The New Jersey Performing Arts Center announced their 2016-17 lineup of programming. Here’s a look at the unique projects on this year’s calendar.
Unique Projects
Returning for a third season on December 17, The Hip Hop Nutcracker with MC Kurtis Blow, a hit holiday show touring to over 27 cities produced by NJPAC, paved the way for other presentations that originated at NJPAC.
Savion Glover will choreograph and perform in Chronology of a HooFer, a new work about the shoes he had to fill on his journey from a Newark youngster to becoming a tap legend (September 23).
Carefree: Dancin’ with Fred & Ginger (November 4 and 5) represents a first-time collaboration between NJPAC and RKO Stage.
Tony Award winning director and choreographer Warren Carlyle (After Midnight and She Loves Me) will reimagine the glitziest numbers from the Astaire-Rogers partnership at RKO Pictures with a cast of Broadway singers and dancers and state-of-the-art stage technology.
Making the leap from screen to concert hall will be classics like “Night and Day,” “The Way You Look Tonight” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.”
Just as The Hip Hop Nutcracker embarked on a national tour, followed by an engagement in Russia, cross-country touring plans are in the works for Carefree, which also plays the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton on November 6.
The Arts Center relishes the challenge to “take it outside” by presenting performances and special events beyond its walls throughout the upcoming season. Collaborations with other venues have resulted in packed concerts at such arenas as Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Newark’s Prudential Center and Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Conn., creating alternative streams of revenue and increasing audience awareness of NJPAC.
