A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Martha’s picks:
If you missed Juliana May (“Adult Documentary”), Jen Rosenblit (“Clap Hands”), or Paul Lazar (“Cage Shuffle”) at American Realness last week, you can catch all of them this week, too. But add to your Realness list Big Dance Theater’s other work in process “17C,” an ensemble work based on the diaries of Samuel Pepys, but hearing other voices – the women in his life – to make current sense of a fabled history maker.
There are two top-notch “festivals in a box” for those who want their APAP week to end with a bang. The frenzy and mash-up of CATCH wraps up PS122’s COIL Festival with a “night of performance mayhem” in “COIL’d Again,” bringing a slew of new, edgy artists to the crunch of a single evening at the Invisible Dog Arts Center in Brooklyn on January 15, and the first 2017 free evening of Movement Research at the Judson Church happens on January 9. This periodic event brings several daring artists to showcase their works-in-process. The Jan. 9 lineup is especially compelling: Michelle Boulé, Ursula Eagly, Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug, Abigail Levine and Cleek Schrey.
Leigh adds:
Once upon a time, New York City Ballet was the place to see new work. In our era, probably the best new ballet at the company bowed more than a decade ago: Alexei Ratmansky’s “Russian Seasons.” The fans have adapted by watching the great dancers instead. You should too. Next week, when the company opens its winter season, Wednesday the 18th looks like a best bet: an all-Balanchine program of “Allegro Brillante,” his one-act “Swan Lake” and 1946’s modernist masterpiece “The Four Temperaments” with three of the company’s top ballerinas, Ashley Bouder, Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck, presiding.
