New Yorkers were graced this past weekend with an invite to The Cookout by choreographer Robert Garland. The ‘cookout’ is a metaphorical space for African American culture, Dance Theatre of Harlem having shaped that culture in part for 56 years, not all of them easy. But the company has persevered and burnished a reputation as a stalwart outpost of Balanchine, of classic story ballets and challenging contemporary work, including work by Black choreographers. That’s a complex signature for a company that numbers only 17 today.
Eight of those protean dancers made something very fine out of The Cookout, a work that deconstructs the daily discipline of ballet class and the rituals of dap and social dance that evolved from African American traditions. The dancers launched into finicky pointe work and double tours en l’air with charm and a nonchalance that belied rigorous technique. Danced expressions of camaraderie, of mourning and acceptance, hope and joy were set to iconic songs from different eras.
From Jill Scott’s silky, vivacious account of a long walk with a date in the park in the dark, whose witty lyrics depict a life together – if only the pair can acknowledge and accept their respective pasts (“Your background, it ain’t squeaky clean/Shit, sometimes we all got to swim upstream”) – to the funky groove and socially conscious lyrics of Cymande, Caron Wheeler’s poignant lament for a lost child, and Brass Construction’s driving exhortation to “keep movin’ on.”
Keenan English kicked off the party with a buoyant reverie. Ariana Dickerson, Lindsey Donnell, Alexandra Rene Jones and Delaney Washington brought a simmering tension to Wheeler’s song of grief, sliding their pointes out to échappé while sharply contracting their abs. Micah Bullard deployed a gigantic mop with fervor and swiveling hips. The ensemble made their final exit, gaily brandishing red Solo cups – for it wouldn’t be a proper cookout without those iconic plastic Solo cups. The spirited, nonconformist Kouadio Davis hung back and flopped on the ground as if basking in sunshine.
Sliding at full tilt from the soulful world of The Cookout into William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, the company once again proved its affinity for Forsythe’s breakneck brand of classicism. They nailed the attack and imbued it with classical elegance – particularly the radiant Alexandra Hutchinson, who made no big deal of expansive jumps with a flick of a leg into a high extension. And the regal Lindsey Donnell whose long limbs stretched and recoiled with exquisite abandon. Dancing together, Micah Bullard and David Wright made a virtue of their differences in physique and quality of movement. The icing on the cake was the fielding of three more women in the cast than usual. That’s six of them whirling and bobbing around in those marvelous space age-y tutus flattened into glowing neon green knife-edged discs. It felt like a tribute to the Gaia spacecraft, a glowing, spinning disc which – after a decade of scanning the Milky Way and sending valuable astronomical data back to scientists on Earth – has just been decommissioned, its thrusters deployed one last time to send it into a lonely orbit around the Sun.
Programming Vertiginous and Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations together was a master-stroke by Garland, who took the company reins in 2023. Both pieces challenge the company’s classical technique; both champion a need for speed. In Donizetti, the ensemble ladies introduced themselves by whacking their arabesques into a standing split. Hutchinson and Wright anchored opening night, galvanizing the crowd with her sideways-rocketing jumps, his dazzling pirouette sequences and sharply zigzagging leaps. Everyone danced big and took risks, and the ballet, though not one of Balanchine’s greatest hits, should have blazed. But it was dragged down by unsophisticated and unflattering costumes more suited to the Rhineland villagers in Giselle than these noble athletes. (New York City Ballet’s are not much better. These dancers should be in classical tutus not sad dirndls.)
Costuming of a high order distinguished the rest of the mixed bill, especially in the world premiere of Jodie Gates’ mysteriously titled Passage of Being. The glamorous pair of Derek Brockington and Kamala Saara led six dancers in filmy, sparkly loungewear through a twilit world dappled with shimmering sounds and the frangible voice of composer Ryan Lott. Gates harnessed these dancers’ physical gifts with a finely calibrated emotional sensibility, in a contemporary vocabulary that glides, swims, circles and swoops, winding and unwinding in lift after gorgeous lift. Brockington hoisted Saara into an overhead side-lying lift, very Russian in concept but the execution was unshowy, an expression of a glorious, muted emotion. “Don't say it's too late," pleaded Lott. The curtain came down as Saara spun a vortex of sweeping extensions and yearning backbends, her breathing labored, the scene one of overwhelming beauty and foreboding.
