The American Dance Festival announced the lineup for their 2011 season this afternoon. While longtime dance goers will hardly be shocked at the number of usual suspects listed among its 14 mainstage presentations between June 9 and July 23, the news that, after 43 years, this summer will be co-director Charles Reinhart’s last with the festival should raise at least a few eyebrows across the dance world.

So, for that matter, might the festival’s choice for the 2011 Samuel H. Scripps Award: choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Despite an internationally celebrated career that has spanned 30 years and inspired festivals itself, the 2011 season marks the choreographer’s first performance—ever—at ADF. A check for $50,000 accompanying the award for a lifetime’s achievement sweetens the deal when her 27-year-old company, Rosas, debuts—at least, at ADF—with that group’s first work from 1983, Rosas dannst Rosas, June 10-12.

Others making their first ADF mainstage appearances during this summer's "Something New, Something Treasured" season include TAO Dance Theater, a young modern dance company from China (6/20-22), Israeli dance duo Yossi Berg & Oded Graf (6/14-15), and Taiwanese choreographer Blareyaung Pagarlava (7/18-20).

After her Pity Party and Various Stages of Drowning moved audiences last summer, we want to see the world premieres of Rosie Herrera’s Dining Alone (6/27-29), and a new work Martha Clarke will create on ADF dance students (7/18-20). Shen Wei is slated to present a world premiere that will display, according to press advances, “a new…side of [his] artistic skill” (7/14-16). The apparently immortal Paul Taylor debuts a new work, The Uncommitted (7/21-23), after Pilobolus presents the world premieres of three team-ups: with Butoh artist Takuya Muramatsu from Dairakudakan, the "engineers, programmers and pilots" at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)—and the Grammy-winning band OK Go (6/30-7/2).

Among notable reconstructions: Bill T. Jones remounts D-Man in the Waters, his 1989 work in honor of deceased company member Damien Acquavella, to live accompaniment by the Durham Symphony (6/16-18), before Dayton Contemporary Dance Company restages Donald McKayle’s 1959 masterpiece, Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder. (The company shows that work on a shared bill in which Ronald K. Brown and EVIDENCE presents their newest work, On Earth Together, to a Stevie Wonder soundtrack, June 23-25). Eiko & Koma continues their multi-year 40th anniversary celebration with a recreation of 1995’s River in Duke Gardens (7/5-6), and two associates of Twyla Tharp reconstruct Sweet Fields on ADF students (7/18-20), three years after Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s performance of it here in 2008.

Standouts among the other dates this summer include a performance of the complete Chapters from a Broken Novel, Doug Varone’s new work that audiences in Raleigh and Asheville saw tantalizing excerpts from in February (July 11-13). And after the austere dynamics of his 2009 mainstage duets, Emanuel Gat returns with his full company for the U.S. premiere of Brilliant Colors, July 7—9.

The season begins with a one-night benefit gala featuring African American Dance Ensemble, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performing Ohad Naharin, performance artist John Kelly performing Martha Clarke’s Pagliaccio—and Mark Dendy reprising his memorable solo performance as Martha Graham, June 9.

The full schedule appears after the break.

Quotes in each listing are taken from descriptions on the ADF’s website, americandancefestival.org. More coverage will follow, as the season approaches.

2011 Gala:
Mark Dendy, Scottish Dance Theater, Martha Clarke, African American Dance Ensemble, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
Thursday, June 9
DPAC
Benefit in celebration of Charles L. Reinhart's final season as ADF Director.
Mark Dendy: “channeling one of the ADF's founders, Martha Graham.”
Scottish Dance Theater: US premiere of Drift (2010), an “intense and highly physical duet that examines loneliness and the risk of full commitment.”
Martha Clarke: Pagliaccio (1980), “a candid and witty solo,” performed by performance artist John Kelly. African American Dance Ensemble: first section of Celebration, a “highly energetic work that celebrates traditional African dance and drumming”
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago: excerpt from Ohad Naharin's THREE TO MAX

Rosas
Rosas danst Rosas (1983)
Friday—Sunday, June 10—12
Reynolds Theater, Duke
Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: 2011 Samuel H. Scripps ADF Award Winner.
Award ceremony, Saturday night before the performance.
“Five physically intense ‘chapters’ will unravel the relationship between music and choreography and explore the complex interactions between uniformity and individuality.”

Yossi Berg & Oded Graf
Animal Lost (2010)
Tuesday, June 14 at 8 pm and Wednesday, June 15
Reynolds Theater, Duke
US premiere of 2005 Israeli group: “supremely physical, sometimes provocative, and always poignant dance works.” Animal Lost is a “wildly imaginative and, at times, comical exploration of stereotypes and social clichés.” Company’s “exceptionally technical dancers challenge the line between fantasy and reality, investigating relationships and self- discovery through compelling text, gestures, movement and song.”

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
D-Man in the Waters (1989), Spent Days Out Yonder (excerpt from 2000’s You Walk?)
Thursday—Saturday, June 16—18
DPAC
D-Man in the Waters (1989), honoring deceased company member Damien Acquavella, is a “living memory of Jones’ firsthand experience with death, and the resiliency of the human spirit.” Durham Symphony will provide live musical accompaniment in both works.

TAO Dance Theater
Weight X 3 (2009), 2 (2011)
Monday—Wednesday, June 20—22
Reynolds Theater, Duke
US debut for quickly rising Chinese modern dance company, whose work reaches “highest level of technical virtuosity,” and “challenges all previous conceptions of modern dance.”
Weight X 3 (2009): “permeated with concepts of physicality and humanity”
2 (2011): set to a score “from the rhythms of spoken and written word,” “investigates the natural progression of movement as it abounds without limitations.”

EVIDENCE: On Earth Together (2011), Grace (1999)
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company: Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder (1959), Vespers (1986)
June 23—25
DPAC
DCDC: Donald McKayle’s masterpiece Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder (1959) “a sorrowful glimpse into the lost hope of men on a chain gang as they yearn for their freedom”; Ulysses Dove’s Vespers (1986), “captures the soul and deep spirituality of the women in Southern churches.”
EVIDENCE: On Earth Together (2011), latest work, set to Stevie Wonder

Rosie Herrera
Dining Alone (2011), Pity Party (new version of 2010 work)
June 27—29
Reynolds Theater, Duke
World premiere of ADF commissioned work. See her remarks on Dining Alone in our interview from last summer.

Pilobolus
Untitled (1975), world premieres of Seraph, All Is Not Lost and an untitled work
June 30—July 2
DPAC
Company’s 40th anniversary. Untitled “examines the profound relationship between men and women.” Three world premieres:
1. Collaboration with Japanese Butoh artist, Takuya Muramatsu, longtime associated with Dairakudakan
2. Seraph, collaboration with MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) under the direction of Daniela Rus, “investigates the relationship between human and machine”
3. All Is Not Lost, “live companion” to Pilobolus' “video collaboration” with OK Go. Work explores “perspectives, gravity, and dimensionality through a kaleidoscopic view of human connection.”

Eiko & Koma
River (1995)
July 5-6 at 9:15 pm
Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Duo’s 40th anniversary celebration continues. Artists perform in a stream, in a work that "transcends... previous notions of life and time and challenges the relationship of audience to artist."

Emanuel Gat Dance
Brilliant Corners (2011)
July 7—9 at 8 pm
DPAC
US premiere of work inspired by Thelonius Monk’s 1957 album of the same name — although Monk’s music does not appear in the piece. Original score by Gat. A “choreographic playground” which “investigates the human and mechanical forces that create what is seen onstage.”

Doug Varone and Dancers
Chapters from a Broken Novel (2011)
July 11—13 at 8 pm
Reynolds Theater, Duke
Company’s 25th anniversary continues. Complete performance of “22 vignettes inspired by Artistic Director Doug Varone’s collection of phrases, photos, quotes, and overheard conversations.” See our February interview with the choreographer for more details.

Shen Wei Dance Arts
unnamed world premiere
July 14— 16 at 8 pm
DPAC
Shen Wei “ infuses his riveting and timeless movement vocabulary with the use of new artistic mediums,” in a premiere that “will show a new and undoubtedly captivating side of Shen Wei’s artistic skill.”

Past/Forward:
Sweet Fields (Twyla Tharp, 1996) and world premieres by Martha Clarke and Bulareyaung Pagarlava
July 18—20 at 8 pm
Reynolds Theater, Duke
This series sets historic reconstructions and new works on ADF School students.

Paul Taylor Dance Company
The Uncommitted (world premiere), Promethean Fire (2002), Company B (1991)
July 21-23
DPAC