6 Can't-Miss Shows This November, Chosen By DM Editors
The fall performance season continues at breakneck speed with everything from an international ballet company making its U.S. debut to a retrospective on one of New York City’s most iconic dancemakers—not to mention more than a few intriguing new works. Here’s what we’ve got pencilled in.
Have Your Cake
Hans van Manen’s Trois Gnossiennes. Photo by Peter Rakossy, Courtesy Ellen Jacobs Associates
NEW YORK CITY Hungarian National Ballet is putting its best foot forward for its American debut at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. Following a Nov. 4 gala, the company presents recent stagings of full-length staples Swan Lake (Nov. 6–8) and Don Quixote (Nov. 9–10). To close the engagement, Trois Gnossiennes, 5 Tangos and Black Cake, a trio of Hans van Manen works programmed together last year in celebration of the venerable choreographer’s 85th birthday, will be performed twice on Nov. 11. opera.hu. —Courtney Escoyne
Blood Memory
Red Clay Dance Company’s Destine Young. Photo by Raymond Jerome, Courtesy Red Clay Dance Company
CHICAGO
Red Clay Dance Company’s ongoing cultural exchange project with Uganda’s Keiga Dance Company has resulted in a new work: EKILI MUNDA|What Lies Within. Created to open the Afro-contemporary troupe’s 10th-anniversary season, the piece, by artistic director Vershawn Sanders-Ward and Keiga artistic director Jonas Byaruhanga, investigates the body as an archive for cultural history. Nov. 8–10. redclaydance.com. —CE
Heuristic History
Emily Coates. Photo by Anna Lee Campbell, Courtesy Danspace Project
NEW YORK CITY Emmanuèle Phuon and Emily Coates share an evening at Danspace Project that promises smart, thought-provoking new dances. Phuon’s Bits & Pieces (Choreographic Donations) looks back on her eclectic, continent-spanning career with contributions from Patricia Hoffbauer, David Thomson, Elisa Monte, Yvonne Rainer and Vincent Dunoyer. A History of Light, in collaboration with artist Josiah McElheny, dives into Coates’ investigation of the intersections of dance and science through the lens of the women who have advanced art and technology throughout history. Nov. 8–10. danspaceproject.org. —CE
Update in Progress
Bill Shannon. Photo by Garrett Jones, Courtesy Dance Place
WASHINGTON, DC, AND NEW YORK CITY
Ballet dancers have their pointe shoes, tap dancers have their tap shoes, Spanish dancers have their castanets—and Bill Shannon has his crutches. Since childhood, he has lived with a condition in his hips that makes it hard for him to bear weight. He’s created a technique of gliding, swiveling, spinning and floating with his crutches, earning him a place in New York City’s underground club scene. Recently, he’s taken the idea of necessary body extensions into technology. In his new Touch Update, which was developed at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and premiered in May in Pittsburgh, Shannon has devised wearable video masks and video sculptures that seem to dismantle the human body. Performers include the couple slowdanger (2018 “25 to Watch”) and Pittsburgh hip-hop crew Get Down Gang. Ultimately, Shannon is looking at the human potential for change. Dance Place, Nov. 10–11. New York Live Arts, Nov. 14–18. whatiswhat.com. —Wendy Perron
Early Twyla
Twyla Tharp in her Eight Jelly Rolls. Photo courtesy DM Archives
NEW YORK CITY
Before Twyla Tharp choreographed highly technical and propulsive ballets like In the Upper Room, she made a slew of dances with a minimalist edge. Some of them were silent and austere, but when she started to use music—whoa! What a feast of sly musicality and slippery movement. Her latest program Minimalism and Me ranges from the simplicity of her first time out—Tank Dive (1965), all angles and diagonals with a yo-yo trick thrown in—to her lusciously loose, vaudeville-inspired classic, Eight Jelly Rolls (1971), with music by jazz composer Jelly Roll Morton. Our question: Who will perform Twyla’s outrageously sloppy/precise drunk solo? The program comes to the Joyce Nov. 14–Dec. 9. joyce.org. —WP
Marginalia
Karen L. Charles’ Sacred Feminine is one work included in Femthology. Photo by Bill Cameron, Courtesy AQUA Public Relations
ST. PAUL, MN
In the Margins, a program presented by Threads Dance Project at The O’Shaughnessy this month, aims to foster empathy for communities that are often relegated to liminal spaces in society. Karen L. Charles’ To Hear Like Me utilizes American Sign Language, music visualization and silence as it interrogates implicit bias against the deaf/hard-of-hearing community. Joining it is Femthology, comprising excerpts from already-existing works that explore the female experience, newly reimagined to be equally accessible to hearing and deaf/hard-of-hearing audiences. Nov. 16–17. threadsdance.org. —CE
