DANCE
THURSDAY & SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 & 12, 2019
7:30 PM THURSDAY
2:00 & 8:00 PM SATURDAY

Masters at Work: Balanchine & Cunningham
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$35-$200
https://www.nycballet.com/season-tickets/19-20-season/fall/oct-10-2019-balanchine-cunningham.aspx
https://www.nycballet.com/season-tickets/19-20-season/fall/oct-12-2019-mat-balanchine-cunningham.aspx
https://www.nycballet.com/season-tickets/19-20-season/fall/oct-12-2019-eve-balanchine-cunningham.aspx

I used to wonder why it was that ballet people have embraced arch-Post-Modernist Merce Cunningham while remaining indifferent to the hardcore Judson dancers and their aesthetic progeny. But the last Cunningham piece I saw, it hit me: whereas the other Post-Modernists were intent on remaking dance by introducing everyday motions into the vocabulary, Cunningham's movement vocabulary remains resolutely technical and dancelike: Cunningham just introduces indeterminacy and musical independence into the mix. So it makes perfect sense that (a) the City Ballet dances Cunningham's Summerspace (to Feldman!!!!) splendidly, and (b) its audience eats it up. It seems odd to me that Summerspace is being paired with two of Balanchine's more Classical/Romantic, less overtly modern, pieces — but maybe that's the point.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Evenings, let's kick it old skool at The Leopard at des Artistes. Before the matinée, lunch at Épicere Boulud.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Extreme Mexican at The Black Ant.