Saturday, August 27

[dirac]

Performances by Miami City Ballet bring the Jacob's Pillow season to a close.

Quote

Surely one sign of a dance company’s exceptionalism is when it performs, as this company does, “legacy” repertoire in a manner that make the works seem fresh. Aside from “Geta,” the youngest of the program’s other dances — Robbins’ 1984 “Antique Epigraphs” — is nearly 40 years old. Staged for the company by Christine Redpath, this enigmatic piece for eight women is subtly perfumed with a potpourri of accents (wit, eroticism, ritualism, mischievousness, even hints of danger). In Florence Klotz’s lovely, long, gauzy pastel tunics, the women alternate between a kind of staccato austerity — walking and pausing with parallel legs, arms etching purposely rigid positions — and bursts of buzzing activity, bursting into storms of châine turns or eddying in paddle turns or bustling about the stage in energetic prances. Pianists Ciro Foderé and Francisco Rennó, performing Debussy’s “Six épigraphes antiques” and flautist Linda Toote, performing Debussy’s “Syrinx,” accompany the dancers with an intimate intensity.