Sara Rudner and Dana Reitz in Necessary Weather

Last weekend I braved the dreaded weekend track-work on the Metro and made the long trek out to the American Dance Institute in Rockville, MD. It was hot, there were tourist families with dangling kids, and the whole thing took pretty darn close to 90 minutes, one way. But when I arrived at ADI, a costumed man held the door open for me, a smiling receptionist checked my name off the list, and I entered the cool, dark theater. Things only got better from there as Doug Elkins’ Fraulein Maria tickled my funny bone and my brain bone for the duration of the performance, a rare and deeply satisfying combination in dance. So the schlepp out there was arduous but oh-so-worth the effort.

Keep this in mind next season as the American Dance Institute presents a performing series starting in October. They’ll be presenting Jane Comfort in October, David Dorfman in November, and Sara Rudner/Dana Reitz/Jennifer Tipton in March. All three promise to be equally rewarding for those who make the journey. It’s unbelievably fantastic that we’ll have another venue for contemporary performance in the area, especially if the programming choices continue to be so strong. Plan on bringing a friend and look at the journey as part of the destination.

This information is from their website, but I’m reposting below:

ROCKOFFSHAKEOFFROCKOFFSHAKE.

Effervescent Collective (yours truly) and Caroline Marcantoni are hosting the First Ever Baltimore Experimental Dance Round Robin at the Lumberhaus on Feb 26t & Feb 27th.

Alex Vizzi
Baltimore Experimental Dance Collective
Bolt3000
Caroline Marcantoni
Jake Dibeler
Effervescent Collective
International Flow Syndicate

Sweaty, sassy, DJ’d dance party included.

Yes you can park in the adjacent lot on the weekends.

Bring $ for donations of all kinds, merch, etc.

LOVE & HOT SAUCE, Lily

DANCE ROUND ROBIN: Effervescent Collective and friends present a sweaty, sassy, round up of local experimental dance performances.

Baltimore, Maryland, February 26 & 27th, 2011

On February 26th and 27th, Caroline Marcantoni and Lily Susskind (Effervescent Collective) are hosting a Dance Round-Robin at Lumberhaus in Station North. Along with Eve Hanan and Meghan Flanigan, Susskind and Marcatoni run the Lumberhaus as a new and much needed sanctuary for experimental dance in Baltimore. The ‘Round Robin’ structure, with three stages on the periphery of the studio, and the audience rotating in the middle, celebrates short, bizarre, dances presented in (hopefully) rapid succession.

Other performers include: The Experimental Dance Collective (BXDC), a recently minted collection of artists interested in presenting movement based experiments; Jake Dibeler, who starred as “Baby” in Effervescent’s interpretation of Dirty Dancing in 2010; and International Flow Syndicate, a local family of B’Boys. Effervescent is presenting three new pieces, all shorter than five minutes. ‘Rock Off/Shake Off’ is Susskind’s first installment in a suite of dances that grows out of her pedestrian adventures in Baltimore City. Founding Effervescent member Claire Cote will premiere an eerie and graceful trio, anchored in a clever use of fabric and hoola hoops. In conjunction with Effervescent’s goal of supporting emergent dance-makers, member Rachel Boss will unveil her first choreographic adventure, a long-sleeved dectet. Marcantoni revsits two dances and premiers a third; “I Zimbra” first performed at Whartscape last summer, “Plutonian Recollection” with Marcantoni on drums, first shown at the Lumberhaus in October, and a brand spanking new peice. There will also be aerial vogueing, strawberry sauce, performative Popping, shaking, and twist-tie accessories.

DJ set after the show on both nights. Susskind says, “We expect the whole thing to boil over into a serious, all-out get-down. As Beyoncé says, ‘a little sweatin’ never hurt nobody.’” Doors are at 9 pm. Show starts promptly at 10 pm. Suggested donation $5-$15 at the door.

But the real success was the festival’s explicit promotion of risk as a virtue. Let’s make dance with two trash cans and see what happens when we throw them really high, as John Jasperse and James McGinn did. Let’s put on festivals of interesting home-grown work because no one else is doing it, or festivals of the far-flung because the home-grown in our particular hamlet is stale and insular. Let’s take some real risks and see what happens and talk about it—and when we fall on our faces, let’s try something else instead of doing the same thing again. Let’s stick a pin in some of the pretentious bubbles swirling around us. Let’s be vulnerable together. That’s what I heard whispered from the walls of the Abrons Arts Center in between all of the performances of the festival’s run, and they were welcome whisperings indeed.

photo by Andrea Mohin for the New York Times

2:46 PM Andy: i’m here
me: hello
ready for some kunst-talk?
2:47 PM Andy: indeed
me: so, welcome to Widening the I
we both attended the performance of Neal Medlyn’s “Brave New Girl”
2:48 PM on friday, January 7, 2011
and it’s been a week and it seems like it’s still kind of sloshing around for both of us
2:49 PM Andy: yeah i find i have the whole show stuck in my head the same way the songs, Hannah/Miley covers, seem to do
2:50 PM me: why do you think that is?
but yeah, for me too, even in a weekend really packed with performances and art, that one is standing out
2:53 PM you writing a novel over there?
2:54 PM Andy: well to begin with, it was for me (and i suspect for much of the audience) quite a fundamental education about who/what Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus is. This isn’t something i can claim to have clearly understood before seeing this piece. I mean, i was generally aware of some grotesque character out there associated with those names, but i just filed it in with the broad pool of things i don’t pay attention to, don’t know the details of, and yet feel fairly sure are bad for everyone.
2:56 PM me: right; that’s something really interesting to me. it seems like the piece is intended for consumption by an audience that doesn’t overlap with the mainstream. and yet it doesn’t just take hits at this cultural target that seems really huge and easy.
2:57 PM Andy: stop typing!
me: i mean, i actually felt real empathy for miley cyrus by the end.
which i hadn’t expected
ok, ok, sorry!
3:02 PM Andy: there is a question in there though, of who the mainstream is, who actually knows the characters, real and scripted, in this little story. i doubt that a real majority of american-culture consumers are really paying attention to hannah montana’s ins and out, but the producers/marketing end certainly can make sure we all know it exists, and somehow that mild ubiquity is connected to the this state of being barely aware that she/it/they are a cultural object. I think this it what made it such a surprise to see hannah/miley’s lives portrayed the way neal did.
3:04 PM me: i can see that, that there’s a broad swath of us that are vaguely aware of these characters
3:05 PM i was talking to our friend r. yesterday who had also seen the performance and she thought the strongest part of the show was the introduction, which i also loved
3:06 PM mostly because i feel like i must have played axis and allies with farris craddock from 1993-1997
3:07 PM i thought he did such a convincing job of not appearing to be acting
3:08 PM Andy: yeah it was great, though i thought it might have relied a bit much on heavy-handed “remember this bit for later in the show” foreshadowing, and a little over-earnestness
me: i am a sucker for the earnest
3:11 PM i think i’m not patient enough for this kind of response….
3:12 PM Andy: for me the strongest possible parts of the show were neal’s bewigged song performances. THAT was earnest. besides filling in for me which blurred and artless pop songs i’m hearing belong to hannah/miley (H&M?), they presented clearly the tone, the lyrics, the invisible hand of the ghost writer we know is churning them out and attempting to write them in the “voice” that the entertainment narrative needs her to have
ok let me keep going…
3:13 PM me: ha! ok
3:14 PM but i may start my own side-track…
Andy: no!
me: and now we have the image of neal any time we hear those songs
which is really satisfying for me
3:15 PM it’s like a protest that just keeps rippling out
3:17 PM it’s like the most effective form of pop culture protest i can think of, transforming the banal pop flotsam we’re all drifting in
3:20 PM Andy: so, we’re getting these exposures of the management and scripting of her hannah character’s life, her new public miley character’s life, and her “real” life (represented by her “5am me time” moments). The amazing moment for me, though, was when neal, in one of those 5am scenes, lurks into the middle of the audience and starts in on a soliloquy that begins as a rumination on H&M’s complicated arc, but somehow slips into a story of a self and troubles and lost jobs and crappy shared apartments that might be neal’s own story, or mine, or someone else who isn’t miley cyrus. This was the onliest realest dialog in the piece, and Neal puppeteered it out of her mouth the same as her pop song writers.
3:23 PM me: right… and who knows where it really came from. it makes me question the idea of believability and what relevance that has anymore
Andy: genau
me: it might be completely out the window. because all of that script seemed ‘believable’ at some level
3:25 PM but i wanted to go back to that idea of not just taking pot-shots
3:26 PM Andy: right
me: and i could be wrong about this, but we talked earlier about the use of that nina simone song (desperate ones)
and how it didn’t seem like they were setting up an easy equation of authenticity (nina simone) vs. artificiality (miley cyrus)
3:28 PM it was a bit hard to hear the nina simone song, but it seemed like there were some common elements of desperation, and longing, and loneliness
or did you think there was some simplistic opposition going on?
3:31 PM Andy: honestly i could hardly hear it at all, and i didn’t know the original well enough to rely on my own information. for me, it connects too strongly to the beginning, to the greek-chorus bit of farris’s introduction, and felt like an attempt to wrap up too cleanly. But, you know me, the stranger and less resolved the better IMHO.
3:32 PM me: hence your favorite part being neal’s soliloquy from the audience…
Andy: right
3:34 PM me: (as a sidenote, how do neal and dwayne ray not know each other? was palestine, texas just cranking out the really skinny musical smarties so fast in the 70s that they couldn’t even keep track of them all?)
3:39 PM Andy: for me, the best elements had to do with combining the reality of what she/they are singing/saying, who they’re speaking to, how we encounter and process it, what it must be like to move in and out of those roles, and how much we, outside of it, know or care. This was most perfectly and poignantly seen in the prolonged mutation of the “Party in the USA” performance, in which the song faded in all its parts but the iconic keyboard riff while the three performers continued locked into a dance moved tied to the riff. As the sound became further and further detached from the song it came from, the “choreography” looked more are more distorted, involuntary, and uncomfortable, just like everything else about H&M’s life presented.
3:42 PM me: i think that’s a good way to put it and a good place to wrap up for now
any closing thoughts that will burn you up if they go unsaid?
3:43 PM Andy: no, i think that taps me out
3:45 PM me: all right, thanks for coming along
you are invited back anytime
3:46 PM Andy: certainly! really enjoyed it

I witnessed his Intervention with a sound artist, Robert Sember, and the performance took place at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on January 8, 2011. The audience was seated along the four walls of the studio on the 6th floor, which meant that the official performance was in competition with distractingly beautiful views of the city night outside and the audience itself, with each member clearly visible.

Conceptually rich, Intenvention #4 involved iterations of Cardona’s recorded voice narrating the movement of the performers or himself. Most of the movement was simple, pedestrian and repeated, so there was a lot of space for exploring other aspects of the experience and the atmosphere created was kinda slow and dreamy. For accounts with fewer question marks, you can visit this one from Gia Kourlas, or this one from Rachel Straus.

Could the voice please instruct Cardona to spin some more?, those spins are fun to watch.
Is there some way I could take the voice home with me and it could tell me to relax or remind me to listen to what isn’t being said, like it’s doing now?
Are the performers tempted to disobey the vocal instructions? Are they rebelling in small ways that are not visible?
What would happen if I started following the directions from the voice as well?
Do these three men like each other? Did Cardona really meet collaborator Robert Sember for the first time 5 days ago? What will their relationship be like after this?
Performer Francis Stansky looks like my friend David Wilcox; I wonder what Dave Wilcox is up to these days?
How did my choices in life converge to this one moment where I’m in a square dance studio, looking out into a dark New York night, watching a man follow his own directions?
How is Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor managing to get to all shows on time and look completely calm and collected any time you see him?
Why is this audience of high-powered presenters and other industry insiders so so so white?
How did the two collaborators decide when the piece should be over?
Have the other Interventions in the series been this serious?
Why is my attention continually drawn to this woman in the audience with a pale face, pink pants and a tailored blue jacket? Is she a performer or just someone I almost know?

An exorcism, that’s what we’ve been through together. Did you too have to peel yourself from your seat at the end of the show, put on your scarf in a daze, and attempt to go on with your evening as planned? Or did you wander about the city, processing the strange vision you had just witnessed? Or go home and curl up in a corner with a blanket and some hot tea, putting on some poppy music to dispel the chilling images? Or did you grab the closest human you could find and celebrate what incredible creatures we are, capable of making art like this? It felt as if achugar had located the murkiest, most hidden repositories of fears in the body, put in a direct line, and piped them out onto the stage.

I’m not sure how they managed to get it so pitch-black in the theater, because it seemed darker than just having all of the lights off and blocking out outside light. Imagine the darkest space you’ve ever been in and you’re approximating the sensation. Into this darkness came achugar’s sonorous intonation of a Spanish language chant for children, designed for healing when they’ve been hurt. (Sana sana, colita de rana. Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.) The rhyme is said to have special healing powers, and it did in achugar’s tending. I turned my eyes away from the red exit sign, the only light source in the theater, and enjoyed the inkiness all around, with achugar’s piercing voice from the back of the room. And then the thudding footfalls started from the back as well and I felt a large presence stomp by me, achugar’s collaborator Michael Mahalchick.

The costumes and the sounds and movement were so evocative that somehow I turned the back of the stage, a partially brick wall, into an elaborate set with a house façade and an old door. I only realized halfway through the piece that what I had thought was a house was just the back of the stage. That’s some truly effective atmospheric creation when you don’t even have to build a set because you have the audience imagine one for you. Did you fall for this as well or are your eyes smarter or your imagination less susceptible?

And then I could have watched achugar shuffle along a diagonal line for the next 20 years or so. She indulged me for a good long while, the repetition comfortably numbing, but it could have gone on even longer. The pace picked up and achugar started shedding pieces of her vaguely Victorian and completely fantastic black frock (designed by Walter Dundervill) a bit at a time. Towards the end when they were doing that section with the arms that was like part signaling ships, part ritual, part drill team, I thought one of us was going to explode.

I hope I didn’t distract you with my own movement, as I found myself unable to keep from putting my hand to my forehead in sheer disbelief at the stunning use of light, repeatedly. Is there someone on the MacArthur selection committee reading this? Because lighting designer Madeline Best should be given a genius award right this second. The sudden pools of light appearing like islands. The murky light of the back of the stage that the eyes were forced to make sense of. The simplicity and restraint.

Anyway. I’m glad you were there. I’m glad I was there. Maybe we were all healed in some small, monumentally unmeasurable way.

Con cariño,
ellen