Tag Archives: wade thompson drill hall

DOOM, HOPE, AND THE BARD AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Anne Imhof reimagines Romeo and Juliet in Doom: House of Hope at the armory (photo by Nadine Fraczkowski / courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Ave. Armory)

DOOM: HOUSE OF HOPE
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 3–12, $60
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

“What less than doomsday is the prince’s doom?” Friar Laurence asks Romeo in William Shakespeare’s tragic tale Romeo & Juliet.

Because of its massive 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Park Ave. Armory has been home to numerous unique theatrical productions and art installations, involving such unusual elements as thirty tons of clothing (Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land), wooden swings hanging seventy feet from the ceiling (Ann Hamilton’s The Event of a Thread), one hundred bleating sheep (Heiner Goebbels’s De Materie), and a dark, mysterious heath (Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth).

Now Berlin-based Golden Lion winner Anne Imhof has transformed the hall into an enormous prom gym, filling the space with more than fifty actors, dancers (ABT, modern, flexn, line), skateboarders, and musicians, twenty-six Cadillac Escalades, a Jumbotron, and other inspiring elements for Doom: House of Hope, a three-hour multidisciplinary reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, running March 3–12. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the durational performance features Sihana Shalaj, Levi Strasser, and Devon Teuscher as Romeo; Talia Ryder and Remy Young as Juliet; assistant director and costumer Eliza Douglas, choreographer Josh Johnson, Cranston Mills, and Connor Holloway as Mercutio; Jakob Eilinghoff, Arthur Tendeng, and Daniil Simkin as Benvolio; and Efron Danzg, vocalist Lia Wang, and Simkin as Tybalt. Among the other characters are Vinson Fraley and Toon Lobach as angels, Perla Haney-Jardine as the critic, Tess Petronio as the photographer, Casper von Bulow as the director and the revolutionary, Coco Gordon Moore as the poet, Tahlil Myth as the storyteller, and Henry Douglas as the gamer, offering yet more twists on the traditional tragedy.

The band, under the musical direction of Ville Haimala, consists of Sharleen Chidiac on guitar, Eilinghoff on bass, Eva Bella Kaufman on drums, and James Shaffer on guitar, with vocals by Lia Wang. The score ranges from Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to the Doors, Radiohead, and Frank Sinatra, along with original compositions by ATK44, Douglas, Haimala, Imhof, Lia Lia, Jacob Madden, and Strasser. In addition to Shakespeare, the text collects quotes from Jean Genet, Heinrich Heine, and Raymond Moody and writings about George Balanchine, John Cranko, Dieter Gackstetter, Bruce Nauman, Jerome Robbins, Tino Sehgal, and others.

The set is by sub, with sound by Mark Grey and lighting by the masterful Urs Schönebaum, who has dazzled audiences with his work on such previous armory productions as Inside Light and Doppelganger.

As its title states, the immersive show recognizes the doom so many feel now, the increasing anxiety over the state of the planet, while also seeing a potentially bright future.

Romeo (Levi Strasser) and Juliet (Talia Ryder) face doom and hope in Anne Imhof extravaganza at the armory (photo by Nadine Fraczkowski / courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Ave. Armory)

A few moments after Friar Laurence predicts the worst, Romeo tells him, “Hang up philosophy. / Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, / Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom.” Perhaps there is a way out of this mess we’re in, although the Bard’s original play does not exactly end happily.

On March 11 at 5:30, Imhof, whose other works include Sex, Natures Mortes, and Angst I–III, will participate in an artist talk about Doom: House of Hope with writer and curator Ebony L. Haynes.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

KYLE ABRAHAM AT THE ARMORY: RUNNING IN CIRCLES TO COMBAT FEAR AND ANXIETY

Kyle Abraham leads a large ensemble in Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful (photo by Alex Sargent / courtesy Park Ave. Armory)

DEAR LORD, MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
December 3-14, $75-$170
www.armoryonpark.org
www.aimbykyleabraham.com

As audience members enter Park Ave. Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall to experience Kyle Abraham’s Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful, they are greeted by Cao Yuxi’s (aka JAMES) stunning set, a large backdrop that spills out over the floor, approaching the seating; projected on it is a pixelated image of Abraham’s head and shoulders, immersed in a naturalistic environment that evokes leaves, flowers, grass, and trees. It’s like a living version of a Kehinde Wiley portrait, except instead of celebrating the subject, in this case he eventually disappears. It’s a poignant evolution that is made even starker when Abraham, who has not danced with an ensemble in nine years, emerges onto the stage, running around in a circle again and again, at first fast but then slowing down until he has to stop and catch his breath.

In the program for the awe-inspiring armory commission, the forty-seven-year-old Pittsburgh-born dancer and choreographer explains, “I’m saddened by delayed positive progressive change in this world and frightened by the chaos of pandemic debris. I’ve never felt so deeply inclined to make something so attached to how I feel in the present. . . . I move through this world full of fear and a newfound fragility. . . . I dance in remembrance of the innocence of my younger self. And I dance in the present day, with sadness and fear of an unknown future, and a fading hope and prayer for imaginable change.”

Abraham is soon joined by a talented troupe of dancers that he has worked with in the past and present — Jamaal Bowman, Amari Frazier, Mykiah Goree, Tamisha Guy, Alysia Johnson, Catherine Kirk, Faith Mondesire, Riley O’Flynn, William Okajima, Morgan Olschewsche, Jai Perez, Donovan Reed, Keturah Stephen, Stephanie Terasaki, Gianna Theodore, and Olivia Wang — who break out into solos, duets, trios, and quartets, lifting, jumping, and interacting to a powerful live commissioned score by yMusic, a chamber ensemble featuring Alex Sopp on flutes and voice, Mark Dover on clarinets, CJ Camerieri on trumpet and French horn, Rob Moose on violin and guitar, Nadia Sirota on viola, and Gabriel Cabezas on cello. Sound, image, and movement come together in exquisite ways as the abstract shapes and colors continue almost microscopically morphing on the screen, providing an alternative to the muted earth palette of Karen Young’s costumes. The immersive sound is by Sam Crawford, with lighting by Dan Scully.

In the sixty-five-minute piece, Abraham, who choreographs for his own company, A.I.M. (Abraham in Motion), as well as New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Royal Ballet, and the National Ballet of Cuba, wears his emotions on his sleeve as he explores aging, fear and anxiety, and loneliness. He was inspired in part by Richard Powers’s 2018 novel, The Overstory, which deals with Americans’ connection to the natural world, especially trees; the book’s narrative is divided into four chapters: “Roots,” “Trunk,” “Crown,” and “Seeds.” The circles Abraham runs could be like the rings of a tree, but in his case he thinks he is running out of time. In addition, he was affected by his father’s early onset dementia at an age only a few years older than Abraham is now.

Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful is exhilarating and propulsive as well as meditative, with only touches of foreboding. It’s also the kind of work that could only happen at the armory.

In the program note, Abraham asks, “Where will the world be in 5 years?”

It’s a loaded question that is impossible to answer, given the number of wars going on, the growing dangers of climate change, and the rash of international political extremism, but with more works like Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful, it will be a better place regardless.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

INDRA’S NET

Meredith Monk’s Indra’s Net at Park Ave. Armory is a multimedia marvel (photo by Stephanie Berger)

INDRA’S NET
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Through October 6, $45-$185
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Meredith Monk, the grand doyenne of experimental music, theater, film, and dance, completes her trilogy exploring the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural environment and the universe with the gorgeous Indra’s Net, making its North American premiere at Park Ave. Armory through October 6. The eighty-one-year-old MacArthur Fellow and National Medal of Arts honoree began the three-part work with 2013’s On Behalf of Nature, followed by 2017’s Cellular Songs. Conceived for the armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, The piece starts with a preamble; as the audience enters the space, they are greeted by “Rotation Shrine,” projections of Monk and members of her vocal ensemble in silhouette, their bodies floating across the screen. Meanwhile, four dancers to the right and four to the left pose in spotlights as droning music plays.

The audience is then seated in rafters around a large circle on the floor with eight small chairs lined horizontally in a row; at the east end of the hall is a moonlike flat screen hovering above the performance space, facing the audience, its curved upper limit mimicking the arched ceiling. The eight dancers (Tomas Cruz, Jodi Gilbert, Toussaint Jeanlouis, Anaïs Maviel, Luisa Muhr, Paul Pinto, Sarah Rossy, Chanan Ben Simon), known as the mirror chorus, take seats on cushions along the outer edge of the circle, then Monk and the vocal ensemble (Paul Chwe MinChul An, Theo Bleckmann, Gideon Crevoshay, Allison Easter, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, music supervisor Allison Sniffin) sit on the chairs. They move their arms and legs in synchronized motion to begin the piece as the sixteen-piece orchestra, eight on each side and dressed in shades of blue, perform the lovely score, led by Fifi Zhango on piano, Laura Sherman on harp, Ethan Cohn on double bass, Michael Raia on clarinet, and Karl Ronneburg and John Hollenbeck on percussion.

It’s no mere coincidence that the cast is made up of groups of eight, a number that, in various mathematical, religious, mystical, and numerological meanings, represents regeneration, prosperity, and the search for balance between the spiritual and material worlds.

Soon the vocal ensemble is wandering the stage, breaking off into duets and trios as if they are having conversations, although no actual words are spoken, instead creating their own language. Occasionally, a live overhead camera projects the movement on the screen, providing breathtaking visuals. At one point, the vocal ensemble, in all white, and the mirror chorus, in all black, interact as projections of tree branches evoking arteries appear on the floor and screen, interweaving humans with nature. The costumes and set are by Yoshio Yabara, with whispery, echoing immersive sound by Daniel Neumann, evocative, sometimes spooky lighting by Joe Levasseur, mesmerizing cinematography by Ben Stechschulte, and engaging projections by Jorge Morales Picó.

Meredith Monk completes eleven-year trilogy with dazzling Indra’s Net (photo by Stephanie Berger)

In the program, Monk explains that the title of the eighty-minute piece, Indra’s Net, comes from an “ancient Buddhist/Hindu legend [in which] an enlightened king, Indra, stretches an immense, boundless net across the universe with an infinitely faceted jewel at every intersection. Each jewel is unique yet reflects all the others, illuminating the principle of interdependence among all living things.”

Metaphorically, the net and jewels refer to the interdependence between the performers and the audience, celebrating each individual, but on the way out after the show it morphs into a poetic reality as the audience encounters “Offering Shrine,” a video of sixteen people, including many of the vocalists and dancers, opening their hands to reveal such objects as a baseball, keys, a toy car, Scrabble letters, and animal sculptures, representations of which are arranged on a long table below the screen. It’s a compelling way to pay tribute to the little things that, together, help shape an existence that encircles us all.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

R.O.S.E.

Park Ave. Armory has been transformed into a rave club for R.O.S.E. (photo by Stephanie Berger)

R.O.S.E.
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
September 5-12, $65
www.armoryonpark.org

Sharon Eyal’s exhilarating R.O.S.E., which opened September 5 for a too-brief seven-show run in Wade Thompson Drill Hall in Park Ave. Armory, ebbs and flows as a participatory dance experience that pulses with a series of slow fuses that explode about half a dozen times over the course of three hot hours.

An armory commission that debuted last year at New Century Hall in Manchester, R.O.S.E. starts off calmer than one might expect. The hall is divided into front and back sections by a floor-to-ceiling side-to-side black fabric wall. As the audience arrived in the first section of the hall, about a half hour before showtime, a DJ spun droning tunes in the space, mostly empty save for a few couches and benches; a projection of a large white rose glowed on the wall behind the DJ.

On opening night, one man moved slowly back and forth to the music as a handful of others relaxed, talked, and checked their phones. Little was going on; excitement was nonexistent. At 7:30, the crowd began entering the main space; staff wearing glow sticks placed a sticker over each person’s phone camera lens, as absolutely no photo or video is allowed inside.

The truncated area lacks the breathtaking awe of the hall’s usual vastness, with walls and curtains on all sides and lights and speakers hanging down, blocking the view of the impressive ceiling. There are four step-platforms, with bars in two corners, the tech crew in a third, and DJ Ben UFO in the fourth. (The set design is by Daphnée Lanternier, who is also credited with creative direction.)

Dancers weave in, through, and around the crowd in Sharon Eyal’s immersive R.O.S.E. (photo by Stephanie Berger)

It was not clear what to do at first as attendees considered where to stand. (I recommend hanging around wherever you see white tape on the floor.) The crowd consisted of people from all age groups (except children), in all types of dress and hairstyles, including small groups that appeared to come straight out of SNL’s old “Sprockets” skits; some swayed to the music, others chattered away, and a few scanned their phones. After about fifteen curious minutes, one gentleman stepped into a spotlight in the middle of the room and clapped his hands over his head several times; that was all it took to get more people to start dancing.

Shortly after eight o’clock, as the packed dance floor was heating up, nine performers (Darren Devaney, Guido Dutilh, Juan Gil, Alice Godfrey, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Johnny McMillan, Keren Lurie Pardes, and Nitzan Ressler) entered the space, making their way through the audience, which parted to let them pass. Wearing postapocalyptic beige costumes by Maria Grazia Chiuri of Christian Dior Couture (that occasionally included cowls and cinch sacks), metal jewelry and makeup by Noa Eyal Behar (that featured streaked black eyeliner, teardrops, and piercings), they moved through the crowd with insectlike precision, their arms and legs forming awkward angles.

Eyal cut her teeth as a member and choreographer of Batsheva Dance Company, and her exciting movement language contains elements of former Batsheva artistic director Ohad Naharin’s Gaga system. The work is codirected by Eyal’s longtime collaborator Gai Behar, whom Eyal met in a club in the late 1990s, and Caius Pawsom of the Young art collective.

While some audience members hung back on the platform risers, others followed the nine dancers around the room as the music thumped, haze wafted over everyone, and Alon Cohen’s propulsive lighting shifted between darkness and light. And then the dancers disappeared.

A team of twelve dancers in black join the fray at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

This pattern happened five or six times during the evening. The dancers would sneak into the area, starting from different corners, and groove for between five and fifteen minutes, sometimes breaking off into stunning solos. If you decide to remain close to them, you have to stay vigilant, as they unpredictably turn, twist, and reach out; you might be touched — one woman stood her ground, so a dancer made contact with her, while another dancer gently put a hand on a man’s shoulder — and you might even be given a black rose.

For one exquisitely choreographed scene, the nine dancers faced off against twelve dancers in black lace (New York–based Julia Ciesielka, Blu Furutate, Antonia Gillette, Michaella Ho, Destinee Jimenez, Nick LaMaina, Natalie Wong, Nina Longid, Julian Sanchez, Luc Simpson, Kailei Sin, and Jeremy Villas) in an epic battle that evoked both West Side Story and The Warriors (as well as a smidgen of Beneath the Planet of the Apes).

It’s a long night, so if you need a break, you can wander back to the first section or even out into the armory’s various period rooms with chairs and couches, and you can get a breath of fresh air outside, but the time between dances gets shorter and shorter as the evening continues, and you don’t want to miss any of them. Part of the fun is anticipating where the dancers will next emerge from and when and where they will exit. Near the end, there are longer solos and, ultimately, a stirring finale where everyone comes together in a rousing celebration bursting with electricity.

The more you put into R.O.S.E., the more you will get out of it. Don’t take off the phone sticker and try to steal a picture or video, which I saw at least two people doing, and don’t obsessively scroll through your cell in between dances. Get into the groove. Bask in the freedom. Join the party and rave on!

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

R.O.S.E.

R.O.S.E. premiered last year at the Manchester International Festival (photo by Johan Persson)

R.O.S.E.
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
September 5-12, $65
www.armoryonpark.org

Park Ave. Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall has been turned into a flashy nightclub for the North American premiere of the immersive R.O.S.E., running September 5-12.

There are no seats for the three-hour production, so the audience will be on their feet and on the move, shaking and grooving to the show, which features cutting-edge choreography by Sharon Eyal, direction by Gai Behar and Caius Pawson of the record label Young, musical curation by Mattis With of Young, stage and creative design by Daphnée Lanternier, lighting by Alon Cohen, costumes by Maria Grazia Chiuri, and music by DJ Ben UFO. (Audience members can take a break on lounge seating in adjoining reception rooms.)

An armory commission that previously played at New Century Hall in Manchester, R.O.S.E. explodes with freedom, energy, and intimacy as audience and performers meld together as one.

There are several special programs being held in conjunction with R.O.S.E. On September 7 at 7:00, there will be a SLINK rave ($35) with DJs Currency Audio, Laenz, Simisea, rrao, and Enayet, while on September 8 at 6:00 the STUNT QUEEN!!! rave will be led by DJs Kilopatrah Jones, MORENXXX, madison moore, and TYGAPAW, hosted by Xander C. Gaines Aviance and with a poetry reading by Abdu Mongo Ali. And on September 8 at 3:00, “Day for Night: A Salon on Art and Nightlife” ($35) features “Music and Deejaying” with madison moore, Kevin Aviance, and Xander C. Gaines Aviance; “Dance and Club Culture” with Ariel Osterweis and MX Oops; and “The Art of Queer Worldmaking” with Gage Spex, Raúl de Nieves, Dosha, and Jacolby Satterwhite.

Some shows are already sold out, so act fast if you want to catch what should be one of the hottest shows of the year.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

INSIDE LIGHT: ELECTRONIC MASTERPIECES FROM STOCKHAUSEN’S LICHT

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Inside Light is a multimedia marvel at Park Ave. Armory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

INSIDE LIGHT
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Friday, June 14, $70, 6:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
online slideshow

“I hope that the future will bring us auditoriums with permanent technical installations where we can listen to music like Weltraum as often as we like — including the individual layers, sounds, and tones in listening seminars,” Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote in the program notes for his 141-minute 1992 Weltraum (Outer Space). “Listeners may perceive every sound from beginning to end, experience every movement and maintain their concentration.”

While it might not be permanent, the experimental German composer has found a home at Park Ave. Armory, where his work has been staged to dramatic impact. In 2012, the New York Philharmonic performed Stockhausen’s tri-orchestral Gruppen (Groups), with 109 musicians divided into three ensembles. In 2013, the armory presented Oktophonie, a sixty-nine-minute layer from Act II of Dienstag aus Licht, the Tuesday portion of his 1977–2003 twenty-nine-hour opera cycle Licht: The Seven Days of the Week, set in an immersive environment created by Thai contemporary artist Rirkrit Tiravanija.

The legacy of Stockhausen, who died in 2007 at the age of seventy-nine, is now being celebrated at the armory with the meditative and mesmerizing Inside Light, comprising five sections over nearly six hours; although it ostensibly relates the story of Eve, the archangel Michael, and Lucifer, don’t search too hard for a narrative. Conceived by armory artistic director Pierre Audi, the multimedia extravaganza takes place in a huge oval at the center of the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, where audience members can use BackJack chairs or spread out on the floor; try not to get too settled in, as it’s strongly advised that you occasionally walk inside and outside the space to enhance the experience, moving your chair as different segments unfold and even listening from the hallway.

The stunning installation, by Urs Schönebaum, whose previous breathtaking lighting at the armory includes Claus Guth’s Doppelganger and William Kentridge’s The Head & the Load, features a large screen hanging at the west end, constructed of eleven connected pieces that increase in height from the edges to the center; at the east end are five vertically oriented screens of slightly different widths, separated by critical negative space. A thin, oval strip of light encircles the area, and some two dozen ceiling lights are arranged in a wide spiral, surrounded by speakers. The enveloping, prerecorded sound design, from basset-horns and keyboards to wind, ocean waves, and ominous laughter that wash over the audience, is by musician and longtime Stockhausen collaborator Kathinka Pasveer, with expert engineering by Reinhard Klose.

The droning, contemplative music is accompanied by hit-or-miss video projections by Robi Voigt. Hypnotic black, white, and gray grids shimmer, evoking Sol LeWitt and Tetrus, while a misty green is haunting. (I advise staring at the white and gray grids, then shutting your eyes quickly to see the reverse images in the darkness.) Reddish-orange abstract shapes are less interesting, moving like mathematical fractals. Feel free to close your eyes and just listen, or get up and walk around when the visuals fail to engage. However, Schönebaum’s lighting is spectacular, as beams of white, red, blue, and green intersect across the vast space, spots shine down on the floor, a planetlike object emits at times nearly blinding dullish color, and an empty square of white lights hovers above like a UFO about to beam up audience members.

Inside Light can be experienced in two parts, the first consisting of Montags-Gruss (Monday Greeting and Eve Greeting), Unsichtbare Chöre from Donnerstag (Invisible Choirs from Thursday), and Mittwochs-Gruss (Wednesday Greeting), the second Freitags-Gruss (Friday Greeting) and Freitags-Abschied (Friday Farewell), but it’s best experienced in one full marathon, which I saw on June 8 and is being repeated June 14, beginning at 6:30 pm, with a one-hour dinner break. Be sure to check out the Mary Divver Room, where you’ll encounter some of the inspiration for Voigt’s videos.

As previously noted, don’t stay glued to your seat; get up, turn your chair around, walk across the space, and let the music guide you. However, watch out for a transformative moment when the horizontal screen, displaying a black-and-white grid, appears to start moving into itself, something I won’t soon forget.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ILLINOISE

Illinoise reimagines Sufjan Stevens album as a dance-theater piece (photo by Stephanie Berger)

ILLINOISE
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Monday – Saturday through March 26, standby only
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Justin Peck and Sufjan Stevens’s eighth collaboration is a poignant and exhilarating exploration of young love, grief, and the search for personal identity, with its fingers firmly on the pulse of today’s youth culture.

The DC-born Peck, thirty-six, is a Tony-winning dancer, choreographer, director, and filmmaker and the resident choreographer of New York City Ballet. The Detroit-born Stevens, forty-eight, is a Grammy- and Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter and soundtrack composer. The longtime friends have previously worked together on pieces for NYCB, Houston Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet, including Year of the Rabbit, Everywhere We Go, and Reflections.

Their latest, the dazzling Illinoise, opened Wednesday night for a sold-out run continuing in Park Ave. Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall through March 26. [ed. note: The production is moving to Broadway, running April 24 to August 10 at the St. James.]

The ninety-minute dance-theater work is based on Stevens’s 2005 concept album, Illinois, aka Sufjan Stevens Invites You to: Come on Feel the Illinoise. “I feel like specifically Illinois and Chicago are sort of the center of gravity for the American Midwest,” Stevens told Dusted about the genesis of the record.

Henry (Ricky Ubeda) and Carl (Ben Cook) go on a road trip in Illinoise (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The original story, by Peck and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview, Marys Seacole), introduces us to a young man named Henry (Ricky Ubeda) as he ventures from a small town in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, to Chicago and then New York City. He joins up with a group of eleven free-living young people who are like a modern-day version of the hippies from Hair. Sitting around a campfire (consisting of lanterns), they take journals out of their backpacks and share stories from their lives.

The dancers never speak or sing; Adam Rigg’s multilevel wooden set features three small platforms for a trio of vocalists: keyboardist Elijah Lyons and guitarists Shara Nova and Tasha Viets-VanLear. They wear wasp sings, which refer to the song “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!,” in which they sing, “Oh, I am not quite sleeping / Oh, I am fast in bed / There on the wall in the bedroom creeping / I see a wasp with her wings outstretched.” Eleven other instrumentalists, from drums, strings, woodwinds, and horns to bass, banjo, percussion, and mandolin, are scattered across the top level.

Morgan (Rachel Lockhart) looks for signs from the ancestors underneath a billboard of a canceled Andrew Jackson (“Jacksonville”). Jo Daviess (dance captain Jeanette Delgado) is surrounded by evil-masked figures in black robes representing the Founding Fathers (“They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!”). Wayne (Alejandro Vargas) encounters serial killer John Wayne Gacy in a clown outfit, realizing that we all have secrets to hide (“John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”). And the aptly named Clark (Robbie Fairchild) removes his glasses and shirt and becomes Superman, one of many, believing, “Only a steel man came to recover / If he had run from gold, carry over / We celebrate our sense of each other / We have a lot to give one another” (“The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts”). The costumes are by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, with masks by Julian Crouch and props by Andrew Diaz.

Clark (Robbie Fairchild) turns into Superman at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Those tales serve as a prologue to the main narrative, which Henry reluctantly conveys, involving a Jules and Jim–like relationship between him and his childhood friends Carl (Ben Cook) and Shelby (Gaby Diaz) and, later, his first adult love, Douglas (Ahmad Simmons). Jealousy, illness, and loyalty bring them together and tear them apart as they try to find their place in a difficult world — from politics to family to religion — that often doesn’t even try to understand them. “Tuesday night at the Bible study / We lift our hands and pray over your body / But nothing ever happens,” they sing in “Casimir Pulaski Day,” named for the Polish freedom fighter who was a general in the Continental Army and became known as the Father of American Cavalry.

Ultimately, in the finale, “The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders,” they declare, “What have we become, America?”

Illinoise explodes with energy but is anchored by an underlying tenderness. Have no fear if you’re not a fan of Stevens; Nathan Koci’s music direction and supervision and Timo Andres’s arrangements and orchestrations lift the score, and some of Stevens’s more twee lyrics disappear into the overall thrilling zeitgeist.

Innate hope and charm emanate from the dancers, highlighted by Lockhart, Delgado, Vargas, Fairchild, and Byron Tittle, who portrays Estrella and adds tap to a movement language that blends contemporary and ballet. The four leads — Ubeda, Cook, Diaz, and Simmons — imbue their characters with deep emotional conflicts that can be as stirring as they are heartbreaking; several scenes play out like a twenty-first-century silent movie in color. The cast also features Christine Flores as Anikova, dance captain Craig Salstein as I-94 East Bound, and Kara Chan as Star, with Jada German, Zachary Gonder, Dario Natarelli, and Tyrone Reese making up the swing.

Not everything works, and the timeline can get confusing, but Peck and Sibblies Drury pull no punches. Garth MacAleavey’s sound design reverberates throughout the hall, while Brandon Stirling Baker’s lighting bursts forth in multiple palettes and cleverly informs us of the location, accompanied by projections on a billboard above the band.

Each attendee receives a program modeled on the journals used by the performers, in red, blue, orange, or green and with a different wasp wing image on it. Inside are several handwritten entries by Henry, complete with illustrations and even a blotch that Henry explains is a “tear mark b/c I made myself cry in my new journal like a dork.” He also writes, “I couldn’t feel anything. Maybe I couldn’t feel it because I am too obsessed with my own past.”

Illinoise will make you feel. And if you are so inclined, there are several blank pages at the back of the program where you can share and reflect.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]