Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – A big week for contemporary dance: SONYA TAYEH, BILL T. JONES, and SARAH MICHELSON unveil notable new works

• By drediman
• September 18, 2026
• No Comments

This week was a big one for contemporary dance, headlined by the unveiling of new works — each performed in bespoke spaces — by major choreographers Sonya Tayeh, Bill T. Jones, and Sarah Michelson. As per usual, here are my thoughts on these notable New York premieres.

THE SURGE: AN ODE TO SINÉAD O’CONNOR
The Joyce Theater
Through September 27

This week, The Joyce Theater’s fall season kicked off with Sonya Tayeh’s full length piece The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor (RECOMMENDED). As the title indicates, the work is an homage to the life and uncompromising spirit of Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 56. Co-produced by Factory International and first seen in Manchester this past June, the 75-minute piece is set to a parade of O’Connor’s songs — dispersed between segments of pointed interviews with the singer — and designed for a cast of ten female dancers. Refreshingly both indifferent and conscious of age, the performances register both on an individual level and as an ensemble, reflecting both a tight knit community, as well as the multitudes contained within. Throughout, Tayeh’s choreography is both accessible yet deeply personal, expressing the complexity and range of the human experience. It’s this mix of emotional transparency and commercial precision and polish that proved to be the winning recipe that snagged Tayeh a Tony Award for her choreography for the Broadway musical Moulin Rouge! There’s also something inherently spiritual about the piece, as directly indicated by the use of church pews — which create various spacial configurations over the course of the evening — on and around which the dance was created. Tom Visser’s atmospheric lighting also contributes to the haunting, almost ghostly quality of the production, which seems to simultaneously transpire on various planes of existence.

NOWHERE
Museum of Modern Art
Through October 11

Also opening this past week was contemporary dance choreographer Sarah Michelson’s ambitious residency at the Museum of Modern Art. Entitled nowhere (RECOMMENDED), the conceptually expansive project is nothing less than a meditation on the very essence of dance. Both casually inviting — on its first day, unsuspecting museum guests stumbled upon the piece — and choreographically rigorous, it’s an endeavor that blurs the lines between private rehearsal and public performance. Performed continuously during the museum’s opening hours, the durational experience necessarily comes in and out of focus, drawing in patient viewers in with quirky details and giddy happenstance occurrences. As a clear homage to the sad death of cultural icon Dolly Parton, much of the my two-hour viewing on opening day was set to the instantly recognizable beats of the country singer’s hit single “9 to 5” (the song selection was also a cheeky reference to the marathon-like length of each day’s work at MoMA). In nowhere, Michelson acts as both ring leader and performer — she’s joined by a continuously-changing cast of both young and established dancers, all extraordinarily committed and game for the invariable surprises that come their way — shaping the experience with the spirit of adventurous experimentation and the acknowledgement of the acutely ephemeral nature of dance. I look forward to revisiting nowhere at some point later on in its run to inspect how it’s evolved and changed.

CURRICULUM IV: SPIN AND SPIN! TURN! TURN! TURN!
New York Live Arts / LMCC’s River to River Festival
Closed

Last weekend, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company unveiled Curriculum IV: Spin and Spin! Turn! Turn! Turn! (RECOMMENDED) at the outdoor amphitheater in Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park in Battery Park City. Set against the stunning backdrop of New York Harbor during sunset — with the Statue of Liberty glowing on the horizon like beacon — Bill T. Jones’s piece is a layered meditation on 9/11 on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. More specifically, the full length piece is an abstract response to a non-performance that was originally set to have premiered on September 12, 2001 under the Twin Towers. Co-commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New York Live Arts as a free-of-charge performance, Curriculum IV was the culminating event of the 2026 edition of the LMCC’s annual River to River festival. Like the other entries of Jones’s “Curriculum” series, the work is ensemble-driven that relies on the company’s diversity, as well as gestural movements whose repetition conveys ever-evolving meaning. This fourth installment is less overtly political than its predecessors, instead defiantly looking beyond anxiety to focus on our shared humanity in the face of immense danger, and our capacity to move on and remember — albeit through the lens of our own complicated times. The production featured Samora Pinderhughes’ original patchwork score — played and sung live, beautifully — itself a knotted reaction to the simple sentiments of Pete Seeger’s classic folk/pop song “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)”.