Mozart was no dummy. He knew what it meant when a beard for Count Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach contacted him to write a requiem. In declining health, he threw himself into composing his swansong. Then, every artist’s worst nightmare occurred – he died before finishing. Desperate to retain the commission money, his widow had Franz Xaver Süssmyer, Mozart’s pupil, complete the magnum opus. To this day, scholars remain unsure of who composed what. In a way, it doesn’t matter. The Requiem in D minor is a banger of a piece, full of Sturm und Drang, that still captivates in 2022.
Enter choreographer Kyle Abraham, who, in a decade and a half, has gone from no-name to name on everyone’s lips. His re-envisioning of Mozart's masterpiece, Requiem: Fire in the Air of Earth, had its US premiere at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater. (Apparently, the element of water doesn't make the cut though a few salty tears would've been welcome.)
Abraham appoints an ambassador of sorts in Jlin, an electronic composer, to negotiate the distance from a genius working in the courts of Salzberg and Vienna to a Black, gay cellist and dancer from Pittsburgh. She knows exactly what sacred space the two should commune in – the club. Playing live in the pit, Jlin matches the intensity of the original Requiem with clanging percussion, poly-rhythmical imperatives and micro pauses that destabilize expectations. Sometimes, the thump and the thrum reside under Mozart’s composition, the former pushing us deep into the ground, the latter pulling us skyward. Other times, a snippet of Mozart’s extravagant melodies is consumed into Jlin’s inferno, where it’s tossed from beat to beat, like a game of musical hot potato.
Between the fire of Jlin and the air of Mozart lies the earth. Ten dancers roam across a futuristic landscape by Dan Scully that contains a quartet of lighted cylinders, plus spare geometric sculptures that resemble a pair of bookcases from a bougie furniture store. The lighting brightens to lipstick pink and darkens to lead-pencil gray.
If only the choreography were as interesting. Abraham's company, A.I.M, stands in split weight, their feet anchored 12 to 24 inches apart, and writhe... and then writhe more. They flick their limbs and occasionally bourrée, their feet drilling into the floor like needles on a sewing machine. The negative spaces forged by their bodies prove too slight an egress for the music’s volume, both in dynamics and magnitude, to pass through. Thus, the tidal wave of notes accumulates everywhere but the stage. And then there're the spatial arrangements, which don’t match, much less challenge, the drama. The performers huddle around puddles of light or clump together in corners.
Let’s talk about the circles. The term rond de jambe, a step in which a dancer arcs their leg in a semicircle either clockwise or counterclockwise, appears seven times in my notes. That’s a lot! But the cast does frequently sweep their legs through high-flying grand rond de jambes or drop their weight into floor-skimming ones. Another circle looms above, where a fluorescent loop houses a video screen. As if a porthole to the afterworld, it projects images that make me keen not to visit: a black hole, yellow goop, and what registers as a bloody fingerprint.
At the halfway point, a loose narrative emerges. Flaunting Giles Deacon’s bisque-colored frocks adorned with a scarlet sleeve or golden bustle, the artists form a royal court. Our lords and ladies gossip, frolic and scheme. One coquette sashays across the stage as a man follows on his hands and knees, like a besotted lap dog. Near the end, Martell Ruffin stutters through an exquisite solo, his joints articulating as if he's a puppet controlled by external forces. Then, he flatlines, his body splayed in a prostrate X. Sorry for the spoiler, but did you really think everybody makes it out of a requiem alive?
Ultimately, Abraham neither keeps up nor competes with the music, which provokes frustration and admiration. Why are the dancers yet again in split weight, wavering back and forth, as a sonic tsunami rages? But how bold of him to cleave a strong line between his values and those of the composer's.
Mostly, though, I found myself underwhelmed. For all the spectacle devoted to the matter of life and death, Requiem: Fire in the Air of Earth has little to say about either.
