BAM announces 2016 Next Wave Festival lineup

BAM has announced the lineup for its 2016 Next Wave Festival. This year’s program of music, theatre, opera, and dance runs September 7 through December 18. 2016 Next Wave Festival subscriptions go on sale June 13 (June 6 for BAM Members) and single tickets for all Next Wave shows go on sale August 1 (July 25 for BAM Members). This year’s lineup includes:

The Magnetic Fields performing the ambitious “50 Song Memoir” which chronicles the 50 years of songwriter Stephin Merritt’s life — one song per year — performed over the course of two nights at the Gilman Opera House on December 2 & 3. More details:

In concert, the music will be played and sung by seven performers in a stage set featuring 50 years of artifacts both musical (vintage computers, reel-to-reel tape decks, newly invented instruments), and decorative (tiki bar, shag carpet, vintage magazines for the perusal of idle musicians). The seven performers each play seven different instruments, either traditional (cello, charango, clavichord) or invented in the last 50 years (Slinky guitar, Swarmatron, synthesizer). The stage extravaganza will be directed by the award-winning Jose Zayas (Love in the Time of Cholera, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter).

There’s also the NY premiere of ‘monumental,’ a large-scale work performed by Canada’s dance company The Holy Body Tattoo with a live score by Godspeed You! Black Emperor which will be performed at Howard Gilman Opera House on September 16 & 17. Originally performed in 2005 at Canada’s National Arts Centre, here are more details of the work:

Engaged in purgatorial corporate survival, an ensemble of nine dancers dressed in monochromatic office attire—each anchored atop a two foot-tall pillar—represents the contemporary “Everyman” who at first represses the energy, aggression and hostility that seethes behind their controlled exteriors. With a flinch, restraint gives way to a stream of jarring and stilted movements. As they step, stumble, and slide off of their platforms, their movement personifies the madness of urban life—the repetition, confinement, alienation—culminating in the struggle to preserve the self against the frantic pace of life in contemporary corporate culture.

Performed under a shadowy, menacing cityscape designed by Marc Parent, and backed by the post- rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s massive wall of sound, this constellation of characters physically evokes an ever-accelerating climate of greed and ambition, where personal relationships are subjected to group identity and human connection becomes increasingly difficult.

People Get Ready’s Stephen Reker and his new band Open House will perform “Rememberer” at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) from October 19-22:

With songs and staging inspired by Henry Miller’s novella The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, Steven Reker leads the band in a concert where architecture doubles as an instrument. The group stacks up, tears down, and rearranges industry-standard Styrofoam insulation boards throughout the concert, while harnessing their acoustic properties with microphones. The palette of sounds includes vintage synthesizers, voices, guitar, saxophone, acoustic-electric drums, and the noises that leap out of the ever-changing set.

There is also ‘Rules of the Game,’ a multidisciplinary work created by choreographer Jonah Bokaer, visual artist Daniel Arsham, and composer Pharrell Williams which runs at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from November 10 – 12.

Plus: Sō Percussion’s multimedia show “A Gun Show” from November 30 – December 3 at BAM Harvey Theater; a new musical, A Star Has Burnt My Eye, written by Howard Fishman and Connie Converse that will run from November 9-12 at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space); and Letter to a Man, a collaboration between Robert Wilson and Mikhail Baryshnikov which will be performed at BAM Harvey Theater on October 15, 19—22, and 26—29.

There is much much more than this. For detailed info, head to BAM’s website. You can check out the full 2016 BAM Next Wave Festival Lineup, plus watch a trailer for it, below.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWMYShoIwEU&feature=youtu.be

BAM 2016 Next Wave Festival – LINEUP/SCHEDULE

the loser
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave) Sep 7, 9—10 at 7:30pm, Sep 11 at 3pm
Tickets: $30, 50, 75

The 2016 Next Wave opens with a world premiere that will transform how the artists use the Howard Gilman Opera House and how the audience views a performance. In realizing David Lang’s vision for the loser, an opera based on Thomas Bernhard’s eponymous novel about an old man’s reckoning with unfulfilled lifelong artistic dreams, a platform will be built out of the orchestra level (which is closed to the audience) to raise the lone singer, baritone Rod Gilfrey (Anna Nicole, 2013 Next Wave), into midair inside the theater. Hovering in the distance behind him is a grand piano, played by the young virtuoso Conrad Tao. A chamber ensemble accompanies, unseen by the audience. The unusual staging allows the audience to see the character as Lang imagined him: separated from the world by a gulf, surrounded by a void.

Bridge Over Mud US Premiere Verdensteatret
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Sep 7—10 at 7:30 and 9:30pm
Tickets: $25

Plunging the audience into an otherworldly multimedia experience, Bridge Over Mud transforms the Fishman Space into an electromechanical object-theater, examining the fragile bonds that preserve humanity in the face of encroaching technology. Created by Norway’s innovative Verdensteatret—an eclectic collective of Norwegian videographers, computer animators, sound engineers, musicians, and visual artists—this work encompasses nearly three years of audiovisual experimentation.

Part concert, part installation, and part performance, Bridge Over Mud slowly and mysteriously unfolds over a vast grid-like set comprising 195 feet of elevated tracks, 11 motorized vehicles, 60 speakers, and 30 micro-controlled motors. Throughout the hour-long work, Verdensteatret uses these tracks to transport video elements, robotic sculptures, and screens, and to create audio clips, constructing an immense and intricate space teeming with transmitting and refracting devices. Cinematic projections are acoustic sound clips fed through digital channels which have been programmed to convert them into moving images. As it builds toward its climactic conclusion, Bridge Over Mud challenges and stimulates the senses, inviting the audience to see the sounds and listen to the images.

After Sarah Kane, Wajdi Mouawad and J. M. Coetzee Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Sep 13—17 at 7pm; Sep 18 at 3pm
Tickets: $30, 55, 85 (weekday); $35, 65, 95 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

Isabelle Huppert returns to BAM as the doomed queen Phaedra, a woman grappling with an incestuous desire for her stepson. Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski weaves together multiple versions and variations of the Greek myth of Phaedra, offering a radical reconstruction of this tragic tale. The play’s text is composed of excerpts from Phaedra’s Love by British playwright Sarah Kane (itself a modern adaptation of Seneca’s Phaedra) and J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello, as well as original writing developed in collaboration with Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad. The shape-shifting queen is cast as a vengeful goddess, an exotic dancer, and an aging novelist. As the story unfolds, the fractured visions meld to offer a startling postmodern look at a mythic figure.

portrait of myself as my father
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Sep 14—17 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

Inspired by the Zimbabwe-born, Brooklyn-based choreographer’s complex relationship with her absentee father and preoccupied more broadly with fraught assumptions about black masculinity, nora chipaumire’s portrait of myself as my father features chipaumire (Miriam, 2012 Next Wave) and extraordinary Senegalese dancer Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye, known as Kaolack (formerly of Compagnie Jant Bi, Les escailles de la memoire, 2008 Next Wave). The two perform within a makeshift boxing ring—complete with Shamar Watt as ringmaster—with viewers on four sides. Rooted in chipaumire’s signature fusion of traditional African and contemporary dance, portrait uses the metaphor of sports to explore the question: how are men displayed and how are they consumed? It is at once aggressive, playful, personal, and furious, compelling viewers to engage with what scares and intrigues us about a male body which happens to be black. portrait of myself as my father is part of BAM’s new Brooklyn- Paris Artist Exchange with Théâtre de la Ville, Paris and will be performed at Théâtre des Abesses from Sep 28—Oct 1.

The Undertaking
Written and directed by Steve Cosson The Civilians
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Sep 21—24 at 7:30pm; Sep 25 at 3pm Tickets: $25

With The Undertaking, The Civilians—a company known for making entertaining shows about uncomfortable subjects—introduce a neurotic, quixotic, and heroic theatrical exploration of mortality. This world premiere play for two actors uses a real life conversation between Civilians founder (and The Undertaking’s writer/director/performer) Steve Cosson and close friend Jessica Mitrani, a Colombian-American artist, as a jumping off point to create a contemporary version of classical quests into the underworld. Their dialogue, taken verbatim, is Socratic in its search for truth, but becomes more messily human as they drink too much wine, read too much Carl Jung, and try in vain to remember the instructions of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. As the play unfolds, the actors embody new characters, their voices taken from company interviews with more than 200 people including hospice workers, philosophers, shamans, morticians, near death survivors, and others. A strong video component anchors and amplifies the proceedings.

Minuit
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Oct 5—8 at 7:30pm; Oct 8 at 2pm
Tickets: $25

A major force in France’s nouveau cirque scene, the inimitable Yoann Bourgeois makes his US debut in Minuit, a series of theatrical vignettes inspired by what he calls the “suspension point”—the body’s ineffable moment of weightlessness while in motion. Bourgeois and his fellow artists pair the works with music by Philip Glass and original music composed and performed live by harpist Laure Brisa.

An isolated staircase, moving platforms, trampolines, cables, swivels, and a pile of scattered tables, chairs, and instruments create shifting sets throughout this string of short pieces, each playing with “theater” as a concept and as a physical space. Blurring the boundary between performance and the creation of the performance space, Minuit reflects Bourgeois’ preoccupation with seizing the present as a way of slowing down time. As he and his collaborators fall and fly, bodies mimic pulleys and gears, weights and counterweights, where they—like midnight itself—linger in the moment between.

Monchichi New York Premiere Company Wang Ramirez
Artistic direction, conception, choreography, and dance by Wang Ramirez Dramaturgy by Vincent Rafis
Lighting design by Cyril Mulon
Set design by Ida Ravn
Costumes by Wang Ramirez
Music by Ilia Koutchoukov aka Everydayz /+∞
Arrangements by Fabien Biron
Additional music by Carlos Gardel, Alva Noto, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Oct 12—Oct 15 at 7:30pm; Oct 14 at 9:30pm
Tickets: $25

Company Wang Ramirez, comprising choreographers and dancers Sébastien Ramirez and Honji Wang, makes its BAM debut with Monchichi, a choreographic study of cultural identity. French- Spanish Ramirez, a gifted b-boy, and Korean-German Wang, whose stylistic influences include ballet and martial arts, cultivate a physical language that reflects our globalized world. With a minimal set and synth-heavy score featuring original music from French DJ Everydayz, Monchichi grows out of the spaces between the two dancers’ hybrid cultures and movement idioms. It is a shared self-portrait of partners, both in art and life. Hip-hop technical precision give way to dance theater aesthetic, as the duo explore the interplay between vivacity and discipline, masculine and feminine, virtuosity and authenticity.

The Holy Body Tattoo
Music by Godspeed You! Black Emperor Choreography by Dana Gingras and Noam Gagnon
Text by Jenny Holzer
Films by William Morrison Lighting design by Marc Parent
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave)
Sep 16 and 17 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 40, 50 (weekday), $25, 35, 45, 55 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

monumental is an elegiac investigation into the physical anxiety of urban culture. This large-scale work performed by Canada’s powerful dance company The Holy Body Tattoo combines textual elements from Jenny Holzer, film projections by William Morrison, live music by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and choreography by Dana Gingras and Noam Gagnon.

Engaged in purgatorial corporate survival, an ensemble of nine dancers dressed in monochromatic office attire—each anchored atop a two foot-tall pillar—represents the contemporary “Everyman” who at first represses the energy, aggression and hostility that seethes behind their controlled exteriors. With a flinch, restraint gives way to a stream of jarring and stilted movements. As they step, stumble, and slide off of their platforms, their movement personifies the madness of urban life—the repetition, confinement, alienation—culminating in the struggle to preserve the self against the frantic pace of life in contemporary corporate culture.
Performed under a shadowy, menacing cityscape designed by Marc Parent, and backed by the post- rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s massive wall of sound, this constellation of characters physically evokes an ever-accelerating climate of greed and ambition, where personal relationships are subjected to group identity and human connection becomes increasingly difficult.

monumental originally premiered at Canada’s National Arts Centre on February 24, 2005. Ten years later, this new production is produced by choreographer Dana Gingras’ Montreal-based company Animals of Distinction and includes live music performed by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Remains
Choreography by John Jasperse Music by John King
Lighting design by Lenore Doxsee
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Sep 21—24 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25, 35, 45 (weekday); $30, 40, 50 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

For 30 years, John Jasperse has been at the vanguard of the downtown dance scene, unafraid to challenge accepted dance vocabulary and leaving indelible footprints in contemporary dance history. In his third decade as a dancer and choreographer, he considers: what “remains” after a dance performance is finished and the stage is left empty? Where does he stand vis- à-vis the early- and mid-20th-century modern dance pioneers? His new piece, a BAM commission, addresses the question of legacy head-on. Remains is about the illusion of ego, the notion of a fluid boundary between the self and one’s environment—what we build through our actions and what we leave behind in our wake. Six dancers (Maggie Cloud, Marc Crousillat, Burr Johnson, Heather Lang, Stuart Singer, and Claire Westby) move to an original score by another downtown veteran, composer John King.

Battlefield
C.I.C.T./Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
Based on The Mahabharata and the play by Jean-Claude Carrière Adapted and directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne
Music by Toshi Tsuchitori
Lighting design by Philippe Vialatte Costume design by Oria Puppo
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Sep 28—Oct 1; Oct 4—9 at 7:30pm; Oct 1, 8 & 9 at 2pm; Oct 2 at 3pm Opens Oct 1
Tickets: $30, 50, 80, 110 (weekdays); $35, 60, 90, 120 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

Peter Brook’s internationally renowned team—Marie-Hélène Estienne and Jean-Claude Carrière— revisit the great Indian epic The Mahabharata 30 years after Brook’s legendary production captivated the theater world—and inaugurated the BAM Majestic Theater (now the BAM Harvey). It was renovated expressly by former BAM President and Executive Producer Harvey Lichtenstein for Brook to house the original production in the US. But whereas the nine-hour original was as expansive and immersive as its source material, Battlefield—at just over an hour—is a minimalist theatrical consideration of “the bitter taste of defeat” (Brook) embedded in military “victories” that often come at an incomprehensible cost. Featuring four actors and one musician, the play focuses on Prince Yudhishthira as he grapples with the central question of how to live with himself in light of the devastation and massacres that he has caused. Lauded as “luminous and potent” (The Independent) in its UK debut, Battlefield’s exploration of a world grappling with the effects of extreme violence feels simultaneously topical and timeless.

Songs of Lear
Song of the Goat Theatre (Teatr Pieśń Kozła) Directed by Grzegorz Bral
Music by Jean-Claude Acquaviva and Maciej Rychły
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Sep 28—Oct 1at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

Song of the Goat Theatre makes its BAM debut with a dramatic song-cycle that distills the plot, characters, and themes of King Lear into a non-linear musical journey. Songs of Lear, which premiered at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival to rave reviews, is an intimate and compelling hybrid production. The Polish ensemble has chosen integral scenes from Shakespeare’s tragedy to weave a story out of gestures, words, and music. With minimal staging, the 10 performers rely on the transformative power of their voices. The music––most of it loosely based on Gregorian chant–– reveals the subtle, coursing energies of the play. Despair, madness, disappointment, and love take on a visceral urgency in the form of pounding drums, guttural wails, Balkan bagpipes, and a polyphonic chorus.

The Hunger
By Donnacha Dennehy Alarm Will Sound Conducted by Alan Pierson Directed by Tom Creed
Presented in association with Irish Arts Center
Set and video design by Jim Findlay Costume design by TBD
Lighting design by TBD
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave) Sep 30—Oct 1 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 40 (weekday), $25, 35, 45 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

Rooted in the emotional, political, and socioeconomic devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine (1845- 52), The Hunger is a riveting new opera by renowned contemporary composer Donnacha Dennehy. Performed by the chamber band Alarm Will Sound, soprano Katherine Manley, and sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, the libretto principally draws from rare, first-hand accounts by Asenath Nicholson, an American humanitarian so moved by the waves of immigrants arriving in New York that she travelled to Ireland to bear witness, reporting from the cabins of starving families. By integrating historical and new documentary material, the opera gives a unique perspective on a period of major upheaval during which at least one million people died, and another million emigrated—mainly to the US, Canada, and the UK—forever altering the social fabric.

An evening-length work, The Hunger is punctuated by video commentary and profound early recordings of traditional Irish folk ballads mined from various archives including those of Alan Lomax. Performing a score that fuses a lush, modern sound with elements of minimalism, the instrumentalists and vocalists reside on stage together throughout the entire piece, situated around a looming mound of dirt bereft of any nourishment. As it progresses through its layered narrative, the opera addresses complex issues of governance and economic policy—balancing Nicholson’s personal, historical voice with video clips from modern thinkers including Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, and Branko Milanovic—imparting ideas about income inequality, food insecurity, and political economics that still resonate today.

Neither
Shen Wei Dance Arts Music by Morton Feldman Libretto by Samuel Beckett
Concept, choreography, set and costume design by Shen Wei Lighting design by Jennifer Tipton
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave)
Oct 5—8 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 40, 55 (weekday); $25, 35, 45, 65 (weekend)

The multifaceted Shen Wei has drawn inspiration for his works from such diverse sources as Western painting, calligraphy, Chinese opera, and nature. For his latest artistic endeavor and his BAM debut he turns to Neither, maverick composer Morton Feldman’s daringly spare and iridescent mono-drama with a 16-line libretto by Samuel Beckett. This unique collaboration by the two modernist titans is suggestive and elusive rather than dramatic and lends itself to the visual and expressive power of Shen Wei’s dance. Shen’s undulating choreography and mobile sets animate the stage in an evocative play of light and shadow, confinement and release, creating a total work of art that captures Feldman’s brooding yet incandescent score and Beckett’s lament. Shen’s movement flares, sharply and urgently, then settles together into intricate tableaux, oscillating—like Beckett’s libretto—in the gaps between departure and perpetual return.

Rosas & Ictus
Choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Music by Gérard Grisey
Music direction by Georges-Elie Octors
Lighting design by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Luc Schaltin Costumes by Anne-Catherine Kunz
Musical dramaturgy by Bojana Cvejić
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave)
Oct 14 & 15 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 40, 55 (weekday); $20, 35, 50, 65 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to BAM with Vortex Temporum, an evening- length work featuring De Keersmaeker’s company Rosas and contemporary music ensemble Ictus. Continuing the choreographer’s explorations of dance in relation to contemporary classical music, Vortex Temporum (2013) is set to (and named for) a 1996 piece by the late composer Gérard Grisey—a leading proponent of the 20th-century music movement known as spectralism, which emphasized pure sound and its transformations. The work premiered at Germany’s Ruhrtriennale Festival in 2013, and makes its US premiere as part of BAM’s 2016 Next Wave Festival.

In Vortex Temporum, seven dancers convey music through movement, each connected to a roving musician and associating individual movements with one instrumental part. The dancers’ movements enhance the perception of the sound-score with increasingly complex motion. The connection of the dancers and musicians attains a rare level of equilibrium; a “concert of dance” (Le Monde).

Letter to a Man
US Premiere Robert Wilson/Mikhail Baryshnikov
Direction, set design, lighting concept Robert Wilson with Mikhail Baryshnikov Based on the diary of Vaslav Nijinsky
Text by Christian Dumais-Lvowski
Dramaturgy by Darryl Pinckney
Music curated by Hal Willner
Costumes by Jacques Reynaud
Collaboration to movements and spoken text by Lucinda Childs Lighting design by A.J. Weissbard
Sound design by Nick Sagar / Ella Wahlström
Video design by Tomek Jeziorski
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Oct 15, 19—22, 26—29 at 7:30pm; Oct 16, 23 & 30 at 3pm Tickets: $35, 65, 85, 120 (weekday); $35, 70, 95, 130 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

Iconic director Robert Wilson and legendary performer Mikhail Baryshnikov join forces to create Letter to a Man—a theatrical work based on the famous diary of Russian dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Nijinsky, who performed with Sergei Diaghilev’s renowned Ballets Russes was-in his prime- the most celebrated male dancer in the Western world before descending into schizophrenia. Hal Willner’s century-spanning score contextualizes the intriguing narrative by weaving audio fragments of the diary with music by Tom Waits, Arvo Pärt, Henry Mancini, and Soviet futurist composer Alexander Mosolov.

Aware that his mental health had been deteriorating since the end of WWI, Nijinsky spent six and a half weeks between January to March of 1919 deftly crafting an extraordinary written document conveying his struggle against madness. His thoughts on paper wrestle with tormented sexuality, his profound love of dance, spiritual doubts, and preoccupations with Diaghilev, his erstwhile lover. Once the diary was finished, Nijinsky locked himself away, remaining isolated for more than two decades while watched over by his wife. As the World War II wound down, the great artist showed signs of life again; this is where Letter to a Man begins, providing a glimpse into the dancer’s past, and ahead toward his few remaining years. The project marks the second collaboration for Wilson and Baryshnikov, whose production of Daniil Kharms’ The Old Woman (2014 Spring Season), featuring Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe, toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim.

Rememberer
Steven Reker Open House
Directed by Steven Reker
New York Premiere
20
Sound design by Ryan Seaton and Christopher Madden Lighting design by Vincent Vigilante
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Oct 19—22 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

With songs and staging inspired by Henry Miller’s novella The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, Steven Reker leads the band in a concert where architecture doubles as an instrument. The group stacks up, tears down, and rearranges industry-standard Styrofoam insulation boards throughout the concert, while harnessing their acoustic properties with microphones. The palette of sounds includes vintage synthesizers, voices, guitar, saxophone, acoustic-electric drums, and the noises that leap out of the ever-changing set.

Request Concert
Łaźnia Nowa Theater and TR Warszawa By Franz Xaver Kroetz
Directed by Yana Ross
Dramaturgy by Aśka Grochulska
Translation by Danuta Żmij-Zielińska
Music by Aśka Grochulska and Tomasz Wyszomirski Lighting design by Mats Öhlin
Scenography and multimedia design by Simona Biekšaitė
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Oct 26—Oct 29 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

Director Yana Ross makes her BAM debut with Franz Xaver Kroetz’s poignant cultural critique, Request Concert. The play consists only of stage directions, no dialogue. The sole character is a 50-year-old middle class woman who lives alone in an overly tidy apartment. She comes home from work, prepares dinner, does the laundry, watches TV, and listens to a radio program. Surrounded by Ikea furniture and brand-name appliances, acclaimed Polish actress Danuta Stenka infuses these actions with an increasing sense of loneliness and futility. Request Concert explores the devastating circumstances of life in a world that values objects over people. Staged in the round, the audience is invited to walk around the set and observe the production from all angles.

Pavement
Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Nov 2—5 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25
Talk: On Urban Culture in the Age of Black Lives Matter
With Kyle Abraham and members of Abraham.In.Motion Moderated by Carl Hancock Rux
Nov 3, post-show (free for same-day ticket holders)

“Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as a natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the ‘higher’ against the ‘lower’ races.” – W.E.B. Du Bois
Pavement is dancer-choreographer and 2013 MacArthur Fellowship recipient Kyle Abraham’s evening-length dance inspired by two seminal works: John Singleton’s 1991 film Boyz N the Hood and W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic work of American literature, Souls of Black Folk. Abraham relocates the film from its iconic South Central Los Angeles setting to the historically black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh where he grew up. But Abraham’s creative vision extends further into the past as well, with references to the Homewood and Hill Districts’ heyday, when jazz legends like Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington performed at local theaters, half a century before streets that once flourished with family run businesses succumbed to gang violence and crack cocaine. The devastating gesture of a white man lowering a black man’s body gently to the ground, wrapping him in an almost tender headlock, and placing his hands behind his back is a grounding refrain. Throughout the work—which employs video projections, dialogue from the film, and a wide variety of music ranging from Handel to Sam Cooke to hip hop—Abraham and six other dancers bound and rebound with hip-hop attack and balletic flow, while handshakes become fistfights and pas-de-deux and bodies stack up against each other and the ground. Pavement debuted at Harlem Stage in 2012 but was missing key set elements due to Hurricane Sandy; the BAM Fisher presentation is the first production of the work with all creative components in place.

Kings of War
By William Shakespeare Toneelgroep Amsterdam Directed by Ivo van Hove
Translation by Rob Klinkenberg
Adaptation by Bart van den Eynde and Peter van Kraaij Dramaturgy by Peter van Kraaij
Set and light design by Jan Versweyveld
Music by Eric Sleichim
Costumes by An D’Huys
Video by Tal Yarden
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave) Nov 3—Nov 5 at 7pm, Nov 6 at 1pm
Tickets: $30, 50, 80, 110

Acclaimed director Ivo van Hove returns to BAM with Toneelgroep Amsterdam and his second epic Shakespeare adaptation. Kings of War combines Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3, and Richard III into a single, explosive play about the perils of leadership. It lays bare the political mechanisms of powerful men and their subordinates, and exposes the dichotomy between national interests and self- importance. Henry V is an ambitious, yet inexperienced monarch, eager to prove his worth; Henry VI, an ineffectual ruler who fails to reconcile warring factions; and Richard, an egocentric despot. The action takes place in a modern-day war room. Cameras capture backroom dealings and a rousing battle cry is delivered via national broadcast. The interplay of live action and video reveals the disparate ways in which war is waged––from an air-conditioned room to a blighted street corner.

Plexus
A piece by Aurélien Bory for Kaori Ito Compagnie 111
Conception, scenography, and direction by Aurélien Bory Choregraphy by Aurélien Bory and Kaori Ito
Music by Joan Cambon
Lighting design by Arno Veyrat
Sound design by Stéphane Ley Costumes by Sylvie Marcucci
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St) Nov 9—12 at 7:30pm, Nov 13 at 3pm
US Premiere
Tickets: $20, 30, 40, 60 (weekday); $25, 35, 45, 65 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

French theater director Aurélien Bory has wowed BAM audiences twice before with his imaginative interplay of performers and stage sets. In Les sept planches de la ruse (2008 Next Wave), it was a mysterious panorama of acrobats scaling giant geometric shaped boards; in Sans Objet (2012 Next Wave), it was a sometimes funny, sometimes awe-inspiring tango between two humans and a giant industrial robot. Bory returns with Plexus (Latin for “intertwining”), in which thousands of black nylon strings on the stage to form a three dimensional loom. Japanese dancer and choreographer Kaori Ito threads her body like a weaving shuttle through the “loom” to produce a series of stunning dance tableaux.

A Star Has Burnt My Eye
New York Premiere Written by Howard Fishman
Music and lyrics by Connie Converse
Directed by Tom Dugdale
Dramaturgy by James Harrison Monaco
Set and costume design by Christopher Heilman Lighting design by Megan Lang and Megan Estes
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Nov 9—12 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

A play with music, A Star Has Burnt My Eye is inspired by the extraordinary true story of Connie Converse. An unknown musician living in Greenwich Village in the early 1950s, Converse wrote and self-recorded original music—by turns beautiful, poetic, funny, and haunting—that was far ahead of its time. A quarter of a century later, long despairing of finding an audience for her art, Converse left goodbye letters that weren’t quite suicide notes, and vanished. A tribute to this remarkable lost artist, the setting for Howard Fishman’s A Star Has Burnt My Eye is both simple and illuminating: in a Brooklyn apartment, a contemporary musician (played by Fishman) has gathered collaborators to prepare for a concert of Converse’s music. Over the course of a single afternoon, they attempt to get inside her life and songs, examining notions of success, alienation, passion, and the ways in which genius can lead to salvation or self-destruction. The play features live performances of Converse’s songs, readings from her personal letters and journals, previously unheard music, and recreations of firsthand recollections from those who knew her.

Rules Of The Game
Jonah Bokaer and Daniel Arsham
With an original score by Pharrell Williams
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave) Nov 10—Nov 12 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25, 35, 50 (weekdays); $30, 40, 55 (weekends) (subject to change after July 24)

RECESS (2010) Choreography by Jonah Bokaer
New York Premiere
Scenography by Daniel Arsham Music by Stavros Gasparatos Lighting design by Aaron Copp Costumes by Richard Chai

Why Patterns (2011)
Choreography and direction by Jonah Bokaer
Scenography by Snarkitecture (Daniel Arsham and Alex Mustonen) Music by Morton Feldman and Alexis Georgopoulos
Lighting design by Aaron Copp
Costumes by Richard Chai

Rules of the Game (2016)
Choreography and direction by Jonah Bokaer Scenography by Daniel Arsham
Original score by Pharrell Williams
Arranged and conducted by David Campbell
Exclusive recording by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Lighting Design by Aaron Copp
Costumes by Chris Stamp/STAMPD
BAM Fisher Hillman Studio
Tickets: $25 ($12.50 for BAM Members)

Rules Of The Game—the centerpiece of a triple bill of New York City premieres—is a new multidisciplinary work created by choreographer Jonah Bokaer, visual artist Daniel Arsham, and composer Pharrell Williams. It marks the first collaboration by the three artists, and Williams’ first composition for dance and theater—commissioned for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, arranged and conducted by David Campbell. Rules Of The Game, a work for eight dancers, draws inspiration from playwright Luigi Pirandello’s texts, notably Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), and its play- within-a-play, Rules Of The Game (1918), which inspired this work.

The program features two additional works which reflect Jonah Bokaer and Daniel Arsham’s longtime collaborative work, now celebrating 10 years of repertory. RECESS, a solo performance by Bokaer, explores movement, temporality, memory, and space while Bokaer performs with an enormous roll of white paper, visually transforming the stage into 20 scenic landscapes with that material. Why Patterns, a piece for four dancers set to music by Morton Feldman and ARP, investigates design and perception with sculptural frames and 10,000 thousand ping pong balls. Bokaer last appeared at BAM with ECLIPSE, a collaboration with visual artist Anthony McCall which was commissioned to open the BAM Fisher’s first Next Wave season in 2012.

Thank You For Coming: Play
Faye Driscoll
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Pl) Nov 16—19 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

Choreographer and director Faye Driscoll’s work consists of rigorously crafted group experiences that come off as improvised, chaotic, and spontaneous. Driscoll—the 2016 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher—will make her Next Wave debut with a BAM commission, the second piece in a projected trilogy that proposes performance as shared political act, where performer and audience co-create reality. The first, Thank You For Coming: Attendance, was called “engrossing and ebullient” (Hyperallergic). The new piece focuses on the way we consume and fabricate stories in order to make our lives cohere; the ritual of storytelling will be at the forefront of this physically-driven dance-play. The choreography for Play will be made by lingering in the gaps and glitches—physically and vocally—between what we say versus what we do. Driscoll’s own life story combines with those of her collaborators and the audience to create a semi-fictional collective autobiography that is danced, sung, and spoken.

Memory Rings
Phantom Limb Company
Conceived by Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko Choreography by Ryan Heffington
Direction and design by Jessica Grindstaff Original music and puppet design by Erik Sanko
Costume design by Henrik Vibskov Lighting design by Brian H. Scott Sound design by Darron L. West Projection design by Keith Skretch Dramaturgy by Janice Paran
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Nov 17—19 at 7:30pm; Nov 20 at 3pm
Tickets: $30, 40, 65 (weekdays); $35, 50, 75 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

From the rich imaginations of the acclaimed Phantom Limb Company, Memory Rings is a spellbinding journey into the woods of a vanishing past and even more precarious future. A phantasmagoric mix of puppetry, choreography, projections, music, and macabre fairy tales, this stunning theatrical collage unfolds beneath the boughs of the world’s oldest tree, chronicling five thousand years of environmental change.

Following the company’s cautionary tale 69 ̊S. (2011 Next Wave Festival), Memory Rings is the second part of a trilogy of original works about environmental degradation. Inspired by the Methuselah Tree, a California bristlecone pine estimated to be more than 4800 years old, the work creates a meditative space for thought and reflection by blending together scenes and images drawn from mythology and fairy tales—from Gilgamesh to Snow White—while marionettes and dancers with full head masks depict the many characters lurking in our forests, blurring the boundaries between human and animal, present and past, dream and reality.

The Tree of Life
Written and directed by Terrence Malick Wordless Music Orchestra
Presented in association with Wordless Music
Conducted by Ryan McAdams Robert Fleitz, piano
Jennifer Zetlan, soprano
US Premiere of film with live music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave) Nov 18 & 19 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $35, 45, 55, 75

For two nights only, BAM and Wordless Music present a special screening of Terrence Malick’s (Badlands, Days of Heaven) The Tree of Life with a 100-piece orchestra and choir providing live accompaniment. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, this impressionist masterwork meditates on the whys and hows of the universe framed within an engaging coming-of-age tale set in 1950s Waco, TX. Featuring brilliant performances by Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, and Jessica Chastain, the film boasts Malick’s signature striking imagery and ambitious themes while incorporating a rich range of powerful and iconic music. Including compositions by Berlioz, Mahler, Brahms, Smetana, Zbigniew Preisner, Giya Kancheli, John Tavener, and Henryk Górecki across its two-plus hour running time, the film is as awe-inspiring musically as it is visually and philosophically.

A Gun Show
Sō Percussion Directed by Ain Gordon
Choreography by Emily Johnson
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Nov 30—Dec 3 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 25, 35 (weekday); $25, 30, 40 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

An abstract exploration of a visceral issue, Sō Percussion’s A Gun Show uses music, text, and movement to consider the question: “what is it about our collective psyche that fastens so tightly to guns?” The group began the production as a way to process the unfathomable school shootings in Newtown, CT. The four members of Sō Percussion—Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting—take center stage alongside Emily Johnson, choreographer of the evening’s gestural movement vocabulary, against a backdrop of deer in a bucolic setting. The collective’s signature copious, often unconventional, array of percussive objects—here including a decommissioned Russian army rifle—line the sides of a raked stage. The music reflects the ensemble’s sonic associations with American gun culture, ranging from militaristic rhythms to mournful blues. An additional corps of eight swap out and play instruments and serve as a Greek chorus, stand-ins for an audience invited to reflect and commune with the performers on this complex topic.

On The Road
ZviDance
Choreography by Zvi Gotheiner
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Nov 30—Dec 3 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

Israeli-born, NYC-based choreographer Zvi Gotheiner and his contemporary dance company ZviDance make their BAM debut in On The Road, a work inspired by Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel. The piece contemplates the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and the Beat generation’s clarion call of social rebellion. Using projected footage from the company’s own cross-country road trip, Gotheiner and his collaborators present a multimedia movement work that explores concepts of restlessness, freedom, longing, and exploration. Composer Scott Killian’s soundscape includes commentary from spoken word artists, 1950s jazz, and original music.

The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir
New York Premiere
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave) Dec 2 (Program A) & Dec 3 (Program B) at 7:30pm Tickets: $30, 45
(subject to change after July 24)

The Magnetic Fields’ 50 Song Memoir chronicles the 50 years of songwriter Stephin Merritt’s life—one song per year—performed over the course of two nights. This BAM engagement by Merritt’s beloved group previews an upcoming album, projected for release by Nonesuch Records in late 2016/early 2017. The album commenced recording on Stephin Merritt’s 50th birthday, February 9, 2015.

Unlike Merritt’s previous work, the lyrics on 50 Song Memoir are nonfiction, a mix of autobiography (bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery) and documentary (hippies, Hollywood, hyperacusis). There is one song per year for the 50 years since the songwriter’s birth in 1965. Musically, the sound ranges as widely and adventurously as possible, within the context of lyrics-driven music.

In concert, the music will be played and sung by seven performers in a stage set featuring 50 years of artifacts both musical (vintage computers, reel-to-reel tape decks, newly invented instruments), and decorative (tiki bar, shag carpet, vintage magazines for the perusal of idle musicians). The seven performers each play seven different instruments, either traditional (cello, charango, clavichord) or invented in the last 50 years (Slinky guitar, Swarmatron, synthesizer). The stage extravaganza will be directed by the award-winning Jose Zayas (Love in the Time of Cholera, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter).
For press information, contact Sandy Sawotka at [email protected] or 718.636.4190.

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare
Cheek by Jowl
Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod
Directed by Declan Donnellan
Designed by Nick Ormerod
Lighting designer Judith Greenwood
Composer and sound designer Paddy Cunneen Associate and movement director Jane Gibson
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Dec 6—10 at 7:30pm, Dec 11 at 3pm
Tickets: $25, 45, 65, 85 (weekday); $30, 50, 75, 95 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

The imaginative British theater troupe Cheek by Jowl tackles Shakespeare’s late romance The Winter’s Tale in honor of the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death. The staging, which has been described by Les Echoes as “a dream,” employs simple theatrical craft to clearly render the play’s notoriously wide-spanning timelines and locations. The set contains only a beige-colored wooden bench and a simple hut. Actors, in unobtrusive modern dress, sing, dance, run, and act out with total emotional commitment in this tale of jealousy, fidelity, abandonment, friendship, atonement, and reconciliation.

Brent Green and Sam Green: Live Cinema New York Premiere
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Dec 7—10 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

Known separately for singular performances combining cinema with live musical accompaniment and narration, self-taught animator Brent Green and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (unrelated) make their Next Wave debuts with a collaborative program. Foley sound artist Kate Ryan and a band comprising Brendan Canty (Fugazi), James Canty (Nation of Ulysses), and Becky Foon (Silver Mt. Zion) perform live alongside the cinematic proceedings: flickering stop-motion forays into the Southern Gothic from Brent, engrossing documentaries about provincial dreamers and doers from Sam. The result is a unique live art experience that fuses the energy and immediacy of a rock show with cinema’s immersive storytelling capabilities.

The Hard Nut
Based on the book by E.T.A. Hoffman, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King Mark Morris Dance Group
Featuring the MMDG Music Ensemble and The Hard Nut Singers Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, Op. 71 Conducted by Colin Fowler
Choreography by Mark Morris
Set design by Adrianne Lobel
Costume design by Martin Pakledinaz
Lighting design by James F. Ingalls
Production based on the work of Charles Burns
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave)
Dec 10 at 2 & 7:30pm; Dec 11 at 3pm; Dec 14—16 at 7:30pm; Dec 17 at 2 & 7:30pm; Dec 18 at 3pm
Tickets: $25, 40, 65, 95, 115 (weekday); $35, 50, 75, 105, 125 (weekend)

An exhilarating New York City tradition, BAM and Mark Morris Dance Group once again present the holiday classic The Hard Nut—a cheeky yet reverent homage to The Nutcracker. “I’ve never seen a funnier full-length dance work, and the laughs bubble up throughout,” says The Washington Post. For this updated classic fairytale, Morris sets the action in the swinging 70s, complete with go-go boots, G.I. Joe soldiers, a dancing Barbie doll, and inspired gender-bending casting. This mix of playfulness and exquisite dance, combined with the greatest respect for E.T.A Hoffman’s original story and Tchaikovsky’s complete, original score, earned The Hard Nut the winning spot in Ovation TV’s “Battle of the Nutcrackers” contest three years running. The Hard Nut takes its title from the story-within-a- story from Hoffman’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, wherein an evil Rat Queen promises to restore the Princess Pirlipat’s beauty if a young man can crack the “hard nut” with his teeth.

CITIZEN
Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group Choreography by Reggie Wilson
BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Dec 14—17 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 40 (weekdays); $25, 35, 45 (weekend) (subject to change after July 24)

Choreographer Reggie Wilson and his Fist & Heel Performance Group return to BAM with a new work that questions what it means to belong and what it means to not want to belong. CITIZEN is inspired by the histories of iconic African-Americans who faced prevalent contradictions and adversity in relation to their civic duties. A provocative dialogue emerges through a series of five intricately woven solos, layered with haunting footage that suspends time and place. Wilson, whose postmodern work embodies elements of blues, folk, and African Diaspora cultures, exposes isolation and the ways in which we make space for our communities and our countries without sacrificing ourselves and the legacies of our cultural identities.

Amplified
Dublin Guitar Quartet Music by Michael Gordon Directed by Jim Findlay
Presented in association with Irish Arts Center
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) 321 Ashland Pl Dec 14—17 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25

The new music advocates of Dublin Guitar Quartet makes their BAM debut with Michael Gordon’s Amplified. Written for electric guitars, Amplified premiered at the New Music Dublin Festival in 2015 and continues Gordon’s exploration into hour-long, single-instrument explorations that already include Rushes for seven bassoons and Timber (Next Wave 2012) for six percussionists playing amplified wooden “simantras” (2x4s). In the intimate Fishman Space, the audience surrounds the quartet, whose guitars alternatively roar and murmur in amplified sound.