BODYTRAFFIC
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York
April 15, 2025
Program: “This Reminds Me of You”
Mayday, I Forgot The Start, Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro
Jerry Hochman
For its latest engagement at the Joyce Theater, Los Angeles-based BODYTRAFFIC, a contemporary dance company of considerable renown, brought with it three dances that premiered just last year. Although they have that in common, and clearly fit within the umbrella of the program’s nominal title (“This Reminds Me of You”), each is significantly different from the others, and each is interesting and thought provoking. It proved to be a very fine program. And one of the pieces, by a choreographer I previously knew nothing about, is a work of performance art that’s one of the most visually thrilling-looking dances I’ve seen.
I’ll consider the dances in program order – which happens to reflect my order of increasing merit.
BODYTRAFFIC in Trey McIntyre’s “Mayday”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
I’ve seen at least two dances created by prolific choreographer Trey McIntyre: Ma Maison in 2018, and Eight Women in 2019, each presented at the Joyce by Parsons Dance. I thought that the former, which McIntyre created in 2008 for his Trey McIntyre Project (which ceased functioning in 2014), is a fabulous piece of dance entertainment; a non-stop high-quality epic hoot about New Orleans. Eight Women, created soon (much too soon) after her death, focuses on Aretha Franklin and her music. I determined that it was too surface and should have been better than it was, that it reflected Franklin’s distinctive music but didn’t do anything more than that, and that each choreographed song sequence had the same impact as the one before, and the one that followed.
Mayday is somewhere in-between those two: it can be quite entertaining, but it’s more surface than substance. And it has an annoyingly dual personality.
Mayday is, or at least is intended to be, a choreographic essay that explores (per the program note) “the looming specter that life can be cut short at any moment. We are seemingly dancing on a tightrope….Yet we still dance, we still move toward love, and we still plan, create, and live as if infinity lies before us.” To make his point, the note also says that McIntyre “[uses] the timeless music of Buddy Holly.” But it’s all Buddy Holly – not just his music: McIntyre uses Holly’s personal and performing appearance, and references, continuously, the specific manner of his death – and, of course, relies on the beat of his music to fuel his choreography. So it looks like a tribute and sounds like a tribute, but it’s not. But it’s not not a tribute either.
BODYTRAFFIC
in Trey McIntyre’s “Mayday”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
The result is neither fully here, nor fully there. The music detracts from the dance’s point, and the dance’s point detracts from the music. That I ended up enjoying Mayday – most of the time – emphasizes a third aspect of the piece. Regardless of its clichéd intent or whether it’s a tribute, as I noted earlier it’s undeniably entertaining, which is its most significant quality. Although what I say here emphasizes the negative, that’s the bottom line.
Holly was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, and a pioneer of early Rock and Roll. He had a string of hit songs in the mid-late 1950s, but died in a plane crash, together with recording stars Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, and the plane’s pilot, in 1959. He was 22. The crash was memorialized in Don McLean’s song “American Pie” as “the day the music died.” Dion diMucci (of Dion and the Belmonts) was on the same tour, called the Winter Party Tour, but didn’t take the plane. [For those interested, an article on the San Diego Troubadour website written by Terry Roland in 2023 gives a superb account of the accident, the music, and Holly himself. It can be found at The Winter Dance Party 1959: The Night the Music Lived | San Diego Troubadour .]
BODYTRAFFIC in Trey McIntyre’s “Mayday”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
I find it difficult to believe, but apparently no tribute to Holly (whose real name was Charles Hardin Holley) has been choreographed previously. A cursory search revealed nothing remotely pertinent other than the existence of Ballet Lubbock (Holly was born in Lubbock, a city in Northwest Texas), which describes itself as a pre-professional dance school that also performs in the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences in, surprise, Lubbock, TX. There’s also a travelling tribute tour, called Winter Dance Party (after the name of the performing tour that Holly and the others participated in), but that’s not dance.
So it seems that McIntyre had a clear shot at creating something memorable. That he didn’t, I think, is a product of distance – both temporal and emotional. To me Buddy Holly and the accident that took his life happened in real time. To McIntyre, who was born ten years after Holly’s death, it’s history.
BODYTRAFFIC
in Trey McIntyre’s “Mayday”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
On its own merits, without considering the inspiration for it or whether he could have done a better job of utilizing Holly’s music and crafting a tribute to him, Mayday isn’t bad at all; it’s just not as good as I’d hoped. The plane crash is treated like a continuing looming presence, as well as ancient history – like the sinking of the Titanic, only in the air. There are lots of schticks, but they’re appropriate since they connect the dance to Holly: there’s a red model plane (a surrogate for Holly’s flight to his death, but also a metaphor for life’s precarious and unpredictable course) that appears in each scene (each song is a scene) and ties them all together; each of the eight dancers wears characteristic Buddy Holly eyeglasses and ubiquitous grey suit – except the jacket and shirt (and, to my recollection, the tie) are cut to upper chest level, revealing bare skin – apparently for the sole purpose of enabling the dancers to create body-thumping sounds consistent with a particular song’s beat.
But there’s no sense of loss. It’s all so matter-of-fact: life ends unpredictably; death happens; just live life at max warp while you can. Indeed, that’s the only message that one can get from the dance’s penultimate image (to “Peggy Sue”) of one dancer (Joan Rodriguez) running in place with increasing speed as if on life’s treadmill trying to keep ahead of whatever ending might be chasing him.
BODYTRAFFIC in Trey McIntyre’s “Mayday”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
The dance is comprised of nine or ten Holly songs (or songs attributable to Buddy Holly and the Crickets – the name of his accompanying band when he first started). They included “Everyday,” “Smokey Joe’s Café,” “Learning the Game,” “Not Fade Away,” “That’ll Be the Day,” “Oh Boy,” “True Love Ways,” and “Peggy Sue,” and one or two others I didn’t recognize or take note of. The dance’s greatest disappointment, at least to me: the choreography for “That’ll Be the Day,” which, considering its lyrics, could have been monumental, but was buried as just another dance to Holly music. There were some highlights, however. In addition to Rodriguez’s running in place (which happens elsewhere in the piece too, as I recall, and with more of the dancers running in place in tandem), I noted an emotion-laden duet between Rodriguez and a female dancer (I think) Katie Garcia, as well as a solo performed by (again, I think) Jordyn Santiago. [Unfortunately, the dancers in each segment are not identified, and the head shots on the company’s website don’t match the costumed dancers.] The dance’s other performers, the balance of the company, were Chandler Davidson, Donnie Duncan, Jr, Pedro Garcia. Anaya Gonzalez, and Alana Jones.
Matthew Neenan is a former Principal Dancer and, later, Resident Choreographer with Pennsylvania (now Philadelphia) Ballet) who subsequently co-founded BalletX and is now a free-lance choreographer. I’ve seen many of his choreographic creations, including one presented by BalletX that I considered masterful – which, curiously, involved an airplane crash (among other air-travel-related issues): Sunset, o639 Hours. But of late I haven’t been impressed with his work – at least those pieces of his that I’ve seen. I Forgot The Start, however, shows that Neenan, if he ever left, is back.
BODYTRAFFIC in Matthew Neenan’s “I Forgot The Start”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
I Forgot the Start is both perplexing and mesmerizing. But unlike a lot of other dances that fit that description, and somewhat inexplicably, this one pulled me along with it. It has a unique and compelling style.
According to the program note, I Forgot the Start “walks the line between joy and grief to illuminate the sheer relentlessness of hope. The work is an honest exploration of resilience in the pursuit of connection, despite life’s uncertainties. We are reminded that there’s no light without dark.” In addition to including two brilliant poetic-like phrases that I’ll have to borrow sometime, that description is amorphous enough to fit many narratives (and non-narratives), but here it’s particularly apt.
Although it’s camouflaged, I Forgot The Start is also quite personal. But beneath that, or together with it, there’s majesty.
BODYTRAFFIC
in Matthew Neenan’s “I Forgot The Start”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
The choreography floats on the back of an assortment of songs that wouldn’t necessarily appear to fit, but they do: “In this Heart” by Sinead O’Connor, “Machu Picchu” by Heather Christian and the Arbonaughts, “Paka Ua” by Ozzie Kotani & Daniel Ho, “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” by Broken Social Scene, and “Flint,” by Sufjan Stevens. They all have something of a dreamy, distant, in-the-clouds ambiance, tinged with sadness. Neenan’s dance feels the same way.
The piece can relate to a lot of different things, but most apparent to me is a combined overriding sense of loss, memory, and renewal. The dancers are clad in costumes (designed by Marian Talan de la Rosa) that are as interesting, and as curious, as the dance for which they were created. Essentially, they’re white and gauzy and genderless, but they also give the appearance of invisibility – as if the viewer can see beyond the costume façade to the soul beneath. Combined with the muted (but not murky) lighting, designed by Christopher Ash, I thought of allusions both to medical practitioners who wear white (e.g., doctors and nurses), and also to bodies floating on some higher plane. [I’ve already used the word “floating” twice with respect to this dance, and could do so even more frequently.] Both references fit a dance in which death may be imminent, and where the persistence of loss and memory would not be far behind, or, in the mist of grief, concurrent.
BODYTRAFFIC
in Matthew Neenan’s “I Forgot The Start”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
The movement is generally light and at times simple – dancers with their backs to the audience, standing in place and swaying, then turning to face the audience and repeating. Slowly, more movement variety is added: deeper swaying arms, jumps, hops, lifts. It’s all sort of bubbly – but this isn’t effervescence. There’s also a lot of repetition here, but instead of being visually numbing, it’s mesmerizing.
As critical as the choreography, costumes, and lighting are, however, what adds more distinctiveness to the piece is a hanging screen located slightly downstage from the rear curtain on which a variety of images are projected. The changing video (set and video design also by Ash) are generally soft and gentle scenes, and cycles, of nature in various forms and focal points (tree branches and leaves falling and then returning, a sky filled with birds flying to somewhere, etc.); ever-changing but ever-continuing – even in the face of death, memory is both retained and recurrent.
At one point, action on stage freezes (including in the middle of one overhead lift), but then continues. I’m not sure of the significance of this, although it fits within the parameters of an immediate, but changing focal point. Perhaps the cessation of movement is there to represent the moment of an actual death, but there’s nothing in the balance of the dance that supports that.
BODYTRAFFIC in Matthew Neenan’s “I Forgot The Start”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
Toward the end, the dance focuses on two male dancers who have removed their shirts (leaving the impression of being unclothed bodies – or memories), eventually evolving into something resembling a disconnected wrestling match – not the sport of wresting, but the push and pull of a dance of separation and/or death, imminent or in the past. One of them looks desperate not to lose the other; the other seems to communicate a more stoic ‘that’s life’ recognition of reality. As the confrontation continues (sometimes moving very slowly, but powerfully), the audience hears the spoken/sung voice of Sufjan Stevens floating through the theater’s speakers, slowly delivering a stanza from “Flint” that’s something of a narrated description of what Neenan has choreographed on stage, and of the inner turmoil, and eventual reluctant resolution of the feeling of imminent or actual loss that may have prompted it – a stanza that is replicated in the program note, and which includes the dance’s title: which I take to mean that in the course of the imminent death of one party to a relationship, either or both partners forget to celebrate the joy of the relationship’s beginning – its “start.”
Although my account doesn’t focus on it, even with the repetition, there’s considerable choreographic variety here, and an overall sense that the choreography is both contemplative and a means to an end. But as noteworthy as that may be, the dance Neenan and his collaborators have crafted is bigger than that. It’s sometimes difficult to navigate, with imagery that at times seems to float by, but it’s masterful.
The evening concluded with Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro (hereafter The Maestro), choreographed by Juel D. Lane, who has an extensive choreographic (and performance) background. As I wrote at the outset, I’d not heard of him previously, which demonstrates yet again that I need to get out more often.
The Maestro features a gimmicky device, but gimmick or not, it’s integral to the piece. As used here, in its entirety it’s a remarkable dance-long coup de théâtre.
Chandler Davidson in Juel D. Lane’s
“Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
From the beginning (although the audience may not notice it at first), there’s a translucent downstage scrim through which, depending on the direction of light against it, the viewer may see the stage action behind it, or may only be able to see what’s projected against it. Here, the scrim serves both functions.
Choreographed to an original African or Afro-Cuban score created by Munir Zakee that complements the choreography without overwhelming it (though it’s close at times), The Maestro is an homage to the late Ernie Barnes, an artist (and former professional football player) whose stylized paintings recognized and replicated the Black cultural experience. His paintings were featured on album covers and TV shows; and as the quality of his paintings grew increasingly apparent, he became something of an “unknown” celebrity. He passed away in in Los Angeles at age 70.
One of Barnes’s most celebrated paintings is titled “Sugar Shack,” a highly stylized vision of action in a Black “social club.” This painting is used here as Barnes’s creative centerpiece.
The Maestro is gripping from the start. Through the scrim, the audience can see Chandler Davidson, obviously representing Barnes, restless, pacing around his living space/studio. Soon thereafter, he lifts an object (or pretends to) and uses it as a brush to paint across a (to my recollection) imaginary canvas. Each stroke he makes is “captured” on the scrim as projections of the same paint strokes. If you don’t know it’s coming, it’s a conceptual knockout. But it gets even better from there.
BODYTRAFFIC in Juel D. Lane’s
“Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
One of Barnes’s most significant characters (in terms of frequency of use) is an unknown woman in a yellow dress. Following the developments noted above, Alana Jones (again, I think) appears and is seen by Davidson/Barnes in a nearby club, and perhaps later in his studio as well (the distinction between club/studio/living space is intentionally blurred). She wears a yellow dress. He is captivated, and inspired, by her. Effectively, she becomes his muse.
When Davidson/Barnes returns to his “studio” area, he begins to add her image to his painting. As he does this, the yellow color is added to the paint strokes projected upon the scrim.
Subsequently (I think I have the order right, but I’m not certain) the remainder of the cast appears in that “club” area, one by one, each in a different color costume. Davidson sees them, and thereafter adds more paint strokes to the “painting” in his studio, one by one to replicate the different color-outfitted dancers, who are the club’s attendees. As he does this, the projected painting adds these colors also, one by one. Davidson then explodes into an extraordinary solo (reflecting, I think, the creative explosion in Barnes’s mind). He returns to his studio “painting,” begins to paint, and slowly the colors on the projected “painting” morph into the “Sugar Shack” – in which the painted denizens of the club “wear” the colors worn by the dancers Barnes saw at the club, including as the more dominant character, the woman in yellow.
BODYTRAFFIC in Juel D. Lane’s
“Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro”
Photo Courtesy of BODYTRAFFIC
After less than a minute, the “Sugar Shack” image morphs into a projected photo of the real Ernie Barnes as a young man (perhaps as he looked when he painted “Sugar Shack”).
This is a remarkably well-conceived and executed sequence, stunning in its ingenuity, and it reflects the same qualities in the dance in its entirety. If The Maestro can be criticized, it’s that there isn’t much choreography there. But in this case I don’t think that’s valid. The choreography for Davidson/Barnes alone is sufficiently memorable (and was memorably performed). Abetted by the indicia of dancing in the “club,” the choreography here may not be dominant, but it’s more than sufficient.
Tributes don’t come any better than this. Lane and Zakee and lighting designer Michael Jarett, video designer/magician Yee Eun Nam, costume designer Jarrod Barnes, and the BODYTRAFFC dancers – especially Davidson, have here created one of the finest dances, in terms of overall visual impact, that I’ve seen this year.
BODYTRAFFIC was founded in 2007 by New York expatriate Tina Finkelman Berkett. It was a risk bringing an evening of all new and (relatively) untested dances to New York, a risk she took, and a risk that, to me, not only was successful, but that elevated BODYTRAFFIC’s reputation higher than it already was. I dislike companies that insist on presenting their name in all caps; it’s usually too much self-congratulatory shouting. But I don’t mind it here – this BODYTRAFFIC program was something to shout about.
The post BODYTRAFFIC: Something to Shout About appeared first on CriticalDance.