10 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER18, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY NHUNG LÊ
“Trio A,” a short excerpt from a dance that Yvonne Rainer choreo-
graphed in 1966, has become not only Rainer’s most famous work but
the most prominent emblem of all the game-changing approaches of
nineteen-sixties postmodern dance. It’s still often performed, written
about, and studied in museums and universities. Yet “Parts of Some
Sextets,” a work that Rainer created the previous year—and which hasn’t
been performed since—may have been as significant in her development.
In an essay about the piece, Rainer offered her soon to be infamous list
of the theatrical conventions she was rejecting: “No to spectacle,” “No
to virtuosity,” and so on. The work involved ten performers, twelve mat-
tresses, and thirty-one mostly ordinary-looking activities, arranged and
timed so that something changed every thirty seconds. Now, working
from photographs and five-eighths of the recently rediscovered score,
Rainer and Emily Coates have reconstructed the dance for Performa- At the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, Nov. 15-17, some parts of
dance history return.—Brian Seibert
POSTMODERNDANCE
1
DANCE
Paul Taylor
David H. Koch
In its final week at Lincoln Center, Paul Taylor
American Modern Dance performs a varied
selection of works drawn from Taylor’s long
career. The earliest pieces, “Post Meridian”
(1965) and “Private Domain” (1969), haven’t
been seen in years. Both have designs by the
American painter Alex Katz, and both reflect
Taylor’s time as a dancer with Martha Graham,
particularly in their psychological hue. “Private
Domain” is Taylor’s exploration of the dark
side of the human psyche, a theme he returned
to regularly through the years. For a lighter
side of Taylor, there is “Airs” or “Company
B” (though that one, too, has its shadows), as
well as the most joyous Taylor dance of them
all, “Esplanade.”—Marina Harss (Nov. 12-17.)Kate Wallich + the YC
Joyce Theatre
Outside of her base in Seattle, Kate Wallich
is probably best known for Dance Church, an
inclusive workout class that has spread across
the country. For the Joyce Theatre début of
her company, the YC, she brings something
similarly permissive but sexier, at least in a
camp sense. “The Sun Still Burns Here” is a
thoroughgoing collaboration with the art-pop
musician Perfume Genius, who not only sings
his brooding songs but co-directs and dances,
too, ending up in an erotic tangle with Wallich.
Amid silk and velvet drapery, all the dancers
touch and writhe, doing something like Pina
Bausch reimagined by Paula Abdul.—Brian
Seibert (Nov. 13-17.)Colin Dunne/“Concert”
Baryshnikov Arts Center
The Irish fiddler Tommy Potts, who died in
1988, is something of a cult figure—a tradi-
tionalist who broke with tradition, a virtuoso
who hated performing in public. In this one-
man show, the Irish step dancer Colin Dunne
engages with Potts’s famously undanceable
music—as captured in the album “The Liffey
Banks”—lacing his own rhythmic dance pat-
terns around Potts’s mercurial melodies. Both
Potts and Dunne are inspired improvisers,
with an open, searching approach to their in-
struments—in Potts’s case the fiddle, and in
Dunne’s his exceptionally agile, rhythmically
attuned feet.—M.H. (Nov. 14-16.)It’s Showtime NYC!
Abrons Arts Center
The name of this company of skilled street
dancers is the answer to a question: “What
time is it?” Usually, that question and an-
swer come as an announcement before a
performance in a subway car or a similarly
contested space, but this group is committedand finesse on the podium, took over the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in 2010. The
Italian music director and his Windy City
players blow through New York for a two-
day stint at Carnegie Hall. They conjure
the Eternal City with the exuberance and
drama of Bizet’s “Roma” and Respighi’s
“Pines of Rome,” and the mezzo-soprano
Joyce DiDonato joins them for Berlioz’s “La
Mort de Cléopâtre,” a powerful death scene
worthy of the Egyptian queen. The second
night’s program returns to Italy—Verona
this time—with selections from Prokofiev’s
stunning “Romeo and Juliet,” plus the com-
poser’s Symphony No. 3.—Oussama Zahr
(Nov. 15-16 at 8.)
“Tristan und Isolde,” Act II
David Geffen Hall
The centerpiece of Wagner’s “Tristan und
Isolde,” an opera that takes both romance and
Western tonality to extremes, is the surging
love scene in Act II. A clandestine rendez-
vous under the cover of night, it builds to an
impassioned, almost frenzied climax and takes
more than thirty minutes—and vocal cords of
steel—to perform. Gianandrea Noseda con-
ducts the National Symphony Orchestra and
an excellent cast, led by Christine Goerke and
Stephen Gould as the titular lovers, in a concert
performance of the full act for Lincoln Center’s
White Light Festival.—O.Z. (Nov. 17 at 3.)“Lux”
Church of the Intercession
For this week’s installment of the “Crypt Ses-
sions,” the pianist Matan Porat plays from his
2018 album, “Lux,” which takes light—glimmer-
ing, glaring, or absent—as its theme. It’s a play-
list that emphasizes devotional concept over
aural cohesion, but there’s plenty to enjoy in this
musical book of hours. The first of Schumann’s
“Songs of the Dawn” beams across an awak-
ening landscape that reappears, hazy with af-
ternoon heat, in a transcription of Debussy’s
“Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune.” Duskyworks by Liszt and Adès lead to the inevitable
finale: the first movement of Beethoven’s So-
nata No. 14, “Moonlight.”—F.M. (Nov. 19 at 8.)