WOMEN MOVE THE WORLD

Women Move The World, the 2025/2026 92NY Harkness Dance Mainstage Series created, curated and choreographed entirely by women, debuted YY Dance Company’s Elsewhere, the final installment of artistic director Yue Yin’s evening-length triptych series.

Yin’s salient choreographic voice matches 92NY’s passion for bringing these unshakable voices to the limelight. Challenging the performance status quo of dance works being created, lived, then discarded, Yin created a choreographic universe that was as alive and expansive as the time that it took up.

Yin’s choreography is so vividly stylized it is without a doubt a representation of her legacy, and the dancers are so immersed they effortlessly join her universe. The trilogy’s themes were heightened by symbolic portals of existence and transition.

Concluding Somewhere, dancers moved towards and into a light source illuminating a portal, hinting at the journey continuing. These beams of light opened the Elsewhere space, and one by one dancers emerged; it read instantly that this was the portal, and the dancers had made it through.

Due to the intimacy of the space, viewers could see the pulsation of breathless chests, and beads of sweat dripping onto the dark marley floor. FoCo beckons this level of exertion, and in conversation with Yin’s choreography, highlights the energetic range and capabilities of both the style and the dancers. Dancers harnessed stillness, softness, as well as tumultuous wrangling. Whether miniscule shifts in the direction of their chests falling together, or through a soaring sequence of grounded, space-consuming movement, the work showed off the company’s incredible command of their bodies, and energetic output.

The meticulous art of holding focus in subtlety, then jumping right into explosive rigor is something YYDC has mastered craftfully. While their faces remained stoic, their movements and relationships to one another interchanged. Sequences of smaller groups, as well as solos were interspersed, with moments of the fourth wall breaking down. Just as we were watching intimate duets, dancers on stage were also stepping back, watching. We were unified in witnessing beautiful connections.

From Nowhere, to Somewhere and now Elsewhere, represented varying parts of the continuous human experience. Through compassionate movement language, Yin has articulated a space where audiences can almost see into the future. Not only exploring ‘where might we go?’, but how we can go forward; not only ‘what are we doing here?’, but what can’t we do when we are unified in spirit and intention.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Emma Edy Morris