BAM Announces 'A New York Season: A Celebration of Our City's Artists'

BAM has announced A New York Season, a celebratory homecoming that brings together a league of artists who have made, and continue to make, New York City the culture capital of the world. Running from Nov 30 2021-Mar 26 2022, the season brings exciting new works, and rarely seen masterpieces from Kyle Abraham, Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, Mark Morris, Annie-B Parson, Siti Company, Pam Tanowitz, and Reggie Wilson, and features conversations with Spike Lee and Karen Brooks Hopkins, BAM's President Emerita, about their forthcoming books. The season also marks a new, permanent addtion to BAM's campus with Teresita Fernández' monumental sculpture, Paradise Parados, located on the Robert W. Wilson Sculpture Terrace at the BAM Strong.

As the city regains its glow, BAM is excited to present these world-class artists we are lucky to call neighbors. With vision and grit, they channel this town's singular magic in genre-transcending performance, expansive conversations, and thrilling public art. Here and now, these artists come together to inform-and inspire-our new world.

Tickets go on sale for BAM Members and Patrons on Oct 14, and to the general public on Oct 20 at BAM.org.

"For many, the arts are what define New York City," said BAM's Artistic Director, David Binder. "We're pleased to present an extraordinary group of local artists whose work reminds us of why we live where we live. Together, they bring an effervescence, a sense of possibility, and a bit of magic."

"BAM is deeply grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies and to all our donors for their incredible generosity. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant we received this year, which was made possible by the leadership of Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer," said Co-Interim President Jennifer Anglade. "This support is crucial as we continue to bring adventurous art to audiences while providing space and opportunities for our community to gather and connect."

BAM continues its mission to present adventurous art on all our stages, spaces, and in our cinemas, with humanities, literary, community, visual art, and family programs. Full season details, updates, and confirmations will continue to be posted on BAM.org

**All performances will adhere to protocols developed in accordance with New York State regulations and in consultation with medical professionals for the safety of our artists, audiences, and staff. **

PERFORMANCE:

Kiki & Herb SLEIGH at BAM BAM Debut

Created by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman
Nov 30, Dec 2-4 at 7:30pm
Tickets start at $35
Harvey Theater at BAM Strong
651 Fulton St

This holiday season, prepare yourself for sleighing belles, rabid yells, and tidings of joy from New York's most iconic "octogenarian" lounge act, Kiki (Justin Vivian Bond) and Herb (Kenny Mellman). A match made in-depending on who you ask-a 1934 Western Pennsylvania children's asylum, the 90s San Francisco club circuit, or the dawn of time, this relentlessly fabulous duo makes its BAM debut with a brand-new holiday spectacular.

Whether it's an evening at Carnegie Hall, a sold-out run at Joe's Pub, or "Kiki & Herb: Alive on Broadway," Bond and Mellman's signature cocktail of boozy banter, pop-culture shmaltz, and claws-out cultural critique has charmed this city for more than two decades. Don't miss this rare opportunity to witness legends in action, belting Christmas classics off their long-out-of-print 2000 album Do You Hear What We Hear (Tori Amos's "Crucify" as part of the "Whose Child is This?" medley, anyone?) and slinging enough cheer to choke down even this helluva holiday season.

BAM in association with The Kitchen presents World Premiere
The Mood Room
Big Dance Theater
Conceived, directed, and choreographed by Annie-B Parson

Based on Five Sisters by Guy de Cointet with additional text from Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

Music by Holly Herndon
Sound design and recomposition by Mark degli Antoni
Set design by Lauren Machen
Costume design by Baille Younkman
Lighting design by Joe Levasseur
Video design by Keith Skretch

Nov 30-Dec 2 & Dec 4, 7:30pm
Dec 3, 7 & 9pm
Dec 5, 3pm
Tickets start at $35

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Pl.
Brooklyn, NY

Inspired by French-born visual artist and playwright Guy de Cointet, this piercing new evening-length piece by Annie-B Parson's Big Dance Theater explores a story of five sisters in 1980 gathered in their childhood Los Angeles home. Against Holly Herndon's urgent, experimental score, Mood Room mixes theater, dance, and spoken opera to explore the origins of early Reaganism, when Americans were urged to spend and shop rather than actively participate in civic society. In the physical and metaphorical mood room, the all-female cast dives into a deep self-indulgent bubble, retreating from their responsibilities as participants in the larger world. Referencing multiple texts, including Chekhov's Three Sisters and soap operas, The Mood Room is a mirror for being and nothingness, angst and regret, class and navel-gazing.

POWER

New York City Premiere
Fist & Heel Performance Group
Choreography by Reggie Wilson

Costume design by Naoko Nagata and Enver Chakartash
Lighting design by Jonathan Belcher

Jan 13-15 at 7:30pm
Jan 17 at 3pm
Tickets start at $30

Harvey Theater at BAM Strong
651 Fulton St
Brooklyn, NY

Reggie Wilson brings his Fist & Heel Performance Group home to Brooklyn for a revelatory weekend of "moving into spirit." In this kinesthetic, propulsive, rhythmic experience connecting American Black and Shaker traditions, Wilson explores the body as a radical tool for illuminating the internal and communal. Following his own visceral, obsessive curiosity, Wilson draws inspiration from Rebecca Cox Jackson, a free Black woman who became a Shaker eldress and formed her own community in Philadelphia-as well as the Shakers' complex relationship to free and enslaved African-Americans. Through his framework of African formalism, applying postmodern, avant-garde movement with Black dance traditions, Wilson discovers what's possible when ecstatic bliss meets structural rigor.In Power, developed at Jacob's Pillow and the neighboring Hancock Shaker Village, Wilson imagines the mutual Black-Shaker influence as shaping experimental 19th-century American dance worship. Channeling the refusal of Anglo-Judeo-Christian limitations on the body, Fist & Heel makes that utopian energy manifest, whirling, stamping, and singing it alive. Power coincides with BAM's annual commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Four Quartets

New York City Premiere/BAM Debut

Text by T. S. Eliot
Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Music by Kaija Saariaho
Images by Brice Marden

The Knights
Pam Tanowitz Dance

Narration by Kathleen Chalfant
Scenic and lighting design by Clifton Taylor
Costume design by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung
Sound design by Jean-Baptiste Barriére

Feb 10-12, 7:30pm
Tickets start at $25

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave
Brooklyn, NY

After much anticipation following its critically acclaimed 2018 world premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard, Four Quartets lands at BAM. Along with composer Kaija Saariaho and painter Brice Marden, choreographer Pam Tanowitz creates a sublime and thrilling performance inspired by T.S. Eliot's beautiful and mysterious meditation, Four Quartets. These haunting and evocative poems emerged in 1943 from the chaos of World War II as hopeful testaments to the redemptive power of spirituality, art, and human goodness in the darkest of times. Tony Award-nominated Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America, Wit) performs Eliot's text live in this much-lauded collaboration.

An Untitled Love

New York City Premiere
A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

Music by D'Angelo & The Vanguard
Scenic & lighting design by Dan Scully
Costume design by Karen Young and Kyle Abraham
Visual art by Joe Buckingham

Feb 23-25 at 7:30pm
Tickets start at $30

Harvey Theater at BAM Strong

651 Fulton St
Brooklyn, NY

Set to the music of the neo-soul, Grammy Award-winning R&B artist D'Angelo, An Untitled Love serves as Kyle Abraham's creative exaltation of Black love and unity. He dedicates this feel-good work-its visceral hope, solace, and joy-to family, culture, and community strengthened over generations and lifetimes. Nearly three decades after first befriending Brown Sugar, D'Angelo's debut album, Abraham choreographs to the music of a singular artist for the first time in a work of this scale. Personifying love in all forms, this work shines through devotion to detail in the music and through movement.

The Medium

Based on the Life and Predictions of Marshall McLuhan
Created by Siti Company
Conceived and directed by Anne Bogart

Scenic & lighting design Brian H Scott adapted from original scenic design by Neil Patel Costume design by Gabriel Berry

Soundscape by Darron L West

Mar 15-19, 7:30pm
Mar 20, 3pm
Tickets start at $35

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
321 Ashland Pl.
Brooklyn, NY

For the past 30 years, Anne Bogart's Siti Company has created a new work almost every year-and in the process, firmly established itself as an internationally celebrated New York theater institution. Now, to mark its final season producing and presenting new work, SITI revives its first-ever devised piece: a meditation on technology that's more resonant now than when it premiered in 1993.

The Medium draws heavily on the writings of pioneering media theorist Marshall McLuhan, coiner of the phrases "the medium is the message" and "global village" to describe his visions of our interconnected future. A champion talker deprived of speech by a stroke near the end of his life, McLuhan (portrayed with tragicomic precision by Obie-winner Will Bond) staggers and clicks his way through Bogart's multichannel multiverse-a black-and-white vision of televised anti-revolution that puts our modern technocratic dilemmas front-and-center. Staged with minimalist potency and maximal physicality by Bogart and the astonishing artists of Siti Company, The Medium asks: Who are we-and what are we becoming-in the flickering light of our own devices? Bogart and SITI have created over 40 works, including War of the Worlds (2000 NWF); bobrauschenbergamerica (2003 NWF); Hotel Cassiopeia (2007 NWF); Trojan Women (After Euripides) (2012 NWF); A Rite (2013 NWF); and Steel Hammer (2015 NWF).

L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Mark Morris Dance Group
MMDG Music Ensemble and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street with Downtown Voices
Conducted by Colin Fowler
Choreography by Mark Morris

Music by George Frideric Handel
Set design by Adrianne Lobel
Costume design by Christine Van Loon
Lighting design by James F. Ingalls

Mar 24-26, 7:30pm
Mar 27, 3pm
Tickets start at $35

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave
Brooklyn, NY

Returning to Brooklyn for the first time in two decades, and hailed as Mark Morris' undisputed masterwork since its US premiere at BAM in 1990, L'Allegro conjures a mythic landscape of graces, gods, and lovers.

L'Allegro is an ebullient evening of quintessential Mark Morris, whose juxtaposition of human conditions is illuminated by Adrienne Lobel's luminous sets (inspired by William Blake's watercolors), Christine van Loon's shimmering costumes, and Handel's interpretation of John Milton's Arcadian poetry brought to life with musical forces including the vocal vigor of Yulia Van Doren, Sarah Brailey, and Brian Giebler. Morris's pictorial choreography draws on ballet, folk dances, everyday gestures, and other elements to create an inimitable form of contemporary dance. This poignant work is ancient yet youthful...Baroque yet effortlessly natural...innocent yet wise.

VISUAL ART

Part of the BAM/Robert W. Wilson Public Art Initiative, Paradise Parados is a site-specific, permanent sculpture by Teresita Fernández created for the terrace of BAM Strong, connected to the Harvey Theater. Fabricated from mirror-polished stainless steel, the work reflects the changing light, passersby, and surrounding urban life and tree canopies. The artwork-a winner of the NYC Public Design Commission award for Excellence in Design-consists of undulate organic forms that reference the ivy-covered brick walls so common throughout Brooklyn. Framing the entrance to a lounge area inside, the artwork becomes a passage and canopy that suggests a draped, proscenium-like entrance, mimicking the rippling curtains that would frame a stage.

TALKS

Spike Lee
In conversation with David Lee

Launch of SPIKE
Co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore
Part of Unbound

Dec 11, 7:30pm
Tickets: $15, $25, and $35 access only; $55, $65, and $75 with copy of SPIKE to be picked
up at the event

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave
Brooklyn, NY

Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee and his brother, David Lee, convene at BAM for an expansive conversation celebrating the launch of the acclaimed filmmaker's book, SPIKE. This lavish visual celebration of his life and career to date features storytelling by Lee and hundreds of never-before-seen photographs by David Lee, Spike's official on-set photographer, from Brooklyn film sets and beyond. In opening his archives, Lee provides behinda??thea??scenes material from the making of his iconic films, documentaries, TV shows, and music videos.

Karen Brooks Hopkins
In conversation with Oskar Eustis

Launch of BAM...and Then It Hit Me
Co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore
Part of Unbound

Jan 26, 7:30pm

Location to be announced.

In this intimate evening of conversation at BAM, Karen Brooks Hopkins discusses her memoir of 36 years at the world-famous cultural institution. A page-turning look behind the scenes of America's oldest performing arts center, BAM ... and Then It Hit Me is filled with stories and photographs of artists and icons-Princess Diana, Ingmar Bergman, Chuck Davis, David Byrne, LL Cool J, and Pina Bausch, among others-along with hands-on practical advice on fundraising and leadership. The book is a paean to the glory of the arts and the evolution of Brooklyn: in Karen's words, "the coolest neighborhood on the planet." Through personal stories and raw reflections, tales of glamour and of grit, Karen looks back upon her career's twists of fate, the total failures, and great triumphs along the way. She is joined in conversation by Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater.