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IMPRESSIONS: New York City Center's Fall for Dance 2024 (Programs 2 and 3)
By Henning Rübsam
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Published on October 21, 2024
kNoname Artist / Roderick George. Photo: Alice Chacon
Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Boston Ballet, kNoname Artist, Anne Plamondon, Herman Cornejo & Skylar Brandt, and M.A.D.D. Rhythms
NEW YORK CITY CENTER - Fall For Dance Festival
Program 2: Friday, September 20, 2024
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COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET: Dwight Rhoden & Desmond Richardson, Artistic Directors // Excerpts from For Crying Out Loud // Choreography by DWIGHT RHODEN //Music by U2
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BOSTON BALLET: Mikko Nissinen, Artistic Director // Ein von Viel NY Premiere // Choreography by SABRINA MATTHEWS // Music by JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
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kNoname Artist | Roderick George // Roderick George, Artistic Director //Venom Choreography by RODERICK GEORGE // Music by SLOWDANGER
Program 3: Tuesday, September 24, 2024
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ANNE PLAMONDON PRODUCTIONS : Anne Plamondon, Artistic Director // MYOKINE US Premiere // Choreography by ANNE PLAMONDON //Music by OLIVIER FAIRFIELD and OURIELLE AUVÉ
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HERMAN CORNEJO & SKYLAR BRANDT: The Specter of the Rose World Premiere // Choreography:HERMAN CORNEJO after MICHEL FOKINE // Music by CARL MARIA VON WEBER
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M.A.D.D. Rhythms: Bril Barrett, Founder & Artistic Director // Excerpts from Feeling Good: A M.A.D.D. Rhythms Tribute to Nina Simone // NY Premiere // Choreography: BRIL BARRETT, STARINAH “STAR” DIXON, ALEXANDRYA FRYSON, DONNETTA “LIL BIT” JACKSON, and TRISTAN BRUNS
Choreographer Dwight Rhoden’s "For Crying Out Loud" premiered on the relatively small stage of The Joyce Theater in November 2023, and opens Program 2 of this year’s Fall for Dance Festival. The 18 dancers of Complexions Contemporary Ballet have no problem transferring the work to the bigger stage at City Center since they perform with skill, vigor, and enthusiasm. It’s eye-catching that they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors representing the diversity of New York City.
"For Crying out Loud" features hits of the still popular Irish band U2. You did not have to be around during the band’s heyday in the late 1980s to hum along to songs like “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m looking for” or “With or Without You” since they still get lots of airplay. Glorious high-octane dancing and countless entrances and exits that have dancers running on and off stage make the piece an aerobic tour de force.
The songs written by bass guitarist Adam Clayton, lead singer Bono, and lead guitarist and keyboardist The Edge, often tell stories. While I do not see these stories reflected in the choreography, the sheer exuberance the dancers bring to the stage is entertaining. What they manage to do is hard and looks it. It affirms technique. Only the fittest will get through this kind of challenge and the company happens to have a full stable of dance artists with athletic ability and plenty of stamina. However, watching the dancers run center stage to strut their stuff, and then run off presumably to rest so they can run on again, eventually becomes tiresome. Costumes by Christine Darch don’t hide the beautiful bodies under lighting by Michael Korsh.
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Boston Ballet, under the artistic direction of Mikko Nissinen, presents a 2001 male duet by choreographer Sabrina Matthews. Dancers Jeffrey Cirio and Yue Shi are joined onstage by pianist Alex Foaksman, who plays from Johann Sebastian Bach’s "Goldberg Variations". Clad in white costumes, the work "Ein von Viel" feels clinical. It amounts to a cleanly executed etude.
Maybe this palate cleanser gave me the appetite for what was to come.
kNoname Artist / Roderick George is a company I was unfamiliar with, but that from now on I will seek out. A big disco ball hangs from the ceiling and a company of men dances as if attending a party. I question the title, "Venom." But after just one song the mood shifts. Voices over the music by Slowdanger take you back inside the AIDS crisis. Hope is a medicine, and the men partner each other supportively dancing their hearts out. They don’t perform for the audience, but they are fully there for one another and we witness exchanges of passion, beauty, heartbreak, and loss. Turns with a leg held in front while the body leans back pull a dancer in many directions at once. Inner strength and resilience can help one survive for only so long, and the real backbone proves to be a brotherhood.
Throughout the work, snow falls from the sky. It is dark snow and looks bleak and sad. Eventually it covers the stage, and the dancers keep moving through it. True community and love cannot be stopped. The dancers wear simple shorts, t-shirts and socks, which are all grey, and never get in the way of the dance.
George has made a moving work and his powerful dancers commit to it wholeheartedly. I am spellbound, and forget to take any notes. My gratitude goes out to everyone involved. The dancers deserve special mention: Nazear Brown, Roderick George, Nouhoum Koita, Jordan Lang, Dominic Santia, Jeremy Villas, Nat Wilson, and understudy Tyrone Reese.
In the disappointing Program 3, Anne Plamondon Productions’ "Myokine" features seven supple dancers who seem comfortable with a lot of low-to-the-ground movement. Exercise stimulates the synthesis and secretion of myokines, which are skeletal muscle-derived molecules. These Canadian artists seem healthy, despite their drab costuming and sock-covered feet.
Ballet star Herman Cornejo still looks good. Why he wears awful spray-painted pants for his unfortunate update of "The Specter of the Rose" is beyond me. And lovely dancer Skylar Brandt as Cornejo’s sidekick is forced to appear in cheap-looking cut-off jean shorts while she bourrées and sustains balances on one leg. The audience applauds.
M.A.D.D. Rhythms. Photo: Julieta Cervantes
That the music of Johann Sebastian Bach first inspired the great singer and pianist Nina Simone is not evident in a tap dance tribute by M.A.D.D. Rhythms.
“Once I understood Bach’s music, I never wanted to be anything other than a concert pianist,” Simone wrote. “Bach made me dedicate my life to music.”
Today, she is probably best remembered for her wide-ranging influence on jazz and blues music as well as for being a dedicated civil rights activist. This homage to Simone does not hit one right note.
