this week in dance

RONALD K. BROWN, EVIDENCE: DEN OF DREAMS / DANCING SPIRIT

Ronald K. Brown returns to the stage in a special duet in upcoming Joyce season (photo © Julieta Cervantes)

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
February 6-11, $10-$46
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org
www.evidencedance.com

It’s always a thrill to see Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, a Dance Company, bring its electrifying work to the Joyce, or anywhere, for that matter. Founded by Brown in 1985, the Brooklyn-based troupe dazzles audiences with its unique and inspired integration of traditional African dance with contemporary movement while emphasizing a strong sense of community and a social conscience. Evidence will be at the Joyce February 6-11, highlighted by the world premiere of Den of Dreams, a duet performed by Brown and Bessie winner Arcell Cabuag in celebration of Cabuag’s twentieth anniversary as associate artistic director, a job that includes teaching master classes and working with dance schools around the globe. Evidence will also present the company premiere of Dancing Spirit, a 2009 work Brown choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in honor of Judith Jamison’s twentieth anniversary as AAADT artistic director, featuring music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Radiohead, and War and melding Afro-Cuban and Brazilian styles. Also on the bill are 2002’s Come Ye, a call for peace set to the music of Nina Simone and Fela Kuti, and March, a duet, excerpted from 1995’s Lessons, set to a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., being performed as a tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of the reverend’s assassination. Opening night will also feature Upside Down, an excerpt from Brown’s 1998 Destiny, with music by Wunmi. The season is part of Carnegie Hall’s wide-ranging festival “The ’60s: The Years that Changed America” and will include a curtain chat following the February 7 show, a master class on February 9, and a family matinee on February 10. The dynamic company includes rehearsal director Annique Roberts, assistant rehearsal director Keon Thoulouis, Shayla Caldwell, Kevyn Ryan Butler, Courtney Paige, Demetrius Burns, and Janeill Cooper.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1982. Acrylic, spray paint, and oilstick on canvas, Collection of Yusaku Maezawa. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Untitled,” acrylic, spray paint, and oilstick on canvas, 1982 (Collection of Yusaku Maezawa. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors Black History Month with its free February First Saturday program, featuring live performances by Aaron Abernathy, the Skins, Brooklyn Dance Festival, Everyday People, Latasha Alcindor (presenting All a Dream: Intro to Latasha), and Urban Word NYC, including teen poets William Lohier, Shakeva Griswould, Roya Marsh, Jive Poetic, and Anthony McPherson, hosted by Shanelle Gabriel; a screening of Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis’s Whose Streets? followed by a discussion with Folayan and museum Teen Night Planning Committee senior member Elizabeth Rodriguez; pop-up gallery talks by teen apprentices in the “American Art” galleries; a community talk by Kleaver Cruz, founder of the Black Joy Project; a Black Joy photo booth with photographer Dominique Sindayiganza; a hands-on workshop inspired by the scratch and resist technique of Jean-Michel Basquiat; a curator talk by Eugenie Tsai on Basquiat’s “Untitled” (1982), part of the exhibition “One Basquiat”; and the community talk “Malcolm X in Brooklyn” by oral historian Zaheer Ali. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “One Basquiat,” “Roots of ‘The Dinner Party’: History in the Making,” ““Arts of Korea,” “Infinite Blue,” “Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys,” “Rodin at the Brooklyn Museum: The Body in Bronze,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more.

mecca vazie andrews and the MOVEMENT movement: [title]

mecca vazie andrews and the MOVEMENT movement will present new immersive work in dialogue with Laura Owens exhibition at the Whitney (photo courtesy of mecca vazie andrews)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Saturday, February 3, $10, 4:00
Exhibition continues through February 4
212-570-3600
whitney.org
meccavazieandrews.tumblr.com

In conjunction with the exhibition Laura Owens, a midcareer survey of the work of the LA-based artist, the Whitney is hosting the immersive multimedia performance [title], by LA dancer, choreographer, and teacher mecca vazie andrews and her company, the MOVEMENT movement. The fifty-minute presentation will feature movement, sound, and projection as andrews responds to Owens’s radical style of painting, exploring freedom, enlightenment, and the future. The performance takes place on February 3 at 4:00, the day before the exhibition closes; tickets are ten dollars in addition to museum admission. Also currently on view at the Whitney are “Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined,” “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017,” “Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900-1960,” and “Experiments in Electrostatics: Photocopy Art from the Whitney’s Collection, 1966-1986.”

CATHERINE CABEEN/HYPHEN: GIVE ME MORE

Catherine Cabeen/Hyphen presents the world premiere of Give Me More at Theater for the New City January 25-27 (photo by MAP)

Theater for the New City
155 First Ave. at Tenth St.
January 25–27, $17-$20, 8:00
www.catherinecabeen.com
www.theaterforthenewcity.net

In a December post on her blog, “. . . and another thing,” about her sixth evening-length work, Give Me More, and how it evolved from her thinking about the connective tissue known as fascia, Catherine Cabeen wrote, “The many scientists and somatic practitioners who are advocating for a more holistic view of the body are doing so at the same time that intersectional feminism has come to the fore of socio-political conversations. The current US administration has an impressively wide-reaching ability to hurt people, places, and things that I, and many in my community, care about. It occurred to me in the wake of the 2016 election, that shifting our perspective on our bodies from being a collection of disparate parts, to being a whole composed of diverse yet interrelated movements, could shed light on a helpful way to look at our society in general, and the Resistance in particular.” Dancer, artist, teacher, and choreographer Cabeen — who previously was a member of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Richard Move/MoveOpolis! — and her Hyphen company, which she founded in Seattle in 2006, will be presenting the world premiere of Give Me More at Theater for the New City January 25-27 at 8:00. The three-part piece about identity, inequality, fabric, drag, the nervous system, waste, and other concepts begins with the comedic duet “Glitter in the Gutter,” performed by Cabeen and Kristina Berger. The middle section is “This American Koan,” set to an original score by Mark Katsaounis and performed by Cabeen, Nya Bowman, Darby Canessa, Hector Cerna, Sarah Lustbader, Kathryn Maclellan, and Trebien Pollard on an interactive set featuring two hundred pounds of recycled clothing donated by the faculty, staff, and students of Marymount Manhattan College. Give Me More concludes with “. . . yet again,” a Cabeen solo with music by composer and multi-instrumentalist Westin Portillo. As Cabeen also notes on her blog, “So . . . a piece about gender, consumption, and environmental destruction has emerged from a meditation on fascia.” Just connect the dots. . . .

THE ’60s: THE YEARS THAT CHANGED AMERICA

You Say You Want a Revolution exhibition at NYPL is part of Carnegie Halls festival

“You Say You Want a Revolution: Remembering the Sixties” exhibition at NYPL is part of wide-ranging Carnegie Hall festival

Multiple locations
January 14 – March 24
www.carnegiehall.org

America came of age in the 1960s, from the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X to Vietnam and the Summer of Love. Carnegie Hall is paying tribute to the turbulent decade with the two-month series “The ’60s: The Years that Changed America,” inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robert A. Caro. The native New Yorker, who turned eighty-two this past October, is the author of such books as The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York and the four-part The Years of Lyndon Johnson, with a fifth tome on the way. “Luther King gave people ‘the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be,’ Bayard Rustin said — in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield,’” Caro wrote in Master of the Senate, a quote obviously apt for MLK Day. Running January 14 through March 24 all across the city, the festival features concerts, panel discussions, film screenings, dance, art exhibitions, and more. Below are only some of the many highlights; keep watching this space for more additions.

Sunday, January 14
through
Saturday, March 24
“Max’s Kansas City,” photos and writings, Mark Borghi Gallery, free

Friday, January 19
“You Say You Want a Revolution: Remembering the Sixties,” Library After Hours opening night program with experimental films, album-cover workshop, games and puzzles, curator tour led by Isaac Gewirtz, dance party with Felix Hernandez, and more, exhibit continues through September 1, the New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, free, 7:00

Kronos Quartet, works by Stacy Garrop (world premiere inspired by “I Have a Dream” speech), Zachary J. Watkins (world premiere inspired by Studs Terkel), Terry Riley, John Cage, and Janis Joplin, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, $62-$72, 9:00

Tuesday, January 23
through
Friday, May 18
“The Global Interconnections of 1968,” Kempner Exhibition Gallery, Butler Library (sixth floor), Columbia University, free

Thursday, January 25
Snarky Puppy with David Crosby and Friends, including Chris Thile and Laura Mvula, Stern/Perelman at Carnegie Hall, $26-$100, 8:00

Friday, January 26
Bernard and Irene Schwartz Classic Film Series: Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978), Justice in Film presentation introduced by Susan Lacy, New-York Historical Society, free with pay-what-you-wish museum admission, 7:00

Tuesday, February 6
through
Sunday, February 11
March, duet from Lessons inspired by civil rights movement, part of winter season program by Ronald K. Brown / Evidence, a Dance Company, the Joyce Theater, $26-$46

Friday, February 16
“Philip Glass Ensemble: Music with Changing Parts,” Stern/Perelman at Carnegie Hall, $14.50 – $95, 8:00

Wednesday, February 21
“The Summer of Law and Disorder: Harlem Riot of 1964,” panel discussion, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, free with advance registration beginning February 7, 6:30

Tuesday, March 13
Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers Series: “The ’60s from Both Sides Now: An Evening with Judy Collins,” in conversation with historian Harold Holzer, New-York Historical Society, $38, 6:30

Saturday, March 24
“The Vietnam War: At Home and Abroad,” multimedia presentation with Friction Quartet performing George Crumb’s “Black Angels” and more groups to be announced, narrated by John Monsky, Zankel at Carnegie Hall, $35-$45, 2:00

SOARING WINGS

Shanghai Dance Theatre celebrates the rediscovery of the crested ibis in Soaring Wings at Lincoln Center

David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
January 5-7, $22-$167
212-496-0600
davidhkochtheater.com

The Shanghai Dance Theatre has landed in the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center this weekend with the U.S. premiere of Soaring Wings, a new-agey epic modern fable presented in a style reminiscent of the Radio City Rockettes. Written by Luo Huaizhen and directed and choreographed by Tong Ruirui, the lengthy two-hour piece is about the discovery of seven crested ibises, a much-loved bird species thought to be extinct, in Shaanxi Province in 1981. The lavish production boasts more than three dozen dancers in gorgeous costumes by Zhong Jiani, who does an especially effective job with the flowing white wings of the seven women portraying the “bird of good fortune” as well as the dark, ominous, futuristic garments worn by a corp of male dancers who represent pollution and environmental degradation. Huaizhen and Ruirui have a penchant for lining up the performers in Rockette-like vertical and horizontal columns, while Ruirui’s choreography features perhaps all-too-realistic birdlike neck and head movements for the crane women, which manages to be simultaneously completely convincing and disturbingly eerie. The staging is simple, with a perhaps-dead tree with its roots showing that is wheeled on- and offstage, in front of projections of scenes of clouds and mountains on a rear scrim. Principal dancers Zhu Jiejing and Wang Jiajun lead a large cast that perpetually smiles coquettishly as they flirt with ballet and contemporary and folk dance, creating a lush, evocative something that is not quite any of those genres but which had audience members enthusiastically sneaking cellphone photos. And Guo Sida’s syrupy score is far too reminiscent of “Healing Rhythms,” a biofeedback program developed by doctors Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, and Andrew Weil — one of the program’s training skills even involves a floating feather, which plays a prominent role in Soaring Wings, continuing through January 7 at Lincoln Center before flying to Boston. And no, there is no kickline at the end.

UNDER THE RADAR: AFTER

Alicia ayo Ohs and Andrew Schneider explore the nature of reality in mind-blowing After (photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor P.
January 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, $25
212-539-8500
www.publictheater.org

Andrew Schneider uses high and low tech to investigate what makes a life — and what might happen at death — in the mind-blowing After, having its New York City premiere as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival. The sequel to his mind-blowing, Obie-winning YOUARENOWHERE (which can be pronounced as “You are nowhere” or “You are now here”), After explores the construction of consciousness through perception and sensation, creating a kind of collective hallucination as two people, Schneider and Alicia ayo Ohs, discuss various aspects of existence amid flashing lights, electronic sounds, color shifts, near-complete extended darkness, and heavenly cloud cover. “Your brain is not reality,” ayo tells Schneider early on, calling into question what humans, and theater patrons, see and hear. The Milwaukee-born, Brooklyn-based Schneider wrote the text and directs the show in addition to handling the experimental lighting, projections, and set design, which essentially is a spare stage with a bright white floor; the lights quickly go on and off, joined by loud, sharp noises, as scenes change magically in mere seconds, reminiscent of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information and Nick Payne’s Constellations. At one point, Schneider and ayo will be sitting in folding chairs, then will be lying on the floor, then will be leaning over a desk, the changes coming like firing synapses. Later the two performers are joined by a larger cast, including production coordinator Kedian Keohan and scenic coordinator Peter Musante, but it’s the relationship between Schneider and ayo that is at the heart of the eighty-minute show.

Andrew Schneider uses cutting-edge technology in New York City premiere at the Public Theater as part of Under the Radar festival (photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki)

Throughout, the sound emerges from all over the theater, as if it has physical form; sound designers Schneider and Bobby McElver, who refer to the effects as auditory holograms, are employing the cutting-edge spatial audio technology Wave Field Synthesis, which was developed at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer. The piece is deeply theoretical as well as being super-fun and thought-provoking, balancing serious philosophy with an intoxicating playfulness and razor-sharp sense of humor. As the audience enters Martinson Hall at the Public, Irma Thomas’s heart-tugging “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)” softly repeats over and over, the Soul Queen of New Orleans singing, “I know / to ever let you go / oh, is more than I could ever stand”; but the mood shifts when that is replaced by Starship’s tacky, and loud, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” as Mickey Thomas (no relation) and Grace Slick warble, “And we can build this dream together / standing strong forever.” Former Wooster Group member Schneider (Field, Tidal, Wow+Flutter) and assistant director and script developer ayo (Faye Driscoll’s Thank You for Coming series), dressed in dark clothing and wearing microphones as well as electronic gadgets on each of their arms, don’t miss a beat as After delves into the nature of language and movement, of speech and human behavior, putting the audience through sensory overload and sensory deprivation to imagine the biochemical secrets of life and death.