BY ELIZABETH ZIMMER | The coronavirus may have retreated from our city, but its fallout, in shuttered theaters and unemployed performers of every description, lingers in our atmosphere. Festivals that once lured thousands are furloughed or, at best, transformed into video compendia of past triumphs and Zoom experiments. Many of the videos on view take into account our reduced attention spans, running from under five minutes to, at most, an hour. Most are free to see, but donations are deeply appreciated.

The American Dance Festival (at Duke University in Durham, NC) and Dixon Place (on Chrystie St.), both shuttered at the moment, co-produced Sara Juli’s Burnt-Out Wife with regional presenters. I saw it at Dixon Place in February, and now a film of the performance is available courtesy of ADF. The one-woman show takes place in an enormous pink bathroom with a throne-like toilet, hooks for a variety of negligees, a shower, and a woman ready to throw in the towel on marriage and parenthood. Juli, a comic dancer who’s also an accomplished arts manager, talks, struts, slumps, and may put you off human contact . . . oh, wait. After its online premiere on Tuesday, August 11, Burnt-Out Wife will be available to screen from Wednesday morning at 10am through midnight on Monday, August 17. There’s a discussion with Juli at 6pm, Sunday, August 16. Tickets, at $12 for an individual and $17 for several people watching at once, are available online by clicking here.

The Joyce Theater continues to stream dance gems from its own vaults, and from filmmakers associated with artists who’ve appeared on its stage. The 10-minute Meditation: A Silent Prayer continues its run through Friday, August 14, at 10am. This 2018 sextet by Kyle Abraham has music by Craig Harris, with text and voiceover by Carrie May Weems.

Also currently on view and running through Friday, August 28, is the 20-minute Bhairava, a site-specific dance film for camera by Canadians Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer. A beautiful capture of a Kuchipudi dance by Shantala Shivalingappa, it features the Indian artist in a landscape of rocks, sky, a setting sun and a rising moon. Dancing in a temple, she is accompanied by a quartet including composer Ramesh Jetty, providing vocals, percussion, and flute music; bird sounds also surround this remarkable performance.

Next up is Women’s Resistance, an excerpt from the 2008 work les écailles de la mémoire (The Scales of Memory), a collaboration between American choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and the Senegalese artist Germaine Acogny, who direct Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi respectively. Beginning Thursday, August 13 at 7pm, and continuing through the morning of Friday, August 21, this 11-minute section has music by Fabrice Bouillon-Laforest and Frederick Bobin. In the cast are a number of women now in the front rank of local Black choreographers. Access to the JoyceStream is free, but the theater would be grateful for donations. To do so, visit joyce.org/joycestream.

The Battery Dance Festival, now in its 39th year, goes virtual for the first time, offering nine free hour-long performances Friday, August 14 through Sunday the 22nd, one each evening from 7 to 8pm. The stunning setting of this festival has long been the harbor-front in Robert F. Wagner Park; watching boaters watching dancing is almost as entertaining as the diverse artists themselves. I toyed with telling you to take your laptop down to the south coast and watch the dances from the waterfront, but a friend pointed out that Wi-Fi might not be available. So, hey, stay home and experience these programs, curated by longtime artistic director Jonathan Hollander, from the comfort of your couch. Know that each is available online for ten days after its premiere. If you catch them all, you’ll have seen 52 performances, including 28 premieres from 19 countries!

Opening night, Friday, August 14, features Black Voices in Dance, three New York ensembles and Will Ervin, now based in Illinois. Completing the bill are D (founded by Dorchell Haqq), Kofago Dance Theater, and Jamal Jackson Dance Company.

The second program, From India, is performed Saturday, August 15 (India’s Independence Day), moderated by scholar Rajika Puri. On view are Aakash Odedra Company, Aditi Mangaldas Dance, Bijayini Satpathy, Kapila Venu, and six other artists. The third night, Sunday, August 16, includes dance-makers from Iraqi Kurdistan, the Palestinian Territories, Iran and Lebanon, as well as films celebrating the late Ayman Safiah, a 29-year-old Palestinian dancer.

Six contributions from abroad make up the fourth evening, Monday, August 17. Among them is Japanese choreographer Emiko Agatsuma in Future Temple; a dance film from Dutch choreographer Emma Evelein; and another film, shot in Greece, by Swiss choreographer Maja Zimmerlin and French filmmaker Thomas Delord. The fifth show, on Tuesday, August 18, celebrates the centennial of U.S. women’s right to vote with a program co-curated by Catherine Tharin. On the bill are works by Doris Humphrey, Jean Erdman, Isadora Duncan, Kathryn Posin, and troupes from Alabama, New York, and Los Angeles.

Companies from Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa fill a bill on Wednesday, August 19. North American ensembles from Canada (Kaeja d’Dance and the National Ballet of Canada), Ohio (Dancing Wheels), Mexico (Delfos Danza), New York (Cornfield Dance), and the indigenous territory in occupied New Mexico and California (Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations) perform on Thursday, August 20.

Battery Dance and associated artists take the stage on Friday, August 21, with a new work from Curaçao-based choreographer Reuel Rogers, a world premiere by Battery choreographed by Razvan Stoian, and the local Art-a-Hack, which explores the intersection between dance and technology. The grand finale, Saturday, August 22, is a salute to New York City (From NYC with Love and Hope), featuring Tom Gold Dance, Accent Dance (tango!), Dolly Sfeir, Pony Box Dance Theatre, and the Fractal Collective, a Dutch troupe showing a documentary about international break dancers—hustle, hope & hierarchy.

For more information, to access the recordings, and to donate, visit batterydance.org/battery-dance-festival.

New York City Center Live @ Home: Diary of a Tap Dancer V.6: Us

Ayodele Casel, a dazzling tap dancer for decades who’s finally emerging into the spotlight, has been posting regular episodes from a seven-part series of brief encounters with young BIPOC performers. Episode 3 features Starinah “Star” Dixon, of the North Lonsdale neighborhood in Chicago, who “created the family we wished we had” through tap dancing. New episodes will continue to appear. Go to NYCityCenter.org/Tap to view them.

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