this week in dance

ADGFEST 2014

AMERICAN DANCE GUILD PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL 2014
The Ailey Citigroup Theater
The Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th St. at Ninth Ave.
December 4-7, $20-$30
800-838-3006 ext1
www.americandanceguild.org

The American Dance Guild’s Annual Performance Festival is set for December 4-7 at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, with thirty-three artists and companies performing, including special tributes to Philadanco founder Joan Myers Brown, Douglas Dunn, and Bill Evans. “The American Dance Guild annual festival now holds a unique position as both a promoter of the new and preserver of the living history of modern dance as an art form,” ADG president Gloria McLean said in a statement. The four-day event begins on December 4 with an awards ceremony and works presented by Brown with Hope Boykin, Dunn (Near Miss), Evans (the solo Three Preludes), John Pennington (the New York City premiere of Daniel Nagrin’s solo Man of Action), Sun Ock Lee, Sarah Skaggs, Jody Oberfelder, Chad Michael Hall, Catherine Gallant, and Eye on Dance/Celia Ipiotis, followed by a gala. Friday night brings together Brown (Ronald K. Brown’s Gatekeepers), Juri Nishio, Kyla Barkin, McLean, Dana Tai Burgess, Loretta Fois & Sabatino Verlezza, Aaron Atkins, Zach Ingram, and Sue Bernhard. Taking the stage Saturday night will be Dunn, Amy Pivar, Indah M. Walsh, Chien Ying Wang & Paul Ocampo, Gesel Mason (dancing Donald McKayle’s Saturday’s Child), Maxine Steinman, Mary Seidman, and Azul Dance Theater. ADGFEST 2014 concludes Sunday night with Bill Evans Dance Company (Colony), Tina Croll, Elizabeth Shea, Kanon Sapp, Janet Charleston performing a solo created for her by Dunn, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Ara Fitzgerald & Clare Byrne, and Nai Ni Chen Dance Company.

HOLIDAY LIGHTINGS 2014

The Sigafoos’ Christmas tree pulls into Rock Center earlier this month (photo courtesy TODAY show)

The Sigafoos’ Norwegian spruce pulls into Rock Center earlier this month from Pennsylvania (photo courtesy TODAY show)

Over the next few weeks, Christmas trees and menorahs will be lit all over the city, accompanied by live performances, seasonal treats, special guests, and family-friendly activities, all free. Below are only some of the many highlights as the Big Apple prepares for the holidays.

Park Slope Holiday Tree Lighting
Fifth Ave. at Third St.
Saturday, November 29, 6:30
www.parkslopefifthavenuebid.com
Live music by Amy Miles, carols by Opera on Tap, crafts, puppet shows, cookies, marshmallows, hot chocolate, popcorn, children’s activities, Santa and Frosty the Snowman

Fifteenth Annual Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square
Dante Park, Broadway between 63rd & 64th Sts., Time Warner Center, David Rubenstein Atrium
Monday, December 1, 5:30 – 9:00
www.winterseve.nyc
Emcee Billy Porter, ice sculpting, live performances by Arlo Guthrie and family, Alice Farley Dance Theater, Golem, Spuyten Duyvil, Batala NYC, the Lucky Chops Brass Band, M.A.K.U. SoundSystem, the N’Harmonics, Uptown Vocal, the Cafe Wha? House Band, the Jazzmeia Horn Quartet, Bach Vespers, Annika, Hungry March Band, Raya Brass Band, Shinbone Alley Stilt Band, Dylan Meek, Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes, the Hot Sardines, Yaz Band, Mariachi Real De Mexico, the Suzi Shelton Band, the Big Apple Circus, Chinese Lion Dancers, Kinky Boots, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, dance groups, WNET characters, a screening of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, food tastings ($1-$4), Sesame Street’s Digital Playground & Walkaround Abby Cadabby

The South Street Seaport’s Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony
Fulton St. at Front St.
Tuesday, December 2, 5:45
Live music, family-friendly activities, more
www.southstreetseaport.com

Winter Village Tree Lighting
Bryant Park
40th – 42nd Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, December 2, 6:00
www.wintervillage.org
Details to be announced

Eighty-Second Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting
Rockefeller Plaza, between West 48th and West 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues
Wednesday, December 3, 7:00 – 9:00
www.rockefellercenter.com
Musical guests to be announced; tree will remain lit through January 7

Central Park Conservancy’s Eighteenth Annual Dana Holiday Lighting
Charles A. Dana Discovery Center inside the park at 110th St. & Malcolm X Blvd.
Thursday, December 4, 5:30 – 6:30
www.centralparknyc.org
Flotilla of more than twenty illuminated trees on Harlem Meer, live ice carving, photos with Santa and his elves, Christmas carols, and hot cocoa and cookies

Christmas in Richmond Town: Traditional Tree Lighting
Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island
441 Clarke Ave.
Sunday, December 7, 5:00
www.historicrichmondtown.org
Festivities begin at 11:00 am ($2 per person, six and under free) with shopping village, carolers, storytelling, Santa Claus, tours, Bell Choir, horse & carriage rides ($2, two and under free), free Christmas tree lighting at 5:00

Carl Schurz Park Holiday Tree Lighting
East 86th St. at East End Ave.
Sunday, December 7, 5:00
www.carlschurzparknyc.etapwss.com
Christmas carols, Cantori choir, Orbital Brass, candlelight, candy canes, and hot chocolate

The Park Avenue Tree Lighting
Outside Brick Presbyterian Church, Park Ave. at 91st St.
Sunday, December 7, 6:30
www.fundforparkavenue.org
Annual lighting of trees along Park Ave. Malls between 54th & 97th Sts., starting with tree outside Brick Presbyterian Church

Mad. Sq. Holiday 2014
Madison Square Park
23rd – 26th Sts. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Tuesday, December 9, 3:30
www.madisonsquarepark.org
Live performances by Audra Rox and cast members of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, horticultural workshop with a red twig dogwood planting led by Gardener Steph, Reading Rangers storytelling, Gingerbread Boulevard, seasonal treats from Hill Country Chicken, SD26, and Frittering Away, tree lighting at 5:00

Washington Square Park tree will be lit on December 10 (photo courtesy Washington Square Park Blog)

The Washington Square Park Tree Lighting
Washington Square Park Arch at Fifth Ave.
Wednesday, December 10, 6:00
www.washingtonsquarenyc.org
Live music by the Rob Susman Brass Quartet, songbooks for caroling, Santa Claus

Holiday on the Hudson
West Harlem Piers Park, West 125th & Marginal Sts.
Saturday, December 13, 5:00
www.riversideparknyc.org
Live music by the All-City High School Chorus, holiday decorations workshop, more

Zuccotti Park Holiday Lighting
Broadway & Liberty St.
Saturday, December 13, 5:30
www.artsbrookfield.com
Live music by the Manhattan Dolls and Metropolitan Klezmer, sweet treats, more

World’s Largest Menorah will be lit nightly in Grand Army Plaza (photo courtesy Chabad Park Slope)

World’s Largest Menorah will be lit nightly during Hanukkah in Grand Army Plaza (photo courtesy Chabad Park Slope)

World’s Largest Menorah
Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
December 16-23, 6:00
Live music, hot latkes, gifts for kids
www.chabadparkslope.com

World’s Largest Hanukkah Menorah
Grand Army Plaza, Manhattan
Fifth Ave. between 58th & 59th Sts.
December 16-23, 6:00

IVY BALDWIN DANCE: OXBOW

Katie Workum, Eleanor Smith, Luke Miller, and Anna Carapetyan perform in Ivy Baldwin’s OXBOW (photo by Ian Douglas)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 13-16, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ivybaldwindance.org

Named for the U-shaped bend in a river, Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission, Oxbow, is an evocative five-person dance steeped in the language of Movement Research, where the New York-based choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow is an artist-in-residence (as she also is at the BAM Fisher). With the audience sitting on three sides of the stage, the sixty-minute piece opens with Ryan Tracy, dressed in black, playing an elegiac solo on a piano in one of the near corners of the stage. After finishing his composition, he walks to the back and lies down on his stomach as Eleanor Smith appears, shaking and stretching in a black top and white pants. She is soon joined by Luke Miller (replacing an ill Lawrence Cassella) in all white, Katie Workum in a red dress, the exquisite Anna Carapetyan in red and black (the costumes are by fashion designer Alice Ritter), and Tracy as they move about the stage in front of Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen’s massive horizontal installation of twisted paper, often in silence. The audience can often hear their heavy breathing and every squeak of their feet against the floor; Justin Jones’s live-mixed sound design also includes barely audible background music and unidentifiable crunching sounds, and at one point Smith bangs on the keyboards as well.

A moving duet by Katie Workum and Anna Carapetyan concludes Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission (photo by Ian Douglas)

A moving duet by Katie Workum and Anna Carapetyan is part of Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission (photo by Ian Douglas)

I don’t know if Baldwin has ever seen William A. Wellman’s classic 1943 Western, The Ox-Bow Incident, or read Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s original novel, but I couldn’t help but see a lot of narrative elements and referents from that famous story about a posse determined to hang three men who might or might not be cattle rustlers who murdered a rancher. Kavanaugh and Nguyen’s sculpture looks like a scorched fallen tree with ropes that could have been nooses, the black-and-white costumes could symbolize good and evil, and the two women in red could represent the potential death of innocent people (as do a series of sudden wailing screams). Regardless, Oxbow is a riveting dance performed by an extremely talented company highlighted by Smith and Carapetyan, who have danced together before in such works as Juliana F. May’s Gutter Gate at New York Live Arts in 2012, in addition to the elegant Workum, the agile Miller, and the surprisingly nimble Tracy. Throughout Oxbow, the performers keep a close watch on one another as they interact in a lovely piece by an imaginative choreographer who is always worth watching as well.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER NY CITY CENTER SEASON

Robert Moses’s THE PLEASURE OF THE LESSON will makes its Ailey company premiere at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 3 – January 4, $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has something extra special to celebrate this year, as the company prepares for its annual holiday season at City Center. Their founder, Alvin Ailey, who started the troupe in 1958 and passed away in 1989, will be posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 24, to be accepted by current AAADT artistic director Robert Battle. In addition, longtime chairman of the board Joan H. Weill is retiring, going out with a bang, as more than $40 million has been raised in her honor so far for in the Campaign for Ailey’s Future. The season begins December 3 with an opening-night gala featuring Battle’s Unfold, with live music by Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu, the company premiere of Hofesh Schechter’s Uprising, and the Ailey classic Revelations, also with live music. Making its world premieres over the course of the month are Matthew Rushing’s Odetta, a tribute to the singer-songwriter and activist, and Robert Moses’s The Pleasure of the Lesson, while the other company premieres are Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain (Pas de Deux), Asadata Dafora’s Awassa Astrige / Ostrich, and Jacqulyn Buglisi’s Suspended Women.

Matthew Rushing’s ODETTA honors the singer-songwriter and activist on the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act (photo by Steve Wilson)

Continuing through January 4, the season also includes new productions of Ulysses Dove’s Bad Blood and Hans van Manen’s Polish Pieces; the always popular “Ailey/Ellington” program, consisting of Night Creature, Pas de Duke, The River, and Revelations; Saturday afternoon family matinees followed by Q&As with the dancers; and “Celebrating the Women of Ailey,” a presentation on December 16 honoring the fabulous Linda Celeste Sims, Hope Boykin, and the rest of the Ailey women with Cry, Night Creature, an excerpt from Vespers, and Revelations. Among the returning favorites are David Parsons’s blinding Caught, Ronald K. Brown’s elegant Four Corners and Grace, Ohad Naharin’s rapturous Minus 16, Battle’s dizzying Takademe, and Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters (Part 1). And for New Year’s Eve, Revelations will be performed by past and present members of the company.

OXBOW

Ivy Baldwin Dance makes its BAM debut with OXBOW (photo by Andy Romer)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 13-16, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ivybaldwindance.org

Brooklyn-based choreographer Ivy Baldwin is having quite a year. While celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of her company, Ivy Baldwin Dance, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow, and this week she will make her BAM debut with Oxbow, an evening-length work she made as the 2014 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher. The work was created in collaboration with dancers Anna Carapetyan, Lawrence Cassella, Eleanor Smith, and Katie Workum and features a live-mixed score by Justin Jones and additional music by Ryan Tracy. The twisted-paper set is by installation artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, with lighting by Michael O’Connor and costumes by Alice Ritter. In such previous pieces as Ambient Cowboy and Here Rests Peggy, Baldwin has displayed a unique visual flair and compelling sense of narrative likely to continue with Oxbow, described as “exploring the inexorable nature of the two forces that contain us all: space and time, geology and chronology.” The piece runs November 13-16, with tickets only twenty dollars.

GIBNEY DANCE: DoublePlus

Jennifer Meckley and Fiona Lundie perform in Abby Zbikowski’s “Destabilizer,” part of Gibney Dance’s DoublePlus series celebrating the opening of its new downtown space (photo by Nick Fancher)

Gibney Dance Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
Wednesday through Saturday, November 5 – December 20, $15, 7:30
www.gibneydance.org

Gibney Dance is celebrating its expansion to 280 Broadway with the six-week series DoublePlus, in which six established choreographers will curate programs by two up-and-coming dance creators. Founded in 1991 at 890 Broadway by Gina Gibney “to bring the possibility of movement to where it otherwise would not exist,” the company has now taken over 280 Broadway, the former home of Dance New Amsterdam by City Hall. Wednesday night shows will be preceded by a Meet the Curator talk, while Friday night performances will be followed by a discussion with the curator and dance artists. The series was developed by founding artistic director Gibney and new director of programs and presentation Craig T. Peterson as part of the company’s mission of “Making Space for Dance.” Gibney explained, “What we’re interested in building is a fully supported artistic ‘ecosystem’ that puts to use the unique set of resources at our disposal to benefit all of the communities we’ve been serving for the past twenty-two years: artists, audiences, and the vulnerable populations we reach through our Community Action Program.” The Community Action Program brings together dancers with domestic violence survivors for special programs and workshops. For the DoublePlus program, Annie-B Parson mentors Audrey Hailes (Death Made Love to My Feet) and Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (The Art of Luv) November 5-8, RoseAnne Spradlin leads Daria Faïn (is as if alone) and Gillian Walsh (Continued™ Procedures) November 12-15, Miguel Gutierrez oversees Rakiya A. Orange (Aziza) and Alex Rodabaugh (g1br33l) November 19-22, Donna Uchizono counsels Alex Escalante (Venado) and Molly Poerstel (Stolen Grounds) December 3-6, Jon Kinzel advises Anna Azrieli (Averaging) and Stuart Shugg (Dear Washing Machine, Long Night) December 10-13, and Bebe Miller coaches Maree ReMalia (merrygogo) and Abby Zbikowski (Destabilizer) December 17-20.

TANZTHEATER WUPPERTAL PINA BAUSCH: KONTAKTHOF

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s KONTAKTHOF is finally making its BAM debut after thirty-six years (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
October 23 – November 2, $25-$110
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.pina-bausch.de/en

Shortly before a recent performance of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s much-loved Kontakthof began, I bumped into longtime dancer and current rehearsal director Dominique Mercy, who was surveying the situation from the back of BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House. I let him know that the primary reason I got into writing about dance is because of Pina Bausch; the first piece of contemporary dance theater I ever saw (at the behest of my wife) was the company’s Danzón at BAM back in 1999, changing everything I ever thought about dance, and that I had seen every Bausch work brought to Brooklyn since then. He put his hand on my shoulder, smiled, and said, “I’m so sorry. I take the blame.” Of course, there is nothing for Mercy or the immensely talented German troupe to apologize for; they’ve been delighting audiences around the world for more than forty years with their unique brand of performance, rife with movement, music, humor, and a special relationship with the audience. At the beginning of 1978’s seminal Kontakthof, which is finishing up its BAM debut November 2, the members of the company move to the front of the stage, show off their clothing (men in dark suits, women in beautiful gowns, designed by Rolf Borzik), run their hands over their hair, and open their mouth and grit their teeth. For the next two and a half hours, they engage in a series of gender-based antics and situations, all taking place in a dance hall / rehearsal studio with chairs along three sides. They occasionally speak into microphones, glide across the floor in unison, collapse in a fury, scream, and taunt and tease one another as a wide range of prerecorded music plays, from Anton Karas’s Third Man theme and Jimmy Dorsey’s “J. D.’s Boogie” to Lesso-Valerio’s “Liebeszweifel” and Ralph Benatzky’s “Einmal ist keinmal,” performed primarily by Juan Lossas und sein Tango-Orchester, who contribute several original songs as well.

KONTAKTHOF explores the battle of the sexes in unique ways (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Kontakthof, which can be translated as “Contact Zone,” “Meeting Place,” or “Contact of Courtyard,” has been performed by senior citizens and teenagers in addition to the regular company, each age group bringing a different nuance to the piece. At BAM, the regular company, which itself consists of performers of different ages, sizes, shapes, and nationalities, brought the piece to invigorating life, melding pain with pleasure as men and women fight it out onstage, always with a wink at the audience. Several dancers even approach the front row and ask for change so they can erotically ride a mechanical pony meant for children. Even as it occasionally gets repetitive, Kontakthof is a joy to behold, another masterpiece from Bausch, who passed away in 2009 at the age of fifty-eight but whose legacy lives on in the rich talent of her company, which is now in the clearly capable hands of longtime TR dancer Lutz Förster, who was named artistic director in April 2013. Seeing Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch every few years is like seeing old friends, catching up, finding out what they’re up to (the wonderful Nazareth Panadero, for example, won the 2014 Spanish National Dance Award for Interpretación), and then marveling at what’s been gained — and lost — over the passage of time. And for all of that, I don’t mind blaming Dominique Mercy one bit.