We’re not suggesting that choreographer Andrea Miller‘s “YEAR” (2024) for A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, is literally “The White Lotus” in dance. No way! But somehow, Miller’s ingenious, mesmerizing, tribal, thirty-minute ballet goes for the jugular in a way that syncs with the neurotic energy with which the HBO series wrapped up its Thailand adventure. The sexiness the choreographer deploys in a searing duet at “YEAR”‘s center oddly evokes Rick and Chelsea, the doomed lovers of “White Lotus,” who held the Internet in thrall the entirety of last week.
What was it that hearkened “White Lotus” for me? Like much in our maddeningly abstract art form, it’s a combination of form and feeling. The dance’s setting evoked a steamy Thai-jungle tone. Glistening white backboards had the dancers pop like tropical parrots in stunning painted unitards by Orly Anan Studio — wearable art on the A.I.M dancers’ bodacious bodies. Frederic Despierre’s thumping, claustrophobic sound score, a musical-mecanique, gave the proceedings an inescapably sweaty feel. There was a steamy, tribal, in-your-face aura, laced with tension, that, similar to the intertwined characters of “Lotus,” portended that, hey, this is not going to end well.
photo chris strong
Miller’s uber-luscious way with female movement, matched by her equally slithery stuff for guys, found its match in Abraham’s latest crop of stellar, state-of-the-art dancers. “YEAR” opens with a lengthy solo by a stage dominatrix: Faith Joy Mondesire, a curvaceous goddess in her orange unitard, a color that has long since been the new Black. A no-nonsense woman in command of her every body part — hips, legs, thighs, feet — she also sports the undulating torso that is de rigeur for an Abraham dancer. Planting herself at stage center with a deep plunge into a wide second position — it’s ouchy even thinking about bending that far — in later versions of the pose, she pushes one bare foot into a forced arch curving her torso far over it, stretching two arms asymmetrically. Her climb onto tippy-toe engenders a body wave, and her arms go scarecrow. However the arms zig-or-zag, here’s a dance who makes sense of what her choreographer asks of her. Essentially, with her crooked shapes, she’s the gap-toothed Chelsea of “Lotus”; she’s off kilter, but it’s real and it’s good. When a pack of lady dancers join in, kind of bourreeing on demi-pointe behind her, they syncopate little beats in Despierre’s music with hiccups and bumps.
The legs swing high; the spins are multiple; the backbones, as mentioned, are fluid. Two dancers enter the stage gingerly; they’re like a vaudeville team teasing the audience. The tippytoe walks, the tree branch arms, the splayed hands. Wow, who are these people? Miller builds and builds this hypnotic madness, so much that I did feel (in the two viewings I had) she had a difficult time getting out of it, but I didn’t mind that either. The denouement seemed to last ten minutes. In it, dancers revisit that second-position stance and kick with one foot after another, banging foot-to-the calf of the other leg. Super disturbing, a kind of self flagellation. Miller had a wonderful explanation behind her work, a lot about information and data as “logic becomes our entry point in to every space,” thus spurring her to make a dance about “how we as humans put stock into body language.” Well, I certainly got the body language part!
photo chris strong
The program also includes a jewel of a new work by Kyle Abraham, a yummy quartet called “2 x 4,” set to a tremulous duet of bass saxophones by composer Shelley Washington. Fabulous intersecting costumes by Reid Bartelme & Harriet Jung added to the visual pleasure and good lord what a gorgeous backdrop by painter Devin B. Johnson, which Abraham lighting design stalwart Dan Scully lit like butter. Abraham’s abilities in the dance-sculpting of space grows as he goes, and this time, he works at an admirably slow-to-medium tempo. Which is hard(er). It was choreographer David Rousseve who raved to me after the show that Kyle’s incursions (if you will!) into the classical ballet world are boomeranging beautifully into his works for his contemporary troupe. I think David got that right.
Dance critic Debra Levine is founder/editor/publisher of arts●meme.