this week in dance

RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE WINTER SEASON AT THE JOYCE

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE return to the Joyce with Walking Out the Dark (photo by Ernesto Mancebo)

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, a Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 16–21, $52-$72
212-691-9740
www.joyce.org
www.evidencedance.com

One of the highlights of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s sixty-fifth anniversary season at New York City Center last month was a new production of Ronald K. Brown’s 2009 Dancing Spirit, a celebration of longtime Ailey dancer and artistic director Judith Jamison. Before and after the December 23 presentation, Brown, who suffered a stroke in April 2021 that almost cost him his life, stood in the back of the orchestra with his life partner, dancer and associate artistic director Arcell Cabuag, hugging, kissing, and shaking hands with friends, colleagues, and well-wishers. Brown still has a lot of work to do, but his progress has been awe-inspiring.

Brown, a Bed-Stuy native, now brings his Evidence company — named after the 1948 Thelonius Monk composition — to the Joyce for its annual winter season. Running January 16–21, the show features two of Brown’s masterworks, 2001’s Walking Out the Dark and 2012’s Torch.

The former, a fifty-five-minute choreographed conversation among mother, brother, sister, lover, and friend dealing with self-examination, ritual, and healing, has an original score by Philip Hamilton (“Freedom”), with text from letters by Brown in addition to songs by Sweet Honey in the Rock (“Oh Death”), Ballet Folklorico Cutumba de Santiago de Cuba, and Toumani Diabate and live drumming by Abou Camara. The cast alternates between Demetrius Burns, Joyce Edwards, Gregory Hamilton, Isaiah K. Harvey, and Cabuag, who is celebrating his twenty-fifth year with the troupe and will take on the “Gratitude” solo four times, and Stephanie Chronopoulos, Austin Warren Coats, Valériane Louisy, Shaylin D. Watson, and Burns (“Gratitude”); the movement is inspired by dance from Benin, Cuba, and Côte d’lvoire.

The latter is a touching tribute to the life and memory of former Brown student and dance enthusiast Beth Young, who passed away in January 2012. The half-hour piece, which focuses on perseverance and self-determination, will be performed by Burns, Chronopoulos, Coats, Edwards, Hamilton, Harvey, Louisy, and Watson, with music by Teddy Douglas and DJ Zinhle featuring Busiswa Gqulu, remixed by Brown.

There will be a Curtain Chat on January 17 and a family matinee on January 20 at 2:00.

In addition, in conjunction with APAP, Brown and Cabuag are presenting an excerpt from Percussion Bitter Sweet, which they are creating for “Max Roach 100”; the sneak peek takes place at the Joyce on January 13 at 4:00 and at Alvin Ailey Studios on January 14 at 5:30.

No company has the kind of dancing spirit Brown and Evidence display, and it should be on full view in this winter program at the Joyce.

Out-FRONT! Festival

Ogemdi Ude’s Hear is part of Pioneers Go East Collective’s Out-FRONT! Festival (photo by Maria Baranova)

Out-FRONT! FESTIVAL
LGBT Community Center, 208 West Thirteenth St.
Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St.
January 10–20, free – $28.52 (suggested donation)
pioneersgoeast.org

Pioneers Go East Collective, which is dedicated to “radical queer performance, dance, and film for social change,” is presenting the 2024 Out-FRONT! Festival, taking place January 10-15 at the LGBT Community Center and January 17-20 at Abrons Arts Center. The bill features live performances by Arthur Aviles and Collaborators, Joey Kipp with Pioneers, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, Jason Anthony Rodriguez, Paz Tanjuaquio, Ogemdi Ude, and Annie MingHao Wang; workshops with Rodriguez and Magda Kaczmarska; and a film program.

“This year’s festival brings together ten extraordinary multigenerational artists whose socially engaged practices explore issues of race, gender, disability, grief, migration, and our collective humanity in ways that continue to inspire us,” Pioneers artistic director Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte said in a statement. “We created Out-FRONT! to both celebrate artists with community-driven approaches to art-making and to offer them a platform to share their work with audiences during the Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference, an opportunity we hope provides new connections and sparks a positive dialogue about creative participation in shared spaces.”

Rodriguez, who played Lemar Wintour on Pose, will stage Take a Good Look with Dominican dancer and actor Gaymer and the solo Meet Me in the Moon. Aviles’s Naked Vanguard series continues with reimaginations of earlier works (Morning Dance, In the End, Let’s Begin, and A Jamaican BattyBwoy in America) in addition to the world premiere of Untitled #5A After Ted Shawn AKA Dansé Mexicaine & Jamaïquaine Américaine, performed by Nikolai McKenzie Ben Rema, Hunter Sturgis, and Aviles. The film screenings consist of a new short by Fana Fraser, And I was recognized by Omega X, Danni Venne, Matt Harvey, and Laura Marie Marciano, and The Personal Things by Tourmaline.

Below is the full schedule; admission to all events is free with RSVP (suggested donation $25).

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Wednesday, January 10
Jason Anthony Rodriguez, Take a Good Look / Meet Me in the Moon, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 8:00

Thursday, January 11
Jason Anthony Rodriguez, Take a Good Look / Meet Me in the Moon, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 7:00

Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective, Tracing Lorraine, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 8:00

Friday, January 12
Voguing for Teens, NEXT! TEEN Workshop with Jason Anthony Rodriguez, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 3:00

Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective, Tracing Lorraine, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 8:00

Saturday, January 13
Films by Fana Fraser, Omega X & Danni, Matt Harvey, Laura Marie Marciano, and Tourmaline, LGBT Community Center, Gallery 101, 5:00

Ogemdi Ude, Hear, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 7:00

Sunday, January 14
NEXT! Workshop for older adults with Magda Kaczmarska, dance and storytelling, LGBT Community Center, 5:00

Ogemdi Ude, Hear, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 6:00

Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, YO OBSOLETE, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 7:00

Monday, January 15
Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, YO OBSOLETE, LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301, 8:00

Wednesday, January 17
Arthur Aviles and Collaborators, Naked Vanguard, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse, 8:00

Thursday, January 18
Annie MingHao Wang, had my mouth, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse, 8:00

Friday, January 19
Paz Tanjuaquio / TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions, Silweta, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse, 7:00

Arthur Aviles and Collaborators, Naked Vanguard, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse, 8:00

Saturday, January 20
Annie MingHao Wang, had my mouth, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse, 5:00

Paz Tanjuaquio / TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions, Silweta, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse, 6:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LIVE ARTERY 2024: WEATHERING

Humanity gets caught up in the maelstrom in Faye Driscoll’s Weathering (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

WEATHERING
New York Live Arts
219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 9-13, $10-$45
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.fayedriscoll.com

As I noted in April 2023, Faye Driscoll’s latest work, Weathering, is, well, everything.

It is now back for an encore run January 9-13 as part of New York Live Arts’ Live Artery 2024 series. Below is my original review; do whatever you can to get a ticket to this extraordinary experience.

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The seventy-minute Weathering takes place on a squishy white movable platform raft designed by Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan. The audience sits on all four sides of the object. One by one, ten performers — James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, and Jo Warren, in Karen Boyer’s costumes of everyday dress, some with backpacks, bags, and other accoutrements — step on and off the platform, eventually all standing in place and freezing, becoming what Driscoll calls a flesh sculpture.

Stage managers Emily Vizina and Ryan Gamblin, in all black, go to opposite corners and gently push the platform so it spins around, extremely slowly at first. The dancers barely move a muscle, but as the platform rotates, you can start to tell that the performers have shifted ever so slightly, lowering a knee, reaching out a hand, turning a foot, almost imperceptibly; the effect is like you are watching a living, creeping flipbook. Soon they begin touching, the connections electrifying, as if the contact is life affirming, which is especially potent as we emerge from Covid restrictions that kept us physically apart from one another. As the bodies interweave, they close gaps, filling spaces of loss and absence.

Performers encounter all five senses while spinning around the New York Live Arts stage (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

Driscoll incorporates all five senses as she and the stage managers occasionally spray the performers (and the audience) with citrus-smelling water and some of the dancers let out small groans and grunts as they put their mouths on an arm, leg, or neck that approaches them, somewhere in between the hunger for sex and the hunger of zombies seeking sustenance.

As the score builds — the sound and music direction is by Sophia Brous, with live sound and sound design by Ryan Gamblin and composition, field recordings, and sound design by Guillaume Malaret — the raft is spun around faster and faster. Personal items fall haphazardly to the ground: keys, a wallet, cellphones. Clothes start coming off, revealing more of who these people are and challenging what we might have previously thought about them while harkening back to our primeval existence, equating the beginning and the end. Chaos ensues, as the audience tries to capture as much of the action as it possibly can, not wanting to miss a single thing, as if every little movement, every sound, every change could upset the balance of this mini-universe.

Driscoll is telling us to pay attention, letting us know that humanity is failing and we are destroying the planet. The raft, evoking Earth and its orbit, sometimes slides slightly out of control, nearly hitting the people in the first row.

Faye Driscoll’s Weathering continues at NYLA through April 15 (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

The faster the raft goes, the more the audience is overcome by an intoxicating joy mixed with impending doom; it is absolutely exhilarating to follow each of the performers’ journeys, ten individuals striving to survive on their own and as a group, just as we in the audience are.

The show is accompanied by the companion reader Durations of Short Detail, with short pieces by dramaturg Dages Juvelier Keates (“We Are So Close”), dancer and choreographer Jesse Zaritt (“To Hold and Be Held”), and Driscoll, whose poem “Chariots of Flesh” relates, “We’ve been trembling in the trench for / Days? / Weeks? / Years? / Lifetimes? / Despite thick fog / I am overcome / By the smell of your clean shaven skin / Face, eyes, gaze, nose, mouth, fear / I try to pound you out but you latch onto my arm, / wrap your leg around me and reverse position / You try to pound me out but I latch onto your arm, / wrap my leg around you and reverse position / We are desperate to know the outcome / Desperate to know the outcome / Desperate to know the outcome. . . .”

As she has in such previous pieces as the Thank You for Coming trilogy, You’re Me, and There is so much mad in me, Driscoll investigates the intrinsic relationship between performer and audience, the imperative bond, but there is a lot more at stake in Weathering, nothing less than the future of the human race.

I don’t know that we can save the world through art, but with creators such as Driscoll, we can have a hell of a lot of terrifying fun trying.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

UNDER THE RADAR 2024: TOP FIVE

Get tickets to such shows as Volcano at the Under the Radar festival before time runs out (photo by Emijlia Jefrehmova)

UNDER THE RADAR 2024
Multiple venues
January 5-21
utrfest.org

There was quite an uproar in June when Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis announced the cancellation of the widely popular Under the Radar festival, which the Public had hosted since 2006. Held every January, the series featured a diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, discussions, and live music and dance, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Eustis followed that outcry with another message:

“Last week, difficult news was shared that the Under the Radar festival would not return for the Public’s 23–24 season. We made the painful decision to place the festival on hiatus. I understand and share the hurt that those who participated in and loved the festival have expressed over the past few days. . . . Unfortunately, these are exceptionally challenging times in our field. The Public, like almost every other nonprofit theater in the country, is facing serious financial pressure. . . . In the certainty that better times will come, we continue to work to preserve the health and mission of the Public. We look forward to a time when we can fully expand back into the robust and expansive theater we need to be.”

Festival founder and director Mark Russell was determined that the show must go on, and he brought it back to life. “Festivals are celebrations. They mark harvests and other moments of abundance or recognition,” he said in a statement. “Under the Radar is a festival that each year celebrates the vibrancy of new theater, in New York and internationally. At this moment, even in very challenging times, there is still innovative work rising from communities around New York and in far-reaching parts of the globe. Under the Radar aims to spotlight this work for audiences — not only those ‘in the know’ but from a wider stretch of communities, diverse in all respects, that could benefit by engaging with these creative leaders.”

The 2024 program includes two dozen presentations at seventeen venues, taking place from January 5 to 21. Below are my top five choices, which do not include two highly praised and strongly recommended works that are making encore appearances in New York, Dmitry Krimov/Krymov Lab NYC’s Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: In Our Own Words at BRIC and Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s bilingual Public Obscenities at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. In addition, the UFO sidebar of works in progress consist of Matt Romein’s Bag of Worms at Onassis ONX Studio, Zora Howard’s The Master’s Tools at Chelsea Factory (with Okwui Okpokwasili as Tituba from The Crucible), Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon’s How does it feel to look at nothing at National Sawdust, Theater in Quarantine and Sinking Ship Productions’ live debut of the previously streamed The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at the Connelly Theater, Jenn Kidwell and *the Blackening’s We Come to Collect [A Flirtation, with Capitalism] at the Flea, and Penny Arcade’s The Art of Becoming — Episode 3: Superstar Interrupted [1967-1973] at Joe’s Pub. In addition, a free symposium at NYU Skirball Center on January 12 at 9:30 am features Inge Ceustermans, Hana Sharif, Sunny Jain, Taylor Mac, Jeremy O. Harris, Ravi Jain, and Kaneza Schaal, hosted by Edgar Miramontes, looking at the future of independent theater.

A book club offers unique insight into Miranda July’s The First Bad Man (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

THE FIRST BAD MAN
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Samuel Rehearsal Studio, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza
January 5-13, choose-what-you-pay (suggested admission $35)
www.lincolncenter.org
www.panpantheatre.com

Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre has staged unique versions of Beckett’s Embers and Cascando as well as Gina Moxley’s The Patient Gloria. The company now turns its attention on a unique aspect of literature; for The First Bad Man at Lincoln Center’s Samuel Rehearsal Studio, audience members watch a book club dissect Miranda July’s wildly original 2015 novel, as characters and story lines intersect with reality.

A bouncy castle becomes more than just a fun children’s place in Nile Harris’s this house is not a home (photo by Alex Munro)

this house is not a home
Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 6-14, $30.05
www.abronsartscenter.org

A bouncy castle helps Nile Harris explore how the world has changed over the last two years, with the assistance of Crackhead Barney, Malcolm-x Betts, slowdanger, and GENG PTP along with a gingerbread minstrel, vape addicts, a movie cowboy, and others, in this house is not a home. Afropessimism is on the menu in this collaboration between Abrons Art Center and Ping Chong Company.

Hamlet | Toilet makes its NYC debut at Japan Society (photo courtesy Kaimaku Pennant Race)

HAMLET | TOILET
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 10-13, $35
japansociety.org

In 2019, Yu Murai and Kaimaku Pennant Race blew our minds with the outrageous Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, a bizarrely entertaining mashup of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. They’re now back with another mad mix at Japan Society; I’m not sure there’s much more to say that what’s in the press release: “Notoriously iconoclastic and scatological director Yu Murai’s Hamlet | Toilet runs the Bard’s highbrow tale of existential woe through the poop chute.” Each ticket comes with free same-day admission to the exhibition “Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus.”

VOLCANO
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
January 10-21, $54
stannswarehouse.org

Melding theater, dance, and sci-fi, Irish writer, director, and choreographer Luke Murphy (Slow Tide, Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte) introduces audiences to the mysterious Amber Project in this four-part miniseries of forty-five-minute multimedia segments starring Murphy and Will Thompson, exploring their past as they face an uncertain future.

OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 4, $68-$139
www.bam.org
ourclassplay.com

During the pandemic, Igor Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke through with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, attracting such stalwarts as Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov to join the troupe. Following shows at BAC and Lincoln Center, the company brings a timely new adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class to BAM, about a 1941 pogrom in Poland that severely impacts the relationships of a group of students. Broadway veterans Richard Topol, Alexandra Silber, and Gus Birney star, alongside Jewish and non-Jewish cast and crew members from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ALVIN AILEY: ALL NEW 2023

Caroline T. Dartey and James Gilmer team up in world premiere of Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish’s Me, Myself and You (photo by Paul Kolnik)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through December 31, $42-$172
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual all-new programs at City Center are among my favorite events of the year, and the 2023 edition, the troupe’s sixty-fifth anniversary, is no exception. The evening began with a new production of Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream, which the choreographer calls “a piece about how to return to joy”; the original debuted at City Center in 2000. The twenty-two-minute work unfolds in a series of vignettes featuring, on December 23, Patrick Coker, Isaiah Day, Caroline T. Dartey, Coral Dolphin, Samantha Figgins, Jacquelin Harris, Yannick Lebrun, Corrin Rachelle Mitchell, and Christopher Taylor, who perform to silence, a storm, chiming bells, and other sounds by Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, American electronics composer Miguel Frasconi, and the late South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba (a gorgeous duet to “Unhome”). At one point a dancer is alone onstage, like a music box ballerina, two horizontal beams of smoky light overhead; the lighting is by Al Crawford based on Axel Morgenthaler’s original design, with tight-fitting, short costumes by Robert Rosenwasser, the men in all black, the women in black and/or yellow.

Former Ailey dancer Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish’s world premiere, Me, Myself and You, is a seven-minute duet that recalls Jamar Roberts’s 2022 In a Sentimental Mood, about a young couple exploring love and desire. Here Roxas-Dobrish uses Damien Sneed and Brandie Sutton’s version of the Duke Ellington classic, “In a Sentimental Mood,” as Dartey, in a sexy, partially shear black gown, sets up a three-paneled mirror in the corner and shares tender moments with James Gilmer, bare-chested with black pants, combine for some awe-inspiring moves. The costumes are by Dante Baylor, with lighting by Yi-Chung Chen that makes the most of the couple’s reflections in the mirror while calling into question whether it is actually happening or a memory or fantasy.

A new production of Hans van Manen’s Solo, originally performed by the company in 2005 and staged here by Clifton Brown and Rachel Beaujean, is seven minutes of playful one-upmanship as Renaldo Maurice, Christopher Taylor, and Kanji Segawa strut their stuff in a kind of dance-off, their costumes (by Keso Dekker) differentiated by yellow, orange, and red; as each finishes a solo, they make gestures and eye movements inviting the next dancer to top what they have just done. But this is no mere rap battle; instead, it’s set to Sigiswald Kuijken’s versions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Partita for Solo Violin No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002 — Double: Presto” and “Partita for Solo Violin No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002 — Double: Corrente.”

A new production of Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit honors Judith Jamison’s eightieth birthday (photo by Paul Kolnik)

In 2009, AAADT presented the world premiere of by Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit, which Brown choreographed as a tribute to former Ailey dancer Judith Jamison’s twentieth anniversary as artistic director of the company. Now, in honor of Jamison’s eightieth birthday, Brown revisits the work in a lovely new production. The half-hour piece, danced by Hannah Alissa Richardson, Deidre Rogan, Yazzmeen Laidler, Harris, Solomon Dumas, Taylor, Christopher R. Wilson, Jau’mair Garland, and Coker, builds at a simmering pace as the cast, in blue and white costumes designed by Omatayo Wunmi Olaiya that evoke Jamison’s performance of the “Wade in the Water” section of Revelations, move in unison and break out into solos, duets, and other groups to Stefon Harris’s and Joe Temperley’s versions of Ellington’s “The Single Petal of a Rose,” Wynton Marsalis’s “What Have You Done?” and “Tsotsobi — The Morning Star (Children),” the Vitamin String Quartet’s cover of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place,” and War’s “Flying Machine (The Chase).” Brown incorporates Afro-Cuban and Brazilian movement into his rhythmic language; the work is highlighted by Dumas and Richardson celebrating Ailey and Jamison, respectively, with stunning solos as the moon arrives for a glowing conclusion.

Also debuting at City Center in 2023 is a new production of Roberts’s Ode and the world premiere of Amy Hall Garner’s CENTURY.

In her 1993 autobiography, Dancing Spirit, Jamison writes, “Dance is bigger than your physical body. When you extend your arm, it does not stop at the end of your fingers, because you’re dancing bigger than that; you’re dancing spirit.” AAADT has been maintaining that spirit for sixty-five years, with more to come.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER: 65th ANNIVERSARY SEASON

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Y. Lebrun, P. Coker, X. Mack, and R. Maurice in Alvin Ailey’s For “Bird” — with Love (photo by Dario Calmese)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 29 – December 31, $42-$172
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

No matter what’s going on in the world — and in case you haven’t noticed, right now there’s a whole lot — when the end of November rolls around, you can count on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to provide a much-needed respite with its always exciting and entertaining end-of-year season at New York City Center. This time around the company is celebrating its sixty-fifth anniversary by presenting more than two dozen works, including world premieres by first-time AAADT choreographers Amy Hall Garner (CENTURY) and former Ailey dancer Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish (Me, Myself and You) and new productions of Hans van Manen’s Solo, Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream, Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit, and Jamar Roberts’s Ode.

Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? is part of Ailey season at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

The programs are divided into “Premiere Night,” “Ailey Classics,” “All Ailey,” “Live Music,” “All New,” and “Pioneering Women of Ailey”; the opening-night gala, honoring former Ailey dancer, choreographer, and artistic director Judith Jamison, pairs a performance of Revelations with a live choir and a world premiere with Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo.

The personal CENTURY was inspired by Garner’s grandfather and is set to music by Ray Charles, Count Basie, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and others; Me, Myself and You explores reminiscence, love, and loss. “Pioneering Women of Ailey” pays tribute to Jamison, Carmen de Lavallade, Denise Jefferson, and Sylvia Waters, while rising jazz stars will perform live December 15-17. Among the other highlights the company of thirty-three dancers will perform are Paul Taylor’s DUET, Alvin Ailey and Mary Barnett’s Survivors, Roberts’s In a Sentimental Mood, and Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? After twelve years as artistic director, Robert Battle announced that he is stepping down immediately because of health concerns; longtime Ailey dancer and associate artistic director Matthew Rushing will take over temporarily until the board chooses a full-time successor; among Battle’s works for the company are Ella, For Four, In/Side, Love Stories, Mass, and Unfold.

JUNGLE BOOK REIMAGINED

JUNGLE BOOK reimagined
Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall
Broadway at 60th St.
November 16-18, pay-what-you-wish (suggested price $35), 7:30
www.lincolncenter.org
www.akramkhancompany.net

“We are now living in unprecedented and uncertain times, not only for our species but for all species on this planet,” artistic director, dancer, and choreographer Akram Khan notes. “And the root cause of this conundrum is because we have forgotten our connection to our home, our planet. We all inhabit it, we all take from it, and we all build on it, but we have forgotten to return our respect for it.”

Khan takes a new look at The Jungle Book, which was first an 1894 collection by Rudyard Kipling and then a popular 1967 Disney animated musical film, in Jungle Book reimagined, a two-hour show that focuses on colonization, refugees, gender, and climate change. The story is written by Tariq Jordan, with music by Jocelyn Pook; Khan is the director and choreographer, with sound by Gareth Fry, lighting by Michael Hulls, visual stage design by Miriam Buether, art and animation direction by Adam Smith, and video design by Nick Hillel.

The work is performed by Maya Balam Meyong, Tom Davis-Dunn, Harry Theadora Foster, Filippo Franzese, Bianca Mikahil, Max Revell, Matthew Sandiford, Pui Yung Shum, Elpida Skourou, Holly Vallis, Jan Mikaela Villanueva, and Luke Watson.

Tickets are pay-what-you-wish, with a suggested price of $35, to see this multimedia production appropriate for children ten and up.