New Work Premiere for Lucy Guerin Inc.

Lucy Guerin's newest work, Human Interest Story, will premiere in Melbourne July 23 to August 1, a presentation of Malthouse Theatre and Lucy Guerin, Inc. in association with Perth International Arts Festival at the Merlyn Theatre. The work explores the limits of sympathy in our media-saturated culture and our ability to respond to far away events. It confronts the daily reality of being showered with an unceasing transmission of news, in which totally horrifying stories are entwined with bland and the home-like fare (like food and home renovating shows). There is a detachment that lets us effortlessly exchange our attention between them by tapping the remote control. Is this a survival mechanism, or does it still leave a tangle of hurt lodged deep inside us?

Chase's Q2 Habitat between a Rock & a Hard Place

“Quarreography” is a term coined for Alison Chase Performance that means dances in the natural and dramatic setting of the Settlement Granite Quarry on Deer Isle, two miles northeast of Stonington, ME. The adventure is now two years old.

Chase's latest project, Q2 Habitat, takes to the rocks August 3 to 8, exploring the ongoing dialectic between specific, local ideologies and the natural history of this particular place. Chase is building the work in collaboration with choreographer, performer and puppet artist Mia Kanazawa and composer Nigel Chase. An essential character in the piece is a huge yellow front end loader operated by a local quarrier. (It reminds her of a dinosaur.) Q2 Habitat was pioneered last summer on a smaller scale and is now designed for twelve professional dancers, a ten-member steel band, three-to-four puppeteers and a cast of eight to sixteen community members. Says Chase, “It's nice. It's trans-generational and and trans-professional.”

Chase was Founding Artistic Director of Pilobolus Dance Theater and now heads her own company that combines new professional dancers and veteran dancers who have worked with her before. Their work is devoted to interdisciplinary works (including film, projections and puppetry.)

When Chase says she's on the rocks, it means she's in her creative space. What she develops in the quarry is meant to be reconfigured for theaters. "Some things live and breathe in the quarry," says Chase. "In a quarry, you use found light and you are inventive about scale."

Guerin's Structure and Sadness to Jacob's Pillow

From August 18 to 22, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival will present Lucy Guerin, Inc. in Structure and Sadness, which deals with the collapse of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne in the 1970s. Lucy Guerin is the most celebrated Australian dance maker known for fervent, daring movements and unusual isolation and articulation of the joints. This piece bases its unique movement vocabulary on the engineering principles of compression, suspension, torsion and failure.

Structure and Sadness explores the even not as a factual narrative, but as a physical, emotional and visual response to a devastating accident. (Thirty-five men died in the collapse; the reconstructed bridge was finally completed in 1978.) Guerin examines the bridge as a supporting and connecting structure. Its concrete and definable form contrasts with the unknowable grief and chaos brought about by its failure. The dance constructs the bridge and its approaches with a gigantic house of cards, ranging in size (for perspective) from the very small to the very large. It shifts between practical building of supportive structures and the impressionistic, choreographic portrayal of disintegration and sorrow.

Florida Dance hosts Dorfman's Disavowal

On June 24, David Dorfman Dance will perform  Disavowal for Florida Dance Festival at USF's School of Theatre and Dance in Tampa. The work, inspired by the life and legend of radical abolitionist and (in)famous "race traitor" John Brown, is a flight of movement imagination on the stakes of racial identity, commitment, and the possibility of freedom and choice under conditions of white supremacy.

Through dance-theater, Dorfman asks: was John Brown a prophet? A terrorist? A hero? A lunatic? Disavowal probes the struggles of living a life and vision wrought by the paradoxical forces of nihilism and conviction, where the possession by one worldview and the dispossession of another can lead to violence to the body and to the soul.

Rubberbandance to ADF and Tanzmesse

Victor Quijada created Rubberbandance by blending the spontaneity and exuberance of hip hop with the refinement of classical dance. American Dance Festival will present his Loan Sharking at Durham Performing Arts Center June 24 to 26. The piece is actually a collection of works from company's repertory. A reader described it in a letter to the Honolulu Times, writing, When they dance, they pop and lock, hunker down and spin on the floor only to rise with controlled languorous grace into the arms of a partner. If you are confused about how it all comes together, you aren't alone. When Quijada brought his mix of classically trained and hiphop dancers together, they wondered the same thing. They didn't use the same terminology about their specific forms so even communicating a vision was difficult at first. But the mere concept of what they were trying to do engaged the imaginations of audiences. People crowd performing arts spaces to witness the results of a marriage that seemed unlikely to all but a few like Quijada.

Rubberbandance Group will conclude the summer with a performance of Loan Sharking at Tanzmesse NRW Dance Exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany on August 28.

Armitage's Itutu goes Outdoors in Brooklyn

Celebrate Brooklyn will present Itutu by Karole Armitage in the Prospect Park Bandshell July 8 at 8:00 pm. The haunting yet unabashedly festive mix of dance and music evokes African notions of syncretism with polyrhythmic music by Lukas Ligeti, African pop sounds of Burkina Electric (performed live) and Armitage's own off-kilter ballet.

When it debuted at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House last November, as part of the 2009 Next Wave Festival, Leigh Witchell (New York Post) declared, Itutu means 'cool' in Yoruba. Judging from Karole Armitage's work at BAM, it might also mean 'fun.' She had similar praise for the dancers, adding, Armitage's choreography is energetic and well-made. She makes sly ballet references, and her big, everybody-dance finale is something Balanchine might have choreographed--had he been from Burkina Faso, or what used to be Upper Volta, the band's home.

Three Theories going to Jacob's Pillow

Hosted by Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Armitage Gone! Dance will have six performances of Three Theories, an evening-length work inspired by renowned physicist Brian Greene’s best-selling book, The Elegant Universe at the beautiful Ted Shawn Theatre, July 14-18.

Karole Armitage has always been interested in the intersection of art and science and began contemplating Three Theories after reading The Elegant Universe. Greene’s book details the inherent conflict between the two great pillars of modern theoretical physics: Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and ventures into the remarkable ideas emerging from attempts to resolve the conflict, particularly string theory. Using key concepts specific to each theory as a springboard to generate movement, Armitage has created a work in three distinct sections– Relativity, Quantum, and String– each defined by its own dance structure and musical language. For Armitage, contemporary physics is replete with visual metaphor. Her aim is not to illustrate scientific constructs, but rather to use such principles as a means for exploring new possibilities in movement and patterning.

This production is the result of several years of development during which Karole Armitage met with physicist Brian Greene to lay the foundation for the work. Three Theories received its world premiere at the Krannert Center in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, on April 6, 2010. 

Karole Armitage's Itutu

From November 4 to 7, Armitage Gone! Dance performed the U.S. premiere of Itutu at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House as part of the 2009 Next Wave Festival.  It was a haunting yet unabashedly festive mix of dance and music, evoking African notions of syncretism with polyrhythmic music by Lukas Ligeti, African pop sounds of Burkina Electric (performed live), and Armitage's own off-kilter ballet.

Deborah Jowitt wrote in the Village Voice, "The dancers are a pleasure to watch: Those not yet mentioned are Kristina Bethel-Blunt, William Isaac, Luke Manley, Abbey Roesner, Bennyroyce Royon, Marlon Taylor-Wiles, Emily Wagner, Mei-Hua Wang, and Masayo Yamaguchi. Eda shines with Zoko Zoko in several variants of a pas de deux. The fabulous, long-limbed Bethel-Blunt and Arpon dance arrestingly, while others lie curled on the ground like slain (or sleeping) animals. Lingani is a mesmerizing presence, whether singing or moving vigorously. The opening audience's wild applause was, in good part, for the power of the performers, for their stamina, their virtuosity, and their beauty. And, in case you hadn't noticed, audiences these days like extremes: loud, bright, hyper-kinetic, fast. Hot is the new cool."