Baryshnikov Arts Center Announces Spring 2022 Season

Baryshnikov Arts Center has announced the Spring 2022 season of dance, music, and film presented in BAC's performance spaces and on BAC's streaming platform, February 7-May 21. BAC Digital Commissions are free and available to watch on demand. All tickets for BAC Presents in-person performances are on sale now at bacnyc.org or 866-811-4111.

The Spring 2022 season opens with Open Practice, a virtual performance by high-wire artist Philippe Petit (February 7-21). This film offers a rare opportunity to peer into the fascinating backstage world of a unique master. Filmed at the Ulster Performing Arts Center, it gives audiences a behind-the-scenes look at Petit's creative process and the origins of many of his singular walks and moves on the wire.

Dance presentations this season include the New York virtual premiere of her body as words by Toronto-based choreographer Peggy Baker. her body as words is a film and sound installation exploring female identity and physicality. The work is inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and was created collaboratively by Baker and nine dance artists from across Canada. This digital performance runs February 28 to March 14. Minneapolis-based choreographer Ashwini Ramaswamy returns to BAC with the New York premiere of Let the Crows Come, a work she developed during a 2018 BAC residency that deconstructs the Bharatanatyam form, set to an original score performed live, April 13-15 in BAC's Jerome Robbins Theater. Also in April, choreographer Omar Román De Jesús will present the virtual premiere of a new contemporary dance film in which threads of memory ricochet and recombine to tell a hyperbolic life story. This new work will be presented alongside De Jesús's film Los Perros del Barrio Colosal (April 25-May 9). New York City-based choreographer Donna Uchizono brings the world premiere of Wings of Iron, a work that looks at the courage it takes to be human and in these charged times, humane. Co-presented with the Chocolate Factory Theater, Wings of Iron will be presented May 18-21 in BAC's Howard Gilman Performance Space.

Three in-person music programs will be presented throughout the spring. On March 14 and 15, Chromic Duo will perform an evening of music using prepared piano, toy piano, synthesizers, and effects. The program includes the BAC commission of the ongoing development of Homecoming: love you all ways, an augmented reality experience that shares the stories of Chinatown's mural artists through site-specific storytelling and music curated and composed by Chromic Duo. Grammy award-winning violinist Johnny Gandelsman will present his newest project, This is America, featuring performances of 10 new works for solo violin written by a diverse group of US-based composers, alongside two iconic works by Johann Sebastian Bach. The program includes Nick Dunston's BAC-commissioned world premiere as well as works by Rhiannon Giddens, Angélica Negrón, Tyshawn Sorey, and others. (March 16 and 17). The New York premiere of Grammy-nominated Andy Akiho's Seven Pillars, an evening-length work for percussion quartet, will be presented on April 7 and 8. Created as a live theatrical event, it features music composed by Akiho performed by Sandbox Percussion, and lighting and stage design by Michael Joseph McQuilken.

A complete schedule of BAC's Spring 2022 Season follows.

BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER: SPRING 2022 SEASON

Philippe Petit
Open Practice (New York City Premiere)

February 7-21 (VIRTUAL)
BAC Digital Commission
Free and available on demand at bacnyc.org
Running time: 60 minutes

To prepare for his high wire walks around the globe-more than 80 of them so far-Philippe Petit has practiced almost daily for the last 55 years. His most notable adventure was his illegal walk between the Twin Towers, a caper recounted in his book To Reach the Clouds, on which the 2009 Academy Award-winning documentary Man on Wire was based. Petit's latest show, Open Practice, beautifully shot at the majestic Ulster Performing Arts Center, gives audiences front row seats to observe Petit's creative process and inventive moves on the wire. Interspersed with anecdotes about his life, he reveals some of the extraordinary ways he thinks about creativity and risk and what he calls "cheating the impossible."

Peggy Baker

her body as words (New York Premiere)

February 28-March 14 (VIRTUAL)

BAC Digital Commission

Free and available on demand at bacnyc.org

Running time: 51 minutes

Peggy Baker's new work, her body as words (2020), is a sound and film installation that fragments and explodes notions of female identity as expressed by nine Canadian dance artists. Inspired by the 2009 translation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Baker entered a deeply collaborative process involving personal conversations with the performers. Dancing the complexities of their lived identities, these artists offer gestural renderings touching on themes of race, gender expression, sexual orientation, sexual appetite, pregnancy, miscarriage, motherhood, disability, physical labor, and aging. her body as words was filmed by Jeremy Mimnagh and features sound design by Debashis Sinha.

Chromic Duo

Homecoming: love you all ways

March 14-15, 7:30PM (IN-PERSON)

Howard Gilman Performance Space

BAC Salon

Tickets: $20 at bacnyc.org

Running time: 60 minutes

Chromic Duo blends piano, prepared piano, toy piano, and electronics into genre-fluid performances and installations. They will present a program that builds upon multimedia and chamber music performance practice. The new work will utilize research and prototyping of interviews and field recordings conducted in New York City's Chinatown to bring to light the sounds and stories of people and the communities around them. This program combines performance art, sound design, installation, and new technologies to lay the foundation to reflect on personal journeys and the rich cultural heritage behind them, and ultimately celebrates the resilience in Asian American communities in the face of uncertainty and adversity.

Program:
Nyokabi Kariuki: laika, bluu (NY Premiere)
Chromic Duo: Fluorescent Oceans
Chromic Duo: lightless
Phong Tran: selections from The Computer Room (World Premiere)
Chromic Duo: Blue Vice (NY Premiere)
Chromic Duo: new work (BAC Commission, World Premiere)

Johnny Gandelsman
This is America

March 16-17, 7:30PM (IN-PERSON)
Howard Gilman Performance Space
BAC Salon
Tickets: $20 at bacnyc.org
Running time: 60 minutes

Violinist and producer Johnny Gandelsman brings his new commissioning project This Is America, a celebration of America's rich cultural tapestry and its myriad perspectives, thoughts, and ideas. The program offers a vivid counterpoint to the idea that this land can be understood through any single dominant point of view. The BAC program features performances of 10 new works for solo violin written by a diverse group of US-based composers, alongside two iconic works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

March 16 Program:
Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suite No.1 in G Major, BWV 1007 (transcribed for violin)
Angélica Negrón: A través del manto Luminoso
Olivia Davis: Steeped
Nick Dunston: Tardigrades (BAC Commission, World Premiere)
Christina Courtin: Stroon
Marika Hughes: From J With Love

March 17 Program:
Johann Sebastian Bach: Suite no.3 For Solo Cello, BWV 1009 (transcribed for violin)
Adele Faizullina: Dew, Time, Linger
Nick Dunston: Tardigrades (BAC Commission, World Premiere)
Tyshawn Sorey: For Courtney Bryan
Rhea Fowler & Micaela Tobin: A City Upon a Hill?
Rhiannon Giddens: New To The Session

Andy Akiho: Seven Pillars (New York Premiere)
Sandbox Percussion

April 7-8, 8PM (IN-PERSON)
Jerome Robbins Theater
Tickets: $25 at bacnyc.org
Running time: 80 minutes

Hailed by The New York Times as "a lush, brooding celebration of noise," Andy Akiho's Seven Pillars is his most ambitious project to date. Nominated for a Grammy Award for best classical composition and best chamber music performance, the work is structured as a large-scale palindrome and consists of seven ensemble movements and one solo movement for each member of Sandbox Percussion. Michael Joseph McQuilken's lighting scheme reinforces the work's form throughout the live performance. Performed by Sandbox, this evening-length work is the largest-scale chamber music work that Akiho has written and that Sandbox has commissioned. Akiho and Sandbox's collaboration for Seven Pillars has spanned the past eight years.

Ashwini Ramaswamy
Let the Crows Come (New York Premiere)

April 13-15, 8PM (IN-PERSON)
Jerome Robbins Theater
Tickets: $25 at bacnyc.org
Running time: 60 minutes

Minneapolis-based choreographer and dancer Ashwini Ramaswamy's Let the Crows Come was developed during a 2018 BAC residency and originally scheduled to be performed at BAC in spring 2020. Let the Crows Come evokes mythography and ancestry, using the metaphor of crows as messengers for the living and guides for the departed-and in the process explores how memory and homeland channel guidance and dislocation. In a series of three dance solos from Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam), Alanna Morris-Van Tassel (Contemporary/Afro-Caribbean), and Berit Ahlgren (Gaga), Bharatanatyam is deconstructed and recontextualized to recall a memory that has a shared origin but is remembered differently from person to person. The work features live music by composers Jace Clayton (DJ/ rupture) and Brent Arnold, who extrapolate from Prema Ramamurthy's classical Carnatic (South Indian) score, utilizing centuries-old compositional structures as the point of departure for their sonic explorations.

Omar Román De Jesús

World Premiere
April 25-May 9 (VIRTUAL)
BAC Digital Commission
Free and available on demand at bacnyc.org
Running time: 40 minutes

Omar Román De Jesús's new dance film turns an absurdist lens on moments of a family's life while examining the global forces that impact their everyday decisions. Ten short scenes reveal the strange happenings of their surreal environment, where threads of memory ricochet and recombine to tell a hyperbolic life story: a dream diary flung open. The new work is paired with De Jesús's 12-minute film, Los Perros del Barrio Colosal. A wild romp through the challenges of creative decision-making, the characters ask us to consider the far side of the moments when our ideas threaten, with disjointed urgency, to swallow us whole.

Donna Uchizono Company
Wings of Iron (World Premiere)

May 18-21, 7:30PM (IN-PERSON)
Howard Gilman Performance Space
Tickets: $25 at bacnyc.org
Running time: 60 minutes

Bessie and US Artist award winner Donna Uchizono will present the world premiere of Wings of Iron, an evening-length work that examines what it takes to remain humane in these charged times. Investigating the "weight in-between," the work provides a forum in which to share the weight of vulnerability that is simultaneously public and private. The detailed choreography unfolds a tough exterior over time allowing a new intimacy to emerge, leading to a deeper exploration of this question. Choreographed by Uchizono in collaboration with performers Bria Bacon, Natalie Green, Molly Lieber, and Pareena Lim, Wings of Iron features an original score by composer okkyung lee and lighting design by Joe Levasseur, co-presented by the Chocolate Factory Theater.

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