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Fall is here and so is BAM’s perennial festival of theater, dance, music and film. As any local culture vulture will tell you, when temperatures cool down, culture heats up in Fort Greene thanks to Next Wave. If your tastes are more global and aesthetically extreme than, say, the best shows on Broadway and beyond this fall, then Next Wave is your jam. Now in its 31st season, the festival runs through December. Although you can find plenty of options in a range of fields, we’ll share our top picks in theater and dance. More details and tickets here.
THEATER
Songs of Lear
Heads up, connoisseurs of post-Grotowski physical theater: The Polish troupe Song of the Goat Theatre mixes Shakespeare’s anguished tragedy with music and chanting. Sept 28–Oct 1.
Battlefield
Who says legendary director Peter Brook is immune to this age of faster, quicker, shorter? He boils down his nine-hour stage version of the Indian mystical epic The Mahabarata into 70 minutes of sacred ritual-theater.
Letter to a Man
Mikhail Baryshnikov channels his ballet forerunner, Vaslav Nijinsky, in a work designed and directed by the visionary auteur Robert Wilson. The piece explores Nijinsky’s art, but also his lifelong mental problems.
Kings of War
Ivo van Hove returns to BAM for an epic night of Shakespeare history plays (in Dutch, mind you). He distills the high points of Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III into nearly five hours of modern-dress, multimedia action. If you caught the director’s Roman Tragedies in 2012, you know what to expect.
The Winter’s Tale
The fearless and innovative British troupe Cheek by Jowl stages the Bard’s late romance about loyalty, friendship and jealousy. Declan Donnellan finds bittersweet notes in a story that starts as a tragedy and ends in laughter, miracles and tears.
DANCE
Shen Wei Dance Arts: Neither
The international choreographer fashions steps to go with composer Morton Feldman’s operatic monodrama Neither, to a 16-line libretto by Samuel Beckett.
Company Wang Ramirez: Monchichi
Call this the United Nations of hip-hop dance: choreographers with French-Spanish and Korean-German heritage, mingling influences and cultural references. Two dancers and a bare tree in the background? More Beckett: hints of Waiting for Godot, perhaps.
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