John Pennington will perform Harald Kreuzberg’s Dances Before God at ADG Performance Festival (photo by Tammy Abbott)
The Ailey Citigroup Theater
The Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th St. at Ninth Ave.
September 6-9, $22 (festival pass $50)
www.americandanceguild.org
The annual American Dance Guild Performance Festival returns to the Ailey Citigroup Theater this week with four nights of dance featuring thirty-three international artists. This year’s honorees are award-winning dancers, teachers, and choreographers Dianne McIntyre and Elaine Summers, who will be presenting works of their own at the festival. Thursday night’s gala features pieces by Kyla Barkin, Rebecca Netl-Fiol, John Pennington (reimaging Harald Kreutzberg’s “Dances Before God”), Shani Collins-Achille (“Swing Us Sky Rain[bow]”), and Hee Ra Yoo in addition to McIntyre’s “Life’s Force,” celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Sounds in Motion, with trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, McIntyre, and a cast of twenty people who have performed with McIntyre during her career (Saturday also), and Summers’s 1976 “Windows in the Kitchen,” a multimedia work with Douglas Dunn, Jon Gibson, and Matt Turney (Friday also). Friday’s lineup includes Dawn Robinson, Sue Bernhard, Sarah Stackhouse, Joe Cele, Maxine Steinman, Tina Croll, Jenny Showalter, Sarah Mettin, and Laurie Taylor, while Saturday features Rebecca McArthur, Peggy Choy, Allison Jones, Claudia Gitelmann, Mary Seidman, Kaoru Ikeda, Sasha Spielvogel, and Andrew Janetti. The festival concludes Sunday with Marta Renzi, Betsy Fisher (taking on “Angst” from Dore Hoyer’s “Affectos Humanos”), Erin La Sala, Joan Gavaler, Kathy Wildberger, Gloria McLean (the Will Barnet tribute “Dancing Without Illusion”), Nancy Zendora, Joseph Mills (the solo “Circlewalker”), and Molissa Fenley (the new duet “100 Vessels”). Be sure to get there early to check out videos of works by McIntyre and Summers that span their long, influential careers.