this week in dance

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.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER AT NEW YORK CITY CENTER

Jamar Roberts’s In a Sentimental Mood will make its work premiere at AAADT season at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 30 – December 24, $39-$169
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a rough coupla weeks. Thankfully, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to New York City Center this week just in time to give me just the break I need, something I look forward to every year.

AAADT’s 2022 fall/winter season at City Center runs November 30 to December 24, featuring fifteen works presented in various groupings, beginning with an opening night gala consisting of an excerpt from Mauro Bigonzetti’s Festa Barocca (with Constance Stamatiou and students from the Ailey School), a romantic duet from Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs, and excerpts from Alvin Ailey’s classic Night Creature along with artistic director Robert Battle’s Unfold, with live vocals by soprano Brandie Sutton, before concluding with Ailey’s standard-bearer, Revelations.

If you haven’t been paying attention to former Ailey dancer Jamar Roberts’s growth as a choreographer, you’ve been missing a special progression. The world premiere of his In a Sentimental Mood, the exploration of a young couple’s love and desire, set to music by Duke Ellington and Rafiq Bhatia’s spin on a quartet of jazz standards, is sure to be a highlight at City Center. The other world premiere is Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings?, a celebration of Black culture with songs by the Flamingos, Jazmine Sullivan, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, and others. The troupe will present the company premieres of Paul Taylor’s 1964 short, motionless DUET and Tharp’s 1997 Roy’s Joys, a nine-part piece honoring trumpet legend Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge. There will also be a new production of Ailey and Mary Barnett’s 1986 Survivors, a tribute to Nelson and Winnie Mandela with music by drummer Max Roach and singer Abbey Lincoln, restaged by former AAADT associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya.

Fan favorite BUSK by Aszure Barton is part of AAADT presentation at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

The repertory pieces offer a wide range of consistent delights from throughout the company’s sixty-four-year existence. “All Ailey A” encompasses Night Creature, Reflections in D, Pas de Duke, and The River, “All Ailey B” brings together Memoria, Survivors, and Revelations, “All Ailey C” comprises Blues Suite, Reflections in D, Cry, and Revelations, and “All Ailey D” boasts The River, Blues Suite, and Revelations.

Future of Jazz Orchestra will perform live December 16-18 to Night Creature, Reflections in D, For Four, and Pas de Duke. Two “All New” programs team up In a Sentimental Mood, DUET, Survivors, and Roy’s Joys or Roy’s Joys, Survivors, and Are You in Your Feelings?

I always make sure to see one of the “All New” evenings, a glorious way to say goodbye to one year and welcome the next one, filled with hope and promise and great dancing.

COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET AT THE JOYCE

Who: COMPLEXIONS Contemporary Ballet
What: Twenty-eighth anniversary season
Where: The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
When: November 22 – December 4, $61-$81
Why: Founded in 1994 by artistic directors Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, COMPLEXIONS Contemporary Ballet (CCB) espouses its own “nique,” which “uses a classical ballet structure as its foundation yet allows momentum and the integration of a fully mobile torso, weight shift, and dynamics to enhance the outcome. Contemporary in its perspective, nique places a special emphasis on coordination, physical integration, precision, efficiency, and clarity of form.” CCB will exhibit that discipline in its upcoming season at the Joyce, running November 22 to December 4.

The New Rochelle–based troupe will be presenting two programs plus a gala. The first program (November 23-27) consists of Rhoden’s twenty-eight-minute Hissy Fits, a work for ten dancers set to music by J. S. Bach, and his 2021 Snatched Back from the Edges, which began life as a series of Black Is Beautiful films made during the pandemic lockdown, taking on racial injustice, with spoken word and music by Terrell Lewis, Tye Tribbett, Shirley Caesar, and Jon Batiste. The second program (November 29 – December 4) includes an excerpt from Snatched Back from the Edges, Jae Man Joo’s Serenity, William Forsythe’s Slingerland Pas de Deux, and the world premieres of Francesca Harper’s System and Rhoden’s Endgame/Love One. (The works will be performed by Christian Burse, Jacopo Calvo, Kobe Atwood Courtney, Jasmine Cruz, Jillian Davis, Thomas Dilley, Vincenzo Di Primo, Joe Gonzalez, Harrison Knostman, MaryAnn Massa, Marissa Mattingly, Tatiana Melendez, Miguel Solano, Lucy Stewart, Candy Tong, April Watson, Elijah Mack, and Angelo De Serra.)

The gala, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, will be held on November 22, with highlights from the company’s twenty-eighth season and its collaboration with the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. There will be a Curtain Chat following the November 30 performance and a family matinee on December 3 at 2:00.

BAM NEXT WAVE: TROJAN WOMEN

Ong Keng Sen and the National Changgeuk Company of Korea make their BAM debut with Trojan Women (photo courtesy NTOK)

TROJAN WOMEN
Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, November 18, and Saturday, November 19, $44-$125 (use code COURAGE to save 20%), 7:30
www.bam.org
www.ntok.go.kr/en

In 2011, as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival, BAM presented SITI Company’s Trojan Women (After Euripides), Jocelyn Clarke’s adaptation of Euripides’s 415 BCE play, the conclusion of a Trojan War trilogy that began with Alexandros and Palamedes.

In 1991, Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen staged Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1965 adaptation of Trojan Women in a granite quarry. In 2016, Ong revisited the tale, this time with the National Changgeuk Company of Korea, combining classical Greek tragedy with contemporary K-pop and the Korean storytelling form known as pansori, which dates back to the seventeenth century and features each solo singer accompanied by one instrument.

Now Ong brings Hecuba (Kim Kum-mi), Cassandra (Yi So-yeon), Andromache (Kim Mi-jin), Helen (Kim Jun-soo), and the rest of the Trojan men and women (Lee Kwang-bok as Talthybios, Choi Ho-sung as Menelaus, Yu Tae-pyung-yang as Soul of Souls, an eight-woman chorus, and a nine-piece orchestra) to BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House November 18 and 19 as part of the fortieth Next Wave Festival. The production, which has traveled around the world, melds text by playwright Bae Sam-sik, traditional pansori music by South Korean Living National Treasure master singer Ahn Sook-sun, K-pop music by Parasite and Squid Game composer Jung Jae-il, a surreal set by Cho Myung-hee, bold lighting by Scott Zielinski, exciting video design by Austin Switser, and white costumes by Kim Moo-hong.

“My style of distilled yet rich storytelling is often expressed through a strong concept, integrated gesamtkunstwerk, and bold visuality,” Ong explains in a program note. “When I was invited by the National Changgeuk Company of Korea to direct Trojan Women, I yearned to return to the minimalism of pansori, where a solo storyteller sings all the parts with only one drummer. Thus began the task of removing the layers which had been overlaid in time over changgeuk (a musical theater genre formed in the early twentieth century from pansori), like stripping off layers of paints and renovations to get to the base architecture of an old house. . . . From the beginning I felt that Helen, who stands between the Greeks and the Trojans, is a character between binary opposites. In our production, the voice of Helen exists in the space between masculine and feminine — she is an outsider who launched the war between Greece and Troy. With the chorus, I drew inspiration from the music of enslaved peoples transported from Africa to the Americas. Similarly to how African music became the music of spirituals, blues, jazz, rap, it would be wonderful if the chorus of Trojan Women could express the vibrant potential future of pansori. Hence the invitation to Jang Jae-Il to write the music for the chorus in the genre of K-pop, where the emotionalism of pansori infuses contemporary pop elements. ”

This show marks the BAM debut of the National Changgeuk Company of Korea, which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The 110-minute multimedia drama incorporates music, dance, and theater, with a cast of more than dozen singers, actors, and musicians exploring the effects of battle on women, particularly the Korean War. “Trojan Women deals with human dignity and self-respect,” Ong said in an October 2016 interview with the Financial Times. “Most of all, it is focused on women’s strong will to live. I also hope that this work would remind the audience of the pain and sorrow Korean women had suffered after the war.”

ACTION SONGS / PROTEST DANCES

Who: Edisa Weeks, Taína Asili, Spirit McIntyre, Martha Redbone, Noni Byrd-Gibbs, Steven Jeltsch, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Devin Oshiro, Brittany Stewart, Marýa Wethers
What: Action Songs/Protest Dances
Where: Kupferberg Center for the Arts, 153-49 Reeves Ave., Flushing
When: Saturday, November 12, 8:00, and Sunday, November 13, 3:00, $20
Why: Given the state of the nation, particularly following the midterm elections, it is a time for action and protest. On November 12 and 13, Queens College will be hosting the timely program “Action Songs/Protest Dances,” featuring an impressive lineup of musicians and dancers. The event was conceived by director and choreographer Edisa Weeks in honor of civil rights activist James Forman (1928-2005), who wrote such books as The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Self Determination: An Examination of the Question and Its Application to the African American People, and High Tide of Black Resistance and Other Political & Literary Writings.

“I started teaching at Queens College in 2010, which is also when the QC Rosenthal Library Civil Rights Archives acquired James Forman’s personal papers,” Weeks said in a statement. “I was incredibly excited as Forman was the first person I heard criticize capitalism as an exploitive economic system. I was a kid at the time, and remember feeling shocked, as I grew up playing Monopoly and believing that capitalism was good and the ‘American Way.’ Since 2010 I’ve been wondering how I can lift up James Forman’s voice, work, advocacy, and sacrifices during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Then in 2020 the pandemic happened, followed by the murder of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. I began wondering how as a choreographer I can engage with the protests that were happening across the nation and help address injustices in America. The Kupferberg Center for the Arts Incubator Project provided the opportunity to create ‘Action Songs/Protest Dances,’ which celebrates the life and words of James Forman, and through music and dance advocates for America to be a truly great nation.”

The event features original songs by Taina Asili, Spirit McIntyre, and Martha Redbone, with dancers Noni Byrd-Gibbs, Steven Jeltsch, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Devin Oshiro, Brittany Stewart, and Marýa Wethers. Each show will be followed by a discussion with the composers and performers, moderated by Miles Grier on November 12 and Natanya Duncan on November 13.

NEIL GREENBERG: BETSY

Neil Greenberg will present the world premiere of Betsy this week at La MaMa (photo by Frank Mullaney)

Who: Neil Greenberg, Paul Hamilton, Opal Ingle, Owen Prum
What: World premiere dance
Where: La MaMa’s Downstairs Theater, 66 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
When: November 12-14, 17-20, $10-$30
Why: “Betsy makes use of projected written text that situates the dance within a two-pandemic landscape of COVID and AIDS, and within the also-ongoing crisis of racism and white supremacy,” dancer and choreographer Neil Greenberg explains on the Kickstarter page for his latest piece, premiering November 12-14 and 17-20 at LaMaMa. “I’m working to expose the cultural rootedness of any performance material in the conditions of its production. The use of text simultaneously gestures toward the kind of meaning-making encouraged by language while also intervening to allow for other perceptual possibilities.” The work features Greenberg, Paul Hamilton, Opal Ingle, and Owen Prum, with an original score by James Lo and Zeena Parkins and lighting by Michael Stiller. A former member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company and dance curator at the Kitchen and currently on the dance faculty at the New School, Greenberg made his La MaMa debut in 1987 with MacGuffin, or How Meanings Get Lost.

“Betsy will engage with the phenomenon of performance itself, in a play with the multiple relational possibilities between performers and spectators, and between a work and its spectators,” Greenberg (Partial View, This) continues. “Betsy will be presented with audience surrounding the performance arena, each viewer necessarily experiencing the performance materials differently due to their distinct vantage point, enabling spectators to watch the dance, themselves, and each other as they watch the dance together.”