this week in dance

WINTER’S EVE AT LINCOLN SQUARE 2012

Broadway from 59th to 66th Sts.
Monday, November 26, free, 5:00 on
212-581-3774
www.winterseve.org

The thirteenth annual Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square takes place November 26, beginning at 5:00 with the tree-lighting ceremony in Dante Park led by Suzanne Vega, the cast of Avenue Q, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, local news anchor Sade Baderinwa, and kids’ singer Laurie Berkner. Among myriad other live performances, Brave Combo will be playing on 62nd St. from 6:30 to 8:30, Soul Farm will be in Dante Park at 6:30 and 7:45, the Marcus Strickland Quartet will be at the American Folk Art Museum at 6:45 and 7:45, ¡Retumba! will be inside the David Rubenstein Atrium at 7:00, the Alice Farley Dance Theater will be presenting surrealist street theater all night long, Cynthia Sayer & Sparks Fly will be in Richard Tucker Park at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00, Cobu will present Japanese percussion and tap-dancing in front of Alice Tully Hall at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00, Batala New York will be in front of ATH at 6:30, 7:30, and 8:30, the Outer Borough Brass Band will be in Dante Park at 7:15, the Hungry March Band will be in Dante Park at 8:30, the Hot Sardines will take over Richard Tucker at 6:30, 7:30, and 8:30, the Emmet Cohen Trio will be on the second floor of the Time Warner Center at 8:00, and the Stephane Wrembel Trio will be on the Empire Hotel Rooftop from 6:30 to 9:30. Among the family-friendly events are the Dirty Sock Funtime Band, face painting, arts and crafts, and a photo booth at the American Bible Society and the Big Apple Circus, the La Guardia High School Show Choir, the casts of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella and Motown: The Musical, card making, circus face painting, and more on the second floor of the Time Warner Center. There will also be special activities as TD Bank, a holiday concert and sing-along in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, screenings of Annie at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, and Santa at Gracious Home, Brooks Brothers, and St. Paul’s. You can check out tastings from local restaurants for $1 to $5, including A Voce, Asiate, Bar Masa, Bouchon Bakery, Landmarc, Boulud Sud, Ed’s Chowder House, Magnolia Bakery, Rosa Mexicano, P. J. Clarke’s, the Smith, and ’wichcraft, among many others. The event producer, the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District, is asking attendees to bring a new or gently used coat to donate to New York Cares, for people in need following Hurricane Sandy.

TWI-NY TALK: ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER

Rehearsal director and guest artist Matthew Rushing and members of the AAADT company are ready for annual month-long season at City Center (photo by Andrew Eccles)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 28 – December 30, $25-$135
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been captivating audiences for more than fifty years, amassing a repertoire of more than two hundred works from more than eighty choreographers since its founding by Alvin Ailey in 1958 at the 92nd St. Y. The inspirational company returns to City Center in Midtown for its annual season November 28 through December 30, comprising world premieres, new productions, company premieres, and Ailey Classics. Robert Battle is now in his second season as artistic director, having taken over in July 2011 from the legendary Judith Jamison, and he has put together another exciting series of shows. Last year’s all-new program contained Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16, Battle’s Takademe, Rennie Harris’s Home, and Alvin Ailey’s Streams, and they are all back again. The new works for 2012 are Garth Fagan’s From Before, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, Kyle Abraham’s Another Night, Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, and Battle’s Strange Humors. The special programs include Revelations with live performance by Jessye Norman, Anika Noni Rose, and Brian Stokes Mitchell, Saturday afternoon family matinees followed by Q&A sessions, and a tribute to Renee Robinson, who is retiring after more than thirty years with the company. As AAADT prepared for opening night, we asked nine of the dancers which piece they were most looking forward to performing on the City Center stage. (Below photos by Andrew Eccles, Eduardo Patino, and Paul Kolnick; for a chance to win free tickets to the December 12 performance, go here.)

Marcus Jarrell Willis: I think I’m most excited to perform Grace by Ronald K. Brown this season. I’ve been watching the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on videos since I was a child, but I never had the chance to see the company in a live performance until just before moving from Houston to study at the Ailey School twelve years ago. Grace was first on the program and I fell in love. So now having the opportunity to be a part of it almost takes me full circle, and I’m thrilled.

Aisha Mitchell: I am really looking forward to premiering Kyle Abraham’s work, Another Night. The choreography is electric and set to music by Dizzy Gillespie. Also it’s the sole world premiere in our repertoire this season, so I’m ready to get onstage and share with our audiences something they have never seen before.

Kirven James Boyd: Our home season is my favorite time of the year because we’re able to perform all of our current repertory as well as a number of returning favorites. This season there are so many works that I’m looking forward to performing, but one of the most important roles for me this season would have to be A Song for You from the Ailey Classics program. This solo is an excerpt of a ballet called Love Songs, which was choreographed by Mr. Ailey in 1972. For the men in the company, being cast to perform this ballet holds the same weight as a woman being cast to perform Cry. For me, this is by far one of the biggest highlights of my career and I’m looking forward to discovering new layers of my artistry through this work.

Daniel Harder: The ballet I’m most looking forward to performing this season is Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort. I think the ballet is going to present a great challenge for me because it provides the perfect blend of ballet and modern vocabulary and allows me to tap into a quieter sensuality and power. Also, Kylián is an iconic choreographer, so I’m excited to have the opportunity to perform his work this season.

Antonio Douthit: I am so excited that Mr. Battle brought Grace back into the company’s repertory. Grace is one of the ballets I saw when I first joined the company nine years ago and was just in awe of what Ron Brown did with the movement and how he used the dancers in the space. I am happy to be taking on this ballet and growing from it.

Samuel Lee Roberts: I am looking forward to performing Robert Battle’s Strange Humors the most. Having been a founding member of Battleworks Dance Company, I performed the role for many years in the past. Coming back to it will be like seeing an old friend! I also look forward to performing with Mr. Boyd (a force of nature). I am sure that the Ailey audience will fall in love with this ballet.

Yannick Lebrun: I am most looking forward to performing Grace by Ronald K. Brown this season. The first time I saw the ballet six years ago as a student in the Ailey School, I immediately fell in love with it. After joining the company four years ago, I always hoped and wished that it would return to the repertory, so now that I have an opportunity to perform it, it’s almost like a dream come true, because I’m able to interpret a ballet that inspired me so much long ago and that has a deep meaning. I hope the audience is moved by my performance of the work just as I was so many years ago.

Michael Francis McBride: It is really difficult to pick just one work that I am most excited about performing this season because the repertory has an expanding diversity and every piece is so different. If I had to pick three, I would say that I am really excited to perform Robert Battle’s Strange Humors, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, and Ronald K. Brown’s Grace. These three made the list because they are new to this year’s repertory and they challenge me in new and exciting ways.

Sarah Daley: I’m most excited to perform Petite Mort. It’s an amazing ballet that captivated me the first time I saw it and I’m excited to bring it to our New York audience.

MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE AND BIG BALLOON BLOW-UP

Hello Kitty will fly into New York City this week, making her Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade debut

77th St. & Central Park West to 34th St. & Seventh Ave.
Thursday, November 22, free, 9:00 am – 12 noon
212-494-4495
www.macys.com

In 1924, a bunch of Macy’s employees joined forces and held the first Macy’s Christmas Parade, as it was then known. This year Macy’s celebrates the eighty-sixth edition of this beloved American event. (For those of you going crazy trying to figure out how 1924 to 2012 makes 86, the parade was canceled from 1942 through 1944 because of World War II.) The 2012 lineup features such new giant balloons as Hello Kitty, Papa Smurf, and Elf on the Shelf and such new floats as Sprout, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, Gibson’s Music Is Our Life, and 75 Years of March Madness alongside such returning favorites as Kermit the Frog, Spider-Man, Julius, the Kool-Aid Man, Uncle Sam, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Snoopy’s Dog House, and Big Man Santa, all making their way through a new route that will take the parade down Sixth Ave. from Central Park South to Herald Square. Among the Broadway shows that will present lip-synching floats are Annie, Bring It On, Cinderella, Elf, and Nice Work if You Can Get It in addition to live performances by Carly Rae Jepsen, Flo Rida, the Wanted, Karmin, Neon Trees, Cody Simpson, Jimmy Fallon & the Roots, Jennette McCurdy, Chris Isaak, and Don McLean. Other special guests include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Whoopi Goldberg, Geoffrey Zakarian, Colbie Caillat, Mannheim Steamroller, Trace Adkins, Miss USA Olivia Culpo, and Olympic gold medalists Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross, and Jordyn Wieber. The parade will feature 11 marching bands, 16 giant balloons, 28 floats, 19 novelty balloonicles, 20 marching bands and cheerleading groups, 30 clown troupes, and more.

To get a start on the parade, head on over to Central Park West and Columbus Ave. between 77th & 81st Sts. the day before, November 21, from approximately 3:00 to 10:00 to check out the Big Balloon Blow-up. Watching the annual inflation-eve blow-up of Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons is a growing tradition, with crowds getting bigger and bigger every year, but it’s still a thrill to see the giant characters raised from the ground, reborn every Thanksgiving to march in a parade viewed by millions and millions of people around the world. (For further information, you can get the official parade app here.)

ONTHEFLOOR WITH THE DANCE CARTEL

Liberty Hall at the ACE Hotel
20 West 29th St. at Broadway
Tuesday nights at 9:00 through December 18 (no show November 20), $15-$20
www.thedancecartel.com

After spending about an hour and a half with the Dance Cartel, you might not know exactly quite what hit you, but you are likely to feel energized and exhilarated. The night opens with short, odd, off-kilter performance pieces but swiftly turns into a whirlwind of exuberant, electrifying movement. Held in the dark basement known as Liberty Hall in the Ace Hotel, OntheFloor begins with a curated series of extremely low-budget pieces of performance art that can range from very silly videos to an awful first-time comedian to an auction of remnants of artworks supposedly gathered off the streets of a Hurricane Sandy–rattled Chelsea. But then the Dance Cartel takes over, a group of costumed men and women who look and move like survivors from Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield” video. Alexandra Albrecht, Aziza Barnes, Emily Bass, nicHi Douglas, Josh Palmer, Justin Perez, Ryan Ross, and choreographer and codirector Ani Taj Niemann make their way throughout the space, followed by the audience, as familiar bass-heavy rap, hip-hop, and pop songs vibrate off the walls, courtesy of DJs Max Pearl and Average Jo. Vadim Ledvin’s lighting goes from frenetic and emotional to cool and mysterious as the dancers take center stage, then run off into corners, hump walls, writhe on the ground, and gyrate against one another. MCs Chinaza Uche and Cyndi Perczek rev up the crowd as things get fast and furious, the dancers getting right in everyone’s face, eventually leading to a free-for-all finale. Codirected by Sam Pinkleton, the show also features video by Harrison Boyce and Stephen Arnoczy and live music by Rose Blanshei and BatalaNYC. People are encouraged to come early, stay late, and buy drinks at the bar; they also receive instructions asking them not to stand in front of any lights, to stay off cell phones unless tweeting or texting about the show, to get out of the way of flying bodies, and “If you want to dance, dance. If you want to jump, jump. If you want to sit over there, that’s lame but fine.”

PIVOTAL WORKS: THE VILCEK FOUNDATION PROJECT

Vilcek Prize winner Michel Kouakou will present two world premieres November 17-18 at the Joyce SoHo

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer St. between Houston & Prince Sts.
November 15-18, $15
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org
www.vilcek.org

The Vilcek Foundation, which supports and honors contributions in the sciences, arts, and culture by immigrants, continues its year-long celebration of dance with the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, taking place November 15-18 at the Joyce SoHo. The program on Thursday and Friday at 7:30 features the four finalists, who were chosen by a panel consisting of Alicia Adams, Bonnie Brooks, Joan Finkelstein, Jane Forde, Larry Keigwin, Larry Rhodes, and Andrea Snyder. Vietnam’s Thang Dao will present Lenore, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven; France’s Fanny Ara will perform the solo piece Solea; Italy’s Alice Gosti examines pasta and family in the potentially messy Spaghetti Co.; and Sweden’s Pontus Lidberg will be represented by an excerpt of the multimedia WITHIN (Labyrinth Within), which he created for Morphoses and ran at the Joyce in full last week. On November 17 at 7:30 and November 18 at 2:00, Ivory Coast’s Michel Kouakou, winner of the $25,000 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, will lead his company, Daara Dance, in a pair of world premieres, Shifters and A Drop from Nowhere. There will be receptions following the performances on November 15 and 17.

MORPHOSES: WITHIN (LABYRINTH WITHIN)

Morphoses explores reality and perception in multimedia WITHIN (LABYRINTH WITHIN)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
November 7-10, $10-$49
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.morphoses.org

This past summer, the New York-based Morphoses company presented the world premiere of the multimedia WITHIN (Labyrinth Within) at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The hour-long piece, by Swedish dancer and choreographer Pontus Lidberg, Morphoses’ current resident artistic director, examines reality and perception by combining live and projected movement. The work features Jens Weber, Gabrielle Lamb, Laura Mead, New York City Ballet’s Adrian Danchig-Waring, and American Ballet Theatre’s Isabella Boylston onstage, joined onscreen by Wendy Whelan, Giovanni Bucchieri, and Lidberg, with a score by David Lang. The November 8 performance will be preceded by a discussion led by Susan Thomasson and followed by a Dance Chat with members of the Morphoses company.

RUDE MECHS: DIONYSUS IN 69

Rude Mechs will faithfully restage Performance Group environmental theater classic DIONYSUS in 69 at New York Live Arts

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 6-10, $30
212-924-0077
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.rudemechs.com

In 1968, the Performance Group, an experimental SoHo theater company founded by artistic director Richard Schechner the year before, staged Dionysus in 69, an avant-garde version of Euripides’ Greek tragedy The Bacchae, which involves the beautiful young partying god Dionysus; Pentheus, the king of Thebes, who took over for his grandfather Cadmus; the blind prophet Teiresias; and Pentheus’s mother, Agauë. The production was filmed by Brian De Palma, who had been impressed by the participatory environmental show that melds audience and performer. Now the Austin-based Rude Mechs, who specialize in organic theatrical performances, are faithfully restaging Dionysus in 69 at New York Live Arts, using the original production and film as sources for the evening-length piece, which features, among other things, full-frontal male and female nudity. Once again the audience gets in on the action, as all seats are general admission on wooden platforms on the floor or accessed via ladders. The show runs November 6-10; on November 8, there will be a preperformance conversation, “The (Re)performance of Discussing Dionysus in 69,” with Schechner and Rude Mechs co-artistic producing directors Madge Darlington and Shawn Sides, while on November 9 there will be a special talk following the 7:30 performance, “Discussing Dionysus in 69, NOW,” with Schechner, Darlington, and Sides speaking with writer and dance critic Elizabeth Zimmer.