Keyon Gaskin’s IT’S NOT A THING is part of American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Duncan Gray)
Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 7-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.abronsartscenter.org
The seventh American Realness festival consists of twenty cutting-edge theatrical presentations ($20 each), a movement workshop ($90), and four free lectures and discussions over the course of eleven days, January 7-17, almost exclusively at Abrons Arts Center. There’s so much going on that every day features between six and ten events spread throughout the venue, which includes the Experimental Theater, the Playhouse, the Underground Theater, and room 201. Two performances take place at other venues: The great Jack Ferver, who has a well-deserved rabid fan base for his deeply personal and intimate, often confessional multidisciplinary works, returns to American Realness with Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité) at Gibney Dance (January 13-16), an updated version of a piece that debuted in 2012 at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival and in which the audience becomes part of the action. And Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen also employs interactivity in her multimedia 69 Positions (January 15-17, $15), which connects sexuality and public space in MoMA PS1’s VW Dome. Back at Abrons, the New York premiere of Heather Kravas’s dead, disappears (January 7-11) integrates Richard Serra’s Verb List into a solo work about words and movement, woman and object. In choreographer Larissa Velez-Jackson’s Star Crap Method (January 9-17), performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein, and Velez-Jackson and lighting designer Kathy Kaufman improvise as they examine the role of sound, light, music, and movement. In the world premiere of Erin Markey’s A Ride on the Irish Cream (January 13-17), Markey and Becca Blackwell bring to life the love between a girl and a pontoon boat/horse. M. Lamar’s Destruction (January 13-16) investigates the white supremacist world order using Negro spirituals. Sadness is at the heart of the New York premiere of Ligia Lewis’s Sorrow Swag (January 7-10), performed by Brian Getnick with live musical accompaniment by George Lewis Jr. Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, and Brendan Dougherty collaborate on Culture Administration & Trembling (January 7-8), which explores the nature of spectatorship.
The festival also includes Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia (January 8-17), Keyon Gaskin’s it’s not a thing (January 8-11), Fernando Belfiore’s AL13FB<3 (January 9-12), Keith Hennessy and Jassem Hindi’s future friend/ships (January 9-12), Sara Shelton Mann, Hennessy, and Norman Rutherford’s Sara (The Smuggler) (January 11-13), Yvonne Meier’s Durch Nacht und Nebel (January 11-16), Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers’ Mira El! (January 12-15), choreographer Milka Djordjevich and composer Chris Peck’s Mass (January 13-15), the world premiere of the Bureau for the Future of Choreography’s Score for a Lecture, and James & Jen | McGinn & Again’s Over the River | Through the Woods diptych (January 16-17). In addition, Kravas, Lewis, Jenn Joy, and Kelly Kivland will discuss “Melancholia and Precarious Virtuosity” on January 8 at 3:30, Claudia La Rocco, Lane Czaplinski, Annie Dorsen, Yelena Gluzman, Katherine Profeta, and others will explore the question “How Should the Present Think About the Future?” on January 9 at noon, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Thomas J. Lax, Soyoung Yoon, and Cassie Mey will delve into “A Charming Uproar: On Documenting Dance” on January 10 at 3:30, Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz will lecture on “I Am Black (You Have to Be Willing to Not Know)” on January 17 at 11:00 am, and Movement Research will host the workshop “Creative Differences” with La Rocco on January 7, 10, and 12 ($90).