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JANE ANGER, OR . . .

William Shakespeare (Michael Urie) is suffering from writer’s block during the plague in Jane Anger (photo by Valerie Terranova)

JANE ANGER
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 26, $25-$75
newohiotheatre.org
www.janeangerplay.com

Talene Monahon’s Jane Anger is a frenetic farce that believes if you hit the audience with a nonstop, relentless barrage of jokes, enough are going to stick to make the experience worthwhile. The laughs actually begin with the full title, which is: Jane Anger or The Lamentable Comedie of Jane Anger, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard. And I’m happy to say that more than enough jokes hit their target to make this a very funny evening.

It’s 1606, and London is in the midst of yet another plague. Addressing the audience directly at the start of the play, Jane Anger (Amelia Workman) immediately equates that time with recent global affairs. “It’s back, baby!” she announces. “The death carts are out, the plague screecher is running around screeching, the playhouses have closed, fleas are swarming the streets, people are freaking out.”

With the city in lockdown, including the theater, William Shakespeare (Michael Urie) is stuck in his home, suffering an extreme case of writer’s block. With no place to go, Francis Sir (Ryan Spahn), an apprentice actor with the King’s Men — who appears to be much older than the nearly sixteen years he claims to be — asks for shelter from the Bard, who agrees to let him live on the floor in his writing room. The quaint Elizabethan set, by Joey Mendoza, features a large window in the back that functions as an entrance, above where Francis sleeps.

“Sixteen? This seems most improbable to me,” the Bard says. “You seem somewhat older and uglier and more weathered in the face.” Francis replies, “The poverty, sir. It has coarsened me. I assure you I am a mere youth. A boy, a stripling, a youngker!”

Real-life partners Michael Urie and Ryan Spahn star in new play by Talene Monahon (photo by Valerie Terranova)

Feeling a ton of pressure — during the 1593 plague, Shakespeare wrote the poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and worries that now he will be outpaced by the prolific Ben Jonson and even Thomas Middleton — the Bard ultimately decides to pen King Lear, even though there is already another play about the same monarch, purportedly written by Thomas Kyd, called King Leir. But to make the story his own, Shakespeare is going to change Leir to Lear and Cordella to Cordelia.

Soon the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Jane, his muse, pays a surprise visit on her former lover. “You’re alive. You came!” the Bard declares. “Aw! Not any time that you would remember,” Jane ribaldly answers.

Jane has a favor to ask of Shakespeare: She needs him to sign a document endorsing a pamphlet she is trying to get published by William Jaggard. (In fact, a woman going by the name Jane Anger did publish a highly influential 1589 pamphlet entitled “her Protection for Women. To defend them against the SCANDALOUS REPORTES OF a late Surfeiting Lover, and all other like Venerians that complaine so to bee overcloyed with womens kindnesse.”) But Will wants to finish his new play before helping Jane — and he’s not exactly sure about woman writers, as an earlier exchange with Francis revealed.

Francis: Sir. You need not fret. This shall all pass. Your genius is surely not imperiled by the plague-writing of other men or women or anyone —
Will: Men or who?
Francis: . . . Women, sir . . . ?
Will: Frankie! Was that your sarcasm again? A woman writing? What, sitting at a little desk with her quill? Scribbling away in her skirt?? “Look at me! I’m a woman writing!”
Francis: “Look at me! I’m a woman forming words out of my mind and then making sentences out of them.”
Will: “Look at me! I’m a woman who can spell!” HA HA.
Will and Francis: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

When Francis asks, “What is a Cunning Woman? Is that like a physician? Or a Barber-Surgeon?” Shakespeare replies, “Yes, Frankie, it’s similar but the differences are the person has breasts and makes less money.”

Next to join in the fray is Shakespeare’s detested wife, Anne Hathaway (Monahon). He purposely hasn’t seen her in seven years and seemingly refuses to acknowledge the prior existence of their son, Hamnet, who died a decade before, most likely from the plague. Anne Hathaway is always referred to by her full name, Anne Hathaway, and yes, there are inside references to the current actress, Anne Hathaway, who portrayed Viola in Twelfth Night at the Delacorte in 2009.

“Simply put, Anne Hathaway is Death to a writer’s process,” Shakespeare declares, adding a moment later, “For whatever reason, people don’t seem to like Anne Hathaway. It’s a bit of a thing, actually.”

The high jinks speed up with four characters onstage as egos clash, revelations are made, and the silliness only increases, with Monty Python-esque humor.

Amelia Workman stars as the title character in Talene Monahon’s Jane Anger (photo by Valerie Terranova)

An earlier, shorter iteration of Jane Anger, called Frankie and Will, was streamed during the pandemic, with the action taking place in Urie (Angels in America, Buyer & Cellar) and Spahn’s (Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, How to Load a Musket) Manhattan apartment; the real-life partners did numerous virtual presentations over the last two years, and they both starred in Michael Kahn’s eccentric production of Hamlet for Shakespeare Theater Company in 2018, with Urie as the title character and Spahn as his old friend Rosencrantz. Having acted together so often — in addition to cohabitating — the pair has an instant chemistry, in this case reminiscent of Abbott & Costello.

Director Jess Chayes (HOME/SICK, The Antelope Party) holds nothing back, letting the characters fire away at will, pun intended. Plenty of jokes miss their target — repeated references to the Pony Rule, the equivalent of social distancing, fall flat — but plenty nail the bull’s-eye.

Monahon, who previously wrote How to Load a Musket and starred in Widower’s Houses for TACT, is lithe and demure as the somewhat simpleminded, self-deprecating Anne Hathaway, while the ever-dependable Workman (Fefu and Her Friends, Tender Napalm) is bold and fierce as the unabashed, forward-thinking Jane.

In her pamphlet, Anger wrote, “At the end of men’s fair promises there is a Labyrinth, and therefore ever hereafter stop your ears when they protest friendship, lest they come to an end before you are aware whereby you fall without redemption. The path which leads thereunto, is Mans wit, and the mile’s ends are marked with these trees, Folly, Vice, Mischief, Lust, Deceit, and Pride. These to deceive you shall be clothed in the raiments of Fancy, Virtue, Modesty, Love, True meaning, and Handsomness. . . .” Monahon and Chayes capture that spirit in this madcap comedy.

LEMON GIRLS OR ART FOR THE ARTLESS

A quartet of senior women gets more than they bargained for in Lemon Girls or Art for Artless (photo by Andrew Bisdale)

LEMON GIRLS OR ART FOR THE ARTLESS
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the Downstairs
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Thursday – Sunday through March 27, $25-$30
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org
talkingband.org

Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless is a small show in a small space, but it’s one of the most exhilarating and inspiring shows I’ve seen since the pandemic interrupted in-person entertainment in March 2020. It’s an uproarious and touching celebration of aging and coming to terms with who you are and what you’ve accomplished, a kind of alternative to the wickedly fun Six on Broadway, where the six wives of Henry VIII battle it out to see who had it worst with the monarch.

Continuing in the Downstairs theater at La MaMa through March 27, Lemon Girls is about four senior women whose connection to life changes when they meet a stranger in their local café, appropriately called Solo, where the quartet, friends since attending the progressive Lemon Elementary school together, meet for coffee every Tuesday at 3:30. They sit at the same table each week, but they are surprised one afternoon to not only find a line to get in — the new pencil latte has become a thing — but also see that a stranger has taken their spot.

Urban historian Nivea (Patrena Murray), social worker Topo (Lizzie Olesker), retired civil servant Pinny (Louise Smith), and cookbook writer Lorca (Ellen Maddow) assume that the man, Sid Spitz (Jack Wetherall), will cede them the table, but instead he cheekily asks them to join him, in some ways becoming their fifth friend, painter Fran (Tina Shepard), who is not there. They recognize instantly that he’s not like the other males they know, who call themselves the Romeos: Retired Old Men Eating Out. (“They enjoy the turkey chili. It gives them gas,” Pinny points out.) An FIT librarian and performance artist, Sid invites the women to become part of a music theater workshop he leads in the basement of a rec center.

After some waffling, they do actually show up. Their skepticism of Sid’s earnest direction gives the rehearsal scenes brilliant, low-key comedy. “Keep on walking, fill in the spaces, curve through the people, use your arms. And STOP. And float. And STOP and float,” he advises, adding, “The floor is sand, your feet are hands, they squeeze the sand. They caress, they sink, they caress, they squeeze.”

Lorca says to Nivea, “What does he mean our feet are hands? Like monkeys? Does he mean monkeys? Is this the beach? Are we supposed to be at the beach, or the zoo?”

When Sid tells them to move underwater and “fill the empty spaces,” Lorca wonders, “Underwater? How do we breathe? People can’t breathe underwater.” And when he prompts them to glide like their hands are knives and the air is bread, slicing away, Lorca argues, “Suddenly it’s the kitchen?”

Sid Spitz (Jack Wetherall) leads rehearsals for upcoming show in charmer at La MaMa (photo by Andrew Bisdale)

But the four women are superb actors, able to play their characters, older women who are learning to perform, with skill and nuance as the quartet eventually enjoys adapting to Sid’s unique choreographic methods and come up with songs that share intimate details of their lives. As they prepare to put on a public show for an organization called Art for the Artless, there’s conflict: In order to keep the workshop funded, they need a fifth participant, and Nivea promises to bring Fran.

In addition, Sid needs to get paid so he can afford his rent to his landlord and best friend, Marvin; the unseen Marvin is about to turn ninety and is close with artist David Hockney, which excites the group, who rave about how Hockney’s recent show at the Met changed their lives.

At one point, Topo opines, “What I think I look like and what I look like don’t match. That gives me the creeps,” to which Lorca replies, “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Before the rehearsals, the women had resigned themselves to a plain existence, exemplified by some of Lorca’s bitter songs. Sitting outside the café, Lorca and Pinny remember one of Lorca’s schoolgirl ditties: “I sit on a bee because I am dumb / I scream at my teacher cuz she isn’t fair / I kick the doctor because he hurt me / I drown in the river because it is there.” But hope is on the way.

Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless is the latest from avant-garde mainstays Talking Band, which has staged more than fifty new works since 1974. The show is directed by four-time Obie winner Paul Zimet (The City of No Illusions, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth), who cofounded the troupe with Maddow (Fusiform Gyrus — A Septet for Two Scientists and Five Horns, Fat Skirt Big Nozzle), who wrote Lemon Girls and composed the wonderful songs, and Shepard. Sean Donovan (Cabin, The Reception) did the marvelous, often hysterical choreography, which is a character unto itself, helping define the four women and how they view the world. The fab costumes are by Kiki Smith.

Anna Kiraly’s set is anchored by the slightly raised Café Solo at the corner of stage right, covered by a blue curtain when the action is taking place in the central makeshift workshop space, where a door leads beyond. The characters open and close the curtain as scenes there begin and end; on the back wall of the café, Kiraly projects pixelated, abstracted black-and-white footage of younger people hanging out in the shop, which the four women ignore.

As we emerge from the coronavirus crisis, which hit senior citizens particularly hard, it is an absolute joy to watch Nivea, Topo, Pinny, Lorca, and Sid, portrayed by a supremely talented cast, meeting new people, trying new things, and finding renewed meaning in their everyday existence.

“That’s what’s changed!” Nivea suddenly declares. “That’s what I’ve gone back to, I mean. I’ve stopped watching myself. I used to always be watching myself watching myself. Did you ever do that?”

Lorca replies, “Oh yeah. Everything was such a ridiculous complication of layers. And finally I just got tired of it, really, really tired of it. I would watch myself reflected in store windows looking like a hobbling old hag. It was so sad and exhausting! So I just stopped looking. It’s like I went back to when I was eight or something. Whatever I feel like doing, I do it.”

Talking Band has been around for nearly a half century; if you haven’t seen them before, you’ll be thrilled that you’ve met them now and have finally been introduced to their intoxicating philosophy.

UPLOAD

UPLOAD
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
March 22-30, $45-$150, 7:30 / 8:00
www.armoryonpark.org
www.vanderaa.net

Dutch composer Michel van der Aa returns to Park Ave. Armory this month with the North American premiere of Upload, a multimedia opera running March 22-30 in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall. The hybrid work uses film and motion capture technology to tell the story of a father and daughter seeking digital consciousness, an exciting follow-up to Rashaad Newsome’s recently concluded Assembly installation at the armory, which was hosted by the AI known as Being the Digital Griot.

Previously presented at the Dutch National Opera and the Bregenz Festival in Austria, the eighty-five-minute Upload features soprano Julia Bullock as the daughter and baritone Roderick Williams as the father in person, with Katja Herbers as a psychiatrist and Ashley Zukerman as a CEO in prerecorded flashbacks shot by cinematographer Joost Rietdijk. The score is performed by the Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik under the direction of Otto Tausk; the set and lighting are by Theun Mosk, with motion capture and graphics by Darien Brito and special effects by Julius Horsthuis.

Composer, director, and librettist van der Aa was last at the armory with 2017’s Blank Out, in which Williams appeared onscreen in a story loosely based on the life and career of bilingual South African poet Ingrid Jonker. “Park Ave. Armory is one of my favorite performance spaces in the world,” van der Aa said in a statement. “When it presented Blank Out, I was inspired by the response from the armory’s open-minded and diverse audiences. Upload was developed with the Armory in mind.” There will be an artist talk with van der Aa, moderated by performance artist Marina Abramović, on March 22 at 6:00 ($15).

JANE BY CHARLOTTE

Jane Birkin is seen through the eyes of her daughter in Jane by Charlotte

JANE BY CHARLOTTE (Charlotte Gainsbourg, 2021)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Thursday, March 17
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

Jane by Charlotte is a documentary that only a daughter could make about her mother, a movie about two women who are always being looked at looking at each other.

In 1988, French New Wave auteur Agnès Varda made Jane B. par Agnès V., in which the director herself was a character in the film, showing London-born French singer, actress, and fashion icon Jane Birkin galivanting through imaginative and playful set pieces as Varda photographed her, with Varda sometimes revealing herself in front of and behind the camera. She had just finished Kung Fu Master, a family affair starring Birkin, her daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg (who also appeared in the documentary) and Lou Doillon, and Varda’s son Mathieu Demy.

Charlotte, the actress and singer who is the daughter of Birkin and French pop star and heartthrob Serge Gainsbourgh, now picks up the camera to delve into her complicated relationship with her mother in another family affair, Jane by Charlotte, opening March 17 at the Quad. Charlotte will be at the theater for Q&As after the 7:00 and 7:30 screenings Thursday night. It’s a deeply personal film in which mother and daughter share intimate details of their lives together, the good and the bad, while also avoiding certain topics as they head toward milestones, with Jane approaching seventy-five and Charlotte fifty.

Daughter and mother take a break in bed by Jane by Charlotte

“Filming you with a camera is basically an excuse to just look at you. That’s a brief explanation of the process, OK?” Charlotte tells her mother, who has been looked at most of her life. Birkin has been a public figure since she was a teenager as an international model in the 1960s, her name immortalized in the treasured Hermés Birkin bag. She’s released some twenty albums and appeared in such films as Blowup, Je t’aime moi non plus, La Belle Noiseuse, and Death on the Nile. Charlotte is no stranger to the limelight either, starring in such films as Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac, Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams, and Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep and releasing five records of her own.

Cinematographer Adrien Bertolle follows Jane, Charlotte, and, occasionally, Charlotte’s young daughter, Jo, as they roam from Paris and New York City to Brittany, visiting the beach, a Manhattan rooftop, and, for the first time in many years, the home Jane and Charlotte lived in with Serge, who passed away in 1991 at the age of sixty-two. They are shown rehearsing a duet at the Beacon for the touring concert “Birkin Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique,” performing Serge’s song “Ballade de Johnny-Jane.” [ed. note: Birkin will be performing at the Town Hall on June 22 in support of her December 2020 record, Oh! Pardon tu dormais. . . .] The soundtrack also features snippets of Birkin’s “F.R.U.I.T.,” “Max,” and “Je voulais être une telle perfection pour toi!” and Charlotte’s “Lying with You” and “Kate.”

Jane often poses for her daughter, who takes still shots and movies of her mother, who speaks openly about her aging as Charlotte snaps close-ups of her mother’s wrinkled face, arms, and hands. They lie together in bed, all in a heavenly white, as Jane talks about her insomnia and her longstanding near-addiction to sleeping pills.

Jane had one child with each of her major relationships: She had Kate with her husband, conductor and film composer John Barry, in 1967; Charlotte with Serge, who she never married, in 1971; and singer, actress, and model Lou with director Jacques Doillon in 1982. But mother and daughter carefully avoid several details. They discuss Jane’s recent illness without ever naming it as leukemia. And although they often mention Kate, they never speak of her as being dead; a fashion photographer, Kate died in 2013 at the age of forty-six, perhaps by suicide. Both Jane and Charlotte divide their lives into two segments, before and after Kate, a haunting presence who hovers over them.

Charlotte Gainsbourgh and Jane Birkin stroll through Paris in intimate documentary

Jane, who suffered a minor stroke in September, has come to terms with getting older. “We don’t have much of a choice, you know,” she says. “I’m very lucky.” She also admits to making mistakes with Charlotte and in other parts of her life. “I never wanted to do wrong in regards to you,” she tells her. “You were so private, and so . . . secretive. I didn’t have any clues.” Later, sitting in front of projections of home movies, Jane confesses, “I think I’m always tormented by guilt. I often wonder if it was all my fault, if I should have done differently, in regards to everything.”

Ultimately, in her directorial debut, Charlotte makes some confessions of her own, revealing what she still needs from her mother. It’s a poignant and emotional, wholly French finale, evoking Truffaut as we watch Jane on a beach, her hair blowing in the wind. The two of them then hug as if they never want to let go, Charlotte’s Bolex camera dangling over her shoulder.

FIRST LOOK 2022: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN

Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as a flight attendant going nowhere in Zero Fucks Given

FIRST LOOK 2022: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN (RIEN À FOUTRE) (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre, 2021)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, March 18, 7:00
Festival runs March 16-20; weekend pass $60; festival pass $120
718-777-6800
movingimage.us

Adèle Exarchopoulos is magnetic as a flight attendant with a loose grip on her life in Zero Fucks Given, the debut directorial collaboration between Paris- and Brussels-based cowriters and producers Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre. The film makes its New York premiere as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s eleventh “First Look” festival, consisting of more than three dozen international shorts and features in addition to a gallery presentation and a live virtual reality performance.

Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color, Mandibles) stars as Cassandre, a twentysomething woman who’s unable to commit to anything, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She considers herself a free spirit, but she doesn’t do much with that freedom. She is based at an airport in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and wants to get a better airline job in Dubai; she might travel the world, but she spends most of her time in airport hotels and nightclubs, swiping right and left on her cellphone for company. “I like people for two hours and then it’s goodbye,” she tells friends.

As a flight attendant for Wing, she downs vodka before takeoff, usually does the bare minimum at work, and regularly breaks the rules, which she thinks don’t apply to her; when she is offered a promotion, she asserts that she doesn’t want any more responsibilities. After partying, she often wakes up in a blackout about the night before. She might claim to not care, but she is clearly haunted by the death of her mother, who died in a horrific car crash. She has trouble communicating with her father, Jean (Alexandre Perrier), who was devastated by the loss and is trying to sue someone, anyone. When Cassandre — whose name references the Greek mythological figure who was cursed with the ability to prophesize doom that no one listens to — eventually has to return home, suppressed emotions bubble to the surface.

Zero Fucks Given has an infectious, freewheeling atmosphere; the cast includes nonprofessional actors and actual airline personnel, and Perrier, who plays Cassandre’s distraught dad, is one of the associate producers. Marre and Lecoustre (Castle to Castle) eschew rehearsals and encourage significant improvisation while shooting on location with extended breaks in between filming scenes. Exarchopoulos even does her own hair and makeup and wears her own clothing to give the film a more realistic feeling.

Cinematographer Olivier Boonjing zooms in on Cassandre’s face and body as she pretends not to care about what she’s doing, but there’s more to her than she’s allowing herself to acknowledge. “I’m rather lucky,” she says, but she’s going nowhere. She rarely has time to experience the ritzy cities she flies to, traveling back and forth in the enclosed space of airplanes, breathing recycled air. Her mother died in a roundabout, unable to get out of a traffic circle, a stark metaphor for how Cassandre is stuck in life. You might not give a fuck about Cassandre at the beginning, but by the end you’ll be giving more than a few.

Zero Fucks Given is screening at MoMI on March 18 at 7:00. “First Look 2022” runs March 16-20, kicking off with Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s Croatia-set Murina, preceded by Tsai Ming-liang’s Hong Kong short The Night. The closing night selection is Pawel Lozinski’s documentary The Balcony Movie. Among the other films are Kirill Serebrennikov’s Petrov’s Flu, Sergei Loznitza Babi Yar. Context, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection, Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play, Edwin’s Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, Omar El Zohairy’s Feathers, and Radu Jude’s Semiotic Plastic. There will also be daily “Working on It” lab sessions with live presentations, panel discussions, and screenings, followed by receptions with festival guests

WAVES ACROSS TIME: TRADITIONAL DANCE AND MUSIC OF OKINAWA

Who: Okinawan dancers and musicians
What: Performance honoring the golden anniversary of Okinawa being returned to Japan following US WWII occupation
Where: Japan Society, 333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
When: Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19, $42, 7:30
Why: On June 17, 1971, the last of the Ryukyu Islands was returned to Japanese control. “Waves Across Time: Traditional Dance and Music of Okinawa” is touring the United States, paying tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of that event with an evening of traditional music and dance that comes to Japan Society on March 18 and 19. Michihiko Kakazu, the artistic director of the National Theatre Okinawa, has curated a diverse program that includes several types of traditional storytelling featuring a select group of performers wearing lavish, colorful bingata costumes, created using a unique Okinawan dyeing process.

“Waves Across Time” begins with excerpts from the noh-inspired kumiodori masterpiece Manzai Techiuchi; “Sakamoto-bushi” features two women using castanets called yotsudake, followed by a dance between brothers disguised as buskers, and concluding with “Shinobi no ba,” a secret rendezvous that includes solos for the thirteen-stringed koto and the fue. The program continues with several zo odori works, folk dances that originated in the nineteenth century and grew in popularity in the late 1920s after the Meiji era, consisting of solos, duets, and ensemble pieces about traditional village life (Murasakae), true love, and martial arts. The music will be performed live on the snakeskin-covered three-stringed sanshin and other traditional instruments. Each performance will be preceded by a lecture on Okinawa by ethnomusicologist Dr. James Rhys Edwards at 6:30; Japan Society will also host the workshop “Introduction to Okinawan Dance,” led by Kakazu and members of the troupe, on March 19 at 11:00 ($50) and “Okinawan Dance Workshop for Families” on March 20 at 10:30 ($40 per family).

ARMITAGE GONE! DANCE: A PANDEMIC NOTEBOOK

Jock Soto and Karole Armitage will dance onscreen and in person at New York Live Arts (photo courtesy AG!D)

ARMITAGE GONE! DANCE: A PANDEMIC NOTEBOOK
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
March 16-19, $15-$35, 7:30
newyorklivearts.org
www.armitagegonedance.org

Armitage Gone! Dance will be at New York Live Arts this week with a program of world premieres that mix live performance with film, fashion, visual art, science, and more that promises to be a grand finale before the company is reimagined for the future. As a special treat, Karole Armitage, who founded AG!D in 1981, will take the stage for the first time since 1989.

“A Pandemic Notebook” begins with the diptych Beautiful Monster and Louis. The first part was inspired by Le streghe bruciata viva (The Witch Burned Alive), Luchino Visconti’s contribution to the 1967 omnibus Le streghe, with Silvana Mangano and Annie Girardot, and Roberto Rossellini’s 1966 television film La prise de pouvoir par Louix XIV (The Taking of Power by Louis XIV), along with references to former president Donald Trump and celebrity culture; the music is by Michael Gordon, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Thomas Adès, and David T. Little.

The second part combines two short films from Armitage’s “Under the Dancer” series, Head to Heel and Andy, made during the pandemic, with live performance, followed by Time/Times, an homage to slow cinema in which Armitage, currently an MIT Media Lab Directors Fellow, will dance with former New York City Ballet principal Jock Soto in front of footage taken in White Sand Dunes National Park, Valley of Fires lava fields, and Plaza Blanca in New Mexico and in the snow of Crested Butte, Colorado, set to Bach’s Chaconne.

The next piece, 6 Ft. Apart, debuted online last May in “WOMEN / CREATE! A Virtual Festival of Dance” and will now be performed in person; the work involves Alonso Guzman tracking dancers Sierra French and Cristian Laverde-Koenig using an iPhone attached to his baseball cap that triggers engineer Agnes Fury Cameron’s abstract percussive sounds.

The seventy-five-minute show concludes with Marc Jacobs, adapted from the fall 2021 runway show Armitage choreographed for the designer, who supplies the daring costumes for this performance, set to the Jim Pepper Remembrance Band and Gunther Schuller’s “Goin’ Down to Muskogee.”

The full company consists of Armitage, Guzman, Laverde-Koenig, French, Isaac Kerr, and Kali Marie Oliver, with lighting by Tsubasa Kamei and Clifton Taylor. It should be quite a farewell for the popular, cutting-edge company; it will be fascinating to see what Armitage does next.