NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER

Review By Celia Ipiotis

There was a palpable buzz in the audience when Nederlands Dans  Theater returned to City Center after a four year absence. Known as a company of expertly trained and highly individualistic dancers, Amsterdam’s Nederlands Dans Theater unveiled a program of three dances.

Noted for his angular, off kilter choreography on steroids,  William Forsythe’s 2002 piece aesthetically flips 180 degrees to softer shapes entwining dancers in supportive holds and balances. N.N.N.N. wraps 4 male dancers, Surimu Fukushi, Barry Gans, Aram Hasler, Theophilus Vesely, into a dance sewn together through breaths that multiplied into an overarching, internal rhythm.

A collaboration between choreographers Imre & Marne and a Dutch design company DRFIT, The Point Being, slips in and out of light. Creating a sense of foreground and memory, the dancers collect in animalistic poses, rolling and wrinkling arms and legs in mysterious combinations. Light by Tom Visser bends around bodily masses, emerging and disappearing through a smoky landscape. A thin curtain of black rope panels adds an additional layer of “otherness,” but despite the occasional bright, roving lights, the stage slumbers under a visual haziness.

Bodies form a communal, sensual organism engaged in earthy rituals in Jakie by Bathsheva alumni Sharon Eyal & Gali Ehar. Dressed in skin-colored unitards, the genderless looking company tips precariously in off kilter extensions and turns. They reach across limbs, grounding each other within the assembly of bodies. In partnership with the music by Ori Lichtik, Jakie’s addictive, liquid movements pull the audience into the mystical universe of never-ending motion.

Under the direction of Emily Molnar, the relatively solemn Nederlands Dans Theater program called for at least one more bright piece — both figuratively and literally.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis