Avery Wheless is a Los Angeles-based painter who was born and raised in Petaluma, California. With her mother, a ballet instructor, and her father, an animator for LucasFilms, it’s no wonder she became a painter and video artist with a penchant for the theatrical. Her video works often depict movement artists performing choreography, and her painted portraits often depict everyday people engaging in the unconscious performativity of everyday life. Her current solo exhibition Stage, Presence on view at a private residence in Beverly Hills with BozoMag includes portrayals of the artist and her friends occupying glamorous spaces, caught in moments that subtly reveal the effort that comes with looking at ease. These acts are not celebrated or bemoaned. They just are. One friend reaches into the cocktail dress of another to lift and expose the fullness of her breast in anticipation of reuniting with an ex. Other figures unwittingly become subjects as they applaud an unseen performer or spy pensively on others while sipping martinis. The pageantry of hyper femininity is as vulnerable as it is manicured when you look at it from the right angle and Avery Wheless has a way of depicting it all simultaneously like an emotional lenticular on canvas. Read more.
GöteborgsOperans Danskompani Presents Choreography by Damien Jalet & Sharon Eyal @ Sadler Wells in London
text by Lara Monro
This weekend GöteborgsOperans Danskompani presented Skid and SAABA, the works of internationally acclaimed choreographers Damien Jalet and Sharon Eyal, at London’s Sadlers Wells. Both performances push the limits of contemporary dance through their daringly experimental approaches.
Jalet’s Skid was first performed in 2017 at Gothenburg’s opera house. In 2019, it was named “Work of the Year” by the critical collective “Danse avec la Plume.” Its fitting title alludes to the relentless effort that the seventeen dancers endure to stay on the 34-degree tilted stage designed by New York artists Jim Hodges and Carlos Marques da Cruz.
This experimental choreography is inspired by the laws of gravity, which forces the dancers to both struggle against and surrender to its natural forces. One by one, the dancers emerge over the top of the stage, which they slip and slide down before falling into the dark void at the bottom. More often than not, it is unclear as to whether they are improvising, carrying out a choreographed movement, or in the midst of losing their grip. Jalet creates a landscape of endless possibilities that is both moving and slapstick. The dancers, adorned in playful and multi-functional costumes by fashion designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard, are in an exhausting dialogue with the inhospitable terrain. Split into three sections, the first is a gentle introduction to the dancers and their graceful attempts at navigating their descent. The second is more dramatic as they challenge gravity by ascending the stage; showing off their physical strength and agility in unified choreography. In the final piece, a solitary figure appears, suspended in a beige sack—alluding to an amniotic sack or a perhaps a big pair of tights—and breaks free from their clothes and the womb-like space. Spectacularly framed by the harsh white lighting, the naked body walks slowly to the top of the stage and jumps off into what we can interpret as the precipice of the universe.
GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, SAABA by Sharon Eyal, image credit Tilo Stengel
It’s safe to say the best performance was saved for last. Eyal’s distinct style is effortlessly carried off by the hypnotic dancers in SAABA who spend most of the performance on demi-pointe, pulsating power. Each contorted movement exaggerates Eyal’s uncomfortable, abstract, and totally unique language. The androgynous body suits, made by Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, leave little to the imagination. We are left in awe as we observe the capabilities of the human body when pushed to its physical limits. There is an alien-like quality in the way the dancers carry themselves; an unnerving beauty as each and every muscle throbs and protrudes. Their wild, jarring movements prompt a visceral reaction. You are in awe and repulsed all at once. Favoring unison, Eyal keeps her dancers connected, or at least in close proximity to one another for the duration of the performance. Yet, they manage to maintain their individual conviction and sass throughout.
GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, SAABA by Sharon Eyal, image credit Tilo Stengel
Lara Monro Interviews Choreographer Holly Blakey In Anticipation of the Premiere of Cowpuncher My Ass →
Photograph by Max Barnett
Born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Holly Blakey found contemporary dance as a teenager. After she was rejected by a number of well-known dance schools, she attended University of Roehampton where teaching dance was the only option. What was initially a devastating and painful life transition turned out to be a profound moment for Blakey, leading to a fruitful career as a choreographer. Free from the confines of institutional models and languages of dance, she created her own — one that advocates drama and our lived experiences.
Honesty, intimacy, and a sense of community feed into her work, as does her fascination with music, film, and TV. Her ability to emulate pop culture has led Blakey to traverse multiple creative industries such as directing music videos for musicians who include Florence Welch and Coldplay. She also had a longstanding collaboration with the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, whose widower Andreas Kronthaler, has designed the costumes for the return of her performance of Cowpuncher My Ass. This Wild West dance show, scored by Mica Levi, takes the notion of the hyper masculine, yet camp cowboy, as a starting point to explore the archetypes of masculinity through non-linear perspectives.
Cowpuncher My Ass will be playing at Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Wednesday 15 February at 7:30 pm.
Autre’s London editor at large, Lara Monro, spoke with Blakey in between rehearsals to discuss how the performance challenges what might be deemed acceptable in choreography and much more. Read more.
Sharon Eyal's Rambert2 Slays The Stage With Killer Pig @ Sadlers Wells In London
Rambert2 Dancers in Sharon Eyal's Killer Pig © Deborah Jaffe
text by Lara Monro
photographs by Deborah Jaffe
In February 2020, 650 early career dancers auditioned to join Rambert2: a new and exciting programme founded to develop the artistic practices of a diverse cast of daring performers. Eleven practitioners were selected for their unique talent. Starting in May this year, the ensemble toured the UK to perform Sharon Eyal’s Killer Pig. Designed to extend the Rambert company’s traditional reach, the Rambert2 collective takes distinctive, world-class dance to more people in more places.
Born in Jerusalem, Eyal established the contemporary dance company L-E-V (meaning heart) with her long-standing collaborator Gai Behar in 2013. Prior to this, Eyal danced with the Batsheva Dance Company from 1990 - 2008. From 2009, she began to form her own choreographies including Killer Pig (2009) and Corps de Walk (2011). Since 2013, L-E-V has had more than 200 performances in some of the most exclusive venues and festivals around the world: The Joyce Theatre – NYC; Jacob's Pillow – Berkshires; The Montpellier Danse Festival – France; Julidans – Amsterdam.
Last weekend, Sadlers Wells welcomed Rambert2 to its stage. Eight of the eleven performers executed Killer Pig with unwavering raw passion. The minimalist expression, intense honesty, and uncompromising physicality of the piece is provocative, carnal, and adrenaline-inducing. L-E-V uniquely combines ballet with hip hop: a head-bop seamlessly morphs into a pirouette. At forty minutes in length, the performance is the epitome of artistic endurance. The audience witnesses fearless determination and dedication as the performers bodies are pushed to extremes. The dance explores a spectrum of emotion: dark, obsessive, and beautiful.
Instantly submerged within what feels like a club room dedicated to pounding industrial techno, the bodies move mainly in unison — part of a whole organism that ebbs and flows across the stage — until one, or a few break off and offer up an independent performance before dissolving back into the collective. It's tribal, at times trance-like, with a sassy aggression.
Tight, beige leotards leave little to the imagination, allowing every part of the anatomy to be celebrated for its athletic achievement: muscles bursting, ribs protruding. The harsh, white lights designed by Kevin A. Jones draw attention to their facial expressions: passioned, pained, sometimes crazed.
Home was also performed by Rambert2: a new commission created by the American choreographer Micaela Taylor. The first dance of the evening is recognized for its numerous influences that encompass classical ballet, hip hop and Gaga.
Long-term L-E-V collaborator, Ori Lichtik, is the genius behind the multifaceted industrial soundscape, which arguably seals the deal for making the performance an all-around superlative piece of contemporary dance. The standing ovation, and emotional reaction this provoked in the audience, was a poignant nod to the long-overdue return of live performance post COVID.
Repeat: Sculptures By Janet Levy, Choreography By Diane Gemsch @ SWB Experimenthaus In Zurich
As we navigate our lives in these times of a pandemic, the question about home and living becomes even more pronounced. Janet Levy questions what is home and what is the significance of home, collecting objects from her surroundings to create a site-specific sculptural installation. In kind, Diane Gemsch creates an emotional response by physically bringing this action to movement while engaging with the house and sculpture installation.
Repeat is on view by appointment through May @ SWB Experimenthaus Neubühl, Westbühlstrasse 59, 8038 Zurich-Wollishofen. photographs by Rudolf Moser
Watch BAGGAGE: A Dance Film By Choreographer Jay Carlon @ Los Angeles' Historic Union Station
BAGGAGE is a theatrical dance work for film by acclaimed dancer and choreographer Jay Carlon with a live-score and sound design by musician Alex Wand. Developed on site in Union Station’s historic Ticketing Hall during a two-week residency by Carlon and Wand—the work celebrates origin stories and embodies the many histories of arrivals and departures at the station and in our lives. It is a personal family narrative of migration told in three chapters unpacked through music, dance, and memory inside the landmark historic space that has served as a gateway to the many individual and collective California arrival stories over the past eight decades.
Opening with the Phillipine proverb “A person who does not remember where they came from will never reach their destination” in Tagalog to provoke the question “How did you get here?”, Carlon channels the stories of the space through his personal family story. The film concludes with an emotional and physical release as Carlon lets go of family traumas handed down from previous generations.
Watch Rashid Johnson's The New Black Yoga (2011)
Representing the performative aspect of Johnson’s practice,The New Black Yoga (2011) is a short film depicting an enigmatic scenario in which five African-American men perform choreographed movements on a deserted beach. Their gestures alternately appear balletic, athletic, and martial, conjuring a range of potential narratives that ultimately remain elusive. Johnson’s 2016 installation Antoine’s Organ is included in the New Museum’s current exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America.
Read Our Interview Of Artist, Abolitionist & Facilitator Brianna Mims →
Brianna Mims is a polymath if I’ve ever seen one. Along with a lifetime of training in myriad dance forms and becoming a multidisciplinary movement artist, she can likely be found speaking publicly on the role of the NAACP and transformational justice in the abolitionist movement, or walking runway at any number of fashion weeks, or developing curriculum for children to feel safe in moving and communicating freely. Then again, she might just be researching the efficacy of our local welfare system, or brushing up on her Arabic. click here to read more
Multidisciplinary Artist Chris Emile Presents AMEND @ MAK Center In Los Angeles
An exhibition and series of four performances by multi-disciplinary artist Chris Emile, AMEND explores Black male identity through movement, cinema, sculpture and sound. Emile employs archival & contemporary found footage with artifactual set design to re-render the modern architectural marvel that is the Schindler House into a sacred, private place: a home amenable for Black dealing and healing. An intergenerational cast of three dancers acting as one man, move the audience through the house and through time working their way through the question: who, if not me, decides what a Black man is? This performance series took place on September 26 at the Schindler House of the MAK Center in Los Angeles. continues from its original dates in March 2020, which were postponed due to the coronavirus. photographs by Lani Trock
Tatsumi Hijikata & Eikoh Hosoe: Collaborations With Tatsumi Hijikata @ Nonaka-Hill In Los Angeles
As Japan urbanized in the economic boom period in the decades following WWII, Hosoe felt a growing sense of urgency to revisit the rural Tohoku region where he had been evacuated as a child to escape Tokyo air-raids. The photographer enlisted dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, who is from the same Tohoku region, to enact the "sickle-toothed weasel", a vicious god of local folklore and a threat that terrorized the young displaced Hosoe, who also associates his time in that region with an innocent happiness within an otherwise dark period. Hosoe said:
“In the village, he played with children, was laughed at by farmers along the roadside, shat in the middle of a field, attacked a bride, kidnapped a baby, and ran through the rural landscape. Almost all the shooting was done guerrilla style in a flash. This was something that could only be achieved through photography. No other medium — film, television, painting, or novel — could have been used in its place. At that moment, I was certain of the superiority of photography.” - Eikoh Hosoe, “Foreword” in Kamaitachi 1. Eikoh Hosoe: Collaborations With Tatsumi Hijikata is on view through November 30 at Nonaka-Hill 720 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles
Valerj Pobega Presents "Kabuki in Berlin" Fall/Winter 2019 collection
Avant-garde fashion designer and artist Valerj Pobega presented her “Kabuki in Berlin” -Fall/Winter 2019 collection with a site-specific performance in collaboration with dancers, acrobats and a music performance by Lawrence Rothman. Dressed in the designer’s hand-painted silk creations from “Kabuki in Berlin” her collection was inspired by the hybrid identities and androgynous stylings as seen in the Liza Minnelli’s turn as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, and the epicene performances of Lindsey Kemp and David Bowie in their 1970 mimed numbers which had hints of Kabuki theatre. photographs by Mekael Dawson
Adrian Piper's 'Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016' Opens @ Hammer Museum in Los Angeles
Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016 is the most comprehensive West Coast exhibition to date of the work of Adrian Piper (b. 1948, New York). It is also the first West Coast museum presentation of Piper’s works in more than a decade, and her first since receiving the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist at the 56th Venice Biennale of 2015 and Germany’s Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 2018. Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, this expansive retrospective features more than 270 works gathered from public and private collections from around the world, and encompasses a wide range of mediums that Piper has explored for over 50 years: drawing, photography, works on paper, video, multimedia installations, performance, painting, sculpture, and sound.
Piper’s groundbreaking, transformative work has profoundly shaped the form and content of Conceptual art since the 1960s, exerting an incalculable influence on artists working today. Her investigations into the political, social, and spiritual potential of Conceptual art frequently address gender, race, and xenophobia through incisive humor and wit, and draw on her long-standing involvement with philosophy and yoga.
For this exhibition, the Hammer is partnering with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) to present Piper’s work What It’s Like, What It Is #3, a large-scale mixed-media installation addressing racial stereotypes. Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016 in on view through January 6 at Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.
Fixed: A Piece Choreographed By Chris Emile Of No)one. Art House @ MOCA In Los Angeles
Chris Emile and No)one. Art House presented a choreographed performance in response to Haegue Yang’s Strange Fruit (2012-13), part of MOCA’s permanent collection. Yang’s work takes its title from the anti-lynching anthem famously recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Using Yang’s installation as its stage, Emile’s performance examines the public display and consumption of violence against marginalized bodies and investigates how Black Americans process trauma. The performance expands the dialogue between Yang’s Strange Fruit and the protest song of the same name. Chris Emile, the choreographer, is the cofounder of No)one. Art House, a collective that produces movement-based installations in unconventional spaces throughout Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Maceo Paisley And Katie Malia Present Line Steppers @ Marciano Foundation
Line Steppers, a performance by Maceo Paisley and Katie Malia, unfolds within Albert Oehlen/Peppi Bottrop: Line Packers”. Paisley and Malia’s navigation of a social space in the gallery adds a layer of commentary on labor versus expression in the world of art and entertainment. Curated by Brian Getnick. photographs by Lani Trock
No)one. Art House Performs Sky Echo @ The Getty Center
Choreographed by Samantha Blake Goodman, Sky Echo is a psalm whispered to the universe, drifting the dancers in and out of the museum’s fountains. It is a trio performed by Bianca Medina, Chris Emile, and Sasha Rivero. The dancers move in costumes provided by New York-based designer Mara Hoffman to live musical accompaniment by vocalists AKUA and Anthony Calonico. This transcendent performance sways audiences and softly carries viewers to a place of bliss. photographs by Lani Trock
Milka Djordjevich's ANTHEM Is This Weekend's Must-See Show @ Ghebaly Gallery
Milka Djordjevich’s ANTHEM, presented by Los Angeles Performance Practice, currently on a three-night run at Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles, is a pulsing kaleidoscope of movement that is difficult to label. Maybe disco dressage comes close, a choreographed disintegration loop, something akin to the rising and fading blips on a Soviet-era heart monitor, performed by a distant artificially intelligent species programmed only with 1.44 megabytes of 20th century cabaret instruction. In actuality the dance is performed by four human women named Laurel Atwell, Jessica Cook, Dorothy Dubrule, and Devika Wickremesinghe.
According to Djordjevich, ANTHEM utilizes “existing and imagined vernacular dance styles” to explore “labor, play, and feminine-posturing.” You could say that this trifecta becomes a first, second and third act by which to break down the performance, and break down it will. Within the hour-long performance, an innocent playground clapping game turns into a cocaine fever dream that reminds you of Sydney Pollack’s 1969 adaption of Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? It's about a Great Depression-era dance marathon the devolves into desperation, exhaustion, greed and death. ANTHEM is electric and existentially thrilling in the same context. It is a fragmented mirror reflecting an alternate reality that absorbs the viewer within Djordjevich’s enthralling matrix, helped maybe by the droning, undulating music of Chris Peck and theatrical communist bloc, discotheque-toned lighting by Madeline Best.
Each dancer, one with a full Petra Von Kant afro, arrive in a kind of centipede-like daisy chain, various lackadaisical rhythmic exercises turn into cavalier Saturday Night Fever dance moves performed with brilliantly stolid indifference. Soon, the dancers climb on top of each other, writhing double-deckers of velvet covered flesh. One chews gum, blows bubbles and makes awkward eye contact with the audience. Two of them lose their shoes. At points they all rehydrate and fix their hair as they fall into a hypnotic groove, one of which takes on a texture of movement that has a robotic, cool remove. Mascara, eye shadow and sweat glistens. The dancers slowly succumb to gravity and exhaustion, like bon vivants at dawn. They emerge from their stupor to return from whence they came. The fever has broken and no bitter tears were shed.
ANTHEM has three remaining performances in Los Angeles, Saturday 6/9 at 10pm, Sunday 6/10 at 3pm & 7pm. Ghebaly Gallery is located at 2245 E Washington Boulevard. photographs by Summer Bowie
Debut Performance Of Maceo Paisley's Untangling Manhood @ PAM
On May 25, 2018 PAM hosted the debut performance of Untangling Manhood, Maceo Paisley investigates gender through embodied inquiry, juxtaposing identity and social constructs. Using movement, language, and audience interaction, Paisley guides us through a narrative that goes beyond making art, inviting audiences to confront themselves in the process. photographs by Lani Trock
Samantha Blake Launches "MAPS" @ Navel LA
On Saturday April 28th, Navel LA celebrated the launch of MAPS, Movement Art Performance Space. MAPS was founded by Samantha Blake and is dedicated to cultivating the contemporary and traditional arts of the Afro-Latinx and Caribbean diaspora in Los Angeles. The launch featured three dance performances by Samantha Blake, Chris Bordenave and Vera Passos (respectively), along with a film screening by Nery Madrid, singing by Felicia ‘Onyi’ Richards, costumes by Gabrielle Datau + Jiro Maestu (Poche) and Desiree Klein, and still photographs by Russel Hamilton, shot during the film’s creation. You can read our interview of Chris Bordenave from our Winter 2017 issue here. Navel LA is located at 1611 S Hope Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Read Our Interview Of Chris Bordenave Contemporary Choreographer & Founder of No)one. Art House →
A classically trained, multi-disciplinary choreographer, who is one of the 3 founding members of a dance company called No)one. Art House., Chris Bordenave has recently been working with a number of musical artists, such as Anderson Paak, Mayer Hawthorne, and more recently Solange and Kelela. He has also been creating site-specific works for institutions such as the California African American Museum, Hauser + Wirth, and Solange’s SAINT HERON House. Click here to read the full interview.
Watch The Music Video For Blood Orange's Track "I Know" Starring Maria Kochetkova
I Know is from Blood Orange's new album Freetown Sound, which can be streamed here. music video direction by Devonté Hynes & Tracy Antonopoulos