In the back room of a hotel cafe in Lower Manhattan, the Irish director Garry Hynes was talking about Sean O’Casey, the laborer turned playwright whose frequently funny, sometimes blood-chilling, canonical 1920s tragicomedies are set amid the tenements of Dublin….
Read the full story by Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times.
“At the end of every play in the Dublin Trilogy, the stage has pushed beyond the real into a dense and resonant space of metaphor. O’Casey is too smart, and too funny, to succumb to nihilism, but he’s also too smart, and too full of grief, not to acknowledge the darkness on all sides…” – Sara Holdren, Vulture
“An eerier kind of togetherness emerged in John Jasperse’s ‘Visitation,’ for Doug LeCours, Tim Bendernagel and Cynthia Koppe. Invoking ghosts and ghostliness, this spacious yet intricate work managed to fill NYU Skirball’s expansive stage, building to a climax in which the three dancers, uncannily, appeared enmeshed as one. […] It was hard to look away from Koppe, who gave a quietly magnificent performance: so rigorously present in her body, she seemed to have broken through to a different realm.”
Based mainly in Europe, this American choreographer returned to New York with “Maggie the Cat,” a heady mix of runway, voguing and an energizing point of departure: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” With his “Maggie” — a play, a character, a force? — Harrell created a bold, joyful show that elevated the notion of runway movement as dance and any old household objects, like pillows and towels, as couture. It was a sonic and visual delight.
“[The dance] keeps artfully approaching edges, leaning toward but not quite touching camp, kitsch, overwhelming emotion, ecstasy.”
“In ‘Textplay,’ Stoppard and Beckett Get Snarky, FWIW”
“Iranian Female Composers Speak Indirectly to the Moment: Planned before anti-regime protests broke out in Iran, a concert centered on connectivity finds itself tied to the news of the day.”
“A Dance for Our Times Travels to a Dark Place: The choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly explores the fear that permeates society in the North American premiere of ‘Wakatt’ at NYU Skirball.”
“N.Y.U. Skirball Season Reinvigorates the Classics: Elevator Repair Service will premiere a show inspired by Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull,’ and the Classical Theater of Harlem’s hip-hop-infused ‘Seize the King’ gets an encore.”
“In ‘I Agree to the Terms,’ It’s Raining Pennies From Amazon: The Builders Association explores the world of turkers, workers performing thousands of weird, low-paying tasks for an online giant.”
“Eiko Otake and Margaret Leng Tan Reflect on Art, Friendship, and Life”
New York Magazine rates “The Duet Project” “Highbrow, Brilliant” in their Approval Matrix.
“Cosmic Stories: Du Yun Revisits Her Earliest Music Theater: A program at NYU Skirball pairs ‘Zolle’ and ‘A Cockroach’s Tarantella,’ youthful works from when the composer felt “like a fish out of water.”
“Immersed in ‘Stranger Things,’ Then Strolling to Beckett: Our writer checked out two very different experiences in New York. In Netflix’s TV re-creation, you fight Demogorgons. In “Cascando,” you walk off your existential angst.”
“‘Seagull’ Review: Blurring the Lines of Fiction: Elevator Repair Service’s Chekhov revival has promising ideas about art, experimentation and truth”
“New York fans of Daniel Fish’s Tony-nominated production of “Oklahoma!” will soon have the opportunity to experience another remix of an American classic by the director.”
“It’s about how bad news — the giving and the receiving of it — constitutes us as a community who now know just how wrong things can go.”
“Of course, the messenger is also a storyteller—one charged with passing on not only the facts, but their affective impact. In doing this they must relive the horror, embody it, share it, and evoke the audiences’ emotional responses.”
“Watching these shambling insectivores quarrel and cavort invites us to meditate on what it means to be an animal, human or otherwise. And if you didn’t feel much like meditating, you could just shake your snout, clap your paws and dance along.”
“It all begins with a man in a hole. Or rather, it begins with the hole itself, which occupies the center — dead center, I should say — of the screen that fills the stage at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center.”
“Perhaps staging a panel discussion would put them on equal footing with their critics—but they didn’t want to actually bore anyone. So: a panel discussion in which the panelists moon their spectators.”
“Taylor Mac isn’t the only one doing 24-hour shows. A group of marathon performances will arrive at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center next season that will test the endurance of both the performers and the audience.”
New York Times recommends a panel featuring Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore who will discuss their book “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics”
“For about a year beginning in 2013, Brian Rogers, a film director and video and sound artist, found himself living — half a week, every week — in a former Catholic church in upstate New York.”
A panel reflects on the legacy of the Stonewall rebellion and the L.G.B.T. rights movement at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan.
“…get to know the British theater company that cast a bottle of vinegar bottle as … Hamlet.”
“In “And on the Thousandth Night …” a handful of actors will greet the dawn with a bedtime story that never quite ends. And on subsequent nights those same performers will act out the complete works of Shakespeare in 36 solo performances with an assist from common household objects.”
“…inanimate objects, epic performances and why most Forced Entertainment shows — the Skirball ones, too — are built to fail.”
“There is something of the nursery in the show’s insistence on unfettered imagination, and something of the bedtime story in the way the best of these tales unfold. They’re not soporific but soothingly mesmeric, even the tragic ones. They’re at close range, too, with the audience seated onstage.”
“Inspired by the legend of Scheherazade, eight members of the visiting U.K. troupe Forced Entertainment—dressed in ragged royal costumery—improvise a six-hour story that builds on itself and borrows from a vast array of sources old and new.”
“This fall’s dance calendar will feature inventive takes on old favorites and intriguing new works.”
“For one thing, he has removed the word “dance” from his company’s name. ‘We’re a contemporary performance ensemble,’”
“Bill T. Jones is one of the few choreographers who can weave together social consciousness with choreographic inventiveness.”
“For the past four years, Mr. Jones has found inspiration in transforming oral histories into dance-theater productions.”
“In his new piece, 10000 Gestures, each action is different—no repeats. This week, a horde of more than 20 dancers invades New York City’s NYU Skirball Center, each of them cramming a thousand gestures into one hour.”
“Each of its titular motions for a cast of twenty-five may be as small as a blink or as big as a leap, but, once executed, it does not recur. In place of conventional choreographic patterns, there’s a dense, bewildering rush, and Mozart’s “Requiem,” to make you think of death.”
“Some choreographers live for repetition, while others, like the French choreographer Boris Charmatz, at least in his 2017 work “10000 Gestures,” deliberately fights against it.”
“Tere related his choreographic processes to the nature of the mind itself, which remains in and out of a constant episodic flow of consciousness.”
“As tangential in sequence and unfixed in meaning as free-associative poetry, Tere O’Connor’s masterful works resist capsule description.”
“When a choreographer is in the middle of creating a new dance, there’s an inevitable freak-out moment. “
“He doesn’t, however, show us different things happening irrespective of one another. Everything seems connected, part of the same intricate organism.”
“…challenging his eight dancers to find calm despite negotiating numerous physical tasks involving polyrhythms, velocity and duration.”
“Eight dancers perform the New York premiere of O’Connor’s 2017 work, for which he composed his own musical score. The piece explores tensions between formality and emotion.”
“In keeping with this idea, drawn from Marx’s writings, the festival will be entirely pay-what-you-wish. Guests will be presented with an itemized budget before each event, detailing how much it cost to put the event together.”
“Her new piece “Brujx” is part of Marx Festival: On Your Marx, and its socialist theme is the oppression of the proletariat: whether the idea of dance as labor can be transcended through a kind of primal magic.”
“‘I wanted my setting of Choral Marx to be a complicatedly multiple work that asks how Marx might reverberate now, at this political moment when we’re asking some very basic questions about world capitalism and how it is propelled by racism and nationalism.’”
“The power of Marx and his writings is the revolutionary way of seeing, giving individuals an alternate lens through which to view and dissect the seemingly inevitable progression of capitalism. His ideology became a tool—a weapon—and as with all such items, its usage depends on the hand that wields it.”
“This Brooklyn-based choreographer, originally from Uruguay, presents the premiere of “Brujx,” in which she continues her investigation of dance as a healing art by ritualizing the labor of her dancers.”
“The crazed alacrity of the young audience was morbidly fascinating. I suspected that many were students in NYU’s various performance programs, and that many had found online videos of other presentations of P Project…”
““On Your Marx”– a two week long jubilee hosted by NYU to celebrate 200 years of Marx commenced. VICE News took a look at Marxist performance art, academic panels, and whatever Slavoj Zizek was thinking four minutes ago.”
“Theatergoers of New York, unite! You have nothing to lose but your time. NYU Skirball presents a two-week festival to commemorate the bicentennial of beard-stroking communist forefather Karl Marx.”
“While the allegations against Mr. Fabre are specific, they have also raised larger questions: whether dancers, trained from an early age to obey teachers, directors and choreographers, in an environment where physical proximity is a given, find it difficult to refuse inappropriate or excessive demands.”
“How do you encompass the stories and myriad characters of Greek tragedies in a single evening of theater? You don’t. You need a full day, or so proposes the avant-garde Belgian director and choreographer Jan Fabre.”
“Belgian activists, including some who once worked with the acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Jan Fabre, have demanded New York University do more to address allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Fabre as his company prepares to perform at N.Y.U. on Saturday.”
“The choreographer John Heginbotham and the puppeteer Amy Trompetter create a world of large and tiny puppets alongside dancers to explore issues of morality. Fantastic characters, including giant babies, blue angels and heroic rats, come to life in a series of vignettes.”
“Set in motion by a suite of piano pieces by Rossini and Respighi, Heginbotham’s dancers and Trompetter’s homemade-looking puppets enact a kind of dance fable about the clash between good and evil, darkness and light.”
“The joyful finale of John Heginbotham’s “Fantasque,” set to music by Respighi, reminds the dancer Lindsey Jones of the “flowy freedom” of Isadora Duncan.”
“The word “fantasque,” originally French, is both noun (meaning fancy, fantasy) and adjective (meaning fanciful, fantastic).”
“A collaboration between choreographer John Heginbotham and puppeteer Amy Trompetter, this inventive pageant features giant babies, heroic rats and blue angels, rendered through a mix of live dancers and puppets large and small.”
“Many have attempted the genre of burlesque revue, but Briefs, I’m happy to report, is among the best — smart, irreverent, and funny, with sex appeal to spare. The company’s ability to couple awe-inspiring physical feats with comedy and choreographic panache is where it finds its success.”
“The bit was full of bone-juggling fun and the performers diving through hula hoops, escalating until it ended with one of the humans getting a mouthful of faux dog poop. Disgusting? Sure. But it was a clear sign that their talk of pushing boundaries wasn’t just for show.”
“Opening with a full ensemble number of pulsating burlesque fans and breakaway costumes, Fa’anana declared the night was going to be “a bit of butch with a f*ckload of camp.” What was promised was delivered.”
“An aesthete who elevated recitation over print, Wilde would have been quite flummoxed by Gatz, the jaw-dropping literary installation by Elevator Repair Service. This eight-hour-plus immersion—in which 13 actors read aloud every blessed word of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—is thoroughly aural, even musical.”
“Here was a show that improbably transformed the intimate relationship between a reader and a book into a joyously collective act of literary seduction, performed by a chameleon cast of 13, and it became the season’s most coveted ticket.”
“‘There is a recitation of The Great Gatsby embedded in what we do, but that is not the totality of what we do,’ said Collins. ‘In Scott as Nick, this is the story of someone becoming completely lost in a great novel. And it is a slowly emerging hallucination of the novel against a very unlikely backdrop.’”
“Mr. Rau’s taboo-challenging productions over the last decade led one publication to call him “the world’s most controversial director.” Born in Bern, Switzerland, he broke out in 2009 with “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” about the trial and execution of Romania’s Communist leader and his wife; he was sued afterward by Ceausescu’s son for using the family name.”
“For Milo Rau, making his American stage directing debut, the perversity is the point. Commissioned to create a work of children’s theater, he set out to redefine what that genre could mean — and also, it seems, to live up to his reputation as ‘the world’s most controversial director.’”
“He broke out in 2009 with “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” about the trial and execution of Romania’s Communist leader and his wife, while “La Reprise” — in which he re-enacts the murder of a gay man in Belgium — was the talk of this year’s Avignon Festival.”
“Greek tragedies may go back 2,500 years, but theater directors continue to find them extraordinarily resonant, sometimes staging them in contemporary settings or finding other ways to emphasize how pride and passion, ancient or modern, can bleed out and leave a society in ruins.”
“Swiss director Milo Rau and his pot-stirring documentary-theater troupe, the International Institute of Political Murder, turn their sniper’s eye on the story of Belgian pedophile and serial killer Marc Dutroux.”
“Pinocchio always wanted to be a real boy, and the choreographer Kyle Abraham is wondering what that even means today. In “Live! The Realest M.C.,” Abraham uses the children’s tale as a starting point to dissect gender roles and black masculinity in the context of hip-hop culture.”
“But if you’re a black American, nothing has changed. People were spitting on us and making us feel inferior for a very long time, so I don’t feel any different with the current president in office– if that’s where people try to perceive in this work.”
“’For me, it was definitely in some ways an abstracted look back at my high school experience, but more than that because identity is a big part of the work and in some ways a buzz word that people are using today for whatever reason…’”
“In it, Abraham, wearing a long skirt, played with conventions of toughness and urban attitude. Now, more than a decade later, his ideas about identity and self-presentation have deepened, unfolding in a wider spectrum of colors.”
“The ever-rising Abraham revisits his 2011 exploration of hip-hop culture, the Pinocchio story and notions of masculinity in the black community. A.I.M company member Jeremy “Jae” Neal performs the role previous played by the choreographer.”
“Petronio presents the fifth edition of “Bloodlines,” an autobiographical project that pays homage to the creators of postmodern dance and traces the choreographer’s own influences.”
“…the Judson founders Steve Paxton and Trisha Brown —“it was not about emotion. It was about motion and the rules of motion. So that separated him in a certain way, and I was very curious.””
“In the foreground, dancers, sleekly costumed by H. Petal, etch geometric patterns onto the stage in front of numerous scenes: a barren forest, an exploding bomb, a soldier walking down a street, a torn flag.”
“Later in the month, the Joyce Theater will host three different companies presenting different Cunningham works, while the Skirball Center presents In Conversation with Merce, featuring different dancers’ responses to the choreographer’s legacy.”
“Part of “In Conversation With Merce” at @nyuskirball on Friday and Saturday — Mina is one of 3 dance artists exploring their relationship to the choreographer — “Hi, Merce!” combines text with Mina’s effervescent take on Butoh, a dance form that emerged in post-World War II Japan.”
“Netta Yerushalmy explores Cunningham’s dance vocabulary. Mina Nishimura, who hails from Japan, seeks a nexus between Cunningham’s abstraction and the expressionist dance style Butoh. The wild card is Moriah Evans…”
“Just because his 100th birthday has passed — observed with the breathtaking multicity event “Night of 100 Solos” — doesn’t mean we are done celebrating Merce Cunningham or contemplating his vast legacy.”
“This presentation, curated by Rashaun Mitchell, a former company member and a trustee with the Merce Cunningham Trust, explores the theoretical, practical and experiential approaches to Cunningham’s work. Three respected choreographers take part: Moriah Evans, Mina Nishimura and Netta Yerushalmy.”
“It’s about how do you continue rather than simply stopping . . . I think one thing that in the theater you have to learn: That when you go off, you are exiting. Don’t finish what you’re doing before you’re really off.”
“NYU presents new works commissioned for the centenary. Rashaun Mitchell, who danced with Merce Cunningham’s company, curates a program that features Netta Yerushalmy, Moriah Evans and Mina Nishimura.”
“At Skirball, Mr. Wegman said, he plans to build out the theater’s international programming by taking advantage of connections N.Y.U. faculty members may have. He also wanted to see what he could do to “embrace Broadway.” “It’s this great-sized theater,” he said. “Physically, and even programmatically, it’s where uptown meets downtown.””
“This is the first season organized by the Skirball’s new director, Jay Wegman, The official start comes on Sept. 15 with a free immersive dance party masterminded by the collective AUNTS.”
“Skirball’s new season, which the center announced Friday, is accordingly ambitious, as if the Brooklyn Academy of Music had opened an outpost in Manhattan: adventurous productions of classics like “The Pirates of Penzance” and concerts with music by the downtown composers David Lang and John Zorn.”
“’We held focus groups and discovered students weren’t coming because they thought the programming was for their parents or grandparents,’ he said.”
“There’s dance that happens onstage, between the curtains and then everything else. The everything else is the realm of AUNTs, an unconventional dance platform that since 2005 has been scrambling our assumptions about how to see and experience the art form, turning performances into immersive parties.”
“Mr. Linyekula’s “In Search of Dinozord” — a politically minded fairy tale about the Congo, set to fragments of Mozart’s Requiem — will also have its American premiere as part of the festival, with a brief run at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.”
“Talking to the dancers, he briskly summarized his home country as “quite a messy place,” beset by massacres and wars that never really end, where “if 100 people die, it is not news.” In such a place, imagining any future, much less a better one, is an exercise of extreme will. “I have to fight for it,” he said. “I have to invent it.””
“Between passages of precarious movement — a skittering dance for Mr. Ebotani that ends with him collapsing to the floor; a duet in which one man arranges another’s unresponsive limbs; an electrifying solo for Mr. Kumbonyeki to Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile”…”
“It’s long been a cultural stereotype that Americans are prudes. So what better way to confront our discomfort with sex and nudity than to fill a theater with naked dancers simulating sex? In “7 Pleasures,” the Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen presents 12 dancers in what has been called a “choreographic orgy.””
“The story of the 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in which a group of armed Palestinian fighters sought refuge in the church, comes to the United States from the political theater company Freedom Theater, based in a West Bank refugee camp and focused on issues related to the Palestinian experience.”
“No matter what the laws of physics decree, there is untold and explosive energy in resistance. Or such is the evidence of “Burning Doors,” the Belarus Free Theater’s bruising exploration of the dynamics of resistance — the kind that occurs in the intersection of art and politics — at La MaMa.”
“Creative costuming is at the heart of Halloween, and who’s more of an expert than New York’s drag performers? At this Greenwich Village celebration, billed as “for kids of all genders and ages,” eight entertainers promise not only a costume party but also a performance of fairy tales whose plots and lessons have been adapted for contemporary relevance.”
“In one flickering instant you see the New York of the original Penn Station (gone in 1964), in another you ride the Third Avenue Elevated, a railway that once ran the length of Manhattan like a zipper. Hovering over streets and sidewalks, it delivered multitudes while casting dappled shadows made for beauty shots and sometimes poetry.”
“For this freewheeling theater troupe that specializes in updated classics, bringing its popular production of “The Pirates of Penzance” to New York would require more than setting up the three plastic swimming pools and functioning tiki bar on a stage that will be shared with the audience.”
“They bring to mind (shudder) the sort of determinedly fun-loving counselors you may remember from summer camp. And since it is Gilbert and Sullivan on the bill, you may be excused for dreading that imminent camp of a different and more strident kind, with arch and winking performances of an operetta that is arch and winking to begin with.”
“A soprano, the closest this opera has to a protagonist, mostly walks across intersecting white platforms, amid white lace curtains that billow as she passes. She sometimes hums softly but mostly whispers cryptic phrases and fragments of sentences. The words themselves are often unclear, especially when she wanders away from you.”
“This isn’t your typical fairy tale. Then again, these aren’t your typical actors. This show, billed as “for kids of all genders and ages,” features eight New York City drag performers, putting their own spin on the perils of Princess Aurora, with an emphasis on inclusiveness and self-acceptance.”
“The angry art of protest is flourishing these days, and its forms are as myriad as the grievances it gives voice to: marches, rallies, occupations, boycotts, black evening wear for televised awards ceremonies. Then there is the popular retro-disco-circus protest, featuring family-friendly nudity.”
“For “Gala,” the French choreographer showcases 20 New Yorkers, some professional dancers and others amateurs, ranging in age from 8 to 80. This structurally simple work, in which performers cross the stage while enacting specific actions, emphasizes, in the end, the power of movement in humorous and poignant ways.”
“Fear not: Familiarity with the novel is no prerequisite for enjoying this antic show, a madcap mash-up of live performance, prominent video and much audience participation. But, as the members of this experimental company are happy to tell you, their 105-minute devised performance is no substitute for the 1,200-page literary experience.”
“But despite their different styles, they started performing together along the tourist-filled 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Their shows aimed to touch people rather than just entertain them”
“On Saturday, they bring to New York “Love Heals All Wounds,” a vaguely narrative work that touches on police brutality and champions empathy and inclusion.”
“For the United States premiere of “Until Our Hearts Stop,” Ms. Stuart — a much-admired American choreographer who has long been based in Berlin and Brussels — returns to New York with a work for six performers and a three-piece onstage jazz band. Here, the dancers and musicians, on bass, piano and drums, explore an intimate space of desire and illusion that is heightened by their proximity.”
“The Bang on a Can All-Stars and Mr. Riley will perform his “Autodreamographical Tales,” inspired by a dream diary Mr. Riley kept in 1987; the piece flows in and out of Indian raga, New Age music and bluesy asides. The All-Stars will also perform Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together,” about the Attica prison riots.”