this week in dance

AS THE EYES OF THE SEAHORSE

Live music and dance collide and intersect at HERE Arts Center

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
December 9-11, $15-$20
212-352-3101
www.here.org

Two Philadelphia groups will create a unique performance piece in the round December 9-11 at HERE Arts Center, combining indie folk rock with experimental dance in AS THE EYES OF THE SEAHORSE. Music group the Mural and the Mint, consisting of Corey Duncan, Eliza Jones, Michael Kiley, Jebney Lewis, and Joshua Ramey, and the Nichole Canuso Dance Company, featuring Nichole Canuso, Niki Cousineau, Meg Foley, John Luna, Shannon Murphy, and Christina Zani, will collaborate on a stage surrounded by candlelit Mason jars and various odds and ends. The Mural and the Mint released their debut album, PRIVATE POCKETS, in 2008, and have just made the first single from their upcoming disc (also called AS THE EYES OF THE SEAHORSE), a light-hearted song called “Ripe,” available for free online. Canuso’s previous productions include TAKES, WANDERING ALICE, and THE ROYAL WE. The collaboration is part of HERE’s hemispHEREs initiative, which brings together visiting artists and the institution’s resident artists in a series of workshops, open rehearsals, discussions, and performances.

PASS THE BLUTWURST, BITTE

La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Thursday – Sunday through December 19
Tickets: $25-$30
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org

In 1928, Austrian painter Egon Schiele died at the age of twenty-eight. Perhaps not coincidentally, visual artist John Kelly is retiring his masterwork, a dance-theater piece about Schiele’s life and career, in its twenty-eighth year. PASS THE BLUTWURST, BITTE was first performed in a very different, much shorter version back at the Pyramid Club in 1982. The constantly evolving piece earned Kelly an Obie for its 1986 run at Dance Theater Workshop, then was revived in an expanded version at La MaMa in 1995. As part of La MaMa’s fortieth anniversary season, founder and artistic director Ellen Stewart convinced Kelly to once again bring back BLUTWURST, which is now running at the Ellen Stewart Theatre through December 19. Kelly has vowed that this will be the last time he ever performs the show, which in its fourth version features several new dances and videos. It’s a thrilling production about art and love that pits the bohemian lifestyle against a repressive culture, told in brilliant and unique ways. The rubbery-limbed Kelly marvelously embodies the sharp, angular Schiele, accompanied by a pair of Alter Egons (Luke Murphy and Eric Jackson Bradley) as he first woos free-spirited Wally Neuzil (Tymberly Canale), whom he meets in a café chugging beer and eating sausage, as his muse and mistress, and later the more traditional Edith (MacKenzie Meehan), who soon becomes his wife. Kelly alternates between silent-movie-like vignettes, set dance pieces, and short Expressionistic film segments, including a marvelous one in which he incorporates glass, his own drawing, and one of Schiele’s most famous self-portraits. The scenes between Schiele and Wally are particularly effective, as Kelly and Canale nearly melt into each other despite Schiele’s social awkwardness. Kelly has kept the show decidedly low-tech, with lo-fi music played on an old record player, the videos choppy and old-fashioned, and Huck Snyder’s sets sparse and intimate. BLUTWURST, which also garnered Kelly an NEA American Masterpieces Award, is playing Thursdays through Sundays through December 19.

Although you don’t have to know anything about Schiele’s extraordinary work to fall in love with the show, we suggest you do just a bit of homework before you go; you can find numerous images and an excellent essay on Schiele online from his New York dealer, Galerie St. Etienne, and several of his works are usually on view at the Neue Galerie. In addition, “Schiele-Kelly,” a collection of new photographs of Kelly posing as Schiele as well as ephemera from the show’s history, continues December 9-12 at La MaMa La Galleria at 6 East First St.

LESLIE SATIN AND DANCERS: RIGHT THIS MINUTE

Leslie Satin, Andrew Gurian, and Connie Beckley collaborate on RIGHT THIS MINUTE at University Settlement

The Performance Project at University Settlement
184 Eldridge St.
Saturday, December 4, $5-$15, 8:00
212-453-4523
www.universitysettlement.org

Last night New York-based choreographer and NYU professor Leslie Satin, PhD, made her University Settlement debut with her latest evening-length piece, RIGHT THIS MINUTE. Satin, whose long career has included such work as UNDER COVER, WALKING THE PLANKTON, and CROSS SECTIONS, has once again collaborated with video artist Andrew Gurian as well as Connie Beckley, who has created a sound environment that incorporates both live and recorded voice. The dance, which investigates memory and imagination, is performed by Satin with David Botana, Janet Charleston, and Ted Johnson, with lighting design by Brian Aldous.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will honor Judith Jamison’s long service with special programs at annual City Center season (photo by Jack Mitchell)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 1 – January 2
Tickets: $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Philly-born dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison performed with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1965 to 1980, returning in December 1989 to become the artistic director of the company. After twenty-one years in that role, Jamison is stepping down, and Ailey’s annual winter season at City Center will be honoring her throughout its run, beginning with an opening night gala December 1 featuring the company premiere of Robert Battle’s “The Hunt,” Ailey’s “Cry,” and Sweet Honey in the Rock singing live to “Revelations,” and culminating in a special farewell tribute on January 2 that will include excerpts from many of the works most closely associated with her, from “Cry” (performed by three different dancers) and “Pas de Duke” to “Reminiscin’” and “Firebird.” (Battle will take over as artistic director in July 2011.) The season will also feature specially priced family matinees that will include “Revelations” performed by a cast of fifty; All Ailey programs, with such pieces as “Night Creature,” “Memoria,” “Mary Lou’s Mass,” and “Revelations”; All New programs, introducing world or company premieres and/or new productions of Christopher Huggins’s “Anointed,” Geoffrey Holder’s “The Prodigal Prince,” Camille A. Brown’s “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine,” Jamison’s “Forgotten Time,” and other works; and performances accompanied by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Ailey’s “Three Black Kings,” Hans Van Manen’s “Solo,” Ulysses Dove’s “Vespers” and “Episodes,” Battle’s “In/Side,” Billy Wilson’s “The Winter in Lisbon”) and other groups.

EIKO & KOMA

Eiko & Koma will be making special appearances in December and January that examine their creative process (photo by Anna Lee Campbell)

Saturday, December 4, Delicious Movement Workshop, Japan Society, 333 East 47th St., $40, 1:00 – 5:00
Friday, January 21, Performance & Lecture, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture, Miller Theatre, Columbia University, 116th St. & Broadway, free with RSVP
www.eikoandkoma.org

For nearly forty years, the Japanese team of Eiko & Koma have been choreographing and performing humanistic dances and site-specific events around the world, focusing on the intense, emotional beauty of slow physical movement. The MacArthur Fellowship winners, who have created such pieces as WHITE DANCE, BREATH, OFFERING, HUNGER, MOURNING, and THE CARAVAN PROJECT, will be presenting two special evenings that examine their working process. On December 4, Eiko & Koma will be at the Japan Society for the four-hour “Delicious Movement Workshop,” in which they will lead participants, who need no prior dance experience, through a series of mental and physical exercises that fall into their seventeen-part manifesto; “When we give workshops,” they note on their website, “we share what we think and what we do with the hope that other people can also enjoy the movements and images we like to be engaged in. In our class, people discover commonalities and differences between each other and with us.” Then, on January 21, Eiko & Koma will be at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre for a free performance and lecture in honor of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture’s twenty-fifth anniversary; admission is free but advance RSVP is required.

WINTER’S EVE AT LINCOLN SQUARE 2010

Broadway from 59th to 66th Sts.
Monday, November 29, 5:30
Admission: free but please bring can of food to Dante Park for City Harvest
www.winterseve.org

The Lincoln Square Business Improvement District’s eleventh annual Winter’s Eve party takes place on Monday, November 29, featuring live performances, food tastings, children’s activities, ice sculptures, street musicians, holiday singalongs, and much more. The festivities begin at 5:30 in Dante Park with the tree-lighting ceremony, with John Pizzarelli handling the honors this year. Chia’s Dance Party will get booties shaking in Dante Park at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00, the Brazilian percussion ensemble Harlem Samba will do the same in Richard Tucker Park at the same times, violinist supreme Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul will be playing in the Winter’s Eve Dance Tent at 6:15 and 7:30, the Anat Cohen Quartet with Avishai Cohen will be joined by Pizzarelli for shows at 6:45 and 7:45 at the American Folk Art Museum, the David Rubenstein Atrium will host a Holiday Bhangra Party featuring Red Baraat at 7:00, Jane Seymour will sign copies of AMONG ANGELS at the Borders in the Time Warner Center at 7:00, Naturally 7 will highlight a cappella holiday songs at the Apple Store at 7:00, the Rose Rutledge Trio will play in the Time Warner Center at 7:30, and the Alice Farley Dance Theater will create site-specific pieces in front of Alice Tully Hall all night long, in addition to performances by the Hungry March Band, Mariachi Real de Mexico, Arm-of-the-Sea, the Raya Brass Band, the West Side Y’s Kids, the Youth Pride Chorus, and others. And the New York Institute of Technology will present the multimedia Festival of Lights in its auditorium. All events are free, although the food tastings will require small payments; however, the Lincoln Square BID asks that everyone bring a can of food to donate to City Harvest in exchange for all of the free fun.

MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE 2010

The pilgrims arrive for another Turkey Day in NYC (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The pilgrims arrive for another Turkey Day in NYC, hoping this year not to get wet (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

77th St. & Central Park West to 34th St. & Seventh Ave.
Thursday, November 25, 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-fourth edition of this beloved American event. (For those of you going crazy trying to figure out how 1924 to 2010 makes 84, the parade was canceled from 1942 through 1944 because of World War II.) This year’s lineup features such floats as the Pillsbury Doughboy, Kung Fu Panda, “Super Cute” Hello Kitty, Kermit the Frog, Horton the Elephant, Spider-Man, Snoopy, and Pikachu along with such floats as 123 Sesame Street, Jolly Polly Pirate Ship, Elves Raise the Roof, Dora’s Christmas Carol Adventure, and Mount Rushmore’s American Pride, all essentially advertising for your holiday dollars. Also participating in the fun will be a dozen marching bands, tens of thousands of cheerleaders, the Big Apple Circus, the U.S. Pizza Team, lots and lots of clowns, and lip-synched performances by such celebrities as India.Arie, Jimmy Fallon & the Roots, Miranda Cosgrove, Arlo Guthrie, Kylie Minogue, Eric Hutchinson, Jessica Simpson, Michael Grimm, Gladys Knight, Kanye West, and various Broadway musical casts.

To get a head start on the parade, head on over to Central Park West and Columbus Ave. between 77th & 81st Sts. the day before, November 24, 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.