THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER14, 2020 11
ILLUSTRATION BY JASJYOT SINGH HANS
Lin-Manuel Miranda probably wouldn’t
be your first choice to play Anita in
“West Side Story,” but in 2014 he got
his shot at the role, singing “A Boy Like
That” opposite Raúl Esparza, as Maria.
The occasion was Miscast, a loopy an-
nual gala thrown by Off Broadway’s
MCC Theatre that gives pros the chance
to sing parts they wouldn’t normally get a
crack at. Other past highlights (viewable
on YouTube) include Aaron Tveit and
Gavin Creel in the lesbian duet from
“Rent,” Cynthia Erivo as Yentl, and an
all-male rendition of “Cell Block Tango,”
from “Chicago.” This year’s twenti-
eth-anniversary edition, on Sept. 13, is,
of course, virtual, with appearances from
Beanie Feldstein, Leslie Odom, Jr., Adri-
enne Warren, Judith Light, and members
of the original cast of “Hairspray.” Visit
mcctheater.org.—Michael Schulman
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DANCE
BalletCollective
With the big New York dance companies shut
out of their usual stages, nimble side projects
grow in importance. This one brings together
members of New York City Ballet—including
Anthony Huxley and Ashley Laracey—with
members of the Martha Graham Dance Com-
pany. Following a strict quarantine proce-
dure, they have prepared “Natural History,”
a new work by Troy Schumacher, BalletCol-
lective’s artistic director and choreographer.
The dance, performed outside, on a private
preserve in Pines Plains, New York, Sept. 10
and Sept. 12, is about memory, about before
and after, all pandemic resonances intended.
Those who can’t make it in person can watch
a live stream on the project’s Web site.—Brian
Seibert (balletcollective.com/live)
Dance Now
Unable to celebrate its twenty-fifth anni-
versary in its usual home, at Joe’s Pub, the
Dance Now festival is going virtual—but it’s
also expanding. Six installments, released
from now until May, mix new videos with
vintage recorded performances. Access to
each episode costs ten dollars; the first of-
fering, available on Sept. 10, débuts a solo
by the joy-giving tap dancer Ayodele Casel,
a Mike Esperanza piece in which more and
more people cram into an elevator, and the
goofy trio LMnO3 as an off-kilter marching
band.—B.S. (dancenow.online)
David Gordon
Has the pandemic smashed together work
and home? That’s nothing new for David
Gordon, who has been mingling his personal
life with his dance theatre, to witty and mov-
ing effect, for decades. In “The Philadelphia
Matter—1972/2020,” a new sixty-minute film
for the 2020 Philadelphia Fringe Festival,
streaming on the Christ Church Neighbor-
hood House’s Web site from Sept. 10 to Oct.4,
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MOVIES
Cuties (Mignonnes)
The closely observed and subtly analytical
first feature by the French director Maïmouna
Doucouré puts the impulsive energies of an
THEATREPERFORMANCE
Gordon does something else he’s been doing
forever: he imaginatively recycles old work.
Thirty or so Philadelphia dancers filmed
themselves, in separate spaces, performing
sections of Gordon’s ever-evolving nine-
teen-seventies piece “The Matter.” Combin-
ing these videos with historical footage and a
droll recounting of the work’s intimate origins,
Gordon and the video artist Jorge Cousineau
have made a wonderfully alive collage of then
and now.—B.S. (neighborhood-house.com)
“Table of Silence Project 9/11”
There is something to be said for yearly ritu-
als. They mark the passage of time, and give
us a moment to reflect on the past. So it’s reas-
suring that Buglisi Dance Theatre’s “Table of
Silence Project,” a ceremony that takes place
every September 11th, will return this year,
live-streamed on Lincoln Center at Home.
The Josie Robertson Plaza is an eerily appro-
priate location for such a performance, with
its concentric circles of light and dark stone
leading toward a gushing fountain. Dancers
gather, dressed in white, at 7:55 A.M., and
process, in patterns, toward the center, to
the sound of simple, ritualistic music. There
will be fewer dancers than previous years, to
allow for social distancing; they come from
Buglisi Dance Theatre, Ailey II, Ballet His-
pánico, the Juilliard School, and elsewhere,
accompanied by the electric violinist Daniel
Bernard Roumain and the poet Marc Bamuthi
Joseph.—Marina Harss (lincolncenter.org)
eleven-year-old girl named Amy (Fathia Yous-
souf) at the crossroads of tradition and moder-
nity. Amy, whose family is Senegalese, lives
in Paris with her mother (Maïmouna Gueye)
and two younger brothers; her father, who’s
been away, is about to return—with a second
wife. The family is Muslim and observant;
the strictly disciplined Amy, in silent revolt
against the perceived betrayal of her mother,
acts out in the company of four uninhibited
girls who flirt, curse, and fight, and who are
rehearsing for a hip-hop dance competition.
Amy, who wants to dance with them, gets
lured into petty crime and endures social-me-
dia humiliations while defying and scandaliz-
ing her family. Doucouré pays keen attention
to Amy’s quest for a self-made identity—and
to a sexualized, commercialized mainstream
culture that deludes children, especially those
raised in cultural isolation. The film’s ulti-
mate subject is the ghetto itself; a remarkable
symbolic ending redefines French identity. In
French and Wolof.—Richard Brody (Streaming
on Netflix.)
Four Adventures of
Reinette and Mirabelle
This quartet of breezy sketches by Eric
Rohmer, from 1987, finds him pursuing mighty
subjects with casual means. The young women
of the title—Reinette (Joëlle Miquel), the
country mouse, a self-taught artist prepar-
ing to study in Paris, and Mirabelle (Jessica
Forde), the city mouse, a Parisian ethnology
student on a rustic summer vacation—bond
amid nature’s splendors and decide to room
together in the capital. There, Reinette cul-
tivates her talent even as her principles are
challenged by urbanites’ brazen schemes,
and Mirabelle deploys her own wiles to help
her gifted but vulnerable friend. The heart
of the story is the birth of art from hidden,
humble, natural abilities, which are sharpened
the installation in person, prior to its online
début. The work’s live-streamed première,
celebrating Spiegel’s seventy-fifth birthday,
features immersive video and a chat with both
artists.—S.S. (Sept. 10 at 8.)
Molly Tuttle:
“... but i’d rather be with you”
FOLK “... but i’d rather be with you” is the blue-
grass guitarist Molly Tuttle’s entry to a growing
genre—the quarantine LP. Conceived, recorded,
and released in the shadow of COVID-19, the
album finds Tuttle fleeing to the comfort of
cover songs. Although the Nashville artist has
been entrenched in roots music since childhood,
her choices here are more reflective of her Bay
Area youth (Rancid, the Grateful Dead) and
millennial affinities (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Harry
Styles). But the record’s star is “She’s a Rain-
bow,” the crown jewel of the Rolling Stones’
brief flirtation with psychedelia. In Tuttle’s
reading, the song uses a bluegrass spirit to look
to the past—and a feminist allegiance to peek
at the future.—Jay Ruttenberg
