Next Wave FestivalBrooklyn Academy of Music Performances

The Next Wave Festival, which presents experi-mental work on a grand scale, celebrated its twentieth year in 2002. In the beginning, it showed mostly American chore-ographers, but as it progressed it featured more groups from abroad. This years dance pre-mieres were from Brazil, France, Germany, and Japan. (The only two American entries in dance-Meredith Monk and Mark Mor-ris--did not perform premieres.) The companies who performed first in this years series lived up to the festivals reputation for exciting, sometimes controversial performance. The Brazilian company Grupo Corpo, whose artistic director and resident choreographer are brothers (Paulo and Rodrigo Pederneiras, respectively), fea-tured a snappy, infectious fusion of jazz, ballet, and Afro-Carib-bean styles. The elasticity of the dancers, particularly their torsos, was a marvel. But in both pieces, 21 and O Corpo, the beat was as constant as a metronome, leaving one thirsting for some breathing space (music by Marco Antonio Guimaraes and Arnaldo Antunes, respectively). In the first piece, the respite came in a lovely section where the dancers simply walked across the stage, one woman advancing further than the others, while the lighting (by Paulo Pederneiras) made them look like they were floating slightly above the ground.

Some of the duet work in 21 was startling. At one point a woman, curled tightly around a mans arm, was lugged along as though she were a leaden basket. At other times, women looked like windup dolls or birds or apes. But for the most part, the chore-ography relied, quite unimagina-

tively, on unison and canon.

Ballet Preljocaj gets under your skin. The program comprised two visually stunning works by Angelin Preljocaj: Helikopter and Rite of Spring. In the first, six dancers moved against and through each other in clusters--a toughened version of contact improvisation. A mysterious pro-jection from above (video scenic design by Holger Forterer) made the ground look like runways, propellers, and then puddles of water. This last created a thrilling illusion whereby the dancers legs activated the apparent ripples. But the starkest moment was when the loud music (Helikopter Quartet by Karlheinz Stock-hausen) abruptly dropped off, allowing the action to subside in silence. The sole dancer left onstage suddenly seemed more visible as a person, more vulner-able and free, as if she had just emerged from an oppressive state.The women teased the men by dancing with their panties dropped to their ankles, but later seemed to quake at the ferocity of the male sex drive. Preljocajs characteristic combination of inventiveness, and ominousness reigned over a mating season with occasional hints of rape. Toward the end, the dancers, who had been using separate plots of grass as their coupling turf, pushed the plots together to form a single terrain of undulating earth (scenic design by Thierry Leproust). As the Chosen One, Isabelle Arnaud (alternating with Nagisa Shirai) danced the final, nude solo with strength, determina-tion, and bewilderment. Though not as primal as the Nijinsky-Hodson version performed by The Joffrey Ballet in the 1980s, Preljocajs response to the earth-cracking Stravinsky music was powerful and provocative. New to most New Yorkers was Sasha Waltz, who brought Korper (Bodies) from Germany. As with Preljocaj, there was an ominous edge. The danc-ers treated their own and each others bodies with a perverse curiosity that occasionally veered toward cruelty. They didnt just fall; they slammed to the ground. They didnt just drift; they were

squashed by a glass case.

The poetic confusion of the body became clear During a creat-ing scalloping lines reminiscent

of Trisha Browns Line Up. A reprieve from the thudding interactions was a monologue by the Australian dancer Grayson Millwood. He gently pointed out became clear During a moment of scattered silly actions, the huge black wall that bisected the space and housed the glass case toppled (set design by Thomas Schenk, Heike Schuppelius, and Waltz). Afterward, the group seemed to coalesce,of Trisha Browns Line Up. A reprieve from the thudding interactions was a monologue by the Austra-lian dancer Grayson Millwood. He gently pointed out body parts that contradicted his words, like when he said, She kissed me in a funny place ... in that little groove between the nose and the upper lip, and displayed the crook of his elbow. Similar incor-rectly illustrated monologues had appeared before, but as Mill-wood performed

it, something pleasing and charm-ing crept in. The poetic confu-sion of the body became clear. His was a great addition to a piece that could have been called Battling Bodies.ankai Jukus Hibiki (Resonance From Far Away), lifted the Next Wave Fes-tival from body and earth to the realm of air and spirit. Like other works its done, it was refined compared to the more raw strains of butoh that embrace ghoulish despair or buffoonery. Hanging flasks released drops of water, which fell, at a maddeningly slow rate, into huge concave discs on the floor. The most fascinating section had four men elegantly dressed as women, hovering over a disc of thick red liquid, moving their hands delicately. At one point, they let one hand crawl

like a spider down the other arm. Was this an exorcism, a tea ceremony, a guilty wringing of hands, an eternity of waiting, or a calligraphy practice session? Each movement was tantalizingly elusive.

1

The poetic confusion of the body became clear.

Dancer performing at the Next Wave Festival

GuideNext Wave Festival

Brooklyn Academy of Music Performances

The Next Wave Festival, which presents experi-mental work on a grand scale, celebrated its twentieth year in 2002. In the beginning, it showed mostly American chore-ographers, but as it progressed it featured more groups from abroad. This years dance pre-mieres were from Brazil, France, Germany, and Japan. (The only two American entries in dance-Meredith Monk and Mark Mor-ris--did not perform premieres.) The companies who performed first in this years series lived up to the festivals reputation for exciting, sometimes controversial performance. The Brazilian company Grupo Corpo, whose artistic director and resident choreographer are brothers (Paulo and Rodrigo Pederneiras, respectively), fea-tured a snappy, infectious fusion of jazz, ballet, and Afro-Carib-bean styles. The elasticity of the dancers, particularly their torsos, was a marvel. But in both pieces, 21 and O Corpo, the beat was as constant as a metronome, leaving one thirsting for some breathing space (music by Marco Antonio Guimaraes and Arnaldo Antunes, respectively). In the first piece, the respite came in a lovely section where the dancers simply walked across the stage, one woman advancing further than the others, while the lighting (by Paulo Pederneiras) made them look like they were floating slightly above the ground. Some of the duet work in 21 was startling. At one point a woman, curled tightly around a mans arm, was lugged along as though she were a leaden basket.

Ballet Preljocaj gets under your skin. The program comprised two visually stunning works by Angelin Preljocaj: Helikopter and Rite of Spring. In the first, six dancers moved against and through each other in clusters--a toughened version of contact improvisation. A mysterious pro-jection from above (video scenic design by Holger Forterer) made the ground look like runways, propellers, and then puddles of water. This last created a thrilling illusion whereby the dancers legs activated the apparent ripples. But the starkest moment was when the loud music (Helikopter Quartet by Karlheinz Stockhausen) abruptly dropped off, allowing the action to subside in silence.

The sole dancer left onstage sud denly seemed more visible as a person, more vulnerable and free, as if she had just emerged from an oppressive state.The women teased the men by dancing with their panties dropped to their ankles, but later seemed to quake at the ferocity of the male sex drive. Preljocajs characteristic combina-tion of inventiveness, and ominous-ness reigned over a mating season with occasional hints of rape. Toward the end, the dancers, who had been using separate plots of grass as their coupling turf, pushed the plots together to form a single terrain of undulating earth (scenic design by Thierry Leproust).

The poetic confusion of the body became clear During a creat-ing scalloping lines reminiscent

of Trisha Browns Line Up. A reprieve from the thudding interactions was a monologue by the Australian dancer Grayson Millwood. He gently pointed out became clear During a moment of scattered silly actions, the huge black wall that bisected the space and housed the glass case toppled (set design by Thomas Schenk, Heike Schuppelius, and Waltz). Afterward, the group seemed to coalesce,of Trisha Browns Line Up. A reprieve from the thudding interactions was a monologue by the Austra-lian dancer Grayson Millwood. He gently pointed out body parts that contradicted his words, like when he said, She kissed me in a funny place ... in that little groove between the nose and the upper lip, and displayed the crook of his elbow. Similar incor-rectly illustrated monologues had appeared before, but as Mill-wood performed

it, something pleasing and charm-ing crept in. The poetic confu-sion of the body became clear. His was a great addition to a piece that could have been called Battling Bodies.ankai Jukus Hibiki (Resonance From Far Away), lifted the Next Wave Fes-tival from body and earth to the realm of air and spirit. Like other works its done, it was refined compared to the more raw strains of butoh that embrace ghoulish despair or buffoonery. Hanging flasks released drops of water, which fell, at a maddeningly slow rate, into huge concave discs on the floor. The most fascinating section had four men elegantly dressed as women, hovering over a disc of thick red liquid, moving their hands delicately. At one point, they let one hand crawl

like a spider down the other arm. Was this an exorcism, a tea ceremony, a guilty wringing of hands, an eternity of waiting, or a calligraphy practice session? Each movement was tantalizingly elusive.

The poetic confusion of the body became clear.

Dancer performing at the Next Wave Festival

A group of dancers at the Next Wave festival at the BAM

BAMBAM

William Kentridge at the Brooklyn Academy of Music

The Magic Flute, Mozarts last opera (1791), has frequently at-tracted visual artists. Kokoschka, Chagall, Hockney and Maurice Sendak designed stage versions, and Ingmar Bergman turned a performance of it at Stockholms 18th-century Drottningholm Theater into arguably the great-est film of an opera ever made. Perhaps its the outlandishness of the plot that baits the hook: a combination of a narrative with Masonic overtones set in ancient Egypt, rife with enchanted instru-ments, elemental trials and a primal face-off between forces of good and evil. Who can resist the scene where the hero Tamino, raising the flute to his lips for the

first time, prompts wild animals to dance? The whole thing just begs for visuals. William Kentridge has long had an affiliation with theater, and he previously designed one opera, a production of Monte-verdis II Ritorno dUlisse, which was mounted at several venues, including New Yorks John Jay Theater, in 2004 (it was revived including New Yorks John Jay Theater, in 2004 (it was revived in Brussels this May). In 2005 he turned to Mozart, devising a production of The Magic Flute in Brussels by (as with Ulisse) the Theatre de la Monnaie; it trav-eled to South Africa and landed in mid-April 2007 at the

Brooklyn Academy of Music. Kentridges display at Marian Goodman in 2006 of prepara-tory materials for the opera won best gallery exhibition of the year from the International Associa-tion of Art Critics.Kentridges all black-and-white combination of drawing and film took over the stage in a continually changing display of lush, orientalizing backdrops, ingenious gliding props, light shows (the lighting director was Jennifer Tipton) and large and small animations, some transpiring on portable black-boards. These visuals evanes-cently propelled the opera along, even through passages where the staging can tend to stagnate.

William Kentridge

William Kentridge at the BAM

The Magic Flute, Mozarts last opera (1791), has frequently attracted visual artists. Kokoschka, Chagall, Hockney and Maurice Sendak designed stage versions, and Ingmar Bergman turned a performance of it at Stockholms 18th-century Drottningholm Theater into arguably the greatest film of an opera ever made. Perhaps its the outlandishness of the plot that baits the hook: a combination of a narrative with Masonic overtones set in ancient Egypt, rife with enchanted instruments, elemental trials and a primal face-off between forces of good and evil. Who can resist the scene where the hero Tamino, raising the flute to his lips for the first time, prompts wild animals to dance? The whole thing just begs for visuals. William Kentridge has long had an affiliation with theater, and he previously designed one opera, a production of Monteverdi II Ritorno dUlisse, which was mounted at several venues, including New Yorks John Jay Theater, in 2004 (it was revived including New Yorks John Jay Theater, in 2004 (it was revived in Brussels this May). In 2005 he turned to Mozart, devising a production of The Magic Flute in Brus-sels by (as with Ulisse) the Theatre de la Monnaie; it traveled to South Africa and landed in mid-April 2007 at the Brooklyn Academy of Mu-sic. Kentridges display at Marian Goodman in 2006 of preparatory materials for the opera won best gallery exhibition of the year from the International Association of Art Critics.Kentridges all black-and-white combination of drawing and film took over the stage in a continually changing display of lush, orientalizing backdrops, ingenious gliding props, light shows (the lighting director was Jennifer Tipton) and large and small animations, some transpiring on portable blackboards.

Guide The Stage Designer Strikes Back

Kentridges opera was mounted at several venues including the Rose Theater

THEATER REVIEWBergman Reimagines Ibsens Haunted Widow

The living dead, her son calls her, a ghost in her own house. And sure enough, when we first see Mrs. Alving in Ingmar Bergmans truly macabre production of Ibsens Ghosts at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Mu-sic, she brings to mind someone who might be called Keeper of the Crypt in an old British horror movie, the kind set in Victorian times amid smothering velvet curtains. Her beautiful face blazes with the flame of life, yet her walk is that of a zombie, halting and hob-bled. Her eyes open and close with hypnotic languor, while somber piano notes fall like rain. Then she makes a slow, stately rotation, a full 360 degrees, as if to survey the devastation she has wrought. This eerie, lonely dance, performed by the ravishing Pernilla August, is seen twice in Mr. Bergmans Ghosts, which runs through Saturday. (And this radically reshaped interpretation is probably best perceived as a Bergman-Ibsen collaboration.) It is used as a silent prologue and epilogue to the production, and it perfectly embodies the spirit that pervades the evening.

Only Regine Engstrad (An-gela Kovacs, in a vibrant perfor-mance), the young housekeeper reared by Mrs. Alving, begins to match her in vitality. And Mr. Bergman has been unable to re-sist the temptation to interject a scene in which the two women face off like Strindbergian rivals. Guess who wins? Such feminine fire burns all the brighter against Goran Wass-bergs deep-green period setting of gothic shadows and suffocat-ing cloth walls. (The sets center revolves to suggest a confined, inescapable cycle.) The gloom is penetrated by Pierre Leveaus hot, dusky pools of light, and the sun Osvald looks to in the final scene is a blood-red ball. The men are, by design, unreal compared with the women, as if they were figments of Mrs. Alvings imagination. Pastor Manders, dressed all in plum colors like a character from a Clue game, suggests one of Dickenss cartoonish, short-sighted philanthropists. Jacob Engstrad (Orjan Ramberg), the drunken carpenter with the game leg, stalks the play like a noisy grave robber.

An old caricature depicting Henrik Ibsen