Catherine Tharin

The Circa Ensemble from Australia presented What Will Have Been, in the Black Box Theater at PS21 on a bright Saturday afternoon this month. Acrobats Kimberley Rossi, Malte Gerhardt and Zachary Stephens with violinist Miranda Cuckson, a PS21 board member, were featured.

Japanese choreographer Ruri Mito made her North American debut at PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, NY, in early January. As part of Japan Society’s annual Japan + East Asia programming for the APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) industry conference in NYC that recently concluded, PS21 is an astute partner.

Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful. Just the title of choreographer Kyle Abraham’s most recent dance seen at NYC’s Armory on Park Avenue on December 9 is gripping. A glorious sweep of a dance that moves through the seasons (a metaphor for time passing) as depicted in the spectacular, ever morphing set is expressed with delicacy, power and nuance by a man facing mortality. Abraham writes in the program, “My words and thoughts stammer where they used to sing. I dance in remembrance of the innocence in of my younger self.”

Now in its 22nd consecutive season, the witty, irreverent and raucous Nut/Cracked will be presented by The Bang Group at Kaatsbaan, in Tivoli, N,Y,, on December 20 and 21. As the Cultural Center’s holiday offering, there is a reason why this 65-minute reimagined Nutcracker has entertained countless numbers of delighted patrons: it is laugh-out-loud funny.

Le sacre de Lila (2022), its U.S. premiere on September 29 at PS21 in Chatham, NY, is a contemporary dance based on the traditional Lila healing ritual of the Maghreb, an area that spans several North African countries. Moroccan-French-Quebecois choreographer, Ismaël Mouaraki explores trance through song, dance and music.

This week at the Catskill Mountain Foundation through a Guggenheim Works & Process LaunchPad tech-residency, the Martha Graham Dance Company performs a preview of choreographers Baye & Asa’s Cortege, inspired by Martha Graham’s Cortege of Eagles from 1967, at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, NY.

The three-week Kaatsbaan Cultural Park 2024 Annual Festival in Tivoli, NY, opens this Friday with the September 13 screening of Merce/Misha/More directed by Daniel Madoff. The film features choreographer Merce Cunningham, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet star and impresario, in conversation and in dancing.

Unite, the one-week ballet festival at The Joyce Theater, the dance specific venue in New York City, is the brainchild of American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, Calvin Royal III.

Composer Charles Martin Loeffler’s forgotten Octet will be performed at Stissing Center in Pine Plains, New York at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 9. The combination of instruments, two clarinets, string quartet, harp, and double bass, offers a variety of textures and “illuminates new gradients of the tonal spectrum,” says clarinetist, Graeme Steele Johnson, who discovered and reconstructed the Loeffler score lost for 127 years.

Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective, the esteemed street dance company founded by Michele Byrd-McPhee in 2004, presented The Black Dancing Bodies Project: SpeakMyMind at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville on March 30 direct from its premiere at Works & Process, the performing arts series affiliated with the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Works & Process supported the Ladies of Hip Hop with five LaunchPAD residencies. The Catskill Mountain Foundation partners with Works & Process.