Dance, Valiant & Molecular

Newark (Niweweorce). Photo: Stephanie Berger

By Susan Yung

On the surface, Trisha Brown’s proscenium dances are kinetically intriguing and relatable, formed of waves of roiling, fluid phrases. But dig down, and the intellectual rigor and self-imposed rules factoring into their creation reveal Brown’s fascinating thought processes, and connect them to her early task-based or site-specific works such as Walking on the Wall or Roof Piece. Three major proscenium works will be performed by the Trisha Brown Dance Company at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from January 28—30, celebrating a relationship that dates from 1976.

2015 Next Wave Preview—Earning the Next

Edivaldo Ernesto in Continu. Photo: Sebastian Bolesch

By Susan Yung

After 32 jam-packed years, the Next Wave Festival moniker gets its share of scrutiny. It was new in 1983, so how could it remain that way? A strong retort exists in descriptors, connected by a neat wave icon, that run along the page margins in the 2015 festival brochure. William Kentridge’s Refuse the Hour is tagged opera〰dance〰music〰visual art. Helen Lawrence: theater〰live filmmaking... and so on. The Next Wave’s multitude of cross-discipline performances are, ostensibly, new hybrid genres. The Next Wave is known for showcasing surprising collaborations by accomplished artists, and that trend is only amplified this fall. Chances are you won’t have seen anything quite like the 32 shows being presented from September through December.

Mark Morris' Jazzy Spring

Spring, Spring, Spring. Photo: Peg Skorpinski

By Susan Yung

Mark Morris Dance Group returns in April with two rich programs of repertory, including his vivacious interpretation of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; Words, a lauded recent work seen briefly in New York before an international tour; and a world premiere entitled Whelm, to Debussy. Not only that, the troupe performs one of MMDG’s all-time favorites, Grand Duo; its soft-slipper rendition of Pacific, most often performed by ballet companies on pointe; and more.

Birds With Skymirrors—The Last Dance on Earth

by Brian McCormick

MAU in Birds With Skymirrors. Photo: Sebastian Bolesch

Visionary and provocative, fearless, endless, and beautiful: the work of Lemi Ponifasio requires a letting go of expectations, and having patience to inhabit timeless space; clocks have no place here. His creations transcend genres, mastering a palette that mixes dance, theater, and ceremony, and draws from visual art, politics, philosophy, race relations, history, tradition, and myth. His work has been compared to that of Robert Wilson and Pina Bausch—and in strictly formal terms, he would agree.

What distinguishes MAU, Ponifasio’s community of collaborators from his native Samoa, New Zealand, and the south Pacific, is their transformation of the theater into a ritual space of striking urgency. The name MAU, taken from the Samoan independence movement in New Zealand, means “a declaration to the truth of a matter, or revolution, as an effort to transform.”

“I don’t just make theater for those who love it,” Ponifasio explains. “Theater often deals with the human, phenomenal world. I’m not trying to tell a story. I’m not interested with the superficial, but the cosmological. I’m inviting people to take time to stop and commune in that place—to suspend time, and dissolve space. If you can imagine a garden without flowers, this is what you will experience in a performance by MAU,” he adds. “It is like a Zen garden, where you contemplate your own existence. You are the flower, and you are open to find your own truth.”

Next Wave's 45 Flavors

by Susan Yung

Ivy Baldwin Dance in Oxbow. Photo: Andy Romer

Think of BAM’s 2014 Next Wave Festival’s 45 productions as you might Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors. There’s something for every taste, but it’s nearly impossible to imagine savoring everything, at least all at once. Here’s an approach to the festival that might help in parsing just what you want to see this Next Wave, and what flavors might be the most satisfying to you.

In September, we celebrate the recording label Nonesuch’s 50 years with a deep, diverse lineup of 14 programs, bookended upfront by a reunion of seismic proportions—Philip Glass and Steve Reich with their ensembles, on one stage—and at the end of the month, a true rock star, Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters. In between, you’ll find the varied sounds of Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile; Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish; John Adams, Alarm Will Sound; Youssou N’Dour; Carolina Chocolate Drops; Rhiannon Giddens; Devendra Banhart, Sam Beam of Iron and Wine, and Stephin Merritt; Kronos Quartet with Natalie Merchant, Giddens, Sam Amidon, and Olivia Chaney; Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet in Landfall; Rokia Traoré, Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté; Tweedy, and Caetano Veloso. Seek out new sounds, choose your current favorite artists, or better yet, both.

Let’s look at the 12 shows in the BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space, the newest venue, which has acquired a big fanbase for its infinite flexibility and intimate size. Three lauded choreographers present new works, each with a unique approach: Jodi Melnick’s Moment Marigold has music by Steven Reker; Ivy Baldwin’s Oxbow includes a sculptural set by Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen Nguyen; and The Wanderer by Jessica Lang uses Schubert’s lieder.

Beauty, Ever Ephemeral

by Brian Scott Lipton

Beauty and the Beast may be a tale as old as time, but that hasn’t stopped artists from finding their own ways of telling the story of the shy, beautiful girl who falls in love with the ugly monster who is really a prince. Now, Lemieux Pilon 4D Art co-founders Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon are delivering their own take. La Belle et la Bête, at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House November 21 to 23, blends elements of the classic 18th-century fairy tale with 21st-century technology.

Enchanted by Jean Cocteau’s classic 1946 film, the pair decided to dig deeper into the story’s history. “We first read the version written for children by Mme. De Beaumont in the 1750s. It’s very popular in France,” says Lemieux. “Then we found out that it was based on a short adult novel by Mme. de Villeneuve, written 15 years earlier. It was to prepare women to marry a rich but ugly man. All of these bedtime stories our parents tell us, they became our myths. And there’s always a moral. They’re designed to tell us how to live and often tell us the tragic destiny of ourselves.”

Using plot details from both versions, Lemieux and Pilon, whose production of La Tempête was seen at BAM in 2006, crafted their own story. “Our beast is not an ugly old man, but a man who was in love and abandoned by that love. He’s kind of sexy but disfigured,” says Lemieux. “The beauty is a woman from today; she’s a young, intelligent, visual artist, who has issues dealing with the death of her mother. Like the beast, she’s kind of hurt herself. The fact is we all have some sort of drama in our lives. So we have these two characters who are broken, meet against all odds, and fall in love. And that leads to the questions we want to explore: Is it still possible to fall in love without the idea of conventional beauty? Can we look beyond appearances in a world where images are so important? Is it possible to go deeper and see what’s inside another person?”

The Doors of BAM

by Louie Fleck, BAM Archives Coordinator

No, Jim Morrison is not alive, hiding in some secret room at BAM. But since “people are strange,” and since I am a person—one who enjoys exploring all the most obscure and hidden nooks of BAM—I thought it would be interesting to guide BAMblog readers through a tour of some of the stranger doors at BAM.

There are probably over 1000 doors contained in the Peter Jay Sharp building, otherwise known as the Opera House at BAM. Since opening in 1908, this building has undergone countless renovations and modifications. For example, long gone are the horse carriage entrances that flanked the foyer on Ashland Place and St. Felix Street. Also, while still visible from the outside, the center set of doors at 30 Lafayette are no longer used, as there is an escalator behind those doors in the lobby.

Thomas Paulucci, Crew Chief, and I took a little tour and now we’d like to share a few of the “hidden” places with you…

Just Announced: Beyond This Place

It isn't everyday that a documentary filmmaker has the guts to turn the camera on himself, much less on, say, his fraught relationship with his perpetually stoned, freedom-fetishizing, absentee father. But we get nothing less in the award-winning documentary Beyond This Place, director Kaleo La Belle's engrossing chronicle of his own attempts to make amends with his dad, forget it all, and move on.

Luckily, BAM just got the green light to screen the film in the Opera House on October 30 as part of our 150th anniversary celebrations. We couldn't be more excited. Take a look at the trailer here:



So why are we screening it in the roomy opera house instead of closer to the popcorn in BAM Rose Cinemas? Because it will definitely sell out, and we want to make sure there's plenty of room for all that want to see it. Why will it sell out? Because, along with the buzz surrounding the film in general, two very special guests—one of them an already-seasoned, particularly doe-eyed BAM artist—will be on hand to provide a live soundtrack. Unfortunately, the guests' names are locked inside of a secret vault located half a mile under Lafayette Avenue. They also might or might not be mentioned at 1:38 into the trailer above...

Beyond This Place goes on sale tomorrow (September 14) to BAM members and Monday (September 19) to the general public. As I said, it will definitely sell out, so if you want to absolutely guarantee your seat, become a BAM member and beat the rush for tickets.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House by William Christie

One of the great impresarios of the 20th century, Harvey Lichtenstein, former president and executive producer of BAM, traveled the globe to listen to people he liked and discover people he didn’t know. We were first introduced when he came to our performance of Lully’s Atys at the Opéra Royal of Versailles; he was absolutely bowled over by the piece and wanted to bring it to BAM. Working with Peter Brook, Pina Bausch, or Robert Wilson, and now taking on a 17th-century French Baroque opera, was risk-taking, but Harvey knew his public and he knew about creating an audience for what he liked. So we met and became friends, and decided to work together. “Look,” Harvey said, “we can’t provide an orchestra, and we don’t have a standing choir. What we can provide is intelligence, creative programming, we can provide an audience, and we can provide a venue.” And that was the beginning of a BAM career for me and for my ensemble, Les Arts Florissants.

It was the spring of 1989 when we finally brought Atys to BAM. Coming from Europe, where opera houses and civic theaters are generally in the plushest parts of town, when I arrived at BAM it looked as if I had entered a war zone. Here was this incredible building, this great white elephant, surrounded by little more than parking lots. Once inside, of course, it was heaven. First of all, you have a staff that is one of the best in the world, not only the people up top but the people in and around the stage who actually work with you. It’s a truly wonderful team. And the hall itself is brilliant, with marvelous visibility and acoustics, and the people who go to the opera, who want to see things as well as hear things, are virtually guaranteed a visual experience as exciting as the musical experience.