Dance Magazine Fall Preview Critics' Choice 2002 and calendar: September 1-November 30

Dance Magazine, Sept, 2002

Oct 16-20, 24-27, Pennsylvania Ballet, Merriam Theatre, 250 S Broad St, 215/336-2000

Oct 17-19, MOMIX, Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center

Nov 7-9, Compania Nacional de Danza, Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center

Nov 21-23, Philadanco, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

New York

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes has been writing about dance for the New York Post, The New York Times, the London Times, Dance and Dancers, for fifty-two years.

JOYCE THEATER, SEPTEMBER 24-October 13, 212/ 242-0800. Opening of 2002-03 season with MOMIX. This popular "Son-of-Pilobolus" company, directed by its founder and choreographer, Moses Pendleton, one of the Pilobolean co-founders, is staging popular works from its repertoire, such as Opus Cactus. It is also offering the New York premiere of Momix in Orbit, described in publicity materials as "an evolving stratosphere of cosmic pleasure, in which time and space are lost in an ethereal realm of dreamlike shadow and motion." God knows what that means, other than "fasten your seatbelts."

October 8-13, City Center, 212/581-1212. Although Manhattan is home to two of the world's greatest classic companies, it rarely gets visits from other classic U.S. troupes. Thus the return of Helgi Tomasson's San Francisco Ballet is a major New York event. Tomasson's company brings three different programs, most of them New York premieres. These include, on the first night, Yuri Possokov's Damned, Christopher Wheeldon's Continuum (another of Wheeldon's ongoing explorations into the music of Gyorgy Ligeti), and Mark Morris's subtly riotous Sandpaper Ballet. In subsequent programs Morris's A Garden, Julia Adam's Night, and Tomasson's Chaconne for Piano and Two Dancers all make their bow with other works by Balanchine, Tomasson, and William Forsythe.

October 15-27, City Center, 212/581-1212. American Ballet Theatre's annual Fall Season. This is the season where ABT shows off its smaller-scaled repertoire, as opposed to the works suitable for the Metropolitan Opera House or other large venues. This year it will include new ballets by James Kudelka, Robert Hill, and Lar Lubovitch; revivals of Jerome Robbins's Fancy Free and Other Dances; Martha Clarke's The Garden of Villandry; and a rare revival of Antony Tudor's Offenbach in the Underworld.

October 15-20, Joyce Theatre, 212/242-0800. Stephen Petronio Company. Petronio's new program showcases the world premiere of City of Twist, which the company describes as "a suite of fantastically skewed dances inspired by the complexity and flavor of New York City and the characters who inhabit it." The program includes a new solo for Petronio himself called Broken Man, and Strange Attractors Part II, a work premiered during the company's Joyce season in 2000.

October 16-19, BAM Harvey Theatre, 718/636-4100. Part of Brooklyn Academy of Music's 20th Next Wave Festival. Ballet Preljocaj presents two U.S. premieres from Angelin Preljocaj: Helikopter, set to Stockhausen's Helikopter Quartett, and his far more controversial version of The Rite of Spring.