Mark Dendy's Labyrinth muddled, but honest

New York City's Metropolitan Opera restages its shorter, family-friendly version of Mozart's The Magic Flute with great music and delightful visuals.

The New York City Opera has spent the season reinventing itself from a large company with a large theater to a peripatetic one presenting small works. Perhaps it was apt that they closed their season with Telemann’s Orpheus.

I find myself once again in the lovely Playhouse at the Abrons Arts Center, which on this occasion hosts the world première of the new piece by Palissimo – the intrepidly inventive troupe helmed by the choreographer Pavel Zuštiak.

I am back at the Abrons Arts Center’s historic (but unconventionally programmed) jewel box, the Playhouse, so soon after the recent Jack Ferver extravaganza. This time around, the stage is hosting another choreographer, Yvonne Meier, whose “reconstruction” of The Shining I likewise had the opportunity to ruminate on earlier this season.

Jack Ferver is a well-loved figure on New York’s downtown performance circuit, so it is no wonder that I arrive to Abrons Arts Center’s largest space (the Playhouse) to find that every available seat in the house is full.

I promise I am not late – the house lights are up and the performance has not formally begun. And yet, the audience is dead silent as the auditorium slowly fills up for this evening’s performance of Super Nature, a collaboration between the Minneapolis-based dance troupe Bodycartography Project and the luminary composer/harpist Zeena Parkins, presented here as part of no less than two festivals: C