The Season is On

“A Picture of You Falling,” “Rise,” “Ash,” “Bzzzz”
Fall for Dance 2019 – Program 1
City Center
New York, NY
October 1, 2019

With City Center’s annual “Fall for Dance” festival in full swing, the New York dance season is officially open. The first program included two world premiere City Center Commissions, including a new work by Kyle Abraham for Misty Copeland. An American company and an international company filled in the evening, and – always aiming to please the crowd – this season’s first program also ended, predictably, with a rousing finale. Caleb Teicher & Company, who closed with the evening’s other new City Center commission, also offered the biggest punch.

The most anticipated performance was the Abraham/ Copeland commission. When Abraham, the MacArthur-certified choreo- grapher, created the stunning “The Runaway” on New York City Ballet in 2018, he proved he could masterfully intersect ballet with his distinctive contemporary dance vision. Copeland is one of ballet’s current bonafide superstars. “Ash” the solo he made for this premiere with Copeland  is lovely, but with expectations high, it wasn't entirely satisfying.

On a raw stage, ropes and backstage equipment as her backdrop, all eyes were on the soloist. Copeland’s powerful arms sometimes spread in swan-like balletic wings, or shrugged and shivered; her turns were perfectly balanced whether on toe or flat-footed. Her elegant neck leaned gently forward, angling her face in shadow. The movement was more tender than vivid, as if in mourning or hiding. She traveled smoothly, gently, and rested close to where she began.

One of the best parts of the piece was Copeland’s terrific costume, a shimmering gold leotard with light transparent fabric panels that floated and paused with each of her movements and balances. Crafted by the dependably inventive Reid Barthelme and Harriet Jung, the costume revealed and caressed all of the working parts of the beautiful dancer – her long legs and muscled calves, her powerful shoulders and graceful arms. If the choreography was not as interesting as we’d hoped, it was hard to be disappointed, watching this beautiful artist in motion.

This festival aims to be bigger than New York, and the first program opened with Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance. Alicia Delgadillo (in a late cast change) and Elliott Hammans were the conflicted lovers in Crystal Pite’s 2010 duet “A Picture of You Falling.” A contemporary story dance about love, the spoken script followed an interior monologue, narrating a love story that the dancers graphically embodied.

Hubbard Street’s disciplined training gave these characters and movements the sharp edges the choreography demanded. Hammans crumpled to the ground (to the narrated phase “how you collapse”) and, defying gravity, instantly bounced him upright and back into the story. Delgadillo entered and re-entered his life, striding in a long diagonal walk and collision that framed their meeting and their memories. The percussion matched the torque of their bodies as their hearts were heard hitting the floor.

Another dependable feature of Fall for Dance is its inclusion of at least one non-American company in every program. “Rise,” choreo- graphed by Gregory Maqoma, and danced by his South African company, Vuyani Dance Theatre, was this evening’s international offering. In this dance of hope and energy, the large company leapt, thrust, and beat the stage in symmetrical moves, arrayed in staggered rows and columns like a game board come alive. Soloists and dancers in duets broke free, watched by their fellows onstage, and the momentum of their spins and height clearly shared DNA with the energetic street dance that was built around the world on moves like these. Half-hidden early in the dance, Musa Motha, a powerful dancer missing one leg, emerged as a soloist and in duet; using an arm brace to balance, his jumps and turns were joyous and edgy.

The high point of the opening program was its closing work, Caleb Teicher’s “Bzzzz.” In a funny, rhythmic partnership with an equally large musical presence – beatbox artist Chris Celiz, – Teicher and his company used his idiosyncratic combination of tap, hip hop, jazz, and large swathes of individual personality to light up the stage. Opening with a breathy shtick in front of the closed curtain, Celiz led a call and response, his voice gyrations calling, and tap rhythms answering from speakers that captured the dancing behind the curtain. The sound and the dance were perfect partners.

The dancers moved across three miked platforms. They entered as a parade, each added dancer offering a bit of personality and individual panache. Teicher’s ebullient solos and rousing duet with Celiz were body-bending combinations of dance forms, as Teicher’s feet leaned off-kilter in balances that were captured in the sharp breaths of the beatbox exhalations.

In mixed duets and a parade of solos, each dancer demonstrated their chops; every one of these performers must have won their street dance duels. Teicher’s smile lights the room and is infectious. The sense of energy and sheer joy in this company blasted from the stage, especially in a quick final snap-crackle-pop of a full company coda (and a lightning sharp curtain call and dance coda, after what was, clearly, the expected standing ovation.)

There was nothing new in form or flow in this first Fall for Dance program, and though the ending was exuberant, it was also predictable. City Center was popping the cork on their 2019 season, and it’s hard to complain about (even familiar) champagne.

copyright © 2019 by Martha Sherman