Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With summer around the corner, yes, soon enough we'll be complaining about the heat. We're going to focus on some of the great things summer brings to our culture calendars. Today, we're zeroing in on dance with Marina Harss who put together a dance preview for the New Yorkers goings on about town section. She also contributes to the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Dance Magazine, and other publications and is the author of the book, The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky's Life in Ballet. Marina Harss, welcome back to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Marina Harss: Thank you, Brian. It's nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with Lincoln Center and their annual Summer for the City festival where I see all sorts of dancing will be going on on stages and on the plaza. Can you give us some of the highlights?

Marina Harss: Yes. This is a new-ish feature at Lincoln Center, and it's an opportunity to not just watch dance, but take part. It evolved from Midsummer Night Swing, one of the more wonderful institutions in New York. What they do is they set up this big dance floor in the middle of Lincoln Center with a giant disco ball. Almost every night it seems, they have either bands or DJs for dance parties, and there are dance classes as well, and it's free. It's really a wonderful way to enjoy that part of town.

Brian Lehrer: That is cool. Some of it I see will be indoors, July 11th and 12th at the Rose Theater, the big space at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Marina Harss: Yes, that's the extended Lincoln Center area, a few blocks downtown. They're holding something called India Week this year at Summer for the City. In addition to dance classes, and actually, bands and people can actually learn some Indian dance. They're having these two performances by companies that are coming in to town. One is this really wonderful choreographer and dancer called Aakash Odedra.

He's pairing up with a Chinese contemporary dancer called Hu Shenyuan. They're doing a duet that is called Samsara. It's actually inspired by a 16th-century Chinese novel about a monk who travels from China to India. It's a voyage of self-discovery and self-exploration. They're two amazing dancers.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like it could be visually really compelling. One more thing at Lincoln Center, separate from that festival, American Ballet Theater has some things to look for including a ballet about Virginia Woolf.

Marina Harss: Yes, as you said, it happens at the Metropolitan Opera House, but it's separate from the Summer for the City offerings. American Ballet Theater has its five-week season. The new ballet of the season is Woolf Works, which it actually premiered in England in 2015, but this is its American premiere and it's by a British contemporary choreographer called Wayne McGregor. It's loosely inspired by Virginia Woolf's three novels, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves.

It also draws on her stream-of-consciousness writing style and her state of mind in letters and her diaries. It's not a narrative, but it's very suggestive and it's full of really impressive technological designs. The designers are actually two architectural companies. There are lasers and amazing projections, and the dancers become part of this visual landscape.

Brian Lehrer: Very cool. Earlier this week in our summer preview series, we mentioned some of the things going on at Little Island, that wonderful new performance space off the Hudson River around the bottom of the High Line. What's caught your attention there in the dance category?

Marina Harss: With such a cool space to see performances, it's like this little park in a martini glass on the water and has this stage, and it's just gorgeous, and quirky, and a wonderful place. The tickets for those shows are all $25. A lot of the summer offerings are less expensive than what you would get the rest of the year. Their season is all premieres, which is very ambitious. They have two dance premieres. One is by Twyla Tharp and the other one is by Pam Tanowitz.

The Twyla Tharp piece is a big new piece. It's an evening-length piece with live music set to a collage of music by T Bone Burnett, David Mansfield, jazz, 17th-century music, and she's known for these amazing collages of music. She's used The Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan, and others. 24 dancers. It should be a big, exciting, fun thing to see.

Brian Lehrer: Let's touch briefly on some other parks that will be hosting dance performances. We're going to run out of time soon, but Bryant Park, Prospect Park, Rockefeller Park, pick one.

Marina Harss: Yes. The Battery Dance Festival at the end of the summer is always one of the great New York events because everything else has gone away. Then there's a week of performances at Rockefeller Park. The view and the sunset, you can't go wrong with that.

Brian Lehrer: If you want to go to the Berkshires, Jacob's Pillow classic dance space, I've been lucky enough to be there. Jacob's Pillow in the Berkshires, still going strong.

Marina Harss: Yes, the oldest dance festival in the United States, still going strong. An amazing place to see dance. So beautiful and a little bit cooler than the city, and you might even get to see some fireflies. There are two indoor theaters and one outdoor theater. This year, the Royal Ballet is coming. It's its first time at the Pillow in its history. They're doing a mixed platter of short works, which include classical excerpts like Giselle and Frederick Ashton's Five Brahms Waltzes. Natalia Osipova, who is this extraordinary ballerina is coming. She's only performing on July 3rd, though.

Brian Lehrer: There we have to leave it. A summer dance preview with Marina Harss who put together one of those previews for the New Yorker's Goings On About Town section. She's the author of the book, The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky's Life in Ballet. This was great. Thank you so much.

Marina Harss: Thanks, Brian. Good luck with the pledge drive.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks a lot. We'll do another Summer Arts Preview on Monday. That one's going to be classical music with WQXR's Ed Yim. That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today and for this week.

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