Poetry in Motion

After a quiet August, the New York City dance calendar fills up almost impossibly quickly, with one particular program generating ample, and justified, hype. With its first program, New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival kick-starts the season with a jolt of energy.

Performance

Fall for Dance: Program 1 / A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham: “In the art of undoing” / Skylar Brandt and Aran Bell in Gerald Arpino's “L’Air d’Esprit” / Martha Graham Dance Company in Baye & Asa’s “Cortege”

Place

New York City Center, New York, NY, September 22, 2026

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham: “In the art of undoing.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Now in its 23rd year, the annual program—which this year features dancers from 15 companies across 10 performances—offers an unmatched opportunity to appreciate a veritable smorgasbord of today’s dance talent. With works by Kyle Abraham and Baye & Asa performed alongside a pas de deux by Gerard Arpino, the opening program delivered a satisfying mix of contrasts.

Abraham’s company, A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, presented the New York premiere of his piece “In the art of undoing,” which debuted at last year’s Vail Dance Festival. Featuring 10 dancers, it’s an avant-garde work that finds its strongest moments in full-company scenes. The performers, wearing street clothes, weave through one another along to a metronymic score by Jermaine Spivy. The choreography is rapid and gravitationally demanding; the dancers propel themselves around and tilt into new postures as if they are repeatedly pulled in different directions. Eventually, they speak, reciting, in monotonous chant, a poem which appears on the screen, word by word, behind them. The meaning is not apparent—which seems to be the point.

They chant again, later in the piece, running through the words as if they are steps of auditory choreography. A surprise element of speech in a dance can be hard to pull off, but Abraham’s use of the spoken word is complementary to the urgency of his choreography.

It also aligns with the more pedestrian moments of the work, which—perhaps necessarily—juxapose the more rigorous passages of traveling turns and risk-taking tilts. Aside from their sheer athleticism, the strength of the dancers is their chemistry with one another as they interact and react to one another in space. It’s intense and impressive.

Skylar Brandt and Aran Bell in Gerald Arpino's “L’Air d’Esprit.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

With “L’Air d’Esprit,” the 1978 pas de deux by Gerald Arpino, set to music by Adolphe Adam, American Ballet Theatre principals Skylar Brandt and Aran Bell offer a far more ethereal contrast to Abraham’s realism.

With lights creating a cross-hatch effect on a darkened stage, Bell carries Brandt across in a torch lift, starting and ending in the shadows with just a moment of brightness in between. The effect is that of a waking dream. With Adam’s score, the pas de deux is kind of like if the second act of Giselle were a happy story (and indeed, the music comes from a rarely used part of his Giselle score). In a lavender, romantic tutu, Brandt is pixielike; it helps that she only comes up to Bell’s shoulder.

The pas is full of lifts, and Bell propels Brandt as if she is a jewelry-box ballerina. He’s a reliable partner, well-attuned to Brandt’s more daring moves, like a fouetté into an endless, pristine pirouette. In his solo variation, a series of double saut de basque en manège give him the opportunity to show off, too.

Brandt’s variation begins with a lithe, rapid bourée back on stage, and develops into a brisk petit allegro. Her footwork is tidy, but most importantly, her upper body conveys no sense of struggle—instead, Brandt looks like she’s having loads of fun.

It’s a delight to see two dancers who are rarely paired together get a turn at such a lovely pas de deux. On their own, Brandt and Bell are expectedly excellent. What makes this performance so lovely is how well they complement one another. Both times Brandt lands across Bell’s back, holding one leg in a low attitude derrière, it’s breathtaking.

Lloyd Knight in Baye & Asa’s “Cortege.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Baye & Asa’s “Cortege,” made for the Martha Graham Dance Company, has quickly become a staple of the company’s repertoire since its 2023 debut, and it makes an intense close to the program.

Though the choreographic duo drew inspiration from Graham’s 1967 “Cortege of Eagles”—one of her many Hellenistic works—the piece that comes to mind for me is 1936’s “Chronicle,” an anti-fascist work created just a few years before the outbreak of the second World War.

Baye & Asa’s “Cortege” begins and ends the same way—with a dark shroud covering a diagonal line of kneeling dancers—with the choreography evoking the imagery of both war and its resulting suffering. A few particular images linger: one dancer supporting the other as they walk forward, wrapping their arm around the other’s neck so they appear headless; another dancer reaching forward to the audience before they’re pulled back into the dark; the full company of eight marching in militaristic precision.

Where a constant beat drives forward Abraham’s work, Baye & Asa’s piece is completely rhythmless. There is an occasional pattern of a banging drum and a repeated two-note chime, but more often than not, the dancers find their way in the expanse of the score, which provides few directives for how they should move, whether slow or fast. It’s in this—in my third watch of this particular piece—that I find a stirring message: that the moments of chaos and suffering are ones made by choice, rather than destiny.

The piece feels as relevant today as it did upon its premiere three years ago, and while it has some unevenness—too-long pauses and symbolic gestures that feel a touch too literal (dancers put on vests, seemingly signifying combat attire, on stage)—it delivers an emotional punch. Baye & Asa carry on Graham’s anti-war message with vigor.

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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