THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019 11
ILLUSTRATION BY DIANA EJAITA
In 2008, the choreographer Bill T. Jones directed a Broadway musical
about the Nigerian singer, performer, and activist Fela Kuti. It became
a hit, and with good reason: the late Kuti’s music and performance style
were infectious, defiant, and sexy, as was Jones’s choreography, which won
a Tony. The spirit of Fela returns at SummerStage, on July 31, at Central
Park’s Rumsey Playfield, in a concert version of the show, with a suite of
Fela’s rollicking, blues-and-funk-infused songs. Though Jones isn’t directly
involved, “Fela! The Concert” nevertheless includes dancing, an essential
part of the Fela experience. The cast, led by Duain Richmond, is backed
by a ten-piece band.—Marina Harss
INTHEPARK
1
DANCE
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
Becket, Mass.
OUT OF TOWN The intimate Doris Duke Theatre
hosts an intriguing première, July 31-Aug. 4: a
collaboration between the former New York City
Ballet star Wendy Whelan (now deputy director
of the company), the high priestess of minimal-
ist dance, Lucinda Childs, and the cellist Maya
Beiser. Together they have created “The Day,” a
duet for Whelan and Beiser that explores themes
of life, memory, and the transcendence of the
soul, with music by David Lang. Meanwhile,
the powerful dancers of Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M
company perform at the Ted Shawn Theatre,
in a program that includes a new solo, “INDY,”
for Abraham, and an all-woman trio by Andrea
Miller, set to a cool electronic groove by Reggie
Wilkins. Miller’s own company, Gallim, takes
over the Ted Shawn the following week, Aug.
7-11, with a program that showcases Miller’s
visceral, physically extreme movement language.
At the Doris Duke Aug. 7-11, the Canadian com-
pany Red Sky Performance, which specializes in
works that reimagine indigenous dance, music,
and legend, makes its festival début.—Marina
Harss (Through Aug. 25.)
“Blak Whyte Gray”
Gerald W. Lynch Theatre
This production, by the East London hip-hop
company Boy Blue, was a hit at last year’s White
Light Festival; it returns to Lincoln Center as
part of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Its three
parts move from oppression to freedom—from
robotlike people suffering inwardly to the
fashioning of a comic-book hero and an ances-
tor-summoning dance party. Some of the effects
are clichéd and hokey, but the dancing is excep-
tionally exact and much of the choreography is
innovative; the whole thing has a cumulative
force that’s huge.—Brian Seibert (Aug. 1-3.)
Out of Doors
Lincoln Center
On Aug. 2, the free festival in Damrosch Park
offers what should be a knockout program.
By itself, a screening of “Liza with a ‘Z,’” the
1972 Liza Minnelli concert film directed by
Bob Fosse, would already be a winner: it’s de-
lightfully, absurdly of its time (the year of the
Fosse-Minnelli “Cabaret” movie) and yet en-
tirely one of a kind. That crazy energy is hard to
match, but, if anyone can do it, it’s Caleb Teicher
& Company, performing live. This youthful
troupe adroitly mixes tap and Lindy Hop, jazz
and beatboxing, old-school technique and a con-
temporary sensibility. On Aug. 7, the flamenco
dancer Jesús Carmona, Liza-flamboyant in his
own style, presents his piece “Amatour,” with
live accompaniment.—B.S. (Aug. 2 and Aug. 7.)
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 associated with London’s Royal Ballet.
Kevin O’Hare, the company’s director, has
chosen a predictable medley of excerpts by
British choreographers, including Frederick
Ashton, Christopher Wheeldon, and Wayne
McGregor. Lauren Cuthbertson, a leading
ballerina with the troupe, has selected all new
works, with one by the British-born American
Ballet Theatre dancer and choreographer-on-
the-rise Gemma Bond. The designer Jean-
Marc Puissant also includes a ballet by Bond.
The lanky star Edward Watson has chosen
perhaps the most unusual piece, Maurice
Béjart’s male duet “Song of a Wayfarer,” set
to Mahler songs and performed by David
Hallberg, of A.B.T., and Joseph Gordon, of
New York City Ballet.—M.H. (Aug. 6-11 and
Aug. 13-18.)
“Under Siege”
David H. Koch
The ancient battles that led to the found-
ing of the Han dynasty are an oft-told tale.
This version, by the Chinese choreographer
Yang Liping, presented by the Mostly Mo-
zart Festival, is a visually spectacular one,
designed by Tim Yip, of “Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon” fame. From the start, a
forest canopy of scissors hangs over the
stage, ominous and mobile; the climactic
string-quartet piece “Anea Crystal,” and Thomas
Adès’s orchestral “Asyla” is cosmically gargan-
tuan. But Oliver Knussen’s Brittenesque “Whit-
man Settings,” in which a singer recalls how she
“look’d up in perfect silence at the stars,” keeps
us on Earth.—F.M. (Aug. 8-12, various times.)
dell’Arte Opera Festival
La MaMa
With a festival season devoted entirely to fe-
male composers, the dell’Arte Opera Ensemble
foregrounds the women who have guided opera
as an art form since its beginning and who were
often also performers and teachers. The honor
of opening such a survey goes, by rights, to the
soprano and court composer Francesca Caccini,
whose elegant seventeenth-century drama “La
Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’Isola di Alcina”
is the first known opera written by a woman.
The company nods to contemporary opera
with Whitney George’s newly commissioned
“Princess Maleine,” modelled after a play by
Debussy’s collaborator Maurice Maeterlinck. A
scenes program features excerpts from works by
Thea Musgrave and Victoria Bond, plus a rare
opportunity to hear “Cendrillon,” a tender, hour-
long salon opera by the fabled nineteenth-cen-
tury French mezzo-soprano and vocal pedagogue
Pauline Viardot. A recital of songs by Nadia
Boulanger, an influential teacher of compos-
ers, and her sister, Lili, rounds out dell’Arte’s
worthwhile history lesson.—O.Z. (Aug. 10-25.)
