Tag Archives: Ohad Naharin

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER 2014

New production of Hans van Manen’s POLISH PIECES (seen here performed by Antonio Douthit-Boyd and Akua Noni Parker) is part of Ailey’s second consecutive Lincoln Center season (photo by Andrew Eccles)

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 12-16, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is already an end-of-year tradition, moving into City Center every December. The celebrated company is now reinvigorating the start of summer with its second consecutive June season at Lincoln Center, this time paying tribute to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of the company founder and namesake at the age of fifty-eight. From June 11 to 22, AAADT will present thirteen works in four different programs at the David H. Koch Theater, with a special free bonus on opening night, when former company members Nasha Thomas-Schmitt and Renee Robinson teach how to dance the “I’ve Been ’Buked,” “Wade in the Water,” and “Rocka My Soul” sections of Revelations at 5:30 on Josie Robertson Plaza. Program A (June 12, 14, 18, 22) features Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, the world premiere of Robert Moses’s The Pleasure of the Lesson, the San Francisco-based choreographer and composer’s first piece for Ailey, and Revelations. Program B (June 13, 15, 21) consists of Ronald K. Brown’s gorgeous Grace, the company premiere of Asadata Dafora’s 1932 Awassa Astrige/Ostrich, a solo piece set to African music by Carl Riley, Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters (Part 1), and Ohad Naharin’s glorious Minus 16. Program C (June 14, 15, 20) honors the collaboration between Ailey and Duke Ellington with the classic Night Creature and Pas de Duke, associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya’s 2013 restaging of The River, and Revelations. Program D (June 17, 21, 22) comprises Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton’s contagious and energetic Lift, new productions of David Parsons’s signature strobe-heavy solo Caught, set to music by Robert Fripp, and Hans van Manen’s Polish Pieces, with music by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, and Revelations. The family matinees on June 14 and 21 will be followed by a Q&A with members of the company.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL OF THE DAY: ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER AT CITY CENTER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Antonio Douthit-Boyd and Linda Celeste Sims perform in a new production of Alvin Ailey’s THE RIVER (photo by Paul Kolnik)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 4 – January 5, $25-$135; 40% off select performances with code ALYFRI
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Next week, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to City Center for its annual holiday season, its twenty-fifth since Alvin Ailey passed away on December 1, 1989. As a special one-day-only Black Friday special, tickets for select performances are being discounted up to forty percent by using the promo code ALYFRI, available online from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, by phone 11:00 am to 8:00 pm, and at the box office 12 noon to 8:00 (where there is no service charge). Running December 4 to January 5, the 2013-14 season, the third under artistic director Robert Battle, is chock-full of company classics and exciting new commissions. Back again are such recent additions as Rennie Harris’s Home, Ohad Naharin’s dazzling Minus 16, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, Kyle Abraham’s Another Night, Ronald K. Brown’s breathtaking Grace, Battle’s Strange Humors and In/Side, and Paul Taylor’s Arden Court. This year’s world premieres include Aszure Barton’s LIFT, Wayne McGregor’s Chroma (featuring music by Jack White), Bill T. Jones’s D-Man in the Waters (Part I), and Brown’s Four Corners, along with new productions of Ailey’s Pas De Duke and The River. Most performances conclude, of course, with the Ailey mainstay Revelations, several with live music.

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER

Ronald K. Brown leads rehearsal for FOUR CORNERS, which makes its world premiere next week as AADT returns to Lincoln Center (photo by Claudia Schrier)

Ronald K. Brown leads rehearsal for FOUR CORNERS, which makes its world premiere next week as Alvin Ailey returns to Lincoln Center for the first time since 2000 (photo by Claudia Schreier)

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 12-16, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater always puts a jolt into the holiday season, taking up residence at City Center every December. This month, as an added bonus, they’ll be performing at Lincoln Center for the first time in thirteen years. Led by artistic director Robert Battle, AADT will be at the David H. Koch Theater from June 6 to 12, presenting seven pieces over the course of seven performances. The highlight is the world premiere of Ronald K. Brown’s Four Corners, which was inspired by Carl Hancock Rux’s “Lamentations” and is set to music by Hancock Rux and others. The seven programs also feature Brown’s beautiful Grace as well as Garth Fagan’s From Before, Jiří Kylián’s inventive Petite Mort, Battle’s whirlwind solo work Takademe (performed by either Kirven James Boyd or Jamar Roberts), Ohad Naharin’s dazzling Minus 16, and the company’s signature Revelations. (For reviews of many of these works from the past two years, go here and here.) Battle has just added Ailey II’s Jeroboam Bozeman and Fana Tesfagiorgis and Battleworks veteran Elisa Clark to the troupe, while rehearsal director and guest artist Matthew Rushing will take the stage in both Brown pieces. Revelations, which closes six of the performances, will include either Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims or Alicia Graf Mack and Roberts teaming up for the “Fix Me” pas de deux, and the June 15 matinee will be followed by a Q&A with the dancers.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER

Robert Battle is ready for his second City Center season as AAADT artistic director, along with dancers Antonio Douthit, Rachael McLaren, Jacqueline Green, Jamar Roberts, and Alicia Graf Mack (photo by Andrew Eccles)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 28 – December 30, $25-$135
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Since 1958, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been a central part of the New York City performing arts scene, revolutionizing the perception of dance through its special programs, workshops, classes, and unique melding of music and movement. Originally inspired by Alvin Ailey’s “blood memories” of growing up in Texas with a single mother, the company has gone on to be named by Congress as “a vital American cultural ambassador to the world.” Now led by artistic director Robert Battle, AAADT begins its annual New York City Center season this week, presenting such works as Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16, Paul Taylor’s Arden Court, Rennie Harris’s Home, Ulysses Dove’s Vespers and Urban Folk Dance, Camille A. Brown’s The Evolution of a Secured Feminine, Battle’s The Hunt, In/Side, and Takademe, and Ailey’s Memoria and other classics. (To see which work nine of the dancers are most looking forward to, go here.)

TICKET GIVEAWAY: With so much to choose from, it’s hard to decide which programs to see, but twi-ny has teamed up with AAADT to make the decision easy. We are giving away two pairs of tickets to the Tuesday, December 12, show at 7:30, consisting of the company premiere of Battle’s duet Strange Humors, Dove’s Episodes, and Ailey’s Night Creature and Revelations. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite Ailey dance to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, November 28, at 3:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; two winners will be selected at random.

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: HORA

Ohad Naharin and his Batsheva company reimagine traditional Israeli group dance in HORA (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
March 7-10, $20-$70
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.batsheva.co.il

For more than thirty years, Tel Aviv-based choreographer Ohad Naharin has been creating exciting, unpredictable works that push the limits of what contemporary dance can be. His unique movement language, known as Gaga, has been a centerpiece of the Batsheva Dance Company since 1990, when he was named artistic director. Works such as Deca Dance, Three, Minus 16, and Project 5 have dazzled audiences with their wild creativity and often humorous use of music. Naharin returns to BAM this week with Hora, an hour-long piece for eleven dancers that features lighting and stage design by Avi Yona Bueno, costumes by Anna Mirkin, and a vast array of classical music arranged and performed by Isao Tomita, including snippets of Mussorgsky, Strauss, Ives, Grieg, Wagner, Debussy, Sibelius, and John Williams. You never know what’s going to happen in Naharin’s work, which always makes it fresh and inviting. On Saturday, March 10, at 12 noon ($20), you can join in the fun by taking an open class with Batsheva dancers at BAM’s Hillman Attic Studio; we recently found ourselves onstage with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater going Gaga to their production of Minus 16, a thrill that still gives us chills every time we think of it, which is rather often.

Ohad Naharin’s HORA is a dazzlingly subtle, mesmerizingly beautiful dance (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Update: In a large rectangular room bathed in an intoxicating green light, eleven dancers sit on a long bench at the back. One at a time they get up and start moving slowly to an austere silence that eventually gives way to Ryoji Ikeda’s electronic drone music. Six women, wearing various black leotards, and five men, in white and gray shorts and T-shirts, often stay in place as they bend down, stretch toward the ceiling, and twist and turn. Soon Isao Tomita’s score takes over, playfully reconfigured versions of classical music familiarized in Hollywood movies, including Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” Wagner’s “Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries,” and even John Williams’s main theme from Star Wars. Over the course of sixty minutes, the dancers (including stand-out Iyar Elezra) perform Ohad Naharin’s movement-based nonlinear, nonnarrative choreography that shifts from controlled chaos to featured solos and duets while at other times feeling like the dancers are rehearsing their own roles all at once, seldom making physical contact. The Batsheva Dance Company’s Hora — which never evolves into the title’s traditional Jewish celebratory group dance — is a mesmerizing experience, a stunning balance of light, color, sound, and movement from one of the world’s most innovative and entertaining choreographers.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER: ALL NEW

Rennie Harris’s specially commissioned “Home” examines the AIDS crisis in a positive way (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through January 1, $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

In our exclusive twi-ny talk with Robert Battle last month, the new Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic director discussed his plans for the future of the famed company, explaining, “If it’s one choreographer’s work, it’s harder to do that, but when you’re choosing works from many different choreographers in one season you get the sense of that yin and yang, that stretching forward of busting the whole thing wide open but yet keeping the traditional so that the company stays rooted.” Battle certainly busted things wide open on December 13, when he introduced an all-new program of works that provided a telling example of where he is heading. The evening began with a new production of Ailey’s 1970 piece, “Streams,” an elegant, balletic dance restaged by associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya with affection for Ailey’s original and Miloslav Kabelac’s percussion-and-xylophone-heavy score but lacking deep emotion. That was followed by Battle’s own short but wonderfully entertaining 1999 work, “Takademe,” in which Kirven James Boyd, wearing a ruffled red Missoni outfit, danced wildly to Naren Budhakar’s live vocal performance in what became a fun, scatlike speaking-in-tongues verbal and physical showdown. Thus, Battle kicked things off with the traditional, then announced his arrival, leading to the second half of the evening, the explosive pairing of Rennie Harris’s newly commissioned “Home” and the Ailey premiere of Ohad Naharin’s revelatory “Minus 16,” from 1999. In the former, fourteen dancers, including rehearsal director Matthew Rushing, all wearing street clothes, gathered together in a group before letting loose, moving to music by Dennis Ferrer and Raphael Xavier in a work inspired by actual responses to the “Fight HIV Your Way” initiative. A fanciful tribute to Ailey himself, who died of AIDS in 1989, “Home” is hopeful and uplifting, an excellent lead-in to the grand finale, one of the most cutting-edge works ever performed by AAADT.

Ohad Naharin’s “Minus 16” is a highlight of Alvin Ailey’s New York season at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

With intermission not quite over, a solitary man stands near the front of the stage, dressed in Hasidic clothing, slowly beginning to move as the audience makes its way back inside the theater. It’s impossible not to initially think of the racial tensions that have long existed between African Americans and the Hasidic community in New York City, primarily in Crown Heights, but as he is joined by more dancers and the music turns from the John Buzon Trio’s “It Must Be True” to the traditional standard “Hava Nagila,” those thoughts disappear as Naharin’s unique Gaga movement language takes over. The central part of the piece is an exhilarating section in which eighteen dancers (the number eighteen represents the word “life” in Hebrew) are seated in a semicircle, performing on, under, on top of, or next to their chairs as they follow one another around one by one in order as verses are added on to the Passover children’s song “Echad Mi Yode’a.” It’s as if City Center has suddenly become home to a breathtaking, rather unique bar mitzvah celebration, a riotous party that soon involves inviting audience members, including yours truly, onto the stage to join in duets with members of the Ailey crew. (We have to thank the marvelous Belen Estrada for not making us look like a complete idiot up there.) Things eventually slow down but pick up yet again in Naharin’s sparkling piece, which also uses music by Vivaldi and the Beach Boys in addition to “Over the Rainbow” and “Hooray for Hollywood.” A virtuoso work that signals a major step for AAADT, “Minus 16” is dedicated to Naharin’s late wife, Mari Kajiwara, who was an Ailey dancer from 1970 to 1984 and Alvin Ailey’s rehearsal assistant. Battle made a major statement with this all-new program, one that promises a bright and exciting future under his leadership. (“Streams,” “Home,” and “Minus 16” will all be performed on December 21 at 8:00, along with Joyce Trisler’s “Journey.” “Home” is also scheduled for December 23, 28, 30, and 31, with “Minus 16” scheduled for December 25, 28, and 31, at varying times.)

TWI-NY TALK: ROBERT BATTLE

New Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic director Robert Battle (c.) poses with dancers he has invited to join the company (photo by Andrew Eccles)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 30 – January 1, $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Founded in 1958, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater had only two artistic directors over the course of its first fifty-two years, beginning with Ailey himself, who led the company until his death from AIDS in 1989, followed by Judith Jamison, who continued in the role through this summer, when in July she named her successor, Robert Battle. The thirty-eight-year-old Miami native has had a long affiliation with AAADT, having been an artist-in-residence since 1999, and he has had several works performed by the company, including “The Hunt,” “In/Side,” and “Love Stories,” a collaboration with Jamison and Rennie Harris.

Battle, who studied at Juilliard, danced with Parsons Dance Company, started his own group, Battleworks Dance Company, and was named a “Master of African American Choreography” by the Kennedy Center in 2005, is presenting his inaugural City Center season as AAADT artistic director from November 30 through January 1. The annual five-week event will feature Paul Taylor’s “Arden Court” (in his Ailey debut), Ohad Naharin’s interactive “Minus 16,” Jamison’s “Forgotten Time,” the world premiere of Harris’s AIDS-related “Home,” new productions of Joyce Trisler’s “Journey” and Alvin Ailey’s “Streams,” and several pieces by Battle, most notably the Ailey premiere of “Takademe.” Select performances of a number of works will include live music by such special guests as John Legend, Naren Budhkar, the Knights, and others. With the City Center season just a few weeks away, Battle talked with twi-ny about legacy, responsibility, and the precipice of discovery.

twi-ny: You are now only the third artistic director in the history of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. What is your greatest fear?

Robert Battle: I think that’s an unknown. Fear is not for me something that I turn on and off. Anybody, especially an artist, always has a healthy dose of fear mixed with optimism, because those two opposing forces is what creates energy, the energy that is the creative force. So I think it’s a healthy mixture of both of those things.

twi-ny: What are you looking forward to the most?

Robert Battle: I’m looking forward to watching and reveling at the dancers and the delights of the work that is coming in to the repertory and watching and being a part of taking the company into the future. That’s what I look forward to the most.

twi-ny: How did you go about selecting and grouping the dances for this year’s City Center season, which includes the company premiere of your own “Takademe”? Were you looking for an overriding theme?

Robert Battle has taken over the reins of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from Judith Jamison (photo by Andrew Eccles)

Robert Battle: Yes, the overriding theme is past, present, and future. We’re a repertory company — in a way, we’re a repository for great modern dance works — so, of course, looking back at Mr. Ailey’s work, Joyce Trisler’s “Journey,” created in 1958, all of these works are part of looking back and new productions of those works. Being in the present, looking at Rennie Harris’s work and his commission [“Home”] — he’s a hip-hop choreographer, so he uses hip-hop as his language. That is a part of the present; hip-hop is on everybody’s mind, radio, whatever it may be, but dealing with hip-hop to tell the stories of people who are surviving and thriving with HIV/AIDS is a wonderful tribute because it’s about the celebration of life. And then looking at works to me that echo the future, like Ohad Naharin’s “Minus 16,” which breaks the fourth wall: It invites the audience onto the stage, it has audience participation, it has a whole new way of moving for the dancers. So in that way we’re looking at the future. So we’re looking at all three of those things.

twi-ny: Who are some of the new choreographers you’d like to bring into the extended Ailey family?

Robert Battle: Aha — that, I cannot say [laughs], with deference to all choreographers who may want to be a part of this. I can’t just list one or two, but I really want the work to express the complexity of the world, society. It should be a reflection of that, so that you have choreographers of different races and backgrounds and approaches and themes bringing their voice to our voice. That’s what Mr. Ailey wanted, what Ms. Jamison continued, and what I will continue, to look far and wide, and to keep the audience and the dancers on that precipice of discovery.

twi-ny: With that in mind, how are you balancing the Ailey tradition with, perhaps, the urge to bust things wide open and initiate potential change under your leadership?

Robert Battle: I think that question could have a period at the end. That is what I am doing, balancing the traditional with the sometimes nontraditional. I think the notion of doing something without it having some connection to what is already here is not something I’m interested in. I’m really interested in blending the two. And that’s because this is a repertory company; that’s why I’m able to do that. If it’s one choreographer’s work, it’s harder to do that, but when you’re choosing works from many different choreographers in one season you get the sense of that yin and yang, that stretching forward of busting the whole thing wide open but yet keeping the traditional so that the company stays rooted. That’s why it began in the first place; celebrating the African American tradition and culture and experience in this country but also expanding on that idea is what I’m trying to do.