Read the New York Times Review

Benefit co-chairs

Stephen Greco
Carla Peterson
Laurie Uprichard
Martin Wechsler

Benefit Committee

Bruce Allardice
Barbara Bryan
Wally Cardona
Frank Carucci
HT Chen
Ping Chong
Yoshiko Chuma
Merce Cunningham
Anne Dennin
David Diamond
Barbara Duffy
Robert Een
Joan Finkelstein
Vallejo Gantner
Olivia Georgia
Ain Gordon
Judy Hussie-Taylor
John Jesurun
Paul Langland
Cynthia Mayeda
Joseph V. Melillo
Jon Nakagawa
Jonathan Nye
Pablo Vela
Martha Wilson

Speakers

Ping Chong
Deborah Jowitt

Performances

Mark Bennett
Tom Bogdan
HT Chen & Dian Dong
Yoshiko Chuma
Lawrence Goldhuber & Keely Garfield
John Jasperse
Jodi Melnick
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble
Nicky Paraiso
John Scott
Basil Twist
Christopher Williams
Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs

DVD/Audio Performances (In Lobby)

Jonah Bokaer
Doug Elkins
John Kelly

Micki Wesson

Micki Wesson is President Emerita of Meredith Monk/ The House Foundation for the Arts, Inc. and an Arts Consultant. A former dancer, performer and teacher, Ms. Wesson performed with Judy Martin/ Paper Bag Players, Meredith Monk and most recently with Lawrence Goldhuber, among others. She taught at Dance Players, Creative Arts Group, workshops in many colleges, including Rutgers University, University of Rochester and Montclair State, as well as in inner-city schools in New York and New Jersey. She has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, Dance/USA, and the New York Dance and Performance ('Bessie') Awards. She is a pro-bono consultant for several artists concerning board formation, responsibilities and fundraising strategies. In 1993, Ms. Wesson received the International Society of Performing Arts Administrators Angel Award for Extraordinary Generosity, Leadership and Vision. She also received a 2000 Bessie Award. She has been an artist member of Dance Theater Workshop's Board of Directors since 1990. Micki is thrilled to be honored here at the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival at La MaMa's Annex Theatre, where she performed in the revival of Meredith Monk's Quarry, along with Nicky Paraiso, in 1985.

Using Movement to Thank a Champion of the Arts

By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO, The New York Times

In opening remarks on Thursday night for “Dancing for Micki,” a homage to the longtime arts supporter Micki Wesson, the theater director Ping Chong counted her among those who “help us transcend, however briefly, the mundane, and approach the divine.”

Those words might have been a description of the extraordinary program that followed at the La MaMa Annex Theater. There were several valentines to Ms. Wesson, including a funny and moving letter from the composer and sound designer Mark Bennett and a sweetly off-color dance-theater tribute by Keely Garfield and Lawrence Goldhuber.

There were also knockout vocal performances, including two appearances by Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble and a stirring rendition of “Nessun Dorma” by John Scott. But the night belonged to dance.

Gala fare tends to be gaudy and exhausting: simultaneously too little and too much. But these brief works were dances of quiet and uncommon beauty. It was an evening, as Ms. Wesson said at the end, intended to show why she has “been in love with the community for more than 40 years.”

All of the pieces were solos or duets, save for the performance by the John Jasperse Company, which presented work-in-progress material danced by the marvelous Erin Cornell, Eleanor Hullihan and Kayvon Pourazar. As Rick Ross’s hip-hop track “Where My Money (I Need That)” charged the space with raucous energy, Mr. Jasperse’s movement language looked ever more precise.

Illuminated by a bank of glittering overhead lights, the dancers evinced a louche glamour. In a repeated motif, they sank onto one leg, their knees appearing almost to collapse, while the other leg opened from the hip. Their chins curved into their shoulders as their arms made slow, sensuous filigrees through space. It was mesmerizing.

In separate dances Yoshiko Chuma and Jodi Melnick were like ghosts attempting communication from distant, near-soundless worlds. Ms. Chuma’s fluid, abrupt gestures became increasingly insistent, but the message remained obscure. As the lights fell, and a soundtrack like rushing traffic eased, she stamped her foot loudly, perhaps registering her ire.

Ms. Melnick, as is her wont, was quieter and fragile, her slender frame clad in a sheer, sylphlike shirtdress. As the lights dimmed on her, she only waved, mournfully, stepping slowly backward.

Earlier, she was briefly joined by Vicky Shick for a duet in which they seemed to gain strength from each other, pressing their bodies close, weaving in and out of complicated embraces and even, at one point, clasping their raised hands together in a gesture of resolve.

In another duet the husband and wife Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs darted about the stage as if driven by the insistent whine of strings in their recorded score. Restless gestures and shifting patterns were at once perfunctory and decisive. Only at the end did they truly settle, Mr. Yon resting his head on Ms. Griggs’s shoulder and curving his arm around her waist.

But the most thrilling pairing came courtesy of the puppeteer Basil Twist. Barefoot and in tails, he manipulated a small wooden puppet and also functioned as its partner. Somehow his onstage presence only enhanced the potent magic of his art.