6 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER13, 2021
ILLUSTRATION BY AMRITA MARINO
One of Robert Battle’s most significant acts as the director of Alvin
Ailey American Dance Theatre was to name Jamar Roberts as choreog-
rapher-in-residence just before the pandemic. Roberts, who joined the
company in 2002, is a dancer of great power and stature, as well as surprising
delicacy and vulnerability. On Dec. 9, as part of Ailey’s City Center season
(through Dec. 19), Roberts retires from dancing with the company, in a
farewell program that includes a new solo for himself, “You Are the Golden
Hour That Would Soon Evanesce,” set to music from the jazz composer
Jason Moran’s album “The Sound Will Tell You,” played live by Moran.
It promises to be larger than life, just as Roberts is.—Marina HarssCONTEMPORARYDANCE
is a pop-and-locker, and the hoop dance is
Native American. This year, the production,
returning to the Kings Theatre, on Dec. 11, has
been expanded, with a hip-hop-ballet battle
and a new Mother Ginger, to fill out the full
Tchaikovsky score.—B.S. (kingstheatre.com)Juilliard Dance
In their first live “New Dances” show since
the beginning of the pandemic, the students
of Juilliard Dance present new works by four
choreographers. Justin Peck, whose choreogra-
phy drives Steven Spielberg’s new film adap-
tation of “West Side Story,” has made a piece
for the fourth-year students, to be performed
in sneakers. (It’s set to an electronic score by
Dan Deacon.) Caili Quan, a budding chore-
ographer who until recently was a dancer with
BalletX, is paired with the first-years; Rena
Butler, of Gibney Dance Company, is working
with the sophomores on a piece inspired by
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”; and
Norbert De La Cruz III (an alum) is making a
dance for the third-year students. The Quan
and the De La Cruz pieces are accompanied
live by Juilliard musicians.—Marina Harss
(Dec. 8-12; Peter Jay Sharp Theatre.)New York Theatre Ballet
As “Nutcracker”s go, New York Theatre Bal-
let’s staging is short and sweet, distilled to one
hour to accommodate the attention spans of1
THETHEATRE
Assassins
There is a giddy and deep pleasure to be
had from this stripped-down revival of Ste-
phen Sondheim’s musical, directed by John
Doyle, about the desperate and the deluded,
people who were stepped on until they de-
cided that their only recourse was to grab
a gun and point it at the President. (The
show’s book is by John Weidman, based on
a great, perverse idea by Charles Gilbert,
Jr.) Try not to hum along as John Wilkes
Booth (Steven Pasquale), John Hinckley, Jr.
(Adam Chanler-Berat), Lynette (Squeaky)
Fromme (Tavi Gevinson), Sara Jane Moore
(Judy Kuhn), and the rest of this band of
murderous misfits serenade you with their
conviction that, per Thomas Jefferson, “ev-
erybody’s got the right to be happy.” The
Balladeer (the appealing Ethan Slater) guides
us with optimistic sanity through the tales
of each, from the anarchist Leon Czolgosz
(Brandon Uranowitz), a factory worker whose
furious analysis of capitalist oppression is
spot on—though his assassination of Wil-
liam McKinley doesn’t do much to change
things—to Charles Guiteau (Will Swenson,
electric with comic charisma), an unhinged
self-promoter who cakewalks his way to the
gallows after he offs James Garfield for refus-
ing to name him Ambassador to France. This
pitch-dark show, which deals with the slimy
underbelly of American dreams, couldn’t
be more upbeat, and that’s what gives it its
eerie power.—Alexandra Schwartz (Reviewed
in our issue of 11/29/21.) (Classic Stage Com-
pany; through Jan. 29.)Clyde’s
In Lynn Nottage’s new play, directed by Kate
Whoriskey, Clyde (Uzo Aduba) is the badass,
shit-talking, intermittently horny, sometimes
violent proprietor of a run-down sandwich
joint at a truck stop. She’s also an ex-convict,
and so are the people who work for her, a fact
that she hangs over their heads like rain in a
cloud at every opportunity. Tish (Kara Young,
in a great performance) is a single mom sad-
dled by a trifling, untrustworthy co-parent.
Rafael (Reza Salazar) fumblingly pines for
her. Jason (Edmund Donovan) is the new guy,
initially quiet and sullen, marked up with
white-supremacist tattoos. They’re all under
the thrall of the sagelike Montrellous (Ron
Cephas Jones), a kind of sandwich guru, who
wants to jazz up the place with new recipes
and more tender attention to ingredients. The
characters’ life stories come between slapstick
riffs on sandwich-making and kitchen eti-
quette—a bunch of well-performed gags—and
as a result the play has trouble finding its
tone. Clyde is never subjected to the kind
of scrutiny that makes watching a character
worthwhile, and it’s hard to figure out how se-
riously to take the putatively tough moments1
DANCE
Les Ballets Trockadero de
Monte Carlo
Still combining low comedy with high tech-
nique, this all-male troupe, founded in 1974,
brings its loving mockery of ballet back to
the Joyce Theatre, for a three-week holiday
run, Dec. 14-Jan. 2. The first of two programs
features, amid repertory staples, the New York
première of “Nightcrawlers.” A parody of Je-
rome Robbins’s “In the Night,” it’s a kind of
sequel to the early Trocks classic “Yes, Virginia,
Another Piano Ballet,” as well as a return to
Trocks choreographing for the group’s long-ab-
sent co-founder Peter Anastos. The second
program offers, for the first time at the Joyce,
a “Nutcracker” pas de deux that sends up the
season head-on.—Brian Seibert (joyce.org)
“The Brooklyn Nutcracker”
“The Brooklyn Nutcracker” stands out for
its cultural inclusivity. There’s a Victorian
holiday party and a Russian-ballet “Waltz
of the Flowers,” but Uncle Drosselmeyer
younger audience members. The production
is graced with a lovely Art Nouveau set, with
parts that move to reveal the story’s different
scenes, and clever choreography, by Keith
Michael, for its tiny cast. The score is a record-
ing.—M.H. (Dec. 10-12; Florence Gould Hall.)to nineties techno, that often wears its vinyl
fuzz proudly, which just adds to its throwback
feel.—Michaelangelo Matos