this week in dance

THE GRAND PARADISE

A mother (Tori Sparks) reevaluates her life in THE GRAND PARADISE (photo by Darial Sneed)

Third Rail Projects
383 Troutman St. between Wyckoff & Irving Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 4, $95-$150
718-374-5196
thegrandparadise.com

First and foremost, you need to understand that what happens at the Grand Paradise stays at the Grand Paradise. Over the course of your visit, you’re likely to be rubbed, grabbed, hugged, massaged, slow-danced, and led into private rooms, but it’s all in great fun. In 2013, Brooklyn dance-theater troupe Third Rail Projects introduced a set of characters, a traveling family, in the site-specific Roadside Attraction, which took place in and around a retrofitted 1970s camper. That nameless family has now made it to Florida, where they have gathered at the Grand Paradise, a New Age-y vacation resort that is the immersive offspring of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat (and partially inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s multiplatinum Rumours album). In a renovated one-story warehouse in Bushwick, sixty audience members join Mom (Tori Sparks), Dad (Tom Pearson), their younger daughter (Kate Ladenheim), their older daughter (Ashley Handel), and her boyfriend (Niko Tsocanos) for two hours of unpredictability with the singing Siren (Lily Ockwell), Midas (Roxanne Kidd), a cabana boy (Sebastiani Romagnolo), Venus (Emma Hoette), Jett (Rebekah Morin), the Libertine (Jeff Lyon), and the Lady (Lea Fulton) and the Gentleman (Brendan Duggan), among others, many of whom perform short dance pieces. At the beginning, you can wander through rooms at your own pace to familiarize yourself with the surroundings, but soon you will be guided by actors — and separated from whomever you came with — as the narrative starts to unfold, involving sexual freedom, the search for personal identity, the passage of time, fear of death, midlife crises, and the Fountain of Youth. Each of the five main characters (there are several casts for different performances) experiences a kind of reawakening — compelling, emotional stories we followed with great interest. But what they discover is not necessarily what they were initially after.

A possible Fountain of Youth beckons at the Grand Paradise (photo by Darial Sneed)

The Grand Paradise is directed, designed, written, and choreographed by Third Rail Projects artistic directors Zach Morris, Jennine Willett, and Pearson, the masterminds behind the popular immersive production Then She Fell, a multisensory takeoff of Alice in Wonderland that has been playing at the Kingsland Ward at St. Johns institutional facility in Williamsburg since 2012. Among the places you will encounter as you journey through the resort are a beach with a hunky lifeguard (Zach McNally), a disco, a motel room, and the Shipwreck Lounge, where you can buy a tropical drink. All through the night, Aqua Twin Girl (Elisa Davis) and Aqua Twin Boy (Joshua Reaver) swim in an aquarium while hustlers William (Robert Vail), Grace, (Katrina Reid), and Farrah (Lauren Muraski) and the activities director (Alberto Denis) keep you always occupied. (As opposed to immersive-theater standard-bearer Sleep No More, you are not left to your own devices quite as much in The Grand Paradise, although you certainly have more than an acceptable amount of free will.) Kudos go out to the cast, composer and sound designer Sean Hagerty, costumer Karen Young, and environment designer Elisabeth Svenningsen, who have gone full tilt in making sure your stay is a very pleasant one. The extremely specific rules include no cell phones or cameras, and you must check all coats and bags. Participants are told not to open any closed doors, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be adventurous, peering through windows, peeking into drawers, opening shutters, and following a character when they beckon you into the private unknown. But alas, we’ve already said too much. Bon voyage!

LUNAR NEW YEAR 4714: THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY

lunar new year 4714

Sara D. Roosevelt Park and other locations
East Houston St. between Forsythe & Chrystie Sts.
February 8-28, free – $200
www.betterchinatown.com
www.explorechinatown.com

Gōng xǐ fā cái! New York City is ready to celebrate the Year of the Monkey this month with special events all over town. The seventeenth New Year Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival will explode in and around Sara D. Roosevelt Park on February 8 at 11:00 am, with live music and dance, speeches by politicians, drum groups, lion, dragon, and unicorn dancers making their way through local businesses, and more than half a million rounds of firecrackers warding off evil spirits and welcoming in a prosperous new year. Also on February 8, China Institute will host “A Taste of Chinese New Year” (free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm) featuring Mandarin classes, a China Ink workshop, and more; on February 13 (free, 12 noon – 5:00), China Institute invites everyone back for a family celebration including lion dances, kung fu demonstrations, arts & crafts, and dumplings.

The New York Philharmonic gets into the party spirit with Long Yu conducting a multimedia Chinese New Year Concert at David Geffen Hall on February 9 ($35-$110, 7:30) with violinist Maxim Vengerov and harpist Nancy Allen performing Li Huanzhi’s “Spring Festival Overture,” Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s “The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto,” Kreisler’s “Tambourin Chinois,” and Tan Dun’s “Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women.” The Flushing Lunar New Year Parade takes place February 13 at 9:30. Dr. Hsing-Lih Chou has again curated a Lunar New Year Dance Sampler at Flushing Town Hall on February 14 (free, 12 noon). The seventeenth annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade and Festival will wind its way through Chinatown, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and Columbus Park on February 14 starting at 1:00, with cultural booths in the park and a parade with floats, antique cars, live performances, and much more from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other nations. The annual family festival at the Queens Botanical Garden is set for February 20 ($2-$4, 1:00 – 3:00). The New York Chinese Cultural Center will present a Lunar New Year program with folk dances, paper cutting, calligraphy, and lion dances at the Bronx Museum of the Arts also on February 20 (free, 2:00 – 4:00).

The Museum of Chinese in America celebrates the holiday with its annual Lunar New Year Family Festival on February 20 ($10, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm) with live music and dance, demonstrations and workshops, storytelling, arts and crafts, and more. One of our favorite restaurants, Xi’an Famous Foods, will be hosting a Lunar New Year Festival concert at Terminal 5 on February 20 ($60-$200, 5:30) with Far East Movement, Kimberley Chen, Soft Lipa, and Kina Grannis, benefiting Apex for Youth. There will be a Hao Bang Ah Monkey Puppet Show by Chinese Theatre Works, calligraphy workshops, a zodiac-themed scavenger hunt, and arts & crafts at the Prospect Park Zoo and the Queens Zoo on February 27-28 ($6-$8). And finally, the Lantern Festival is set for February 28 (free, 11:30 am – 3:30 pm) in Sunset Park on Eighth Ave. between Fifty-Third & Fifty-Fifth Sts.

LUNAR NEW YEAR FESTIVAL: YEAR OF THE MONKEY

The Met will celebrate the Year of the Monkey with a full slate of programs on February 6

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Saturday, February 6, free with recommended museum admission ($12-$25), 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
www.metmuseum.org

It will soon be 4713 on the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Monkey, a positive yang fire year that celebrates the monkey’s clever wit and inventive, playful nature. On February 6, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will host its annual Lunar New Year festival, with special events going on all day long honoring both China and Tibet. There will be live performances by Sesame Street puppeteers, students from the Music from China Youth Orchestra using traditional instruments, and Lotus Music & Dance in addition to a parade led by the Chinese Center on Long Island Lion Troupe. Art workshops include paper cutting with Master Lu, Monkey King mask making with the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, iPad calligraphy with the China Institute, a hand-pulled noodle demonstration by Chef Zheng of Noodle Q, a martial arts demonstration by the New York Chinese Cultural Center, Chinese tea ceremonies with Ten Ren Tea & Ginseng Co., a participatory installation by artist Wu Jian’an, a reading by picture book author and illustrator Yangsook Choi, bilingual storytime, drawing stations, and more. There will also be an interactive digital fireworks display in the Great Hall by CHiKA and Calli Higgins. The museum is currently showing several exhibitions related to China and Tibet, including “Monkey Business: Celebrating the Year of the Monkey,” “The Arts of Nepal and Tibet: Recent Gifts,” “Chinese Textiles: Ten Centuries of Masterpieces from the Met Collection,” “Chinese Lacquer: Treasures from the Irving Collection, 12th-18th Century,” and “Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Metropolitan Collection.”

DAYBREAKER NYC

Yoga ravers party it up early in the morning at Daybreaker event (photo by twi-ny/ees)

Space Ibiza NY
637 West 50th St. between Eleventh Ave. & the West Side Highway
Wednesday, February 3, $26.75 (dance party only) – $42.20 (yoga and dance), 6:00 – 9:00 am
www.eventbrite.com
www.spaceibizany.com

Getting home at 6am isn’t unusual in New York City. Getting up to go clubbing at that hour certainly is, but thanks to Daybreaker’s 6am to 9am raves, New Yorkers can do just that. Twice a month, a couple hundred to a thousand partygoers show up at a rotating series of clubs around New York for an hour of funky club-style yoga followed by a two-hour psychedelically lit, high-energy, super-positive dance party with DJs such as Claire Salvo, brass bands, drumlines, and changing themes. Then they head off to work. Founders Matthew Brimer and Radha Agrawal wanted an alternative to the often dark, exclusive nightlife vibe and founded Daybreaker in New York a year ago. The wildly popular parties exploded and have spread to Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and, this year, London and Paris, but at its heart, Daybreaker grew out of the city that never sleeps. The parties are sober, and each has a different suggested theme, but the vibe is pretty accepting of whatever you wear, since most of the twentysomething attendees are powering off to work at 9. The January 13 rave at Irving Plaza was all about wearing grown-up onesies; the next, on February 3 at West Side’s legendary Space Ibiza, calls for bright colors. Tickets come with lots of treats from partners, including Califia Cold Brew Coffee, green juice, coconut water, energy drinks, and more. Stoking the energy at that hour is key, and MC Elliott LaRue will orchestrate the music, with appearances by the Hudson Horns, the Club Casa Chamber Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Express Drumline popping up in the crowd at various intervals to keep the spirit high. Early bird dance tickets are sold out already, but tickets for the 6-7am yoga segment plus the party, as well as 7-9am party-only tickets, are still available. If you want to jump-start your day with possibly the best jolt of energy in the city, rave on with Daybreaker.

ARTS BROOKFIELD: STEPHEN PETRONIO COMPANY

Stephen Petronio will present “Locomotor / Non Locomotor” and Merce Cunningham’s “RainForest” at Brookfield Place on February 3

Who: Stephen Petronio Company
What: Free dance performances presented by Arts Brookfield
Where: Brookfield Place Winter Garden, 230 Vesey St.
When: Wednesday, February 3, free, 12:30 & 7:30
Why: On October 30, Stephen Petronio Company performed Luminous Mischief outdoors in Madison Square Park, interacting with the public under and around Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana” installation. On February 3, New Jersey–born, Manhattan-based dancer and choreographer Stephen Petronio will lead his company into the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place for two special performances that serve as a kind of appetizer for its upcoming March season at the Joyce. At 12:30, the company will present the 2015 piece Locomotor / Non Locomotor, featuring choreography by Petronio, an original score by Clams Casino, vocal elements by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, costumes by Narciso Rodriguez, and lighting by Ken Tabachnick. At 7:30, SPC will perform Merce Cunningham’s 1968 work RainForest, set to live electronic music by David Tudor, with costumes by Andy Warhol and lighting by Aaron Copp, part of Petronio’s five-year “Bloodlines” series, paying homage to his postmodern dance influences. The company consists of Davalois Fearon, Kyle Filley, Gino Grenek, Cori Kresge, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Nicholas Sciscione, Emily Stone, and Joshua Tuason. “What a wonderful opportunity to perform some of our favorite works in a setting that finds an audience we rarely reach in Manhattan,” Petronio explained in a statement. “We’re happy to offer audiences the chance to see the company perform Locomotor / Non Locomotor and RainForest in an unusual space, before we launch our second season of ‘Bloodlines’ at the Joyce Theater on March 8.” The Joyce run includes Trisha Brown’s 1979 Glacial Decoy and Petronio’s 1990 MiddleSexGorge and the world premiere of Big Daddy Deluxe.

ARTISTS AT THE CROSSROADS

R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili will discuss their residencies at the first Artists at the Crossroads discussion

Who: R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili
What: Artists at the Crossroads
Where: TheStage at the TimesCenter, 242 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
When: Tuesday, February 1, free, 6:00
Why: New York City–based composer and interactive performance and installation artist R. Luke DuBois and Brooklyn-based writer, dancer, and Bessie-winning choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili will team up for the inaugural Residency Artist Talk, “Artists at the Crossroads,” being held February 1 at 6:00 at the TimesCenter. DuBois and Okpokwasili will discuss their three-month residencies, with a focus on creating public art for Times Square Arts, part of the Times Square Alliance. The free event will be moderated by Deep Lab member Kate Crawford; the next two residents, Brooklyn-based media artist and designer Joshue Ott and New Jersey–born composer Kenneth Kirschner, will be introduced at the end of the talk. The Residency at the Crossroads program “invites artists to experiment and engage with Times Square’s unique urban identity, history, and users. . . . They will be encouraged to invite multidisciplinary collaborators of their choice to create interventions, convenings, and experiments in Times Square’s public spaces, in open studios, and online.”

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY: PROSCENIUM WORKS

PRESENT TENSE is one of three Trisha Brown pieces that will be presented at BAM this week (photo by Dirk Bleicker)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
January 28-30, $25-$65, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.trishabrowncompany.org

In January 2013, Trisha Brown Dance Company kicked off its “Proscenium Works” tour at BAM, presenting Newark (Niweweorce), Les Yeux et l’âme, I’m going to toss my arms — if you catch them they’re yours, Homemade, and Set and Reset in the Howard Gilman Opera House. The New York–based troupe, which was founded in 1970, took the tour around the world, with stops in Canada, Germany, Slovenia, France, and other countries, and is now returning to BAM for the next-to-last “Proscenium Works” show, being held January 28-30 at BAM. (The grand finale takes place February 4-6 at the University of Washington in Seattle.) The program begins with the seminal 1983 BAM commission Set and Reset, which we described three years ago as “a stirring collaboration” bringing together Laurie Anderson’s hypnotic, repetitive “Long Time, No See,” Robert Rauschenberg’s three-part geometric construction on which newsreel-style black-and-white footage is projected, and lighting by six-time Tony nominee Beverly Emmons. That is followed by Present Tense, Brown’s 2003 work that features aerial choreography set to a score by John Cage and colorful costumes and stage design by artist Elizabeth Murray. (The costumes have been reimagined by Elizabeth Cannon.) The evening concludes with Newark (Niweweorce), in which different-colored wall screens by artist Donald Judd occasionally descend from above and divide the stage into claustrophobic spaces; the piece is set to Judd’s minimalist score that combines silence with bolts of loud noises that resemble the sounds of an MRI, which didn’t exist when Newark (Niweweorce) debuted in 1987. The company includes Cecily Campbell, Marc Crousillat, Olsi Gjeci, Leah Ives, Tara Lorenzen, Carolyn Lucas, Diane Madden, Jamie Scott, and Stuart Shugg. And as a bonus, “Heart and Mind,” an exhibition of Murray’s paintings and drawings, is on view through February 15 in the Diker Gallery Café.