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Kyle Marshall\u2019s dance \u201cOnyx\u201d has a historical subject: the Black roots of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. But don\u2019t expect the work \u2014 one of the three New York premieres that make up his company\u2019s debut program at the Joyce Theater this week \u2014 to be a straightforward parade of Black artists and their jukebox hits. Marshall\u2019s approach is exploratory and questioning.<\/p>\n
The work features music from the likes of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but it comes largely in fragments, as from a radio signal barely in range. We first hear bits of James Brown (\u201cThe Payback,\u201d nice choice), and then as part of that track plays like a radio fully tuned in, Marshall and his terrific dancers slip into some deliciously funky grooving. Not for long, though. Soon, the music cuts out, setting up a pattern of pleasure flashed and denied.<\/p>\n
We hear static and the sound of trains. There\u2019s a physical motif of hands quivering with the spirit. The charismatic dancer Nik Owens, wearing one long glove, samples dances like the Twist and the Mashed Potato before taking a Black Power stance. Then he seems to become Little Richard, whose voice we hear testifying about what the Beatles and the Rolling Stones took from him.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s about as direct as \u201cOnyx\u201d gets. Marshall rubs his fingers together in a \u201cpay me\u201d gesture, but that\u2019s just an understated moment during a solo to fragments of Big Mama Thornton\u2019s \u201cHound Dog\u201d that channels Michael Jackson as much as it does Elvis (who took that song from her). After thrashing to death metal, everyone collapses. But then they rise and the dance carries on, with too many more sections, culminating in a Tina Turner-like turn by Bree Breeden to \u201cI Can\u2019t Stand the Rain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The whole program seems to have history on its mind. \u201cAlice,\u201d a stand-alone piece for Breeden set to three spiritual compositions by Alice Coltrane, looks like a descendant of Alvin Ailey\u2019s \u201cCry,\u201d a classic one-woman work that also uses Coltrane\u2019s music. \u201cAlice\u201d is an old-fashioned modern-dance solo, complete with penitent kneeling and diagonal walks into the light, but it\u2019s a less dramatic affair than \u201cCry,\u201d more gently self-accepting. Breeden is excellent in it, undulant and calmly strong, making blooming jumps land softly and melt into the floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cRuin,\u201d which opens the program, is weakest, showing the downsides of Marshall\u2019s take-your-time approach. The dancers are attired (by Edo Tastic, the company\u2019s creative director) as Greek statues with heavy eyeliner and mini hair buns. They move like Greek statues, too, on a stage littered with electronic equipment and urns.<\/p>\n
The electronics and urns have something to do with a Dynamic Listening system, designed by Cal Fish, who controls it from in front of the stage. But the stage sounds that Fish loops and manipulates \u2014 the clapping, snapping and stepping of the dancers \u2014 are too rhythmically rudimentary. As in \u201cOnyx,\u201d the grooves keep being interrupted, like an avoidance of rhythm. Late in the dance, more contemporary looseness and attitude seep into the movement, and I imagined that the statues were waking up and acquiring color. This notion faded, though, as the crackling of fire became the white noise of rain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cOnyx,\u201d in its way, is also about ruin, or ruins. The static that interrupts the music is the sound of erasure. But \u201cOnyx\u201d is more hopeful and touching in its attitude toward the past. Some of its movement phrases look like those of Trisha Brown, in whose company Marshall danced. At the end, we hear the voice of Thornton reminding us that \u201cold-timers\u201d still have something to say, and the dancers look back respectfully at an empty patch of light. As they exit, Breeden\u2019s gaze lingers on a shadow on the wall.<\/p>\n
Kyle Marshall Choreography<\/strong><\/p>\n Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan; joyce.org.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n