13 dance events to attend this winter

With the start of a new year comes the emergence of colorful and inventive dance productions, created by companies from both near and far away. Boston will see some world premieres, including selections from Boston Ballet’s “Winter Experience,” as well as local debuts, like Ashwini Ramaswamy’s “Let the Crows Come.” You’ll be able to experience a range of performances onstage, from narratives about healing to a soulful work featuring spiritual music. Whether you enjoy flamboyant flamenco, explorations of Afrofuturism, or seeing a fairytale come to life, there are many dance events to watch this season.

A company “that celebrates tap’s connections to Afro-Brazilian music and dance,” Music From The Sole was founded by dancer-choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and composer-musician Gregory Richardson in 2015. The group brings “I Didn’t Come to Stay” to Boston for its debut in the city, and the work will showcase tap dance’s relationship to jazz, Brazilian funk, samba and house styles. Featuring eight dancers and a five-piece band, the performance will honor the “joy, strength, depth and virtuosity of Black dance and music.” “I Didn’t Come to Stay” was previously recognized on the New York Times’ “Best Dance Performances of 2022” list.

MOMIX, a dance company based in Connecticut, strives to take audience members to a surreal fantasy world and use the power of dance and illusion to transport and enchant. Spectators who attend “Alice” at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre will enter a whimsical realm inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” taking in the story’s famed characters, from white rabbits to the enigmatic caterpillar, to the Queen of Hearts. The show, created by MOMIX founder and artistic director Moses Pendleton, merges illusion with acrobatics, imagination and more.

A crow can serve as a symbol, “a messenger between life and death, transcending space and time,” in works of art like Ashwini Ramaswamy’s “Let the Crows Come.” Ramaswamy navigates that metaphor, along with the themes of “memory, dislocation, [and] ancestry,” in the production’s Boston premiere. It will explore Indian classical dance, while also putting the spotlight on two other female artists from different backgrounds: Alanna Morris’ Afro-Caribbean Modern style, and Berit Ahlgren’s Gaga technique created by Ohad Naharin.

Alexandria Nunweiler with The Click, a Massachusetts contemporary dance collaborative, has created “Edge of Aquarius,” a dance and theater production that is something of a birthday party. For the show, The Foundry’s black box theater will be designed to look like a family living room, while party favors will be handed out. Performers will tell stories inspired by real experiences through movement. Overall, the work will look at “the evolution of birthday traditions, values, and expectations,” according to a press release, which also confirms that “cake is involved.”

NATyA Dance Collective will introduce viewers to a suite of pieces that address the idea of healing through dance, poetry and music. The performance aims to examine how we find ourselves as individuals and human beings during difficult times, reaching for joy and resilience while the world endures suffering. “Radical Love: A Collective Movement” will expand on these concepts through “Bharatanatyam, folk dance, contemporary storytelling, a Sikh shabad, and the live music of acclaimed singer/songwriter Anju.” NATyA Dance Collective was founded by Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan, originating with classes in 2015.

Award-winning movement artist Shamel Pitts, together with his Brooklyn-based arts collective TRIBE, created a multidisciplinary performance inspired by Afrofuturism, “BLACK HOLE.” Three Black performers will undergo a journey, beginning in a black hole that is described as a “metaphorical place of transformation and potential.” According to the event description, the dancers will be enveloped in a “soundscape of original music, sound samples and spoken word,” as they deliver a narrative of growth and empowerment. Video projections and stark lighting will accompany the hour-long work.

Boston Ballet’s “Winter Experience” program will feature three distinct performances, collectively presenting contemporary and classical mixed repertoire. Together, the works aim to portray the evolution of dance. The first oeuvre is “2B One,” a world premiere and the seventh work of choreographer Helen Pickett. The ballet will be set to music from Mikael Karlsson and draws inspiration from the themes of community, tenacity, courage and individuality. It will be performed by 11 dancers.

“Petal,” another creation from Pickett, is a vibrant and hopeful ballet that is set to the music of Philip Glass and Thomas Montgomery Newman. According to the Boston Ballet’s website, the work is a “sensory experience of motion, light and music” and will emphasize dancers’ relationships with “each other and themselves through sweeping movements and non-traditional partnering.” The work was originally commissioned for a 2007 Boston Ballet workshop as a 10-minute piece.

The final performance, “Raymonda,” is Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen’s re-imagining of Marius Petipa’s work of the same name. The world premiere of this one-act ballet will captivate viewers with classical technique, exquisite costumes and a beautiful score from late Russian Romantic composer Alexander Glazunov. Rechoreographed sections are by Nissinen, Florence Clerc and Alla Nikitina.

The romantic French ballet “Giselle,” set to music by Adolphe Adam, will unfold a ghost-filled story at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. At the tale’s center is Giselle, a peasant girl who falls in love with a disguised nobleman and dies of heartbreak when his identity and deceptions are revealed. She joins the Willis, a group of vengeful female spirits who have been betrayed by their lovers. Dancers will be clad in exquisite costumes from Ukrainian fashion designer Malva Verbitskaya. The Grand Kyiv Ballet will donate a portion of proceeds from the show to support renovation efforts of the Kyiv State Choreographic College in Ukraine.

For four nights, Flamenco Festival 2024 will showcase the varied “emotions and styles” exhibited in the Spanish art form. On March 2, José Fernández Torres, a multiple Grammy Award-winner known as Tomatito, will play guitar with the support of a full ensemble and accompanied by guest dancer Karime Amaya. The show will take place at the Berklee Performance Center.

Celebrated dancer, choreographer and director Alfonso Losa will perform “Espacio Creativo,” also at the Berklee Performance Center on March 9. Lauded as “the most genuine current representative of the Madrid school of flamenco dance and the necessary bridge between the masters and the new generation,” according to Global Arts Live’s website, Losa will take the stage with guest dancer Concha Jareño.

For the intergenerational performance “Gala Flamenca,” held on March 10, several of Spain’s most celebrated dancers in the flamenco world will come to the Berklee Performance Center. Two acclaimed stars, Manuel Liñán and Alfonso Losa, will be joined by rising performers El Yiyo and Paula Comitre. A full music ensemble, which will include guest singer Sandra Carrasco, will accompany the dance, which promises to be fiery and full of passion and power.

The festival closes on March 13 with a show from singer María José Llergo at the Somerville Theatre’s Crystal Ballroom. The musician has a new voice in the contemporary flamenco scene that has been called “authentic, modern and original.”

The San Francisco-based, American contemporary ballet company Alonzo King LINES Ballet will perform the Boston premiere of the work “Deep River.” The production is a soulful creation, a collaboration between master choreographer Alonzo King, Grammy Award-winning vocalist Lisa Fischer and jazz pianist Jason Moran that uses spiritual music from Black, Jewish and Indian traditions. The company was formed in 1982 by King, who calls his works “‘thought structures’ created by the manipulation of energies that exist in matter through laws, which govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists.”

An ethereal, graceful production of “Cinderella” comes to Boston to regale audiences with the fairytale of a young woman who transcends hardships and experiences the realization of her dreams. The classic fable is told in three acts and is set to a stunning score by Sergei Prokofiev. The iconic choreography comes from Sir Frederick Ashton, one of the most influential 20th-century dancers and choreographers. Sets from Toer van Schayk and costumes designed by Christine Haworth will be brand new to Boston spectators.

Boston and Chicago-based artist Jessi Stegall presents “The Theremin Vignettes,” a tribute to Clara Rockmore, a Lithuanian-Jewish woman and theremin virtuoso who made great advancements for electronic music. The production blends ballet and contemporary styles, gesture, and spoken word, performed by a group of 11 dancers. The choreographic vignettes will be set to Rockmore’s arrangements of classic theremin scores and explore ideas of “grief, remembrance and devotion.”

Jean Appolon Expressions, a contemporary dance company in Boston with a deep connection to Haitian-folkloric culture, will perform “An n Ale.” The program is comprised of three pieces grounded in a message of collective healing: “Ginen,” an excerpt of “Traka,” explores historical trauma; improvisational performance “Black Is Black” plays with Haitian folkloric rhythms and movements; and the new work “Petro” illustrates the “strength of Haitians’ spirits and the way Haitians immerse themselves in the Haitian Vodou tradition,” according to the event listing.