Seasonal Movement

It hasn’t gotten quite as crazy as the lines for Shakespeare in the Park, but dance enthusiasts did start lining up at 11:30 the night before the box office opened for City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival. Once again, the 10-day festival—with five wildly diverse programs including familiar big names, adventurous downtown artists, foreign companies not seen here before, and everything from tap to Indian to hip-hop and more—is the hottest ticket in town, and rightly so. Among the 20 selections are world and local premieres, as well as some beloved audience favorites and plenty of surprises.

It certainly opens with a bang. The first program (Sept. 28 & 29) gives New Yorkers a long-awaited first look at Merce Cunningham’s XOVER, a 2007 work with a score by John Cage. (This Cunningham company appearance will be its first locally during its two-year Legacy Tour.) Miami City Ballet, which established its top-drawer credentials with its much-lauded January 2009 City Center season, closes that program with The Golden Section, Twyla Tharp’s high-flying ensemble work set to David Byrne music. Andrea Miller, one of the most exciting younger choreographers in town, will offer an adaptation of I Can See Myself in Your Pupil, and the well-balanced program is rounded out by Indian Odissi dancer/choreographer Madhavi Mudgal, who returns to the festival with a world premiere.

Fall for Dance has been such a success from the start, particularly in bringing in new audiences for dance, there hasn’t been much need to tinker with a winning formula. But Arlene Shuler, City Center’s president and CEO, points out several ways it has evolved since its 2004 launch. “In the beginning we had more companies, a lot of shorter works, so we could have five companies a night. We realized that was sometimes too much; it made the evening long, and sometimes so rich that it was almost overwhelming. Last year, when we did Ballets Russes programming, we had more full-length pieces, so we reduced it to four companies on each program, and I think that works very well.”

At a time when ever-fewer foreign dance companies perform in New York, the festival offers an important opportunity to catch up with some of what’s happening overseas. This year’s international visitors include Finland’s Tero Saarinen Company, which offered intriguing programs at the Joyce Theater and BAM on earlier visits. Unusually, this work is a solo, a U.S. premiere performed by Saarinen himself, but choreographed by Carolyn Carlson, an influential expatriate American. Inspired by the life of Mark Rothko, it may be the dance world’s version of last seasons’ hit play Red.

Two international offerings come by way of London’s Sadlers Wells Theater, with which City Center has a fruitful partnership. One is Russell Maliphant’s AfterLight (Part 1), a solo based on drawings of Nijinsky and set to Satie music, created for the theater’s “In the Spirit of Diaghilev” program last year. Shu-Yi & (Dancers) Company, a Taiwanese troupe making its U.S. debut, won the Sadler’s Wells 2009 Global Dance Contest. “They solicited dance companies’ videos online, and had people vote on them. The winning company, out of 170 entries, was presented at Sadler’s Wells,” explains Shuler. “It’s a very young company, with a very new treatment of Bolero.”

Also making its U.S. debut is Companhia Urbana de Dança, a Brazilian hip-hop troupe whose choreographer, Sonia Destri, creates movement in collaboration with her company members, drawing on the dancers’ identities and life stories as inspiration. Festival first-timers include Emanuel Gat Dance, with a meditative solo to John Coltrane; Company Rafaela Carrasco from Spain, performing a three-part work to live music; and Dresden Semperoper Ballet, taking on the virtuoso challenges of William Forsythe’s Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon, directed by American Ballet Theatre star Angel Corella, is back after its local debut at City Center earlier this year, with Solea, performed by Corella and his sister Carmen.

Ballet fans definitely won’t go hungry at Fall for Dance. Three of the country’s top troupes, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, will all perform. NYCB will actually be up against itself: four leading members will dance Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels while their colleagues are holding forth at Lincoln Center. “They can only perform certain works here; they have to have live music. So we can’t do works that require a big orchestra,” Shuler says. “Red Angels is a piece we’ve really been wanting to do here. I think it shows a side of City Ballet that’s very dynamic and exciting.”

Add Paul Taylor’s Company B—and tap master Jason Samuels Smith joining forces with hip-hop innovator Mr. Wiggles—to the mix, and you see just how varied the programming is. There will be plenty for dance fans to discuss and debate in the always-lively Lounge FFD in the neighboring atrium, where food, drink and music are available before and after the performances.

[Fall for Dance]

Sept. 28–Oct. 9, City Center, 131 W. 55th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-581-1212; $10. Pre-performance DanceTalks Oct 1 & 7 at 6:30, Free.