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IMPRESSIONS: Gauthier Dance at The Joyce Theater
By Cecly Placenti
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Published on March 26, 2025
Photo: Jeanette Bak
Artistic Director: Eric Gauthier
Company Manager: Inga Kunz
Ballet Masters: Cesar Locsin, Luis Eduardo Sayago
Artistic Management: Daria Mosunova, Susanne Wildermuth, Jessica Wojcik
Technical Production Management: Holger Reuker
Artistic Coordination Set & Costumes: Gudrun Schretzmeier
Dancers: Bruna Andrade, Tuti Cedeño, Andrew Cummings, Anneleen Dedroog, Karlijn Dedroog, Barbara Melo Freire, Stefano Gallelli, Luca Pannacci, Garazi Perez Oloriz, Arnau Redorta Ortiz, Shai Ottolenghi, Izabela Szylinska, Sidney Elizabeth Turtschi, Giovanni Visone, Shawn Wu, and Shori Yamamoto
March 11, 2025
New York City is a global hub for dance, thanks to its renowned resident companies, emerging local talent, and the world-class troupes that visit its stages. Gauthier Dance/Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart's return to The Joyce Theater after eight years exemplifies the latter, offering up a program that mixes the playful with the poignant in an exciting evening of contemporary dance.
While seeing dance performances on any given Tuesday may be commonplace in this city, being addressed by company directors before performances is not. On opening night, artistic director Eric Gauthier greeted the audience with enthusiasm and gratitude, letting us know he greets audiences all over the world on company tours and his stop in New York City would be no different. Gauthier’s candor and charm make it easy to see why his company has risen in stature so quickly — first established in 2007, Gauthier Dance is now regarded as one of the premiere contemporary ballet companies in Germany and commissions many of the brightest choreographers working in the field.
The program opens with Point, a trio depicting the obsessive distortions of jealousy, danced by Bruna Andrade, Karlijn Dedroog and Izabela Szylinska. Choreographed by Sharon Eyal, Point was commissioned in 2022 for The Seven Deadly Sins project in which Gauthier Dance invited seven choreographers to create a new work based on one of the major Christian vices. Eyal, who danced with the Batsehva Dance Company for nearly twenty years, is heavily influenced by Ohad Naharin’s Gaga style, yet her approach is distinct. Like Gaga, which emphasizes sensations within the dancers’ bodies and encourages the discovery of new movement patterns, Eyal’s choreography is visceral and not easily codifiable. The dancers move like insects, sinuous and distorted. Splayed rib cages, overly arched backs, shrugged shoulders and inverted elbows defy the laws of classical dance, yet classical elements emerge. Quick steps on relevè, deep pliés in second position, and lush leg extensions are recognizable technical elements that seamlessly meld with robotic, bird-like preening as each dancer attempts to steal attention away from the others. Failing, they claw at their throats with menace as if trying to try to crawl out of their own skin in discomfort. In the end, overcoming their fractured duets and solos, Andrade, Dedroog and Szylinska join together and perform a mechanical, hypnotic salsa. Point is fascinating, stark and cold.
Gauthier’s humorous solo ABC, danced by Shori Yamamoto, begins with his recorded voice warning the audience that the following production will be performed by a professional, and not to try these moves at home. Then, Gauthier recites the alphabet, iterating words and phrases that have to do with dance while Yamamoto performs them. The result is a playful game between the unseen narrator and the dancer, and between the dancer and the audience. Some words are ballet terms like “assemble” and “arabesque,” but others are less concrete, as in “angular” and “available.” The words come at a rapid-fire pace, forcing Yamamoto to quickly move between complicated dance steps and pantomime. He handles each transition with ease, performing virtuosic jumping and turning variations with crystalline precision, then suddenly grips his back and grimaces at the word “old,” or pretends to smoke a cigarette when he hears "Pina Bausch." What makes the piece work so well is not only Yamamoto’s stellar technique and control, but his acting ability and capacity to shift facial expressions and opposing physical demands within seconds.
Hofesh Shechter's Swan Cake begins with the house lights still up. Nine dancers run onto the stage, clapping to the electronic score, also created by Shechter. Their energy is high and celebratory, matching the intensity of the music. It alludes to a rave. The dancers, dressed in mis-matched street clothes, invite the audience to clap along as they step and pop their chests to the rhythm. Suddenly there is a black out and the dancers reappear in dimmer lighting, clumped together and pulsing like one large organism, no longer aware of an audience. Sometimes the clump moves as one, accenting the tribal rhythm together. At others, they define the structure each in their own way — shoulders dip and circle, backs contract and release, arms undulate. The vibe is ritualistic and hypnotic.
Shechter, artistic director of Hofesh Shechter Company, is currently the artist-in-residence with Gauthier Dance. Like Eyal, he danced with the Batsheva company and has his own take on Gaga. Where Eyal’s movement style can be seen as robotic and mechanized, Shechter’s is animalistic. He has a mesmerizing way of choreographing masses of bodies like a kaleidoscope, dancers separating and reuniting seamlessly. There are glimpses of swan-like arms, but these swans are not delicate. Their arms undulate softly for mere moments. The rest of the time they vibrate, punch, stretch with tension and cut sharp angles. Near the end, the music shifts and sounds like it is coming from behind a thick wall. The dancers gather together in a triangular mass, their arms becoming more unison and softer, but still amplify the percussive score. Swan Cake is a strange magic, infectious and inclusive.
Closing the program is Naharin’s iconic Minus 16, a contemporary masterpiece. Part of its genius is that despite being performed many times by companies around the world since its inception in 1999, the piece is never the same twice. Made of excerpts from several of Naharin’s early works, it is structured and arranged differently depending on the company.
Minus 16 also begins with the house lights still on, during intermission. A dancer casually walks on stage wearing a black suit jacket and pants, and begins a twitching, boneless solo. At times he looks drunk, at others like there are ants beneath his clothing that he is trying to shake out. Sometimes he dances as if completely unaware of being watched then suddenly whips off a perfect triple pirouette into a double tour en’lair- complicated ballet steps that demand — and receive — attention.
Afterward, sixteen dancers all dressed in identical black suits and hats enter and sit in chairs arranged in a semicircle on the stage, slumped. They stand and fling themselves into back bends, hurl themselves to the floor, recover and repeat, in a wave from end to end. With each repeat something changes — an arm gesture,a piece of clothing removed- except for the final dancer who continually gets tossed to the floor by a seemingly invisible force. Their movements accumulate, as does the music — a driving, Viking-rock version of the Jewish Passover song, “Echad Mi Yodea.” The dancers jump up and stand in wide legged, powerful stances and shout-sing along. The exactitude of their accumulating movements is profound and captivating.
Later, six dancers stand at the front of the stage in grey underclothes and perform a crisp, precise gestural phrase to the sound of a metronome. There is a sensual duet to classical music where a man slowly lifts and supports the weight of his female partner, hardly ever losing contact with her skin. In the end, the cast is back in their black suits, wandering the audience for new dance partners. Guests are brought up on stage and invited into a madcap mambo.
Minus 16 felt like a journey, and the audience was on it from beginning to end. In fact, the whole evening felt like that — an odyssey through stark places, fun places, communal places, places unfamiliar and places that felt like home. Gauthier Dance received an immediate standing ovation that evening. Although visiting guests to New York City, they made us feel connected to them and to each other, and in a city as big and bustling as this one, that is a great gift.
