Perpetual Motion

An insistent electronic beat suffuses the dark-wood auditorium while people are milling about and locating their seats. There’s something delightfully discordant about this setting: on a brisk Thursday evening on the Upper East Side, a bold and genre-bending production transforms a nearly 100-year-old space into a club.

Performance

An Evening With Aszure Barton

Place

Geffen Stage at Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92NY, New York, NY, May 21, 2026

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

Tobin Del Cuore, Mariah Gravelin, and James Gregg in “Trio” by Aszure Barton. Photograph by Kelly Puleio

The 92NY Harkness Dance Center closed its 2025/2026 season, which focused entirely on the work of female choreographers, with a one-night only showcase, “An Evening with Aszure Barton,” giving one of the most exciting contemporary dance makers today carte blanche. With a cast of 19 dancers—many from Hubbard Street Chicago, and others from companies such as Gauthier Dance and Limón Dance Company—the program unfolds over eight pieces and one video interlude. Three works were created specifically for this evening.

It’s clear from the start that this is not an ordinary survey of work. “Busk – Solo,” performed by Kyle Robinson, is a segment from an evening-length piece, and it opens the show with a curious, pantomimic air. Robinson, wearing white gloves and a hooded sweatshirt, postures gracefully to a gentle guitar score by Slava Grigoryan. The title of the work, of course, references the act of busking: performing in a public venue for money. It feels appropriate that select gestures (the unfurling of an arm, the wave of a hand) have a self-aware sensation of performativity. At the end, Robinson is joined with a cast of other dancers, shrouded in their hoods, who appear briefly before they slither off the stage and into the audience. This seamless transition from one piece to the next repeats throughout the first act of the program, creating a sense of continuity between dances that share a language, yet speak in different tones.

Left on stage are Hubbard Street dancers Shota Miyoshi and Cyrie Topete—an electrifying pair stationed under their own spotlights for “A Duo.” They rotate and pivot their bodies quickly, allowing their limbs to reverberate playfully, releasing, at times, into a Fosse-like expansion. This, like much of Barton’s oeuvre, is an intensely athletic work, but it’s also one in which expression is far from an afterthought; the dancers emote in exaggerated fashion, at one point stretching their mouths in an Munchian O.

Kyle Robinson in “Busk - Solo” by Aszure Barton. Photograph by Kelly Puleio

“Pod,” the first piece of the night created specifically for this performance, has a long build up to a surprise. A cast of eight dancers move like they are underwater, yet appear, at the beginning, as if they have washed up on shore. They drift together like an anemone, swaying their shoulders and clustering close together. There is something mesmerizing in the repetitiveness of the choreography—it lulls you into trance, only to shock you out of it when the dancers, in a line, lean their heads back and spit out a mouthful of water in an arc that falls behind them. The fact that the moment comes so late into the piece makes it all the more surprising; the laughter from an unassuming audience, contrasted with the serious expressions of the dancers, as they continue, makes it all the better.

Once the wet floors are mopped, three dancers—Jonathan E. Alsberry, Rena Butler, and Jennifer Florentino—arrive, each under their own spotlight, to perform a trio from “Awáa,” another evening-length work. The fast, percussive score by Curtis Robert Macdonald and the rapid and rhythmic, forward-facing moves of the dancers evoke the drive of a high-energy majorette performance. As they sway their arms behind their backs, they have a commanding presence, though as is to be expected with Barton’s choreography: they defy self-seriousness, especially in tumbling runs forward and tick-tocking swipes of their forearms.

Andrew Cummings and Mark Sampson in “human undoing (sloth)” by Aszure Barton. Photograph by Kelly Puleio

A rather fetal video installation by Tobin Del Cuore breaks up the first act, and brings the energy of the space back down to a meditative calm. With this realignment, Andrew Cummings and Mark Sampson take the stage for “human undoing (sloth),” a work that depicts what Barton considers the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins, representing “the sacred being drained from human existence.” The dancers tuck their hands below their wastebands and rap their thighs repeatedly, fluttering their pant legs. There is an animalistic, and at times erotic quality, to the way that Cummings and Sampson move, slinking downwards and dragging their scalps on the floor, folding in on one another. More absurd than humorous, this is the most anguished piece of the program.

Two more new works, both set to Baroque compositions (by Johann Sebastian Bach and Marin Marais, respectively) close out the first act: “Trio,” featuring Tobin Del Cuore, Mariah Gravelin, and James Gregg, and “Duet,” featuring MJ Edwards and Taylor LaBruzzo. Both exemplify the studied insoucience that figures prominently across Barton’s oeuvre—the loose-limbedness that complements and contrasts her more tightly wound choreographic passages. Through both, the dancers maintain a graceful, balletic sensibility.

“LubDub,” a seven-dancer work that Hubbard Street Dance just premiered at home in Chicago, composes the second act. It’s chaos and order, particularly evocative when the dancers form claustrophobic arrangements, lining up chest to back like the legs of a centipede. The loose, gender-neutral costumes—long black pleated skirts and plum t-shirts—add to the visual effect of the dancers’ coordinated flailing of their arms and gyrating of their torsos. It builds to such a degree that when the dancers land on the floor in a circle, bellies down, and the stage goes to black, the audience errupts in a mid-performance applause. Then, they continue, hunching their shoulders, almost menacing, landing tiny jumps like football players, and torpedoing their bodies in an exhaustive, almost ritualistic fervor. It’s a riot. It’s a hit.

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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