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What’s the Future of Dance? Ivy Baldwin’s “Ambient Cowboy” Provides a Clue

May 10, 2012 in Events, Images, Performance with 2 Comments

 

Ivy Baldwin's new dance piece "Ambient Cowboy" included a live set design by MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit (Photo by Nafis Azad)

If you want to catch a glimpse of where dance and performance are headed, look no further than Ivy Baldwin’s Ambient Cowboy, on view last week at New York Live Arts.

It is fitting that a dance piece inspired by Philip Johnson’s famous Glass House should have a set design made of light. And not just any light—but a ribbon of light that glides over wall, floor, and dancers, then suddenly vanishes.

If this set design technique has been used extensively in a dance performance before now, I’d be surprised. I’m flummoxed why the reviews I’ve read haven’t made more of it. This is cutting edge technology—a live drawing combined with live movement—a technique that has the potential to forever alter the future of the performing arts. Think of Nam June Paik or Wolf Vostell’s pioneering use of television sets in their work in the late 50s and early 60s, and you’ll have a better sense of the landscape-altering possibilities new technologies are creating at this critical moment in contemporary art.

In this case the artist behind the iPad is MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit, who also designed the set for Ivy Baldwin’s Here Rests Peggy. Schuleit is never visible during the performance, but the immediacy of her mark is both intoxicating and suspenseful, like watching a tightrope walker balance on a wire. There are no erasers or ESCAPE buttons available to Schuleit. We are accustomed to watching performers on the stage, and performers do what they do in part because they find the immediacy of a live experience exhilarating to some degree. But not every painter has the stomach for live theater. Luckily, Schuleit is up to the task.

 

Choreographer and dancer Ivy Baldwin in "Here Rests Peggy," with set designs by Anna Schueit. The piece is a tribute to art collector Peggy Guggenheim (Photo by Nafis Azad courtesy Ivy Baldwin Dance)

 

Ivy Baldwin's Ambient Cowboy is both elegant and spare, which is not surprising for a dance piece inspired by a house made of glass (Photo by Nafis Azad)

 

Philip Johnson's Glass House was the inspiration for Ivy Baldwin's new dance piece "Ambient Cowboy." This photo by Robin Hill shows the Glass House at dawn (Photo courtesy the Philip Johnson Glass House Blog)

It is a daring concept on Ivy Baldwin’s part—a live performance inspired by a seminal work of architecture combined with the excitement of a live set design. Johnson’s work alone offers many ideas ripe for exploration: transparency, the manmade versus the natural, boundaries, wild versus the civilized, open space versus the contained. There were moments in Baldwin’s Ambient Cowboy when I sensed some connection between the performance and Johnson’s Glass House. When the stage was bathed in green light, for instance, I thought of the large, grassy lawn surrounding the house in New Canaan, Connecticut.

But early in the performance I decided to stop struggling to make such connections and to simply go with the experience. There were powerful moments in Ambient Cowboy that transcended any lingering confusion. While I may not have understood how Lawrence Cassella’s Lamaze-style panting or the dancers’ arched backs and rhythmic chest scratching connected with the larger whole, I found these movements compelling. Baldwin’s choreography also has it’s humorous side, and at times the dance becomes infused with animalic gestures that resemble tail wagging or deer darting and leaping through the forest.

 

Baldwin's choreography also has it's humorous side, and at times the dance becomes infused with animalic gestures that resemble tail wagging or deer darting and leaping through the forest. (Molly Poerstel-Taylor and Ivy Baldwin in "Ambient Cowboy." Photo by Yi-Chun Wu courtesy artsjournal.com)

 

 

The moment when Smith collapses onto the floor on her stomach and Schuleit’s lines begin to furiously scratch out her body was the most mesmerizing point in Ambient Cowboy, and also the best expression of this new technology’s potential. (Photo by Yi-Chun Wu courtesy artsjournal.com)

Lawrence Philip Cassella was particularly riveting to watch on stage, though Ivy Baldwin, Eleanor Smith, and Molly Poerstel-Taylor all had their luminous moments. Eleanor’s Smith’s solo a quarter of the way through Ambient Cowboy was a stand-out. Her ability to convey suffering and sadness through shaking, rocking, and facial expressions was haunting, The moment when Smith collapses onto the floor on her stomach and Schuleit’s lines begin to furiously scratch out her body was the most mesmerizing point in Ambient Cowboy, and also the best expression of this new technology’s potential. I would have liked to have seen more live drawing in Ambient Cowboy.

Justin Jones’ music and sound design was a strong addition, especially during the last half of the performance, and Chloe Z. Brown’s lighting design, with its wash of contrasting yellows and greens, blues and yellows, was a beguiling stage for both the dancers and Schuleit’s light drawings.

 

Pictured (Left to Right) Lawrence Cassella, Eleanor Smith, and Molly Poerstel-Taylor (Photo by Aram Jibilian courtesy New York Live Arts)

 

 

Risk-taking is directly related to the future of dance as it embraces new technologies like the live drawing seen in "Ambient Cowboy." Soon, some incredibly brave team of artists will come along and dare to walk the tightrope, this time without a safety net. ("Ambient Cowboy" photo by Nafis Azad)

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The Gwarlingo Index: 2011′s Most Memorable Experiences in the Arts

January 5, 2012 in Events, Images, News, Performance, Sounds, Spaces, Words with 3 Comments

Michael Clark Company performing in Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern was chosen as one of the most memorable experiences in the arts for 2011. (Photo courtesy camelwritesart.blogspot.com)


 
It’s the New Year, which means it’s time for lofty resolutions and the annual onslaught of “best of” lists.

Here at Gwarlingo, I thought I’d provide readers with a new twist on the traditional “Best of 2011″ list.

I asked an array of artists, composers, filmmakers, writers, musicians, and performers to tell me about their most memorable experiences in the arts during 2011. I wanted to know which books, concerts, albums, art shows, films, plays, performances, essays, etc. had personal resonance with artists this past year. I gave participants the option to comment on their choice or not.

A critical difference between the Gwarlingo Index and other year-end lists is that the chosen work didn’t have to be created or released in 2011. The Index wasn’t meant to be comprehensive. The idea was to see if any zeitgeist emerged in the responses and to get a glimpse of how the arts impacted our lives in the past twelve months.

There are a few surprises here.

I was particularly struck by the cross-disciplinary nature of the list. Many artists chose works or events from outside their own discipline. (Who, for instance, could have guessed that Moosewood author Mollie Katzen would choose a dance performance as her most memorable art experience of 2011?) Five of the composers and musicians polled listed events in the visual arts, which was a surprise. It just proves that creative inspiration comes from a myriad of sources and that cross-pollination between disciplines is a fertile pursuit for today’s working artists. After all, creative people don’t live in boxes.

Dance was a popular category among the artists who responded. Music, less so. Curiously, no plays appear on the Index, but two literary classics from the 19th century do.

 

"I was fascinated to read that some British filmgoers were hopping a ferry and crossing the English Channel to see Tree of Life in France, where the film was already showing. Any movie that can incite this much passion, love or hate, must be doing something right."


 
I was pleased to see two controversial works appear in the Gwarlingo Index—Peter Greenaway’s monumental take on Da Vinci’s The Last Supper and Terrence Malick’s polarizing film Tree of Life.

In early June I began to hear all sorts of rumblings about Malick’s film. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. Some people were walking out of movie theaters in disgust. When I arrived in London that same month, where the film’s release date had been pushed back to July, I was amused to read that some British filmgoers were hopping a ferry and crossing the English Channel to see Tree of Life in France, where the film was already showing. Any movie that can incite this much passion, love or hate, must be doing something right.

As for Greenaway’s monumental installation at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Carter gave the show a scathing review in the New York Times calling the piece “a dud.” “It is, however, a big, expensive, technological-bells-and-whistles-to-the-max dud, which is something,” Carter added. And yet, despite this public drubbing, Greenaway’s installation appears here as one composer’s “most memorable art experience.” It’s a useful reminder that art is exactly that–an art, and not a science. It’s also a reminder to keep an open mind when reading those New York Times’ reviews.

 

An installation view of "Leonardo's Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway." The installation received a scathing review in The New York Times, but appears on the Gwarlingo Index as a most memorable art experience of 2011. (Photo courtesy Luciano Romano/Change Performing Arts)

 
Many large-scale, public events received a mention, including two different art installations at the Park Avenue Armory and an impromptu concert at the Occupy Wall Street protests.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, artists like Rosanne Cash, Bill Powers, and Will Rawls speak eloquently about the relationship between art and solitude. They remind us how rewarding intimacy with a work of art can be. This is one of the benefits of art in the 21st century–it allows us to slow down, to think, to push away those pesky distractions that chip away at our dwindling attention spans, to encounter the world of others.

What were your own memorable experiences in the arts in 2011? Please share your own picks on the Gwarlingo Facebook page or in the “Comments” section below.

 

Singer and Writer Rosanne Cash

The de Kooning retrospective at MoMA had the most profound impact on me in 2011. To see the entire scope of his artistic life, from the small painting he made at age 12 through the complex figures, vast abstracts and sculptures, to the sparse canvasses at the end of his life when his mind was deteriorating, was so moving, heartbreaking, inspiring… overwhelming. I was in tears by the last few paintings.

My friend Laurie Beckelman, who is friends with John Elderfield, who organized the show, arranged for a private tour. Walking through empty galleries with nothing but the art added to the impact. I feel extremely fortunate to have seen this show.

 

Willem de Kooning, Woman, ca. 1969. Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. (Photo © 2011 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society, New York)

 

“De Kooning: A Retrospective” fills MoMA’s entire sixth floor with some 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures. The show is on view through January 9th. (Photo courtesy c-monster.net)

 

Grammy-winner Rosanne Cash has recorded 15 albums and 11 number-one hit singles. Her most recent albums are The List (Manhattan, 2009) and The Essential Rosanne Cash (Sony Legacy, 2011). Her prose and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford-American, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Her most recent book, Composed, was published by Viking in 2010. For more information visit her website or follow her on Twitter.

 

 

Writer William Powers

Last summer, I spent several days alone in an isolated house with no internet connection, dog-sitting for friends. My plan was to do nothing all day but read, and I brought along a novel, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which somehow I’d never got around to. I dove into that beautiful book — it was the Richard Pevear / Larissa Volokhonsky translation — like I haven’t done since college days, and it was glorious. Crime and Punisment is a masterpiece, so in one sense it’s no surprise I had a powerful experience. But the circumstances, a rare chance, in a world of distractions, to focus for an extended period on just one thing, were also a big part of why it was so memorable. Four months have gone by and I still think about that extraordinary inner journey, and fantasize about repeating it with another book, one of these days.

 

 

William Powers is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Hamlet’s BlackBerry, which has been widely praised for its insights on the digital future. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times and many other publications. He has been featured in dozens of major news outlets, including interviews with Katie Couric, NPR, Good Morning America, the PBS NewsHour, CNBC and the BBC, and coverage in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Wired, and The Guardian. For more information, visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

 
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Win Two Free Tickets to See Joseph Keckler in New York City

November 1, 2011 in Events, Performance with 2 Comments

Joseph Keckler will be performing at La Mama in New York City November 18th-20th (Photo by Michael Sharkey)

I’m heading to New York next week and have two tickets to Joseph Keckler’s performance at La Mama to give away to some lucky Gwarlingo reader.

“An Evening with Joseph Keckler” runs from November 18th-20th at La Mama (74A East 4th Street between Bowery & 2nd Ave). I’ll be at the 10:00 p.m. show on Saturday night the 19th and have two additional tickets to share. If you’re in New York that evening and can attend, throw your name into the hat!

There are two ways to enter the contest…

1. Click here and leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Be sure to include your name and email.

2. Or send an email with your full name to michelle (at) gwarlingo (dot) com requesting to be entered in the contest.

Once you’ve officially entered your name into the drawing by emailing me or leaving a comment here, you can enter multiple times by doing one or all of the following…

1. Sign up to receive Gwarlingo by email

2. “Like” Gwarlingo on Facebook

3. Follow Gwarlingo on Twitter

4. Share this article about the Joseph Keckler ticket give-away on Twitter or Facebook

A few important details…

1. You must be able to attend the performance at La MaMa at 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 19th.

2. You must leave your comment or email me before 1 p.m. EST on Monday, November 14th.

3. The winner will be announced on Monday night. The winner needs to respond within 24 hours or I’ll draw an alternate winner from the hat.

 

 

If you haven’t seen Keckler’s work, you owe it to yourself to see him perform live. The artist is quickly making a name for himself. He’s been featured on NPR and The Sundance Channel and written about in The New York Times, The Guardian, SPIN, The Observer, and Time Out New York. He has performed at The New Museum, SF MOMA, Joe’s Pub, and SXSW.
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Joseph Keckler: More Than a Voice

August 19, 2011 in Images, Performance, Sounds, Words with 1 Comment

In March of this year I had the opportunity to see the musician, writer, and artist Joseph Keckler perform to a packed house at MacDowell Downtown, The MacDowell Colony’s free series of artist presentations and performances in downtown Peterborough, New Hampshire. The buzz in the room was palatable, and yet no one knew what to expect from a performer who has been described by The Village Voice as “David Sedaris meets Diamanda Galas.” As one member of the audience said to me before the show began, “This is either going to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, or the most incredible performance ever.”

Joseph Keckler’s work resists definitions; it doesn’t fit into a neat category or boil down to a catchy blurb. This fact alone can make new audiences uncomfortable. But once the lights come up and Keckler begins his performance, all doubts dissipate. Keckler’s stage presence is palatable. He is many artists in one–a unique combination of actor, pianist, opera and blues singer, performer, cabaret act, and storyteller. Within minutes, Keckler had us on the edge of our seats. We were captivated by his haunting, elastic voice, his disarming humor and ease, his down-to-earth banter with the audience, his ability to inhabit the lives of women, old men, fantastical creatures, and talking animals.

Joseph Keckler (Photo by Adam Gardiner)

Keckler admits that he is fascinated with banality. “I resent stories that have things happening,” he told New York Press. It is this mixture of the absurd and the everyday, of the operatic and the vernacular, of compassion and comedy that makes Keckler’s work unique. He is equally at home in an art museum, on stage at Joe’s Pub in New York City, at the SXSW festival in Austin, or in the rural, New England town of Peterborough. It is Keckler’s wit and empathy that allow him to move between these worlds with such ease. One minute he is singing an Italian aria, the next he is telling you a compelling story about his childhood in Michigan.

In this interview with Matthu Placek, Keckler defines a successful performance as one in which he is “half in control and half out of control” (“to echo Marina Abramovic echoing Maria Callas”). He also admits that he has grown tired of “phrases such as ‘genre-busting,’ ‘boundary-crossing,’ and ‘risk-taking.’ But I’d like to see if a non-profit theater will present me taking some risks such as texting while driving, mixing cleaning products, and leaving my front door unlocked,” he jokes.

With such enormous talent, it would be easy for Keckler’s work to be marred by self-indulgence, but so far, he has managed to avoid this trap. In his daily life he is a self-described “hurrier,” but he is also polite, charming, and unassuming and gives the impression of being wise beyond his years. Keckler tells Placek that he likes “defiance, absurdity, a keen wit, a beastly intellect, high standards, celebration of pleasure, openness, and intensity” but is turned off by “moral seriousness” and “open discrimination against anyone.”

Keckler grew up near Kalamazoo, Michigan and earned a painting degree from the University of Michigan. As a boy he loved the music of Cab Calloway and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Originally, he wanted to be a blues singer, but Keckler veered off this path when he began training as an operatic bass-baritone under the instruction of American tenor George Shirley. His classical training has served him well. He now has a three to four-octave range, but uses his versatile voice to create original, classically infused songs, instead of sticking with traditional fare. His love for the blues is still apparent, as when he launches into classics like “I Put a Spell on You” or dark, humorous songs he has written about fantastical creatures.

This quote from New York Press beautifully describes my own impressions of Keckler: He “commands the stage with erotic bravado, launches into dramatic monologues and embodies so many different personae that you can’t help but wonder whether he’s possessed by spirits or if his body cannot help but channel all of the voices in his head. Sensual, cathartic, overwrought and deeply philosophical, his psychotic twists and turns can bring his audience either to tears (from laughter) or to a numbed silence.”

Keckler is quickly making a name for himself. He has been featured on NPR and The Sundance Channel and written about in The New York Times, The Guardian, SPIN, The Observer, and Time Out New York. He has performed at The New Museum, SF MOMA, Joe’s Pub, La MaMa, and SXSW. In 2010, Keckler came out with an EP, Featured Creatures, released in Italy with Transeuropa, paired with a book by contemporary experimental poet Gian Maria Annovi. The songs have be described as dark, theatrical, and eccentric.

Joseph Keckler (Photo by Gian Maria Annovi)

On September first, Keckler will be performing a new show called “A Voice and Nothing More” in Amsterdam. He will open the festival with new work, as well as older pieces that have been re-vamped for the occasion. Keckler will take this new show on the road after its Amsterdam premiere.

While critical praise has been plentiful for Keckler, he is just beginning to find wider financial support for his work. This past year, he had residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell, and the organization Fractured Atlas is now sponsoring him. For his upcoming show in Amsterdam, Keckler needs to raise $4000 to pay for audio recording and mixing, equipment rental, video editing, rehearsal space, and the cost of hiring two musicians and flying them overseas.

If you would like to donate, Keckler has set up a campaign on Indiegogo. Fractured Atlas’ sponsorship means that all donations made to Keckler’s project are tax deductible. There are only a few days left for his fundraising campaign, so please give if you can. And if you can’t, you can also help by spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can track the progress of the campaign here.

If you have an opportunity to see Keckler perform, take it. Until then, you can get a taste of Keckler’s work from these videos. But be forewarned, it is impossible to fully appreciate Keckler’s talent through video and sound recordings, etc. Nothing I have seen on the web matches the power of seeing his live performance. It is the impact of his stage performance as a whole that is most memorable. (If you are reading this post in an email, click here to view the videos and to preview Keckler’s music).

This first video contains one of my favorite Keckler monologues about one of his early day jobs at a classical music publishing company. Keckler finds the “culture of emergency” at “Bumble and Maw” publishers tiresome and amusing. While on the job, he is plagued by annoying coworkers, irritating messages on his voice mail, and a coworker’s pesky parrot, who sings “Queen of the Night.” (Any artist who has suffered frustration and humiliation in a terrible day job will love this piece.)

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