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Theatro IATI
Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional
64 East 4th Street
New York, NY
23-26 July

The Latin Choreographers Festival has taken on precocious depth and character in its second year. Friday night’s performance was more or less filled to capacity. A good thing, too - New York desperately needs more innovative ventures like this, to showcase high-caliber work both by established choreographers and by artists that haven’t yet caught the attention of larger venues like the Joyce and BAM.

Curator Ursula Verduzco and guest dance-makers presented a varied evening program at Theatro IATI, an intimate, spartan East Village cultural landmark. The festival brings together ballet and modern dance, abstract and narrative forms. This event and Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet are two of the city’s best ways to experience ballet beyond the big institutions.

Verduzco, Magloire, along with John Zorn (The Stone) and the empresarios at Le Poisson Rouge, Drom, Galapagos and a small but growing number of venues are pulling off a major miracle - creating vital spaces for new classical art in a city that’s supposed to be on the decline. Good luck to them!

The festival ends on Sunday. Here is Friday night’s program:

Chrome Waters
Choreographer: Annabella Gonzalez/Annabella Gonzales Dance Theater (Mexico/NYC)
Music: Franz Schubert
Dancer: Lucia Campoy

After the Sunset
Choreographer: Yesid Lopez/Yesid & Company (Colombia/NYC)
Music: Arthur Rubinstein
Dancers: Angelica Burgos, Eric Rivera

Habibi HHaloua
Choreographer: Roman Baca/Exit 12 Dance Company (NYC)
Music: Yusuf Islam, Robert Schumann, Voices of TOW Platoon 25th Marines
Dancers: Lisa Fitzgerald, Lara Vilchez, Roman Baca

La Calma
Choreographer: Minou Lallemand/Onium Ballet Project (Colombia/NYC)
Music: Pepe Raphael & The Bottle Blondes
Dancers: Claudia MacPherson, Lesley Garrison

Vieja Ciudad de Hierro
Choreographer: Benjamin Briones/Benjamin Briones Ballet (Mexico/NYC)
Music: Rodrigo González, Maldita Vecindad
Dancers: Ursula Verduzco, Fredrick Davis, Heidi Green, Cesar Ortiz, Kate Loh, Erick Vlack

Yet Still Untitled…
Choreographer: Ted Thomas/Thomas/Ortiz Dance
Music: David Darling
Dancers: Jenna Blumenfield, Serge Desroches, Virginia Horne

Cain
Choreographer: Robert S. Olvera (Ecuador/Mexico)
Dancer: Robert S. Olvera

Shall We Dance
Choreographer: Yesid Lopez/Yesid & Company (Colombia/NYC)
Dancers: Marina Fabila, Yesid Lopez

Getting There
Choreographer: Ursula Verduzco (NYC)
Music: Inquisition Symphony
Dancers: Ursula Verduzco, Fredrick Davis

Mediterranea (Excerpt)
Choreographer: Pedro Ruiz (Cuba, NYC)
Music: Houria Aichi
Dancer: Ellenore Scott

Picking Up the Pieces
Choreographer: Jesus M. Pacheco (Memphis)
Music: John Mayer, Amos Lee
Dancers: Leigh Lajoy, Nicole Correa, Kara Bruzina

See the festival website for more details.

Posts for peace, sound environmental stewardship, humane economic policy and promotion of human health and creativity. About the blogger.

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I love reading newspapers. Print and online. Big and small. One favorite is The Forward. (I started when they published the brilliant cartoonist Ben Katchor, and stayed hooked even after culture editor Alana Newhouse left to join Nextbook and oversee its development of the brilliant Tablet.)

Back to The Forward. One regular feature is worth the price of the paper - ForwardLookingBack, which reprints items from 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Much like Scientific American. Hoping the paper doesn’t mind an extended quote, here’s a great example from the current issue:

100 Years Ago in The Forward
“Jumping up onto a tabletop in the mess hall of Ellis Island, one of the immigrants yelled out: ‘No one could eat breakfast today. The food they give us here isn’t fit for pigs. We are treated here like wild animals, kept in cages and given rotting food to eat.’ The speaker, who recently had written a letter to the Forward regarding the poor conditions on Ellis Island, is one of those slated to be shipped back to Europe because he didn’t have the $25 now required to enter the United States. His speech made a deep impression on the rest of the immigrants, who decided to stop eating and start a hunger strike. The atmosphere frightened immigration officials, who must have thought that a revolution was in the works, so they sent guards into the mess hall with their revolvers drawn. Needless to say, this didn’t help the situation.”

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Vickers AJ, Scardino PT. The clinically-integrated randomized trial: proposed novel method for conducting large trials at low cost. Trials. 2009 Mar 5;10:14. PMID: 19265515.

Andrew Vickers and Peter Scardino, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, propose a new method of conducting large clinical trials - the clinically integrated clinical trial.

What is a clinically integrated clinical trial? An extended quote from the discussion gives a general idea:

“We propose to integrate randomized trials and routine clinical practice, a design we term the “clinically-integrated randomized trial”. The key principle is that the clinical experience of the patient and doctor is virtually indistinguishable whether or not the patient is randomized. Trial patients go through informed consent procedures, and certain aspects of care, such as modifications to the surgical technique used, are determined by randomization rather than being at the discretion of the doctor. Otherwise, there are no obvious differences between the clinical care, follow-up, payment and documentation requirements between patients who do and do not participate in the trial. Integration of a randomized trial into routine clinical practice also implies that randomization itself is routine, in other words, there should be an attempt to randomize every patient. A corollary is that eligibility criteria need to be minimized. The only eligibility criterion should be that the doctor is uncertain about which of the treatments in the trial would be best for the patient, the ‘uncertainty principle.’”

Scardino is a surgical oncologist specializing in prostate cancer, and the article offers a detailed hypothetical example of a clinically integrated clinical trial in surgery for prostate cancer. Briefer examples involve “me-too drugs,” rare diseases, and lifestyle interventions.

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Theatro IATI
Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional
64 East 4th Street
New York, NY
23-26 July

Curator Ursula Verduzco and ten other choreographers will present work this year:

Roman Baca
Benjamin Briones
Yesid Lopez
Annabella Gonzalez
Jesus Pacheco
Minou Lallemand
Cecilia Marta
Robert Spin Olvera
Orlando Peña
Pedro Ruiz

Thomas/Ortiz Dance will be the guest company. See the festival website for more details.

Posts for peace, sound environmental stewardship, humane economic policy and promotion of human health and creativity. About the blogger.

dance

Comments and Links Appreciated!