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2024
NOVEMBER
cont. through December 7 CROSSING THE LINE 2024 Annual festival focusing on francophone visual, film, performance work. A few people whose work I know and recommend (DD Dorvillier, Jérôme Bel, Steve Cosson) and a lot of work by people I don't know of. Which is why this festival is so great.
Presented by l'alliance NY/French Institute NYC
cont. EDGES OF AILEY Whitney Museum Curated by Adrienne Edwards, who spent 6 years putting together a broad and inclusive survey/extension of choreographer Alvin Ailey's work and enormous influence on dance and culture.
cont. through Dec. 22 GIVE ME CARMELITA TROPICANA! Alina Troyano (aka Carmelita) and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Directed by Eric Ting. The final season at Soho Rep Walkerspace before they move to other venues! The very inventive and physical actor/performers flanking Carmelita's story are amazing, portraying Branden J-J and various images from her phantasmagoria. The story is all over the place and beautifully honors the rough and chaotic world of performance art in the 1980's-90's. A bit overlong and wandering but...
1-Dec 1 GATZ Elevator Repair Service revives their 8-hour piece (with dinner break!) reading/performing the entire GREAT GATSBY. They are an amazing company and can actually handle something like this. Public Theater
2 THE FUTURE IS... Danspace screens short videos responding to that prompt.
14-Feb 17 CEREMONIES OUT OF THE AIR: RALPH LEMON. McArthur award winning choreographer, visual artist, installation and conceptual artist. PS1
14-24 SEX VARIANTS OF 1941-A STUDY OF HOMOSEXUAL PATTERNS. New (1 hour!) show by The Civilians with some great cast members and contributing musicians. Skirball.
16 CATCH 76 throwing a collection of performance and music work. The Invisible Dog. Organized by Andrew Dinwiddie, Caleb Hammons, Jeff Larson, Matt Romein, and Eric Shethar. 7PM
17-Feb 17 FLIGHT INTO EGYPT; BLACK ARTISTS AND ANCIENT EGYPT 1876-NOW featuring performances and installations by Kaneza Schaal, Kamau Anu Patton, Clifford Owens, Rashid Johnson and others.
22-24 SALON LUTE Douglas Dunn and Christopher Williams. An evening of new dances, poetry, and song featuring music for Baroque lute and theorbo by French composers Denis Gaultier (c. 1597 or 1602/3 – 1672) and Robert de Visée (c. 1655 – 1732/1733), among others, performed live by acclaimed lutenist/theorbist Dušan Balarin. The event also features recitation of original poetry by Alison Granucci, video by Jacob Burckhardt, décor by Mimi Gross, lighting by Leo Janks, as well as the talents of soprano Paulina Francisco and dancers Christiana Axelsen, Alexandra Berger, Cemiyon Barber, Janet Charleston, Maxfield Haynes, Justin Lynch, Logan Pedon, Emily Pope, Deniz Erkan Sancak, and Jin Ju Song-Begin. Douglas Dunn Studio, 541 Broadway. Tickets via Eventbrite
DECEMBER
cont. through Dec. 22 GIVE ME CARMELITA TROPICANA! Alina Troyano (aka Carmelita) and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Directed by Eric Ting. The final season at Soho Rep Walkerspace before they move to other venues! The very inventive and physical actor/performers flanking Carmelita's story are amazing, portraying Branden J-J and various images from her phantasmagoria. The story is all over the place and beautifully honors the rough and chaotic world of performance art in the 1980's-90's. A bit overlong and wandering but...
(cont. through Feb 17 FLIGHT INTO EGYPT; BLACK ARTISTS AND ANCIENT EGYPT 1876-NOW featuring performances and installations by Kaneza Schaal, Kamau Anu Patton, Clifford Owens, Rashid Johnson and others. Metropolitan Museum of Art
cont. through Feb 17 CEREMONIES OUT OF THE AIR: RALPH LEMON. McArthur award winning choreographer, visual artist, installation and conceptual artist. PS1
2. FIRST MONDAYS free reading series organized by Sarah Schulman. Robert Reid Pharr, Lynne Tillman read, with a remembrance of Gary Indiana who was scheduled to be part of this event, but died in October. 7pm Performance Space NY
3-14 DEAR LORD, MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL. KYLE ABRAHAM Park Avenue Armory
5-7 NO PRESIDENT new work by Nature Theater of Oklahoma. NYU Skirball. "a wild, tightly choreographed political grotesque, set to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker." It seems like they've been away from NY for far too long. Nature Theater can take any material and make it into an utterly unique spectacle.
13 TROUBLE Big Art Group shows work from their residency at Culture Hub NYC. Their use of media and live performance has always been anarchic, inventive and glitchy. Trouble merges Big Art Group’s radical queer and technological strategies with the “troubled” potential of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and hyper-materiality. In the project, the company has built a failure machine employing glitch, AI hallucinations, and model collapse to enact speculative futures." 7pm Free but rsvp 47 Great Jones St. 3rd Fl.
16 Looking at the History of the Danspace Project on their 50th Anniversary 6 pm, Library for the Performing Arts celebrates the seminal and iconic dance presenting organization with a discussion on archival footage featuring Danspace's co-founders, Barbara Dilley and Mary Overlie, and footage of the Natural History of the American Dancer, the performers who ignited the organization’s history. This panel will feature Cynthia Hedstrom, Wendy Perron, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Carol Mullins in conversation.
24-25 DAN FISHBACK IS ALIVE, UNWELL, AND LIVING IN HIS APARTMENT new musical work by the incredibly talented Dan Fishback. 1pm show (no food or beverage service) at Joe's Pub.
2025
JANUARY
4-19 UNDER THE RADAR multiple acts from many places. Now relocated all over the city since the Public Theater dropped this essential festival of new international works.
8-18 LIVE ARTERY one of the many booking conference related showcases, this one produced by New York Live Arts and multiple other venues/producers "fully produced productions onsite at Live Arts and co-presentations with partner Under the Radar, off-site performances with Triskelion Arts, Danspace Project, CPR – Center for Performance Research, and Kelly Strayhorn Theater, and offer 10 showings and an artist salon.
9-19 THE SEARCH FOR POWER created/performed by Tania El Khoury with Ziad Abu Rish. Invisible Dog Her installation last year at ID, Cultural Exchange Rate, was a fascinating exploration of personal history, brilliantly conceived and installed/performed.
9-26 SHOW/BOAT: A RIVER. "re-imagines this classic American story as a play with music, asking how we can rebuild our nation, from the ugly heart of 1880s Jim Crow to the vibrant challenges of 2025" Target Margin Theater. NYUSkirball
20 ENDSIEG: THE SECOND COMING Elfreide Jelinek's response to and coinciding with the 2nd coronation of Donald Trump. Broadcast in multiple languages via Howlaround from Martin E. Segal Center/CUNY
1-4pmEST Directed by Milo Rau. Translated by Gitta Honegger.
FEBRUARY
3 FIRST MONDAYS reading series at PSNY. Brenda Shaughnessy, Natasha Trethewey
8 COFFEEHOUSE CHRONICLES #178-DANCNOISE "an educational performance series exploring the history of Off-Off-Broadway. Part artist-portrait, part history lesson, and part community forum, Coffeehouse Chronicles take an intimate look at the development of downtown theatre, from the 1960s’ “Coffeehouse Theatres” through today." This one focuses on Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton and their duo Dancnoise. Guests Ishmael Houston-Jones, Cynthia Carr, Carmelita Tropicana and more! La Mama 3-5pm
9 MARATHON READING OF THE CANCER JOURNALS BY AUDRE LORDE. organized by Sarah Schulman and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. 1pm Performance Space NY/PSNY Free w/ RSVP
14 STEVE PAXTON-A VIDEO AMBLE Danspace 6:30pm Organized/hosted by Cathy Weis, Lisa Nelson
27-March 1. OO-GA-LA REIMAGNINED (The Fred Holland/Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet danced into the 21st century) Danspace 7:30pm. Ishmael writes: “In 1983 at the Danspace Project festival Contact at 10th and 2nd which celebrated the 11th year that Steve Paxton named the form Contact Improvisation, Fred Holland and I were invited to perform a duet on the Partners Program along with Steve and Nancy Stark Smith and others. Fred and I, who considered ourselves to be the Black Punks of Contact, decided to do our C.I. duet by doing everything wrong. We rehearsed in East Village bars like the Pyramid Club on Avenue A after midnight and were given a cassette tape of sound loops from Kung Fu movies compiled by composer Mark Larson. But it was Fred who named the first ‘wrong’ item in our unpublished score when he said, ‘We are Black.’ We were one of very few people of color included in the festival or inhabiting the C.I. milieu at all. The videos of the two performances of OO-GA-LA by Cathy Weis and Lisa Nelson were largely unseen after the festival until found by Karen Nelson in the early 2000s. I’ve chosen to give the Wrong Contact Score to three AFAB dancers of color who are extraordinary performers, highly skilled improvisors, and innovative DJs to Queer this duet from 40 years and bring it to a new generation.”
MARCH
12-13 WEILL BOY/BRECHT GIRL/EISLER MAN John Kelly "with music director and pianist Mila Henry. Includes the music of Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, and Hans Eisler, among other 20th century art songs. Missives from a Divine Promiscue, songs for a new reality." Joe's Pub
APRIL