Leslie Allison
LESLIE ALLISON is a writer and musician. She composes choral music for performance collaborations with Francis Weiss Rabkin, and her illustrated chapbook of poetry about Martha Stewart, MARTHA, will be released in April 2015 by Ugly Duckling Presse.
DANCE AND PROCESS
Kim Brandt, Alan Calpe, Rebecca Patek, and Gillian Walsh, curated by Sarah Michelson
By Leslie Allison
The audience is still filing into the theater when Kim Brandt’s troupe of 24 dancers—amongst them the other three choreographers on the bill—collapse into a mountain of bodies onstage.
DEAN MOSS: johnbrown
By Leslie AllisonThick, white stripes are painted on the black back wall of The Kitchen’s stage—immediately evoking both the American flag and the slats of prison. Dancer Cassie Mey rises silently from her seated post and begins a transfixing, balletic solo.
APPROACHING THE POLE
Gerard & Kelly's P.O.L.E. at the New Museum
By Leslie Allison
Pole dancing is a form generally excluded from the critical discourse surrounding dance, and—though increasingly less so—dance is a form historically excluded from the critical discourse of fine arts and the museum. It is thrilling then to experience Gerard & Kelly’s P.O.L.E. (People, Objects, Language, Exchange), a series of events and performances at the New Museum that shrug off these distinctions and allow pole dance to exist both as Dance and as Fine Art, with capitals D, F, and A, respectively.
Reflections on Seeing and Saying
By Leslie AllisonSwiss choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis’s From A to B via C orbits around a brief reconstruction of the 17th-century Diego Velazquez painting “Venus at her Mirror.”
In Conversation
On and with Effie Bowen
By Leslie AllisonEffie Bowen looks people in the eye. She draws her viewers with her, deep into mysterious, glittering atmospheres. Performing her own choreography or that of regular collaborators like Jen Rosenblit and Kim Brandt, Bowen’s projects tend toward performance art.
Additional Dancers of Note
by the Rail's Dance SectionA note from the Editor: In the same spirit of the Music section’s Undiscovered Lands, we’ve dedicated October to dancers who we believe deserve greater recognition. Spotlighted here are 16 artists who have captivated us with their virtuosity and inventiveness, their vulnerability and grace. By no means an exhaustive list, we’re excited to begin the conversation.
