Pam Tanowitz Dance kicks off "NY Quadrille," a two-week season masterminded by Lar Lubovitch. Over the years, dance has acquired a reputation for mysteriousness. This vexes many people, enchants others, and confuses others still more. After seeing Pam Tanowitz’s Sequenzas in Quadrilles at the Joyce Theater, I walked along the sidewalk a bit ahead of two women who were energetically … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2016
Re-envisioning Shreds of Memory
John Jasperse presents a new work at BAM Harvey, September 21-24. John Jasperse’s new Remains has a clarity so exquisite that images from it have pasted themselves into my memory. The piece, which premiered at the BAM Harvey this past week, shows some of these images to us many times, but in different ways; imagine a painted group scene, from which someone has clipped individual figures and … [Read more...]
They Could Have Danced All Night
New York City Ballet opens its fall season (September 20 to October 16) with four new ballets. The New York City Ballet’s gala performances are intriguing phenomena—so many gowns trailing hazardous trains during the pre-performance cocktail party on the second floor promenade, so many tiny, slightly slippery hors d’oeuvres, and at the same time such pride and good spirits among those … [Read more...]
Across the Water, into the Past
Colleen Thomas Dance performs a site-specific work on Governors Island, September 16-18. Visiting Governors Island for the first time (yes, really), I look at the fine old wooden houses ranged around the grassy expanse known as Nolan Park—some of them quite grand—and wish I could have grown up there. Probably not when its cannons, facing the scant 800 yards of water that separate the island … [Read more...]
Seeing Autumn In With Cabaret
Dance Now presents its fall festival at Joe's Pub September 7 through 10. How often do you see ten dances in under an hour-and-a-half? Had Joe’s Pub not initiated its annual Dance Now Festival eight years ago, you’d have had to think back to the 1920s and the well-filled solo programs that Martha Graham and others put on. Robin Staff, the producer and executive director of Dance Now, must … [Read more...]