BY ELIZABETH ZIMMER

Pilobolus: July 23-August 11 at The Joyce Theater | This unique, Connecticut-based ensemble—founded at Dartmouth College in 1971 and sometimes called “the dance equivalent of a rock band”—turned 50 on the cusp of the pandemic, so it’s stretching out the anniversary celebration, returning to the Joyce for a three-week season. Two different bills mix new experiments with old favorites (the brilliant, mysterious Untitled, in which Martha Clarke had a choreographic hand, anchors the second bill, titled Memory, while the opening program, Dreams, includes Rushes, a sentimental work made in collaboration with Israelis Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak). Each evening includes a local premiere, and some of the work derives from TV animation like SpongeBob SquarePants. Bring the kids; Pilobolus is famous for its appeal to folks who don’t know or like dance, especially teenage boys. And if you still read books, check out the really interesting, affectionate biography of the troupe, Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life by Robert Pranzatelli, new from the University Press of Florida, which tells the whole story and includes several useful appendices.

July 23 through August 11 at The Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Ave. at W. 19th St.). For tickets ($12-$82), call 212-242-0800 or click here for The Joyce website.  

BAAND Together Dance Festival: July 30-August 3 at the David H. Koch Theater | Behold the summer’s biggest bang for your (very few) bucks: New York’s “big five” dance companies—the ones that command distinguished choreographers and often run long seasons in our largest theaters—come together for an evening in which each of them offers one work. On display will be the New York City Ballet performing George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant, to Stravinsky; the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Hans van Manen’s Solo, to Bach, which features three male dancers; Ballet Hispánico dancing Sombrerísmo by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, a piece that takes its inspiration from Belgian painter René Magritte; American Ballet Theatre in Brady Farrar’s Night Falls, a duet to Chopin; and Dance Theatre of Harlem in a new work, Blake Works IV (The Barre Project) by William Forsythe that originated digitally during the pandemic and is here transformed for the first time for the stage.

July 30-August 3, Tues.-Fri. at 7:30pm, Saturday at 4, at the David H. Koch Theater (20 Lincoln Center Plaza). Seats, with a suggested price of $35, will be available on a “Choose What You Pay” basis, with a minimum of $5—but if you’re patient and flexible, limited free Rush tickets will be available every afternoon at 5pm for that day’s show. Every afternoon during the festival, there’ll be free dance workshops by one of the companies represented, available to all ages and abilities, in the lobby of David Geffen Hall across the plaza. For tickets and info, click here or call 212-875-5456.

 Pam Tanowitz: Day For Night | July 17-21 on Little Island | Choreographer Pam Tanowitz, a native of the Bronx, teaches at Rutgers and has a special relationship with Bard SummerScape. Her thoughtful blend of ballet rigor and modern dance-creativity has slowly and steadily ascended the ranks of the regional dance firmament. She brings us her new Day For Night—which, the press material tells us, examines “relationships, nostalgia, and memory, stitched to the sounds and landscapes of Little Island.” Featuring seven of Downtown’s most interesting performers (Morgan Amirah, Marc Crousillat, Lindsey Jones, Brian Lawson, Sarah Elizabeth Miele, Maile Okamura, and Melissa Toogood) and displaying the superior skills of costume designers Reid Bartelme and Harriett Jung as well as those of lighting designer Davison Scandrett, the piece has music and sound design by Justin Ellington.

At 8:30pm July 17-21 at The Amph on Little Island (Pier 55 in Hudson River Park, at W. 13th St.). All dates are currently sold out. But, as the ticket-booking web page advises, “More tickets may get added to sold out dates, check back later!” (Tickets are $25 if you can get them.) For the Day For Night event page on Little Island’s website, click here. To visit Pam Tanowitz Dance online, click here.

BELOW, FIND DANCE WRITEUPS FROM A RECENTLY PUBLISHED COLUMN BY ELIZABETH ZIMMER

Smuin Contemporary Ballet: July 9-14 at The Joyce Theater | Michael Smuin (1938-2007), one of ballet’s more entertaining choreographers, came out of the American west and danced with ABT and the San Francisco Ballet before turning to choreography at the age of 27. He collapsed and died of a heart attack in his studio at the age of 69, but his disciples carry his mission forward. The San Francisco troupe that bears his name, directed by Celia Fushille since his death, has been celebrating its 30th anniversary, and brings us a mixed bill of New York premieres including a 2014 dance en pointe to Vivaldi by Val Caniparoli (its Italian title translates as “Everything but the kitchen sink”—don’t say I didn’t warn you!). A new sneakered-and-barefoot work by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Tupelo Tornado, celebrates Elvis Presley. A third is by Amy Seiwert, mentored by Smuin himself; she is about to take the reins of the company. Her piece, Renaissance, performed in ballet slippers to a woman’s chorus singing Eastern European folk songs a cappella, was inspired by the largest gender equity protest in recorded history, held in India in 2019.

July 9-14 at The Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Ave. at W. 19th St.). For tickets ($12-$82), call 212-242-0800 or click here for The Joyce website. To visit the Smuin website, click here. Schedule: Tues./Wed., July 9/10, 7;30pm; Thurs./Fri., July 11/12, 8pm; Sat., July 13, 2pm & 8pm; Sun., July 14, 2pm. Curtain Chat (free post-performance discussions with artists) on Wed., July 10.

Dorrance Dance: July 16-21 at The Joyce Theater | Tap wizard Michelle Dorrance has won just about every prize out there, including a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship. The North Carolina native has performed with most of the world’s reigning tap geniuses, appeared with Stephen Colbert, choreographed for the Martha Graham Company, American Ballet Theatre, and the 2021 Broadway production of Flying Over Sunset; and she founded her dazzling troupe in 2011.  Both a musician (she plays bass and ukelele) and a dancer, Dorrance pushes the boundaries of American tap dance. When I spoke to her in late June, she’d just escaped a thunderstorm in Italy and was still cogitating a title for the new hourlong piece she’s bringing to New York. “Art is not a mirror held up to reality,” she remembers, quoting Brecht, “but a hammer with which to shape it.” Her goal is to affect the energy of strife and division tearing the world apart right now: “So much hatred, not enough kindness, not enough care.”  The working title she came up with: We Must Shift.

July 16-21 at The Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Ave. at W. 19th St.). For tickets ($12-$82), call 212-242-0800 or click here for The Joyce website. To visit the Dorrance Dance website, click here. Schedule: Tues./Wed. July 16/17 at 7:30pm; Thurs./Fri. July 18/19 at 8pm; Sat., July 20 at 2pm & 8pm; Sun. July 20 at 2pm. Curtain Chat (free post-performance discussion with artists) on Wed., July 17 and Family Matinee on Sat., July 20. (Audiences 5 to 15 and their grown-ups meet the artists following the performances—Kids’ tickets, $10.)

Ain’t Done Bad: July 9-September 1 at the Irene Diamond Stage, Pershing Square Signature Center | It’s interesting when a show by a dance artist you’ve never heard of moves into a Hell’s Kitchen theater for a run of eight weeks. The high-octane, 90-minute dance-theater piece, conceived and choreographed by Jakob Karr (a veteran of So You Think You Can Dance and other Broadway and touring shows who also performs in it) won the Orlando Fringe’s 2021 Critic’s Choice Award. To the country music of Orville Peck, the troupe tells a story of “coming out, falling in love, and finding one’s true voice as a queer person in the south.” Ads for it, with steamy slides and video, abound on Facebook. We shall see.

Previews beginning July 9; opening July 14 and running through September 1 at the Irene Diamond Stage, Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W. 42nd St., Jim Houghton Way). For tickets ($40-$75), click here to visit the show’s website. Schedule: Tues.–Fri. at 7:30pm; Sat. at 2pm and 8pm; Sun. at 7:3opm (for the week of July 9-14) and beginning July 16: Tues. at 7:30pm; Wed. at 2pm and 7:30pm; Thurs.–Fri. at 7:30pm; Sat. at 2pm and 8pm; Sun. at 7:30pm. 

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