11:30 a.m., Friday, April 24, 2026 – in the ninth floor studio of Ballet Hispanico on West 89th Street – bearing witness to a transcendent offering, ODES by Anna Sokolow (Tel Aviv Lyric Theatre 1964, with music by A.U.Boskovich; Juilliard Concert Hall,1965, with music by Edgard Varese) harnessing the formidable combined energies of Kanopy Dance Company (directors Robert Cleary and Lisa Thurrell) and the Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble (artistic director Samantha Geracht with associate artistic director Lauren Naslund, pictured above, left and right foreground).
I am thinking of characteristically pungent Sokolow advice that dancer Senta Driver cited in a Dance Scope article published just after ODES appeared in NYC: “Now that you know the dance you must work to take away the strangeness of it. You must get used to it, until it is the only thing you can do at that moment.”
Indeed, it was so quiet in the rehearsal room, I whispered to Samantha Geracht, sitting by my side, these young faces attentive to the verge of obsession, brows knitted, mouths set in tight lines, planted feet “as if you are never going to move again, as if you would stay there forever,” as Anna used to say. “They performed this piece for four days earlier in April in Madison,” Samantha replied, “and yet, with Anna, there’s always much, much more to ‘knowing’ a dance.”
So I noticed, as the dancers ran the three-part work, gently urged forward, metaphorically, by Lauren Naslund, who spent as much time suffused by introspection, seeking as she articulated — not what she “wanted,” no, never! — but rather, channeling then re-expressing her embodied experiences of performances for and with Anna in times gone by.
Because the piece premieres at 7.00 tonight, and recurs Sunday night at MMAC Theatre, 248 West 60 St., I will refrain from too much explication.
[You must see it for yourself.]
Suffice it to say that a tenderly symbiotic duet is framed — bracketed — with two cataclysmic ensembles accelerating and shape-shifting from animalistic leaps in one sequence to ground-hugging, to explosive, to interweaving threaded rituals, to partnering rigorously apportioned before morphing toward fretful, various brushings-past and inimitable lifting — or should I say draping.
As always when I observe the dancers, I was barely three feet away in the somewhat depth-bereft space. Even so, I discovered at the conclusion of the out of sequence runs, when I could hardly breathe, that it was impossible to take in the scope of the modernist landscape in one glance.
Anna Sokolow was intent upon tantalizing and confusing me into submission with her visually tough and loving voice.