Mary Seidman does not believe in downsizing. At a time when so many are thinking small and scaling back, she is presenting an expansive new dance work tackling weighty themes with an original score and a cast of 40. You’ve got to admire the vision—and the chutzpah. There are so many collaborators and performers involved in Seidman’s MAMA, a modern folktale that the information barely fits on the large postcard about the event. To embody her imposing theme of the death and regeneration of the earth and its resources, she has enlisted a multi-generational, all-female cast. Leading the way are seven estimable dancers with considerable resumes, who are joined by seven members of Seidman’s company, a group of high school sophomore dance students from LaGuardia High School, eight-and 10-year-old students from the Mark Morris Dance Center (where Seidman teaches) and cameo appeaances by others, including several infants. Read more

FELA! Through Sept. 21. 37 Arts, 450 W. 37 St. (at 10th Ave.), 212-560-8912; $51.25 to Aug. 31; then $76.25. One of the more memorable recent Tony Award moments was Bill T. Jones joyfully dancing his way up to the stage to accept his 2007 award for choreographing Spring Awakening. A determinedly individual and often leading controversial figure in the contemporary dance world for nearly 30 years, Jones has crossed over into theater on several occasions—notably his work on Will Powers Read more

Brand-new works highlight each of the three programs Pilobolus is performing at the Joyce Theater, where a loyal and responsive audience welcomes it every summer. But you won’t find a better example of the magic, sensuality and imagination of this unique troupe than the second half of Program 3, which consists of two older pieces. Symbiosis, one of the finest duets in the company’s repertory, is Michael Tracy’s spellbindingly inventive exploration of the cantileverings and wrap Read more

For his latest work, Spanish Wells, choreographer Nicholas Leichter not only makes a connection between Claude Debussy and Amy Winehouse but also locates a “1960s vibe” that confirms his unusual musical juxtaposition. As the seven dancers cluster and clamber, twist and shudder, with visceral force and sinewy tension during a rehearsal in his Chelsea studio, the alternation between the lush deluge of Debussy’s La Mer and raw, bluesy selections from Winehouse’s Back to Blac Read more

Susan Marshall’s idea of a sandbox is hardly a place for innocent child-like play. In one section of Frame Dances—her performance-installation work-in-progress having its initial showings this week—she has Kristin Hollinsworth and Joseph Poulson crammed into a 4-by-4-foot wooden frame filled with sand in which they nestle, squirm and grope like some odd prehistoric life form. For a moment they seem to be cuddling, but then more ominous overtones intrude. Frame Dances is a ve Read more

Tanks under trees is a convergence of spoken word, dance, plastic arts and music that will test the limits of all of these various mediums. Even more provocatively, it will be performed in the Soho loft where choreographer Douglas Dunn has lived and worked for over 30 years. The salon evening is not just postmodern redux; the informal setting calls for experimentation. The close, contained space is like a “mini-arena,” Dunn says. “We’re all in this together.” The tw Read more

“It’s like a German nightclub,” one guy says as we’re herded into a white circle outline marked on the floor of the dark, open space of the Daryl Roth Theater. Sure, I think, as the techno beats pump through the fog-filled room, except none of us were prepared to go dancing, or to be smashed together in an uncomfortable ring in the dark. Fuerzabruta (meaning “brute force”) is the inevitable follow-up to De La Guarda, the interactive theater experience that ran Read more