fr Right before I met Vincent

endlessly, from last night

the pulse
blue echo

the concussive
murmurings

earlier
spying my belly button
in a drawer
with shredded  biker socks
at 7:40 molting

rusty whispers
from vodka-quaalude
on geometric bodyink

out of mind so
lusting off
to eternity
the trail of clothes
ending in a
glitteringly butch
shadows
dreamt of once before

now hover in
diamond movement of
à l’après-midi d’un faune
Angling over a
busted wall
-when did you
share me
with candy-
from the other club last night
it is time to go out to dance, no?
is it still 3:20
1972 drenched
In sex forgotten in a flash with  all the
beautiful ones inhabiting the
GalleriaAtlantis
busted open in the rumbling
strata of
anonymous  and so liberated from any former crime
but the faith of knowing we
we are giving our bodies to each
other, unlost
A sane human havoc
sounds of falling onyx
and crystals
dripping
on marble
crack below on
Leaves
scrapping branches
mercury running through
Fingers onto
the temples
we hear
sonic psalms
La la la Sacre du Printemps
to escape the sound
Of the blood pulsing together

inside a
Coldest room
waiting for scarred
voices down here, below
Flamingo tangerine fucshia
Dahlia darling ascending
soul & sugar
Paul&Assotto
Larry&Paul
Keith&Timmy&

Ted&Pearl&

SarahVaughan&Joey&Christopher
Georgio&Alberto&JohnAnthony&Michael&Marcel&Menage&PeterMiguelJimmy

Andywasthereoncewethink
et. fuckin’ al. baby
nobody walked away
empty hearted
the corners
of the rooms folded up
not inside shadow
on bluer shadow
pulsing resonance
concussive dissonance
as the body starburst
endlessly through that smashed atom
still dancing with Shiva we dance for you&we dance for with you perpetuo molto

on ink-night beholden to our rainbow warriors
so mighty real

DanceMetros

This month, Dance Affiliates, Philadelphia’s longtime presenter of international contemporary dance finished their 33-year run at the Annenberg Center on the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia and will be changing venues to the Prince Music Theater in Center City Philadelphia going into the 2015-16 season aptly dubbed NextMove- Two favorite troupes – RUBBERBANDance Group and Pilobolus – capped off the final season at the Annenberg.

RUBBERBANDance Group
Apr. 16-18
Empirical Quotient (ph Michael Stobodian)

Every time out, RUBBERBANDance Group taps their growing filling fan base game for the adventurous choreographic mixes by artistic director-choreographer Victor Quijada. Quijada’s troupe of six dancers, from various contemporary dance disciplines, are currently touring Empirical Quotient- winner of Dance Magazine’s 2014 best Choreography award.

Quijada continues to develop and refine his movement styles and has won multiple awards along the way, including the prestigious Princess Grace Choreographic Fellowship and he is emerging as a prolific film choreographer and director.

Empirical Quotient is a long-form narrative with unexpected mise-en-scenes that flow into each other, hinting at stories without resolution. Less literal than Quijada’s previous lengthier work. Composer Jasper Gahunia, a frequent RBDG collaborator scores with the piece with a stream of electronica of staccato echoes, ghost train arias swooping in and strings with pings and bent notes inspire Quijada’s technique, reflected in the bowing bodies and precarious torques.

The opening scene has Anne Plamondon (co-artistic director) Lavinia Vago and Lea Ved in a series of intimate duets and trios. They gesture or tap another dancer, which sends a snakey ripple through their bodies, a standard hip-hop combination, but Quijada’s variants to such trendy movement makes it more compelling.

Then the men join them and establishes a series of interlocking phrases to build the ballet’s singular vocabulary, that freeze (stop frame) and underlines Quijada’s refined transitional phrases. There are a series of arresting reverse phrases, for instance and body puzzles that unlock in ways that only Houdini could explain.

Later, Ved entangled, almost threateningly, during an intense duet with James Gregg who has her bent backward off his body, she flips out of it and her pointed foot is on his neck. There are working something that lands him on all fours begging her and she just shakes her head. Later, Ved sculpts Gregg, Franklin Luy and Zachary Tang into a pile-up and they scamper like a centipede at her comic command.

Tang dazzled in fully pointed pirouettes with his arm over his head like a matador, for instance, adding to the laundry list of signature group moves with back vaults, inverted torso twisters, for instance, slowed up to mid-tempos and adagio movement. They may be less flashy, but impressively, aren’t leaning on movement velocity and are just as much about the critical transitional phrasing. All of the skills at points incorporating Quijada’s aesthetic as he continues to define a technique that careens to undiscovered country in its physicality.

The epilogue to the piece came in the street dance tradition of solo curtain call flash dances and this ensemble shows they have even more juice after over an hour of perpetual motion.

PILOBOLUS
May 7-11

Metaphysical anatomy
(photo:Grant_Halverson)
Pilobolus Dance Theater, the perennial favorite at Dance Celebration proved a fitting closer for the last Annenberg dance, with something for everyone, even if it was jarringly disjointed.

Full disclosure here, it was hard to come out of a dance stupor after seeing Pilobolus’ 2014 piece ‘On the Nature of Things’ which opened the concert. It is without doubt among their finest works, almost in a category by itself. It is a creation of the whole troupe, for one and a manifest artistic statement. One of those dance works that points up that at its best choreography is a language of its own & you can only approximate the real meaning translating the experience in words.

Three dancers on a small metal pedestal, in dance-belts, evoke images from Caravaggio and Michelangelo but rather than friezes, they were in melting motion, that metaphysical artistic component that lives in those paintings. The trio engages mostly with adagio movement, inversions, lifts, precarious falls, coupling that looks past any sexual intimacy, maybe a suggestion of a creator experimenting or giving way to the study of the human anatomy in motion. This flowing together in a powerful theatrical arc. The piece was danced with spellbinding artistry and skill by Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern, Jordan Kriston and Mike Tyus.

So interesting, first off, that Pilobolus that amoeba-esque dance troupe, inspired by fungus that morphs all manner of terrestrial other than human, has composed one of their most profound works displaying the complete majesty and mystery of the human body, mind & certainly dance spirit.

The marquee draw piece by magicians Penn and Teller called (esc) was cloying in the extreme. A woman duck taped to a chair with a plastic bag over her head, leather fetishista pole danseurs, pad-locked crates, Houdini escape magic or no, a little went a long way and P & T were nowhere in sight, most likely counting their money in Vegas.

Automation also had a violent edge of torrential action scenes involving a horror film doorway, wind tunnel movement and dancers throwing each other around. Physically very impressive, but stuck on repeat sequence.

The closer, ‘Day Two’<a created by Moses Pendleton in 1980 still has great power and early signatures- meditative strength moves and body sculptures, for instance. By now the length of it gives it a more dated look, but danced with renewed conviction by the always phantasmagorias muscled company.

DanceMetros

Jessica Lang Dance triumphal at Dance Celebration

Lang’s architecture in ‘Lines Cubed’

Choreographer Jessica Lang grew up in Doylestown PA, and got her start as a dancer-choreographer in Philadelphia. For the last 16 years, she has choreographed more than 80 works for companies all over the world, and has received many awards, including the 2013 Bessie. Lang started Jessica Lang Dance in 2011 and this month, brought them to Philly for their first appearance Dance Celebration at the Annenberg Center.

The troupe’s appearance proved a highlight in an altogether electric season programmed by Dance Celebration artistic director Randy Swartz, which has featured mainly international companies.

At the opening of a four performance run March 19, Lang was introduced by Swartz and she told the audience how appreciative she was for the reception to her company that it indeed, felt like a homecoming for her. Her troupe of ten dancers showcased Lang’s expansive artistic dance template and her salient stage composition with a sampler of six works; you get the sense that this is just a preview of a very prolific choreographic master.

‘Lines Cubed’ builds out of dancers as architectural body studies set to an industrial score by John Metcalf and Thomas Metcalfe, which engulfs the action like a soundtrack to a thriller. The dancers seem to recalibrate their positions with the repeated sound of a piano wires being hammered.

The dancers are grouped in red, yellow, blue or black outfits signal disparate choreographic moods. The ensemble locks in squared or sharply angled shapes get more dizzying and in the process, Lang delineates clean balletic lines -classic, progressive and deconstructed- evolving in her striking stage visual of morphing accordion piping, like a geometric schematic.

The end section strikes as ponderous in the arc of the long form piece. But, the ideas and attack of these dancers with this material makes it a stunner.  

‘Mendelssohn/Incomplete’ for six dancers, indeed does look like a middle draft of a larger work. It is set to the Tranquillo movement, performed by Gould Piano Trio of Mendelssohn’s Concerto No. 1 inspiring lyrical expressionism by Lang, but is also curiously choreographically spare. The couples chasse and petit jumps are pretty, but don’t go anywhere. Lang starts to mix it up with some group configurations, but only briefly.

In contrast, ‘Among the Stars’ with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto is a riveting duet danced by Laura Mead and Clifton Brown. Mead in a drop-dead structured raw silk dress with a train that unspools as she piques across the stage, while Brown holds the other end. It becomes an allegory for their relationship as they leap over its borders, gather it around them or release it in the air, their story punctuated by Lang’s unique lift patterns and releases that flow naturally, danced with precision and subtlety.

Fabric also figures in ‘The Calling’ a solo scored to the ariatic elegies of Trio Mediaeval. Kana Kimora is dressed in a form fitting off white gown that fans out on a wide circle. At points she seemed both free and trapped in it, or disintegrating (she seems to sink into the floor at one point) or in gorgeous sculptural torso-scapes that suddenly become pained. 

‘White: a dance on film’ by Lang and director of photography Shinichi Maruyama has the ensemble projected on screen and moving sometimes in slow motion on turns and jumps showing Lang’s and the dancers polish, but they are just as wily in funny gestures the speeded up section is hilarious Buster Keaton meets modern ballet

‘I.N.K’ at first seemed connected to the dance on film, as a dancer dressed in black togs is suddenly crouched before the blank screen as huge splash of ink starts to be projected on across it. The liquidly soundtrack cues other dancers to enter the scene, some in a scuttling crouch march, others moving with slithery and rippling bodies. The piece just pulses with abstract movement, of the phrasing looking like reverse dance combinations and again Lang creating sculptural shapes in motion. A male-female duet breaks out downstage that seems to be floating an intense relationship, but ultimately, this is decidedly cryptic mis-en-scene.

Lang seems to have some false ending and like Cubed Line, the arc of the piece seems less in focus than the back half. Still, Lang’s edginess and whimsy, side by side, goes a long way in building its own dynamic dance-scape.

The audience’s lusty applause for the conviction and esprit of these dancers sent the clear message that they hope to see them back on this stage again soon.

DanceMetros

‘Risky Business’ quintessential Philadanco

Perelman Theater, Philadelphia
Dec.11

Philadanco has had a very tough year financially and for their fall series at the Kimmel Center titled Risky Business by artistic director Joan Myers Brown, might have more than one meaning. Brown was definitely referring to a program packed with risky, athletic moves. The legendary Brown, has piloted the company for 45 years and her school for 55. Winner of every arts accolade along the way, Danco does Philadelphia proud on tour all over the world, but the city doesn’t return that love with financial support.

But, despite these hardships, Danco opened its 45th home season with a theatrically thrilling, choreographically exciting program of five works. Pulse by Daniel Ezralow, has dancers sliding across the stage with precarious velocity, dressing in bluish iridescent dance togs and socks hydro foiling in and out of dramatic pools of light. The deceptively simple work is Ezralow‘s visual representation of spacey electronica music by David Lang, that builds to a sonic matrix as the dancers pulse together in floaty ensemble configurations and just as fast in breakaway solos. Jah’Meek D. Williams is suddenly the center, in mach speed spins and later Victor Lewis, Jr. locks into a plie with a spellbinding hand dance like he was trying to capture atoms.

‘White Dragon’ choreographed by Elisa Monte for six dancers has a modern-primitive feel, with the dancers are costume in colorful skimpy outfits that could be part of a cultural rite, moving in agitated angular patterns. The music, by Glen Branca gets more 80s clubby and the ensemble sections are more fluid in the back half of the piece with ramped up athleticism and double-tempo phrases. A central duet entrances with sculptural and acrobatic intensity, danced with stunning precision by Rosita Adamo and Joe Gonzalez.

Ray Mercer‘s ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ features a 5 foot standing table that dance on and dive off of, and otherwise use as a relationship cliff. Mercer’s dynamic movement ideas beautifully anchored to couples’ figuring it all out. Like Pulse, this full ensemble piece, shows more refinement every time out and is much more than its dazzling dance effects. Elyse Browning in a scorching solo on top and underneath the table. Roxanne Lyst, always with gorgeous athleticism, is in fearless flight vaulting in breathtaking lateral splits. In one of the sizzling duets, the towering Adrian Moorefield and Janine Beckles have such steeled litheness and intimacy in their partnering.

‘Ghettoscape with Ladder’ is classic by Talley Beatty, set to Natalie Cole’s rendition of Good Morning Heartache. Four men carry in an eight foot ladder and on it is former former Danco and Ailey star Deborah Manning St. Charles (who now teaches at Danco). She reprises her role from 15 years ago, dancing Beatty’s precarious precision with as much theatrical power and balletic grace than ever.

The premiere piece ‘Latched’ by Christopher Huggins, set to Sohn, a pulsing Brit electronica band. Huggins has the dancers in black tops and tights, it is choreographically it is Huggins at his most witty and mysterious. The theme of couples coming together only to be pulled apart, it is a simple physical play on the push-pull of relationships. Huggins’ flowing choreography also technically demanding with low to the ground lift combinations, for instance, that displays Danco’s dazzling athleticism and Huggins’ vivid musicality.

‘Risky Business’ has such artistic depth and technical magic that, in fact, they are more relevant than ever. Brown is about to take embark on a six week European tour with their smash production ‘James Brown: Get on the Good Foot‘ that premiered last year at the Apollo in New York, was given a dicey reception by critics, but played to sold-out houses in New York and L.A. Danco dances on without fail.

DanceMetros

Parsons Dance’s jazzy return to Philly

Miguel Quinones about to take permanent flight in the transcendent Parsons’ dance CAUGHT (photo B. Docktor)

The Dance Celebration series at the Annenberg Center is presenting one of the most diverse and stellar line-ups of companies for their 2014-15 season. The dance series has been struggling to maintain funding in its commitment to present all styles of dance from around the world. They kicked off with Britain’s BalletBoyz, Israel’s Kibbutz Contemporary Dance, Spain’s Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca, all attracting enthusiastic audiences, but still not enough to fill Annenberg’s spacious Zellerbach Theater.

The first week in December, the popular New York based troupe Parsons’ Dance returns with a mixed program of old and new repertoire.. Choreographer David Parsons is not only known for his athletic, sensual and diverse choreographies, but showing vastly different content each time out. His current tour is highlighted by his newest piece Whirlaway and dance-works by out choreographer Trey McIntyre and former Parsons dancer-choreographer Natalie Lomonte.

Whirlaway is scored to a song-cycle by jazz composer Allen Toussaint’s and had its premiere in New Orleans last spring in a sold out performance in a 2500 seat theater. “Everybody’s jaw dropped that we sold out,” Parsons said in a phone interview last week from the company’s studios in New York.

“Allen Toussaint is one of the most legendary singer-composers in the US. He played ‘Whirlaway’ live onstage behind us with a 12-piece band,” Parsons said. The choreographer collaborated directly with Toussaint “we sat around the studio and came up with the tracks for it and he was so great to work with. This is a fantastic piece closer for this Philly program. The music is more jazz-funk and it brings audiences together at the end. You feel like you are in New Orleans celebrating dance and beautiful bodies and music.

As he has done with other song suites, notably ’In the End’ scored to tracks from the Dave Matthews Band, Parsons often choreographs to popular music, usually with a cohesive narrative line. “There is always a thread that I like to communicate. I hate when people sit in a dance concert and have a question mark as to what it’s about. I like to bring something that has to do with their lives. “

Jazz scoring to contemporary dance is a rarity, but it is a standard method that Parsons is always experimenting with. His 2001 piece ’Kind of Blue’ set to Miles Davis’ ’So What’ (also on the Philly program) he describes as “improv based, there are segments where the dancers can go off, I don’t care. You know I like to have fun and I like them to have fun,” he assures. the dancers don’t have to stick to every choreographed move,” Parsons explains. “when we have time off on tour for instance, I get bored. So I would do these jazz improvs.”

Also in Philly, in sharp contrast, the troupe will dance Parsons’ ‘Bachiana’ (1993) scored to J.S.Bach’s Orchestral Suite no. 1, as you would expect is ” very balletic, Air on a G String section is the anchoring duet,“ Parsons describes, “it was first done on a French company and we‘ve danced it all over the world. . Now many other companies have danced it too.”

In addition to choreographing an average of two new pieces a year, David Parsons nurtures other dancer-choreographers with his creative support through Generation NOW Commission. On the current tour, he will be presenting former Parsons dancer-choreographer Natalie Lomonte’s preview of work in development. Lomonte teaches dance at Fordham University and also performs, most recently she dance captain and in the cast of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.” Parsons said that he likes to “stay inside the family as much as we can. New choreographers need a place to show their work. Natalie knows the company and understands the physicality of our dancers.”

At every performance in Philly audiences have come to expect a performance of Parsons most dazzling signature piece ‘Caught‘ a solo work he created in 1982 that never looses its mystique or theatrical punch. Scored to trippy electronica music by Robert Fripp it is a tour de dance force that has been performed by both male and female members of the company. One of its amazing elements is the dancer’s breathtaking synchronization with a strobe light that gives the illusion of the dancer suspended in mid-air.

After Philly, the troupe is performing in Utah, then at the Joyce Theater in New York (Jan.21-Feb.1) before they embark on a six-week European tour.

Parsons Dance Dec. 4-6 at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts 3680 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA | http://www.annenbergcenter.org | 215.898.3900
http://www.parsonsdance.org

Dance&TheaterMetros

(photoLW) Flash reviews- Looking for a last minute recommendation as the Fringe Festival winds down this weekend go for The Renegade Theater production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame | A Mute play. It embodies everything the Fringe is about, artistry, uniqueness and audience engagement. Renegade Artistic Director Michael Dirkin developed the piece over the past year and his inventive has troubadour esprit and luminous craft. The Presbyterian Church at 21st & Walnut couldn’t be a better stand in for Notre Dam & ’Sanctuary’ for Quasimodo to save himself and Esmerlda.

Hugo’s unrequited love story set in 15th century France is a j’accuse against a corrupt political and religious hubris. This troupe to make use all of the organ loft, the vaulted eaves & stonework providing a magnificent set for Hugo’s story about human cruelty. Mason Rosenthal is credited for ’movement’ and is pantomime, dance and narrative clarity at its best. Percussionist and soundtrack artist Adam Vidiksis floods the room with music and effects that. in fact, brings to mind some of the great composers of silent film. Costume designer Rebecca Kanach’s period designs ( knave vests, soldier doublets) not mention Esmerlda’s tarnished couture dance dress, just keeps giving.

Lee Minora radiating Esmerlda’s seductiveness and harsh life. Hug’s Quasimodo can go in the pantheon of great parts that holds a mirror up to an ugly society. And Dan Higbee‘s silent performance is luminous with dignity and power. In a riveting bit of choreography, after being lashed on the block, Quasimodo liberates is suffering by ringing his bells in pantomime Vidiksis’ sound design and these images engulfing the cathedral. Dirkin using the whole church, with a keen sense of scene focus and pace, crucial in a silent play. He also elicits wonderful performances from this true ensemble cast.

meanwhile~~
Garrett Matthew Photography

Later, on Spring Garden across town at the Latvian Society, there is a candle-lit maze that leads to dancer-choreographer Gunnar Montana’s Resurrection Room upstairs. Dancer Stephie-Lyneice, in just her bra and panties lands in a foreboding smoke filled in a chat room with her ‘operating system’ who is activating a futuristic virtual game of virtual survival. She is confronted by a cyborgy thing with a pink melty head with tubes sticking in and out…uggggllly. He is a threatening presence, but eventually become her protector after they engage in a rather rough and tumble dance macabre. Eventually his shirt comes off and his Gunnar sculpted torso is less hazardous. But it’s Beauty and the Beast meets Hellraiser, as other menacing creatures lurch with intent.

The pink melty headed drag geishas in 9-inch heels, who engage a runway stomp, fan and sash snap fight. There s a 9 ft. transformer dude in blade runner stilts and lots of breastplate hardware that Montana does battle with. Later, Gunnar slinks out of the smoke a rockass satyr wearing nothing but a half-pink beard, and a dancebelt with day-glo hairs sticking out & proceeds to attack with pink ooze. Kevin D. Washington also just in a dancebelt, has a scary pink Medusa mane that he can lash around doing mile-high kicks and ninja splits. Montana makes this glamour and gamely fetishista with a lot of props and effects, definitely a raucous cine-crowdpleaser. For dance fans, Resurrection Room is lighter on Montana’s dynamic choreography, but what there is, does hypnotize. A little more dance and movement content to overpower the hardware visuals and it will go to the next level.

DanceMetros

my DanceJournal interview with Ian Hussey and MANNA director Susan Daugherty about one of the best dance nights of this or any other year. http://philadelphiadance.org/blog/2013/03/16/look-out-shut-up-dance-turns-21/
SU&D director Ian Hussey; dancer choreographer Alexandra Hughes; Hughes dancers in her new piece which will premiere at SU&D.

DanceMetros

photo:Patrick Baldwin

 Motionhouse  made their first appearance at Dance Celebration in Philadelphia this month. Judging by the response, they already have avid Philly fans. Scattered is the dance netherworld created by British troupe Motionhouse and is a scary meteor shower environ created byway of hi-def video inlays on a curved vertical floor that disappears skyward’ and functions mostly as a dazzling waterslide. Their high concept performance at the Annenberg Center conceived and choreographed by artistic director Kevin Finnan, for their American debut was a mixed bag of movement and hypnotic film effects designed by Logela Multimedia.

The eight dancers enter barely alive on a barren icescape 3-d hi-def projection. Their bodies have no protection against the elements, eventually, not even movement, and they scurry together for warmth, convulse from hypothermia and eventually zombie away.

A remaining couple take refuge on lawn chairs that float by on an iceburg, but then all this debris floats by, the projections get interactive with the dancers- they are inside a fridge, then encased in ice cubes that the dancers bodies melt, before we know it they are hanging off a waterfall very believably.

Then like an extreme sports team the troupe plunges into the water graphics, but more impressive dives the twizzles and pike positions, somersault dives down the waterfall in dizzying configurations. The water theme in fact runs out of steam and drains your patience. The inverted perspective gets clammier when the troupe eventually carrying water bottles as if they are vessels and then drinking and gurgling, it seems like they are up a river without a choreographic paddle.

Then everything dries up and, to this eye,<em> Motionhouse </em>really kicks in. The troupe is scurrying like lizards or insects, on cracked earth desert (with more static, but equally eye-popping projections). Their accordion limb twists and mechanical head moves are in fact full of dance esprit and witty physicality. Finnan starts to release his performers with more yes fluid dance phrases and you forget all of the literalness and just go with them, some now in harnesses scaling the projections.

Soon the surface is burning and the scenario gets very literal again with coils on an electric stove bursting into surreal structures (think Dali) so water and fire make steam so things get very cloudy.
We end up in an iced over, yet swampy swimming pool and dancers dive through and hole and they float around each other. The ending segment kicks into high gear, but again has to rely too much on the slide. A mixed bag of hi-concept overpowering the live performers.

So it comes down to taste, because this Saturday night audience loved these water, fire, air and earthy moves. Also using many essential elements are soundscapers Sophy Smith and Tim Dickinson’s industrial strength cinematic score.

Music&Dance

NYE~ Lets face the music & dance

Guest maestros usually front the Philadelphia Orchestra’s holiday concert series but Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in the middle of his first season of chief conductor of the Fab Phils, was in Verizon Hall on New Year’s Eve to conduct the exit music for one tattered year.

(P:PeteChecchia)

Nézet-Séguin mixed the Viennese waltz play list up and chose the theme of orchestral dance music from around the world. He opened with the full Suite from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier which contains some very famous waltz passages that are most often extracted. The less familiar lead in to those dizzying waltz section had hints of being under-rehearsed with the orchestra creaky in some of the more complex transitions and atypical for Nézet-Séguin, erratic in the overall pacing. Just when it started to get brittle though, those swirling symphonics bounced everything into proportion and framed a glittering orchestral drama.

In contrast, Nézet-Séguin had no trouble, from start to finish, essaying Haydn Symphony no. 45 (Farewell) with its famous humorous ‘farewell’ from the musicians. Terrific, muscled mis-en-scenes in the allegro movement and Nézet-Séguin brought out the inner baroque chambers of the piece magnificently. Also gorgeous sonority in the cellos during the third movement minuet.

This conductor is game for fun and for such standard fare as Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube brought on Michele Camaya, Jaime Verzain, Todd Burnsed and Ron Todorowski, four dancers from the New York based Mark Stuart troupe. They did a switching partner waltz comedy that played to the literalness of the music. Later, the dancers were back for the Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance from El Amor Brujo and Stuart choreographed what could be viewed as an update of Nijinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, except that the sacrifice, danced by Michele Camaya, is no balletic victim. She let Burnsed and Todorowski fling her around in erotic lift patterns that kept evolving, but she ended up knocking them away when Stuart appears and they glide into a smoldering tango. No virgin sacrifice at the dance altar here. Dance in front of full orchestra, carries risks, they can easily devolve into Lawrence Welk-y style spectacale, but Stuart’s choreography was full of whimsy and wit.

The musical globe trotting also provided the highlights of the evening with Brahms’ Hungarian Dance and especially Shostakovitch’s Waltz from Suite for Variety Orchestra. The Prussian-Slavic percussive drive of this was just completely translucent, a fiery diamond orchestral sound from this orchestra. Then, Eric Satie’s reflective, cathartic masterpiece Gymnopedie No. 3, in the arrangement by Debussy, the Phil’s hypnotic strings, just lushness bathing the hall and the harp line by the inestimable harp of Elizabeth Hainen, providing golden musical moments. Nézet-Séguin finished with a Leonard Bernstein’s Mambo, always an audience favorite and the usual NYE fare Auld Lang Syne.