All Together Now

A unique cooperation by New York City’s five largest dance companies, BAAND Together Dance Festival was conceived as an effort to restart live dance performance after the pandemic. Intended as a free summer event, this year the popular event moved indoors to Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, out of the heat, humidity, and rain. Better for the dancers, yes, but I missed the exuberance of the outdoor stage, where your neighbors might be sharing a picnic, and people have a tendency to cheer. Sitting in the dimmed lights of Koch Theater had the sobering effect of being in church. In its fourth iteration, BAAND Together seems to have become less a celebration and more of a sampler meant to introduce new audiences to ballet.

Performance

BAAND Together Dance Festival: Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem

Place

David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, New York, NY, August 1, 2024

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Pianist Elaine Chelton, guest violinist Sean Lee, and Anthony Huxley and Megan Fairchild in George Balanchine’s “Duo Concertant.” Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

New York City Ballet opened with Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley in Balanchine’s “Duo Concertant,” a work that is also scheduled for the company’s upcoming fall season. Stravinsky composed the music for violinist Samuel Dushkin in 1932 and the two musicians performed together in Europe. Balanchine honored that pairing when he premiered his choreography in 1972. This latest version featured Sean Lee on violin and Elaine Chelton on piano. The best part of the four section piece is the beginning, when the dancers playfully mimic the piano notes with staccato footwork and the action of the violin in their arms.

Hans van Manen’s “Solo” is split three ways by Chalvar Monteiro, Yannick LeBrun, and Patrick Coker of Alvin Ailey, each bounding onstage with more energy than the last, until finally all three come together in an entertaining display of the way dancers can put a unique spin on the same moves. A recurring shrug of the shoulders connects them all in the same underlying carefree sentiment.

Ballet Hispánico in “Sombrerísimo” by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

In “Sombrerísimo” by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, it’s as if surrealist painter René Magritte’s famous bowler hatted men go to a latin dance party. Originally choreographed for an all male cast, Ballet Hispánico has added a single woman to its ensemble of six. There’s plenty of machismo swagger and the signature salsa syncopation as the dancers swap, stack, and skid the hats across the floor. At the end, when tossed into the air, they multiply into a flock of birds.

ABT’s “Night Falls,” a sensuous pas de deux by rising talent, Brady Farrar, was as veiled as its title suggests, but more by placement on the program than in its performance. Thomas Forster and ABT’s newest principal dancer, Chloe Misseldine, moved together like two lungs breathing. But when viewed between the colorful flash of Ballet Hispanico and DTH’s bold Forsythe, their presence was almost too quick to properly register. Jacek Mysinski played Chopin’s “Nocturne No. 19 in E” live, just offstage. Farrar, a member of the ABT Studio Company (for pre-professional dancers ages 17-22) is definitely someone to watch.

Thomas Forster and Chloe Misseldine in “Night Falls” by Brady Farrar. Photograph by Steven Pisano

Dance Theatre of Harlem demonstrated striking depth by stepping into the edgy distortions of William Forsythe’s “Blake Works IV (The Barre Project)” with music by composer James Blake. Opening with a gorgeous pas de deux that sparked with wide second position pliés on pointe and off-kilter angles, the second section took us into the studio where each dancer took a turn at the ballet barre. We the audience became the mirror as the dancers studied their reflection. The piece ended the evening with the gravitas fitting of a finale: all ten dancers on stage—five women on one side, five men on the other.

All told, the dancing was incredible. But the massive venue made the works seem smaller than they are, reducing performance by the city’s most famous dance artists to that of a recital. The Koch stage, stripped down to basics, without sets and minimal production elements, felt somehow lonely—a lot like watching at home on a video screen.

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

comments

Tena August 12, 2024

And the DTH cast was 6 women and 5 men

Joan August 11, 2024

The photograph from Night Falls shows dancers Joseph Markey and SunMi Park.

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