![\"aafb\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/files\/2009\/12\/FestaBarocca.jpg\")
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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater <\/a> at NY City Center<\/p>\n Sunday, December 6, 2009, 7:30 PM<\/p>\n Festa Barocca<\/a><\/em> (2008), choreographed by Mario Bigonzetti; music by G. F. Handel; costumes by Marc Happel.<\/p>\n This is a big, ebullient, full-ensemble piece that captures the spirit of the baroque\u2014as its title and Handel soundtrack properly assert (and as its detractors have seemed oblivious to). Music apart, moreover, we see Baroque and baroqueness everywhere: in the wild abundance of color, in the generous undulations of silk, in spines\u2019 swiveling slopes and limbs\u2019 curlicues, in the mutability yet precision, extravagance yet playfulness overall. Amid the ornate, boisterous choreography here\u2014especially lovely in the three duets\u2014there are touches of flamenco, of courtly mannerism (at one moment a dancer\u2019s stretch becomes a fancy curtsy), of hip-hop, of tango, of capoeira, of breaking, of voguing, of queeny righteousness. Where there\u2019s baroque, there is exuberant attitudinal flaunting; so, too, here.<\/p>\n The piece begins with Hope Boykin<\/a> dancing center-stage to the minuet from Rodelinda<\/em> in front of a bright array of nearly still dancers, who move out little by little, step-wise and on beat, collectively like the slow-motion expansion of some impossibly colorful underwater plant. Boykin is MC-cum<\/em>-sorceress, igniting the proceedings with each snap, conjuring forth movement from her still marionettish crew. When conscripted\u2014or freed\u2014into motion, the dancers in their larger formations soon reveal a choreography that is particularly upper-body-intensive. Arms coil, thrust out, frame the body at big angles, weave before the face in quick flourishes like a magician before the reveal, hoop around the partner\u2019s body at great speed and varying heights\u2014but without touching\u2014like a game of tag for desiring adults.<\/p>\n Having now seen this performance, one cannot but find the two New York Times<\/em> reviews of Festa Barocca<\/em>\u2019s debut this time last year wildly\u2014perhaps willfully\u2014out of touch. Alastair Macaulay<\/a> complained of too much that is \u201cacrobatic\u201d\u2014any trace of stunty mass entertainment clearly heretical\u2014as well as \u201cfoot fetishism.\u201d But what he deemed \u201cfoot fetishism\u201d was Bigonzetti\u2019s attempt to consider for feet in dance some role other than points of gravitation, tips of leg extension, deserving tangency only with the ground. Why not<\/em> use the foot\u2019s flexed firmness to hook and hang from, why not<\/em> let the curves of that neglected ticklish surface between toes and heel run over and find rhyme along the partner\u2019s body? Two of the most affecting duets in Festa Barocca<\/em>\u2014between Constance Stamatiou<\/a> and Clifton Brown<\/a>, and then between Linda Celeste Sims<\/a> and Glenn Allen Sims<\/a>\u2014do just that. One gets the impression that feet\u2014the biped\u2019s workhorses, after all, the body parts that affirm our earthliness with every use, precisely by keeping the rest of our bodies from touching the ground\u2014are for Macaulay, who writes so superbly on ballet, still the bloodied, bruised embarrassments to be tucked up in shapely satin.<\/p>\n