Gibney Company will be at the Joyce May 6–11 with three premieres (photo by Hannah Mayfield)
GIBNEY COMPANY
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
May 6–11, $62-$82
www.joyce.org
gibneydance.org
“This season at The Joyce embodies what Gibney Company stands for — bringing together choreographers with distinct voices, movement languages, and artistic philosophies to shape a program that challenges, inspires, and moves us,” founding artistic director and CEO Gina Gibney said in a statement. “Lucinda Childs, Peter Chu, and Roy Assaf each bring a unique lens to dance, offering profoundly different yet equally compelling perspectives on how movement can communicate, resonate, and evolve.”
The New York–based dance and social justice troupe will be at the Joyce May 6–11, presenting three works. The evening begins with the US premiere of Roy Assaf’s A Couple, a fifteen-minute duet about relationships, set to music by Johannes Brahms performed by Glenn Gould and featuring “Perhaps you are a couple” text by Ariel Freedman; the pairings will be Graham Feeny and Zack Sommer, Madison Goodman and Lounes Landri, and Madi Tanguay and Andrew McShea.
The bill continues with two world premieres, first Peter Chu’s Echoes of Sole and Animal. The full company, consisting of Tiare Keeno, Jie-hung Connie Shiau, Feeny, Sommer, Goodman, Landri, Tanguay, and McShea, explore how sound shapes space, with movement inspired by animal Qi Gong and Taiji philosophies in search of human compassion and connection, with music and sound design by Djeff Houle in addition to immersive guitarist Ferdinand Kavall’s 2024 “Flageolets.” Chu also designed the costumes with Victoria Bek.
The program concludes with Lucinda Childs’s Three Dances (for prepared piano) John Cage, which takes Childs back to her Judson days, examining transdisciplinarity and formalism through structured repetition. The twenty-minute work, performed by all eight dancers, is set to recordings of Cage’s 1944–45 three-part piece played by Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer.
“Gibney Company is built on the idea that dance is a conversation — between artists, disciplines, traditions, and generations,” company director Gilbert T. Small II added. “This program brings together choreographers whose work is shaped by their histories, their influences, and the questions they explore through movement. We are honored to collaborate with such extraordinary artists whose work expands the boundaries of contemporary dance.”
Some shows are nearly sold out, so act fast to get tickets. The May 8 performance will be followed by a Curtain Chat with Childs and biophysicist and applied mathematician Dr. Michael Shelley, who participated together in the Open Interval residency combining dance and science.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]