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Chui Chai

Chui Chai
Pichet Klunchun Dance Company
Gerald W. Lynch Theater
at John Jay College
New York
July 24, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

 One of the smartest things that Thai dancer and choreographer Pichet Klunchun did before he stepped on stage in “Chui Chai” was take his shirt off. No, not because the work needed a bare torso to grab the audience’s attention. The exotic sheen of its traditional materials would have been enough for that. And Klunchun could have held the stage wrapped in burlap with a bag over his head; he’s saturated with charisma. But by stripping off his top and he laid bare the architectural beauty of the movement itself.

Miroku

“Miroku”
Saburo Teshigawara / KARAS
Rose Theater
New York
July 9, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell 

 
The audience for the New York premiere of Saburo Teshigawara’s “Miroku” knew exactly how long the work was supposed to be: the house staff was at pains to both apprise us of its length—70 minutes—and warn us that there would be no intermission. (In other words, hit the restrooms now.) But time, it turns out, is peculiarly elastic in the disquieting universe of “Miroku,” whose solitary inhabitant seems bound in a cycle of serenity and struggle.

Mixed Doubles

“After the Rain,” “Luce Nascosta,” “Who Cares?”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
June 10, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

 
“Luce Nascosta (Unseen Light), Mauro Bigonzetti’s fourth work for New York City Ballet, looks dramatic but isn’t drama. A lot goes on—furiously, and for a long time, too—but nothing ever happens. Lit by Mark Stanley in striking chiaroscuro, nine couples dressed in black engage in the kind of fraught, convoluted partnering that’s “dramatic” in the sense of looking like mortal peril, but is in reality only a simulation of drama. We see emblems—of what? dysfunction? cruelty? torment?—but not the arc of a human encounter. It’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing more than a reflexive, moody angst that’s the lazy sentimentality de nos jours. 

Never Draw to an Inside Straight

“Interplay,” “Call Me Ben,” “Scotch Symphony”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
June 5, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

“Call Me Ben,” Melissa Barak’s new one-act ballet about Bugsy Siegel, is as luxe a production as the famously glamour–obsessed gangster could have wanted. Santiago Calatrava’s backdrops—tall, graceful palm trees soaked in glowing shades of purple and indigo and luminous desert mountains rippling against a bright blue sky—are both simple and simply stunning. Fashion designer Gilles Mendel’s 40’s–inflected chiffon dresses, chic tweed ensembles, and sharp chalk-stripe suits are beautifully cut, beyond gorgeous, and partly underwritten by Bergdorf’s. Jay Greenberg’s newly–commissioned score (“Neon Refracted”) has the handsome, professional sheen of a top-drawer Hollywood soundtrack. The big cast of 31 dancers has been chosen from among the company’s top talent. But for all its glamorous trappings, “Call Me Ben” is a disappointing—if valiant—misfire: Barak, still a young choreographer, doesn’t yet know how to tell a story through dance.

Vintage

“#3,” “MiddleSexGorge,” “Love Me Tender,” “Foreign Import,” and “Ghostown”
Stephen Petronio Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
New York
April 27, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
   
Stephen Petronio—now wrapping up his company’s 25th anniversary season with a week of performances at the Joyce—is utterly indifferent to the sober, lo-fi aesthetic of the more earnest precincts of post-post art. He’s often labeled a “downtown” choreographer, but his downtown is as much that of storied dance clubs and protest theater as it is of raw loft space. Not that his style looks anything like club dancing. In “MiddleSexGorge,” one of the vintage works on the program, it looks like the adorably bratty love child of Trisha Brown and William Forsythe talking smack. But its trappings—music and costumes by “it” bands and edgy designers—are the apotheosis of club theater: the brash art of arriving at the right party in the right clothes with a bevy of fabulous friends in tow.

Hot Prospects

1.2.3 Festival Opening Night
Taylor 2 | ABT II | Ailey II
The Joyce Theater
New York
April 13, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

On the road and out of town for many months of the year, ABT II, Ailey II, and Taylor 2 perform a signal service for the arts by bringing live dance to cities and schools across the U.S. They’re back home for while and in rotation at the Joyce, where each will present its own evening–length program during the 1.2.3 Festival (April 14—April 29). The Festival’s opening night presented a one–time–only opportunity to sample all three companies on the same program. There was a world premiere, a new production, and a chance to see an alternate take on a repertory staple. Ho–hum. Whatever. The real reason to go, of course, was to scout out the new talent and be the first on your block to see a star in the making.

Brownian Motion

"If you couldn’t see me” and “Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503”
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Howard Gilman Performance Space
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York
April 7, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell

As part of its ongoing 40th anniversary celebration, the Trisha Brown Dance Company showcased two of its founder’s short but telling works in a little amuse-bouche of a program at the Baryshnikov Art Center’s Howard Gilman Performance Space. Taken together, Brown’s 1994 solo “If you couldn’t see me” and her 1980 quartet “Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503” clock in at just under a half–hour, but they form an apt synopsis of what’s wonderful about Brown’s work—and what’s disconcerting about it, too.

Nothing Personal

“Beach Birds,” “Duo,” and “Grosse Fugue”
Lyon Opera Ballet
The Joyce Theater
New York
March 9, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell

New dance is really nothing new in Lyon. Jean-Georges Noverre, one of ballet’s revolutionaries, published his seminal treatise Les Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets there in 1760 and both danced with and choreographed for the Lyon Opera. The Lyon Opera Ballet, launched as an autonomous dance company in 1969, looks back by looking forward. Dedicated exclusively to “la danse contemporaine,” the company has amassed a repertory of both well-established and newly–commissioned work by contemporary choreographers as disparate in style and sensibility as Nacho Duato and Tere O’Connor.

Back to Balanchine

“Liebeslieder Walzer” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”
New York City Ballet
Koch Theater
New York
February 16, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell

Finally! After six weeks of back-to-back full-length story ballets (eleven weeks, if one counts “The Nutcracker”), New York City Ballet has returned to the foundation of its repertory:  plotless — though hardly storyless — ballets by Balanchine and Robbins. The final two weeks of its Winter 2010 season opened with an all–Balanchine program featuring “Liebeslieder Walzer” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.”

Oro Viejo

“Oro Viejo” (Old Gold)
Compañía Rocío Molina
New York City Center
New York
February 12, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell

Rocío Molina is an astonishing dancer, as riveting poised in charged stillness as she is in vibrant motion. Judging from “Oro Viejo” (Old Gold), which received its New York premiere at City Center on Friday evening, the 25 year old rising flamenco star is a promising choreographer as well. The work’s individual numbers seemed only tangentially related to its stated theme—old age and the passage of time—but no matter: each comprised its own satisfying little drama and set its own mood, as much through articulate dancing as through costumes and lighting.