this week in dance

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL OF THE DAY: ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER AT CITY CENTER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Antonio Douthit-Boyd and Linda Celeste Sims perform in a new production of Alvin Ailey’s THE RIVER (photo by Paul Kolnik)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 4 – January 5, $25-$135; 40% off select performances with code ALYFRI
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Next week, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to City Center for its annual holiday season, its twenty-fifth since Alvin Ailey passed away on December 1, 1989. As a special one-day-only Black Friday special, tickets for select performances are being discounted up to forty percent by using the promo code ALYFRI, available online from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, by phone 11:00 am to 8:00 pm, and at the box office 12 noon to 8:00 (where there is no service charge). Running December 4 to January 5, the 2013-14 season, the third under artistic director Robert Battle, is chock-full of company classics and exciting new commissions. Back again are such recent additions as Rennie Harris’s Home, Ohad Naharin’s dazzling Minus 16, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, Kyle Abraham’s Another Night, Ronald K. Brown’s breathtaking Grace, Battle’s Strange Humors and In/Side, and Paul Taylor’s Arden Court. This year’s world premieres include Aszure Barton’s LIFT, Wayne McGregor’s Chroma (featuring music by Jack White), Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters (Part I), and Brown’s Four Corners, along with new productions of Ailey’s Pas De Duke and The River. Most performances conclude, of course, with the Ailey mainstay Revelations, several with live music.

DONNA UCHIZONO: FIRE UNDERGROUND AND STATE OF HEADS

Donna Uchizono’s revisited STATE OF HEADS will precede world premiere of FIRE UNDERGROUND

FIRE UNDERGROUND / STATE OF HEADS
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
December 4-7, $30, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.donnauchizono.org

In 2010, New York City-based dancer and choreographer Donna Uchizono performed in longing two, the first time in ten years she had taken the stage, convinced by dancer Hristoula Harakas to do so in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Donna Uchizono Company. Uchizono (Thin Air) will be back onstage again next week for the deeply personal Fire Underground, a New York Live Arts commission that relates the tremendous difficulties she encountered when trying to adopt a child. The piece, which examines the idea of performance itself, is a collaboration with dancer Becky Serrrell-Cyr, lighting designer Joe Levasseur, composer David Shively and photographer Michael Grimaldi and will feature five dancers. The piece will be preceded by an updated version of 1999’s State of Heads, which Uchizono brought back for the recent Oliver Sacks festival at NYLA and will be performed by Serrell-Cyr, Levi Gonzalez, and Harakas, set to music by James Lo and lighting by Stan Pressner. “State of Heads explores the feeling of waiting and the passage of time in the state of hiatus where familiar time and scale are pushed,” she told us in an April twi-ny talk. “Using the separation of the head from the body as a point of departure, in an exploration of disjointedness and the sense of a will apart from the mind driving the movement, surprisingly created a world of endearingly odd characters.” The double bill runs December 4-7 at NYLA; the December 4 performance will be followed by the Stay Late Discussion “Behind Fire Underground” with members of the company, moderated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and the December 5 show will be preceded by the Come Early Panel Conversation “Making Dances in the ’90s Though Today’s Lens” with choreographers Tere O’Connor, John Jasperse, RoseAnne Spradlin, and Uchizono, moderated by Carla Peterson. In addition, Uchizono will lead a Shared Practice workshop on November 30 from 1:00 to 4:00, sharing her creative process with a small class; registration is $20.

THE LINE KING’S LIBRARY: AL HIRSCHFELD AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Al Hirschfeld’s long relationship with the New York Public Library is explored in exhibit at Lincoln Center

Al Hirschfeld’s long relationship with the New York Public Library and the arts is celebrated in exhibit at Lincoln Center

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
Exhibition continues through January 4
Film screening: Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave., Monday, November 18, free, 6:00
212-642-0142
www.nypl.org/lpa

Twelve years ago, New York celebrated the life and eighty-plus-year career of legendary artist Al Hirschfeld with a major retrospective at the Museum of the City of New York and an exhibit of his celebrity caricatures at the New York Public Library’s main branch; in addition, Abrams released two books of his work, one focusing on New York, the other on Hollywood, and Hirschfeld made appearances to promote the publications. Nearly eleven years after his passing in January 2003 at the age of ninety-nine, the New York Public Library is honoring Hirschfeld again with a lovely exhibit at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, “The Line King’s Library: Al Hirschfeld at the New York Public Library.” Visitors can first stop by a re-creation of Hirschfeld’s work area, complete with his drawing table and barber chair, which is on permanent view at the library entrance. The exhibition is straight ahead, consisting of more than one hundred color and black-and-white drawings and lithographs, posters, books, letters, video, newspaper and magazine clippings, and various other ephemera, divided by the discipline of Hirschfeld’s subjects: theater, music, dance, and film, in addition to a section on those artists who influenced the man known as the Line King.

Oscar-winning documentary on Al Hirschfeld screens for free at NYPL on November 18

“My contribution is to take the character — created by the playwright and acted out by the actor — and reinvent it for the theater,” Hirschfeld once explained, and the evidence is on the walls, including works depicting Jack Lemmon in Tribute, Lee J. Cobb in Death of a Salesman, Christopher Plummer in Macbeth, Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, Alan Cumming in Cabaret, and Jackie Mason in The World According to Me, among so many more. There are also caricatures of Marcel Marceau, S. J. Perelman, George Bernard Shaw, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, and a dazzling, rarely shown 1969 print of Martha Graham. Another highlight is the original drawing for “Broadway First Nighters,” along with a key identifying the dozens of celebrities gathered in a packed room, and paraphernalia from Hirschfeld’s musical comedy Sweet Bye and Bye, a collaboration with Perelman, Vernon Duke, and Ogden Nash. And for those fans who have spent years trying to find all the inclusions of “Nina” in Hirschfeld’s drawings, “Nina’s Revenge” features his daughter holding a brush and smiling, the names “Al” and “Dolly” (for Dolly Haas, her mother and Hirschfeld’s second wife) in her long hair. In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a free screening of the Oscar-winning 1996 documentary The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story, introduced by the director, Susan W. Dryfoos, on November 18 at 6:00 in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

MARIA HASSABI: PREMIERE

Choreographer Maria Hassabi is joined by four other dancers as they redefine the relationship between audience and performer in PREMIERE (photo © Paula Court)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 6-9, $12-$15, 8:00
Performa 13 continues through November 24
212-255-5793
www.thekitchen.org
www.13.performa-arts.org

In the November 2011 premiere of Maria Hassabi’s Show at the Kitchen, the audience stood or sat on the black floor as the Cyprus-born, New York–based choreographer and regular cohort Hristoula Harakas weaved ever so slowly through the crowd to a soundtrack that incorporated the audience’s preshow chatter. Hassabi has redefined the relationship between performer and audience once again in Premiere, which premiered at the Kitchen on November 6 and continues through Saturday. When the doors open, Hassabi, Harakas, Robert Steijn, Biba Bell, and Andros Zins-Browne are already carefully positioned on the floor, three sitting, two standing, facing the empty seats as ticket holders enter and walk around them to sit down. Blazing lights on either side illuminate the stock-still performers, who are soon bracketed by semicircles of fresh shoe prints. Once everyone is seated, the doors are closed, and for the next eighty minutes, the five performers, wearing different-colored denim pants, tucked-in button-down shirts with minute but strange extra details, and black shoes or boots, eventually begin moving nearly imperceptibly, slow enough to make Butoh look like the Indy 500. The only sounds are the squeaks made by hands and feet pressing against the floor, except for occasional electronic noise coming out of the speakers (as well as every stomach grumble, cough, and shift from the audience). Never making contact with one another, Hassabi, Harakas, Steijn, Bell, and Zins-Browne perform deeply pensive and carefully choreographed simultaneous solos, fiercely focused, never smiling or breaking concentration, creating a nervous energy between audience and dancer, filled with both trepidation and anticipation. Once you figure out how the performance will end, sheer elation takes over. And then, indeed, it comes to a close, and the audience exits much as it entered. A copresentation of Performa 13, Premiere is another fabulously creative, involving, and challenging piece by Hassabi in her continuing exploration of movement, expectation, personal connection, the nature of performance itself, and the endless intricacies of the human mind and body.

NEXT WAVE DANCE: AND THEN, ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

BAM hosts the New York premiere of Ballet Preljocaj’s apocalyptic “And then, one thousand years of peace” this week (photo © JC Carbonne)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
November 7-9, $20-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.preljocaj.org

Ten years ago, Ballet Preljocaj performed Near Life Experience, an exploration of the body’s endless sensations. Now French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj brings his 2010 creation, And then, one thousand years of peace, to BAM, an evening-length journey into life and death courtesy of the apocalypse. “A fertile source of interpretation, the very word Apocalypse (from the Greek apo: ‘to lift’ and calypsis: veil’) evokes the idea of revealing, unveiling, or highlighting elements that could be present in our world but are hidden from our eyes. It should thus evoke what is nestled in the innermost recesses of our existence, rather than prophesizing about compulsive waves of catastrophe, irreparable destruction, or the imminent end of the world,” Preljocaj explains. “When dance, the art of the indescribable par excellence, assumes the role of the developer (in the photographic sense), is it not most able to realize this delicate function of exposing our fears, anxieties, and hopes? Dance relentlessly highlights the entropy of molecules programmed in the memory of our flesh that heralds the Apocalypse of bodies. It stigmatises our rituals and reveals the incongruity of our positions, be they of a social, religious or pagan nature.” The piece features twenty-one dancers moving in costumes by Igor Chapurin to music by DJ Laurent Garnier, along with Scan X mixes incorporating Benjamin Rippert and Beethoven. The set design, which includes inventive architectural elements, is by Subodh Gupta, with lighting by Cécile Giovansili-Vissière. Last month, the New York City Ballet presented the world premiere of Preljocaj’s Spectral Evidence, a dazzling work about the Salem Witch Trials, leaving fans hungry for more. And then, one thousand years of peace, a collaboration with the Bolshoi, should provide a visual and aural feast. Performances take place at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House November 7-9 at 7:30; in addition, company member Julien Thibault will teach a special class for experienced and professional dancers on November 8 at 12 noon ($25) at the Mark Morris Dance Center.

PERFORMA 13: “PREMIERE” BY MARIA HASSABI

Maria Hassabi’s PREMIERE will have its world premiere at the Kitchen as part of Performa 13

PREMIERE
The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 6-9, $12-$15, 8:00
Performa 13 continues through November 24
212-255-5793
www.thekitchen.org
www.13.performa-arts.org

Like her titles, Maria Hassabi’s performances might seem minimalist on the surface, but there’s a whole lot more lurking underneath. In such works as 2009’s SOLO at P.S. 122 for FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, that same year’s SoloShow at P.S. 122 for Performa 09, and 2011’s Show at the Kitchen (and later held outdoors on the Broad St. cobblestones for the River to River Festival), Hassabi usually appears by herself or with one other dancer (most often the magical Hristoula Harakas), utilizes few if any props (a carpet, a single platform), and moves not to music but to live and prerecorded local sounds that can even incorporate the audience’s own preshow murmurings. This week the Cyprus-born, New York-based dancer and choreographer returns to the Kitchen for the world premiere of the aptly titled Premiere, a copresentation with Performa 13. Featuring Hassabi, Harakas, Robert Steijn, Biba Bell, and Andros Zins-Browne, with sound design by Alex Waterman and visual art and dramaturgy by Scott Lyall (both Hassabi regulars), Premiere explores that moment when a new piece and the public first come together, as performers and the performance meet viewer and critic. It’s sort of like a blind date, neither side quite knowing how things will go but hoping to make a connection. It’s a situation rife with fear, anticipation, and promise, and it should be fascinating to see how Hassabi brings that to life. Premiere runs at the Kitchen from November 6 to 9; Performa 13 continues through November 24 with such other shows as Molly Lowe’s Hands Off at Temp Arts Space, Cally Spooner’s And You Were Wonderful, on Stage at the National Academy, Einat Amir’s Our Best Intentions at Affirmation Arts, Pete Drungle’s Dream Sequences for Solo Piano at Roulette, and Katarzyna Krakowiak’s free The Great and Secret Show at the James A. Farley Post Office.

FIRST SATURDAYS: JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The career of French fashion designer John Paul Gaultier will be celebrated at the Brooklyn Museum’s November edition of its free First Saturdays program. In conjunction with the opening of the multimedia exhibition “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” there will be a curator talk by Lisa Small, an arts workshop demonstrating how to make Gaultier-inspired fashion plates, fashion-related pop-up gallery talks, a lecture on fashion, ethics, and the law by Susan Scafidi, a special performance by Company XIV and Dances of Vice with Miss Ekat and DJ Johanna Constantine, a discussion with photographer Richard Corman about his book Madonna NYC 83, and screenings of Loic Prigent’s 2009 documentary The Day Before, which follows Gaultier as he prepares for a fashion show, and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, for which Gaultier designed the costumes. The night will also include live music by Au Revoir Simone, Watermelon, and Tamar-kali. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” and other exhibits.