In Context: Interpassivities

Classical ballet dancers and migrant workers walk alongside the crowd in this shape-shifting ballet by Danish artist and filmmaker Jesper Just. A modern experience inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, this performance rethinks the meaning of maps, who makes them, and the artificial borders we create. Context is everything, so we’ve provided some articles to read and videos to watch. After you’ve attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #Interpassivities.

In Context: Falling Out

Falling Out is is both a conclusion and a beginning: the final work in Phantom Limb Company’s decade-long trilogy about climate change, the piece strives to spark conversation and action on environmental issues. Context is everything, so we’ve provided some links below for you to contribute, read, watch, and listen to content that will enhance your understanding of the show and the issues. Add your perspective to the conversation by leaving a message with the Memory Telephone, or posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

Less-Than-Strange Window: A Hunt for the Supernatural at BAM

By Claire Greising

Strange Window: The Turn of the Screw, an inventive adaptation of Henry James’ gothic ghost story, is coming to BAM from Dec 12—15. It tells the story of a young governess who has become convinced that there are evil ghosts lurking in the remote estate where she cares for two children. In a spectacular marriage of past and present, The Builders Association’s new production combines the classic narrative with modern technology and experimental theater practices. Told from the perspective of the governess, the production points out the relativity of truth—leaving the audience to decide if the governess is insane or if the ghosts are real.

Strange Window: The Turn of the Screw premiere at Krannert Center earlier this year. Photo courtesy of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In Context: Savage Winter

Director Jonathan Moore’s Savage Winter paints a vivid portrait of a man at the end of his rope. Set to Douglas J. Cuomo’s electric score, which reinterprets Franz Schubert’s brooding Winterreise for our contemporary moment, the opera investigates human emotion in its most raw state. Savage Winter is a fiercely evocative opera, asking both its protagonist and its audience to confront the depths of despair and possibilities for redemption. Context is everything, so we’ve provided a curated selection of articles and videos for you to engage with before seeing the piece. After you’ve attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

What Can Puppets Teach Us About Climate Change—And Ourselves?

By Robert Jackson Wood

Photo of Dai Matsuoka, courtesy of Phantom Limb Company

If you’ve seen the work of Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko—who come to BAM November 7–10 with their latest work, Falling Out—you know the sense of leaving a theater perplexed. You feel enchanted but also unsettled, as though haunted by the work’s subconscious. You feel stuck—pleasantly, productively—in the inbetween.

In Context: Satyagraha

Photo: Markus Gårder  

Cirkus Cirkör lends its signature acrobatic grace and wit to Philip Glass’ mesmerizing operatic account of Mahatma Gandhi’s experiments with civil disobedience in this new production from Sweden's Folkoperan. 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 #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Kreatur

©Sebastian Bolesch

Kreatur is famed choreographer Sasha Waltz’s newest exploration of the human body and how it grapples with domination, technology, and the darkness within. With costume design from Iris van Herpen and an original score by Soundwalk Collective, Kreatur investigates how we relate to each other and to structures of power. Context is everything, so we’ve provided a curated selection of articles and videos for you to engage with before seeing the piece. After you’ve attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

Women at Work: The Domestic Is Not Free

By Natalie Erazo

The third iteration of Women at Work shifts to the subject of domestic labor. As homemakers, caretakers, and familial partners, women shape the well-being of our personal, professional, and cultural milieus, though these efforts often go unseen and are erased from history. Women at Work: The Domestic Is Not Free highlights the persistent efforts of women to create, challenge, and subvert domesticity around the world.

The Day I Became a Woman (2000), photo courtesy of Makhmalbaf Film House/Photofest

Seeing every Next Wave Festival show

Tell us about yourself! What do you do for fun? Do you have any interesting facts about yourself?

I'm Liz! I moved to New York City 7 years ago and to Brooklyn 5 years ago, and I and have been going to BAM frequently since. I use some of my fun time to host a podcast about making good computer security for everyone called Loose Leaf Security (I promise this is fun for me!), but I spend most of it with the arts - either devouring performances at BAM and around NYC or dabbling in a variety of creative pursuits.

In Context: Everywhere All the Time

Photo: Travis Magee

Seán Curran Company comes alive to the beat of a drum in celebration of their 20th anniversary. With live accompaniment from Grammy Award-winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion, this landmark evening of Curran’s new and classic choreography highlights the primordial nature of percussion. 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.

In Context: Watermill

This rarely performed piece by Jerome Robbins was premiered by New York City Ballet in 1972 at Lincoln Center. Different from any Jerome Robbins piece to date, it elicited reactions that ran the gamut. The New York Times critic in attendance at the premiere wrote: “This is the kind of innovative theater that needs a mixed blessing at its birth. And, in my opinion, the boos were from fools, the cheers were from heroes, and the coughs were from that strange and disinterested subscription audience that City Ballet wears round its elegant neck like an albatross.” Context is everything, so we’ve provided some articles to read and videos to watch and listen to, to help you prepare for the upcoming show. After you've attended the performance, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #Watermill.

In Context: I hunger for you

Kimberly Bartosik’s I hunger for you explores the human body using light and its stark absence. Restless, tender, and violent, this modern piece delves into the heart of losing yourself in ecstasy, ritual, and desire. Context is everything, so we’ve provided some articles for you to read and videos to watch. After you’ve attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #ihungerforyou.

Kreatur’s Creators

By Susan Yung

Kreatur. Photo: Ute Zscharnt

Berlin-based choreographer Sasha Waltz has shown her daring breadth in dance-theater at BAM—from the formal eloquence of Continu (2015) to the operatic madness of Gezeiten (2010), which literally set the house on fire. The members of her company alternately thrive, band together, or challenge the parameters given by each distinctive production.

In Context: Measure for Measure

London’s Cheek by Jowl and Moscow’s Pushkin Theatre propels Shakespeare’s “problem play” into a timely juggernaut of political critique. 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 your thoughts by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWaveFestival.

In Context: JACK &

Theater artist Kaneza Schaal joins forces with actor Cornell Alston and artist Christopher Myers to consider reentry into society after prison in the NY Premiere of JACK &. 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.

Share your thoughts on love, water, nature, and loss

Phantom Limb Company

This November, BAM presents Phantom Limb’s new production Falling Out, a theatrical exploration of love, loss, and healing in response to the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. The company is inviting you to participate in the creation of this work, by recording a message in response to the prompts below. Read on for more details, then call (646) 535-7528 to participate.

Insider Perspectives on Watermill

Photo by Jerome Robbins

By Susan Yung

Jerome Robbins’ Watermill, at the BAM Fisher from Oct 24 to 27, is reimagined in a new, site-specific production by choreographer Luca Veggetti. When the hour-long, Noh-inspired dance premiered at New York City Ballet in 1972, it elicited wide-ranging audience reactions. Here, three people provide fascinating insights on varying aspects of Watermill: Veggetti, about the 2018 iteration and how it differs from the original; Hiie Saumaa, a scholar, on insights from the rich trove of Jerome Robbins’ meticulous journals, specifically sections on Watermill; and lead role originator Edward Villella, on working with Robbins on the creation of the piece. —Susan Yung

In Context: Place

In Place, composer Ted Hearne, poet Saul Williams, and director Patricia McGregor consider the difference between space and place, from manifest destiny to modern appropriation, in this rich mix of music, memoir, and mapmaking. 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 #BAMNextWave and @BAM_Brooklyn.

Beyond the Canon: Body and Soul + The Night of the Hunter

Paul Robeson in Body and Soul (1925) and Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter (1955), photos courtesy of Kino Lorber/Park Circus

It is no secret that the cinema canon has historically skewed toward lionizing the white, male auteur. Beyond the Canon is a monthly series that 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. This month’s double feature pairs Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul (1925) with Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955) on Sat, Oct 13 at 4:30pm.

By Ashley Clark

In Context: Alice Coltrane

Celebrate the sublime musical and spiritual legacy of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda in this special one-night engagement led by Surya Botofasina and the Sai Anantam Ashram Singers. 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.

Performing Place

By David Hsieh

I am lying in bed with him / He is asleep / I am lying in bed with him, my son / He is breathing regularly

I am staring at his birthday balloons / They have lost their lift / He is five years old / They lightly graze the ceiling

Stuck and strung up / Not knowing where I will live

My son / Does he know where I end and he begins?

Listen to this excerpt

Ted Hearne’s new vocal work Place starts with these intimate, gentle, almost painful words. It is a father owning up to his responsibility to his son. For this 36-year-old composer, one of the best-regarded of his generation and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Place is a questioning, a reckoning, and an inward look at his proper “place” as a father, as an evolving artist whose past interests often centered on national issues (Katrina Ballad, The Source, Sound from the Bench), as a highly educated middle class moving into a gentrified neighborhood, and as a white man living in a country that is finally coming to terms with that privilege. It is certainly his most personal work to date, of which BAM is honored to give the world premiere on Oct 11 (it continues until Oct 13 in the Harvey Theater). The work is scored for six singers and 18 musicians; many of them come from non-classical backgrounds, as the diverse music requires. Two of them, Josephine Lee and Steven Bradshaw, share their experience of working on this brand-new work.

In Context: Trisha Brown Dance Company

Trisha Brown Dance Company performs rarely seen early works of Trisha Brown, one of the most prolific and inventive post-modern choreographers, at the Fishman Space. The theater will be transformed as dancers navigate the space with ropes and harness, as they originally did in Brown’s SoHo loft in the 1970s. To provide 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 #TBDC.

There's 30something about Mary Reilly

By David Hsieh

(From left) Joseph V. Melillo, Mary Reilly, and Pina Bausch in 2001 for Masurca Fogo 

“For three decades, Mary Reilly has been BAM’s secret weapon. Working shoulder to shoulder with her is a pleasure as she creatively, imaginatively, and perceptively structures support mechanisms for the artists that I have curated for our main stages and ancillary programs. A vast range of sensitivities balanced by the most joyous humanity guarantees that each individual artist feels tremendous support before and during their work here and as they depart for home or other professional obligations. We are a respected cultural institution because of Mary’s professional contribution.” —Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer of BAM