BAAND 2026

The sixth annual BAAND Festival’s final performance opened with a welcome by Dance Theater of Harlem’s Artistic Director, Robert Garland.  He offered a brief icebreaking “lecture demonstration” with two DTH dancers demonstrating ballet arm positions as he asked the diverse audience to stand and mirror their arms to lively, contemporary music. He engaged our senses as we embodied a tiny bit of what was soon to be seen onstage.

Zephyr, meaning “gentle breeze,” a pas de deux choreographed by American Ballet Theater’s Claire Davison, opened the performance. Fangqi Li and Joseph Markey (she in a flowing dress; he in a tunic and soft pants), partnered each other with seemingly effortless turns, leaps, arabesque ronde de jambs, and often symmetrical relationship.

Choreographer Jodie Gates’ Passage of Being, reflected on the power of the fleeting moment and its impact on love, community, and the passage of time.  Six of Dance Theater of Harlem’s dancers expressed constantly changing relationships: duets, trios, forging accumulating then diminishing groupings. An often repetitive movement in the score by Ryan Lott offered two chords that fluctuated back and forth…perhaps a wish to sustain the moment? Woven into the score is Son Lux’s song “Don’t Say It’s Too Late.” The final scene showed five dancers in stillness. A sixth refused to join them, relentlessly leaping and cavorting around the stage as if to say: “seize the moment; seize the day.”

New York City Ballet’s Adrian Danchig Waring and Taylor Stanley, two statuesque men with long, elegant arms, graced the stage in Lar Lubovitch’s Each in Their Own Time. The curtain opened to a long column of blue light (by Jack Mehler) projected onto the back cyc, framing a grand piano, with the two dancers symmetrically placed on either side; dressed in white shirts and trousers.  Pianist Ruoting Li played selections of Brahms’ Eight Piano Pieces (Op 76). The dancers, spotlighted, stood in stillness on either side of the piano during the piano prelude. Then, they elegantly partnered each other, holding hands as they twisted and turned around one another.  One watched as the other danced; then, roles switched. They  supported each other’s weight with strength and care.  Lubovitch’s dance is a beautiful wish for relationships that listen, watch, respond, and understand. 

A Case of You, choreographed by the late Judith Jamison in 2005 for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, was performed by stellar Ailey dancers Samantha Figgins and Yannick Isaiah Day. Danced to Diana Kroll’s interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s song, Day entered the stage in white shirt and black pants holding a red sash. Figgins wore a red sequined dress.  The sash passed between them, sometimes passionately, sometimes ambivalently. The lyrics of the song repeated “I Could Drink a Case of You and Still Be on My Feet “ as the dancers expressed passion and longing; but Kroll’s magnificent voice sometimes overpowered the visual impact of the dance.

Ballet Hispanico’s crowd pleasing “WOW” of a piece, Tranca (meaning Braid) by choreographer Cassi Abranches, brought down the house as the last work.  Brazilian music by Beto Velars, started with rain stick percussion; ten dancers slowly walked on stage, lined up, then alternated forward and back, rising and sinking. They soon moved independently in unison circular floor patterns, steps of six counts. Amazing movement emanated from their bodies: percussive hips swiveled, back and forth under undulating torsos, all to pulsating, passionate music: samba and other, that doesn’t stop!

Three men with deep plié earthy struts, contorting torsos and pelvises, all synchronous with impeccable technique, led the final group of twelve, embodying the life, exuberance, passion, sensuality, and interconnectedness of Brazilian culture, music, and dance.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman

*Photos by Rosalie O’Connor