2025 Fall For Dance Review
September 19, 2025 | New York City Center – New York, NY, USA
I’m having a hard time remaining in step with the current contemporary dance scene.
From my recent experiences, there are troublesome choreographic choices made to infiltrate the purity of the art form, so distracting that the artistry is often lost. My main concern is not with the dancing itself, but with the decisions made behind the scenes. And tonight’s triple-bill at City Center’s 22nd annual Fall For Dance Festival further confirms what I am noticing.
Michael S. Rosenberg, the president of City Center, prompts the audience with a welcome message before the bold US premiere of Dog Rising, choreographed by Clara Furay. This is followed by the invigorating New York premiere of RESURRECTION choreographed by Lil Buck and the closing piece IMPASSE, choreographed by John Inger on Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, a work I reviewed earlier this year; my previous thoughts on its chaotic innovations still stand.
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2025 Fall For Dance Review
The near hour-long Dog Rising choreographed by Clara Furey opens with three men wearing contrasting primary colors. A man in a blue tank top pulsates his shoulders to the beats of “Twin Rising”. Another wearing yellow pants lies sideways to gesture a yogic leg lift and the last man in thick red knee pads barely moves on the floor.
The men perform meditative undulations of various body parts, most especially with their hips. They heel-toe in squeaky-clean sneakers around the stage, influencing each other’s impulsive jives. As things heat up, they start jabbing the air with tight fists, punching downwards, and ducking from invisible opponents by plié-ing side to side.
The piece insidiously crescendos into an overtly provocative trio that sends chills down my spine, and not in a good way. The bizarre underground score also enhances the men’s experimental bouncings which, paired with the red lighting, gives off a blood-boiling aesthetic.
As the synth music simmers, the red-dressed dancer enters his own trancelike state and proceeds to hump the floor nonstop on all fours with his tail diagonally facing the audience. The other two dancers standing facing him upstage, eerily monitoring his thrusts.
The forced-upon voyeurism made me uncomfortable and I wanted to look away…
After a noticeable silence in the theatre, the trio performs idiosyncratic movements in random groupings – shuffling feet from side to side (like tennis players in between serves), flapping elbows, attempting to unclog toilets, pushing one’s hair back, reverse slappings across the head, jazzercising in loops and powering up lawn mowers.
In a solo, the blue dancer parallel sautés with calm athleticism; the other dancers form a duet, relentlessly high-fiving the clouds.
Dog Rising has been perpetually restless from the start. This made me question:
Is overpacking choreography a tactic to cover up the lack of direction in a dance?
Later, the dancer in yellow inclines back to perform a bunch of hip thrusts on the floor, then windmills his arm sideways to a kneel and bounces to a seated position. The brightest beam lights start to flash randomly, zapping my eyes shut. Music suddenly goes from death metal to silence, red lights flashing… and the system crashes to a halt.
Perhaps the piece is trying to articulate that underdogs can rise from oppression if they keep fighting, but here, it feels drowned out by all the wildness. I can see it being appreciated at a different venue downtown (e.g. Movement Research at the Judson Church), but in Midtown – and here in my heart – it spelled trouble.
We enter the land of breakdancing-to-classical voice as a reprieve.
Caroline Shaw’s music begins in blackout, fading in red lights once more. Upstage, Charles “Lil Buck” Riley advances towards the audience in an all-white glow. And Davóne Tines and his amazing operatic voice lingering behind Buck’s every move.
In my first time seeing someone breakdancing to a bass-baritone hymn, RESURRECTION proves to be an innovative collaboration that worked wonders.
What’s magical about Buck’s dancing is he can manipulate every bone in his body to move like water. His fluid arm motions create illusions that are simply breathtaking. Like when he steps one foot through his linked arms and the rest of his body weaves through, or when his arms unfurl like a swan’s wings when Tines sings “I will fly away” (no wonder his duet with cellist Yo-Yo Ma in The Dying Swan went viral).
Buck divinely hovers in a coccyx balance, reminding me of the iconic “I Want To Be Ready” solo from Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. Showing off what jookin’ (a Memphis-style of breakdancing) is all about, he glosses his feet across the stage mimicking Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal minus the fedora.
After dropping into a slinky backbend, he levitates his knees above the floor, calling to mind Earl “Snakehips” Tucker’s defying-gravity legs from the 1930s.
I love it when a non-dancer is also being utilized in a dance, so Buck and Tines mirroring each other’s sequential arm movements to the sides impressed me.
It’s clear that the two artists brought out the best in each other’s dancing and singing.
The lighting design by Roya Abab was superb, casting an amplified silhouette in the background, especially towards the end when Buck retreated back into the shadows where the dance started. The artistic duet bowed and shared a spontaneous encore, and dashed off the stage in a roaring ovation.
A quick note about IMPASSE (music by Amos Ben-Tal & Ibrihim Maalouf), in comparison to my other review of when they performed at The Joyce. I prefer Simone Stevens’ softly-danced portrayal of “The Girl in the Green Dress” over Morgan Clune’s more forceful this evening.
I also caught some José Limón movements in the opening scene that I didn’t notice before, and if I have to pick a favorite part of the dance it would be the calming piano trio right after the house shrinks.
Of course, the familiar chaos also resurfaced – the freakish characters like the vulgar showgirl, the real estate agents with the house cutouts, the drawing of the curtain that felt like a fishbowl being drained. And to this day, I’m still haunted by the moment when the clown in a business suit is being dry humped on the floor.
I am in full support of all the dancers and their commitment to bringing out the choreographers’ visions. But the prevalence of sexualizing the stage and the in-your-face maneuvers, sadly, is polluting the few sparks of hope that I do see in today’s contemporary works.
While the crowd stood and cheered for IMPASSE, I was the first person to duck out, knowing that innocence is lost… once again.
Featured Photo for this 2025 Fall For Dance review of Lil Buck and Davóne Tines in RESURRECTION taken during the Vail Dance Festival in 2023. Photo by Christopher Duggan, courtesy of NY City Center.
