Paula CourtJody Oberfelder

Jody Oberfelder is an East Village dancer/choreographer who started out as the lead singer for the Bagdads, a punk band which played at CBGB’s. She then became a dancer and choreographer who has brought to both roles unusual athleticism, heart, humor, and in the words of Village Voice critic, Deborah Jowitt, “a zest for endearingly human dancing in an upside-down world.”

She has gone from creating works with titles such as “Wanted X Cheerleaders” and “Crash Helmet Brigade” to directing opera (“Dido and Aeneas”)  and now Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale,” which she will present at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Performing Arts at Pace University (where “Inside the Actors Studio” is filmed) from June 9 to 11. Recently The Local spoke to her about her work and how living in the East Village has influenced it.

You have been part of the East Village arts scene for a long time. How has living here informed your work as a dancer and choreographer?

I’ve lived in the East Village from 1980 to the present, and I saw it change from a place where it was still full of old Ukrainian characters and really scary just to go east of Avenue A. When Life Café came into being on Avenue B, I remember kind of tip-toeing my way over there beside the park. I think I was just one of the many kinds of art-makers and filmmakers who was around at that time. Steve Buscemi and his wife Jo Andres were going to all the same events, and he’s pretty famous now! It was more of a cabaret-ish atmosphere, and you’d stay out pretty late, too. There was a great performance duo called Dancenoise, and also the “Full Moon” shows at P.S. 122. This was the more liquid East Village, more sweaty and physical. There were also people doing more esoteric work at the time.
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A would-be message from the East Village, in 140 characters or less and inspired by photography.

Brendan Bernhard

Pansies at Night (E. 9th St.)

Angry old men is what they look like, with eyes
like eyebrows and in-your-face mustaches. Purple
quiffs! Yellow noses! From drinking what?

Michelle Rick

Would-be messages from the East Village in 140 characters or less.

Divine Retribution

Clouds, rain, ice, wind or lung-stopping heat pursue
him, in any country, on almost any day. God’s
punishment for spending ten years in L.A.

Global Transport Provider

The taxi driver from Senegal has lived in Dijon, NY,
Barcelona, and Kansas. He speaks three languages. Just
another working stiff, y’all

Ost

‘The debris of laptops’ (Colin Firth) on silvery display.
Everyone mit coffee & Mac. We all changed so quickly.
Can we please change back?

East Village Grunge

Writers mythologized it, residents boasted of it, tourists
ate it up. Now landlords happily serve it to us, in a
grimy, $2,000 plastic cup

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Kathryn Kattalia For many in the East Village’s Muslim community a sense of closure after the death of Osama bin Laden still seems far off. Below: While much of the world watched news reports of Bin Laden’s killing, patrons at the Little Pakistan Deli watched a cricket match.

On a newspaper stand outside the Little Pakistan Deli on Second Avenue, bold headlines announced the news many Americans have waited 10 years to hear: Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden is dead.

But inside the deli, manager Safdar Zaidi said it was business as usual as several customers crowded around a small television in the back of the store. “They are watching the cricket game instead of the news,” Mr. Zaidi, 45, said. “Pakistan is playing the West Indies.”

While thousands of New Yorkers rushed to Times Square and Ground Zero last night to celebrate news that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by American forces, members of the East Village Muslim community were hesitant to join in, saying closure is still some way off. Mr. Zaidi, whose store has been in the East Village between East 12th and East 13th Streets for more than ten years, said that many of his customers are Muslim cab drivers who stop in during their lunch break.

“Most of them aren’t sure if he’s dead because they haven’t seen a body,” he said. “They want evidence that he died.”
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Claire Glass Scores of people flocked to the World Trade Center site today in the hours after the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

From Ground Zero to Tompkins Square Park, a sampling of local reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden.

At Ground Zero

“Part of the wound has been healed but I’ll be living with this until the day I die. The images of New Yorkers leaping from buildings don’t go away. Today, I don’t have grief. I’m glad this day finally came.”
—Lenny Crisci, 63, a retired police officer, whose younger brother, Lieutenant John Crisci, was killed on 9/11.

Claire Glass Francine Morin at the World Trade Center site this morning.

“We all felt it, smelled it, tasted it, ingested it. The stress, the constant bomb threats that followed and that metallic, rotten stench — all because of this guy and what he did. This man had a direct effect of my life. My personal terrorist is dead.”
— Francine Morin, 41, who worked two blocks away from the World Trade Center and was treated for post-traumatic stress after 9/11.
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jdx

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Welcome To The East Village: This is Your Demented Realtor Speaking

Here is your sofa. Studio prices are available on the
Web, or via consultation with your Personal Real Estate
Provider. Please &#8212 sit down

& be comfortable. That is garbage on the street, & you
might want to avoid that rat. Sadly, rentals are a bit high
right… Look, don’t frown,

we’ve got planeloads of Japanese heading this way very
keen to escape the recent ‘troubles,’ if you see what I
mean, you underfunded clown,

& we do need to impress upon them that this is NY, NY,
with lots of people just like them, that it’s dynamic,
diverse, & a helluva town.

(It’d be one thing if you were a minority, but you’re not
a minority, you’re not even drunk, so get off that sofa or
the cops come round)
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Michelle Rick

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

First Steps Toward Marriage

The 1st time they met, she listened. The 2nd, she spoke.
The 3rd, they crossed swords over Sushi, & fought until
their chopsticks broke

Welcome to the Three-Day Week

Monday to recover, Friday to prepare. Then comes the
Insanely Unseemly Weekend – leaving only Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, there

Maids Gone Wild

Bar maids & chamber maids, old maids & French maids,
going on drink-raids, jumping on beds made, dancing
like demons in a big hotel
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Clint McMahon

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Think Café

Think? He can’t even hear! So he’ll just stand & stare at
the barista there: Sleek update of the girl in Manet’s Un
Bar aux Folies Bergère

Literary Investigation

If T.S.E. were 23, would he be a downtown dandy,
mouth full of Jay-Z? LinkedIn loner on Facebook?
Poetry Society grandee? Let us go then,

& take a look. (Everything you wrote that was prophetic
& new, Major Tom, has long come true. So what would
you do now, for Act Two?)

Life

You can either embrace it or invent increasingly
complicated ways to replace it. Either way, it’ll catch
you in the end. Worse, before then

Truth Deferred

One mirror cruel, the other kind, I stick to the latter
when I unwind. If truth is called for, I take a look: The
first reads me like a book
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Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

I, Phone,

…have taken over, man! You can’t do without me,
forget about it, dude, you’re screwed, don’t you
understand anything? I own you

Personal

Neither a fighter nor a lover, me. Presenting: 180 lbs. of
Humanity. Single, sober, solvent, rents a flat. Touch-
starved. That’s that

Banker’s Advice

Although he could not understand the financial
information Mr. Li was giving him, he suspected Mr. Li
did not fully understand it either

Cosmopolitan (J.P. Morgan Chase)

When he informed him he was moving to France for six
months, Mr. Li looked genuinely puzzled. “France?
Why would you want to go there?”

Finding it difficult to frame a simple answer to such a
complex question, he was polite. “Oh, you know, I just
feel like going somewhere”

The Old Lovers

A decade unmet, fearful of Time’s traces,
they settled on a dinner date
in which they would dine in different places

A Chinese Hair From A Chinese Head

… coiled among murky translucent shells ripped from
shrimp bought on Canal piled like dozens of used
condoms in a bowl on the kitchen table

Embarrassment

The first warm days of Spring can be a scary thing.
Overnight, so calmly – as if they had never been – coats
and hats are shed

and each body’s truth revealed. Eyes grow busier,
bolder. They meet at crossroads. They mate. Cheeks
susceptible turn pink, then red

Madison Avenue

Uptown, you breathe the clean clear air of money. Saw
James Merrill there once, on the street. Imagine what he
could have done with a tweet

Weeping Tom

He can only hear through the air shaft, not see: The song
of life as sung by students from F.I.T. Loud, obnoxious,
excited, cheerful… young

Absence

After she died, he sensed (just once) her watching him
from the sky above 3^rd Avenue. For days she stayed
with him, like the sun’s warmth.

But now three years have passed since her burial
overseas, in an old French city, and the sky above the
East Village, his home, is empty

Margot Wood

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Instructions from the Muse

“Tweet!” the birdie cried. “I am tweeting,” the surly poet
replied. “Tweet! Tweet!” “Look, you dumb… sparrow, I
just told you…” “Tweet!”

A Serious Mutt

Would I be caught dead showboating in that dog run
across the street? Nyet. I’m not some pansified “pet”
pawing the air for adoring looks,

I’m here on important business: Waiting for my Master
to exit the Tompkins Square Library with his usual dose
of videos and books

We ♥ Poets!

Ginsberg’s E. 10th St. apt. gutted; O’Hara’s @ 441 E. 9th
unmarked; the plaque outside Auden’s home on E. 8th
gets the dates wrong

Observer With Cataracts

He finds it hard to not be trivial. He skims, he skates, past
the same stores & faces. Epitaph: “He was not convivial,
& he left no traces”

Materialism

He’s stuck with it, a life of fabricated purpose and no
God. Mud encrusted with jewelry stores. His Western
inheritance, along with not

knowing how to dance. Temples, mosques, are alien, and
the Church does not speak. “Maybe,” he thinks, “It’s
time to speak to It”

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Tim Schreier

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Sunday Morning on Avenue C

The joy of it the sting of it the bells of it the glare of it
the birds of it the eyes of it the prayers of it the drugs of
it the it of it

Sidewalk Encounter

The rat crossed his path with such nonchalance the damn
thing might as well have been wearing shades &
smoking a bidi

The British Lawyer

…Surveyed our sunken roofs, loose bricks, black
spaghetti of dangling phone wires, & declared, “In
London, this would all be illegal!”

Personal Trainer

I met it at downtown’s trendiest gym
could never ascertain: her or him?
never saw it change or shower or swim…
but now I’m toned and trim

P.S. 122

Should artistes shovel snow like normal people? Please.
Pratfalls are aesthetic (Tati, etc.), and black ice is a
frozen film noir…

Middle Age (Paging Lou Reed)

O it’s such a perfect day (though I barely slept) I’m so
glad I spent it with you (whoever you are) where is the
damn zoo, anyway?

Disappointment

At the Immaculate Conception Church, the priest offers
bread, but no wine. The blood of Christ is available only
on Sundays

Beautiful Girl at the Nail Salon

She worked in TV and sounded like TV so he pretended
she was TV and returned his gaze to the mute black hair
of the Asian woman at his feet

Tech-Tock

Even when you refuse to believe them, memes can cling
like cellophane: This bookstore is a dying thing,
empty an hour before closing

Lunch Date

The Loneliest Man in the East Village took the Second
Loneliest Man to lunch. They ate mostly in the silence of
silverware. Both agreed

that they were failures, that their erotic prospects were
risible, that their Linked-In profiles were musty tombs,
and that they rarely met

anyone not connected to the service industry except in
movies, books, and dreams

Discuss

The fact people can be left to die on the sidewalk has
always made the East Village viscerally exciting to
young Europeans

Tim Schreier

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Consumer

Noodles, nails, hair, massage, hookahs, bank, vintage,
tattoos, tacos, bar, bank, espresso, antiquities, massage,
hair, nails, noodles

Sour Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation staring into
iPhones flipping thru texts & tweets & pics ordering
ramen on Ave. A

Winter Doggerel

The hedgehog has seen its shadow. Snow was welcome,
but now must go. Birds must sing and leaves come out.
That’s what I’m talking about!

East Village Blues

He would like to have a big, noble, devoted dog, who
would wait for him patiently outside cafes and stores,
but his apartment is too small

Spring Awaits Them

Winter: The girls with the tattooed limbs have
undergone a double hibernation: not just of
flesh, but of ink

Astor Place

Mr. Li is a Personal Banker but it is against corporate
policy to keep personal items on his desk. His cubicle
must be kept impersonal.

…Soon he will be transferred to another branch of the
same bank, far uptown, and we will never see him again.
Goodbye, Mr. Li!

Angels In the Airshaft

OMG OMG OMG OMG that is so funny… ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha OMG OMG OMG OM… did he really? that is
so… ha ha ha ha ha ha funny

Together Through Life

On the other side of the bathroom mirror he hears his
neighbor of 20 yrs gargle & spit. Thru the bedroom wall
he hears him groan and snore

Roku

Jobless, he sleeps by day and streams French movies on
Netflix all night. If he were a cat, which he should be,
everything would be A-OK

Bourgeois

Panting, the super arrives with (yet again) the wrong
part, the incorrect screw. To save face, we discuss his
recent trip to Paris & tip $5

Geography

Broadway marks the outer limit of the East Village. One
block over, on University Place, the real money begins