FOLK-S, Will you still love me tomorrow?

Alessandro Sciarroni (Italy)

Choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni takes a traditional dance form and works it for all it’s worth. It’s a sheer physical feat of performance. The schuhplattler (“shoebeater”) is a Bavarian folk dance where its performers slap their shoes and legs with their hands; it’s ecstatic, kinetic and one walloping workout. Here the dance is torn from its musical and cultural idioms: Sciarroni wears some nice lederhosen, but other than that we’re witness to the liberating pleasure of abstraction—enduring, playful, even humorous. It all unfolds in various rhythms and physical configurations, evolving and shifting as the energy increases. There are no pauses, no interludes, no intermission, just the beauty of a form taken to its extreme.

This is a demanding performance: the dancers push themselves to the limit. For roughly 90 exhilarating minutes the show ratchets up from impressively strenuous to almost-inconceivable exhaustion; what emerges is a strong suspense, electric and palpable. Sciarroni and his fellow dancers offer a radically innovative work, and key among its virtues is its approach to endurance. How far can these dancers go?

By turns beleaguering, hypnotic and curiously mystical… The freedom to leave made me want to stay, and FOLK-S grew more lovable as it went on—and on.

—The New York Times