by Leigh Witchel
Nederlands Dans Theater is the perfect company to watch viscerally. If you just focused on the excellent dancing and the dramatic effects, you would have been fine. But the company’s program at New York City Center was composed of three dimly-lit, meandering works. If you made the mistake of thinking about craft issues, such as structure, build or logic, you would have wanted to dig a hole, climb a rope ladder, or just escape somehow.
The opener was fine on its own. N.N.N.N. is a quartet made by William Forsythe in 2002 for Ballett Frankfurt. It’s a stripped-down piece done in warmup clothing and socks, originally made for men, here danced by a woman and three men, with likely no difference in effect. Gender wasn’t the point; there weren’t any interactions colored by that. It just needed four dancers.
Forsythe’s movement was pedestrian, which might surprise those whose knowledge of him is from his virtuoso ballets. Here, a man entered, bouncing his arm experimentally, letting it dangle, chucking or placing it.
Another man entered, they watched one another. Then two more people came on, a man and a woman to complete the cast. The experimental, quotidian movement went on in fits and starts. The dancers started touching one another; references crept in as they interlocked arms like cygnets or clasped their hands in a Balanchine chain.
The arc of the dance was only in the movement, but Forsythe is too skilled a choreographer to have nothing going on. The movement morphed and developed; it went into a chopping section and then back to the cygnets. After a while, the dancers exchanged places rolling on the floor like logs.
The music was credited to Thom Willems, and the company assured us it was playing, but it was at such a low volume it might as well have been subliminal. Mostly, we heard the breathing of the dancers.
With only movement holding the piece together, N.N.N.N. had a trivial quality it shares with many of Forsythe’s short-form works. At times, the activity seemed to slow down and evaporate. The light satire in the timing and Muppet poses of N.N.N.N. made it feel like the Flying Karamazov Brothers, only without juggling. The dancers’ very audible breathing – “HAH!” – sounded like a jokey take on martial arts. A final HAH! and the quartet ran off separately.
Like his Quiet Evening of Dance, stripped-down Forsythe felt aimless. There was a structure, there was a build, but there wasn’t a point.
N.N.N.N. was followed by The Point Being. Unfortunately, there was none, for what seemed like about three weeks.
The work made its debut last year, created by Imre and Marne van Opstal in collaboration with designers DRIFT. Once again, it began in the dark, this time with an audible low rumble. The dim stage was divided laterally by a large hanging grid, and one woman, her back to us, was slowly walking towards a man. The other dancers laid slumbering on the floor, waking slowly.
In the dark glow, a woman ginched, zombie-like. Two women partnered and nuzzled as men walked through. At times the rolling floor work seemed almost like capoeira. The women left to a scratchy beat in the music, giving way to a man who rolled, while another man watched him. Who were these alienated people?
The Point Being felt familiar. The lights moved and flashed; the man held and cradled the woman. The partnering and movement fixated so much on breath as the movement’s impetus, it felt as trapped in cliché as ballet’s cliché is being stiff.
The dancers did what they did beautifully; they’re among the best contemporary dancers. But by this point, we were well into The Point Being and there was still no point.
A sidelight was lowered. Two women contorted. A man lay down. Please, let this go somewhere or end.
Nope. The music sawed away and the dance went into a double duet. The grid reappeared, the dancers ran on, dropped to the floor, but one remained up slowly walking forward, the others with their backs to us.
That wasn’t the end. There was another pas de deux. The Point Being was going to grind on until everyone in the cast had their moment. Admirable, but not a reason to keep the curtain raised.
This pas de deux was more aerial, the rest of the cast walked and ran to punctuate it. It became a trio when another woman entered. It was both full out and expertly danced, but still. no. point. Just more empty calories pretending to be a banquet.
Everyone marched in a pattern, then in two groups, three dancers against five with the dancers in each group constantly shifting. It’s not as if the choreographic devices were unsophisticated. They were unedited.
The grids came down again, smoke built up, the dancers whirled. The cast coalesced into a group as the music got louder. Lights flashed, the music stopped and the grid rose. One woman remained while the others went off. Was this the end? We were at what seemed like a fortnight into the dance. There needed to be a conclusion or a meal break.
Nope. There was another &*$%#!! duet.
Make it stop.
The duet kept going, with jellyfish moves and jellyfish structure. Finally the couple released hands and walked apart. The end. Finally. We all deserved graduation diplomas.
The Point Being did not need a collaboration with a designer, but an editor. Badly. Granted, the final duet was the best of them, and there’s no law against ending on a pas de deux instead of a group number, but there were several weaker duets padding the piece. Start cutting, don’t be shy.
Jakie, by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, also made its debut last year. It was a more concise, interesting work than The Point Being, but putting the two works back to back made both look more run-of-the-mill.
Jakie also began in darkness with another portentous, low rumble. A spotlight briefly picked out a Boschian, near-naked crowd: two dancers contorted at the front, while the others slowly moved at the back. The group all lifted one foot into retiré. Actual academic vocabulary, but it was yet another inchoately upset group.
The thudding got louder, sounding like a tape sampling of a switch being abruptly flipped. Ori Lichtik’s composition was another pounding, interchangeable electronic score that provided atmosphere and a beat, but no structure.
The group shivered their legs, then moved in tight unison in a way alternately fluid and mechanical. This went on for a while. People detached briefly, but stayed close to the group for solos that didn’t feel like solos.
Several minutes in, you could have asked the same question again, “Where is this going?” But the dancers spread out into a V, and things started to happen spatially. Finally, form! The group drifted into a line as one man pranced past, then into a square of four lines, springing in counterpoint and exchanging lines.
Sure, that’s a riff on Forsythe’s work, including Artifact, but it was choreography. So much of the evening looked like a parody of American stereotypes of European choreography: “Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.”
The dancers massed and went back to lines, then to a clump with dancers breaking out at the front. The avoidance of real solos felt like a statement. A woman disengaged, and Jakie ended as if it could go on forever.
If you watched the evening like a dancer, going along with the kinesthetic sensations in your body, it was a fantastic evening. If you watched it like a craftsperson, not so much. The show was weakly programmed, with way too many effects, way too much darkness and way too little arc. It was too much of a miserable thing.
As much as people feel like ballet is past its sell-by date, you could argue that because it’s abstracted, it has a longer shelf life. The two pieces made last year looked dated already. In these times, inchoate disaffection and existential dread seems self-indulgent. Most of our angst has a very clear reason.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
N.N.N.N., The Point Being, Jakie – Nederlands Dans Theater
New York City Center, New York, NY
April 6, 2024
Cover: Nederlands Dans Theater in N.N.N.N. Photo © Rahi Rezvani.
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