this week in dance

WORKS & PROCESS 2010

The Guggenheim will offer a sneak peek at Kaija Saariaho’s MAA before its run at Columbia’s Miller Theatre (photo by Richard Termine)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
September 20 – December 20, free – $35 (most events $30)
212-423-3500
www.guggenheim.org

Tickets are now on sale for the Guggenheim’s Works & Process fall series, consisting of advance sneak peeks at upcoming music, dance, and theater productions in the city, with the cast, crew, and/or creators on hand to discuss their work. The series, which tends to sell out relatively quickly, begins September 20 with “MAA: A Ballet by Kaija Saariaho,” an inside look at the collaboration between the International Contemporary Ensemble and choreographer Luca Veggetti, who are mounting a production of Saariaho’s only ballet, at Columbia’s Miller Theatre September 22-25. On September 23, the Gotham Chamber Opera takes the stage at the Peter B. Lewis Theater, performing excerpts from Xavier Montsalvatge’s EL GATO CON BOTAS (PUSS IN BOOTS), which will later hit the New Victory Theater, followed on September 26 with the New York City Opera offering selections from Leonard Bernstein’s A QUIET PLACE. October events include choreographers Jessica Lang and Pontus Lidberg premiering new pieces for Morphoses, set to the same music by David Lang, and “Voices and Dance Within the Americas,” which features further inventive pairings of composers and choreographers, chosen by Ballet Hispanico artistic director Eduardo Vilaro. November brings ABT’s new version of THE NUTCRACKER and an unrealized project from Vertical Opera, while December events range from Brian Turner and Bruce Weigl’s “Poetic Responses to War” to Isaac Mizrahi narrating the New York City Opera’s PETER & THE WOLF, with the season ending, as always, with a pair of free holiday concerts in the rotunda.

WEST INDIAN AMERICAN DAY CARNIVAL

Spectacular costumes are only part of the fun at annual West Indian American Day Carnival celebration on Labor Day (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eastern Pkwy. from Schenectady Ave. to Flatbush Ave. Ext.
Monday, September 6, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-467-1797
www.wiadca.com
www.carnaval.com
2009 parade

Every year we look forward to this fabulous event, now in its forty-third year. We’ve been going for more than fifteen years, and it never lets us down, although it continues to get more and more crowded every Labor Day, with an expected crowd of more than three million in 2010. The festivities begin at 2:00 am with the traditional J’Ouvert Morning, a precarnival procession featuring steel drums and percussion and fabulous masquerade costumes, from Grand Army Plaza to Flatbush Ave. and on to Empire Blvd., then to Nostrand Ave. and Rutland Rd. The Parade of Bands begins around 11:00 am, as truckloads of blasting Caribbean music and groups of ornately dressed dancers, costume bands, masqueraders, moko jumbies, and more march down Eastern Parkway to Grand Army Plaza, soon to be joined by the glad-handing local politicians. Don’t eat before you go; the great homemade food includes ackee and codfish, oxtail stew, curried goat, jerk chicken, fishcakes, and lots of rice and peas. The farther east you venture, the more closed in it gets; by the time you get near Crown Heights, it could take you half an hour just to cross the street, so take it easy and settle in for a fun, colorful day where you need not hurry.

CROSSING THE LINE 2010

Ryoji Ikeda’s “datamatics (ver. 2.0)” kicks off FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival on September 10-11

FIAF FALL FESTIVAL
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 10-27, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org/crossingtheline

The fourth annual Crossing the Line Festival, a multidisciplinary international celebration consisting of cutting-edge music, dance, film, theater, art, photography, lectures, and even a fair, will take place September 10-27 at FIAF as well as such other venues as the Joyce, the Invisible Dog Art Center, 3rd Ward, the Red Hook Community Farm, Dance Theater Workshop, Columbia University, the ISSUE Project Room, and Anthology Film Archives. Ryoji Ikeda kicks off the festival with “datamatics [ver. 2.0],” in which the Japanese artist and composer uses computer data, an electronic score, and strobes to present a visually dynamic performance; Ikeda’s multimedia installation “the transcendental” will be on view in the FIAF Gallery for free from September 11 through October 16. There will be a pair of exciting site-specific performance pieces, with locations to be announced, with Arthur Nauzyciel’s HETERO running September 11-14 and Daniel Pettrow’s THE SEA MUSEUM scheduled for September 18-19. Former Pina Bausch dramaturg Raimund Hoghe and Congolese dancer-choreographer Faustin Linyekula team up on September 16-18, Buddhist monk and teacher Matthieu Ricard sits down with Philip Glass on September 13 to engage in a “Conversation on Contemplation and Creativity,” and Willi Dorner will lead “Bodies in Urban Spaces,” a pair of free performance walks in Lower Manhattan scheduled for sunrise on September 27 and sunset on September 27. In addition, “Farm City: Where Are You Growing?” will explore urban agriculture around the city with a fair, film screenings, a farm tour, and an afternoon forum. The festival will also include performances and appearances by Jérôme Bel, Bertrand Bonello, Bouchra Ouizguen, Richard Garet, and Eliane Radigue. Tickets for the 2010 edition of Crossing the Line are on sale now; please note that some of the free events require advance RSVPs.

PENWALD: 4: UNISON SYMMETRY STANDING

The public is invited to watch Tony Orrico create installation drawing in DTW lobby August 31 – September 2

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
August 31 – September 2, free, 5:00 – 9:00
212-924-0077
www.dancetheaterworkshop.org

From August 31 through September 2, visual artist and performer Tony Orrico will create a movement-based drawing in three parts in the Dance Theater Workshop lobby, working nonstop for four hours each day, from 5:00 to 9:00, with the public is invited to watch free of charge. More than just a wall mural, “Penwald: 4: unison symmetry standing” will feature Orrico using his body in unique ways as the piece comes together, right in front of everyone’s eyes. On his website Orrico writes that “this series considers explorations of symmetry and biomechanics alongside themes of measurement, pathway, gravity, energy, chaos, efficiency, endurance, limitation, repetition, and isolation.” Born in Illinois in 1979, Orrico has danced with Shen Wei Arts and Trisha Brown, presented site-specific performance-art pieces at such locations as Judson Memorial Church and Dixon Place in New York City, Sara Park in Arizona, and a barren landscape in Porto, Portugal; earlier incarnations of “Penwald” have taken place at Postmaster Gallery, PlaceMark, and the Red Horse Café. The final installation will be on view at DTW for an extended period of time.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL

Don’t get washed out of getting tickets to see Pina Bausch’s VOLLMOND at BAM (photo by Laurent Philippe)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.
September 23 – December 19, $20-$85
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Now in its twenty-eighth year, BAM’s Next Wave Festival is, as always, a terrific collection of productions scouted from around the world. Single tickets go on sale Monday, August 30, for Laurie Anderson’s phantasmagoric DELUSION and Pina Bausch’s VOLLMOND, an extremely strong one-two punch to get the season going, featuring a pair of longtime BAM favorites; we recently caught Anderson at (le) poisson rouge, and she’s still at the top of her game, while VOLLMOND is the final piece from the inventive, innovative, and endlessly entertaining Bausch, who passed away in June 2009, leaving behind a BAM legacy that included the thrilling BAMBOO BLUES, NEFÉS, and FUR DIE KINDER VON GESTERN, HEUTE, UND MORGEN, among other splendid shows. The rest of the series goes on sale September 7, with such highlights as Ralph Lemon’s HOW CAN YOU STAY IN THE HOUSE ALL DAY AND NOT GO ANYWHERE?, Stew’s BROOKLYN OMNIBUS, Julia Stiles in the Ridge Theater’s PERSEPHONE, Sasha Waltz’s GEZEITEN, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s version of Akira Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD, Thomas Ostermeier’s take on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, Gísli Örn Gardarsson and Nick Cave’s experimental exploration of Franz Kafka’s METAMORPHOSIS, and Mikel Rouse’s multimedia extravaganza GRAVITY RADIO. Subscription tickets are available right now; if you buy seats to four or more shows, you can save up to forty percent and receive such benefits as priority access to future seasons, flexible scheduling, and discounts for additional tickets.

GREATER NEW YORK/WARM UP

William Cordova’s “Laberintos (after octavio paz)” is set up like dominoes ready to come tumbling down at any moment (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMAPS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Warm Up: Saturdays from 2:00 to 9:00 through September 4, $15 (free for Long Island City residents)
Greater New York: Thursday through Monday from 12 noon – 6:00 pm through October 18
Suggested donation: $10 (free with MoMA ticket within thirty days of MoMA visit)
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org
“pole dance” slideshow

MoMA PS1’s third quinquennial, their five-year survey of contemporary art in the metropolitan area, is an engaging and involving collection of multimedia work from approximately seventy artists. Taking on everything from environmentalism and racism to marketing and celebrity, the show moves along at a breezy pace. Various artists get their own relatively large galleries, including David Benjamin Sherry (yes, you can walk through the doors), Leidy Churchman, Vlatka Horvat, and Zipora Fried, while others get their own small rooms, like Conrad Ventur, who presents the history of Shirley Bassey singing “This Is My Life” as seen through rotating crystal prisms. David Brooks’s “Preserved Forest” installation comments on the deforestation along a new superhighway in Brazil, while Gilad Ratman’s two-channel video, “The 588 Project,” features a bubbling, muddy ooze seemingly coming alive. Visitors are encouraged to add colorful strips of tape to Franklin Evans’s “timecompressionmachine” and to play the strings of Naama Tsabar’s pair of speaker walls. One of the most powerful pieces is Hank Willis Thomas’s “Unbranded,” consisting of advertising photographs tailored to the African American community, organized chronologically from the 1960s to the present, in which all text and brand names have been removed, leaving just the central image to be judged on its own. In the same room, William Cordova’s “Laberintos (after octavio paz)” collects record sleeves from an Ivy League institution that borrowed 200 Inca artifacts from Peru in 1914 and refuses to return them; the albums are arranged in a perilous maze that appears likely to collapse at any moment. As usual, there’s art just about everywhere you look or listen at PS1; Nico Muhly’s specially commissioned sound piece loops in the elevator, and Aki Sasamoto collaborated with Saul Melman on “Skewed Lies / Central Governor” in the boiler room, where live performances are scheduled September 17-19 and October 15-17. Also downstairs, in the cinema, Ronald Bronstein’s FROWNLAND (2007) continues through August 30, with Bronstein discussing the film with Amy Taubin on August 28; future screenings include works by Dani Leventhal and Fern Silva as well as Tomonari Nishikawa and Redmond Entwistle, with upcoming performances by Andrew Lampert and Trisha Baga. In addition, Dutch artist Guido van der Werve will be presenting an orchestra performance October 2 & 9.

Solid Objectives — Idenburg Liu have installed the playful, interactive “Pole Dance” in the PS1 courtyard (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The summer-long hot and sweaty Warm Up series has two Saturdays remaining, with Big Freedia, DJ Rusty Lazer, DJ Rashad, GHE20 GOTHIK DJs Venus X and Brenmar, and Traxx getting booties shaking on August 28, and House of House, DJ Mehdi, and a live set by Holy Ghost! ready to close out the season on September 4. The winner of this year’s Young Architects Program, Solid Objectives — Idenburg Liu (SO – IL), has filled the courtyard with large beach balls, overhead netting, hammocks, wading pools, and sand, where people can relax or toss around the balls while also getting sprayed with mist. Some of the poles in the section immediately to the right are linked to sound, so you can orchestrate your own concert or watch a show choreographed by Kyra Johannesen on August 28 at 2:30. You can also grab burgers, beer, and dogs at the regular Warm Up barbecue, but be prepared for some massive crowds. Summer Saturdays at PS1 have become a right of passage for New Yorkers, who are able to experience art, music, film, dance, food, sport, literature, and more, all in one fabulous setting.

MELT

Eight dancers prepare to melt their bodies and souls in site-specific dance performance

The Salt Pile
Pike Slip & South St.
August 19-22, 26-29, September 2-5, 9-12, $15-$40
718-302-5024
www.sensproduction.org

In choreographer Noémie Lafrance’s site-specific dance presentation, eight performers (Elizabeth Wilkinson, Mare Hieronimus, Teresa Kochis, Celeste Hastings, Ori Lenkinski, Adi Kfir, Meghan Merril, and Marcy Schlissel), wearing outfits made of sculptural beeswax and lanolin, are on a wall, melting in the sun, their souls slowly disintegrating. The highly anticipated MELT, which features a score by Erin McGonigle, comes from the expansive minds at the nonprofit dance company Sens Production, which has previously staged such works as AGORA II in the McCarren Park pool, INVASION at Fort Jay on Governors Island, and DESCENT in the New York City Court Building Clock Tower. Tickets are going fast for the event, which runs Thursday through Sunday the next two weekends.

Update: The performances scheduled for August 22 have been canceled because of the rain, but the show has been extended through September 12.