Author Archives: Christina

Big Apple Walkers Walk-a-thon at Westbeth

GREENWICH HOUSE IS STEPPING UP AT WESTBETH
TOUR THE HISTORIC WEST VILLAGE TOGETHER AS WE WALK OUR WAY TO BETTER HEALTH.

Please come and join us at Westbeth Older Adult Center as we participate in the Big Apple Walk-A-Thon.

Tuesdays at 11:30am
Westbeth Older Adult Center
155 Bank Street (enter through courtyard)
between West and Washington Sts.

Info: Donna Coles dcoles@greenwichhouse.org

Advance Registration: Laura Laura@greenwichhouse.org

WALK-A- THON ENDS IN NOVEMBER WITH MOST STEPS WINNER FOR EACH BOROUGH.

Beth Soll: Earthly Dances in Troubled Times

L-R – Beth Soll, photo credit: Lazslo Toth; Beth Soll and Abby Dias in the film, “Two Red Solos, A Formal Response.” Cinematographer: Ethan Mass; Brianna Lux, photo credit: Jacob Lux.

Saturday May 7, 2022 at 8pm
Sunday May 8, 2022 at 8pm

BETH SOLL & COMPANY
The Westbeth Community Room at Westbeth Center for the Arts
55 Bethune Street (corner of Bethune St. and Washington St.), NYC 10014

TICKETS: sollearthlydances.brownpapertickets.com
Phone: 212-927-0476
Tickets are also available at the box office on the day of performance.

Website: Beth Soll and Company

Choreographer/Dancer Beth Soll, Artistic Director of Beth Soll & Company, will present Earthly Dances in Troubled Times, a concert of four new works and a film at Westbeth Center for the Arts, 55 Bethune Street, NYC. The program will take place on Saturday May 7 and Sunday May 8 at 8pm.
Tickets: sollearthlydances.brownpapertickets.com Tickets are also available at the box office on the day of performance.

Phone: 212-927-0476

*FULL PROGRAM BELOW.

Celebrating the 50-year age difference between herself and her dancers, the two evenings will feature the premiere of Red Duet, a live spin-off of Ms. Soll’s film, Two Red Solos, A Formal Response, which will also be shown. Both works were created in response to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dancers appear in the film in two separate solos, one for company member Abby Dias and another for dancer/choreographer Beth Soll, in separate frames or socially distanced in one frame. Filming took place in 2020 outside, amidst the greenery of Hudson River Park. The vibrant red of the costumes contrast with the lush green of the park. In Red Duet, the live version of the film, Ms. Soll shares the stage with Ms. Dias, using geometric clarity and a thoughtful balance of athleticism and subtle, gesture-based movement.

The other works to be shown echo aspects of the film, including its movement vocabulary, the tension between separation and connection, and the co-existence of formal restraint and emotional expressivity.

According to dance critic Deborah Jowitt, who viewed the film in preview: “What makes this duet especially interesting—even moving—are the subtle distinctions between the two performers. Hard to believe though it is, Soll is about fifty years older than Dias. If they raise both hands to frame their faces, or lean down to touch the ground, they seem like twins, but they approach certain larger moves in individual ways…. Two red solos. The performers’ responses to the title may be formal, and the two of them never touch. But their simultaneous solos seethe with the implications of togetherness and isolation that at present shape our daily lives.” – Arts Journal, Read more.

Seating is limited; health and safety protocols, currently in transition, will be in effect. Protocols as per NYC guidelines to be determined.

* FULL PROGRAM (subject to change):

Spell II (premiere), Solo for Beth Soll. This dance grew out of two earlier solos, one from 1979 and another from 2016. It suggests a sense of immersion in a private, almost visionary place of sensuous introspection, expressed in both kinetic dancing and idiosyncratic gestural movement accompanied by the evocative music of Boston’s celebrated jazz musician Stan Strickland and the equally accomplished Josh Rosen.

Red Duet (premiere) a live version of the film, “Two Red Solos, A Formal Response.” The choreography departs from the restrictions of the separate frames in the film and allows for more intimacy between the dancers than in the film, as well as a sense of vigorous, athletic freedom. Music: prepared tape of nature sounds by the film’s cinematographer Ethan Mass.

Wellspring (premiere), Solo for Abby Dias. The choreography of this piece makes references to the other dances in the program and focuses on Abby’s youthful, hopeful energy, her natural dramatic sense, and her technical skill. The dance is accompanied by the highly original, evocative music by experimental jazz artist, Jeff Platz.

Folk Dance: A Restless Fugue. Duet for Abby Dias and Brianna Lux. This dance makes reference to the traditional folk dance of Eastern Europe and to the embroidered patterns on folk costumes. The dancers move from upstage to downstage with one movement pattern and then move back upstage with another pattern, sometimes deviating from their straight paths. Parts of the dance are performed in unison, but much of it is performed as a fugue or canon, in which one person starts, and the other dancer later joins in with different movement. As the dance develops, the dancers deviate from the rigid lines of the embroidery and dance together or in opposition, which both enriches and undermines the conventions of folk dance and evokes a sense of the aesthetic power, passionate emotions, and suggestions of conflict that are often implicit in traditional dances. Music for the dance is by Param Vir, a British composer originally from India and performed live by noted New York pianist Kathryn Woodard.

Film: Two Red Solos, A Formal Response – the dancers appear in separate frames or socially distanced in one frame. The film was shot outside amidst the greenery of Hudson River Park. For the film Soll worked to reveal and celebrate the 50-year age difference between her and Abby Dias and to locate it within a geometric clarity and thoughtful balance of athleticism and subtle, gesture-based movement. The vibrant red of the costume’s contrasts with the lush green of the park. Cinematographer: Ethan Mass. Editing: Ethan Mass and Beth Soll.

ABOUT BETH SOLL

Beth Soll is the Artistic Director of Dance Projects, Inc./Beth Soll & Company. Beth Soll began her dance training in the U.S. with the Romanian dancer Iris Barbura and continued abroad in Germany and Switzerland. She has performed with many dance companies and has frequently collaborated with artists in all disciplines. She received a bachelor’s degree in modern dance from the U. of Wisconsin and later a Ph.D from Boston University. With her company, which was formed in 1977, she has performed in many U.S. locations and abroad in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Romania, and Russia. She has been honored with many grants and awards from the NEA and from state, civic, and private sources. Since the 1960s, she has been teaching people in varied contexts and in universities, including MIT, where she directed the Dance Program for 20 years, the Harvard Summer Dance Center, Boston University, UC Santa Barbara, Hofstra University, Manhattanville College, and the University of Wisconsin. Her book, Will Modern Dance Survive? Lessons to be Learned from the Pioneers and Unsung Visionaries of Modern Dance was published in 2002.
Bethsollandcompany.org

Now in her late seventies and still dancing, Soll’s very individual style has earned enthusiastic praise throughout the years:

“Gentle, unusual, luminous…iconic purity…thoughtful, beguiling dance.”
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

“This is dance at its most magical, mystical, mysterious.”
Cerina Survant, Chicago Reader

“A distinguished, absorbing, and deeply satisfying concert.”
David Vaughan, Dance Magazine

“…volatile, thrilling, both kinesthetically and spiritually, and altogether magnificent.”
Christine Temin, The Boston Globe

Claire Rosenfeld: The Changing Earth

Monotypes by Claire Rosenfeld

Opening: Tuesday, April 5, 6-8PM

Revelation Gallery
224 Waverly Place
April 5-28, 2022
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 11AM-3PM (and by appointment, contact the artist)
(Closed April 14 and 18)

The Changing Earth focuses on phenomena dramatically shifting our physical reality: forest fires, melting glaciers, and erupting volcanos. These changes to the planet are real, symbolic, and visually profound.

As a longtime painter of dramatic natural images, Claire Rosenfeld’s work draws attention to the rhythmic movement of nature, evoking specific moments of time and place.
The exhibit’s monotypes (unique painted prints) utilize both ink and encaustic (wax and pigment). Many are painted into or collaged, with the subject being suggested rather than stated.
Claire Rosenfeld is a New York City-based visual artist working in painting and experimental printmaking. Her figurative expressionist work utilizes imagery that moves between figuration and abstraction. Additional work can be viewed on her website: www.clairerosenfeld.net

“Claire Rosenfeld’s paintings and drawings have the brilliance of Fauve colors and glare with the stark emotion of German Expressionism, but most of all, they distinguish themselves with a complexity and evolution of mood that are strictly individual… Her way to apply paint—bright over dark over bright—in some instances—shows how she reaches into the darkness to pull out the light. And just as the colors come at the viewer in flashes, the figures gesture with poignancy. The climate of anxiety and the anticipation resolve themselves in the bright/dark stillness where time is congealed: the dynamics are becoming more important than knowing what will take place. Medievalists felt this way—anticipating the place being not mine, but becoming its own.”
Laura Sue Schwartz, Arts Magazine

Claire Rosenfeld, a New York City-based painter, holds an MFA from Queens College, a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and studied at the New York Studio School. Her paintings, drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries, nationally and abroad in numerous solo and group shows. Rosenfeld has been awarded artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Millay Colony for the Arts, Ossabaw Island Project, and others, in the United States, and Karolyi Foundation, France; Fundacion Valparaiso, Spain; and Fundacion Centro Cultural, Dominican Republic. She has taught at the Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts, New York University, and Silvermine School of Art, amongst others.

Spirit of Spring: Festival of the Arts

Come celebrate with Music, Dance, Poetry . . .
SAVE THE DATE – Sunday, March 20, 11am-2pm on Pier 46 
(at Hudson River Park & Charles Street, NYC)

At 11:33am join in RINGING of BELLS for PEACE @ the moment of the Vernal Equinox, led by City Council member Erik Bottcher.

The Villager
Celebrate the coming of spring at Hudson River Pier 46/h2>
March. It’s balmy one day and frigid another. It’s a month of fickle weather inching toward spring.
Spring officially arrives on March 20 at 11:33 am, when day and night are equal across the planet. This Sunday the temperature might possibly be in the 60s.
On that day, Westbeth multi-media artist SuZen with a cadre of friends is hosting a spring celebration on Pier 46, Hudson River and Charles, to usher in the season of rebirth.

“It’s a time of renewal, new beginnings,” SuZen says, “especially, after two years of the pandemic. It’s a time to celebrate life and one another.”

From 11 am to 2 pm, The Spirit of Spring Festival of the Arts will feature music with the Westbeth Jammers, dance, and poetry.
At the exact moment of spring’s entrance, peace bell ringings will take place led by the neighborhood’s newly elected council member Erik Bottcher. The public is invited to make “joyful noise”.

“Now more than ever do we want to think about peace,” she says, reminding neighbors that the ringing of bells for peace will be at the exact moment of the vernal equinox, 11:33 a.m.

Read the entire article by Tequila Minsky HERE

David Greenspan in The Patsy

Transport Group and I are reviving my 2011 solo rendition of Barry Conner’s 1925 romantic comedy The Patsy – a Cinderella story concerning a lovelorn girl smitten with her sister’s fiancé. A conventional comedy unconventionally interpreted. My collaboration with Transport Group went like gangbusters during its initial run. It’s a fleet and funny 80 minutes.

We run from March 31 – May 1 in the beautiful Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center… on the good-ole Lower East Side. If you didn’t catch it in 2011 I think you’ll have a heck of a good time. And if you did see it a decade ago, you might enjoy it even more now given all we’ve been through the last few years.

– David Greenspan

For tickets: Transport Group