Tere O'Connor Dance presents "Long Run" at NYU Skirball

from Tere O'Connor's Long Run
(photo: Ben McKeown)

Two nights does not a long run make. But that's all we got of Long Run, the New York premiere of Tere O'Connor's 2017 octet, at NYU Skirball Center. Nor is a dancer' scamper, quietly observed by a trio of colleagues, long at all. It goes on just enough for you to register it as a breezy dance cliché before it's cut off. Long Run plays with a viewer's perception of a formal, distant stage and what we usually see there. Dancers who spill out, diagonally, from the wings--another attractive cliché. A dancer falling into the waiting support of a huddle of others--another emotion-stirring cliché. An artist filling the stages's expanse with rows of interspersed dancers, enlivening depth in what, essentially, is emptiness.

Folding, unfolding to O'Connor's charming and varied percussion, Judkins, Simon Courchel, Marc Crousillat, Eleanor Hullihan, Emma Judkins, Joey Loto, Silas Riener, Lee Serle and Jin Ju Song-Begin seem toy-like to me. Posable, folding and unfolding, snappily bending at all the joints, stepping to a jaunty rhythm in a way that resonates in a viewer's own body. Feel yourself marching along?

The extroverted movements often emphasize bold, cleanly-cut shapes--like printed letters, no cursive--and open space between dancers. You can almost feel wind coursing around them. You can clearly see the folks in the back. Again, there's that sense of movement bridging a distance, dancers extended in playfulness. I see them, sometimes, like jacks; like letters painted on letter blocks. I'm drawn to the detail of Riener's hands held taught and flat as rackets. And I'd guess my images mean nothing to O'Connor. But here they are. Something the dance is doing when it leaves home.

Music: Tere O'Connor
Lighting design: Michael O'Connor
Costume design: Strauss Bourque-Lafrance

Closed.

For information on future programming at NYU Skirball Center, click here.

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