92Y Announces The 2018 HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL

Entering its 24th season, the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival spans five weeks and showcases a varied spectrum of work from revivals of classic works to cutting-edge pieces by emerging talent exploring the expressiveness of physicality. The festival reflects the reputation of 92Y's Harkness Dance Center not only as the place where it all started...but where it's all heading.

Abby Z and the New Utility - abandoned playground

Fri, Feb 23, 8 pm

Sat, Feb 24, 4 and 8 pm

Tickets from $25

Inside the intimate stadium setup of abandoned playground (2017), nine dancers rip through the space performing complex sequences of hyper-physical dance that push their understandings of their own capabilities and endurance.

Recognized with the 2017 Juried Bessie Award for her "unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary in complex and demanding structures," Abby Zbikowski generates her bold, high-intensity, precisely rhythmic choreography from her background of hip-hop, tap, West African and postmodern dance styles, deeply-rooted punk aesthetic, and close collaboration with her dancers who bring their specific bodies, psychologies and training histories to the work. In this evening-length work Zbikowski highlights each of her dancers' unique strengths and simultaneously forges an intense ensemble connection in that through vocalizations and the channeling of communal energy the dancers invigorate each other to overcome the physical and mental exhaustion of performing such extreme and virtuosic movement at the relentless pace required. Like life, no overstated purpose is given, but as the New York Times dance critic Siobhan Burke surmises "the effort justifies itself."

Click for excerpts from abandoned playground

Balanchine's Eternal Present: The Photography of Paul Kolnik

Paul Kolnik in Conversation with Darci Kistler

Tue, Feb 27, 7 pm, tickets from $29

Paul Kolnik presents images from over 40 years of photographing the New York City Ballet and discusses his artistic response to the ballets of George Balanchine - images that he calls "illuminated documents," - examining the importance of the "eternal present" and creating a poetic intersection of dance and photography. These images were part of celebrated museum exhibitions in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tbilisi. Darci Kistler, Balanchine's last ballerina, offers her unique perspective in relation to these images in conversation with Paul Kolnik.

Kolnik's work is on view in the Weill Art Gallery as part of the Harkness Dance Festival from Feb 16-Apr 23, 2018. An opening reception for the exhibition takes place immediately before this event from 5-6:45 pm.

Dance Heginbotham

Fri, Mar 2, 8 pm

Sat, Mar 3, 4 and 8 pm

Tickets from $25

Dance Heginbotham presents a collection of duets and solos, including New York premieres, from the company's diverse repertory - their first rep show in NYC since 2015.

This unusually intimate performance includes a dynamic mix of recorded and live music, from Aphex Twin and Raymond Scott to Dana Suesse and Heitor Villa-Lobos.

throwaway (2010)

Lulu - excerpt from Twin (2012)

Old-Fashioned (NY premiere)

Only if You Mean It (NY premiere)

Salty Dog (NY premiere*)

Rockefellers (2013)

*Choreographed by Maile Okamura. All others choreographed by John Heginbotham

Pigeonwing Dance, directed by Gabrielle Lamb: Bewilderness and new world premiere

Fri, Mar 9, 8 pm

Sat, Mar 10, 4 and 8 pm

Tickets from $25

Pigeonwing Dance performs Bewilderness (2016) inspired by the writings of author and activist Rebecca Solnit. A response to Solnit's writings on community, disaster, and hope, Bewilderness is a dreamlike puzzle of interlocking stories that dissolve into sinuous, detailed movement and architectural groupings. By turns dark, comic, and hopeful, the work suggests magnetic connections between members of a mysterious community. Musical selections include contemporary settings of arias by Henry Purcell. The company also presents a new creation exploring pattern formation in the natural world. In it, the supple and articulate Pigeonwing dancers will move through a sequence of increasingly intricate spirals, waves, and vortices, all of it inspired by the simple rules governing some of nature's most elegant patterns.

New York Theatre Ballet - A Centennial Celebration of Jerome Robbins

Fri, Mar 16, 8 pm

Sat, Mar 17, 4 and 8 pm

Tickets from $25

The ever-popular New York Theatre Ballet returns to 92Y celebrating Jerome Robbins' 100th birthday with a program of three of his rarely seen ballets; Septet, Concertino and Rondo. Septet and Concertino were choreographed in 1982 for New York City Ballet's Stravinsky Centennial celebration and Rondo, with music by Mozart, premiered at New York City Ballet in 1980. Join us in celebrating Jerome Robbins, one of the greatest of all American choreographers.

Click for an excerpt from Rondo

Urban Bush Women: Hair Parties

Fri, Mar 23, 8 pm

Sat, Mar 24, 4 and 8 pm

Tickets from $25

An event that combines excerpts of Hair and Other Stories with dialogue practice using the deceptively simple topic of HAIR as the organizing principle - what and how hair color, length and varying degrees of curl affect our definitions of good hair and bad hair both within and outside of the African American community - Hair Parties encourage participants to re-examine closely-held beliefs about themselves, society, class, race, gender, age and individual beauty. Political, fun and sometimes raucous, Hair Parties combine conversation, improvisation and highlights from UBW's new work, Hair and Other Stories.

Click for a Hair and Other Stories teaser

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Discounted Tickets for 35 and Under - www.92Y.org/LexList

About 92Y
92nd Street Y is a world-class, nonprofit cultural and community center that fosters the mental, physical and spiritual health of people throughout their lives, offering: wide-ranging conversations with the world's best minds; an outstanding range of programming in the performing, visual and literary arts; fitness and sports programs; and activities for children and families. 92Y is reimagining what it means to be a community center in the digital age with initiatives like the award-winning #GivingTuesday, launched by 92Y in 2012 and now recognized across the US and in a growing number of regions worldwide as a day to celebrate and promote giving. These kinds of initiatives are transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action both locally and around the world. More than 300,000 people visit 92Y annually; millions more participate in 92Y's digital and online initiatives. A proudly Jewish organization since its founding in 1874, 92Y embraces its heritage and welcomes people of all backgrounds and perspectives. For more information, visit www.92Y.org.