Eating George Balanchine: The First Installment of the Ballet Cookbook Dinner Series

Posted on February 25, 2012 by

Balanchine's fish dinner for two and buckwheat kasha. Photograph by Paul LaRosa

As both a balletomane and a bibliophile, I had little choice but to purchase The Ballet Cook Book, by former ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq. Although out of print for decades, the book has become legendary in dance circles. Copies are like gold dust, but after a prolonged online search I succeeded in finding one for the relatively low price of $80.

Paging through it for the first time, it was clear the book was worth every cent. Written in 1966, the 424-page volume is part cookbook and part yearbook, with recipes and biographies of the most renowned ballet dancers and choreographers of the day, including Frederick Ashton, Suzanne Farrell, Jerome Robbins, and Edward Villella. I knew immediately that I wanted to prepare the recipes, and to enjoy them with others who love ballet and food.

There was one problem: I’m a terrible cook. For help, I turned to Antonio Carmena, New York City Ballet soloist and graduate of the French Culinary Institute. (We originally met through Twitter.) He signed on immediately, as did Susan LaRosa, whose passion for preparing vintage recipes led her to start her own baking blog, A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn. As our enthusiasm for the project grew, we decided using The Ballet Cook Book to prepare one meal wouldn’t suffice: We would plan a monthly series of dinners.

Dinner attendees: Jeff, Antonio, me, Evan, Susan, and Michael

The first of these — an intimate but lively gathering of people with varying knowledge of ballet and cooking — took place last Sunday at Susan’s beautiful home in Park Slope, with a very-Russian menu of recipes submitted by George Balanchine, whose ballets I credit with sparking my interest in dance. Joining us were close friends Evan Namerow (writer of the blog Dancing Perfectly Free) and gadabout Jeff Gageby, who assisted me with hauling bags of fish, fruit, and vegetables from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Antonio arrived to do the real cooking immediately after dancing in New York City Ballet’s Romeo + Juliet. He was accompanied by his boyfriend, actor Michael Pereira, whose videotaping and wine bottle-opening skills came in very handy. Susan’s husband, Paul, generously took photos.

Jeff and I arrived early to chop fruits and vegetables (my only tangible contribution to the meal). We assumed we were making good time with our first course of blini (a kind of Russian pancake), but disaster struck when a more thorough reading of the recipe revealed the following line: “Allow to rise for 5 hours.” Oops. To avoid wasting the large quantities of sour cream and salmon roe we had on hand to complement the blini, we decided to forge ahead and hope for the best. Just as I was about to turn on some Stravinsky and pray to Balanchine for help, the dough miraculously started to rise. The blini certainly would have benefited from a few more hours, but they were delicious and proved to be the hit of the dinner. (Download the recipe for “blini.”)

The slow beet borschok, in an early stage.

Next we moved on to Balanchine’s “slow beet borschok.” I assumed it would be a version of borscht, but The Ballet Cook Book takes great care to distinguish the two: Borschok is a “light, clear consommé, an essence of beet-beef extract, that should be drunk from thin china cups, not soup bowls, with sour cream and slides of lemon served on the side.” Our soup benefited from homemade beef stock, which Susan generously prepared the day before using 10 pounds of bones. When we served the borschok — in china cups, true to Mr. B’s instructions — opinion was split: Some (myself included) found it satisfying, but others thought the beets overpowered the beef stock. Susan, one of the early dissenters, reported days later, however, that the leftover soup had become richer in flavor. “Most soups improve with time,” she said, “and this one definitely did.” (Download the recipe for “slow beet borschok.”)

The low point of the dinner, oddly, was the main course, Balanchine’s “fish dinner for two” (expanded for eight). Its ingredients — flounder filets, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, lemon juice, and a few seasonings — are simple, and the result was filling but bland. (“Let’s say it wasn’t my favorite,” Jeff said politely.) A piece of advice for those willing to try this dish: Don’t spend a small fortune on fresh fish like we did. Stick to the much-cheaper frozen filets called for by the recipe; they’re sure to produce a better return on your investment. We paired the fish with buckwheat kasha, one of four kasha recipes submitted by Mr. B. He’ll forgive us, I hope, for adding onions to the recipe to enhance the flavor. (Download the recipes for “fish dinner for two” and “buckwheat kasha.”)

Banana sweet

Finally, for dessert, we prepared the easy-to-make “banana sweet,” a concoction of fried bananas, white grapes, slivered almonds, and apricot jam. (Balanchine preferred exceedingly sweet desserts because he was never allowed them as a boy in Russia. “I used to say to myself: when I grow up, I am going to eat as much sugar and candy as possible.) The dessert’s sugary ingredients did indeed sound promising, but after combining them we were a bit, shall we say, underwhelmed by the dish’s messy appearance. We sampled it almost begrudgingly yet were surprised to find it quite tasty. “It’s similar to bananas foster but sweeter because of the apricot jam,” Evan noted. “And I like the crunch that the nuts added.” (Download the recipe for “banana sweet.”)

There was also, of course, vodka. Lots of it, and straight up, because that’s how Balanchine liked it. After taking our seats, we raised our glasses to the man of the hour, Mr. B. To Antonio (who had danced in Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3 just two nights before) and other dance aficionados at the table, Balanchine’s works are a source of inspiration, and it was touching to learn more about him through the food he regularly ate.

Thanks for allowing us use your recipes, Mr. B. And more thanks for allowing us to watch your ballets.

Watch a video of our cooking condensed to three minutes:

The next Ballet Cook Book dinner — featuring the recipes of New York City Ballet principal dancer Diana Adams — will be held Sunday, March 25. Space is limited, but if you would like to attend, write to ryan@bodiesneverlie.com and tell us why you would like to be our guest.

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An All-Wheeldon Afternoon: New York City Ballet in Les Carillons, Polyphonia & DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse

Posted on February 22, 2012 by

Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia in Christopher Wheeldon's "Les Carillons." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

At New York City Ballet, programs devoted to George Balanchine or Jerome Robbins — the company’s founding choreographers — are common. Far from monotonous, such performances offer opportunities to contrast moods and styles within each choreographer’s body of work, and the versatility is often surprising.

In an unusual move, New York City Ballet recently offered an afternoon of works by Christopher Wheeldon, the company’s former choreographer-in-residence, from 2001 to 2008. The program, however, wasn’t entirely satisfying. Instead of revealing a wealth of talents, these three works — Les Carillons, Polyphonia, and DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse — showed a disheartening sameness. One couldn’t help but notice a preference for dramatic, sometimes unconventional music, and in all three ballets, one often saw lines of dancers performing the same step one after the next, like dominoes falling. (The device, like many others, quickly became tiresome.)

Les Carillons, a premiere this season, demonstrated Wheeldon’s tendency to over-choreograph. The ballet, set to the first two suites of Georges Bizet’s L’Arlésienne, is a hodgepodge of disjointed character sketches and overwrought group dances. It begins promisingly enough, with the entire cast breaking into two circles that perform similar steps with different timing. It gives the sense that these aren’t anonymous dancers but people: unique and spontaneous.

The problem is that the characters, the principals in particular, are too unique: Wheeldon gives little reason to believe they should be in the same ballet. There are a few moments of inventive choreography — such as when Tiler Peck, supported by Gonzalo Garcia, spins on point by pushing on her own raised, bent leg — but Wheeldon too often relies on courtly clichés and dizzying footwork. Carillons would benefit from an editor.

New York City Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon's "DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse, created in 2006 for London’s Royal Ballet, was similarly difficult to follow. Michael Nyman’s loud, driving score, Musique à Grande Vitesse, doesn’t immediately lend itself to dancing, and instead of distilling the music into something more easily digested, Wheeldon attempts to do Nyman one better by packing the choreography with nonstop motion. The result often overwhelms. It was almost impossible, for example, to focus on Ashley Bouder and Joaquin De Luz’s in the ballet’s third pas de deux while, at the same time, couples from the corps danced around them on all sides and took turns sprinting to the edge of the stage. Where to look?

The best of the ballet’s four pas de deux was the first, featuring Teresa Reichlen and Craig Hall. While other couples moved or against with the music, Reichlen danced apart from it, piercing the thick atmosphere with her cool confidence as she slid into half-splits.

Between these two works, fortunately, was Polyphonia, Wheeldon’s 2001 masterpiece set to selections by Gyorgy Ligeti.  Polyphonia succeeds because it surprises at every turn. Balanchine-esque neoclassicism gives way to waltzing in one section. In another, two men — Gonzalo Garcia and Adrian Danchig-Waring at the performance reviewed — suddenly fall to their knees after having moved together in unison; Garcia stands up as Danchig-Waring lies down, a quietly jarring moment.

The ballet is also thrilling because of various tensions present: tension between classicism and distortion, and between the dancers themselves. Wendy Whelan leans into penché only to have Tyler Angle’s arm “undo” the step. In the finale, the men hold their arms in vertical patterns while the women’s are horizontal, then they swap.

Carillons and DGV have casts numbering in the dozens, but Polyphonia accomplishes far more with just four couples. New York City Ballet’s first all-Wheeldon program — paired with my fond memories of another spare Wheeldon masterpiece, After the Rain — suggests that when it comes to this choreographer, less is definitely more.

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Three More by Balanchine: New York City Ballet Dances Concerto Barocco, Tarantella, and The Firebird

Posted on February 7, 2012 by

Teresa Reichlen and Justin Peck in George Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Concerto Barocco was the reason I fell in love with dance. One evening in April 2010, I was paying just my second visit to New York City Ballet, and Barocco — a 1941 work by George Balanchine, debuted by his earlier troupe American Ballet Caravan — opened the program. The ballet is set to Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, a piece of music I knew well, but Balanchine’s sensitive choreography made me hear it in new ways. My eyes widened, and my pulse raced as I took it in. “So this is ballet,” I thought.

It was a joy to remember that moment of revelation at New York City Ballet’s performance last Tuesday, which also opened with Barocco. The ballet still fills me with wonder, and it was a pleasure to see two of the company’s most thrilling ballerinas — Sara Mearns and Teresa Reichlen — in its leading roles. Reichlen showed off her cool, effortless technique while Mearns gave a passionate performance with hints of mischief. The final movement, which has the feel of a playful competition, could have been viewed a battle of approaches. Both triumphed.

Just as satisfying was the second movement’s pas de deux, danced beautifully by Reichlen and Justin Peck. Experience shows what an an unusual pas de deux it is within the Balanchine repertory: The eight women of the corps de ballet never leave the stage, stripping it of the expected intimacy. The women dance mostly apart but join the couple occasionally to form chains or sculptural backdrops for their poses. The corps also responds to the ballerina’s movements — even the simpler ones — with a sort of ripple effect: Lines of four are parted by a series of delicate kicks.

Megan Fairchild in George Balanchine's "Tarantella." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Another viewing of Balanchine’s rollicking duet Tarantella (1964) was also revealing, having since seen the tarantella that closes August Bournonville’s Napoli. The dances have some steps in common — most obviously when the dancers face each other and hop backward in arabesque  — but share little else aside from their tambourines and buoyant energy. Although it plays on a traditional form, there’s never a doubt this is a Balanchine creation: When Megan Fairchild sank into a wide, spider-like plié on point, it brought to mind Agon and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Joaquin De Luz had no trouble outshining his partner. There may be no better vehicle than Tarantella for his charisma and bravura technique.

The ballet that disappointed was one I hadn’t seen: The Firebird, Balanchine’s 1949 take on Russian folklore. Stravinsky’s score, commissioned for the original 1910 Ballets Russes production by Michel Fokine, remains one of the composer’s most enjoyable and illustrative, but the choreography often failed to meet it.

Much of the blame falls to Jerome Robbins, who re-choreographed the monsters’ dance for the ballet’s 1969 revival. The passage’s explosive opening chord coincides with a small monster (played by a child) hopping onto the prince’s back. It’s underwhelming. Other monsters quickly emerge in cartoonish costumes that wouldn’t be out of place on Sesame Street, and their dancing amounts to little more than bouncing. Such silliness deflates the rich atmosphere created by Chagall’s colorful sets. As the Firebird, though, Maria Kowroski was a breath of fresh air. Her arms and fingers flickered like flame, and her serene solo banished the monsters from my mind as well as the stage.

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My First Issue as Dance Editor of The Brooklyn Rail: American Realness, Untitled Feminist Show, and More

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

Keith Hennessy in "Almost" at the American Realness festival. Photograph by Ian Douglas

Last month brought some unexpected but nonetheless happy news: I was named Claudia La Rocco’s successor as dance editor of The Brooklyn Rail. Although I studied journalism and have written for several magazines, I never imagined — after leaving the field in 2009 to pursue work at a nonprofit — that I would return to print. I can’t imagine a better publication to do so with than The Rail, which gives editors and contributors an unusual degree of freedom.

Today The Rail released its February issue, my first as dance editor. From Siobhan Burke, there’s a touching review of the 10-day American Realness festival at the Abrons Arts Center; Christine Hou takes issue with the hokey stereotypes in Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show; and Claudia La Rocco bids farewell to the publication and gives me a generous welcome. These three writers made my first month on the job easy. Read and enjoy.

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The Many Moods of Jerome Robbins: New York City Ballet Performs a Triple-Bill by the Founding Choreographer

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

Gwyneth Muller (left) and Joaquin De Luz, Sterling Hyltin, Christian Tworzyanski, and Austin Laurent in Jerome Robbins' "The Concert." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

The greatest strength of New York City Ballet’s repertory is its sheer variety. Although George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins admired each other’s work, the company’s two founding choreographers approached classical dance differently. One could count on Balanchine for abstraction; Robbins was more interested in making social dances and developing characters. In Robbins’ ballets, one often sees not just bodies in motion but real people.

Last Wednesday, the company paid tribute to Robbins with three works that gave a whirlwind tour of the characters and moods found within his body of work. It’s rare that one can witness such extremes —  carefree joy, agonizing death, and slapstick comedy — all in one evening at the theater.

The program’s first ballet, In G Major, was among Robbins’ contributions to New York City Ballet’s 1975 Ravel Festival. Erté’s colorful scenery and costumes suggest a beach vacation in the 1920s, and Ravel’s jazzy Piano Concerto in G Major adds to the early-19th-century feel. Six couples frolic and jog, and Maria Kowroski barrels through, coyly ignoring the many men who support her as she slips from one bendy pose into another. When Tyler Angle enters to dance with the women of the corps, it must be high noon: The music slows to a languid pace, as does the dancing.

These sunny scenes, however, are never more than cute. The substance arrives in the mysterious pas de deux. As the blue backdrop dims, Kowroski and Angle — both excellent in these roles — might be having a chance encounter in moonlight. Gone is her exuberance: She treats her partner with ambivalence, walking toward him only to retreat a moment later. He meets her halfway, holding her and carrying her across the floor in half-splits. Her equivocation returns in waves, but she surrenders herself to him completely as he lifts her, caressing the air with her arms as if enjoying the feel of an ocean breeze.

Wendy Whelan, Jared Angle, and Ask la Cour in Jerome Robbins' "In Memory of..." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

In Memory of… (1985), another ballet that hinges on its pas de deux, offers a starker image of fragility. Alban Berg’s haunting score, Violin Concerto (to the Memory of an Angel), was inspired by the death of an 18-year-old from polio, and Robbins’ ballet tells a similar story in three chapters: life among the living, a metaphoric battle with illness, and peace and transcendence in death.

On Wednesday, it was Wendy Whelan — the company’s oldest principal dancer — who portrayed the youthful protagonist in Robbins’ ballet, but she embodied innocence and fragility to heartbreaking effect. Her duet with Ask Le Cour, playing the predatory death figure, shows her character’s decline. Le Cour controls her like a puppeteer, slapping her arms to make her spin frantically and compelling her toward him with simple arm gestures. When Whelan leans into penché, it’s not a physical triumph but an act of submission. Elsewhere too, the choreography reveals a number of brilliant touches: The arms in the circle dances, jagged and imperfect in life, become horizontal and harmonious in the afterlife.

After such somberness, the program could end only with The Concert, Robbins’ 1956 comic masterpiece. The series of vignettes is always a pleasure to watch, but more so with an audience that appreciates its humor. On Wednesday, I’m happy to report, enthusiasm was unusually high: A woman behind me laughed so regularly, she at one point had trouble breathing.

A favorite passage pokes fun at ballet itself. Mocking Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides, six women in tutus bump into each other — and the piano onstage — and mar the intended patterns by copying their neighbors. (Georgina Pazcoguin, as one of the most confused among the bunch, acts brilliantly.) Other parts of The Concert poignantly evoke urban life: All 21 dancers walk across the stage and open umbrellas, one by one, after spotting others doing the same. They pair off, then begin to form clusters — constantly growing in human mass — until everyone is huddled around the same small umbrella at center stage. It’s poetry, and all without a single dance step.

The finale finds the dancers flitting about in silky butterfly wings. The first to emerge, Joaquin De Luz, bounces to Chopin, flexes his biceps, and stops to smell the flowers — literally. It’s a simple but powerful solo: He’s happy to be alive, thankful for the small things. After watching The Concert, even after the laughter fades, it’s impossible not to feel that too.

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From a Tin Soldier to a Scottish Tattoo: New York City Ballet Opens Winter Season with Five by Balanchine

Posted on January 22, 2012 by

Company members in George Balanchine's "Le Tombeau de Couperin." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

An energetic affair: That’s what I always imagined an opening night at New York City Ballet would be. As I’ve grown to love the company (and its rich repertory), each break between seasons has seemed longer than the last. This time around, the wait was too much: I had little choice but to purchase a full-price ticket for Tuesday’s performance.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I entered the David Koch Theater 15 minutes before curtain to find the atrium quiet and mostly empty. Audience members headed directly to their seats, where — judging from the volume of applause throughout the evening — at least half of them took naps. Two patrons in the rear orchestra — clearly inebriated — catcalled dancers mid-performance and snapped their fingers loudly to the music, but even these extreme efforts to liven the mood were in vain. (An usher promptly escorted them both from the theater.)

The reason for the audience’s apathy was unclear, but the fault certainly didn’t lie with the program: Tuesday brought three Balanchine ballets from the seventies (The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Who Cares?) and another from the sixties (Tschaichovsky Pas de Deux), which together showed the choreographer’s alarming penchant for variety. (Enthusiasm was also inexplicably low on Wednesday, for a similar program that featured another unique Balanchine work from the seventies: Union Jack.)

Set to selections from Bizet’s Jeux d’Enfants, The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1975) was, as others have already noted, an odd selection to kick off the post-holiday season. (The set — a parlor decorated for Christmastime — in many ways resembled The Nutcracker’s in miniature.) Nevertheless, the 11-minute ballet — about a tin soldier (Daniel Ulbricht, at his very best) in love with a paper-doll ballerina (Megan Fairchild on Tuesday and Erica Pereira on Wednesday) — has an evergreen charm.

Megan Fairchild and Daniel Ulbricht in George Balanchine's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

The ballet’s brimming sweetness lay largely in its distortions of ballet convention. These were, after all, toys, not people. Instead of unfolding fluidly, the ballerina’s développé happened in mechanical spurts, and her elevated foot remained humorously unpointed. Her partner, when leaning in to kiss her, was so stiff he nearly toppled over, and his tendus didn’t glide so much as burst. When the two dancers embraced, they did so with stiff, outstretched arms, like trees falling into each other. Fairchild captured this rigidity brilliantly, and gave a performance of impeccable timing. Pereira, by contrast, looked more confused than mechanical.

What made this ballet so memorable was that the two dolls overcame their inhuman qualities — and missing joints — to evoke empathy. Watching them jump with glee to Ravel’s most ebullient chords, it was impossible not to be touched. (These joyful moments also make the ballerina’s accidental fall into the fireplace later all the more heartbreaking.)

Tiler Peck in George Balanchine's "Who Cares?" Photograph by Paul Kolnik

The real shot in the arm, on both Tuesday and Wednesday, came in the form of Tiler Peck, who recently has become the company’s most thrilling and musical ballerina. In Who Cares? (1970), danced to George Gershwin tunes, she proved what it means to dance big, projecting grace — and even sensuality — in her pas de deux with Robert Fairchild. The audience immediately perked up whenever she appeared onstage.

The following night, Peck conquered a different challenge: Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960). She rattled off echappés with breathtaking speed, and seconds later took her time while descending from a grand battement. Her changes in momentum were palpable, adding an extra edge to what’s already a roller coaster of a ballet.

Le Tombeau de Couperin (1975), on the other hand, had no standout performers. That was the point: Its 16 dancers — all from the corps de ballet — were equal parts of a constantly shifting pattern. All shone brightly.

Ballet choreography is traditionally organized symmetrically, but Tombeau began — disconcertingly — with a sort of double vision: Two “quadriles” of eight dancers performed the same courtly steps on either side of the stage. (Taking in the whole picture could be mesmerizing, but it was also deeply satisfying to select a dancer — any dancer — and watch how she traveled and swapped partners, only to find her way back to an earlier spot.)

And as soon as this unusual organizing principle became normal, Balanchine broke his own rule, sending lines of four dancers each around the stage in no particular. Seconds later, it was all symmetry. The parallel images returned in the rollicking “Rigaudon” section, but here Balanchine threw another curveball: The men faced the women in two long diagonal lines, and dancers stepped out — almost arbitrarily, it appeared — for a series of more intimate solos, duets, and quartets.

Company members in George Balanchine's "Union Jack." Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Wednesday’s program was identical to Tuesday’s with the exception of Union Jack (1976), which took the place of Who Cares? A tribute to the United Kingdom, it began with a Scottish tattoo for an astounding 70 dancers — broken into 10 clans in matching gingham kilts — and ended with a number celebrating the British armed forces.

With all its marching and military-style formations, one would have thought the ballet required absolute precision to achieve its full effect. It was often sloppy on Wednesday, though, muddled by crooked lines and disagreement on timing. I’m told these rank-and-file sections depend more on energy than synchronicity, but that too was in short supply. (Less compelling still was the “Costermonger Duet,” a hokey pas de deux danced by Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette. I agree with the critic Nancy Goldner, who describes it as a “holding pattern”: choreographic filler while the dancers change into new costumes for the finale.)

There’s also the issue of timing. At an hour long, Union Jack was exhausting to watch after three other ballets. I’ve seen it only at the end of a program, and I wonder whether it might be more enjoyable in an earlier slot. Not halfway through the tattoo, I found myself as sleepy and detached as the rest of the audience.

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A Series of Exits, One of Them Final: The Last Performances of Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Posted on January 10, 2012 by

Jamie Scott and Dylan Crossman in "Park Avenue Armory Event." Photograph courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.

A rock concert with enraptured fans crowding the side of stage. A three-ring circus featuring acts of superhuman daring. A series of Olympic competitions accompanied by brassy fanfare. The activity inside the Park Avenue Armory might have resembled any of these settings during the final performances by Merce Cunningham Dance Company from December 29 to 31, but the occasion didn’t look like a farewell. Cunningham’s radical choreography could have been from the future.

It wasn’t, of course: The material for the 50-minute Event – which marked the end of the company’s final two-year Legacy Tour — had been culled from more than a dozen works representing five decades of the Cunningham oeuvre, reaching back to 1959’s Rune. (For those unfamiliar with “Events,” a Cunningham quote in the program explained: “Events consist of excerpts of dances from the repertory and new sequences arranged for the particular performance and place, with the possibility of several separate activities happening at the same time — to allow not so much an evening of dance as the experience of dance.”)

There was indeed much to experience at the Armory. Wearing form-fitted blue and green costumes by Anna Finke, the performers moved on strips of carpet between three stages, where their dances formed a continuous series of contrasts and coincidences. (At one point, all three stages contained duets; later, they simultaneously hosted a solo, a duet, and a trio.) Cloud-like sculptures by Daniel Arsham, made of small white spheres, hung from above, contrasting sharply with the surrounding black walls. Trumpeters and trombonists playing from rafters high above gave way to an army of electronic musicians at laptops, led by music director Takehisa Kosugi. Audiences could watch from the floor or from raised platforms, or stroll through the Armory for a change of perspective.

If the six repertory works presented at the company’s recent season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music evoked themes — nature, human relationships, transcendence — the fragmented nature of the Armory performances turned the focus to movement itself.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company in "Park Avenue Armory Event." Photograph courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory

Much of it was refreshingly simple. Rashaun Mitchell danced a solo from Fractions I (1977), skipping and letting his arms ripple like waves, moving to an inner musicality even as electronic noise blared around him. In a duet from Exchange (1978), Jennifer Goggans experimented with ways of passing through Daniel Madoff, crawling through the tunnel formed by his arched body then nonchalantly stepping over him twice. Even a walk was made thrilling: In a passage from Cross Currents (1964), Brandon Collwes, Jamie Scott, and Marcie Munnerlyn briskly followed invisible lines on the floor, crossing one another’s paths but never colliding, as though playing Pac-Man or navigating the Manhattan grid.

It also became clearer, while watching from up close one evening, how many risks these dancers took. On the stage furthest from the entrance, Mitchell and Andrea Weber offered an excerpt from Nearly Ninety (2009), Cunningham’s last work, in which they relied on each other for balance, slipping quickly into leaning arabesques and attitudes, one arm held by the other for support. Behind their static poses was a precarious game of shifting weight. Dancing a solo from Enter (1992), Silas Riener – the company’s bravest performer — rotated through the center stage, pivoting with one leg while lifting the other into the air at a sharp diagonal. He might have been trying clear the space of a thick fog. Leaning backward and forward farther than anyone would expect, Riener tested his own limits before collapsing in a heap. The solo made one marvel at the body’s potential, and such surprises occur often in Cunningham’s work. I think I’ll miss them the most.

My companions for both performances I attended had never seen any Cunningham. The first, who said he’d been prepared by my descriptions, enjoyed what he saw. My friend on the second night found the movement beautiful but — unsurprisingly — took issue with the music. “It had no connection to the choreography,” he said, bemoaning the electronic arrangements in particular. “It was disturbing.” I smiled, remembering how confounded I’d been nine months ago after my first taste of Cunningham, 1993’s CRWDSPCR. I wish my friend could see more, but it was touching that Cunningham’s work — its mystery, its abstraction, its otherworldliness — had remained challenging until the very end.

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