Downtown and Uptown Dance Meet in a Brooklyn Fest Featuring Superheroes

Hip downtown choreographers rarely share a bill with uptown counterparts, but at the Cool New York Dance Festival everyone's welcome. The sampling of varied visions is eye-opening. Presenting 60 artists, the festival offers deserving choreographers brief but much needed exposure. The work may be uneven, but the dancers excel. From a frenzy of leaps, lifts, and turns in the first program to more contemplative works in the second, Alethea Adsitt's Blink: The Indelible Blue Wall Coda was the most grounded and satisfying. Integrating video, fluid and gestural choreography, layered sound, and modest theatricality, Adsitt and dancers convincingly explored the intrigue of casual encounters. Notable too were the endearing comic qualities of Nelly van Bommel's Love Parade, the butoh-like trance of Akiko Ko-Taiano, the visuals of Jeanette Stoner, and the wackiness of Pascal Rekoert's superhero antics.