New York Notebook
Dare to Dream
A year ago Karole Armitage transformed the Joyce stage into a hushed winter landscape with Ligeti Essays, the second chapter in her hypnotic Dream Trilogy. This season Armitage Gone! Dance concludes the three-part series with Patterns in a Chromatic Field. Inspired by Morton Feldman’s minimalist score, Patterns wends its way through what Armitage calls “a dream-like world of inconclusive interactions and disappearing relationships.” It takes shape on the strikingly varied bodies of her seven-member troupe. An imaginative force in contemporary ballet, Armitage established her company in 2005, upon return from almost two decades of dancemaking in Europe. New York is glad to have her back. Jan. 22–27. www.joyce.org.
—Siobhan Burke
Dance in Dumbo
Presenting three dance festivals in four months may seem like a challenge, but Young Soon Kim, artistic director of White Wave Young Soon Kim Dance Company, embraces the task. Since 2001, White Wave has welcomed nearly 700 companies to their home on the DUMBO waterfront, creating a haven for fresh, fearless contemporary dance. This month, their Cool New York DANCE Festival offers 19 performances by over 60 ensembles, including Amos Pinhasi, Terry Dean Bartlett, and Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks. All come together through Kim’s ongoing search for unbridled creativity, brazen curiosity, and dance that does away with boundaries. Jan. 23–Feb. 3, John Ryan Theater in Brooklyn. See www.whitewavedance.com.
—S.B.
Samba from the Second City
Deeply rooted in the Latino experience, Luna Negra Dance Theater moves to a Latin beat. Led by Cuban-born Eduardo Vilaro, this Chicago-based group showcases contemporary works by both proven masters and fledgling Latino choreographers. In its NYC debut at the New Victory Theater Jan. 25–Feb. 3, it performs three works: Vilaro’s Quinceanera, about the traditional coming of age parties given for 15-year-old Latinas; Michelle Manzanales’ Sugar in the Raw, a driving vision of human relationships set to music by Gustavo Santaolalla (who scored the film Babel), and Pedro Ruiz’s lushly balletic Sonetos de Amor. See www.NewVictory.org or www.lunanegra.org.
—Hedy Weiss
