Nederlands Dans Theatre II at the Joyce

(NDT II in Sleepless, choreographed by Jiri Kylian. Photo:Joris-Jan Bros)

Sat, Apr 11 - There was a dark, brooding sameness to the works on Nederlands Dans Theatre II's program at the Joyce Theatre last week that kept the performance rather droll overall. You can only see so much stark, white lighting from above and dancers staring blankly at each other while they curl up into tortured balls over each others backs before it all starts to come across as a blur.

The one piece that fully worked for me was Shutters Shut (a piece that I really enjoyed when Christopher Wheeldon's company presented it at City Center in October). It is set to a sound recording of Gertude Stein reading her poem "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso," which has a repetitive, rhythmic quality to it. The dancers are bizarrely costumed in leotards, made up with white pancake make up all over their bodies. They twitch and gesture in time to and vaguely in relation to the words in the poem. (The dancers were unidentified in the program.) The ballet is clever and funny, and it was the brightest spot on this program.

The company, known as NDT II in shortform, is the junior company of Nederlands Dans Theatre, the fantastic contemporary dance company from The Hague, Netherlands. Watching junior companies like NDT II, Compania Nacional de Danza II from Spain, or Ailey II can be pretty invigorating experiences because the troupe's young dancers tend to really go for it: they throw themselves whole heartedly into their dancing, and the pieces come off with an exciting sizzle. The most exciting performance that I have seen of Ailey's Revelations came from Ailey II, and similarly, Nacho Duato's work was thrilling and alive with Compania Nacional de Danza II.

NDT II's dancers approached their work much the same way. I thought their dancing was superb, committed and colorful, especially when they had the opportunity to inject some character into their roles, such as in Lightfoot Leon's Sad Case. The work uses upbeat Latin as music, and the dancers perform a grotesque parody of what seem to be a ragged traveling band of musicians.

Said and Done, also by Lightfoot Leon, and Sleepless, by NDT's former artistic director Jiri Kylian, were both dark and moody pieces that took advantage of the dancers' flexibility. Kylian's was the most visually interesting, as dancers plunged and emerged from sections large white wall that bisected the stage.

Second photo by Joris-Jan Bros, of NDT II's dancers in Shutters Shut, choreographed by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon.