HULA HAPPENING San Francisco's Halau 'O Keikiali'i brings Hawaii to Medford. |
There's no end to variety to the fall's dance season, from a Boston Ballet classic to Hawaiian hula and "extreme action" acrobatics.
DAVID PARSONS/EAST VILLAGE OPERA COMPANY | September 25 | Excerpts of Parsons's Remember Me, a controversial rock opera about a nasty love triangle created in collaboration with the EVOC, recently aired on public television under the come-hither title Operatic Heat. In this show, tunes from the classical canon (by such hit-parade masters as Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and Schubert) get the rock-meets-Broadway treatment alongside Parsons's signature stylishness and aerial invention. | Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont Street, Boston| $30-$50 | 617.876.4275 or www.worldmusic.org
NICOLE PIERCE | September 24, 25, 27 | Pierce builds on her training as a classical pianist and her new-found interest in multimedia installations to shape an ambitious choreographic response to Mozart's Requiem. Eight of Boston's best freelance modern dancers confront death, terror, and resolve in this work, which is performed within an environment of five video screens and set to the recorded score. | Armory Center for the Arts, 191 Highland Ave, Somerville | $25 | 617.628.3175 or www.egoartinc.com
KAWA HULA: HULA THROUGH TIME | October 3 | Celebrate Obama's island home (no, not Martha's Vineyard) with a weekend of workshops in hula, lei making, and other Hawaiian cultural traditions capped by a rare professional hula performance on October 3 at Springstep by San Francisco–based Halau 'O Keikiali'i. Led by Kumu Hula Kawika Alfiche, members of this talented halau (that's hula academy to you) have been performing ancient dances and chants alongside contemporary Hawaiian music and choreography since 1994. | Springstep, 98 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford | $22 non-member adults; $19 non-member students and seniors | 781.395.0402 or www.springstep.org
JOSÉ MATEO BALLET THEATRE IN "LUNAR EFFECTS" | October 8-25 | Every dance company, it seems, has to have at least one work set to Philip Glass under its belt. This season, Mateo and company perform Glass's Symphony No. 2 on a program that also includes the revival of Mateo's 1993 Isle of the Dead, which is set to the Rachmaninov tone poem. | Sanctuary Theatre, Old Baptist Church, 400 Harvard St, Cambridge | $35 | 617.354.7467 or www.ballettheatre.org
KEITH TERRY | October 10; November 14-15 | Body percussionist Keith Terry is the dance world's answer to vocalist Bobby McFerrin. Trained as a jazz drummer, Terry long ago left behind the limitations of man-made instruments to explore his own body as a trap set. His dancing spans — and synthesizes — traditions as far apart as vaudeville hambones, Appalachian clogging, and Indonesian monkey chant. In October, Terry performs his solo show in the series "Rhythm at the Regent" at the Regent Theatre in Arlington. Then in November, he returns as Keith Terry and Crosspulse for two shows at Springstep. | "Rhythm at the Regent" @ Regent Theatre, 7 Medford St, Arlington | $30-$20 | 781.646.4849 or www.regenttheatre.com | Keith Terry and Crosspulse @ Springstep, 98 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford | $22 non-member adults; $19 non-member students and seniors | 781.395.0402 or www.springstep.org
RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE | October 16-18 | W.C. Fields may have warned artists not to share the stage with kids or animals, but the artists behind Ronald K. Brown/Evidence have never been known to shirk from a challenge. Two-Year-Old Gentleman features Brown's young nephew, Ame Bender, learning to dance and work and pray alongside two drummers and the company's ensemble of emotionally open and technically precise dancers. Other athletic and spiritual repertory works fill out the engagement. | Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave, Boston | $40 | 617.876.4275 or www.worldmusic.org
STREB EXTREME ACTION | October 22, 25 | When the ICA opened the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theatre a few years back, a terrifyingly beautiful highlight was the sight of the performers of Streb Extreme Action climbing, running, and pitching themselves off what looked like a giant hamster wheel in front of a view of the dark Harbor just beyond the theater's windowed back wall. Elizabeth Streb, the self-described philosopher of "action mechanics," returns with "Brave," a program performed on a constantly rotating floor that incorporates collaborations with composer David Van Tieghem, artists from the MIT Media Lab, and a pair of fifth-generation aerialists from a Mexican circus family — brothers Noe and Ivan España — on the trapeze. | Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave, Boston | $40-35 | 617.478.3100 or www.icaboston.org
BOSTON BALLET INGISELLE | October 1-11 | Boston Ballet reprises Maina Gielgud's production of Giselle at the company's new, year-round Opera House home. In the title role of the peasant girl driven mad by her lover's betrayal, Lorna Feijóo and Erica Cornejo will be joined by new principals Misa Kuranaga and Kathleen Breen Combes, and Breen Combes will also be dancing Myrtha, queen of the Wilis, a role she previously performed as a study in hair-raising pitilessness. | Opera House, 539 Washington St, Boston | $25-$130 | 617.695.6955 or www.bostonballet.org
