Catherine Tharin

Le sacre de Lila (2022), its U.S. premiere on September 29 at PS21 in Chatham, NY, is a contemporary dance based on the traditional Lila healing ritual of the Maghreb, an area that spans several North African countries. Moroccan-French-Quebecois choreographer, Ismaël Mouaraki explores trance through song, dance and music.

This week at the Catskill Mountain Foundation through a Guggenheim Works & Process LaunchPad tech-residency, the Martha Graham Dance Company performs a preview of choreographers Baye & Asa’s Cortege, inspired by Martha Graham’s Cortege of Eagles from 1967, at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, NY.

The three-week Kaatsbaan Cultural Park 2024 Annual Festival in Tivoli, NY, opens this Friday with the September 13 screening of Merce/Misha/More directed by Daniel Madoff. The film features choreographer Merce Cunningham, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet star and impresario, in conversation and in dancing.

Unite, the one-week ballet festival at The Joyce Theater, the dance specific venue in New York City, is the brainchild of American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, Calvin Royal III.

Composer Charles Martin Loeffler’s forgotten Octet will be performed at Stissing Center in Pine Plains, New York at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 9. The combination of instruments, two clarinets, string quartet, harp, and double bass, offers a variety of textures and “illuminates new gradients of the tonal spectrum,” says clarinetist, Graeme Steele Johnson, who discovered and reconstructed the Loeffler score lost for 127 years.

Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective, the esteemed street dance company founded by Michele Byrd-McPhee in 2004, presented The Black Dancing Bodies Project: SpeakMyMind at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville on March 30 direct from its premiere at Works & Process, the performing arts series affiliated with the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Works & Process supported the Ladies of Hip Hop with five LaunchPAD residencies. The Catskill Mountain Foundation partners with Works & Process.

Our region’s dance season, paused until the many, robust festivals resume in warmer months, offers several upcoming performance opportunities.

The raucous and saucy funk-revue holiday show, Holidelic, created by percussionist and singer/songwriter, Grammy-nominated Everett Bradley, plays this weekend at Kaatsbaan Cultural Center. Last weekend’s sold-out shows featured funk-influenced holiday songs written or adapted by Bradley, performed by a band of 12 notable band members, including a horn section, guitar and bass players, percussionist, keyboardist, charismatic singers and dancers, plus Bradley as lead singer and primary strutter.

The Museum of Broadway, the first museum dedicated to this home-grown American performance form, celebrated its inaugural year on November 15.

PS 21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, in Chatham, N.Y., presents L’Etang (The Pond), the final movement-influenced work of the season on Friday and Saturday. The Open-Air Pavilion Theater, tucked into the 100-acre landscape, is covered but open on three sides. Meadows and trees are glimpsed through the building; cadences of birds, animals and insects are heard while watching a production. Curated by the performing arts explorer and PS21 Artistic Director, Elena Siyanko, performances run until the end of December in the main theater and in the Black Box Theater.