A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Leigh says:
Sometimes the point of a goodbye is to make things official. Since heading to Broadway two years ago to star in “An American in Paris,” Robert Fairchild hasn’t been around Lincoln Center much anymore. Apart from a few appearances at New York City Ballet, he’s been in London, first starring in the West End production of AAIP and then “Oklahoma.” Upcoming projects include “Brigadoon” and his commercial theater choreographic debut in “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”
Perhaps ballet was the real detour. Fairchild started his training in Salt Lake City on the tap/jazz/competition circuit, and his most memorable roles at NYCB, such as “Who Cares,” were the ones that called for that loose showbiz style. His final performances will be in “Duo Concertant” at both weekend matinees with Sterling Hyltin, a dancer with whom he has a special onstage chemistry. We’ll miss his charisma at Lincoln Center, but chances are we’ll be seeing even more of him elsewhere.
Martha says:
Rebecca Davis is not in a hurry. Her work wends with deep deliberation, each tiny shift taking on weight and gravity. In the world premiere of “the final hands count beginning sounds” at the Chocolate Factory, Davis’s small troupe of women form perfect lines and shapes, create geometries and layered body sculptures, and seem to breathe with the same breath. A simple premise – combinations of standing, kneeling, sitting, and lying prone and supine – creates an infinity. Davis’s work demands centered attention, and makes it worth your while to leave behind the merely mundane, and get a glimpse of the profound. Opens on Wednesday, October 11 at 8:00 pm.
Israel has produced extraordinary, far-reaching dance artists, and the American Dance Festival is presenting another powerful young Israeli company, Yossi Berg & Oded Graf Dance Theatre at New York Live Arts for two nights in their New York premiere of “Come Jump with Me.” The work is about the energy and immediacy of art, in the context of a country whose political reality is explosive – though Israel is their context, the message seems increasingly relevant to this country as well. Fast, hard, funny, and powerful, their work pushes hard, just as it should. Opens on Friday, October 13 at 7:30 pm.
Cover: Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild in “Duo Concertant.” Photo © Paul Kolnik.
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