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Sunday, January 19, 2025

The 9 Most Intriguing Dance Performances of November 2024


This month’s efficiency calendar packs some severe punch, with a landmark anniversary, a jazzy new Broadway manufacturing, and a bevy of premieres analyzing deep questions on humanity and society. Right here’s what grabbed our consideration.

Within the Thicket

One dancer crouches and leans into another as the second stretches one arm overhead and the opposite leg in front, balancing on one arm.
Davarria Ford and Johnny Huy Nguyen in BRIAR. Picture by Robert C. Bain, courtesy John Hill PR.

SAN FRANCISCO  Drawing on the writings of Hanif Abdurraqib, bell hooks, Robin D.G. Kelley, and others, Chafin Seymour’s seymour::dancecollective questions the probabilities and limitations of abstracting Blackness in BRIAR. The hip-hop-inflected, evening-length dance theater work premieres Nov. 1–2 at ODC Theater. odc.dance.

Flip the Script

Seconds before a man is about to rest his head in the palm of his hand.
Corey Scott-Gilbert. Picture by Florian Hetz, courtesy Baryshnikov Arts.

ONLINE  Corey Scott-Gilbert (aka vAL) and Roderick George transfer by a perpetual loop in STAGED, pushing towards their assigned roles in an endless “American Gothic.” Accompanied by the voice of the late Gus Solomons jr, the quick movie will likely be introduced on-line by Baryshnikov Arts starting Nov. 1. baryshnikovarts.org.

Proper Motion

A woman reaches with open hands toward a figure in a nude shift. In the background, five dancers step one foot over the other, hands making the same gesture at waist height.
Ragamala Dance Firm. Picture by Adam Kissick/APAP, courtesy Northrop.

MINNEAPOLIS  Keerthik Sasidharan’s 2020 novel The Dharma Forest retells the Hindu epic The Mahabharata, zooming in on the people on the heart of a devastating struggle of succession. Aparna, Ranee, and Ashwini Ramaswamy take the novel as inspiration for Ragamala Dance Firm’s latest work, Kids of Dharma, tracing the ripple results of each dharma (“proper motion”) and warfare on the self by a collection of vignettes. A part of Northrop’s Centennial Commissions program, the work premieres Nov. 2. northrop.umn.edu.

Half a Century of Danspace

Rashaun Mitchell, dressed all in white, poses on a grassy plain. One elbow tucks into a raised knee, his head leaning toward the bend.
Rashaun Mitchell, one of many artists contributing to Danspace Undertaking’s fiftieth celebrations. Picture by Amitava Sarkar, courtesy Danspace.

NEW YORK CITY  To have a good time its fiftieth 12 months, Danspace Undertaking invited greater than 50 artists from throughout its 5 many years to create 50-second quick movies in response to the immediate “The Future Is…” These will seem on its web site all year long, however on Nov. 2 they’ll be screened on the group’s house at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery alongside performances and choices by mayfield brooks, Silas Riener, and Angie Pittman, a DJ set by Ali Rosa-Salas, and extra celebratory actions throughout this 50 Ahead gathering. danspaceproject.org.

Which Witch

A kneeling dancer in a black costume with a black mask stretches on a reflective stage under a spotlight, with shoulders bare, extended arms, and head down.
Nejla Yatkin in her The Different Witch. Picture by Enki Andrews, courtesy Yatkin.

CHICAGO  Impressed by Mary Wigman’s 1914 Hexentanz (witch dance), Nejla Yatkin’s The Different Witch delves into archetypes of the witch and the shaman, plumbing the human psyche by ritual and dance whereas alluding to the untamable facets of nature. The multimedia solo, which premiered as a three-part dance movie in 2021, makes its stay efficiency debut on the Ruth Web page Middle for the Arts Nov. 9. ny2dance.com.

There Will Be Blood

A woman in a blood-spattered wedding dress, her hands bathed in red, stands atop a long table set for a feast in the midst of a clearing in a forest.
Royal Danish Ballet’s Stephanie Chen Gundorph Møller as Blood Wedding ceremony’s Bride. Picture by Maria Albrechtsen Mortensen, courtesy Royal Danish Ballet.

COPENHAGEN  Royal Danish Ballet soloist Eukene Sagues adapts a narrative by Federico García Lorca for the corporate’s first commissioned female-choreographed evening-length ballet. Blood Wedding ceremony depicts a girl, trapped inside her anticipated function in a patriarchal society, who runs away from her wedding ceremony together with her former lover, just for the evening to finish in bloodshed and loss of life. Nov. 9–22. kglteater.dk

From the Massive Simple to the Massive Apple

A man in a light-colored suit with a bow tie looks on as another man in a white suit and fedora balances on the tips of his tap shoes, knees knocking in, fingers pointing to either side.
James Monroe Iglehart, as Louis Armstrong, and DeWitt Fleming Jr., as Lincoln Perry, in A Fantastic World. Picture by Jeremy Daniel, courtesy The Press Room.

NEW YORK CITY  After runs in New Orleans and Chicago final fall and starting previews final month, A Fantastic World opens on Broadway Nov. 11. The musical, directed by Christopher Renshaw, who co-conceived it with the late Andrew Delaplaine, traces the lifetime of jazz legend Louis Armstrong (Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart) as advised by his 4 wives. Animating the musician’s greater than 50-year profession because it strikes by New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Hollywood is choreography by Rickey Tripp, who makes his lead-choreography Broadway debut after serving as Camille A. Brown’s affiliate on As soon as on this Island, Choir Boy, and Hell’s Kitchen, plus faucet choreography by DeWitt Fleming Jr., who pulls double obligation taking part in Lincoln Perry. louisarmstrongmusical.com.

A Longstanding Partnership

Two performers are bound together on the black floor of a dance studio. There are microphones, cords, and stands surrounding them. One performer, wearing muted orange shorts, lays over the other, covering most of her body. Their legs and arms are intertwined. The performer closest to the ground holds up a large square mirror, tipping it with one leg and one arm, creating a reflection of the two figures. Sunlight comes in through the windows behind them.
Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith’s STAMINA. Picture by Maria Baranova, courtesy Lieber and Smith.

NEW YORK CITY  Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith return to Roulette with Prairie Daybreak, a totally improvised work unfolding over three evenings that pushes again towards femme objectification and disgrace in dance, touches on the complexity of subjects like grief and parenting, and attracts on their long-term artistic partnership to discover improvisation as a “feminist exclamation.” Nov. 14–16. roulette.org.

Akram Khan Returns

Akram Khan stands at the point of a v, two women on either side of him. All raise a sinuously curving hand overhead, eyes turned up.
Akram Khan’s GIGENIS: The technology of the Earth. Picture by Maxime Dos, courtesy Sadler’s Wells.

LONDON  Akram Khan, famend for his explicit mixing of kathak and modern dance, returns to the stage and his roots with GIGENIS: The technology of the Earth. Sirikalyani Adkoli, Renjith Babu, Mavin Khoo, Mythili Prakash, Vijna Vasudevan, and Kapila Venu—well-regarded practitioners of varied types of classical Indian dance—and 7 stay musicians be part of Khan to hint the threads of historical past and mythology surrounding our relationship to nature and civilization. After debuting in Aix-en-Provence, France, on the finish of August, the work makes its UK debut in London at Sadler’s Wells Nov. 20–24 forward of a 2025 tour with engagements in Paris, New York Metropolis, Santa Barbara, and Washington, DC. sadlerswells.com.

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