New York City Center’s, Fall for Dance Festival, is pleasing to audiences because of its attempt to bring many different genres of dance into one performance.  On Thursday September 30, the dance companies, Company Rafaela Carrasco, New York City Ballet, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, and Companhia Urbana de Danca, each were granted their time to shine on City Center’s stage.  The performance began with the Company Rafaela Carrasco.  With a dim stage, Gema Caballero, sat close to the company’s musicians Suarez “Cano,” and Nacho Arimany.  After a long instrumental introduction, Caballero began to sing.  Yes, that’s right, not dance but sing.  And I couldn’t help but to ask myself if she was having an off day.  I know that the vocals were supposed to have a rough tone; however,  it seemed like the vocalist was having a difficult time getting words out of her mouth.  The actual flamenco started off slow with a sexual duet between Rafaela Carrasco and David Coria.  The piece quickly moved to the third part of the performance, entitled “Percussion,” which Carrasco performed by herself.  Her movements were intricate and showed great skill, and her love for flamenco shined through her movements.

When the New York City Ballet dancers proudly walked onto the stage with their red unitards, I instantly was convinced that their performance of “Red Angels” was going to steal the show.  Even if one is not familiar with dance, it is impossible to miss the strength, agility, and flexibility of these dancers.  As the ballet dancers effortlessly transitioned in and out of second position grand plie, they made the movements appear to be much easier than they actually were. The fact that Ulysses Dove’s choreography did not require the ballerinas to go on pointe toe for their turns added a new feel to their ballet performance. Dove chose to end his piece with all of his dancers simultaneously walking upstage into a bright red background. Does this represent hell?  It’s up to each audience member to decide for him or herself.

The duet performed by the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company was rather disappointing.  Expectations were high for this piece before it began.  Regretfully, this piece certainly did not exceed or even meet these.  The piece, performed by Shayla-Vie Jenkins and LaMichael Leonard, Jr, is very distracting for audience members, especially in seats where the whole stage was not visible.  Jenkins and Leonard frequently used opposite ends of the stage, which made it difficult to grasp the piece as a whole since a viewer could only concentrate on one dancer at a time.  Even though I was able to recognize some of the style choices behind the piece, for example the shoulder shakes frequently used in Lester Horton’s technique, the meaning behind the piece was difficult to grasp, if not impossible.  If a piece does not tell a story, it is helpful for the movements to be capturing and entertaining, of which they were neither. Let’s just be grateful that they did not close the show.

The Companhia Urbana de Danca, choreographed by Sonia Destri, approached dance in a unique way.  Using all black costumes and an all male company, they began their piece with a small solo performed by each of their dancers.  Their piece was more abstract and instantly captured viewer’s attention.  The strength, agility, and diversity which exists among their company members was obvious, and this made the piece even more enjoyable because it introduced many different styles to the same genre of dance.  However, to taste something is always better than to shove a large amount down one’s throat.  As the piece went on, I began to feel like the piece was being shoved down my throat because the length of the piece was too long to keep anyone’s attention.  This was disappointing because the company began their performance so forcefully.

City Center’s presentation of Fall for Dance really made the audience fall…quite possibly fall asleep.  The overall performance was filled with extremely engaging parts, as well as many parts that were so uninteresting; they should have been omitted all together.  I guess they warned us in the title.