The program includes two classics of nineteen-forties Americana: “Appalachian Spring,” Graham’s modernist masterpiece with its sound-of-America Aaron Copland score, and a revival of “Rodeo,” Agnes de Mille’s more conventional Western-themed breakthrough, with its Copland score rearranged for a bluegrass band. These are answered with a première by Jamar Roberts, formerly with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and now freelance. His “We the People” is a protest dance, alternating between struggles in silence and frontal assaults, with fists raised, propelled by the banjo and fiddle music of Rhiannon Giddens, who is known for reclaiming the legacy of Black string bands. It includes much of the America that the other works left out.—Brian Seibert (New York City Center; April 17-20.)
ABOUT TOWN
This story is from the April 22 - 29, 2024 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the April 22 - 29, 2024 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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Thataway Thomas McGuane
The two sisters were growing old now, but they went on gazing toward Palm Springs from this windblown prairie town as though to Mecca.
THE CURRENT CINEMA APOCALYPSE WHEN
“Megalopolis.”
THE THEATRE - PHOTO REALISM
Moisés Kaufman's Here There Are Blueberries.”
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The love songs of Billie Eilish.
FAMILY PORTRAIT
In his latest novel, Garth Risk Hallberg shrinks his frame.
EYES UP HERE
The perils and pleasures of a nice rack.
A CRITIC AT LARGE SAY THE WORD
Why liberals struggle to defend liberalism.
A REPORTER AT LARGE YOU MAKE ME SICK
How corporate scientists discovered—and then helped to conceal—the dangers of forever chemicals.
THE WORLD OF TELEVISION CASTOFFS
REALITY-TV CONTESTANTS ARE BARELY PAID, AND THE EXPERIENCE CAN FEEL LIKE ABUSE. SHOULD THEY UNIONIZE?
SHOUTS & MURMURS IDENTIFIED
A panel of scientific experts commissioned by NASA to study unidentified anomalous phenomena,” more widely known as UFOs, said Thursday that it found no evidence that any of the reported objects were extraterrestrial in origin.