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      Brontez Purnell Brings His Disparate Parts Back to the Dance Stage

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      “Dance is basically language, like another form of writing,” said Purnell, the author of “100 Boyfriends.” He is bringing a new solo piece to Performance Space New York.“I’m such a Cancer,” Brontez Purnell said. “Double Sagittarius too. Just so pointlessly optimistic.”With so many projects happening at once, Purnell, 40, has no reason not to be. Though he has been creating music, films, dance pieces and written works for years, it was his 2021 book, “100 Boyfriends,” that gave him a heightened cultural visibility. Part memoir, part novel, part ethnographic study, the book creates an impressive, no-holds-barred map of his sexual adventures and misadventures in Northern California and earned him a Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction, awarded this week. He maps those experiences back onto his body, a site of his art, as evidenced by his stunning array of tattoos.With Purnell, who was born in Alabama and now lives in the Bay Area, there is practically no distinction between body, mind and spirit, a unity that informs his dancing. Much like his writing, his onstage presence is so liberated it’s almost confrontational. And while he can be unrestrained, it’s always informed by rigor. He worked as a go-go dancer while studying contemporary dance with the modern dance pioneer Anna Halprin, and other Bay Area choreographers; in 2010, he established the Brontez Purnell Dance Company.During the pandemic, his dance practice took a back seat to writing projects. But now he’s back, with his first evening-length solo dance piece, “Invisible Trial,” which premieres this week at Performance Space New York in Manhattan. Based on a paranoid short story by Sylvia Plath, the 40-minute dance loosely follows the nervy receptionist of a mental health clinic, who works under the watchful eye of the God of Anxiety.The work, which Purnell describes as “an intense condensing of structure, sculpture and text,” features a soundscape of original music and spoken passages from Plath’s story. On a minimalist set — with rope, bedding, a reception’s desk — the performance sees him cycle from tinsel-covered headpieces to office wear to full nudity.Purnell rehearsing at Performance Space New York. He describes “Invisble Trial” as “an intense condensing of structure, sculpture and text.”Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesPurnell has enlisted dramaturgical help from the playwright Jeremy O. Harris. Purnell’s longtime collaborator, Larry Arrington, a dancer and astrologer, did the choreography.“My role was more about supporting Brontez as he fleshed his ideas out, and constantly shower him with as much love and care as possible,” Arrington said in a Zoom interview, a framed photo of Purnell in blurry motion behind her. “You look at what he puts out and wonder how he takes all these disparate parts to make something beautiful and epic. How does one person contain this much kinetic spark?”In a quiet room at Performance Space New York, Purnell talked about his relationship to Plath, dance and the eternal martyrdom of the artist. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.What has it been like returning to dance?I spent quarantine finishing my new sci-fi novel, and my new poetry collection, and had forgotten that dance is basically language, like another form of writing. It was time for me to put my body onstage again, to remind myself that I live in a body. The whole point of performance is to reignite the body. It’s a very important spiritual practice.Tell me about you and Sylvia Plath.I started reading her in, like, sixth grade. I had this teacher who gave me books, and they didn’t know what to give this little gay boy, you know, so they just gave me Sylvia Plath. She has this poem called “Mushrooms.” I don’t know, I had a rough childhood, and I just remember the last line stuck with me: “We shall by morning/Inherit the earth/Our foot’s in the door.”What about the Plath story, “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams,” draws your attention?It’s whip-smart, and beatnik-y, and I think really cemented Plath’s voice. It seems very autobiographical because she got electroshock therapy, and the story ends with the narrator getting it after her boss finds her snooping through the clinic’s files. It’s very tense, and she kind of sets herself up as a Christ figure, with the crown of thorns being the electroshock thing.Are you a martyr?Yes, but a really lazy one.You have all of this amazing body art, and so much of your writing is about using your body as memory. I feel like that’s martyr adjacent?I’m doing it so no one else has to. I’ll go do the dirty work and report back, you don’t have to worry about all this. Somebody said that about me in a review once, and I thought that was really funny. It was like, “Brontez is doing all your drugs; smoking crack; [expletive] your boyfriend, and your boyfriend’s boyfriend; drinking your vodka — all so that you don’t have to.”In “Invisible Trial,” Purnell goes from tinsel-covered headpieces to office wear to full nudity.Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesYou’ve been trying to do this piece for 10 years. What held it up?I’ve never had time or given myself permission to do a solo, and this was something that I always wanted to do right, and with support. The San Francisco dance scene is OK, but I have never gotten a whole lot of monetary support from that scene.What do you feel gave you that permission? Performance Space? The success of “100 Boyfriends”?It had been so long since I had actually danced, because of quarantine. Most of my performance art stuff became me doing this humanitarian thing where I was giving free sex shows online to men in closeted countries.How did that go?It was awesome because, you know, men in homophobic countries are so much more appreciative of you and your body. It gave me a new eye on performance, on how much of your soul you’re sharing.What about “Johnny” made you want to turn it into a dance?I’ve always liked Plath’s nervous tension; she’s essentially always writing about anxiety. Here, she’s writing about the futility of being an office worker with other dreams. A lot of the books I’ve written were done in tandem with some terrible job I had. I think the piece is this weird allegory for someone who has other, bigger dreams in life, but are kind of earthbound by their 9-to-5.Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesWhat did the collaborations for this look like?The dramaturgy, with Jeremy, was just a series of late night phone calls about the structure I wanted to do, and how I want to execute it. With Larry, I just gave her certain parameters.But I don’t like to stress out my collaborators too much. I prefer just setting coordinates and then going in there and dealing with it, with their voices in the back of my head. I’m a bit anti-authoritarian, so you can tell me what to do, but not too much. Once you ask someone to choreograph and you ask someone to be a dramaturge, you’re basically asking someone to change your diaper and spank you.Why the new title, “Invisible Trial”?It’s about the idea that there are unforeseen actions happening all around you, dictating your behavior. For instance, if there’s a shadow campaign against you, do you actively confront that? Or do you keep just living your regular life and let the universe sort it out? Every time you bring it up, are you bringing something to the attention of people who had no clue? Now you’ve really put yourself in the spotlight. More

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      City Center’s Season to Feature an International Fall for Dance

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      The festival welcomes foreign troupes for the first time since 2019; other City Center highlights include Twyla Tharp and “The Light in the Piazza” at Encores!“Oliver!,” the return of the National Ballet of Canada and a Twyla Tharp program are among the offerings for New York City Center’s 2022-23 season, the theater announced on Tuesday.“Coming off the pandemic we had a really strong season,” said Arlene Shuler, City Center’s president and chief executive, adding, “I want audiences to take away that City Center is as strong as ever.”The 2022-23 season, Shuler’s last, opens with the Fall for Dance Festival, which for the first time since 2019 will have an international lineup, including the Kyiv City Ballet from Ukraine, as well as companies and artists from France, Germany, India and the Netherlands.Fall for Dance, which Shuler initiated in 2004, remains central to her legacy at the theater. The festival’s eclectic mix of dance companies and low-cost tickets has expanded accessibility to the public and solidified relationships with artists.Also in fall, Twyla Tharp returns to the theater, Oct. 19-23, with two works: “In the Upper Room” (1986) and “Nine Sinatra Songs” (1982), which Shuler called “masterworks — not just for Twyla but for the 20th century.” The program follows last year’s “Twyla Now.”The National Ballet of Canada will take the City Center stage for the first time in 15 years. The program, with live music by the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, features three performances, including Crystal Pite’s “Angels’ Atlas.” It is set to run from March 30-April 1, 2023.City Center’s Encores! will present “The Light in the Piazza” (Feb. 1-5), Jerry Herman’s “Dear World” (March 15-19) and Lionel Bart’s “Oliver!” (May 3-14). And “Parade,” starring Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt in Alfred Uhry’s Tony Award-winning musical about the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish American in Georgia, will be City Center’s annual gala production, on Nov. 1-6.Dance programming at City Center will also include Sara Baras and her company at the annual Flamenco Festival (March 23-26), and Ballet Hispánico, which will perform “Club Havana 18+1” (June 1-3).This year’s City Center Dance Festival, titled “From the Street,” will celebrate the diversity of forms in contemporary hip-hop. The year will close with “Sugar Hill: The Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker” (Nov. 15-27), a jazz-infused retelling of the holiday classic, and the annual season of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Nov. 30-Dec. 24), with new works by Kyle Abraham and Jamar Roberts. More

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      Tony Nominees for Choreography Put the Past in Motion

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      Musicals like “MJ” and “Paradise Square” take on dance of the past — with some missed opportunities. But the dance in “For Colored Girls” helps us to “remember what cannot be said.”A Black dancer and an Irish one face off in a dance contest in 19th-century New York. They take turns, each trying to top the other with steps and rhythms that are unique and unbeatable. It’s adversarial but also collegial, since the premise both assumes and encourages commonality, the kind of back-and-forth that breeds hybrids. This is a primal scene of American dance, and a version of it is on Broadway now.Whether in revivals, jukebox musicals or reimaginings of more distant history, a lot of the dance on Broadway these days is dance of the past. It’s theater, so the aim is less historical fidelity than persuasiveness. The choreography has to represent how people used to move in a way that makes sense to people today. But that constraint contains a possibility: In watching performers of the present embody the dance of the former times, we might feel, in our own bodies, how the present and the past are connected.That possibility was live for all five shows nominated for Tony Awards in choreography this year. The subject of each is, in some sense, historical. But the one that addresses dance history most directly is “Paradise Square.” It’s a musical about the Black and Irish denizens of the Five Points district in the 1860s. In the decades before, this neighborhood was a crucial site of interracial exchange and invention, a nursery not just for tap dance but for American theatrical dance in general — the kind that would long characterize Broadway musicals.“Paradise Square,” with choreography by Bill T. Jones and others, makes dance central and consequential.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMainly set in the kind of tavern where much cultural exchange occurred, the story seems to make dance central and consequential. No one knows exactly what the dancing in the Five Points looked or sounded like, so Bill T. Jones, leading a team of choreographers, is free to juxtapose some ideas of the Black and African side (Juba dance, shout) with some ideas of the Irish (the fast stepping familiar from “Riverdance”). But this choreography is subtle and inventive only compared to the absence of those qualities in the score and book. It doesn’t persuade.The Irish dance, credited to Jason Oremus and Garrett Coleman, is served somewhat better, partly because the Irish clichés in the music support it. Two of what the program calls “Irish Dancers” (Coleman and Colin Barkell), with little role in the plot, get to be briefly impressive in bursts of footwork. But even as the story builds to that Black vs. Irish dance-off, the dancing doesn’t make us feel how and why Black and Irish dance mixed, the similarities and differences that attracted the cultures to each other.It’s a missed opportunity. “Paradise Square” might have staged a shocking, thrilling return to sources, especially the Black ones. Instead, in a deeply flawed show, it offers the sort of choreography that inspires comments like “But wasn’t the dancing good?” Not good enough.Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man,” with choreography by Warren Carlyle.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA revival of “The Music Man,” a tried-and-true classic, is a much simpler choreographic assignment. Warren Carlyle does the job just fine. He has an adequate, nostalgic grasp of the period flavor, the “new steps” of the 1910s. The origins of these moves — in places like the Five Points before spreading to places like Iowa, the musical’s setting, and to the white stages of Broadway — isn’t part of the story. So Carlyle can focus on arranging a large cast of skilled dancers. If it’s all a little cautious and underwhelming, so is the rest of the production.Carlyle offers a professional, if uninspired, take on Broadway choreography as it used to be. “Six” is much more current, despite being about the wives of Henry VIII. The conceit of the show is to give them voice by casting them as contemporary pop divas, inspired by Beyoncé, Rihanna and the like. It’s a singing contest, and we expect to see certain kinds of dancing. These are dancing singers, and as each queen takes her turn, the others serve as the backup that every pop diva commands in concert.This is dance of the present, and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, the choreographer, is up to speed in the genre and its variations — the ratios of sass and sex and empowerment moves, even the requisite absence of dance in Adele-style heartache. She keeps the action both tight and fluid, letting the performers save enough breath for all their belting. Like the clever, catchy pastiche songs, the choreography identifies its sources without quoting directly. It gives the pleasure of finding what we already know in a context where we might not expect it.Present tense: The cast of “Six” doing Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s moves.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA show about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, and one of the great dancing singers, might seem to call for a similar approach. But “MJ,” as in so many other ways, is a different beast. It’s a jukebox musical, so the whole point is to hear the songs you know and love. But many of these songs already have choreography inextricably attached: that of Jackson’s hugely influential music videos of the 1980s. This isn’t just a period style that can be reproduced in general. Plenty of people who know the words and melodies also know all the steps.What is Christopher Wheeldon, the choreographer of “MJ,” to do? For the parts of the show covering Jackson’s early life, the Motown and Soul Train years, Wheeldon can work idiomatically, borrowing the styles to tell the story. When the timeline reaches the advent of MTV, though, he balks, having dancers tease some of the zombie boogie from “Thriller” at the back of the stage, facing away.It’s true that the second act begins with a close-to-verbatim reproduction of Jackson’s epochal “Motown 25” performance of “Billie Jean.” And Myles Frost, who plays the adult Jackson, is an astonishing mimic. (He dances that “Billie Jean” a little better than Jackson did.) But elsewhere, Wheeldon keeps replacing the original choreography with his own, and I kept feeling my heart sink, both as a lifelong Jackson fan and a dance critic.An effective replacement would have to be an improvement. And while Wheeldon is expert at crowd control and transitions (and an extremely accomplished choreographer of ballet), he has little feel for what Jackson in the show calls “smelly jelly” — funk, swing or whatever the dancers of the real Five Points called it. Despite help from Rich and Tone Talauega, who worked with Jackson, Wheeldon keeps swerving from that core, straightening away the rhythmic complexity of Jackson’s dancing along with its strangeness.Myles Frost as Michael Jackson in “MJ,” which was directed by Christopher Wheeldon, who was also the lead choreographer.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe most telling moment is the scene of the dancers who inspired Jackson. The representations of the Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire show no understanding of what Jackson saw in them (rhythm and attack that extend back to the Five Points), and thus the production can’t fully communicate how this great imitator forged a style that has been endlessly imitated. The only predecessor that “MJ” comprehends is Bob Fosse, whose own easy-to-imitate style defines the boundaries of Broadway dance inside which “MJ” keeps retreating.A good director might have pointed this out. But the director of “MJ” is Wheeldon (who, granted, had many other Jackson-related problems to deal with). There’s a strong Broadway precedent for combining those roles, one established by Jerome Robbins. But among this year’s Tony nominees, the best example of how that can benefit a show isn’t Wheeldon.It’s Camille A. Brown. “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” is what its dancing-poet author, Ntozake Shange, called a “choreopoem.” Although the show was a Broadway hit in 1976, the form didn’t become common, even as the text became canonical. Directing and choreographing this revival, Brown becomes one of exceedingly few Black women ever to take both roles for a Broadway show. (The last that comes to my mind is Katherine Dunham, in 1955.) That fact matters, but so does how she uses the combined power: She restores the work as an expression of a culture in which dance is central.The seven women of the cast recite poems, and they’re always dancing, in sadness and joy. They dance in girls’ games that become adult play, part of Shange’s original conception. But Brown adds American Sign Language, making the weaving of language and motion even more visible. Like the cast of “Six,” these women back each other up in dance. But in Brown’s vision, you can also sense their connections in the way that an exposing monologue by one, about abortion or abuse or self-discovery, reverberates in the silent bodies of the others.This isn’t what we know and expect of Broadway choreography. But unlike “Paradise Square,” it is a powerful return to a source. Dance, Shange once wrote, “is how we remember what cannot be said.” Brown reminds us. More

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      La Scala Woos a Younger Audience

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      Like so many cultural institutions, opera houses need to instill passion in the ticket holders of the future.Even an iconic opera house like La Scala must create programming to build the audience of tomorrow. One-third of today’s audience is under 55 years old. But Dominique Meyer, the artistic director and chief executive, is determined to make the house even younger.Since 2009, the theater has offered operagoers under 30 the possibility of attending previews of performances, which are usually reserved for private audiences, and a pass, which gives access to backstage tours, workshops and more. The subscription package, Under30, grants four performances for the price of one and the opportunity to meet artists at a happy hour.Mr. Meyer credited the efforts of his predecessors Stéphane Lissner and Alexander Pereira for their efforts, noting that the subscribers are “very faithful.” He wants to make sure, however, that they remain so: The house’s internal surveys have revealed that audience members between 30 and 40 are the hardest to retain.“It is not as if one’s salary suddenly becomes three times as big when you turn 30,” he explained. “All of a sudden, they have to pay full price, and the tickets are not as good as before.”As such, starting next season, the house will offer loges to those 35 and under at 50 percent of the normal price (370 euros to 920 euros, or $396 to $986, for a four-person loge). There will also be weekly performances offering half-priced tickets — including the opportunity to enjoy free drinks and socialize in specially reserved areas. (Tickets at normal price run up to €150 euros for ballet and €250 for opera.)“Every opera lover has made friends during a performance,” said Mr. Meyer. “We want to support this kind of communal environment.”He also hopes to “open the theater’s doors” to new potential audience members. Last July, the house orchestra, chorus and ballet toured different parts of the city as part of the initiative La Scala in Città (La Scala in the City), offering free tickets. On one occasion, in the Porta Romana District, dancers performed at Mysterious Baths, the swimming pool and cultural event center, in a program of excerpts from works by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Léo Delibes, Ólafur Arnalds and more.Dominique Meyer, La Scala’s artistic director and chief executive, in the theater next to a statue dedicated to the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesMr. Meyer recalled that the only problem were the mosquitoes, which pestered the dancers, especially when they had to hold still. La Scala in Città will be repeated this September on a larger scale, including the young singers of the opera house’s academy, ballet school and children’s choir.This season also saw the launch of the subscription package Un palco in famiglia (A loge for the family), for which adults pay full price and can bring their children for €10 to €15 a head. Materials designed especially for minors are distributed at performances.Meanwhile, since 2014, the theater has mounted productions made for children, welcoming more than 200,000 visitors. This season featured a children’s version of Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” (“Cinderella”), which was also streamed on La Scala’s website.Next season will, for the first time, feature a newly commissioned work, “Il Piccolo Principe” (“The Little Prince”), based on the classic French children’s novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. All productions are under one hour so that young visitors don’t grow bored, and they include child performers to further stimulate interest in the art form.The house has welcomed back most of another audience sector: tourists. They now make up 22 percent of total listeners, down from 30 percent before the pandemic.Mr. Meyer says that while visitors from Asia and Russia have not returned, the Europeans — and the Americans — are back. Of this group, the largest fraction (18 percent) is from Switzerland, followed by France (14 percent) and the United States (13 percent). The cities best represented are Vienna, Paris, London and New York.“If we are diligent and continue,” said Mr. Meyer, “we are certain to win a new audience.” More

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      Review: ‘Third Bird’ Doesn’t Quite Land

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      The fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi is a terrific host, but this production at the Guggenheim Museum is awfully shaggy for an avian story, our critic writes.Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” is a children’s classic, an ideal introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. The production of the score that Works & Process has presented annually at the Guggenheim Museum since 2007, narrated by the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, has itself become a local classic.Now Mizrahi, who has been the designer and director since 2013, has created a companion piece, “Third Bird,” with the composer Nico Muhly and the choreographer John Heginbotham. Why? The premiere at the museum on Friday provided no reason other than to have a little fun. “Third Bird” is charming and slight.As in the Prokofiev original, each character in “Third Bird” is connected with an orchestral instrument or two, here played live by members of Ensemble Signal arrayed around the stage. For the bluebird, there’s flute and piccolo. For the duck, there’s oboe and English horn. The ostrich — the “third bird” — gets the heavier, unusual bass clarinet, and so on, through the cat, the grandfather, the ornithologist and the zookeeper.Mizrahi explains all this at the start. He’s a terrific host, kid-friendly without condescension, an expert teller of bedtime stories, voices and all. His enthusiastic appreciation for how the instruments evoke character establishes exactly the right tone. And by adding instrument-animal pairings that Prokofiev did not, he and Muhly extend Prokofiev’s idea. A bass clarinet is like an ostrich. The orchestra contains more wonders.Mizrahi’s new libretto is less wonderful. It’s a kind of sequel to “Peter and the Wolf,” set in a Central Park elegantly evoked by a skyline silhouette backdrop and the branches of a tree. The duck (Marjorie Folkman), having emerged whole from the stomach of Prokofiev’s wolf, returns to tell its adventure in pantomime. Chased by the Gwen Verdon-like cat (Lindsey Jones), it learns to fly. The ostrich, a new character (played by Brian Lawson), does not.Christine Flores, left, and Marjorie Folkman. The bluebird (Flores) is a ballerina, smug about her skills while Folkman pantomimes her story.David Andrako for Works & Process at the GuggenheimThere are witty touches. Mizrahi, the narrator but also the designer, takes a moment to stop and fix the duck’s wolf-ruffled attire. The bluebird (Christine Flores, light and precise) is a ballerina, smug about her skills. Heginbotham plays the moon by simply sitting in white, high in the skyline backdrop. Muhly evokes the zookeeper (Macy Sullivan) with bouncy harpsichord and whirly tube, and Heginbotham’s choreography responds with some standard vaudevillian humor.But “Third Bird” is awfully shaggy for an avian story. Eventually, a suggestion of a moral emerges, advocating acceptance of different shapes and abilities. (The flightless ostrich is the only character without a human head.) As in “Peter and the Wolf,” danger and even mortality flash briefly and an improbable resolution consoles, though here the resolution is a hoary joke (about New York snowbirds).That’s typical. At one point, Mizrahi announces that the ostrich is about to do “a very special dance.” It isn’t very special. It’s just nice, as is everything else in the production, including the costumes — lots of casual wear ornamented with wings or duck feet. Like many sequels, “Third Bird” offers the pleasures of returning characters and performers, squeezing out something diluted from the original idea. It reflects a weaker light, but then again, so does the moon.“Third Bird” was performed on Friday at the Guggenheim Museum. More

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      American Modern Opera Company Takes Over the Ojai Festival

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      The American Modern Opera Company, a collective of restless and enterprising young musicians and dancers, is preparing for the Ojai Music Festival.CATSKILL, N.Y. — At the Lumberyard center here on a recent evening, more than 15 artists gathered outdoors around a long banquet spread over several picnic tables that had been lined up and topped with tea lights, bottles of rosé and accouterments for a feast of roasted pork lettuce wraps.The group — mostly members of the American Modern Opera Company, or AMOC, a collective founded five years ago by some of the most restless and enterprising young people in the performing arts — locked hands around their place settings. “Close the circle,” one said, nodding toward a remaining gap. Bobbi Jene Smith, the dancer and choreographer, arrived with her toddler, a multilingual mega fan of “Frozen,” to fill it.There was no prayer or any kind of speech. Just a pause, before they all smiled and said in near unison, “Thanks.” Then dinner began.As friends caught up and musicians mingled with dancers, Rebecca Sigel, the company’s manager for its Lumberyard residency, relayed pandemic safety measures, like daily testing, and asked for help cleaning up after dinner. Cooking, something of a competitive sport in AMOC, had been planned in advance; but dishwashing was handled just as easily. The night before, the honors fell to Julia Bullock, one of the world’s great sopranos, who had happily volunteered.That is how AMOC operates: with an all-in-it-together, egalitarian spirit. And that’s how its members insist on offering themselves to partnering institutions and presenters — the latest of which is the Ojai Music Festival in California, where the company will have its largest platform yet, programming and performing four days of events, beginning June 9. As at any AMOC show, anything goes; with disciplines colliding, a violinist may dance, or a concert may turn theatrical. Regardless, novelty and experimentation will reign.The company’s role as this year’s music director at Ojai — a festival overseen by a different guest each year, in collaboration with the artistic director, Ara Guzelimian — is a testament to the precious space it occupies. Endlessly adventurous, it is also a magnet for major support; its members have performed on high-profile stages, been commissioned by the likes of the Paris Opera and even won a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. In March, it received a $750,000 Mellon Foundation grant.From left, Smith, Zack Winokur, Bullock, Schraiber and Hanick debrief at Lumberyard after a rehearsal for “Harawi.”Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesDespite such prestige, AMOC is “an island of misfit toys,” said the bass-baritone Davóne Tines, who like everyone in the company balances his work with it and a busy outside career. “I don’t know what the ‘misfit’ means, but I know that part of it is a yearning for a different sort of way.”That type of yearning is how the company was born, over a lunch between the composer Matthew Aucoin and the stage director Zack Winokur in 2014. The two had grown up in each other’s orbits, overlapping at camp and the Juilliard School, but never really had a substantial conversation until then. They talked about the frustrations of getting a project done quickly with a group of strangers, and wondered what would happen instead if a small network of artists were brought together for intentional, enduring relationships.Over the next couple of years the idea grew more earnest, and Aucoin and Winokur began to invite some of their favorite colleagues from the worlds of music and dance to join. They also sought recommendations; Aucoin asked the violinist Keir GoGwilt, a member, “Who is the violinist you respect the most?” Miranda Cuckson, GoGwilt responded. So she came on board, too.“There was a very particular profile that we were looking for in the artists, which is people who are virtuosos in their area and therefore are appreciated by institutions, but sometimes chafe at the limitations,” Aucoin said. “It was the people who had the chops to excel in the capital-C classical versions of these art forms but didn’t want to live there all the time.”One such artist was Paul Appleby, a tenor who appears regularly at the Metropolitan Opera. When he heard from Aucoin, he recalled, he had been looking for more new-music projects. “How many times,” he said, “can you do ‘Magic Flute’ before you start to glaze over a bit?” Tines felt similarly, describing repertoire like Schumann’s “Liederkreis,” for all its beauty, as “a straitjacket.”During the more nebulous days of AMOC, its artists found refuge in the rural town of Stamford, Vt., where they were regularly hosted by the dancer Marta Miller on an idyllic property with a vegetable garden, pool and rehearsal studio. (Aucoin and Winokur have also bought houses nearby.) It’s now a tradition to meet there in August.“Usually the Vermont time has not been about creating a project as much as working on stuff,” Winokur said. “Or workshopping ideas or totally experimenting. And there’s a level of social engagement: You’re living together, eating together, doing dishes together.”Vermont is where the ritual of giving thanks at dinner started. It’s also where, between the meal and dessert, AMOC members tend to give impromptu performances — a private entertainment that inspired “Family Dinner,” a modular set of miniature concertos by Aucoin that will premiere at Ojai.When they get together, artistic disciplines blur in an open-minded manner redolent of Black Mountain College, the short-lived liberal arts college where Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Anni Albers, for example, freely experimented alongside their students. With AMOC, Smith said, “One thing feeds another.” She continued: “Why would Keir pick up a violin to play, and why would I dance to it? It’s amazing to understand the why, and so much gets answered from there.”Less formal cross-pollination has been productive, too. One night, Bullock danced with the former Batsheva company member Or Schraiber after dinner, and the casual fun led to Schraiber joining a staged production of Messiaen’s song cycle “Harawi” at Ojai, directed by Winokur and choreographed by Smith.When the company formally announced itself, in 2017, it had a mix of instrumentalists (including the JACK Quartet cellist Jay Campbell, the exhilaratingly versatile pianist Conor Hanick, the genre-blending flutist Emi Ferguson, the bassist and composer Doug Balliett, and Jonny Allen, of Sandbox Percussion); vocalists (among them the ubiquitous countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo); and dancers (in addition to Schraiber and Smith, Julia Eichten — though the cellist Coleman Itzkoff has convincingly pulled off this role as well).From left, Miranda Cuckson, Anthony Cheung and Paul Appleby preparing for the premiere of Cheung’s “The Echoing of Tenses.”Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesAt first, the company really had only one project on the calendar: a small festival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where it had an early champion in Diane Borger, the theater’s executive producer. She already knew Tines and Aucoin — their talent, she said was obvious and extraordinary — and committed to three years of hosting them for an event that, she recalled, had to be called Run AMOC!, because “how could it not?”It was essential to the company that its members receive equal pay for their work. “All of these people are at the same caliber, yet their pay is so different based on their disciplines,” Winokur said. “Musicians make more, and dancers make less.” So they set a precedent of a high minimum pay for performance and rehearsal weeks. “It’s less, obviously, than what Anthony or Julia can make in a night,” he added, referring to Costanzo and Bullock’s star status in opera, “but it’s not chump change, either.”The policy is built into the company’s contracts. Sometimes, it’s too expensive — most often at dance institutions, which tend to be chronically underfunded. So when it can, AMOC makes up the difference with subsidies. (That Mellon grant will help.) In the end, Winokur said, “everyone enters the room feeling the same way.”Usually, Winokur said, partners are fine with AMOC’s pay standards. One reason could be that most institutions would be willing to support the company’s artists anyway. Many of them have been regulars at Lincoln Center; during the 2018-19 season, Bullock was in residence at Metropolitan Museum of Art. Costanzo was instrumental in bringing the New York Philharmonic back from its pandemic hiatus. “We have,” Tines said, “earned our stripes.”That puts the company in a position not enjoyed by many avant-gardists, or young artists generally. They have freedom, and means.“The way AMOC engages with institutions is, we are happy to utilize the resources of the hardware,” Tines said. “We need the spaces, we need the financial support. We do not need the artistic ideals or ideas even. Just allow people to be their full selves and artists to create, and hopefully you will allow an ecosystem for beautiful things to be made. The provider of resources cannot also be the arbiter of them.”When AMOC is left to its own devices, it operates in a disciplined, democratic way. It has a “small but busy staff,” Winokur said, consisting of him, the managing director Jennifer Chen, the producer Cath Brittan and the company manager Mary McGowan. The company is also made up of committees, such as the one overseeing Ojai.Anthony Cheung, who composed one of the festival premieres, “The Echoing of Tenses,” said: “I’ve never seen an organization like this, where even in the planning stages people involved or not in the project are so invested.” Guzelimian laughed while recalling the sight of a shared Google Docs file for Ojai, where changes from all members were happening in real time. “Even editing documents,” he said, “is a collective effort.”During the pandemic lockdown, the company met regularly on video calls in which members had long, seminar-like discussions about AMOC’s mission and future. Group decisions, they learned, don’t come easily. Cuckson said, “There’s a lot of work you have to put in,” while Appleby put it more bluntly: “Democracy can be a pain in the ass.”But at their best, the artists achieve what Guzelimian described as “Brownian motion,” adding: “They exert creative pulls on each other that just make more energy. I’m still scratching my head, because conventional wisdom would say that the larger the committee, the more it becomes leveled. In their case, the interaction seems to push them.”Winokur directing a rehearsal of “Harawi” with, from left, Schraiber, Bullock and Hanick.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesWhen they do push one another, it’s often friendly. At Lumberyard, they were preparing a dense slate of Ojai programming, including new works, a tribute to the long-overlooked composer Julius Eastman and dances including the premiere of Smith’s “Open Rehearsal,” based on her film “Broken Theater.” Days are long, and sometimes hot, with one of the spaces cooled only by open doors and fans. Winokur had the most aerial view, moving from room to room with his dog, a young mutt named Henry (one of three on site, joining Sigel’s senior beagle-terrier mix, Ollie, and new puppy, Otis).Even amid struggle — repetition of a single passage, say, for an hour at a time — the mood stayed light. With Costanzo in New York singing in “Akhnaten” at the Met Opera, Tines playfully sang his part in falsetto during rehearsals for Aucoin’s setting of the poet Jorie Graham’s “Deep Water Trawling,” newly arranged for AMOC. And the artists were quick to compliment. Appleby told Cheung that he felt like “The Echoing of Tenses” made him “see the Matrix.” In a break from the thorniness of “Deep Water,” Bullock told Aucoin, “I like this music, Matt,” to which he said, “Thanks, Jules; it’s nice to hear every once in a while.”As she spoke, Bullock rubbed her baby bump. Her coming parenthood is a reminder of the life events that loom over AMOC. They all have independent careers, and some already have families. Winokur said that the company’s structure — more of a relationship network than an organization with regular programming — could protect it from committing to a future it can’t maintain. AMOC’s sustainability, Tines said, is a “big philosophical question.”“I’m interested in understanding what we look like in our next phases of scale,” he added. “Does it mean inviting new people? Does it mean modeling what we’re doing for other groups?”For now, the company’s institutional support continues apace. Winokur said the coming year, after the wave of work created for Ojai, will entail a lot of touring. “Harawi” is going to the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July. “Comet/Poppea” — which blends Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” with a new opera adaptation of W.E.B. Du Bois’s story “The Comet” by George Lewis — will premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA next spring.And that future, as open-ended as it is micromanaged, is currently taking shape at picnic tables in the Hudson Valley, alongside expressions of thanks, songs from “Frozen” and dinner recipes explained in great detail.“I only refer to AMOC as a group of my closest friends and colleagues,” Tines said. “When I’m doing any other project, this is home.” More

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      This High School Musical Teaches Confidence, Power and Teamwork

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      Step dance helps students at Brooklyn Transition Center focus and release excess energy — and it plays a starring role in their musical, “In the Stuy.”“Check one, two, three,” two characters sing into hand-held microphones, grooving in gold-rimmed sunglasses. “This is Benny on the dispatch, yo.”Cut to eight dancers in front of a Monsey Trails bus who start stepping: stomping, clapping, slapping their thighs, doused in rhythm.This scene arrives toward the beginning of “In the Stuy,” a Bed-Stuy adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights” — created, performed and filmed by the students and staff of Brooklyn Transition Center, a special education high school in Bedford-Stuyvesant.Each year for a decade, the center’s arts teachers have put on a musical, and in this year’s — filmed because of the coronavirus pandemic — step has a starring role. “In the Stuy” will be screened on June 3 (for friends and family) and June 4 (for the public).Shakiera Daniel, center, a dance teacher and instructional coach, with students.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesThere has been a step club for five years at Brooklyn Transition Center, which serves students ages 14 to 21. Step, the tradition of percussive movement that gained popularity in Black fraternities and sororities, helps the students at the Center who benefit from highly specialized instruction — like those on the autism spectrum or with emotional and behavioral issues — release excess energy, focus better in class, learn a skill to be proud of and socialize.Shakiera Daniel, a dance teacher and instructional coach, leads the step club, which she started in 2017. “In addition to just dancing, it’s a lot of life lessons that come out of it,” Daniel said recently in a courtyard of the school. “And just helping them grow into young adults.”The step team tends to attract students with behavioral issues, Daniel, 31, said, and their home room teachers will often reach out to her, asking for her support.“They know that I’ll go and talk to the kids,” she said, and “what I say will hold some weight because again, they really like dance, they like step, they like socializing with the kids that they’re with. They like performing.”Daniel “goes hard” with recruitment in September, she said, then holds three-part auditions in October. This year 60 students showed up to try out, compared with just a handful when she began.Annette Natal, an assistant choreographer, running through moves with the students.Nathan Bajar for The New York Times“If they can hold a steady beat, then that’s all I need,” Daniel said “A lot of the students that I have never have stepped in their lives, or even heard of it. And then they’ll try it with me, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, you’re amazing.’”In the “Benny’s Dispatch” scene of “In the Stuy,” three women start stepping, clapping and slapping in mesmerizing synchronization. Dressed in black, their T-shirts read “#DanceSavesLives,” “#LoveWins” and “#TakeAKnee.”It was Daniel who came up with the twist for the show’s title. “‘In the Heights,’ it was not sitting well with me,” she said. “We need to gear it toward where our students live and the area that they see, that they’ve been exposed to.”Kate Fenton, a drama teacher who directed the musical, used the same artistic license to thread in story lines about inflation and gentrification. The show addresses the challenges facing Bed-Stuy, a historically Black neighborhood, but also celebrates the culture it’s steeped in.In one scene, Daniel’s step team dances to Iggy Azalea’s “Work” inside a hair salon — reminiscent of the “No Me Diga” scene in “In the Heights.” When possible, Fenton used songs students already knew and incorporated them into the story.Tahir Tate, also known as Rafiq, has a lead role in “In the Stuy.”Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesAnd she also incorporated neighborhood spots familiar to the students. The hair salon scene was shot at Da Shop barbershop around the corner from the school. Next door to Da Shop is Genao, a Dominican restaurant with a luxe lounge, where a step routine was shot, this one evoking the club scene of “In the Heights.” Set to Panjabi MC’s “Beware,” the number has a Bollywood flair, and dancers sport vibrant scarves knotted around their waists.Desiree Wilkie, 16, a student who lives in the neighborhood, often goes to Genao with her mother. Wilkie, who started stepping with Daniel this year, said she wanted to try it because so many in her family grew up stepping.“Since we all got siblings, little ones,” she said, she wants to show them how the students express themselves through step, so the kids can “see how high school feels.”The opening routine, to the title song from “In the Heights,” was filmed on Ellery Street, right outside the school. In that number, Abigail Bing, 19, dances front and center, performing an intricate step sequence with flow.Asahiah Hudson and Desiree Wilkie. Hudson said that for him, step is about confidence.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesBing joined the step team this year, and participated in the musical for the first time. She said that since she was little she has wanted to be an actor, dancer and stepper. “I always wanted to become one of them,” she said. “That’s my biggest dream now.”Also in that number is Asahiah Hudson, 21, who has been stepping since middle school. At Brooklyn Transition Center, he said he had found friends through dance and mentors in Daniel and her assistant choreographers, Annette Natal and Mikyaa Haynes.“Step means to me, it means confident and be powerful and be stronger as a team,” Hudson said. “When I work with Ms. Daniel and the team I feel happy and powerful.”Daniel has been stepping since she was in seventh grade in Hershey, Pa. While choreographing the musical, she said, she would get home from work to Corona, Queens, and stand in front of a big mirror, playing songs and trying out new footwork.Daniel with her step students and assistants.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesStep practice, which happens during school hours, was increased to two days a week in preparation for “In the Stuy.” Step, Daniel said, is a great incentive for students to stay focused and teaches them how to vocalize their feelings.For Dante Neville, 16, who started stepping with Daniel last year, step is a way to let out extra energy. When he returns to class after a rehearsal, he said, his concentration is improved.“When I’m in class,” he said, “I don’t pay attention and I feel like if I do something that makes me focus, I’ll feel much happier.”That sentiment rings true for many members of the Brooklyn Transition Center’s step team. Onstage at rehearsal, they light up after a practice well done, hugs and high fives ringing through the auditorium. Step, as Hudson put it, means confidence.“This place would be a lot more hectic had step not been a thing,” Daniel said of the center. “That feels good to say.” More

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      ‘MJ’: Dancing the Pain, and Dancing the Pain Away

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      What is the role of choreography on Broadway? Two musicals, “MJ” and “A Strange Loop,” shed light on the dancing body.Don’t get me wrong: The musical “MJ” is a misfire on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. “Thriller” looks like a scene out of “Cats.” The segment showing Michael Jackson’s dance influences — the Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse — is so poor in terms of skill level that I felt sorry for dance, the art form. Irritatingly, yet predictably, the show, directed by the ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards. It will run for ages. Michael Jackson — for all his flaws — is still Michael Jackson.But the production does have something to show about Jackson’s dancing body in all of its articulate anxiety. It made me think: What happened to that body when the boy became a man? How did his dancing change? Was something of his internal landscape exposed in his dancing for all to see? Did we ever really see it?When he was alive and building his pop canon of music and dance, it wasn’t always so easy to grasp how, beyond the nervous twitches of the choreography, his spirit was reflected in his dancing. So much about him was wrapped up in the fashion of the moment that you could forget about his body. (You couldn’t, after all, ignore the ever-morphing features of his face.) There were so many distractions along the way — the skin, the plastic surgery, the allegations of molestation against him.He was always hiding. His costumes were armor, masking his body, his interior life and even, for all of his extraordinary prowess, his physicality. In a sense, he made it possible for his impersonators to exist by crafting and perpetuating a Michael Jackson that anyone could borrow and put on. Like a rhinestone glove. Or a moonwalk.The Broadway musical tries its best to focus on Jackson, the perfectionist artist, MJ, as the adult Jackson is listed in the Playbill. By contrast, the role of Little Michael makes the adult seem more fragile and more bizarre. (There’s a third Michael, too, in between them in age; he makes less of an impression.) You can’t help but notice the dramatic, drastic changes that his dancing body displayed over time. From his childhood as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to the final rehearsals for his Dangerous tour of 1992, the moment that frames the show, we see the way turmoil ripples through his body. For Little Michael, tormented by his father, dance is an escape; for the older MJ, it’s a way for his body to scream in ways he couldn’t with words. His voice, high and whispery, never had the same emphatic force.Christian Wilson, front, as Little Michael in “MJ.” Wilson’s “ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom,” bring the musical to life, our critic says.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe older MJ, in the show, fights for rigid precision — movement phrases are knotty, spiky, full of angles, while Little Michael is smooth and enviably relaxed. (Obviously, dance styles changed drastically during that time, but the contrast seems as emotional as it is physical.) Two young boys alternate as Little Michael, Walter Russell III and Christian Wilson. I can only speak for Wilson, whose performance I saw, but it was his dancing that repeatedly snapped me back to attention.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, the first to recognize shows that opened after a long Broadway shutdown during the pandemic, will be given out on June 12.Lifetime Achievement: Angela Lansbury, an acclaimed and beloved star, will be honored with a special award during this year’s ceremony.Hugh Jackman: The actor may potentially win his third Tony Award for his role in “The Music Man.” He shared some thoughts on his life between film and theater.A New Star: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process.Feinstein’s/54 Below: The beloved basement club, which bills itself as “Broadway’s living room,” will receive an honor at the Tony Awards for excellence in the theater.As a musical, “MJ” can feel as distant and as inaccessible as a music video. Wilson’s presence — his ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom — brought it to life. Even during the curtain calls, his hips kept flowing, perhaps more quietly, more internally than when he was in character, but he never lost hold of his gentle yet powerful groove.That unselfconscious fluidity throws into relief the rigidity and the constraint of MJ, as played by Myles Frost. Frost’s dancing accuracy is extraordinary; it reveals a body turning in on itself and hardening — lonely, brittle, concave. The tipped hat and rounded shoulders weren’t just about Jackson imitating one of his idols, Bob Fosse. Weren’t they also a way to hide (and guard) himself from the world?Jackson’s music was pop, but the way he used his body had such a hard edge that to watch footage of his actual Dangerous tour is to see something related to punk — not in sound, but in angst and speed, anger and attack. The tone is confident and clipped, but beyond the gleaming exterior, you sense pain. Did he even want to move in front of people? I can’t decide. At the start of a performance in Bucharest, he stands still, in profile, with his arms tense at his sides, for what seems like ages while the camera pans to a crowd on the brink of hysteria.Wait for it: Michael Jackson in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the Dangerous tour.Alain Benainous/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesIt’s impossible to know who Jackson really was. “MJ” delivers yet another impersonation of the man we saw onstage and in videos. Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. He could be himself or the person he wanted to be: strong, powerful, sexy. Maybe the dancing body was the man, or his fantasy of himself.I don’t want to honor the choreographic approach in “MJ,” which is mostly cartoonish. But watching the dancing left me thinking about Jackson and what dancing became for him — something he was chained to, rather than a way to break free of the box he found himself in.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More