NDT in NYC

NEW YORK CITY   Nederlands Dans Theater returns to New York City Center for the first time since Emily Molnar took the helm. William Forsythe’s N.N.N.N. is joined by a pair of U.S. premieres: Imre and Marne van Opstal’s The Point Being and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Jakie. April 3–6. nycitycenter.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Centering Latina Voices

SAN FRANCISCO  The Carmen premiering at San Francisco Ballet this month won’t look or sound the same as usual. Choreographer Arielle Smith (a 2022 “25 to Watch” pick) sets the tale in contemporary Cuba—specifically at the family restaurant to which the titular heroine returns with her new husband after the death of her mother—while refocusing the story on Carmen and emphasizing the depth and complexity of the characters with cinematic flair. Escamillo, whom Carmen falls in love with, is recast as a woman, and the new score by Arturo O’Farrill only references the familiar Bizet opera as it layers in Cuban folk music. Joining the new ballet on the Dos Mujeres program is Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Frida Kahlo–inspired Broken Wings (which SFB artistic director Tamara Rojo commissioned and starred in during her English National Ballet tenure). The evening marks the first double bill choreographed by women and the first full program dedicated to Latinx stories at SFB. April 4–14. sfballet.org. —CE

Eclipsing All Else

NEW YORK CITY  Ahead of the Great North American Eclipse on April 8, the feath3r theory alights at NYU Skirball to premiere a devised dance theater work about a group of friends who team up to watch the celestial event and miss it. Raja Feather Kelly draws on Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, the popularity of the science fiction concept of the multiverse, and the ways social media exacerbates loneliness and society’s inability to face it for The Absolute Future (or Death, Loneliness, and The Absolute Future of the Multiverse, or How to Cover the Sun with Mud). April 5–6. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Carnival of Politics

SEATTLE  Choreographed and directed by Francesca Harper and performed by dancer Wendy Whelan and poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Carnival of the Animals reframes the Camille Saint-Saëns classic to consider the animals of a political jungle as it responds to the January 6 insurrection and contemplates the future of democracy. The SOZO-produced work premieres at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts on April 6. sozoartists.com. —CE

Memories of Matriarchs

HOUSTON  With three “Bessie” Awards, the Rome Prize, and a sumptuous stage presence, Jasmine Hearn is one of the most acclaimed contemporary dance artists to come out of Houston. But Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr, a performance, installation, and online archive that preserves the memories of eight Black Houston matriarchs, is their first major commission in their hometown. Commissioned by DiverseWorks, the multidisciplinary project includes original sound scores, choreography, and garments, along with guest performances by former Houston Ballet soloist Sandra Organ Solis and additional vocals and performances by local dancers and “Houston Aunties,” as Hearn calls them. The premiere at Houston Met April 6–7 will be followed by tours to Pittsburgh and New York City. diverseworks.org. —Nancy Wozny

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

COSTA MESA, CA  American Ballet Theatre presents the North American premiere of Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s three-act meditation on the writings of Virginia Woolf, at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Inspired by her novels Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves as well as her letters and diaries, the critically acclaimed ballet eschews narrative adaptation to take a stream of consciousness approach to the modernist writer’s oeuvre. April 11–14. abt.org. —CE

Packed With Premieres

CHICAGO  South Chicago Dance Theatre returns to the Auditorium Theatre for an evening filled to the brim with premieres by Donald Byrd, Joshua Blake Carter, Monique Haley, Tsai Hsi Hung, Terence Marling, and founding executive artistic director Kia Smith. April 27. southchicagodancetheatre.com. —CE

The Weight of a Lie

ZURICH  Cathy Marston brings her penchant for literary adaptation to Atonement, her first new work as Ballett Zürich’s director. In Ian McEwan’s novel and Joe Wright’s acclaimed film adaptation, teenage writer Briony Tallis tells a deliberate lie about her older sister’s lover and spends the rest of her life attempting to make up for its unintended consequences. Marston transfers the action to the world of ballet, making Tallis a choreographer while wrestling with the story’s questions about the fallibility of memory and the nature of self-deception and guilt. April 28–June 7. opernhaus.ch. —CE

A Jazzy Centennial

Dance artists join the nationwide celebration of iconic jazz drummer and composer Max Roach.

Max Roach 100 at The Joyce Theater

NEW YORK CITY  Richard Colton curated The Joyce Theater’s Max Roach 100 program, which will feature a new work to Roach’s Percussion Bitter Sweet album by Ronald K. Brown for Malpaso Dance Company and EVIDENCE, A Dance Company; Rennie Harris Puremovement in The Dream/It’s Time; and a solo by tap star Ayodele Casel set to a series of duets by Roach and Cecil Taylor. April 2–7. joyce.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones at Harlem Stage

NEW YORK CITY  Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company revisits Degga, a 1995 collaboration between Jones, Max Roach, and Toni Morrison, as part of Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program. Also on offer is a new work by Roderick George. April 19–20. harlemstage.org. —CE

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Comings & Goings

Alexei Ratmansky will leave his post as American Ballet Theatre’s artist in residence at the end of June. He joins New York City Ballet as artist in residence in August.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes has stepped aside from the executive directorship of Dance/NYC, assuming the role of strategy and research consultant. The organization has appointed an interim leadership team as it transitions to a distributed leadership model: Candace Thompson-Zachery has been promoted to director of programming and justice initiatives, Vicki Capote to director of development and Sara Roer to director of operations and finance; Milena Luna has been named interim executive director.

Nobuhiro Terada has been named artistic director of the ballet company of the National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Ukraine.

Heath Gill has retired from performing with Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre to join Orlando Ballet as guest ballet master and choreographer.

At Scottish Ballet, Roseanna Leney has been promoted to principal.

Charles-Louis Yoshiyama joined Oregon Ballet Theatre from Houston Ballet as a principal as of January.

At Houston Ballet, Chandler Dalton has been promoted to first soloist, Simone Acri and Naazir Muhammad to soloist and Jack Wolff to demi soloist.

Awards & Honors

Donald Byrd received the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s 2022 Gordon Davidson Award.

At the 2022 NY Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Awards, Tatiana Desardouin received the Juried Bessie Award, Emily L. Waters the Bessies Angel Award and Princess Lockerooo Outstanding Breakout Choreographer. Other awards included: Outstanding Choreographer/Creator for Leslie Cuyjet (Blur), Bill T. Jones, Janet Wong and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company (Deep Blue Sea), Anna Sperber (Bow Echo) and Raúl Tamez (Migrant Mother for Limón Dance Company); Outstanding Performer for Soledad Barrio, Kayla Farrish, Nikolai McKenzie Ben Rema and Antonio Ramos; and Outstanding Revival for Set and Reset/Reset (2021), performed by Candoco Dance Company.

Sadler’s Wells artistic director Alistair Spalding was awarded a British Knighthood for Services to Dance in the New Year Honours.

The Jerome Foundation awarded Arts Organization Grants, ranging from $42,000 to $102,000, to Abrons Art Center, Body Prayers, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Gibney Dance, Harlem Stage, Movement Research and PEPATIAN/Bronx Academy of Art and Dance.

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in December 2022 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Yet Lerman was also frustrated by the feedback she was receiving on her own work, and by the idea that artists should simply sit back and receive critique rather than engage with it. “I hated being misunderstood,” she says. “I felt like we should have a dialogue.”

Generating feedback that feels aligned with the goals of your work can be a challenge—as can knowing what to do with that information once you get it. And even when feedback is conveyed with care, it can sting. Lerman’s Critical Response Process, which she developed beginning in 1990 based on her own dissatisfaction with giving and receiving feedback, addresses some of these issues in its four-step process. Its central tenets include the idea that makers should have an active role in the critique of their work, and that the best feedback is generated when there is a foundation of trust, as well as a spirit of generosity and goodwill.

Feedback can come in forms as casual as inviting a mentor to watch a rehearsal, or as formal as a traditional audience talkback. However it happens, feedback is an invaluable part of the creative process, especially for early-career choreographers, says Spectrum Dance Theater artistic director Donald Byrd. “Feedback is an antidote against hubris,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to learn; to know something you didn’t know before.”

Know What You’re Looking For

Soliciting any and all opinions about your work may very well produce some interesting interpretations. But you’re more likely to generate useful feedback by being intentional about what you’re asking for and why. “Be really clear about the question you want to ask,” says Gesel Mason, choreographer and faculty member at University of Texas at Austin. Mason, who performed with Lerman’s Dance Exchange, often uses CRP or aspects of the practice, which entails asking viewers specific questions about what they saw.

This clarity will help you shape the conversation: Do you want to ask directed questions about a section you’ve been struggling with, or about whether a theme is emerging clearly? Or do you want to facilitate a viewer’s experience of the piece, letting them lead with their impressions and questions? Early in Byrd’s career, for example, he was hungry for any responses he could get and eager to find out what his work was “missing.” Now, he is more selective about who he asks, and is mostly interested in whether his ideas are coming across.

Your motive will also shape whose feedback you seek: An artist from another discipline? A dancemaker who shares—or doesn’t—your sensibilities? A trusted friend? An educated stranger? Byrd most values opinions from those who he knows won’t approach the work with a strong bias towards their own aesthetic preferences and values. Soliciting opinions from those who you are hoping your work will speak to, says Mason, helps ensure you aren’t in an echo chamber of friends and colleagues.

Beyond “Did You Like It?”

Though it’s natural to be curious about whether a viewer “got” your piece, contemporary choreographer Christy Funsch steers clear of this idea when she facilitates talkbacks, pointing out that rarely is it so simple that a work is either understood or not. Instead, she’s “found that it’s more helpful for choreographers to receive a list of images, an expression of an emotional experience that a viewer went through,” says Funsch, who splits her time between New York City and San Francisco. “Try to get away from ‘answers’ and instead acknowledge the incredible thing that dance can do, which is make us find relational truths and reverberations that don’t lead to a single answer.”

Byrd feels similarly. “I know that not everybody’s gonna like what I do, and is that really the thing that I want?” He finds it more useful when viewers ask him questions about a piece, and, similarly, when he gives feedback, he avoids suggesting solutions and just says what he sees.

Feedback Feelings

Because receiving feedback can make you feel vulnerable, it’s tempting to wait until a work is fully baked to invite others in. But, says Amy Seiwert, artistic director of San Francisco–based contemporary ballet company Imagery, waiting until you feel ready often means waiting too long, when there’s no time left to make substantive adjustments.­ Solicit feedback early and often, she suggests, especially when you don’t feel ready: One of her most generative experiences was during a residency when her mentor, Val Caniparoli, would watch an hour of rehearsal every week, whether or not she had anything specifically prepared to show him.

Asking for feedback from people you already trust can make the experience feel less scary. But trust can also be developed in the process itself: Lerman’s CRP is set up to build trust between the maker and the responder throughout the four steps, which begin with viewers simply stating observations in step one and end with sharing opinions in step four. This process also helps artists be more receptive: “If you get defensive, you might as well stop—you aren’t going to learn anything,” Lerman says.

Learning how you respond to feedback is as important as the feedback itself, says Byrd. “At the beginning, you need to take it all in so you can learn to manage not only what you’re hearing, but your feelings about what you’re hearing,” he says.

Now What?

Byrd says that it took him years to realize that feedback is just information for him to use as he wishes. But decid­ing how, exactly, to use it—if at all—can be fraught, says Columbus-based choreographer Bebe Miller, as there’s a risk of moving in the direction of what someone else was expecting, rather than what you’re trying to make.

Even comments that are at first puzzling can spark creativity: Unsure what to make of a critique that her movement phrases are too short in length, Lerman began playing: “What if I thought about too-short lighting, or too-short costumes, or a too-short program note?”

When Mason facilitates feedback sessions among her students, she often has the choreographer implement one change right then. She’ll ask how it felt, what they learned and what they want to take or leave from that experiment.

Critiques that you don’t agree with can be instructive too, says Seiwert. She remembers a time that someone didn’t like a song she was using, and after listening to it over and over again and reconsidering her decision, she emerged able to articulate even more clearly why the song was exactly right. “Sometimes you just need someone to point out that your glasses are sitting on top of your head—you have everything you need, you’re just not seeing it right now,” she says. “To me, that’s where the feedback can be really effective. Because the choreographic process can be so isolating, but it doesn’t need to be that way.”

The Value of Embodied Feedback

Nonverbal feedback, communicated through movement itself, can be illuminating in its directness—you don’t have to imagine how a different approach might shift a piece, you can see it happen in real time.

For contemporary choreographer Christy Funsch, one way of eliciting this is by setting up opportunities for dancers to exert agency over the work, such as asking them to “perform” a piece that isn’t finished as if it were. “Performer choice is a really particular kind of feedback,” she says. San Francisco choreographer Hope Mohr, too, sees “collaboration as a constant form of feedback,” and often asks dancers how the work feels on the inside, using their somatic experience of it to shape how it unfolds visually.

For an even more direct form of embodied feedback, there’s Wrecking, a practice created by choreographer Susan Rethorst in which outside directors “wreck” a choreographer’s work, rearranging and reframing the existing material to create a new version. Funsch, who facilitates wreckings of her own work and the work of others, says the practice can be generative in its subversion of language and politeness—feedback doesn’t have to be articulated, it is simply enacted. Sometimes Funsch has used part of a wrecked version of her work in the final iteration (giving credit to the wrecker), and other times, seeing someone else’s take on her work reinforces why she made the choices she made. —LW

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Play Date

SAN FRANCISCO  ODC Theater’s annual summer festival is back with a new name: State of Play. Co-curated by Amara Tabor-Smith and Charles Slender-White with a focus on queer and BIPOC artists, the performance lineup (live and later via livestream) includes works by Riley Watts and Heather Stewart, MK Abadoo, SAMMAY Peñaflor Dizon, Rosanna Tavarez, Megan Lowe Dances, Erin Yen | Dragons Dance, Nicole Peisl, Kim Ip and Bianca Cabrera. Works-in-progress showings and discussions, debates, and panels are also on offer. June 2–11. odc.dance. —Courtney Escoyne

Update: Rosanna Tavarez’s performances have been postponed to Nov. 11–13.

Book to Ballet

LONDON  Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate tells the story of a young woman with the power to magically infuse her emotions into her cooking, and the drama that ensues when she is unable to be with the man she loves. Christopher Wheeldon collaborated with the author to bring a full-length ballet adaptation to life, set to premiere at The Royal Ballet this month. A co-production with American Ballet Theatre, the ballet reunites the choreographer with composer Joby Talbot and designer Bob Crowley, the team behind literary blockbusters Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale. June 2–17. roh.org.uk. —Julia Mary Register

Hometown Tour

ON TOUR  Dancers with and without disabilities come together in the three-company, three-city National Physically Integrated Dance Festival: Beyond Barriers, Boundaries & Belief! On offer are premieres by Donald Byrd, Mark Tomasic and Brian Murphy for Cleveland’s Dancing Wheels Company, a new work by Heidi Latsky for her eponymous, New York City–based troupe, and Miami’s Karen Peterson and Dancers in an excerpt from founder Karen Peterson Corash’s 2021 Lost and Found. The festival was conceived by Dancing Wheels founding artistic director Mary Verdi-Fletcher, who says, “I felt it was important that our nation recognize the distinct talents of artists that participate in physically integrated dance.” The tour begins in Cleveland, June 10, followed by New York City, June 14, and Miami, June 25. dancingwheels.org. —Steve Sucato

ABT Comes Home

NEW YORK CITY  American Ballet Theatre returns to the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time since 2019, kicking off the season with a Don Quixote featuring a starry triple cast of leads on June 13. In addition to its usual panoply of full-lengths, the company will present the New York premieres of Alexei Ratmansky’s evening-length Of Love and Rage (postponed from 2020) and Alonzo King’s recent Single Eye, and celebrate the 75th anniversary of George Balanchine’s seminal Theme and Variations. June 13–July 16. abt.org. —CE

Closer to Taylor

NEW YORK CITY  Paul Taylor Dance Company takes a break from the grandiosity of Lincoln Center to moonlight at the more intimate Joyce Theater. Curated by artistic director Michael Novak, the programming for the company’s Joyce debut demonstrates the connection between its origins and future, pairing early Taylor pieces, like Events II (1957), Fibers(1961) and Tracer (1962), with a new work from Michelle Manzanales and the New York premiere of Peter Chu’s A Call for Softer Landings. June 14–19. joyce.org. —JMR

Ballet Is Black

WASHINGTON, DC  Black ballet dancers and choreographers are front and center during the Kennedy Center’s Reframing the Narrative week. Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ballethnic Dance Company and Collage Dance Collective perform in two programs curated by Denise Saunders Thompson and Theresa Ruth Howard, showcasing classical excerpts alongside works from the company’s leaders and commissions from recent years by Amy Hall Garner and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. The centerpiece of both programs is a Kennedy Center commission by Donald Byrd, featuring a dozen Black dancers from companies worldwide (including Precious Adams, Katlyn Addison, Jenelle Figgins and Ashley Murphy-Wilson) and a new score by Carlos Simon. June 14–19. kennedy-center.org. —CE

Liberation Meditation

NEW YORK CITY  As part of The Flea Theater’s Juneteenth programming, Urban Bush Women artistic director Chanon Judson has crafted Time’s Up! A Liberation Ritual, a public performance meditation undertaken by Judson and community participants. June 19. theflea.org. —CE

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Hello, Goodbye

NEW YORK CITY
Back onstage in its home theater at last, New York City Ballet premieres new works by contemporary dance darlings Sidra Bell and Andrea Miller at the Fall Fashion Gala Sept. 30, with repeat performances Oct. 1–3, 6 and 12. But it’s also a season of goodbyes: Abi Stafford gives her final bow Sept. 26, then fellow principals Lauren Lovette and Ask La Cour on Oct. 9. Veteran star Maria Kowroski—the last dancer currently in the company to have worked with Jerome Robbins—follows on Oct. 17. nycballet.com. —Courtney Escoyne

Vivid Versatility

LOS ANGELES
Versa-Style Dance Company brings its high-octane blend of hip-hop and Afro-Latin styles to The Ford as the troupe premieres its latest work. Largely improvised, Freemind Freestyle draws inspiration from battling while exploring freedom—both what restricts it and what allows it to flourish. Oct. 1. theford.com. —CE

Hear Them Roar

NEW YORK CITY AND ONLINE
Women Defining Butoh, a series from New York Butoh Institute, pays homage to the women pioneers of the form Oct. 1–30. The series kicks off with virtual performances from early practitioners Natsu Nakajima, Saga Kobayashi, Hiroko Tamano, Yumiko Yoshioka, Minako Seki and Yuko Kaseki, continues with Eugenia Vargas, Cristal Sabbagh, Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh, DAIPANbutoh Collective and Anzu Furukawa, and builds to in-person shows from Vangeline at Brooklyn’s Triskelion Arts Oct. 27–30. Digital and in-person master classes will take place throughout the month. vangeline.com. —CE

Beyond Borders

NEW YORK CITY
Poets, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists and, yes, dancers come together at Judson Memorial Church for Movement Without Borders, a day of performance celebrating four organizations dedicated to humanizing the U.S. immigration system. Dance artists scheduled to perform include Ernesto Breton (in a work by Rudy Perez), Francisco Cordova, Edivaldo Ernesto, Francesca Harper, Horacio Macuacua, Jimena Paz, Shamel Pitts and Mariana Valencia. Oct. 2. movementwithoutborders.com. —CE

Back At It In The Bay

SAN FRANCISCO

ODC Theater welcomes back live audiences with a head-turning slate of shows. The season kicks off on Oct. 2 with the premiere of Funsch Dance Experience’s 12-hour EPOCH, a defiance of Doris Humphrey’s “all dances are too long” edict. Kathak troupe Chitresh Das Institute premieres Mantram, exploring resonance and connection, Oct. 15–17. Kinetech Arts debuts Passage, a multimedia, immersive performance work that explores the relationship between entropy and time, Oct. 23–24. Physical theater company inkBoat premieres Ann Carlson’s These Are the Ones We Fell Among, Nov. 5–7, taking audiences from circuses to alternate universes in a work inspired by the behavior, movement and mythology of elephants. Virtual productions from Amy Seiwert’s Imagery (SKETCH 11: Interrupted, featuring new works by Seiwert and Ben Needham-Wood, Oct. 22–24) and RAWdance (premiering a film version of Ryan T. Smith and Wendy Rein’s Shadow (part 1) alongside Katerina Wong’s The Healer, Oct. 29–30) will join simulcasts of many of the in-person performances online. odc.dance. —CE

Gwen Gets Her Due

NEW YORK CITY 

Fall for Dance, New York City Center’s annual grab bag of a dance festival, has a knack for piquing dance lovers’ curiosity. One titillating treat on the table: a trio of made-for-television dances originally performed by Gwen Verdon, now being taken on by New York City Ballet soloist and Broadway vet Georgina Pazcoguin, as reconstructed by Linda Haberman. While the dances were ori­ginally credited to Bob Fosse, Fosse’s and Verdon’s daughter, Nicole Fosse, believes them to have been actually choreographed by Verdon herself, with assistance from Fosse, and has dubbed the collection Sweet Gwen Suite, in her mother’s honor. nycitycenter.org. —CE

The Politics of Dancing

PITTSBURGH
In the other shoe, veteran dancemaker Beth Corning and noted actor/director Kay Cummings take a deep dive into political and social commentary. “It is one of the most puzzle-pieced works I have ever done,” Corning says. Both deliver incisive monologues on the turbulent state of current events, paired with solos for Corning by award-winning choreographers Donald Byrd, Martha Clarke, Li Chiao-Ping and Max Stone, in this humor-tinged, thought-provoking dance theater work. Oct. 20–24. corningworks.org. —Steve Sucato

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Runaway Hit

Erin Baiano, Courtesy NYCB

The unlikely, unpredictable magic created when New York City Ballet teams up with Kyle Abraham will be put to the test for a third time with the company’s 2021 digital season. A new work for eight dancers—including Taylor Stanley, for whom Abraham created an unforgettable leading role in The Runaway and the made-for-film solo “Ces noms que nous portons”—will debut online April 8 and be available for free streaming for two weeks. The company plans to shoot the work onstage at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, after its creation in a bubble residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park; the film will be co-directed by Abraham and filmmaker Ryan Marie Helfant, who worked on Beyoncé’s Black is King visual album and music videos for the likes of Alicia Keys and Lil Nas X. nycballet.com. —Courtney Escoyne

Tomorrow, Today

Todd Rosenberg, Courtesy 92Y

What will the dancemaking of tomorrow look like? 92Y‘s Harkness Dance Center looks to provide some possibilities with a new series of virtual performances. The Future Dance Festival will showcase works by choreographers with no more than one professional commission to date, selected from submissions by Harkness Dance Center director Taryn Kaschock Russell and a panel that includes A.I.M’s Kyle Abraham, RUBBERBAND’s Victor Quijada, Martha Graham Dance Company’s Janet Eilber, Ballet Hispánico’s Eduardo Vilaro, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago associate artistic director Jessica Tong and Dance Magazine‘s own Jennifer Stahl. Programming will also include interviews with the panelists discussing the finalists and their work. April 9–11, 16–18, 23–25. 92y.org. —CE

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Dance Magazine
asked Donald Byrd, a choreographer whose long and eclectic career spans five decades and two coasts. Byrd got his start dancing for other choreographers, including Twyla Tharp and Gus Solomons jr. He was artistic director of his own company, Donald Byrd/The Group, based in Los Angeles and then New York City, from 1978 until 2002, when he took over as artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle. Along the way, Byrd has also choreographed numerous commissions for other companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

This story is part of a
week-long series guest edited for Dance Magazine by choreographer Kyle Abraham.

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A Homegrown Triple Bill

Lindsay Thomas, Courtesy PNB

SEATTLE
For Locally Sourced, Pacific Northwest Ballet presents three premieres by Seattle-area artists. Donald Byrd, artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater, creates a piece set to music by Israeli composer Emmanuel Witzthum. The founder of Bellevue’s CHOP SHOP contemporary dance festival, Eva Stone collaborates with a female design team for FOIL, choreographed to the music of four women composers. And Seattle-born corps member Miles Pertl makes his first ballet for the main stage. Nov. 8–17. pnb.org. —Caroline Shadle

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I guess I fit the “qualifications” to write this. I’m 63. I’ve been professionally dancing and choreographing for some 40-plus years, and, in the process, have accumulated a certain amount of perspective on the field. After 20 years running Corning Dances & Company, in 2000 I suddenly looked up and realized I was 10 to 20 years older than my company members. The layers of nuance I was craving were not there; their albeit lithe bodies understandably lacked a base of worldly experience and expression. I couldn’t present the kind of movement or conversation I wanted onstage.

So I launched THE GLUE FACTORY PROJECT, which creates evening-length dance theater works on renowned performers over 40. The name alludes to the fate of retired race horses who were put down and their hooves used for making glue. The company is a vehicle for dancers who’ve been onstage for decades, and whose bodies and sensibilities could better echo my own maturing sentiments. Since its inception, nearly 40 artists have been involved, including American Ballet Theatre’s Bonnie Mathis, Cullberg Ballet’s Yvan Auzely, Arthur Aviles of Bill T. Jones fame and Graham dancer Peter Sparling.

“There are physical limitations to an aging machine, but I believe the trade-offs are worth it,” says Corning. Photo courtesy Corning

I wanted to work with dancers I didn’t have to explain myself to as I might have to with younger performers. At the same time, I sensed this might provide a reflection of the “aging” general audience and public at large. I’ve received feedback that what I’m doing is “political,” that I’m “influencing perception, changing bias, working outside the norm.” Personally, I’m just working. And intend to keep doing so.

Let’s face it: There have always been many “isms” in dance. Too short, tall, wrong color, too balletic, modern, loose, tight, too FILL IN THE BLANK. Thankfully, over the past 30 years some “isms” have loosened. Consider those who tackled age before me: Jiří Kylián, who in the ’90s began NDT 3, a company of explicitly older dancers (which unfortunately no longer exists), or PARADIGM, which features the talents of seasoned dancers in New York City. And, of course, there’s Mikhail Baryshnikov, who regenerated his career in his 40s and beyond.

For me, the question has always been about aesthetics, perceptions, expectations. What body and/or personality might “embody” the ideas I’m trying to explore? Yes, there are physical limitations to an aging machine, but I believe the trade-offs are worth it.

“If you’re looking for a more nuanced reality, …then it’s the older dancer with whom I prefer to work,” says Corning, here with Donald Byrd. Photo by Frank Walsh, Courtesy Corning.

In my late 20s, I created and performed in Stockholm, Sweden, alongside some of the best dancers in the world from Cullberg Ballet. I became especially aware of those who were retiring at 42. I kept wondering, Why would they ever do that?! So many were in their prime. They exuded a sense of performance no younger artist could manage. They drew my eye, captured my imagination and deeply inspired me. I remember thinking, I want to look like that onstage.

After a recent production I did with Donald Byrd, a young dancer noted, “Perhaps my career doesn’t have to end as soon as I thought!”

Today, there are only a handful of major companies who’ll hire dancers of “that” age. Why? Is it our ongoing infatuation with youth? Athletics? Physical feats? Then, yes, a younger dancer might fit your bill. But if you’re looking for a more nuanced reality, the ability to express the depth and breadth of this life, bodies that can imbue each and every gesture, attitude and the frailty of our mortal selves, then it’s the older dancer with whom I prefer to work.

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Recently, Charmian Wells wrote a scathing critical analysis of New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas’ review of DanceAfrica. Entitled “Strong and Wrong: On Ignorance and Modes of White Spectatorship in Dance Criticism” it took Kourlas to task for critiquing from a place of cultural and technical ignorance.

Reviews are part of the life blood of artistic sustainability—funders, agents, bookers and audience members use them as guides. Dance critics have a responsibility to the community to do, and be better, or at least have the courage to let the reader know what they don’t understand.

How can you truly comment on what you are seeing when you have no technical knowledge of a specific genre like African or hip hop? Critics who stand on the outside of a culture cannot write about what they do not know. Artists of color endure reviews that are often reductive or dismissive, especially when the work is “foreign” to the critic. Critiques without in-depth analysis—but with comments about how energetic, colorful or dynamic dancers are—reduces the sophistication and mastery that might be present to a learned eye. Instead, what’s read between those lines is “happy Negroes dancing.”

The black body on stage is never neutral, and the effects of its inherent politicization as it relates to the subconscious cultural ignorance and biases held by critics is seldom addressed.

The most common microaggressive critique of black artists is the hyperawareness of their bodies. There are critics who wax poetic about rippling, sinewy musculature, or raw sensuality while overlooking the actual dancing. These trope-laden reviews can read as though the writer was critiquing a dancing slave auction. You can barely read a review of the Ailey company without the mention of their over all “buffness,” especially that of the men. During the meteoric rise of Misty Copeland, there was little talk of her technique; instead there was great focus her “athleticism,” aka muscularity.

Even choreographers fall victim to this focus. Take William Forsythe and Alonzo King: Both have extrapolated the ballet vernacular, one from an anatomic/intellectual place, the other from a organic/spiritual one. Early in their careers, Forsythe was heralded for his innovation and daring while King’s work was reduced to the beauty of his dancers, never addressing the systematic methodology behind creating his aesthetic.

Donald Byrd is another example of a black choreographer whose early work critics rarely acknowledged for its choreographic intricacies. They consistently used adjectives such as “aggressive,” and focused on the “violent” nature of his movement. Byrd was the “angry, black man” choreographer.

Los Angeles Times critic Lewis Segal wrote a particularly scathing review of Byrd’s 1998 production of Life Situations: Daydreams on Giselle, stating, “Byrd has never come to terms with his fixation on ballet.” The fixation of which he speaks is the same one that Twyla Tharp’s 1973 Deuce Coupe was lauded for. Segal was unrelenting: “Obviously, there are plenty of distinguished choreographers who explore ballet technique without requiring toe shoes—Jirí Kylián for starters. But nobody seems as unrelenting as Byrd in his fixation on tests of balance: the heart of pointe choreography.” Why should Byrd be required to “relent” when his white counterparts are free to create?

Black artists are often hemmed into addressing culturally-specific topics, knowing that in order to succeed, white critics must be able to properly “place” them. There is an odd power struggle when black artists’ voices are dictated to them through the critique of what writers “would have liked” to see or what they “should” do instead of the critics confronting what they are actually watching.

Choreographers are trapped between the rock of being culturally-specific, and the hard place of creating abstract work—or any work not necessarily associated with blackness. 2013 MacArthur fellow Kyle Abraham seems to be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. For his latest work for Alvin Ailey, Absent Matter, his inspiration is clearly taken in part from his life in a black male body. Yet The New York Times decided “Mr. Abraham is not fully formed enough as a choreographer to tackle it,” implying that he is (artistically) incapable of telling his own story. Meanwhile, for his new work on his own company, Dearest Home, which instead of confronting politics, confronts human emotion, NYT deemed it, “too many tears, not enough art.”

Camille A. Brown tried to get ahead of this problem with her BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play. This work is dense with the sentiment of growing up as a black girl, and the physical vocabulary is like an encyclopedia spanning from the shores of Africa to the dancehalls of Jamaica and the streets and clubs of America. Cognizant of the overall illiteracy of the audience (because this is information not taught), Brown placed a study guide in the program, and built in a post-show talkback where much of the cultural and historical information was unpacked. Still, writers gave the production a scratch-and-sniff once over, reducing the rhythms derived from Juba to “sneaker tapping” and using trite adjectives to describe the movement: “A sassy, fierce and at times playfully snarky step dance number opened the evening.”

A May danceviewtimes review of The Washington Ballet in Lilac Garden unwittingly revealed the exact reasons why there is such a problem with diversity in ballet today.:

“Another issue was racially neutral casting. Ashley Murphy, one of the company’s black dancers, was the bride-to-be Caroline. Jonathan Jordan, one of the company’s white dancers, was the lover she can not marry. That this became a mixed race pair added a dimension to the story that Tudor hadn’t intended in his careful depiction of English society during Edwardian times—a distracting dimension.”

I would like to know if writer George Jackson is distracted when white male dancers perform the Moor’s role in Othello? Or when white dancers do the Chinese, Arabian, Spanish roles in The Nutcracker? Is he disturbed when humans play swans or when live women are cast as dead ones? Or is his opinion on what he refers to as “neutral casting” reserved for non-white people in traditionally white roles? If that is the case, since traditionally most roles in ballet were cast on white dancers, where would that leave people of color?

His comments on the choreographer’s original intent are purely speculative. Ironically, when you watch the ballet, the only nod to culture, class or era is in the costuming and hair (depending on the production); not even the set alludes to a time period. This is what makes the ballet so enduring—it is a universal story of unrequited love. The casting of the interracial couple is somewhat of a Rorschach test, and clearly Jackson did not see a butterfly.

But if Jackson wants to rely on history, then let’s do. In the 1940s Tudor worked extensively with African American ballet dancers in Philadelphia. When other white teachers refused to teach them, he welcomed them into his classes. When the likes of Delores Browne and Joan Myers Brown took his partnering class and white male dancers refused to partner them, he was happy to step in. Judith Jamison speaks of her time training with him with great affection. In 1954, he choreographed Offenbach in the Underworld for the Philadelphia Guild with John Jones, Billy Wilson and Delores Browne (the ballet was later done on ABT).

Based on these facts, there is a great likelihood that Tudor would have had little issue with the color of the dancers.

Black performers, choreographers and directors are never shocked by this; it is what acronyms like SMH were truncated for. But it smarts a bit more when you believe that you are sharing the hallowed, liberal space of the theater where “the suspension of disbelief” is the agreement we enter into when we cross the threshold.

The fact that dance critics are allowed to write their personal proclivities without presenting them as such is a problem. The fact that there are so few dance critics of color working for mainstream outlets is another. The fact that critics are under no obligation to disclose their ignorance, yet are imbued with the authority to write about (or around) the work, or worse, dismiss its validity, is yet another.

Major publications have been printing pieces about diversity in dance, and have yet to look at their writing and editorial staffs. There can be no “marking” in our community if we are truly looking to create equity. It’s full out or fail. Starting a conversation about the way work is critiqued should be a part of the reconstruction. And until then we have to call it like we see it. In true New York fashion, “If you see something, say something.”

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What cues have you taken from de Mille’s
Carousel?

I wanted to honor Agnes de Mille because she was the original author, so she’s quoted in all of the dances. If you know them, you’ll recognize them. The choreography is contemporary, but it’s also balletic, like the original. However, our sensibility of how dance numbers work in musicals is different than in the past. Theater used to have a great sense of building to a real climax—the classic kind of arc. I’ve tried to give it that old-fashioned sense of how a number builds, but also include the highly physical dancing that we’ve gotten used to in musicals.

Did you ever work directly with de Mille?

When I went to the Harvard summer dance school, she came to give a lecture. She watched a class and came up to me at the end and said, “Young man, you need to go to New York. And tell them I sent you.” So I did, actually.

What themes of
Carousel have you highlighted for the contemporary audience?

One of the things we’re talking about this season at Spectrum is virtue. The virtue of forgiveness and the notion of redemption fit right in with Carousel. Billy’s character reminds me of somebody who is ill-equipped to deal with his circumstances—the way he treats Julie, his wife. He hits her, and her justification is the same one that you hear for domestic violence now. Certainly people weren’t talking about these things then, in the setting of the musical and even in the period it was produced.

What are the challenges of sharing the work in a co-production?

You have to acknowledge the hierarchy in the theater. The director is the boss, so I answer to him, but all of us answer to the producer. It’s a different level of input. At Spectrum, I’m the final word.

What do you look for in your dancers?

I used to say I look for dancers who are fearless, but that’s not true. I don’t think that anybody is fearless. I look for people who can act in spite of their fear. And also I look for people I wouldn’t mind spending a day with, people I wouldn’t mind having dinner with.

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Choreographer Donald Byrd divulges frank thoughts on his company, Spectrum Dance Theater, and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

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