Once upon a time, dance companies from Europe made frequent appearances in our town. But sightings of major companies from that continent have become rarities in recent years. The Brooklyn Academy of Music valiantly imports certain foreign troupes, allowing us a chance to sample, sometimes belatedly, some of what is going on amid the bustling European dance scene. But the days when important foreign companies reliably included Lincoln Center or City Center on their itineraries are long gone.
Nederlands Dans Theater took local dance audiences by storm in the late 1970s, introducing Jirí Kylián’s fervent, sleekly expressionistic works, and for a while the company was a regular and much-admired visitor to our shores. Around the same time as New Yorkers discovered NDT, the company launched a junior troupe, NDT II, of dancers aged 17 to 22. It has long since established its own strong identity and repertory and tours frequently.
Ten years ago, Lincoln Center Festival generously presented NDT’s three companies—NDT III, a chamber-sized ensemble of eminent mature dancers had been added to the roster—and five years ago NDT performed at BAM, its first visit since Kylián had stepped down as artistic director.
This week, the vivid, nuanced performers of NDT II will be at the Joyce Theater with a program of four works, all local or U.S. premieres. They include Sleepless, a spare, disorienting 2004 work by Kylián (who has remained as resident choreographer and artistic adviser after ceding the overall leadership to Andres Hellstrom). Set to a sound score by Dirk Haubrich that incorporates snatches of a Mozart concerto, the work’s set is a wall of panels that enable the six dancers to emerge and withdraw in ways that hide and distort segments of their bodies.
The rest of the program showcases the choreography of Lightfoot León—the combined name for the choreographic tandem of Paul Lightfoot, who is British, and Sol León, who is Spanish. The duo met as dancers in NDT during the 1980s, and since 1991 have contributed over 30 works to the repertory of all three NDT ensembles. Their dances are deft, sometimes quirky; they establish a distinctive vocabulary and mood from the start, and require intensely focused, extremely agile and fluid performances from the dancers.
The Lightfoot León works to be seen at the Joyce include Said and Done, set to Bach, in which four men and three women begin with what looks like an exalted brand of yoga and gradually slip into intricate solos and duets marked by remarkable fluidity and fascinatingly swift, intricate movement. In Sad Case, a quintet of clown-like waifs indulges in revved-up spastic moves in a wacky interpretation of Perez Prado’s juicy Cuban big-band sound. Also on the program is Shutters Shut, in which a couple matches the rhythms and emphases of a Gertrude Stein poem with focused specificity. They come across as simultaneously zany, poignant and endearing.
The Lightfoot León tandem has clearly found a distinctive joint approach to choreography. In a 2006 interview, Lightfoot remarked about their work, “People say that it is like watching a dialogue. You have two ideas and somehow they intertwine and there is a conversation.” Since all three of these works were created specifically for NDT II, they know the dancers very well. Perhaps those dancers know the (possibly amusing, possibly significant) reason why all but a couple of the dances they have choreographed since 1990 have titles beginning with the letter “S.”
Nederlands Dans Theater II
April 9-12, Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at W. 19 St.), 212-242-0800; times vary, $19-$59.
Nederlands Dans Theater took local dance audiences by storm in the late 1970s, introducing Jirí Kylián’s fervent, sleekly expressionistic works, and for a while the company was a regular and much-admired visitor to our shores. Around the same time as New Yorkers discovered NDT, the company launched a junior troupe, NDT II, of dancers aged 17 to 22. It has long since established its own strong identity and repertory and tours frequently.
Ten years ago, Lincoln Center Festival generously presented NDT’s three companies—NDT III, a chamber-sized ensemble of eminent mature dancers had been added to the roster—and five years ago NDT performed at BAM, its first visit since Kylián had stepped down as artistic director.
This week, the vivid, nuanced performers of NDT II will be at the Joyce Theater with a program of four works, all local or U.S. premieres. They include Sleepless, a spare, disorienting 2004 work by Kylián (who has remained as resident choreographer and artistic adviser after ceding the overall leadership to Andres Hellstrom). Set to a sound score by Dirk Haubrich that incorporates snatches of a Mozart concerto, the work’s set is a wall of panels that enable the six dancers to emerge and withdraw in ways that hide and distort segments of their bodies.
The rest of the program showcases the choreography of Lightfoot León—the combined name for the choreographic tandem of Paul Lightfoot, who is British, and Sol León, who is Spanish. The duo met as dancers in NDT during the 1980s, and since 1991 have contributed over 30 works to the repertory of all three NDT ensembles. Their dances are deft, sometimes quirky; they establish a distinctive vocabulary and mood from the start, and require intensely focused, extremely agile and fluid performances from the dancers.
The Lightfoot León works to be seen at the Joyce include Said and Done, set to Bach, in which four men and three women begin with what looks like an exalted brand of yoga and gradually slip into intricate solos and duets marked by remarkable fluidity and fascinatingly swift, intricate movement. In Sad Case, a quintet of clown-like waifs indulges in revved-up spastic moves in a wacky interpretation of Perez Prado’s juicy Cuban big-band sound. Also on the program is Shutters Shut, in which a couple matches the rhythms and emphases of a Gertrude Stein poem with focused specificity. They come across as simultaneously zany, poignant and endearing.
The Lightfoot León tandem has clearly found a distinctive joint approach to choreography. In a 2006 interview, Lightfoot remarked about their work, “People say that it is like watching a dialogue. You have two ideas and somehow they intertwine and there is a conversation.” Since all three of these works were created specifically for NDT II, they know the dancers very well. Perhaps those dancers know the (possibly amusing, possibly significant) reason why all but a couple of the dances they have choreographed since 1990 have titles beginning with the letter “S.”
Nederlands Dans Theater II
April 9-12, Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at W. 19 St.), 212-242-0800; times vary, $19-$59.
