In Context: The Bacchae

The Bacchae, Euripides’ cautionary parable of hubris and fear of the unknown thrashes to new life in the hands of Anne Bogart, the renowned SITI Company, and translator Aaron Poochigian. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #TheBacchae.

In Context: Humans

Australian troupe Circa returns to BAM (Opus, BAM Next Wave 2015) with an awe-inspiring acrobatic journey and love letter to our species. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles, videos, podcasts, and more. After you’ve attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using#BAMNextWave.

Your Guide to The Fisher this Next Wave Season

By Vilina Phan

So you’ve purchased tickets to Jack &, or maybe tickets to I hunger for you or Trisha Brown Dance Company? That’s it, right? It can be, or it can be much more—based on the experience you want. We have a cornucopia of free events and activities happening in the Fisher Lower Lobby this season, many in conjunction with the shows at the Fishman Space. It can be a little difficult to navigate with so much going on, so we’ve laid out a few suggestions, but this is a self-guided adventure, so take these recommendations as jumping off points and happy Next Wave!

BAM + Onassis Foundation: Speaking Truth to Power

By Young Richard Kim

Greek. Photo: Jane Hobson

This fall, BAM partners with the Onassis Cultural Center New York to present Speaking Truth to Power, a multi-disciplinary set of performances, talks, films, and exhibitions. At a time when the nature of truth itself is often called into question, we celebrate the courage it takes to speak boldly to those in or with power—a concept expressed in the Greek notion of parrhesia. In an increasingly fractured moment, artistic spaces provide an opportunity to gather, hear and see one another, to engage with truths that can be agreeable, perhaps uncomfortable or controversial, but often inarguably valuable to explore. Come back throughout the season to watch, discuss, challenge, speak and engage with your own truth and the truth of others. Find more information about the programs on BAM’s website. 

—Molly Silberberg, Associate Director, Humanities, BAM

Making the World a Better Place: Surya Botofasina on Alice Coltrane's Ashram

By Andy Beta

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda—a chosen name meaning "the transcendental lord's highest song of bliss”—was a jazz innovator who made a life of self-reinvention. After the death of John Coltrane, her partner in music and life, Alice found Indian spirituality, started an ashram in California, and became a practitioner of Vedanta. Surya Botofasina grew up on the ashram, and will lead the celebration of Alice’s life and music at the 2018 BAM Next Wave Festival Oct 10. What follows is a truncated Q&A with Surya Botofasina, now a New York City resident, as told to Andy Beta of Pitchfork.

Photo: Krisanne Johnson

How is whiteness a learned performance?

By Susan Yung

Director Patricia McGregor asks you (yes, you): Has gentrification been a protagonist or antagonist in your life? Why and how?
Place began with Ted Hearne addressing the intersections of privilege and appropriation in his own life and work, weighing a personal sense of place and space in the most immediate family relationships against the inherited and generational.

BAM: The Next Wave Festival, the focus of Unbound book release event

By Susan Yung

The Next Wave was a bold experiment in drawing people to Brooklyn to see performances, and it worked. A new book, BAM: The Next Wave Festival (release: Sep 26, 2018), examines the 36-year course of the fall festival that has become an international paradigm. In 1981, Harvey Lichtenstein gathered a handful of primarily dance events as a series; it grew into a festival two years later, after a successful start. The early Next Wave presented mostly downtown New York artists who mingled and collaborated, until then performing in ad hoc spaces, such as lofts and galleries. Visual art was an integral component—it had been helping to provide vast rooms largely bereft but for art on the walls, and a conceptual underpinning both broad and unfettered. The genre stood its own alongside dance, music, and theater, and art became an integral part of the Next Wave, from program covers and posters to exhibitions in odd spaces.

Beyond the Canon: Ravenous + The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Ravenous (1999) courtesy of 20th Century Fox, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) courtesy of MPI Media Group

It is no secret that the cinema canon has historically skewed toward lionizing the white, male auteur. This monthly series seeks to question that history and broaden horizons by pairing one much-loved, highly regarded, canonized classic with a thematically or stylistically-related—and equally brilliant—work by a filmmaker traditionally excluded from that discussion.

By Lindsay Brayton

In Context: Almadraba

Spanish guitarist and composer Oscar Peñas blends together jazz and classical music in the world premiere of Almadraba, an ode to the sustainable Andalusian fishing tradition of the bluefin tuna. Like Andalusia itself, a melange of Moorish and Romanesque influences, Peñas melds together these two genres along with the influence of Cuban, South American, and Spanish music to tell the grand tale of this age-old ecological technique. To give you further insight into the production, we’ve compiled resources below and after you’ve attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #almadraba.

Never Stop Dreaming: Q&A with JACK &'s Cornell Alston

By Charity Coleman

How can internal life be rebuilt after trauma? This Next Wave Festival, theater artist Kaneza Schaal joins forces with actor Cornell Alston and artist Christopher Myers to consider reentry into society after prison in JACK &. Learn more about Alston's journey to the stage below and be sure to catch him in the BAM Fisher October 17—20.

Photo: Christopher Myers

José Andrés’ recipe for comfort in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

By Vilina Phan

José Andrés knows food. Just look at the multi-hyphenate's accolades from Michelin stars to James Beard awards. But his latest efforts haven’t been in a traditional kitchen—instead, they have been focused on Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Just a few days after the devastation in 2017 he traveled to the island and started cooking—but not just any dish, he wanted the food to remain familiar and local, and so he prepared traditional foods like sancocho, arroz de tripleta, and paella as a way to provide comfort.

Courtesy of World Central Kitchen