Happenings
Illinoise
Illinoise “springs to epic life onstage” (The Washington Post) in a “mysterious, deeply moving and unforgettable dance-musical hybrid” (The New York Times) directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Justin Peck.
Illinoise, choreographed and directed by Justin Peck
Tony Award-winning dancer, choreographer, and director Justin Peck embraces Grammy and Academy Award nominee Sufjian Stevens’ album in an ecstatic pageant of storytelling, theater, dance, and live music with a cast of virtuosic dancers, singers, and musicians with a narrative crafted with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview, Marys Seacole)
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Illinoise, choreographed and directed by Justin Peck
Known for its lush orchestrations and wildly inventive portrayal of the state’s people, landscapes, and history, a team of brilliantly imaginative artists unite to transform the album Illinois, by Grammy and Academy Award nominee Sufjan Stevens, into a full-length theatrical performance, with a story by Tony Award winner Justin Peck (New York City Ballet, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury. Featuring a cast of virtuosic dancers, singers, and a live band, Illinoise will lead audiences on a journey through the American heartland.
Works & Process: Peter & the Wolf with Isaac Mizrahi
Isaac Mizrahi narrates and directs Sergei Prokofiev’s charming children’s classic, Peter & the Wolf, accompanied by Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, conducted by Michael P. Atkinson. The cast, wearing costumes by Mizrahi, performs choreography by John Heginbotham, bringing the 30-minute story to life for the young and young at heart.
Song of Songs, Pam Tanowitz Dance
In its New York City premiere, Song of Songs fuses David Lang’s gorgeous choral settings of the Biblical love poem with movement mined and abstracted from Jewish folk dance. A reflection on the intimate bonds of romance and community alike, Tanowitz’s intricate assemblage of style, form, and emotion is also her first evening-length work at City Center, and a return to her one-time home.
Song of Songs, Pam Tanowitz Dance
Spiritual, playful and mystical dance-theatre from choreographer Pam Tanowitz and Pulitzer prize-winning composer David Lang, inspired by one of the greatest love poems of all time.
Studio 189 Spring 2024 Ready-to-wear Collection
Abrima Erwiah debuted the Studio 189 label back in 2013 with actor Rosario Dawson. Every Studio 189 show is a celebration of life and a dance party that will bring out smiles and foot taps from even the most stoic editors and self-serious Fashion Week attendees.
Illinois, co-written, choreographed and directed by Justin Peck
Tony Award-winner Justin Peck (Carousel on Broadway, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, New York City Ballet) transforms Sufjan Stevens’ album into a full-length theatrical performance with a cast of virtuosic dancers, singers, and musicians in a narrative crafted with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury.
Heart of Hearts by Pam Tanowitz
Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels presents “heart of hearts,” a new dance choreographed by Pam Tanowitz
Moving Forward Collective / BODYSONNET
An evening of dance co-presented by The Moving Forward Collective and BODYSONNET at Arts on Site in NYC. Premiering new work by Madison Hicks and collaborators.
The Performance Animal
The Performance Animal, an immersive performance, is a collaboration between Luo Wei, a globally acclaimed pianist and recipient of the Liu Shiming Art Grant in 2023, and the accomplished dancer Zachary Gonder.
PIVOTAL presented by PARA.MAR Dance Theatre
Inspired in part by the city's 2023 “Year of Chicago Healing“ initiative and by the recent, and unexpected, loss of founder and director Stephanie Martinez’s mother, we have invited two of the most sought-after choreographers in contemporary dance: Hélène Simoneau (2021 Guggenheim Fellow, NYCC Choreography Fellow), and Yin Yue (YYDC, Martha Graham, 2021 Harkness Promise Award) to join us in delving into a process that explores the bewilderment, tenderness, and strength that comes from loss – offering a season designed around vulnerability, healing, growth, and pivotal change.
Carmen
Carmen has long been one of the world's favorite operas. It returns this season in the company's vividly colorful, powerfully dramatic production.
Dance On Camera Festival: I was waiting for the echo of a better day
Inspired by the French New Wave, filmmaker Jeremy Jacob has created an intimate reframing of Pam Tanowitz’s angular and sensual choreography, originally developed for a live, outdoor performance at Bard College’s Montgomery Place Campus.
Catalog: A Dance Show
An evening of drinks and dance with work by Peter Farrow, Zachary Gonder, and Corinne Lohner.
Brooklyn Motion Capture Dance Ensemble
BMCDE presents eight new works for dancers and motion capture technology that explore a vast emotional landscape, interrogating concepts of self, identity, the immigrant experience, and our relationships to one another and our environment.
Mark Morris Dance Group: The Hard Nut
Set to Tchaikovsky’s beloved music (with live orchestra), The Hard Nut lovingly channels the warm spirit of this holiday tradition into the swinging 70’s.
TICKETS FOR SATURDAY, DEC 3, 7:30 PM
TICKETS FOR SUNDAY, DEC 4, 2:30 PM
Coltrane Festival with Pam Tanowitz Dance
With live music by saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and her band, Pursuance, the piece sees Tanowitz choreographing to jazz for the first time. Her innovative twist on ballet and modern styles continue to shine forever and ever and ever and ever, uniquely developed for our Zellerbach Theatre. “Pam Tanowitz's dances are a lot like diamonds: They dazzle with compositional brilliance.” (Dance Spirit Magazine)
Studio 189 Spring Summer 2023 Fashion Show
The Spring 2023 collection runway show opens with a spiritual dance led by choreographer Virgil Gadson and a ballet performance led and choreographed by Djassi DaCosta Johnson to pay tribute to those that have fallen. We close with a special performance by Gigi Holiday that pays tribute to the black burlesque movement in the spirit of celebration and followed by a Vogue performance led by Virgil. Our aim is to showcase the many ways we celebrate life through culture in Africa and its Diaspora as we honor 9/11.
The Amplified Concert: 2022 New Century Dance Project (NCDP) Festival
Amplified is one of three festival concerts that bring together world premieres by the Zeitgeist Dance Theatre Second Company, and captivating work from a diverse group of professional, emerging, and student choreographers from across North America who have been selected from a talented pool who submitted their work for consideration.
Untold
Influenced by Elizabeth Lesser’s Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes, PARA.MAR founder and director Stephanie Martinez explores and interrogates the same question of “how the stories we tell, the stories we hear and see, become the culture we know”.
PURCHASE TICKETS
Dancing the Studio for “Dancing Studies”
Pam Tanowitz, known for her abstract treatment of classical and contemporary movement ideas, is the third guest of the cycle of performances “Dancing Studies". She will present a new dance installation, “Dancing the Studio”, inspired by Bruce Nauman’s “Mapping the Studio” and his emphasis on process-over-product. “Dancing the Studio” removes the boundary between process and performance. The rehearsal and the performance are one and the same.
Admission is FREE until capacity is reached.
In Good Spirits: A MÔTÔ Spirits x The Moving Orchestra Massivemuse
This iteration will feature The Moving Orchestra’s co-founders, violinist Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim and pianist Joey Chang, alongside extraordinary trumpet player Dave Adewumi, kaleidoscopic vocalist Hillary Bonhomme, and paragon dancer Zachary Gonder.
PURCHASE TICKETS
Four Quartets with Pam Tanowitz at BAM
“The most sublime dance-theater creation this century: A dance for the soul”
—The New York Times
Film: Every Moment Alters
Shot in New York in 2020, Every Moment Alters captures the intense dislocation and unique disquiet of that long, strange summer. Director Liz Sargent and choreographer Pam Tanowitz evoke a shadow of a memory, of how the past is the present and continues to shape the future. The screen splits and fragments, phrases catch and repeat in the music by Caroline Shaw. “The ability to forget is actually part of what makes us human...”
Onsite Event: Brian Brooks / Moving Company (Leir Outdoor Stage)
A “master of momentum” (Chicago Tribune), Brian Brooks has choreographed for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Miami City Ballet, Wendy Whelan, and his own New York-based company. In The Moving Company’s first Pillow performance since 2013, they perform two world premieres and revisit Closing Distance which premiered just before the pandemic and hasn’t been performed since.
Flight Study, a new work set to a dynamic string quartet piece by GRAMMY-Award winning classical composer Bryce Dessner, was developed in multiple residencies over the past year. Brooks also performs a new untitled solo work for himself for the first time in over five years. Closing Distance is set to a Pulitzer Prize-winning score by composer Caroline Shaw, and features the eight-voice Williamstown, MA-based ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The program was shaped, in part, by the company’s time spent at the Pillow Lab last October.
I Was Waiting for the Echo of a Better Day
A new commission from the Fisher Center’s Choreographer-in Residence Pam Tanowitz (SummerScape 2018’s Four Quartets) and the ASCAP Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein Award-winning composer Jessie Montgomery (whose work was featured in Bard Music Fesival's Out of the Silence series in 2020). Performed with live music, this large-scale dance is set against the spectacular backdrop of the Hudson River and the sun setting behind the Catskill Mountains. Utilizing the full breadth of Montgomery Place’s historic parkland, I was waiting for the echo of a better day beckons us back to gather on this land and pays tribute to what came before.
A companion film from visual artist and filmmaker Jeremy Jacob will be released in the Fisher Center’s fall 2021 UPSTREAMING season.
Commissioning funds for I was waiting for the echo of a better day provided by Jay Franke and David Herro.