The New Yorker - February 17-24 2020

14 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020

ILLUSTRATION BY SUA BALAC

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker doesn’t lack chutzpah. She’s the Belgian

choreographer who, for the revival of “West Side Story” currently on

Broadway, has replaced the original Jerome Robbins choreography with

her own radically different stuff. A similar boldness underlies “Mitten

Wir im Leben Sind” (“In the Midst of Life”), a 2017 work that has its

North American première at N.Y.U. Skirball, Feb. 13-15. It’s set to Bach’s

suites for solo cello, all six in a row, and lasts two attention-taxing hours,

without an intermission. Compounding the audacity, the choreography

is in De Keersmaeker’s most austere, pedestrian mode, all walks and

runs and pivots. (De Keersmaeker, who is fifty-nine, is one of the five

dancers.) But the cellist, Jean-Guihen Queyras, is deeply versed in the

score and up for the marathon. And, if the steps look plain, their design

is firm and considered. The dance of alignment and friction between

Bach and the Belgian postmodernist can clarify both.—Brian Seibert

POSTMODERNDANCE

1

DANCE

New York City Ballet
David H. Koch
Where would the art of ballet be without
“Swan Lake”? Even this company, not known
for its allegiance to evening-length story bal-
lets, has a version (which it will perform Feb.
14-23). This staging dates back to 1996, when
Peter Martins—the company’s former artistic
director—created it for the Royal Danish Bal-
let. (A bit of trivia: the choreographer Alexei
Ratmansky danced it when he was a member
of the Danish company, in the nineties.) Three
years later, Martins brought it to N.Y.C.B.
The staging is swift and a bit dry, and it in-
cludes a second virtuoso male role, for a pesky
jester who flits about the stage in great, flying

NYTB/Chamber Works

Danspace Project

Being a small company doesn’t mean hav-

ing small ambitions, as the troupe formerly

known as New York Theatre Ballet has proved

time and again. For this program, the British

modern-dance choreographer Richard Alston

has adapted an older work, a quartet set to

Ravel, now called “The Small Sonata.” Rob-

ert La Fosse, who danced at both American

Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, has

put together a new version of Stravinsky’s

macabre morality play “The Soldier’s Tale,”

with the well-known downtown performance

artist John Kelly playing the Devil. Another

première, “Uncaged,” by Antonia Frances-

chi, explores the visual world of the painter

Lee Krasner. And the company is reviving

“Double Andante,” by Pam Tanowitz, whose

style, reminiscent of Merce Cunningham’s,

combines rigor and eccentricity.—M.H. (Feb.

13-15.)

Irina Kolesnikova

BAM Howard Gilman

Opera House

St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre, not to be con-

fused with the St. Petersburg-based Ma-

riinsky Ballet, is a touring ensemble that

specializes in ballet classics as well as con-

temporary ballets. Many of its dancers, in-

cluding its star ballerina Irina Kolesnikova,

are graduates of the Vaganova Academy, the

city’s prestigious ballet school. At BAM,

Kolesnikova dances the lead role in “Swan

Lake,” partnered by Denis Rodkin, of the

Bolshoi. The troupe usually travels with its

own orchestra, but here it will be accom-

panied by the Chamber Orchestra of New

York.—M.H. (Feb. 15-16.)

Compagnie Hervé Koubi

Joyce Theatre

This troupe—a bunch of strapping guys from

North Africa and Burkina Faso, always shirt-

less, who can spin on their hands and their

heads and catapult one another high in the

air—has an obvious appeal. The surprise is

its restraint, a habitual slowness that’s poeti-

cally absorbing—until it proves aesthetically

stuck. In “Les nuits barbares, ou les premiers

matins du monde,” the company counters the

fear of foreigners with an identity that tran-

scends borders. Metallic ears on bejewelled

masks are removed and wielded like knives

as the men face off to sacred music by Mo-

zart and Fauré, but no one gets hurt.—B.S.

(Feb. 18-23.)

Richard Alston Dance Company

Alexander Kasser Theatre

Recently knighted, Alston has long been an

establishment figure in British modern dance,

admired for his detailed musicality and his

old-school craftsmanship. So it was a bit of

a shock when he announced, in 2018, that

funding cuts were forcing him to shut down

his company. For its last show in the U.S.,

at Peak Performances, in Montclair, New

Jersey, the troupe brings a program that’s

all new or very recent, including “Brahms

leaps. It also includes some choreography by

Balanchine, from a previous, one-act version.

The abstract, color-coded designs are by the

Danish painter Per Kirkeby.—Marina Harss

(Through March 1.)

Che Malambo

Joyce Theatre

The men of Che Malambo charge like a stam-

pede and dance like cowboys—the Argentine

kind. Malambo, a centuries-old gaucho style,

is competitive and macho. Heads and torsos

ride haughtily over legs that buck, twist, and

beat out rhythms, often ostentatiously on the

rims of boots. Drums slung over shoulders

sometimes take up the beat, as do boleadoras,

weights attached to ropes that are thrown to

ensnare cattle on the run. These tools, swung

like lassos or jump ropes or yo-yos, are visually

spectacular musical instruments, whipping

the air and striking the ground. Imagine a

stage full of those whirring implements, some

held between teeth, and you get a sense of

why the roars of this troupe of twelve sexy,

sweaty guys, directed by the French choreog-

rapher Gilles Brinas, are usually answered by

whoops.—Brian Seibert (Feb. 11-16.)

with tinges of triumphant funk and churning
gospel. During the past few years, London
has emerged as a hotbed of unique and varied
styles of rap, and Radical, who is also a poet
and a visual artist, is poised to be its next great
champion.—B.Y. (Feb. 24.)