Cocktail Party Fact: Some critics have been loathe to consider many of Alwin Nikolais’s pieces as dance works, since the props often fully cover the body of the dancers.
Here’s the plot: A dazzling fabric tent, capable of assuming many shapes, is ceremoniously erected by the dancers, and in the end plummets down on top of [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: As opposed to most classical ballets, Summerspace attempts to build a horizontal rather than a vertical line of movement throughout.
Here’s the plot: The dancers are like winged insects in a summer landscape. The entire dance is a play with space and movement. It attempts to focus on continuous motion rather than beginnings [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Revelations is generally greeted with such enthusiasm because of the contagious spiritual fervor this piece exudes that an encore is in order. A part of the dance was also performed at President Clinton’s inauguration.
Here’s the plot: To the melody of black spirituals, Revelations is a history of American blacks in dance, full [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Although this ballet was first performed in 1917, it was not until the 1973 performance at the City Center Joffrey Ballet that a home grown ballerina was cast in the part of The American Girl.
Here’s the plot: Circus performers try without success to attract the public to their performance. Characters include The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Audiences were surprised and sometimes outraged at the initial performances of Le Sacre du Printemps. One ballerina reported that she could hardly hear the music and hence nearly missed her cues due to all the disapproving hissing and supportive clapping that came from the audience.
Here’s the plot: This ballet details the rebirth [...]

Here’s The Plot: A proletarian couple caricatured in their humble and garish dwelling. He only wishes to sip his beer while she is driven to sartorial and romantic excesses approved by popular culture. Wilson’s stage design includes numerous large plastic objects which repeatedly engage the couple’s exaggerated interest for a short while and then are [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins used this ballet as the basis of Robbins’ first musical, On the Town, which appeared in the same year.
Here’s the plot: The scene is a side street bar in Manhattan. The barkeeper is tending bar when three sailors race in. They knock about, chewing gum and waiting [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: When it premiered, Aureole was called “the white ballet” for the white costumes of the performers. A combination of ballet and modern, the work was a little shocking because it used technique and ideas rejected by the modern dance community.
Here’s the plot: Aureole is loosely broken down into five sections with five [...]

The mission of The Joyce Theater Foundation is to serve and support the art of dance and choreography, to promote the richness and variety of the art form in its fullest expression, and to enhance the public interest in, and appreciation of, dance and the allied arts of music, design and theater.
The [...]