king game Review: Finding the Right Rep for a Repertory Company

Since it was founded in 1968, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company has often been compared with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founded 10 years before. And with Philadanco and Dallas Black Dance Theater, which started up soon after. These troupes share a focus on the African American experience but also, perhaps less obviously, a model. They are repertory companiesking game, which means they are forever facing the question: What repertory will best serve their dancers and audiences?

How about a beloved masterpiece? That’s what Dayton Contemporary Dance has brought to New York for its run at the Joyce Theater this week: Paul Taylor’s “Esplanade” (1975). It serves as a terrific closer for a three-work program that begins at the other end of the quality spectrum.

Dayton is the first Black-centered company to perform “Esplanade.” As an addition to the repertory, the work has some symbolic weight as a show of range and an implicit defiance of limited notions about what such a company should do. In performance, though, what seemed to matter more was that Dayton wasn’t the Paul Taylor company.

“Esplanade,” inspired by the image of a woman running for a bus, is set to excerpts from Bach violin concertos but is built from simple materials: walking, running. Generation after generation of Taylor dancers have made this look easy. The Dayton dancers reveal how difficult it is.

ImageNicolay Dorsett soars over her colleagues in Paul Taylor’s “Esplanade,” part of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s program at the Joyce Theater.Credit...Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times

You can see the mental and physical effort required for the quick shuffling of formations, the courage needed to baseball-slide across the stage without a collision or to leap into someone’s arms. Not yet relaxed into the work, the Dayton dancers slightly rush some of the slower parts, denying the basic moves their full musical values, and they don’t quite let go into the headlong sections.

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