What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 legs at noon, and 3 legs in the evening? In the culmination of their residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, Baye & Asa mobilize this question––the so-called Riddle of the Sphinx––through three different generations of dancers who come together to trace the course of a human lifespan.

Self-described during the post-show Q&A as a “golden jubilee of her relationship with dance,” Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s solo dance, The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, brings body and piano into a profound dialogue in which silence holds its own cadence.

ballets jazz montréal

1: can you catch what is not thrown? / can you caress what is tossed?

HubChats: 50 for 50 Cypher celebrated 50 years of hip hop with a photo exhibition by Steve “Believe” Lunger celebrating the local breaking scene, a lecture demonstration by Mark “Metal” Wong and several Hip Hop Fundamentals students, and a 50-minute intergenerational breakdance cypher to the beats of DJ Yaks.

To Be Danced, a mixed bill curated by Nathan Forster of ReFrame Dance Theatre, brought together a distinct blend of nostalgia, rigor, and unadulterated fun for all ages. Three riotous ReFrame performances were juxtaposed with more somber works that led viewers through a wide range of emotional terrains.

Everyone is given their own keychain flashlight as they enter the theater, and advised that they’ll need to use it. Little blue lights flitter about the space as I fiddle with the switch of my own. Audience members talk amongst themselves as they settle into the U of chairs that rings the stage, seemingly oblivious to the umbrous figure crawling in the upstage corner.

Self described as an artist constantly in transit, su guzey’s interest in Glissant’s concept of errantry––a practice that seeks sovereignty in all aspects of motion––purfuses their solo work, 'rattling'. From sudden music cuts to the use of analogue media and recycled materials, guzey doesn't hide the mechanisms of their perpetual moving from place to place, instead exposing their jarring effect. Within the complex experience they portray, everything is transparent, even the plastic makeshift blanket they cover themselves with.

La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, curated by Nicky Pariso, ran from April 6-30, and featured new and recent works by 12 choreographers and companies with varied approaches to performance. I had the opportunity to attend six of the shows on the program with highlights including Broken Theater by Bobbi Jene Smith, Suck it Up by Baye & Asa, and Put Away the Fire, dear, pt. 2 by Kayla Farrish.

Dimanche, a collaborative production of Cie Focus and Cie Chaliwaté, transforms Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s Fishman Space into a thawing ice cap, a modest living room –– sweltering and tempestuous by turns –– and most remarkably a vivid underwater fallout (made possible by Zoé Tenret’s phantasmagoric scenography and Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin’s genius lighting design) replete with incredibly realistic fish snacking on floating toast, a fluorescent ticking alarm clock, and a smack of jellyfish expertly articulated by the actors’ hands. Written, directed, and performed by Julie Tenret, Sicaire Durieux, and Sandrine Heyraud, the show’s use of experimental clowning, low-fi effects, puppetry, and film converge to create a cohesive and satisfying work of physical theater that traverses the contemporary climate crisis.

Having been out of town during the opening week of DANCIN’ on Broadway, I may have missed the chance to contribute my voice to the hot takes offered by writers for publications like New York Stage, Vulture and of course The New York Times. But after reading countless reviews critical of Wayne Cilento’s revival of Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’ and conducting an interview with Cilento himself (as well as Co-Dance Captains Mattie Love and Gabriel Hyman), I’m happy to be chiming in a bit later, with more background information, perspective and thoughtfulness than I otherwise might have had.

For the past seven years, WHITE WAVE Dance has been hosting their annual SoloDuo Dance Festival to celebrate the unique art of the solo and duet. This year’s three distinct programs consisted of 33 pieces by artists and companies from near and far. Director Young Soon Kim, an active presenter in the NYC dance scene for over three decades, created this festival to provide new opportunities for emerging and mid-career choreographers. Program 1, which opened to a sold out audience at Dixon Place, stood out for its harmonious incorporation of dance makers covering a broad range of experience and aesthetics.

Dancers stride across the stage in Sharon Eyal’s signature relevé walk (legs mostly straight with knees bending slightly upward between steps), hands framing their belly button and elbows symmetrically akimbo. Although there is something fashion show about their diagonal passes, they wear only nude leotards and knee high socks. Micro head movements, saluting gestures and level changes gradually accumulate on top of their consistent steps, which follow a heavy percussion beat –– the opening of composer Ori Lichtik’s unrelenting electronic soundscape. Some dancers let expression flood their face and even in its pattern-based precision, pleasant, momentary asynchronies reward the attentive watcher. According to the program note, “one can see from the same thing how different we are” –– the absolute uniqueness of each individual. When the full group adds dynamic hip movements to their steps, the choreography’s impressive restraint is rewarded. This is German company, tanzmainz, making its Joyce debut with Sharon Eyal’s Der Faust Award-winning piece, Soul Chain.

In its 10th season, the Emmy Award-winning The Hip Hop Nutcracker filled a Saturday evening in Newark with wintery, spirited delight. Guest MC and one of hip hop’s founding fathers, Kurtis Blow, starts the night off with a sing-along segment that ignites the crowd –– the energy is more like a stadium than a theater. Donning a graffitied white suit and bedazzled bow tie, he talks about a special kind of love that can defeat evil. There’s a DJ scratching records downstage left as Blow guides us through the history of hip hop. He pays tribute to Twitch, who recently lost his life to suicide, dedicating the show and the rest of the season to his memory.

Yag 2022, presented as part of Gibney Company’s Up Close series, is a reimagining of Ohad Naharin’s acclaimed 1996 work, Yag, originally created for Batsheva Dance Company.

The lights come up to reveal a red door-like object and a female dancer standing center stage. She holds her left arm up, circling her hips to ambient music. Four dancers enter from all sides wearing street clothes. The dancer in the center introduces herself: “My name is Eleni.” (They use their real names.)

Paul Taylor Dance Company, under the direction of Michael Novak, presented various programs comprising Taylor: A New Era at the Lincoln Center from November 1-13, 2022. The Taylor company is working to define itself after the passing of Paul Taylor in 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic that so heavily impacted the arts, and especially dance. According to the director, attending audiences discovered “some wonderful new Company members performing many of Paul Taylor’s greatest dances and new Taylor Company Commissions, in addition to a unique new collaboration with Orchestra of St. Luke’s. My goal is to give audiences new ways to experience the Company by exploring the relationship between dance and live music and reminding them of the power of our vast repertory and the importance of new work.” The November 3 program consisted of Scudorama by Paul Taylor, Somewhere in the Middle by Amy Hall Garner and Esplanade – another Taylor piece.

The set of Transverse Orientation, Dimitris Papaioannou’s latest work, is simple: a white wall with a white door and a flickering fluorescent. Suited men with bobbling black balloons for heads enter through the door carrying ladders, fascinated like moths by the shuddering tube of light. They approach it magnetically, try clumsily to eliminate the flicker –– the first iteration of one of the piece’s primary motifs. Their awkward sidelong gait and farcical antics delight the audience even as we cringe when they walk nonchalantly beneath a ladder, perhaps a lighthearted omen of what’s to come. Because their coats cover their heads and the balloons float above, the dancers look huge –– a jab at the grandiosity of “serious men” whose heads are really just filled with air? The opening scene ends with an opposing illusion; one dancer appears child-sized. He bangs his “head” against the wall over and over again (a task which is later repeated by another “character”) before being pulled into the darkness of whatever lies behind the set door.

Carmen Caceres/DanceAction’s Welcome to Imagi*Nation: The Trilogy is a “choose-your-own-adventure dance theater interactive performance” that empowers audiences to “change the course of (imaginary) history.” At the center of the show is a conflict between two neighboring nations whose boundary is composed of a row of empty five-gallon water jugs, the presence of which gives the impression of there being two separate stages. Other plastic drink bottles litter the space, arranged by type, and they appear to form the borders of the nations.

French choreographer Gisèle Vienne takes audiences on a slow motion journey through a rave in her 90-minute dance work, Crowd. The piece begins with a person wearing a hoodie and backpack entering from the upstage right corner in slow-mo, glittery sneakers shimmering as they glide across the dimly lit, textured stage. We soon realize that the floor is covered in dirt, scattered with trash.

In Akram Khan’s version of the classical story ballet for English National Ballet, rather than being a peasant, “Giselle is one of a community of migrant garment factory workers (the Outcasts),” according to the program notes. The noblemen have been replaced by Landlords who see the factory workers “as little more than exotic entertainment” and are content to ignore the Outcasts’ needs to promote their own personal gain.

Kyle Abraham’s piece, An Untitled Love, made its New York debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Strong Harvey Theater on February 23. The cast of 10 dancers honors Black History Month by embodying black excellence and the aesthetic of the cool. A dancer casually entering the space marks the beginning of the show, and a couch, plant, lamp and rug establish a living room setting. We are offered an intimate glimpse into a community brimming with utopian energy. From sultry duets to spicy trios, groups of people coalesce and expand like elementary particles or pass through abruptly like cross-currents. Soulful step touches and suave low ball changes are characterized by an effortless groove that pervades the entirety of the piece. The energy is clean but not stale, flirty but not vulgar, celebratory and laid back in a way that makes the audience feel comfortable. At home. From flashy technical elements like suspended turns and explosive leaps to pedestrian gestures like hand holding, chip snacking, juicebox sucking and conversing in tight clumps, classical “dancey” moments are seamlessly folded into the vernacular of the everyday. Black diasporic dance forms as well as contemporary floorwork also have a home in Abraham’s choreographic vocabulary, and facial expressions are unrestrained, filled with joy, feigned disgust and many emotions in between. We get the feeling that the dancers are dancing for and showing off to each other with subtle winks at the audience during certain, well-timed moments.