Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert (Series)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Comedy Undercut ‘The Life.’ Billy Porter Looks for Its Humanity.

      by

      The actor is directing an Encores! revival of the 1997 musical, updating it to confront hard truths about racism, poverty and carceral injustice.When “The Life” opened on Broadway in 1997, the sex trade in Times Square that it depicts was no longer a prominent feature of the area. Like an increasingly polished Midtown Manhattan, the musical, about the women and men who once made it a prostitution capital, was sufficiently family-friendly for my parents to take me to see it, at the age of 15, as my first Broadway show.We came to New York to see “Rent,” Jonathan Larson’s portrait of la vie bohème, which had opened the previous year. After reading newspaper listings, my father chose “The Life” as another show for us to catch while in town. And despite its ostensibly R-rated subject matter (which we assume he somehow overlooked), it was perhaps no more adult in theme than “Rent.” Set circa 1980, “The Life” is also about lovers and strivers doing their best to survive a harsh and unforgiving city.But the Broadway production of “The Life” shared more DNA with droll Gotham fables like “Guys and Dolls” and “Sweet Charity,” another musical about dreams of escaping the sex trade composed, some 30 years earlier, by Cy Coleman, whose score for “The Life” is filled with magnetic melodies and brassy hooks. A hybrid comedy-drama, “The Life” was jazzy and jaunty, with a touch of vaudeville and the blues.Porter with Ledisi, the soul and jazz singer who is taking on the role played by Lillias White in the original 1997 production.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesWith lyrics by Ira Gasman, and a book by Coleman, Gasman and David Newman, “The Life” imagined the sex workers who populated Times Square as showbiz types with verve and moxie. (Vincent Canby’s critic’s essay in The New York Times praised the production’s “go-for-broke pizazz.”) Propelled by electric performances, “The Life” was nominated for 12 Tony Awards and won two, for best featured actor in a musical (Chuck Cooper) and for best featured actress in a musical (Lillias White, whose volcanic rendition of “The Oldest Profession” was the first time I’d witnessed a show-stopping ovation).Though my life could not have been further from “The Life,” there was a restlessness and defiance to the characters that I recognized in my own, as the gay son of immigrants growing up in a mostly white Michigan suburb. Listening to the cast recording, I channeled my angst and alienation into songs like “My Body” and “Why Don’t They Leave Us Alone,” anthems of autonomy and self-determination.Lillias White received a Tony Award for her portrayal of a sex worker in the Broadway production of “The Life.”Associated PressAnd while I could easily relate to yearning for love and escape, “The Life” was not the lesson in hard truths — about racism, poverty and carceral injustice — that it might have been. Though the musical ended in tragedy, comedy kept the so-called hookers and pimps, and their dire straits, at a wry remove. The characters seemed designed for the purposes of entertainment, not to inspire understanding of their interiority and circumstances.“The comedy was doing the storytelling a disservice,” said Billy Porter, who has reconceived a new production of “The Life” for New York City Center’s Encores! series. The show, which begins performances on Wednesday, will be his Encores! directorial debut.The ensemble members Tanairi Vazquez and Jeff Gorti during a recent rehearsal.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesLike most writers working on Broadway at the time, the creators of “The Life” were white men; their story didn’t ask audiences to consider why its mostly Black characters, many of whom are women, were trapped to begin with — only that they wanted out. With his revision, Porter, 52, said he intended to make “The Life” a darker and more clear-eyed drama, humanizing its characters and foregrounding their social disadvantages.Porter, who last year concluded his run as Pray Tell on the FX series “Pose,” played a principal role in early developmental workshops of “The Life” but was not ultimately cast when the show moved to Broadway. He says he believes in the purity of its creators’ intentions. “They wanted to be allies, and they were,” he told me during a lunch break at a recent rehearsal. “The music is extraordinary, that’s why we’re doing it at all.” Still, he noted that this story was problematic in the absence of more context.In reimagining the show, Porter said the humor would come from the characters’ often painful truths. Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesEncores! first approached Porter about directing “The Life” in early 2020; inequalities exposed by the pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement have only fueled the urgency behind his vision for the show. “We have to make sure everybody understands that there are systems of oppression and erasure and caste in place, where if you’re born in a system, you stay in that system,” he said. “We can’t unsee it anymore.”The plot remains largely intact, but characters stuck in “The Life” are presented in more fleshed-out detail — not only with back stories and more vivid inner lives, but with fates beyond the action onstage. Much of this information comes from the narrator, Jojo, originally played by the white actor Sam Harris. In Porter’s iteration, the role has been expanded and will be played by Destan Owens, who is Black. “I wanted the narration to be told through our eyes and our voice,” Porter said.Reflecting on the summer of 1980, when New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy, Jojo tells the audience, “We were all like crabs in a barrel,” scratching and clawing to get out. (Jojo made it to Los Angeles, he says, where he now runs his own P.R. firm.)Porter’s revision has the support of Cy Coleman’s estate, as the musical isn’t often produced because of its mature content. Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThere’s Fleetwood (Ken Robinson), a Vietnam veteran succumbing to the city’s crack epidemic, and his lover Queen (Alexandra Grey), who learns that her cash from turning tricks has not been going to their escape fund. There’s Memphis (Antwayn Hopper), the fly, ruthless kingpin who drives a wedge between them for his own gain. And there’s the worn out and weary Sonja (Ledisi, in the role originated by White), whose character has been deepened from soulful comic relief into a tragic harbinger of what’s to come.Where the original subtly hinted that Sonja is suffering from H.I.V., the first cases of which were diagnosed around the time “The Life” is set, Porter foregrounds her declining health, adding a scene in which the women receive supportive services at a community clinic. That’s where Queen, who is transgender in Porter’s revision, also receives hormone treatments. To Porter, these aspects of the characters’ lives come with the clarity of hindsight.The music of “The Life” also aims to be more reflective of post-disco New York, in new orchestrations and arrangements by James Sampliner. While honoring Coleman’s original melodies, Sampliner said the revival’s sound, which he called “down and funky,” would be far from the original’s big-band jazz, citing sonic influences like Earth, Wind & Fire, the O’Jays, Chaka Khan and Isaac Hayes. “It’s just got stank all over it,” he said.“It’s going to be a full gag,” Porter said of the production. “Even when it’s dark, that’s our job.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe Encores! series, which began its first season under new leadership last month with “The Tap Dance Kid,” has long welcomed substantial revisions to its short-running revivals of American musicals (as the book is often the problem with those rarely seen). But preserving original orchestrations and arrangements has also been part of its mission, so “The Life” represents an artistic departure.It is also the first of what the artistic director, Lear DeBessonet, and the producing creative director, Clint Ramos, call an auteur slot, giving artists like Porter the encouragement to reimagine works from their personal perspective. Porter’s revision has the support of Coleman’s estate, as the musical isn’t often produced because of its mature content.Will “The Life” still have laughs? “It’s going to be a full gag,” Porter said, adding that he considers himself a hopeful entertainer. “Even when it’s dark, that’s our job.” The humor won’t be put on to make anyone feel more comfortable, he added. Rather, it will come from the often painful truths of the situation (like Sonja asking for a doctor’s note to show her pimp).The grit and perseverance that women like Sonja and Queen taught me at a young age remains as well — lessons perhaps rendered more poignant by a fuller picture of the odds stacked against them. And “The Life” may also speak with hard-fought wisdom for troubled times, to a city emerging from another difficult chapter.“We choose hope, not because things are joyful or hopeful,” Porter said. “But in order to live.” More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Review: ‘The Tap Dance Kid,’ Still Out of Step With the Times

      by

      The Encores! series returns with a 1983 musical that, despite its pleasures, wasn’t quite right then and isn’t quite right now.When 8:30 p.m. was a typical curtain time for Broadway musicals, the main character’s biggest number, crystallizing the crisis and ensuring an ovation — think “Rose’s Turn” in “Gypsy” — often came at 11.The curtain for Wednesday night’s opening of the Encores! revival of “The Tap Dance Kid” went up at 7:30, so the so-called 11 o’clock number came closer to 10, but it was still recognizably the main event. That’s when Joshua Henry, playing William Sheridan, the conservative father of a Black family thrown into chaos by a son who wants to be a dancer, let loose with a tirade that ripped the fabric of the rest of the show to pieces, expressing with fury and unbridled terror the character’s disdain for what he sees as the performative Blackness of tap.“I keep on smilin’ through the worst of times,” he snarls while shucking and jiving monstrously. “Lettin’ the white man toss me his nickels and dimes.”It’s an astonishing performance, in the best way hard to watch. If only William were the main character it might even make sense at the end of a mostly lighter-hearted story. But he’s not, and it doesn’t, and the biggest number, whenever it comes, should not be his.That “The Tap Dance Kid” is never sure which of the members of the Sheridan family it’s about — the focus seems to change every 10 minutes — is just one of the oddities afflicting this tonally bewildering but intermittently appealing 1983 musical, which Encores!, in its return to live production after a two-year pandemic hiatus, is offering through Sunday at New York City Center.Is the main character, as the title leads you to expect, William’s 10-year-old son, Willie (Alexander Bello), the one who wants to dance despite his father’s prohibitions? Or is it Emma (Shahadi Wright Joseph), William’s 14-year-old daughter, who wants to be a lawyer like him but can barely get his attention because she’s a girl?Bello, left, with Adrienne Walker, who plays his mother, Ginnie.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhat about William’s wife, Ginnie (Adrienne Walker), who must “tap dance” around her husband’s temper while trying to make things right for her children? Or Ginnie’s brother, Uncle Dipsey (Trevor Jackson), a dancer and choreographer? Dipsey, depending on your point of view, is either leading Willie astray by teaching him the “shim-sham-shimmy” or upholding the joyful traditions of an art form mastered by men like his late father, Daddy Bates (DeWitt Fleming Jr.).Yes, even a ghost gets two big numbers.The musical was always something of a hodgepodge. The original book, by Charles Blackwell, based on the bracingly dour young adult novel “Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change” by Louise Fitzhugh of “Harriet the Spy” fame, never resolved the problem of making peppy entertainment out of such downbeat material.The score — by Henry Krieger and Robert Lorick — fully absorbed that confusion of tone, offering songs that are either purely high-spirited (“Fabulous Feet”) or baldly prosaic (“Four Strikes Against Me”) with little in between. There are times when you don’t know why someone is singing or dancing and other times when you do but wish you didn’t.The Encores! production, directed by Kenny Leon, does not solve those problems. Lydia Diamond’s “concert adaptation” (though the production is amply staged) does make some improvements, moving the story, which in the 1983 production was said to take place in “the present,” to 1956, where it in some ways makes more sense. The family’s interpersonal and often gender-based conflicts — Emma wants to wear pants, Ginnie chafes under her husband’s authority — feel more apt in the earlier period, as does Krieger’s swingy music, which is oddly retro for the composer of “Dreamgirls.” Still, it’s beautifully performed by the 24-piece Encores! orchestra under the direction of Joseph Joubert.But in further revising the jumbled tunestack used for the original production’s national tour, Diamond’s adaptation exacerbates the show’s scattershot approach. (At the start, we get three establishing numbers in a row, for Willie, Dipsey and Emma, thus establishing little.) And the heavy cutting of spoken scenes that is part of the Encores! brief is especially detrimental to such a busy yet unfocused story. In one scene, I realized that Willie was on a bus only after checking the program to find that the number was called “Crosstown.” I’d thought he was in a dream sequence.Foreground from left: Kurt Csolak, Jodeci Milhouse and Justin Prescott. The show’s ensemble numbers, choreographed by Jared Grimes, are suitably spectacular, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe choreography by Jared Grimes is suitably spectacular in the ensemble numbers, and the demonstration of the changing styles of tap as they pass from Daddy Bates to his children and then, via Dipsey, to more familiar Broadway versions, is fascinating to watch. Jackson (along with Tracee Beazer as his girlfriend, Carole) is an especially exciting dancer, and an appealing crooner as well. And Bello, in a tradition of Willies that includes Alfonso Ribeiro, Dulé Hill and Savion Glover, makes a charming show of learning and then quickly personalizing the steps that are part of his heritage.I wish that were the focus of the story — or that there were a focus at all. If the musical numbers are sometimes hard to grasp visually, the staging of the book scenes is too often undifferentiated. And at least on opening night, after just 11 days of rehearsal, the technical elements were not yet cohering. For a show about the excitement of dance, the pace is strangely languid.That’s partly built into the haziness of the original material. And though one of the things Encores! is designed to show us is what musicals, for better or worse, felt like when they first opened, I’m not sure this production, the first under Lear deBessonet, the new artistic director, succeeds.Perhaps it shouldn’t. That “The Tap Dance Kid” tells the story of an upper-middle-class Black family (“Don’t you buy all of your clothes on the Upper East Side?” William asks his wife rhetorically) made it somewhat ahead of its time in 1983. That it was mostly the work of a white creative team makes it somewhat behind the time now. Letting Black artists take a new look is the only sensible thing to do — except for leaving it be. Not every historical relic needs to be on display.The Tap Dance KidThrough Feb. 6 at New York City Center, Manhattan; nycitycenter.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Chicago’ Pops the Cork on 25 Years of Razzle Dazzle

      by

      Bebe Neuwirth, Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, John Kander and others discuss the Broadway revival’s surprising early success and its lasting legacy.When “Chicago” had its debut in 1975 no one expected it to become the longest-running American musical in Broadway history.The reviews were mixed. Walter Kerr wrote that it was “altogether too heavy to let the slender, foolish story breathe.” And though the show had a two-year run, it was dwarfed in impact by “A Chorus Line.”It “seemed too chilly, in those days, to be truly loved,” Ben Brantley wrote two decades later, reflecting on the show’s themes of “murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery.”But then came the “Encores!” production, in 1996 at City Center, a streamlined reworking that bubbled “like vintage Champagne,” Brantley wrote.The delirious reception to the concert staging was “like ice cubes down your back,” John Kander, the musical’s composer, recalled recently. “The original production was not exactly what you’d call a blockbuster.”That four-night concert event propelled the show back to Broadway, where the revival opened 25 years ago, on Nov. 14, 1996, at the Richard Rodgers Theater. (The same theater in which the show debuted in 1975, though back then it was known as the 46th Street Theater.)“This new incarnation,” Brantley wrote in his review, “makes an exhilarating case both for ‘Chicago’ as a musical for the ages and for the essential legacy of Fosse.”Six Tony Awards, three Broadway houses, an Oscar-winning film adaptation and over 30 international reproductions later, this Jazz Age satire has become both a cultural touchstone and a New York City landmark. And the show has continually renewed itself through headline-grabbing cast replacements, which have included Broadway veterans (like Norm Lewis and Jennifer Holliday), singers (Patti LaBelle, Usher and Mel B), screen actors (Brooke Shields and Patrick Swayze) and even media and reality TV figures (Wendy Williams and NeNe Leakes).Adapted from the journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins’s 1926 play, based on the sensationalist murder trials she covered, the vaudeville-style musical follows the ascent to fame of the down-on-her-luck chorine Roxie Hart after she murders her lover. She soon becomes a media spectacle, thanks to her sleazy lawyer, Billy Flynn; but her husband, Amos, and the vaudevillian, Velma Kelly — in the same jail as Roxie for double homicide — are none too pleased.A stable of frequent collaborators made up the creative team: John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the music and lyrics; Ebb and Bob Fosse wrote the book; and the choreography, of course, is Fosse’s.Ann Reinking, Fosse’s protégée and romantic partner, played a vital role in keeping his legacy alive. Reinking, who died last year, adapted his work for the revival; she also filled in as Roxie in the original production (replacing Fosse’s wife, Gwen Verdon), and starred, again as Roxie, in the revival.In advance of the anniversary, which will be celebrated Nov. 16 with a special performance, I spoke about the musical’s history and legacy with several important figures. Here are edited excerpts from our conversations.From Encores! to BroadwayBebe Neuwirth, seated, won the Tony for best actress in a musical for playing Velma.Sara Krulwich/ The New York TimesJAMES NAUGHTON (played Billy Flynn, Roxie’s lawyer, in 1996 and 2004) That first opening night at Encores! left a tremendous impression on me. I was standing backstage and, at the end of the first number, “All That Jazz,” the audience exploded. It was the kind of sound you just don’t hear very often in the theater, or certainly not often enough.JOHN KANDER (composer) I had never experienced anything like this. Fred [Ebb] and I didn’t know much about what Encores! was going to do, so we were totally unprepared.JOEL GREY (played Amos Hart, Roxie’s simpleton husband, in 1996 and in London in 1998) I remember standing next to Jimmy Naughton backstage, and we looked at each other in pure amazement and joy.WALTER BOBBIE (director) I thought the score deserved to be heard again because “Cabaret” had kind of eclipsed it. I was watching the O.J. Simpson trial at the time I started reading the script and thought it felt completely newly minted. It is astonishing to me that the show is almost 50 years old, yet it doesn’t feel that way. It still feels vital: it has theatrical muscle, the characters are vivid, and its issues are ongoing in our public discourse.Joel Grey as Roxie’s husband, Amos, “achieves the miracle of turning passivity into pure show-biz electricity,” Brantley wrote in his review.Sara KrulwichFRAN WEISSLER (Broadway producer) Barry [Weissler] and I were so blown away by the Encores! production that we ran home to call Kander and Ebb and ask for just a little piece of it. Fred Ebb finally told us we could have the whole show. He said, “To tell you the truth, no chandelier is dropping, there’s no French Revolution, or a helicopter onstage; nobody wants to do it.”BEBE NEUWIRTH (Velma Kelly in 1996; Roxie Hart in 2006; and Matron “Mama” Morton in 2013) Pretty much every time you do anything onstage, there’s talk of it going to Broadway. When these talks happened, I was like, “Yeah right,” but then it really transferred, and just kept going and took on a life of its own.The Reinking FactorAnn Reinking updated Bob Fosse’s choreography for the revival and her Roxie was “the most entertainingly erotic cartoon character since Jessica Rabbit,” Brantley wrote.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times NEUWIRTH The strength and longevity of this production would not have been possible without Annie. She had such respect for Bob, and was incredibly attuned to his very specific style.WEISSLER There was nobody like her. She was not only stunning and amazingly talented, with the greatest legs I’ve seen in my life, but she was so kind and giving in her direction to the performers.NAUGHTON I don’t think there are many pieces that are as focused on performers as “Chicago.” Given Walter and Annie’s decision to keep the brilliant, bare-bones Encores! staging when we went to Broadway, when you look at this show, it is pure performing.BOBBIE I said this when I gave my speech at the reopening performance on Sep. 14: “Chicago” has turned into the legacy of Ann Reinking. She really carried the legacy of [Fosse’s] choreography through to this production, which sort of sharpened the aesthetic of his work.Stunt Casting? Or Flexible Casting?Usher took on the role of Billy Flynn when he joined the cast for a few months in 2006.Evan Agostini/Getty ImagesBARRY WEISSLER (Broadway producer) The word “stunt” really comes from the unexpected. The onlooker doesn’t believe that a singer like Usher can play Billy Flynn, so they start calling it a stunt. It’s not a stunt: We don’t take anyone that can’t fulfill the stage work. And there have been people — even important people in the music world — who couldn’t cut it onstage, so didn’t make it into the show.KANDER No matter how bizarre the casting might seem, it always seems to fit right into our original intentions. You could cast a Bulgarian tap dancer as Billy Flynn and, if intelligently cast, it will still be that character, but with whatever personality that performer brings.LILLIAS WHITE (Matron “Mama” Morton, jail matron, in 2006 and 2021) The show is very clear; you see who’s who, and what’s what, from the very beginning. It’s lasted this long because its numbers, with great music and stunning dancing, come up very quickly, so if you like musical theater, you’re going to love this. It’s simple: when you’re good to Mama, Mama’s good to you.CHITA RIVERA (Velma in the 1975 production, and Roxie on the U.S. tour in 1999) Liza Minnelli joined our original production’s cast because she realized it was a wonderful piece, and that it would be great for her. When Gwen [Verdon, the original “Roxie”] got sick, she expressed that she would like to take on the role, and people ate it up.BRANDY NORWOOD (Roxie on Broadway in 2014 and 2017; Los Angeles in 2016; Washington, D.C., in 2017) I didn’t want to be the new R&B chick that comes in and messes everything up. It was the music that sustained me; these are the kind of solid, jazzy numbers I saw myself singing, and I knew I could put my own flavor into them without disrespecting their very Broadway style.GREY When they called me about Encores!, I thought, “No, I can’t play Amos: that’s a big, seven-foot, overweight mechanic.” I didn’t see myself in that. But, after Annie [Reinking] called me, I realized the show just has these great solo spots that could be tailored for each actor.Cross-Cultural RelevanceRyoko Yonekura, who originated the role of Roxie in the Japanese-language production in 2008, made her Broadway debut in 2012, after learning the role in English.Masahiro NoguchiPAULO SZOT (Billy Flynn in 2020 and 2021) I saw [“Chicago”] on Broadway years and years ago, and then, after seeing a production in Paris, knew I had to do it. People just love the script, and the choreography. I’ll be starring in a São Paulo production next year, and I know everyone there will relate to its message and humor.BIANCA MARROQUÍN (Roxie in Mexico City in 2001 and on Broadway, on and off, from 2002-2018; Velma on Broadway in 2021) There was a similar case to the plot’s going on in Mexico when I played Roxie there 20 years ago: Gloria Trevi, a pop star who was in jail at the time, popped the big news that she was pregnant — it’s the same thing! When I’d say the line about how I was going to have a baby, people would lose it.WEISSLER At one point, we wanted to have a Japanese presence in New York, and Japan wanted an American presence in their company. So we brought in Ryoko Yonekura and taught her Roxie, phonetically, and Amra-Faye Wright learned Japanese phonetically and played Velma in the Japanese company. You don’t get that with most Broadway shows.BOBBIE I’m very pleased that we’ve never had issues with ethnicity, going back to our first national tour, which was headed by Obba Babatundé and Jasmine Guy. We have been really vigilant about this for 25 years, and it was not something that we went talking about, we just did it. [When the show reopened after the shutdown, four of its five leads were played by Latinx and Black actors.]Crime ContinuesBrandy Norwood played Roxie on multiple occasions and in multiple cities. “Roxie never stopped dreaming,” Norwood said, “she was going to turn that whole world into her own vaudeville.”Jeremy DanielANA VILLAFAÑE (Roxie in 2021) This show is still incredibly relevant, especially after the pandemic, when we’ve been living on our phones in a completely different way. Roxie has this famous line — “You want to know something? I’ve always wanted to have my name in the papers” — but now it’s not about your name in the paper, it’s about how many followers and likes you have online. I started reading the script on my phone and realized its themes of fast fame, and this obsession with who we are versus who we appear to be, immediately translated to what I am usually looking at on my phone.NORWOOD You fall in love with these characters who are always doing what they want to do, even if it’s dark. Roxie never stopped dreaming, and it didn’t matter if she was just hanging around in bars, she was going to turn that whole world into her own vaudeville. That was her way of coping with the fact that she wasn’t everything she dreamed she was.KANDER We were certainly aware of the piece’s darkness when we created it. There are two ways of dealing with catastrophe: One is that you can pick up banners and yell about it, and the other is to do the same thing by simply holding the evil up to ridicule, and making an audience feel entertained before they realize what it is they’re seeing.RIVERA It seems to be an American thing where, much later, somebody else says something’s brilliant, and critics come back and agree. I go, “Why couldn’t they acknowledge it?” when thinking about the original, but the revival just came along at a better time. Kander, Ebb, and Bob Fosse are true artists, and something that’s really great will last forever. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      City Center Announces Its 2021-2022 Season

      by

      The theater will reopen for in‐person performances with the Fall for Dance Festival in October.New York City Center will resume live, in-person performances in October with the Fall for Dance Festival, one of its signature events. The dance showcase will kick off the theater’s 2021-2022 season, which is also set to include a Twyla Tharp birthday celebration, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual holiday season engagement and two new dance series.“We really wanted to reaffirm our commitment to New York audiences, as a very New York institution, and to New York artists,” Arlene Shuler, City Center’s president and chief executive, said of the ambitious season.“It’s such a huge opportunity for artists,” added Stanford Makishi, the vice president and artistic director of dance programs. “The ones with whom I’ve been speaking over the last 16 months, they’ve all been really dying to not only get back on the stage, but also to actually have the interaction with the audiences.”City Center announced four commissions for this year’s Fall for Dance on Tuesday. Ayodele Casel, Lar Lubovitch and Justin Peck will create new pieces that will be sprinkled throughout the festival’s five programs; and the Verdon Fosse Legacy, an organization dedicated to preserving the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, will reconstruct three dances for the festival. The full lineup and schedule will be released at the beginning of September.In November, Twyla Tharp will celebrate her 80th birthday with “Twyla Now,” a program featuring two world premieres as well as signature works. A host of stars, Sara Mearns and Robert Fairchild among them, will perform, supported by an ensemble of young dancers.City Center’s new dance programming will begin in 2022. Tiler Peck, a principal at New York City Ballet, will inaugurate Artists at the Center, which gives an accomplished dancer the opportunity to craft a program; Peck’s program, March 3-6, will feature works by William Forsythe, Alonzo King and others. City Center Dance Festival, a spring counterpart to Fall for Dance, will follow, March 24 to April 10. It will showcase several New York companies, including Martha Graham Dance Company, Dance Theater of Harlem and Paul Taylor Dance Company.The Encores! series, which revives rarely produced Broadway musicals, will also return in 2022. The three shows, “The Tap Dance Kid” (Feb. 2-6), “The Life” (March 16-20) and “Into the Woods” (May 4-15), were announced last year. The coming Encores! season will be the first under the artistic leadership of Lear deBessonet, who was announced as Jack Viertel’s successor in 2019.More information is available at nycitycenter.org. More