Artiste: Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet

Rachel Rizzuto reviews Cedar Lake's final performances as a company at BAM in New York City.

Rachel Rizzuto reviews Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet's Program C at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.

The New York-based Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is named after a street in Missouri, home of the studio where one of the company’s founders studied ballet many years ago. Both locales – in Missouri and in New York City – are a far distance from any lake, but somehow the name is appropriate: evoking visions of the still and pristine natural world of a wilderness lake.

For the occasion of what I believe has become Cedar Lake’s annual tradition of showcasing work at the Joyce Theater, this contemporary ballet troupe has assembled an impressive trio of guest choreographers – Nederlands Dans Theater’s former chief Jiří Kylián, Crystal Pite and Andonis Foniadakis.

Here are a company of versatile dancers. In the course of an evening they shifted from the hunched choreography of Hofesh Shechter to the long-limbed legginess of Crystal Pite, and also funny man Alexander Ekman’s rhythmic and irrational use of the body. In their first UK visit, Cedar Lake bring buckets of American performing talent but borrow some more familiar European choreographic skills.