Paul Taylor Dance Company's Fall 2025 Koch Season

Speaking in Tongues. Photo: Ron Thiele

Two of Paul Taylor’s stranger, more intriguing dances were performed the first week of the company’s fall Koch season. Speaking in Tongues (1988) is a dark drama with ominous undertones, personified by Lee Duvenek (“Man of the Cloth”), who stands in the shadows with his feet resolutely planted apart. Congregants dance gleefully, patrolled by his gaze. A couple pairs off, a man tries to fit in but can’t, a woman lets loose with two guys. Duvenek emerges from time to time to stride among his followers, or stand above them in surveillance and unwavering judgment.

Taylor often enlisted language to support and refine what he put on stage. Reading the names of some of the characters in Tongues is a case in point: “His Better Half,” “A Mother,” “Her Unwanted Daughter,” The Odd Man Out.” The work is supported by Matthew Patton’s mixed soundtrack of sounds and eerie declamatory voiceovers; Santo Loquasto’s textured panel backdrop, pendant lamps, and everyfolk costumes; and Jennifer Tipton’s moody lighting scheme. It feels downright operatic and relevant in a time of domineering tyrants who appeal to a perplexing populace lost and ready to be led, no matter the outcome.

Kenny Corrigan and Lisa Borres Casey in Scudorama. Photo: Ron Thiele

Scudorama (1963) feels like a quilt of different swatches from Taylor’s canon, represented in the costumes/sets by Alex Katz. There are daily life characters, such as the man in the patchwork jacket; nun-like women in black unitards with white collars; other in wildly colored unitards. Then there are the colorful native blankets that cover dancers, moving like grazing buffalo. The era when Taylor created this work bridged his early conceptual pieces with more dancey modern ones; it’s like a primer on Taylor in one enigmatic dance.

Emmy Wildermuth and company in How Love Sounds. Photo: Steven Pisano

The contemporary commissions in the season provided variety, mingled among Taylor repertoire. Hope Boykin’s premiere, How Love Sounds, held some interesting moments and spatial experiments, such as when two columns of dancers sandwiched center-stage performers. While her musical choices represented eclectic taste, the lack of a cohesive thread felt somewhat chaotic. It also seemed as if the movement vocabulary is a fluid work in progress, drawing from modern, jazz, and other forms.

Elizabeth Chapa and John Harnage in stim. Photo: Hisae Aihara

I have wondered why contemporary dance is not truly permitted to use the vocabularies of the great modern masters without being criticized as plagiarism, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel each time. Such rich troves exist in Taylor, Graham, Cunningham, and others; no doubt the inclination is to create one’s own language. But admirably, it seems as if Resident Choreographer Lauren Lovette has chosen to incorporate some of Taylor’s signature moves into stim, her premiere that vibrates with the nervous energy implied in the title. Iconic Taylor shapes pepper the piece, with elegant set pieces (pewter banners that fly up and down; rust-hued panels forming a backdrop) and luxe costumes (gem-hued unitards with embroidered yokes) by Taylor design stalwart Santo Loquasto.

Elizabeth Chapa stands out in a lengthy solo showcasing her strength, fluidity, and classical technique. She repeatedly vibrates a hand in front of her face, as if to shake herself awake or test reality. Lovette adds playful moves such as backbends and C-jumps into her blend of modern. Women sometimes lift men, and all have equally athletic and passionate passages. A puff of fog represents the return of whatever demons haunt Chapa, before a calming male solo ends the work. This dance feels as if it belongs in the Taylor canon, replete with quotes of his vocabulary in tribute.

Patrick Gamble in Under the Rhythm. Ron Thiele

Robert Battle, after leading Ailey for years and taking time off for a brief span, is now a Resident Choreographer at Taylor, and it seems like a fine fit. His Under the Rhythm brings sizzle, snap, and technique to the Taylor dancers, who are like Olympians ready to race, and whose skills are not always tested by guest choreographers. It begins with 13 of them in a chorus line, all dressed in white shirts, suspenders, and black pants which lend an old time feel. Devon Louis slashes and arranges his arms in semaphores, sweeping his waist-high arms right to left, and grabbing his neck. All the dancers join in, reminding us of the joys of a chorus line in tandem.

Various solos and duets ensue. Madelyn Ho spins low to the ground, her clarity and radiance projecting far. Alex Clayton and Lee Duveneck, in bright red tails, sizzle through an extended playful duet to Ella Fitzgerald scat singing. Toward the end, a line of tightly spaced dancers chugs on, heads bowed and elbows angled, taking a 90º left downstage. While it’s reminiscent of vaudeville and even Fosse, it still feels fresh on these versatile Taylor dancers. Battle has craft, and here imbues it with joy.

The company looks fine, capable and energetic and hitting all the marks. No surprise that it feels different since Taylor's death in 2018, when the company underwent a generational change, with a number of long-time dancers departing, and replacements hired. For decades, it seems as if the dancers carved out their individual niches within the repertory, and established their distinct personalities indelibly. While certain body types and styles of movement continue to wind up in specific roles, the turnover is higher, and perhaps in part due to that, the personalities feel less established. There always seemed to be a woman and a man who were the jesters, who did prat falls or made funny faces. Perhaps it's also the repertory that is being performed — less of the jokey pieces, more of the rest of it. And of course, the commissions, which are taking up an ever larger percentage of time, as it must be. The one constant remains Taylor's work.

Ultima Vez's Infamous Offspring—Physical Theater and High Camp

Tijen Lawton, flying above the cast of Infamous Offspring. Photo: Flavia Tartaglia

It’s good to know that the gods quarrel and nitpick among each other, the same—or more dramatically, anyway—as mortal families do. Dad gets called out by mom for philandering. The kids argue about which of them is their parents’ favorite. One dreams about being born without her contorted feet, and walking and running normally. Yet another’s body is inhabited by her father so he can fornicate with another sibling.

In Infamous Offspring, choreographer Wim Vandekeybus and company sort these speculative nuggets into a multimedia, many-scened opus that plays out on screens, on butcher paper as art created live, and through exhiilarating movement, all backed by a varied sound track of rock music and samples (Warren Ellis/Dirty Three, ILA). It bears a certain wild, unhinged punk sensibility shared in sui generis works by Belgian troupe Needcompany, where key Ultima Vez performer Tijen Lawton performed for years, with their live rock-scored crazy quilts of drama and movement.

Lawton scuttles onstage, ambling like a crab, scooting forward on bent knees with her hands. She reaches a waiting length of butcher paper hanging from a roll, and begins to draw one of several pictures done throughout the piece. A cheesy silver droid appears onscreen, tapping and skittering his fingers across the tabletop. The company of 11 filters onstage, at times hurtling high and barrel leaping, each doing their own crazy thing. One man is told to kill everyone else, and so he does, fake choking and stabbing his siblings. Their parents appear on a higher screen, a pair actors treading the wire between Shakespearean and high camp in a minimalist dwelling.

Photo: Dries Vanderaerden

Dancers scale the lower screen on perpendicular pegs we can’t see, a kind of modern Mount Olympus, from where they observe their spatting brethren. The lower panel later splits into five, creating an effective array of portals and smaller screens. As we were warned in advance, there are many acted depictions of rape and violence, often performed in a hyper, exaggerated anime style, but there’s no questioning the dedication by the performers. Lawton in particular stretches herself, literally, walking as if on malformed feet, drawing several works of art, and getting thrown aloft by the other dancers four times. All the dancers were heroic, Adrian Thömmes and Lotta Sandborgh particularly fearless and savage.

It’s a kind of full-out, propriety-be-damned melange of dance/theater that once was a hallmark of BAM’s Next Wave, and other venues. (In fact, Ultimate Vez performed there in the late 20th century.) There is little likelihood that a work such as this would be produced by Americans, particularly in this fake-pious era of Christmas pageants and country music. It evokes a period in performance when art was the most outrageous thing happening, not reality.

While there is an urgent, portentous overtone to the work, it winks at us repeatedly—the video of the silver man clattering away at his desk, or hammering with shoe heels, the chastity belt-like contraptions donned by everyone that look more like childrens’ Halloween costumes, the arrogant parents who seem right out of a Bergman film. The taste level might be questioned, but the dancers’ skill and absolute physical commitment is definitely not.

ABT Fine-tunes Its Programming

Chloe Misseldine and Joo Won Ahn in Have We Met?! Photo: Steven Pisano.

Assembling a New York ABT season is no simple matter, whether it’s for the longer, summer Met Opera run featuring mainly full-length ballets, or the shorter fall run at the Koch Theater. Scars are still healing from the post-pandemic period, with funding less certain than ever, when more traditional taste plays tug-of-war with innovation, and when name choreographers are commissioned by multiple large companies, creating a weird parallel repertory. ABT’s 2025 Koch season reflects these pressures in some ways, as seen in three programs which I caught.

Skylar Brandt, Hee Seo, and Léa Fleytoux in Gala Performance. Photo: Steven Pisano.

ABT @ 85: A Retrospective of Master Choreographers offered three varying ballets which felt jarring in juxtaposition, but which make sense in a historical context. Les Sylphides, a Romantic confection by Michel Fokine which premiered at a 1908 fundraiser, led off with a demonstration of that genre’s tasteful, boneless interpretation of otherworldly spirits manifested in flesh and blood. Its careful, often mincing movement, the effortful softening of landings (a perversity demanded of women on pointe shoes), and no jutting joints or ugly flexed extremities. The driving impetus is Chopin’s intoxicatingly lush music, which often flows like water, with tempi varying between nocturnes. Hee Seo is one of the company’s most fluid and ethereal dancers, and here partnered with Cory Stearns, leads Léa Fleytoux, Fangqi Li, and a large corps through tableaux of beauty and elegance. Without a narrative, abstracted of any tragedy such as Giselle or Swan Lake, it is however, boring.

The head-spinning corrective emerged in the next work, Antony Tudor’s Gala Performance (1977), to Prokofiev. Seo again dances, this time as an Italian prima ballerina who enters and insistently exits—but only solo—in slow motion, taking ponderous strides, right-angled arms held waist high, as if sitting in a recliner. Here we see Seo’s wry wit as a dancer, delivering with all seriousness hilariously awkward duets with Michael de la Nuez, her oversized ostrich feather headdress sweeping over their limbs like a feather duster. Skylar Brandt danced the Russian Ballerina, fiery, independent, and utterly slapstick. Fleytoux was the French ballerina, proving that she’s becoming indispensable in repertory casting. Perhaps the trick of this Tudor folly is its dedication and relatively long duration, but the jokes wear thin about halfway through.

Patrick Frenette, Breanne Granlund, and Carlos Gonzalez in Rodeo. Photo: Nir Arieli.

Onto Rodeo (1942), by Agnes De Mille, to Copland’s essential music. While decades older than the Tudor, it’s a blast of fresh air in almost every way, bar the lapsing of the feminist plot line, as the Cowgirl—Leanne Granlund—dons a dress and finally gains the attention of the roving cowboys’ leers. Copland’s fundamentally American score provides a solid base for De Mille’s vocabulary, radical in its simplicity and concise narrative meaning. The cowboys salute, flicking their hat brims, stomp and jump with horse-astride stances, and chassee raucously across the stage, arms swinging invisible lassos. The womenfolk, in long frilly dresses, cluster and titter, haughtily sticking their noses in the air and walking primly. Granlund (liberated for at least the first part of Rodeo from the soubrette) carouses with the guys, becoming a confidant rather than an object of pursuit. As much as any ballet role, Cowgirl can change a dancer’s perceived image from demi-solo, petite ballerina to well-rounded theatrical dancer.

Twyla @ 60: A Tharp Celebration comprised three of her most balletic dances, making good use of the company’s technical skill. Sextet (1992) demands pizazz and flair, chock full of fast spins and nailed poses. The music provides different tempos and moods, at times giving a Slavic feel. Bach Partita (1983) premiered on Tharp’s company, but its ranks likely expanded in its ABT iteration. It is structured by the mathematical satisfaction of Bach’s composition (played heroically on violin by Kobi Malkin), complimented by Tharp’s virtuosic and logical balletic phrases. Add to that Santo Loquasto’s flattering short dresses for the featured women (though not so much the mid-length putty numbers for the vast female corps) and there’s much to admire. The lead pairs were Chloe Misseldine and James Whiteside, Catherine Hurlin and Jarod Curley, and Sunmi Park and Carlos Gonzalez, all exhibiting impressive technique, and the women individual sparks.

Zimmi Coker, Jake Roxander, and Olivia Tweedy in Push Comes to Shove. Photo: Nir Arieli.

Speaking of which, Push Comes to Shove (1976) starred Jake Roxander in the vaunted Mikhail Baryshnikov role, in flame-hued silks and velvets, sporting and cavorting with the piece’s signature black bowler. Roxander does fine (no one can truly replace Misha), performing the subtleties of the opening phrase keenly before uncorking the mandatory pyrotechnics. He partners with the zesty Zimmi Coker, with Olivia Tweedy in a third featured, more reserved role. Tharp’s elevated melange based on ballet’s sturdy structure is peppered with idiosyncrasies, but other than the hat tosses and catches, never feels forced or awkward the way her jazzier vocabulary can feel self-conscious by classical dancers. Roxander exudes star quality; expect to see him a lot in coming seasons.

The third program led off with the world premiere of Juliano Nunes’ Have We Met?! The story holds promise: two compatible souls meet in the 1928 bodies of a woman and man, and again in 2038, reincarnated in different vessels. The first section features a soldier (Joo Woon Ahn) and an elegant gown-clad woman (Chloe Misseldine, riveting in every appearance), who dance among platoons of male and female soldiers. The urban setting implies New York City, somewhere in Brooklyn, with the main set elements, by Yousseff Hotait—a bridge, buildings— ingenious textile fabrications, parts of which evoke the South Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s fantastic “memorializations” of architecture and interior elements. The situation provides dramatic impetus for the couple’s romance, given the soldier’s limited time and potential fatal outcome. The troops dance fervently, moving en masse and creating a kinetic textural background.

In the second act, Isabella Boylston and Joseph Markey dance the leads, wearing color block unitards with flapping panels, now dancing in front of the Brooklyn Bridge and some ominous pencil buildings. While easier to read because of the design and color elements, the vocabulary didn’t feel markedly differentiated from the first section, other than a leaping hug by Boylston, clinging to Markey like a koala, and a repeating infinity symbol formed by spliced arms. Optimism—highly ambitious, given the current climate—permeates this section, lit brightly and paced briskly. But without a plot hook like the first couple’s twist of fate, there’s no drama, just an abstract dance with fantastic sets.

Unfortunately, pairing it with Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium only emphasizes the roteness of the ballet vocabulary in the Nunes. Ratmansky uses movement—and all the permutations of the various combinations of the human body—to create something that feels like intense conversation. This work primarily for seven men puts each one forth, centerstage, to state their case. Even though we don’t know the content, we can sense their attitudes and approaches, and always their passion. With only the brief appearance of Sunmi Park as a kind of metaphor for clarity, Ratmansky was free to give the men softer, more expressive movement than ballet usually permits—and what a gift it is.

It’s back to core repertory with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, featuring Catherine Hurlin and Isaac Hernández. The home-grown Hurlin handles the technical demands with elegance, and has developed a musicality and nuanced expression of epaulement that adds dynamism to the crisp ballet steps. Hernández is at ease with the classicism, lending a relaxed flair to the proceedings. Feels right to ground a program with some good old Balanchine, performed by two emerging stars.

To add to its New York presence, ABT will have its first spring season at the Koch in March 2026. Repertory will include Othello (Lar Lubovitch), Firebird (Alexei Ratmansky), Mozartiana (Balanchine), and Raymonda (Petipa).

Random Summer 2025 Reading Trends & Recs

Many of the novels I’ve read lately fall within odd groups. I especially recommend the starred titles:

1. Plots involving characters, nearly all female, being held captive for ideological reasons, either involuntarily or as a way of life.

2. Plots focusing on fraternal pairs whose relationships surpass normal sibling bonds.

3. Characters with the name Louisa.

1:

★ Flashlight, by Susan Choi

Louisa, an American citizen of Korean/Caucasian heritage, and her Korean-born, Japanese-raised father walk on the beach in Japan and are seized by North Koreans; she escapes, but he is held captive in a DPRK prison, made to teach N. Koreans about western ways and languages. 

★ In The Bombshell,  by Darrow Farr

Severine, a rich, spoiled teen, is brutally kidnapped by a Corsican faction. She at first rails against her captors, but eventually sympathizes with their cause. She exploits her appealing persona on social media to gain attention to the cause, and takes radical actions that even her captors aren’t willing to broach. Farr’s style feels akin to Rachel Kushner’s punky, radical tone and how female characters are pushed beyond norms.

In Heartwood, by Amity Gaige 

A hiker, Valerie, is held by militant prepper protesting a radical military training camp in Maine. A search team led by veteran warden Beverly comes up empty, but a retiree seeking friends online happens across the kidnapper in a chat room and provides intel on Valerie’s location.

What Kind of Paradise, Janelle Brown

Jane is being raised, and essentially held captive, by her Ted Kaczynski-like father in a remote cabin in Montana. He’s trying to protect her from the outside world and the downfall of society cause by technology. She escapes after abetting a serious crime for her father, and wrestles with this secret in the aftermath. 

1 & 2:

Our Last Resort, by Clémence Michallon 

Frida and Gabriel, biologically unrelated but basically siblings, escape from the cult where they were raised, committing what they deem necessary crimes to remain loyal to one another—which takes precedence above all.

2:

I’ll Be Right Here, Amy Bloom

Two Algerian siblings escape Paris during the war, and resettle in New York. Their shared challenging upbringing draws them closer than the average filial bond, at least one pair in an unorthodox relationship (and which includes the odious term "throuple.")

3:

Louisa. I suppose that similar to “most popular baby names,” there exists a category of “most popular novel names” at any given moment. It’s time to hear it for Louisa!

★ My Friends, Fredrik Backman

Louisa, a burgeoning artist, unwittingly inherits a masterpiece painting done by an artist whom she runs into in an alley. She makes every attempt at dis-inheriting the artwork, leading up to a clever twist of a resolution.

Gingko Season, Naomi Xu Elegant

Okay, it’s a secondary character who’s named Louisa in this coming-of-age novel revolving around a Philadelphia woman curating an exhibition on bound-foot shoes who seeks love and humanity in unlikely places.

1 & 3: Flashlight, see above

Two Luminous New York City Ballet Premieres

New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Mystic Familiar. Photo: Erin Baiano

It’s hard to comprehend that Mystic Familiar: A Ballet by Justin Peck is his 25th work for New York City Ballet, where he is resident choreographer. (The second part of the title reads as an imprimatur for how much clout he has artistically; it echoes “A Piece by Pina Bausch,” which followed each of her work’s titles.) It’s both a huge accomplishment to accrue so many commissions by his home company, which happens to be one of the world’s most significant troupes. On the other hand, it requires a lot of creativity and hard work to differentiate over two dozen dances on the same company.

Certain Peck dances stand out in my memory. The Times Are Racing (2017) tops that list, anchored by a hip-tappy duet originally done by Peck for himself and Robbie Fairchild (and later including women in the roles), and another duet of flashing feet and circular flip-lifts with Tiler Peck levitating up and down. Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon designed the playful street/athletic wear costumes worn with sneakers. And Dan Deacon’s score charged the piece with an urgency and daredevilry that Peck rode, full speed ahead. The same synergetic creative team has been gathered together to create Mystic.

Taylor Stanley with company in Mystic Familiar. Photo: Erin Baiano

Peck works in a variety of choreographic languages, but the one established in TTAR have distinguished many of his most striking dances. (Moments feel like tips of the hat to his sneaker-ballet predecessors such as Robbins, Childs, and Tharp.) The youthful, athletic vigor; the clustering, pulsing, and exploding of the corps, often singling out a central dancer; the inward, noodling phrases; the dashes of levity and community. The undeniable joie de vivre. 

Many of those elements occur in Mystic Familiar, but the heart of the piece is anomolous: a long solo for Taylor Stanley. His leonine grace and strength have made him a muse for a number of choreographers at NYCB, including Kyle Abraham and Peck. Stanley’s solo is quite expressionistic and emotionally resonant, featuring sculptural shapes that melt into soft looping phrases, or a thrusting sternum, comprising a poignant, poetic section.

Some passages evoke previous Peck dances, as you’d expect. Dancers line the stage’s apron, in silhouette; a column of bodies splits off right and left; a rapid phrase ends in an abruptly held position. Near the end, the performers trade their colorful, translucent streetwear for antiseptic white jumpsuits, adding a chill to the atmosphere. A paranoiac might read them as hazmat suits, a solemn reminder of the not-long-past pandemic. Deacon's music feels melodic and companionable, and less a soundtrack to a revolution.

Peck is now an established Broadway choreographer, with recent productions of Illinoise and Buena Vista Social Club to his credit. It feels as if Broadway has seeped into Mystic in its energetic pacing and the supporting synthesis of Eamon Ore-Giron’s dazzling geometric backdrop, and lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker, which spotlights different points of the mural, like a setting sun descending through the trees. The sum total feels like a solid work that wrings the most out of the resources given, on every production level.

Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward in When We Fell. Photo: Erin Baiano

Kyle Abraham also used the totality of the theater. As opposed to the maximalist approach in Mystic, his premiere of When We Fell leans toward elegant, pure, minimalism. Two pianos sat on opposite sides of the stage, which featured a stage-wide horizontal mirror perhaps a yard high, hovering just above the people on stage. The eight dancers wore Karen Young’s stunning unitards in metallic hues of copper, silver, and gold. The distantly-placed pianos (which play Morton Feldman, Jason Moran, and Nico Muhly’s music), the spacious dark void above the mirror, and the small cast in their shimmering suits compounded to create a feeling of infinity and absence, echoing the Covid era.

Abraham originally made this work as a film in the wake of the pandemic, when dances were made over Zoom with participants in far-away locations. or in collective isolation. He uses ballet steps for the most part, with expressionistic tweaks, like rippling torsos, or deeply swooping port de bras. Rapid piques, frenetic battus, and big leaps and sautés punch up the final section; Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward dance in a large pool of light but otherwise darkness, counterbalancing one another in an apt metaphor for codependency in a time of isolation. It's gratifying to see these two premieres by artists who are no longer brand-new choreographers at NYCB. Both dances are memorable and should crop up with regularity in seasons to come, with luck.

Some company notes... Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette retire from the company this season. And besides seeing the superlative Taylor Stanley in featured premiere roles, KJ Takahashi distinguished himself in crisp, bold solos in both dances, electrifying the stage.

Kyle Abraham Shares the Stage

Year. Photo: Carrie Schneider

Kyle Abraham, one of the most admired and prolific contemporary dancemakers, took a bold step for his company, A.I.M’s, recent Joyce Theater run. Instead of presenting only works he created, he showcased three other choreographers in addition to creating a premiere. While other big-name choreographers have done so (foremost, Alvin Ailey), it’s certainly not standard practice when alive; most understandably want to use the precious stage time as a platform for their own work.

But Abraham has always done things a little differently, often with the larger community in mind. Post-show stage pleas have commonly focused on pleas to donate to Broadway Cares, which supports AIDS/HIV patient services. At the Joyce, he called out by names of all of A.I.M’s dancers, and all the artistic collaborators behind the scenes and sitting in the audience. His gratitude filled the house with genuine appreciation and affection.

He’s also full of choreographic surprises and experimentation, both dance-wise and structurally. His premiere, 2x4, from a broad perspective evoked early modern dance creators with its Big Art set and challenging music (I’m thinking Merce Cunningham). Devin B. Johnson’s immense artwork backdrop, in shades of magma, and the baritone sax score by Shelley Washington, played on stage by Guy Dellacave and Thomas Giles, who periodically stomped their feet and framed the quartet of dancers. Abraham’s unique style mixes catwalk sashays, ballet, gestures, and pedestrian behavior, as if he spliced video clips together from a random day. He’s in no danger of being pigeonholed, style-wise. This more formal work, with challenging music, contrasts strongly with recent works such as An Untitled Love for A.I.M, with its quasi-narrative sections set to D’Angelo, and major commissions for New York City Ballet.

Jamaal Bowman and Olivia Wang in Year. Photo: Carrie Schneider

It was performed third and not last, which might be considered the “prime” slot on a bill. Andrea Miller’s Year (2024) took that honor, perhaps in part due to the installation of a largish set of three white walls surrounding the stage, and a craggy sun-like disc. The eight dancers wore Orly Anan Studio’s vivid unitards painted with surreal motifs—facial features and geometrical shapes. Fred Despierre’s percussion score contributed to the tribal feel. Miller trained in Gaga, and while that often percolates beneath the movement, it’s accented with a bit of voguing. The movement is sensuous, powerful, and expressive, and A.I.M’s skilled dancers wring out every drop, clustering and exploding, unspooling solos. Varied duets included one in which the woman skimmed above the stage, supported by her partner as he spun and leveraged her weight.

Paul Singh’s Just Your Two Wrists (2019) is an absorbing solo, here danced by Amari Frazier with an alternating ferocity and tenderness. (David Lang’s haunting music evokes Pam Tanowitz’s later usage in her memorable 2023 Song of Songs.) The program led off with Shell of a Shell of the Shell (2024), choreographed by Rena Butler to music by Darryl J. Hoffman. Butler is skilled with dramatic stagecraft—silhouetted dancers moving elastically, six pinlit performers isolated yet proximate, shows of extreme emotion in spasmodic or reactive moves. Yet it all felt a bit familiar, other than Hogan McLaughlin’s coarse ecru pantaloon and halter top costumes.

Abraham’s 2x4 almost felt like the answer to the question: which one of these is not like the other? His readiness to take risks by using squawking and stamping sax players, and reset his movement vocabulary for this piece, show why he continues to be lauded and watched carefully. But showcasing three contemporaries, and acknowledging all of his collaborators, reveal an uncommon generosity that runs through his body of work.

Dance Then & Now—Ballet at the Stissing Center

Mónica Lima, Elena Zahlmann, Kristina Shaw, Diana Byer, and
Julian Donahue in Private Angels. Photo: Patrick Trettenero

April promises spring, but winter clung on over the weekend; Columbia County got about half a foot of snow on April 12. So going to Stissing Center in Pine Plains for a Sunday afternoon matinee of Dance Then & Now, a program curated by Diana Byer, presented the chance to gather in a welcoming, vibrant venue and take in a varied ballet program. The works ranged from a 1951 duet by Agnes de Mille, Another Autumn (from Paint Your Wagon), to four contemporary pieces including several premieres.

The hour-long program ranged from experimental modern ballet to musical theater to satire. The latter, by Julian Donahue, titled Private Angels, was a site-specific premiere performed primarily on the auditorium floor, and partly on-stage (we were seated along the perimeter and on the mezzanine). It featured Donahue as a posh ballet taskmaster, controlling and effete—prancing, posing, swinging scythe-like arms, shooting icy glares at us, and eliciting guffaws, notably from a few enthusiastic children in the audience whose giggles were infectious.

Four women (Elena Zahlman, Kristina Shaw, Mónica Lima, and Byer) descended from the space’s four corners, facing one another and performing courtly, contained steps. Each woman took turns being partnered by Donahue, each duet progressing with different dynamics. It built to Lima’s section, when Donahue handled her with vigor, bordering on violence. Occasional piano music by Handel, played by Matteo Mangialetti, accompanied this slightly long but entertaining suite.

The bill led off with the premiere of Calandrelle, choreographed by William Whitener with music by Olivier Messiaen, in which Kristina Shaw hit crisp geometric shapes, bounced, tilted, pet her tutu, and spun with a knee bent. These jottings felt playful even while grounded in ballet. An Agnes de Mille duet from Paint Your Wagon was danced by Zahlmann and Donahue, with Mangialetti playing Frederick Loewe’s music. Though brief, we saw de Mille’s knack for distilling a burgeoning romance into a few key moments—the chaste wooing, and ensuing blossoming into affection and a side-by-side partnership. 

Stephen Pier’s premiere of A Conversation with Keyboard featured Lima and Shaw in elegant short black dresses trading ballet phrases in a rhythmic ebb and flow, and checking in with Mangialetti, playing music by Domenico Cimarosa. Lima and Donahue partnered in Isle of Skye, by Amanda Treiber, with recorded music by Mondrian Villega. Appropriately clad in sky blue costumes, they stretched into elongated lines and tossed in phrases of celebratory social dancing that evoked Scottish reels, perhaps a nod to the title.

All of these dances fit snugly and efficiently into the brief run time, a pleasing sampling of modern ballet that demonstrates the form’s continuing relevance and artistry. The dance programming, selected by Catherine Tharin, is just one genre among many featured at Stissing Center, which mounts a surprisingly robust season in the quietly simmering town of Pine Plains.