this week in dance

ASSEMBLY

(image courtesy Kevin Beasley)

Kevin Beasley’s Assembly takes attendees across three floors of the Kitchen (image courtesy Kevin Beasley)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
June 15-16, 22-23, 29-30, $10 (advance reservations recommended)
Installation on view June 21 & 28, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-255-5793
thekitchen.org

Hot on the heels of his widely hailed audiovisual Whitney exhibition, “A View of a Landscape,” which included several live performances using manipulated sounds emanating from a cotton gin motor, Yale MFA candidate Kevin Beasley is stripping down the Kitchen for the installation / performance series Assembly, taking place in newly empty rooms on three floors of the Chelsea arts institution. Beasley, in conjunction with Lumi Tan, Tim Griffin, and Nicole Kaack from the Kitchen, has created custom sound and video systems that will be activated on Saturday, June 15, 22, and 29, at 6:30, and Sunday, June 16, 23, and 30, at 4:00, in dialogue with the building itself and its position in a changing art world, specifically involving access and collectivity. The mix of musicians, dancers, performance artists, and DJs features Suzi Analogue and Pamela Z on June 15, King Britt presents Moksha Black and Richard Kennedy on June 16, Mhysa, David Thomson, and whoisskitzo on June 22, HPrizm, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, and stud1nt on June 23, Lafawndah, NAR, and Angie Pittman on June 29, and Jason Moran, Logan Takahashi, and Wetware on June 30. In a statement, choreographer Thomson called his piece, Body of work, “a palimpsest. A meditation on memory, identities, and boundaries. A marking of time on the body of a transitional space.” Admission is $10, and attendees are encouraged to walk throughout the Kitchen; advance purchase is recommended. In addition, the installation will be open to the public for free on June 21 and 28 from 11:00 to 6:00.

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Rennie Harris' Lazarus. Photo by Paul Kolnik

Rennie Harris’s Lazarus is part of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater season at Lincoln Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 12-16, $29-$159
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual Lincoln Center season might be short but it’s packed with highlights. From June 12 to 16, AAADT will feature three programs (that all conclude with Revelations), in addition to the gala, at the David H. Koch Theater, as part of the troupe’s sixtieth anniversary celebration. On June 12 at 7:30 and June 14 at 2:00, “Bold Visions” includes the world premiere of Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Ounce of Faith; Ronald K. Brown’s The Call, “a love letter to Mr. Ailey” set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Mary Lou Williams, and Asase Yaa Entertainment Group; and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter, with music by Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn and Victor See Yuen and poetry by Hattie Gossett and Laurie Carlos. (The Saturday Family Matinee will be followed by a Q&A with some of the dancers.) On June 13 at 7:00, the Ailey Spirit Gala Performance features works by several choreographers in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Ailey School, in addition to a one-night-only presentation of a new ballet choreographed by Ailey II artistic director Troy Powell featuring former AileyCampers, current students from the Ailey School, and members of Ailey II and AAADT.

On June 14 and 15 at 8:00, “Trailblazers” is highlighted by Rennie Harris’s two-act, sixty-minute Lazarus (inspired by the life and career of Alvin Ailey), with music by Darrin Ross, Nina Simone, Terrence Trent D’Arby, Michael Kiwanuka, and Odetta and the voice of Ailey. On June 16 at 3:00, “Timeless Ailey” is a potpourri of excerpts from Blues Suite, Streams, Mary Lou’s Mass, The Lark Ascending, Hidden Rites, Night Creature, Cry, Phases, Opus McShann, Pas de Duke, For “Bird” – With Love,” Love Songs, and Memoria. The season comes to a big finish on June 16 at 7:30 with “An Evening Honoring Carmen de Lavallade,” a tribute to the exquisite dancer with excerpts from pieces she performed in (John Butler’s Portrait of Billie, Lester Horton’s Sarong Paramaribo, and her own Sweet Bitter Love), followed by The Call, Ounce of Faith, and Revelations. The engagement also welcomes five new dancers: Renaldo Maurice, Yazzmeen Laidler, Corrin Rachelle Mitchell, Jessica Amber Pinkett, and Patrick Coker.

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AND WOULD HAPPEN

(photo by Stephanie Berger)

Heiner Goebbels explores the last hundred years of European history in Everything that happened and would happen (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
June 3-9, $40-$95
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

German composer and artist Heiner Goebbels constructs, deconstructs, and reconstructs the last hundred years of European history in Everything that happened and would happen, making its American premiere at Park Ave. Armory through June 9. Reconfigured for the armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall — it was originally staged in a former railway depot in Manchester — the multimedia, polyphonic spectacle starts as soon as the doors open, so be sure to get there early. The audience sits in rising rafters on the west side of the hall, watching a team of dancers in black (Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez, Sandhya Daemgen, Antoine Effroy, Ismeni Espejel, Montserrat Gardó Castillo, Freddy Houndekindo, Tuan Ly, Thanh Nguyễn Duy, John Rowley, Annegret Schalke, Ildikó Tóth, Tyra Wigg) carry seemingly random objects onstage — long tubes, metallic seashells, a gold sun, large cloths that they hang from above — position them carefully, then remove them.

Various people read passages from Patrik Ouředník’s 2001 Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, a tragicomic, stream-of-consciousness look at the twentieth century, exploring war, racism, colonialism, collective memory, liberal democracy, the Holocaust, Barbie dolls, and more. Sentences are occasionally projected on hanging sheets designed with trees, maps, and architectural structures, in addition to unedited footage from Euronews’s No Comment, with no narration or context; the night we attended featured very recent live, often violent images from Syria, Colombia, and other nations. (The video design is by Rene Liebert.) In one corner smoke oozes out of a cave, creating a face. Rocks storm down in an avalanche. The dancers roll column-like plinths across the stage, pedestals without busts; later, one performer climbs on top of one and reads from Ouředník’s book.

(photo by Stephanie Berger)

Everything that happened and would happen has been reimagined for the Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The dissonant score, from John Cage’s Europeras 1&2, is played by Camille Émaille on percussion, Gianni Gebbia on saxophone, Cécile Lartigau on ondes Martenot, Nicolas Perrin on guitar and electronics, and Léo Maurel on several specially built, unusual instruments. (The props are from Goebbels’s 2012 production of Europeras 1&2.) Willi Bopp’s stunning sound design has music and words emerging from numerous speakers throughout the hall, as if a choreographed sonic dance. Goebbels is a master of deception; while you’re watching one element, others will sneak up on you, offering surprises galore, evoking life itself — and war, specifically, but without the immediate threat. A long, narrow beam becomes a mobile trench. Black monoliths creep up out of the darkness. At one point I felt as if Birnam Wood was stealthily approaching; another reminded me of George Washington crossing the Delaware (even if it’s not from the last century). The dancers and musicians improvise, furthering the anything-can-happen atmosphere.

Perhaps what’s most invigorating about the 135-minute-plus intermissionless show — Goebbels’s third project at the armory, following Stifter’s Dinge in 2009 and De Materie in 2016 — is that despite the serious topics that are broached, abstract and not, Goebbels leaves it up to us to interpret what we are experiencing; he gives us the building blocks from which we can form our own narrative. “Everything that happened and would happen doesn’t participate in all the attempts to have yet another opinion as to the meaning of what has happened; quite the opposite. Guided by a deep mistrust in the transmission of a one-directional message, I don’t even try,” Goebbels explains in his director’s note. “Everything that happened and would happen seeks to open up a space of images, words, and sounds generous enough to avoid the impression that somebody on stage is trying to tell you what to think. It is a space for imagination and reflection, in which the construction of sense is left for everyone to assemble.”

(photo by Stephanie Berger)

Words, images, movement, and sound come together in unique, contemplative ways in Heiner Goebbels’s return to the armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

It can be slow going, and several members of the audience did not make it to the end, which is too bad, because Everything that happened and would happen proves to be a provocative durational exploration of the past, present, and future fusing together, a multimedia barrage on the eyes and ears that demands our attention even as the mind wanders. Even when not much appears to be going on, something is, of course, mimicking life and the choices we make as we go about our day; Goebbels metaphorically hands us the controls and we watch and listen to what we want to, self-curating the presentation. Ouředník writes, “Historians said that historical memory was not part of history and memory was shifted from the historical to the psychological sphere, and this instituted a new mode of memory whereby it was no longer a question of memory of events but memory of memory.” On opening night, at the close of the show, Goebbels himself was helping the ushers steer the audience to the exits on the far side of the stage, forcing everyone to march along a battered landscape and take stock of where we are at this very moment in time, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. It’s a fitting finale to an adventurous evening of intoxicating, memorable theater.

HUDSON RIVER DANCE FESTIVAL 2019

(photo courtesy Susan Bestul)

Ballet Hispánico will perform Sombrerísimo at Hudson River Dance Festival June 6-7 (photo courtesy Susan Bestul)

Who: Dormeshia, Taylor 2, doug elkins choreography, etc., Ballet Hispánico, Camille A. Brown & Dancers
What: Hudson River Dance Festival
Where: Pier 63 Lawn Bowl at West Twenty-Third St., Hudson River Park
When: Thursday, June 6, and Friday, June 7, free, 7:00
Why: On June 6 and 7, the fifth annual Hudson River Dance Festival takes place at Pier 63 in Hudson River Park, two free evenings of performances while the sun sets over the water. This year’s lineup features another terrific cast, with Dormeshia’s improvisatory Rhythm Migration… from her larger work, And Still You Must Swing; Taylor 2’s Aureole, the 1962 favorite set to music by George Frideric Handel; doug elkins choreography, etc.’s O, round desire, inspired by Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera; Ballet Hispánico’s Sombrerísimo, informed by the bowlers associated with surrealist painter René Magritte; and Camille A. Brown & Dancers’ New Second Line, a celebration of the rebirth of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Note that blankets are allowed, but chairs are not. And make sure to bring sunglasses and a hat, because depending on how the stage is arranged, the sun might be right in your eyes as it sets beautifully over the Hudson.

DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS: in the shelter of the fold / epilogue

epilogue: Hollis Bartlett, Whitney Dufrene, Hsiao-Jou Tang, Courtney Barth |  Photo: © Erin Baiano

Doug Varone’s epilogue makes New York City premiere at BAM (photo © Erin Baiano)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
June 5-8
www.bam.org
www.dougvaroneanddancers.org

Manhattan-based Doug Varone and Dancers will perform their seven-part look into intimacy and faith, the spiritual and the secular, in the shelter of the fold, at BAM Fisher June 5-8, featuring the New York City premiere of an epilogue. The hundred-minute piece is choreographed by Varone, with original music by Lesley Flanigan, Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Raz Mesinai, and Kevin Keller, performed live by Flanigan, PUBLIQuartet, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The lighting is by David Grill and David Ferri, with costumes by Liz Prince. The evening-length piece comprises the sextet horizon, the duet folded, the trio shelter, the duet field, mass for twelve dancers, the solo solo, and epilogue for eight dancers. The sections, five of which debuted in 2016 at Purchase, are interrelated but can stand alone; folded, with a score by Wolfe, was commissioned by BAM for the company’s thirtieth anniversary season in 2017. The troupe consists of Courtney Barth, Hollis Bartlett, Bradley Beakes, Jake Bone, Whitney Dufrene, Hsiao-Jou Tang, Doug Varone, Aya Wilson, and Ryan Yamauchi with Ross Honaker, DeQuan Lewis, Paulina Meneses, Amber Morgan, and Paul Singh. “Each creative process is a tremendously collaborative event with the dancers, embracing all of our imaginations, instincts, and artistry. My thanks and love to them for being such great, caring allies in the creation of the many dances that fall from my brain,” Varone says in the program.

THE WORLD’S FARE 2019

worlds fare

EAT. DRINK. UNITE.
Citi Field
123-01 Roosevelt Ave.
Saturday, May 18, and Sunday, May 19, noon – 7:00
General admission $23, with three-hour beer garden $49, VIP $199
theworldsfare.nyc
www.eventbrite.com

The second annual World’s Fare at Citi Field, near where the 1963-64 World’s Fair took place, features more than one hundred food vendors from all five boroughs, more than five dozen craft breweries, a World Market Bazaar, and more. The Culinary Committee co-chairs this year are Gael Greene, Alex Raij, Anita Lo, and Joshua Schneps, with the festival curated by food-arena movers and shakers Liza Mosquito deGuia, Niko Triantafillou, Jean Lee, Joe DiStefano, George Motz, Tia Keenan, Hannah Goldberg, Felipe Donnelly, Jenny Dorsey, Joseph Yoon, Karen Seiger, Kysha Harris, Tamy Rofe, and Cindy VandenBosch. There will be live music by Black Tie Brass Band, Strings N Skins, Funky Dawgz Brass Band, Mariachi Loco, Rho & the Nomads, Royal KhaoZ, Kaleta & Super Yamba, and Underground Horns and dance performances by Sachiyo Ito & Company, Leggz Ltd., American Bolero Dance Company, NY Chinese Cultural Center, Salit Bellydance, Nartan Rang Dance Academy, Country Dancing, KG Group Entertainment, Gemuetlichen Enzianer Dancers, and Schade Academy of Irish Dancing along with interactive murals, karate exhibitions, henna, African body painting, art by Taisan Tanaka, and other events. Among the participating eateries are Baba’s Pierogies, Balkan Bites, Barbecue on a Stick, Caribbean Street Eats, Chef Jimmy’s Vicious Creole Cycle, D’Abruzzo NYC, DiRiso Risotto Balls, Donovan’s Pub, Down East Lobstah, Duck Season, George Motz’s Oklahoma Fried Onion Cheeseburger, Keki Modern Cakes, Little Porky’s, Macaron Parlour, Melt Bakery, Memphis Seoul, Miss Holly’s Smokehouse, Nansense, Oaxaca Taqueria, Republic of Booza, Rooster Boy, Sam’s Fried Ice Cream, Stuffed Ice Cream, Tania’s Kitchen, Twisted Potato, Wafels & Dinges, and What’s the Dillaz. General admission is $23; you can add three hours of libations in the beer garden for another $26, while VIP access goes for $199.

AI: ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH FOR THE BRAVE NEW WORLD?

live ideas

LIVE IDEAS 2019
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
May 8-12, $10-$20
newyorklivearts.org

New York Live Arts’ seventh annual Live Ideas humanities festival explores artificial intelligence with five days of art, dance, discussion, music, lectures, and more, asking the question “AI: Are You Brave Enough for the Brave New World?” Inaugurated in 2013, the festival previously focused on Dr. Oliver Sacks and James Baldwin; social, political, artistic, and environmental issues; a nonbinary future; and strengthening democracy. Among those participating in the 2019 edition are Bill T. Jones, Nick Hallett, Yuka C Honda, Scorpion Mouse, Kyle McDonald, Patricia Marx, and Eunsu Kang, delving into technological dreaming, coding, mental illness, drones, and the truth. Tickets for most events are between ten and twenty dollars; below are some of the highlights.

Wednesday, May 8
What Is AI?, keynote/performance with Nick Hallett, Meredith Broussard, Patricia Marx, Baba Israel, and Ragamuffin, $15, 6:00

Wednesday, May 8
through
Saturday, May 11

Rhizomatiks Research X ELEVENPLAY X Kyle McDonald: discrete figures, performed on stage designed for interactivity between performers, drones, and AI, $36-$45, 8:00

Thursday, May 9
Future of Work, panel discussion with Arun Sunderarajan, Matthew Putman, Carrie Gleason, Madeleine Clare Elish, and moderator Ritse Erumi, $20, 6:00

Rational Numbers: Music and AI, performance by Yuka C Honda and Angélica Negrón, $10, 9:00

Friday, May 10
Does Truth Need Defending?, panel discussion with Ambika Samarthya-Howard, Hilke Schellmann, Jeff Smith, and moderator Malika Saada Saar, $10, 6:00

Algorave: LiveCode.NYC, rave featuring AI experiments and live performances by Scorpion Mouse, CIBO + Ulysses Popple, Colonel Panix + nom de nom, ioxi + Zach Krall, and Codie, $10, 9:00

(photo by Tomoya Takeshita )

Rhizomatiks Research, ELEVENPLAY, and Kyle McDonald collaborate on interactive performance piece discrete figures (photo by Tomoya Takeshita )

Saturday, May 11
Symposium: AI x ART, including “Body, Movement, Language: AI Sketches” with Bill T. Jones, “Between Science & Speculation: Technological Dreaming” with Ani Liu, “AI in Performance: Making discrete figures” with Kyle McDonald, “Yes, AI CAN help you develop a new relationship with your audience” with Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, “Livecoding Traversals through Sonic Spaces” with Jason Levine, “GANymedes: Art with AI” with Eunsu Kang, “Emergent Storytelling with Artificial Intelligence” with Rachel Ginsberg, and “Creating in the Age of AI” with Ani Liu, Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, Eunsu Kang, Kyle McDonald, and Bill T. Jones, $15, 4:30

Sunday, May 12
Class: How to Question Technology, Or, What Would Neil Postman Say?, with Lance Strate, $15, 1:30

HACK-ART-THON: ACT LABS, “Breaking the Stigma Around Mental Illness,” prototype presentation, jury deliberation, and award ceremony, with Katy Gero & Anastasia Veron, Artyom Astafurov & Beth Graczyk, Jennifer Ding & Dominika Jezewska, Ishaan Jhaveri & Esther Manon Siddiquie, Keely Garfield & Cynthia Hua, Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang & Nia Laureano, Jared Katzman & Rachel Kunstadt, and Marco Berlot & Zeelie Brown, free with advance RSVP, 6:30