Fall Culture Preview: Comic Books, Sex Workers and Life in a Thai Restaurant
We live in interesting cultural times. Institutions face existential challenges: private donations and foundation grants dwindling, graying arts patrons and younger audiences who’d rather look at their phones than dance or opera. Then you’ve got the politicians who want to police content and use places like the Kennedy Center for propaganda, not excellence. What to do? Bring a friend to one of these events. Show them the work is relevant and accessible. Maybe by demystifying “highbrow” forms, we can protect them from being co-opted by ideologues.
In opera
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at the Metropolitan Opera
September 21 – October 11
The Metropolitan Opera has been home to gods, dragons and demons, but never the modern superhero. Until now. Composer Mason Bates and librettist Gene Scheer have adapted Michael Chabon’s 2000 novel about the fictional creators of a Golden Age comic book icon. Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts from the pit. A story of Jewish immigrants during World War II, the overarching theme is escapism—from fascism and the bleakness of life.
Sibyl at Powerhouse International Festival
October 8-11
This multimedia chamber opera features characteristically whimsical design by director William Kentridge, the South African surrealist who often uses stop motion, silhouette and collage. The subject of the piece, which has a percussive, chanting score by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd, is the Apollonian female prophet. This limited engagement is just one of about a dozen dances and theatrical pieces from around the world at Powerhouse in Gowanus.
A Black Masque at the Frick’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium
November 2
Acclaimed bass-baritone Davóne Tines joins the Frick Collection’s resident string quartet, Sonnambula, for a concert deconstruction of Ben Jonson’s 1605 court entertainment, Masque of Blackness. Contrasting extant music with excerpts from West African griot sagas, the piece exposes and critiques British colonial anxieties about Blackness and purity.
Madam at Gallery Particulier, Brooklyn
November 7-11
Not all opera happens in the concert hall. Take a trip to Brooklyn’s Gallery Particulier for Killer Queen Opera’s immersive event. This story focuses on Russian Jewish immigrant Polly Adler, who ran a string of brothels in Manhattan during the Roaring Twenties. Composer Felix Jarrar and librettist Bea Goodwin explore this iconic sex worker and entrepreneur, played by soprano and director Karina Camille Parker.
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions at the Park Avenue Armory
December 2-14
Bet that title got your attention! British composer Philip Venables and librettist Ted Huffman, who created a searing adaptation of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, turn to Larry Mitchell’s 1977 allegory-manifesto about queer liberation from patriarchy. A gleeful, anarchic patchwork for fifteen performers who sing, declaim and play instruments, this episodic piece blurs the lines between opera, cabaret and LGBTQ+ rally.
Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Newhouse Theater
December 16 – January 4
Once upon a time, Gian Carlo Menotti’s holiday opera was a cultural watershed. Created for television and seen by an estimated five million NBC viewers in 1951, the hour-long piece gives a fictional but faithful spin to the Nativity story. For this intimate live version, superstar mezzo-soprano Joyce Didonato heads the cast, directed by Kenny Leon.
In dance
Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow at Park Avenue Armory
September 9-20
Trajal Harrell unveils an ambitious “stadium runway” dance that combines a few of the choreographer’s obsessions: dancing on a surface with Piet Mondrian color planes, the body language of runway models and NYC’s queer voguing scene. There’s an implicit celebration of democracy and diversity in the large cast of dancers and actors, who wear more than sixty virtuosic looks designed by Harrell.
Larsen C at Powerhouse International Festival
October 16-18
How can a group of dancers represent a melting glacier? Greek dancemaker Christos Papadopoulos, in his American debut, shows us. The five-dancer piece takes its name from the Antarctic ice shelf that broke away in 2017, which currently measures 26,000 square miles. Papadopoulos uses movement (to music by Giorgos Poulios) to create a sense of drifting, melting and nature’s resilience.
Of Dishes and Dreams at the Baryshnikov Arts Center
October 16-18
A world premiere commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts, this evening-length piece by Keerati Jinakunwiphat sprang from growing up in a family-run Thai restaurant. Close quarters, repetitive movement, lots of fast entrances and exits and breakable objects—sounds like perfect material for a dance. Jinakunwiphat says she’s interested in “service, synergy and the balance between order and chaos.”
Turn it Out with Tiler Peck & Friends at New York City Center
October 16-19
Principal dancer of NYC Ballet and Instagram star Tiler Peck brings her dance showcase home after earning raves at Sadler’s Wells in London. The sparky, perky Peck partners with Chun Wai Chan, Michelle Dorrance, Lex Ishimoto, Brooklyn Mack, Mira Nadon and others, in works by Peck, Dorrance, Jillian Meyers, Alonzo King and William Forsythe.
Martha@BAM—The 1963 Interview at BAM Fisher
October 28 – November 1
Incarnating the regal Martha Graham herself, choreographer Richard Move combines theater, documentary and dance to recreate a 1963 interview at the 92nd Street Y in which Graham walks the audience through her methods and oeuvre. Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Lisa Kron plays critic Walter Terry, probing the classic Graham use of contraction, release and spiraling.
Gallim: Mother at the Joyce Theater
November 5-9
Andrea Miller’s Brooklyn-based troupe presents the world premiere of a primeval dance about the gestation of life. This choreographed fable seeks to physicalize our biological beginnings, a fleshly genesis of sorts. The EDM score is by Frédéric Despierre and Orly Anan crafts atavistic costumes for Miller’s always fierce, expressive performers.
