A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Martha says:
One of New York’s most internationally diverse dance festivals is the Battery Dance Festival, held annually in August, and presented outdoors at Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park in Battery Park City. Each night of the week-long event (August 11-18,) a different line-up appears in short pieces or excerpts of longer works. This year, companies come from Macedonia (Skopje Dance Theater), Kazakshstan (Damir Tasmagambetov), and Botswana (Mophato Dance Theatre), among many international offerings. On Wednesday night, the festival will highlight kathak – a Northern Indian form of classical dance.
Battery Dance will perform on three nights, including the festival’s opening evening. Framed against the New York Harbor at dusk, this free event is magical even before the dancing begins. A screening of “Moving Stories,” about the international dance education that is central to the work of the company, will open the festival on Saturday August 11 at 8 pm. The festival’s live dance performances open on Sunday August 12 at 7 pm.
[Leigh adds]
Douglas Dunn’s work has a fresh, pastoral look that often makes it seem is if it’s happening out of doors, so en plein air Tuesday night could be a perfect setting. Wednesday’s kathak night is curated by Battery Dance’s AD Jonathan Hollander and Rajika Puri, the inimitable mistress of New York’s Indian dance community. Puri will narrate the evening as well.
Mophato Dance Theatre’s “Pula” was the hit of the festival last year. Pula means rain, something so important it’s the motto of the country, and even its currency unit. The show was a dizzying mix of non-stop African dance, but done by a group of all ages, shapes and sizes that made you feel as if a slice of the country had come here to show itself to you. If you miss it downtown, it will have a limited Broadway run August 22-23.
Pro tip for the festival: bring a hat and sunscreen, there is very limited shade and if it’s hot and sunny, you will broil that first hour until the sun sets. But the stunning view will stay with you long after the dances end.
Netta Yerushalmy premieres “Paramodernities,” a work of scholarship, dance history, and choreographic exploration. Starting Wednesday she will present six performances inspired by the work of six seminal 20th century modern choreographers: Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey – and Bob Fosse. The work, co-commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow, will premiere at the Pillow’s Doris Duke Theater.
Yerushalmy has engaged nineteen top dancers in these works, the resulting offerings deconstruct iconic dance in a way that is both hommage and engagement. Five performances will focus a trio of choreographers, and one program (August 11 at 1 pm) will look at all six. In each offering, the dancers work along with scholars who contextualize the work, as ideas and movement intertwine. Yerushalmy is not one to shy away from a challenge – and her rigorous investigations promise to be both illuminating and provocative. The work opens on August 8 at 8:15 pm with Graham, Cunningham and Fosse.
Cover: Courtesy of the Battery Dance Festival
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