The Baryshnikov Arts Center will return to in-person performances this spring after two years of online programming.
The season includes eight dance and music performances, three of which are virtual. The streamed performances are part of the center’s commissioning program, which began in the fall of 2020 as a way to support the organization and encourage artists to continue creating during the pandemic.
Cora Cahan, the center’s president and chief executive, said the delay in returning to live performances was the result of the pandemic postponement of a long-planned replacement of the building’s heating, ventilation and cooling systems.
“We’re going very slowly and carefully here because we have an audience back on the site for the first time in so long,” Cahan said. “We are excited to schedule live performances in lock-step with our commissioning program that has been so vibrant and dynamic since we started it nearly two years ago.”
The season opens with two virtual presentations: the cord artist Philippe Petit’s “Open Practice”, about his creative process (7-21 February); and a film and sound installation by Toronto choreographer Peggy Baker, “her body as words,” inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” (February 28-March 14).
The first live performances will be evenings with music from Chromic Duo, genre-smoothing musicians using prepared piano, toy piano and synthesizers (March 14-15); violinist and producer Johnny Gandelsman, who will present the New York premiere of his project “This Is America” (March 16-17); and Andy Akiho, whose ‘Seven Pillars’, a full-length work for percussion, will premiere in New York (April 7-8).
The dance programming includes performances by Ashwini Ramaswamy (April 13-15), whose “Let the Crows Come” deconstructs the Bharatanatyam form, and the world premiere of Donna Uchizono’s “Wings of Iron” (May 18-21). Both were originally planned for the center’s spring of 2020. A new dance film by Omar Román De Jesús will be screened virtually (April 25 – May 9).
