It's the movement, really, that's so absorbing at first: bodies fully committed to streaking through space, spreading out into wide jumps and spiraling leaps, then teetering and stretching until they fall heavily off balance. In duets and trios the dancers partner one another roughly, tugging and butting and punching at each other, then sidling up in tight, awkward clinches.
The music and the lighting change abruptly and unpredictably, from shadows to glare, desperate words to pop klezmer. The dance too spazzed from fight to flight, pursuit and capture to thrusting out and yanking open and ecstatic release.
Related:
New stuff, Man at work, Squiggles and lines, More 
- New stuff
One thing that impressed me was that dance invention seems to be making a comeback as a major challenge for young choreographers after years of being stirred into the multimedia stew.
- Man at work
It's easy to manufacture illusions of rap stardom. Any MySpace whiteboy with a few grand can fill a mixtape with big cameos, and for a little more, guests will even shout his name out. But though such pay-for-spray practices have kept established artists eating they've also compromised the organic dynamics that once pushed the genre forward.
- Squiggles and lines
The eponymous directors of Alonzo King Lines Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group both came from backgrounds in modern dance with sprinklings of other styles, and they both subsequently invented movement vocabularies to serve their choreographic ideas.
- Review: Patti Smith's Just Kids
How do you get to be the Godmother of Punk? Pure dumb luck, for starters.
- Flickers
The hour's worth of film and dance that followed my absurdist journey offered flashbacks, edges, mysterious messages, and a thunderstorm. In 1924, Tristan Tzara described Dada as a resistance to the pretensions of art, "a snow of butterflies released from the head of a prestidigitator." I left Inman Square feeling energized.
- Old masters
Last month, students at Boston Conservatory and Boston University paid tribute to two notables of modern dance's second generation in the best possible way: by performing their work.
- High stepping
The heavy-hitter repertory shows this season come from ALVIN AILEY and GEORGE BALANCHINE . But why not welcome spring by taking a chance on fresh experiences as well?
- Walkin' and talkin'
It counts as some small death, the blinders-on result of routine, when instead of noticing how the light hits the river or the man in front of the noodle shop crouches as if he'd got no bones, your thoughts pinball from your sandwich to an e-mail you want to write to a ticking of your to-do list.
- The joy of risk
The solo performances of Michael Moschen have many elements to them: dance movement, juggling, theater, pantomime, the balancing and acrobatic skills of a circus artist, the illusion-making craft of a magician.
- Reality riffs
When Jerome Robbins's New York Export: Opus Jazz boogied onto the scene in 1958 then took Europe by storm. Created for Ballets: U.S.A., a company of ballet, modern, and jazz dancers that Robbins had put together for a government-sponsored cultural exchange tour, Opus Jazz was a kind of spinoff from the 1957 hit musical West Side Story , which Robbins directed and choreographed.
- Airs and graces
Somewhere in the middle of Stephen Petronio’s terrific hour-long dance I Drink the Air Before Me last Friday night, the dancers exited and the space went dark.
- Less
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Dance
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, Entertainment, New York City, Movies, Dance, Dance, Performing Arts, Ballet, New York City Ballet, Documentary Films, Lincoln Center, Less
