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BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: THE GREAT TAMER

Dimitris Papaioannou’s The Great Tamer is ready to wow BAM audiences at the Next Wave Festival (photo by Julian Mommert)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
November 14-17, $30-$55
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/greattamer
www.dimitrispapaioannou.com

Under new artistic director David Binder, BAM’s 2019 Next Wave Festival consists exclusively of BAM debuts, with none of the familiar names that regular BAMgoers are used to seeing time and time again. About the closest you’re going to come is The Great Tamer, conceived, visualized, and directed by Dimitris Papaioannou, a former painter and comics artist who is the first person invited to create a piece for Tanztheater Wuppertal since BAM legend Pina Bausch’s death in 2009, Since She, which premiered last year. The Greek choreographer is now bringing his widely hailed The Great Tamer world tour to the Howard Gilman Opera House, where it runs November 14-17. Don’t let the title fool you; there’s nothing tame about this one-hundred-minute work, which features a Kubrick-esque astronaut, ample nudity, absurdist sculptural installations, nods to art history, bits of magic, and an unpredictable integration of humanity, nature, and technology, all set to Stephanos Droussiotis’s adaptation of Johann Strauss II’s Blue Danube. The wild piece is performed by Pavlina Andriopoulou, Costas Chrysafidis, Ektoras Liatsos, Ioannis Michos, Evangelia Randou, Kalliopi Simou, Drossos Skotis, Christos Strinopoulos, Yorgos Tsiantoulas, and Alex Vangelis, with sets by Tina Tzoka, costumes by Aggelos Mendis, lighting by Evina Vassilakopoulou, and sculptures by Nectarios Dionysatos. Prepare to be awed.

BAM NEXT WAVE: HAMNET / HE DID WHAT?

Dead Centre makes its BAM debut with Hamnet (photo by Ed Lefkowicz)

HAMNET
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
Through November 3, $25
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/hamnet
www.deadcentre.org

What is a son without a father? What is a father without a son? Those questions are at the heart of Dead Centre’s Hamnet, making its New York premiere this week at BAM. The sixty-minute multimedia show is part of new BAM artistic director David Binder’s inaugural Next Wave Festival consisting exclusively of BAM debuts, and this one is highlighted by a dynamite performance by Aran Murphy as the title character, in his professional acting debut. Murphy is a contemporary Hamnet, William Shakespeare’s only son, who died tragically in 1596 at the age of eleven. The boy is dressed in modern clothes, carries around a backpack, and regularly asks Google for information; it’s as if he’s been searching for his father, who abandoned him and his twin sister, Judith, and their mother, Anne Hathaway, in order to write his plays, for more than four hundred years. “To be, or not to be,” he declares several times, hoping that maybe his dad’s writings will help him find him.

Written and directed by Dead Centre founders Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd, Hamnet features a large screen at the back of the stage, where the audience is live-streamed through most of the show. Jose Miguel Jimenez’s innovative video design and Liv O’Donoghue’s choreography form a kind of magic as Hamnet roams Andrew Clancy’s set, sometimes disappearing onscreen even though he is right in front of us, or vice versa, and growing even more complex and eerie when the ghost of his father (Moukarzel) appears. The narrative at times becomes murky and confusing, but the technical wizardry and Murphy’s astounding portrayal overshadow its shortcomings. “Who would fardels bear, / To grunt and sweat under a weary life, / But that the dread of something after death, / The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of?” Hamlet asks. Hamnet is a hypnotic puzzle about death, grief, and personal identity, albeit one that is not easily unravele’d.

BAM presents free animated street opera on building facade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

HE DID WHAT?
Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Ave. at St. Felix St.
Through November 2, free, 7:00 – 10:00
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.dumbworld.co.uk

After seeing Hamnet, make your way around the corner to BAM’s main home, the Peter Jay Sharp Building, which houses the Howard Gilman Opera House, to catch the world premiere of Dumbworld and Irish National Opera’s He Did What? The ten-minute animated film, conceived and created by Brian Irvine and John McIlduff with video by Killan Waters and Conan McIvor, is projected onto the facade of the building at the corner of Lafayette Ave. and St. Felix St. The audience is given headsets through which they hear the hysterical story of three alter kockers with walkers parading slowly down the street, a man followed by two women. The two women are gossiping about him, as his wife recently caught him in bed with another woman and is deciding what to do about it. The characters are sung by Doreen Curran, Sylvia O’Brien, and Dan Reardon, with music composed by Irvine and played by the RTE Concert Orchestra, conducted by Fergus Shiel. The piece was written and directed by McIlduff; the riotous words also appear on the wall in goofy, graffiti-like type, complementing KAWS’s BAM mural and David Byrne’s bike rack across the street. While Hamnet will have you wondering, “How did they do that?,” the free presentation of He Did What?, running 7:00 to 10:00 nightly through November 2, will have you saying again and again, “He did what?” as well as “Oh no she didn’t. Oh yes she did.”

NEXT WAVE 2019

The Second Woman repeats the same scene from John Cassavetes’s Opening Night one hundred times (photo by Heidrun Lohr)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 230 Lafayette Ave.
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Pl.
October 15 – December 15
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Like myriad loyal BAMgoers, I look forward every year to the announcement of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which has been presenting cutting-edge, experimental, and innovative dance, music, film, theater, opera, and hard-to-categorize multidisciplinary performances from around the world for nearly forty years. We eagerly scour the schedule to see when our longtime BAM favorites will be returning, scanning for such beloved names and companies as Robert Wilson, Sasha Waltz, Grupo Corpo, Batsheva, Philip Glass, Sankai Juku, Ivo van Hove, Mark Morris, Théâtre de la Ville, William Kentridge, Laurie Anderson, and the incomparable Pina Bausch, programmed by masterful executive producer Joe Melillo since 1999.

But this year’s lineup features nary a single familiar name, including that of Melillo, who retired after the Winter/Spring season. For his debut Next Wave Festival, new artistic director David Binder has opted to include a roster of performers all making their BAM debuts as well. But don’t be scared off by the lack of recognition. There was a time when no one in New York had ever seen Pina Bausch, Sankai Juku, Batsheva, Sasha Waltz, et al. And by its very nature, the Next Wave is all about the future of performance, delivered to an eager and intrepid audience open to anything and everything.

Dead Centre’s Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare’s son (photo by Ernesto Galan)

“In programming my first season at BAM, I was inspired by the genesis of Next Wave and the groundbreaking work of my predecessors, Harvey Lichtenstein and Joe Melillo,” Binder said in a statement. “Next Wave is a place to see, share, and celebrate the most exciting new ideas in theater, music, dance, and, especially, the unclassifiable adventures. We’ve invited a slate of artists who have never performed at BAM. Each and every one of them is making a BAM debut, with artistic work that’s surprising and resonant. I’m excited to launch this season and to build BAM’s next chapter
with you.”

The 2019 Next Wave roster is an impressive one, kicking off October 15-20 with Michael Keegan-Dolan and Teaċ Daṁsa’s Swan Lake / Loch na hEala, about a young girl sexually assaulted by a priest. In The Second Woman, Alia Shawkat performs the same scene from John Cassavetes’s Opening Night one hundred times with one hundred different men over the course of twenty-four consecutive hours. Christiane Jatahy’s What if they went to Moscow? explores film and theater in a retelling of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters that takes place concurrently onstage at the BAM Fisher and onscreen at BAM Rose Cinemas, the audiences switching places as the performance repeats. In Dante or Die’s User Not Found, audience members sit in a café at the Greene Grape Annex on Fulton St., following the exploits of a man a few tables away. Dimitris Papaioannou breaks boundaries as he explores human existence in The Great Tamer. And Glenn Kaino’s When a Pot Finds Its Purpose will be the inaugural free exhibition at the new Rudin Family Gallery at BAM Strong.

Dante or Die’s User Not Found takes place in the Greene Grape Annex on Fulton St. (photo by Justin Jones)

The 2019 Next Wave Festival also includes Bruno Beltrão/Grupo de Rua’s Inoah, Dumbworld’s free outdoor art piece He Did What?, Selina Thompson’s free interactive installation Race Cards, Dead Centre’s Hamnet, Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s Bacchae: Prelude to a Purge, Untitled Projects/Unicorn Theatre, UK’s The End of Eddy, Peeping Tom’s 32 rue Vandenbranden, Fuel/National Theatre/Leeds Playhouse’s Barber Shop Chronicles, Kyle Marshall Choreography’s A.D. & Colored, Kate McIntosh’s In Many Hands, and Meow Meow’s A Very Meow Meow Holiday Show. Still worried about unfamiliarity? If you’ve been to BAM before, you should be ready, willing, and able to be surprised, and if you’ve never been to BAM, you should be preparing to make your debut.

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN ARTS FESTIVAL

Peter Brook will be celebrated at several events during the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Festival this weekend (photo © Marian Adreani)

Brooklyn Cultural District
The Plaza at 300 Ashland and other locations
October 4-6, free – $115
www.dbartsfestival.org

Downtown Brooklyn is the place to be this weekend for the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Festival, taking place around the Plaza at 300 Ashland from Friday to Saturday. There will be an African drum circle, live music and dance, talks and discussions, theater, glass-making demonstrations, film screenings, classes, treasure hunts, art exhibitions, and more; while many events are free, others require ticketing at BAM, Theatre for a New Audience, the Mark Morris Dance Center, and the New York Transit Museum, among others. Below are some of the highlights.

Friday, October 4
Kickoff with live performance by Soul Tigers Marching Band and dance party with Soul Summit, the Plaza at 300 Ashland, free, 5:00 – 8:00

Free Demonstration Night: The Two-Part Mold, with Kellie Krouse and Jeffrey Close, UrbanGlass, free, 6:00 – 9:00

Peter Brook\NY, with Paul Auster, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and Jeffrey Horowitz, Center for Fiction, $10 (includes $10 off at bookstore), 7:00

Pop-Up: An Artistic Treasure Hunt, by Strike Anywhere and the Tours Soundpainting Orchestra, Fort Greene, free, 7:00

Saturday, October 5
African Drum Circle with Mr. Fitz, the Plaza at 300 Ashland, free, 11:00

NYTM Train Operators Workshop, New York Transit Museum, free with museum admission, 11:30 & 3:30

Dance: Pas de Deux, with Brooklyn Ballet, set to Jean-Phillippe Rameau’s “Gavotte et Six Doubles,” the Plaza at 300 Ashland, free, 2:00

Rhys Chatham: The Sun Too Close to the Earth / Jonathan Kane and Zeena Parkins: Oh, Suzanne, ISSUE Project Room, $20-$25, 8:00

Sunday, October 6
Dance: Tribal Truth, in collaboration with Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet, the Plaza at 300 Ashland, free, 12:00

MC Oddissee, the Plaza at 300 Ashland, free, 1:00

Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present & Future Tour, $15-$30, 2:00

Pop-Up: Nkiru Books, with DJ set by Talib Kweli, the Plaza at 300 Ashland, free, 2:00 – 5:00

UNBOUND: DAPPER DAN IN CONVERSATION WITH ELAINE WELTEROTH

dapper dan

Who: Dapper Dan, Elaine Welteroth
What: Book launch with talk and signing
Where: BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4100
When: Wednesday, July 10, $20 event only, $40 with book, 7:00
Why: “It was a midnight like any other at the store. The lights were on out front, the door unlocked, the grate rolled halfway up. Dapper Dan’s Boutique was open. My night crew of tailors was in the back filling orders. Jackets, jumpsuits, parkas. Their sewing machines hummed into the wee hours. I was lying on my bed in the little apartment I’d built in back for myself. Most nights, you could find me there, rereading a book of philosophy or spirituality or trying to sneak in a nap,” begins fashion icon Daniel “Dapper Dan” Day’s memoir, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem. “I had good reasons for never closing the shop and rarely leaving it. For one, a lot of my customers preferred late-night visits, for anonymity during the week or for the after-hours vibe of the weekends. I also had to keep an eye on my employees, who were backdooring my designs. It was my name on the awning out front, and in my world, your name means everything. It was my reputation, my brand, and people came from all over the city and beyond—from Philly and Chicago, Houston and Miami—because they wanted a Dapper Dan. I was the store, and the store was me.” On July 10, the seventy-four-year-old Dapper Dan, who has helped dress such figures as Eric B. and Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, Big Daddy Kane, Mike Tyson, LL Cool J, Jam Master Jay, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, and Jay-Z, will launch his book with a talk and a signing at BAM Rose Cinemas, presented with Greenlight Bookstore as part of the Unbound series. He will be interviewed by journalist, magazine editor, Project Runway judge, and influencer Elaine Welteroth, author of the new book More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are. Tickets are $20 for the event and $40 for the event and a copy of Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem.

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: VENEZUELA

Batsheva’s Venezuela offers chills and thrills at BAM (photo by Stephanie Berger)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
March 27-30, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
batsheva.co.il/en

Batsheva’s Venezuela is yet another exhilarating must-see work from one of the world’s most adventurous and exciting companies. Running March 27–30 at the Howard Gilman Opera House, the evening-length piece, which doesn’t overtly reference the titular, troubled South American nation in its narrative, consists of two forty-minute sections. In the first part, the Israeli troupe moves as a group, breaks into energetic solos and daring duets, skips around with delight, and lines up at the front of the stage, each dancer stepping forward one at a time as two men rap Biggie’s NSFW “Dead Wrong” (“The weak or the strong / who got it goin’ on / You’re dead wrong”). The women ride the men like donkeys. In a blur, the cast, all dressed in black (the costumes are by dancer Eri Nakamura), briskly skip from one side to the other, some moving forward, some backward, chaos threatening but soon replaced by a childlike wonder. The music primarily consists of Gregorian chants until a growing drone overtakes everything and the lights go out.

Batsheva dancers repeat themselves in dazzling ways in Ohad Naharin’s Venezuela at BAM (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The lights come back on and there are different dancers now onstage, and for the next forty minutes they perform the exact same choreography, only to a different soundtrack (including songs by Rage Against the Machine, Olafur Arnalds, and Vox; the lush soundtrack design and edit is by Maxim Waratt) and with different lighting by Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi), offering an enchanting perspective on what choreographer Ohad Naharin showed us in the first half, his Gaga movement language telling a new story. Even the blank cloths that were dropped in the first section now become colorful symbols. The first Batsheva work to come to New York since former company dancer Gili Navot took over as artistic director from Naharin, who is now house choreographer, Venezuela is another triumph from a scintillating company that has been enriching dance and dazzling audiences for decades.

VENEZUELA

Batsheva’s Venezuela dances into BAM this week (photo by Asca)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
March 27-30, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
batsheva.co.il/en

Superstar Israeli troupe Batsheva Dance Company is back at BAM this week with Ohad Naharin’s Venezuela, running March 27-30 at the Howard Gilman Opera House. The evening-length work consists of two forty-minute sections that mirror each other movement-wise but change the score, which ranges from Gregorian chants to songs by Rage Against the Machine, Olafur Arnalds, the Notorious B.I.G., and Vox. Under Naharin’s leadership, Batsheva has been presenting dance at BAM for many years, including The Last Work, Hora, and Sadeh21; this will be the main troupe’s first visit since former company dancer Gili Navot took over as artistic director, with Naharin remaining as house choreographer to develop new pieces and continue his research into his unique Gaga language. Venezuela, which addresses freedom of choice and has been percolating in Naharin for decades, is performed by Etay Axelroad, Billy Barry, Yael Ben Ezer, Matan Cohen, Ben Green, Chiaki Horita, Chunwoong Kim, Rani Lebzelter, Hugo Marmelada, Eri Nakamura, Nitzan Ressler, Kyle Scheurich, Maayan Sheinfeld, Yoni (Yonatan) Simon, Hani Sirkis, Amalia Smith, Imre van Opstal, and Erez Zohar, with lighting by Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi), soundtrack design and edit by Maxim Waratt, and costumes by Nakamura. On March 29 at 10:30 am at the Mark Morris Dance Center, a Batsheva company member will lead a Gaga and Repertory master class for professionals ($25).