Archives for 2006

His pieces have been made for his own group and for others in the United States and in Europe – from American Ballet Theater and WNET to the Paris Opera Ballet’s special department for cutting-edge dance. On occasion he has collaborated with his son, the playwright Ain Gordon, beginning aptly, in 1994, with a production called “The Family Business.” Along the way, he has collected an impressive array of awards and grants, among them three Bessies (the highest honor on New York’s downtown dance scene), two Obies and a pair of Guggenheim fellowships.

Although Mr. Gordon, born in 1936, had always been a convincing presence onstage, he has not cast himself in “Birdonia.” He no longer appears in his own productions. “I knew when I wanted to stop performing,” he said. “I was no longer interested in it. I used to like the transformation aspect of performing. I’m too old now. I can’t transform anymore.”

Mr. Gordon’s interest in technique never came from the physical hunger of a born dancer. It belonged, instead, to the curiosity of a born director. “Even at the beginning,” he said, “when I went in search of technique, it was not for technique that I would be passing through my body. It was for technique that I would be passing through my brain to other people. I went to performances, I watched rehearsals, I talked to people I could learn from. I did everything I could do to absorb information that had not come to me by the route in which it had come to most of my peers. That was – and continues to be – a complicated way to go about being in this business. But I have been unstoppable.”

One of Mr. Gordon’s chief assets for the last 45 years has been an instinctive performer: his wife, the dancer and actor Valda Setterfield, who plays the title role in “Aristophanes in Birdonia.” Known for her elegance and eloquence, the British-born Ms. Setterfield trained with Ballet Rambert, then, transplanting herself to America, became a distinctive member of Merce Cunningham’s company.

Ms. Setterfield has been performing Mr. Gordon’s work since 1974, when, in an effort to offer her a new way of dancing as she recovered from a serious car accident, he created “Chair, Alternatives 1 Through 5,” a duet in which the two explored what could be done with the most utilitarian of objects, a metal folding chair – sitting, standing, kneeling and lying on it, tipping it, passing it over their bodies, collapsing it and opening it again. (The chair became an enduring motif in Mr. Gordon’s work and duly recurs in “Birdonia.”)

Onstage, with her grace, self-possession, soft clear voice and patrician accent, Ms. Setterfield has made an effective foil to the down-to-earth Mr. Gordon, with his burly figure and ramshackle manner. Behind the scenes, Mr. Gordon, always fascinated by the drama of family life, has continually drawn upon their individual personalities and their relationship, provocatively blurring the distinctions between reality and theatrical make-believe for his productions.

Ms. Setterfield said she didn’t find it strange to be playing a male character in “Birdonia.” She had already suavely embodied Marcel Duchamp in Mr. Gordon’s 1990 work “The Mysteries and What’s So Funny?” Her approach: “I think of the nature of the character, not particularly about the gender.”

As for Mr. Gordon: “I think of Valda in this role – as I have before – as being my mouthpiece, the person who could utter the things that were making me crazy in the world. And instead of coming from me, this angry New York Jewish person, the message would sound beautiful.”

“Actually,” he added, after a moment’s further thought, “everybody in my pieces is me.”

Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.

As far as I can recall, the first dance book I owned was Tamara Karsavina’s memoir, Theatre Street. My favourite uncle gave it to me when I was a child—I don’t know why. Uncle Harry was cheerfully free from acquaintance with the arts, and Terpsichore had not yet claimed me for her own. Never mind. I read it—absorbed, enchanted, in thrall to the artist’s vivid, trenchant glimpses of her life’s journey: Childhood in St Petersburg in the late-nineteenth century. School days at the Maryinsky, where she was a few classes behind Pavlova and a short generation ahead of Balanchine, who admired her greatly. Development into a supreme lyric and dramatic dancer—and a great star—in what is now the Kirov Ballet. Ventures with Diaghilev, creating leading roles in ballets by Fokine and Massine. Tragically foreshortened partnership with Nijinsky. And, finally, emigration to England where for decades she contributed to the blossoming of British ballet. Though I’ve read dozens of dance biographies since, Karsavina’s Theatre Street remains, in my mind and heart, the indelible one. It converted me to dance before I had seen a single performance.

Now, of course, I own hundreds of dance books—far too many, some might say. Still, most of them have proved useful. Granted, several are mere curiosities or just tiny pointers to an ephemeral world that once turned, but their evidence is often unique. Many, having gone out of print, are growing increasingly rare and thus prohibitively expensive to acquire. Among them are dozens that I love inordinately. From time to time I fret about what will happen to them—all of them—when I’m gone. If you, reader, happen to be a bookish dance person, you might do some constructive worrying about your own horde.

[Read more…] about YOU CAN’T GIVE ‘EM AWAY: THOUGHTS ON LIBRARIES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) — The program for Savion Glover’s new show at New York’s Joyce Theater contains a 25-word biography of the legendary dancer that ends: “Praise almighty God.”

Witnesses to the tireless rhythmic invention and dazzling technical prowess of this genius of tap may be roused to cry “Amen.”

Glover, one of the greatest dancers of his generation in any genre, is the sole dancer in “Visions of a Bible.” He also has choreographed and directed the program and designed the lighting, which suggests sunset in an urban heaven.

Backed by gospel singer Lori Ann Hunter and the Otherz, the suave, witty jazz quartet that regularly accompanies him, the 32-year-old Glover appears in his familiar homeboy guise: dreadlocks, goatee, unbuttoned shirt over white singlet, beads and khakis.

His feet work miracles. They start out whispering multisyllabic secrets, then escalate by precise degrees to complex, full-force declarations.

The soft effects suggest a clock — or perhaps an infernal machine — ticking away in the night. The loudest barrages make you think of artillery fire, with personal rage behind its murderous force. In between, the tapping is simply the juiciest percussion music you’re ever going to hear.

Child Prodigy

Every part of his foot has myriad ways of touching the floor. Often you can’t see this because the speed blurs the image, but you can hear it.

At the start, Glover’s concentration is so intense that he doesn’t make eye contact with the audience. As the program progresses, he lifts his face and offers a sweet, guileless smile that recalls snapshots of him as a kid.

Glover is that rare performer — a child prodigy who has grown up to be an adult prodigy.

Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, he was drumming before he could walk. By age 7, he was in tap class, where his instinct for rhythm was noticed immediately.

He made his Broadway debut at 11, taking over the lead in “The Tap Dance Kid.” Four years later, he was in “Black and Blue,” soaking up everything he could about tap and life from revered old hoofers in the cast like Jimmy Slyde and Lon Chaney.

TV, Movies

Then came “Jelly’s Last Jam” (1991), where he played opposite Gregory Hines, who became his mentor. By 1995, he was calling the shots himself, choreographing and starring in “Bring in `Da Noise, Bring in `Da Funk,” which won four Tonys.

Glover uses varied forums to get broader recognition for his art form. Last year’s “Classical Savion” featured him dancing to Bach and Vivaldi, as well as jazz. He’s also appeared in movies, commercials and television, including five years as a regular on “Sesame Street.”

Glover is a proselytizer for tap, a convincing street preacher practicing the laying on of feet.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

THE boy on the platform faces a pair of curlicued bronze candelabra bearing scarlet candles. He removes the central taper from one of them, inserts the index finger of his right hand into the metal hollow, upends himself and balances, his svelte, perfectly proportioned body taut and unwavering, supported only by the one finger.

He is Christian Atayde Stoinev, who turned 14 last week. He’s a star in the Big Apple Circus, the one-ring, zero-lions-and-tigers entertainment that has pitched its tent in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center for its annual New York season, which continues through Jan. 8.

Some children dream of running away to join the circus. Christian was born into it. His parents, who hold administrative jobs with the Big Apple Circus and serve as his coaches, are former circus artists. Maritza Atayde, a fourth-generation member of her family’s Circo Atayde Hermanos, the oldest and biggest circus in Mexico, performed as an aerialist and with a pack of Dobermans she had trained. Ivan Stoinev, from Bulgaria, was a versatile equilibrist. Christian made his debut at 5, standing bravely on the shoulders of his father, who was mounted on an unsupported ladder.

Like many circus artists, Christian has multiple skills. Pressed to describe his line of work specifically, he calls himself an acrobat. His specialty is hand-balancing, which he embarked on when he was 10. One of his routine maneuvers is to perch upside down on two slender poles, each topped with a stack of four blocks, then, maintaining his equilibrium, remove the blocks one by one. “It takes about a year to learn to balance on two hands.” he said. “From there you just play with it.” The one-finger feat, he admits, is a rare accomplishment.

Tumbling combines with balancing in Christian’s most charming number, performed with his minuscule pet dog, Scooby, a Russian toy terrier. As Christian does rollovers, Scooby scampers over his body in the opposite direction, as if on a treadmill. Then Scooby stands poised on a small, precarious platform made by his master’s raised, flexed feet. For the finale, Christian lies horizontal on his belly atop a single pole, legs stretched wide, with Scooby poised on top of him like a toy out of a Crackerjack box.

But Christian is singular – and poignant – not so much for what he does as for the manner in which he does it. He works with precision and alacrity, maintaining a demeanor that is all modesty and grace. Where you might expect show-biz panache, even a tawdry hard sell, he is guileless and radiant.

His combination of skill and unaffected charm (enhanced by dark good looks) has already won him prizes. At Monaco’s prestigious annual competition for circus youth last February, he won not only the bronze medal but also the cup awarded by Prince Rainier to his personal favorite in the show.

The limelight and its rewards are balanced by a demanding schedule of practice (several hours a day) and performance (some 10 shows a week). Academic instruction and homework are fitted around the circus schedule but never stinted. Christian is in the ninth grade at the circus’s One-Ring School House, where the student body of six is accommodated in a specially outfitted trailer. There he receives a weekly 15 hours of classroom instruction and eight hours of one-on-one tutoring, including advanced work in math, his favorite subject. He applies himself to his books just as he does to his unusual vocation, with the matter-of-fact aplomb of a professional.

Christian’s life is at once exotic and surprisingly normal. Even for a stage kid, his trade is unusual. What’s more, his existence is entirely peripatetic. He lives in the Orlando, Fla., house he calls home only three weeks a year; the rest of the time he’s on the road, housed with his family in one of the 60 trailers that constitute the Big Apple community. Yet he spends his spare time in pursuits that are regulation young-teen stuff: playing soccer with his local pals; shopping for the latest look in clothes and sneakers; playing video games; watching too much television; letting girls pursue him.

Despite his commitment to the circus, he also dreams about college. “I could play on the football or basketball teams there,” he said, “and – maybe I’m better than I think I am – even become a professional.”

Adolescence is a complex process with an unpredictable outcome. Christian may well outgrow his present grace. But right now, he’s magical.

Copyright © 2005 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) — The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been lucky in its association with the young black choreographer Ronald K. Brown. His previous works for the company, “Grace” (1999) and “Serving Nia” (2001), showed promising skill and a rich imagination. Unfortunately his new piece, “Ife / My Heart,” which premiered earlier this week, disappointed.

The dance presents what I take to be three generations of the African diaspora. A quartet in “native” dress does vivid percussive and rippling movement. A trio in chic urban outfits, suggesting the U.S. in the 1940’s, is strongly inflected by jazz.

A pair of young sweethearts, before whose dulcet innocence all barriers fall, are open to both styles, which they gentle with modern-dance lyricism.

The action shows the groups first keeping to their own ways, then gradually accepting each other. The two younger generations try out the ancestors’ moves. These elders, in turn, welcome their descendants into their rituals.

Brown’s message is often more than political or social; it’s spiritual. But this time, it just doesn’t fly.

The air is clogged by spoken texts that you can’t quite make out, competing for attention with an already busy musical collage.

Meanwhile, the choreographic strategies seem naive. A circle dance may well be a metaphor for community, but the one in “Ife” is too tame and too pat.

Jazz Greats

The Ailey season’s second new work is from Judith Jamison, the troupe’s artistic director. Aptly called “Reminiscin’,” it’s set to popular songs, mostly ones that Jamison first heard, she says, when her parents were dancing cheek to cheek in the living room.

They’re rendered by the likes of jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. A few more recent tunes and vocalists — including Flack, in “Always” — keep them company.

Michael Fagin contributed a barroom set inspired by Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” The dance, however, adamantly avoids the bitter loneliness the painting evokes.

Instead, Jamison offers a suite of dances about “relationships” that is pervaded by a feel-good atmosphere of human empathy. In her vignettes about spats, flirtations, and heartfelt, sometimes heart-sore commitments, even the difficult and sad situations promise a satisfactory resolution.

The movement is somewhat more sophisticated than the message. Jazz lies at its heart, orchestrating a contrast between svelte curves and impudent angles. Stylized mime conveys a sense of animated conversations among a proud, spirited community.

Showing Off

Overall, though, Jamison seems inspired not by music or motion, theme or idea, but by a desire to show off the facility and personality of her dancers. She is, after all, the mother of them all. And their performance is predictably divine.

It’s no secret that the company’s strong point is not choreography but dancers. Among the many standouts are the nervy, electrifying Dwana Adiaha Smallwood; Hope Boykin, oak-tree strong and full of deep passions; and the lovely Asha Thomas. The veteran Matthew Rushing holds his own against the young technical whizzes on the male roster, but you remember him for his sweetness and serenity.

One of the peak performances I witnessed this season came in the Ailey perennial — “Revelations.” The partnering rapport between Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims made the poignant adagio duet, “Fix Me, Jesus,” as delicate, tender, and rapt as the choreographer himself might have imagined.

The penitent’s swooning pitched falls into her savior’s arms — a matter of control, courage and trust — created the illusion of a body becoming airborne through sheer spiritual grace.

Gifted and Gorgeous

Another thing the Ailey does dazzlingly is to put on a show that envelops the dancing like gift wrap on a precious package.

Opening night, for instance, is traditionally a vivid display of beautiful and powerful people — besides the performers themselves. This year’s first night, Nov. 30, was no exception.

Every promenade in the theater served as a catwalk for audience members in ravishing, often imaginative dress. The onstage preliminaries included a welcome from Jamison, whose dynamic leadership qualities are almost palpable, followed by testimony from celebs Roberta Flack, a seductive powerhouse even when she’s just talking, and Taye Diggs, all voice and smile.

Miraculously, the parading and speechifying remained warm and relaxed, persuading you that the event was simply the gathering of a family. One that just happened to harbor the gifted and the gorgeous.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — With its old-fashioned Christmas Eve party, a strange old uncle who might be a wizard, and a tree that grows to towering height, the New York City Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker” remains the company’s irresistible evergreen.

The corps de ballet of snowflakes leaps and swirls through a storm of white confetti. Toys come to life in the first act; sweets are animated in the second. Marauding mice are defeated in tragicomic battle. Not least, there’s the confident proposal that a drama’s hero and heroine can be under the age of puberty.

An enthusiastic audience of adults and splendidly dressed children, many of them awake way past their bedtime, greeted the opening last Friday of the company’s annual five-week run at Lincoln Center.

Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” has a direct link to the original version, choreographed in 1892 by Lev Ivanov for the grand classical dance company at the Maryinsky (later Kirov) Theater in St. Petersburg.

The libretto was based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s bizarre “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” of 1816. The tale, moving from upper-middle-class family life to a hallucinatory dream, describes the first intimations of romantic love in the life of a girl still young enough to play with dolls. The radiant score, which survives being piped into shopping malls, was commissioned from Tchaikovsky.

Angels and Mice

Friday’s performance was crisp, clean, and bright, cast with principals and soloists selected not so much for emotional resonance as for their dazzling technique.

Playing the Sugar Plum Fairy, Sofiane Sylve added a new softness and airiness to her formidable skill in daring plunges and rock-steady balances. In the role of Dewdrop, the diminutive Ashley Bouder boldly spun and soared as if impelled by an invisible engine.

Two virtuoso male soloists made Olympic-style feats look playful. As the Toy Soldier assigned flexed-foot jumps with beats and shifting-focus turns, Austin Laurent executed them blithely. Playing a politically incorrect “Chinaman,” touching his hands to his toes as he split his legs in the air, Daniel Ulbricht seemed to have ball-bearing hip joints.

And then there were the 40 children, very young School of American Ballet students coached by Garielle Whittle, in roles that include the young heroine and her prince, party guests, playthings, sweets, angels and mice. They acted exuberantly and danced impeccably.

Holiday Ritual

Many people take their kids to “The Nutcracker” year after year. Then they take their grandkids. This ballet is not merely holiday entertainment. It is a ritual. It assures us that — despite our fears of menacing dreams, dark magic, the mysteries of growing up, and plain old physical threat — all will be well. And that ecstasy is attainable, albeit fitfully.

Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” draws upon his memories of the one he was part of as a child. In the last years of the tsars, he grew up in the illustrious academy attached to the ballet company in St. Petersburg, which numbers among its alumni Pavlova, Nijinsky and Baryshnikov.

At the age of 15, Balanchine performed the role of the young Nutcracker Prince in the Maryinsky production, having done duty earlier as a mouse and a candy cane.

Boy Prince

His own version of “The Nutcracker” quotes verbatim the boy prince’s mime monologue, which contains a blow-by-blow description of his battle with the bellicose mice — a tour de force of courage, vivacity and impeccable manners.

Like the incorporation of this inherited material, the whole ballet works as an homage to the old even as it revivifies the legacy for new generations. Perhaps one of the reasons we go to see it lies in its power to contradict the principles of our present throwaway culture.

Balanchine’s version ignited a widespread “Nutcracker” craze, not least because it fills ballet companies’ coffers. Today, there are so many productions nationwide, an entire Web site is devoted to cataloguing them: http://nutcrackerballet.net/index.html .

`Hard Nut’

This flood of traditional versions has sparked an anti- “Nutcracker” subgenre, in which Mark Morris’s 1991 “The Hard Nut” reigns supreme. Set in a suburban Swinging Sixties, it undermines all the bourgeois premises of the original ballet, to which Balanchine lovingly adhered.

What’s more, it incorporates the horrific section of the Hoffmann tale, involving an exquisite infant princess who is hideously disfigured by a vengeful mouse. Choreographers usually omit it in the interest of preserving Yuletide joy.

Nevertheless, the Morris version is tender as well as sardonic, with an ending that celebrates universal love.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) — Suzanne Farrell, George Balanchine’s last and arguably most potent muse, now stages some of the most luminous renditions of the master choreographer’s works.

Excluded from using her gifts at the New York City Ballet — where Peter Martins likes to tend the master’s legacy at the home base — she formed her own company. Now in its sixth year, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet opened at Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater last night in an all- Balanchine program that provided continual reminders of the choreographer’s original intentions.

(It’s worth noting that the date coincided with the opening night of the New York City Ballet’s winter season, where there was no Balanchine on the bill.)

Music lay at the heart of Balanchine’s choreography and Farrell’s dancing. “La Source,” created in 1968 to a deliquescent Delibes score, seems to make music visible.

In the SFB’s new production of the piece, the performers appear to be impelled by music, riding the air the way a surfer rides the waves, and phrasing their movement as if in a many-faceted dialogue with the orchestra.

Granted, the eight-woman ensemble enchants more than the three principals. Because she can provide only intermittent employment, Farrell must make do with people who are good dancers at best, not great ones. Though she works wonders with them, none of her regulars has all that it takes to be a star.

Decadent Horror

The same limitation was evident in the company’s premiere of the 1951 “La Valse,” Balanchine’s death-and- the-maiden response to Ravel. Yet the production did convey, thrillingly, the ballet’s haunted atmosphere, its chic, and its decadent horror. The wildness and desperation that climax in the hectic final scene were, rightly, suggested from the very beginning.

Much of the effect is due to Farrell’s perpetually urging her dancers to give everything they have to the present moment, a tactic for which she herself was celebrated. Her reconstruction of the “Contrapuntal Blues” pas de deux from Balanchine’s 1964 “Clarinade” proved to be the evening’s surprise hit.

Marathon Dancing

Set to Morton Gould’s jazz concerto for clarinet, the ballet was the first work Balanchine created after the NYCB’s move to Lincoln Center, but quickly judged to be disposable. With Erin Mahoney-Du in Farrell’s role, this segment of it looks sexy, witty and filled with invention, including a choreographic riff on lap dancing.

Ostensibly an evocation of the marathon-dancing craze, the duet combines the low-end hoofer style of “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” with the high-end Japanese erotic-print stuff of “Bugaku.” Mahoney-Du, the most Farrellesque of the SFB women, provided just the right combination of plasticity and rakish angles, coolness and heat.

The SFB’s earlier production of the 1972 “Duo Concertante” completed the program. Throughout the evening, the music was beautifully rendered.

Farrell’s enterprise, despite its merits, remains an ad hoc company. It grew out of a series of master classes that Kennedy Center invited her to give in 1993 and that remains an annual event.

Ad Hoc

In 1999 Farrell expanded her efforts into staging ballets with a pick-up group of professional dancers, some little more than advanced students, others veterans past their prime.

Though Farrell initially resisted the idea of running a company, in 2002 the group officially became The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. From its base at Kennedy Center, it began to tour.

The SFB’s most ambitious achievement to date was the revival, earlier this year, of Balanchine’s “Don Quixote,” a rich, uneven program-length work. Created for Farrell in 1965, and seemingly dependent on her luminous portrayal of Dulcinea, it hadn’t been performed for a quarter century.

Balanchine Legacy

At every turn, the production proved Farrell’s immense gift for staging Balanchine. It also revealed her desperate need for a company that is not merely a sometime thing. Only an established institution can offer her the continuity needed to attract and develop first-class dancers and preserve stagings essential to the Balanchine legacy.

Farrell has had great good fortune in the support of two men with remarkable administrative gifts. First, James Wolfensohn, when he chaired the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, then Michael Kaiser, president of Kennedy Center, whose skills in programming and financial management are legendary.

Now the question remains, can Kaiser enable Farrell to take the next step? Farrell celebrated her 60th birthday in August. Ballet is a tragically evanescent art. The time is now.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

WHEN Johannes Wieland gave his dance company no name but his own – just that, Johannes Wieland – it may have been the only ego-driven act of his career. More typically, this postmodern choreographer, whose austere dances suggest both physical and psychic violence, operates like a disappearing act.

Mr. Wieland’s small, feisty company will appear at the Citigroup Theater Thursday through Saturday in a program featuring two pieces new to New York, “artificial” and “reverse,” as well as excerpts from “coma,” a work in progress. Mr. Wieland, still a fluent mover at 37, will perform in none of them. When he does dance, it’s usually in a brief solo piece, his actions the equivalent of whispers and shadows, his head shying away from the spectator’s gaze. In rehearsal and conversation, he is the gentlest of creatures, solicitous of everyone’s well-being. He looks like an ascetic monk in a 15th-century Flemish painting, and his presence is so unemphatic as to be on the verge of vanishing.

Mr. Wieland’s choreography for his group, however, tells a different story. The work is obsessive, nakedly so, and that is crucial to its power. It’s lean and mean, often threatening, usually enigmatic and occasionally bizarre. Still, though the dances are generally abstract, with an architectural structure that evokes the Bauhaus, they are not infernal machines. Rather, they serve as conduits for emotional atmosphere, revealing contemporary urban life laid bare: the perilous landscape, the harsh terms of survival, the repressed feeling about to explode, the unraveling relationships, the numb perseverance.

The movement vocabulary of these pieces has a ballet base because Mr. Wieland trained as a classical dancer and because ballet is the lingua franca among today’s concert dancers. But a slew of other modes adds to the picture, such as contact improvisation, in which bodies moving at full throttle cantilever unpredictably off one another to achieve, fleetingly, improbable feats and configurations.

Every move is a metaphor. In “membrane,” when the dancers slither in and out of glossy black windbreakers – their own and their partners’, even if the partners are still wearing them – the viewer is clearly meant to think of the term “second skin” and then think further on how such personal armor can be penetrated. In a Wieland piece, even the décor is metaphoric. Time and again, the dancers operate in and around lighted boxes that read easily as cages, cells for solitary confinement or vitrines offering tempting wares for sale. (The dancers keep their faces impassive, which only intensifies their sensuous allure.)

Mr. Wieland will tell you his dances are conceptual, sprung from ideas that, he says cavalierly, may be more or less apparent in the outcome. The dances tell you that their maker is heavily invested in how things look. Even Mr. Wieland’s most menacing stage pictures remain handsome. So here is a choreographer primarily interested in thoughts – which are, by definition, invisible – and in sights that can be effectively freeze-framed. Contrary to usual choreographic practice, music and motion (motion, that is, for its own visceral sake) take second place. “Dance is just my medium,” Mr. Wieland concurs. “A tool.”

A three-hour working session on the segments of “coma” reveals material that seems far from finished. Mr. Wieland allows himself to create (and then modify) slowly, meditatively, in collaboration with his dancers, keeping every possible option open. His aesthetic procrastination is worthy of Jerome Robbins, who was famous for holding onto myriad variations on a passage before making his final decision. But Mr. Wieland has a keen eye and a commitment to his vision that gives his slowly arrived-at choices the air of inevitability.