In a year marked by personal losses as well as national strife, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about time. Strange how hours can feel eternal, days brief and weeks like they are bleeding into each other so that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
I had all that in mind while compiling my favorite arts and culture picks from this year. Some of these works consider time on a personal level, like when you pick up a book and can’t put it down. Others ask how much time we have as a society considering the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities. A handful think of time more linearly — offering reflections on the past so we might better understand the future.
Here are some works, in alphabetical order, that rearranged time for me:
Alvin Ailey
Two recent works offer a portrait of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s past, an understanding of its present and a vision of its future. Edges of Ailey, a searching exhibition on view at the Whitney Museum until Feb. 9, explores the dance choreographer’s biography and his radical approach to modern dance. An 18-channel video installation by filmmakers Josh Begley and Kya Lou envelops the space, which is populated by photographs of Ailey, his handwritten notes and posters from early productions. For a sense of the company’s present, look to the Ailey company’s holiday season at the New York City Center, which is on until Jan. 5. Dedicated to the late