May 2001 BAMcinematek 2001 Spring Season 651 ARTS Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra BAM Spring Season sponsor: PH il iP M ORRIS ~lAG(8Ill COMPANIES INC. Contents • May 2001 The Beat Goes On 8 DanceAfrica returns to BAM, under the ebullient vision and supervision of Chuck Davis. A photo gallery. Cries and Whispers 18 Renowned director Ingmar Bergman directs a haunting production of Strinberg's The Ghost Sonata , which comes to BAM next month . By Stan Schwartz Judson Joy 22 Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project soars with Judson Church's postmodern legacy. By Susan Yung Program 25 Upcoming Events 47 BAMdirectory 5 1 The Ghost Sonata Photo by Bengt Wanselius B1\ 1\/1 Co\/or 1\ rtict Andres Serrano was born in New York City in 1950 and studied art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1967 to 1969. His artworks have been exhibited in galleries and institutions around the world. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions, including "Body and Soul," a traveling exhibition seen in Norway, Germany, and England, and mid-career retrospectives at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Philadelphia and the Groninger MuseumfThe Netherlands. His photographs have been included in many group shows, with recent exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City; the Serpentine Art Gallery, London; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. He is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York City. Andres Serrano BAM Photography Portfolio Hooded Warbler II, The Andres Serrano image on the cover is from BAM 's new Photography 2000 Portfolio. The portfolio features 11 images donated to BAM by Richard 20" x 24" Avedon , Adam Fuss, Ralph Gibson, Nan Goldin, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Courtesy Paula Cooper Annie Leibovitz, Jack Pierson , Richard Prince, Andres Serrano, Cindy Gallery, New York Sherman, and William Wegman. All prints are 20 x 24 inches, signed and For BAMart informa­ numbered in an edition of 40. They will be delivered to buyers in custom­ tion, contact Deborah made linen portfolio boxes designed especially for BAM by John Cheim. The Bowie at pre-publication initial offering is $15,000 + tax and shipping. The portfolio is 718.636.4138 published by Serge Sorokko Gallery of New York and San Francisco. 4 If you're in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, this Memorial Day weekend and suddenly feel as if you've traveled to Africa, don't be surprised- it's BAM's annual DanceAfrica festival. > Chuck Davis (above) Photo by Dan Rest Ndere Troupe of Uganda (right) 8 Ndere Troupe of Uganda BAM buzzes with activity in DanceAfrica, a weekend-long celebration of African/ African-American dance and culture. Now in its 24th year, DanceAfrica has grown into the country's largest celebration of African dance. Chuck Davis and DanceAfrica were recently cited on a list of "America's Irre­ placeable Dance Treasures: the First 100." Respect for tradition and ancestry is present throughout, from the opening libation cere­ mony to the honor shown to the Council of Elders by the younger generations. Performing in DanceAfrica 2001 in BAM 's Howard Gilman Opera House are the Ndere Troupe from Uganda, Sabar Ak Ru Afriq, Forces of Nature, and the BAM Restora­ tion/DanceAfrica Ensemble. Ndere brings Uganda's traditional, glorious spectacle of dance, drumming, and music. Many of the dances emanate from rituals and celebra- Ndere Troupe of Uganda 10 tions, such as hunting, courtship, and the second work with the Jahrama Ndiaye En­ honoring of the king. Sabar Ak Ru Afriq will semble of drums. Forces of Nature offers a present Revival , featuring its own unique dynamic blend of traditional movement with style of allegorical dance, and will perform a breathtaking contemporary theatrical ele- The Sabar Ak Ru Afriq company 14 The Sabar Ak Ru Afriq company ments. Always a crowd favorite , the youth­ fully exuberant BAM Restoration! DanceAfrica Ensemble will interact with dancers from Ndere in special dances for females and males. Outside, the DanceAfrica Bazaar bustles with the commerce of carved artworks, daz­ zling dashikis, and freshly sliced coconut and sugar cane. To round out the festival , BAMcinematek at BAM Rose Cinemas will offer a selection of related films, including the highly acclaimed Faat-Kine (Senegal) by Ousmane Sembene. BAMcafe Live will present live music as part of the festival. True to its recently earned title, OanceAfrica is an irreplaceable dance treasure and a joyous celebration of all facets of African culture .- Susan Yung Forces of Nature 16 The Royal Dramatic Thea tre of August Strindberg may be best known in Amer­ ica for such angst-ridden dramas of searing psy­ Sweden brings August Strindberg's chological real ism as Miss Julie and The Father, The Ghost Sonata to BAM under but essentia l to the great Swedish playwright's output are his later dream plays. These are the distinguished direction of film evocative, symbolist fantasies shot through with and theater dynamo Ingmar Buddhist touches. At the same time these dream plays reflect Strindberg's growing interest in the Bergman. By Stan Schwartz 18th-century Swedish theologian Emanuel Swe­ denborg and his notions of spiritual correspon­ dence. Strindberg's works in this category include the epic three-part To Damascus as well as the aptly titled and equally epic A Dream Play. On a far more compact scale, there is The Ghost Sonata, one of Strindberg's so-called late "chamber plays" written in 1907 for his own Intimate Theatre . With striking economy of lan­ guage and its startling mix of lyricism and grotes­ querie, The Ghost Sonata reveals Strindberg as a true master of the dream play idiom. Dream plays are very tricky things-to write, of course, but perhaps even more so to direct. How Bergman (left) at work Photo by Bengt Wa nsellius do you stage events in a credible way when logi- 18 cal cause-and-effect and psychological realism are jettisoned, or at least, substantially blurred? How do you maintain dramatic tension if much of the proceedings seems dreamily inexplicable? Enter Ingmar Bergman, arguably as much a leg­ end, at this point, as Strindberg himself. Of course, Bergman is known to all as one of the great film directors. But for more than five decades, he's also shown himself to be a master conjurer of theater magic, principa lly at Stock­ holm's Royal Dramatic Theatre (known as Dra­ maten) , where his most recent production, Schiller's Mary Stuart, has been playing to packed houses since its premiere last December. There's no disputing that these two towering fig­ ures in Swed ish cultura l history are closely linked. The influence of Strindberg on Bergman's film work is formidable and, conversely, one can­ not overstate Bergman's particular affinity for Strindberg's plays, not just the real istic plays with their fierce psychological warfare, but also for the otherworld Ii ness of the dream plays. After all, what is a dream if not the idiosyncratic pre- The Ghost Sonata Photo by Bengt Wanselius sentation of pure, concentrated feelings expressed through a peculiar constellation of pure, concentrated imagery? And what better way to describe the entire Bergman oeuvre? Over the years, Bergman has staged many Strindberg plays at Dramaten, and it's significant that the current production of The Ghost Sonata marks the director's fourth inquiry into its mys­ teries. Bergman has a habit of continually retum­ ing to the same play, but it would be wrong to characterize this as an instance of someone "try­ ing to get it right." Rather, it's the mark of a mas­ ter interpreter who feels compelled to continually explore further. Bergman first staged The Ghost Sonata in 1941 as an amateur production, with understandably problematic results (the director was 23), but version number three , at Dramaten in 1973, was ground breaking in its treatment of the play's difficult final scene. The current pro­ duction further crystallizes Bergman's interpreta­ tion of Strindberg's enigmatic text into one seamless, haunting vision. On paper, The Ghost Sonata sounds fairly sim­ ple, if strange. In the first of its three scenes- The Ghost Sonata Photo by Bengt Wanselius 19 Mummy-wife, who emerges from her closet, clucking like a parrot. Meanwhile, the Student is falling in love with the beautiful young Girl who mayor may not be the Colonel's daughter. In the play's last and most troubling and mystical scene, set in the so-called Hyacinth Room, the Student, now irreversibly poisoned by the household's menacing air, con­ fronts the Girl and reveals her as the horribly scarred and diseased creature she really is. The truth proves too much for her to bea r. That's the story. The challenge is to transform it into a coherent dream-vision- in the heightened, quasi-mystical sense of the term. The process seems to come remarkably easy for Bergman, himself a Sunday Child (a detail of fundamental importance to such films as Fanny and Alexan­ der and Sunday's Children). The director under­ stands that achieving a convincing dream-state onstage has nothing to do with hokey effects and everything to do with mining the play's relentless inner logic and filling it out with an emotionally charged hyperrealism . To further the effect, Bergman employs a deliberate and elegant cho­ reography to underscore the play's musicality. All the while, the director punctuates the pro­ ceedings with small , salient details not spelled out by Strindberg but logically extrapolated from his world: a maid emptying a pail of steamy excrement, Hummel's hand bleeding from advanced psoriasis (Strindberg suffered from The Ghost Sonata Photo by Bengt Wa nselius the same), that same hand leaving a trace of "movements," if you like-the young Student blood as it caresses a white marble statue of a meets up with the sinister, wheelchair-bound old beautiful woman.