\n<\/p>\n
The dance started \u2014 or seemed to start \u2014 with people walking onto the stage before finding a spot and lying down. The bright, blisteringly white lights made the view murky, yet through the haze random bodies were stretched out on backs and sides, utterly limp. Above them was a suspended zeppelin: Imagine a giant balloon of a baked potato floating over 34th Street in the Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade.<\/p>\n
But, really, the scene was somber. Eventually, others \u2014 dancers, recognizable by their bare feet \u2014 helped those on the floor, who turned out to be volunteers from the audience, rise to cross the stage. And some time later, they escorted them off the stage and back to their seats. In \u201ctakemehome<\/a>,\u201d by the French choreographer Dimitri Chamblas in collaboration with the musician Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, there is always a sense that something important is about<\/em> to happen.<\/p>\n The problem with this presentation by Dance Reflections \u2014 the festival produced by Van Cleef & Arpels \u2014 and NYU Skirball, where it was performed on Friday evening, is that it stays firmly planted in a nebulous, largely unenergetic middle ground.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What seems moody soon becomes drearily drawn out in this dance, of which the premise is promising: nine dancers, five electric guitars and five amplifiers \u2014 and Kim Gordon! (She and Chamblas have worked together since 2018<\/a>.) I was excited for some noise, but earplugs weren\u2019t needed for \u201ctakemehome,\u201d which was dominated by prolonged silence or near silence; at times, Gordon\u2019s voice, vocalizing sounds or a whispering, anguished \u201ctake me home,\u201d cut through the air with an imploring urgency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the dancers shifted from states of action to stillness, they continually retreated to winding, improvisatory-seeming solos, which pegged them as loners or, as a program note compared them to, shadows: \u201cThe forgotten ones of the great metropolises: prisoners, elders, unproductive ghosts, the neglected, the indecisive.\u201d<\/p>\n