The Joyce Theater, New York, NY.
February 18, 2025.
Herman Cornejo takes on a century old ballet that never quite came to fruition in his new piece, Anima Animal, performed at the Joyce Theater in late February. Cornejo, principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre since 2003, re-awakens a story intended to be told by ballet great Vaslav Nijinsky in 1917, about a Guarani legend of the Urutau bird, known for its exquisite song and elusive nature. Grupo Cadabra, the revered contemporary company from Argentina, joins Cornejo onstage to tell this tale of love, redemption and compassion.
The tone was simple: a dark stage with dancers costumed by Anabella Tuliano and Elsa Schenone in flesh-colored, sheer fabric, creating a sense of oneness and connection to the earth. Electronic pulsing music scored the work, honoring native rhythms and folkloric beats crafted by DJ Uji and Noelia Escalzo. In both cases, elements of tradition and contemporary interpretation melded together.
In fact, the marrying of the old and new permeated the entire work with a strong ballet vocabulary being danced by a known contemporary company. Utilizing both ballet lines and pedestrian elements of contemporary dance, the work displays its message of magic and grounded humanity via the choreography brilliantly. While Cornejo is the Artistic Director, Anabella Tuliano (also the Artistic Director of Grupo Cadabra) choreographed this work.
The dance is that of a specific story – one exploring the complexities of human nature in nature – but the work would have stood on its own as a plotless piece as well. The movement was enthralling in its complex forms, specific details, and the manner in which the dancers morphed to and from elements of nature, distinguished by the feeling they shared and less the obvious moments they executed. Much of the movement is the group dancing with Cornejo an obvious outsider, until he finds an ultimately doomed partnership with a women from another tribe, and eventually transcends his human-ness in a final solo.
There are many layers to this work – the history of its reimagining, the collaboration between Cornejo and Grupo Cadabra, the complexly composed music, the unification of traditional ballet and contemporary dance, and the incredible skill and talent of the dancers, but the balance of them all allows the vision to shine brightly through. The risk of over-complication is high, but the result was a beautiful and palpable journey through the dichotomies of being human and the interconnectedness we have with the universe.
By Emily Sarkissian of Dance Informa.
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