this week in dance

AILEY ASCENDING 60th ANNIVERSARY

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be celebrating its sixtieth anniversary at City Center, which is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 28 – December 30, $29-$159
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

On March 30, 1958, a troupe of black dancers performed as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for the first time, at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA Dance Center, traveling around in station wagons. Now AAADT’s sixtieth anniversary tour pulls up to City Center for the company’s annual monthlong residence, this year running November 28 to December 30. The season, known as “Ailey Ascending,” features new and old works, looking back at the troupe’s glorious history and exciting future. Under the leadership of artistic director Robert Battle, thirty-two dancers, including longtime favorites Hope Boykin, Clifton Brown, Vernard J. Gilmore, Daniel Harder, Rachael McLaren, Akua Noni Parker, Jamar Roberts, and the incomparable Glen Allen Sims and Linda Celeste Sims, will be presenting the world premiere of Ronald K. Brown’s The Call, which Brown refers to as a “love letter to Mr. Ailey,” with music by Johann Sebastian Bach (performed by Chris Thile, Edgar Meyere, and Yo-Yo Ma), Mary Lou Williams, and Asase Yaa; Rennie Harris’s Lazarus, the first two-part AAADT ballet, by AAADT’s first artist-in-residence, dealing with racism and Ailey’s legacy from 1958 to today, set to music by Nina Simone, Terrence Trent D’Arby, Michael Kiwanuka, Odetta, and Darrin Ross, along with the voice of Alvin Ailey; and EN by Jessica Lang (who just announced that Jessica Lang Dance is in its final season, closing on April 30, 2019), her hundredth ballet, with original music by Jakub Ciupinski. There will also be the company premiere of Wayne McGregor’s Kairos, set to Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” reimagined by Max Richter and with set design by Idris Khan. New productions consist of Battle’s Juba and former artistic director Judith Jamison’s Divining and Forgotten Time.

Among the special programs are “All Ailey” (Memoria, Masekela Langage, Revelations; Night Creature, Cry, Masekela Langage, Revelations), “All Battle” (Juba, Ella, No Longer Silent, In/Side, Mass), “All New” (Kairos, Lazarus), “3 Visionaries” (Mass, Ella, Divining, Forgotten Time, Cry, Revelations), and “Timeless Ailey,” comprising excerpts from many well-known and rarely performed Ailey works, including Opus McShann, For “Bird” with Love, Mary Lou’s Mass, The Lark Ascending, Phases, Hidden Rites, and Pas de Duke. The opening-night gala will be chaired by Angela Bassett and Cicely Tyson and features special appearances by Ledisi, Norm Lewis, and Brandie Sutton, a new piece by Battle set to Nina Simone’s “Black Is the Color,” and the premiere of the multimedia Becoming Ailey, which will also kick off every performance except the December 11 celebration of New York City Center’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Also on the schedule are Jamar Roberts’s Members Don’t Get Weary (music by John Coltrane), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter (music by Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn), Talley Beatty’s Stack-Up (music by Earth, Wind & Fire, Grover Washington Jr., Fearless Four, and Alphonze Mouzon), and Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Section (music by David Byrne).

BILL SHANNON: TOUCH UPDATE

Bill Shannon’s multidisciplinary Touch Update will be presented at New York Live Arts this week (photo courtesy Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 14-17, $15-$20, 7:30
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.whatiswhat.com

Extraordinary multidisciplinary artist Bill Shannon brings his latest project, the multimedia Touch Update, to New York Live Arts this week, accompanied by special programs. Shannon is best known for his performances and unique technique using crutches, as he was born with a degenerative hip condition. But that hasn’t stopped Shannon from skateboarding through the Financial District, moving through Duarte Square and Governors Island, and appearing at the Maker Faire in Queens. Over the years, he has been adding cutting-edge technology to his performances and installations, culminating in Touch Update, which incorporates dance, theater, prerecorded and live video, and a cubist mask onto which images are projected; Shannon met with neuroscientists to get everything just right. “It’s built around basic philosophical questions about humanity: Can people change?” he says in an online promo piece in which he also calls the show “a response to the filter of social and digital media and how humans interact.” The seventy-minute work, which was developed at a residency at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, includes reverse engineering of the Shannon Technique for those who do not require crutches and will be performed by Raphael Botelho Nepomuceno, Ron Chunn Jr., Teena Marie Custer, Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight of slowdanger, Jacquea Mae, Cornelius Henke, and David Whitewolf. The November 15 show will be followed by a Stay Late Conversation moderated by Jennifer Edwards; there will also be a Reverse Engineering Workshop ($15) on November 17 at 1:00 and a lecture, “The Condition Arriving” ($10, $5 with ticket), the same day at 5:00.

RUPTURE

rupture

Art During the Occupation Gallery, Bushwick
119 Ingraham St., Buzzer 05
Ground Floor Main Gallery, Brooklyn Fire Proof Building
Tuesday, November 13, and Wednesday, November 14, $15, 7:30
www.art-during-the-occupation-gallery.com

Art During the Occupation Gallery in Bushwick is temporarily deinstalling its current exhibition, David B. Frye’s “Return of the Mack,” in order to present the two-night experiential art performance Rupture. The thirty-five-minute piece features dance and choreography by Lexie Thrash and Kelsey Kramer, featuring performance artist Eric Gottshall, sound artist Adriana Norat, and musical artist Sonpekiza, exploring ideas of fear, pessimism, displacement, and death through music, movement and wearable sculpture. Tickets are $15; the shows begin at 7:30 and will be followed by a reception with the artists.

WALLY CARDONA: GIVEN IN THE BLACK BOX

wally cardona given

The Black Box at Gibney 280 Broadway
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
November 8-10, $15-$20, 8:00
www.gibneydance.org
www.wcvismorphing.org

In 2011, Wally Cardona began his series of Interventions, followed the next year by The Set Up (with Jennifer Lacey), residencies and performances that explored the very nature of dance, narrative, and collaboration. After a public hiatus of nearly four years, Cardona, who was raised in California and Texas, lives in Brooklyn, and teaches at Juilliard and the New School, will present the world premiere of Given at Gibney 280 Broadway November 8-10. “After six years of travel (dancing on dirt, concrete, living room carpets, and pagoda tiles), a return to the dance studio. Time spent emptying, waiting, and doing what seemed like nothing . . . now an offering on the way, in the black box.” The show will feature Cardona with dancers Joanna Kotze and Molly Lieber and composer Jonathan Bepler. As is Cardona’s trademark, not much is known about the show, so you’ll just have to head over to Gibney to check out the latest from this always innovative creator — but it’s hard to go wrong with such outstanding artists as Kotze (What will be like when we get there, It Happened It Had Happened It Is Happening It Will Happen) and Lieber (Rude World with Eleanor Smith; Maria Hassabi: Staged).

SOUL OF A NATION: ART IN THE AGE OF BLACK POWER

Faith Ringgold, “United States of Attica,” offset lithograph on paper, © 2018 courtesy ACA Galleries, © 2018 Faith Ringgold

FIRST SATURDAYS
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 3, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum explores art and Black Power in the November edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Antoine Drye, Shelley Nicole’s blaKbüshe, and the Brooklyn Dance Festival; an Art & Dialogue discussion with curators Valerie Cassel Oliver and Catherine Morris; a hands-on workshop in which participants can create miniature paintings inspired by jazz and the work of Alma Thomas, William T. Williams, and others; a curator tour of “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” with Ashley James; original poetry and music by Jaime Lee Lewis, Jennifer Falu, Joekenneth Museau, Asante Amin, Frank Malloy, and Terry Lovette in addition to excerpts from the 1968 collection Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing; pop-up poetry with Sean DesVignes, Joel Dias-Porter, and Omotara James of Cave Canem; an “Archives as Raw History” tour with archivist Molly Seegers; and the community talk “Black Art Futures Fund.” In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” “Syria, Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart,” “One: Do Ho Suh,” “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection,” “Something to Say: Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Deborah Kass, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas,” “Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu,” “Rob Wynne: FLOAT,” “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more.

MARX FESTIVAL: ON YOUR MARX

Ivo Dimchev’s P Project offers audience members cash in exchange for a performance

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts and other NYU locations
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
October 17-28, free with advance RSVP
212-992-8484
nyuskirball.org

This past May, Karl Marx would have turned two hundred years old. The NYU Skirball Center is celebrating his bicentennial with twelve days of special free programming honoring the man who wrote, “The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” Audiences can also determine if they want to contribute to the performances based on supply and demand and their own consciousness; the events are all free with advance RSVP but donations are welcome. The “Karl Marx Festival: On Your Marx” begins October 17 at 7:30 with London-based Bulgarian performance artist Ivo Dimchev’s one-hour show, P Project, in which people from the audience will get paid by agreeing to do spur-of-the-moment things involving words that begin with the letter “P.” For example, Dimchev will present them with tasks that might involve such words as Piano, Pray, Pussy, Poetry, Poppers, etc. On October 18 at 6:00, NYU professors Erin Gray, Arun Kundnani, Michael Ralph, and Nikhil Singh will discuss “Racial Capitalism” at the Tamiment Library. On October 19 at 9:30, DJs AndrewAndrew will spin Marxist discs along with readings by special guests from Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto.

marx festival

On October 19 and 20 at 7:30, Brooklyn-based Uruguayan dancer and choreographer luciana achugar will present the world premiere of Brujx, which explores ideas of labor. On October 22 at 6:30, Slavoj Žižek will deliver the Skirball Talks lecture “The Fate of the Commons: A Trotskyite View.” On October 23 at 5:30, NYU professors Lisa Daily, Dean Saranillio, and Jerome Whitington will discuss “Futurity & Consumption” at the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis. On October 24 at 4:00, author Sarah Rose will talk about her 2017 book, No Right to Be Idle at the eighth floor commons at 239 Greene St. On October 25 at 5:30, luciana achugar, Julie Tolentino, and Amin Husain will join for the conversation “Labor, Aesthetics, Identity” at the Department of Performance Studies. On October 26 at 7:30, Malik Gaines, Miguel Gutierrez, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Ryan McNamara, Seung-Min Lee, and Alison Kizu-Blair will stage “Courtesy the Artists: Popular Revolt,” a live-sourced multimedia work directed by Alexandro Segade and Amy Ruhl. The festival concludes October 28 at 5:00 with Ethan Philbrick’s Choral Marx, a singing adaptation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Manifesto for the Communist Party, performed by Benjamin Bath, Gelsey Bell, Sarah Chihaya, Hai-ting Chinn, Tomás Cruz, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McQueen, Gizelxanath Rodriguez, and Ryan Tracy.

SPLIT

Lilian Steiner and Melanie Lane delve into the public and the private in Lucy Guerin’s Split at BAC (photo by Gregory Lorenzutti)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
October 11-13, $25, 7:30
212-811-4111
bacnyc.org
www.lucyguerininc.com

At the end of Australian company Lucy Guerin Inc’s Split, which continues through October 13 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the two performers take their well-deserved bows. While Melanie Lane is in the blue dress she wore during the fifty-minute duet, Lilian Steiner is still naked, as she has been since the start. It’s an unusually fascinating moment; when Lane and Steiner first took the stage, the nudity was as bold as it was curious. It feels far more natural as the show goes on, quickly becoming barely noticeable as the two women interact. It’s eventually not an issue at all. But it’s as if Guerin (Corridor, Untrained) is making yet one more point as Steiner now stands before the audience, still in the buff, then runs offstage and comes back covered to more applause. It’s just a human, female body — a vastly talented one at that — and no one else is going to control it.

Melanie Lane and Lilian Steiner keep cutting the floor in half in Split (photo by Gregory Lorenzutti)

Split is a mesmerizing piece that follows two women as time and space close in on them. In the first section, Lane and Steiner are in complete synchronicity, moving to the exact same choreography within a large white rectangle. Their arms and hands swirl, they writhe on the floor, the only differences being Lane’s dress and her long, flowing tresses, which is countered by Steiner’s tightly pulled-back hair. It’s as if they’re two parts of the same woman, the public and the private, each unaware of the other’s existence. They’re not mirror images; instead, it’s like Steiner is an X-ray version of Lane, revealing what the body is doing inside the clothing, every bone and muscle celebrating form and movement. After twenty minutes, they cut the black stage in half with a vertical strip of white tape and each stays within that smaller box for the next ten minutes, but now facing each other, their movements consisting of sharp angles, their relationship taking on a fierce, primal quality that borders on jealousy. Their floor space is halved again after five minutes, then two and a half, and so on until they have mere seconds in a tiny area in which they are unable to stand side-by-side. Each segment is lit differently by Paul Lim, accompanied by UK composer Scanner’s (Robin Rimbaud) ever-present percussive electronic score. It’s an enchanting, compelling work whose exploration of the female form falls somewhere between scientific and sensual (and even cannibalistic at one point). Split — the name refers to the way the dancers keep cutting the floor in half as well as how they are like one woman split in two — flows so seamlessly that the nudity fades into the background about halfway through, only to reappear at the curtain call, as Guerin investigates the inner and outer beauty of the human body.