14 THENEWYORKER, AUGUST 26, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY MAX DALTON
This autumn, New York is bursting
with dance. Ayodele Casel, one of the
city’s preëminent tap dancers and cho-
reographers, will have her first full-eve-
ning show at the Joyce (Sept. 24-29), a
collaboration with the Latin-jazz com-
poser and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill.
(Tap is enjoying a welcome resurgence,
with women leading the way.) Casel
and four other dancers will share the
stage with O’Farrill’s band, tapping to
a range of music styles, from rumba to
bomba (a thrillingly percussive style
from Puerto Rico) and, of course, Latin
jazz. “It’s a family affair,” Casel says,
“rooted in the need to communicate
everything human.”
The most recognizable element in
Merce Cunningham’s “Summerspace,”
from 1958, is its design. A Pointillist
backdrop, by Robert Rauschenberg,
glows with yellow, orange, red, blue, pur-
ple, and green dots; the dancers’ unitards
are painted to match. This early Cun-
ningham work is full of clean, pellucid
shapes that make it easier to grasp than
some of his later, more densely packed
compositions. It’s also very beautiful, like
watching a colony of gazelles frolic in
a field of flowers. New York City Ballet,
which first performed the piece in 1966,
brings it back as part of its fall season
(Sept. 17-Oct. 13, at the David H. Koch
Theatre).
Also returning is Shantala Shiva
lingappa, who last appeared in New
York three years ago. Shivalingappa
is a master of the quicksilver, lilting
southern-Indian classical-dance form
Kuchipudi, but she has also appeared in
the works of several contemporary cho-
reographers, including Pina Bausch, and
theatre directors, such as Peter Brook.
She brings this varied background to
her dancing, which is pure, light, and
animated from within. At the Joyce
(Oct. 8-12), she performs a solo evening
called “Akasha,” which means “sky” or
“space” in Sanskrit, accompanied on-
stage by four excellent musicians.
Most shows at the Shed, the new, ex-
pandable performance space at Hudson
Yards, are mashups of various artistic
genres, but this season the smaller Griffin
Theatre will offer something rather more
straightforward: an evening of dances by
the contemporary choreographer William
Forsythe. The intimacy of the venue is
essential to the mood of the program
(Oct. 11-25), titled “A Quiet Evening of
Dance.” Two of the works are performed
in silence or with minimal accompani-
ment; all of them reflect Forsythe’s life-
long exploration of the geometries of
ballet and the mechanics of the human
body. There’s absolutely nothing flashy
about it—and that’s just fine.
—Marina HarssDANCE
FALL PREVIEW
Latin-Jazz Tap, Kuchipudi, Quietude
1
DANCE
SummerStage /Wendy Whelan
Rumsey Playfield, Central Park
The 2017 film “Restless Creature: Wendy
Whelan” is an affecting portrait of the former
New York City Ballet star as she reinvents her-
self in middle age; she comes across as an ap-
pealing blend of humble, frank, self-doubting,
and brave. This free SummerStage screening is
preceded by a taste of the kind of projects she
does now (in addition to serving as the asso-
ciate artistic director of City Ballet). Whelan
performs a work-in-progress excerpt of a new,
topical take on Saint-Saëns’s “Carnival of the
Animals,” with choreography by Francesca
Harper and spoken word by the writer and
dancer Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who riffs on the
migration of monarch butterflies to make points
about human refugees.—Brian Seibert (Aug. 21.)Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
Becket, Mass.
OUT OF TOWN When Boston Ballet premièred
William Forsythe’s “Playlist (EP),” in March,
it was big news—the piece was the controver-
sial choreographer’s first work for an Ameri-
can ballet company in almost thirty years. It
turned out to be conservative: classical-style
variations set to a mixtape of current and retro
pop hits. Now excerpted for the troupe’s pro-
gram at the Ted Shawn Theatre, alongside
drearier fare by Leonid Yakobson and Jorma
Elo, it’s mild fun that makes the company
look good. At the Doris Duke, Urban Bush
Women braves much deeper music, nothing
less than John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”
In their 2015 work “Walking with ’Trane,”
they dance, semi-improvisationally, to two
Coltrane-inspired scores (one played live by
the excellent pianist George Caldwell), reach-
ing for his spiritual heights.—B.S. (Aug. 21-25.)“The Hudson Eye”
Basilica Hudson
OUT OF TOWN Of the recent wave of artists setting
up shop in Hudson, New York, the choreogra-
pher Jonah Bokaer arrived on the early side.
Now he’s celebrating ten years there with a ten-
day festival. The events around town encompass
much more than dance—art exhibitions, music
performances, “hot topic” panel discussions,
films by Marina Abramović—but the dance
offerings are especially plentiful, includingMilton Suggs Quintet
Dizzy’s Club
The questing spirit of the sixties carried into
the 1970 album “That Healin’ Feelin’: The
United States of Mind Phase I,” the first of
a trilogy by the pianist, composer—and, for
this project, lyricist—Horace Silver. Here,
the vocalist Milton Suggs takes on the series’
funky vibe of love, peace, and mindfulness,
presumably with all contemporary irony left
at the door. If he avoids Silver’s more didac-
tic ruminations on, say, diet and exercise, the
positive message and incessant groove of the
music will win out.—S.F. (Aug. 26.)