Susan Yung, February 24, 2009

Watching a dance can sometimes leave me wondering why the choreographer created it. Often it's during a "pure dance" work that doesn't offer anything new, even if the technique is solid and the dancers are skilled (as is nearly always the case in New York City). Sometimes, form is enough, sometimes not. But two programs - redevelop (Death Valley) by Brian Rogers, and Alchemy, by Doug Varone - focus on important subjects that provide much context to work with.

Redevelop, at the intimate Chocolate Factory (where Rogers is artistic director) in Queens through Feb 28, concerns myriad ideas of gentrification and the inexorable displacement of longtime residents. The primary set pieces are modular plastic sheets suspended on wires by hooks, reminiscent of the building's industrial roots. The semi-translucent panels obstruct, catch images, and are removed to allow us to see the action beyond. The work begins with a video of a man discussing local life from decades ago. The performance is like a poem comprising all different elements - hardware/building bits are illuminated slowly and magically; mysterious and mostly obstructed movements repeat; sounds, like wind chimes, haunt the air.

There are rituals, or their trappings, that accrue to structure daily life. Tea sets are stacked like a house of cards. A convivial dinner eaten far upstage, including its slowly intensifying savory aroma, becomes the finale, accompanied by a song by Rogers in the audience. Time passes and the layers peel away, moving upstage. The performance, like time, dissolves, evoking a wistful, tragic feel, like the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Water drips through leaks in the roof, and a newly-revealed peek onto the street outside is the ultimate set piece-a pitch-perfect, surreal dose of reality. The production is put together superbly with impeccable lighting by Chloe Brown and keen consideration of every element.

Brian McCormick, February 20, 2009

Fragments cohere, pull apart, dissolve, flare up, and connect in artful, meaningful ways in "Redevelop (Death Valley)," a collaborative endeavor at the Chocolate Factory Theater, Long Island City's multidisciplinary artist laboratory. A meditation on space that is quite literally "sculpting in time," it's framed by ideologies about real estate development. Space-time bends back and forth, layering contemporary and historical conditions.

"Redevelop" has no narrative structure, but it does unfold in a linear manner, and the audience is seated facing the space and action. Multiple translucent panels of industrial plastic hang in rows of two from cables strung wall to wall. They obscure or ghost the performers, but also serve as screens for projection of video - live and recorded - and make noise when they are moved laterally.

The opening features a talking head interview with a charming elderly male resident of Long Island City, Frank Carrado, talking about how the neighborhood has changed over the years. As he reminisces with great aplomb and little romanticism, the editing of the video changes to soft dissolves, matching concept to content, fading the one who remembers as the familiar landscape from his memory also vanishes.

A rhythmic mechanical sound emerges as the oral history disappears - pulleys, assembly line movement, the noise of industry, and a distant rumbling. Light blooms brightly, then dims, illuminating emptiness.

A figure emerges, peering from behind the wall of panels through a slit between rows at the edge of the frame, making simple gestures of balancing that are repeated. Live video feeds project on the screens in front of her, now a split screen of various perspectives, angles, and sizes. Then, she slides apart the panels.

Recorded dialog barely audible contrasts with the amplified images of the performers on the screen directly in front of us, as the performers enter one by one, still hidden for the most part by the plastic surface, creating an effect of blankness full of potential. Alec Baldwin's "brass balls" tirade about real estate from "Glengarry Glen Ross" gets delivered loud and clear and is later repeated several times by one of the performers - the only speaking in the hour-long work. Later, FDR can be heard declaring, "No country, however rich, can stand to waste its human resources." It's rare these days and refreshing to encounter a message piece that's also a masterpiece.

As promised, the cast deconstructs the set as the work progresses, removing the lower level of panels to reveal more of the space, to allow the audience to look into it - not just at it - for the first time. Now, on the smaller screen remaining at the front, video footage shot for the work in Death Valley recalls history and provides a literally stark reminder.

As this video plays, the theater fills with the smell of cooking. The four performers - Jennifer Lee Dudek, Sheila Lewandowski, Yoko Myoi, and Mark Sitko - sit down for a meal, while Brian Rogers (credited with concept, direction, choreography, and the short films) plays guitar and sings from the front row of the audience.

At the front of the space, where a tea set had been placed and illuminated, water begins leaking as if from the ceiling, a surprising, musical, exquisite touch - and the long cue for the cast to exit as they entered, one by one.

Rogers and his collaborators - Chloe Brown on lighting design, Chris Peck on sounds, Brad Kisicki on set design, and Madeleine Best on live video - deserve great praise for "Redevelop." It's smart, beautiful, totally topical, and timeless, and one of the best multimedia performances I've seen this century. The cohesive integration of documentary, live and recorded video and audio, moving translucent screens of industrial plastic fragmenting live and media space like giant rectangular physical pixels, and live performance put this intimate gesamtkunstwerk on par with some of the best in the genre. It's intellectually and politically didactic, but also poetic, sensory, and psychological, connecting points in space-time, and conceiving of the body in relation to space, to shadows, and to specters of the past and present.

Gia Kourlas, February 17, 2009

At the moment Long Island City is still a neighborhood. Brian Rogers, the artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, knows it's only a matter of time before it becomes unrecognizable. In "redevelop (death valley)," seen at the theater on Friday, Mr. Rogers focuses on the disparate notions of home and property by exploring the connection between his Queens neighborhood and gold-rush-era ghost towns. In this real-time video and performance installation the audience sits in front of several overlapping screens. The work begins with a sharply edited interview with a 78-year-old Long Island City resident whose memories create a vivid sense of place. As Chris Peck's score generates an ominous aural landscape - Mr. Rogers also plays guitar and sings - four performers appear behind and on the screens. Here the layers between what we perceive and see are purposely and poignantly ambiguous.

In some ways Mr. Rogers's work, like his subject matter, is in development. He has a strong beginning and end; the middle section, the most atmospheric and choreographically dense, is somewhat abrupt.

When the screens are removed and the performers are shown at a table enjoying a pasta dinner, the sound of rain is only a mild disturbance until it begins to pour - literally - onto the table. No matter how promising a piece of property is, there's always the danger of living under a bad roof.

Paul Menard, February 18, 2009

It takes only a stroll past the hip bars and chic Thai noodle houses of Vernon Boulevard to see that Long Island City isn't the low-rent bargain it once was. Luxury condos and real-estate moguls have displaced many longtime residents of this once-sleepy Queens neighborhood, and given Brian Rogers ample fodder for redevelop (death valley), his unsatisfying meditation on our ever-changing urban landscape.

Part multimedia installation, part case study, Rogers's work is a collage of live-feed video, lackluster gestural dance, and murmured text (was that a line from Glengarry Glen Ross?) combined to create a fractured diptych about the paradoxical impermanence of home. Reticent ensemble members go about their private choreography obscured by walls of frosted plastic panels, gradually removing them to reveal the Chocolate Factory's expansive loft space. Like in an archeological excavation, these spatial layers are slowly peeled away as short films and a hypnotic soundscape juxtapose industrial progress with barren desolation.

Unfortunately, this all makes redevelop sound more interesting than it actually is. While Rogers and company create a few moments of evocative beauty-water magically trickles onto an antique tea set as wind chimes tinkle-they never add up to much. Rogers can't seem to rein in the urban sprawl of redevelop's disparate and, at times, self-indulgent elements before these musings are sequestered to the realm of private performance. Like an abandoned LIC warehouse, this piece may have interesting architectural adornments, but its flimsy structure needs to be shored up.

Andy Horwitz, February 13, 2009

Last night we went to The Chocolate Factory for the opening of Brian Rogers' redevelop (death valley). I really enjoyed it a lot.

While waiting for the house to open I got into a discussion about the challenges of writing about performance work that doesn't fall neatly into any category and how too few "critics" in mainstream media actually bridge dance-theater-music-video-art-installation. It's a tricky situation b/c each discipline demands deep knowledge - on the other hand, you need to acknowledge that many artists aren't working in pure (or singular) forms, so it is inappropriate to evaluate them based on narrow criteria. Generally, I prefer to err on the side of caution and as much as possible accept the work on its own terms.

I say this because redevelop (death valley) really is a hybrid work - and I think a darn good one. If I had to create a category I would say it is a three-dimensional time-based video art performance with movement and music. It's kind of like a really thoughtful, introspective terrarium/magic box, or maybe a surreal, cerebral real-time lava lamp.

As often happens, I forgot to take notes, so this may be inaccurate. The show opens with a video interview of a guy from the neighborhood (Long Island City) talking about how it has changed, then transitions into some movement sequences where the actors re-arrange the hanging screen/panels and are alternately revealed and obscured by said panels. They are simultaneously being video projected onto the panels (live)... and there is ambient sound design happening, a fan blows wind chimes in a constant undertone. After that we fade into another video sequence - death valley - that has Brian and Sheila exploring abandoned towns and buildings in, I assume, Death Valley. And then we fade into another sequence where the actors, far upstage, eat dinner and chat, while downstage it starts to rain.

I think - and I may be wrong - that the piece is a meditation on place, home, memory and meaning. There is no "story" and no elaborate movement, nor are there crazy technological orgies of computer video blah blah blah. While I imagine it is very complicated to run the show - congrats to Brian, Madeline and Chloe for pulling it off! - the effect is simple, seamless, understated and elegant.

Maybe its like one of those spinning Japanese shadow lantern things? I don't know. But kudos to everyone involved - that there is some art. And though I don't want to single anyone out (all the elements were really strong, the sound and video were integrated wonderfully) BUT its rare that I notice the lighting in a good way - usually its because everything else sucks. But in this case it was such an integral part of the entire experience and Chloe Z. Brown's work is beautiful and precise and artful.

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