Dancing

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      At Rennie Harris’s Hip-Hop University, Teaching the Teachers

      by

      On a Friday morning in December the hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris was in Boulder, Colo., teaching a master class. Rather than taking a post at the front of the studio and staying there, Harris moved among the students, weaving his way through the room and dancing along with them. He offered a few critiques, but more often he paused to share stories and historical tidbits, illuminating the lineage and theory behind the movements he was teaching.But this was more than just a master class. It was one of the final sessions in a yearlong program to train and certify hip-hop and street dance teachers. A few days later, most of these students became members of the first graduating class at the newly minted Rennie Harris University.Over the course of his decades-long career, Harris, who turns 59 this week, has been a guiding force, ushering hip-hop and street dance into new spaces and championing their history and legacy. He is perhaps most widely known for bringing these styles to the concert stage with his Philadelphia-based company Rennie Harris Puremovement. (The company will present its signature work, “Rome & Jewels,” a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet,” at the Joyce Theater in New York in February.) Rennie Harris University builds on the principles that have shaped its founder’s career, bringing them into the classroom.“No one’s teaching how to teach hip-hop, everyone’s just teaching people how to do it,” said Harris, here in Boulder for his program’s winter cypher session.Stephen Speranza“What’s special, I think, about the curriculum is the pedagogy piece,” Harris said in an interview. “Because no one’s teaching how to teach hip-hop, everyone’s just teaching people how to do it. It’s the assumption that because you can do it, then you can teach it, but everybody doesn’t know how to teach it.”Hip-hop teaching, he said, often focuses largely on learning choreography. Rennie Harris University aims to broaden the scope by giving educators a working knowledge not only of hip-hop technique, but also of its origins and culture. And because hip-hop and other street styles have historically been overlooked in academic settings that teach dance, a program like this one could help place qualified instructors in institutions where these styles have not been offered or prioritized.Farrah McAdam, a member of the first graduating class, said there were additional benefits: “I think this program helps quote, legitimize hip-hop, even though it’s legit as is, right? But we know in education or academic spaces, ballet and modern are seen as a higher priority or a higher foundation of dance than hip-hop or other cultural forms.”In dance programs across the United States, classical ballet and modern are typically part of the core curriculum, while genres like tap, hip-hop and other street styles are often offered as electives — if at all. And while faculty members, dancers and choreographers have grown more vocal about the need for change — especially after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, which brought renewed attention to racial bias in the arts — it has been slow in coming.Farrah McAdam and Tyreis Hunte in B-boy KO’s Popping Combo class in Boulder.Stephen SperanzaFor D. Sabela Grimes, a multidisciplinary artist and associate professor of practice at the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California, this phenomenon is part of what he calls the “ballet industrial complex.” Ballet, “at least in the American context, has created pathways for people to have careers as performers,” he said, “and then go into higher education.” But, he added, that has not been the case for hip-hop and street dance teachers.Grimes, an original “Rome & Jewels” cast member, said he was hopeful about the change he is seeing on an institutional level — and that programs like Harris’s would help with the momentum.“I think the program will be a resource,” he said, but “what I have learned working in higher education is that we’re going to need more. Times are changing, which is beautiful, but these institutions don’t move at the same pace that hip-hop culture in a really general sense moves and popular culture also moves.”Harris’s program may be the first of its kind at this level, but similar ones are in the works. Last fall, the British dance company ZooNation rolled out a slate of courses to train hip-hop teachers. And Moncell Durden, a dance scholar, hip-hop figure and a former member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, is developing a teacher certification program in Black American dance as part of his organization, Intangible Roots. It’s slated to begin in the fall, online and with in-person sessions in Los Angeles.The seeds for Rennie Harris University were planted more than 20 years ago, when Harris started Illadelph Legends, a dance festival that gathered hip-hop and street dance pioneers to teach classes and discuss the culture and the history of the forms. Harris said that Durden, who was also involved with the festival, had proposed a partnership with Unesco to create a certification program that would explore hip-hop as a form of traditional folklore. The idea didn’t come to fruition, Harris said, but he couldn’t get it out of his head.Harris presiding at the dance battle at the cypher session in Boulder.Stephen SperanzaHe got to work mining his connections across the dance world, he said, and “called some in favors.” Rennie Harris University welcomed its first pool of applicants in early 2021.The program is structured to allow students to take technique classes locally, with a list of qualified instructors near their homes provided by the school; students also meet virtually to take a rotating slate of courses online. Sessions cover hip-hop and street dance-specific injury prevention, pedagogy, theory and history; Harris’s contribution, a series called The Day Before Hip-Hop, traces the roots of the form back to the period of American slavery. The courses are taught by renowned dance scholars including Ayo Walker, Thomas DeFrantz, Charmaine Warren and Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, and hip-hop and street dance practitioners like Buddha Stretch, Pop Master Fabel and B-boy YNOT.“Most people think that dance is just dance,” said Stephanie Sanchez, a graduate of Rennie Harris University. “And it’s not, it’s so much more than that — it’s research, development, where this move comes from. And that’s exactly what Rennie is doing with this program.”On top of their course load, students attend multiday intensives called cypher sessions, with in-person dance classes and lectures. On the roster for the winter session, held in Boulder in December, were classes like Wake & Break, Tops & Rocks, Popping Combo and Can U Freestyle. (The spring session is in Miami; tuition covers the classes but students pay separate fees for travel, room and board.) The cypher sessions, named for an important hip-hop practice in which dancers (or rappers) gather to perform and cheer one another on — usually in a circle, taking turns in the center — bring students together in a community, a vital part of the Rennie Harris University experience and of hip-hop culture more broadly.To earn their certificates, students are required to pass an extensive slate of assessments. These include teaching a mock class, taking a written test and participating in the cypher-end dance battle, which welcomes dancers from the area and offers a $3,000 grand prize.Warming up before the dance battle.Stephen SperanzaPreparing to pull out their most impressive stunts, the students at the cypher session in December may have been feeling the pressure on the evening of the battle. But a strong sense of unity was the prevailing note. As the judges paused the competition to deliberate after the first round, the competitors fell into a cypher, dancing for — and with — one another as if they’d been dancing together for years.Many Rennie Harris University graduates have taken on Harris’s sense of mission. Tyreis Hunte, a senior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., said they hoped to bring hip-hop and street dance into the academy in a deeper way, “to educate communities about the history and the integrity of street dance and street culture.”Some are already teaching dance, like McAdam, who works at Sonoma State University in California. She said her experience at Rennie Harris University had deepened her relationship to hip-hop. That it is not only about her teaching, she said, “but also just showing up to jams and battles and spaces, or opening doors for other people to come into the teaching space that might not usually have the access.”For Harris, too, the program is about opening doors. It’s an opportunity to share his knowledge, and also to widen hip-hop and street dance’s circle of influence and help reshape priorities.At Rennie Harris University, where the second cohort has already started classes, “we’re flipping the script,” he said. “Hip-hop dance is first. House dance is first. Street dance is first — that’s the focus, right? Anything else is secondary.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Review: ‘Drama,’ at the Volksbühne, Contains Many Things. But Drama Isn’t One.

      by

      The choreographer Constanza Macras’s new work at the Volksbühne is a chaotic revue featuring dance, slapstick, spoken dialogue, pop music and heavy-handed monologues.The last thing the Volksbühne Berlin needs is more drama. That might sound like an odd thing to say about one of Germany’s most important theaters, but in recent years the company seems to have had all the histrionics it can take.It has been struggling to regain its artistic footing after the dismissal of its longtime leader Frank Castorf, in 2017, to make way for Chris Dercon, a tony Belgian impresario who didn’t last through his first season. Then Dercon’s replacement, Klaus Dörr, stepped down before the end of his term, after women in the company raised allegations of sexual harassment.When René Pollesch, one of Germany’s most acclaimed dramatists and a veteran of the Castorf years, was installed as artistic director in 2021, it was widely hoped he would be a purveyor of both stability and artistic excellence. However, Pollesch has struggled to restore the Volksbühne’s reputation as one of the most groundbreaking in Europe.Since Pollesch took the reins, the theater’s program has been a hot mess, with critical pans and poor box office returns. Against this background, it seemed inauspicious that the Argentine choreographer Constanza Macras titled her latest work for the theater “Drama.” The show had its premiere Thursday, and will run in repertory at the theater for the rest of the season.“Drama” is not a straightforward dance piece. Instead, Macras and her 10 performers — drawn from her own company, Dorky Park, plus some guest dancers — serve up a disjointed revue that is about theater itself, in the vaguest of senses. How is it that actors reciting lines written by someone else — often at a remove of centuries or millenniums — can ring true to audiences nowadays? Will they in the future? Using dance, movement — including Buster Keaton-esque slapstick — spoken dialogue and pop music, primarily in English and German, Macras’s intrepid and indefatigable troupe sets out to investigate.In the show’s opening minutes, Macras gives us a potpourri of Shakespearean scenes in a jittery pantomime. Toward the end, we get a three-minute version of Sophocles’s “Antigone.” In between, she treats us to a series of goofy scenarios, including a particularly zany one without dialogue, in which the dancers become life-size Playmobil figures with their helmet-like wigs and stiff limbs.In a zany scene from “Drama,” the players perform jerky movements, dressed as life-size Playmobil figures.Thomas AurinIn that scene, the performers’ controlled, jerky movements are impressive. Elsewhere, the cast display some startling physical feats. The most gob smacking is when the hunky dancer Campbell Caspary walks down a flight of stairs on his hands.The 10 performers that cavort across the large stage pretty much nonstop for two and a half hours are striking dancers, although the results are far more mixed when they are called on to recite texts or sing. With gusto but varying levels of musical skill, they belt out pop anthems backed by two onstage musicians, and when the entire cast launched into “I Sing the Body Electric,” from the 1980s musical “Fame,” joined onstage by a local amateur choir, that gaudy number felt like the show’s grand finale. Alas, we were only halfway through.As the evening wore on, cast members launched into heavy-handed soliloquies about cultural appropriation and artists’ poor pay. (“Dance is so intersectional,” is the worst line in a script with no shortage of clunkers.) Occasional self-deprecating references to the show’s own sloppiness come across as an unconvincing tactic to forestall criticism.From left: Caspary, Bas and Shoji in a musical number from “Drama.”Thomas AurinTaking in the entire spectacle is like following a sloppy brainstorming session through to its illogical conclusion. So why should we be surprised when Macras gives us a late-evening history lesson about Nélida Roca, the Argentine “vedette,” or showgirl, who held Buenos Aires enthralled from the 1950s to the 1970s. The real disappointment is that the burlesque show that follows is curiously low on razzle dazzle, despite all the feather headdresses and tassels.Here, as elsewhere in “Drama,” Macras’ choreography lacks distinction. It was deflating to watch the dancers give their all to exertions that hardly seemed worth the energy.As a chaotic vaudeville featuring dance, music, slapstick and confessional monologues, “Drama” bears more than a passing resemblance to Florentina Holzinger’s “Ophelia’s Got Talent,” a revue featuring an all-naked female dance troupe which is one of the Volksbühne’s only box office hits this season.Macras doesn’t go in for the shock tactics that are Holzinger’s stock in trade, but she still appears to take a page from the younger and more transgressive practitioner of dance theater. There’s even a monologue about suicide that will sound familiar to anyone who has suffered through “Ophelia’s Got Talent.” And although it’s blessedly shorter, “Drama” is similarly meandering, and feels endless.After two and a half hours, “Drama” leaves one exhausted, not exhilarated. It’s made up of many — far too many — ingredients, but drama isn’t one of them. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Television

      A Wednesday Addams Contest Brings the Fans

      by

      At a Brooklyn club, fans of the Netflix series “Wednesday” showed off their takes on the pigtailed heroine’s signature moves in a midnight competition.On a Brooklyn street dotted with auto repair garages, a line of young women wearing black ruffled dresses, black chokers, little black backpacks and Doc Martens waited in the cold outside a club called Quantum on Friday night. They were united in their fandom for the Netflix series “Wednesday” and their adoration for the show’s macabre protagonist, Wednesday Addams.The club, which is beside the Gowanus Expressway, was hosting an Addams Family-themed party dedicated to the dance that Wednesday performs in the show’s fourth episode at a prom-like event at Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for outcasts, vampires and werewolves. The angular dance is characterized by unpredictable arm flails and head jerks, and executed to the 1981 psychobilly classic “Goo Goo Muck,” by the Cramps. It has inspired endless fans to post bedroom tributes on TikTok.Jenna Ortega, the 20-year-old former Disney star who plays Wednesday, choreographed the moves herself by studying footage of goths dancing at clubs in the 1980s and borrowing ideas from performers like Bob Fosse, Siouxsie Sioux, Lene Lovich and Denis Lavant.She has also cited the gyrations of Lisa Loring, who played Wednesday in the 1960s TV series “The Addams Family.” The New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas has written of Ortega’s performance: “It’s the defiant dance of a nonconformist. It’s a celebration of weird.”The crowd at Quantum Brooklyn watches the Addams Family-themed dance competition.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesA cardboard cutout of the night’s role model has a moment in the spotlight.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs the club filled up with Wednesdays, there was a sense of anticipation in the crowd: At midnight, on an elevated runway, there would be a contest to determine which Wednesday had mastered the dance best.Wednesday Addams, High School SleuthJenna Ortega stars as the Addams Family’s death-obsessed young daughter in Netflix’s new series “Wednesday.”Review: “Perhaps for the first time, an Addams Family story pushes Wednesday toward being more like everyone else,” our critic writes.Inhabiting Wednesday: Ortega, a former Disney star, plays a teenage version of the character, who is sent to a boarding school for outcasts. This is what she said about taking on the role.Iconic Moves: Ortega’s Wednesday dance is a viral sensation, but why? Disarming and defiant, it’s the dance of a nonconformist.Along for the Ride: Joy Sunday, who plays a siren and popular girl who clashes with Wednesday, shares glimpses of her life in 2022 through seven photos in her camera roll.A big screen behind the D.J. booth showed clips of the old black-and-white TV series, the Addams Family movies from the 1990s and the Netflix show. The event’s organizer (an outfit called Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Presents) had promoted the party with a program that promised a playlist of “sad girl bops,” which ended up meaning songs by Lana Del Rey and My Chemical Romance. On the stage, the hip-hop artist Sl!ck performed a Wednesday-inspired rap.The Quantum dance floor became a fashion runway for all manner of Wednesday Addams costume interpretations: outfits featured black-and-white socks, polka dot shirts, leather coats, metal skull earrings, thick-soled boots with silver spider buckles and brothel creepers. But there were a few spots of color in the crowd, in the form of fans dressed as Enid Sinclair, Wednesday’s jovial roommate, who wears floral skirts, pink sweaters and berets.Between dances, fans reflected on Ms. Ortega’s performance, as well as why a character conceived in the 1930s by the New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams is now thriving as a mascot for the weird almost 90 years later.“What Wednesday’s dance represents is that it’s not about trying to prove you’re different,” said Melanie Allen-Harrison, 32, who wore a dark baggy coat and a silver pendant necklace. “It’s about knowing that you are and owning that.”Melanie Allen-Harrison, left, and Rosalinda Rodriguez were among the revelers.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAriella Van Cooten, 31, a middle-school teacher who had dyed her hair pink and green, said: “Now it’s cool to be goth because of the show. People used to look at me funny because I shopped at Hot Topic.” She added, “I think Wednesday has endured as a character because she’s not afraid to be bold, even if that means drinking poison.”The D.J., Cip Cipriano, who wore a Wednesday Addams muscle shirt, said: “I was a gay guido from Yonkers who had to move to San Francisco. We’re drawn to Wednesday because so many of us know what it feels like to be an outcast. And not only is Wednesday a black sheep, she’s the black sheep of the Addams Family.”Finally, midnight arrived, and the Wednesday dance contest was at hand.In homage to a pivotal “Wednesday” scene, a clubgoer squirted fake blood at dance-off competitors.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesPetra Hyde does the Wednesday dance.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesSix contestants climbed onto the stage. The reverb guitar twang of “Goo Goo Muck” began to thunder through the club’s loudspeakers. As the crowd cheered, the contestants mimicked Ms. Ortega’s moves while imitating her character’s signature cold stare.In the final round, water guns were given to audience members so that they could douse the contestants in red paint — a homage to the scene following Ms. Ortega’s dance, in which some local teenagers stage a cruel prank on the Nevermore students by pumping a blood-like liquid into the school’s sprinkler system.The winner was picked democratically: whoever received the loudest applause. It was Jeffrey Pelayo, a 23-year-old fashion stylist who had dressed up as Wednesday’s father, Gomez Addams. He was wearing a blazer and tie, and his smudged pencil mustache was drawn in mascara. He was given a tiara and a drink ticket as his prize.And the winner is … Gomez? Jeffrey Pelayo drew the biggest cheers at Quantum.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs night waned into early morning at the club, the Wednesday crowd began to thin out and the staff diverted its attention to customers who wanted to slam shots and party to hits by Kesha and Katy Perry. The dance floor, in other words, turned into the kind of scene that Wednesday Addams would despise. Bombarding the stage, a gang of college girls screamed along to the lyrics of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” while a couple of guys loitered at the bar building up their liquid courage.And yet, as the club devolved into a fratty spectacle, a pair of last-call Wednesdays were dancing hard in a dark corner of the floor, stomping their boots and moshing around in circles, their little black backpacks bobbing up and down. They moved with defiance, dancing strangely without a care. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      10 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2023

      by

      “Succession” returns, the Spider-Verse spawns a sequel, Kelela hits the road and Michael B. Jordan makes his directing debut with “Creed III.”Miguel and Carlos CevallosMargaret LyonsThe Scheming Roys of “Succession” ReturnBrian Cox as Logan Roy in Season 4 of “Succession,” which returns to HBO in the spring.Macall Polay/HBOWhile there are no sure bets in television, and plenty of once-great shows have fallen into bland disarray, I am counting the days until “Succession” comes back for its fourth season. (HBO says it will air in the spring.) Oh, I can hear the jangly piano theme now, and just knowing that the bereft and broken Roys, their gorgeously cruel dialogue and endless, joyless quests for power will soon be back on my screen fills me with elation. God, I hope Kendall sings in front of an audience again, and Greg stammers his way into failing up somehow, and Gerri and Roman’s erotic entanglement deepens and Shiv continues her reign of ecru terror. Logan will be grumbly! Connor will be a dingus! Tom will be in hapless agony! And I will be so, so happy, reveling in the show’s mastery of tension, its push-pull of crumbling and coalescing.Maya PhillipsThe Spider-Verse Slings Into a SequelBefore Michelle Yeoh faced off against Jobu Tupaki and her everything bagel of oblivion in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and before Doctor Strange fought bizarro Strange with weaponized music notation in “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” in 2018 “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” provided a much-needed shock to the multiverse concept in film. Though it introduced a whole gang of Spider-people, each with his or her own unique back story, universe and aesthetic, “Spider-Verse” made plenty of space for its protagonist, Miles Morales, a young Afro-Latino Spider-Man whose heartfelt, humorous character arc, along with the film’s stunning animation and killer soundtrack, wasn’t lost even amid the infinite vastness of the multiverse. In June the sequel, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” will offer a more mature Miles and a new cast of Spider-variants voiced by a stellar cast, including Issa Rae as an Afro-wearing Spider-Woman, Daniel Kaluuya as Spider-Punk and Oscar Isaac as Spider-Man 2099.Jon ParelesKelela Hits the Road With Her Avant-Garde R&BThe singer and songwriter Kelela has floated on the avant-garde fringe of R&B since she released her first mixtape, “Cut 4 Me,” in 2013. Working with some of the most innovative producers around, Kelela often places her voice within eerie electronic backdrops, creating unexpected intimacy in virtual realms. But she has been elusive. She released her only full-length album, “Take Me Apart,” in 2017, and re-emerged with a few singles in 2022, starting with the enigmatic “Washed Away” and moving toward dance music and pop with “Happy Ending” and “On the Run.” Those songs are previews of her second full-length album, “Raven,” which is due in February, followed by a club tour — titled “Rave:N”—- that brings her to Webster Hall in New York on March 17. Both should reveal her latest convolutions and innovations.Mike HaleTwo Spins on the Mystery of the WeekNatasha Lyonne plays the crime-solving heroine of Peacock’s “Poker Face,” created by Rian Johnson.Phillip Caruso/PeacockTwo new crime dramas are taking different approaches to a venerable format, the mystery of the week. Fox’s “Accused” (Jan. 22) is a pure anthology, with 15 self-contained episodes set in different locales and featuring different casts. This presumably expensive venture — a lot of actors, including Wendell Pierce, Margo Martindale, Michael Chiklis, Rhea Perlman and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, need to be paid — is a joint venture of Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa (“Homeland”) and David Shore (“House”). Peacock’s “Poker Face” (Jan. 26), on the other hand, achieves its episodic structure by putting its crime-solving heroine on the road, where she finds new mysteries to tackle each week. Created by Rian Johnson (“Knives Out”) and starring Natasha Lyonne, it also requires an extensive cast, which includes Adrien Brody, Cherry Jones, Chloë Sevigny, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte and the busy Rhea Perlman.Jesse GreenA Rare Revival of a Hansberry DramaLorraine Hansberry, photographed in her apartment in 1959; her play “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” will be presented at BAM beginning in February.David Attie/Getty ImagesOnly two plays by Lorraine Hansberry were produced during her short lifetime. “A Raisin in the Sun,” in 1959, was the big deal: an instant classic, forever revivable. But “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” which opened on Broadway in 1964 and closed days before she died in 1965, has barely been seen again. Now it will be, in a starry production (Feb. 4 through March 19) directed by Anne Kauffman for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan play a bohemian Village couple — much like Hansberry and her husband, Robert Nemiroff — struggling to align their racial, sexual and cultural positions within the treacherous crosscurrents of contemporary politics. In some ways a Black critique of white liberalism, it leaves no group unscathed in its portrait of do-gooders doing what, for Hansberry, they do best: making a mess with the best of intentions.Salamishah TilletMichael B. Jordan Gets Back in the RingShot on IMAX cameras, “Creed III” promises to get extremely close to the frenzied action of a boxing match. Michael B. Jordan, making his directorial debut, is back as the light heavyweight champion Adonis “Donnie” Creed, now a thriving family man with Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and their daughter (Mila Davis-Kent). While Sylvester Stallone doesn’t star in this installment of the franchise, Jonathan Majors plays Donnie’s childhood friend Damian, who leaves prison after nearly two decades and turns into his fiercest competitor. Both men are among the most charismatic, talented and nuanced actors of their generation and I expect they’ll deliver some powerful performances inside and outside the ring. Look for the movie on March 3.Zachary WoolfeA New Staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the MetA design sketch for a new staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Metropolitan Opera, with Piotr Beczala in the title role.via Metropolitan OperaOf the core repertory, the 25 or 30 titles at the center of the Metropolitan Opera’s history, none has been absent from its stage longer than Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” This is strange, since “Lohengrin” is probably the most performed Wagner work worldwide; it’s done all the time. But the Met’s radically minimal, painstakingly still Robert Wilson production posed extreme demands on singers and technicians alike, and was last seen in 2006. So it’ll be a major event when, on Feb. 26, the opera finally returns to New York in a new staging, directed by François Girard, whose thoughtful “Parsifal,” set in a stylized present day, was a success. (His muddled “Der Fliegende Holländer” early in 2020, less so.) Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, conducts a cast that includes the plangent tenor Piotr Beczala in the title role, the budding Wagnerian Tamara Wilson as Elsa, Christine Goerke as the aggrieved Ortrud, Evgeny Nikitin and Günther Groissböck.Gia KourlasPina Bausch Takes a Trip to BrazilIn “Água” by the choreographer Pina Bausch, Tsai-Chin Yu, foreground, spins with Nicholas Losada behind her.Ursula KaufmannThe choreographer Pina Bausch found inspiration in places and in cultures in the latter part of her career, transforming those experiences into shimmering, visceral dances. While they don’t have the darkness and bite of her earlier works, they do have the potential to wash over you like a vacation — albeit one in the theater. This spring, from March 3 to 19, the Brooklyn Academy of Music will host one such trip to Brazil. In “Água,” created by Bausch during a 2001 residency, the radiance of the landscape is celebrated with voluptuous, exuberant dancing and sumptuous color. It’s been six years since Tanztheater Wuppertal, now under the artistic direction of Boris Charmatz, a French experimentalist, performed at the Academy. As usual with a Bausch work, the hair will flow, the dresses will shimmer and the soundtrack will be eclectic. This one includes music by PJ Harvey, St Germain and Tom Waits. Strap yourself in.Jason FaragoTangled Webs of Modern Invention at the GuggenheimGego installing “Reticulárea” at Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1969.Fundación Gego; Juan SantanaHer birth certificate read Gertrud Goldschmidt — but the German-born Venezuelan artist always preferred Gego, a shrinking of her first and last names that reverberated with an art of slender brilliance. Born to a Jewish family in Hamburg in 1912, she studied architecture before fleeing to Caracas in 1939, and only in her 40s did she begin gathering copper wires, aluminum rods and plastic dowels into striking yet splintery abstract clusters. Beguiling and forbidding by turns, her works could be suspended like a mobile, or stream from the ceiling, or else could propagate across a room like a massive spider’s web. On one point Gego was uncompromising: These metal assemblages were not sculptures, she insisted, but “drawings without paper” that took a very different route to abstraction than the clean geometries many other Latin American artists favored. (They’re also delightfully resistant to social media transmission, their finely interlaced wires beyond the ken of even the highest-resolution cameraphone.) “Gego: Measuring Infinity,” opening March 31 at the Guggenheim, will fill the museum’s white spiral with her spindly aggregations — and, amid extreme refugee crises in both Europe and Venezuela, her themes of fragility and enmeshment have lost none of their force.Jason ZinomanSara Schaefer Spoofs the Comedy WorldSpoofing the cult of comedy in the language of Scientology, the wry, incisive stand-up Sara Schaefer adopts the pose, jargon and microphone of a guru in her new solo show about how to make it in the stand-up business. “Going Up” (a riff on the Scientology term “Going Clear”), which has been performed a few times but will get a wider hearing in 2023, is ambitious and nimble, sneakily personal with enough inside-baseball jokes to make it a must-see for comedy nerds. The most impressive example of this, and the bit I am most looking forward to revisiting, is when Schaefer illustrates every kind of modern stand-up by doing the same genre of joke, over and over again, in a multitude of styles. It’s a feat of comedy as well as criticism that captures an entire scene in just a few minutes. Her show should be a staple of festivals, but early in the year, it will stop in, among other places, San Francisco, Austin and New York when she performs at Caveat on April 6. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Tshala Muana, Congolese Singer With Danceable Messages, Dies at 64

      by

      A superstar in Africa, she sang in the language of her tribe and often addressed social concerns, insisting on women’s strength and decrying abuse. Tshala Muana, a Congolese singer who brought a supple voice and sensual dance moves to songs about women’s dignity and social issues, died on Dec. 10 in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was 64.Her death, in a hospital, was announced on Facebook by her producer and companion, Claude Mashala. He did not cite a cause, but Ms. Muana had a stroke in 2020 and had diabetes and hypertension.Unlike other internationally successful Congolese performers, Ms. Muana sang most of her songs in Tshiluba, the native language of her Kasai tribe, rather than in French or Lingala, the Congolese lingua franca. Her songs often addressed social concerns, insisting on women’s strength and decrying abuse; she also promoted condom use to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa.She was praised as the “queen” of mutuashi, a traditional Kasai rhythm and hip-pumping dance which she updated in her hits and carried to concert stages worldwide. In the early 2000s, Ms. Muana was elected to Congo’s parliament along with another top musician, Tabu Ley. She championed issues involving women, children and the poor and became widely known as Mamu Nationale, “Mother of the Nation.”Elisabeth Tshala Muana Muidikay was born on March 13, 1958, in Élisabethville, in what was then the Belgian Congo; the city is now Lubumbashi, the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was the second of 10 children of Amadeus Muidikayi and Alphonsine Bambiwa Tumba. Her father, a soldier, died during civil warfare in Congo when she was 6 years old.Ms. Muana had an arranged marriage as a teenager, but she left it after the death of an infant daughter. She moved to Kinshasa, where she became a dancer and backup singer in the band led by the singer M’Pongo Love.In 1980 she left her homeland, which by then had been renamed Zaire, and traveled through West Africa. She settled in Ivory Coast, where she started her solo career, and recorded her first single, “Amina,” in Paris in 1982. She moved to Paris around the time she recorded her first album, “Kami,” there in 1984.By the time she returned to Zaire in the mid-1980s, she had established herself as a hitmaker in Africa. In 1987, she had a pan-African hit with “Karibou Yangu,” whose lyrics were in Swahili.She moved to Paris again in 1990 and remained there until the end of the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 before returning to what was now the Democratic Republic of Congo.Ms. Muana maintained a long and prolific career, releasing nearly two dozen albums and performing in Africa, Europe and the United States. The percolating grooves of her songs fused mutuashi rhythms with salsa, Congolese soukous and other African and Caribbean rhythms, deploying synthesizers and horns alongside traditional percussion. One of her most highly regarded albums, “Mutuashi,” was released in the United States in 1996.Her songs often carried messages of ethical uplift and social criticism, at times veiled in metaphor. At her concerts, which brought her to stadiums across Africa, she was renowned for dancing that fans considered sexy and detractors considered vulgar. In 2003 she shared the Kora All Africa Music Award for best female central African artist with another Congolese singer, M’bilia Bel.In November 2020, Ms. Muana released her last single, “Ingratitude,” a song chiding someone for disloyalty to a mentor. She was arrested and imprisoned, apparently because Congo’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, believed the song was criticizing him for breaking away from Joseph Kabila, Congo’s former president, whom Ms. Muana had supported. She was released within a day, and Mr. Mashala, her producer and companion, said at the time that the song was aimed more generally at a lifetime of betrayals by people and corporations. Ms. Muana had no children. Information on survivors other than Mr. Mashala was not immediately available.Although Ms. Muana championed her Kasai roots, she strongly supported multicultural unity for her strife-torn country.“In Congo there is no love for each other, no one has the country at heart,” she told The Observer, a Ugandan newspaper, in 2009. “We were elected to Parliament to represent our cultures and musicians, but the primary assignment was teaching love.” More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      The Artists We Lost in 2022, in Their Words

      by

      Music innovators who sang of coal country and “Great Balls of Fire.” An actress who made a signature role out of a devilish baker who meets a fiery end. The trailblazing heart of “In the Heat of the Night.”The creative people who died this year include many whose lives helped shape our own — through the art they made, and through the words they said. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their own voices.Sidney Poitier.Sam Falk/The New York Times“Life offered no auditions for the many roles I had to play.”— Sidney Poitier, actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“People in the past have done what we’re trying to do infinitely better. That’s why, for one’s own sanity, to keep one’s own sense of proportion, one must regularly go back to them.”— Peter Brook, director, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Ronnie Spector.Art Zelin/Getty Images“Every song is a little piece of my life.”— Ronnie Spector, singer, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Yuriko.Jack Mitchell/Getty Images“Dance is living. Dance is, for me, it’s survival.”— Yuriko, dancer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Kirstie Alley.Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“The question is, how do you create with what you have?”— Kirstie Alley, actress, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)Carmen Herrera.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“Every painting has been a fight between the painting and me. I tend to win. But you know how many paintings I threw in the garbage?”— Carmen Herrera, artist, born 1915 (Read the obituary.)“I decided that in every scene, you’re naked. If you’re dressed in a parka, what’s the difference if you’re dressed in nothing at all, if you’re exploring yourself?”— William Hurt, actor, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Takeoff.Rich Fury/Getty Images For Global Citizen“You gotta have fun with a song, make somebody laugh. You gotta have character. A hard punchline can make you laugh, but you gotta know how to say it.”— Takeoff, rapper, born 1994 (Read the obituary.)“I love watching people get hit in the crotch. But only if they get back up.”— Bob Saget, comedian and actor, born 1956 (Read the obituary.)Olivia Newton-John.Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA, via Shutterstock“I do like to be alone at times, just to breathe.”— Olivia Newton-John, singer, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Movies are like clouds that sit over reality: If I do cinema well, I can uncover what is beneath, my friends, my allies, what I am, where I come from.”— Jean-Luc Godard, director, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Sam Gilliam.Anthony Barboza/Getty Images“The expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political.”— Sam Gilliam, artist, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“Everyone says that I was a role model. But I never thought of it when I was doing the music and when I was performing. I just wanted to make good music.”— Betty Davis, singer-songwriter, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Nichelle Nichols.Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images“The next Einstein might have a Black face — and she’s female.”— Nichelle Nichols, actress, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“If I could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, it would be with Albert Einstein at Panzanella.”— Judy Tenuta, comedian, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)“In time, writers learn that good fiction editors care as much about the story as the writer does, or almost, anyway. And you really often end up, the three of you — the writer, and the editor, and the story — working on this obdurate, beautiful thing, this brand-new creation.”— Roger Angell, writer and editor, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Jennifer Bartlett.Susan Wood/Getty Images“I spent 30 years trying to convince people and myself that I was smart, that I was a good painter, that I was this or that. It’s not going to happen. The only person that it should happen for is me. This is what I was meant to do.”— Jennifer Bartlett, artist, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Christine McVie.P. Floyd/Daily Express, via Hulton Archive and Getty Images“I didn’t aspire to be on the stage playing piano, let alone singing, because I never thought I had much of a voice. But my option was window-dresser or jump off the cliff and try this. So I jumped off the cliff.”— Christine McVie, musician and songwriter, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“Sometimes you have to put yourself on the edge. You go to the precipice and lean over it.”— Maria Ewing, opera singer, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Taylor Hawkins.John Atashian/Getty Images“There’s so much in what I do that is beyond hard work — there’s luck and timing and just being in the right place at the right time with the right hairdo.”— Taylor Hawkins, drummer, born 1972 (Read the obituary.)“I was primarily an actress and not a pretty face.”— Angela Lansbury, actress, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)“I always try to improve upon what I’ve done. If something’s not working, I’ll change it to make it better. I’m an artist and a performer above all, and I don’t limit myself.”— Elza Soares, singer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Leslie Jordan.Fred Prouser/Reuters“I’m always working, always. I got to keep the ship afloat.”— Leslie Jordan, actor, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“The reward of the work has always been the work itself.”— David McCullough, historian and author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“To me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear.”— Barbara Ehrenreich, author, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)James Caan.Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Passion is such an important thing to have in life because it ends so soon, and my passion was to grow up with my son.”— James Caan, actor, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)Tina Ramirez.Michael Falco for The New York Times“Words are unnecessary when movement and feeling and expression can say it all.”— Tina Ramirez, dancer and founder of Ballet Hispánico, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Claes Oldenburg.Tony Evans/Getty Images“I haven’t done anything on the subject of flies. It’s the sort of thing that could interest me. Anything could interest me, actually.”— Claes Oldenburg, artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“A skull is a beautiful thing.”— Lee Bontecou, artist, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“I like to write strong characters who are no better or worse than anybody else on earth.”— Charles Fuller, playwright, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Ray Liotta.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty Images“One review said I played a sleazy, heartless, cold person who you don’t really care about. Great! I love it; that’s what I played.”— Ray Liotta, actor, born around 1954 (Read the obituary.)Jerry Lee Lewis.Thomas S. England/Getty Images“There’s a difference between a phenomenon and a stylist. I’m a stylist, Elvis was the phenomenon, and don’t you forget it.”— Jerry Lee Lewis, musician, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“All of us have something built into our ears that comes from the place where we grow up and where we were as children.”— George Crumb, composer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Anne Heche. SGranitz/WireImage, via Getty Images“People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.”— Anne Heche, actress, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)Louie Anderson.Gary Null/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“That’s my goal every night: Hopefully at some point in my act, you have forgotten whatever trouble you had when you came in.”— Louie Anderson, comedian and actor, born 1953 (Read the obituary.)“Adult human beings live with the certainty of grief, which deepens us and opens us to other people, who have been there, too.”— Peter Straub, author, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Ned Rorem.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“I believe in the importance of the unimportant — in the quotidian pathos.”— Ned Rorem, composer, born 1923 (Read the obituary.)Gilbert Gottfried.Fred Hermansky/NBC, via Getty Images“I don’t always mean to offend. I only sometimes mean to offend.”— Gilbert Gottfried, comedian, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“Merce Cunningham is quoted somewhere as saying he wanted a company that danced the way he danced. I kept doing the same thing. And I began to wonder why I was insisting that they be as limited as I am.”— David Gordon, choreographer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Hilary Mantel.Ellie Smith for The New York Times“The universe is not limited by what I can imagine.”— Hilary Mantel, author, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“Getting the right people with a shared vision is three-quarters of the battle.”— Anne Parsons, arts administrator, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)Paula Rego.Rita Barros/Getty Images“My paintings are stories, but they are not narratives, in that they have no past and future.”— Paula Rego, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Javier Marías.Quim Llenas/Getty Images“When you are addressing your fellow citizens, you have to give some hope sometimes, even if you want to say that everything is terrible, that we are governed by a bunch of gangsters. In a novel, you can be much more pessimistic. You are more savage, you are wilder, you are freer, you think truer, you think better.”— Javier Marías, author, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)“Art is not blameless. Art can inflict harm.”— Richard Taruskin, musicologist, born 1945 (Read the obituary.)“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker. I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”— Pablo Milanés, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Peter Bogdanovich.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Success is very hard. Nobody prepares you for it. You think you’re infallible. You pretend you know more than you do.”— Peter Bogdanovich, director, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Loretta Lynn.CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images“I think the highest point of my career was in the late ’70s. I had No. 1 songs, a best-selling book and a movie made about my life. But I think it was also the lowest point for me as well. Life gets away from you so fast when you move fast.”— Loretta Lynn, singer-songwriter, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)Thich Nhat Hanh.Golding/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.”— Thich Nhat Hanh, monk and author, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images; Anthony Barboza/Getty Images; Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images; Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      New Year’s Eve in New York City: What to Do, See and Eat

      by

      Ring in the holiday just like the old days — in person.I’m going to close out 2022 by opening my front door and having fun in person. Unlike last New Year’s Eve, New York is back in the business of live entertainment for New Year’s Eve. I might have to wear a mask, but like Whitney Houston, I want to dance with somebody.Here’s a guide to what’s going on in New York City, from the festivities in Times Square and midnight concerts to cooking classes and family-friendly events. We have you covered, whether you’re still reveling at sunup or in bed by countdown.Ball Drop and FireworksIf you want to watch the ball drop in person, start planning your night now. For everything you need to know, visit the Times Square Alliance, which will host a free live webcast on New Year’s Eve starting at 6 p.m.; you can also stream the festivities at TimesSquareBall.net.For broadcasts from Times Square, you have two options: “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest,” with Ciara singing at midnight (8 p.m. on ABC); CNN’s live New Year’s Eve show, hosted by Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen with performances by Usher, Ellie Goulding and Patti LaBelle (8 p.m.).If you want to venture outside Manhattan, or if you live in Brooklyn, for the first time since 2020 Grand Army Plaza will host an evening of music before fireworks at midnight. Fireworks also go off in Central Park at that time (more on that below).For the best views of fireworks set off near Liberty Island, try the water. Circle Line offers a three-hour party cruise, leaving from Pier 83 in Manhattan, and Empress Cruises hosts a party on its boat called the Timeless, leaving from Pier 36. Both events include food, an open bar, music and panoramic views of fireworks.Pop and Rock ConcertsTrey Anastasio of Phish at Madison Square Garden.Chad Batka for The New York TimesAs midnight inches closer, let music set the mood. Gogol Bordello brings its Eastern European punk-swing sounds to the Brooklyn Bowl, and the producer-composer Flying Lotus leads a night of electronic music at Webster Hall. Or say goodbye to 2022 with the jam bands Phish, at Madison Square Garden, or Gov’t Mule, at the Beacon Theater. On the dance floor is where you’ll be when !!! plays the Sultan Room; same with Reggae Fest Live at the King’s Theater, featuring Serani and Wayne Wonder. And listen up, Gen X: The Gowanus performance space Littlefield hosts “New Year’s Eve with the Smiths,” a concert by the Smiths Tribute NYC, an homage to the ’80s British band.Dance (and Skate) PartiesLooking for something more offbeat? The immersive Romp on 26th: A New Year at Chelsea Table + Stage features an evening of burlesque by Seedy Edie and Audrey Love, who will perform throughout the evening. (Black tie is suggested.) Shoot for the moon at the Bushwick entertainment venue House of Yes, which describes its queer-friendly Gala Galactica party as “a celebration of all things cosmic”; recommended looks include “interstellar shine” and “alien superstar.” Nowadays, a club in Ridgewood, Queens, hosts New Year’s Nonstop, an almost 24-hour dance party that kicks off at 8 p.m. and continues until New Year’s Day afternoon.For old-school fun, lace up your skates with Skate Crates, a roller skating club that’s taking over an event space in Midwood, Brooklyn, for its New Year’s Eve Celebration Skate; there will be a vegetarian/vegan menu and a midnight toast, but bring your own skates. Royal Palms, a 21+ shuffleboard club in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is hosting its Flamingo Formal, a not-too-formal dance party with the option to play on one of its regulation-size courts.More Shows: Classical, Jazz and ComedyNot much of a dancer? You’ve got options too. A classical music holiday tradition for over 30 years, New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace returns to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, featuring Holst’s “St. Paul’s Suite” and the premiere of Joseph Turrin’s “Lullaby for Vaska.”For jazz lovers, the trumpeter Chris Botti plays two shows as part of his annual holiday residency at the Blue Note. And the singer-comedienne Sandra Bernhard takes the mic at Joe’s Pub for two performances.The comedy club Caroline’s, which recently announced it was closing, will present its final two shows at its home near Broadway and 50th St. And the nonagenarian singer Marilyn Maye performs twice at the Birdland Jazz Club in Times Square, including at the 7 p.m. show, allowing enough time to get home before the neighborhood goes haywire.Family-Friendly EventsThe Rockettes in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesParents will appreciate early-bird opportunities to welcome Baby New Year. The Staten Island Children’s Museum hosts a four-hour Noon Year’s Eve Dance Party, with a balloon drop at noon. The Long Island Children’s Museum, in Garden City, N.Y., hosts its own ball drops at noon and 4 p.m., along with crafts and a dance party.For live entertainment, there are many options. Circus Abyssinia: Tulu, a new production from the Ethiopian troupe of aerialists and jugglers, has a noon matinee at the New Victory Theater. Blue Man Group is hustling, with three shows at the Astor Place Theater, and it’s a two-matinee day for the Rockettes in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. New York City Ballet offers a 2 p.m. “Nutcracker” at the Koch Theater.Cooking ClassesTreats at Raaka Chocolate in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIf you need a thoughtful hostess gift for a New Year’s Eve party, or if you want to stuff your own face, try a dessert class. Raaka Chocolate offers three afternoon truffle-making sessions at its chocolate factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn. You’ll cut and hand roll ganache, learn to temper chocolate — that’s the tricky part — and then decorate with unroasted cacao powder and gold powder. You’ll leave with your own box of about 15 handmade dark chocolate truffles that are single origin, vegan (they’re made with coconut milk) and gluten-free.Milk Bar NYC is offering an afternoon birthday cake assembling class, no baking required. You’ll learn how to cut cake rounds and stack each layer with frosting and crumbs to make a 6-inch cake, then use scraps from the cake to make truffles — all to take home. The class will be held at Milk Bar NYC’s flagship store in NoMad.Midnight Run and HikesBear Mountain Inn at Harriman State Park, an hour’s drive north of New York City.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesFor something more venturesome, Adventure Untamed, a group that organizes guided outdoor experiences for New Yorkers, offers a New Year’s Eve day hike in Harriman State Park, about an hour’s drive from New York City, with a stop for hot chocolate afterward at the cozy Bear Mountain Inn in Tomkins Cove, N.Y.To welcome 2023 the heart-racing way, do the New York Road Runners Midnight Run in Central Park, a four-mile race that starts when the fireworks go off at midnight. The course is a real beauty: It takes you from Bethesda Terrace, past the Reservoir and back down again. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Onstage, It’s Finally Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas Again

      by

      The Rockettes are high-kicking their way through the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. The Sugarplum Fairy, after an unsought interregnum, is presiding over the Land of Sweets at the New York City Ballet. All around the country, choirs are singing hallelujahs in Handel’s “Messiah” and Scrooges are learning to replace bahs with blessings.After two years of Christmastime washouts — there was 2020, when live performance was still impossible in many places, and then last winter, when the Omicron wave stopped many productions — arts-lovers and arts institutions say that they are determined that this will be their first fully staged holiday in three years.“It feels absolutely like the first Christmas post-Covid — there are more tourists in town, Times Square feels very alive again, people are venturing out in a way that I haven’t witnessed since 2019, and sales are more robust across the board,” said Eva Price, a Broadway producer whose musical last year, “Jagged Little Pill,” permanently closed as Omicron bore down, but whose new musical, “& Juliet,” is thriving as this year’s holidays near.Performances of holiday fare, including “The Nutcracker,” Handel’s “Messiah” and, here, “A Christmas Carol,” have become treasured rituals for many families.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesFor arts lovers and arts presenters, late December looms large. Performances of “The Nutcracker,” “A Christmas Carol” and “Messiah” are cherished holiday traditions for many families. Those events are also vital sources of revenue for the organizations that present them. And on Broadway, year-end is when houses are fullest and grosses are highest.“‘A Christmas Carol’ is the lifeblood of our institution,” said Kevin Moriarty, the artistic director of Dallas Theater Center, which first staged an adaptation of the Dickens classic in 1969, and had been doing so annually since 1979 until the pandemic. Most seasons, the play is the theater’s top seller.Last year, Moriarty’s effort to bring the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future back onstage — still with mask and vaccine requirements for the audience — faltered when Omicron hit, and the final 11 days of the run were canceled. “It just felt like the knockout blow we hadn’t seen coming — it felt like things will never get back to normal,” Moriarty said.Handel’s “Messiah” was back at Trinity Church Wall Street in Manhattan. Calla Kessler for The New York TimesDallas was one of many arts institutions wounded by Omicron. The Center Theater Group of Los Angeles canceled 22 of 40 scheduled performances of “A Christmas Carol,” losing about $1.5 million. On Broadway, grosses dropped 57 percent from Thanksgiving week to Christmas week, when 128 performances were canceled. Radio City Music Hall ended its run of the “Christmas Spectacular” with the Rockettes more than a week before Christmas. And the New York City Ballet canceled 17 of 47 scheduled performances of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” costing it about $5 million.“The virus just made it impossible to go on,” said Katherine E. Brown, the executive director of the New York City Ballet, where “The Nutcracker” has been a tradition since 1954. “It was more than a little depressing, and there were lots of disappointed people, onstage and off.”This year: so far, so good. “It’s going really well,” Brown said. “I don’t want to tempt the fates by saying that too loudly, but it’s actually back to prepandemic levels, and even slightly higher. It feels like we’re really back, and the energy in the houses is just phenomenal.”Of course there are still viruses in the air this year: public health officials are warning of a “tripledemic” of the coronavirus, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V. Covid cases and hospitalizations have risen nationally since Thanksgiving, and New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, donned a face mask on Tuesday as he urged New Yorkers to take precautions. One new Broadway play, “The Collaboration,” had to cancel several performances this week, including its opening night, after someone in the company tested positive for the coronavirus.But with Christmas just days away, there have yet to be the wholesale closings that marred last year. And now most people over six months old can be vaccinated, and there is a new bivalent vaccine, lowering both risk and anxiety.“We learned a lot from last year: there are more understudies in place, there is more crew coverage, and we have contingency plans that feel more spelled out,” Price said. Brown agreed, saying, “Through the school of hard knocks, we’re better at managing through it.”“George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” is being staged once again by New York City Ballet, which had to cut its run short last winter because of Omicron. Sterling Hyltin danced the Sugarplum Fairy in a performance last month. Erin BaianoThe upheaval last winter upended many holiday plans.Mike Rhone, a quality assurance engineer in Santa Clara, Calif., had tickets to the Broadway musicals “Hadestown,” “Flying Over Sunset” and “Caroline, or Change,” and planned to propose to his partner in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.Instead he proposed at home, on the couch. But they’ll try again this year, with tickets to “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Ohio State Murders,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and the Rockettes. “We’ll definitely get that photo in front of the Rockefeller Center tree,” Rhone said, “just as married people instead of newly-engaged.”Shannon Buster, a civil engineer from Kansas City, Mo., had tickets last year to several Broadway shows and a set of hard-to-score restaurant reservations. “The night before we left, we watched handsome David Muir deliver dire news about Omicron surging, Broadway shows closing, restaurants closing, and we canceled,” she said. This year, she was determined to make the trip happen: “I swear by all that is holy that even an outbreak of rabid, flesh-eating bacteria will not keep me from it.” Last weekend, she and her husband made the delayed trip, trying out some new restaurants and seeing “Death of a Salesman” and “A Strange Loop.”For performers, this year is a welcome relief.Scott Mello, a tenor, has been singing Handel’s “Messiah” at Trinity Church Wall Street each Christmas season since 2015. Last year he found himself singing the “Messiah” at home, in the shower, but it wasn’t the same. “It didn’t feel like Christmas,” he said. This year, he added, “feels like an unveiling.”Ashley Hod, a soloist with New York City Ballet, has been part of its “Nutcracker” for much of her life — she performed in it as a child, when she was studying at the ballet’s school, and joined the cast as an apprentice in 2012; since then she has performed most of the women’s roles. Last year she rehearsed for two months to get ready to go on as the Sugarplum Fairy, but the show was canceled before her turn arrived.“It was devastating,” she said.This year, she’s on as a soloist, and thrilled. “We all have a new appreciation for it,” she said. “Everyone feels really lucky to be back.”On Broadway, things are looking up: Thanksgiving week was the top-grossing week since theaters reopened. And there are other signs of seasonal spending: Jefferson Mays’s virtuosic one-man version of “A Christmas Carol,” which he performed without an audience for streaming when the pandemic made in-person performances impossible, finally made it to Broadway, and is selling strongly as Christmas approaches.Beyond Broadway, things are better too. In New Orleans on Tuesday night, Christmas Without Tears returned — it’s a rambunctious and star-studded annual variety show hosted by the performers Harry Shearer and Judith Owen to raise money for charity (this year, Innocence Project New Orleans).Some “Messiah” fans seemed to be in the Christmas spirit. Calla Kessler for The New York Times“The audience was so primed, ready, and wanting the show,” Owen said. “It was like they’d waited two years for this.”But there are also reasons for sobriety: Broadway’s overall grosses this season are still about 13 percent below what they were in 2019, and this fall a number of shows, struggling to find audiences, have been forced to close. Around the country, many performing arts organizations have been unable to bring audiences back at prepandemic levels.Not everyone is rushing back. Erich Meager, a visual artist in Palm Springs, had booked 10 shows over six nights last December. Then the Rockettes closed, then “Jagged Little Pill,” then two more. “Each morning we would wake up and see what shows were canceled and search for replacements, a less than ideal theater experience,” he said. “This year we are staying close to home for the holidays, but next year we’ll be back.”But many patrons are ready to celebrate.“There have been so many virtual performances, but it’s not really the same thing,” said Luciana Sikula, a Manhattan fashion industry worker who had been attending a performance of “Messiah” annually at Trinity Church Wall Street until the pandemic, and finally got to experience it again in person again this month.Jeffrey Carter, a music professor from St. Louis who had booked and canceled five trips to New York since the pandemic began, finally made it this week; he checked out the new Museum of Broadway as well as an exhibit at the Grolier Club, caught the Oratorio Society of New York’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall, and saw “A Man of No Importance,” “A Strange Loop” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” “I’m packing in N.Y.C. at Christmastime in four days and four nights,” he said, “and I’m catching up — in person — with people I love.” More