by Leigh Witchel
Often the only connection between the works in a Fall for Dance program is that there’s no connection. Still, that’s the curatorial aim of the festival, less a carefully composed meal than a potluck that contains something everyone might like. Hopefully. That, and the low ticket price, bring in a different audience. The three works on Program 4 were, as usual, eclectic.
Abby Zbikowski’s “Indestructible” celebrated dance as a physical, exhausting activity. It was performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, an Afrocentric company that’s been working since 1968. Zbikowski’s work was less contemporary and more post-modern. She is also based in Ohio, but she’s won a Bessie and says her works “pay homage to the effort of living.”
The production was no-nonsense: the stage was stripped, harshly lit by Matthew J. Evans’ industrial lighting, and the music by Death Grips began as industrial noise. That quickly cut out and a man entered into a circle of light. He swung his legs, kicking, then dropped into a weighted time step circling the stage in heavy chugs.
Another man joined him. Two women took over the exertion, jumping under themselves, and continued on in solos and duos. One woman jumped repeatedly on to her knees; blessedly, it looked as if she were wearing kneepads.
Throughout the piece dancers kept with one another by verbal cues (“And go!”) Mostly the dancers speaking were onstage, but other times off. Sometimes that felt like an accompaniment that impelled the dance, at other times a narration of something already determined.
The next section was demarcated by a change in lighting and noise. Six dancers in two lines of three raced towards the center, passing each other. They inched on the floor, counting time, or encouraging one another, “Let’s go, girl!” Once they dove to the floor face up, “Indestructible” was done.
The frenzied calisthenics of “Indestructible” were impressive in their strain, but the point of turning exertion and group exercise into choreography was elusive. It felt like a mashup of military drills and CrossFit.
Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Two of Us,” a duet to Joni Mitchell for Sara Mearns and Robbie Fairchild, was originally created as a film for the digital performance of the Festival in 2020. Loose and simple, it was a cakewalk for them but they made up for the simplicity in a relaxed, glamorous performance.
Mearns wore loose pants and a top by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme, with her hair loose as well. She was on pointe, but this wasn’t meant to be rigorous. Backwards bourrées became loose shuffles; her hair often covered her face. To “I Don’t Know Where I Stand” she did skipping steps and decorative arms that felt more like an improvised soliloquy than dance design. Her solo ended almost as if she went to sleep, but then she turned to where Fairchild would enter.
Fairchild’s solo, done in soft slippers to “Urge for Going,” had a different temperament; less introspection and more mercurial attack. When the song talked about taking flight you could see echoes of it in Fairchild’s port de bras; his arms rotated and pushed like pistons.
Mearns reentered, her hair now loosely fastened in a bun, for a short solo to “You Turn Me On I’m a Radio.” She skipped, rolling her torso, and the backwards bourrées returned, but this time amplified into scooping hops. It was a different mood and persona: the smart, knowing woman. She shuffled to the corner; Fairchild entered at the opposite corner.
Wheeldon used a lusher, orchestrated remake of “Both Sides Now” from 2000, sung by an older, alto and more experienced Mitchell who really had looked at clouds from almost all sides by then. But the relationship onstage was much less ambivalent. Fairchild and Mearns weren’t looking back, but sharing the same reverie.
Wheeldon used crème de la crème tracks from Mitchell’s discography, but he didn’t match her perception. The loose phrasing seemed to equate Mitchell’s mellowness for easy listening, and it also seemed that was what the dancers wanted as well. They were taking it easy, but then Mearns did a high, linear extension to the side to remind you the rigor was there if she felt like it.
Kyiv City Ballet was the Cinderella act; one as perpetually on the road as the Ballets Russes. The troupe came to us from North Carolina, it went to Texas when it left us. They performed sections of a work that had been given its premiere a week earlier: “Thoughts,” by Vladyslav Dobshynskyi, who also danced the lead. It was a familiar-looking ballet that used a theme dancers are attracted to: the individual against the group.
Make that a couple instead of an individual, Dobshynskyi danced with Maryna Apanasenko, both dressed in white in front of a beige corps. Arlene Croce is grimacing somewhere, “Thoughts” was indeed Beige Art. Dobshynskyi stretched and posed shirtless to the whispers of the crowd; the corps danced mostly in unison. After a while, they echoed his poses facing to the back.
A unison section was done to thudding music, then a nervous duet. There was more angst-ridden partnering, and monolithic corps dancing. The dancers raced into a clump, Apanasenko crossed, he tried to reach for her, but instead she was lifted up by the men surrounded by the women in a massive fountain-like formation that seemed straight out of “Spartacus.”
Her solo, and the duet with Dobshynskyi that followed looked very familiar. She was extremely loose-jointed; her legs flew front with no effort. To close, the back traveler rose on a bright orange sky; the crowd made fists and dropped to the floor.
“Thoughts” wasn’t a very sophisticated work, but this is a company that has been thrust into the limelight by outrageous fortune. It had left Ukraine for Paris the day before the invasion, and found itself stranded with two principal dancers, two-thirds of the corps and costumes for “The Nutcracker.” A residency in Paris was arranged along with touring opportunities. Let’s cut them some slack.
After a brief pause, “Men of Kyiv” ended the show. It was a character piece, a hopak, choreographed by Pavlo Virsky. There were no national costumes, instead the men wore simple T-shirts: six in blue and six in yellow, natch.
Instead of combat, the men were in friendly competition, doing all the tricks: barrel turns, side splits, coffee grinders, crab walks at blinding speed. It was a brief, showy outburst that ended with a happy cry from the cast. Character vocabulary is taught alongside ballet, but often in countries with a developed folk tradition, dancers branch off to specialize in it or in ballet. These dancers had to do both, which takes work and gear-shifting.
But since Kyiv City is evidently short of repertory and bifolkal when it comes to disciplines, could some nice person at the Balanchine Trust throw “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” their way? Stravinsky’s mother was born in Kyiv, and his father sang with the opera there – there is a connection. Just think of how good that folk-influenced finale would look on them.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
Fall for Dance Program 4
New York City Center, New York, NY
September 29, 2022
Cover: Dayton Contemporary Dance Company in “Indestructible.” Photo credit © Christopher Duggan.
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