The coming season of the Abrons Arts Center, the performing arts arm of the Henry Street Settlement, will be devoted mostly to theater, dance and music premieres. The season also includes a six-month residency, from January through June, by the International Contemporary Ensemble, which will feature new works by Christian Wolff, George Lewis, John Zorn, Cory Smythe and Forrest Pierce.
The first of the season’s world premieres is the choreographer Mark Dendy’s “Labyrinth,” a retelling of the Theseus myth with an autobiographical overlay (Oct. 9 to 26). Other world-premiere dance productions include Enrico D. Wey’s “1, this useless tool [this folded flower],” a work that explores Asian-American identity politics, internalized phobias, sexuality and other issues (Nov. 20 to 22); a Rebecca Patek work in which she offers a self-analysis filtered through the story of the murderers Leopold and Loeb (May 20 to 23); and Will Rawls’s “Based on Real Events,” which will use the history of the Henry Street Playhouse as its source material (June 4 to 6).
Among the theater works having world premieres are “Pretty Filthy,” a work about porn stars by the Civilians (Jan. 30 to March 1); David Greenspan’s “I’m Looking for Helen Twelvetrees,” about finding the early film star toward the end of her life (March 19 to April 4); and Sibyl Kempson’s “Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag.”
Other highlights of the season include David Neumann’s “I Understand Everything Better,” a meditation on the way people deal with calamity, traumatic change and approaching death (April 9 to 18); Mabou Mines performing Lee Breuer’s “Glass Guignol: The Brother and Sister Play,” a work about the shifting relationship between Tennessee Williams and his sister (April 22 to May 10); installments of the Queer New York International Arts Festival (Sept. 17 to 25) — the Forest Fringe MicroFestival, which began as part of the Edinburgh Festival in 2007 and is making its first New York appearance (Oct. 3 to 5), and American Realness, a multidisciplinary festival that will include visual art exhibitions as well as performances (throughout January).
A report in the “Arts, Briefly” column on Monday about the coming season of the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan misstated the centenary the season will celebrate. It is the centenary of the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse at the center — not of the Henry Street Settlement, the center’s parent organization.
A report in the “Arts, Briefly” column on Monday about the coming season of the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan, using information from a publicist, misstated the closing date of the choreographer Mark Dendy’s “Labyrinth,” a retelling of the Theseus myth. It runs from Oct. 9 to Oct. 26 — not to Oct. 12.
An earlier version of this post erroneously attributed a distinction to the the coming season of the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan. David Neumann’s “I Understand Everything Better,” which will run there in April, will have its world premiere in March at the American Dance Institute in Washington D.C. It will not have its world premiere at the Abrons Art Center.