this week in dance

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.

BRIClab: A CANARY TORSI — PERFORMANCE PORTRAIT: LIVE (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)

Julie Wyman takes video of Anna Azrieli for a canary torsi interactive installation coming to BRIC House (photo by Amir Denzel Hall)

BRIC House Artist Studio
647 Fulton St.
Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21, $10-$14, 8:00
718-683-5600
bricartsmedia.org
acanarytorsi.org

In an October 2014 twi-ny talk with Yanira Castro, the founder, director, and choreographer of a canary torsi told me in reference to a question about her relationship with the audience, “I want to create a scenario for them and to be in conversation with them and I want them to form the picture, craft their experience. Their presence dynamically changes what is occurring. That is what ‘live’ means for me. It is dynamic because of the people in the room.” We were talking about her piece Court/Garden, but we could have just as well been discussing her current work-in-progress, Performance Portrait: Live. During a November 10-21 BRIClab residency, Castro will be creating life-sized versions of durational videos made during a summer residency at Gibney Dance, in which Julie Wyman filmed company performers Anna Azrieli, Leslie Cuyjet, Peter B. Schmitz, and David Thomson frozen in individual, single gestures as if locked in a direct, mutual gaze with a spectator. There will be two public showings of the resulting interactive multichannel video installation, Performance Portrait: Live (work-in-progress), on November 20 and 21 at 8:00, featuring interaction design by company composer and pianist Stephan Moore, using a network of Kinect 2 sensors, and audience environment by Kathy Couch. Each showing will be followed by a moderated dialogue with the audience and the artists.

DANCE UNDER THE INFLUENCE: JACOB SLOMINSKI

Jacob Slominski will conclude Dance under the Influence season at MAD, curated by Jack Ferver (photo courtesy of the artist)

Who: Jacob Slominski
What: Dance under the Influence
Where: Museum of Arts & Design, seventh floor, 2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Broadway, 800-838-3006
When: Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, $17, 7:30
Why: The Museum of Arts & Design’s annual Dance under the Influence series, curated this year by Jack Ferver, concludes with California-born, New York City-based dancer and choreographer Jacob Slominski on November 13 & 14. Slominski has performed with such choreographers as Faye Driscoll, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Ferver, most recently in Chambre at the New Museum. In his piece for MAD, Slominski, whose own work has been seen at such venues as Chez Bushwick and Gibney Dance, will investigate the relationship between audience and performer, particularly questioning whether the comfort level for audiences has evolved so much that the show itself is even necessary anymore. The November 13 performance will be followed by a discussion with Slominski, hosted by Ferver.

RONALD K. BROWN / EVIDENCE, A DANCE COMPANY AT BRIC

Ronald K. Brown / Evidence, A Dance Company will be performing a pair of programs in November at BRIC (photo © Ayodele Casel)

BRIC Arts | Media House
647 Fulton St.
November 12-22, $16-$27
718-683-5600
bricartsmedia.org
www.evidencedance.com

In an interview ten years ago, Ronald K. Brown told me, “I want everyone to dance.” A decade later, the Brooklyn native is still fulfilling that desire as he comes to the end of a three-year residency at BRIC with his immensely talented troupe, Evidence, A Dance Company. As part of the residency, which included free community dance classes, as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the company, Evidence will be performing two programs this month at BRIC in downtown Brooklyn, right next to BAM’s Harvey Theater. The first program, being held November 12-14, consists of Two-Year Old Gentlemen, with live music by Mamadouba Mohamed Camara; the “Clear as Tear Water” solo from Truth Don Die; the “March” duet from Lessons; and Water, featuring text written and performed by Cheryl Boyce Taylor. Brown and Taylor will join in a post-show discussion with moderator Eva Yaa Asantewaa following the November 13 performance. The second program, November 19-22, includes Walking Out the Dark, with music by Philip Hamilton, and Why You Follow/Por Que Sigues, a work originally commissioned for Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company. It is always a treat to see Brown and his infectious smile, whether performing, talking about his work, his travels, and his community, or teaching classes; he has a genuine love of life and dance, and that shows through in his dazzling choreography.

MARINELLA SENATORE AND NÁSTIO MOSQUITO: VISIBLE ON THE HIGH LINE

Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan)” to help kick off Creative Time Summit

The High Line
Gansevoort St. entrance to Chelsea Market Passage
Friday, November 13, free, 6:00
thehighline.org
creativetime.org

The Creative Time Summit, a two-day series of workshops, roundtables, and open discussions exploring the intersection of art and social justice, takes place November 14-15 at the Boys and Girls High School campus on Fulton St. in Brooklyn, featuring such participants as keynote speakers Nikole Hannah-Jones and Boots Riley along with Bill Ayers, Hans Haacke, Leonard Lopate, Luis Camnitzer, Hope Ginsburg, Tahir Hemphill, Chloë Bass, Tania Bruguera, and many others. But the summit, “The Curriculum NYC,” kicks off Friday night with the special event “Visible on the High Line,” an evening of site-specific participatory performances focusing on collaboration and social interaction, curated by Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander of the Visible Project, “a research project in contemporary art devoted to art work in the social sphere, that aims to produce and sustain socially engaged artistic practices in a global context.” Italian visual artist Marinella Senatore will present the latest iteration of her “School of Narrative Dance” project, beginning at the Gansevoort St. entrance to the High Line and continuing on to the Chelsea Market Passage above Sixteenth St., where Angolan artist and musician Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan),” a look at media and identity, with visuals by Vic Pereiro. Admission to the High Line performance is free; tickets to the Creative Time Summit run from $25 to $350, depending on what you can afford.

SPECTATOR

Company Derashinera stages North American premiere of multimedia SPECTATOR at Japan Society on Friday and Saturday

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, $30, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Spectators can check out the North American premiere of Shuji Onodera’s Spectator at Japan Society on November 13 & 14. The multimedia dance-theater work was developed out of Tokyo workshops with deaf students, two of whom (Maki Yamada and Mai Nagumo) are part of the cast, along with Naoya Oda from Butoh company Dairakudakan. Spectator, choreographed by Company Derashinera director Onodera, consists of lighthearted vignettes that include a woman manipulating tiny chairs that are echoed by performers in regular-size chairs, Japanese text projected in word bubbles on a screen, and a man and a woman playing with a small ball. The November 13 performance will be followed by a reception with the artists.

WUNDERBAUM: LOOKING FOR PAUL

Wunderbaum makes its New York debut with work examining controversial public art project by Paul McCarthy (photo by Steven A. Gunther)

New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 11-14, $15-$35, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
thenewforest.nl

In 2001, controversial Utah-born, California-based artist Paul McCarthy was commissioned by Rotterdam to make a public sculpture for Shouwburgplein, or Theater Square. However, the city ultimately rejected McCarthy’s work, a giant Santa Claus holding a rather phallic pine tree that soon became known as “Kabouter Buttplug,” or “Buttplug Gnome.” The sculpture was moved several times before finally parading into its new home in the Eendrachtsplein. The eco-conscious Dutch-Flemish collective Wunderbaum examines the controversy, and public art in general, in the multimedia Looking for Paul, which is having its New York premiere November 11-14 at New York Live Arts. In the piece, bookstore owner Inez van Dam has no appreciation for “Kabouter Buttplug,” so she decides to do something about it, going out to Los Angeles to confront McCarthy, who is rather familiar with confrontation. Looking for Paul features actors and creators Walter Bart, Inez van Dam, Matijs Jansen, Maartje Remmers, Marleen Scholten, and guest Daniel Frankl, with design by Maarten van Otterdijk.