In the News

Who is called to lead a funeral? Who is summoned to help us through these burial rights? Who can gracefully usher a spirit from this realm into the next? Who is qualified to take our uncertain hands and lead us through the bardos of the afterlife? Who is equipped to ritualize loss and mourning? Who then, in this journey, also has the fortitude to direct the choir and the prayer and the procession?

A shaman.

A healer.

An artist.

A witch.

A lover.

A friend.

A daughter.

Indeed.

We gather here. Together.

The very first thing that the choreographer Faye Driscoll does in “Thank You for Coming: Space,” the final installment in a trilogy, is act out the series’s title. Standing in a slouch, barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans, she thanks her audience for showing up, acknowledging the quotidian difficulties of attending live performance. The speech is disarming, but also, as it extends in awkward silences and tangents, a little disturbing. Something is off.

The choreographer Faye Driscoll is the next recipient of New York Live Arts’ robust biennial residency award, the organization announced on Wednesday. The award, the Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist, is notable for the breadth of its support, which includes a commissioning fee, a technical residency and a fully produced production as well as two years of full-time salary and health care benefits.

To understand the blueprint of who Daniel Alexander Jones is as a multidisciplinary artist and thought leader, we have to go back to Springfield, Massachusetts during the Civil Rights era. This working class city bursting with factories was one of the stops on the Great Migration for families and people seeking work in order to escape the racial violence in states such as the Carolinas and Virginia.

To see Holland Andrews perform is to witness the channeling deep reserves of light and darkness, for the benefit of audiences battered by all manners of emotional trauma.

“I am offering a prescription with my music,” Andrews said, “to help the potential unease in their life at that moment. What do I have that you need?”

There’s a moment in Holland Andrews’ video introduction to Museum of Calm where their brow tenses and they clasp their hands tightly, trying desperately to summon an effective description of their work. It’s a relatable feeling: the futility of attempting to represent deeply personal thoughts and feelings in words. But even before the piece begins, it’s clear to the audience that such futility, or even vulnerability, is not the slightest bit threatening to Holland Andrews—it’s a challenge.

At home on Saturday afternoon, I rolled out a yoga mat and lay down on the floor. I guided my back over a bolster, tucked a pillow beneath my neck, and pulled a blanket across my body. I wiggled my toes and let my feet fall open. I sighed. Then I waited for Holland Andrews to sing to me over the phone.

Dance show or sporting event? At the beginning of Abby Zbikowski’s exhilarating “Abandoned Playground,” which had its world premiere at Abrons Arts Center on Thursday, it’s not entirely clear. Nine dancers in uniforms of orange shorts, sneakers and heavy-duty kneepads — members of Ms. Zbikowski’s five-year-old company, Abby Z and the New Utility — warmed up on the stage of the Abrons playhouse with the focused energy of boxers preparing for a fight.

Some dance pieces begin as sparks of inspiration in the mind or heart of a choreographer. In fact, many dance works start this way. Others take shape around a particular performer. In these cases the character, movement language and essence of such a person becomes a choreographer’s raw material, and as such, the work cannot exist without said performer. This is the case in Robyn Orlin’s And so you see... our honourable blue sky and ever enduring sun... can only be consumed slice by slice, which will make its Israeli debut in Jerusalem as part of the Israel Festival. 

The South African choreographer Robyn Orlin has a long history of annoying people, but from talking to her, you would never know it. She is candid to a fault, thoughtful and rather adorably scattered. Her e-mails are filled with exclamation marks and signed with x’s, denoting kisses. And yet Ms.