Brooklyn Academy of Music plans New York-centric season

There will be dances exploring love and relationships between blacks, theatrical works highlighting the impact of technology on everyday life and an appearance by filmmaker Spike Lee.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music will focus its upcoming season on artists from New York City, the organization said on Friday, as it seeks to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s a season to celebrate the artists who give New York a sense of possibility, a sense of wonder, a sense of effervescence, a glow, a little bit of magic,” said the academy’s artistic director. , David Binder, in an interview. He said the academy wanted to create a season to mark New York’s recovery from the pandemic, which crippled many of the city’s cultural institutions for more than 18 months.

The season, which runs from November to March, is the academy’s first since the start of the pandemic. As the organization tries to draw audiences to its stages and recoup millions of ticket revenue lost during the pandemic, it will deliver a mix of familiar hits and new works.

Dance will take center stage, starting in November with the world premiere of “The Mood Room,” a Big Dance Theater production, designed, directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson. The show, set in Los Angeles in 1980, mixes dance, theater and spoken opera to explore the effects of Reaganism.

The dance lineup also includes Reggie Wilson’s “Power” in January and the New York premiere of Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love” in February. The work, to neo-soul music, is described as an “exaltation of black love and unity”.

Also in February, Pam Tanowitz’s acclaimed “Four Quartets”, a staging of poems by TS Eliot. When it premiered at Bard College’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in 2018, Alastair Macaulay, writing in The New York Times, called it “the greatest dance-theater creation to date this century.”

In March, the Mark Morris Dance Group will perform the Morris classic “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato” (1988), to Handel’s oratorio.

There will also be theater and cabaret performances. In March, SITI Company, the famous New York experimental theater company, will stage “The Medium”, a minimalist meditation on the role of technology in society.

Cabaret performers Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman will play their alter egos Kiki and Herb in a new holiday special, titled “SLEIGH,” which premieres after Thanksgiving.

In December, Lee will appear alongside his brother for a conversation about the filmmaker’s new book, “SPIKE,” a visual look at his career.

With coronavirus cases still high, it remains to be seen whether the audience will show up at pre-pandemic levels, but Binder said he believes many people are clamoring for live performances. The academy’s brief fall season, which opened in September, drew several sold-out crowds, he said.

“It looks like New Yorkers are really hungry to go back to the theater,” Binder said. “I feel very optimistic and excited.”