Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Exciting new dance works, unveiled via OPEN CALL and WORKS & PROCESS at The Shed and the Guggenheim, respectively

• By drediman
• June 6, 2021
• No Comments

This past week, I attended a quartet of exciting new dance pieces, each of which was commissioned by the new works programming of The Shed and the Guggenheim (these two institutions also happen to boast some of New York’s most unique and expansive performance spaces).

UNVEILING / UNDERSCORED
Sonya Tayeh & Moses Sumney / Ephram Asherie Dance
The Guggenheim Museum / Works & Process

The Guggenheim’s Works & Process series has saved some of its finest offerings for the end of its season. The first of the two new works from the series that I encountered this week was Unveiling (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), choreographed by Sonya Tayeh and featuring a mesmerizing score written and performed by indie music singer/songwriter Moses Sumney. In short, it’s one of the most astonishing new works of dance I’ve seen in quite a while. Drawing inspiration from Japanese butoh and modern dance, Ms. Tayeh has created a distinctive vocabulary of movement to express the notion of self-actualization, while establishing a captivating symbiosis with Mr. Sumney’s musical composition. Dancing the piece was an accomplished set of dancers – Lia Cirio, Robbie Fairchild, Lorezo Pagano, Ida Saki, Gabe Stone Shayer, and Cassie Trenary – who threw themselves into the new work with intensity and purpose. Then the very next night, I attended UnderScored (RECOMMENDED) by Ephrat Asherie Dance, a celebratory, high energy work commemorating New York’s underground dance and music scene. The eclectic company (spanning the ages of 25 to 77!) was a joy to watch as they vogued and street danced their way through, in effect, history. At the nexus of it all was a trio of legendary figures from the 1980s and 1990s club scene – Archie Burnett, Brahms “Bravo” LaFortune, and Michele Saunders.

(Solo Dance Work) / CHRONICLE X
Leslie Cuyjet / Nia O. Witherspoon
The Shed

As Works & Process winds down for the season, The Shed’s Open Call series got under way this past week. The multidisciplinary series has been curated to give historically marginalized perspectives and new voices a major platform to present their art (visual, performance). On Friday, I attended two performances in the inaugural series, the first of which was Leslie Cuyjet’s short new solo dance piece (RECOMMENDED) at The Shed’s relatively intimate Skylights space. Very much in the avant-garde dance tradition, Ms. Cuyjet’s latest continues her exploration of (in)visibility as a Black woman, using spoken text and objects to bring her body in and out of focus. Then later that evening, continuing the theme of empowering Black women, Nia O. Witherspoon’s sprawling, immersive Chronicle X (RECOMMENDED) exploded into the McCourt. Part cleansing ritual (in a the same pointed mold as Aleshea Harris’s acclaimed What to Send Up When It Goes Down, which is returning to BAM this month), part cosmic creation fable, the unruly work devotes much of its generous runtime and elaborate structure to movement and choreography, including a good dose of exuberantly-performed street dance and FlexN. As the evening’s goddess-like emcee, Ms. Witherspoon commanded the soaring space, admirably managing to hold together a production that was literally bursting at the seams.