TBA DIARY: The last of Misha, now with photos!

Sunday, Sept. 9

Donna Uchizono Co. at Newmark Theatre

Fifteen minutes early wasn't early enough to score Newmark floor seats for the Donna Uchizono Company: the lure of guest artist Mikhail Baryshnikov was enough to pack the house, leaving me with a vertigo-inducing view from the balcony at stage left. But I stopped kicking myself midway through State of Heads, the first of two dances on the bill, when I caught a glimpse (through the wings at stage right) of Misha himself, warming up at the barre. I stifled the kind of giddy shriek usually associated with ‘tweener sightings of Zac Posen and focused on the piece at hand.

Fifty bucks says there'd have been floor seats left if Misha wasn't on the bill, but since he was, more people got to see how economic movement, partnered with carefully calibrated sound effects and stark design, can convey anything from humor to dread. State of Heads is about millennial unrest, and its dancers, shuffling and teetering carefully around the stage like drunks, left the impression of a party gone bust.

Leap to Tall, Uchizono's homage to Misha, with Misha, was arguably less interesting, choreographically, but it got the standing ovation and made another kind of point: Just because you're eligible for an AARP discount at the local Econo Lodge doesn't mean you're not a force to be reckoned with.


Photos from the Saturday, Sept. 8 performance of Leap to Tall by Ken Aaron, courtesy of pica.org.