THE WORLD FROM OUR SEATS, AT NYUAD

▶ The Arts Centre season is already creating a global buzz, which can only help local artists,

When Toshi Reagon takes to the stage at The Arts Centre at NYU Abu Dhabi to present the world premiere of Octavia E Butler’s Parable of the Sower, on November 9 to 11, it will mark the fitting close of a full circle. The genre-bending cultural complex at the university campus was inaugurated by Reagon in September 2015, opening its first performance season with a stripped-back, work-in-progress “in concert” version of the opera. Now, she is back to present the finished piece.

Reagon is the first of five eminent artists making a repeat appearance, as part of The Arts Centre’s confident third season, some to present new work in-part developed during their earlier stay in the emirate. The coming months will also welcome return visits from Aakash Odedra, Kronos Quartet, Ragamala Dance Company and Amir ElSaffar, who all performed during the 2015/16 programme.

For Reagon, her mind was made up by the response to her last visit, which marked both the song cycle’s second booking, and the first outside her hometown of New York.

“I think back to people at The Arts Centre – I could feel they had a personal investment in this work,” says Reagon. “It meant a lot that they asked me to open the centre and introduce it to the community with this work – and bringing it back really felt like the right thing.”

Hosting the world premiere of a piece that will doubtless go far and wide is a huge coup for the Emirates. “This is only the beginning,” quips Reagon, who is already sizing up a “juicy” hometown run before going on the road, and puts the Abu Dhabi brand at the heart of artistic circles across the globe.

By the end of this season, The Arts Centre will have hosted eight world premieres to date – in addition to more than 50 UAE premieres – including many Abu Dhabi-commissioned works tipped to later play at esteemed venues such as London’s Sadler’s Wells, and New York’s Carnegie Hall, while curators are flying in from The Netherlands and Singapore to consider works for future seasons.

One work already picking up an international buzz is the first complete presentation of Aakash Odedra’s #JeSuis, at The Black Box from February 7 to 9. The British dancer’s hour-long piece will be finished during a five-week stay on campus – the longest residency of any artist so far – during which dance and dramaturgy students will interact with Odedra daily, while completing a specially curated companion course.

Beyond the campus confines, The Arts Centre seeks to enrich the UAE’s wider creative community, with workshops, talks, school visits and community dinners which typically make up a performer’s stay.

Emirati spoken word artist Afra Atiq had the chance to collaborate with eccentric Swiss jazz pianist Nik Bärtsch, who opened The Arts Centre’s second season with a 27-hourlong, improvised concert ritual. “It was the first time I ever did anything with music,” says Atiq, “and it was a bridge between me and an international artist.”

Last year, Atiq also attended a workshop about breathing techniques hosted by the cast of Holoscenes – an installation piece in which the performers are slowly submerged with water inside a huge tank.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to meet lots of artists and interact with them in a way that wouldn’t normally be possible – and that’s really important in nurturing local and regionally based talent,” she says. “The Arts Centre is incredibly supportive of the arts community, and of Emirati artists. They provide opportunities for artistic development that I think are unique.”

Inviting performers back also plays a key role in demystifying the often-oblique creative process. In October 2015, Ragamala Dance Company visited to present

They Rose at Dawn – just one week after its hometown New York premiere – and while in Abu Dhabi, the southern Indian-inspired dance troupe began embryonic work on a new piece co-commissioned by The Arts Centre, Written in Water.

Inspired by the role snakes and ladders play in Hindu and Sufi thought, students were invited to explore the nature of chance by acting out the classic board game, through interactive workshops. Now those same students can hope to join some dots when Written in Water is