Joyce Theater

The L.A. company Bodytraffic returns to the Joyce with a evening that explores sensations of memory, nostalgia and the things that may trigger them. The bill comprises three works: Trey McIntyre's Mayday, a laurel to Buddy Holly set to such songs as “Peggy Sue” and “That’ll Be the Day”; Matthew Neenan's I Forgot the Start, which employs music by Sinéad O’Connor and others to explore love won and lost; and Juel D. Lane's Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro, which depicts the artist Ernie Barnes as he works on one of his most famous paintings.

In its latest Joyce engagement, Kyle Abraham's contemporary-dance company explores themes of Black and queer identity, resilence and social connection in a mixed bill of four recent works: two pieces by Princess Grace Award winners, Andrea Miller's YEAR and Rena Butler's Shell of A Shell of The Shell, that the company premiered last year; Paul Singh's 2019 solo Just Your Two Wrists, set to music by David Lang; and Abraham’s own latest work, an as-yet-untitled collaboration with composer Shelley Washington. 

Trisha Brown's company soldiers on after the 2017 death of its founder. Its new bill at the Joyce includes Time again, a commissioned dive into questions of visibility and invisibility, newly created for the company by Australia's Lee Serle in collaboration with visual artist Mateo López and composer-soundscapist Alisdair Macindoe. The program also freatures two loose, silky pieces from Brown's Unstable Molecular Structure cycle: Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503 (1980), performed amid "fog sculptures" by Japan's Fujiko Nakaya, and Son of Gone Fishin’ (1981), set to excerpts from all three parts of Robert Ashley's opera Atalanta (Acts of God).

New York's own contemporary dance outfit Gibney Company, which has expanded its reach significantly in the 2020s, returns to the Joyce with a three-piece suite: the world premiere of postmodern-dance doyenne Lucinda Childs's Three Dances (for prepared piano) John Cage, inspired by Cage's 1944-45 ballet composition; and the company premieres of Peter Chu’s Echoes of Sole and Animal, which draws from traditional Chinese movement philosophies and practices, and Roy Assaf’s A Couple, a duet set to piano works by Brahms.