A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Martha says:
“Folk Incest” is a work about sexual abuse and trauma which Juliana May has been developing for much longer than the “#MeToo” movement had a name. It premiered this week at Abrons Arts Center. With a cast of five superb women – Leslie Cuyjet, Tess Dworman, Lucy Kaminsky, Molly Poerstel, and Rebecca Wender — May uses abstraction to explore the indescribable. Grounding her work in cultural references of the present, May also laces her work with dark humor, like the creation of a rape colony, to flay the countless forms of oppression that have been used to silence and disempower women. This won’t a be comfortable work to see, but silence is no longer acceptable, and women’s survival, often under unendurable circumstances, deserves this powerful investigation now more than ever. Through October 20.
In another powerful work, Tere O’Connor also relies on abstraction, to explore a different side of the human shadow. His octet “Long Run” has its New York premiere at the Skirball Center. In “Long Run,” the performers drive through elaborate layers of time, speed, and endurance to find a place of stillness. O’Connor also created the dynamic score. Opens at NYU Skirball Center on Friday, October 12 at 7:30 pm.
In addition to new works being presented around the city, the Brooklyn Academy of Music brings a trio of early Trisha Brown works back for a reminder of the giant shoulders that so much contemporary choreography stands upon. The offerings include “Ballet” (1968), an experiment in rope walking created a few years before Peter Moore became the Man Walking Down the Side of A Building at 80 Wooster Street. In another early piece that explored suspending bodies, the company will also perform “Working Title” (1985). The evening closes with the 1974 duet “Pamplona Stones.” For a companion dive into Brown’s foundational work, visit The Museum of Modern Art for their aptly named exhibit “Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done,” on view through February 3. Trisha Brown’s work is certainly never done. BAM presents as part of the Next Wave Festival, opens Wednesday, October 10 at 7:30 pm.
Cover: Marc Crousillat, Simon Courchel, Jin Ju Song-Begin in “Long Run.” Photo © Ben McKeown.
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