Issue #43
Fall 2013
One of the many reasons we selected Zeena to be the cover artist has to do with questions of collaboration and its striking significance throughout her career. How do our collaborators shift our practices? As this issue’s content came into being, collaboration emerged as a theme for many of the featured artists. Reid Bartelme and Jmy James Kidd address collaboration in their discussions and statements concerning costumes and choreography. Ponderosa is a dance festival founded from cooperative living and process. Artists unite in protest against state violence and injustice at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale. Donna Uchizono reminisces on the collective urgency in her 1990s downtown dance community with John Jasperse, Tere O’Connor and Jennifer Monson.
Matthew Lyons’ ongoing PJ series “Black Box/White Cube: Six Sides, Typologically Distinct” brings Adrienne Truscott and Sara Greenberger Rafferty into dialogue about their approaches to gender, body politics and comedy. Please dive into Fiona Templeton’s Datebook — it really is a must read. Her elegant interweaving of life and art practice makes me feel human. An incidental theme, but a clear one in this issue, is the strong presence of women, their distinct lives, histories, senses of self and creative strategies.
Editorial team
Cover Artist
Zeena Parkins
Editor-In-Chief
Moriah Evans
Buck Wanner - Lydia Bell - Trajal Harrell - Troy Lambert
Managing Editor
Rebecca Wender
Contributing Editor
effie bowen - Andrew Dinwiddie - Matthew Lyons
Copy Editor
Conor Creaney
Intern
Amanda Lopez-Kurtz - Elena Light
Ad Layout
Catherine Galasso
Articles
News: Letter to the Bessies Committee
July 28, 2013 Dear Bessie Committee, It is after careful consideration that I write this letter to you to request that you remove my nomination from the Bessie award category...
Stolen Article: Bodies That Matter
On a dazzling Saturdayafternoon, splashed with resplendent sunshine after too many cool gray days of rain, I slowly picked my way through the hordes of tourists, whether drawn by warmth...
Venice Biennale Performance Map
Costumes & Choreography: Reid Bartelme
MRPJ: What is a costume? What does it do? REID BARTELME: A costume is an element of performance that aids in the separation of audience from performer. It is a...
Festival: Ponderosa History: Community Connect
The German dance retreat Ponderosa, tucked away from Berlin in a village on the border of Poland, is a community space unlike many others. Developed and run by expat Stephanie...
Black Box / White Cube
In this installment of “Black Box / White Cube: Six Sides, Typologically Distinct,” choreographer and performer Adrienne Truscott talks with visual artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty about their approaches to gender...
Datebook
1973 I am born! 1979-1993 I went to Brearley, a fancy blue-blood Upper East Side school in New York where I started doing plays because I was a good reader-out-loud....
Stolen Article: The Frozen Choreographer
Boris Charmatz will be the guest choreographer at this year's Avignon festival. Laurent Goumarre gives us a portrait of this atypical figure. He needs few words to sum up what...
The High Marks 2012-2013
THE HIGH MARKS 2012-2013 Artists name the most significant works of the season. niv Acosta, Dance/Performance Artist ...Too Freedom..., Adrienne Truscott, The Kitchen, NYC Macro Men , Tess Dworman, Center...
Conversations: Dancing Downtown in the 1990s
These interviews came out of the thesis I wrote for my MFA in 2008. I wanted to write about my experience of the dance culture in the early 1990s in...
Centerfold: Omagbitse Omagbemi
“For me being on stage is about allowing myself to be open to all possibilities. Letting the unknown surprise you and realizing that you are alive with every breath. This...
Introduction: Zeena Parkins Portfolio
Sound can act as a support system or a perfume. It can be a porous substance to move through or a raft like structure to float upon. Sound does not...
Interview: Zeena Parkins with Seth Cluett
Zeena Parkins in conversation with Seth Cluett Seth Cluett: Did you play harp in high school as well as piano? Zeena Parkins: Yes, and I also danced. Seth: Did you...
Collaborating with Zeena
In Choreography, a Prologue for the Apocalypse of Understanding, Get Ready!, our second project together, we (myself, Zeena, the performers, and Thomas Dunn, the lighting designer) treated our mediums (light,...
Zeena Parkins and the Play of Translation and Response
“No one ever lived more from day to day than I, or was more dependent on chance. It is the inescapable chain of events that has brought me to this...
Complete Oeuvre and Performance History
Complete Oeuvre Sirens and Silences Work Resumed on the Tower (RE Records), 1983. Collab. w/ News from Babel. Current Trends in Racism in America (Sound Aspects), 1985. Collab. w/ Butch...
Reprint: Strange Fruit
I got the No New York record when I was at Bard College, and it blew my mind,” improvising harpist Zeena Parkins exclaims, recalling her first brush with the late...
Costumes & Choreography: Jmy James Kidd
I appreciate art making because it is inherently transparent and reflective. I look inside the choices made in a work of art to see both the person making it and...