this week in dance

THE SHAPE OF THINGS: LAND OF BROKEN DREAMS CONVENING & CONCERT SERIES

LAND OF BROKEN DREAMS
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Concerts and convenings: December 9-11, $25
Installation: Tuesday – Sunday through December 31, $18
www.armoryonpark.org

As part of Carrie Mae Weems’s “The Shape of Things” monumental multimedia installation at Park Ave. Armory, there will be three days of live music, conversations, and performances that activate the space. Tickets are going fast for the “Land of Broken Dreams” series, which features nighttime concerts by singer-songwriter Somi on December 9, the jazz trio of Vijay Iyer, Arooj Aftab, and Linda May Han Oh on December 10, and Terri Lyne Carrington and Lisa Fischer, whose latest project is “Music for Abolition,” on December 11. Tickets also include admission to a “Daytime Convening” from 1:00 to 7:00, with pop-up performances by more than 150 artists in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the Board of Officers Room, the Veterans Room, and the Colonels Room.

Among those participating are photographer Dawoud Bey, tap dancer Maurice Chestnut, painter Torkwase Dyson, theater director Scott Elliott, Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, philanthropist Agnes Gund, poet, playwright, and novelist Carl Hancock Rux, dancer and choreographer Francesca Harper, musician and author Nona Hendryx, civil rights leader Ben Jealous, interdisciplinary artist Rashid Johnson, visual artist Joan Jonas, set designer Christine Jones, artist Deborah Kass, painter Julie Mehretu, cultural theorist, poet, and scholar Fred Moten, visual artist Shirin Neshat, curator, critic, and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist, multimedia installation artist Tony Oursler, poet, essayist, playwright, and editor Claudia Rankine, sculptor Alyson Shotz, conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas, performance artist Carmelita Tropicana, rapper, actor, and Roots MC Tariq Trotter, author Quincy Troupe, director Whitney White, and the Peace Poets. You might just have to move in to the armory for seventy-two hours so you don’t miss a minute of what promises to be a memorable event.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER WINTER SEASON 2021

Robert Battle’s new For Four is part of his tenth anniversary celebration at Ailey (photo by Christopher Duggan)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 1-19, $29-$159
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

If you weren’t following Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during the pandemic lockdown, you missed out on some of the best virtual presentations of the last twenty months, from online conversations, “Dancer Diaries,” and “Ailey Up Close” talks to archival performances available on Ailey All Access and brand-new works created over Zoom and outdoors. Among the highlights were a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Alvin Ailey’s Cry, members of the Ailey company, Ailey II, and the Ailey School taking on artistic director Robert Battle’s The Hunt, a special filmed edition of Revelations Reimagined, and excerpts from Camille A. Brown’s City of Rain, Rennie Harris’s Lazarus, Judith Jamison’s Divining, and Jamar Roberts’s Ode in addition to Roberts’s exhilarating outdoor work A Jam Session for Troubling Times.

The Manhattan-based troupe, with new members Lloyd A. Boyd III, Caroline T. Dartey, Ashley Kaylynn Green, and Ashley Mayeux, is now back in person for its annual season at City Center, running December 1 to 19. In past years, AAADT has bid farewell to retiring dancers Linda Celeste Sims (now assistant to the rehearsal director) and Matthew Rushing (now associate artistic director) and longtime associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya; the winter run is centered around Bessie winner Roberts’s final performance, as he turns his attention to serving as AAADT’s resident choreographer. On December 9, Roberts will dance his last solo, You Are the Golden Hour That Would Soon Evanesce, with pianist Jason Moran playing his song “Only the Shadow Knows (Honey)” live; the evening also includes the world premiere of Roberts’s Holding Space, which was first seen virtually during the pandemic. Set to an electronic score by Canadian musician Tim Hecker, the piece features an onstage open cube that Roberts calls “a metaphor for many things: quarantine, being confined in a small space — if you were to, let’s say, look at an apartment building and you see the window and you see different people living in the apartment building, but the cube was sort of like taking a magnifying glass and going deeper into just one apartment unit and seeing what that experience is like, experiencing one person out of the whole.”

At City Center, AAADT will also present the in-person world premiere of Battle’s For Four, previously seen only online, with music by Wynton Marsalis. There will be new productions of Ailey’s 1976 Pas de Duke, restaged by Rushing and rehearsal director Ronni Favors, comprising five solos and duets set to songs by Duke Ellington; Reflections in D, Ailey’s 1963 solo restaged by Jamison; The River, Ailey’s thirty-four-minute 1970 opus with an original score by Ellington, restaged by Rushing, Favors, and Clifton Brown; and Battle’s Unfold, a 2007 duet set to Leontyne Price’s rendition of Gustave Charpentier’s “Depuis Le Jour,” restaged by Ailey dancer Kanji Segawa.

AAADT celebrates Battle’s tenth anniversary as artistic director with an evening consisting of Mass, Ella, In/Side, For Four, Unfold, Takademe, and the finale from Love Stories. Also on the schedule are Lazarus, Cry, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter, Aszure Barton’s BUSK, and Ailey’s Blues Suite and Memoria, divided into such programs as “New Works,” “All Ailey,” “50 Years of Cry,” and “Ailey & Ellington.” As always, the Saturday matinees will be followed by a Q&A with members of the company.

Seeing Ailey on its home stage at City Center is a rite of passage, something all New Yorkers must experience; just don’t be surprised when it becomes an annual December sojourn.

THE MOOD ROOM

Big Dance Theater’s The Mood Room explores Reagan-era consumerism and more (photo by Maria Baranova)

THE MOOD ROOM
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 30 – December 7, $35–$55
www.bam.org
www.bigdancetheater.org

Tickets are going fast for Big Dance Theater’s The Mood Room, coming to BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space November 30 to December 7. The sixty-minute world premiere, presented in association with the Kitchen, combines music, dance, theater, opera, and text, adapted from Guy de Cointet’s 1982 play The Five Sisters and Anton Chekhov’s 1900 classic The Three Sisters. In a program note, BDT cofounder, choreographer, and director Annie-B Parson explains, “Sometimes you find an artistic soul mate in the simple act of opening a book. This is what happened to me when I read the late 20th c. ‘plays’ of visual artist Guy de Cointet. You see, they are not really plays, they are visual events with texts that bask in the hot mess of the non-narrative posing as narrative — a state I would call living! Here is where de Cointet and I intersect: he is devoted to detours, departures, tonal shifts, and the unconfirmed. An atmosphere of codes, exits, and non-results permeate the writing. He quotes without substantiation or reason, he is a-historic, is liberated from achieving even a glimmer of resolution, and his authorial voice is intentionally cracking. His theater is both textual and visually based, without any hierarchy for language, truth, or the answer — and the physical objects in the texts have no stable meaning throughout the play. No one changes; no one learns anything.”

The multimedia piece takes place in Los Angeles in the Reagan 1980s of rampant consumerism and trickle-down economics. Elizabeth DeMent, Theda Hammel, Kate Moran, Myssi Robinson, and Michelle Sui portray the five sisters, with an experimental score by Holly Herndon, sound and recomposition by Mark degli Antoni, set design by Lauren Machen, costumes by Baille Younkman and Samantha Mcelrath, lighting by Joe Levasseur, and video by Keith Skretch. You should always expect the unexpected with BDT, whose previous works include Comme Toujours Here I Stand, Antigonick, and Short Form, and it sounds like The Mood Room will be no different.

YIN YUE DANCE COMPANY: RIPPLE

Yin Yue Dance Company presents gorgeous new work at 92nd St. Y and online (photo by Richard Termine)

Who: Yin Yue Dance Company
What: Streaming performance and discussion
Where: 92Y online
When: November 19-21, $15
Why: Yin Yue Dance Company’s Ripple is one of the most gorgeous works I’ve seen during the pandemic — from the comfort of my apartment, where I’ve watched hundreds over the last twenty months. The thirty-six-minute piece was filmed live in front of an audience on November 18 at Kaufmann Concert Hall as part of the 92nd St. Y’s Mainstage Series. The world premiere, featuring Kristalyn Gill, Jordan Lang, Grace Whitworth, Nat Wilson, and Yin Yue performing on a dark stage, was essentially developed over the previous five days, and the company didn’t even meet in person in full until the dress rehearsal on the day of the show, when Yin was still finalizing the choreography.

Yin Yue leads her company in streaming performance (photo by Paul B. Goode)

You wouldn’t know it from how beautifully the work flows from one section to the next, highlighted by a dramatic solo by Yin, confined to an oval spotlight, her arms alternately reaching out and cradling herself. The music ranges from romantically cinematic to a pulsating electronic score, along with some spoken text, as the dancers form duets and trios, coming together for several emotional passages, bathed occasionally in blue, then red. If you’ve been reluctant to watch dance onscreen, Ripple is a great place to start. The performance is followed by a discussion with the dancers moderated by Harkness director Taryn Kaschock Russell.

On December 6, Yin (A Trace of Inevitability, A Glimpse Inside a Shared Story) will be at the Guggenheim to receive the Harkness Promise Award along with Alethea Pace at the sixty-fourth annual 2021 Dance Magazine Awards, which will be livestreamed. The Mainstage Series continues December 16–19 with Michelle Dorrance and Dormeshia with special guests, February 24–27 with Baye & Asa and Passion Fruit Dance Company, and March 3–6 with Caleb Teicher and Conrad Tao.

TWI-NY TALK: STEPHEN PETRONIO / PETRONIO’S PUNK PICKS AND OTHER DELIGHTS

Stephen Petronio leads an open rehearsal in preparation for La MaMa shows (photo by Paula Court)

PETRONIO’S PUNK PICKS AND OTHER DELIGHTS
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
November 18-21, $21-$30
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org
petron.io/event/lamama

At a recent open rehearsal streamed on Zoom, Newark-born, Manhattan-based choreographer Stephen Petronio said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to look back at some of those works from some of those smaller little gems that we love.” The result is “Petronio’s Punk Picks and Other Delights,” running November 18–21 at La MaMa. The evening consists of eleven short solos and duets, going back to 1993, set to songs by the Stranglers, the London Suede, Anohni, Nick Cave, Elvis Presley, Yoko Ono, Rufus Wainwright, and Radiohead, as well as Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre Du Printemps,” performed by Larissa Asebedo, Kris Lee, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Tiffany Ogburn, Ryan Pliss, Nicholas Sciscione, and Mac Twining. Petronio will also present the world premiere of Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s multimedia and then we hit the boundary where the sun’s wind ceases . . . , with music by LVDF, Heliopause, and Anne Müller.

Founded in 1984, the Stephen Petronio Company was one of the busiest troupes during the pandemic. Beaming in first from their individual homes, then gathering together at the Petronio Residency Center (PRC), a 175-acre haven in the Catskills, the tight-knit company performed new pieces, hosted online galas and master classes, put on a virtual season at the Joyce, and had a public birthday party for Petronio. Over that time, Petronio kept a quarantine journal that has been published in a deluxe hardcover limited edition, In Absentia, with lavish photos by Sarah Silver and Grant Friedman. In addition, Petronio is expanding his Bloodlines program, in which he restages classic works by such choreographers as Yvonne Rainer, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Trisha Brown, to include a “futures” section that so far has featured new commissions by Davalois Fearon and Mercer.

While preparing for SPC’s debut at La MaMa, the always engaging and candid Petronio answered questions about choreographing “when the world stopped,” returning to the stage, what music is on his current playlist, and more.

Stephen Petronio released the deluxe hardcover book In Absentia during the pandemic (photo by Sarah Silver)

twi-ny: Let’s start with perhaps the most obvious question: How does it feel to be back working in theaters? At your open rehearsal following Fall for Dance, you said “it was exciting and frightening and emotional.”

stephen petronio: It’s all of those things but particularly with this body of work, it’s like finally, we can really focus in with a microscope on some of the details that are the underpinnings of what is at the center of a particular body of work and the delicious focus of what we do in the studio.

twi-ny: SPC was one of the most active companies during the pandemic lockdown. How soon after March 2020 did you decide to forge ahead at such a pace online?

sp: I decided immediately because that’s my survival instinct. My legs kept moving and I felt that to stop, we would all be overwhelmed with uncertainty and fear. I thought it best to use our physical practice to keep us grounded.

twi-ny: How important was PRC to that decision?

sp: I don’t think we would have been able to do it without PRC. First of all, I had a completely safe space to work in and I immediately began teaching classes on Zoom to the dancers just as a way of being together and then we began making on Zoom as a way of staying in touch with our practice. Then I began to realize that we could actually make stuff to show other people. I could only do that because of PRC. And then when I was able to work out the finances, I was able to bring the company up fairly regularly for a few weeks at a time across those endless months of lockdown. We also quickly realized that we could be a haven for other choreographers who could make it up to us.

twi-ny: You really took advantage of everything that Zoom has to offer. What was it like choreographing such virtual works as #GimmeShelter and Are You Lonesome Tonight that way?

sp: A complete nightmare! I hadn’t seen Zoom before the pandemic and it took me time to understand the lag time in relationship to making movement with music. And I also began to see many other people working on Zoom and some it was really fun and inventive and I was looking for a way to use the technology in a method that was true to my own work.

twi-ny: You also celebrated your sixty-fifth birthday over Zoom; did you have a good time? It was fun to watch.

sp: I had an amazing time and it was very emotional because it was such a lonely and isolated time; it was really fun to be with people in a very relaxed way.

twi-ny: You kept a journal during the pandemic that you’ve released as a deluxe book, In Absentia. What spurred you to keep that kind of diary?

sp: When the world stopped, I began to do all the things that I do that remind me of myself, remind me of my body, my thoughts, my emotional life, and so I went to writing as a natural response to check in with myself in a regular way. I did a memoir, Confessions of a Motion Addict, about ten years back and so a writing practice is not new to me and it seemed like such an important event that we were living through that I wanted to mark it in some way.

Jaqlin Medlock dances from her home during online presentation (photo courtesy Stephen Petronio Company)

twi-ny: My two favorite dancers during the lockdown were Sara Mearns and Jaqlin Medlock. (I named them Best Solo Dance Performance in the twi-ny Pandemic Awards, along with Jamar Roberts.) You have such an amazing rapport with Medlock, which was evident in your recent open rehearsal; what makes her the ideal SPC dancer?

sp: She is sharp as a razor, I’ve known her for over ten years so we’re so fluid together in terms of my thought process and language, and she’s incredibly determined to get things exactly the way she wants it. She’s a monster for details, and watching that [#GimmeShelter] solo come into focus up to the final recording was such a delight.

twi-ny: SPC performed at Fall for Dance at City Center, and next up is La MaMa. You’ve never performed there before, although I believe you’ve lived near there for a long time. What made you want to perform there this time around?

sp: I moved onto St. Marks Place in 1979 and lived there for many, many years. Normally, it’s hard for me to figure out the finances for my company’s performance in a theater of that size. My executive director, Jonas Klabin, was having drinks with the director of programming, Nicky Paraiso, of La MaMa at a performance and began to open up a discussion about it. Of course, I’ve known Nicky for years. But this is a time to do things that we really want to and let the economics fall as they may. La MaMa is such a gem of a place to perform and this is the perfect moment.

twi-ny: I love La MaMa, and I see Nicky all over town, always checking out what’s going on. “Petronio’s Punk Picks and Other Delights” consists of eleven numbers set to music by a wide range of artists. You’ve previously done an evening of songs by Nick Cave, Underland; if you could choreograph a whole album by anyone, what would it be? Is there a specific song you’d love to choreograph but haven’t been able to?

sp: Nick Cave was a highlight. I did a work to a catalog of Lou Reed songs [The Island of Misfit Toys], which was another miraculous moment in my life. I’ve been tempted to tackle Leonard Cohen’s body of work but his poetry is so dense that I’ve been hesitant. Leonard Cohen’s song “Democracy” is an anthem I’d love to have a go at!

Stephen Petronio walks down the outside of the Whitney as part of Trisha Brown retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: I would love to see that! What kind of music do you listen to when you’re not thinking about songs for dances?

sp: I’m listening to Bach a lot, Billie Eilish; I’m very fond of female vocalists in particular. Lana Del Rey has a new album out that’s pretty damn good. And I’m loving St. Vincent.

twi-ny: Now that you’ve embraced the virtual world, do you see the future of SPC as a hybrid one, or are you going to concentrate solely on in-person shows?

sp: I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to become hybridized. We jumped in and we’re in. But it’s so delicious to be back in front of an audience. And the shows at La MaMa are a total love letter to the people that have been following me over the years. It’s really fun to make a show that’s so much about the joy of the work that I’ve made with incredible dancers over the years and to music that I completely love. This is music that has moved me, and to pass it to this current generation of titan dancers seems just right. We’re still here!

FIRST ANNUAL BATTERY DANCE GALLERY CRAWL

Who: Battery Dance
What: First annual Battery Dance Gallery Crawl
Where: Eight Tribeca galleries
When: Saturday, November 20, free with advance RSVP, 2:00 – 4:00
Why: Founded in 1976 by president and artistic director Jonathan Hollander, Battery Dance “envisions a time when the universal expression of dance will ignite a movement across geographic, social, and cultural boundaries to improve people’s quality of life.” The company has been doing just that with unique programming both inside and outdoors, in New York City and around the world. The company is adding to its central presentation, the free Battery Dance Festival, held downtown for forty years, with the first annual Battery Dance Gallery Crawl. On November 20 between 2:00 and 4:00, eight current and former Battery Dance members and a special guest will perform in eight galleries near its home base in Tribeca, reacting directly to the art on display; the shows are free with advance RSVP and proof of full vaccination. “Coming out of pandemic-enforced isolation, we saw a renaissance on our streets with empty, distressed storefronts remade into gorgeous spaces for art. It seemed like a beckoning for us — come, dance, bring the neighbors out, and let’s celebrate each other and our community,” Hollander said in a statement. Below is the full list of performers, galleries, and their current exhibitions.

Mira Cook at GRIMM
Condition Humaine
54 White St.

Sarah Housepian at Jane Lombard Gallery
Drawn Together
58 White St.

Vivake Khamsingsavath & Durgesh Gangani at R & Company
Marquiscarpa: Richard Marquis Works 1991-2011
64 White St.

Jillian Linkowski at Projekt 105
New Figurations
105 Hudson St.

Randall Riley at Kapp Kapp
In the Margins
368 Broadway

Sean Scantlebury at Andrew Kreps Gallery
Moshekwa Langa: The Sweets of Sin
22 Cortlandt Alley

Sara Seger at David Lewis
Claire Lehmann
57 Walker St.

Razvan Stoian at CHART Gallery
8 Americans
74 Franklin St.

DRIFT: FRAGILE FUTURE / DRIFT MATERIALISM: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

DRIFT: FRAGILE FUTURE
The Shed, the McCourt
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 19, exhibition $25, Drifters and exhibition $35
Includes admission to Ian Cheng: Life After BOB
646-455-3494
theshed.org
online slideshow

Since 2007, the Amsterdam-based duo DRIFT, a partnership between Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, have been exploring the intersection and interdependence of humans, nature, and technology. Their environmentally conscious, multidimensional works are like individual ecosystems that present hope for a future potentially doomed by climate change. Continuing through December 19 at the Shed at Hudson Yards, Fragile Future is a wonderland of experiential installations, presented by Superblue, which specializes in immersive art.

The exhibition begins with Fragile Future, a light sculpture with a modular system based on the growth of dandelions, constructed from LED lights, phosphor bronze, printed circuit board, and the hairs and seeds of dandelions themselves. Coded Coincidence consists of dozens and dozens of beaded lights that move about a long, rectangular, netted space, sudden gusts of air making them mimic the flight of elm seeds in the spring. There’s an emotional aspect to the movement as they travel in groups and gather in a corner, or, with a kind of sadness, one gets trapped in the netting, alone until it can be freed and join the rest of the herd.

Ego might be composed of nylon fiber, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber monofilaments, polyester, and polyvinyl fluoride and run by motors set to specific algorithms, but it seems to have an organic life of its own. Created for Nederlandse Reisopera’s production of Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, about the love between Orpheus and Eurydice and his descent into the underworld, Ego is a monumental handmade woven block that rises, falls, spreads out, collapses, and twists and turns as if magically floating through space, evoking human emotions amid a gentle soundscape. Describing its construction, Gordijn explains in a Drift video, “It depends on how that ego is shaped, how flexible it is, or how rigid it is. Because if it is rigid, there is only one truth, and if it’s flexible, you can move along with what is needed in order for it to accept certain truths or accept how life is or how the world is being built. And I think it’s a big difficulty in everybody’s life to be flexible in your vision and to be flexible in your perspective. But we have to be flexible, and I like that about Ego, that it can be a very rigid block but it can also completely change. It can be a solution.”

The next room is filled with “Materialism,” a collection of reverse-engineered sculptures that reduce such consumer products as a Big Mac menu, a coffee cup, an iPhone, a pencil, and a bicycle into colored blocks based on the size of their raw materials, resulting in miniature architectural models meant to reveal how we exploit the earth and its labor force.

In the two-channel, twelve-minute film Drifters, Drift’s iconic concrete blocks float through New York City at one end of a long room and across mountains, rivers, and forests at the other end, searching for where they came from and what awaits them.

The pièce de resistance takes place in the McCourt, the Shed’s 17,000-square-foot McCourt performance venue, only at certain times and with an extra charge, so plan your visit carefully. Four levitating Drifters, real versions of the blocks from the film in the previous room, move slowly throughout the space for more than an hour, set to a droning soundtrack by Anohni, the English singer-songwriter who used to lead the band Antony and the Johnsons. The blocks are floating without wires, engaged in a butoh-like dance as they very (very) slowly flip, lower, and rise, sometimes dangling just overhead. Occasionally they gently bump into each other in a kind of soft kiss. The audience can walk around the area, sit in folding chairs, or lie down on their backs on the floor as these monoliths put on a mesmerizing show that could be an outtake from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. During the performance, I asked Gordijn how they did it. After offering two guesses that she quickly said no to, I suggested a third, which she simply smiled at. It’s extraordinarily peaceful and relaxing while also instilling hope for a future where humans, nature, and technology can exist together in harmony.

[On December 10 and 11, Ego will be activated by special dance performances, featuring Company Wo. (Daniel Kersh, Marcella Ann Lewis, Erika Choe, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, and Myssi Robinson) from 11:30 to 5:00 and Project-TAG (Mizuho Kappa) from 5:30 to 8:00 on Friday and Limón Dance Company (Jessica Sgambelluri) from 11:30 to 2:00 and Battery Dance (Durgesh Gangani, Jillian Linkowski, Razvan Stoian, Randall Riley, Sarah Housepian, and Vivake Khamsingsavath) from 2:30 to 8:00 on Saturday.]

Drift exhibit at Pace features self-portraits of founders Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

DRIFT MATERIALISM: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Pace Gallery
540 West Twenty-Fifth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 5 – December 18, free
www.pacegallery.com

In an April 2020 online Pace discussion with musician Lee Ranaldo — he was supposed to play live with Ego when it was previously at Pace but it was canceled because of the pandemic — Gordijn said about the lockdown, “One of the beautiful things I found in the last days or weeks, actually, was that I realized that every night at a certain time, a group of crows is flying the same circles as if they’re all waiting for each other. Every day it is around 8:00, before sunset. This sort of connection with a place, where you start to get to know the animals, the plants, and the particularities, that is what I would love to explore more and the relationship that you can have with that.”

It is that kind of worldview that makes Drift’s work so compelling. In conjunction with Drift: Fragile Future, Pace is presenting “Drift Materialism: Past, Present, Future,” which expands on the “Materialism” room at the Shed. Continuing through December 18, the small show features sculptures that resemble Russian Constructivism filtered through children’s blocks. For the large-scale wall hanging 1980 Beetle, Gordijn and Nauta took apart a Volkswagen and put it back together. The resulting blocks represent forty-two materials, reduced to their accumulated mass.

Drift usually deconstructs inanimate objects, but two new works explore the molecular elements of the human body, side-by-side self-portraits of Gordijn and Nauta that are exactly equal. In the back room, the augmented reality Block Universe consists of a plexiglass sun surrounded by planets; the gallery supplies iPads that depict orbiting Drifters and other elements. The title comes from the theory that everything is happening at once, that past, present, and future exist in unison.

“We’re not having relationships with the materials and objects around us anymore,” Nauta explains in a Drift video. “And if you start losing the connection with this, you’re going to be very unhappy, because you lose the wonder in life.”

Next up is Drift’s kinetic sculpture Amplitude, a permanent commission slated to go on view at 45 Rockefeller Plaza, providing yet more wonder.