A dance on a rooftop is a mysterious thing. How is it that a roof is more like water than land? The breeze that comes with elevation, the way the air dances around you as you watch bodies in motion, unlocks something that can’t be replicated on a stage or even, for some strange reason, on grass.
On Sunday, the rooftop in question — at the Empire Hotel — made up for its small size by location: It was only a half a block away from Lincoln Center, where performances have been on hold since the lockdown began in March.
At the Empire, Dancers of N.Y.C.B., a new organization developed to support members of New York City Ballet during the pandemic, presented a benefit performance featuring choreography by former and current company members: Preston Chamblee, Lauren Lovette, Benjamin Millepied, Justin Peck, Janie Taylor and Christopher Wheeldon.
The City Ballet dancers Daniel Applebaum and Lauren King produced the program along with Melissa Gerstein, a former dancer whose daughter attends the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet. It was a group effort, initiated by Ms. Gerstein who, during a welcoming speech, took off her mask for a brief moment to scream, “Yes!” (She clearly missed watching live dance as much as the dancers missed dancing.)
The stage was a small patch of Marley flooring, with mirrors hanging on two sides of its perimeter to open up the possibility of seeing dancers from different perspectives. Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara — brave, determined and standing tall in her point shoes — led the way with an excerpt from Mr. Wheeldon’s enduring “Polyphonia,” in which she took care to display every angle with illuminating, fluid sweep. All the dancers wore masks, which made their eyes more pronounced, both to good and distracting effect; Ms. Dutton-O’Hara knows how to make hers enhance the steps.
Along with excerpts from works by Mr. Millepied and Mr. Peck — both serviceable, though neither particularly inspiring — were new pieces, beginning with Mr. Chamblee’s “An Awaited Breath,” set to music by Fanny Mendelssohn, for the dancers Jacqueline Bologna and Cainan Weber. It spoke to the turmoil of the moment, with falls to the floor, deep contractions and imploring arms, yet its images of resignation and hope had a tendency to ramble on.
The other two ballets, though just as brief, possessed more point of view. How great is it when the moment a ballet starts, you know exactly who choreographed it? It relates to the choreographers’ dancing: From Ms. Taylor, a former City Ballet principal, the quality had to do with a way of melding specificity with wild, carefree abandon; from Ms. Lovette, a current principal, it was the entrancing ability to take positions and loosen them into silken shapes full of power and passion.
Ms. Taylor’s “Schmaltz for Two” — a funny title for such a dramatic but unsentimental dance — woke up the space. Anthony Huxley and Kristen Segin, clad in fire engine red polo tops, faced each another, in sync yet apart, as they circled the tiny stage with flexed wrists; suddenly, their feet burst into a spray of small kicks.
In this miniature triptych to music by Joaquín Turina, Aaron Copland, Gyorgy Kurtag and Erik Satie, Ms. Segin, gutsy and electric, next appeared alone, using her elastic torso to dart from here to there trailed by her whipping ponytail. She was followed by Mr. Huxley, whose solo — full of quick stops and starts — made much of his impeccable line and ease of musicality until he, just as she had, collapsed to the floor.
The stage become a living canvas as they awoke to Satie: Crawling, sliding and rolling, they eventually made their way upright with a catlike stretch and their arms raised to the sky. Facing each other, they lowered into a first position plié before drooping over — their bodies limp like thirsty plants — and stepped sideways reaching their arms toward each other as they backed off the stage as if illustrating a lost embrace. Actually, that last bit was a moment of schmaltz. My heart sank. It was a little anticlimactic and even more cliché.
Ms. Lovette’s “Wound Up Wind Down,” set to “Thankyoubranch” by the American-Dutch duo the Books, featured another impressive pairing: Lauren Collett and Emma Von Enck, each in belted knitted dance overalls in pale pink and blue. Positioned back to back, they stretched their arms out, bending forward as their limbs buckled and contorted to create a portrait of mingling sensibilities: eccentric and electric.
Shapes came fast, sometimes in a way that made the choreography look under-rehearsed and blurry. But Ms. Lovette’s vision, a meld of classical and jazz dance with a strains of folk and the occasional backbend, created a particular kind of space for two women to express, in both energetic and despondent ways, something that we’ve all been dealing with for the past seven months: being trapped in a room.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence that each new work had dancers, in some form or another, falling to the floor. Sometimes I feel like doing that, too. But the way these City Ballet dancers banded together — handling customer service, laying down a Marley floor on the roof of a hotel, curating a program — was encouraging. They put on a show, and at least for one afternoon, they got to dance again.
