The Nederlands Dans Theater came to Chicago for two shows last week at the Auditorium Theater, on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was the second I got to. Each night featured the same slate of three works, though, so this wasn’t such a great impediment, but with dancing on this level of expressive nuance and intricate storytelling, two performances probably isn’t enough to take it all in, let alone absorb everything that’s happening on stage. But what you are able to see and are able to grasp is deeply moving and almost tragic, and the dancers’ considerable technique fades from view and you – or at least, I – let my mind wander to the metaphysics the choreographers seem to be aiming for, and the dancers are delivering.
Beginning with Lightfoot León’s (Paul Lightfoot, Sol León) Shoot the Moon and ending with Crystal Pite’s The Second Person, the program moved from a narrative-driven choreography to a more abstract vocabulary. The five dancers in Shoot the Moon inhabit a set of rooms set on a turntable, on which the walls rotate so that we only ever see a couple, or a soloists. Videos projected above the dancers occasionally focus in on the action who are (were) out of sight. We see one couple fighting, another not fighting, and another room usually with just a male soloist in it.
At one point, the walls spin such that we can see the action in each room in quick succession, and it becomes bleakly clear that none of these people are able to interact at any deep level with anyone else, and that they never will. (At least, that’s how it seemed to me. They say that criticism always says more about the critic than about the work of art…and lord knows I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the actual physical movements.) The music was from Philip Glass’s Tirol Concerto for piano and orchestra, and the choreography mapped its ebbs and swells perfectly.
This is as good a point as any to praise the NDL’s website, which puts Flash videos of their dances at the top of every page. You don’t have to Click Here! to see their dancing; you don’t have to take some reviewer’s word that the company is awesome; you don’t have to register for some sort of update; it’s just there and the music and dancing start as soon as you arrive and you see the beautiful dancers immediately. Bravo. The dances danced in Chicago can be viewed here.)
Next was Jirí Kylián’s Wings of Wax, which takes off from Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. As Breughel shifts our attention from the fall of Icarus to that of the commonplace action of the townsfolk, who are oblivious to Icarus’s recent flight and fall, Kilián moves his eight dancers in and out of view on a dark stage such that it’s a continual game to keep your eyes on the dancers. A giant tree hangs above the stage with a searchlight moving in an orbit around it. At one point, the four women come upstage and begin taking simple steps, forward and back, and as beguiling as their movements are, you can’t help but wonder if the men aren’t the actual focal point, and you’re being fooled.
As Kilián incorporated music by Heinrich Biber, John Cage, Glass, and Bach, he used that to cleanly delineate each of the passing moments. The fluid patterns during Biber’s Baroque opening stopped dead when one of Cage’s prepared-piano pieces began, and took a fittingly more mechanized turn.
I wish they had an image for this dance with the tree. Alas
Last up was the evening’s tour de force for the entire company, The Second Person by Crystal Pite. Working with composer Owen Belton’s electronic score, with samples of spoken words and massive industrial clankings, she fashioned a gritty, machine-like world that ultimately turned poignantly beautiful. She was aided in this by three Bunraku puppets, two doll-sized and the other life-size, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the breathtaking use of these dolls makes their appearance in Petrouschka look downright sophomoric. The dance’s conclusion (which is on the NDL website) in which one female dancer appears to have turned into a puppet, is one of those heartbreaking moments that isn’t soon forgotten.
And in the local relationships to this company, it’s fun to see that Hubbard Street Dance Company’s Jim Vincent is leaving Chicago become artistic director of Netherlands Dans Theater, while a former leader of NDL 1 named Glenn Edgerton is coming in to lead Hubbard Street. I’ll bring the Kleenex if last week’s NDL performances is anything like what Edgerton can bring to Hubbard Street.