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By Henning Rübsam
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Published on March 26, 2025
Brooklyn Ballet in "Night/Life." Photo: Victoria Romulo
Choreography By Shannon Harkins, Lynn Parkerson, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, and Will A. Evin Jr.
Brooklyn Ballet
Founding Artistic Director: Lynn Parkerson // Associate Director: Alison Mixon
NIGHT/LIFE
Choreography: Shannon Harkins, Lynn Parkerson, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, Will A. Evin Jr.
The Mark O’Donnell Theater, 160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY
March 20 – 23, 2025
Artistic Director Lynn Parkerson founded the Brooklyn Ballet in 2002. She and her team built a school, and, in 2009, opened a permanent facility with studio space and a 99-seat theater on Schermerhorn Street, where the company holds its annual home seasons.
On opening night, associate director Alison Mixon and Parkerson address the audience and introduce the company’s philosophy. They seek to work with emerging and established choreographers across disciplines. Yet another commitment — to connect the art form’s history to the present — strikes me as at least an equally important goal.
In Chopin Dances, first performed in 2012, Parkerson cleverly and lovingly recycles choreography by both Isadora Duncan and Michel Fokine. Duncan, a pioneer of American modern dance, had toured Russia early in the 20th century with her solo work to Chopin’s music. Her influence on Fokine, a Russian reformer,
Parkerson’s reduction of the work makes do with only four dancers. Isadora (danced by a musical and lyrical Audrey Borst) greets the space wearing a maroon, off-the-shoulder tunic. She floats, and uses the pliability in her knees and ankle joints to cruise seamlessly across the stage. (The program credits Duncan specialist Catherine Gallant as a collaborator). A Fokine solo en pointe for the young Valentina Olaya does not quite feel natural yet, but the ensuing flawless ballet partnering by Yinet Fernandez and Kevin Ortiz shows how much care went into this production.
But it gets even better: Isadora and the ballet dancers perform at the same time. Beautiful tableaux emerge from the marriage of the two worlds; and Isadora’s earthbound fluidity creates a foundation and a basso continuo for Fokine’s melodic ballet dancers. What a wonderful idea to introduce young dancers to the movement concepts of our pioneers, and to demonstrate that the world of dance really is not divided, but essentially one.
The program opens with the premiere of After the Fraying, a quintet by Shannon Harkins. All the women dance en pointe and wear wonderfully puffy, white sleeves that make me think of an orchestra of concertinas (the hexagonal, smallish accordion)
Parker’s Section 1 (a work-in-progress), features Tristan Grannum with a stunning arabesque line, and the sculpturally grounded Brian “HallowDreamz” Henry. Accompanied live by composer Toni Mora, the duet bridges ballet and contemporary dance worlds through a modern-day, same-sex partnership. I look forward to the finished work.
The third movement (Animé) of Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine, played by Kessa Mefford on the piano, supplies a pleasant interlude,while the dancers change for Will A. Ervin Jr.’s premiere, Wedlock. Music by Stevie Wonder, Samara Jo, and George Lovett, interspersed with voic
In this septet, two men and two women dressed in black suits — a traditional groom’s outfit — are joined by a woman in a white suit and another woman in a wedding dress, as well as a man in white pants and a transparent, white, flower-patterned shirt. The central pas de deux keeps apart two male dancers, Henry (in black) and the gorgeously supple Santiago Vargas (in white). They eye each other with suspicion, longing, and despair to the sounds of “Guess who I saw today,” which tells a story of infidelity.
Wedlock certainly
