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      A Disruptor Asks, Is New York Finally Ready for ‘DOOM’?

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      Barking Doberman pinchers behind chain link fencing and performers who looked like they came straight from the Berlin club scene made the ultracool German performance artist Anne Imhof infamous.But last week, at her first rehearsal for “DOOM: House of Hope” at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, there were no dogs in sight.There were still those impossibly beautiful performers, though, many very young. They were sprawled on the floor of one of the Armory’s rehearsal spaces, sitting at the piano, testing out bits of movement, or rehearsing lines from marked up copies of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” — the new project’s starting point.Belying her works’ fierce, sometimes aggro aesthetics, Imhof was a gentle, observing presence, not so much directing the performers but asking them how they wanted to proceed — utterly unlike the strict rigor of, say, a ballet rehearsal.“I count on chance and accidents and things that are not planned,” the 46-year-old Berlin-based artist told me. “There has to be enough openness to it that the performers have agency.”“I count on chance and accidents and things that are not planned,” said Imhof, 46, who conceived of “DOOM” as a performance best suited for the Armory, rather than an artwork for a museum. She had wanted to do a ballet for a long time.Tess Mayer for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An Oakland Dance Troupe Brings Vertical Choreography to Broadway

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      In 1990, Amelia Rudolph was hiking through Tuolumne Meadows, a stunning mountain pass in Yosemite National Park, when she had an epiphany on a shiny granite bluff: “Could you make a performance here?” she wondered. “Could you dance on a cliff?”Rudolph, a dancer in the Bay Area who trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, had just written a college thesis on dance and ritual and recently become an avid climber. Those experiences converged in her mountaintop revelation — and inspired her to make a dance while dangling from the climbing wall at the gym where she worked.That dance, though unrefined, was enthusiastically received. “I realized I tapped into some part of our human imagination that loves to fly,” Rudolph, 61, said in a phone interview.From that seed grew Project Bandaloop, now just Bandaloop, a vertical dance company that fuses contemporary dance with climbing technique and technology. Using equipment, like harnesses, ropes and belay devices, Bandaloop can take dance’s soaring, ethereal qualities to extremes and bring them to unlikely perpendicular surfaces like the rock face of El Capitan in California or Tianmen Mountain in China.“The spirit of the company,” Rudolph said, celebrates “the power and vulnerability of natural spaces.”Now Bandaloop’s gravity-defying movement and ecological DNA have come to Broadway in the musical “Redwood,” starring Idina Menzel, which opened on Feb. 13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring

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      Onstage, Denzel Washington is Othello, and Paul Mescal is Stanley Kowalski as stars illuminate the theater marquees. Plus: FKA twigs takes “Eusexua” on tour. Bang on a Can, Twyla Tharp, and much more.BroadwayOPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)Mel Semé and Natalie Venetia Belcon in the musical “Buena Vista Social Club.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin Peck (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater.PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, Black political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater.GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How ‘The Lion King’s Resident Dance Supervisor Keeps the Musical in Motion

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      If there were a want ad for resident dance supervisor to “The Lion King,” it might read something like this: Must be able to work 10-hour days, seven days a week; to manipulate 200 puppets and walk on stilts; to wrangle 52 performers and remember every move in the two-and-a-half-hour show. Candidate must also have the heart of a social worker, the discipline of a Marine and the boundless enthusiasm of a camp counselor to keep the musical as fresh as when it opened 28 years ago.While plenty of Broadway shows have dance captains — they’re in charge of keeping choreography in good order — only “The Lion King” has a resident dance supervisor. The show is like a giant, kinetic jigsaw puzzle: It needs someone to ensure that all the pieces fit together, so that the narrative moves forward — and no one gets hurt.This has been Ruthlyn Salomons’s job for 25 years.There are crowds backstage and onstage at “The Lion King,” which has 52 performers; ensemble members perform multiple roles.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesMovement is the show’s motor, Salomons said. “It’s what binds it. It’s not just the performing bodies that move. Everything in the show moves. Everything dances.” That goes for a 5-inch mouse as much as for the 13-foot-long mama elephant, Bertha, who has four puppeteers tucked into her body.“The show’s demands are so unusual,” said Michele Steckler, a former associate producer of “The Lion King,” “that taking care of it requires a different kind of maintenance.” In the show’s early days, Steckler petitioned her colleagues to create a new position for someone to oversee all the movement. “It was just too much for one person,” she said. (The show also has two dance captains, but they double as performers and can’t see the show from outside.)Salomons with Ntsepa Pitjeng-Molebatsi, who plays Rafiki.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Choreographer Chris Gattelli Sends Love Letters to His Dance Heroes

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      The dance humor in Christopher Gattelli’s shows, like “Schmigadoon!” and “Death Becomes Her,” is underpinned by affection for musical theater and its excesses.If Christopher Gattelli’s choreography looks familiar, that’s probably the point. A veteran of more than 20 Broadway shows and a devotee of movie musicals, he has an encyclopedic dance brain, a catalog of musical theater references he deploys throughout his work onstage and onscreen. Homage is his calling card.And that makes him a very clever satirist. His two current projects — the stage adaptation of the television show “Schmigadoon!,” in the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center in Washington through Sunday; and Broadway’s “Death Becomes Her,” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater — both feature wickedly detailed sendups of “musical theater dance.”For Gattelli, 52, those scare quotes might as well be hugs. Barbed as his dance humor can be, it’s underpinned by his affection for the genre, in spite and because of its excesses and quirks.“It’s easy to get snarky when you’re spoofing something you’re so familiar with,” he said in an interview. “It’s easy to get all the digs in. But I’m truly writing love letters to all of my dance heroes.”In his choreography for “Schmigadoon!” on AppleTV+, he all but addressed those letters by name. For the show’s first season — which followed a 21st-century couple stranded in a world where every day is a Golden Age musical — Gattelli channeled the knee-slapping, heel-clicking ebullience of the choreographers Agnes de Mille and Michael Kidd. For the second season, set in the grittier environs of “Schmicago,” he brought in the pigeon-toed slinkiness of Bob Fosse and the splayed-fingers jazz of Michael Bennett.A scene from “Schmigadoon!” at the Kennedy Center.Matthew Murphy and Evan ZimmermanWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chappell Roan, Kai Cenat, Shannon Sharpe Are Among Our Breakout Stars of 2024

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      Audacious, original and wielding a clear vision, the stars who rose to the top in 2024 pushed boundaries and took bold, even risky, choices. Here are 10 artists who shook up their scenes and resonated with fans this year.Pop MusicChappell RoanIt’s almost incomprehensible to think that last year, Chappell Roan still had time to work as a camp counselor.It’s not that she hadn’t been pursuing pop. Her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” was released in 2023. One of its now-hit singles “Pink Pony Club” was released back in 2020.But it was this year that all the pieces coalesced: Her album hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and No. 1 in album sales; her extravagant drag-inspired persona, 1980s-influenced pop sound, soaring vocals and edgy performances have become wildly viral; she outgrew her tour plans; and her dance-along anthem “Hot to Go!” was even featured in a Target ad and played at sporting events.All the while, her lyrics tackle queer issues frankly. Her track “Good Luck, Babe!” — about a relationship between two women that collapses because one is, as Roan has put it, “denying fate” — was one of the biggest hits of the summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      36 Things That Stuck With Us in 2024

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      The movie scenes, TV episodes, song lyrics and other moments that reporters, critics, editors and visual journalists in Culture couldn’t stop thinking about this year.The Last Scene in a Film‘Challengers’Mike Faist in “Challengers.”MGMReal tennis, like real dancing, happens when the body is rapt and alive, where visceral sensation takes over and the only thing left is the crystallization of every nerve and muscle, both aligned and on edge. That last match was a dance.— More

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      Dick Van Dyke, Approaching 99, Dances in Coldplay’s Latest Video

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      In the clip, which was filmed in October, Van Dyke sings, dances barefoot and offers meditations on aging, family and love.Dick Van Dyke, the lithe and witty nonagenarian whose career spans more than seven decades, has added yet another role to his lengthy résumé: music video star.Dancing barefoot in the backyard of his Malibu, Calif., home, Van Dyke, 98, is the focus of Coldplay’s latest music video, “All My Love.”Van Dyke, who starred on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” from 1961 to 1966 and danced his way through “Mary Poppins” 60 years ago, pulls out some of his signature dance moves while the band’s frontman Chris Martin plays an upright piano.The video, directed by Spike Jonze and Mary Wigmore, was filmed in October. A directors’ cut that lasts more than seven minutes came out on Friday; a shorter version will be released Dec. 13 on Van Dyke’s 99th birthday.Van Dyke, who is introduced with a title card noting that he was born in 1925, gamely pokes fun at his age, including when a voice asks him to close his eyes and think of the people who meant something to him. He does, and then opens them. “I’m too old for this — I’ll pass out and go to sleep,” he says, adding, with a mischievous chuckle, “I’ll take a nap!”Martin said Thursday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that it was his and Jonze’s idea to cast Van Dyke in the video. Martin said that he and Van Dyke are neighbors, and that they had met several years ago.“This really may be the most fun thing I’ve ever done,” Martin said of the video. “It makes me so grateful. It’s a big deal for me.”In the video, photographs of Van Dyke’s family and from his long career — including a picture with Mary Tyler Moore, his co-star on the “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and “Mary Poppins” memorabilia — flash on the screen. Van Dyke, in a suit and tie but no shoes, dances and shows of some of his old comic moves.Many scenes show his wife, Arlene Silver, and his family gathered around him. And at times he grows thoughtful, meditating on aging, family and love. “I’m acutely aware that I’m, you know, could go any day now but I don’t know why it doesn’t concern me,” Van Dyke says. “I’m not afraid of it. I have that feeling, totally against anything intellectual, that I’m going to be all right.”Van Dyke adds that he had been lucky to be able to “play and act silly” for a living. More