Smooth Moves: Fall’s Dance-Themed Events

By Troy Segal

Whether you’re into ballet or tap, modern, or classical, these terpsichorean-themed talks, demos and activities offer some fun/thought-provoking/stimulating experiences for lovers of the dance.

Top Hat, 42nd Street (above), The Wizard of Oz, On the Town — were the 1930s and ‘40s the Golden Age of Movie Musicals or what? Songs will be sung, scores will be played, and backstage tales will be told at this lecture on that musical era, at the 92nd Street Y on Sept. 19.

Damian Woetzel, former New York City Ballet principal-turned-arts festival administrator, leads a demonstration of dancers and musicians of different stripes (from ballet to hip-hop, from violinists to bagpipers) interacting along a common theme, Sept. 21 & 22, at the Guggenheim Museum.

Images from Charles Atlas’s Because We Must (1978). Credit

Feast your eyes on some fascinating footage by Charles Atlas (no, not the bodybuilder, but an veteran documentary filmmaker specializing in dance and music), as he discusses his 40-year-long career and shows excerpts from films starring Merce Cunningham and Michael Clark. Sept. 23 at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Get a glimpse of the little-known work of a master — specifically, Merce Cunningham’s ballet Un Jour Ou Deux (One or Two Days), with music by John Cage and set by Jasper Johns — at this Sept. 24 screening of a filmed revival of the piece. It’s part of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ The Dance Historian Is In series, which also includes cinematic showings of ballets by Frederick Ashton Oct. 29 and August Bournonville Nov. 26, and a French 1937 movie, La Mort du Cygne (pictured above), a precursor to The Red Shoes, The Turning Point, Black Swan, and all those films set in the ballet world.

Some show-biz heavyweights (director Susan Stroman, the writing team Ahrens & Flaherty) are doing a musical about Marie Van Goethem, the real-life apprentice ballerina and model for Degas’ famous sculpture of a Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, and they’ll discuss it and show excerpts from the show, which stars New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck, Oct. 5, at the Guggenheim Museum.

Ballet choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on his life and red-hot career (he’s currently American Ballet Theatre’s Artist in Residence) at the New York Public Library (the big one, with the lion statues out front), Oct. 8.

L.A. Dance Project. Photo: Laurent Philippe

Another NYCB veteran, Benjamin Millepied (aka Mr. Natalie Portman), talks on Oct. 15 with dance critic Deborah Jowitt about the troupe he’s just founded, the L.A. Dance Project, which is performing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Jerome Robbins was one of those rare choreographers equally at home at the ballet and on Broadway. On Nov. 9, at the Guggenheim Museum, you can see excerpts from his first ballet, Fancy Free, and his first musical, On The Town (a new revival of which is on the Great White Way) — along with narration by current-day Robbins interpreters/choreographers Robert LaFosse and Joshua Bergasse.

Fashionistas should be fascinated by a day-long symposium at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Topics include how couturiers are increasingly being called upon to design dance costumes — and how, historically, costumes have influenced everyday fashions, Oct. 23…or, take a guided tour of the museum’s Dance & Fashion exhibit, which explores the same themes, Nov. 19 & 24.

Irina Baranova, one of the “baby ballerinas” of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (she danced Odette in Swan Lake at age 14) is fondly remembered by actress Victoria Tennant and NYCB principal Wendy Whelan — from, respectively, the viewpoint of a daughter and a prima ballerina — at this talk at the 92nd Street Y, Dec. 4.