Stephen Petronio Company

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For BLOOM, Petronio and Wainwright joined forces with the Young People's Chorus of New York City, producing an original choral work inspired by the optimism of youth. For his part, Wainwright set poems by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, along with Latin Mass texts, to new music. Petronio's choreography reflects the self-consciousness, hope, and heady intensity of young adulthood. At one point a dancer contorts and balances awkwardly on the floor while the others continue hitting their marks, performing with easy assurance. Later on, a more aggressively phrased solo, full of sharp elbows and angles, gives way to athletic yet hymnlike duets.

The Rite Part — an excerpt from Full Half Wrong (1992) and Petronio's provocative take on the vanguard Stravinsky score The Rite of Spring — rounds out each evening. Teeming with sensual heat and exacting, hard-edged isolations, the work expertly diversifies the program, providing a taste of Petronio's earlier, perhaps tougher, repertoire.

[Review published February 2007]