Yin Yue presents her troupe and Chinese guests at Peridance

It shouldn't be too difficult to write a headline. But this one--pretty generic, eh?--took longer than usual to come together. That reflects a larger quandary about how to write about the show that Shanghai-born Yin Yue presented at Peridance Capezio Center this past weekend.

Her New York-based Yin Yue Dance Company's own abstract, contemporary pieces alternated with festive delicacies--brief ballet ensembles and Chinese classical and folk dances choreographed by Ying Yin and Zhou Dan and performed by students from China's Jiangxi Zhongshan Dance School. This curious coin kept flipping.

First, it would be all bright, cheery colors and unflagging smiles from China; precision-crafted fantasias--a bevy of young women in pink pointe shoes, tassels, spangles, the works--that would have inspired Busby Berkeley. Then lights would dim again, and out would come one or more of the Yue crew, dressed dark and drab, launching one of the choreographer's typically stretchy, gnarly, bulletproof assaults on space. The mood-swinging went back-and-forth like this for roughly 90 minutes. What to make of it all?

I cannot claim insight into the conventions of dance in China--insight that might have been more available to some of my fellow viewers--but I'd say that Yue would serve her Chinese colleagues and their New York audience better by producing a separate showcase for their artistry and providing, in program notes or a spoken introduction, a little background on the school and each of the dances presented.

Her own quartet--herself, Grace Whitworth, Luke Bermingham and Liane Aung--can be terrific. I can't say I "get" the enigmatic choreography or have a sense of what drives Yue as a maker, what matters to her beyond the forcefulness of her movement. But the sculptural, nearly industrial movement looks sharp, clean, purposeful. It has spring and tensile strength and cuts air like nobody's business. All of her dancers have lithe, compact but athletic bodies similar to hers, with Whitworth being particularly grounded, surefooted and--you can clearly see--mentally focused. Bermingham excels in this way, too, in the solo One Step Before The Exit. Duets are occasions for exacting puzzles in the handling of one partner by the other; ensembles bring rhythmic retractions and ricochets--all thrilling, mysterious assertions in space that, in all honesty, I craved after each injection of sunshine and sugar from the Chinese students.

FringeNYC: Yin Yue's "We Have Been Here Before"

I found myself longing for something as I watched We Have Been Here Before performed by Yin Yue Dance Company--a sense of why. That can happen even when both choreographer and dancers show prodigious facility, as is the case here. That doesn't mean that there isn't a why--just that it might not be clear to me, one viewer. The piece ran for 50 minutes, which I figured is a reasonable amount of time to hang out with people displaying serious talent and bravery, even if I'm not sure what it's supposed to add up to beyond what the choreographer said elsewhere--that she wants to "push the limits of physical capability" and bring out deep human emotion. Those desires are not unique in dance-making.

I'll guess at a how--which is that Yin draws from her training in Chinese classical and traditional dances, applying superb flexibility and an alert complexity of timing and coordination to the contemporary dance she makes for her small ensemble. What makes her project contemporary is, in particular, its embrace of physical distortion, great stretches of crunchiness alternating with taffy-pull movement. A big, chewy meal.  

We Have Been Here Before is "beautiful ugly"--shapely and picturesque with a strain of mania running through it, beginning to end. And what dancers: able to walk, chew gum, rub their bellies and--I'm sure if you asked them--launch into some throat singing, all at the same time. I exaggerate, sure, but not by much. The work relates no story, draws no characters, and continously snaps together minute jigsaw puzzle pieces of movement that could have been plucked from the bottom of a black velvet bag in the the dark. So you've got to wonder: How did they ever memorize all of that?

For some reason, the FringeNYC program lists only five performers--Rachel Patrice Fallon, Daniel Holt, Sarah F. Parker, Nicole von Arx and Grace Whitworth--but Yin also performs late in the piece. Also watch the darkly dramatic Whitworth and often simian Holt, but all dancers serve this intriguing, diverting work quite well.

See We Have Been Here Before tonight at 7:30pm or Friday, August 17 at 2pm.

The New School for Drama Theatre
151 Bank Street, 3rd Floor (between Washington and West Streets), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here.