Since the start of the global pandemic roughly eight months ago, most dance companies have temporarily shuttered their doors. Seasons have been canceled, dancers have been furloughed, and companies have offered archival video footage as a way to entice donors.
But there’s also been a wellspring of what I’d call, well, pandemic choreography. They are, generally speaking, brief pieces by contemporary choreographers that have adapted to the new normal. As they are deprived of a theater, the settings are usually the great outdoors. The need to dance outside on hard pavement makes difficult pointework impossible. Thus, pandemic choreography emphasizes sculptural posing and vaguely modern-dance-like movement. The mood is usually contemplative, as bursts of allegro dancing seem out of place in such a time.
New York City Ballet ended their Fall Digital Season with a festival of new choreography. There were five new works presented. The choreographers are familiar names within the contemporary ballet/modern dance world – Sidra Bell, Pam Tanowitz, Andrea Miller, Jamar Roberts and NYCB’s own resident choreographer, Justin Peck. All of the filming took place in different parts of the Lincoln Center campus.
Jamar Roberts’ Water Rite was barely a dance. Corps dancer Victor Abreu was submerged in the Hearst Plaza pool for less than three minutes. He flailed his limbs around and did some aquatic running. I could have watched an old Esther Williams film.
Sidra Bell’s pixelation in a wave (Within Wires) was a collection of pandemic choreography clichés – four dancers (Mira Nadon, Peter Walker, Emily Kikta and Ghaleb Kayali) were spaced over various places in Lincoln Center. They struck a bunch of sculptural poses. The camera-work emphasized close-ups of their faces rather than their bodies. The music by Dennis Bell screeched. Thankfully it ended as soon as it began.
Pam Tanowitz’s work Solo for Russell: Sites 1-5 had some intelligent ideas. There were ‘two’ Russell Janzens and the footage was spliced together. One version of Russell had him in sweats and a yoga mat. The other Russell is in a more stylized dance costume that includes a blue and yellow body drape. Yoga mat Russell walks around Lincoln Center while dancer Russell dances on a hilled lawn. Tanowitz’s movement vocabulary is heavily influenced by Merce Cunningham, with the trademark “Merce balances” (where a leg is extended at all sorts of different angles and held in place) and controlled body rotations. Eventually yoga mat Russell and dancer Russell become one? An interesting experiment, but (like a lot of Tanowitz’s work) more a cerebral exercise than a dance.