this week in dance

twi-ny talk: JODY OBERFELDER / RUBE G. — THE CONSEQUENCE OF ACTION

Jody Oberfelder, Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker will perform Rube G. — The Consequence of Action at Gibney this month (costumes by Claire Fleury / photo courtesy Jody Oberfelder Projects)

RUBE G. — THE CONSEQUENCE OF ACTION
Gibney Dance Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, White Box Studio C
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
Saturday and Sunday, March 4-5, 11-12, 18-19, $15-$25
jodyoberfelder.com
gibneydance.org

New York–based director, dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Jody Oberfelder is the September 2023 entry in the Modern Women: 21st Century Dance Coloring Book calendar. On that page she says, “Standing on my head I see the world upside down. When I’m right side up, I look again with a different perspective.”

The quote is apropos of her latest piece, Rube G. — The Consequence of Action, making its world premiere March 4-19 at Gibney.

“Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions but don’t believe that I ever existed as a person,” Rube Goldberg once explained. “They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber’s itch — terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.”

Reuben L. Goldberg (1883–1970) was an engineer, sculptor, inventor, author, and cartoonist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his political cartoon “Peace Today,” a depiction of an American family and their house perched atop a giant atomic bomb that is tilting precariously at the edge of a cliff. But Goldberg is best known for his drawings of crazy contraptions in which a series of odd items must connect in a chain reaction in order to make something happen, like dominoes but with objects and animals.

In Adam Felber’s 2006 novel Schrödinger’s Ball, a character explains, “You know: a lever is pulled, causing a boot to kick a dog, whose bark motivates a hamster to run on a wheel which winds a pulley that raises a gate that releases a bowling ball and so on? Until, at the end, finally, the machine does something incredibly mundane, like making a piece of toast. Yes? Well, as it turns out, that’s the world.”

A fun, immersive, interactive view of the world and our place in it, Rube G. — The Consequence of Action features Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker, joined by Detroit native Oberfelder, weaving in and around an audience of forty people sitting on stools spaced two feet apart, with music by klezmer trumpeter Frank London. There is light touching as the performers ask audience members to give them small pushes, as if we’re all objects in a Rube Goldberg machine, which the Rube Goldberg Institution for Innovation & Creativity says “solves a simple problem in the most ridiculously inefficient way possible.”

In May 2019, London put together “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” at the New York Public Library, in which he selected a wide range of artists to pay tribute to such Jewish cultural figures as Hannah Arendt, Benjamin Cardozo, Morton Feldman, Susan Sontag, and Kurt Weill; Oberfelder was assigned Goldberg. She spent the next four years researching him, leading to the short film Rube G., the performance Rube G at Roulette, and Amphitheater in East River Park.

On a recent Monday afternoon, I was a “test guest” at a rehearsal for the new work, experiencing the piece and then talking about it afterward with Oberfelder, Yi-Li Tong, Meneses, Merker, and fellow test guest EmmaGrace Skove as Oberfelder took notes; she was particularly interested in a comment I made about one section reminding me of a pinball machine. Following the discussion, I spoke with Oberfelder — whose oeuvre also includes Madame Ovary, 4Chambers, Throb, The Soldier’s Tale, and The Title Comes Last — about Goldberg, working with new dancers, making connections, and her affinity for site-specific immersive presentations.

Jody Oberfelder watches team rehearse at Open Jar Studios in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: In creating this work, did you have a specific fascination with Rube Goldberg himself or the Rube Goldberg machine?

jody oberfelder: I’m thinking of it in a larger context, like how one thing affects another. Frank London actually gave me the assignment in 2019. He had a thing about Jewish thinkers, philosophers, poets, writers. He had like twenty people on a program at the New York Public Library. And he assigned who got what. So I got Rube Goldberg. I knew about Rube Goldberg because when I was working on The Brain Piece, the neuroscientist who was teaching a class in illusion showed us the the Okay Go video [“This Too Shall Pass”], which is quite amazing. I think everybody knows about Rube Goldberg without knowing they know about Rube Goldberg. But now I’ve been researching who he was as a person and how he was of his time. The humor is very much Jewish humor too, like his comic strip “Foolish Questions.” He asks about how things affect each other and that’s a question that’s been in my choreographic toolbox. What interests me is intersections of people and ideas. And my medium is bodies. So this is really nice for me, instead of doing a purely conceptual piece to just work physically with awesome dancers.

twi-ny: You said Frank approached you in 2019, but I would’ve thought that it came out of the pandemic lockdown, when people couldn’t connect. But it was already in process.

j.o.: But that was different; it was more celebratory.

twi-ny: It has the same name, but it’s not the same?

j.o.: That one I called Amphitheater, because I knew I would do Rube G., and then we did the show at Roulette. It totally was about Rube Goldberg.

twi-ny: And you did the film also.

j.o.: The film was a total pandemic film. People said, Look, can’t we wear masks? I’m like, no. Because one day nobody’s going to want to see masks. I look at that film and it was everybody in their little boxes, they would go outside to dance. And I just strung them together with the same words that catalyzed this piece. Like “bounce lever carousel” is one, “slide slice.” So I just came up with the action words from studying Rube Goldberg machines that were posted online, the ones that people work on for a really long time and they jump up and down at the end. In fact, some of the sound score was ripped from YouTube. You can hear the dominoes falling.

twi-ny: So these are new dancers for you?

j.o.: Yes. And that’s what changed the piece.

twi-ny: In what way? Was it an open call?

j.o.: Yes, they’re from the audition that I had. I just thought start fresh, look around, see who’s out there. Ashley is my Gyrotonics teacher; she’s so beautiful when she teaches. I just said, Look, I’m thinking about adding in some new dancers. Do you want to come to the studio? And in a two-hour span of time, I made up a whole bunch of material with her; that was a no-brainer. And then I picked the other two from the audition I had.

twi-ny: Ashley just seems like a natural human connector.

j.o.: She danced with Doug Varone and she still dances with Jacqulyn Buglisi, but I had no idea. You don’t know until you get in the studio how someone will be with you. Each of them has their own quality. They’re not carbon copies of each other. They’re unique dancers. And they just went with the material. I had to stop inventing. Even Frank said, Jody, you’ve got too much material. Just stop inventing.

Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker go horizontal mountain climbing in Rube G. — The Consequence of Action (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: You just want to keep watching them do something.

j.o.: Well, yeah. Now I want to do a pinball machine. I think we’ll have to do something as a transition where someone’s trying to get through and they get bounced back. That’s great.

I don’t like to get an idea from seeing someone in someone else’s piece, because they’ll be different. In fact, I did go see Ashley perform with somebody and I just said, She’ll be different with me.

twi-ny: Since the very beginning of your career, you’ve been into immersive, interactive, site-specific pieces, before it was a thing, a genre. What was the impetus?

j.o.: I’m pretty visual. And I like environments. If I look at the music stands in this room, there’s definite space around each one. [Gets up and walks around room] You get an idea from looking at the place that you’re in. [Returns to seat] The immersive stuff that I’ve been doing the last three years is very much like leading the audience on an experience so that they know what this space is, so that they’re going on a journey.

twi-ny: So that’s how you explore the spaces you’re in? Your mind automatically sees that.

j.o.: I applied for an NEA grant and hopefully we’re going to be partnering with Greenwood Cemetery. That would be the next thing. I came up with a title before, and I have the location. It’s going to be called And then, no.

twi-ny: It’s a great place to see a performance.

j.o.: I’m also doing a piece called Walking to Present, which we’re doing in Munich, right on the site of a Trümmerberg, which is a trauma mountain. It’s at Olympiaberg in Olympic Park. What they did after World War II is they made these huge piles of rubble and just covered it with turf. And then they got the great idea to turn it into a park. And when, when the Olympics came in 1972, they made a beautifully scaled park. And that’s where the performance will take place.

So working on all this primed me to get back to Rube G. in a different way, so that it wouldn’t just be on the stage, there wouldn’t be a separation. It’s an experiment to see if I can be immersive inside, if I can make the room come alive as if it were an installation of people.

twi-ny: Right. As a test guest, that’s exactly what I felt.

j.o.: We’re all in this period where we need to lighten up and not be so hard on ourselves. And we’re in this period where a little goodwill, a little lightheartedness is important. There’s all this heavy stuff we have to think about daily. Walking to Present is a little more deep. But I hope I can find after this piece more lightness, even though the subject matter of walking through history and walking over history is heavy. Cemeteries are heavy, but, on the flip side, you can’t experience heaviness unless you have lightness.

twi-ny: You’re Jewish. Does that have anything to do with your choice of doing it in Munich [where eleven Israeli coaches and athletes were killed in a terrorist attack in the Olympic Village in 1972]?

Jody Oberfelder Projects will become a dancing Rube Goldberg machine in world premiere at Gibney (photo courtesy Jody Oberfelder Projects)

j.o.: Definitely. I’m married to a German guy, so I’ve been going to Germany a lot, and I performed there in 1983, a solo concert in a club, three pieces. And this curator saw me and we’ve been in touch all these years. I was doing my piece Life Traveler with the suitcases, where it’s a one-on-one piece. And she got the gist of that and just said, We’d love you to be part of the [2023 Dance München] festival. So I feel really lucky to have that be in such good company. But Rube G. is its own piece. And it’s not an identity piece. It’s just what it is. It’s not a political statement, but it is kind of, because what would be political about it is what happens when people gather together. Either you resist and you’re destructive or you’re constructive.

twi-ny: Do you see Rube G. as a natural progression of your career or more of an outlier?

j.o.: Oh, well, I see this piece as both. It’s a return to the really athletic physical stuff I did for most of the first twenty years. I mean, I was very athletic. I didn’t dance until I was nineteen and I did gymnastics and water ballet. I was a cheerleader. You couldn’t get me to sit in a chair for over forty minutes.

So it’s a continuation of my exploration of physical possibilities. And it’s fed by the idea that the fourth wall has to come down. It’s just not interesting to me to dance on a stage unless it’s something with bells and whistles, visual opera. I heard a piano concert, Yuja Wang, and that was on a stage and I was riveted, I was part of it. There’s a way to put things on a stage and have the audience be part of it. But I like intimacy.

twi-ny: As an audience member at so many of your shows, I can say that’s one of the draws; you’re not going to just be sitting in the audience as an observer. You’re going to be involved. You might be physically touched, but you’ll certainly be emotionally and psychologically touched.

j.o.: Well, with these pieces that only forty people can attend, it’s hard to make a living. I have to do a benefit and hope people will come to that [on March 19]. Apply for grants . . . but I’m not complaining. I don’t stop working. I feel like dancers and artists, we work so hard, and our brilliance is something the world needs. The climate is making the world smaller. We’re all going to be suffering the same things. I hope I’m putting something really great in the world for people to experience.

tanzmainz: SHARON EYAL’S SOUL CHAIN

Soul Chain is an explosive Joyce debut for tanzmainz (photo by Andreas Etter/tanzmainz)

SOUL CHAIN
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
January 24-28
212-691-9740
www.joyce.org
www.staatstheater-mainz.com

German-based tanzmainz makes its explosive Joyce debut with Sharon Eyal’s Soul Chain, fifty-five minutes of pure exhilaration and intensity, a thumping trance rave executed with a thrilling military-like precision. An international cast of seventeen fearless dancers first enters the empty stage on relevé, one, two, and three at a time, walking on tiptoes and the balls of their feet determinedly in Rebecca Hytting’s tight-fitting beige leotards, which run from shoulder to buttocks, most of the men bare-chested. Soon they are forming a hive or collective, part apian, part Borg, angulating their arms and legs with movements evoking insects; some collective members stand out by keeping an arm raised — or swiveling a head back and forth for a frightening amount of time — while the others dance in unison. (The brave company features Elisabeth Gareis, Daria Hlinkina, Cassandra Martin, Nora Monsecour, Amber Pansters, Maasa Sakano, Marija Slavec-Neeman, Milena Wiese, Zachary Chant, Paul Elie, Finn Lakeberg, Christian Leveque, Jaume Luque Parellada, Cornelius Mickel, Matti Tauru, Alberto Terribile, and Federico Longo.)

Alon Cohen’s stark lighting isolates individuals and cuts the stage in half, furthering the idea of a group and singular entities. Dancers occasionally break free and perform improvised solos that challenge the limits of physical possibility as Israeli composer and DJ Ori Lichtik’s original industrial techno score echoes through the theater, beating into your bones. Lichtik and Jerusalem-born choreographer Eyal of L-E-V, a former longtime Batsheva dancer and house choreographer, worked in conjunction with the dancers as the piece developed, establishing their own creative collective that ultimately links up with the audience. (To get in the mood, check out the accompanying Spotify playlist, consisting of forty songs that inspired the troupe.)

The night I went, the crowd didn’t want to leave at the end, joining together for three boisterous curtain calls, followed by an informative talkback with tanzmainz director Honne Dohrmann, dancers Monsecour and Longo, and Joyce marketing manager Nadia Halim, who shed more light on the process of making Soul Chain, emphasizing collaboration, protecting bodies, and Eyal’s goal of promoting passion and love and celebrating uniqueness amid longing and loneliness.

RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE: OPEN DOOR/THE EQUALITY OF NIGHT AND DAY/GRACE

Ronald K. Brown’s The Equality of Night and Day makes its stunning NYC premiere at the Joyce this week (photo by Rose Eichenbaum)

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, a Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 17-22, $51-$71
212-691-9740
www.joyce.org
www.evidencedance.com

“When I work, in all situations, people meet me and they say, ‘You create family wherever you go,’ and so I think I have a nurturing side but I demand a lot,” Brooklyn-based choreographer Ronald K. Brown explains in an Alvin Ailey video about the making of Open Door, a piece Brown made for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2015. “Why do you have to open the door, how do you open the door, this whole thing of easing, pushing through the door . . .”

Brown created a sense of family and community yet again when his troupe, EVIDENCE, a Dance Company, kicked off its home season at the Joyce on January 17. The program started, appropriately enough, with the company premiere of Open Door, which was inspired by Brown’s travels to Cuba. In front of a screen that changes colors (the lighting is by Tsubasa Kamei), Arturo O’Farrill’s eight-piece Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble performs Luis Demetrio’s “La Puerta,” Tito Puente’s “Picadillo,” and O’Farrill’s “All of the Americas” (from his “Afro Latin Jazz Suite”) and “Vaca Frita” as nine dancers move about the stage, led by solos and duets by Shaylin D. Watson and Isaiah K. Harvey. Originally commissioned for AAADT in 2015, it’s an uplifting twenty-six minutes, with the dancers often putting out their palms in gestures of welcome, beckoning not only fellow dancers but immigrants from Cuba and around the globe.

Open Door is just the right aperitif for the world premiere of The Equality of Night and Day (TEND), a sizzling emotional work in which Brown gets more explicit as he tackles his recurrent themes of social injustice and racism. Five men (Demetrius Burns, Austin Coats, Randall Riley, Christopher Salango, Harvey) and five women (Watson, Shayla Caldwell, Joyce Edwards, Stephanie Chronopoulos, Breana Moore), in loose-fitting flowing blue costumes by Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya, gather and separate to a powerful original score by pianist Jason Moran and the rallying words of activist and writer Angela Davis, who declared in a 2017 speech at Brown, “During the coming period, our primary job will be to build community, to create community — in ways that allow us to understand that the work that we do now does matter, even if we cannot see in an immediate sense the consequences of the work we are doing. It will matter eventually.”

Photos of protests from the last half century and more, curated by Debra Wills, are projected on the back screen, instilling a sense of immediacy in the proceedings, which are highlighted by poignant movement by Burns, Caldwell, and Edwards, the men at one point covering their faces and letting out primeval screams. Later the dancers remove their tops and walk around in a kind of memorial prayer for Black bodies, reacting to Davis’s facts about the racial imbalance in crime and punishment.

The evening concludes with Brown’s half-hour classic, Grace, an appropriate finale providing subtle elegance following the exuberance of Open Door and the psychological intensity of TEND. Commissioned for AAADT in 1999, the deeply spiritual piece begins with Edwards standing in a large doorway at the back of the stage; as opposed to the first two works, where the dancers often came onto the stage with a swagger, here they mostly walk on and off calmly, five women and six men in lovely white or red costumes by Olaiya. They strut out their elbows and their hands reach for the sky to songs by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis Jr., and Fela Kuti, spreading the energy to the audience.

Some years back, I saw Grace at the Joyce with Brown himself dancing a major role. The Bed-Stuy native saved one final, exhilarating moment for the curtain call on January 17, cementing the loving community he had built over the course of the program. He came onstage to uproarious applause, walking gently with a four-pronged cane and being helped by his partner and associate artistic director, Arcell Cabuag. Brown suffered a debilitating stroke in April 2021, at the age of fifty-four, shortly after a residency at Jacob’s Pillow to develop TEND, but has vowed to walk again on his own, and he is ahead of his doctors’ prognosis. The smile on his face was infectious, assuring everyone that there is a promising future to look forward to for all of us.

RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE AT THE JOYCE

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE presents New York premiere at the Joyce next week (photo by Rose Eichenbaum)

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, a Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 17-22, $51-$71
212-691-9740
www.joyce.org
www.evidencedance.com

Discussing “the grief and the weight of everything that we feel,” choreographer Ronald K. Brown says, in a Jacob’s Pillow behind-the-scenes video of the making of his latest work, The Equality of Night and Day (TEND), “I want us to find that joy and make sure that everyone understands that this is the destination in the word equality. That it’s the destination of this kind of . . . serenity.”

Since 1985, Bed-Stuy native Brown has been choreographing illuminating works for his Brooklyn-based troupe, EVIDENCE, melding classical ballet and traditional West African movement to create powerful and exhilarating contemporary pieces steeped in social justice, honoring the ancestors, and celebrating community. Through January 15, Brown is curating American Dance Platform at the Joyce, featuring Les Ballet Afrik, B. Moore Dance, and waheedworks. “I remember the first time EVIDENCE, a Dance Company was on the Joyce stage over twenty years ago,” Brown writes in the program. “It was a monumental moment for us and I hope that these three companies will benefit from the exposure that the platform provides.”

Following American Dance Platform, EVIDENCE returns to the Joyce stage for its 2023 home season, presenting three works. Commissioned for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1999 and added to the EVIDENCE repertory in 2004, Grace is a rapturous tribute to Ailey’s legacy, set to music by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis Jr., and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Also choreographed for AAADT, 2015’s Open Door will have its company premiere, a twenty-six-minute piece with live music by Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble.

The centerpiece is the New York premiere of TEND, which explores balance, equity, and fairness, with a score by pianist and visual artist Jason Moran, spoken word by Angela Davis, flowing costumes by Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya, set design and lighting by Tsubasa Kamei, and photographs curated by Debra Wills; the company consists of associate artistic director Arcell Cabuag, rehearsal directors Demetrius Burns and Shayla Caldwell, assistant rehearsal director Joyce Edwards, Stephanie Chronopoulos, Austin Coats, Isaiah Harvey, and Breana Moore, with guest artists Randall Riley, Christopher Salango, Shaylin D. Watson, Kirven Douthit-Boyd, Daniel Harder, Hannah Alissa Richardson, Annique S. Roberts, and Keon Thoulouis. There will be a Curtain Chat following the January 18 performance and a family matinee on January 21.

Don’t miss what is sure to be one of the highlights of the dance year. Brown/EVIDENCE knows how to get the crowd going like no other company; every time I see them feels monumental.

UNDER THE RADAR 2023

A Thousand Ways (Part Three): Assembly brings strangers together at the New York Public Library (photo courtesy 600 Highwaymen)

UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL
Public Theater and other venues
January 4-22, free – $60
publictheater.org

The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival is back and in person for its eighteenth iteration, running January 4-22 at the Public as well as Chelsea Factory, NYU Skirball, La MaMa, BAM, and the New York Public Library’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation branch. As always, the works come from around the world, a mélange of disciplines that offers unique theatrical experiences. Among this year’s selections are Jasmine Lee-Jones’s seven methods of killing kylie jenner, Annie Saunders and Becca Wolff’s Our Country, Roger Guenveur Smith’s Otto Frank, Rachel Mars’s Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters, Kaneza Schaal’s KLII, and Timothy White Eagle and the Violet Triangle’s The Indigo Room.

In addition, “Incoming! — Works-in-Process” features early looks at pieces by Mia Rovegno, Miranda Haymon, Nile Harris, Mariana Valencia, Eric Lockley, Savon Bartley, Raelle Myrick-Hodges, and Justin Elizabeth Sayre, while Joe’s Pub will host performances by Eszter Balint, Negin Farsad, Julian Fleisher and his Rather Big Band, Salty Brine, and Migguel Anggelo.

Below is a look at four of the highlights.

600 HIGHWAYMEN: A THOUSAND WAYS (PART THREE): AN ASSEMBLY
The New York Public Library, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library
455 Fifth Ave. at Fortieth St., seventh floor
January 4-22, free with advance RSVP
publictheater.org

At the January 2021 Under the Radar Festival, the Obie-winning 600 Highwaymen presented A Thousand Ways (Part One): A Phone Call, a free hourlong telephone conversation between you and another person, randomly put together and facilitated by an electronic voice that asks both general and intimate questions, from where you are sitting to what smells you are missing, structured around a dangerous and lonely fictional situation that is a metaphor for sheltering in place. The company followed that up with the second part, An Encounter, in which you and a stranger — not the same one — meet in person, sitting across a table, separated from one another by a clear glass panel, with no touching and no sharing of objects. In both sections, I bonded quickly with the other person, making for intimate and poignant moments when we were all keeping our distance from each other.

Now comes the grand finale, Assembly, where sixteen strangers at a time will come together to finish the story at the New York Public Library’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation branch in Midtown. Written and created by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, A Thousand Ways innovatively tracks how the pandemic lockdown influenced the ways we interact with others as well as how critical connection and entertainment are.

Palindromic show makes US premiere at Under the Radar Festival (photo courtesy Ontroerend Goed)

ONTROEREND GOED: Are we not drawn onward to new erA
BAM Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 4-8, $45
publictheater.org
www.bam.org

What do the following three statements have in common? “Dammit, I’m mad.” “Madam in Eden, I’m Adam.” “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama.” They are all palindromes, reading the same way backward and forward. They also, in their own way, relate to Ontroerend Goed’s Are we not drawn onward to new erA, running January 4-8 at BAM’s Fishman Space. Directed by Alexander Devriendt, the Belgian theater collective’s seventy-minute show features a title and a narrative that work both backward and forward as they explore climate change and the destruction wrought by humanity, which has set the Garden of Eden on the path toward armageddon. But maybe, just maybe, there is still time to save the planet if we come up with just the right plan.

PLEXUS POLAIRE: MOBY DICK
NYU Skirball
566 LaGuardia Pl.
January 12-14, $40
publictheater.org
nyuskirball.org

The world is obsessed with Moby-Dick much the way Captain Ahab is obsessed with the great white itself. Now it’s Norwegian theater company Plexus Polaire and artistic director Yngvild Aspeli’s turn to harpoon the story of one of the most grand quests in all of literature. Aspeli (Signaux, Opéra Opaque, Dracula) incorporates seven actors, fifty puppets, video projections, a drowned orchestra, and a giant whale to transform Herman Melville’s 1851 novel into a haunting ninety-minute multimedia production at NYU Skirball for four performances only, so get on board as soon as you can.

Brian Mendes and Jim Fletcher get ready for NYCP’s Field of Mars (photo courtesy New York City Players)

NEW YORK CITY PLAYERS: FIELD OF MARS
NYU Skirball
566 LaGuardia Pl.
January 19-22, 24-29, $60
publictheater.org
nyuskirball.org

I’ll follow Richard Maxwell and New York City Players anywhere, whether it’s on a boat past the Statue of Liberty (The Vessel), an existential journey inside relationships and theater itself (The Evening, Isolde) and outside time and space (Paradiso, Good Samaritans), or even to the Red Planet and beyond. Actually, his newest piece, Field of Mars, playing at NYU Skirball January 19-29, refers not to the fourth planet from the sun but to the ancient term for a large public space and military parade ground. Maxwell doesn’t like to share too much about upcoming shows, but we do know that this one features Lakpa Bhutia, Nicholas Elliott, Jim Fletcher, Eleanor Hutchins, Paige Martin, Brian Mendes, James Moore, Phil Moore, Steven Thompson, Tory Vazquez, and Gillian Walsh and that the limited audience will be seated on the stage.

Oh, and Maxwell noted in an email blast: “Field of Mars: A chain restaurant in Chapel Hill is used as a way to measure the progress of primates, from hunter/gatherer to fast casual dining experience. Topics covered: Music, Food, Nature, and Spirituality. . . . I also wanted to take this opportunity to tell parents regarding the content of Field of Mars: my kids (aged 11 and 15) will not be seeing this show.”

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER: ALL NEW AT CITY CENTER

Ghrai DeVore-Stokes and Chalvar Monteiro explore love in Jamar Roberts’s In a Sentimental Mood (photo by Paul Kolnik)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER: ALL NEW
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through December 24, $39-$169
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

It was all about coupling, uncoupling, and never-coupling at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s all-new program on December 15, part of the annual City Center season that continues through Christmas Eve. The evening began with the world premiere of Jamar Roberts’s poignant and emotional In a Sentimental Mood, in which Courtney Celeste Spears and Christopher R. Wilson follow the trajectory of a relationship in a dark and mysterious red-lit room. Spears appears first, dressed in a long white coat and white hat with red gloves, filled with hope as a scratchy recording of Duke Ellington’s “There’s Something About an Old Love” plays. She rips off her coat and hat to reveal a sexy black outfit underneath as she is joined by Christopher R. Wilson and the two get romantic to Rafiq Bhatia’s version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” featuring vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, who sings, “The first time ever I kissed your mouth / I felt the earth move in my hand / Like the trembling heart of a captive bird,” holding the last word for a jarring, extended period. As Roberts’s sharp, angular choreography continues, the dancers experience an angry, then melancholic setback and try to reunite to Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” and Ellington’s “Single Petal of a Rose.” It’s a lovely piece from former longtime Ailey dancer Roberts, who also designed the costumes and set, enhanced with stark lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker.

Belén Indhira Pereyra and Patrick Coker merge as one in Paul Taylor’s DUET (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Following a pause, Jacquelin Harris and Renaldo Maurice become one in the company premiere of Paul Taylor’s 1964 DUET, a classic pas de deux set to Franz Josef Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ” Sonata VII in E-flat major – Largo. Dressed in George Tacet’s tight-fitting, colorful bodysuits, Harris and Maurice move elegantly with sinewy expertise, their beings merging amid their confident love.

Vernard Gilmore and Ghrai DeVore-Stokes reach for freedom in Alvin Ailey’s Survivors (photo by Paul Kolnik)

After intermission, a new production of Ailey and Mary Barnett’s 1986 Survivors, restaged by Masazumi Chaya, focuses on the love story between Nelson and Winnie Mandela after his arrest. As jazz drummer Max Roach’s “Survivors” and “Triptych” practically explode (balanced by Peter Phillips’s stings), Harris, in a flowing red skirt and African top, and Yannick Lebrun, in brown pants, a white shirt, and suspenders, are separated by incomplete bars, evoking both the injustice of Apartheid and the possibility of freedom. (The costumes are by Toni-Leslie James, with original décor by Douglas Grekin and lighting by Tim Hunter.) They are accompanied by Wilson, Solomon Dumas, Hannah Alissa Richardson, Caroline T. Dartey, and Yazzmeen Laidler, wearing traditional South African hats and serving as a kind of Greek chorus. It’s a powerful work about a determined couple, all the more affecting since we know that Mandela was freed in 1990 and he and Winnie divorced in 1996.

Chalvar Monteiro and Ashley Green come together and break apart in Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? (photo by Paul Kolnik)

The world premiere of Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? brought the house down, an exhilarating celebration of Black culture. Through spoken dialogue and such songs as the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You,” Lauryn Hill’s “Forgive Them Father,” Drake’s “That’s How You Feel,” Erykah Badu’s “I’ll Call U Back,” and Kendrick Lamar’s “LOVE. ft. Zacari,” seven women (Dartey, Ghrai DeVoire-Stokes, Samantha Figgins, Ashley Kaylynn Green, Ashey Mayeux, Miranda Quinn, and Deidre Rogan) and five men (Dumas, Maurice, James Gilmer, Chalvar Monteiro, and Jermaine Terry), flirt, diss, come together, and grow apart in front of a backdrop of a fluorescent semicircle and larger, flatter circle, suggesting the sun and the moon. At the center of it all are Monteiro and Green, who swirl, embrace, push away, and keep an eye on each other as various other couples, including two men, form and dissolve. There’s a little bit of West Side Story here, some Night Creature there, leading to a thrilling finale.

Are You in Your Feelings? bursts with a masterful, infectious energy that is a fitting conclusion to a night of love and separation, joy and sadness, humor and romance, starting and ending with the choreographers who are leading AAADT into the future, Roberts and Abraham.

STEPHEN PETRONIO COMPANY: BLOODLINES/BLOODLINES(FUTURE)

Stephen Petronio’s New Prayer for Now is part of special program at Danspace (film still courtesy of the Joyce Theater)

Who: Stephen Petronio Company
What: Bloodlines/Bloodlines(future)
Where: Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 131 East Tenth St. at Second Ave.
When: December 8-10, $20, 7:30
Why: The indefatigable Stephen Petronio doesn’t know how to stop, which is a boon for dance lovers. The Newark-born choreographer presented innovative virtual work during the pandemic lockdown, followed by the exciting “Petronio’s Punk Picks and Other Delights” at La MaMa last November and a season at the Joyce this past May. Petronio, who celebrates postmodern dance history in his “Bloodlines” project, restaging classic works by Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, and others, while collaborating with the next generation of creators, including Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Davalois Fearon, and UFlyMothership (dancer, singer, and songwriter Tendayi Kuumba and sound designer, director, and music producer Greg Purnell), is now returning to Danspace Project, where he presented his first evening-length work forty years ago.

Bloodlines/Bloodlines(future) consists of that 1982 piece, Steve Paxton’s improvisational Jag Vill Gärna Telefonera (I Would Like to Make a Phone Call), which Paxton, interpreting sports photographs, originally performed with Robert Rauschenberg in 1964 (see 2018 SPC MoMA rehearsal clip above); Petronio’s initially virtual New New Prayer for Now, set to original music by Monstah Black and renditions of “Balm in Gilead” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” recorded with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City (YPC); UFlyMothership’s The Adventures of Mr. Left Brain and Ms. Right, which pits technology against nature; Fearon’s Finding Herstory, a solo set to a compilation of Kumina, Doundounba, Congolese, Ska, Reggae, and Dancehall and music composed by Fearon and clarinetist and sax player Michael McGinnis; and the conclusion of Mercer’s six-year Process memoir 7 (Vol 8): ‘back to love.’

“It’s a thrill to come back to Danspace, the first venue to ever produce my work,” Petronio said in a statement. “And to do so in conversation with a work from history that empowers me, alongside these voices of the future that inspire me, makes this evening a profound one for me.” It should be a profound, and extremely entertaining, evening for the audience as well.