Fall Dance Preview

New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre return to Lincoln Center, the Joyce hosts Ragamala Dance and Caleb Teicher, and more.
Three dancers
Illustration by Zhenya Oliinyk

For months, dance has been making its cautious return, usually outdoors, in small-scale works, but nothing can compare with the rush of seeing a stage full of dancers, their arms and legs radiating energy and precision. New York City Ballet’s opening-night program this fall closes with just such a spectacle—George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C,” a grand display for fifty dancers, dressed in black and white, set to youthful Bizet. If you’re in need of a burst of joy, here it is. The season (Sept. 21-Oct. 17) also offers new works, farewells (for Maria Kowroski, Lauren Lovette, Abi Stafford, and Ask la Cour), and Balanchine’s razor-sharp modernist masterpiece “Agon,” which for many has come to define the company style.

The Joyce Theatre is back in the business of presenting companies from across the country, beginning with the excellent Minneapolis-based ensemble Ragamala Dance (Sept. 22-26). Ragamala, whose specialty is the South Indian form bharata natyam, performs “Fires of Varanasi,” an evening-length work inspired by the eternal cycle of life and death. Also not to be missed is Caleb Teicher’s celebration of the Lindy Hop and swing music, “Swing Out,” performed to the live accompaniment of the Eyal Vilner Big Band (Oct. 5-17).

Nothing signals dance’s return quite as clearly as a new edition of Fall for Dance, the eclectic and reasonably priced festival at City Center (Oct. 13‑24). Among the highlights are a new tap piece by the phenomenal Ayodele Casel; the revival of three solos created by Bob Fosse for Gwen Verdon, performed by the New York City Ballet dancer Georgina Pazcoguin (who just published a saucy memoir, “Swan Dive”); and a première of a pas de deux for Adrian Danchig-Waring and Joseph Gordon, “To Each in His Own Time,” by Lar Lubovitch.

American Ballet Theatre is back at Lincoln Center for two weeks (Oct. 20‑31), the first of which is devoted to the beloved nineteenth-century work “Giselle.” It is likely that the company, having promoted several dancers last year, will offer at least one or two débuts in the role of the young villager turned ghostly spirit. Then the company switches gears, with mixed bills of works created during the pandemic, by Alexei Ratmansky, Jessica Lang, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Christopher Rudd, and others.

BAM, with fewer dance offerings than usual this fall, presents the U.S. début of Cia Suave, in “Cria” (Nov. 2-6), which incorporates the street-dance vocabulary of Rio de Janeiro, where its choreographer, Alice Ripoll, is based. ♦