Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – In its opening days, DANCE REFLECTIONS ambitiously takes on technology, human connection, and the natural world

• By drediman
• February 24, 2026
• No Comments

This past week saw the arrival and departure of the three initial offerings of the 2026 edition of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival, an expansive, nearly month-long festival of contemporary dance spanning numerous performing arts venues across New York. In its high profile opening week, the ambitious festival has already given dance fans a lot to chew on, namely drumming up grand choreographic meditations on subjects such as technology, human connection, and the natural world. As per usual, read on for my thoughts.

LYON OPERA BALLET — BIPED / MYCELIUM
New York City Center

Opening night of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival belonged to the terrific Lyon Opera Ballet, who embarked on a modern dance double bill — Merce Cunningham’s classic BIPED and the US premiere of Christos Papadopoulos’s Mycelium (RECOMMENDED). Conceptually, the program at New York City Center was a slow-burning meditation on the natural and physical world. The evening commenced with Cunningham’s work, a seamless 1999 collaboration between the choreographer, composer Gavin Bryars, and digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar (whose kinetic digital imagery is projected on a scrim between the audience and the dancers) that seems to depict the physical world on an atomic level. Luxuriously stretched over 45 intricately counted minutes, the piece is comprised of a dizzying array of solo, duet, trio, and ensemble variations that require considerable balance, strength, and focus from its performers. Despite the occasional wobbly moment, the well-trained dancers of the Lyon Opera Ballet — garbed in sleekly flattering iridescent costumes — for the most part handled the rigorous specifications of Cunningham’s exacting choreography, effectively manifesting pure bodies in motion across time and space. The second half of the evening fell to the hands of Papadopoulos (who has been making quite the splash in the contemporary dance world over in Europe), whose Mycelium is a hypnotic exercise in repetitious side-to-side micro-movements, glacial modifications, and collective mind-setting. Set to Coti K’s evocative electronic score, the Greek choreographer’s organic vision — a US premiere — was disarmingly realized by the dancers, who at once brought to mind the soothing surrender of aquatic life (somehow, jellyfish come to mind) and the dangerous seduction of reptilian aggression.

(LA)HORDE & BALLET NATIONAL DE MARSEILLE — AGE OF CONTENT
Brooklyn Academy of Music

Then over at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Dance Reflections continued with The Age of Content (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), (LA)HORDE (i.e., the creative collective of Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel) and Ballet national de Marseille’s latest large scale choreographic installation, this one contemplating the human body in an existence consumed by the digital world — more specifically, video games, avatars, artificial intelligence, even porn. What differentiates the works produced by this collaboration — and what makes them so stimulating and thrilling to watch — is that they aren’t afraid of addressing and/or conveying more complex and pressing ideas that are front of mind for many of us in these unsettled and unsettling current times. And like their production of Room with a View (which New Yorker’s were exposed to during last year’s festival; you can read my review of that piece here), The Age of Content is audacious and thrillingly realized on a massive scale. Indeed, truth be told, this is what true singularity of vision and a big budget can get you. (LA)HORDE’s staging is a masterful hybrid at the intersection of dance/movement, design, and theatrical concept. Over the course of 75 minutes, the full-length work ingeniously mashes a number of disparate vernaculars and aesthetics to contemplate the evolving fabric of human existence vis-à-vis technology. By combining the visceral immediacy of live performance (kudos to the spectacularly game company of dancers), the internal logic of video gaming (particularly referenced is Grand Theft Auto, complete with a near life-sized motorized car onstage), the uninhibitedness of porn, and the fabricated ebullience of TikTok dances, Age of Content conjures a vision of a fractured reality where juxtapositions are the norm. Fear not, it’s actually all less depressing than revealing.

L.A. DANCE PROJECT — REFLECTIONS: A TRIPTYCH BY BENJAMIN MILLEPIED
Perelman Performing Arts Center

Dance Reflections concluded its first weekend at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (“PAC NYC” for short) with Reflections: A Tryptych by Benjamin Millepied (RECOMMENDED). For this collection of dances, the French choreographer — who was formerly married to film star Natalie Portman, whom he met during the filming of Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar-winning film Black Swan — has brought together three of his ballets, which he created between 2013 and 2016. Performed by Millepied company’s company L.A. Dance Project, the works represent three aspects of human connection, starting with Reflections (2013), a quiet meditation on memory and yearning. Despite its contemplative air — the tone is set by David Lang’s hauntingly subdued score and the internal sensitivity (which may read as tentativeness) of the steps and movements — the feelings it elicits are big, real, and raw, as indicated by Barbara Kruger’s textually in-your-face designs. The program continued with Hearts & Arrows, perhaps the most accessible but least interesting of the three. Set to a driving minimalist score by Philip Glass (composed for the 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters), the piece exemplifies Millepied at his most conventional and crisp — here, emotions take on somewhat of a “soundbite” kind of quality — calling to mind a laidback Justin Peck. Ending the triple bill was On the Other Side, the evening’s most satisfying and artistically resounding work. Again set to music by Glass — this time to a suite of the ubiquitous composer’s piano études — the piece is an affecting depiction our collective human experience, combining the penetrating introspection of Reflections and the choreographic allure of Hearts & Arrows. The dancing throughout by the L.A. Dance Project dancers was strong; it’s abundantly clear that they are acclimated to Millepied’s tendency for casualness that opens up to deep empathy and insight. Overall, the three dances — here presented together for the first time — effectively merged movement, design, and music with understated finesse and a mind for thoughtfully conveying the human condition.