Getting the BAAND Back Together

The BAAND Together Dance Festival was created in 2021 to reintroduce dance to New York City after the pandemic. It provided five troupes (Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem) with some much-needed work and allowed culture-starved New Yorkers to congregate safely. It has evolved quite a bit in its five years. Social distancing is blessedly over, so for the second year in a row, the BAAND shows were held indoors at the David H. Koch Theater instead of outside at the Damrosch Park Bandshell—a change I was grateful for on the stormy summer night I attended. There are also physical programs with full casting and production credits now, instead of various links forcing audience members to play a frustrating game of website hopscotch.

Performance

BAAND Together, with performances by 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, July 31

Words

Faye Arthurs

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Lar Lubovitch’s “Many Angels.” Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

Happily, the spirit of inclusivity remains. In fact, it has been expanded: this year there were two performances at which audio description was available, and one performance that was relaxed. The tickets are still free, and there were also free dance workshops for adults and children by each troupe throughout the week. However, this year there was also a surprising carryover from the festival’s inception: a general feeling of precarity. Covid is behind us, but since the arts have lately faced drastic cuts in funding and political attacks, the urgency to band together to support some of NY’s finest dance institutions was eerily renewed. There was a touch of defiance as ABT Artistic Director Susan Jaffe stressed in her pre-show remarks: “what makes NYC great is its diversity, creativity, and spirit.” The programming reflected this sense of unease and impending doom, with four of the five companies offering dances of comfort and escape.

First up was the Dance Theatre of Harlem, with excerpts from Artistic Director Robert Garland’s easygoing “Nyman String Quartet No. 2” from 2019. “Chill out,” is the message of this mashup of ballet and popular dancing. I liked the vibe, though it asked too little of its dancers. There were fun “Agon” and “Four Temperaments” Easter eggs for Balanchine fans, but also too many endless step-together groove sequences. It was saved by the individuality of its ten dancers, who thankfully brought loads of personal style to the elementary unison groupwork. Kouadio Davis, Lindsey Donnell, and Ingrid Silva especially shone.

Dance Theatre of Harlem in Robert Garland’s “Nyman String Quartet No. 2.” Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

The New York City Ballet was next with Christopher Wheeldon’s beautiful, yet ubiquitous, “After the Rain” pas de deux (from 2005). Miriam Miller and Alec Knight assumed the roles created for Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto, with violinist Lydia Hong and pianist Elaine Chelton playing Arvo Pärt’s calming loops from the pit. Miller and Knight, gorgeous specimens both, followed the trend of most latter-day interpreters toward a more demonstrative tenderness, making this pas feel a bit like a beachy summer romance. The abstract stoicism of its original form evoked rocks being sculpted slowly over time by erosion, with Pärt’s triplets cascading maddeningly like water droplets—seemingly for eternity. It is a more human, lovelier dance these days, but also a less haunting one.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater followed this with Lar Lubovitch’s utopian ballet “Many Angels,” set to the famous Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The fluffy cloud backdrop, the diaphanous jumpsuits by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and the godly beacons of light by Clifton Taylor combined to make this dance, which debuted last December, the ultimate heaven-scape. Upon this second viewing I was struck with how well Lubovitch’s choreography supported his scenic design, as the dancers wafted around in seemingly the same currents of air and gathered in cumulonimbus clumps, echoing each other’s shapes without copying them. Jacquelin Harris and an ardent Yannick Lebrun featured prominently.

Ballet Hispánico in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Tiburones.” Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

American Ballet Theatre closed out this dreamy middle of the program with Jaffe’s “Midnight Pas de Deux,” to the adagio of Alessandro Marcello’s “Concerto in D Minor,” which was nicely played by oboist Liam Boisset and pianist Evangelos Spanos in the pit. Newly-minted soloist Sierra Armstrong and corps member Michael de la Nuez—the breakout star of the Met season—looked wonderful together, but they didn’t do much other than spin, while touching or in tandem, in Brad Fields’s moody blue light.

After all this lilting escapism, it was thrilling when the curtain rose on the edgy figure of Adam Dario Morales, who towered in heels, a deconstructed tuxedo leo, and a wig cap to lead his Ballet Hispánico peers in Anabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “House of Mad’moiselle” (from 2010, reworked in 2024). Bart Rijnink’s soundscape spliced music by himself, Leonard Bernstein, Chavela Vargas, Oro Solido, and Charles Gounod together with guttural cries, operatic trills, Spanish voiceover, and the entire cast screaming “Maria.” In the first year of BAAND, Ballet Hispánico brought Lopez Ochoa’s “Tiburones,” which explored the long shadow of “West Side Story” on Latinx culture in America. “Mad’moiselle” continued this conversation, taking Tony’s “Maria” wail as a jumping off point to examine and subvert Latina stereotypes using drag, abanicos, and a slew of scintillating Latin dances. The excellent company delivered showgirl suavity despite their goofy Raggedy Ann wigs (on both the men and women). The program needed this jolt, and it was a potent reminder that during this fraught time we’re going to need dance not only as solace, but also as a form of resistance.

Faye Arthurs

Faye Arthurs is a former ballet dancer with New York City Ballet. She chronicled her time as a professional dancer in her blog Thoughts from the Paint. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Fordham University. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their sons.

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