Mark Morris Dance Group is included in this year's Fall for Dance
Sometimes the word
“festival” is tossed around too loosely, but Fall for Dance, City Center’s
invigorating celebration of all forms of dance now in its sixth year, more than
merits the term. Opening with Savion Glover and Paul Taylor, winding up with
the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre performing Revelations—with Mark Morris, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte
Carlo, New York City Ballet and Morphoses among those included along the
way—this two-week event is as festive as they come. Throw in the $10 ticket
price, plus the Lounge FFD—filled with music, good food and drink and general
dance-world camaraderie and cross-pollination before and after performances—and
you can see why Fall for Dance’s 10 performances (five different programs)
always play to packed houses, with a cancellation line forming each night.
City Center has been
blessed in recent years with imaginative, determined executive directors who
envision novel programming ventures and know how to make them happen. Judith
Daykin arrived at City Center with the idea of presenting forgotten but worthy
musicals in concert staging, and in 1994 the Encores series was born. Arlene
Shuler took over the position in 2003, and the next year she launched Fall for
Dance. Both of these projects have not only been tremendously successful, they
have been imitated in other cities.
Inclusiveness has been a
mark of Fall for Dance from the start. Uptown meets downtown, Indian dance
meets tap, and categories have become irrelevant. This year is no exception.
Sharing the stage with better-known companies are scrappier troupes such as
those of Monica Bill Barnes and Mark Dendy. Early on, Fall for Dance went
international, and this year’s schedule includes the Australian Ballet, Les
Grands Ballets Canadiens, Batsheva Dance Company. Appearing on the second
program (Sept. 24 & 25) and eagerly awaited is the newly formed Tangueros
del Sur, whose stars Natalia Hills
and Gabriel Misse have been acclaimed in their previous brief local appearances
Shuler, who will receive
the prestigious Capezio Award on the festival’s opening night, recalled the
beginnings of Fall for Dance. “We had always had an initial concept that we
wanted to have some major companies to anchor the Festival. Some people said,
‘these companies aren’t going to be willing to share a program.’ In fact, that didn’t
turn out to be the case at all. Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham and others
supported the idea of trying to bring in new and young audiences to dance, and
agreed to share a program.” She has the audience surveys from the previous five
years to show that the festival’s audience is youthful (more than one-third are
under 30) and that many are new to dance, attracted by the eclectic programming
and modest ticket pricing. A good portion of those newcomers then goes on to
take in other dance events throughout the season.
An exciting and ambitious
new aspect of this year’s Fall for Dance is that there is a theme carrying
through across all the programs—a celebration of the innovative and influential
Ballets Russes that was founded by Serge Diaghilev in 1909. “I wanted to
acknowledge the centennial, and thought Fall for Dance was a perfect vehicle to
do that. One of the reasons to do it was there didn’t seem to be anybody else
the city who was doing anything in honor of Ballets Russes,” Shuler explained.
(One major institution that did take note of the anniversary was the New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts, and portions of its recent exhibition
honoring the centennial will be on view at City Center for these two weeks.)
The Diaghilev focus has led
to some fascinating inclusions on the programs, including reconstructions of
ballets first presented by Diaghilev, as well as contemporary interpretations
of those works. Thus, Boston Ballet will perform Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun, while Ballet West
will dance his sister Bronislava Nijinska’s Les
Biches. The Australian Ballet will be seen in Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose. Taking a contemporary cue from the past are
Basil Twist, the ever-surprising puppeteer, with his Petrushka Suite and Stijn
Celis, a Belgian choreographer whose 2002 version of Les Noces will be danced by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de
Montreal.
So past will meet
present—adding yet another intriguing aspect, and opportunity for comparison
and contrast to this singular event.
Fall For Dance
Through Oct. 3, New York
City Center, 130 W. 56th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-581-1212; times vary, $10 per performance
