NYCB|Kammermusik-Le Tombeau du Couperin-Antique Epigraphs-Raymonda
Feb 2, 2026
LADDER
Feb 7, 2026
Photo by Eugene Golovesov on Unsplash
This year’s Under the Radar offerings spanned a wide aesthetic sphere. Here’s an overview of a handful of the pleasures found in this exploratory arts winter festival.
MAMI
Skirball Theater opened its doors and invited audiences into the imagistic, ancestral world devised by the Greek Albanian artist Mario Banushi. A microcosm of life is pressed from birth to death passed through images of women — perhaps representing a midwife, grandmother, wife, mother, child, and of a father and son or lover. Mami’s atmosphere features darkness often lit by one bulb or one source of light. Audio adds to the mosaic of elements including barking dogs, Albanian female vocals and the Greek Orthodox church lamentations heard at the Good Friday burial service. Never speaking, the actors nonetheless fashion a humanly majestic and haunting universe of love, strife, life, and death.
TRY/STEP/TRIP
Framed by the rhythmically compelling step dancing and rap infused lyrics; writer, composer, performer Dahlak Brathwaite’s Try/Step/Trip hops through a story of a young man busted for carrying marijuana and his experiences navigating the legal system. Animated by Brathwaite’s music, Toran X. Moore’s kinetically-charged choreography courses through the piece fusing step, and hip hop to club dance. The cast –led by a compelling and nimble Tyresse Shawn Avery — dance, sing, chant and speak truths to young black men balancing on the hot rails of American justice and manhood. Boisterously directed by Roberto Uno, the collection of actors assume multiple roles and comment, Greek chorus style, on the hero’s journey.
REFLECTIONS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
Whenever Roger Guenveur Smith is in town, I make an effort to attend his all-consuming performances. Ensconced in New York Theater Workshop’s small upstairs venue, Smith, a tall imposing man dressed in a dark suit, spins a tale of his time with the brilliant visual artist Jean Michel Basquiat. Told in first person, Smith met Basquiat when he was a rapper in California. What we learn about Basquiat that perhaps we did not know before, is the extent of his humanity, curiosity and sweetness.
Simply by shifting his demeanor, Smith assumes Basquiat’s lithe frame and breathy voice. Throughout the riveting one hour solo show, the audience gets a Black cultural history lesson, particularly one that flows through the great jazz artists of the bebop era. Music and art danced together in the 70’s and 80’s forging a visual poetry that resounded throughout the world. Although he only lived until the age of 28, Basquiat left an indelible mark on the art community and on Smith’s soul.
FORD HILL PROJECT
For many women, the Anita Hill hearings in 1991 forever changed the way they thought about physical and psychological harassment and abuse by men. The hearings also confirmed the difficulty women had — and would continue to have — being believed when asserting male misconduct. In this production, written by Elizabeth Marvel and Lee Sunday Evans and directed by Evans, a succinct 4 person cast assumed the roles of Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford , Cavanagh and Clarence Thomas. Both were brilliant women, articulately representing their story and remaining undaunted under hours of scrutiny and frequent inane questions.
Designed so that each woman would pull key passages from their testimony, they alternated, first one coming forward and then the next. That arrangement captured the ironic similarities divided by more than two and a half decades. It’s alarming. Elizabeth Marvel as Ford and Amber Iman as Hill, inject their roles with a genuine dignity, intelligence, poise and grace.
THE WOOSTER GROUP/ERIC BERRYMAN: GET YOUR ASS IN THE WATER AND SWIM LIKE ME
For a moment, I feared the actual piece would fail to rise above the shadow of the utterly compelling title. But in true Wooster Group fashion, the audience leaves mulling the amusing, and agitating ideas swimming around their heads. Positioned on the postage stamp size stage, Berryman and the excellent percussionist Jharis Yokley invite everyone on a journey, griot style, through toasts and poetry handed down from the Black oral tradition. The affably engaging Berryman starts by reminding everyone that the ancient Greeks were fascinated by kleos — “immortal fame” — attributed to a hero’s journey. This idea passes through raucous wedding and graduation toasts and risque poems punctuated by the hero’s journey. Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, Berryman consistently keeps people laughing and gulping.
EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis
