this week in dance

AMERICAN REALNESS

Keyon Gaskin’s IT’S NOT A THING is part of American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Duncan Gray)

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 7-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.abronsartscenter.org

The seventh American Realness festival consists of twenty cutting-edge theatrical presentations ($20 each), a movement workshop ($90), and four free lectures and discussions over the course of eleven days, January 7-17, almost exclusively at Abrons Arts Center. There’s so much going on that every day features between six and ten events spread throughout the venue, which includes the Experimental Theater, the Playhouse, the Underground Theater, and room 201. Two performances take place at other venues: The great Jack Ferver, who has a well-deserved rabid fan base for his deeply personal and intimate, often confessional multidisciplinary works, returns to American Realness with Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité) at Gibney Dance (January 13-16), an updated version of a piece that debuted in 2012 at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival and in which the audience becomes part of the action. And Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen also employs interactivity in her multimedia 69 Positions (January 15-17, $15), which connects sexuality and public space in MoMA PS1’s VW Dome. Back at Abrons, the New York premiere of Heather Kravas’s dead, disappears (January 7-11) integrates Richard Serra’s Verb List into a solo work about words and movement, woman and object. In choreographer Larissa Velez-Jackson’s Star Crap Method (January 9-17), performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein, and Velez-Jackson and lighting designer Kathy Kaufman improvise as they examine the role of sound, light, music, and movement. In the world premiere of Erin Markey’s A Ride on the Irish Cream (January 13-17), Markey and Becca Blackwell bring to life the love between a girl and a pontoon boat/horse. M. Lamar’s Destruction (January 13-16) investigates the white supremacist world order using Negro spirituals. Sadness is at the heart of the New York premiere of Ligia Lewis’s Sorrow Swag (January 7-10), performed by Brian Getnick with live musical accompaniment by George Lewis Jr. Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, and Brendan Dougherty collaborate on Culture Administration & Trembling (January 7-8), which explores the nature of spectatorship.

The festival also includes Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia (January 8-17), Keyon Gaskin’s it’s not a thing (January 8-11), Fernando Belfiore’s AL13FB<3 (January 9-12), Keith Hennessy and Jassem Hindi’s future friend/ships (January 9-12), Sara Shelton Mann, Hennessy, and Norman Rutherford’s Sara (The Smuggler) (January 11-13), Yvonne Meier’s Durch Nacht und Nebel (January 11-16), Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers’ Mira El! (January 12-15), choreographer Milka Djordjevich and composer Chris Peck’s Mass (January 13-15), the world premiere of the Bureau for the Future of Choreography’s Score for a Lecture, and James & Jen | McGinn & Again’s Over the River | Through the Woods diptych (January 16-17). In addition, Kravas, Lewis, Jenn Joy, and Kelly Kivland will discuss “Melancholia and Precarious Virtuosity” on January 8 at 3:30, Claudia La Rocco, Lane Czaplinski, Annie Dorsen, Yelena Gluzman, Katherine Profeta, and others will explore the question “How Should the Present Think About the Future?” on January 9 at noon, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Thomas J. Lax, Soyoung Yoon, and Cassie Mey will delve into “A Charming Uproar: On Documenting Dance” on January 10 at 3:30, Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz will lecture on “I Am Black (You Have to Be Willing to Not Know)” on January 17 at 11:00 am, and Movement Research will host the workshop “Creative Differences” with La Rocco on January 7, 10, and 12 ($90).

UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL

Dorothée Munyaneza and Compagnie Kadidi’s SAMEDI DÉTENTE is part of Public Theater’s annual Under the Radar Festival (photo by Laura Fouqueré)

The Public Theater unless otherwise noted
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 6-17, $25 unless otherwise noted
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The Public Theater’s 2016 Under the Radar Festival features eighteen innovative music, dance, and theater hybrids from around the globe, taking place primarily at the Public’s many stages. The fun begins with the French duo of Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort and Germinal (January 6-9, the Public’s Newman Theater), who use the magic of theater to build the world from scratch. Lars Jan and Early Morning Opera combine a 1950s typewriter with kinetic light sculptures in The Institute of Memory (TIMe) (January 8-17, the Public’s Martinson Hall), as Jan delves into his father’s past as a Cold War operative. Director Andrew Scoville, composer Joe Drymala, technologist Dave Tennent, and writer Jaclyn Backhaus team up for the live podcast People Doing Math Live! (January 8 & 17, the Public’s Shiva Theater), complete with audience participation. Canadian duo Liz Paul and Bahia Watson’s two-woman show pomme is french for apple returns to Joe’s Pub on January 10 & 17, exploring womanhood in unique ways. DarkMatter, the trans South Asian spoken-word duo of Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, will perform the concert #ItGetsBitter at Joe’s Pub on January 12 & 14. Individual tickets for Martha Redbone’s new Bone Hill (January 13-16, Joe’s Pub), a collaboration with Aaron Whitby and Roberta Uno, are sold out, but you can still catch the show as part of a UTR Pack (five shows for $100). Nikki Appino and Saori Tsukuda’s Club Diamond (January 13 & 17, Shiva) combines silent film, live music, and Japanese techniques to explore the concept of truth in thirty-five minutes. Dorothée Munyaneza, who was born in Rwanda and currently lives in France, brings her Compagnie Kadidi to the Public’s LuEsther Hall for Samedi détente (January 14-17), looking back at the 1994 genocide, joined by Ivorian dancer Nadia Beugré and French musician Alain Mahé. Japan’s Toshiki Okada, who was previously at UTR in 2011 with Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech and in 2013 with the Pig Iron Theatre Company for Zero Cost House, will be back at Japan Society with God Bless Baseball (January 14-17, $35), which examines America’s pastime in Korea and Japan.

Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq takes a unique look at NANOOK OF THE NORTH at Under the Radar Festival (photo by Nadya Kwandibens)

Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq will perform live to Robert J. Flaherty’s 19922 silent film, Nanook of the North, January 15-17 at the Newman, reclaiming her heritage, joined by percussionist Jean Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot. The 2016 Under the Radar Festival also includes 600 Highwaymen’s Employee of the Year (January 7-17, Martinson Hall), Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s The Art of Luv (Part I): Elliot (January 8-17, the Public’s Anspacher Theater), Sister Sylvester’s They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain (January 9 & 16, Shiva), I Am a Boys Choir’s demonstrating the imaginary body or how i became an ice princess (January 10 & 16, Shiva), Ahamefule J. Oluo’s Now I’m Fine (January 12-17, Newman), Guillermo Calderón’s Escuela (January 13-17, LuEsther Hall), Wildcat!’s I Do Mind Dying — Danse Précarité (January 14 & 17, Shiva), and Dane Terry’s Bird in the House (January 15-16, Shiva). In addition, numerous performances will be followed by Q&As with members of the creative teams, and there will be two free round-table discussions at the Public, “Assembly Required: New Media, New Dramaturgies” with Jan, André M. Zachery, and others on January 16 at noon and “Destroyer of Worlds” with Janani Balasubramanian, Abigail Browde, Calderón, Michael Silverstone, and Vaid-Menon on January 17 at noon.

COIL 2016

Ranters Theatre’s SONG kicks off COIL 2016 festival (photo by Jorge Lizalde)

Multiple venues
January 5-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
www.ps122.org

Every January, New York City is home to a handful of performance festivals that feature cutting-edge and experimental theater, dance, music, and installation art. PS122’s home at 150 First Ave. is scheduled to reopen this summer following a major renovation, but in the meantime you can experience its innovative programming at COIL 2016, taking place at various venues in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. “COIL 2016 attacks the very concept of boundaries and of limits. The boundaries between ideologies, life and death, the contemporary and historic, human and machine, light and darkness, audience and performer,” PS122 artistic director Vallejo Gantner explains on the event website. “Limitations of time, identity, age, and geography disappear. The work we will see this year deals with evolutionary transformation — personal, social, and artistic.” COIL begins on January 5 with Ranters Theatre’s Song (January 5-8), a sixty-minute immersive sound and visual installation at the New Ohio Theatre in which the audience can sit or lie down on the floor. Composer and vocalist Samita Sinha collaborates with Red Baarat percussionist Sunny Jain, guitarist and sound designer Greg Mcmurray, lighting designer Devin Cameron, visual artist Dani Leventhal, and director Ain Gordon on bewilderment and other queer lions (January 6-10, Invisible Dog Art Center), an intimate investigation of ritual and mythology through music, text, and image. Choreographer Jillian Peña’s Panopticon (January 9-17, Abrons Arts Center), a copresentation with American Realness, uses reflections to give a kaleidoscopic effect to a duet by Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin.

At the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Australians Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham team up for Morphia Series (January 12-16), an eighteen-minute phantasmal environment for twelve audience members at a time. Annie Dorsen, whose Magical with Anne Juren was a highlight of COIL 2013, is back with Yesterday Tomorrow (January 13-16, La MaMa), in which Hai-Ting Chinn, Jeffrey Gavett, and Natalie Raybould go on a multimedia musical journey from the Beatles’ “Yesterday” to Annie’s “Tomorrow.” Asia Society will be hosting Xi Ban and Po Huang Club’s one-night only Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2 (January 13, free with RSVP, 7:00 & 9:30), which melds Peking Opera with southern blues. The festival also includes niv Acosta’s Discotropic (January 6-10, Westbeth Artists Community), Frank Boyd’s The Holler Sessions (January 6-17, Paradise Factory), Kaneza Schaal’s Go Forth (January 7-12, Westbeth), David Neumann’s I Understand Everything Better (January 10-16, the Chocolate Factory), Ranters Theatre’s Intimacy (January 11-16, New Ohio Theatre), Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin’s Confirmation (January 13-17, Invisible Dog), Jonathan Capdevielle’s Adishatz / Adieu (January 15-17, Abrons Arts Center), and Michael Kliën’s Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. (January 15, Martha Graham Studios, 3:00 – 7:00).

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER AT CITY CENTER: ALL-NEW

Robert Battle’s AWAKENING is his first new work for Ailey since becoming AAADT artistic director

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through January 3, $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

“All my life I’ve been fascinated by the precipice in all of us. When you come to it, you either choose to fall or you don’t,” Alvin Ailey once said. That theory is still alive and well at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater under the leadership of artistic director Robert Battle, who took over the reins from Ailey protégée Judith Jamison in July 2011. And it is particularly evident in the new works that Battle has brought into the company, four of which were on display December 17 as part of AAADT’s annual month-long season at City Center. The evening began with Piazzolla Caldera, the second piece by Paul Taylor to enter the Ailey repertoire, following Arden Court in 2011, Battle’s inaugural year. Created by Taylor in 1997 and restaged for Ailey by Richard Chen See, Piazzolla Caldera is a reinterpretation of the tango, set to music by Jerzy Peterburshky and Astor Piazzolla in four sections. On a dimly lit stage with fifteen lighting fixtures dangling from the ceiling at different heights (designed by Jennifer Tipton), the dazzling Linda Celeste Sims is fighting her loneliness as she moves through a dusky nightclub. Men pair up with women, women pair up with women, and men pair up with men — a pas de deux between Daniel Harder and Michael Francis McBride seems to defy the laws of gravity — but Sims can’t find her place, even getting involved in a hard-fought battle with Belen Pereyra over Yannick Lebrun. The brown costumes, with the men in pants and shirts, the women in knee-length dresses, stockings, and heels, are by Oscar-nominated, Tony-winning designer Santo Loquasto. Kyle Abraham, whose Another Night premiered with Ailey in 2012, is back with Untitled America: First Movement, the beginning of a trilogy about the effects of the prison system on families. Set to British soul singer Laura Mvula’s plaintive “Father, Father,” which contains the lyrics “Brother, brother, let me love you / Whisper all your deepest fears, you can trust me / And when it’s over we can begin / Finally to make amends, try to save us,” the stark, spare dance was beautifully performed by Jacqueline Green, Chalvar Monerior, and Danica Paulos, but at ten minutes, it was more of a teaser for what is to come than a self-contained work.

Ronald K. Brown offers up another Ailey treat with the world premiere of OPEN DOOR

Next up was Battle’s Awakening, his first new piece for Ailey since he became artistic director and one that Battle has noted was influenced by Taylor’s Piazzolla Caldera. Set to composer John Mackey’s loud, heavily cinematic “Turning” and “The Attention of Souls,” Awakening is an eighteen-minute sci-fi epic with heavenly overtones that evoke, of all things, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. Wearing all-white costumes by Jon Taylor, twelve dancers come together and drift apart in chaotic fashion, both escaping from and searching for something, with the tall, always impressive Jamar Roberts trying to establish a unique identity away from the pack amid futuristic lighting by Al Crawford that includes a wall that slowly separates to reveal a mysterious glowing horizon. The evening concluded with Ronald K. Brown’s latest piece for Ailey, the sensational Open Door. As he has done with such previous works as Grace and Four Corners, Brown, the head of Brooklyn’s Evidence, a Dance Company, gets the most out of the Ailey dancers, who clearly love performing his West African-based choreography. Open Door is centered by a series of lovely duets by Celeste Sims and guest artist and Ailey rehearsal director Matthew Rushing that go from slow and aching to dynamic and rhythmic, set to four songs by Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. The colorful costumes by Keiko Voltaire, with the women in long, flowing skirts and the men in tank tops and pants, interact with Crawford’s ever-shifting smoky backdrop. Rushing, Celeste Sims, Roberts, Pereyra, Harder, Akua Noni Parker, Glenn Allen Sims, Rachael McLaren, Vernard J. Gilmore, and Hope Boykin swing their arms, swirl their bodies, leap, kick, and lie on the floor in an energetic and infectious celebration of movement. It was a thrilling conclusion to a wonderful evening of company and world premieres. The all-new program will also be presented on December 22 (with Rennie Harris’s Exodus in place of Piazzolla Caldera), December 26, and January 2; you can also catch Open Door on December 23 and Awakening on December 24.

SASHA WALTZ & GUESTS: CONTINU

Niannian Zhou (photo by Sebastian Bolesch)

Niannian Zhou and the rest of Sasha Waltz and Guests will perform CONTINU at BAM December 4-5 (photo by Sebastian Bolesch)

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
December 4-5, $25-$75
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.sashawaltz.de/en

“I decided to call my music ‘organized sound’ and myself, not a musician, but a ‘worker in rhythms, frequencies and intensities,’” French composer Edgard Varèse once noted. “Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements.” He could just as well have been talking about the work of German choreographer Sasha Waltz, whose Continu is centered around Varèse’s 1927 orchestral piece, Arcana. Waltz is also “an organizer of disparate elements”; she calls her company Sasha Waltz and Guests to incorporate an ever-growing list of collaborators in music, dance, the visual arts, and other disciplines. Waltz is back at BAM with Continu, which has a too-short two-performance run at the Howard Gilman Opera House on December 4 and 5; she was previously at BAM with Körper (Bodies) in 2002, Impromptus in 2005, and the mesmerizing, metaphysical triptych Gezeiten (Tides) in 2010. Continu is a triptych as well, consisting of three sections that were born out of site-specific commissions she created for the 2009 inaugurations of David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum in Berlin and Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI in Rome. In Continu, more than twenty dancers run energetically around the stage, with an occasional couple and individual breaking away from the pack to fight for their own identity. Varèse’s Arcana is bookended by works from Iannis Xenakis (the percussion solo “Rebonds B” and “Concret PH”), Claude Vivier (“Zipangu for 13 Strings”), and Mozart (in addition to snippets of Varèse’s “Ionisation” and “Hyperprism”) as Bernd Skodzig’s costumes go from black to white. The consolidation of a decade’s work, Continu, a dance-theater dialogue between space and bodies, order and chaos, “original violence” and peace, involving archaic choreography, gets its name from how it continued to develop over the years, culminating in a final version that premiered in 2011 in Salzburg. Waltz’s work is always overflowing with wonderful surprises, so don’t miss this all-too-rare opportunity to see her company, once again back in Brooklyn.

ADG FEST 2015

AMERICAN DANCE GUILD 2015 PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL
The Ailey Citigroup Theater
The Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th St. at Ninth Ave.
December 3-6, $15-$50
800-838-3006 ext1
americandanceguild.org

This year’s American Dance Guild Performance Festival takes place December 3-6 at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, consisting of nearly three dozen artists and companies in addition to tributes to living legends Liz Lerman, Doug Varone, and Alice Teirstein. Lerman will present a video history of her career on December 3 and 4, Varone will perform in Lux on December 3 and 5, and Teirstein’s Young Dancemakers will perform a short piece on December 3 and 6. The festival also features Jacqulyn Buglisi’s Sospiri on December 4 and Merce Cunningham’s Suite for Two on December 5. Among the other dancers and choreographers presenting programs are Imana Gunawan, Cherylyn Lavagnino, Dominic Duong, Daniel Gwirtzman, Nancy Zendora, Kaoru Ikeda, Jessica Gaynor, Rebecca Rice, and Jin-Wen Yu.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER: NEW YORK CITY WINTER SEASON 2015

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Robert Battle’s NO LONGER SILENT (photo by Paul Kolnik)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 2 – January 3, $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

For many people, the coming of Thanksgiving signals that Christmas is not too far off. For others, like us, it means that Alvin Ailey’s annual season at City Center is right around the corner. From December 2 to January 3, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be at the West Fifty-Sixth Street institution, continuing to spread its wings under the inspired leadership of artistic director Robert Battle. This season is highlighted by four world premieres: Ronald K. Brown’s Open Door, set to music by Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra; Rennie Harris’s Exodus; Kyle Abraham’s Untitled America: First Movement, the start of a trilogy that examines the prison system; and Battle’s own Awakening, his first new work with AAADT since taking the reins from Judith Jamison. Jamison’s A Case for You, an excerpt from her longer piece, Reminiscin’, gets a new production, set to Diana Krall’s version of the Joni Mitchell song. There will also be new productions of Ailey’s Blues Suite, Love Songs, and Cry and Talley Beatty’s Toccata, an excerpt from Come and Get the Beauty of It Hot. The company will be premiering two works, Battle’s No Longer Silent, with a score by Nazi-banned Jewish composer Erwin Schulhoff, and Paul Taylor’s Piazzolla Caldera, set to tango music by Astor Piazzolla.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Linda Celeste Sims in Alvin Ailey’s CRY (photo by Nan Melville)

On December 15, 20 (matinee), and 29, “Ailey Visionaries” presents works exclusively by past and present AAADT artistic directors Ailey, Jamison, and Battle. Revelations will be performed with live music on December 2, 4, and 5, while live music will also accompany Blues Suite on December 16, 19 (matinee), 20 (evening), and 31. Five programs will consist of only new works, on December 17, 19 (evening), 22, and 26 (evening) and January 2 (evening). And true Ailey fanatics can catch five programs of pieces by the legendary dancer and choreographer, on December 8, 13 (matinee), 16, 19 (matinee), and 20 (evening). As always, Saturday matinees will be followed by Q&As with members of the company. As a bonus, Ronald K. Brown will teach a master class on November 30, Donna Wood will lead a Blues Suite class on December 6, and Hope Boykin will teach a Beyond the Stage Master Class on December 14. And Jamison’s fiftieth anniversary of joining AAADT will be celebrated on New Year’s Eve, featuring the return of Clifton Brown, who will dance A Case of You. In addition to those special events, the season includes such returning favorites as David Parsons’s Caught, Brown’s Four Corners and Grace, Aszure Barton’s Lift, and Hans van Manen’s Polish Pieces, among others. So yes, you have your work cut out for you to choose just the right performance, but you can’t go wrong with any of them. Or you can do what we would like to do and just move in to City Center for the month.