Juliette Binoche stars in new adaptation of ANTIGONE as part of BAM Next Wave Festival (photo by Jan Versweyveld)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.
BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl.
September 16 – December 20, $20-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Every fall, we practically move into BAM for its annual Next Wave Festival, three months of exciting, challenging, and cutting-edge dance, music, theater, and other arts. And this year is no exception, with a roster of events that has us salivating. The star attraction is Ivo van Hove’s Antigone, a multimedia adaptation of Sophokles’s classic Greek tragedy in a new colloquial translation by Anne Carson and featuring Oscar winner Juliette Binoche in the title role. Other theater highlights are Stan Douglas and Chris Haddock’s multimedia stage noir, Helen Lawrence; Carl Hancock Rux’s The Exalted, about German-Jewish writer and art historian Carl Einstein, genocide, and genealogy, directed by Anne Bogart and with live music by Theo Bleckman; Royal Shakespeare Company actor Paterson Joseph portraying Charles “Sancho” Ignatius in the one-man show Sancho: An Act of Remembrance; and John Jahnke and Hotel Savant’s Alas, the Nymphs, a modern reimagination of the story of Greek mythological figure Hylas.
Sankai Juku returns to BAM for the first time since 2006 with UMUSUNA (photo courtesy of Sankai Juku)
The dance lineup at the 2015 Next Wave Festival is extraordinary as always, led by the return of German choreographer Sasha Waltz with Continu, a wild piece of dance theater set to Edgard Varèse’s “Arcana,” and Japanese Butoh troupe Sankai Juku’s Umusuna: Memories Before History, Ushio Amagatsu’s meditative exploration of history through fire, water, air, and earth. The season also includes Finnish choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström’s experimental Tape, the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan’s Rice, U-Theatre’s Beyond Time, Souleymane Badolo’s Yimbégré, Urban Bush Women’s Walking with ’Trane, Mark Morris’s annual holiday favorite The Hard Nut, and Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto in David Michalek’s Hagoromo, with choreography by David Neumann, puppetry by Chris M. Green, and Nathan Davis’s score performed live by the International Contemporary Ensemble.
William Kentridge stars in his multimedia opera REFUSE THE HOUR (photo by John Hodgkiss)
The music program features one of the most unusual works, Kid Koala’s adaptation of his graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall, about a robot in love with an office mate, for which Kid Koala will be joined by the Afiara Quartet. In All Vows, cellist Maya Beiser teams up with bassist Jherek Bischoff, drummer Zachary Alford, and filmmaker Bill Morrison. Timur and the Dime Museum say a glam farewell to the environment in Collapse. In Real Enemies, Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society big band join forces with filmmaker Peter Nigrini, writer-director Isaac Butler, and designer Maruti Evans to delve into American conspiracy theories. South African genius William Kentridge is back at BAM with the multimedia opera Refuse the Hour, a companion piece to his immersive “Refusal of Time” installation recently acquired by the Met. Drummer Jim White and Sasha Waltz & Guests dancer Claudia de Serpa Soares perform on one side of a two-way mirror in More up a tree. And Steppenwolf cofounder Terry Kinney turns Portland indie group Other Lives’ stage show into a multimedia experience. Tickets are going fast — Miranda July’s participatory New Society is already sold out, as is Théâtre de l’Atelier’s Savannah Bay, both of which take place at the small BAM Fisher, where all tickets are always a mere $25 — so don’t hesitate if you want to catch some of these fab presentations.