BY ELIZABETH ZIMMER

Bryant Park Picnic Performances: Family Day

Saturday, August 10, 5pm

At Bryant Park, 1080 Sixth Ave.

Click here for more Picnic Performances info, including livestream viewing

Check @bryantparknyc for rain cancellation weather updates

If you have the constitution to watch dance outdoors in high summer, enjoy hanging out with little kids, and prefer your tickets free, make your way to Bryant Park, where this August 10 Family Day show is likely to surprise and delight. The park provides blankets to sit on in the center lawn section (but doesn’t want your plastic tarps or inflatable chairs), and supplies chairs if you’re OK with sitting around the edges. Bring a picnic or buy snacks there. The New Victory Theater, a block away down West 42nd Street, collaborates with Bank of America to sponsor an hour-long, interactive event, closing out the Park’s first-ever Family Day. It features Bessie-award-winning choreographer Ephrat Asherie, an Israeli woman whose metier is hip-hop, and the Barkin/Selissen Project, a company whose work blurs conventional distinctions between emotion and intellect, between dreaming and being wide awake. All are teaching artists at the New Victory, and will invite kids to join in on the process.

Bryant Park Picnic Performances

Contemporary Dance: Mark Morris Dance Group, Blacks in Ballet, and Reed Luplau

Saturday, August 31, 7pm

At Bryant Park, 1080 Sixth Ave.

Click here for Picnic Performances info, including livestream viewing

Check @bryantparknyc for rain cancellation weather updates

The first-rate Mark Morris Dance Group, now in its 44th year and flourishing at its Brooklyn headquarters and on tour around the world, brings to the Bryant Park outdoor stage one of its early hits, the 1981 Gloria, to Vivaldi. The troupe will be joined by Blacks in Ballet, a project initiated by Brazilian dancers Ingrid Silva, Ruan Galdino, and Fábio Mariano to elevate black classical dancers. Completing the Contemporary Dance program is Reed Luplau, a native of Perth, Australia who’s danced with Sydney Dance Company, several New York City troupes, and a clutch of Broadway shows, as well as appearing in television and film. Tiffany Rea-Fisher, longtime curator of events in Bryant Park, assembled this triple bill. For more info, click here.

—END—

Chelsea Community News is an independent, hyperlocal news, arts, events, info, and opinion website made possible with the help of our awesome advertisers and the support of our readers. Our Promise: Never a paywall, no pop-up ads, all content is FREE. With that in mind, if circumstances allow, please consider taking part in our GoFundMe campaign (click here). To make a direct donation, give feedback, send a Letter to the Editor, or contact  founder/editor, email Scott Stiffler, via scott@chelseacommunitynews.com.