marc bamuthi joseph Archives - Dance Magazine

10 Must-See Shows Hitting Stages This April

Dance Magazine — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The spring performance season is moving full steam ahead with literary-inspired ballets, a queer reimagining of Carmen, and premieres drawing from everything from the upcoming solar eclipse to contemporary American politics. Here’s what’s grabbing our attention.

NDT in NYC

NDT in William Forsythe’s 12 N. Photo by Rahi Rezvani, courtesy New York City Center/NDT.

NEW YORK CITY Nederlands Dans Theater returns to New York City Center for the first time since Emily Molnar took the helm. William Forsythe’s N.N.N.N. is joined by a pair of U.S. premieres: Imre and Marne van Opstal’s The Point Being and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Jakie. April 3–6. nycitycenter.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Centering Latina Voices

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa rehearsing her Broken Wings with San Francisco Ballet. Photo by Lindsay Rallo, courtesy SFB.

SAN FRANCISCO The Carmen premiering at San Francisco Ballet this month won’t look or sound the same as usual. Choreographer Arielle Smith (a 2022 “25 to Watch” pick) sets the tale in contemporary Cuba—specifically at the family restaurant to which the titular heroine returns with her new husband after the death of her mother—while refocusing the story on Carmen and emphasizing the depth and complexity of the characters with cinematic flair. Escamillo, whom Carmen falls in love with, is recast as a woman, and the new score by Arturo O’Farrill only references the familiar Bizet opera as it layers in Cuban folk music. Joining the new ballet on the Dos Mujeres program is Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Frida Kahlo–inspired Broken Wings (which SFB artistic director Tamara Rojo commissioned and starred in during her English National Ballet tenure). The evening marks the first double bill choreographed by women and the first full program dedicated to Latinx stories at SFB. April 4–14. sfballet.org. —CE

Eclipsing All Else

the feath3r theory’s The Absolute Future. Photo courtesy the feath3r theory.

NEW YORK CITY Ahead of the Great North American Eclipse on April 8, the feath3r theory alights at NYU Skirball to premiere a devised dance theater work about a group of friends who team up to watch the celestial event and miss it. Raja Feather Kelly draws on Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, the popularity of the science fiction concept of the multiverse, and the ways social media exacerbates loneliness and society’s inability to face it for The Absolute Future (or Death, Loneliness, and The Absolute Future of the Multiverse, or How to Cover the Sun with Mud). April 5–6. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Carnival of Politics

Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Wendy Whelan. Photo by Leslie Lyons, courtesy SOZO.

SEATTLE Choreographed and directed by Francesca Harper and performed by dancer Wendy Whelan and poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Carnival of the Animals reframes the Camille Saint-Saëns classic to consider the animals of a political jungle as it responds to the January 6 insurrection and contemplates the future of democracy. The SOZO-produced work premieres at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts on April 6. sozoartists.com. —CE

Memories of Matriarchs

Jasmine Hearn in their Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr. Photo by Jay Warr, courtesy DiverseWorks.

HOUSTON With three “Bessie” Awards, the Rome Prize, and a sumptuous stage presence, Jasmine Hearn is one of the most acclaimed contemporary dance artists to come out of Houston. But Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr, a performance, installation, and online archive that preserves the memories of eight Black Houston matriarchs, is their first major commission in their hometown. Commissioned by DiverseWorks, the multidisciplinary project includes original sound scores, choreography, and garments, along with guest performances by former Houston Ballet soloist Sandra Organ Solis and additional vocals and performances by local dancers and “Houston Aunties,” as Hearn calls them. The premiere at Houston Met April 6–7 will be followed by tours to Pittsburgh and New York City. diverseworks.org. —Nancy Wozny

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Royal Ballet in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works. Photo by Andrej Uspenski, courtesy ABT.

COSTA MESA, CA American Ballet Theatre presents the North American premiere of Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s three-act meditation on the writings of Virginia Woolf, at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Inspired by her novels Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves as well as her letters and diaries, the critically acclaimed ballet eschews narrative adaptation to take a stream of consciousness approach to the modernist writer’s oeuvre. April 11–14. abt.org. —CE

Packed With Premieres

South Chicago Dance Theatre’s Mya Bryant and Kim Davis. Photo by Michelle Reid Photography, courtesy SCDT.

CHICAGO South Chicago Dance Theatre returns to the Auditorium Theatre for an evening filled to the brim with premieres by Donald Byrd, Joshua Blake Carter, Monique Haley, Tsai Hsi Hung, Terence Marling, and founding executive artistic director Kia Smith. April 27. southchicagodancetheatre.com. —CE

The Weight of a Lie

Cathy Marston. Photo by Erik Tomasson, courtesy San Francisco Ballet.

ZURICH Cathy Marston brings her penchant for literary adaptation to Atonement, her first new work as Ballett Zürich’s director. In Ian McEwan’s novel and Joe Wright’s acclaimed film adaptation, teenage writer Briony Tallis tells a deliberate lie about her older sister’s lover and spends the rest of her life attempting to make up for its unintended consequences. Marston transfers the action to the world of ballet, making Tallis a choreographer while wrestling with the story’s questions about the fallibility of memory and the nature of self-deception and guilt. April 28–June 7. opernhaus.ch. —CE

A Jazzy Centennial

Dance artists join the nationwide celebration of iconic jazz drummer and composer Max Roach.

Max Roach. Photo courtesy Richard Kornberg & Associates.

Max Roach 100 at The Joyce Theater

NEW YORK CITY Richard Colton curated The Joyce Theater’s Max Roach 100 program, which will feature a new work to Roach’s Percussion Bitter Sweet album by Ronald K. Brown for Malpaso Dance Company and EVIDENCE, A Dance Company; Rennie Harris Puremovement in The Dream/It’s Time; and a solo by tap star Ayodele Casel set to a series of duets by Roach and Cecil Taylor. April 2–7. joyce.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones at Harlem Stage

NEW YORK CITY Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company revisits Degga, a 1995 collaboration between Jones, Max Roach, and Toni Morrison, as part of Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program. Also on offer is a new work by Roderick George. April 19–20. harlemstage.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in Curriculum II. Photo by Maria Baranova, courtesy Blake Zidell & Associates.

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The Most Influential People in Dance Today: Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Zachary Whittenburg — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 23:00:00 +0000

Chief of program and pedagogy at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Q: How has your role evolved since joining YBCA five years ago?

“I bring a social practice ethic to performance. You could call me the architect of a program that connects communities to the work that we present.”

Q: The Bay Area is known for being a source of fresh ideas, whether about art, gender, politics or technology. How do you see that reflected in the dance you’re seeing?

“It begins with a phenomenon of displacement, from refugees leaving Syria to what folks call “gentrification” or “resegregation.” Then you have the recent attacks on broad support for the arts, and on voices of dissent. Compound that with the longstanding tradition of the Bay Area as a place for radical performance, put all that together in a cocktail, and you have both an expertise and an unabashed urgency around confronting economic inequity in particular.

“I would name two artists off the bat who are responding to those impulses: Kim Epifano, whose work The Last Blue Couch in the Sky we’re presenting, and Amara Tabor-Smith, who’s making House/Full of blackwomen. Both artists are putting creative lenses on the notion of cultural erasure. A third and fourth might be Alicia Garza, one of the cofounders of Black Lives Matter, who is rooted in Oakland, and Nicole Klaymoon of the Embodiment Project.”

Q: What’s the future of dance?

“What I think is awesome is the diversity of dance expression, from folks taking J-Sette and voguing out of queer clubs, to expanding the notions of ballet, to the continuing formalization of hip-hop culture within a proscenium space. The role of dance in political resistance is very much alive. We need our voices of dissent, and we need to be in touch with beauty, which is something that dance provides us all.”

Read the rest of Dance Magazine‘s list of the most influential people in dance today.

The post The Most Influential People in Dance Today: Marc Bamuthi Joseph appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Most Influential People in Dance Today

Jennifer Heimlich — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 23:00:00 +0000

For Dance Magazine‘s 90th anniversary issue, we wanted to celebrate the movers, shakers and changemakers who are having the biggest impact on our field right now. There were so many to choose from! But with the help of dozens of writers, artists and administrators working in dance, the Dance Magazine staff whittled the list down to those we felt are making the most difference right now.

Click through the links below to find out why they made our list.