing is that he asks questions about problem areas in works he has seen, choosing a sense of inquiry about artistic choices as opposed to defaulting to the incredibly toxic yet popular stance of pomposity and dismissiveness in the face of alternative choreographic authoring."

New Yorker review of Tere O'Connor's show

I love it when this happens because it teaches me even more about dance criticism.  Keep it up y'all.  It's more fun than TMZ and more educational than a MOOC.

All Work and No Dance Makes Katie a B**ch

Today I'm grumbling because Mordine and Co. is on break so I'm not dancing as regularly.  I usually get my butt into Visceral Dance Center (Lou Conte is good too, but they have only SCAAAAARY pro-ballet in the morning whereas Visceral's adv/pro ballet isn't so scary.) but this is the end of the semester at UW-Milwaukee, where I teach, and I have a crap-load of grading to do.  Then my receptionist gig at The Dance Center of Columbia College  in the evenings to pay the rent.

Working there is great because I get a free ticket to their Presenting Series and therefore get to see even more dance on my limited budget.  Plus, when I'm reception-ing, I can use all the rollers they have scattered about the building.

But at this point with a whole 5 days between me and my last dance class, I'm only bitching about work, so let me get back to it.  For those of you who don't have the dance-addiction it's like this: you know when you haven't eaten in a while and you're like "no one talk to me until I shove this cookie in my mouth or I'll bite your head off"?  Well, it's similar with dancing.  I'm going to be grumpy until my next class.  And no, the yoga-home-practice and pirouettes I did in my living room didn't help at all.  They just pissed off my downstairs neighbor and made my husband laugh at me while we watched the Bears lose to the Vikings.

So I'm off to read all of my students Movement Analysis papers (at least it's about dance) and try to pry my brain away from the internet so I will actually finish instead of looking up PhD programs and interesting choreography.  CONCENTRATE!  Maybe I need to unplug my internet...

Double Dance Show Weekend

My single dance date turned into a double dance date! My husband and I met my dancer friend Kelly Anderson at Kate Corby's show "Passing" at Links Hall this past Saturday. We had a chance to chat with Kristina Fluty about life and school and Kate, herself, about the dance scene in Chicago. Then I scored a cheap-seat at Hubbard Street's Show "Transcendent" today at the Harris Theater to see Mats Ek's premier Casi-Casa.

Kate's show, about life and death, was made more full in the intimacy of Links hall by the ambient sounds from the passing trains and party-goers on the busy Saturday night.  It was only a welcome intrusion because the casual nature of the choreography.  Dressed in street-clothes and alternately tossing themselves about or lightly placing their gestures about the space, we felt as if the cycle of life and death wasn't too heavy or heady of a topic but something that just happens or slowly floods into one's experience.

The highlight of Kate's show was definitely the duet between Josh Anderson and Michelle Scurlock. Vacillating between linear movement phrases and repetitive gesture we get a glimpse into a relationship that is complicated, a little competitive and often hilarious in the most understated way.  This understated hilarity is mostly in thanks to Michelle Scurlock's deft looks at Josh which manage to be just at the right moments and neither too subtle or too imposing.  She also has the fastest arms in Chicago.

My dance weekend then went from 10's of seats to 100's of seats with my trip to the Harris.  I've been dying to see more European choreographers.  It's not often that I get to see their work live (money, proximity, etc.) so I was so excited to see this show.  Although Canadian Aszure Barton's piece "Untouched" was a dramatic hit, the highlight of the show was certainly Swedish choreographer Mats Ek's piece Casi-Casa.  Finally a break from the relentless ballet vocabulary!  It was full of emotion without beating you over the head with it.  The emotion came from the pedestrian movement, the spare household objects that had a life of their own and the little bursts of sound and often incomprehensible words from the dancers.  I bumped into Dr. Green and his wife from Columbia College afterwards and they were discussing how the Ek piece had a taste of Pina and a clear influence from Ek's time spent working with Nederlands.  I could go on, but I want it to settle first.  I'm sure I'll have dreams tonight of roll-stepping pedestrians, militant housewives, and complicit furniture.

OMG. Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm back.

OMG. It's been so long. Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm back. I guess I got sucked down the rabbit hole of Facebook, instagram and linkedin. Why? Oh because there are so many more things I can do with my smartphone and those social media platforms...

Whatever. I'm back and I'm going to start writing to you because I miss you.

So what's new? I'm living in Chicago now! Yes, if you remember a few blogs back I was bitching about Miami dance and then I was like "someday I'll get back to Chicago". Well I made it and now I'll bitch about Chicago and say "someday I'll get back to Miami!".

Anyhoo, I'm dancing with Mordine and Company and teaching up at UW-Milwaukee (you want to cry about your commute? Mine is 2-3 hours). Ahhh, what I do for dance. My favorite thing? I can take class every day and see multiple shows every week. Not that I have any money, but still. Tonight I'm seeing Katie Corby's Passing

I'll tell you ALLLLLL about it after the show and a martini. By the by, there's still a crap-load of ballet here so I'm not getting off that easy with the classes. Molly Shanahan!!! You better finish that PhD quickly because I need some more of your classes here in Chicago dammit!!!

GLCMA

So, I just received my GLCMA (Graduate Laban Certification in Movement Analysis) from Columbia College in Chicago. It was quite a road (15 months) and for those of you who haven't heard of Movement Analysis, there are only 2 places to become a CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) and only 1 place to become a GLCMA in the United States of America. Phew!

This basically means that I can analyze people's movement. This can be used for Dance, Acting, personal consultations for the workplace, Therapy, etc., etc. Beyond being able to break down human movement into recognizable parts, it is also a fabulous tool for pushing the art of Dance forward. There are so many forms of dance out there in South Florida and often times we have a hard time comparing them, appreciating them and risking precious ticket money on a new show. What the GLCMA gave me was clarity of language to more consistently define what makes a show a success from Bollywood to Butoh.

As I preach in the classroom, you can't define something by what you "like" or how it makes you "feel good". It's so much deeper than that. My personal journey was getting past judging a show on how "intellectual" I perceived it to be. When you strip the dance down to levels and efforts, initiations and shaping... it becomes even more exciting. So now I am all pumped up to go out there and see more work and create more work! That's all for now...

Miami Made

So I just discovered the Miami Made festival...
The point is for the illustrious Arscht center and affiliates to celebrate and highlight the work of local artists in order to support the growth of new and experimental work in Miami. BUT, it was hardly advertised. Only those established in the arts scene got emails or notices. Well.

Anyhoo, I stopped by because someone had graciously gotten me a ticket because they thought I would benefit from attending. My first impression... experimental? What? Granted, I was not able to stay for the whole weekend and see some of the highlighted and ticketed events (of which the artists get NO proceeds), but if this is experimental, then I'm Crispin Hellion Glover.

But Miami, I love ya! Kiss kiss.

Sleepless Night Miami

So on Saturday night, Miami was host to an event called Sleepless Night. It is in its second year (with a year hiatus in between due to lack of funding) and everyone was anxious to see if the ambitious 6pm-7am festival would attract a crowd. Well... it seems that "free" was the right price for most of Miami, because at the little event I performed in (The Miami Beach Botanical Gardens), festival go-ers streamed in and out steadily.

I fully intended to take advantage of the free shuttle rides and comb parts of Miami that I haven't seen yet, but alas, a stupid catering truck servicing an out-going wedding reception at our performance site blocked my car in and Saul and I ended up hanging out in the garden for two hours past my performance before we could get the heck out. Then our tired bones drove home to Sunrise because the reality of 12:34am hit and we decided we valued our Sunday morning coffee time more than battling the traffic on the highway back towards the action.

So, what did I see: Well, I performed with Momentum Dance Company and a Video Installation Artist at the Botanical Gardens for a throng of on-lookers. I helped to shape a site specific dance mostly based on interactions with the crowd and with each other suited for a crowd-friendly and interactive performance space. The crowd enjoyed having dancers pause beside them or engage them in passing bits of film from the installation around. They seemed to stop in their tracks and really notice the installation as opposed to when we hid ourselves away in the building and the audience was free to ignore the film and wander (briskly) through the grounds and back out again. I think If I were to do it all over again, I would choose to sprinkle 5-7 minute dances every 10 minutes for an hour. It was a success as a longer piece, but as an installation, the ongoing performances would have served it better.

As a Miami newcomer, I was heartened to see the many art-goers. In the North Country, as I fondly call the upper Midwest, events such as this would be called an Art-Crawl and that Art would be mainly visual art as opposed to the myriad live events offered at Sleepless Night. I applaud Audi's funding of such a needed night that anyone could afford and which highlighted many of the underfunded live art groups peppering Miami. Hooray. Now, if only that nap had held my sleepiness at bay a bit longer because I am ITCHING to see South Beach!