ZviDance’s 10 members are onstage together so much that they register as a big family, content to perform Zvi Gotheiner’s fluid movement. In the company’s well-paced premiere, Easy for You to Say (to Shostakovich), pulsing energy is released through limbs pulled from the torso in opposing tension. Dancers sing and talk only to be quieted by others; a ballet phrase appears, adding textural interest. A male duet features intricate entwining arms hooked behind heads, tugging and pushing. In Lapse (2002, to Scott Killian’s score), jogging is the tiresomely recurrent motif; dancers jog in a pack and break off singly or in pairs, swooping through bold diving turns. Four men prance like boxers and form a square, surrounding a woman (secure or trapped?). By the end, I felt as if I’d watched someone else’s family reunion—happy for them, but wistful to experience things firsthand. Susan Yung
Experienced Choreographers Guide Young Dance Artists From Four Boroughs
In a world moving so fast, so erratically, what happens when artists like Arthur Aviles or Stephan Koplowitz are asked to explore issues in the lives of today’s youth? “The Subway Series,” curated by Nancy Duncan and Ivan Sygoda, offered entertainment if scant elucidation. In Back in the Day . . . (when i was young, i’m not a kid anymore), Abigail Rosin’s Groove With Me (Manhattan) transitioned from hand-clapping, rope-skipping games of yesteryear to MTV fare. Best moves: fleet-footed kicks to an OutKast song. Paz Tanjuaquio’s brisk, jazzy Take Seven displayed the serene discipline of her Sinatra High (Queens) ensemble. Koplowitz’s spirited My Tribe, with students from Packer Collegiate Institute (Brooklyn), included real kids’ words and brash, angular, awkward, even cartoonish movements. Aviles took the most hands-off approach with his charges: In Process, three gender-bending teens from his Bronx-based BAAD! soloed straight from the boogie-down heart with a heap of personal, private style if not yet composed, theatrical sense. Eva Yaa Asantewaa