Our guide to dance performances happening this weekend and in the week ahead.
ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER at New York City Center (Dec. 4, 7 p.m.; Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.; through Jan. 5). Seeking an alternative to “The Nutcracker” this holiday season? Head to City Center for an evening that’s just as spiritually rousing. The Ailey company begins its annual winter residency on Wednesday with a gala featuring “Cunningham Centennial Solos,” a compilation of excerpts from a handful of Merce Cunningham works that span a half-century. This is paired with the company classic “Revelations,” danced to live music. That piece returns on Thursday, a performance open only to ticket buyers between 21 and 35 years old (their guests can be any age), and appears alongside Ailey’s moving solo “Cry,” Judith Jamison’s “Divining” and Ronald K. Brown’s “The Call.”
212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org
DORMESHIA, DERICK K. GRANT, JASON SAMUELS SMITH AND CAMILLE A. BROWN at the Joyce Theater (Dec. 3-4, 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 5-6, 8 p.m.; through Dec. 8). For her acclaimed 2016 work “And Still You Must Swing,” Dormeshia convened a dream team of rhythmic performers: Grant and Smith, fellow tap masters with whom she has danced for over 20 years, and Brown, a guest artist who complements their musical complexity with her own contemporary movement language. Together, the four performers return for this event to honor tap’s history and trace its journey in relationship to jazz and swing music, and as an expression of cultural pride and political resistance.
212-242-0800, joyce.org
TESS DWORMAN at the Chocolate Factory (Dec. 4-7, 8 p.m.). In 2011, Dworman presented a work set partly to the Beach Boys called “Solo for Legendary Children,” which she has said is “as if abstraction, acting, Western European dance, professional magic and Toni Collette had all been put into a trash fire and I inhaled the fumes.” She refers to her latest work, “A Child Retires,” as a “premature retrospective” of that earlier piece; in it, Dworman keeps the Beach Boys around and wears her mother’s old T-shirt, makes creative use of a tote bag and adds three dancers: Doug LeCours, Tingying Ma and Alex Rodabaugh.
718-482-7069, chocolatefactorytheater.org
[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]
KYLE MARSHALL at BAM Fisher (Dec. 4-6, 7:30 p.m.; through Dec. 7). Making his BAM debut as part of the Next Wave Festival, Marshall, who danced with Trisha Brown and Doug Elkins, presents two works that each explore an important part of his identity — one spiritual and one physical. In “A.D.,” he probes his faith, questions Christian iconography (why are angels always portrayed as white?) and asks how Christianity affects the country more broadly. In “Colored,” a 2017 work, he and two other dancers portray the way black bodies are both idealized and demonized, and how they are perceived in dance, especially by predominantly white audiences.
718-636-4100, bam.org
MOVEMENT RESEARCH FESTIVAL FALL 2019 at Danspace Project (Dec. 5-7, 8 p.m.). This year’s festival, called “ComeUnion,” explores how a person’s physical perceptions and experiences can pave the way for personal and social healing while responding to social justice issues. Workshops, screenings and discussions begin on Wednesday and continue through Dec. 8, but the three curated programs of performances, each featuring a different lineup, begin on Thursday with Camilo Godoy, Jerron Herman and Stevie May, followed on Friday with KK de La Vida, Dustin Maxwell and Grace Osborne. Saturday’s program consists of works by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez and Merián Soto.
866-811-4111, danspaceproject.org
NEW YORK CITY BALLET at the David H. Koch Theater (Nov. 29, 8 p.m.; Nov. 30, 2 and 8 p.m.; Dec. 1, 1 and 5 p.m.; Dec. 5, 7 p.m.; through Jan. 5). ’Twas the day after Thanksgiving and all through the land, ballet companies began trotting out productions of “The Nutcracker,” a holiday dance tradition most grand. And in New York, the grandest among them is City Ballet’s, formally known as “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” which has been performed since 1954. That title rightly emphasizes this version’s secret weapon: Act II’s glorious choreography, particularly the breathtaking final pas de deux between the Sugarplum Fairy and her cavalier. Act I has its own virtuosic feat in the form of a supersize Christmas tree, which captures all the magic and wonder of this familiar tale.
212-496-0600, nycballet.com
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