Who: COMPLEXIONS Contemporary Ballet
What: Twenty-eighth anniversary season
Where: The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
When: November 22 – December 4, $61-$81
Why: Founded in 1994 by artistic directors Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, COMPLEXIONS Contemporary Ballet (CCB) espouses its own “nique,” which “uses a classical ballet structure as its foundation yet allows momentum and the integration of a fully mobile torso, weight shift, and dynamics to enhance the outcome. Contemporary in its perspective, nique places a special emphasis on coordination, physical integration, precision, efficiency, and clarity of form.” CCB will exhibit that discipline in its upcoming season at the Joyce, running November 22 to December 4.
The New Rochelle–based troupe will be presenting two programs plus a gala. The first program (November 23-27) consists of Rhoden’s twenty-eight-minute Hissy Fits, a work for ten dancers set to music by J. S. Bach, and his 2021 Snatched Back from the Edges, which began life as a series of Black Is Beautiful films made during the pandemic lockdown, taking on racial injustice, with spoken word and music by Terrell Lewis, Tye Tribbett, Shirley Caesar, and Jon Batiste. The second program (November 29 – December 4) includes an excerpt from Snatched Back from the Edges, Jae Man Joo’s Serenity, William Forsythe’s Slingerland Pas de Deux, and the world premieres of Francesca Harper’s System and Rhoden’s Endgame/Love One. (The works will be performed by Christian Burse, Jacopo Calvo, Kobe Atwood Courtney, Jasmine Cruz, Jillian Davis, Thomas Dilley, Vincenzo Di Primo, Joe Gonzalez, Harrison Knostman, MaryAnn Massa, Marissa Mattingly, Tatiana Melendez, Miguel Solano, Lucy Stewart, Candy Tong, April Watson, Elijah Mack, and Angelo De Serra.)
The gala, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, will be held on November 22, with highlights from the company’s twenty-eighth season and its collaboration with the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. There will be a Curtain Chat following the November 30 performance and a family matinee on December 3 at 2:00.