Sun, sand, and Beach Birds.
The ninth annual Beach Sessions Dance Series mixes choreography and nature at Rockaway Beach on Saturday, Aug. 26, at 5:45 pm.
With the Atlantic Ocean and maybe even a few dolphins as the backdrop, spectators will watch a new arrangement of Merce Cunningham’s 1991 Beach Birds and a response by choreographer Sarah Michelson.
Cunningham was 70 when he used the day’s software to create Beach Birds as a distinctively naturalistic and fluid dance. At the time, he said: “I had three things in mind: one was birds, obviously, or animals or whatever, but also humans on the beach and also one of the things that I love so much on shores – the way you are looking at a rock and you go around it, and it looks different each time, as though it were alive too.”
Beach Birds had a second run in 1993 with Elliot Caplan’s Beach Birds for Camera film. Now on Aug. 26, the work gets another adaptation with Patricia Lent, Rashaun Mitchell, and a cast of 11 dancers who will release birds.
Michelson, who has been creating dances in New York since the early 1990s, will build on her connection to Cunningham and his legacy as a frame.
Admission is free, and the stage is simply the sand at Beach 108th Street. The nearest landmark is the Beach 106 Street Food Concession on the Boardwalk. If going by public transportation, take the Rockaway Ferry to Beach 108th Street or the Far Rockaway-bound A train to Broad Channel and transfer to the S shuttle to Beach 105th Street.
Sasha Okshteyn founded Beach Sessions in 2015 to introduce outdoor dance to the Rockaways — and the Rockaways to outdoor dancers. This year’s effort is co-produced by Morgan Griffin.
Bonus Films
Warm up for Beach Sessions with short dance films — all inspired by and created on beaches – at Arverne Cinema, 72-02 Gouverneur Ave., on Friday, Aug. 25, at 8 pm.
The line-up features the 1993 Beach Birds for Camera, Maya Deren’s At Land (1944), Simone Forti’s Zuma News, LA (2013), excerpts from Carolyn Brown’s Dune Dance (1981), and Madeline Hollander’s Arena filmed at Beach Sessions 2017.
Images: Beach Sessions