this week in dance

HARKNESS MAIN STAGE SERIES: AMOC’S WITH CARE

AMOC’s With Care comes to the 92nd St. Y this week (photo by Natalia Perez)

Who: Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber, Keir GoGwilt, Miranda Cuckson
What: New York City premiere of work by AMOC (American Modern Opera Company)
Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Center, 1395 Lexington Ave. at Ninety-Second St., and online
When: In person Thursday, April 28, $30, 8:00; online April 29, noon, to May 1, midnight, $15
Why: In November 2018, married former Batsheva dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber debuted With Care at ODC Theater in San Francisco, a co-commission with AMOC (American Modern Opera Company). The piece, which explores caregiving, carelessness, and loss — as perceived prior to the pandemic, when those issues took center stage — was created by Smith in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt; the latter performs with violinist Miranda Cuckson as current L.A. Dance Project artists-in-residence Smith and Schraiber, portraying a caregiver and a wounded spirit, move around them.

Directed by Smith and featuring music by AMOC cofounder Matthew Aucoin, the work includes chairs, small wooden slats, and sand with dance, music, and spoken word that should take on new meaning in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. “The original impetus for With Care came out of the last section of my previous work with Keir, A Study on Effort,” Smith said in a statement. “This piece consists of seven efforts, the last of which is the effort of taking care. We thought to expand this study of emotional and physical labor into a theatrical context, investigating the dynamics of caregiving and taking between four characters. Adding Or and Miranda opened a world in which the dynamics of care spiral from empathy to apathy. The more our characters attempt to break free from this cycle, the more they become lost in the maze of their commitments to each other. Yet ultimately the only solace they find is in each other. Never stop caring.”

With Care will be performed live at the 92nd St. Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall on April 28 at 8:00; a recording will be available online from April 29 at noon to May 1 at midnight. For more on Smith and Schraiber, check out Boaz Yakin’s 2019 film, Aviva, and Elvira Lind’s 2017 documentary, Bobbi Jene. The Harkness Main Stage Series continues in May with the Future Dance Festival and in June with Jonathan Fredrickson of Tanztheater Wuppertal.

EIKO OTAKE’S THE DUET PROJECT: DISTANCE IS MALLEABLE

Eiko Otake and Iris McCloughan will team up again for “The Duet Project” at NYU Skirball

Who: Eiko Otake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, DonChristian Jones, Margaret Leng Tan, Iris McCloughan
What: “The Duet Project”
Where: NYU Skirball, 566 LaGuardia Pl. at Washington Square South
When: April 15-17, $35
Why: Following decades of dancing with her husband, Koma, in 2014, after Koma injured his ankle, Eiko Otake began exploring solo work as well as duets with other collaborators. In 2017 she launched “The Duet Project: Distance Is Malleable,” teaming up with a wide range of artists, posing the questions “How can two artists collide and return changed but whole? How can two individuals encounter and converse over their differences with or without words? How can we express both explicitly and implicitly what each of us really cares about?” Among those she’s worked with are painter Beverly McIver, filmmaker Alexis Moh, choreographers Merián Soto and Ann Carlson, dancer Chitra Vairavan, musician Ralph Samuelson, and photographer and historian William Johnston. In her choreographer’s note, Eiko explains, “In my new ‘Duet Project: Distance Is Malleable,’ I work with a diverse group of artists, living and dead. Collaborators come from different places, times, disciplines, and concerns. Together, we try to maximize the potentials of our various encounters so as to reaffirm that distance is indeed malleable.”

“The Duet Project” is now making its New York premiere April 15-17 at NYU Skirball, where Eiko’s unique experiments continue with choreographer, curator, and improvisor Ishmael Houston-Jones, painter, rapper, and organizer DonChristian Jones, avant-garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan, and poet and performance maker Iris McCloughan. As Eiko also explains, “This endeavor is as much about conversation as it is about self-curation, developing instincts, desires, strategies, and tools for encounters with or without words. It is also about developing urges, hesitations, and resistance by looking at each other and taking time. Being physically and mindfully together is memory making. Every encounter is to affirm living and also to prepare for one’s inevitable leaving. My body is always leaning forward to the next encounter.”

LA MaMA MOVES! DANCE FESTIVAL ’22

Tiffany Mills’s Homing kicks off La MaMa festival (photo by Robert Altman)

Who: Tiffany Mills Company, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Jesse Zaritt, Gerald Casel Dance, Pele Bauch, Marina Celander, Compañía Cuerpo de Indias, Valetango Company, John Scott Dance
What: Seventeenth La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
Where: La MaMa, Ellen Stewart Theatre and the Downstairs Theatre, 66 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Aves., and online
When: Thursday – Sunday, April 14 – May 1, $20-$30
Why: Following two iterations in 2021, one online only, one hybrid, La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival is back where it belongs at the Ellen Stewart and Downstairs Theatres, highlighting works by nine dance artists and companies Thursday through Sunday through May 1. “This season’s choreographers are working with a myriad of issues: reexamining the meaning of home, researching postmodern dance as a racial construct, and recognizing the essential need for trust in our everyday lives,” curator Nicky Paraiso said in a statement. “These concerns have arisen in a time of crisis, uncertainty, and also reflection, questioning the ways we respond with our bodies, our minds, our hearts. The artists in this season’s festival have taken on these issues in creative, thoughtful, deeply felt ways.” The shows will be available for streaming following the live performances.

The festival kicks off April 14-16 with the world premiere of Tiffany Mills Company’s Homing, part of the troupe’s twentieth anniversary season, performed by Mills, Jordan Morley, Nikolas Owens, Emily Pope, and Mei Yamanaka and set to music by Max Giteck Duykers. April 15-18 sees a twin bill of Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s journey of coming out and reconciliation, Process memoir 7 (Vol. 5): to land somewhere unfelt, and Jesse Zaritt’s No End of Detail (III), a solo show exploring body rituals and Jewish-American identity. The New York premiere of Gerald Casel Dance’s Not About Race Dance takes place April 22-24, performed by Casel, Styles Alexander, Audrey Johnson, Karla Quintero, and Cauveri Suresh, with live sound design by Tim Russell. That same weekend finds a shared evening of two world premieres, Pele Bauch’s A.K.A. Ka Inoa, which examines names and ethnic identity, and Marina Celander’s Stone She: Space Edition, about humanity’s disconnect with nature, with Celander, Asma Feyjinmi, Michaela Lind, and Katja Otero and millstone design by Emma Oppenheimer.

On April 23, Movement Research will host the offsite afternoon symposium “Secret Journey: Stop Calling Them Dangerous #3,” with the unstoppable Yoshiko Chuma and others. The final weekend consists of the US premiere of Compañía Cuerpo de Indias’s Flowers for Kazuo Ohno (and Leonard Cohen), honoring Ohno, one of the creators of Butoh, and folk legend Cohen; the world premiere of Valetango Company’s Confianza (“Trust”), in which Rodney Hamilton, Orlando Reyes Ibarra, Alondra Meek, and Valeria Solomonoff seek transformation; and the US premiere of John Scott Dance’s Cloud Study, performed by Mufutau Yusuf and Magdalena Hylak, set to music by Ryan Vial.

SPOTLIGHT — MICHIYAYA DANCE: you have to look through this to see me

Bree Breeden is the Expander in new work by MICHIYAYA Dance debuting April 14-16 at Gibney 280

Who: MICHIYAYA Dance
What: Spring season
Where: Gibney Dance in-person and online, 280 Broadway
When: April 14-16, $15-$20, 8:00
Why: Cofounded in 2015 by Anya and Mitsuko Clarke-Verdery, “MICHIYAYA is a queer-led dance company that pushes boundaries and centers the divine feminine by creating space for multidisciplinary performances and programming.” The NYC-based troupe will brings its latest work to the Studio H theater at Gibney 280 and online April 14-16, presenting you have to look through this to see me. The new piece, which explores intimacy, nonbinary sensuality, and healing, was created by the cofounders in collaboration with dancers Alex Bittner, Bree Breeden (the Expander), Joy Carlos, Alex Schmidt (the Paradox), and Alexandra Wood (the Sentient), who will be joined by guest artist Gabriella Sibeko (the Transporter). The original score was compose by Grammy nominee Billy Dean Thomas, with costumes by Bones and set design by Christina and Riza Rodriguez of Maria Maria.

ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: LET THE CROWS COME

Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come soars into BAC April 13-15 (photo by Jake Armour)

LET THE CROWS COME
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
April 13-15, $25, 7:30
646-731-3200
bacnyc.org
www.ashwiniramaswamy.com

While Baryshnikov Arts Center continues presenting outstanding filmed works on its website, including some of the best pieces made during the pandemic, it has also returned to live, in-person performances. Next up is Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come, taking place April 13-15 in the Jerome Robbins Theater. A founding member of Ragamala Dance Company, Minneapolis-based dancer and choreographer Ramaswamy experiments with the South Indian Bharatanatyam technique in the sixty-minute dance, which explores ritual and tradition, memory and homeland, and features Brooklyn-born Alanna Morris, whose work focuses on her Afro-Caribbean diasporic identity; Minneapolis native Berit Ahlgren, a Gaga dancer and teacher; and Ramaswamy.

“I have been immersed in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam for over thirty years,” Ramaswamy notes on her website. “The vitality of my choreography stems from extensive training guided by the technical rigor and expressive authenticity that are the hallmarks of my cultural and artistic lineage. The body of a Bharatanatyam dancer moves like an interlocking puzzle, its pieces a display of otherworldly grace.” The original score, inspired by Carnatic (South Indian classical) music, by Jace Clayton (DJ/rupture), Brent Arnold, and Prema Ramamurthy, will be performed live by Arnold on cello, Clayton on electronics, Rohan Krishnamurthy on mridangam, Roopa Mahadevan on vocals, and Arun Ramamurthy on violin. The sound is by Maury Jensen, with lighting by Mat Terwilliger.

“My upbringing in both India and the US has encouraged a hybrid aesthetic perspective, and my work is aimed at immigrants longing to make connections between the ancestral and the current,” Ramaswamy explained in a statement about Let the Crows Come. “I create environments for the stage where past, present, and future intermingle; these worlds capture the disorientation and reorientation of the immigrant settling into a new land and explore how to preserve individuality while creating new spaces of convergence.”

CANDOCO DANCE COMPANY AT BAM

Candoco Dance Company reimagines Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset in BAM debut (photo by Chantal Guevara)

Who: Candoco Dance Company
What: BAM debut of London-based dance troupe
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 230 Lafayette Ave.
When: April 8-9, $20-$55, 7:30
Why: Candoco Dance Company was founded in 1991 in London by Celeste Dandeker-Arnold and Adam Benjamin, following a series of workshops at the Aspire Centre for Spinal Injury. The troupe, which pushes the boundaries of what dance can be for both disabled and nondisabled performers, will be making its BAM debut on April 8 and 9, presenting two works, one of which is a reinterpretation of a classic. Commissioned by BAM in 1983, Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Set and Reset is a postmodern masterpiece that is currently being reconceived as an art installation at the Tate. Candoco, which is included in the Tate show, will perform its reimagining as part of the Set and Reset/Reset Restaging Project, with direction by former TBDC member Abigail Yager and music by Laurie Anderson. The costumes are by Dandeker-Arnold and visuals by David Locke, both based on Robert Rasuchenberg’s originals, with lighting by Chahine Yavroyan, based on the 1983 design by Rauschenberg and Beverly Emmons.

Also on the BAM bill is Face In, a 2017 collaboration between Candoco and Israeli-American choreographer and director Yasmeen Godder. The work, featuring set design by Gareth Green, lighting by Seth Rook Williams, costumes by Adam Kalderon, and music by the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble ft. Emika and others, swirls in multiple colors and unique movement. “I think our identity can be extended to more places sometimes than we think — it can, or that we’re willing to expose,” Godder said in a behind-the-scenes video about the work.

AMANDA SELWYN DANCE THEATRE: THREADS

Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre presents world premiere of Threads at New York Live Arts this week (photo by Maria Baranova)

Who: Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre
What: World premiere of Threads
Where: New York Live Arts, 219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves., and online
When: April 7-9, $15-$30, 7:30 (livestream $20)
Why: Since 2000, Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre has been staging works that explore what makes us human, the connections between people and nature, performer and audience, and humanity itself. The New York–based company will be presenting the world premiere of its latest evening-length piece, Threads, April 7-9 at New York Live Arts, looking at how we have dealt psychologically, emotionally, and physically with the last two years. “Threads explores what holds us together in isolation and the practice of letting go,” Selwyn said in a statement. “This pandemic has brought into focus where priorities are, the value of our human connections, and the very fleeting nature of it all. We are just a moment away from change. The threads can be fixed, torn, mended, or woven. . . . This is a story of heartbreak, forgiveness, loss, new beginnings, agency, and powerlessness.”

The work features set and costumes by Anna-Alisa Belous, lighting by Dan Ozminkowski, and sound by Joel Wilhelmi; it will be performed by Torrey Harada, Manon Hallay, Misaki Hayama, David Hochberg, Isaac Kerr, Minseon Kim, Ashley McQueen, Michael Miles, Oscar Antonio Rodriguez, Lauren Russo, John Trunfio, and Evita Zacharioglou. If you can’t make it to the Chelsea theater, the shows will also be livestreamed here.

“It starts as a thread of an idea and, from that thread, a fabric of meaning emerges,” Selwyn (Hindsight, Crossroads, Renewal) continues. “One thread at a time. By listening, pulling, teasing, tearing at each piece. Showing up in it. We can only see when our minds, eyes, and hearts are open. We can only see when we are ready. When we aren’t looking. In this pause, we step forward and balance on a thread to discover divine beauty. We measure risk, we acknowledge what is gone, we let go.”