Joyce Theater

Chicago's popular Hubbard Street, under the guidance of artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, returns to its NYC pied-à-terre at the Joyce Theatre. The program this time comprises Ohad Naharin's early all-male quintet Black Milk (1990) and the New York premieres of FLOCK's Into Being, Johan Inger’s Impasse and resident artist Aszure Barton's A Duo.

The Martha Graham company keeps the modern dance master's legacy alive at the Joyce with a set of programs that juxtapose classic Graham pieces with works by modern choreographers. The run is divided into three major programs plus two one-offs. The Gala Opening on April 1 includes Graham's Clytemnestra Act II (1958) and the world premiere of Baye & Asa’s Cortege. Those two pieces are also in Program A (Apr 2, 4, 10, 12) along with Hofesh Shechter’s Cave (2022) and the world premiere of Xin Ying's Letter to Nobody, which she created in collaboration with Mimi Yin. Program B (Apr 3, 6, 9, 13) features two Graham masterworks of Americana, Frontier (1935) and Rodeo (1942) as well as Jamar Roberts's We the People (2024) and Virginie Mécène's reconstructions of a pair of early Graham solos, Revolt (1927) and Immigrant (1928). Cave and Cortege recur in Program C (Apr 5, 6, 8, 11, 13) in tandem with Graham's Brontë-sisters ballet Deaths and Entrances (1943) and her Greek-myth duet Errand into the Maze (1947). The family matinee on April 12 comprises Rodeo, We the People and a performance of Graham's Panorama (1935) by teenage dancers from this year's All-City Panorama Project.

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.