Compagnie Hervé KOUBI worships the sun in Sol Invictus (photo by Nathalie Sternalski)
DANCE REFLECTIONS: SOL INVICTUS
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 23-28, $10-$71
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
French choreographer Hervé Koubi studied dance and biology at the University of Aix-en-Provence, and he combines the two elements gorgeously in Sol Invictus as his company of eighteen performers pushes the limits of what the human body can do.
In a program note, Koubi calls the seventy-five-minute piece “a manifesto for life,” and he fills it with sections that explore ritual, worship, faith in a higher power — in this case, the sun — and life, death, and rebirth.
Continuing at the Joyce through January 28, Sol Invictus, which means “invincible sun,” is named for the Roman Sun God, a deity that inspired cult followings. It begins in silence with Allan Sobral Dos Santos running around in a circle, faster and faster, moving lower and lower until his hand touches the reflective floor. The other dancers watch him from either side.
Soon the soundtrack starts — the score features music and soundscapes by Mikael Karlsson, Maxime Bodson, Beethoven (the funeral procession from the Seventh Symphony), and Steve Reich — and a friendly street dance battle breaks out. Koubi’s movement language melds hip-hop, capoeira, ballet, and contemporary dance, heavily influenced by his discovery in 2009 of his Algerian heritage; his troupe comes primarily from North Africa.
They twirl, jump, slide, shake, lift, toss, and dash around the stage, doing flips, cartwheels, head- and handstands, and dazzling twists and spins in musical arranger Guilaume Gabriel’s muted-palette culottes, loose-fitting skirts or shorts, several of the men going bare-chested, revealing impressive, heavily tattooed bodies. For the first time, Compagnie Hervé KOUBI includes women (Francesca Bazzucchi, Joy Isabella Brown, Hsuan-Hung Hsu), toning down a bit of the beefy masculinity on display.
Lionel Buzonie’s lighting ranges from heavenly glows to ominous fog; the eight spots at the top back bounce off the floor, casting ululating shadows on the Joyce’s ceiling. At one point a handful of dancers, each with a light behind them, approaches the stage slowly, like zombies. The narrative shifts from dance-off to postapocalyptic survival to West Side Story jubilance.
A long stretch of fabric in the back becomes a glittering gold translucent parachute enveloping first Bazzucchi, then later the one-legged Samuel Da Silveira Lima.
The dancers spend most of the show closely observing one another, but occasionally a single performer comes to the front and looks out at the audience, both warning us and beckoning us to join in the group worship of the sun as a way to rise out of the hazy darkness.
Koubi, who previously presented The Barbarian Nights, or The First Dawns of the World in 2020 and What the Day Owes to the Night in 2018 at the Joyce, can get a bit lost in all the razzle-dazzle, as impressive as it is, but he finds hope and love in the gathering itself, and it’s hard not to find the joy on his journey.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]