text by Caia Cupolo
photography by Hannah Mayfield
The Gibney Company has returned to New York Live Arts with its annual Up Close series, where the company collaborates with choreographers to revive past works and showcase new ones. This year’s series features Swedish choreographer Johan Inger’s Rain Dogs (2011) and Bliss (2016), as well as a world premiere of When It Was. Inger is an internationally renowned choreographer who got his start after dancing for Nederlands Dans Theater in the ’90s. Since then, he has created works for major companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance, Gauthier Dance Company, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and now the Gibney Company.
The program was a journey through Inger’s emotionally charged theatrical style, moving through works of distinct tone and mood. The set for the opening piece, Rain Dogs, was minimal, with a few radios in the upstage right corner. One soloist, Graham Feeny, began the piece holding a radio. He performed a brief solo, composed of many gestural moves and interactions with his prop. This vignette set the tone for the rest of the performance through the contrast between his solemn stares at the radio and playful gestures. It is a raw and tender reflection on solitude and the search for identity, rendered through facial expressions and gesticulations that could only be read in an intimate setting like New York Live Arts. The rest of the dancers entered the stage, moving from a tight vertical line to an explosive, passionate constellation, cued by the soloist’s clicking of the radio. The latter half of the piece was accompanied by black debris floating down from the ceiling like snowfall.
This high-spirited piece was beautifully contrasted by the world premiere of When It Was, a tender duet set to Samuel Barber’s melancholic Adagio for Strings. As an elegy, the piece captured the quiet strength and eventual fragility of partnership, using breathtaking lifts and moments of sustained balance to question identity and dependence. The technical precision required for such vulnerable, slow-tempo movement was impeccably executed, bridging the program’s more visceral works with quiet reflection.
The evening culminated with Bliss, an audience favorite set to Keith Jarrett’s iconic Köln Concert. The piece is an ode to sheer, ecstatic joy. The choreography matched the music’s soaring, free spirit with expansive, loose, and brightly colored costuming. The work evolved from a communal drift into an explosive, unified dance party, demonstrating the company’s ability to shift from internalized drama to luminous, communal exuberance. The curtain call was succeeded by a celebration of Gibney dancer Jie-Hung Connie Shiau’s last performance with the company. She gave everything to the dance in Bliss and was sent off with a standing ovation.
Ultimately, Gibney’s Up Close performance of Inger’s works is a triumph of the contemporary repertory model. The dancers exhibit a technical mastery that allows them to embody radically different choreographic languages. The Up Close series has featured works by Yin Yue and Rena Butler in the past; now, it presents the humanistic storytelling of Inger. The series confirms that when art is presented without distance, the result is a deeper, more meaningful connection.