Ivy Baldwin's Bear Crown at DTW.
http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/performance/what-a-lovely-bear-crown/686/
There’s something about Ivy Baldwin’s work that’s transporting. It could be the movement, which shifts between childlike play and virtuosity. It might be the attention to detail in every element, from lighting to set to sound, including a settling overture. It might be the five engaging performers, including Baldwin. In all likelihood, it’s everything assembled and polished til it gleams.
Baldwin’s new work at DTW, Bear Crown, which closed this last weekend, makes the cavernous theater look wonderful. The velvet curtain sits closed for the overture (music by Justin Jones), with shimmering, hypnotic chords easing our minds into place for the performance. It opens to reveal a three-tiered, semicircular, wood platform (by Mendel Rabinovitch) flush upstage. Downspots cast light-columns on the wall, and Chloe Brown’s essential lighting imbues a golden glow over the proceedings. The setting is formal and monumental.
Mindy Nelson, fists above crooked elbows, slide-snaps her crossed feet together, slowly establishing a rhythm. The group joins in, making semi-heroic poses in lunges, biceps flexed and flaunted, circling wrists and torsos. Eyes hidden by hands, they migrate upstage and the movement diminishes to near imperceptibility, down to a collective sway, then just a breath. The five become one. The energy rises as the dancers step-chassee around the stage before beaching themselves on their stomachs, one leg bent, arms sphinxed.
While the Sharks (Puerto Ricans) are still depicted as the interlopers in this turf battle, they come across as more balanced and better dressed than their foes. Much of this depth comes from the females—Maria (Josefina Scaglione) and Anita (Karen Olivo), two sides of a coin—and their friends. They wear purple flared dresses with flouncy skirts (designed by David Woolard) that the women swish around. The Jets guys are mostly thuggish or limited somehow, and the gals—who get pushed around a lot—wear narrow cut, skimpy outfits that don’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the costumes.
Subtitled The Problem Perspective and assembled by Ann Goldstein, senior curator at MOCA in LA, with Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, the centerpiece of the show is an installation that sums up Kippenberger’s madcap vision and breadth of ambition. Located in MOMA’s cavernous atrium space, entitled The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika,” it is the ostensible set for a scene from Kafka’s unfinished book. On an artificial turf football field sit dozens of seating/table arrangements of every stripe, each unique unit a stand-alone artwork—a setting for so many simultaneous interviews made into a spectator sport by bleachers at two ends.
Redevelop, at the intimate 
In fact, MoMA/AP is way better, because it catches folks by surprise, at least it did me. MoMA has put up nearly 60 different “artworks,” most of which are familiar, and some of which are new. Icons include Meret Oppenheim’s Object(“fur teacup”), Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, and van Gogh’s Starry Night reside next to fresher names such as Wangechi Mutu and Bill Morrison. Also included are works of industrial design, such as John Barnard/Ferrari’s Formula One racing car and flower printed fabric by William Morris.
Now he has taken a bit of a departure in directing
The projections monopolize attention, and evoke the large computer desktop of someone with ADD (ahem). The feed ranged from politics to pop culture to sports, and seemed pre-selected. It began with scripted takes of two women discussing a death from different points of view—one experiencing it firsthand; the other an artist perhaps mining the situation for subject material. (Video clip below.) The montage included clips of a boy singing in the style of Maurice Chevalier, Reagan’s inauguration, Nadal and Federer accepting their Australian Open trophies (an unfortunate reminder of how much emotional impact real life, albeit sports, can make).
As guileless as the characters seem to be, they can also set rules to shape apparently random acts, such as deciding to remain in the hotel for five days (the amount of money they have contributes to the length of their stay too), and buying three dozen condoms to use in that length of time. Their blithe hope is that when their time together is up, the war will have ended. They experience this intimate bond and yet never even learn one another’s name, and hope they don’t have to deal with future encounters. It’s not dissimilar to the confidences shared through avatars online — at times more personal than those shared among best friends in real time, face to face. Anonymity as the ultimate freedom; no pesky obligations.
Pinto choreographed Shaker (video clip below) with Avshalom Pollak. They also designed the set, costumes, and selected the music. Their vision is fairly unique these days, more whimsical and sentimental than most work done in New York. Three doghouses sit upstage, out of which emerge the twelve performers. There’s a woman in an evening gown spinning out a ribbon dance, and later sharing tea with an older man in a striped suit; a group of women in black sundresses (a bit puzzling, given the snow… maybe it’s sand?) with long, fling-worthy hair; a dog/mime; and several dancers in head-to-toe unitards in hues of snow, ice, sleet.
