I’ve been hearing about Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet for a couple of years from a friend of Andy’s who is the company’s costume manager, but I’d never seen them before. My review of their current season at the Joyce — well, one of two programs they’re performing anyway — has just been posted on CultureVulture.net.
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in Alexander Ekman's "Hubbub"
“The strength of the company is its athletic vigor, which showed up best in Program A’s opening piece, Jo Stromgren’s “Sunday, Again,” and not just because the dance revolved around a sort of deconstructed badminton game. The bent racquet, the net without poles, and the shuttlecocks turned out to be metaphors for what the choreographer’s program note calls “the domestic jungle of luxury problems and gender frictions.” Fortunately, the metaphor didn’t get banged on too heavily — really, the duet-heavy 35-minute piece was mainly going for the cavalier brusqueness and brutal casualness of couples who’ve been together long enough to get on each other’s nerves over the slightest pretext. Set to three Bach pieces, the dancing is fast and fierce, and the standard is set right away with a killer duet between Jason Kittelberger and Acacia Schachte full of limbless lifts and daredevil jumps.”
You can read the review in its entirety here.
another eye opens 
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