this week in dance

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: NEW YEAR, NEW FUTURES

Jason Benjamin’s SUITED will be shown at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday night, followed by the discussion “Queer Style as Resistance in Post-Trump Activism”

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, January 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

A lot of Americans were glad to bid good riddance to 2016, although there’s plenty of fear for what can happen in 2017. The Brooklyn Museum explores some of those very legitimate concerns in its free First Saturday program on January 7. There will be live performances by Tank and the Bangas, Discwoman (DJs BEARCAT and SHYBOI) and Cakes Da Killa; a Brooklyn Dance Festival workshop; a book club reading, discussion, and signing with Daniel José Older for his latest Bone Street Rumba novel, Battle Hill Bolero; a hands-on art workshop in which participants can make masks inspired by “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt”; a screening of Jason Benjamin’s Suited, followed by a “Queer Style as Resistance in Post-Trump Activism” talkback with Benjamin, dapperQ, Anita Dolce Vita, Daniel Friedman, Debbie-Jean Lemonte, and Rae Tutera; a curator tour of “A Woman’s Afterlife” with Edward Bleiberg; pop-up gallery talks on “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty”; a community resource fair with Active Citizen Project/Project EATS, Caribbean Leadership Empowerment Foundation, Historic Districts Council, Spaceworks, Carroll Gardens Association, and Pioneer Works; Kids Corner storytelling (“Virtuous Journeys”) with Rezz and Mando; and pop-up publishing with DIY feminist publishers Pilot Press, led by Jen Kennedy and Liz Linden. In addition, you can check out such exhibits as “Iggy Pop Life Class by Jeremy Deller,” “Beverly Buchanan — Ruins and Rituals,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty,” and “Infinite Blue”; admission to “Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present,” which closes January 8, requires a discounted admission fee of $10.

COIL 2017 — MOLLY LIEBER + ELEANOR SMITH: BASKETBALL

Molly Lieber + Eleanor Smith will present world premiere of BASKETBALL as part of Coil 2017

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
January 7-10, $20
Festival runs January 3-22
212-811-4111
www.bacnyc.org
www.ps122.org/basketball

“We don’t present objects, static fixed ideas. These are living, breathing, complicated, flawed, and wonderful experiences. Profound and unpredictable. Difficult,” outgoing PS122 artistic director Vallejo Gantner said about Coil 2017, the last he will oversee. Although he was referring to the multidisciplinary festival as a whole, his words also apply to the highly anticipated world premiere of Molly Lieber + Eleanor Smith’s Basketball, a PS122 commission that runs January 7-10 at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Since 2006, Lieber (Maria Hassabi, Donna Uchizono, luciana achugar) and Smith (Ivy Baldwin, Juliana F. May/MAYDANCE, Katie Workum) have been creating physically and emotionally powerful duets rooted in improvisation. In such works as Tulip, Beautiful Bone, and Rude World, the pair invites the audience into intimate experiences that can be both gorgeous and uncomfortable, as if they have opened up the door on an imaginary private life. Their pieces are also a celebration of the female body. In the seventy-five-minute Basketball, Lieber and Smith, who were nominated for a 2013 Bessie Award for Emerging Choreographer — Lieber also won a 2016 Outstanding Performer Bessie “for her introspective and tenacious performances” — explore past shames as they merge back and forth through time and space. Coil 2017 continues through January 22 with such other dance-related programs as Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe’s Meeting, Pavel Zuštiak / Palissimo’s Custodians of Beauty, Nicola Gunn’s Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster, and Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt’s A Study on Effort.

AMERICAN REALNESS: ÉTROITS SONT LES VAISSEAUX by KIMBERLY BARTOSIK/daela

Joanna Kotze and Lance Gries will perform Kimberly Bartosik / daela’s ÉTROITS SONT LES VAISSEAUX at Gibney Dance January 6-7 (photo by Ryutaro Mishima)

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
January 6-7, $15, 5:00 & 7:00
American Realness runs January 6-12
gibneydance.org
americanrealness.com

In April 2016, Brooklyn-based company Kimberly Bartosik / daela premiered the duet Étroits sont les Vaisseaux at Gibney Dance’s Agnes Varis Performance Lab. On January 6 and 7, as part of the multidisciplinary American Realness festival and in conjunction with APAP | NYC, Bartosik (The Materiality of Impermanence, Ecsteriority) will be presenting four encore performances at the Gibney lab, both days at 5:00 and 7:00. The very intimate show, which will be performed for a small audience, was inspired by Anselm Keifer’s eighty-two-foot-long “Étroits sont les Vaisseaux,” an undulating installation that is on long-term view at MassMoca. The duet will again be performed by Joanna Kotze (Find Yourself Here, Between You and Me) and Lance Gries (Etudes for an Astronaut, The FIFTY Project), with lighting and set design by Roderick Murray, costumes by Bartosik, Kotze, and Gries, sound by Bartosik and Murray, and choreography by Bartosik in close collaboration with the dancers. The piece deals with time and tides, running twenty-four minutes and fifty seconds, based on the lunar day, which lasts twenty-four hours and fifty minutes.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE SHOWCASE 2017: JAPAN + EAST ASIA

(photo © Naoshi Hattori.; courtesy of Aichi Arts Center)

Five duos will perform at Japan Society’s seventeenth Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + Asia (photo © Naoshi Hattori.; courtesy of Aichi Arts Center)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 6, and Saturday, January 7, $30, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Traditionally, we like to end our year by seeing the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in its December season at City Center, then start every other year off right with the Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + East Asia every January at Japan Society. The seventeenth edition of the biennial event takes place January 6 and 7, as five acts will perform special duets. The 2017 lineup features the North American premiere of Korean company JJbro’s playful and energetic Jimmy & Jack; the North American premiere of Japanese troupe Co. Un Yamada’s unique interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s 1923 Les Noces (The Wedding), which the maestro called “Choreographed Scenes with Music and Voices”; the North American premiere of Taiwan company B DANCE’s Hugin/Munin, involving the title characters, ravens whose names mean “thought” and “memory,” respectively, sitting on Norse god Odin’s shoulders (choreographed by Po-Cheng Tsai); the North American premiere of Taiwain troupe In Theatre’s Tschüss!! Bunny, choreographed by Yen-Cheng Liu, examining life and death and rebirth, inspired by the concept “Now is the moment, and creation is the assembling of the fragments of lives”; and the world premiere of TranSenses, a collaboration between Japanese dancer and choreographer Akiko Kitamura and Canadian media alchemist and audiovisual sculptor Navid Navab. There are still tickets left to catch this biennial treat; the January 6 performance will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists Reception.

YANIRA CASTRO | A CANARY TORSI: PERFORMANCE | PORTRAIT

a canary torsi’s responsive multimedia installation “Performance Portrait” offers visitors a chance to respond to dancers (photo by Julie Wyman)

PERFORMANCE | PORTRAIT @ APAP
The Glass House, the Invisible Dog Art Center
51 Bergen St.
January 5-15, free, 4:30 – 8:30
theinvisibledog.org
acanarytorsi.org

After being exhibited as part of the “Wonderland” group show at the Invisible Dog Art Center, a canary torsi’s latest collaborative project, Performance | Portrait, moves just down the street to the IDAC’s Glass House in conjunction with APAP | NYC, the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference, which features special performances throughout New York City every January. Puerto Rico–born Yanira Castro founded a canary torsi (an anagram of her name) in 2009, specializing in site-adaptive interactive works that blur the boundaries between audience and performer. In Paradis, the audience followed the dancers around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, occasionally interacting with one another. In Court/Garden, Castro created a space inspired by the court of Louis XIV, exploring image, assembly, presentation, and consumption.

Many of those elements are at the center of Performance | Portrait, which runs at the Glass House from January 5 to 15. The responsive multimedia work, made in conjunction with installation artist Kathy Couch, interaction designer Stephan Moore, and filmmaker Julie Wyman, consists of a projector that is activated once a person steps on a small box in between a screen and a curtain. The projector beams an image of four dancers, one at a time (Anna Azrieli, Leslie Cuyjet, Peter Schmitz, David Thomson), who were previously filmed by Wyman at a different location but in front of the same curtain where the viewer now stands. Each dancer gazes directly into the camera, essentially right into the viewer’s eyes; just as the viewer is waiting for the dancer to do something entertaining, it appears that the often uncomfortable dancers (each was filmed for four hours) are waiting for the viewer to do something entertaining as well. Castro is calling into question the gaze, audience expectation, the interplay before performer and crowd, and performer expectation, the dancers turning the tables on the viewer, who is likely to get antsy rather quickly unless he or she can just settle in and go head-to-head with the dancer for a while. It feels like a different take on the staring contests Marina Abramović held with MoMA visitors in “The Artist Is Present.” As the viewer stands there, the performers change over the course of time, but once the viewer steps off the box, the dancer fades into nothingness, for without an audience, can there be a performance?

NEVER BEFORE, NEVER AGAIN

never-before-never-again

Triskelion Arts
Muriel Schulman Theater
106 Calyer St. (enter on Banker St.)
January 5-8, $16-$20
www.triskelionarts.org

Most of the winter performance festivals, such as Under the Radar, COIL, Prototype, and American Realness, consist of experimental works that have either already been performed elsewhere or will afterward. However, the nonprofit Triskelion Arts, which was founded in Brooklyn in 2000 to “foster the development and presentation of the performing arts,” has something very different in mind with its “Never Before, Never Again” festival, which consists of dance, music, comedy, theater, poetry, and other disciplines in improvisational performances that have never been presented before and never will again quite like they will be during the third annual event, running January 5-8. The improv celebration begins January 5 with the Lovelies; Alyssa Gersony; Judah Levenson, Hank Mason, and Shane Gertner; kamrDANCE; NOW ACCEPTING ALL OFFERS MADE; and Katelyn Halpern & Dancers. On January 6, the lineup features Schmidt / Keenoy Movement / Sound Lab; slowdanger; Jog Films; Debbie Z & Friends; and the Lovelies. Saturday’s roster boasts Mauri Connors and Mindy Toro; TanzKlub; the Shelburne Trio (bassist Kevin Farrell, dancer Rachel Mckinstry, and poet Josh Adler); stb x at; Sarah Foster / MoveWorks; and Boom Bat Gesture Performance Group. The festival concludes January 8 with Ali Perkins; Kirsten Schnittker; Jason Mears / Quentin Tolimieri; There’s No Law (Rachel Cohen, Michael Henry, Irene Siegel); and Lokasparsa Dance Projects / clyde forth. Tickets are $16 in advance, $20 at the door to check out these now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t performances.

WINTER 2017 PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS

Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt team up for A STUDY ON EFFORT at Invisible Dog Center as part of COIL festival

The always exciting winter performance festival season gets under way right after New Year’s, with a slew of popular programs occurring all over town and in multiple boroughs. PS122’s COIL 2017 festival, the last under artistic director Vallejo Gantner, consists of fourteen events, with a dozen performances, a sewing bee, and the Red + White Party. The Public Theater’s fourteenth annual Under the Radar fest includes twenty-one programs, centering on experimental music, theater, and dance, along with postshow discussions and the Incoming festival within a festival. The NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate the centennial of Thelonius Monk’s birth while also concentrating on social justice. Focusing on “socially and aesthetically marginal and subversive artists tearing at the boundaries of form and wrestling with the realities of identity,” American Realness was founded in 2010 by Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor and Abrons Arts Center in 2010, directly modeled after the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival; the eighth annual event comprises more than two dozen performances, readings, workshops, discussions, installations, and a party. The fifth annual Prototype festival, which presents cutting-edge opera-theater and music-theater, hosts seven productions, an anniversary party, panel discussions and talkbacks, and the Out of Bounds series of free performances in public spaces. Below are a handful of recommendations for each of the above January festivals.

COIL
Multiple venues
January 3-22
www.ps122.org/coil-2017

January 3, 4-7, 10-15
CVRTAIN, by Yehuda Duenyas, immersive virtual reality experience, 151 Gallery, 132 West 18th St., $10

January 5-8
Custodians of Beauty, by Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo, dance-theater piece exploring beauty, La MaMa, the Downstairs, 66 East Fourth St., $20

January 7-10
Basketball, by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, dance exploring past shames, Howard Gilman Performance Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $20

January 8
Umyuangvigkaq: PS122 Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee, by Emily Johnson/Catalyst, featuring breakfast, “This Is Lenapehoking: Countering Perceived Invisibility,” “Indigenizing the Future: The Continuance of Aesthetic, Invention, Ceremony,” “My Dad Gives Blueberries to Caribou He Hunts: Indigenous Process and Research as Ceremony,” and “Radical Love: Indigenous Artists and Our Allies,” Ace Hotel New York, 20 West 29th St., free with advance RSVP, 11:30 am – 6:00 pm

January 12-14
A Study on Effort, by dancer and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt, Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., $20

Tania El Khoury’s GARDENS SPEAK give voice back to dead Syrian activists and protesters (photo by Jesse Hunniford)

UNDER THE RADAR
Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 4-15
publictheater.org

January 4, 6, 10
Erin Markey: Boner Killer, words and music by Erin Markey, directed by Ellie Heyman, starring Markey and Emily Bate, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, $25

January 6-9
Gardens Speak, interactive sound installation about ten deceased Syrian activists, by Tania El Khoury, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Abe Burrows Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

January 9
Incoming! They, Themselves and Schmerm, written and performed by Becca Blackwell, directed and developed by Ellie Heyman, the Robert Moss Theater at Playwrights Downtown, 440 Lafayette St., $25, 5:00 & 8:30

January 11, 12, 14, 15
Latin Standards, written and performed by Marga Gomez, directed by David Schwizer, Martinson Hall, the Public Theater, $25

January 12-15
Time of Women by Belarus Free Theatre, about a trio of women (Maryia Sazonava as Iryna Khalip, Maryna Yurevich as Natalya Radina, Yana Rusakevich as Nasta Palazhanka) fighting for a free and democratic Belarus, written by Nicolai Khalezin and Natiala Kaliada and directed by Khalezin, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Shop Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate one hundredth birthday of Thelonius Monk (photo by William P. Gottlieb)

NYC WINTER JAZZFEST
Multiple venues
January 5-10
www.winterjazzfest.com

January 6, 7
NYC Winter Jazzfest Marathon, multiple venues, $45-$55 per day, $80-$90 for both

Sunday, January 8
Thelonious Monk Makes a Hundred, panel discussion, the New School, Fifth Floor Theater, 55 West Thirteenth St., 3:00

Thelonius Monk 100th Birthday Improv Show, with Kris Davis, David Virelles, Shabaka Hutchings, Sam Newsome, Marc Ribot, Charlie Burnham, Erik Friedlander, Linda Oh, Trevor Dunn, Hamid Drake, Andrew Cyrille, and Deva Mahal playing Solo Monk, Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., $20-$25, 8:00

Tuesday, January 10
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra: A Concert for Social Justice, with special guest Geri Allen and arrangements by Carla Bley, Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $30-$40, Social and Environmental Justice panel at 6:00, show at 8:00

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works at Abrons Arts Center as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

AMERICAN REALNESS
Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 5-12
americanrealness.com

January 5-7
An Evening of Solo Works by Meg Stuart, including XXX for Arlene and Colleagues and Signs of Affection, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 6, 7
Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, by Kimberly Bartosik / daela, duet for Joanna Kotze and Lance Gries, inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s large-scale sculpture, Gibney Dance, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, $15

January 6, 7, 10
Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (s), solo by Trajan Harrell, first work in series, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 7, 8, 9, 10
Adult Documentary by Juliana F. May, piece for five dancers about trauma and form, Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, $20

January 8
In the Works: Dance in Process Resident Artists & Guests, with performances by Melinda Ring, Anna Sperber, Michelle Boulé, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Gibney Dance Company, Antonio Ramos, Katie Workum, Bjorn Safsten, Yanira Castro, iele paloumpis, Gibney Dance Choreographic Center, 890 Broadway, free, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

FUNERAL DOOM SPIRITUAL will have its New York premiere at National Sawdust as part of Prototype festival (photo by M. Lamar)

PROTOTYPE
Multiple venues
January 5-15, $25 unless otherwise noted
www.prototypefestival.org

January 5
Out of Bounds: Amirtha Kidambi, inspired by Nina Simone’s performance at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:00

January 5-14
Mata Hari, composed by Matt Marks, directed and with libretto by Paul Peers, conducted by David Bloom, and starring Tina Mitchell, HERE, 145 Sixth Ave., $30

January 6
Out of Bounds: Leah Coloff, inspired by Patti Smith’s Kimberly and a set at CBGB’s, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:30

January 6, 7, 9
Breaking the Waves, New York City premiere of opera based on Lars Von Trier film, composed by Missy Mazzoli, directed by James Darrah, conducted by Julian Wachner, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, and starring Bess McNeill and Jan Nyman, NYU Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Pl., $30-$75, 7:30

January 13, 14
Funeral Doom Spiritual, multimedia concert by composers M. Lamar and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix and librettists Lamar and Tucker Culbertson, with Lamar on piano and vocals, string arrangements by Hunt-Hendrix, and additional arrangements by James Ilgenfritz & the Anagram Strings, National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth St., $30, 7:00 & 10:00