New production of Hans van Manen’s POLISH PIECES (seen here performed by Antonio Douthit-Boyd and Akua Noni Parker) is part of Ailey’s second consecutive Lincoln Center season (photo by Andrew Eccles)
David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 12-16, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is already an end-of-year tradition, moving into City Center every December. The celebrated company is now reinvigorating the start of summer with its second consecutive June season at Lincoln Center, this time paying tribute to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of the company founder and namesake at the age of fifty-eight. From June 11 to 22, AAADT will present thirteen works in four different programs at the David H. Koch Theater, with a special free bonus on opening night, when former company members Nasha Thomas-Schmitt and Renee Robinson teach how to dance the “I’ve Been ’Buked,” “Wade in the Water,” and “Rocka My Soul” sections of Revelations at 5:30 on Josie Robertson Plaza. Program A (June 12, 14, 18, 22) features Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, the world premiere of Robert Moses’s The Pleasure of the Lesson, the San Francisco-based choreographer and composer’s first piece for Ailey, and Revelations. Program B (June 13, 15, 21) consists of Ronald K. Brown’s gorgeous Grace, the company premiere of Asadata Dafora’s 1932 Awassa Astrige/Ostrich, a solo piece set to African music by Carl Riley, Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters (Part 1), and Ohad Naharin’s glorious Minus 16. Program C (June 14, 15, 20) honors the collaboration between Ailey and Duke Ellington with the classic Night Creature and Pas de Duke, associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya’s 2013 restaging of The River, and Revelations. Program D (June 17, 21, 22) comprises Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton’s contagious and energetic Lift, new productions of David Parsons’s signature strobe-heavy solo Caught, set to music by Robert Fripp, and Hans van Manen’s Polish Pieces, with music by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, and Revelations. The family matinees on June 14 and 21 will be followed by a Q&A with members of the company.