After a total of 72 weeks of canceled programming since March 2020, the Joyce Theater is presenting its 48-week annual fall season, with renewed hopes of carrying out each scheduled performance.
“We’ve had a whole year of opening and closing and opening and closing,” said Linda Shelton, Joyce’s executive director. “Every week we wondered, ‘Are we going through the week?'”
The Fall-Winter season, announced Wednesday, will run from September through February and will feature 18 acts, including debuts from LaTasha Barnes – known on the Chelsea stage as a dancer but new as a choreographer – with “The Jazz Continuum” (October 11-16). ), an intergenerational celebration of black dancers and musicians; Fouad Boussouf, whose choreography draws on contemporary dance, hip-hop and circus movements along with traditional dance from his native Morocco in “Näss” (18-23 October); and the German contemporary company tanzmainz with Sharon Eyal’s “Soul Chain” (24-28 January).
The season kicks off with “Burn” (September 20-25), a dance-theatre solo work by the Olivier and Tony Award-winning actor Alan Cumming and the Olivier-winning choreographer Steven Hoggett in a co-production with the National Theater of Scotland, Edinburgh International Festival, focusing on the triumphs and turmoil of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
Shelton said Cumming recently said to her backstage at a performance, “I’ve got another dance piece in me, are you ready?” To which she replied, “Of course.”
This season, Camille A. Brown returns to the Joyce Theater (the two-time Tony nominee in 2022 for her direction and choreography of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf”) with a trio of works that express the black identity. Redefining , one of which is also an ode to black girlhood (October 25-30), and Ronald K. Brown and his company Evidence, with “The Equality of Night and Day” (January 17-22), which challenges society presumptions of fairness and equity.
Visiting from abroad are the Cuban group Malpaso Dance Company (Oct 4-9), in a 10th anniversary performance, and the contemporary company Cullberg, from Sweden, with “Horse, the solos” (Feb. 1-5), a new work by Deborah Hay.
For now, the theatre, which reviews its Covid-19 policies on a weekly basis, will continue to require audience members to wear masks and provide proof of vaccination.
“There is so much desire to be on the podium,” Shelton said. “We hear that from every company that they just can’t wait to be one stage again.”
“We don’t know what the coming year will bring,” she added, “but we’re going for it.”