Category Archives: PERFORMANCE

MICHAEL CLARK — COSMIC DANCER

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I never really had a plan, except to express myself as purely as possible… I still make work on my own body first, as I always have. I can only understand it from the inside. — Michael Clark

MICHAEL CLARK—COSMIC DANCER, recently at the Barbican, was the first comprehensive retrospective of the British dance artist. Interrupted by the pandemic shutdowns, the exhibition lives on in the catalog, edited by Florence Ostende.

Bringing together materials from his choreographic work and collaborations with artists—including Elizabeth Peyton, Silke Otto-Knapp, Sarah Lucas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Leigh Bowery, Peter Doig, Cerith Wyn Evans, and Duncan Campbell—the book is a beautiful complement to MICHAEL CLARK, a 2011 monograph edited by Suzanne Cotter and Robert Violette.

See link below for details.

MICHAEL CLARK—COSMIC DANCER

Edited by Florence Ostende.

Prestel Publishing

From top: Charles Atlas, Hail the New Puritan (1986), Michael Clark, stills, 16mm film transferred to video, image courtesy and © Charles Atlas and Luhring Augustine; Michael Clark and Company, I Am Curious, Orange, 1988, photograph by Richard Haughton, image courtesy and © the artists and the photographer; Michael Clark, Before and After: The Fall, 2001, in Berlin, Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole, photograph by Andrea Stappert, image courtesy and © the artists and photographer; Clark during the filming of Hail the New Puritan, photograph by Alexander James, image courtesy and © the artists and the photographer; Wolfgang Tillmans, man with clouds, 1998, image courtesy and © the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Maureen Paley, and David Zwirner; Elizabeth Peyton, Michael Clark, 2009, image courtesy and © the artist and Sadie Coles HQ; Silke Otto-Knapp, Group (Formation), 2020, watercolor, image courtesy and © the artist, Galerie Buchholz, and Greengrassi; Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer (2020), edited by Florence Ostende, exhibition catalog cover image—Clark, Mmm, photograph by Hugo Glendinning—courtesy and © the artist, the photographer, the Barbican, and Prestel Publishing; Leigh Bowery and Rachel Auburn in Hail the New Puritan; Clark at the opening of Derek Jarman’s 1984 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, photograph by Steve Pyke; Hail the New Puritan, courtesy and © Atlas and Luhring Augustine; Ellen van Schuylenburch and Clark in Hail the New Puritan, photograph by Haughton. Images courtesy and © the artists, the photographers, and the Barbican.

JESSICA EMMANUEL

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Jessica Emmanuel presents ‘kwirē/, a new solo, multimedia dance work that “considers a dystopian world where the majority of historical and ancestral information has been destroyed.”

The wealthy have left the planet and few humans survived. A dance and sound retrieval system has been created to help us restore our connection to our memories and the history that is stored in our DNA. Guided by Emmanuel’s ancestors, she gathers and collects information, nurtures the soil and roots that are used to restore the earth for those left behind.* 

Filmed on the REDCAT stage and available to watch this week online, the work takes place in a sculptural installation created in collaboration between Emmanuel and Trulee Hall.

See link below for details.

JESSICA EMMANUEL—‘KWIRE*

REDCAT

Thursday and Friday, March 4 and 5.

8:30 pm on the West Coast, 11:30 pm East Coast.

Saturday, March 6.

5 pm on the West Coast, 8 pm East Coast.

From top: Jessica Emmanuel, ‘kwirē/; Emmanuel in Reflections of the Vastness Within at The Chronicles of LA: Chapter 2: Self, 2018; Emmanuel in Trilogy: Witnessing Her + Decolonize That Mind + Proliferation of Joy, Teatr Studio, Warsaw, 2018; Emmanuel in Poor Dog Group, Dionysia (aka Satyr Atlas), Getty Villa, 2011.

FILM MAUDIT 2.0 — REZA ABDOH

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When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach. And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames. — Antonin Artaud*

Film Maudit is here. Inspired by Jean Cocteau and presented by Highways, the second iteration of the festival of “outré” films brings together dozens of features and shorts for free streaming.

One of this year’s highlights is Adam Soch’s immersive documentary REZA ABDOH—THEATRE VISIONARY, a view from inside the transgressive work of the late, great theater provocateur, creator of such spectacles as The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice, Bogeyman, The Law of Remains, Father Was a Peculiar Man, Minamata, Tight Right White, and Quotations From a Ruined City.

Featuring extensive documentary footage of Abdoh’s rehearsals and produced work at the Los Angeles Theater Center, the Long Beach Opera, New York’s Diplomat Hotel, and the streets of the Meatpacking District, the film includes interviews with the actors, artists, friends, and advocates in his circle: Alan Mandell, Tony Torn, Ken Roht, Tom Pearl, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jacqueline Gregg, Juliana Francis-Kelly, Peter Jacobs, Edwin Gerard, Diane White, Elsbeth M. Collins, Morgan Jenness, Bill Bushnell, Anne Hamburger, Peter Sellars, Norman Frisch, Daniel Mufson, Sylvie Drake, Sandy Cleary, David Schweizer, Tal Yarden, Sabrina Artel, Anita Durst, Alix Hester, John Jahnke, Laurel Meade, Alyson Campbell, his mother Homa Oboodi, and his brothers Sardar and Salar Abdoh.

See link below for screening details.

REZA ABDOH—THEATRE VISIONARY

Directed by Adam Soch.

Film Maudit 2.0

Now streaming.

*Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, translated by Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958).

Reza Abdoh, from top: The Law of Remains (1992), photographs (2) from the Hotel Diplomat, New York, production, photographs © Paula Court; Bogeyman (1990), photograph © Jan Deen; Tight Right White (1993), photographs (3) from the 440 Lafayette Street, New York, production, photographs © Paula Court; The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1990), upper photograph © R. Kaufman, lower two from the Sigma Festival, Bordeaux, production in 1992, photographs © Patrick Veyssière; Quotations From a Ruined City (1994), written by Salar Abdoh and Reza Abdoh, middle photograph © Paula Court, upper and lower photographs from the 448 West 16th Street, New York production, photographs © Jan Deen.

Below: Salar Abdoh (left), Reza Abdoh, and Sardar Abdoh; Reza Abdoh, photograph © Richard Liebfried.

MAKI NAMEKAWA PERFORMS GLASS

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Phil has written sonatas for other instruments before, but this would be his first for the piano. I imagined how much he would pour into it given that the piano is the instrument he has spent a lifetime playing (at home and on countless tours). However, Phil is not an artist to let the potential of a “first” be tethered to what is known. His exuberance came from writing something that would far surpass what he could play, or be able to entirely hear on the instrument itself beyond imagining it as the composer. There would need to be someone who could bring the music to life and bridge the musical space between themselves, the audience and the composer.

Phil composed his Piano Sonota for Maki Namekawa and Maki collaborated on its shape and dimensionality by adding her tremendous capacity and insight as a pianist. — Kristy Edmunds

In spring of 2019, Philip Glass sent Namekawa the score for the sonata, and the following summer the two longtime collaborators premiered the work at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr. The piece made its American debut in November of that year at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

This weekend, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA)—in association with Ars Electronica in Linz—will stream a prerecorded performance by Namekawa of the piece. Also on the program: Mozart Camargo Guarnieri’s Sonatina No. 3 in G-clef (1937), Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-1908), and György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata.

See link below for details.

PIANO SONATA BY PHILIP GLASS—PERFORMED BY MAKI NAMEKAWA

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance

Sunday, January 10.

3 pm on the West Coast; 6 pm East Coast.

From top: Philip Glass and Maki Namekawa at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, 2019; Namekawa, photograph by Tom Mesic; Namekawa, photograph by Verena Lafferentz; Namekawa and Glass, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, 2019. Images courtesy and © the photographers, the musicians, and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

LAZARUS STREAM

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LAZARUS was one of the last things dad created before he died. I know he was incredibly excited about it: working with new people in a new medium. His favorite place to be. As tired as he was, he was clearly loving it! The original London production will be streaming in January. — Duncan Jones

David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s LAZARUS—directed by Ivo van Hove—will stream this month for three days only, marking Bowie’s birthday and the fifth anniversary of his death. See link below to find your location, date, and time.

LAZARUS

Music and lyrics by David Bowie, book by Enda Walsh.

Based on the novel The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis.

DICE

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, January 8, 9, and 10.

David Bowie and Enda Walsh, Lazarus (2015), from top: Michael C. Hall; Lazarus poster; Hall and Sophia Anne Caruso; Hall. Images courtesy and © Robert Fox Ltd. and Jones/Tintoretto Entertainment.