The radical dance-for-all festival returns with an avant-garde selection

 

I was trapped in a bizarre pattern of barricades, close but not close enough to City Center, and keenly aware that every four minutes pedaled on the sleek gray e-bike with its futuristic purple headlight was costing me a full one dollar. What should’ve been a 10-minute, under $3 ride had stretched out. Details I should’ve remembered didn’t dawn on me until it was too late. 

 

Every year New York City Center, a Moorish Revival theater and former Shriners’ temple saved from demolition with public funds during LaGuardia’s mayoral administration, does its big one during Fall For Dance. The festival, which brings together revived, commissioned, and world-premiere works from around the world, offers flat-rate $30 tickets for every seat in the house during its five programs performed over 10 days. 

 

I had tickets to see a new work by Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M. on a Tuesday night, that was the part I remembered. But I’d forgotten, as I somehow do every year, that because Fall For Dance coincides with the UN’s General Assembly getting to 55th Street is a gamified nightmare of blocked off streets, indifferent police officers, redirected traffic patterns, and decommissioned Citibike docks. Against all odds, I crawled over a dozen disgruntled white seniors and slid into my seat in the center of the mezzanine, sweaty and self-conscious, just as the lights began to dim.

 

The curtains rose on 10 dancers in swishy khakis and boxy satin tops set to sounds of clashing metal you’d expect to hear in an industrial-era factory. The troupe of both men and women spread across the stage and moved haltingly to the clangs. In moments of silence or quiet between sounds, you could hear the squeak of a foot turn quickly on its ball, or the percussive slap of a palm on a thigh. Unexpectedly, the dancers began to chant and captions appeared word-by-word in the projection behind them. The chant was a run-on sentence about others’ expectations peppered with intentionally conflicting thoughts. I was able to jot one line after it was repeated several times over, Some may try to bend, ending completely. For me, it evoked work and capitalism, a warning against systems that want to drain us of all we have, (but who’s to say!) Chanting was revisited as dancers took the stage in pairs tumbling under and over each other or in combat as the metallic clanging continued. I tried to extend grace through my confusion, accepting that my rush to the show could’ve had me too off-kilter to make sense of what I was seeing.

 

For me, making sense of dance can be difficult and I left the theater unsure of how I felt or what I thought about the work. I went home and read up. The piece, In the act of undoing, was commissioned by California State University, premiered at Colorado’s Vail Dance Festival last summer, and was choreographed by the well-regarded Jermaine Spivey, who also created the music. It’s described as a “demanding work for the performers…[that] animates the essence of what moves people, and elaborately demonstrate[s] the rigor, unity and diversity of our movements when we all remain on task.” While I didn’t see all of the themes included in the description, I felt affirmed that I’d at least picked up on the composition’s allusions to work and collaboration. It reminded me of the final performance in Nazareth Hassan’s Practice, in which the cohort moves interpretively to monologues spoken in unison, but while Hassan pokes fun at the exploitive sides of the arts, undoing was performed in earnest. In watching rehearsal footage from Spivey’s Once…Never…and again… from Nederlands Dans Theater, I saw similarly choppy movements and dancers moving alongside, but not necessarily with, each other. 

 

Spivey’s style is not what I’d expected from A.I.M. given the works I admire most by Kyle Abraham which, as of their fall gala on September 25, is now named Kyle Abraham Dance Vanguard. The name change is announced on their website with directions to donate. They’ve deemed the mission of this new chapter to be “building a future for dance through bold, genre-crossing work”. I still dream about Abraham’s piece for Alvin Ailey Are You In Your Feelings? which is set to contemporary R&B, features brightly colored costumes, and expresses the tumultuousness of modern dating. I liked Feelings so much I took 10 more people to see it with me for my birthday in 2023. While I wasn’t expecting a redux at Fall For Dance, I had unfairly assumed that undoing would overlap with Feelings in genre, style, musical selection or message. Duly noted.

 

I don’t mean to be too hard on Spivey or even on myself. His style has a worldwide audience and as for me, I’m still learning. This year for Fall for Dance, I scaled back to 1 night from 4. (Running back and forth to City Center last year had me so tired, I felt like I’d fallen over for dance.) Next year I’ll have two more lessons to carry forward: do a quick work-up on traffic patterns and choreographers in advance. For best results, more due diligence is in order.  

 

blacklove 🖤 and starlight 🌟 

The 23rd Fall For Dance Festival was September 22 – October 3, 2026 at New York City Center in Midtown. I purchased my own tickets for this performance. The festival will return in 2027. Program line-ups and ticket schedules are announced throughout the year. Read my guide to FFD or my FFD reviews from 2025, 2024, and 2023.