Ailey in Fort Worth

Vernard Gilmore, one of my favorites of the evening

Taking inspiration from A Time to Dance, and happy to have any excuse to do a review in list format, I present 25 things about the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre performance that took place last night at the sold-out Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. I’ll go in roughly chronological order.

–Bass Hall needed some ushers downstairs for the will call and ticket lines. Chaos down there.
–It was my first time in the Bass and we were in the very top row of seats in the very highest balcony, and it was a crazy steep rake down to the stage! When we first sat down I wasn’t sure it was going to work out for me, but I ended up feeling like we had pretty good seats. We could see all the patterning and the movement translated through the distance just fine.
–Thank you AAADT for providing $5 tickets for students and faculty! An incredible bargain and I saw an abundance of young people taking advantage of the offer.
–I know I’m an authoritarian when it comes to theatre etiquette, but I think people should understand that cell phones basically function as flashlights in a darkened theatre when the screen is active. Drives me up the wall! After one section within a piece, people would pull out their cell phones. I think we are a nation of addicts and we’re just starting to realize it. So, to the man way down in the 4th row who looked at his phone constantly, please turn your cell phone off the next time you go to a performance so the 1300 people above you are not distracted by your phone.
–I liked the 12 minute video introduction to the company. I thought it was helpful to give the audience some context for the work and was really well done, with commentary from a wide variety of dance types. I will break out the notable bits because otherwise, I will not make it to 25…
–Ailey was born in Rogers, Texas. Rogers is about an hour south of Waco, in case you were wondering. I wonder if the town has any kind of marker or tribute to Ailey. Anyone out there know?
–Let’s not take this company for granted. It could have easily fallen on rocky times after Ailey passed away in 1989. I think Judith Jamison is a very savvy visionary, and that we are so lucky that the company was passed into her capable hands. She movingly described how Ailey simply asked her if she would take over the company and she said, “sure, of course” and that was that.
–I appreciated that they included all of the Ailey programs that are offered at their center, rather than solely the main company. They aim to provide the best possible training to the largest group of people, which I think is simple, admirable, and beautiful.
–Jawole Willa Jo Zollar described the company as what we would like America to be. I’ll go for that.
–The making of the video was funded in part by Citigroup. Ominous in light of recent developments. I am genuinely worried about arts funding in this country.
–Festa Barocca is a new piece by the Italian choreographer Mario Bigonzetti, premiered in New York last December. A good deal of it worked for me. It felt innovative and fresh. My eyes felt like they had movements to latch onto that were repeated, but not too often. It felt a little overlong and I would have cut out some of the literal gestures, the women faux-slapping the men, the soloist miming that she was hot and tired. These came off as too easy and obvious.
–There’s a decent

that time of year…

dance sequence

Originally uploaded by ecstatictyler

Students are applying for graduate school, faculty and administration types are interviewing for jobs, and the nerves are especially high this year with our lovely economy. We had some beautiful movers at graduate auditions here at Texas Woman’s University a couple of weeks ago. Good luck to everyone auditioning, weighing their options, or hoping an opportunity comes along!

Thought I would round up some encouraging news from academia in honor of the season.
–Across town at the University of North Texas, they recently made it possible for faculty to take time off for personal reasons, like having a baby, without it negatively affecting their tenure chances. The tenure clock will stop while the faculty is off doing other things so it doesn’t look like a big blank spot in the CV for a year. Thumbs up, UNT!
–Hampshire College updated their socially responsible investing policies and divested from several corporations that contribute to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. They’re now treading carefully and saying the decision had nothing to do with Israel-Palestine, but the end result is the same, so I’m still choosing to celebrate.
–It may become easier for employees of private colleges, among other places, to unionize. The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story. Go go Employee Free Choice Act!

ticket news/tiny reviews

Ailey is going to be in Fort Worth at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth on the 24th and 25th. Student and faculty tickets are $5. 5! Seriously! And tickets to see Out on a Limb at the Out of the Loop festival go on sale on Tuesday. One performance only, March 15, and I would not miss it. Tickets are already on sale for the dazzling duo of Jennifer Blankenship and Nicole Touzien presenting their MFA show, More than a Mouthful. Two shows on March 8 at the Eisemann Center in Richardson. I’ll be playing the cello during part of the show and some other stuff…

This weekend saw the Gay Prom Bloodbath at Mable Peabody’s Beauty Parlor and Chainsaw Repair and the dancing of the headlining band Punk Bunny was memorable, outrageous and lots of fun. And contagious to boot! A pleasant surprise that there were choreographed dances for each song. If they come to where you are, go see them, as they have to be seen to be believed. (The Dallas Observer has a rather dour review. It makes me sad when the critic is clearly the person in the room having the least amount of fun; I witnessed it that night and it wasn’t the first time.)

I’m late with this tiny reportback but Dallas-area dancers Nicole Touzien and Meghan Cardwell-Wilson provided a few minutes of lusciously gorgeous mostly improvised movement last weekend at 500x as part of the Ghost Town Arts Collective show currently up at the gallery. They had a very cramped space to work in (and I enjoyed seeing people scuttle out of the way and clutch their beers protectively), but they made it work. Let’s have more dance at gallery openings!

question of the day

The question of the day comes from Mark Morris: “If improvisation is so liberating, why does it all look alike?” The NYTimes has an article on his residency at Centenary College. How much did a school with a teeny tiny dance department have to pay for Mark Morris to come? Oodles, I bet. *update! $20,000. Which I think does qualify as oodles, at least in the dance world.*

Guerrilla Girls come to Denton

guerrilla girl

Originally uploaded by ellensquid

The fabulous Guerrilla Girls came to town last night and attracted such a large crowd that some unfortunates were turned away at the door. Those that did get in were mostly young and overwhelmingly female. The Guerrilla Girls started in New York in the mid 80s in response to the patriarchy in the art world. Probably their most famous image has an image of a reclining gorilla with statistics pointing out how few women artists (5%) comprised the Met’s collection and how many images of nude women there were compared to nude men (85%). Still pretty darn close to the current stats, which is sad, to put it mildly. All of the members of the collective wear gorilla masks for their public appearances and adopt pseudonyms of famous female artists in order to remain anonymous. As “Frida Kahlo” and “Kathe Kollwitz” put it last night, “we could be anyone, we could be anywhere.”

After becoming more acquainted with the art world, where a new piece of art sometimes represents just another line on the resume, I’m even more impressed with the anonymity factor. These women are doing an enormous amount of work without the benefits coming back to their career. Truly public service.

But I wish they could have gone a little deeper in their remarks last night. They mentioned the possibility of co-optation now that they are speaking at places like the Tate Modern and having shows at the Venice Biennale, but reported that it was just “irresistible” to be in the shows and have larger audiences. Really? Can you say a little more please? There’s all kinds of interesting lines of thought there and it seems a little problematic to not resist slipping into the mainstream. And what’s up with the Texas bashing? You have 500 young women, probably a lot of them artists, in one room to hear you speak and you’re going to jokingly describe Texas as a “big art state”? There is a ton of interesting art going on here! Additionally, I would like to state that no one that I know in Texas gives a flying hoo-hoo about George Bush. You don’t need to bring him up. We know he’s here, we don’t need to talk about it. Ever. Unless we’re making plans to do a home demo or something.

They completely redeemed themselves in the Q&A though, talking about how change doesn’t just happen and we’re all responsible for the way things are. They encouraged the audience to “invent your own way to be an activist, an artist, a feminist” and it was pretty damn powerful. Kahlo and Kollwitz also made the point that art schools should tell their students that the art world sucks and we have to change it, but also that there are many art worlds and you can dream up your own way of building that world. The latest Guerrilla Girl project is a book that traces the historical development of women and hysteria and the two told fine tales about male doctors giving women orgasms for pay and the use of vibrators as medical devices and/or vacuum cleaners. An entertaining and juicy evening.