Encorethe Performing Arts Magazine I ~Ambili Contents April 2006
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April 2006 2006 Spring Season Clayton Brothers, SptInf TIme Fmh, (detail) 2006 BAM 2006 $prI1II Seaon Is sponsoted by: Bloomberg ENCOREThe Performing Arts Magazine I ~AMbili Contents April 2006 Village Voice Critics' Fave 2005 Films BAMcinematek's annual Village Voice Film Critics Poll series Film review excerpts 26 Kammer/Kammer A Q&A with choreographer William Forsythe 28 Kammer/Kammer Photo: Armin Linke BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble Celebrating its tenth anniversary by Indira Etwaroo 30 Program 37 Upcoming Events 47 BAM Directory 48 BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble Photo: Jack Vartoogian Cover Artists Rob and Christian Clayton grew up in Aurora, CO, and graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 1988 and 1991. Both concurrently served on the faculty at Art Center and now lecture worldwide. Their book, The Most Special Day of My Life, was published by La Luz de Jesus Press in 2003. In 2004, the Clay tons exhibited with Mackey Ga llery in Houston, TX and at Art Statements, Art Basel Miami Beach. Their work is in many public collections including The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (Madison, WI) where their installation Tim House will be on view in April, 2006. The Clayton Brothers' next solo exhibition will be at Bellwether (New York) in May 2006. Rob and Christian Clayton are brothers and collabora tors, and the best of friends. Collectively they work as the Clayton Brothers, Cover: Clayton Brothers, producing dynamic, improvisational, yet purposeful and humane paintings, Rob Clayton and Christian Clayton installations and mixed-media works on paper. The Clayton Brothers' Spring Time Fresh, 2006 Mixed media on canvas approach to art-making is a collaborative process: one brother begins a 60" x 84" painting, then hands it off to the other, then back again, and so on. Their art is narrative, autobiographical, uncanny, and intuitive, CUlled from the secret Proceeds from the sale of this work benefit BAM. For information on this language of shared childhood and sprinkled with the sour irony of truth. and other BAMart offerings, contact Rath er than nostalgic musings about youth, the Clayton Brothers' recollec Neil Freeman at 718.636.4101 or tions of the past are revealed through the tainted lens of adulthood. Th eir [email protected] images speak through illuminated memories; visual vernaculars lifted from folklore, mythology, urban legend, sound bytes, and info-graphics. 25 Village Voice Best of 2005 BAMcinematek presents Village Voice: Best of 2005, April 6- 23, a series of selections from the prestigious The Village Voice Take 7 Film Critics Poll, The weekly newspaper's annual poll enlists film critics from across the country to pick the best films of the year plus outstanding undistributed works, Following are excerpts of selected reviews by Voice critics, Full info & schedule at BAMorg Funny Ha Ha , dir, Andrew Bujalski, Apr 7 Most of the ha-ha's in Funny Ha Ha are not exactly funny: Andrew Bujalski's debut feature is foremost a squirming comedy of recognition, This Boston ultra-indie-which Bujalski wrote, directed , edited, and co-starred in-slouches through the blurry limbo of post-collegiate existence, a period at once ephemeral and cruelly decisive, It opens with 23-year-old heroine Mamie (Kate Dollenmayer) stumbling into a tattoo parlor, where the proprietor refuses to ink her because she's plastered, This movie about the fear of the permanent-and the barely conscious, unwittingly reckless processes behind life-altering decisions-might be subtitled The Possibly Indelible Adventures of a Desultory Twentysomething, Shot on 16mm in an unassuming pseudo-verite, Funny Ha Ha is less offhand than it first appears, '" A movie full of goofy-cute people conducting profoundly casual and casually profound conversations littered with dangling sentences and pockets of dead air, it's seemingly designed to elicit a collective c'est moi from twentysomething hipster enclaves across the country, But Bujalski doesn't just reproduce the halting, roundabout patterns of actual talk-he has a keen ear for the defensive and passive-aggressive uses of inarticulate speech, "Bujalski's film thrums with ambivalent dread-underlying the characters' inert indecision is a reluctance to let the rest of their lives begin , not least for fear that it might prove an undifferentiated haze, The final scene is as close to perfection as any Amerindie has come in recent memory-in a single reaction of Mamie's, we see a small but definite shift in perspective; abruptly, Bujalski stops the film, as if there's nothing more to say, It's a wonderful parting shot for a movie that locates the momentous in the mundane, - Dennis Lim The Intruder, dir. Claire Denis, Apr 8 Claire Denis' tactile tone poems are premised on the primacy of sensory experience " , Her latest feature, The Intruder, is a decisive breakthrough-her most poetic and primal film to date, as thrilling as it is initially baffling, '" Denis claims as inspiration French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's L'lntrus, an account of his heart transplant that ponders the existential implications of this corporeal intrusion, Denis, more intuitive than analytical, applies the text's pungent sense of internal foreignness-along with its push-pull of encroachment and rejection- not just to the human body but also to the natural world, border crossings, post-colonial dynamics, fathers and 26 Village Voice Best of 2005 sons. For what is essentially an adaptation of a metaphor, The Intruder is almost shockingly concrete. Its intractable physica lity owes much to Michel Subor, a man's-man presence in the lead role, and the imposing landscapes in which he's often framed. A weathered recluse, Subor's Lou is lives with his beloved huskies in a mountain cabin near the Franco-Swiss border. Nancy terms his transplant a "metaphysical adventure"-and the phrase perfectly describes Denis' film as well. With a new ticker, Louis escapes to the other side of the world, in search of a new life-or a place to die. The Intruder imagines the post transplant condition as a simultaneous rebirth and afterlife .... The title most obviously refers to Louis' grafted organ, a stranger within, but also to the dreams that come with it- hauntings that invade his consciousness so completely that we and he can no longer tell the difference . ... Cinematographer Agnes Godard ensures that almost every image leaves a retinal imprint.. This mysterious object may be Denis' most gorgeous film (which is saying something), but more than that, it's a fearless filmmaker'S boldest experiment yet, a direct line from her unconscious to yours . - Dennis Lim Far Side of the Moon dir. Robert Lepage, Apr 12 An inventive adaptation of a one-man stage play into a lavish, hi-def, big-screen production, the fifth feature from actor-playwright-director Robert Lepage is easily his best since his masterful debut, Le Confessional. Far Side of the Moon is likewise set in his hometown of Quebec City, but rather than piling on the Hitchcock references, Lepage offers a sly, semi-autobiographical lesson in the motion of bodies, on and above the Earth . Employing plenty of the director's signature seamless pans across time and space, Lepage lyrically fuses childhood memories with present-day sibling riva lry, archival footage with crisp video. Far Side of the Moon is also the first time filmmaker Lepage has directed the actor Lepage, and here he even stars as brothers .... Both brothers are obstinate in equa l measure-Philippe, though, is a cancer survivor, and hence more bitter-and Lepage patiently brings the two mirror-image narcissists in line, like planets on parallel orbits. Reworking his own raw material, Lepage spins a rich, moving film that acknowledges humanity's power to break out of Earth's daily gravity; in the process, he leaves audiences floating. - Mark Peranson Land of the Dead , di r. George Rome ro, Apr 13 Where chaos reigned in Night of the Living Dead, Land of the Dead shows an institutionalized disaster. A mindless zombie underclass controls the countryside. The super-rich are holed up in gated high-rises while a demoralized service class huddles in shanty slums, venturing out to the dead zone to loot provisions from the stenches (whom they distract with firework displays). A few loudmouths talk revolution; then, led by an "evolved" corpse, the stenches march on the city ... Set almost entirely at night and accompanied by a clanking industrial score, Land of the Dead is populated by an urgent gaggle of posturing loudmouths-notably John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, and Asia Argento-all of whom are upstaged by the reproachful horde of zombie extras and their anguished leader, Eugene Clark. Far stronger than Spielberg's post- 9!ll War of the Worlds, against which it opened in early summer, Romero's post-apocalyptic vision only came into its own with Hurricane Katrina. Suddenly, the movie's images of fire, flood , looting, evacuation, and shortages were abundantly present in Bush's America-if not yet the exploding heads and gooey entrail-chawing. Watching CNN, it was impossible not to appreciate Romero's warning that the fantasy of social cohesion is the first victim of catastrophe. - J. Hoberman 27 Kammer/Kammer Q&A with choreographer William Forsythe, The Forsythe Company, about Kammer/Kammer Rebecca Groves, dramaturg, The Forsythe Company: A chaotic scene is already underway when the audience enters the theater in Kammer/Kammer. The space-haphazardly strewn with moveable walls, painted flats and video equipment-appears to be a rehearsal studio, film set, and performance stage all in one. Dancers practice moves and improvise. Tony Rizzi runs around joking and chatting up the audience. What is the purpose of all this stage activity before he announces, "Curtain, up!"? William Forsythe: What seems in the opening scene to be unrehearsed chaos is actually a very calculated set-up.