Claudia La Rocco, NY Times - May 16, 2008

It is endearing to give the members of your audience a gift. It is smart to butter them up with compliments. And it is dynamite to perform a dance that makes them think. Eleanor Bauer/Good Move manages the trifecta in "At Large," which opened on Wednesday at the Chocolate Factory.

Upon entering, ticket holders received "At Large With Reasonable Doubt," an excellent little collection of essays, conversations and interviews with a Who's Who of contemporary dance artists. Some of the language sounds a little smarter than it actually is, but the book is a keeper. Then, shortly into the dance, Ms. Bauer, in a fake Texas drawl, winningly informed her public, "You're doing a fantastic job of sitting in the dark and just waiting for something to happen."

Why, thank you. But the experience wasn't so passive, given the many conflicting layers that need to be unpacked. "At Large" was created and performed by Ms. Bauer, Manon Santkin and the particularly enchanting Femke Gyselinck, a gamine dancer who muscled her way through a last-minute ankle injury with impressive stoicism.

"At Large" is at once a performance, a philosophical inquiry into the nature of performance and a sprawling, ambitious multimedia project. (Besides the book, the work includes an installation, an invented dance fad called scratching and a supplementary Web site, goodmove.be.) As Ms. Bauer's cheeky compliment and its twangy delivery imply, "At Large" the performance both delights in and critiques the expectation that, if successful, a dance will entertain.

"At Large" provides this entertainment, including songs with lyrics as catchy as they are ridiculous; the razzle-dazzle of a golden curtain as backdrop; and a two-minute contest in which the women endeavor to, as Ms. Santkin explains, "reach real physical pleasure." But what the artists giveth, they taketh away, spending long minutes working through hermetic movement phrases that run from hypnotic to numbing.

And when the golden curtain drops - as it does in magically small increments - there is no fabulous surprise waiting, only the theater's plain brick wall and factory windows.

I half-expected the windows to be open, so intent does Ms. Bauer seem on throwing her arms around the world. "At Large" is a good start.

May 5, 2008

As you may have heard, we're taking Taste of LIC up a notch this year.....to the beautiful roof deck of Rockrose East Coast. Here are pictures:

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Live Sh-- Alternative Presenter Fair

1/10 & 1/11 2009

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February 17 2009, 7PM