New York Notebook, January 2025

Justin Faircloth, Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez, Wendell Gray II, Jay Carlon. Courtesy New York Live Arts. Photo: Maria Baranova

Super Nothing

Miguel Gutierrez
New York Live Arts, Jan 12-18, 2025

Miguel Gutierrez has, over decades, been predictably unpredictable. He has woven into performances sections of spoken text, multimedia, performance, and dance. In Super Nothing, at New York Live Arts, perhaps what’s most surprising is that nearly the entire 70-minute piece comprises abstract and gestural movement. Also, that movement is set to music (by Rosana Cabán), wide-ranging in style and dynamic, thoughout the work. As Gutierrez says in his program note, his main emotion of late is grief, primarily about the state of politics here and abroad.

And so in the face of what feels like shouting into the wind and being blown backward, he turns to the dancer’s tool kit, the body. He has set the work on four remarkable performers: Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez, Wendell Gray II, Justin Faircloth, and Jay Carlon. For about an hour, with little apparent repetition, each one moves continuously — thousands of small movements strung together, some gestural and deeply evocative, others freeform, expressing a palette of emotions, or simply conveying joy or sorrow. Carolina Ortiz designed the gorgeous variegated lighting, including a costume change interlude when the lights came to life and took over as the focus.

From my notes on the movement: free, expressive, playful, twitching, arm paddling, staggering around perimeter, spasming, bracelet shaking while ascending stairs, seal flippers pushing forward, whipping attitude turns, self-conscious voguing, fake phone call, tending to an ailing friend. Dancers exit, and the lighting takes over as fog rolls in—the omnipresent kite above, lit hues of white from warm to cool, red/yellow projected discs, flat rectangles, banks of warm sidelights brightening and dimming, with the temperature rising and falling on our eager faces. It almost felt as if the building had come alive irrespective of our presence.

Jay Carlon, Wendell Gray II, Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez, Justin Faircloth. Courtesy New York Live Arts. Photo: Maria Baranova

The performers return, having changed from black & white slashed pieces to neon yellow and black garments. After another spell of dashed off gestures and freeform moves, they unite centerstage in a square, and begin a multi-measure section that feels much more purposeful and structured. They repeat it facing different directions, snapping into a line, and reclustering. Toward the end, they move as close to us as possible, intensely repeating individual phrases manically, then retreat upstage and trickle off. They’ve left it all on the stage, moving us with their stamina, dedication, and intellect. Lunatics might be running the asylum, but these artists are in full control of their bodies.

Ronald K. Brown / Evidence

Joyce Theater, Jan 14-19, 2025

Ronald K. Brown / Evidence celebrates 40 years this season, believe it or not. There is still nothing like Brown’s work—so ecstatic, full of faith, incorporating challenging techniques and rhythms, and largely presented in proscenium dance venues, with impressive production elements. But it’s mainly the ecstasy and elation, generated through an explosive vocabulary unspooled effortlessly by his dancers and mixed with pensive moments.

Demetrius Burns and
Shaylin D. Watson.
Photo by Whitney Brown

Grace (1999/2003), commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, remains Brown’s most resonant work, and among the great modern dances. The music, by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis, Jr., and Fela Kuti, with guest singer Gordon Chambers, undergirds and propels the many movements—a harmonious artistic creation that feels like the kinetic manifestation of the title. And while it’s difficult to match the athletic prowess of the Ailey company’s dancers, Evidence delivers a more humanistic interpretation, while having the advantage of being closer to us in a smaller house.

Ailey also commissioned Serving Nia (2001); the Joyce performance was Evidence’s company premiere. On the shorter side at about 15 minutes, the piece is set in front of a striking backdrop depicting—depending on your mood—either a cliff face or a wall at a sharp angle, tucked into a corner and evocative of Ed Ruscha’s geometric compositions. Brown’s dancers often face to the side, signifying a private communication with an unseen being, and also favors a diagonal movement path. Sadly, when the lighting shifted to a deep red, I could only think of the LA fires.

In Order My Steps (2005), Kevin Boseman guests as a dancer and speaker. The work began as a collaboration between Brown and Kevin’s late brother, actor Chadwick. Themes of war and addiction emerge in the music and long monologue delivered by Boseman. This piece felt different than Brown’s usual music-driven style, including the more relaxed jazz music (Terry Riley, Bob Marley, David Ivey) and partitioning the stage area with the dancers at left in two lines, and Boseman at right. There was less of the joyful unleashing of energy so prominent in much of his other work, in particular Grace, but it did showcase Boseman’s breadth of talent and Brown’s willingness to experiment.

Nick Cave at Shainman Gallery. Photo: Susan Yung

Nick Cave, Amalgams and Graphts

Jack Shainman Gallery, 46 Lafayette St, to Mar 15

The New York gallery scene surely reflects the real estate market in the city. The mass has shifted innumerable times, mostly involving varying gallery densities in Manhattan’s East Village, UES, Soho, Noho, Chelsea, LES, Tribeca, and Lower Manhattan, among others. It seems that the latest notable shift is onto Broadway below Canal (and a handful of blocks south, east, and west), where huge storefronts that not long ago housed cheap clothing and shoe stores are now galleries.

Marian Goodman now has an entire building at 385 Broadway near Walker. But the other big headline is another satellite of Jack Shainman Gallery in the Clocktower Building designed by McKim, Mead & White, from 1898, and originally the home of New York Life Insurance. It has nearly 30-foot high ceilings, with original marble columns and a massive bank vault door; stand-alone office cubicles dot the mezzanine. 

The space’s inaugural show, work by Nick Cave, seems to have demanded the new outpost’s acquisition; it includes Amalgam (Origin), a 26-foot high bronze casting that echoes his Soundsuit series. Related Amalgam sculptures created on a human scale are also on view, as well as an extensive series of Graphts—wall pieces composed of floral and souvenir map serving tray fragments, needlepoint portraits (including of Cave), and floral elements intricately collaged together by screws. Cave’s work is charged with many levels of meaning and symbolism, and the craftsmanship nears perfection. These latter-day treasures have found a proper temporary home in an architectural manifestation of capitalism. Shainman adds this to a portfolio of reclaimed spaces, which includes The School in Kinderhook, NY.

Favorite Books, 2024

Our Evenings, Alan Hollinghurst

Roman Year, Andre Aciman

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney

Colored Television, Danzy Senna

The God of the Woods, Liz Moore

Real Americans, Rachel Khong

The Editor, Sara Franklin

Table for Two, Amor Towles

Lucky, Jane Smiley

James, Percival Everett

After Annie, Anna Quindlen

Prophet Song, Paul Lynch

Playground, Richard Powers

The Work of Art, Adam Moss

Paul Taylor's Family Tree Grows

Jessica Ferretti in Vive La Loie!. Photo: Whitney Browne

Legacy in modern dance has been a subject of perpetual interest for me, and the advent of the 2024 Paul Taylor season adds even more intrigue. Lauren Lovette was named a Resident Choreographer last year; she created two new works for this season. And intriguingly, Robert Battle was just named as another Resident Choreographer; he created a solo tribute to revered alumna Carolyn Adams, now Director of Education for Taylor. I caught four programs in November.

Lovette’s appointment was a leap of faith by Artistic Director Michael Novak, but it has proved to be mostly sound despite a small choreographic output on which to base the decision. I saw Recess, a season premiere by her, which forefronts the playful and upbeat aspects of dance. The opening tableau featured the five dancers in silhouette, arranged in a sculptural human bridge, and surrounded by Libby Stadstad’s ethereal set of multi-colored panels framing the proscenium (and evocative of Adrianne Lobel’s design for Mark Morris’ L’Allegro). The size-graduated panels compressed the vast proscenium space, making the small cast seem larger. Mark Eric’s costumes, elevated takes on athleisure, echoed the colorful set’s hues. Unfortunately, many of the stop-start gestures and exchanges between the dancers didn’t project, even if their competitive, playful, and athletic interactions carried the dance. 

Jada Pearman, Alex Clayton in Recess. Photo: Whitney Browne

Vive La Loie!, a tribute to Loie Fuller by Jody Sperling, dazzled in a way that Fuller’s original dances might have. Jessica Ferretti stood atop a tall plinth, draped in swaths of white silky fabric, with long wings guided by flexible poles. She fluttered, swirled, and rippled the fabric to mesmerizing effect; I did not expect to be so riveted. At moments, it recalled a grand-scale Symphonie Fantastique by Basil Twist—fabric given bewitching life. A second Fuller-inspired work by Sperling, Clair de Lune, was performed on another program. Emmy Wildermuth worked on the floor, skimming her wings just above it into eddying cascades and lily-shaped flutes. These certainly piqued interest in a modern dance figure that has been more museum artifact than flesh-and-blood artist. 

Several years after Taylor’s death, it might be easy to forget that he made some klunkers. With so many good and great dances by Taylor to choose from, it certainly makes curatorial sense to avoid the lesser ones, some of which may never see a footlight again. But a side effect of seeing highly cherry-picked and curated dances by Taylor, juxtaposed with commissions by less experienced choreographers, can seem unfair to the current generation. 

Devon Louis in Aureole. Photo: Whitney Browne

Taylor’s Aureole (1962) remains one of his early and timeless masterpieces of concision, gentle poetry, and explosive athleticism—a précis of the man himself. Devon Louis danced Taylor's famous solo, a silhouette of which now forms the company's logo. Louis, a very special dancer with the physique of a tight end, moves with a plush grace and delicacy, and leaps so space-eating that he must often rein them in.  

Gabrielle Barnes, John Harnage, Maria Ambrose, Elizabeth Chapa in Funny Papers. 
Photo: Whitney Browne

Funny Papers’ (1994) choreography is now credited to six company members from the original cast, “amended and combined by Paul Taylor.” I don’t recall how it has been billed in the past, but this felt like an admirable elucidation as so often the dancers contribute to the choreography with modest credit. And funny it was indeed, especially the high camp of “I Am Woman” and the dedication of the dancers (especially John Harnage) while thrusting their fists in cheerleader positions and pompous saltes. It’s the kind of piece that might fall flat without absolute buy-ins by the dancers. The audience loved it.

Lost, Found and Lost. Photo: Whitney Browne

Lost, Found and Lost (1982) and The Word (1998) are two other sui generis dances in the company’s rep. The first dance encapsulates ennui with movements normally spied in restroom queues and by water coolers, set to Donald York's symphonic elevator muzak. The dance is elevated by Alex Katz's elegant bedazzled black unitards, veils, and neon jazz shoes and, again, the cast's total commitment to indifference. The Word, by contrast, portrays the insidious and inexorable infection of a virus (danced by the indispensable Madelyn Ho), be it religious or political. Santo Loquasto's prep school uniforms, the same for all, brilliantly encapsulate the brainwashed ranks, who dance as if possessed.  

The Word. Photo: Ron Thiele

Back to Robert Battle being welcomed into the fold… he departed abruptly as nine-year artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on the eve of that company’s big City Center season last year. His resurfacing at Taylor makes some lineage sense in that Battle was an important leader and choreographer at David Parsons' company before branching out on his own, where he created some very strong works, including some performed by Ailey.  Parsons was once a star at the Taylor company, and so there is some shared movement DNA between the three, if faint. Alicia Graf Mack, once a memorable Ailey company member, will become artistic director at Ailey, another strong limb on that company’s family tree. The two respective trees of Taylor and Ailey now share some roots if they hadn't before. 

(Please excuse odd formatting in this post; Blogger is haunted by gremlins...)

Wishing For More Than New

La Boutique. Photo: Kyle Froman.

Watching La Boutique, a new work by Gemma Bond for ABT's 2024 fall season, I pondered the purpose of ballet commissions. Are they simply to stay alive, in some respects, like a shark needing to swim to keep going? To identify new choreographic voices, and in the case of Bond, an ABT alum who carries the troupe’s DNA? To challenge the dancers, who can mix some new dances into their warhorse-heavy repertory? To provide the audiences with reasons to buy tickets if another Swan Lake isn’t enough? Likely all of these things, and ultimately to produce a good dance that pushes all involved—craft-wise, artistically, genre-wise.

Isabella Boylston and Thomas Forster in La Boutique. Photo: Kyle Froman.

And while La Boutique does pose technical challenges for the dancers, it falls short of challenging genre norms and audiences. Its music, La Boutique Fantasque by Ottorino Resphighi after Gioachino Rossini, provides a dynamic background of swooping orchestral music. Jean-Marc Puissant’s costumes tweak the standard tutu and tunic with bold geometric accents. Leading the 26-member cast through brisk balletic passages dotted with modern touches such as layouts, Isabella Boylston and Thomas Forster performed a grand, romantic duet. (The complex patterns woven by the dancers’ paths were interrupted by two men crashing together at one point, revealing the need for more rehearsal.) Clifton Taylor’s lighting, in one scene, drenched the stage in blue so that it appeared to be a sea. But in the end, La Boutique didn’t make enough of an impression to demand being reseen.

Léa Fleytoux and Skylar Brandt in Mercurial Son. Photo: Kyle Froman.

In contrast, Mercurial Son, a premiere by Kyle Abraham, piqued interest with its contemporary electronic score by Grischa Lichtenberger, and metallic-hued costumes by Karen Young that at moments whipped frothily around spinning bodies. Abraham manages to make his cast of seven feel like many more. Each dancer, and in one case a pair, carved out individual styles and motifs in solo stage crossings. Balletic moves mixed with Abraham’s sui generis hip-hop flow and fractured lines. Super fast spins alternate with luxuriant posés. Calvin Royal, carved elegant shapes and collapsed in a winking dying swan quote. I look forward to seeing this again to catch more details I may have missed.

Melvin Lawovi in Mercurial Son. Photo: Kyle Froman.

The slate finished with Harald Lander’s Études, set to Carl Czerny’s score, which premiered in 1948 by the Royal Danish Ballet. This treatise, demonstrating the building blocks of ballet through a highly stylized class, while long, is gratifying and instructive viewing if a bit like homework. Devon Teuscher’s superb line, and Jarod Curley and Andrew Robare’s top-like pirouettes, all contributed to this précis of the balletic language. But the friction between this museum piece and Abraham's au courant Mercurial Son raised questions about ABT's direction, or at least curatorial eye. 

Kaatsbaan Celebrates Dance, from Tap to Genomes

Music From The Sole. Photo: Jack Baran

Kaatsbaan’s annual festival is a work in progress, this year spanning four weeks starting in September. Reliance on the uncovered outdoor Mountain Stage, with its panoramic views, in past years has meant numerous cancellations or relocating of performances due to inclement weather—rain or thunderstorms, not to mention sweltering heat and sun during performances. This year, a canopy has been added to the re-oriented stage, allowing the performers to be sheltered and some of the audience to be shaded. The festival took place later on, during cooler temps, in addition to scheduling events in the elegant, climate-controlled Black Box Theater.

Thus the New Works Bill of dance was performed inside in late September, and reminded me of why theaters are such welcoming safe havens for art, with every element controlled. Music From The Sole led off, a collective of body percussionists (with an emphasis on tap) plus a band whose members sometimes move alongside the dancers. Several tap dance islands were interspersed with platforms to hold the musicians, forming a kind of atoll, between which performers leapt playfully. The group emphasizes Brazilian music (artistic director and choreographer Leonardo Sandoval is Brazilian; Gregory Richardson and collaborators penned the music), which leans on a sunny, mellifluous kind of jazz that guarantees warm fuzzies.

As the performers filtered on, the dancers sat downstage, their backs to us, to watch as the musicians began tuning and playing. This set an amiable tone, as if we were watching a jam session in a studio and were part of the proceedings. The dancers exuded joy, visually checking one another and the musicians, often tapping in unison while moving across the stage. Sandoval is long-limbed, with a loose, playful style. Warm-toned lighting (Kathy Kaufman) complemented the overall feeling of generosity and positivity. Movement and sound-making—whether with an instrument or with the body—all blended into an ecstatic melange.

Boca Tuya. Photo: Jack Baran

Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight, by Boca Tuya, featured a duet by Omar Román De Jesús and Ian Spring. Through visceral and intricate partnering sequences, the two expressed intimacy and interdependence, both aggressive and tender. One sat on the other’s thigh, or bore the other’s weight, lifting, embracing, and resisting. At moments they seemed like one being. Jesse Scheinin composed the score, emphasizing a rhythmic flute; fog drifted onstage every now and then to add drama.

Limón Dance Company. Photo: Jack Baran

Kayla Farrish choreographed a preview of an untitled work for 13 dancers of the Limón Dance Company, sourcing inspiration from two Limón works: Redes and El Grito, with loose themes of collective work and consciousness and freedom, respectively. Sweeping passages for many dancers seemed to expand the black box stage, pushing energy beyond the walls. The company heaved as one, formed a circle several times, and morphed into a tableau that resembled the prow of a ship. The music, by Alex MacKinnon, ranged from cacophonous, squealing jazz to bass-heavy sections to soulful guitar licks. Toward the end, a woman became isolated from the group, evoking the way a victim is chosen in Rite of Spring. Farrish skillfully crafts muscular phrases, although despite the seriousness of the given themes, a little humor or break in the fervency might have offered some emotional texture.

In early October, on the newly sheltered Mountain Stage, Kaatsbaan presented Autobiography V100 & V101, by Company Wayne McGregor. Its namesake choreographer has many laurels and major commissions to his name, but I confess that the work has failed to resonate with me. He works with highly skilled dancers, creating a maximally expressive movement style that tests the pliability of the body. In Autobiography, 23 sections of movement (for the 23 pairs of chomosomes in the human genome) are ordered by algorithm, bookended by set scenes. While this certainly sounds serious and of import—and no doubt it is to McGregor and the dancers, who perform it differently at each show—it’s mostly lost on viewers. But appended to the regular production credits are a list of Ongoing Scientific Partners, providentially expanding the project's reach and financial resources.

Autobiography, photographed in Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France (2023)
 Photo: Ravi Deepres

Music by Jlin ranges from tinkling pipes to explosive booms to electronic ephemera, peppered with shrieks and text snippets, such as “leave me alone.” The dynamics vary from energetic, space-eating phrases to intimate partnering. Some stage structures manifest in a slow walking circle on the perimeter, or two interlocking upstage lines. The dancers continually change costumes (by Aitor Throup) between sections, from smocks to tied-shirt skirts in blacks and whites to minimal bikinis in the finale.

Genome sequencing aside, the vocabulary leans on McGregor’s hyper expressionist staples such as rippling torsos, high leg extensions, and bursting leaps. The choreographer seems to constantly be searching for the body's limits, yet it elicits no emotion or reflection. The style feels external, as if it were applied and not generated from some internal impulse, in the way dances by Camille Brown or Ohad Naharin. After repeated viewing, there's little sparking curiosity or the desire to learn what kind of story or physical experiment underpins the choreography.

As for the Mountain Stage, while the canopy is welcome, without apparent added front lighting, the dancers are at times difficult to see as they're silhouetted in front of sunlit trees and sky. (Judging from the company-supplied photos from France, taken indoors, the lighting scheme is highly designed and integral to the work.) But the facility upgrade helps the viewer experience, as do chairs for some of the audience. The entire campus, with many buildings designed by Stanford White, is an idyllic destination for culture, evolving each season.

Day for Night, for All

Day for Night. Photo: Liz Devine

The July 21 performance of Pam Tanowitz’s premiere, Day for Night, encapsulated the best of summer in the city, with the weather cooperating. A buzzy premiere by one of the busiest choreographers, a lovely new venue, the great outdoors set apart from the hot city, but not too far—what’s not to like? It was presented as part of Little Island’s summer slate, of impressive bounty and breadth, with nine commissions.

Little Island is reached by foot or bicycle by crossing the West Side Highway—an act of metamorphosis that shifts your mindset into one of leisure and breezes after being baked from above and below during the daytime. The Island is an architectural folly, and its design and fastidiousness make it feel a bit like an amusement park. (In a good way.) The pre-8:30 curtain sun was steadily sinking over New Jersey, and on this night, it emitted a palette of lavenders and pinks, with some low, dense clouds refracting the sun to electrify the Hoboken skyline.

As I approached the amphitheater, dancers in green romped on the grass patches, with Tanowitz quietly giving them direction in a prelude to the show. The theater’s upstage is the Hudson River, including a stand of piers and New Jersey. Boats cruised by surprisingly fast, some with no lights on. Seagulls perched on the piers and squawked. The occasional siren sounded from the city behind, plus a lot of helicopter buzzing.

While most of the dance action takes place on the center stage, Tanowitz expands the performance space up the numerous aisles, on and below the Juliet balcony catwalks on either side of the stage, and to the railing of the upstage fence overlooking the river where the dancers stop to gaze out or wave lazily at the birds. She regularly incorporates venues into her dances; just last week, at Jacob’s Pillow, in her Secret Things, a dancer walked into the house and acknowledged the musicians in the pit before going backstage. At Bard in 2021, in I Was Waiting for the Echo of a Better Day, her dancers roamed and danced around the vast grounds of Montgomery Place overlooking the Catskills; it was left to viewers to decide where to look, when.

Maile Okamura, Marc Crousillat, Lindsey Jones
in Day for Night. Photo: Liz Devine

Tanowitz continues her remarkable choreographic invention by isolating and combining different details of each part of the body in unlimited variants, continuously creating subtly new shapes. (It evokes the Surrealists’ game of Exquisite Corpse, but with the body’s sections making dimensional configurations from surprising recombinants.) There are many tender interactions between the dancers in Day for Night, if no traditional lifts or partnering tropes. Certain dancer pods perform long sections before others appear, solo or in small groups, only to exit for long spans. Recurring motifs include the pony step; falling onto a side-extended leg and raising the other leg, like a see-saw; deep pliés in second; and, in repose on the astroturfed benches, joining us in observing other dancers at work. 

Justin Ellington created the sound, a pastiche of found snippets over which ambient noises (birds, choppers) layered, and Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung designed the multi-hued mesh costumes. Davison Scandrett designed the mostly nuanced, sometimes bold lighting, no easy task when competing with a sunset. Melissa Toogood performed a coda in the Grove, a bookend to the danced preludes. We departed in the dark, crossing the West Side Highway back to the main beehive of Manhattan. It felt like waking from a dream of the best kind. 

Little Island is a fantastic small venue with ambitious, rewarding programming led by Zack Winokur, producing artistic director, and Laura Clement, executive director, with tickets at $25. Just check the weather forecast.

Plein Air Dance, Summer of 2024

Smashed2. Photo: Camille Greenwell

SMASHED2

Gandini Juggling | PS21, Chatham, NY | July 12, 2024

Oranges, watermelons, and juggling! Kati Ylä-Hokkala and Sean Gandini took inspiration for SMASHED2 from Pina Bausch, which is evident from the first moment of the show as performers clad in semi-formal black dresses and suits cross rhythmically downstage—while juggling oranges. There could be far worse templates for a cirque show, but this homage was not noted in the digital program, and so all I could think was how blatantly the UK's Gandini Juggling had ripped off Bausch. But on their website, they duly acknowledge their debt to Pina, and a bit of scrolling shows they’re working on a project that honors Merce Cunningham as well.

And actually, the Nelken line works beautifully for this parade of jugglers, each highly skilled in the vexing craft, yet able to sync their movements while pacing in rhythm. They also borrow the convention of a solo woman downstage, speaking directly to the audience, in this case, saying “Oranges. Watermelons.” Indeed, these are the two main props for this evening of whimsy, underpinned by darker themes of gender conflict and retribution.

Smashed2. Photo: Camille Greenwell

As the scenes progress, women juggle while the two men attempt to distract and flirt with them. A woman with a baton also tries to disrupt the main juggler’s routine, ultimately with success. Six of the women surround one, forming a kind of many-armed Kali that passes around oranges in an overly long sequence. The watermelons are held by the women, now lying down in a circle, using their feet to balance the fruit, or passing them around. As you might guess from the title, things get juicy at the end, when the women overpower the men and use them for target practice for the melons and the juice of oranges, taking revenge for previous harassment. Similar to Bausch, the performance is grounded by a varied songlist that ranges from Americana folk song to new age shimmer. And, as always at PS21, the onstage action in the open-air amphitheater fought for attention, this time from a hot-air balloon cruising in the sultry air nearby.

Chun Wai Chan, Grace Scheffel, and Gilbert Bolden III in Underneath, There Is Light. Photo: Erin Baiano

New York City Ballet

Saratoga Performing Arts Center | Saratoga Springs, NY | July 11, 2024

There were also distractions at SPAC in Saratoga Springs for its annual presentation of New York City Ballet, but primarily from the audience, for which the plein-air theater seems conducive to random chatting, and from one rowdy man directly behind me lacking impulse control, badly timed, bellowed F-words or OMGs, albeit in support of the dancers. I caught the contemporary program, which alternated with Jewels and some classic chestnuts including Swan Lake and Coppélia. I had seen Amy Hall Garner’s Underneath, There Is Light at the Koch Theater earlier this year, and at the spacious SPAC stage, it felt better situated, with its non-stop blasts of pyrotechnics. In the second part, the women in gold gowns and the men in pearl rompers seemed to float organically into the surrounding atmosphere.

Naomi Corti and Ruby Lister in Gustave le Gray No.1. Photo: Erin Baiano

Two very different red quartets followed. Red Angels by Ulysses Dove (1994), a chamber-scaled staple of the repertory, features electric movements to match the twangy music by Richard Einhorn. Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Gray No. 1 (2019) features four women responding to, and literally moving, Stephen Gosling and his piano. With a repeating motif of a simple sauté, it’s the choreographer’s most poetic and intimate commission for the company yet, and rewards re-viewing. (Tanowitz remains one of the busiest choreographers around. Earlier in the week, I saw the Royal Ballet perform an excerpt of Tanowitz's Secret Things (2023) at Jacob's Pillow, write-up forthcoming, and will soon see Day For Night, her commission for Little Island in New York City.)

The Times Are Racing (2017), by Justin Peck, holds particular interest after seeing his music-theater work Illinoise at Bard last year. So many of the movements and tropes that suffuse the Broadway-bound show (for which Peck won the Tony for best choreography) are nascent in Times, and they felt radical and fresh seven years ago. But he has made so much work in the interim that some of his inventions feel overly familiar. Clustering centerstage, pulsing and lifting up one dancer, bursting apart… the outwear to signify breaking of tradition or the “outside”… sneakers… these all are elements Peck has used time and again. Times is kind of a primer of many of Peck’s non-classical motifs packed into 25 minutes, and apparently reason enough to scream more ecstatic expletives at the stage.