this week in dance

TICKET ALERT: FALL FOR DANCE 2017

fall for dance 2017

New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tickets go on sale Sunday, September 10, 11:00 am (get place in line starting at 10:00 am)
Festival runs October 2-14, $15
212-581-1212
www.nycitycenter.org

One of the hottest tickets of the season is always the annual Fall for Dance Festival at City Center, ten days of performances by twenty companies from around the world, each show a mere fifteen bucks. This year’s lineup is stellar once again, with such troupes as Trisha Brown Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Abraham.In.Motion, the San Francisco Ballet, Stephen Petronio Company, and the Pennsylvania Ballet performing works by such choreographers as Christopher Wheeldon, Kyle Abraham, Alexei Ratmansky, Ronald K. Brown, Crystal Pite, Mark Morris, and Michelle Dorrance. Most evenings will be preceded by free dance lessons by members of one of that night’s performing companies, open to all ticket holders (Tango Fire, October 4; Cie Art Move Concept, October 5; Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater with Ronald K. Brown, October 6; Ballet BC, October 11; Company Wang Ramirez, October 12; Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, October 13). More advanced dancers can sign up for master classes ($15) with Dorrance Dance (tap) on October 3 at 6:00 and with Wendy Whelan (ballet) on October 14 at noon. Tickets go on sale Sunday, September 10, at 11:00 am, but you need to get your place in line at 10:00, so don’t waste any time if you want to see any of the below programs, because these events sell out ridiculously fast.

Monday, October 2, and Tuesday, October 3, 8:00
Miami City Ballet
Vincent Mantsoe, GULA, choreographed by Vincent Sekwati KoKo Mantsoe
Trisha Brown Dance Company, You can see us, choreographed by Trisha Brown
Dorrance Dance, Myelination, world premiere Fall for Dance commission, choreographed by Michelle Dorrance

Wednesday, October 4, and Thursday, October 5, 8:00
Pennsylvania Ballet, Rush©, choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon
Cie Art Move Concept, Nibiru, choreographed by Soria Rem and Mehdi Ouachek
Stephen Petronio Company, Bloodlines: Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton
German Cornejo’s Tango Fire, Tango Fire, choreographed by German Cornejo

Friday, October 6, and Saturday, October 7, 8:00
Sanjukta Sinha, IceCraft Dance Company, Kin-Incede, choreographed by Padma Bhusan Kumudini Lakhia
American Ballet Theatre, Souvenir d’un lieu cher, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Open Door, choreographed by Ronald K. Brown
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Paquita, after Marius Petipa

Wednesday, October 11, and Thursday, October 12, 8:00
Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Streams, choreographed by Andonis Foniadakis
Abraham.In.Motion, Drive, world premiere Fall for Dance commission, choreographed by Kyle Abraham
Sara Mearns and Honji Wang, No. 1, world premiere co-commission, choreographed by Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez
Ballet BC, Bill, choreographed by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar

Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14, 8:00
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Solo Echo, choreographed by Crystal Pite
San Francisco Ballet, Concerto Grosso, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson
David Hallberg, Twelve of ’em, world premiere Fall for Dance commission, choreographed by Mark Morris
Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, Matria Etnocentra, choreographed by George Céspedes

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: AMONG FRIENDS

“Mud Muse” is one of many collaborations in MoMA exhibit “Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through September 17
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

“Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends” is almost too much of a good thing, a massive MoMA retrospective of the interdisciplinary artist who died in 2008 at the age of eighty-two. The exhausting exhibition consists of more than 250 works, highlighting his collaborations while celebrating the vast nature of his practice. “Oh, I love collaborating, because art can be a really lonely business, if you’re really just working from your ego,” he says in an old interview on the audio guide. The show follows the Texas native from his Black Mountain College years through his time in Italy and North Africa, from his early combines and classical-influenced pieces to performances, silkscreens, objects, “Experiments in Art and Technology” (E.A.T.), and more. Many of his greatest hits are here, including “Bed,” “Monogram,” “Canyon,” “Gift for Apollo,” and his illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, alongside collaborations with Jasper Johns, John Cage, Jean Tinguely, Willem de Kooning, Susan Weil, Brice Marden, Sturtevant, Alex Hay, and more. Among the most unusual works is the bubbling “Mud Muse” created with Carl Adams, George Carr, Lewis Ellmore, Frank Lahaye, and Jim Wilkinson. And most entertaining is Rauschenberg’s involvement in the dance world, making sets for and even performing in pieces by Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown and Laurie Anderson, Harry Shunk and Janos Kender, and others, some filmed by Charles Atlas. The exhibition is supplemented with works by such Rauschenberg contemporaries as Aaron Siskind, Cy Twombly, Lucinda Childs, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Robert Whitman. Meanwhile, the audio guide includes contributions from Yvonne Rainer, Calvin Tompkins, Weil, Marden, Brown, Virginia Dwan, Atlas, Julie Martin, and Rauschenberg’s son, Christopher. So how does one make sense of it all? MoMA is hosting a series of talks and performances to help sort everything out. The exhibition continues through September 17; the below “gallery experiences” are free with museum admission, with no advance RSVP required. (Only the September 12 “Dante Among Friends” performance requires paid ticketing.)

Peter Moore, “Performance view of Robert Rauschenberg’s Pelican (1963),” 1965 (© Barbara Moore/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York)

Wednesday, September 6, 11:30 & 3:30
“Dance among Friends: Robert Rauschenberg’s Collaborations with Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Taylor,” featuring Changeling, Three Epitaphs, Tracer, You Can See Us, and excerpts from other works, Sculpture Garden

“Robert Rauschenberg’s Process,” with Lauren Kaplan

Wednesday, September 6, 11:30
Thursday, September 7, 1:30
Wednesday, September 13, 1:30
Thursday, September 14, 11:30 & 1:30
“No One Is an Island,” with Kerry Downey

Thursday, September 7, 1:30
“Rauschenberg Among Friends,” with Elisabeth Bardt-Pellerin

Saturday, September 9, 11:30
Sunday, September 17, 1:30
“100 Ways to Make a Picture,” with Petra Pankow

Sunday, September 10, 11:30
Monday, September 11, 11:30
“A Bit of This and That: Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines,” with Jane Royal

Tuesday, September 12
“Collaborators, Friends, Lovers,” with Tamara Kostianovsky, 11:30

“Dante among Friends,” with Robin Coste Lewis and Kevin Young responding in music and poetry to Rauschenberg’s Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, curated and hosted by Terrance McKnight, $5-$15, 7:00

ALEXANDRA PIRICI: THRESHOLD

Bucharest-based artist Alexandra Pirici re-created Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” in 2014 (photo courtesy of the artist)

On the High Line at 30th Street between 11th & 12th Aves.
September 5-7, free, 4:00 – 7:00
art.thehighline.org

Donald Trump might be seeking to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, but a very different kind of wall is going up on the High Line this week. On September 5-7 from 4:00 to 7:00, Romanian dancer, choreographer, and performance artist Alexandra Pirici will construct “Threshold” at the gate that separates the eastern and western rail yards at Thirtieth St. The architectural boundary is not made of wire, concrete, or wood but performers who will move about and transform the public space. Among the participants lining the flexible human wall — which visitors can interact with — will be Marissa Brown, Catherine Cabeen, Miguel Angel Guzmán, Samuel Hanson, Casey Hess, Jordan Isadore, Jhia Louise Jackson, Annie Kloppenberger, Elizabeth Mulkey, Candace Tabbs, and Jessica Weinstein. In such pieces as “Leaking Territories,” “Aggregate,” “Monument to Work,” and “If You Don’t Want Us, We Want You,” Pirici, who cites Tino Sehgal, Jérôme Bel, and La Ribot as influences, mixes in the political in both clear and subtle ways. Admission is free, and no advance RSVP is required.

YANIRA CASTRO | A CANARY TORSI: CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR

Yanira Castro presents new trilogy, CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR in three boroughs this month

Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St.
The Chocolate Factory Theater, 5-49 49th Ave.
Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St.
September 7-23, free – $30
acanarytorsi.org/cast-stage-author

This past January, Yanira Castro | a canary torsi presented Performance | Portrait at the Invisible Dog Art Center, a multimedia interactive work that continues Castro’s exploration of the intimate relationship between audience and performer. The company is now back at the Invisible Dog with AUTHOR, the third part of a trilogy that also includes CAST at the Chocolate Factory Theater and STAGE at Abrons Arts Center. AUTHOR is on view Wednesday to Saturday from 1:00 to 7:00 and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 from September 9 to 17 (free), with an opening reception September 9 at 6:00. The participatory piece involves a computer game in which visitors will share their memories of being a spectator, interacting onscreen with contributing artists Kyle Bukhari, Simon Courchel, Leslie Cuyjet, devynn emory, John Hoobyar, Iréne Hultman, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Luke Miller, Heather Olson, Sai Somboon, David Thomson, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Pamela Vail, Tara Aisha Willis, and Darrin Wright. And you get to go home with a printed memento of your experience. Admission is free but advance registration is strongly suggested here. In the forty-five-minute CAST, running Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:00 from September 13 to 23 at the Chocolate Factory ($20), a rotating quartet of performers will work with a new script every night, computer-generated from more than one hundred hours of recorded conversations. Finally, STAGE, “a visual and aural fantasia,” takes place at Abrons Arts Center on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from September 14 to 23 at 9:00 ($20), a collaboratively choreographed work with a live improvised sound score by Stephan Moore and lighting by Kathy Couch. (The times are arranged so you can see all three parts of the trilogy on certain days, although each is a standalone piece.) You can get a $30 pass for all three events here, but act quickly, because Castro, whose previous works include Paradis, Court/Garden, and Wilderness, always presents intriguing, popular events that sell out in advance.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL 2017

Tanztheater Wuppertal/Pina Bausch’s Café Müller returns to BAM for Next Wave Festival (photo by Bo Lahola)

BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl.
September 14 – December 16
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

As usual, we are considering moving in to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for three months after the announcement of the lineup for the thirty-fifth BAM Next Wave Festival, running September 14 through December 16 at the Harvey, the Howard Gilman Opera House, and the Fisher. “This year’s Next Wave showcases artists from Switzerland to Senegal in creative dialogue with historic events, personal histories, and the present moment,” longtime BAM executive producer Joe Melillo said in a statement. The roster includes old favorites and up-and-comers from around the world, with several surprises. Dance enthusiasts will be particularly impressed with the schedule, which begins September 14-24 with a superb double bill of Tanztheater Wuppertal/Pina Bausch’s Café Müller and The Rite of Spring, which were part of the first Bausch program at BAM back in June 1984. For The Principles of Uncertainty (September 27-30), Maira Kalman teams up with John Heginbotham, Dance Heginbotham, and the Knights to bring her online graphic diary to life. New York Live Arts artistic director and cofounder Bill T. Jones returns to BAM with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and composer Nick Hallett for A Letter to My Nephew (October 3-7), about his nephew, Lance T. Briggs, who battled illness and addiction. Senegalese artist Germaine Acogny takes center stage for the emotional solo piece Mon élue noire (My Black Chosen One): Sacre #2 (October 4-7), choreographed specifically for her by Olivier Dubois of Ballet du Nord, set to music by Stravinsky. Also on the movement bill are Joshua Beamish/MOVETHECOMPANY’s Saudade, Cynthia Oliver’s Virago-Man Dem, ODC/Dance, Brenda Way, and KT Nelson’s boulders and bones, David Dorfman Dance’s Aroundtown, Hofesh Shechter Company’s Grand Finale, Xavier Cha’s Buffer, Big Dance Theater’s 17c, and Tesseract, a multimedia collaboration between Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, and Silas Riener.

Schaubühne Berlin presents the U.S. premiere of its unique take on Richard III at BAM Next Wave Festival (photo by Arno Declair)

The festival also boasts impressive theater productions, kicking off October 11-14 with Schaubühne Berlin’s tantalizing version of Shakespeare’s Richard III, translated and adapted by Marius von Mayenburg, directed by Thomas Ostermeier, and starring Lars Eidinger. Théâtre de la Ville, Paris is back November 2-4 with Albert Camus’s State of Siege, directed by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota. Tony-winning Belgian director Ivo van Hove takes on Ayn Rand in Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s four-hour The Fountainhead November 28 to December 2. Rachel Dickstein and Ripe Time bring Naomi Iizuka’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Sleep to the Fisher November 20 to December 2. Fresh off her Broadway stint in Marvin’s Room, Lili Taylor stars in Farmhouse/Whorehouse: An Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra, directed by Lee Sunday Evans (December 12-16). Geoff Sobelle, who went solo at BAM for The Object Lesson, is joined by an ensemble of designers and dancers for Home (December 6-10). And be on the lookout for Manfred Karge, Alexandra Wood, and Wales Millennium Centre’s Man to Man, Thaddeus Phillips and Steven Dufala’s A Billion Nights on Earth, the Cameri Theatre of Tel-Aviv’s adaptation of Etgar Keret’s Suddenly, directed by Zvi Sahar and PuppetCinema, Manual Cinema’s Mementos Mori, Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project’s /peh-LO-tah/, and James Thierrée and Compagnie du Hanneton’s La grenouille avait raison (The Toad Knew).

Music aficionados have plenty to choose from, with Olivier Py Sings Les Premiere Adieux de Miss Knife, Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, and Vân-Ánh Võ’s My Lai, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Counts’s Road Trip, Gabriel Kahane’s Book of Travelers, Rithy Panh, Him Sophy, Trent Walker, Jonathan Berger, and Harriet Scott’s Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia, Wordless Music Orchestra and Chorus’s two-part John Cale: The Velvet Underground & Nico, and the New York premiere of American Repertory Theater’s Crossing, an opera inspired by Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” composed, written, and conducted by Matthew Aucoin and directed by Diane Paulus. The season is supplemented with several postperformance talks and master classes.

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL 2017

Annie Dorsen turns FIAF auditorium into planetarium for Crossing the Line Festival

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 6 – October 15, free – $60
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.fiaf.org

FIAF’s annual Crossing the Line Festival enters its second decade with the eleventh edition of its always exciting multidisciplinary lineup featuring unique and eclectic works from around the world. This year’s focus is on Congolese choreographer and CTL veteran Faustin Linyekula, who will be presenting the world premiere of the site-specific Banataba at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (9/9, 9/10, 9/12, $65), the U.S. premiere of In Search of Dinozord with Studios Kabako at the NYU Skirball Center (9/22, 9/23, $40), and the world premiere of Festival of Dreams at Roberto Clemente Plaza on 9/23 and Weeksville Heritage Center on 9/24 (free, 3:00). The festival begins September 6-7 with Ryoji Ikeda’s supercodex (live set) at the Met ($45-$60), a follow-up to his dazzling Superposition from 2014. In #PUNK, taking place 9/14-15 in FIAF’s Tinker Auditorium ($30), Zimbabwe-born, New York–based Nora Chipaumire channels the musical rage of Patti Smith; the 9/14 show will be followed by a Q&A with Chipaumire and Linyekula, moderated by Ralph Lemon. Performance festival regular Annie Dorsen (Magical, Yesterday Tomorrow) takes a new narrative approach to the internet in The Great Outdoors, 9/21-23 in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall ($35). Alessandro Sciarroni continues his “Will you still love me tomorrow?” trilogy with the New York premiere of UNTITLED_I will be there when you die at La MaMa 9/28-30 ($25, 8:00).

Moroccan dancer-choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen’s Corbeaux (Crows) is a site-specific living sculpture that will move throughout the Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court 9/30 and 10/1 (free with museum admission). Drag fave Dickie Beau conjures Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland in Blackouts 10/5-8 at Abrons Arts Center ($30). Adelheid Roosen and Nazmiye Oral transform FIAF’s Le Skyroom into an intimate living room in No Longer without You 10/12-15 ($25), in which traditional Muslim immigrant Havva Oral and her Westernized daughter, Nazmiye, discuss faith, sexuality, identity, and more. In addition, Alain Willaume’s immersive exhibition, “VULNERABLE,” will be on view 9/15 to 10/28 in the FIAF Gallery (free), and Sophie Calle’s Voir la mer, set by the Black Sea in Istanbul, will be projected on Times Square billboards every night in October at 11:57 as part of the monthly Midnight Moment program.

COCKTAILS AT COOPER HEWITT — JONAH BOKAER: THE DISAPPEARANCE PORTRAITS

Jonah Bokaer concludes Cooper Hewitt series on August 24 with The Disappearance Portraits (photo by KSharkeyMiller)

Who: Jonah Bokaer
What: The Disappearance Portraits
Where: Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 90th St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
When: Thursday, August 24, $13-$15, 6:00
Why: The summer Thursdays Cocktails at Cooper Hewitt series concludes August 24 with American choreographer and visual artist Jonah Bokaer’s The Disappearance Portraits, taking place in the Smithsonian Design Museum’s Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden. Bokaer, whose previous works include Eclipse, Triple Echo, Rules of the Game and Neither, will be performing to original music by Soundwalk Collective. The site-specific live installation was inspired by research Bokaer conducted into his family history and the Mediterranean migration crisis.