All Together Now

Transformation is inevitable—and necessary in order to persist. That’s a theme that runs through two new works staged by Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet in “Origin,” a program focused entirely on emerging choreographic talent. Olivia Court Mesa’s “The breakable us,” and Sarah Baltzinger and Isaiah Wilson’s “Goats” are tonally distinct works that showcase the dancers’ athleticism and connection through inventive partnering sequences and measured pacing.

Performance

Scapino Ballet: “The Breakable Us” by Olivia Court Mesa / “Goats” by Sarah Baltzinger and Isaiah Wilson

Place

Theater Rotterdam Schouwburg, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, June 8, 2025

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

Scapino Ballet in “Goats” by Sarah Baltzinger and Isaiah Wilson. Photograph by Bart Grieten

The 80-year-old Scapino Ballet partnered with the Rotterdam Choreographic Competition RIDCC to program these works, in addition to two dance films, curated by Cinedans, shown in between the live performances: Fibonacci, choreographed by Marie Gourdain, leads the program, and Lucid Dreaming, directed and choreographed by Emma Evelein, opens the second act of the show.

Both live performances embrace a touch of surrealism, albeit in starkly different ways. “The Breakable Us” favors a dreamy, relatively minimalist approach with a few key set pieces which create a developed world for the dancers to inhabit. It’s something out of a Dalí painting: on stage are a few pieces of furniture that are not quite right. An armoire tilts diagonally, and early on, is revealed to have a hole in its door through which a dancer, at one point, inserts and dangles an arm. A simple wooden chair is an IKEA-gone-wrong kind of creation: split into two halves that come together when stacked yet are easily taken apart when a dancer lifts one part around their body, holding it as armor around their human shell.

This environment is interactive, and it evolves as the piece progresses, dancers moving the set pieces to create a fortress of sorts, on which they can drape themselves and find nooks to hide away. “The Breakable Us,” the program explains, is a dance about “trauma as a source of growth.” This may be why so much of the movement involves dancers pulling apart only for them to come back together again. None of them can achieve their aims on their own.

Scapino Ballet in “The Breakable Us” by Olivia Court Mesa. Photograph by Bart Grietens

This idea is most resonant when dancer Francesco Simeone makes his first appearance on stage. He is curled in the fetal position in a wooden box, which after a first movement, the other dancers carry out from behind a set piece. It takes a lot to get him on his feet—literally. The other four dancers pull him from the container but he remains folded over, vulnerable in a flesh-colored leotard and red kitten heels. The group carries him through a sequence of lifts and falls, Simeone somersaulting over the backs of those who hold him up. Later in the piece, another dancer casts away his heels—a welcome assist.

Most striking in Court Mesa’s choreography are the myriad of ways in which she brings dancers together to connect. These are not simple, easy lifts. Instead, the piece explores different modes of connection—how two dancers may move through a sequence with one person’s head rolling on another one’s leg; how a huddle of dancers can form a vehicle to propel another to where they need to be. It is through these connections that these individuals achieve transformation.

Where “The Breakable Us” is pensive and melancholic—albeit ultimately hopeful—“Goats” is full-on absurdist. The scene is a set within a set. The piece starts with the stage fully lit, devoid of a backdrop. Instead, the walls and backstage fixtures of the theater are visible and in the center of the stage is a contained area: a seamless backdrop of turf, creating a grass wall and floor, framed by visible stage lights. A stagehand with a lawnmower makes his way over the patch, and then they arrive: the seven goats.

These goats, of course, are the dancers. Dressed in pale pink street clothes and white socks and sneakers, they are not as visually literal as Nijinsky’s faun, but in movement and demeanor, they are shockingly animalistic. They run, legs amok, with their arms straight out at their sides. They land on the floor, often in a tabletop pose or a cobra, both legs bent at right angles. Sometimes they shimmy in sudden attack of nerves. Often, they sniff and inspect their neighbors. They do not—cannot—leave the green once they have arrived.

Scapino Ballet in “Goats” by Sarah Baltzinger and Isaiah Wilson. Photograph by Bart Grieten

There’s something inherently ritualistic about “Goats,” particularly thanks to dancer Rafael Belinha’s role as, it seems, head goat in charge. His energy is frenetic as he pikes and hitch kicks and—yes—screams exactly like the barn animal he embodies.

There’s plenty of humor in “Goats.” Much of this has to do with the wild behaviors the dancers exhibit on stage: they scratch at the turf, they emit menacing “bahs,” they turn their faces to the audience, eyes and mouths wide and breathe loudly. At the edge of the turf are two microphones which add a percussive element to the piece, particularly when the dancers move through startlingly active floor work sequences that involve crawling, full body jumps from a starfish position, and much contorting. There is something of the herd mentality here, envisioned as a stark, cultish metaphor.

Baltzinger and Wilson’s “Goats” is aware just how ridiculous it is, but that doesn’t make it an unserious piece. It is the athleticism of Scapino Ballet’s dancers, their unrelenting stamina for a piece that grows more frantic as it progresses, and their commitment to the bit, as it were, that make this piece a resounding feat. With so much energy exerted in the achievement, it seems only natural that “Goats” ends with the dancers collapsed on the turf, each one, dragged offstage by the stagehands who reemerge at the end. In their absence, another stagehand throws onto the green seven little stuffed animals. The goats have returned—albeit in their new form.

Rebecca Deczynski

Rebecca Deczynski is a New York City-based writer and editor publishes the newsletter Thinking About Getting Into. Her work has appeared in publications including Inc., Domino, NYLON, and InStyle. She graduated from Barnard College cum laude with a degree in English and a minor in dance.

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