In-person SoloDuo Dance Festival is set for February 6-7 at Dixon Place
SoloDuo DANCE FESTIVAL
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Pl. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Sunday, February 6, 6:00 & 8:00, and Monday, February 7, 7:30, $15-$25
212-219-0736 dixonplace.org www.whitewavedance.org
In November 2020, Young Soon Kim’s Brooklyn-based White Wave troupe had to go virtual with its SoloDuo Dance Festival, presenting filmed excerpts of its long-running work-in-progress iyouuswe II. This year, White Wave will be holding its sixth annual SoloDuo Dance Festival at Dixon Place, with three in-person shows on February 6 and 7. The festival features solos and duets by more than two dozen emerging and midcareer choreographers, from companies and individuals from across the country. Below is the full lineup.
Sunday, February 6, 6:00
CoreDance Contemporary (NY)
Corian Ellisor Dance (GA)
Scott Autry (NY)
Yu.S.Artistry (NY)
THE MARK dance company (NC)
sk|dancers (IN)
Santiago Rivera (CA)
Kevin Toyo (NY)
Li Chiao-Ping Dance (WI)
Obremski/Works (NY)
Sunday, February 6, 8:00
Elizabeth Shea Dance (IN)
New York Theatre Ballet (NY)
FUSE Dance Company (CA)
East by North Dance Theatre (NY)
John Beasant III (TX)
University of Arizona School of Dance (AZ)
Metanoia Dance (NY)
Constance Nicolas Vellozzi (NY)
Koin & Co (NY)
Charlotte Adams & Dancers (AZ)
WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (NY)
Monday, February 7, 7:30
ZINC Movement Co. (NH)
Quianna Simpson (OH)
Smutek Dance (MI)
Amos Pinhasi (NY)
DiMauro Dance (NY)
HR Dance (NY)
Alison Cook Beatty Dance (NY)
Lindsey Bramham Howie (NC)
Elise Knudson (NY)
WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (NY)
Double Vision is one of several new works being previewed in Ballets with a Twist watch parties
Who:Ballets with a Twist What: Virtual watch parties for short-film series Where:Twist Theater online When: Friday, January 21, 8:00 & 10:00; Saturday, January 22, 2:00, 8:00 & 10:00, free Why: Tribeca-based Ballets with a Twist has been offering a unique twist on ballet for more than twenty-five years. The company’s short works are all named for and inspired by potent potables, performed together as Cocktail Hour: The Show. Among the pieces that combine drama, humor, mystery, and romance are Absinthe,Grappa,Martini,Zombie,Champagne,Boilermaker,Cuba Libre, and Hot Toddy.
Because of the pandemic lockdown and the continuing spread of various variants, the troupe, founded in 1996 by artistic director and choreographer Marilyn Klaus, has moved outdoors for its latest presentation, Mirage, a four-part suite being livestreamed for free on January 21-22 at 8:00 and 10:00, with an additional matinee viewing on Saturday at 2:00. The short film was directed, photographed, and edited by Emma Huibregtse, with choreography by Klaus, original music by Stephen Gaboury, and costumes by designer Catherine Zehr.
In Ranch Water, Dorothea Garland struts with a top hat on the troupe’s roof. In La Paloma, Garland glories across an old airstrip in Brooklyn, almost floating away in colorful costumes. In Smooth Criminal, Andres Neira channels Michael Jackson at the historic Queens Unisphere. And in Double Vision, real-life partners Claire Mazza and Alejandro Ulloa promenade at a masked ball on the steps of an abandoned castle in Harlem.
After the performances, members of the cast and crew in the studio discuss their process, including Klaus, Gaboury, Zehr, Jennifer Buonamia, Mackenzie Frey, Tori Hey, Margaret Hoshor, Amy Gilson, and Haley Neisser. Mirage is a mere aperitif for the upcoming stage version to be held later this year, which will also feature animated projections by Huibregtse and lighting by Dan Hansell. So grab your cocktail of choice, settle in, and join one of the watch parties taking place this weekend.
Who:Molly Lieber & Eleanor Smith, James Lo, Tatyana Tenenbaum What: Streaming performance and live virtual discussion Where:Baryshnikov Arts Center online When: Live Zoom discussion January 19, free with RSVP, 5:00; performance available on demand through January 24 at 5:00, free Why: Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, who have been creating dance works together for more than fifteen years, debuted their latest piece, Gloria, made during the pandemic, outdoors at Abrons Arts Center this past May. The indoor premiere is scheduled for April 8-9 at New York Live Arts. In the meantime, you can catch an extensive rehearsal of Gloria — a name shared by Lieber’s baby — as part of Baryshnikov Arts Center’s excellent digital programming. In the ninety-minute work, Lieber and Smith redefine female objectification, incorporating microphones and mic stands, large mirrors on wheels, and folding chairs as they move about BAC’s rehearsal space, asserting control over their physical form as women. The soundtrack evolves from a long silence, interrupted by screams from Lieber, Smith singing “Getting to Know You” from The King and I, and Lieber mumbling Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch,” to snippets of patriotic marches, traffic, birds, and Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit, “Gloria.” (The wide-ranging sound design is by James Lo.)
Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith’s Gloria rehearsal excerpt continues online through January 24 (photo by Maria Baranova)
At one point, Lieber puts the microphone all over Smith’s skin, giving voice to her body. “It’s too much,” Smith repeats later, reflecting on the expectations of others. Lieber and Smith entwine themselves on the floor, take off and put back on their costumes, morph into emotional positions that often evoke sexual contact, and dare the patriarchal system to question who they are and what they want out of life, determined to survive amid all the maelstrom, especially the mass grief caused by the coronavirus crisis. As in such earlier works as Body Comes Apart,Basketball,Rude World,Tulip, and Beautiful Bone,Gloria is emotionally and physically exhausting as Lieber and Smith push each other to the extreme — and then keep going.
The piece was filmed and edited by the extraordinary Tatyana Tenenbaum, whose previous virtual work for BAC includes Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm, River L. Ramirez’s Ghostfolk, and a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Merce Cunningham’s Landrover.Gloria is available for streaming through January 24 at 5:00. On January 19 at 5:00, Lieber and Smith will take part in a live discussion over Zoom, joined by Lo and moderated by Tenenbaum.
Hofesh Shechter will present an inside look at his new work for Martha Graham in January 19 livestream
Who:Hofesh Shechter What: NEW@Graham with Hofesh Shechter Where:Martha Graham Dance Company online or via Patreon When: Wednesday, January 19, $25, 7:00 Why: Over the past few months, the Martha Graham Dance Company’s Studio Series has featured “GrahamDeconstructed”: Acts of Light with original cast member Peggy Lyman, New@Graham with Andrea Miller discussing her new work (Scavengers) for the troupe, and a holiday event with Graham 2 that included highlights from Appalachian Spring. Jerusalem-born, London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter was scheduled to present in-person New@Graham open rehearsals of his new MGDC piece January 18-19 at the Martha Graham Studio Theater at 55 Bethune St., but because of the omicron surge, the event will be livestreamed only on January 19 at 7:00. Shechter will offer an inside look at the work-in-progress commission, set to premiere in April at City Center.
Shechter, who has also choreographed works for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Batsheva Ensemble, Candoco Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater 1, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, and Royal Ballet Flanders, has said, “I want audiences to be awakened, to experience my work from the gut. Trusting the gut is to me like trusting nature, or God, or a sense of purpose; a source, a spark. Trusting a higher and better force than our limited oppressed cultured minds.” We’ll have to do that virtually January 19 in preparation for the spring in-person season.
The Studio Series continues February 22-23 with an exploration of the reimagining of Graham’s 1952 Canticle for Innocent Comedians by eight choreographers (Sonya Tayeh, Kristina and Sadé Alleyne, Sir Robert Cohan, Jenn Freeman, Juliano Nunes, Micaela Taylor, and Yin Yue), which will also be part of the City Center season.
The life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be celebrated at BAM on MLK Day (photo courtesy SuperStock)
Who: Dr. Imani Perry, Nona Hendryx, Craig Harris & Tailgaters Tales, Sing Harlem, Kyle Marshall, Reggie Wilson, others What: Thirty-Sixth Annual Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Where:BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Harvey Theater at BAM Strong, BAM Rose Cinemas, and online When: Monday, January 17, free with RSVP, 10:30 am Why: No one pays tribute every year to the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quite the way BAM does on MLK Day. On January 17, the Brooklyn institution will be hosting another impressive gathering, both in person and online, featuring a keynote address by Dr. Imani Perry, author and professor of African American studies at Princeton, entitled “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community”; live performances by Nona Hendryx with Craig Harris & Tailgaters Tales and Sing Harlem; and the eight-minute video King, a recording of a solo by dancer and choreographer Kyle Marshall that incorporates text from Dr. King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered on April 3, 1968, the day before his assassination.
Kyle Marshall’s King is part of BAM MLK tribute (photo by Steven Speliotis)
“We’re thrilled to welcome the community back as we uplift one another and unite in celebration of Dr. King’s enduring legacy and its relevance today,” BAM co-interim resident Coco Killingsworth said in a statement. ”Brooklyn’s beloved tradition was established a year after Dr. King’s birthday was recognized as a national holiday, and thirty-six years later, his convictions remain an indelible force for equality, dignity, and justice. This year we are expanding our celebration to include more programs and events at a moment when we so deeply need to channel Dr. King’s legacy, leadership, and lessons.”
The day also includes a 1:00 screening in BAM Rose Cinemas of Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry’s 2021 documentary Attica, about the 1971 uprising at the prison; a 3:00 community presentation at the Harvey Theater at BAM Strong of Reggie Wilson’s Power, a dance that explores the world of the Black Shakers; the BAMkids workshop “Heroes of Color HQ” for children five to eleven, focusing on underrepresented historical figures; and a digital billboard showing “Salvation: A State of Being,” with contributions by seven Black visual artists (Adama Delphine Fawundu, Genevieve Gaignard, Jamel Shabazz, Frank Stewart, Roscoè B. Thické III, Deborah Willis, and Joshua Woods) honoring author and activist bell hooks, who passed away on December 15 at the age of sixty-nine.
As Dr. King said on April 3, 1968: “Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: ‘We want to be free.’ And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.”
CONTEMPORARY DANCE FESTIVAL
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 14, and Saturday, January 15, $30, 7:30
212-715-1258 www.japansociety.org
Following last year’s cancellation because of the pandemic, Japan Society’s “Contemporary Dance Festival: Japan + East Asia” (previously known as “Contemporary Dance Showcase”) returns for its nineteenth installment, albeit slightly changed because of the omicron surge. Two of the presenting companies will perform in person, while a third will be seen in a prerecorded video because of travel restrictions. The biennial event takes place January 14 and 15, beginning in the lobby at 6:45 with FreeSteps — NiNi, a thirty-minute site-specific solo choreographed by Wei-Chia Su, founder of the Taiwanese troupe HORSE, and performed by Yu-Ting Fang that is open to the first one hundred people, including those without tickets for the rest of the show.
The festival then moves into the theater at 7:30 with a video of A HUM SAN SUI, a duet choreographed and performed by Japanese butoh artists Kentaro Kujirai and Barabbas Okuyama. Subtitled in English Mountains and Rivers from Alpha to Omega, the piece features an electronic score by FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA, set design by T O J U, and costumes by Mika Tominaga and is divided into three chapters: “The Reincarnation Michinoku, the Back Country,” “The Soul of the Dead,” and “Mountains and Rivers in Tokyo.” The screening is followed by the live North American premiere of Choi x Kang Project’s Complement, a playful work with props and live video from Korean creators Choi Min-sun and Kang Jin-an. The evening concludes with the North American premiere of Hao “Demian” Cheng’s Touchdown, in which Hao, the founder of the Taiwanese company Incandescence Dance, incorporates his mathematical background and knowledge of quantum physics into a solo of movement and monologue set on a stage that mimics a school blackboard on which he draws in chalk, with lighting by Ke-Chu Lai and sound by Chao-En Cheng. The Friday night show will be followed by a reception with the artists, while the Saturday performance will be followed by a Q&A.
Reggie Wilson’s Power explores Black Shakers and spirituality (photo by Christopher Duggan / courtesy Jacob’s Pillow)
POWER
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Harvey Theater at BAM Strong
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
January 13-15, $25-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100 www.bam.org/power
Reggie Wilson and his Fist & Heel Performance Group — “Not Just Your Mama’s Post-Modern Dance Company” — return to their home borough of Brooklyn for the New York City premiere of Power, running January 13-15 at the Harvey Theater at BAM Strong. Held in conjunction with BAM’s annual celebration of MLK Day,Power is an exhilarating seventy-minute piece about freedom and spirituality set in the world of the Shakers, asking the questions “What would the worship of Black Shakers actually have looked like?” and “How were the general, core Shaker tenets of ‘heaven on earth’ realized (social activism, pacifism, gender equality, celibacy, and the confession of sin)?”
Choreographed by Wilson and inspired by Black Shaker Eldress Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson, Shaker foundress Mother Ann Lee, the First Great Awakening (the Evangelical Revival), and American Utopianism and Binary Opposition (as well as Wilson’s 1995 The Littlest Baptist), the work is performed by eight dancers and three vocalists, with costumes by Naoko Nagata and Enver Chakartash and lighting by Jonathan Belcher, featuring songs by the Staple Singers, Bessie Jones & St. Simon’s Island Singers, Meredith Monk, Craig Loftis, Omar Thiam with Jam Begum & Khady Saar, and others. Power was developed at Danspace Project, then Jacob’s Pillow and the nearby Hancock Shaker Village.
“The idea of spirituality, religiosity, being able to be manifested with the body in relationship with other bodies is something really kind of exciting, so when I heard specifically about Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson in Philadelphia having a Black Shaker community, it seemed like there were two worlds that I had never actually put together in my imagination,” Wilson says in the above BAM behind-the-scenes video. “It also seemed parallel to my eternal and ongoing obsession with thinking about Black and Africanist traditions in relationship to white or postmodern performance or religions.”
Power is part of BAM’s program “A New York Season,” which continues with Pam Tanowitz Dance’s Four Quarters and Kyle Abraham’s An Untitled Love in February and SITI Company’s The Medium and Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato in March.
