Houston Grand Opera sails into the Park Avenue Armory with THE PASSENGER as part of Lincoln Center Festival (photo by Stephanie Berger)
Lincoln Center and other locations
July 7 – August 16, $45-$175
212-721-6500
www.lincolncenterfestival.org
Although there are only five companies presenting at this year’s Lincoln Center Festival, there is plenty to see at this annual summer event that makes creative use of the otherwise vacated spaces usually inhabited by the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and previously, the New York City Opera, in addition to other locations. The festival kicks off with the welcome return of Japanese Kabuki theater company Heisei Nakamura-za for the first time since the 2012 death of star actor Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, but the centuries-old family legacy continues with his two sons, Nakamura Kankuro VI and Nakamura Shichinosuke II, leading a rare revival of the nineteenth-century samurai ghost story Kaidan Chibusa no Enoki (The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree) at the Rose Theater July 7-12 ($45-$175). To heighten the atmosphere, Josie Robertson Plaza will be home to a Japanese Artisan Village through July 13, selling such items as nihon ningyo (hand-painted dolls), tenugui (cotton towels), and kanzashi (traditional hair ornaments). Award-winning Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker looks back at her past with four of her earliest pieces, 1982’s Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, 1983’s Rosas danst Rosas, 1984’s Elena’s Aria, and 1987’s Bartók/Mikrokosmos, running July 8-16 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater ($35-$75). Now in her mid-fifties, De Keersmaeker will dance in two of the shows; she will also participate in a talk-back following the July 8 performance, a book presentation with Bojana Cvejić and moderator André Lepecki on July 12 (free and open to the public), and a discussion with Anna Kisselgoff on July 15 in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (free with advance tickets).
Isabelle Huppert and Cate Blanchett team up in Lincoln Center Festival presentation of THE MAIDS (photo © Lisa Tomasetti)
The Houston Grand Opera sails into the Park Avenue Armory July 10-13 ($45-$250) with director David Pountney’s English-language adaptation of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s The Passenger, the story of a former Nazi concentration camp overseer trying to escape her past; the impressive two-floor set consists of an ocean liner above and a prison camp below. Each performance will be preceded by a chamber concert by the ARC Ensemble playing works by Weinberg; in addition, there will be a special screening of Andrej Munk’s 1963 cinematic adaptation of Zofia Posmysz’s source novel on July 8 at 6:00 in the SHK Penthouse (free with advance tickets), followed by a discussion with Holocaust survivors and others. For the first time ever, the Bolshoi’s ballet, opera, orchestra, and chorus will appear together in New York City, beginning with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride July 12-13 at Avery Fisher Hall ($35-$100) and continuing with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake July 15-20 ($35-$125), Ludwig Minkus’s Don Quixote July 22-23 (with new choreography by Alexei Fadeyechev), and Aram Khachaturyan’s Spartacus July 25-27, all at the David H. Koch Theater. The festival concludes in a big way with the Sydney Theatre Company’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids, directed by Benedict Andrews and starring Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert, and Elizabeth Debicki, playing August 6-16 at New York City Center ($35-$120, partial view seats still available).
In 1982, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman followed Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal on a five-week tour of Europe as the cutting-edge troupe traveled to Milan, Venice, and Avignon. “I was deeply touched by her lengthy performances that mingle in your head,” Akerman says at the beginning of the resulting documentary, “One Day Pina Asked…,” continuing, “I have the feeling that the images we brought back do not convey this very much and often betray it.” Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Je tu il elle) needn’t have worried; her fifty-seven-minute film, made for the Repères sur la Modern Dance French television series, is filled with memorable moments that more than do justice to Bausch’s unique form of dance theater. From 1973 up to her death in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, Bausch created compelling works that examined the male-female dynamic and the concepts of love and connection with revolutionary stagings that included spoken word, unusual costuming, an unpredictable movement vocabulary, and performers of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Akerman captures the troupe, consisting of twenty-six dancers from thirteen countries, in run-throughs, rehearsals, and live presentations of Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with Me), Nelken (Carnations), 1980, Kontakthof, and Walzer, often focusing in on individual dancers in extreme close-ups that reveal their relationship with their performance. Although Bausch, forty at the time, is seen only at the beginning and end of the documentary, her creative process is always at center stage. At one point, dancer Lutz Förster tells a story of performing Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” in sign language in response to Bausch’s asking the troupe to name something they’re proud of. Förster, who took over as artistic director in April 2013, first performs the song for Akerman, then later is shown performing it in Nelken. (Bausch fans will also recognize such longtime company members as Héléna Pikon, Nazareth Panadero, and Dominique Mercy.)