this week in dance

DOWNTOWN DANCE FESTIVAL 2011

Saturday, August 13, and Sunday, August 14, Battery Park lawn, 1:00 – 4:00
Monday, August 15, through Friday, August 19, One New York Plaza, Water St. at Whitehall St., 12 noon – 2:00 pm
Saturday, August 20, Dance New Amsterdam, 280 Broadway (enter on Chambers St.), 8:00
Admission: free (advance reservations needed for August 20)
www.batterydanceco.com

One of the longest-running free outdoor dance series in the country, the Downtown Dance Festival is turning thirty this year with another diverse lineup of performers taking over Battery Park and One New York Plaza. Running August 13-20, the festival, which is hosted by the Battery Dance Company, includes presentations by BALAM Dance Theater, Ballets with a Twist, Dancewave, Jamal Jackson Dance Company, Lydia Johnson Dance, and Murray Spalding Mandalas as well as Malaysia’s Sutra Dance Theatre and Poland’s Silesian Dance Theatre. The festival will head indoors August 20 for its grand finale, with Sutra Dance Theatre, led by artistic director Ramil Ibrahim, and Silesian Dance Theatre, under artistic director Jacek Luminski, teaming up at Dance New Amsterdam; although all of the outdoor shows are first come, first served, the indoor grand finale requires advance free tickets available here.

HIP HOP GENERATION NEXT ’11: FROM THE SOUTH BRONX TO EAST ASIA BLOCK PARTY

Simpson St. between 163rd & Barretto Sts.
Saturday, August 6, free, 2:00 – 8:00
www.dancinginthestreets.org
www.casita.us

The three-week, four-event Hip Hop Generation Next ’11 festival comes to a close on August 6 with a blowout block party, following the Ladies of Hip Hop Festival (July 15-17), STEPYAGAMEUP (July 23-24), and Hip Hop Kung Fu (August 2-3). Presented with the Casita Maria Center for Arts in Education, the celebration, which focuses on the burgeoning cultural connections between the Bronx and Korea and Japan, will be hosted by Jorge “Popmaster Fabei” Pabon and Brandon “Peace” Albright and feature such performers as DJ Doc, the Abrazos Orchestra, Emilio “Buddha Stretch” Austin Jr. & the Hip Hop / Kung Fu ensemble, XXL Freshman Fred the Godson, Illstyle & Peace Productions, KR3TS, Full Circle with Gabriel “Kwikstep” Dionisio and Ana “Rokafella” Garcia, the all-woman urban dance collective MAWU, Misnomer(S), SnapShot & WandeePop, GrandWizzard Theodore, and the Ghanaian/Bronx collaboration “hiplife.” There will also be graffiti art projects, Double Dutch, workshops, ciphers, and other activities in what should be one of the hottest street festivals of the summer.

EIKO & KOMA: WATER / RESIDUE

Eiko and Koma will perform in Lincoln Center’s Paul Milstein Pool as part of free Out of Doors Festival (photo by Robert G. Sanchez)

Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Paul Milstein Pool, Hearst Plaza
July 27-31, free, 9:30
212-875-5000
www.lcoutofdoors.org
www.eikoandkoma.org

In the spring, innovative New York-based dancers and choreographers Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma performed the powerful Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a free, haunting “living installation” in which the longtime couple moved perilously slowly in a postapocalyptic organic environment that included tantalizing drips of water coming from the ceiling. For their latest site-specific work, Eiko and Koma will perform in the Paul Milstein Pool at Hearst Plaza, July 27-31 at 9:30, as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. Native American flutist-composer Robert Mirabal will accompany the dancers in the water, playing his original score live. Also on hand will be Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure,” which has occupied the pool for years. The new piece was partly inspired by Eiko and Koma’s 1995 River, which takes place in moving water and was recently reconstructed for the 2011 American Dance Festival; water has also played a role in such previous productions as Elegy (1984), Thirst (1985), and Passage (1989). “In this most urban landscape of midtown Manhattan, we also intend to remember and imagine the ancient water all living things came from and each of us was born from,” they explain in a program note. “Finally, many recent disasters remind us that water’s seeming calm is illusory.” It is appropriate that Water is taking place in a reflecting pool, as Lincoln Center is also hosting “Residue,” a multimedia exhibition that looks back at Eiko and Koma’s long career in conjunction with their ongoing Retrospective Project, featuring video, sets, costumes, and the extraordinary structure built for Naked. The display continues at the Astor Gallery at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through October 30. On July 28 at 6:00, Dance magazine editor in chief Wendy Perron will speak with Eiko and Koma and show several of their short videos, including My Parents, The Retrospective Project, Dancing in Water: The Making of River, and The Making of Cambodian Stories. All events are free and open to the public.

CEDAR LAKE 360º INSTALLATION

Dancers appear from everywhere in Cedar Lake 360º immersive installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SUMMER INTENSIVE
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
547 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
July 27-29, $25, 7:30 & 9:00
212-244-0015
www.cedarlakedance.com
360º slideshow

For its 2011 summer intensive, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet has invited fifty student dancers to participate — in addition to the audience itself. Led by artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer and ballet master Alexandra Damiani, the sixteen-member company and its guests (twenty-five dancers per performance, plus the standing-room-only audience) will join forces in immersive multimedia interactive forty-minute events in their Chelsea home. “At a Cedar Lake installation everyone is a collaborator and everyone will leave with something of their own,” Pouffer explained in a statement. The student dancers have been training at Cedar Lake since July 11, taking classes in numerous disciplines in preparation for the 360º installation, scheduled for July 29-31 at 7:30 & 9:00 each night. There will be no seats; instead, the audience will be able to walk around the theater as the dancers move around them.

SUMMER NIGHT AT THE FRICK COLLECTION

Giovanni Bellini, “St. Francis in the Desert,” oil on poplar panel, ca. 1475-78

The Frick Collection
1 East 70th St. at Fifth Ave.
Friday, July 22, free, 6:00 – 9:00 (children over ten welcome)
212-288-0700
www.frick.org

Every Sunday morning from 11:00 to 1:00, admission to the Frick Collection is pay-what-you-wish instead of the normal $18 to experience one of the city’s genuine treasures. But this Friday, the Frick is extending its hours, as the “Summer Night” program will open its doors for free from 6:00 to 9:00 for a special after-hours viewing of “In a New Light: Bellini’s ‘St. Francis in the Desert,’” which has recently undergone infrared reflectography, leading to new insight into the meaning behind the masterpiece, as well as “Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette.” The evening will also include the class “Summer Sketch: Bellini and Botany,” taught by Liz Insogna in the Garden Court; the gallery talks “Introduction to the Frick” at 6:15, 7:15, and 8:15 in the West Gallery and “Rooms of the Frick” at 6:45, 7:45, and 8:45 in the Dining Room; the curatorial presentations “Marie-Antoinette’s Turkish Dreams” by Charlotte Vignon at 6:30 and 7:00 and “Bellini Multimedia: Screening” by Denise Allen at 7:30; and five-minute live performances of “Danse Arabe” by Andreas Heise and Kristen Stevens in the Music Room at 8:15, 8:25, 8:35, and 8:45. Although there are no reservations or tickets needed, there are likely to be long lines for everything, so get there early.

ARMITAGE GONE! DANCE AND SPECIAL MUSICAL GUEST VIJAY IYER

Jazz pianist, composer, and producer Vijay Iyer will be at SummerStage this weekend, teaming up for a specially commissioned work with Armitage Gone! Dance (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Central Park SummerStage
Rumsey Playfield
Saturday, July 16, and Sunday, July 17, free, 8:00
212-360-2777
www.summerstage.org

New York-based choreographer Karole Armitage and her aggressive, physical company, Armitage Gone! Dance, are teaming up with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer to present the world premiere of the SummerStage commission UnEasy on July 16-17. The work will involve the dancers moving around Iyer and his band, which will also include a bassist, drummer, violinist, and cellist. Over the past few years, Armitage has staged such exciting pieces as GAGA-Gaku, Ligeti Essays, and an updated version of her 1981 breakthrough, Drastic-Classicisim, mixing in elements of punk and street dance; the SummerStage program will begin with the Quantum Theory section of her recent Three Theories, which also tackles the Big Bang, the Theory of Relativity, and String Theory. The Rochester-born Iyer is a jazz prodigy who has been playing the piano and violin since he was a young child. The Grammy nominee, who has released such well-titled albums as Memorophilia, Architextures, Panoptic Modes, Historicity, and Tirtha over the course of his fifteen-year career, played Castle Clinton earlier this summer and next month will take part in the Pi Recordings series at the Stone, joined by saxophonist Steve Lehman and drummer Tyshawn Sorey on August 17 and 18 and guitarist Libery Ellman, violinist Matt Maneri, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Damion Reid on August 20. The SummerStage evenings will begin with the world premiere of The Melting Pot from Harlem-born Juilliard graduate Darrell Grand Moultrie’s new company, Dance Grand Moultrie, along with the New York City premiere of Regality, performed with the August Wilson Center Dance Ensemble.

EXTRAORDINARY MOVES

Elizabeth Streb’s “Human Fountain” should make a big splash as conclusion of three-part Extraordinary Moves dance presentation in World Financial Center Plaza (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

River to River Festival
World Financial Center
220 Vesey St.
Thursday, July 14, 6:00; Friday, July 15, 12 noon & 6:00 pm; Saturday, July 16, 2:00, 4:00 & 6:00
Admission: free
www.rivertorivernyc.com

Over the next three days, the River to River Festival will be presenting an exciting series of site-specific dance performances featuring three very different performances. Taking place in several locations around the World Financial Center, the ninety-minute Extraordinary Moves program begins with Australia’s Strange Fruit performing “The Three Belles,” followed by “Selected Works” from master juggler Michael Moschen, including “Triangle,” in which he situates himself inside a rather large version of the musical instrument. The audience will then make its way over to the STREB Extreme Action Company’s “Human Fountain,” a thirty-foot, three-story installation inspired by the Bellagio fountain in Las Vegas. Elizabeth Streb’s extremely talented company of performers blew away crowds at last week’s acrobatic, Whitney-commissioned ASCENSION, so this promises to be one heckuva finale. (In addition, Third Rail Projects will be presenting “Looking Glass” on Thursday at 12:30 in World Financial Center Plaza as part of the Extraordinary Moves series but not linked with the other three performances, and Judy Dennis’s “The Dancer Views” and “A Dance to Spring: The Drawings of Jules Feiffer” will be on view as well in the WFC Winter Garden and Courtyard Gallery, respectively.)

Australia’s Strange Fruit float through the air with the greatest of ease in “The Three Belles” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: The three-part Extraordinary Moves program is a whirlwind ninety minutes of breathtaking acrobatics. First up is Strange Fruit’s “The Three Belles,” in which a trio of dancers in elaborate purple Victorian costumes climb up bendable poles and then twist, turn, and lower themselves in the air, as if floating on the wind, looking spectacular set against the backdrop of the World Financial Center and the Lower Manhattan skyline. That is followed by Michael Moschen, who displays and discusses his unique approach to juggling, which ends up being more entertaining than it first sounds as he incorporates tap-dancing (seriously), a coat hanger, and an oversized triangle into his act. The program concludes with the thrilling “Human Fountain,” in which the fearless crew of the STREB Extreme Action Company clearly has fun re-creating Las Vegas’s famed Bellagio Fountain as they jump, fall, and soar off a three-tiered platform that reaches more than thirty feet high. The finale is simply dazzling. The three-day event concludes Saturday afternoon beginning at 2:00, 4:00, and 6:00.