Kokyat’s photo from the day I met Tom Gold at his studio; Tom was preparing to take a troupe of New York City Ballet dancers to Tel Aiv. Seated at left are artist Luma Rouge and NYCB’s principal ballerina Abi Stafford. Read about the afternoon here. Click the above photo to enlarge.
A gallery of Kokyat’s rehearsal photos here. Photos of Tom and Abi rehearsing a Twyla Tharp duet here. Link to a portfolio of Tel Aviv performance images here. Watch a brief excerpt from Tom’s ballet SHANTI here.
One of the New York City dance scene’s smoothest movers, Bennyroyce Royon gives a workshop in contemporary style and improv at Peridance from January 3rd – 7th, 2011. Watch a trailer here, which features Kokyat’s photography. Above picture of Benny teaching at The Rover earlier this year is also by Kokyat.
Attila Joey Csiki of Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will be giving a workshop in Lubovitch repertoire at Peridance from November 29th – December 3rd. Information here. Photo of Attila above by Brian Krontz from our recent visit to Attila’s studio rehearsal.
Ballerina Joy Womack photographed by Vihao Pham. Kokyat and I met this young dancer this past summer at Avi Scher’s studio while she was in New York City.
Wednesday November 24, 2010 – The dancers of Amy Marshall Dance Company are preparing for a studio showing on November 29th for friends of the Company at which Amy will unveil a new logo and announce the launch of their new website which features a collaboration with designer Norma Kamali and photographer Lois Greenfield. I dropped in at City Center studio for an hour today to watch the dancers running thru Riding the Purple Twilight, a section of which will be performed at Monday’s fete.
During a break, Chad Levy gave me a sneak peek at the new website. It’s stunning. I look forward to ‘introducing’ it on my blog.
Having my camera with me was of little use when the choreography is as fast-paced as this. Most of my images were just blurs of motion. A least in the above picture you can tell who that these are people.
Shannon MacDowell and Louis Acquisto, above.
More about Amy Marshall Dance Company after Monday’s event.
Tuesday November 23, 2010 – I went down to Harlem today to watch part of a rehearsal of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in preparation for their upcoming performances. The Company will perform at the Harlem School of the Arts from December 2nd thru 5th. Details here. The performances are a collaboration with the Ahn Trio and composer Kenji Bunch. In addition, dances set to works by Pat Metheny and Ronn Yedidia will be premiered.
We discovered Nai-Ni Chen earlier this year when a dancer we’d met, Jamison Goodnight, joined Nai-Ni’s company. Both Kokyat and I so thoroughly enjoyed the programme we saw and have been looking forward to seeing the group again. Kokyat’s photo of Jamison, above.
At today’s rehearsal I watched a preview of the works to be shown at the upcoming performances. Each piece is like a visual poem; certain stylistic elements run like silken threads thry the tapestries of dance but each work is also a unique response to the respective musical composition. Above: dancers Riyo Mito and Justin Lynch.
Central to the Chen/Ahn/Bunch collaboration will be a piece entitled CONCRETE STREAM. The work – which begins with a finely-wrought solo for Jamison Goodnight – will feature the musicians’ participation onstage. For another Kenji Bunch composition, GROOVEBOXES, the choreographer departs from her signature style of spacious, lyrical movement and has the dancers sailing thru fast-paced, energized combinations with perfect grace.
I am not sure who has the finer fortune here: the dancers who have Nai-Ni’s entrancing choreography in which they can give wing to their expressive artistry, or Nai-Ni Chen herself in having such an appealing and polished roster of dancers to turn her visions into danced reality. It’s an ideal situation for all concerned.
The dancers were kind enough – at the end of a long day in the studio – to pose for some photos which of course made me wish that Kokyat had been there. It does seem that he will be photographing one of the performances next week so then I should really have some exciting images of this radiant Company to share. Above: Riyo Mito and Justin Lynch.
Wei Yao and Jamison Goodnight…
…performed an impromptu adagio for me.
Jamison and Wei
Francisco Silvino…
…tries on a new costume, and he looks great.
Sunday November 21, 2010 matinee – The Columbia Ballet Collaborative under the artistic direction of Elysia Dawn gave an afternoon of dance at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center with a new work by Pennsylvania Ballet’s Choreographer in Residence Matthew Neenan starring New York City Ballet principal dancer Amar Ramasar, as well as a premiere work by CBC’s resident choreographer Emery LeCrone. The programme also featured new works by Zalman Grinberg, NYCB soloist Adam Hendrickson, Summer Jones and Amanda Lowe. Photo at the top: from a rehearsal of Emery LeCrone’s new CBC work entitled Palindrome; photo by Kokyat.
The afternoon started well and built from there; each choreographer’s voice was clearly expressive and there was a fine variety of musical styles to keep the ear as content as the eye.
Summer Jones presented Sound in One Movement to a violin solo composed and played ‘live’ by Philip Wharton. Structured with an opening duet followed by a quartet and then an ensemble passage featuring a prominent pas de deux couple the choreographer showed an interesting grasp of having different people doing different things at the same time; the attractive music helped to blend these elements into a cohesive whole.
Matthew Neenan, resident choreographer of Pennsylvania Ballet, set the andante of Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto in A minor as a pas de deux for Elysia Dawn and New York City Ballet principal dancer Amar Ramasar. Both dressed in black, the dancers performed this duet with a quiet tenderness that never became saccharine. With his inherent star power, Amar could easily have turned this adagio into a personal showpiece but instead he gallantly kept the focus on his beautiful partner.
“A wonderful voice, not suited for singing” was my initial thought on hearing Joanna Newsom for the first time singing Sawdust and Diamonds as the score of Amanda Lowe’s Then and Never. I’d had the same reaction the first time I heard Alanis Morisette – til she won me over with The Uninvited. Anyway, after a few moments Ms. Newsom and her harp started weaving a spell. And the choreographer took up the thread and wove it into a really impressive piece for nine women which had an Isadora Duncan feel (or was I having a Duncan hangover from last night?) but which also had a clarity of structure that was refreshing in its appeal. The nine girls took the music and the choreographer’s vision and gave the piece a transportive feminine energy.
Last week Zalman Grinberg set Debussy to very appealing effect at the Young Choreographers Showcase. Today he scored again using a familiar piece (Chopin Impromptu #4) and creating a trio for three sylphs on pointe (The Impromptu Fantasise) that seemed on the face of it to be a reverie in romantic-style classicism; by incorporating subtle contemporary touches here and there Zalman gave the piece a unique quality. His three ballerinas – Caitlin Dieck, Kara Buckley and Katie Kantor – were attractive components of the work’s success. I look forward to following Zalman’s choreographic work in the coming months; he seems to have something unique to say and he isn’t afraid to use the classics as a basis for expression.
The afternoon was on an impressive roll and New York City Ballet’s Adam Hendrickson took up the torch with a wonderfully satisfying piece entitled Sun Will Set. The gently rhythmic score by Zoe Keating evoked cradles, rocking chairs or the endless thrum of a spinning wheel as this Americana ballet evolved with imaginative clarity. Four women in plain soft-coloured shifts gather, glean and weave in a gestural language of repetitive tasks. From their busywork, each has a solo phrase just long enough to make a personal impression before stepping back to the collective. Music, movement and mood were finely integrated; the piece really drew me in. Kudos to the four girls – Sophie Alpern, Lauren Alpert, Lauren DeMaria and Alexandra McGlade – who gave life to Adam’s vision. Past works of Adam’s that I’ve seen tended to feature virtuoso passages for male dancers; in extending his range here, I felt that Adam’s moving steadily along on a unique choreographic path. I will be watching to see where it leads him.
Above: Kokyat’s photo of Erin Arbuckle rehearsing Emery LeCrone’s Palindrome. Here Emery has produced another intriguing dancework to add to her treasury with Palindrome, a dark work set to an often ominous-sounding score culled from music of Chris Clark and Venetian Snares. Four dancers – Erin Arbuckle, Rebecca Azenberg, Paul Busch and Richard Isaac – move thru this stark soundscape with powerful individual performances.There are duets – Erin and Paul, Rebecca and Richard – and a passage of communal port de bras that seems to communicate some ancient language. The choreography flows forward and then at a point everything flows in reverse. Kokyat and I had seen a developmental rehearsal of this piece early on in the process, and a second rehearsal when it was fully set (photo of Erin Arbuckle above by Kokyat) but in the costumed and lit final product there was still a lot to discover.
Manhattan Movement and Arts Center is becoming one of my favorite destinations in the New York dance world. From ballet classes taught by Deborah Wingert to watching Joy Womack rehearsing an Avi Scher solo, Kokyat and I have had some great times at MMAC in recent months. I always look forward to going there.
Sunday November 21, 2010 evening – The culmination of one of my busiest fortnights since I started blogging: a truly enjoyable evening of works by Lar Lubovitch, beautifully danced by his beautiful dancers. This was the Company’s final performance of a sold-out run at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
I suppose North Star would be considered early Philip Glass. He’d been composing for about ten years when he wrote this in 1977. (The ballet premiered in 1978). The music seems denser and less ethereal than many of Glass’s later works, but still very enjoyable to hear. The dancers swirl and flash about the stage individually or in quartets which join and then splinter as the music ebbs and flows. The restless energy of the score is visualized by the choreographer to perfect effect. Photo above: Todd Rosenberg.
Katarzyna Skarpetowska and Brian McGinnis (above, Christopher Duggan photo) performed the duet from MEADOW. Dating from 1999 and originally set on ABT, this work is set to an intrinsically luminous work by Gavin Bryars entitled Incipit Vita Nova.To the uneartly sounds of the counter-tenor voice, the dancers create sculptural shapes as one pose flows into another with silken smoothness. For the perfection of their performance, Skarpetowska and McGinnis were warmly cheered.
THE LEGEND OF TEN is a tribute to the ten members of the Company and – all clad in somewhat ominous but elegant black – the dancers turned it into a tribute to Lubovitch who is surely the king of lyricism among current choreographers. With a central adagio couple (Jenna Fakhoury and Reid Bartelme) surrounded by a lively octet of dancers who often step in unison and sometimes bring gypsy flourishes to their movements, the piece is structurally propelled by the music of the Brahms piano quintet Opus 34. The Lubovitch dancers mesh into a cohesive ensemble but the individual personalities of the dancers also shine thru in this, the latest success in the choreographer’s long catalog of works. (Photo above: Sasha Fornani)
All was going well as I saw the finish line of my 2-week dance marathon approaching, but on standing up for the second intermission tonight, my left knee finally rebelled in earnest. I realized that if I sat for another twenty minutes it would tighten further so I hobbled down to the street and after a few minutes of walking it loosened up enough to limp to the subway. I felt bad missing the last piece on the Lubovitch programme though it was one (Coltrane’s Favorite Things) I’d seen not long ago. My grandmother always told me: “It’s hell to grow old!”
Thursday October 28, 2010 – Avi Scher is creating a new duet for New York City Ballet artists Ana Sophia Scheller and David Prottas and he invited Kokyat and me to watch a rehearsal down in SoHo tonight. This pas de deux will be presented at the Young Choreographers Showcase at the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center Theatre, 248 West 60th Street (between 10th and West End Avenues) on Sunday evening November 14th. Tickets available here.
Avi tells me that this duet will eventually become part of a larger piece that he is working on entitled DreamScapes.
Ana and David are two of NYCB‘s most attractive and charismatic dancers; I always love watching them onstage so it was exciting to observe them in the studio. Their partnership creates an intense and shifting dynamic and the choreography takes wing from that with some really expansive moments (above)…
…as well as a kind of intimate tension that keeps the focus of the duet on the relationship.
Here is a gallery of Kokyat’s images from this rehearsal:
In addition to Avi Scher’s newest creation, the Young Choreographers Showcase will feature works by Emery LeCrone, Ja’ Malik, Justin Peck and Zalman Grinberg.
Isadora Duncan (above, in 1908) is a legendary name in the world of dance. Born in San Francisco in 1877, Isadora moved to Paris in 1900 where she taught a style of dance freed from the constraints of classical ballet technique. She also performed, and her reputation for dancing to classical music wearing a Grecian tunic in her bare feet and with hair down made her a celebrity.
In her private life, Duncan’s affair with Paris Singer (of the sewing-machine Singers), her tempestuous marriage to poet Sergei Yesenin and an affair with the poetess Mercedes de Acosta (as well as a rumoured dalliance with Eleanora Duse) were manifestations of her free-thinking lifestyle. She embraced Communism; she gave birth to three children out of wedlock, though none survived her.
Fatal accidents plagued Isadora to the end: her father died in the sinking of the SS Mohegan in 1898 and her two young children were killed in a bizarre accident in Paris in 1913 when a car in which they were sitting with their nanny rolled into the Seine. Duncan met her own death in an equally strange manner: riding in an open car, her long scarf became entangled in the rear wheel and she was strangled.
People today may be familiar with the tragedies of Duncan’s life and of her pioneering work as a dancer but: what were her dances actually like? The group IsadoraNOW under the direction of Elyssa Dru Rosenberg have invited us to a rehearsal on Halloween evening. Watch a brief video here of dancers from IsadoraNOW performing, and there’s a lovely gallery of photos of the Company here. I’m very much anticipating this experience.
Oberon's Glade 