this week in dance

BASTILLE DAY CELEBRATION 2018

FIAF-hosted Bastille Day celebration packs them in on Sixtieth St. (photo by Michael George)

Sixtieth St. between Fifth & Lexington Aves.
Sunday, July 15, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
bastilledayny.org
fiaf.org

On July 14, 1789, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, a symbolic victory that kicked off the French Revolution and the establishment of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Ever since, July 14 has been a national holiday celebrating liberté, égalité, and fraternité. In New York City, the Bastille Day festivities are set for Sunday, July 15, along Sixtieth St., where the French Institute Alliance Française hosts its annual daylong party of food, music, dance, and other special activities. The celebration begins with a live screening of the World Cup Final in Florence Gould Hall and outside, where, as luck would have it, France vies for the coveted title. There will be a Summer in the South of France Tasting in FIAF’s Tinker Auditorium from 12 noon to 4:30 ($25), with wines from Sud de France, French beers from Kronenbourg, Président cheeses, Bayonne Ham, and artisan breads from Maison Kayser, as well as the elegant Champagne & Jazz Party in Le Skyroom at 1:30 and 3:30 ($65-$75), featuring Champagnes from Pol Roger, Ayala, Champagne Delamotte, and Besserat de Bellefon, cocktails from Grand Marnier, macarons from Ladurée, chocolates from Voilà Chocolat, and hors d’oeuvres from Maman Bakery, in addition to a live performance by Chloé Perrier. The annual raffle ($20) can win you such prizes as trips to Paris and Le Martinique or dinners at French restaurants.

Food, drink, and beauty and fashion items will be available in the French-themed market and the new French Garden from Jerome Dreyfuss, 727 Sailbags, L’atelier, Moutet, French Wink, Ladurée, Brasserie Cognac, Dominique Ansel Kitchen, Le Souk, Miss Madeleine, Oliviers & Co., Mille-feuille, Sel Magique, Simply Gourmand, St. Michel, Sud de France, Macaron Parlour, Pistache, Lunii, and others. The fête also includes roaming French mime Catherina Gasta, a kids corner with a library and arts & crafts, a photobooth, “An Ode for Freedom” interactive street art with Kinmx & Iljin, Can-Can Dancing with Karen Peled (12:45 & 2:10), a Caribbean Zouk dance lesson with Franck Muhel (4:25), the Citroën Classic Car Show, live performances by MarieLine Grinda (1:00), It’s Showtime NYC! (1:30), Jacques & Marie’s Paris Swing Band (2:30), the Hungry March Band (2:55), La Jarry (3:05), and Sense (3:55), and a sneak peek screening of Yvan Attal’s Le Brio ($14, 5:30) in Florence Gould Hall.

BATSHEVA — THE YOUNG ENSEMBLE: NAHARIN’S VIRUS

Batsheva’s Young Ensemble will perform Naharin’s Virus at the Joyce July 10-22 (photo by Gadi Dagon)

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
July 10-22, $10-$86
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org
batsheva.co.il/en

In 1990, choreographer, teacher, and Gaga movement-language developer Ohad Naharin was named artistic director of the Tel Aviv–based Batsheva Dance Company. Later that same year, he started Batsheva – The Young Ensemble as a training ground for emerging dancers. This weekend, Batsheva – The Young Ensemble is performing one of Naharin’s signature works, Naharin’s Virus, at Jacob’s Pillow, followed by a two-week run at the Joyce in Chelsea, from July 10 to 22. The sixty-minute heavily political piece is partly adapted from Peter Handke’s 1966 play, Offending the Audience, about which the Austrian writer has explained, “I first intended to write an essay, a pamphlet, against the theatre, but then I realized that a paperback isn’t an effective way to publish an anti-theatre statement. And so the outcome was, paradoxically, doing something onstage against the stage, using the theatre to protest against the theatre of the moment — I don’t mean theatre as such, the Absolute, I mean theatre as a historical phenomenon, as it is to this day.” Naharin’s Virus, which debuted in 2001 and made its US premiere at BAM in the spring of 2002, features a percussive score of Arabic music by Shama Khader, Habib Allah Jamal, and Karni Postel, along with snippets of Barber, D’Alessio, Stokes, and Parsons.

The Young Ensemble consists of Chen Agron, Mourad Bouayad, Thibaut Eiferman, Ariel Gelbart, Londiwe Khoza, Kornelia Maria Tamara Lech, Ohad Mazor, Robin Lesley Nimanong, Evyatar Omessy, Igor Ptashenchuk, Roni Rahamim, Tamar Rosenzweig, Hani Sirkis, Xanthe van Opstal, Nicolas Ventura, and Paul Vickers. “Handke’s play is about the negation of the theater,” Naharin said in a BAM program note. “The direct, continuous appeal to the public turns the spectator’s mere presence, his self-awareness and his act of listening — into the main issue of the play. He glorifies the public — but means no praise, he scorns them — but means no offense. He contradicts himself. The play empties the stage of all expectations, of all theatrical conventions. A space, a void is created: It is there where my creation takes place!” There will be a Curtain Chat following the July 11 performance, and Young Ensemble rehearsal director Michal Sayfan will be teaching a two-hour master class at Gibney on July 20 ($20, 10:00 am).

WILL RAWLS, UNCLE REBUS

Will Rawls, I make me [sic], TBA Festival, 2017 (photo by Maggie Heath)

Who: Will Rawls
What: High Line Performance Art
Where: On the High Line at Seventeenth St., Sunken Overlook
When: Tuesday, July 10, through Thursday, July 12, free with RSVP, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Why: Brooklyn-based choreographer, curator, writer, and performer Will Rawls will present the site-specific Will Rawls, Uncle Rebus on the High Line in the Sunken Overlook at Seventeenth St. and Tenth Ave. on July 10-12 from 6:00 to 8:00; admission is free, but advance RSVP is required. Rawls, who has performed with Shen Wei, Marina Abramović, Nicholas Leichter, Maria Hassabi, Tino Sehgal, Jérôme Bel, Noemie LaFrance, and others and is half of the performance art duo Dance Gang (with Kennis Hawkins), reimagines the controversial Uncle Remus narrator and his Brer Rabbit tales, joining Trinity Bobo, Stanley Gambucci, and Jasmine Hearn, in costumes by Eleanor O’Connell, as they use a custom keyboard to tell a rather different story in the form of a choreographed meditation on language, race, tradition, and the human body.

BRIC CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! FESTIVAL — LES BALLETS JAZZ DE MONTRÉAL: LEONARD COHEN’S DANCE ME

Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal will present U.S. premiere of Dance Me in Prospect Park on July 6

Prospect Park Bandshell
Prospect Park
Ninth St. & Prospect Park West
Friday, July 6, free, 8:00
www.bricartsmedia.org
www.bjmdanse.ca

In November 2016, Canadian troubadour Leonard Cohen passed away at the age of eighty-two. The poet, singer-songwriter, novelist, and Zen monk left behind a six-decade legacy of investigating love and the human condition like no one else. In 1972, the year after Cohen released one of his masterpieces, Songs of Love and Hate, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal was founded, a company dedicated to merging classical dance with more contemporary styles. On July 6, the troupe will present the U.S. premiere of Dance Me at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the free BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. The eighty-minute piece was commissioned, prior to Cohen’s death, for Montreal’s 375th anniversary and debuted in Canada last December. Set to songs from throughout Cohen’s long career and organized around the cycles of existence as experienced through the changing seasons, Dance Me was conceived by BJM artistic director Louis Robitaille and is choreographed by Andonis Foniadakis, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Ihsan Rustem for fourteen performers, with musical direction by Martin Léon, scenic design by Pierre-Étienne Locas, lighting by Cédric Delorme-Bouchard and Simon Beetschen, video by Hub Studio (Gonzalo Soldi, Thomas Payette, and Jeremy Fassio), sound by Guy Fortin, and costumes by Philippe Dubuc. On December 20, 2012, Cohen played the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, opening the show with “Dance Me to the End of Love,” from his 1984 album Various Positions, in which he croons, “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin / Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in / Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove / Dance me to the end of love.” BJM’s Dance Me should lift the Brooklyn audience in the beautiful confines of Prospect Park.

FREE SUMMER EVENTS JULY 1-8

Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo will defend their hot-dog-eating titles at Nathan’s on July 4

The free summer arts & culture season is under way, with dance, theater, music, art, film, and other special outdoor programs all across the city. Every week we will be recommending a handful of events. Keep watching twi-ny for more detailed highlights as well.

Sunday, July 1
SummerStage: Northern Beat: Broken Social Scene, Melissa Laveaux, and the East Pointers, Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, 3:00

Monday, July 2
Movies Under the Stars: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017), Walt Whitman Park, Cadman Plaza East, blankets and chairs permitted, no alcohol, 8:30

Tuesday, July 3
Lincoln Sessions at Pier 17: Atlas Genius, free with advance RSVP, Seaport Square at Pier 17, South Street Seaport, 5:00

Wednesday, July 4
The Hot Dog Eating Contest, Nathan’s Famous, Surf Ave. at Stillwell Ave., Coney Island, women’s competition (four-time defending champion Miki Sudo) at 10:50 am, men’s (defending champion Joey Chestnut) at 12 noon

Peridance moves from Bryant Park [above] to Union Square Park for July 5 performance (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Thursday, July 5
Summer in the Square: including yoga at 7:00, cardio at 8:00, Art Farm in the City at 9:00, Hopalong Andrew at 11:00, the New School Jazz Trio at 12 noon, Dueling Performances with Peridance Contemporary Dance Company at 5:00, and Sunset Vinyasa Yoga at 7:30, Union Square Park, 7:00 am – 8:30 pm

Friday, July 6
Bryant Park Picnics: Contemporary Dance, with Steps on Broadway Summer Study NYC Theater/Jazz Intensive, Monteleone Dance, Tiffany Mills Company, and Jennifer Muller/The Works, Bryant Park Fountain Terrace, 6:00

Saturday, July 7
Rite of Summer Music Festival: Dither Quartet, Colonels Row, Governors Island, 1:00 & 3:00

Sunday, July 8
Laughter in the Parks, with Dean Edwards and others, Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park, 2:00

BRIC CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! FESTIVAL: THE BLUES PROJECT FEATURING DORRANCE DANCE WITH TOSHI REAGON & BIGLovely

Dorrance Dance will be joined by Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely at Prospect Park Bandshell June 28 (photo by Christopher Duggan)

Prospect Park Bandshell
Prospect Park
Ninth St. & Prospect Park West
Thursday, June 28, free, 7:00
www.bricartsmedia.org

In 2011, North Carolina–raised tap-dancer, choreographer, director, and teacher Michelle Dorrance founded the New York City–based Dorrance Dance, focusing on the past, present, and future of tap dancing, pushing the limits of the discipline in such works as Myelination, ETM: Double Down, and SOUNDspace. For more than three decades, Atlanta-born, DC-raised, longtime Brooklynite Toshi Reagon has been performing her unique mix of folk, blues, gospel, rock, and funk, joined by her band, BIGLovely, since 1996. Dorrance, a MacArthur Genius, onetime STOMP cast member, and former bassist with Darwin Deez, and Reagon, an activist whose mother is Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and father was Cordell Hull Reagon, both founders of the Freedom Singers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and whose godfather is Pete Seeger, joined forces in 2013 to create The Blues Project, a sixty-five-minute piece for nine dancers and five musicians, choreographed by Dorrance, Derick K. Grant, and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and featuring original music composed by Reagon, who has previously written music for the Jane Comfort Dance Company and Urban Bush Women.

The work is being presented for free June 28 at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, with Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely performing the score live. After the show, there will be a special reception with New York–based Peruvian artist Grimanesa Amorós, whose light sculpture, Hedera, was recently unveiled on the grass at the bandshell, commissioned by BRIC specifically for the fortieth anniversary of the Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. Amorós will talk about her work with BRIC contemporary art VP Elizabeth Ferrer, followed by an audience Q&A.

ALEXANDRA BACHZETSIS: WEAR A MASK WHEN YOU TALK TO ME / PRIVATE SONG

Alexandra Bachzetsis, PRIVATE: Wear a mask when you talk to me, 2016. Photo © Blommers & Schumm

The High Line at Fourteenth St.
June 25-29, free with advance RSVP, 8:00
www.alexandrabachzetsis.com
art.thehighline.org

Swiss choreographer and visual artist Alexandra Bachzetsis, who explores the human body, gender identity, and the concept of beauty in her performance art works, will present two related pieces on the High Line next week. Inspired by Trisha Brown, the fifty-three-minute PRIVATE: Wear a mask when you talk to me, taking place June 25 and 27 at 8:00, involves a wide range of movement based on various cultural memes (yoga, drag queens, Michael Jackson). “PRIVATE does not mobilize techniques of parody that have been developed within feminist and queer cultures during the last years,” writer and curator Paul B. Preciado explains on Bachzetsis’s website. “It doesn’t aim to represent the process of embodiment of gender and sexual norms, but rather it explores the instances of performative failure and inner transition that allow for agency and resistance to emerge. How much history of discipline and dissidence can be encapsulated within a single gesture? Can movement activate the memory of the subaltern bodies that have been buried underneath hegemonic codes?” On June 26 and 28 at 8:00, Bachzetsis’s Private Song features Bachzetsis, Sotiris Vasiliou, and Thibault Lac and music by Giannis Papaioannou, Vassilis Tsitsanis, and Giorgos Mitsakis, investigating the rebetiko tradition. Again, Preciado points out, “With three performers, Private Song re-frames some of the elements that were part of the solo performance Private: Wear a mask when you talk to me. While the solo performance uses self-mutation as a technique to explore gender and cultural constructions through the ritualized repetition of embodied gesture, Private Song proposes framing as a perceptual strategy for questioning, underlining, or neutralizing the spectator’s relation to moving bodies on stage.” The performances are free, but advance RSVP is recommended.