THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019 9
ILLUSTRATION BY CHIARA LANZIERI
This fall, the Joyce Theatre is providing live music for all its dance shows.
One upshot of this commitment, it seems, is an uncommon abundance
of tap acts—dancers who provide some of their own music, by dancing.
First is Ayodele Casel, a down-to-earth storyteller whose relaxed poise can
belie the exceptional quickness and needlepoint intricacy of her footwork.
For her début as a Joyce headliner, Sept. 24-29, this excellent musician is
bringing along another: the pianist-composer Arturo O’Farrill. His deep,
broad knowledge of Afro-Latin jazz is a given, but Casel, who was born
in the Bronx and spent some of her childhood in her parents’ homeland
of Puerto Rico, understands it, too. Playing together, she and O’Farrill
communicate at advanced levels without showing off, following each other’s
swerves, from groove to groove, as in a game between friends. A few other
musicians and musician-dancers join them in the fun.—Brian Seibert
TA P DANCE
1
DANCE
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch
For a company that tends to eschew eve-
ning-length ballets, “Jewels,” created by the cho-
reographer George Balanchine, in 1967, is an ex-
ception. More than a single ballet, it is composed
of three separate but thematically connected
works, inspired by the qualities of gemstones and
by contrasting musical worlds. “Emeralds,” set to
music by Fauré, is quietly mysterious. “Rubies,”
all sharp angles and brazenness, is meant to
evoke the energy of New York. And “Diamonds”
reflects the opulence and wistfulness of the Rus-
sia of Balanchine’s imagination. In recent years,
both Maria Kowroski and Sara Mearns have
dominated “Diamonds”; Kowroski is remote
and regal, Mearns urgent, almost feverish in her
approach. The tall, phlegmatic Teresa Reichlen
has come to define the cool glamour of “Rubies.”
Few ballets give a better sense of the company
as a whole.—Marina Harss (Through Oct. 13.)
Ivy Baldwin Dance
Manitoga
OUT OF TOWN Ivy Baldwin seems to be making
a specialty out of dances that respond to iso-
lated landmarks of modernist architecture. Her
2016 work “Keen (Part 1)” took place in and
around Philip Johnson’s Glass House. Now, with
“Quarry,” she takes on Manitoga, the former
home and estate of the industrial designer Russel
Wright, in Garrison, New York. Drawing on
the site’s balance between the natural and the
man-made, between inside and outside, and
on the drama of the house and the garden, she
sometimes positions spectators across vistas,
far from her dancers, and sometimes up close,
right next to them, in the woods.—Brian Seibert
(Sept. 21-22.)
SITI Company and STREB
Alexander Kasser Theatre
OUT OF TOWN Collaborating for the first time,
the physical-stunt choreographer Elizabeth
Streb and the theatre director Anne Bogart find
common ground in “Falling & Loving.” The
production, premièring at Peak Performances,
in Montclair, New Jersey, combines six actors
from SITI Company and six dancer-athletes
from the STREB Extreme Action Company.
As always with Streb, there are contraptions:
bowling balls swinging dangerously on strings, a
Guck Machine that drops water, sand, confetti,
and more. But, this time, there are also words
to give the mess some meaning—love sonnets
and other phrases, by Charles Mee, that hymn
the cyclical nature of love.—B.S. (Sept. 24-29.)
for the End of Time,” a complementary cycle,
Founders members contemplate modern-day
conflicts.—S.S. (Sept. 23 at 7:30.)
“Manon”
Metropolitan Opera House
For the Cours-la-Reine scene in Laurent Pelly’s
production of Massenet’s “Manon,” the titular
heroine’s over-the-top gown and plumed hat
clearly nod to Eliza Doolittle’s getup for the
Ascot racecourse in “My Fair Lady.” But it’s
more than a cheap directorial trick. Like Eliza,
Manon is being tested in a public display of her
seductive powers, but, unlike Audrey Hepburn’s
foulmouthed flower girl, she triumphs, singing a
gavotte that enchants the assembled spectators.
The Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa,
ready to make an impression as Massenet’s demi-
mondaine, returns to the Met following a string
of successes in Europe. The cast also includes
Michael Fabiano and Artur Ruciński; Maurizio
Benini conducts.—O.Z. (Sept. 24 at 7:30.)
Robert Een
Roulette
A composer, cellist, and singer of striking orig-
inality, Robert Een celebrates the start of his
fortieth season as a performing artist. He’s
joined by the award-winning writer and illus-
trator Brian Selznick as he reprises selections
from “Live Oak, with Moss,” Selznick’s theatre
piece based on a private cycle of poems by Walt
Whitman about same-sex desire and longing,
which the poet subsequently reordered and in-
corporated into “Leaves of Grass.” The program
also includes recent and new music by Een and
features the guest vocalists Katie Geissinger and
Nick Hallett.—S.S. (Sept. 24 at 8.)
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
New York Live Arts
Before the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa
De Keersmaeker made her much admired and
much imitated piece “Rosas Danst Rosas”—
whose moves have even made their way into
a Beyoncé video—she created “Fase, Four
Movements to the Music of Steve Reich,” in
1982, while studying in New York. It is this
work, both minimal and lush, mind-bendingly
repetitive and crisply plainspoken, that put De
Keersmaeker on the map. In each section, a
pair of dancers responds to Reich’s score—for
piano, voice, string instruments, and clapping,
respectively—with elegant loops of movement
that evolve, gradually, over time. At New York
Live Arts, her company, Rosas, will perform
first “Fase” and then “Rosas” over a two-week
period.—M.H. (Sept. 24. Through Oct. 5.)
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MOVIES
América
This brisk, poignant documentary is centered
on an elderly Mexican woman named América,
who has dementia. She lives in the town of
Colima; there, her son, Luis, is in jail on charges
of neglecting her, but when her grandson Diego,
