THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019 7
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRIET LEE-MERRION
When a major ballet dancer dabbles in other forms, it’s often to extend
a career past the usual retirement age. Or it’s a vanity project in which
the dancer’s poor decisions betray a cloistered sensibility. But Sara
Mearns isn’t following either script. Still in her prime at New York City
Ballet, she moonlights in styles as disparate as those of Isadora Duncan,
Merce Cunningham, and nineteen-forties musical theatre. Her choices
are generally smart; her absorption in new challenges, illuminating. In
her program at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, in Becket, Massa-
chusetts, Aug. 14-18, an odd-couple duet with the German-Korean
hip-hop dancer Honji Wang is cross-genre cute, but a project with the
ultra-subtle postmodern choreographer Jodi Melnick, extended here in
a new duet, is an artistic exchange from which both sides gain. What
won’t Mearns try? Maybe Martha Graham, whose company is at the
Pillow the same week? No—there’s a reconstructed Graham solo on
Mearns’s program, too.—Brian Seibert
INTHEBERKSHIRES
1
DANCE
Ballet Festival
Joyce Theatre
In the dog days of summer, when most New
York theatres are dark, the Joyce holds a fes-
tival of ballet. The two-week series comprises
four programs, each curated by a different
figure affiliated with London’s Royal Ballet.
Ed Watson, the company’s lanky star, asso-
ciated with dramatic roles and the stretchy
aesthetic of Wayne McGregor, is responsible
for a program that includes both “Cristaux,”
by Arthur Pita, and “Qualia,” by McGregor.
For the other program this week, the designer
Jean-Marc Puissant has selected a ballet by
the British-born choreographer-on-the-rise
Gemma Bond, and an older work, Maurice
Béjart’s male duet “Song of a Wayfarer,” set
to Mahler songs and performed by David
Hallberg, of American Ballet Theatre, and
Joseph Gordon, of New York City Ballet.
It’s a rare opportunity to see Béjart in New
York.—Marina Harss (Aug. 13-18.)
Battery Dance Festival
Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Park
The strengths of this free annual showcase
are harbor views and international variety. As
usual, the closing events include an all-Indian
program on Indian Independence Day (Aug.
to the evil Duke of Monroth (Tam Mutu),
whose lucre Zidler needs in order to keep the
lights on and the absinthe flowing. Tveit’s
Christian is adorable, the Duke louche and
slinky, but we are here for the music—hits
from Elton John to Beyoncé and Lady Gaga
that roll through the audience in wave after
wave of dopamine—and for the glorious glitz:
arrive early to see the actors begin to appear in
their corsets and codpieces on Derek McLane’s
appropriately maximalist set.—A.S. (8/5 &
12/19) (Open run.)
Native Son
The Duke on 42nd Street
How does one adapt Richard Wright’s classic
novel for the stage? Bigger Thomas, the young
black protagonist, presents a particular prob-
lem: as his rap sheet lengthens, the book re-
veals his broad gamut of conflicting emotions
and shifting moods and his stubborn impeni-
tence for his criminal actions in third-person
narration. The Acting Company’s stage adap-
tation, by Nambi E. Kelley, directed by Seret
Scott, attempts a solution in the form of a
new character, the Black Rat (Jason Bowen), a
tipped-hat, deep-voiced, film-noir rendering of
Bigger’s interiority. Galen Ryan Kane’s Bigger
lacks the dynamism of the book’s character,
informed by Wright’s musings on racial and
social consciousness, and the production veers
between being too on the nose in its racial iro-
nies and too stylized in its drama. A mixed-up
chronology and whiplash-fast scene changes,
with the help of verbal cues—repeated words,
echoed reactions—enliven the plot, but what’s
lost is Wright’s hard edge and bite.—M.P.
(Through Aug. 24.)
Rinse, Repeat
Pershing Square Signature Center
Eating disorders—and the stigma around
them—are the topic of this play, about the awk-
ward homecoming of a college student from a
rehabilitation center, after she nearly died from
anorexia, and her family’s varied reactions to
her return. The playwright, Domenica Feraud,
takes the lead role, but the characters are under-
developed, and the direction, by Kate Hop-
kins, is obvious and stiff. The opportunity for
a nuanced take on these illnesses breaks down
along gender lines: the women are the ones
with disordered eating habits, while the men
are willfully ignorant and occasionally cruel on
the subject. The line reads, too, are often hollow,
including in a grating blowout scene near the
end, with several minutes of barked dialogue.
The setting, in an orderly sitcom-ready kitchen
that many New Yorkers would envy (designed
by Brittany Vasta), is apt, but it also harks back
to the play’s “very special episode” styling
from decades past.—M.P. (Through Aug. 17.)
15), this one distinguished by dancers and
drummers from Manipur, led by the scholar
Darshana Jhaveri. Other events—outdoors,
at Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Park, and indoors,
at the Schimmel Center—feature the U.S.
débuts of Reuel Rogers, from Curaçao, and
SEAD’s Bodhi Project, from Austria.—Brian
Seibert (Aug. 14-17.)
The Clark Center Tribute
Marcus Garvey Park
In 1959, Alvin Ailey helped turn a Y.W.C.A.
into the Clark Center, a crucial home for
dancers and choreographers of all back-
grounds. The organization has now been de-
funct for as many years as it was in action—
thirty—but it’s still remembered lovingly.
This free SummerStage sixtieth-anniversary
tribute boasts appearances by Philadanco!,
Dyane Harvey, and the Ailey veteran Hope
Clarke, in addition to new works by too-
young-to-remember inheritors of Clark Cen-
ter spirit, such as Amy Hall Garner.—B.S.
(Aug. 15.)
