Lauren Wingenroth

The morning after the premiere of Mark Dendy's Whistleblower at Dixon Place comes disturbing news that the military is forcing transwoman and former intelligence office Chelsea Manning to follow male grooming standards while imprisoned. Dendy's timing is lucky. His piece explores Manning's mind as she faces charges for leaking almost one million documents containing evidence of war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though Manning's case already feels like history in some ways, Dendy reminds us that its personal and political meanings are still urgent.

Sometimes theater magic is used so greedily that it becomes entirely unmagical. The succession of unrelated illusions comprising MOMIX's Alchemia, created by artistic director Moses Pendleton, had such an effect, sacrificing sincerity and substance for the sake of shock and spectacle.

In the wake of Julie Kent's Saturday retirement performance of 'Romeo and Juliet' emerges American Ballet Theatre's week-long run of 'Swan Lake' - their first production without the talents of their three recently retired superstars: Kent, Paloma Herrera, and Xiomara Reyes. Now one of only two American principal ballerinas, Gillian Murphy led the Monday night production as Odette/Odile, bringing new subtlety to the role.

Who knew that lodged in a Red Hook warehouse is a porthole to the deep south? Mary John Frank's wild and detail-driven imagination transports participants who must be called party-goers, not audience members, to the world of Debutaunte, a world that feels as real and full-bodied as any of the high-budget immersive theater projects trending on New York streets in recent years.

Books are the structure around which Mark Dendy's NEWYORKnewyork @ Astor Place is built. The cramped Joe's Pub stage is set with an abstracted skyline of books, soon to be destroyed by Mei Yamanaka as she embodies the forces of gentrification that Dendy not-so-subtly suggests are destroying our twice-named city. The piece itself is painstakingly researched, pulling together historical moments from 1848 to the present to tell the story of the Astor Place Library (where the Public Theater now sits), a story intertwined with the artists and activists it housed, displaced, informed, and inflamed.

Though formulaic, Fall for Dance programs, presented each fall at New York City Center with the universal ticket price of $15, tend to succeed in including a diverse set of voices. Program 4 fulfilled this expectation, featuring works by Brian Brooks Moving Company, Tim Harbour, Benjamin Millipied, and Dr. Rennie Harris. The evening was delightfully varied in both the styles danced and the experiences represented. One important exception dampened this program and the festival as a whole--the lack of work by women choreographers, a disappointing but not unusual exclusion.