Helen Lawrence—Dreaming in Art

Hrothgar Mathews and Lisa Ryder in Helen Lawrence. Photo: David Cooper

By Rob Weinert-Kendt

From its contrived sets to its stark lighting, from its stylized costumes to its still more stylized dialogue, vintage film noir has a vivid unreality that’s positively dreamlike, though it’s hard now to untangle whether our films resemble our dreams or vice versa. After all, what did human dreams look like before movies? Like paintings or plays? Or is this the wrong way to peer through the lens—should we instead rightly think of our time’s visual arts as renderings of our dream lives?

Blurring Circus Frontiers

Tabac Rouge's dynamic ensemble. Photo: Richard Haughton

By Roy Gómez-Cruz

The fifth creation by the Compagnie du Hanneton, Tabac Rouge, directed and choreographed by virtuoso performer James Thierrée, is the first of several physical theater performances in the 2015 Next Wave Festival at BAM. The piece, which opens in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House tonight, explores the porous boundaries between theater, dance, and contemporary circus. With a cast of world-class dancers and high-level acrobats, Tabac Rouge represents the erratic desires of a capricious tyrant through the mesmerizing and whimsical physicality of his people.

Reconfiguration—A Visual Transformation of Music by Other Lives

L-R: Josh Onstott, Jesse Tabish, Jonathon Mooney. Photo: Amanda Leigh Smith/YONDER

By Jane Jansen Seymour

Indie rock band Other Lives brings a cinematic expansiveness to music, and now a team of theatrical designers is providing a setting on stage befitting the sound. Conceived by producer Rebecca Habel and director Terry Kinney of Mixtape Productions, Reconfiguration: An Evening with Other Lives will be presented October 9 & 10 in the majestic Howard Gilman Opera House, as part of the Next Wave Festival. With a format similar to a symphony, ballet, or theater piece, the performances offer an inventive way to experience a band in concert.

In Context: Reconfiguration: An Evening with Other Lives

Reconfiguration: An Evening with Other Lives comes to BAM on October 9. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #OtherLives.

Antigone, Interpreted

Last weekend, book lovers convened in the seat of justice in Brooklyn to discuss a play translated, adapted, and performed in countless iterations: Antigone, which comes to BAM in a new translation by Anne Carson September 24—October 4. In the ornate Borough Hall courtroom, philosopher Bonnie Honig and playwright Ellen McLaughlin joined performer Kaneza Schaal to discuss the play.

Discussion begins in stately Brooklyn Borough Hall. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

by Nora Tjossem

Approaching Antigone from a philosophical standpoint, Honig kicked off the event by proposing lamentation as political action—the eponymous character not as martyr, but as activist. McLaughlin introduced the piece as “perfect theater,” living on in such works as The Island, a two-man, play-within-a-play performance of Antigone set in South Africa, and her own Kissing the Floor, an adaptation set in the Depression era US.

In Context: New Society

Miranda July’s New Society comes to BAM on October 7. Get to know July the writer, actor, filmmaker, and distracted meditator with the links below. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #NewSociety.

In Context: Dream’d in a Dream

Séan Curran Company’s Dream’d in a Dream, a collaboration with Kyrgyz folk music ensemble Ustatshakirt Plus, comes to BAM October 7. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #DMUSA.

Peggy Jarrell Kaplan: Portraits of BAM Artists (1982—2015)

Mikhail Baryshnikov holding a portrait of Peggy Jarrell Kaplan. Photo: Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, 2000

by Susan Yung

Photographer Peggy Jarrell Kaplan has photographed approximately 135 artists who have performed or collaborated with BAM. In 1984, she had photographed enough BAM artists that Humanities Director Roger Oliver suggested she shoot the complete round of season artists to illustrate the Next Wave Journal. Kaplan also photographed the artists for the 1985 journal. She had two solo shows in conjunction with BAM: Portraits Celebrating BAM's Next Wave Festival: 1983—89 (Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, 1992) and Staged: BAM Artist Portraits (Harvey Theater, 2004).

The unanswered question–how to get to the dark soul of Antigone

Director Ivo van Hove's Antigone, featuring Juliette Binoche and a new translation by Anne Carson, comes to BAM on September 24. A note from the director follows.

Obi Abili, Juliette Binoche, and Patrick O’Kane in Antigone. Photo: Jan Versweyveld

by Ivo van Hove

Antigone, by Sophokles, tells the ancient story of one of Oidipous’s daughters, who refuses to follow the orders of her uncle Kreon, the new Head of State.

Kreon has ordained that Antigone’s brother Polyneikes, who, along with their brother Eteokles has just died in a cruel civil war, should not be allowed a burial because he is a traitor.

A war of words begins with short but razor sharp scenes between Antigone and Kreon: an exhaustive, long, bitter but also passionate discourse of opposing views on how to treat the dead, especially when they are deemed an enemy of the state.

NWF: Next Wave Fashion

Victor Wilde's designs in action during opening night of COLLAPSE. Photo: Mike Benigno

by Chris Tyler

New York Fashion Week might be over, but things are just heating up for this year’s Next Wave Festival. From Willi Smith’s work with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in ‘89’s Secret Pastures (for which Keith Haring designed sets), to the custom Pina Prada bags at the Two Cigarettes in the Dark opening in ‘94, Next Wave artists have a long (and stylish!) history of attracting visionary talent from the fashion world… and 2015 proves no exception.

In Context: 17 Border Crossings

Thaddeus Phillips' 17 Border Crossings comes to BAM on September 30. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #17BorderCrossings.

In Context: Tabac Rouge

Physical theater virtuoso James Thierrée's Tabac Rouge comes to BAM on September 30. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #TabacRouge.

BAM Blog Questionnaire: Tsai Ming-yuan of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre

Rice's Tsai Ming-yuan. Photo: Liu Chen-hsiang

You've seen him in photos—in BAM's season brochures, website, in posters, or postcards. He is the face of Rice, a dance made by Lin Hwai-min for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, which opens the 2015 Next Wave Festival on Wednesday, September 16. The dancer in the photo is Tsai Ming-yuan. Bare-chested and barefoot, in indigo pants, holding a bamboo stick curved like a new moon, he is part of the landscape, as strong and as flexible as the golden hued rice stalks behind him. Before you finally see him in person, let’s hear from him.

When did you join Cloud Gate? What are your responsibilities there? Is this your first visit to BAM?

I was one of the original members of Cloud Gate 2 when I joined in 1999. I became a Cloud Gate dancer in 2001. My prior performances at BAM include Water Moon (2003), Wild Cursive (2007), and Water Stains on the Wall (2011). Besides dancing, I also serve as a rehearsal assistant for the company.

What do you like about dancing?

To me, dancing is sharing—sharing the experience and joy of my life. I find that I see myself clearer through dance. This is particular true with Mr. Lin’s work, with its underlining philosophy. It is very challenging but also rewarding in the end.

Delicate, Controlled Manipulation: An Interview with Nufonia Must Fall's Puppeteers

Kid Koala's Nufonia Must Fall at the Noorderzon Festival in 2014.

A tone-deaf robot, fearful of his growing obsolescence, tries to woo an office worker with his love songs in prolific producer and turntablist Kid Koala’s bold adaptation of his tender, and entirely wordless, 2003 graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall—coming to the BAM Harvey Theater September 17—20. Collaborating with Oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett, Kid Koala enlists a team of puppeteers to stage the circuit-bent amoré as camera crews edit the footage in real time, resulting in a live silent film. To better understand this unique performance event, we spoke with three of the show's puppeteers (Clea Minaker, Felix Boisvert, and Karina Bleau) about the various mechanisms underpinning such a hyper-hybrid work of art.

30 Years in 30 Days: A Celebration of the Black Rock Coalition

The Black Rock Coalition Orchestra, featuring Stew. Photo: Earl Douglas, Jr.

By Darrell M. McNeill

Thirty years ago, at the crest of another "Black Lives Matter" epoch—hip-hop going mainstream, The Cosby Show, Spike Lee, Michael Jackson, and the rise of African-Americans and "urban influence" in media and pop culture—a group of cultural warriors were born. In the mid-1980s, the music industry operated (and, bluntly, STILL operates) under a type of cultural Jim Crow, where white artists were/are largely free to pursue any musical genres they chose, while black artists were/are relegated to genres considered more "traditional" or "conventional" (meaning, in real world terms, more commercially viable), like gospel, rap, R&B, soul, jazz, funk, reggae, blues, etc. This flew in the face of documented history, particularly of modern pop and rock 'n' roll, where Black artists were either creating or at the aesthetic forefront of these genres.

In April of 1985, Vernon Reid, Konda Mason, Greg Tate, Craig Street, and a loose group of musicians, writers, actors, filmmakers, academicians, journalists, and fans—driven by these incongruities and inequities in music and the arts—gathered initially to dialogue and vent and figure out solutions. They began to coalesce around the idea that black artists have the inalienable right to the same creative freedom and compensation for success as their white counterparts. By September, a name was chartered, a manifesto was drafted, and the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) was founded.

In Context: Antigone

Director Ivo van Hove's Antigone, featuring Juliette Binoche and a new translation by Anne Carson, comes to BAM on September 24. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #Antigone.

In Context: TAPE

TAPE, choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström's duct tape-delineated po-mo mashup up of modern dance and baroque music, comes to BAM on September 23. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #Kvarnstrom.

In Context: Rice

Rice, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's lyrical tribute to Taiwan's essential crop, opens the 2015 Next Wave Festival on September 16. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #CloudGateDance.

In Context: Nufonia Must Fall

Nufonia Must Fall, the puppet-filled adaptation of DJ Kid Koala's titular graphic novel, comes to BAM on September 17. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #NufoniaMustFall.

In Context: COLLAPSE

COLLAPSE, LA band Timur and the Dime Museum's glam-rock requiem for Mother Earth, comes to BAM on September 17. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #TimurCOLLAPSE.