this week in dance

NYC PRIDE 2013

New York City celebrates gay pride this weekend with a series of special events (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations
June 28-30, free – $45
www.nycpride.org
2012 gay pride parade slideshow

As more and more states pass same-sex marriage bills, especially now that DOMA has been defeated, there is more and more to celebrate at annual gay pride festivities, although there is of course still a long way to go until there is full equality nationwide. The party begins June 28 at 7:00 with the Rally (free) in Hudson River Park’s Pier 26, hosted by Pandora Boxx and Keith Price and featuring performances by Pam Ann, Nhoji, Vicci Martinez, Shawnee She King, Alexis Houston, JLine, Kit Yan, Jessica Halem, Sassfrass Lowrey, Ryan Amador, the NYC Gay Men’s Chorus, Teresa Genecco & Her Little Big Band, and the Imperial Court of New York, with speeches by Rev. Mark Erson, Carl Siciliano, Jacob Rudolph, Danny Garvin, and Janice Thom. The next day, the VIP Rooftop Party ($35-$500) takes place on Hudson Terrace from 2:00 to 10:00, with DJs Serving Ovahness, Marco Da Silva, and Frankie Knuckles, running side by side with the tenth anniversary of the official women’s event Rapture on the River ($25-$1,000) on Pier 26, with DJs Dimples and Whitney Day. On Sunday at 12 noon, the March (free) gets under way, moving from Fifth Ave. & Thirty-Sixth St. down to Christopher & Greenwich Sts., led by grand marshals Edie Windsor, Earl Fowlkes, and Harry Belafonte; among the awards being given out are Best Use of Theme, Best Marching Contingent, Best Decorated Vehicle, Best Musical Contingent, and Most Original. Also on Sunday, the LGBT street fair PrideFest (free) runs from 11:00 to 6:00 on Hudson St., with live performances by Rhythm Locura, Victoria Chase, Lady M., Ladyboi, Tania Marissa, Kelly King, Christine Martucci, and others, while the sold-out Dance on the Pier ($45-$1,250) gets hot and heavy on Pier 26 and people cool off at the new event Pride {Poolside} ($35-$500) presented by Hed Kandi at Hotel Americano in Chelsea.

FLIPPING DOMINION: AN EVENING OF TWO CONTRASTING WORKS

CONTROL DOMINION is one of two world premieres being presented this week at CPR by BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance

BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance
CPR — Center for Performance Research
361 Manhattan Ave.
Thursday, June 27, and Saturday, June 29, $20 ($15 with discount code 7183491210361), 7:30
718-349-1210
www.bodystoriesfellion.org
www.cprnyc.org

“In performance I love dancing past the sort of exhaustion barriers that I find normally and I enter a place that is above my normal self,” Dan Chenoweth says about Control Dominion, one of two world premieres being presented June 27 and 29 by BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn. The multimedia piece takes place in a futuristic cyborg society highlighted by robotic, anarchic movement, with electronic music by John Yanelli. The New York City-based company will also be debuting The Mantises Are Flipping (P.S. I’ll Have Whatever They’re Having), in which the dancers and musician-composer Ryan Edwards interact through sound and movement, exploring duality, voyeurism, and rhythmic harmony. The ninety-minute evening, titled “Flipping Dominion: An Evening of Two Contrasting Works,” features Corey Bliss, Li Cata, Julie Goldberg, Sarah Hillmon, Julia Jurgiliewicz, Nicole Kadar, Lindsey Ridgeway, and Chenoweth and will be followed by a reception at Brooklyn Brewery. BodyStories, whose “mission is to examine depths of societies in their darkest and brightest moments and to inspire audiences to physically sense emotional and psychological aspects of the human condition onstage,” will also be giving a free performance on June 28 at 6:00 as part of the Booking Dance Festival Edinburgh preview showcase in Bryant Park, along with Dzul Dance, Synthesis Dance Project, Freespace Dance, Michael Mao Dance, and Rebecca Stenn.

LAURIE ANDERSON: THE LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE

Laurie Anderson is curating and participating in a special series of events for the free River to River Festival this week (photo by Tim Knox)

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL
Note new time and place: Tuesday, June 18, Stuyvesant High School, 345 Chambers St., free, 8:00
Wednesday, June 19, Rockefeller Park, free, 7:00
Curated programming continues through June 22
www.rivertorivernyc.com
www.laurieanderson.com

Innovative experimental multimedia artist Laurie Anderson is guest-curating five days of special programming for the River to River Festival, including two nights that harken back to her seminal work United States 1-4. On June 18 and 19, Anderson will be in Rockefeller Park presenting “The Language of the Future,” with Tuesday focusing on “Stories” with the Annie Gosfield Trio (with Gosfield on sampling keyboard, Roger Kleier on guitar, and Ches Smith on drums), actor Steve Buscemi, choreographer Young Jean Lee, guitarist Gerry Leonard, horn player Doug Wieselman, and violist Eyvind Kang, while Wednesday will be all about “Songs,” with Richard Devine on electronics, Jacob Garchik on horns, and Jeffrey Zeigler on cello in addition to Wieselman, Kang, and Smith. [ed. note: Because of the weather, Tuesday’s show has been moved indoors to Stuyvesant High School and pushed back to 8:00.] “I wanted to explore how artists use time in their work,” Anderson explains in a statement about the shows. “Each guest artist in this series has a unique approach to time whether slowing it down, rolling it backwards, speeding it up, or pairing it with images in polyphonic ways. Perhaps, my real, and deeper, motive is to create a floating atmosphere that extends the summer evening and makes it all the more dream-like and timeless.” The series continues June 20 at Pier 15 on the East River Esplanade with “An Evening of Live Music and Cinema” featuring documentarian Sam Green, Brooklyn band the Quavers, and music collaborative yMUSIC. Next, Luibo Borissov and Konrad Kaczmarek team up for the interactive Peripatetic Audio Visual Ensemble beginning at River Terrace in Rockefeller Park, with an open rehearsal on June 20 followed by 2:00 and 7:00 shows on June 21-22, all of which require free advance RSVP here. Also on June 21, River to River will screen Chassol’s Indiamore, and on June 22, Andrew Schneider will perform his live multimedia Tidal, both on Pier 15. Anderson fans can also catch her inaugural New York painting and drawing exhibition, “BOAT,” along with a video installation and sculpture, at Vito Schnabel on Leroy St. through June 23.

COMING TOGETHER / ATTICA

Rebecca Lazier adapts Frederic Rzewski’s Attica-related compositions into an immersive, site-specific work at Invisible Dog

The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen St. between Smith & Court Sts.
June 13-15, $20
www.theinvisibledog.org
www.rebeccalazier.com

In 1971, pianist Frederic Rzewski composed a pair of minimalist works inspired by the Attica prison riots in upstate New York, which left more than three dozen people dead and forever changed the public’s view of the treatment of prisoners. Nova Scotia native Rebecca Lazier has used the two pieces — “Coming Together,” which features the slowly repeated sentence “Attica is in front of me,” spoken by a survivor of the riots who had been asked “How does it feel to have Attica behind you?,” and “Attica,” with words taken from a letter written by inmate Sam Melville, who died during the uprising — to create the site-specific Coming Together / Attica, running at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn June 13-15. The U.S. premiere will be performed by Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, Asli Bulbul, Jennifer Lafferty, Pierre Guilbault, and Christopher Ralph, with Mellissa Hughes as vocal soloist and live music by Newspeak, conducted by David T. Little for eight instruments. The fifty-minute show takes place on the third floor of the art space, set across four thousand square feet, with lighting design by Davison Scandrett and prison-related costumes by Mary-Jo Mecca. Lazier’s piece is divided into three sections: “Coming Together,” “The Quiet,” and “Attica,” combining music, movement, and text to explore isolation, oppression, memory, and adversity in an immersive presentation that, at one point, switches the relationship between audience and performer, playing with the idea of who is being held captive by whom.

EGG ROLLS & EGG CREAMS FESTIVAL 2013

Annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams fest flies into the Lower East Side on June 9 (photo by Kate Milford)

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Sunday, June 9, 12 noon – 4:00 pm
Admission: free
212-219-0302
www.eldridgestreet.org

The thirteenth annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams block party once again will bring together the Jewish and Chinese communities of the Lower East Side on June 9 for what is always a fun day of food and drink, live music and dance, history, culture, and lots more. Among the highlights of the festival are the kosher egg creams and egg rolls, yarmulke and challah workshops, tea ceremonies, a genealogy clinic, Yiddish and Chinese lessons, Hebrew and Chinese calligraphy classes, mah jongg, cantorial songs, Jewish paper cutting and Chinese paper folding, face painting, and free tours (in English and Chinese) of the wonderfully renovated Eldridge St. Synagogue, which boasts the East Window designed by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans. In past years, the festival has included performances by the Chinatown Senior Center Folk Orchestra, Qi Shu Fang’s Peking Opera, the Shashmaqam Bukharan Jewish Cultural Group, Ray Muziker Klezmer Ensemble, and Cantor Eric Freeman, some of whom will be back again for this year’s multicultural celebration.

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER

Ronald K. Brown leads rehearsal for FOUR CORNERS, which makes its world premiere next week as AADT returns to Lincoln Center (photo by Claudia Schrier)

Ronald K. Brown leads rehearsal for FOUR CORNERS, which makes its world premiere next week as Alvin Ailey returns to Lincoln Center for the first time since 2000 (photo by Claudia Schreier)

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 12-16, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater always puts a jolt into the holiday season, taking up residence at City Center every December. This month, as an added bonus, they’ll be performing at Lincoln Center for the first time in thirteen years. Led by artistic director Robert Battle, AADT will be at the David H. Koch Theater from June 6 to 12, presenting seven pieces over the course of seven performances. The highlight is the world premiere of Ronald K. Brown’s Four Corners, which was inspired by Carl Hancock Rux’s “Lamentations” and is set to music by Hancock Rux and others. The seven programs also feature Brown’s beautiful Grace as well as Garth Fagan’s From Before, Jiří Kylián’s inventive Petite Mort, Battle’s whirlwind solo work Takademe (performed by either Kirven James Boyd or Jamar Roberts), Ohad Naharin’s dazzling Minus 16, and the company’s signature Revelations. (For reviews of many of these works from the past two years, go here and here.) Battle has just added Ailey II’s Jeroboam Bozeman and Fana Tesfagiorgis and Battleworks veteran Elisa Clark to the troupe, while rehearsal director and guest artist Matthew Rushing will take the stage in both Brown pieces. Revelations, which closes six of the performances, will include either Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims or Alicia Graf Mack and Roberts teaming up for the “Fix Me” pas de deux, and the June 15 matinee will be followed by a Q&A with the dancers.

DANCE CONVERSATIONS 2013

Motley Dance’s DRILL PIECE examines the social and cultural aspects of gender and the military (photo by Victoria Masters)

The Flea Theater
41 White St. between Broadway & Church St.
June 4-14, Tuesday – Friday, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
212-352-3101
www.theflea.org

The Flea’s free annual Dance Conversations series returns June 4-13, giving dancers and choreographers the opportunity to present new pieces, excerpts, and works-in-progress, then discuss their creative process with the audience and special moderators. This year’s festival, curated by Nina Winthrop, gets under way on June 4 with Susan Thomasson & Elissaveta Iordanova (Who’s Going to Blink?), David Appel (more than a murmur), Amy Cova Dance (Spinal Streets and a Straw), and Motley Dance (Drill Piece), followed by a talk moderated by Molissa Fenley. On June 5, the lineup includes Daniela Hoff Dance Company (Mirror), Claire Porter/PORTABLES (Falling for Prepositions), and Naomi Goldberg Haas (The Dress), with moderator Rebecca Lazier. On June 6, there will be performances by Inclined Dance Project (Stuck Together Pieces), Barbara Mahler’s Dances (When She Stumbles), Ian Wen & Irina Kom (Houseguest de novo), and KATES (KATES: which is unusual), with moderator Joanna Kotze, while June 7 features GREYZONE (Waves), Tomomi Imai (Deep Blue), and Khaleah London/LAYERS (The Ultimatum), with moderator Kimberly Bartosik. The second week includes such companies and choreographers as binbinFactory/Satoshi Haga & Rie Fukuzawa, Krista Jansen, Jesse Phillips-Fein, Megan Sipe/Dancing Fish Productions, and Rosario, with moderators Gus Solomons jr, Jody Oberfelder, Pooh Kaye, and Winthrop. Dance Conversations is a great forum for dance enthusiasts to get sneak peeks at works from emerging and midcareer choreographers and go behind the scenes of their creations in intimate discussions.