this week in dance

TIME AND “TIME AGAIN”: TRISHA BROWN AT THE JOYCE

Opal Loop / Cloud Installation #722503 is part of Trisha Brown season at the Joyce (photo by Maria Baranova)

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
April 29 – May 4, $52-$72
www.joyce.org

For its 2025 season at the Joyce, Trisha Brown Dance Company looks back at its seminal Unstable Molecular Structure Cycle while also forging ahead into the future.

Running April 29 through May 4, the program features three dances, beginning with the world premiere of Time again, which explores the concept of change, repetition, chance, and familiarity. Choreographed by Lee Serle, who was mentored by Brown in 2010 through the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiative, the work features set and visual design by Mateo López, who was mentored by William Kentridge in 2012–13 in the Rolex program, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, and music by Australian sound artist Alisdair Macindoe. It will be performed by TBDC members Savannah Gaillard, Rochelle Jamila, Burr Johnson, Ashley Merker, Patrick Needham, Jennifer Payán, and Spencer James Weidie.

Following intermission, the company returns with two pieces from the Unstable Molecular Structure Cycle, which executive director Kirstin Kapustik calls “a series of works that embrace fluidity, unpredictability, and the beauty of constant change.” First up is 1980’s Opal Loop / Cloud Installation #722503, a collaboration with Japanese fog artist Fujiko Nakaya that invites the audience “to bring together images within themselves.” Merker, Needham, Payán, and Weidie perform to the sounds of water passing through high-pressure nozzles, with costumes by Judith Shea and lighting by Beverly Emmons.

The evening concludes with 1981’s Son of Gone Fishin’, which Brown called “a doozey. In it I reached the apogee of complexity in my work.” The full ensemble randomly selects sections of Robert Ashley’s score from his three-opera opus Atalanta, with costumes by Shea and lighting by Emmons evoking the original set design by Donald Judd.

To dive deeper, there will be a Curtain Chat following the April 30 performance.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE VOICE OF A TEARDROP: ACTIVATING OTOBONG NKANGA’S CADENCE AT MoMA

Artist Otobong Nkanga will be joined by six performers to activate Cadence installation on April 27 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Otobong Nkanga and others
What: Installation activation
Where: Marron Family Atrium, MoMA, 11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Sunday, April 27, free with museum admission, 10:30 am – 5:30 pm
Why: Describing her MoMA atrium commission Cadence, Nigeria-born, Belgium-based artist Otobong Nkanga notes, “Once I’d visited MoMA, I was interested in creating a tapestry work for the highest wall in the atrium, which would allow for a way of looking into the world from a different perspective. I wanted to create the notion of falling: a fall of things, a certain shift, a certain rhythm. The tapestry opens up to a more three-dimensional space, with sculptural pieces made of clay, smoked raku, and glass hanging from ropes and sitting on anthracite rocks, and a sound piece integrated in the sculpture that relates to the notion of teardrops, which is another kind of fall. . . . I wanted to make something that explores different rhythms of life. You might also feel that it’s a world that is beyond this one, like the universe somehow. It’s a mix of different worlds — from the underworld and the mining of minerals, to the surface and the soil, to the atmosphere and the heat of the sun, into outer space — all collapsing together in one place. That’s what creates the cadence of life. That’s what creates, actually, a world, because you cannot separate what is happening in the universe from what is happening underneath the soil in the core of the earth.”

On April 27 from 10:30 to 5:30, Nkanga and six other performers — Holland Andrews, Keishera, Muyassar Kurdi, Anaïs Maviel, Miss Olithea, and Samita Sinha, in costumes by Christian Joy — will activate the installation, incorporating sound and movement to interact with the piece. “What if a teardrop actually had a voice? What would it say? How would it say it? The work is really looking at that teardrop, and the emotions that go with it,” Nkanga says of the live performance, which is free with museum admission. Cadence is on view through July 27.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GRAHAM100: PSYCHODRAMAS AND MYTHOLOGY AT THE JOYCE

Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Baye & Asa’s Cortege and more in Joyce season (photo by Steven Pisano)

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY: DANCES OF THE MIND
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
April 1-13, $62-$82
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
marthagraham.org

What’s old is new again.

The Martha Graham Dance Company brings its ninety-ninth season to the Joyce for two weeks of classics, world premieres, and reimaginings of familiar pieces, in one case using — gasp! — AI.

From April 1 to 13, MGDC will present “Dances of the Mind,” three programs as part of its continuing GRAHAM100 celebration, preparing for its official centennial next year. Program A consists of Graham’s 1958 Clytemnestra Act II, with an original score by Halim El-Dabh and set by Isamu Noguchi; Baye & Asa’s Cortege, a world premiere about Charon the ferryman, inspired by Graham’s 1967 Cortege of Eagles, with music by Jack Grabow and costumes by Caleb Krieg; Xin Ying’s Letter to Nobody, based on Graham’s 1940 Letter to the World, this time honoring Graham and her legacy, incorporating generative media and AI technology, along with an Emily Dickinson poem (“I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you – Nobody – too? / Then there’s a pair of us!”), to craft a duet with Graham, Erick Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham; and Hofesh Shechter’s kinetic 2022 CAVE, with music by Âme and Shechter and costumes by Krieg.

Program B comprises Graham’s 1935 solo Frontier: American Perspective of the Plains, honoring the spirit of the pioneer woman, with a score by Louis Horst and set by Isamu Noguchi; two lost 1920s solos, Revolt and Immigrant, reimagined by Graham 2 director Virginie Mécène through extensive research; a new production of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, with Gabe Witcher’s bluegrass arrangement of Aaron Copland’s famous score, costumes by Oana Botez, and set by two-time Tony winner Beowulf Boritt; and Jamar Roberts’s 2024 We the People, which Roberts explains “is equal parts protest and lament, speculating on the ways in which America does not always live up to its promise,” with music by Rhiannon Giddens (arranged by Witcher) and costumes by Karen Young.

The third program brings together Graham’s 1943 Deaths and Entrances, made while Graham was contemplating faith and despair and inspired by the lives of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, with music by Hunter Johnson, set by Arch Lauterer, and costumes by Oscar de la Renta; Graham’s 1947 Errand into the Maze, a duet based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, with a score by Gian Carlo Menotti and set by Noguchi; and CAVE.

In addition, the April 1 gala features Clytemnestra Act II and Cortege, the April 5 University Partners Showcase highlights university and high school dancers performing works by Graham, Hawkins, José Limón, and others, the April 12 family matinee presents Graham’s 1935 call-to-action Panorama, Rodeo, and We the People, and there will be a Curtain Chat following the April 9 show.

Founded in 1926 in a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan, MGDC has an illustrious history involving a wide range of remarkable collaborators; the current troupe includes So Young An, Ane Arieta, Laurel Dalley Smith, Zachary Jeppsen-Toy, Meagan King, Lloyd Knight, Rayan Lecurieux-Durival, Antonio Leone, Devin Loh, Amanda Moreira, Ethan Palma, Jai Perez, Anne Souder, Matthew Spangler, Richard Villaverde, Leslie Andrea Williams, and Xin Ying.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE NEXT GENERATION OF DANCE: AILEY II RETURNS HOME

Ailey II brings Houston Thomas’s Down the Rabbit Hole back home in two-week NYC season (photo by Nir Arieli)

AILEY II AT CITIGROUP THEATER
Ailey Citigroup Theater
405 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 26 – April 6, $62.25
ailey.org

Ailey II has been on the road, visiting more than two dozen cities, but the company called “the next generation of dance” is coming back to New York for its annual season at the Ailey Citigroup Theater on West Fifty-Fifth St. Running March 26 to April 6, the season is dedicated to longtime Ailey dancer, choreographer, and artistic director Judith Jamison, who passed away in November at the age of eighty-one.

“Ailey II is thrilled to come back to our home stage after an incredible tour across the country as we leap into our sixth decade,” artistic director Francesca Harper said in a statement. “We are eager to welcome both our loyal supporters and new audiences to experience the exciting artistry of Ailey II through two programs that bridge the past and present, celebrating how each generation shapes the future. Whether audiences find joy, connection, or a sense of empowerment, I want them to carry that discovery into their lives long after they leave the theater.”

The company of twelve dancers — Carley Brooks, Meredith Brown, Jennifer M. Gerken, Alfred L. Jordan II, Xavier Logan, Kiri Moore, Corinth Moulterie, Xhosa Scott, Kayla Mei-Wan Thomas, Darion Turner, Eric Vidaña, and Jordyn White — will present “Echoes,” comprising Harper’s Luminous, the world premiere of Houston Thomas’s Down the Rabbit Hole, and a new production of Alvin Ailey’s Streams, and “New Vintage,” consisting of an excerpt from Jamison’s Divining, excerpts from Ailey’s Blues Suite, The Lark Ascending, and Streams, Down the Rabbit Hole, and Baye & Asa’s John 4:20. Each program is approximately 105 minutes with two intermissions; tickets are $62.65.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BOXED IN: JOSHUA WILLIAM GELB’s [untitled miniature] AT HERE

Joshua William Gelb spends three hours a night in a tiny box at Here through March 25 (photo by Maria Baranova)

[untitled miniature]
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
March 18-25, $27-$102 (livestream only $10), 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
here.org
theaterinquarantine.com

In January, Joshua William Gelb, who had transformed his eight-square-foot closet in the East Village into a pristine white digital stage during the pandemic, escaped the safety of his home in order to present The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [Redux], a staggeringly inventive hourlong multimedia play performed in a replica of his closet, accompanied by live and prerecorded video segments interacting with each other.

Gelb, whose collaborative virtual productions, dubbed Theater in Quarantine, include I Am Sending You the Sacred Face: One Brief Musical Act with Mother Teresa, Footnote for the End of Time, and Nosferatu: A 3D Symphony of Horror, now steps further into the technological avant-garde with the hybrid [untitled miniature], running through March 25 at Here. Each evening from 7:00 to 10:00, Gelb, nude and covered in white talcum powder, will perform in a white box measuring only 35″ wide by 19.5″ tall. His actions, which begin with him seemingly asleep, can be seen on an iPhone facing the box, a screen on the back of the box, three video monitors in the hallway, and a wall around the corner with nine screens that alternate between live and prerecorded scenes of Gelb in the box, sometimes bathed in yellow, pink, or other colors, along with television test patterns, the SMPTE color-bar grids that, sixty years ago, appeared on television sets after broadcasters shut down for the night — and which, if they came on today, would signal the end is near.

Audience members can relax on the vivid blue floor in the central space, sit in a chair, or walk around the room, following the show on an app that shares different views of Gelb and encourages everyone to participate in a chat that is read out loud by a female AI voice, audible to both the audience and Gelb. The only other items in the room are a red fire extinguisher and an old metal first-aid kit on the wall; after I accidentally knocked my head against it, one of the black-clad stage managers silently came over, opened it up, took out a small package that said “bandages,” and offered me a brown Tic Tac.

[untitled miniature] features a live video feed broadcast to numerous screens and online (photo by Maria Baranova)

In an Instagram post, Gelb delves into the nature of the work, explaining, “Why am I naked? . . . The naked body is the foundation of art. . . . I’m trying to see if it’s possible to find a real impression of tactility in the digital medium. I wanted to make a piece that really felt distilled down to its most essential elements, the smallest performance space possible and a human body. That shouldn’t be controversial, but try putting a naked body on the internet outside of OnlyFans and you hit a wall — algorithmic sensors, AI moderators, the corporate infrastructure that decides what is and is not acceptable. . . . Art isn’t about comfort or what’s acceptable. And artists need a digital space where they can push boundaries, even ones that make us uncomfortable.”

Gelb certainly looks uncomfortable as he wiggles, turns, squirms, and reconfigures his limbs; often, when he bumps into or purposely strikes the box, harsh, loud sounds reverberate blast out, a cacophonous symphony. At times the audience is enveloped in the much more rewarding sounds of chirping birds and a gently rushing river. Gelb occasionally lets out a grunt but is mostly quiet as he struggles inside the claustrophobic box.

Durational performance offers numerous ways to experience it (photo by Maria Baranova)

Gelb is clearly not enjoying himself, grimacing, staring out blankly, seemingly unable to get out of his predicament. Although one side of the box is open, he is trapped, in a cage he has built for himself. It’s as if he’s been sent to solitary confinement for an unnamed crime. Maybe he wakes up, wrestles with another difficult day, and goes back to bed — or perhaps has decided, once awake, to eventually stay under the covers, avoiding facing the world. He could be stuck on a social media platform on which he no longer wants to reveal himself. Or maybe he has experienced an entire lifetime in forty-five minutes, being birthed from the womb and later laid to rest in a grave.

The piece can also be taken more literally, applied to how we were all penned in at home during lockdown, terrified of leaving, spending too much time with our little electronic boxes that kept warning us of impending doom — and with which Gelb has carved out a unique and fascinating career.

At the show’s conclusion, there are no bows, no applause. Some members of the audience gingerly leave, and others stay, no one sure whether anything else is going to happen, sort of like life itself, before, during, and after a pandemic.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

DOOM, HOPE, AND THE BARD AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Anne Imhof reimagines Romeo and Juliet in Doom: House of Hope at the armory (photo by Nadine Fraczkowski / courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Ave. Armory)

DOOM: HOUSE OF HOPE
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 3–12, $60
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

“What less than doomsday is the prince’s doom?” Friar Laurence asks Romeo in William Shakespeare’s tragic tale Romeo & Juliet.

Because of its massive 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Park Ave. Armory has been home to numerous unique theatrical productions and art installations, involving such unusual elements as thirty tons of clothing (Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land), wooden swings hanging seventy feet from the ceiling (Ann Hamilton’s The Event of a Thread), one hundred bleating sheep (Heiner Goebbels’s De Materie), and a dark, mysterious heath (Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth).

Now Berlin-based Golden Lion winner Anne Imhof has transformed the hall into an enormous prom gym, filling the space with more than fifty actors, dancers (ABT, modern, flexn, line), skateboarders, and musicians, twenty-six Cadillac Escalades, a Jumbotron, and other inspiring elements for Doom: House of Hope, a three-hour multidisciplinary reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, running March 3–12. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the durational performance features Sihana Shalaj, Levi Strasser, and Devon Teuscher as Romeo; Talia Ryder and Remy Young as Juliet; assistant director and costumer Eliza Douglas, choreographer Josh Johnson, Cranston Mills, and Connor Holloway as Mercutio; Jakob Eilinghoff, Arthur Tendeng, and Daniil Simkin as Benvolio; and Efron Danzg, vocalist Lia Wang, and Simkin as Tybalt. Among the other characters are Vinson Fraley and Toon Lobach as angels, Perla Haney-Jardine as the critic, Tess Petronio as the photographer, Casper von Bulow as the director and the revolutionary, Coco Gordon Moore as the poet, Tahlil Myth as the storyteller, and Henry Douglas as the gamer, offering yet more twists on the traditional tragedy.

The band, under the musical direction of Ville Haimala, consists of Sharleen Chidiac on guitar, Eilinghoff on bass, Eva Bella Kaufman on drums, and James Shaffer on guitar, with vocals by Lia Wang. The score ranges from Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to the Doors, Radiohead, and Frank Sinatra, along with original compositions by ATK44, Douglas, Haimala, Imhof, Lia Lia, Jacob Madden, and Strasser. In addition to Shakespeare, the text collects quotes from Jean Genet, Heinrich Heine, and Raymond Moody and writings about George Balanchine, John Cranko, Dieter Gackstetter, Bruce Nauman, Jerome Robbins, Tino Sehgal, and others.

The set is by sub, with sound by Mark Grey and lighting by the masterful Urs Schönebaum, who has dazzled audiences with his work on such previous armory productions as Inside Light and Doppelganger.

As its title states, the immersive show recognizes the doom so many feel now, the increasing anxiety over the state of the planet, while also seeing a potentially bright future.

Romeo (Levi Strasser) and Juliet (Talia Ryder) face doom and hope in Anne Imhof extravaganza at the armory (photo by Nadine Fraczkowski / courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Ave. Armory)

A few moments after Friar Laurence predicts the worst, Romeo tells him, “Hang up philosophy. / Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, / Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom.” Perhaps there is a way out of this mess we’re in, although the Bard’s original play does not exactly end happily.

On March 11 at 5:30, Imhof, whose other works include Sex, Natures Mortes, and Angst I–III, will participate in an artist talk about Doom: House of Hope with writer and curator Ebony L. Haynes.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NIGHT AND DAY: COMPAGNIE HERVÉ KOUBI AT THE JOYCE

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI brings What the Day Owes to the Night back to the Joyce (photo ©-Didier Philispart)

DANCE REFLECTIONS: WHAT THE DAY OWES TO THE NIGHT
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 28 – February 2, $12-$82
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.cie-koubi.fr

Last January, French choreographer Hervé Koubi brought down the house at the Joyce with his troupe’s stirring 2023 production, Sol Invictus, so it’s no surprise that Compagnie Hervé KOUBI sold out in advance its encore engagement of 2013’s What the Day Owes to the Night. A later production dazzled Joyce audiences in 2018, and it’s back to once again push the limits of what the human body can do.

In a program note, Koubi, who discovered his family’s Algerian roots when he was twenty-five, explains, “This project is at the crossroads of two preoccupations: my taste for the construction and the danced composition and a deep need to bring me closer to my origins in the land of Algeria. Links to be found, others to be renewed, and still others to be built.” Upon learning of his heritage, he spent four years in Algeria and came back with a movement language that incorporates hip-hop, the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira, break-dancing, gymnastics, ballet, and contemporary dance, performed by an all-male North African ensemble.

The sixty-five-minute presentation is named after the 2008 novel by Yasmina Khadra, the pseudonym of Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul; the show does not follow the plot of the romantic drama as much as the feel and setting, structured around the midcentury battle of Mers El-Kebir, the Algerian War for Independence, and the hours in a day.

The insanely talented dancers — Badr Benr Guibi, Giacomo Buffoni, Mohammed Elhilali, Vladimir Gruev, Youssef El Kanfoudi, Abdelghani Ferradji, Oualid Guennoun, Bendehiba Maamar, Nadjib Meherhera, Houssni Mijem, Ismail Oubbajaddi, Matteo Ruiz, and El Houssaini Zahid — are dressed in white cotton pants with panels that swirl and shirts that eventually come off, revealing duly impressive torsos. The flowing costumes are by assistant choreographer Guillaume Gabriel, who also arranged the score, which features Johann Sebastian Bach, Sufi music, and the Kronos Quartet performing songs by Egyptian Nubian musician Hamza El Din, in addition to moments of poetic silence.

The dancers begin in a pile in a far corner, then stir in a hazy, smokey dawn. Over time, as Lionel Buzonie’s lighting gets sharper and brighter, resulting in different shades of shadows on the white floor and, for one section, two dozen golden circles, the men do jaw-dropping head spins; shoot our their arms as if defending themselves; lift up one man high into the sky; and form two groups that each toss a dancer up and others catch him.

They swirl like whirling dervishes, writhe on the floor, and arch and angle their bodies in unison. They run forward and backward, perform cartwheels and diving somersaults, and hold hands in a circle. At one point, twelve men line up on one side and all watch a dazzling solo. At another, they come together and do simultaneous handstands, their bare feet dangling in the air like roots growing out of the earth. They occasionally slow down, most likely to gather their breath before the next action-packed moments.

Part of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels initiative, What the Day Owes to the Night does become a bit repetitive — is it possible for remarkable head spins to become de rigeur? — but it is also utterly thrilling, a unified piece that immerses you in Koubi’s world, radically changed by his discovery of his secret family identity. It will likely make you think about your own ancestors and wonder what beauty might be hidden there.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]