LYON OPERA BALLET

Review by Celia Ipiotis

Merce Cunningham’s 1999 adventure into the science of motion capture resulted in the creation of Biped, a nod to the digital future we currently live in.  An enormously satisfying confluence of motion, digital projections, and sound, Biped opened the Lyon Opera Ballet’s season at City Center. Dancers materialized in long lyrical arabesques, tilts, one arm bent, head tilted back and poof–they’re gone. 

The pencil-lined dance figures floated over the scrim and interacted with the ghostly projected images connecting virtual reality with real life. Slick in Suzanne Gallo’s shiny silver tank suits, the dancers smoothed over some of Cunningham’s more technically demanding elements, in particular the off-balance, daring body dips. Another visual element that adds a startling additional to the multi media panels of light projected on the floor, like the deep blue that traveled upstage. Best seen from the balcony, the production remains a harbinger of future dance visions.

Through the darkness, knotted bodies moved en masse splitting into arteries of motion. Inspired by the rich fungal landscape, the trance-like ballet, Mycelium by Christos Papadapoulos continues the line of Greek choreographers who are apparently drawn closer to dark mysteries rather than sunny vistas. By peering into symbiotic relationships, Papadopoulos visualized the inter-connective engineering that begot life systems. The Lyon Opera Ballet dancers’ feet shuffled in minute side to side steps, like the Russian folk dances where women in long dresses, use tiny, rapid steps to conjure the image of dancers floating across the stage. 

A striking company, they wore sleek black filmy tunics and pants by Angelos Mentis. Seething in dark spaces eerily lit by Eliza Alexandropoulou,it was difficult to decipher individuals, rather, the company materialized as a throng of vibrating, shockingly provocative forms. In the end, when the full company magnetically connected en masse in the patches of high contrast lighting, one felt overwhelmed. Although a couple of audience members left, those who remained shot up in a standing ovation.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis