by Leigh Witchel
The opening night of Fall For Dance was a celebration. It was the 18th season, and a palpable thrill and relief to be back at City Center after more than 18 long months. It was a great evening if you came for that celebration. If you came to see well-programmed dance, it was – as usual – more hit or miss.
The show led off with five-time FFD vets STREB EXTREME ACTION. Eight dancers did three pieces, kitted out in blue unitards like gymnasts or astronauts. Even though they referred to themselves as dancers, what they did was more acrobatics as high-energy as its all-caps name.
Like acrobatics, it was hair-raising. The first number, “Molinette” involved three of the group high atop a scaffolding, perilously revolving in giant loops while strapped firmly in by their boots. Occasionally the trio synchronized arm and torso motions.
Felix Hess, the onstage DJ, shouted at the crowd to “make some noise” – so this wasn’t an experience about perceiving. It was about feeling involved – there was even an audience arm-wave and a T-shirt cannon. “Give yourself a round of applause,” Hess shouted, as if we had earned a participation medal for showing up.
As we watched the scaffolding disassembled behind a scrim, the dancers performed “Add” in front. It was another trio; this time of jumping and slamming to the floor with a grunt. Elizabeth Streb’s work is most interested in force and exertion: as raw and physical as possible. After that, “Pole Vaults,” a solo that was equal parts baton twirling and rhythmic gymnastics.
Streb’s section ended with “Air,” a trampoline piece that involved the full company flipping and hurling itself one by one on to an air mat. The slamming to the mat got predictable and exhausting, but there were some nifty tricks, including a moment where two men seemed suspended midair in a run.
But no matter how much fun this was, dance – at least as performance – is as much about meaning as about motion. It’s about what you’re watching, but also the hundred other things that reminds you of. Like the circus, Streb’s extreme action is one thing and one thing only – what you’re looking at.
Kyle Abraham’s “Our Indigo: If We Were a Love Song” was an emotional hard reverse. The seven-dancer work, for his company A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, had its premiere last month at the American Dance Festival. Set to a group of Nina Simone recordings, a tight group of seven dancers slowly moved in half-light in an anguished meditation on the pain of being black in the United States.
Abraham also spoke for an even more marginalized group – those who are gay and black in the U.S. In “Keeper of the Flame” Donovan Reed did a runway ball sashay to the back. Abraham didn’t just use it decoratively, it was as much as a traveling step as anything else. That combination of style and utility became its own pungent commentary on where concert dance sources (and doesn’t source) its raw material. In “Don’t Explain” Reed and Jae Neal barely connected. Absorbed in his own spasms, Neal passed Reed and barely noticed him as Neal left.
Yet “Our Indigo” was hard to sit through, for more than the heartfelt urgency of the subject. Because each section is self-contained, a jukebox compilation of songs is one of the easiest, and cheapest, to rehearse logistically. But it’s also one of the hardest to make choreographically satisfying and the work fell prey to that. The Simone songs, all downtempo with largely the same dynamics as well as emotional territory, made the sections blur together, as did casting most as solos. Even the light cues barely changed level. Except for a sudden back handspring Gianna Theodore did to “Little Girl Blue” that solo felt like it was danced on one slow, sustained note. With so little contrast, it was a long push.
Another short stop and abrupt change of direction followed: The Verdon Fosse Legacy presented a world premiere commission, “Sweet Gwen Suite” featuring New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin, backed up by Zachary Downer and Tyler Eisenreich in three short numbers originally danced by Gwen Verdon on television.
The three were dressed like spangly gauchos. Cigarettes dangling from their lips (could it be a Fosse dance without cigarettes?), Pazcoguin moved into a flamenco-influenced solo; clapping out palmas that morphed into Fosse finger snaps in lieu of castanets.
From that, there was a hip-popping trio and finally a number known to all Internet junkies, “Mexican Breakfast” done with two men in backup instead of women. Pazcoguin is a natural Broadway performer, but all three of them punched this hard. Every move was sharply punctuated, every look out to the audience done as if to stun and paralyze prey. The original is all over the Internet; you can see it has a much lighter touch. Maybe that’s another difference in the half-century that’s passed – this wasn’t any less subtle than anything else on the bill.
The evening ended joyfully in a group curtain call followed by a confetti shower. After a year and a half out of the theater, Fall for Dance is once again what is usually is: a raucous buffet that values eclecticism over discrimination. It’s going to be something-for-everyone even if those somethings are spinach, ice cream and ball bearings. So, if you’re a Mr. Crankypants who values thoughtful programming where the whole looks as good as the parts, you’ll have to bring your own discrimination.
copyright ©2021 by Leigh Witchel
Fall for Dance Program 1
New York City Center, New York, NY
October 13, 2021
Cover: A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham in “Our Indigo: If We Were a Love Song.” Photo credit © Stephanie Berger
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