Fall Arts Preview
• Fall Visual Art
• Fall Stage
• Fall Dance
• Fall Comedy
• Fall Literary
• Fall Film
• Fall Music
From ballet and bellydance to Bollywood, the fall dance season is bursting with options. Here’s a sampling:
The fourth Trans-Q Live!, a queer evening of dance, poetry, film and music, visits The Andy Warhol Museum on Sept. 15. Dance performers include #kNOwSHADE, Gia T. Cacalano and Moriah Ella Mason. On Sept. 29, Cacalano joins slowdanger for imprints, at SPACE Gallery.
Attack Theatre opens its 23rd season with its recurring program Some Assembly Required, Sept. 21-22 at Contemporary Craft, and Sept. 23 at Braddock’s UnSmoke Systems Artspace. On Dec. 1-3, at Pittsburgh Opera’s George R. White Studio, the company premieres In Defense of Gravity, inspired by the poetry of Pittsburgh’s Jimmy Cvetic. Also on Sept. 22: world-touring America’s Got Talent finalist iLuminate shows off its fusion of glow-in-the-dark technology and dance at the Byham Theater; Beats Antique, featuring bellydance star Zoe Jakes, performs at Mr. Small’s; and The Pillow Project/The Ellipses Condition presents the third installment of The Invisible Jazz Labs series, blending dance and physics, at The Space Upstairs (series concludes Oct. 27).
On Sept. 23 and 24, global bellydance sensation Sadie Marquardt performs at The Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, in Carnegie. Texture Contemporary Ballet’s sixth season continues Sept. 29-Oct. 1, at the New Hazlett Theater, with Boundless; on Nov. 4, at the Carnegie Stage, Texture presents the 10th installment of its WIP Choreography Project.
Celebrating its 70th anniversary, LADO: National Folk Dance Ensemble of Croatia performs Oct. 5 at the Byham. Also at the Byham, on Oct. 7, Pittsburgh Dance Council opens its season with San Francisco’s Alonzo King LINES Ballet, followed by the return of Pittsburgh native and MacArthur genius grant-winner Kyle Abraham and his company Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion in a program of repertory works at the August Wilson Center (Nov. 10 and 11).
On Oct. 8, at the New Hazlett, Millennium Dance Complex presents Ascendance, a dance showcase featuring local troupes fireWALL Dance Theatre, Exhalations Dance Theatre and more.
The Kelly-Strayhorn Theater’s season opens Oct. 13 and 14 with Minneapolis-based contemporary Indian-American company Ananya Dance Theatre in Shyamali: Sprouting Words, and continues with “Crutch Master” Bill Shannon’s residency showing (Oct. 23), and Balafon West African Dance’s Black River Dance Festival (Oct. 27 and 28). At KST’s Alloy Studios, on Dec. 1, choreographer Maree ReMalia, New York-based video artist Gigi Gatewood, and Washington, D.C.-based dancer Lillian Cho present a preview of Off the Record; and on Dec. 15 and 16, there’s fôr, a collaboration between slowdanger and NYC’s MICHIYAYA Dance.
Point Park University’s Conservatory Dance Company kicks off its new season Oct. 13-15 with the annual Student Choreography Project. On Nov. 15-19, also at the university’s George Rowland White Performance Studio, the company presents Contemporary Choreographers, featuring rising star Kate Skarpetowska. And Dec. 1-10, the student troupe presents its Winter Dance Concert, featuring works by Adam Hougland and dance legend Lucinda Childs, at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre opens its 48th season Halloween weekend with Dracula (Oct. 27-29), and on Dec. 1-27 reprises The Nutcracker— both at the Benedum Center. And on Oct. 29, Pearl Arts Studios presents slowdanger and New York-based Davalois Fearson.
On Nov. 4, at the Byham, ballet and juggling come together in world-touring British troupe Gandini Juggling’s 4 x 4 Ephemeral Architectures. On Nov. 9-12, at Carnegie Stage, Moriah Ella Mason reprises her recent smash hit, Sex Werque. Bodiography opens its new season Nov. 18 at the Byham with The Messiah, in conjunction with La Roche College, and follows on Dec. 1 with Unblemished Disclosure, at The Frick Museum. And on Nov. 18, nationally touring tappers SOLE Defined perform at Shady Side Academy’s Hillman Center.