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Lucy Gellman |
Jun 24, 2016 7:02 am
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Erin Baiano Photo
In “First Word,” a silent solo that follows Tyondai Braxton‘s “ArpRec1,” acclaimed dancer Wendy Whelan rediscovers her body: Her arms, that have carried so many classical performances, are now unbound. Her long, dextrous torso reaches forward and snaps back. Her legs — how they bend so violently when asked! — delight in new configurations. Even her huge eyes, deeply expressive when they catch the light, convey a profound sort of reeducation. When fellow dancer Brian Brooks joins her onstage for an exercise in impossible synchronicity, it’s all that the audience can do to try to not blink, lest they miss something.
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Lucy Gellman |
Jun 23, 2016 7:07 am
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Erin Baiano Photo
Whelan and Brooks rehearsing.
Wendy Whelan and Brian Brooks have a message for New Haveners: Reinventing yourself should never stop, and should never feel completely comfortable. For Whelan, who gave her pointe shoes to Brooks sometime after retiring from the New York City Ballet (NYCB) two years ago, that sense of self-renewal is vital — and she wants to share it widely, through movement.
While that phase of her career began long before New Haven, there’s now a chapter of it in the Elm City, where she and Brooks arrived earlier this week to familiarize themselves with and rehearse on the Shubert Theater’s well-loved stage. Thursday and Friday night, they will appear there in the world premiere of Some Of A Thousand Words, a collaboration with the New York-based quartet Brooklyn Rider that takes off where Whelan and Brooks’ 2012 project Restless Creature ended. Where Restless Creature, a series of sketches, was danced to Brooklyn Rider’s take on several 20th-century composers, particularly Phillip Glass, Some Of A Thousand Words includes an original composition from the group’s violinist, who will perform onstage with the duo. The performance takes place as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
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Lucy Gellman |
Jun 22, 2016 7:25 am
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Judy Rosenthal Photo
A still from Pied à terre.
Just six or seven minutes into Pied à terre, dancer Yang Hao did something that the audience, bracing for a kinetic performance, may not have expected: He lay down. Prone, pressed right up against the floor as if totally exhausted. As if his body brought with it an immeasurable weight. The room fell into total silence. Everything up to this point had focused in on minute, measured but powerful gestures: the flick and flutter of fingers, clean snapping of wrists, arch of his back against his rolled shoulders. Was this an early admission of defeat, or something else?
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Lucy Gellman |
Jun 16, 2016 7:40 am
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Ellen Crane Photography
Even before the first strains of Kendrick Lamar’s galvanizing “Alright” fell over the stage, company dancers from Abraham.In.Motion were taking a stand, and then some, on the evolving politics of black identity.
Behind them, footage of protests rolled across a linen scrim, priming the audience for what was to come. The video died down as the music ramped up. The dancers’ bodies jerked violently, choppily, as they made their way across the stage. Arms soared upward, long fingers catching in the light. Faces turned toward the audience, then back toward the stage, launching into untethered motion as the number of dancers grew.
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Ifeanyi Awachie |
Jun 6, 2016 1:53 pm
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Ifeanyi Awachie Photo
Bethune.
Michael Bethune and Kejuan Simmons, a.k.a. young rap duo N‑Finity Muzik, paced energetically back and forth in the grass in front of the stage, closing the distance between them and their audience. Multicolored dashikis, hanging in a vendor’s tent, flapped in the breeze. Community members and staff in purple T‑shirts circled the sunny park.
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Lucy Gellman |
May 9, 2016 7:11 am
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Lucy Gellman Photo
Kimbro.
Taking in the sounds of Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps and Arms & Voices as a mist began to fall over Whalley Avenue, pint-sized Westvillian Ava Kimbro and her mom Marjorie made a decision: stick it out, at least until Ava could get a big, blooming flower painted on her face. After all, this was their third Westville Artwalk, and they weren’t going to be that easily deterred. They inched toward the front of the line, where face artist Lauren Wilson was hard at work with her palettes, brushes, and stencils.
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Lucy Gellman |
May 5, 2016 2:52 pm
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Lucy Gellman Photo
Lasley.
Marsh.
The Great Give marathon is over and WNHH radio programming is back to normal! Today’s programs delve into the daily duties of Connecticut’s secretary of the state, ask what performative film looks like in the year 2016, tease out the difference between contemporary and classical dance, and more.
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David Sepulveda |
Apr 11, 2016 7:00 am
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DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS
Assistant Principal Mia Edmonds- Duff performs in Soul Sisters of the Past.
After watching a rousing dance performance of “Soul Sisters of the Past” at this year’s annual Talent Haven fundraiser at Co-op Arts and Humanities High School, New Haven school board member and event emcee Edward Joyner told the audience he was inspired to start a male version of the group: The Bengay Dancers.
Today’s broadcasts on WNHH radio uncover new secrets about the artist Andy Warhol, explore mental health in the black community, try to get to the bottom of messy relationships, and more.
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Lucy Gellman |
Jan 22, 2016 8:12 am
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Lucy Gellman Photos
Sylvia Heart.
Sylvia Heart was rocking it at center stage, squaring a yellow-bustiered chest toward the audience as Pink’s “This Used to Be A Fun House”, came fabulously to life, blaring through the speakers.
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Lucy Gellman |
Nov 16, 2015 2:22 pm
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John Hodgkiss Photo
When it begins with the story of Perseus, slayer of Medusa and unknowing fulfiller of bleak prophecies, Refuse The Hour presents itself as the kind of thing that will revel in narrative. A young William Kentridge and his father are on a train, itself barreling through space and time. His father has opened a book of mythologies — maybe Hamilton’s, maybe someone else’s — and begins to unwrap the story step by step, starting with the original prophecy from the Oracle of Apollo that Perseus, who is not yet born, will kill his father.
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Thomas Breen |
Nov 12, 2015 1:03 pm
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Photo by Rosie Kar, PhD
Angela Bowen (left), Jennifer Abod, and poet Kitty Tsui
In The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen, which will be playing this Thursday night as one of the opening movies in the 2015 New Haven International Film Festival, director Jennifer Abod documents the many challenges and triumphs of a woman who continually sought to reinvent herself as she came to know and embrace each aspect of a complicated identity. Indeed, the film is a sort of love letter — a well-deserved and carefully made one — to the New Haven dancer, feminist, civil rights activist and scholar offers a loving portrait of a life defined by difficult transitions, hard-won success and lasting personal and professional influence.
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Lucy Gellman |
Nov 11, 2015 2:51 pm
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Billy Fischer’s blonde dreadlocks swung wildly as he placed one near-blackened bare foot in front of the other and wound around the room. “Now swing you neighbor!” he shouted. “Now swing your partner!”
He laughed, a wide grin spreading across his face.
Is New Haven suffering from a paucity of live music? Mitchell Young, proponent of the #gscia campaign, argues that it definitely is. Dean Correia, who has used the scene to nurture a now-burgeoning career, disagrees. Their conflicting opinions came head to head on episode of Alisa Bowen’s “Culture Cocktail” on WNHH radio.
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Lucy Gellman |
Oct 26, 2015 7:39 am
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Lucy Gellman Photos
In the dimly lit but buzzing back room of Kelly’s Gastropub, Tiffany Ulrich was midway through a pint of Front Porch IPA, describing to a handful of listeners how it was made. Noelle Shipley went with the Two Roads Hefewiesen. Sunny Khaira was heading for the same brewery’s Honeyspot Road. Alison Graham stuck with Sam Adams, deep in a conversation with two new friends as she sipped and sniffed her drink to show how an IPA smelled different from say, a pilsner.
When Billy Discrosta decided to set up shop in New Haven after seven years as a cruise ship performer, teaching voice and performance lessons in the city, he had one student in a little room, and wasn’t quite sure any sort of business would take off. Now that number is steadily growing, and he doesn’t plan on going anywhere else soon.
Alisa Bowens has a vision: across the Green, a hundred bodies rocking and swaying to the same song, dancing their way towards a healthier lifestyle.
Some are hand in hand, swinging each other wildly as they laugh and chatter about the day’s events around town. Others move to the beat alone, lifting their arms over their heads and perfecting some fancy footwork. Everyone, she imagines, is having a good deal of fun.
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Lucy Gellman |
Jun 29, 2015 1:10 pm
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“Can anyone tell me what this is called?” asked Issa Coulibaly, hoisting his hollow and hefty drum high enough for the audience to see it. He turned it slowly at his waist, taut ropes shifting at its sides.
A small but steady voice rose from the middle of the tent. Might it be a djembe? it wondered aloud.
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Lucy Gellman |
Jun 26, 2015 11:44 am
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Courtesy Machine de Cirque
“We are going to survive no matter what happens,” crackled a Cronkitean voice to the half-dark of the University Theater, the determined squeal of a radio signal falling silent after several seconds. Cloaked behind two long, dimly lit curtains, a number of silhouettes leaned in, listening for any last, surprise utterances before the world around them quieted completely.
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Sebastian Medina-Tayac |
Jun 25, 2015 1:05 pm
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Ann Garrett Robinson sent her daughter to Bowen/Peters School of Dance, where for two decades the iron-willed Angela Bowen (pictured) empowered black girls not only to sweep statewide competitions, but also to excel in other aspects of their lives for two decades.
