The Dance Reflections Festival Is a Gift
In what feels like a vestige from a more collaborative era, the Cuban contemporary-dance troupe Malpaso Dance Company is the product of a joint venture between an American institution—the Joyce Theatre Foundation—and an exceptional group of Cuban dancers and choreographers based in Havana. Malpaso’s repertory combines works by local dancemakers with international commissions, all performed with great musicality and finesse (proof that Cuban dance training, despite many challenges, is still topnotch). For its yearly run at the Joyce, Malpaso brings “Dark Meadow Suite,” its first dip into the world of Martha Graham. The suite, shorn of its set pieces by Noguchi, from 1946, is less packed with symbolism than the original, but it retains Graham’s powerful movement vocabulary, a mix of urgency and lyricism, made visible by the contrast of tension and release. Malpaso also presents a new work, by the former Kyle Abraham dancer Keerati Jinakunwiphat.—Marina Harss (Joyce Theatre; Feb. 10-15.)
Classical
Amid all the constant wondering of when things will get better, the slow drip of time may feel like a curse. But the composer Huang Ruo knows that this slowness can also offer opportunity for pause, reflection, and escape. This month, the National Sawdust Ensemble, with the mezzo-soprano Kelly Clarke and the pianist Joanne Kang, perform the New York première of Ruo’s piece “A Dust in Time,” a sixty-minute string passacaglia inspired by the sand mandalas of Tibetan Buddhists. The melodies came to Ruo as he was falling asleep, weaving and layering like textile threads. The work both meditates and blooms, reminding us to keep breathing as we move on through—a helpful, if temporary, antidote to our noxious moment.—Jane Bua (National Sawdust; Feb. 18.)
Art
Alison Rossiter works with a wide variety of expired and antique photographic papers, but she doesn’t use them to make photographs. Instead, she arranges them like children’s building blocks in a frame, where the aging but undeveloped papers, in subtle shadings of brown, tan, and white, become architectural studies. Several of these groupings were inspired by Man Ray’s “Tapestry,” a patchwork-quilt-like fabric piece with a similar range of earthy colors, from 1911. In Rossiter’s show “Semblance,” all the pieces have a minimalist elegance, but perhaps the most sublime is a series of what look like off-white plinths supporting small metal blocks: tiny, ruined late-nineteenth-century daguerreotype plates that might be portals into deep space.—Vince Aletti (Yossi Milo; through March 14.)
Movies
“Send Help,” Sam Raimi’s new thriller on an old theme—a mismatched pair on a desert island—exists only for its clever twists. Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), a brilliant but socially awkward analyst at a financial-consulting firm, is passed over for a promised promotion by its heir-head new president, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), who nonetheless takes her on a business trip to Bangkok. When the plane crashes en route, Linda and Bradley are stranded together. Despite her mousiness, Linda (who auditioned for “Survivor”) has the skills that the injured and dependent Bradley lacks, and she makes the most of her power. Both characters have exactly the traits, however incongruous, that the plot requires, and the story is built for jump scares and gross-outs, with little concern for practicalities; its mild pleasures are hollowed out by incuriosity.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)
Art
