Dance Reflections Returns With Bumps but a Thrilling Ride

Dance Reflections, the festival sponsored by Van Cleef & Arpels, returned to New York for the second time, bringing a program of mainly European works to venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. France was particularly visible: the Lyon Opera Ballet offered a double bill at New York City Center, while (La)Horde and the National Ballet of Marseille presented Age of Content at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The festival continues through March 21. At New York City Center, the Lyon Opera Ballet paired Merce Cunningham’s Biped with the United States premiere of Christos Papadopoulos’s Mycelium. The production elements of Biped—Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser’s projections, Aaron Copp’s lighting, Suzanne Gallo’s costumes and Gavin Bryars’s score—still hold a unique magic, but the company’s performance often felt overmatched: balances loosened into tentative gestures, and unison and canon blurred into an airless texture.

dance reflections, van cleef, new york, lyon opera, brooklyn, merce cunningham, biped, mycelium, christos papadopoulos, national ballet