What Moves You

The Fall for Dance Festival programming formula runs roughly thus: feature a new troupe, include a pet (or vanity) project of a big NYC star, and end with a feel-good group showcase. It has been a mostly winning formula for 20 years now, and Program 3 of this year’s FFDF hewed to those rules. “Feeling Good” was even part of the closing work’s title. Two of the companies on offer were new to the festival this year, which was neat. Unfortunately, a tested formula doesn’t always equate to a good show. The trio of works on Program 3 was wildly uneven. Frustratingly, the better pieces were brief while the bad one was interminable.

Performance

Fall for Dance Festival: Program Three

Place

New York City Center, New York, NY, October 2024

Words

Faye Arthurs

Anne Plamondon Productions in “Myokine.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Anne Plamondon Productions, a Québecoise troupe, made their first appearance at the festival with “Myokine,” choreographed by Plamondon to music by Olivier Fairfield and Ourielle Auvé. I am always excited to hear from a new voice, and Plamondon’s company has several Indigenous Canadian members, so the potential for freshness was high. Sadly, “Myokine” had absolutely nothing new to say, if it had anything to say at all. It recycled the worst contemporary trends so vapidly that I felt transported back in time to Nederlands Dans Theater’s awful April performance (it so happens that Plamondon danced with NDT 2 for a spell).

“Myokine” was dark, smoky, droning, piddling, and anxious, which makes no sense because myokines are the proteins released into the bloodstream by muscle contractions that improve metabolism and decrease inflammation. Myokines help fight cancer, diabetes, neurodegeneration, and ageing. They are the body’s warriors, and the best way to summon their army is through strength training. So it was odd that “Myokine” featured hunched over, angsty, and involuntarily tweaky vocabulary. There were few lifts, and few passages that displayed the dancers’ power. A climactic moment featured a guy flopping heavily to the floor like a dead fish being tossed onto a newspaper. In one section, a singer hummed and breathily sang clips from the Tears for Fears song “Mad World,” which contains lyrics like: “I want to drown my sorrow/No tomorrow” and “I find it kind of sad/The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.” The Plamondon dancers were clearly talented and strong movers, but nothing about “Myokine” broadcast strength or self-improvement.

Anne Plamondon Productions in “Myokine.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Maybe “Myokine Deficiency” (a condition linked to frailty and sarcopenia) would have been a better title. However, there were two motifs that could possibly be linked to the purposeful firing of muscles: the pulling back of an arrow and hammering at the ground. But much of the dancers’ invisible archery was impotent, with the dancers tipping over before unleashing their shots. And the kneeling strikers evoked railroad slaves or coal miners, reading as more futile than productive—Sisyphean over industrious. Both theme steps appeared to be more of the empty gesticulations that are so common in contemporary dance right now—a trend I’d call pantomime Tourette’s.

Did I like anything? Yes. I thought it was cool when one dancer was soloing slowly in a front corner spotlight while another was moving superfast in the dark upstage, barely discernible. It made for a creepy haunted-house effect. I also liked the winey palette of the dancers’ casual separates, by Marie-Audrey Jacques, though I have no idea why they changed into black biketards and camisoles as the piece progressed. Nor do I know why the dim lighting, by Eric Chad, turn slightly amber by the end. I did not feel as if I’d been taken on any sort of journey to necessitate these shifts. It all felt like more of the self-serious same, for an excessive amount of time.

As I watched “Myokine,” it occurred to me that this whole bleak genre could be the choreographic fallout of Covid-19. The spasmic paranoia, the way the dancers seem disconnected even in unison clumps, the minimal partnering, the dejected slumping (no one seems to want to stand upright), and the clipped-wing aspect of the movements might all be part of a pandemic hangover. (Though many of these trends preceded the coronavirus—maybe these fads are partly a reaction to smart phone dissociation?) Whatever the case, I hope choreographers get it out of their systems soon, because this piece, like so many others of its ilk, did not seem to be working through or examining troubling issues so much as wallowing in them.

Skylar Brandt and Herman Cornejo in “The Specter of the Rose” by Cornejo. Photograph by Steven Pisano

As people squirmed in their seats all around me, I wondered if “Myokine” would still get the standard, overly-effusive FFD reception. Not so much: it received a normal amount of applause for, say, a dance performance at Lincoln Center, which, put through a FFD measurement conversion, is like throwing eggs. Luckily, ballet superstar Herman Cornejo’s pyrotechnic and candied update of Michel Fokine’s “The Specter of the Rose” followed. People could lose their minds over Skylar Brandt’s stupendous arabesque balances and Cornejo’s spinning-top bravura.

Before the performance, Stanford Mikishi (Vice President and Artistic Director of the festival) announced that this was Cornejo’s tenth appearance at FFD, making him the most featured artist in the festival’s 20-year history. This marked his first appearance as a choreographer too, though his contributions in that capacity mostly involved rebelliously reframing Fokine’s classic pas de deux. Brandt wore cutoff denim shorts; Cornejo sported ripped jeans. His staging featured a neon, pop-art rose drawing (by Kenneth E. Parris III) as well as metal beams slanting down from the rafters. Cornejo’s “Specter” was short, technically dazzling, and trying very hard to be James Dean Fokine. I thought of Ethan Stiefel’s leather jacket, motorcycle, and too-cool-for-school pieces as hotshot dancer/choreographer Cooper Nielson in the campy film Center Stage.

Singer Felena Bunn with M.A.D.D. Rhythms “Feeling Good: A M.A.D.D. Rhythms Tribute to Nina Simone.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

In its FFD debut, the Chicago-based tap collective M.A.D.D. Rhythms stirringly closed the show with an excerpt from “Feeling Good: A M.A.D.D. Rhythms Tribute to Nina Simone.” The curtain rose on six men furiously tapping in place in individual spotlights, flanking the fantastic vocalist Felena Bunn, who was wailing at the center of the stage. Their cacophony nearly drowned out the fabulous four-piece band behind them, until the dancers settled into solo passages while Bunn and the band segued into a heavy, throaty rendition of Simone’s “Strange Fruit.”

Everything about this concept was awesome. “Strange Fruit” is a deceptive song: its grotesque lyrics about the lynching of Black people are cached in a soothing, melodious soundscape. Sonically, it’s easy-listening dinner party material, but if you attend to Simone’s words you will throw up your meal. Though Simone’s voice conveys resonant ache, this tune is the epitome of resigned, ironic, and passive protest. How wonderful then, to have Bunn screaming while the men angrily stomped out their rage to it. It was the appropriate reaction to considering the prevalence of trees festooned with hanged Black bodies in the South.

Bunn movingly covered Simone’s “Four Women” next, assisted by four vivid lady tappers. And M.A.D.D finished up with a rousing take on “Feeling Good,” featuring four couples doing upbeat, synchronized tapping that evoked Broadway and Dormeshia. When the cast bowed after this third number it was a shock; I’d have happily watched them sing and tap and play for another half hour. But that’s the dream, right? Always leave them wanting more. And that, really, is the point of the FFDF’s sampler programming: try out a few different styles and seek out more of what moves you.

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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