The Zah! Returns
“Confetti,” “L’air d’Esprit,” “Round of Angels,” “Birthday Variations”
Arpino Dance Festival, Program 1
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
October 1, 2025
Two years after Gerald Arpino’s centennial celebration, New York audiences got a chance to delight in the works of this co-founder of The Joffrey Ballet. Though the company he helped build decamped to Chicago decades ago, the Arpino Dance Festival's opening program brought his distinctive spirit home through dancers assembled from companies nationwide, and the evening pulsed with unmistakably New York energy.
The “Zah!” that defined and sometimes maligned him (if some old reviews are to be trusted) burst forth immediately in “Confetti,” his 1970 creation to Gioacchino Rossini’s music. This relentless showcase for three couples barely paused for breath, and the dancers of Artistic Ventures in Dance worked to bring forth every detail of this work. The poses were statements that dissolved into dainty footwork, partners acknowledged each other with courtly precision and then would launch into a near-acrobatic lift. All this in tutus for the women, and with tambourines. If the constantly shifting formations occasionally suggested an advanced partnering class exam set to music, the sheer virtuosity (and those tambourines!) made it a thrilling display of Arpino’s defining characteristics of speed and presence.
But that was just a warm-up. With “L’air d’Esprit,” a duet dedicated to legendary ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva and set to music by Adolphe Adam, came a complete tonal shift. Misa Kuranaga of San Francisco Ballet and Angelo Greco of Houston Ballet presented the work with such luminous romanticism that it felt like “Giselle” reimagined, this time with a happy ending. From the moment Greco carried Kuranaga onstage, weightless as a spirit, through her singing arms and impossibly lyrical poses to his transfixed partnering, the piece breathed tender joy.
“Round of Angels” followed next, after an intermission. This dance for six men and one woman, performed by The Joffrey Ballet to Gustav Mahler’s Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, was created at the start of AIDS epidemic, and was dedicated to Arpino’s deceased friend, James R. Howell. Soon after the curtain went up, a couple emerged from the ensemble, and the dance turned into an intimate conversation, with the ballerina receding from her partner’s lifting arms as the group would carry her away. The entire solemn dance dripped with celestial poetry in step phrasing, and loving respect and cherished wonder in its emotional range.
The evening concluded with "Birthday Variations," which Kim Sagami, Executive Director of the Gerald Arpino Foundation, aptly describes as "modern ballet in a tutu." Oklahoma City Ballet delivered this bouquet of confections, with Alejandro Gonzalez providing masculine contrast through powerful jetés against the feminine variations. While classical in spirit, the steps had all the complexities of more modern dance, with piqué diagonals to the dancer’s right directed down stage with the back toward the audience, polka-like steps that switched accenting mid-phrase, and some demanding balances in the variations for women. The piece showcased Arpino's choreographic signatures: intricate transitions, the constant play of weight between supporting and working legs, and movement that engages the entire body.
copyright © 2025 by Marianne Adams
