Into the Wilde
At a time when the arts in America are under attack and many small dance companies are quietly disappearing, San Francisco’s dance scene—for decades second in its volume of activity only to New York—still has a pulse.
PlusWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
“Let us remember, we’re fighting two viruses,” the choreographer Kyle Abraham writes on the A.I.M (Abraham in Motion) website. In what is a perfect response to both, the Joyce Theater is streaming a performance of his piece “Meditation: A Silent Prayer” online through August 24th. Though this work premiered in 2018, it seems tailor-made for the Black Lives Matter reckoning of today. Of course, the racism and bloodshed “Meditation” addresses have been around for centuries, but the piece is frighteningly apropos to the current pressure cooker moment. Running just ten minutes, “Meditation” is an ideal length for our digitally-dependent quarantine. And though it predated the murder by two years, it seems eerily right that it runs just a hair longer than George Floyd’s fatal police encounter—it feels like a meditation and silent prayer to honor his memory too.
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Jae Neal in “Meditation: A Silent Prayer” by A.I.M. Photograph by Steven Schreiber
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At a time when the arts in America are under attack and many small dance companies are quietly disappearing, San Francisco’s dance scene—for decades second in its volume of activity only to New York—still has a pulse.
PlusNoé Soulier enters the space without warning, and it takes a few seconds for the chattering audience to register the man now standing before them, dressed simply in a grey t-shirt and black pants, barefoot.
PlusIn the first few seconds that the lights come up on BalletX at the Joyce Theater, an audience member murmurs her assent: “I love it already.”
PlusThe right foil can sharpen the distinct shapes of a choreographic work, making it appear more completely itself through the comparison of another.
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