22 THENEWYORKER, MARCH 9, 2020
ILLUSTRATION BY ALVA SKOG
March is flamenco season in New York,
thanks to the annual Flamenco Festival
(March 12-April 5, at various venues),
which brings all that’s new and old in this
Spanish art dating back centuries. The
offerings in this year’s twentieth-anniver-
sary edition are particularly wide-rang-
ing, from the highly produced “An Ode
to Time,” by the superstar bailaora María
Pagés (at City Center, March 28-29), to
the experimental and anarchic-feeling
“Fla.co.men” (Skirball, March 13), by
the flamenco surrealist Israel Galván.
(Take snacks to the Galván show, which
is almost two hours long, with no in-
termission.) Two of the more personal
offerings come from Rocío Molina, an
innovator who indulges her fierce imag-
ination and sense of humor in “Caída
del Cielo” (City Center, March 27), and
Manuel Liñán, whose show “¡Viva!” is a
joyously openhearted exploration of the
expressive potential of flamenco in drag
(City Center, April 3).
Jamar Roberts, who was appointed
choreographer-in-residence of the Alvin
Ailey troupe last year, will make his first
piece for New York City Ballet, to be re-
vealed on May 7 in the company’s spring
season (at the David H. Koch, April 21-
May 31). It will be intriguing to see, for
the first time, how Roberts translates his
quietly incisive aesthetic to the idiom of
ballet. Interestingly, he’s not using jazz
this time—earlier pieces were set to Col-
trane and Don Pullen—but, rather, the
ambient music of Kyle Preston, which
Roberts describes as “minimalist in in-
strumentation but maximal in tension and
emotion.” On April 24, Pam Tanowitz, a
choreographer who specializes in dissect-
ing the internal logic of ballet, will unveil
her second piece for the company.
The Mark Morris Dance Group pre-
sents an intimate evening at its Brooklyn
headquarters that includes the New York
première of a new work by Morris, “Ar-
rows. Eros.” (Mark Morris Dance Center,
April 15-19). The sextet is set to two
short cantatas for soprano and mezzo
by George Frideric Handel, a composer
who has inspired Morris to great heights
in the past. The music, performed live, is
reason enough to show up, as are Morris’s
exceptional, down-to-earth dancers.
Reggie Wilson’s collagelike pieces
gather fragments of stories, mytholo-
gies, songs, and dances related to Afri-
can-American history and expression.
In “POWER,” his latest work for his
company, Reggie Wilson / Fist and Heel
Performance Group (BAM’s Harvey
Theatre, April 29-May 2), he explores
the movement language of the black
Shakers, a little-discussed branch of
the utopian eighteenth-century reli-
gious movement.
—Marina HarssDANCE
SPRING PREVIEW
Flamenco Season, a New Work by Mark Morris
León and Paul Lightfoot, we get “Shut Eye,”
a fantasy made of light and shadow.—Marina
Harss (March 4-7.)Amanda Selwyn
Baruch Performing Arts Center
Selwyn has managed to produce sincere, per-
sonal works year after year for two decades—no
small feat. Her choreography tends toward
emotional directness and fluidity and is often
developed through a collaborative process with
the dancers of her company, Amanda Selwyn
Dance Theatre. Her newest work, “Hindsight,”
deals with the emotional impact of memory on
the human psyche and includes motifs drawn
from the repertory she has built during the past
twenty years.—M.H. (March 5-7.)Oona Doherty
92nd Street Y
This fast-rising Northern Irish choreographer
starts her performances for the 92nd Street Y’s
Harkness Dance Festival at street level, emerg-
ing from the back of a car, already strutting.
The solo she performs upstairs in the theatre,
an excerpt from “Hard to Be Soft,” retains
much of that swagger. Her stage presence is
tough and electric, her face as expressive as an
actor’s. To a soundtrack of angry voices from a
documentary about Belfast youth, she samples
the sneering, crotch-grabbing posturing of a
working-class male, masking vulnerability with
aggression. At the same time, there’s heavenly
choir music playing, and Doherty stretches
toward the sublime.—B.S. (March 6-7.)“Fruits Borne Out of Rust”
Japan Society
In this multimedia work, the Japanese visual
artist Tabaimo looks for a bright side to aging
and decay. The piece is a sort of surreal day in
the life, set to a cheery live pop score. Tabaimo’s
whimsical animation (reminiscent of Terry
Gilliam’s Monty Python work) is projected
behind and over the body of the dancer Chiharu
Mamiya, placing her in a domestic scene, and
then suddenly in a giant birdcage. The agi-
tated, non-sequitur choreography is by Maki
Morishita; beneath all the whimsy is a quiet
desperation.—B.S. (March 6-7.)Nacera Belaza & Meryem Jazouli
Danspace Project
As part of Danspace Project’s “Platform 2020:
Utterances from the Chorus,” two choreogra-
phers steeped in North African dance and song
share a program. Jazouli, based in Casablanca,
presents “Folkah!,” an examination of guedra,
a folk dance of southern Moroccan women
in which a semicircle of clapping, ululating
singers support a soloist on her knees. Belaza,
born in Algeria and based in France, offers
“La Procession,” leading the audience through
St. Mark’s Church on a journey that pauses
before darkly poetic scenes and ends in spin-
ning.—B.S. (March 9-10.)
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