TDF Stages

Dive into the fall dance season with New York City Ballet, a 40-piece fest and even a FREE event

---

Plenty of major dance companies and venues like New York City Ballet and The Joyce Theater are kicking off their fall seasons this month. But there are also a number of intriguing one-offs and under-the-radar dance performances worthy of your September calendar. Of the 10 events we're highlighting, one is FREE, we have TDF offers for another and we expect to have additional discounts in the coming weeks. It's best to check our offers daily as ticket availability changes frequently.

---

DANCE NOW Festival
Joe's Pub at The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street near Astor Place

Runs September 4-7 and 26.

A tasty downtown dance sampler, this feisty annual fest features 40 works organized into four performances. Participating choreographers -- a combination of emerging as well as established dance-makers like Alice Sheppard (pictured above), Caleb Teicher and TAKE Dance -- are tasked with creating pieces that last no longer than five minutes and are suitable for Joe's Pub's small stage. The resulting programs should be as dynamic as they are diverse. DANCE NOW's producers will select their ten favorites for the September 26 encore performance, where an overall winner will receive a development stipend toward a future full-length commission.

---

9/11 Table of Silence Project
Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, enter at 64th Street and Columbus Avenue

---

September 11. FREE

Equal parts performance and ceremony, choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi's commemoration of the September 11 attacks debuted on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy and has become an annual event. More than 150 white-clad dancers proceed with slow, mystical focus along a maze-like path around the Lincoln Center fountain, accompanied by a gently meditative score performed live. In addition to the contributions of three composers, visual artist Rossella Vasta created the plates used in this ritualistic piece. If you can't make it there in person, you can watch via live-stream.

---

The Kathryn Posin Dance Company: Evolution, Triple Sextet and Memoir
Buttenwieser Hall at the 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street

Runs September 13 and 14.

Veteran modern dance choreographer Kathryn Posin, who founded her namesake company in 1972, kicks off the 92nd Street Y's Dig Dance series with a trio of world premieres. Evolution is a playful piece for seven dancers inspired by Charles Darwin's life and letters, with Posin reading from the famed scientist's correspondence. For Triple Sextet, Posin puts six dancers in motion to the intricate polyrhythms of Steve Reich's Double Sextet, and Memoir is a solo set to Bach, performed by the eloquent Lance Westergard.

---

New Chamber Ballet: The Night
City Center Studio 5, 130 West 56th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues

Runs September 13-14. At press time, discount tickets were available for New Chamber Ballet.

Since founding his all-female company in 2004, Miro Magloire has become well known for presenting intimate studio performances of new small-scale ballets, always accompanied by live music. The Night is a full-evening world premiere for four dancers performed in the round and set to a quartet of chamber pieces by contemporary German composer Wolfgang Rihm.

---

RUBBERBAND
Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street

Runs September 17-22.

The Joyce launches its new season with this acclaimed Montreal-based company, which heretofore has only been seen fleetingly in New York. Victor Quijada, who founded RUBBERBAND in 2002, has a multifaceted background that's evident in his work. He started out as a break dancer, studied ballet, then did a stint with Twyla Tharp's troupe before focusing on choreography. Known for their explosive athleticism that fuses street and classical moves, RUBBERBAND's ten dancers will perform Quijada's first work for a large stage, Ever So Slightly, to live accompaniment.

---

New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza, enter at 63rd Street

Runs September 17-October 13.

NYCB's four-week fall season includes a generous helping of Balanchine ballets, opening with five performances of his timeless classic Jewels. The five additional programs include works by Jerome Robbins, former and current resident choreographers Christopher Wheeldon and Justin Peck, as well as premieres by current principal Lauren Lovette and former soloist Edwaard Liang. NYCB also celebrates the Merce Cunningham centennial by reviving the legendary choreographer's pristine Summerspace, which he first staged for the company in the 1960s.

---

Ayodele Casel + Arturo O'Farrill
Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street

Runs September 24-29.

This world premiere marks a major dance-and-music collaboration. Casel, one of the city's most inventive tap dance exponents, joins forces with O'Farrill, a Grammy-winning Afro-Latin jazz pianist-composer to explore the connections between tap and music genres such as salsa, rhumba, danzón and modal jazz.

---

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: Fase and Rosas danst Rosas
New York Live Arts, 219 West 19 Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues

Runs September 24-28; October 1-5.

In December, this celebrated Belgian dance-maker will make her Broadway debut as choreographer for Ivo van Hove's new production of West Side Story. To get a peek at Keersmaeker's style, check out these revivals of two of her earliest, most rigorous works from the 1980s. While still studying at NYU, she launched her career with Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, an extended duet marked by repetition and subtly shifting patterns. In the intricately structured Rosas danst Rosas, she expanded on her minimalist aesthetic with four dancers performing meticulous reiterations of mundane gestures which take on a hypnotic sensuality.

---

Ballet West: Balanchine's Ballets Russes: The Song of the Nightingale and Apollo
Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89 Street

September 29.

The Guggenheim's eclectic Works & Process series gives a behind-the-scenes peek at this Salt Lake City company's reconstruction of The Song of the Nightingale, a "lost" Balanchine work created for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes that marked the choreographer's first of many collaborations with composer Igor Stravinsky. Excerpts from that ballet as well as Apollo will be presented, followed by a discussion with noted dance historians Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, who assisted Ballet West with the project.

---

Works & Process Rotunda Project: Dance Theatre of Harlem at 50
The Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89 Street

September 30.

In honor of its 50th anniversary, Dance Theatre of Harlem returns to the Guggenheim's rotunda where it made its official New York debut in 1971. That inaugural performance included Tones by company founder Arthur Mitchell, and that ballet is on this program along with excerpts from works by Balanchine and DTH resident choreographer Robert Garland.

---

Susan Reiter regularly covers dance for TDF Stages.

Top image: Alice Sheppard in Where Good Souls Fear, which will be performed at the DANCE NOW Festival. Photo by Mengwen Cao.

TDF MEMBERS: Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.