this week in dance

BRAZILIAN DAY IN NEW YORK 2012

Brazilian Day is always one of the best — and most crowded — street festivals of the summer (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

46th St. between Sixth & Madison Aves.
Sunday, September 2, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
212-382-1631
www.brazilianday.com
brazilian day in new york 2011 slideshow

Now in its twenty-eighth year, Brazilian Day in New York is a colorful celebration of the culture of the South American nation and of the many Brazilian immigrants who now live in the tristate area, believed to number more than 300,000. Following Saturday’s ritual Cleansing of 46th St., Sunday’s festivities in Little Brazil will include two stages of live entertainment, with music from Latino, Jorge & Mateus, Armandinho Macedo, and others, hosted by Serginho Groisman, as well as traditional Brazilian cuisine (keep a look-out for whole hog, feijoada, fresh sugarcane juice, and caipirinha), arts and crafts, information about traveling to Brazil, capoeira demonstrations, and more, with some 1.5 million people expected to attend what is always a blast of a party, with little pockets of music and dance liable to break out anywhere at any moment.

CROSSING THE LINE 2012

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 14 – October 14, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Tickets are now on sale for the sixth annual Crossing the Line festival, a month-long program of interdisciplinary performances and art sponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française at venues across the city. Running September 14 through October 14, the 2012 edition of CTL, curated by Gideon Lester, Lili Chopra, and Simon Dove, features a host of free events, with most ticketed shows twenty dollars and under. The festival opens on September 14 with the first of three concerts by innovative guitarist Bill Frisell, playing with two of his groups, the 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers, in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall; he’ll then be at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn the next morning at 8:00 for the world premiere of his solo piece “Early (Not Too Late),” followed that night by the world premiere of the multimedia “Close Your Eyes” at the Invisible Dog, a collaboration with musician Eyvind Kang and visual artist Jim Woodring. Brian Rogers, cofounder and artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, will present Hot Box at the Long Island City institution, a chaotic look at mayhem, stillness, and disorder using a live video feed. Festival vet Gérald Kurdian returns with The Magic of Spectacular Theater at Abrons Arts Center, combining music and magic. DD Dorvillier / Human Future Dance Corps brings Danza Permanente to the Kitchen, reimagining a Beethoven score for four dancers, with acoustic design by Zeena Parkins. Choreographer Sarah Michelson will deliver Not a Lecture / Performance, while Jack Ferver will blend psychoanalysis with dance in the very personal Mon Ma Mes, both one-time-only presentations at FIAF. Joris Lacoste’s 4 Prepared Dreams uses hypnosis on April March, Annie Dorsen, Tony Conrad, and Jonathan Caouette. Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula, who dazzled CTL audiences last year with more more more . . . future, will participate in a discussion on September 17 with director Peter Sellars, followed by his solo work Le Cargo on September 18. Pascal Rambert’s Love’s End examines the disintegration of a relationship, with Kate Moran and Jim Fletcher at Abrons, while Raimund Hoghe teams up with Takashi Ueno at the Baryshnikov Arts Center for Pas de Deux, a playful look at the history of the classical duet. For Diário (através de um Olho Baiano), one of numerous free events, Bel Borba, collaborating with Burt Sun and André Costantini, will create a new piece of art every day somewhere in the city throughout the festival, with all coming together for a grand finale. Also free is David Levine’s Habit, a live ninety-minute-drama that loops for eight hours in the Essex Street Market, and OMSK / Lotte van den Berg’s Pleinvrees / Agoraphobia, in which the audience (advance RSVP required) wanders around Times Square listening on their cell phones to a man making his way through the area as well. In addition, Steven and William Ladd’s Shaboygen installation will be up at the Invisible Dog, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s audiovisual portraits will be on view at the FIAF Gallery. Once again, CTL has included a little something for everyone, from performance art and dance to video and photography, from theater and concerts to the unusual and the indefinable.

THALIA DOCS: NEVER STAND STILL

Documentary celebrates the long history of Jacob’s Pillow as a mecca for dance (photo by Christopher Duggan)

NEVER STAND STILL: DANCING AT JACOB’S PILLOW (Ron Honsa, 2011)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, August 19 & 26 and September 2, $14, 8:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
firstrunfeatures.com

In conjunction with the eightieth anniversary of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Ron Honsa has made Never Stand Still, a documentary that celebrates the long history of the national historic landmark dedicated to the art of movement. Narrated by Bill T. Jones, the seventy-five-minute documentary looks back at the founding of the Pillow, located in Becket, Massachusetts, through exciting archival footage of Ted Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, Shawn’s all-male troupe, and the construction of the first American theater dedicated specifically to dance. Honsa speaks with such legendary dancers and choreographers as Merce Cunningham, Suzanne Farrell, Mark Morris, Judith Jamison, Paul Taylor, and Marge Champion, who all discuss the importance of the Pillow as a nurturing creative mecca that continues to bring performers and audiences together from all over the world. “It was a place where people could, quietly or not, think differently and act differently,” Cunningham says in one of his last interviews. Gideon Obarzanek calls the Pillow “one of the few places you can come and really feel and understand the past in order to move into the future.” Honsa focuses on a series of companies and creators as they rehearse and perform at Jacob’s Pillow, including Obarzanek’s Chunky Move, Rasta Thomas and Bad Boy Dance, solo artist Shivantala Shivalingappa, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Jens Rosén and Stockholm 59° North, Nikolaj Hübbe and the Royal Danish Ballet, and Bill Irwin, who pays tribute to the movement skills of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Honsa (The Men Who Danced) gives equal time to the past, present, and future of dance, incorporating classical, modern, contemporary, hip-hop, experimental, ballet, and other styles and genres, playing no favorites. The film is screening for three consecutive Sundays as part of the ongoing Thalia Docs program at Symphony Space, with Honsa participating in a Q&A following the August 19 show.

TICKET ALERT: BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE

Tickets go on sale August 13 for inaugural Next Wave season in Fishman Space at new BAM Fisher center

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
All tickets $20; on sale Monday, August 13
Season runs September 5 – December 23
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Bigger isn’t necessarily better these days as BAM gets into the low-price, small-theater game for its thirtieth Next Wave festival. Earlier this year, the Signature Theatre opened its new Pershing Square Center on West 42nd St., comprising three venues that seat between 191 and 294 people and with all ticket prices for the initial run a mere $25. Then, in May, Lincoln Center raised the curtain on its new space, the Claire Tow Theater, which resides above the Mitzi E. Newhouse and has room for 112 customers, who pay only $20 per performance. And today, $20 tickets go on sale for BAM’s new venue, BAM Fisher on Ashland Pl., which features the 250-seat Fishman Space. Focusing on short-run experimental presentations, BAM Fisher will host dance, film, music, theater, talks, and more. The inaugural season opens with Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall’s site-specific Eclipse, an intimate four-character dance with the audience on all four sides, and continues with such works as The Shooting Gallery, a collaboration between video artist Bill Morrison and composer Richard Einhorn; Brooklyn Bred, consisting of performance art by Coco Fusco, Dread Scott, and Jennifer Miller, curated by Martha Wilson; Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Living Word Project’s sociopolitical red, black & GREEN: a blues, which promises something for all five senses; and dance pieces by Lucy Guerin (Untrained) and Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (And lose the name of action). Expect the phone lines to be jammed, because tickets ($28-$144) also go on sale today for a new production of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs’s four-and-a-half-hour Einstein on the Beach at the Howard Gilman Opera House.

DOWNTOWN DANCE FESTIVAL

Saturday, August 11, and Sunday, August 12, Battery Park lawn, 1:00 – 4:00
Monday, August 13, through Friday, August 17, One New York Plaza, Water St. at Whitehall St., 12 noon – 2:00 pm
Saturday, August 18, Dance New Amsterdam, 280 Broadway (enter on Chambers St.), 6:00
Admission: free
www.batterydanceco.com

The thirty-first annual Downtown Dance Festival grooves into Battery Park this weekend, kicking off eight days of free music and movement from around the world, including global fusion dance theater, soul-driven contemporary dance, a teenage group from New York City, an Indian company from Petrozavosk, Russia, and other troupes and disciplines. Sponsored by the Battery Dance Company, the festival gets under way on Saturday afternoon at 1:00 on the Battery Park Lawn with Figures of Flight, the Jamal Jackson Dance Company, Morales Dance, Phoenix Project Dance, Roschman Dance Company, and Singapore’s Sri Warisan Som Said Performing Arts. Sunday includes the host company as well as Buglisi Dance Theatre, Dancewave Company, Exit 12 Dance Company, Kun-Yan Lin/Dancers, Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, and Jamal Jackson and Phoenix. The festival continues Monday through Friday with performances at One New York Plaza, including Vanaver Caravan’s tribute to Woody Guthrie on Thursday and the Erasing Borders of Indian Dance Festival on Friday with Bageshree Vaze, Jaikishore & Mosilikanti, Mayuri Dance Group, Sonali Skandan & Jiva Dance, and the Trinetra Chhau Dance Company. Things conclude on Saturday night at Dance New Amsterdam with Exit 12 and Battery Dance; DNA and Battery Dance Studios will also hold master classes and workshops through August 17.

HONG KONG DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL

Twenty-second annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival takes place this weekend in Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Saturday, August 3, and Sunday, August 4, free, 8:30 am – 6:00 pm
718-767-1776
www.hkdbf-ny.org

More than twenty-three hundred years ago, ailing and exiled Chinese minister and master poet Qu Yuan walked into the Miluo River, intent on ending his life via ritual suicide. His followers’ race to save him, and to honor his spirit by throwing dumplings into the water, is the folklore behind the annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, taking place this weekend in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. More than 170 teams will be participating in seventy-five races over the two days, in special dragon boats that can hold as many as twenty crewmembers. The festivities also include live music and dance, martial arts demonstrations, food booths, and a family-friendly arts and crafts tent featuring calligraphy, rice doll making, kite making, origami, bead stringing, and more. The performances begin on Saturday morning at 10:30 with the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York and continue with Lion Dancers from Zhanjian at 12:45, the Bailen Brothers at 1:30, Shaolin Masters at 2:30, and Dana Leong and His Music, with MC iLLspokiNN, at 3:30. Sunday’s lineup gets under way at 10:00 with Mariachi Aguila y Plata, followed by Dance China NY at 10:30, the Lion Dancers at 11:00, Napua Davoy’s Brave New World at 12 noon, Shaolin Masters at 1:00, and Ballet Folklórico Nuevo Amanecer de Jesus Cortez at 2:00.

SUMMER STREETS

The people will occup Park Ave. for three successive Saturdays during annual Summer Streets program (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Park Ave. & 72nd St. to Foley Square
Saturday, August 4, 11, 18, free, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
www.nyc.gov

The New York City government — or at least Mayor Michael Bloomberg — is on a mission to make its citizens healthier. While that has led to controversy over trans fats and the size of soft drinks, it has also resulted in the annual Summer Streets program, when Park Ave. is closed to vehicles from 72nd St. all the way down to Foley Sq., instead to be filled with people walking, jogging, skating, and biking between seven in the morning and one o’clock in the afternoon. On August 4, 11, and 18, the third annual Summer Streets will include activities for the mind and body throughout the route, which features several rest stops. At Fifty-first St., there will be a tai chi class taught by the Taoist Tai Chi Society of the USA, bachata lessons from the Piel Canela Dance Company, a double dutch performance by the National Double Dutch League, theatrical teasers from the upcoming New York Fringe Festival, salsa lessons from Salsa New York, and an Ecuadorian dance performance courtesy of the Ayazamana Cultural Center. At Fortieth St., you’ll encounter restorative yoga and meditation by Yoga Agora, massage therapy from Pegasus Wellness, and a site-specific urban art installation. At Twenty-fifth St., you can rent bikes and rollerblades for free and learn about recycling. At Astor Pl. and Lafayette St., Crunch will host a series of public workouts, including Sunrise Salutations and Masala Bhangra, and you can find another site-specific urban art installation. At Spring and Lafayette, the REI Outdoor School will hold bicycle seminars, with free repairs from Bicycle Habitat, and you can climb a rock wall. And finally, at Foley Square, there is yoga from Shape Up NYC, a Taiwanese Temple Fair from Chio-Tian Folk Drum & Arts Group, a dance cardio workout led by Broadway Bodies, free zip-lining, more art, a mobile playground, and live performances from Still Saffire, Asphalt Green, and the National Double Dutch League. Even if that is all too much to swallow, just going for a leisurely stroll down a vehicle-free Park Ave. makes for a memorable experience.