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One More Time

Over the span of two weeks, New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival brought to its storied stage a wide range of performers from across the globe with different disciplines, perspectives, and movement vocabularies. Its fifth and final program reiterated what it’s all about: exploring, and celebrating, all the different ways we dance.

Performance

Fall for Dance Festival: Program 5 - Stuttgart Ballet “Three for Hans” / “...and, or…” by Jyun-Yi Lin and Wei-Ting Hung / Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater “Grace” by Ronald K. Brown

Place

New York City Center, New York, NY, September 2025

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

Mackenzie Brown and Martí Paixà in “Two Pieces for Het” by Hans van Manen. Photograph by Steven Pisano

The selections for the program could not have been more disparate—but that’s the fun of Fall for Dance. Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet opened the program with “Three for Hans,” a selection of three works by now-93-year-old Dutch choreographer, Hans van Manen, whose classicism and sense of humor make unlikely complements in his wide body of work.

Dancers Mackenzie Brown and Martí Paixà perform “Two Pieces for Het,” set to music by two Estonian composers, Erkki-Sven Tüür and Arvo Pärt, and premiered by Dutch National Ballet in 1997. It’s a playful work that starts as a competition, each dancer moving as the other watches on, judging. In a sequence of tours en l’air, keeping his arms out, hands balled in fists, and his feet flat, only coming off the ground enough to execute the turn, Paixà garners some laughs from the audience. The second part of this piece, a more traditional adagio with contemporary accents—a flexed foot in an extension—shifts the tone to tenderness.

Elisa Badenes and Friedemann Vogel in “Trois Gnossiennes.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Elisa Badenes and Friedemann Vogel in “Trois Gnossiennes.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

The standout work of “Three for Hans” is the second: Van Manen’s 1982 “Trois Gnossiennes,” set to the Erik Satie work by the same name and performed by Elisa Badenes and Friedemann Vogel. The pas de deux is angular yet fluid. Badenes is almost impossibly smooth in her precision as Vogel promenades her, lowers her to the ground, and in one particularly impressive moment, lifts her above his head as she holds a kind of horizontal chair pose. There’s a calculated geometry to this choreography: ballerina as protractor.

“Solo,” a 1997 work to Bach’s “Partita for Solo Violin No. 1 in B minor” is a crowd-pleasing piece of one-upmanship as Fabio Adorisio, Henrik Erikson, and Matteo Miccini take their turns in a metaphorical ring, occasionally tossing their arms up in a “who cares?” gesture. It’s an energetic piece, but one that benefits from even greater refinement of its nuances. In Dutch National Ballet’s June performance of this work in its Amsterdam home base, greater risks with regard to musicality and a sharper approach to the work’s more esoteric movements gave dancers a more virtuosic appeal.

Jyun-Yi Lin and Wei-Ting Hung in “...and, or…” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Jyun-Yi Lin and Wei-Ting Hung in “...and, or…” Photograph by Steven Pisano

The second piece of the program diverged sharply from this neoclassical approach: “...and, or…” is a piece with no music, and as such, it relies on dancers Jyun-Yi Lin and Wei-Ting Hung to maintain their pacing, as well as the audience’s captivation.  

It takes a while before the piece gets into its flow. Lin and Hung take on a kind of competitive chemistry as they move together through space; sometimes one jumps on top of the other, which the other always reciprocates. At one point, when Hung comes hurdling toward Lin, the audience gasps—with so much power in the jump, it seems they’ll both collapse. They don’t, and continue moving in repeated patterns, their steps, breathing, and the occasional clap or slap creating a DIY score. It’s amusing, and admittedly impressive, though the novelty grows thin after a time. When the lights of the theater come up at a planned thud, the audience begins to applaud, thinking it’s finished—but there’s still some ways to go.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Closing Fall for Dance with a performance by Alvin Ailey might feel obvious—the company, after all, closes City Center’s annual season with its December residency—but it’s clearly the right move. Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace,” which premiered in 1999, is equal parts liturgy and dance party, blending together elements of West African and modern dance. The 11-person piece begins with an expressive solo by a dancer in white to Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” before progressing into a playlist of jazz, electronic, and Afrobeat tracks.

The dancers fully embody the music as they keep in constant motion. There are elements of a procession in the piece when, at one point, a line of dancers in white walk diagonally down the stage while dancers in red dance around them, their palms open, their shoulders rolled back.

When the dancers come together in unison—the beat thumping—it’s hard not to get excited, so much so that a few audience members feel compelled to shout a justified, “woo!” 

Then, it shifts back to where we began. When Fela Kútì’s “Shakara” fades back into “Come Sunday,” there’s a brief lull in energy with tonal shift. But it’s easy enough to forget the transition when the dancers are so fluid, so expansive, and so life-affirming in their movements. Of course they earn a standing ovation.

Rebecca Deczynski

Rebecca Deczynski is a New York City-based writer and editor publishes the newsletter, Mezzanine Society. 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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