A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Martha says:
River to River is back! This free festival of dance and performance sponsored each summer by LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) will be strung across Lower Manhattan and Governors Island. The works are often created or reworked to take best advantage of the surroundings on water, amidst sky scrapers, in hidden courtyards, or on Governors Island. Among many noteworthy offerings this year, three of contemporary dance’s best female choreographers will perform work. Jodi Melnick, an intricate artist whose work exudes delicacy, but is undergirded with invisible steel, presents “Moat,” an installation/performance created with visual artist John Monti at Fort Jay on Governors Island. Forceful Beth Gill shows her “Catacomb” at the classical Federal Hall. Faye Driscoll’s “Play” is the second installation of the mesmerizing “Thank You for Coming.” Her collaborators will perform on the corner of Broad and Wall Streets.
There are several larger scale collaborations offered at R2R as well. Among them, the festival opens with The Dance Cartel presenting “R2R Living Rooms” featuring DJ Average Joe and rotating artists. And Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey present the culmination of a five-year collaboration with several master artists of other dance traditions from classical Burmese to French Baroque, to offer “THE SET UP: ISLAND GHOST SLEEP PRINCESS TIME STORY SHOW.” This will be offered over two weekends on and around Governors Island. It’s also free, but reservations are required.
If you’re in New York City for these couple of weeks, wander downtown and see what happens. The R2R Festival runs from June 14-25.
Sally Silvers is such a smart choreographer. Her dance movement is impeccable (the loyalty of dancers like Dylan Crossman, Melissa Toogood, and Alicia Ohs – among many others – are proof), but each piece is also complicated with human interaction, story, and image. Her new work, “Tenderizer” at DANCEROULETTE, interlinks three dances that push, pull, interrupt and illuminate each other. Opens on June 15 at 8 pm.
When artists like Jane Comfort and Ishmael Houston-Jones show up in a cast as as guests at “The Reception” by Sebastián Calderón Bentin and Sean Donovan, that’s a party I want to attend. The show-as-shindig has been an artistic cauldron for theater and dance for centuries: the mix of characters, drinks, and circumstance fermenting in a closed petri dish of human interaction. Join the premiere of Bentin and Donovan’s “The Reception” at HERE. Opens June 14 at 8 pm.
Cover: Sean Donovan, Paul Singh, Brandon Washington, Alicia Ohs and Laurel Snyder in “PLAY.” Photo © Whitney Brewer.
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