Gisèle Vienne
BAM
October 13–15
In the US premiere of CROWD, the French choreographer Gisèle Vienne "...transports audiences to a 1990’s Detroit rave, and a night spent losing oneself in the crowd. The air throbs with pulsing beats from the radical EDM artists of 90s Detroit. Time ebbs and flows, capturing a moment of explosive synchronicity or slowing down to illuminate the tiniest movements, as 15 individual stories emerge and are subsumed by the group," according to the release.  Find out more here 



Anabella Lenzu
Sanctuary Space, The Center at West Park
October 13-15
Lenzu will present the world premiere of The night that you stopped acting/ La noche que dejaste de actuar which "...confronts the absurdity and irony of life, while being an artist and a spectator in today’s world. The work reflects Anabella Lenzu’s experience as a Latina artist living in New York and comes from a deep examination of her motivations as a woman, mother, and immigrant," according to the release. Find out  more here 

Various Artists
October 15
David Dupuy Studios
This group of artists with a shared heritage of Middle Eastern-North African (MENA) backgrounds come together  to create a multi-level performance piece that integrates dance, music, art, spoken word, calligraphy, and more Roses In Sand.  Find out more here

Twyla Tharp
October 19 – 23
New York City Center
Tharp revisits two iconic works, In the Upper Room and Nine Sinatra Songs set to music by Frank Sinatra.  Find out more here   
Fouad Boussouf
The Joyce Theater
October18 - 23 
Moroccan choreographer Boussouf offers the New York premiere of Näss (People), inspired by an array of dance traditions and comprised of a corps of seven dancers that respond to beats of percussion and electronic music.  Find out more here

Emily Johnson
New Live Arts
October 20-22
Johnson will present her newest dance performance and process, Being Future Being, which delves into the power of creation, with new stories that seek to sustain a world that must begin again. Find out more here

Dance/NYC Announces Dance Industry Census Roundtable Discussion Series for Dance Workers Across New York City Metropolitan Area

The dance service organization​ Dance/NYC today announced dates for its upcoming Dance Industry Census Roundtable Discussion Series. 

Taking place across NYC’s five boroughs and three regional metropolitan areas, the series will include ten discussion events – eight in-person and two virtual-only – that will invite dance workers and those who lead and work with dance-related businesses and organizations an opportunity to share their personal stories and experiences working within the local dance industry and cultural sector. Registration for the Discussion Series is available at Dance.NYC/CensusRoundtables. There is no cost to attend the discussion events.
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As the second phase of the Dance Industry Census, an effort to count every dance worker and entity in the industry, the roundtable discussions are an opportunity for members of the dance community to have their unique perspectives as dance workers and organizations recognized. With the collection of this qualitative data in conjunction with the quantitative data acquired via the Census, Dance/NYC hopes to gain a better understanding of the size, makeup, health and state of the dance ecosystem in order to address economic inequities in the field through its Dance. Workforce. Resilience. Initiative.
“The Dance Industry Census aims to understand the true story of who makes dance in New York City and how,” said Dance/NYC Executive Director Alejandra Duque Cifuentes. “These Roundtable Discussion events will allow us to do just that — gather experiences directly from workers and organizations in the field who bring their unique lived experiences to further illuminate the findings from the survey. This is imperative especially to ensure that the contributions of dance workers and entities who identity as or are led by disabled, immigrant, Black, Indigenous, and peoples of color are acknowledged despite intentional and historic underinvestment and in doing so enable Dance/NYC to build a more comprehensive picture of the inequities that exist at both the individual and systemic levels.”

​Read more here

Stephanie Dabney
July 11, 1958 - September 28, 2022

​New York Times:
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Stephanie Dabney, a principal dancer with the Dance Theater of Harlem who became an international star and a role model for aspiring Black ballerinas, died on Sept. 28 at a nursing home in Manhattan. She was 64.

Her sister, Janine Dabney-Battle, said the cause was cardiopulmonary arrest. Ms. Dabney had been living with H.I.V. since 1990 and had weathered numerous health complications.
Ms. Dabney was just 16 in 1975, when she joined the Harlem company, which was founded in 1969 by Karel Shook and Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at New York City Ballet, to create opportunities for dancers of color.
Mr. Mitchell was a protégé of George Balanchine, and Ms. Dabney was a natural fit for the company’s Balanchine-based neoclassical style. “Stephanie had it all: line, feet, technique, speed, imagination and the most important thing of all, heart,” Virginia Johnson, the company’s artistic director, wrote in an email.

Read entire New York Times article here

Marjani Forté-Saunders + Everett Saunders
Abrons Art Center
October 6 - 8
Forté-Saunders and Saunders will present PROPHET a 4 year archival, research, & multi-genre storytelling project on the life-journey of a Lyricist. Manifesting as a Performance Work, an Ethnographic Memoir, an Experimental Film, and Album, Prophet...illuminates the distinctive practices, systems, philosophies, and political ideologies that have shaped Hip Hop’s Emcee/Lyricists.  Prophet also traces the evolution from Emcee to Lyricist and invites audiences to enter a world of mindpower, bravery, self-determination, and triumph––facets of the artist’s quest for self-realization. Using text, sound, film, and performance, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist makes its own imaginative and embodied contribution to the scholarly, civic, and ancient legacies of radical Black expression. Find out more here

Malpaso Dance Company
The Joyce
October 4-9
​Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company returns to New York with a program that includes woman with water by Mats Ek, Elemental by Robyn Mineko Williams, plus more. Find out more here 

Constanza Macras/Dorky Park
BAM
October 5-8
Berlin-based Argentinian choreographer Macras offers Open for Everything, giving attention to "...the most misunderstood and mistreated groups in Europe—the Roma.  Mixing music, dance, storytelling...it offers a reflection of the diverse paths taken by Romani people in a borderless but still nationality-bound Europe." notes the release.  Find out more here 

Yvonne Rainer
New York Live Arts
October 5 -8
New York Live Arts and Performa co-present the world premiere Rainer’s  “HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees?” A  work for nine performers that reflects on America’s ongoing reckoning with systemic racism. Rainer has announced that this would be her “last dance.”  Find out more here

Triskelion Arts/Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute
Triskelion Arts
October 6-8
For this collaboration, the companies will present the world premiere of The Slowest Wave, combining butoh and neuroscience.  Find out more here

Various Artists
Arts On Site
October 7
For the MADE BY WOMEN festival, presented by Dual Rivet, featured will be works by Dual Rivet, Rachel Lockhart, Courtney Conovan, DoubleTake Dance, Joelle Santiago, Larissa Leung, Mayu Nakaya.  Find out more here

Ishmael Houston-Jones
Virtual/Black Diaspora
October 8
Houston-Jones will be the guest for this Black Diaspora event.  These events are open to a Black- or Afro-Latinx-identifying audience only. RSVP and find out more here

LaTasha Barnes
The Joyce
October 11-16
LaTasha Barnes’ The Jazz Continuum which "...centers the prolific artistry of Jazz music and dance as a cornerstone of Black American dance forms," according the release, will feature an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary cast of Black dancers and musicians. Find out more here

GrahamaDeconstructed
Martha Graham Studio Theater
October 11–12
The evening will focus on the geometry of Diversion of Angels (1948) made in order to appreciate the complex play of memory and emotion embedded in its design. Using danced excerpts as illustration, Janet Eilber will dissect the intricate structure of this dance. Find out more here 

Beau Bree Rhee
The Kitchen (at Chelsea building)
October 12 & 20
Beau Bree Rhee’s Shadow of the Sea a “dance poem” that begins by coalescing the shadows of historic and future waters. Find out more here 

FROM Gino Grenek:

I am deeply honored to announce that as of September 1, 2022, I have begun my new role as the executive director of the Stephen Petronio Company. It is with great pride that I return to the company in this leadership position after having danced the work of Stephen Petronio for 17 years.

After earning a degree in engineering from Dartmouth College in 1994, I focused my attention on my love for and commitment to dance and was extremely fortunate to eventually find a home in the ever-evolving and expanding Stephen Petronio Company. From 1999 until 2016, not only did I discover on a daily basis in the studio and on stages around the world just exactly what dance could be, but I found a group of dancers that embodied the lesson my first dance teachers always taught me; that dance at its very best is about ensemble.

During my 17-year tenure with the company as a dancer, I also served as the rehearsal director and assistant to the artistic director. In 2007, my body of work with Stephen Petronio was recognized with a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award. As grateful as I am to have been given such a prestigious honor, I have always believed that the award was not only an acknowledgment of what I had accomplished, but more importantly what we as a company had achieved. Yes, 17 years is a long time, but it truly is only a fraction of the nearly 40-year history of the Stephen Petronio Company and the many extraordinary artists that formed its foundation and continue to create its future.

I hold in my heart and body such profound respect for the artists that danced in the company before me, for those that danced with me and for those that are dancing there now. These are the artists that energized me and continue to encourage me to be a better version of myself than the one I was yesterday. We all knew that attaining true perfection in Stephen Petronio’s work would never really be possible due to the demanding complexity of the choreography. However, as a supportive family of dancers we always invigorated each other to keep pursuing excellence at all times and to face each new challenge without reservations or fear. Achieving perfection was never the goal. Expanding the boundaries of what any of us thought possible was the real pursuit and knowing that to discover a world without limits, we needed to find that together and then share it without hesitation and with love. It is my sincere hope that my time as a dancer in the company embodied that commitment to collaboration, hard work and generosity and I intend to continue to embrace those unshakable beliefs of the Stephen Petronio Company as the new executive director.

On behalf of the team at the Stephen Petronio Company and the Petronio Residency Center, I wish you health, peace and prosperity. I so very much look forward to working with you in the future so that together we can continue the journey to uncover new and expansive ways to encourage this world to be stronger in all capacities. The challenges are great, but so are the possibilities.
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Sincerely,
Gino Grenek
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​Read more about Gino here

BRADLEY SHELVER, a native of South Africa, newly appointed Artistic Director of the Joffrey Ballet Concert Group in New York, trained at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg and at The Ailey School in New York. 

He has danced with the Ailey II, Elisa Monte Dance, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, The Francesca Harper Project, Limón Dance Company, Phoenix Dance Theater (UK) and in projects with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co., Lar Lubovich Dance, The Universal Ballet, Radio City Music Hall, and in productions with the Mark Morris Dance Group. He is in his 13th season as a principal dancer with The Metropolitan Opera Ballet.
 

Mr. Shelver has choreographed works for; Richmond Ballet, Ailey II, Ballet Austin, Lustig Dance Theater, Compania Rio Danca, New Jersey Dance Theater Ensemble, Cape Dance Company, Cedar Lake 2, Sobers & Godley Dance, Nexus Dance Lab, as well as creating works for The Royal Danish and Royal Swedish Ballet Schools, Joffrey Ballet School, Central Ballet School (London) The Ailey School, Boston Conservatory, Long Island University and Purchase College.
 
He was co-producer and curator for the annual REVERBdance Festival from 2010-2016. From 2013-2016, he was the Artistic Director of the STEPS Repertory Ensemble and the Production Director for Steps on Broadway. He is currently the Artistic Director of The Joffrey Ballet Concert Group and The Brooklyn Dance Festival Company and taught classes for the ensembles of Mathew Bourne’s “Adventures in Motion Pictures”, The Lion King on Broadway, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Elisa Monte Dance. 

Mr Shelver is on the faculty of schools and universities worldwide including ABT/JKO School, Adjunct Professor at Montclair State University, The Limòn Institute, Complexions Contemporary Ballet Academy, Royal Danish and Royal Swedish Ballet Schools, The Ailey School, La Guardia High School for the Performing Arts, Joffrey Ballet School, Bikuratim (Israel), Pan American Modern Dance School (Brazil), Hinton Battle Academy. (Tokyo), DAR Jazz Academy (Russia) among others. He is a certified ballet teacher with the ABT National Training Curriculum. 

Also a writer, he was a contributor for Dance Spirit Magazine and his book, “Performance Through the Dance Technique of Lester Horton” is available worldwide.
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