Top 10 Shows I Didn't See This Year
A familiar, inescapable feeling has led me to resurrect this newsletter, which I last sent out no fewer than 374 days ago: regret! It’s “best of the year” list season, and the proliferation of roundups and reflections (including my own) inevitably gets me thinking about everything I didn’t see over the past 12 months. In our current chapter of the pandemic, there’s once again enough live performance happening in New York that, try as I might, I simply can’t see it all. Considering the upheaval of recent years, that abundance is actually worth celebrating, even as I mourn my scheduling conflicts and failures. But let’s not get too positive here; this list is about disappointment!
As with year-end lists that take stock of what the writer has seen, this one can’t claim to be comprehensive. There is plenty I wish I saw that’s not included below. I chose 10 performances that, of those I recall missing, I regret missing most, with the criteria for selection being how heavily my heart sinks when I imagine being asked, “Did you see [X show]?” and having to confess that I did not. For simplicity, I’ve geographically limited this exercise to New York City, though if I were to open it up, top contenders would include the provocative-sounding 90th-anniversary season opener at Jacob’s Pillow, America(na) to Me; Jean Butler’s What We Hold at the Dublin Theatre Festival (rumored to be coming soon to North America, fingers crossed); and Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring at Chicago’s Harris Theater, performed by a company of dancers from 14 African countries (this gorgeous review by Irene Hsiao might be the next best thing).
Perhaps this will become an annual New Year’s Eve tradition, but after four years of publishing and not publishing this newsletter, I’ve learned to resist my planning instincts and let things evolve as they may. For the moment, here, in chronological order, is my first and possibly last edition of “Top 10 Shows I Didn’t See This Year.”
Reggie Wilson, POWER1. Remember the great Omicron wave of January 2022? Yes, that was this year, and it was cresting just as Wilson’s always exhilarating Fist & Heel Performance Group came to BAM, with a work inspired by the 19th-century Black Shaker visionary Rebecca Cox Jackson. Feeling sick on the night I had planned to go (with what turned out not to be Covid), I erred on the side of caution and stayed in. Nearly a year later, still not sure that was the right choice.
Trinity Irish Dance Company. As a former competitive Irish dancer who looked up to this group in my teenage years, I remain intensely curious about what they’re up to. When I learned they’d be at the Joyce Theater in March, I was especially excited to see Kait Sardin, a new company member whose hip-hop / Irish dance mash-ups I’ve enjoyed watching on Instagram. Alas, this rare New York engagement coincided with a trip I had planned (and already postponed once, thanks to Omicron) to visit friends on the West Coast. Despite a lukewarm report on the show from a trusted colleague, I still wish I’d seen it for myself.
Mette Edvardsen, No Title. You know those friends who, when they tell you to go see something, you should always listen? I failed to do so when one such friend pointed me toward the Norwegian choreographer Mette Edvardsen’s first New York performances, in April, at the Williamsburg arts space Amant. I don’t recall why I couldn’t make it, though this was exactly one month before my wedding (I got married this year!) so most likely I was just feeling overwhelmed. My memory of not being there recently came flooding back thanks to Jennifer Krasinski’s must-read “The Year in Performance” for Artforum, in which she recounts the quiet magic of a piece that “unfolded and swallowed itself simultaneously.”
Jordan D. Lloyd, JEROME. In retrospect I feel like this show, presented on two early June evenings in the courtyard of a Bed-Stuy middle school, was the dance event of summer in New York. Missing it was an extra big bummer because it was happening just down the street from where I live. For a moment, I actually considered zipping back to the city from Massachusetts, where I was preparing for a post-wedding gathering at my sister’s house, then realized this would be logistically unwise. Fortunately, there are fabulous photos and a video of the full June 3 performance, which captures not just the dance but the whole vibe.
Jonathan González, PRACTICE. Sometimes you have to choose: Should I see this show, or that show? And sometimes, having chosen, you look back and wonder what you were thinking. Such was the case one night in mid-June when, instead of experiencing the rebellious revelry of this Lower East Side performance-party (which I glimpsed via the Instagram stories of those involved), I attended a different and almost certainly less interesting event just a few blocks away. To the friend who joined me, trusting my judgement: I’m sorry for leading us astray.
Benjamin Akio Kimitch, Tiger Hands. I wouldn’t trade anything for the month I spent in Chicago this summer (taking part in the Newberry Library’s enlightening NEH institute, Making Modernism — and taking care of two cats). But I wish I could have been in two places at once on the first weekend in August, when this work I’d long been awaiting — a critique of “East-meets-West” tropes with the wonderful cast of Pareena Lim, Julie McMillan Castellano, and Lai Yi Ohlsen — had its premiere at The Shed. In the absence of that superpower, I’m grateful for Candice Thompson’s detailed observations and insights in the Brooklyn Rail. (Let’s hear it for dance writers, right? And especially the Rail’s steadfast dance section.)
Meg Stuart, VIOLET. When I got an assignment to review back-to-back evenings of Fall for Dance, on the same weekend that Stuart’s intriguing Berlin-based company was in town, I knew that getting to NYU Skirball to see this 2011 work would be a stretch. In an effort to satisfy my curiosity, I texted two friends who were at the show, but they only made matters worse by reporting, independently, that it was “very 2011” and “very 2010.” What did this mean? I may never know.
David Thomson, VESSEL. In October, a dormant injury from my Irish dancing days decided to wake up and make itself known in the form of severe lower back pain — during one of the year’s busiest weeks for dance, of course. Heeding my body’s call to rest, I reluctantly cleared my dance-going calendar and resigned myself to lying flat on the floor as much as possible for a week. The good news: It worked! (I’m feeling much better.) The bad news: I missed a number of shows I really wanted to see, including Thomson’s installation at the Chocolate Factory, which sounded like the kind of meditation I needed at the time. Once again, I found some solace in reading the Rail, which published not one but two responses to the work, in a lovely double review by Nora Raine Thompson and Noa Weiss.
Lia Rodrigues, Encantado. Sometimes it’s a glowing review that makes you wish you had been there, like Candice Thompson’s vivid account of this Brazilian choreographer’s New York debut, which she called “playful and hypnotic in all its maximalist splendor.” A colleague familiar with Rodrigues had urged me to go (another person whose advice I should never ignore), but the two-night BAM engagement fell during a week overflowing with deadlines, and amid the chaos of having just adopted a dog. Still, reading Thompson, I regretted not finding a way.
Sally Silvers, Pandora’s New Cake Stain. As I reflect on missing this, just a few weeks ago, I think, “How did that happen?” Despite my admiration for Silvers and her phenomenal cast — Bria Bacon! Burr Johnson! Cori Kresge! Benedict Nguyen! Myssi Robinson! and so many more! — the necessary scheduling gymnastics eluded me. Generously, Roulette posts recordings of their events online, never a substitute for the real thing, but at least some consolation. Maybe I’ll take a look in the new year. For now, on the evening of December 31, it’s time for a real break.
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Assembling this list made me realize that one-word all-caps titles were big this year.