New York Dwell Arts, New York, NY.
June 22, 2024.
YY Dance Firm (YYDC) premiered the evening-length SOMEWHERE at New York Dwell Arts in late June. The work is the second of a trilogy – the primary, NOWHERE, premiered at Chelsea Manufacturing unit in the summertime of 2023. The 4 performances over three days introduced practically full homes to the theater. On the night time of my attendance, closing night time, the bows loved a prolonged standing ovation, the likes of which I’ve not seen in a while. This time, nonetheless, SOMEWHERE had arrived and the response was enthusiastic.
Creative Director Yue Yin’s choreography is born from her method, referred to as FoCo: a mix of conventional Chinese language classical dance, people, ballet and up to date. The method employs the three concepts of activation, rooting and mapping to discover genuine, highly effective connections to motion. The result’s a mesmerizing visible expertise.
The stage was set sans wings with the aspect lights seen, its vastness illumination a shocking artwork set up alongside the again of the house. Created by the duo referred to as The Striped Canary, the big scale set design of white material spanned the again of the stage with a sparse door resulting in….we don’t know…and created a profound juxtaposition between the starkness of the stage and the whimsical softness and purity of the material.
The world of SOMEWHERE shares those self same concepts – broadly that of duality current to strengthen the entire. The magnetic opposing concepts all of us expertise in life construct via the event of the work, which is fixed dancing for 75 minutes. Teams kind, change, morph, splinter, and but all inform a nuanced story of neighborhood. The fluid negotiations of effectivity that dominate Yue’s FoCo method serve effectively to specific the complicated concepts of humanity onstage on this piece. The highly effective expression of motion at all times current in Yue’s work compels largely due to its understanding of and respect for steadiness: to go up, one should root down; to movement freely, one should harness deep core vitality; to blow up, one should collect.
For audiences, the virtually trance-like high quality of the manufacturing (set to an unique rating by Michael Banabila and carried out brilliantly by technically masterful dancers) wraps itself round you and carries you to a world essentially acquainted to us all – that there’s magnificence to duality, and that magnificence may exist due to it.
By Emily Sarkissian of Dance Informa.
