bud

Music: Rufus Wainwright

Costumes: Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ

Lighting: Ken Tabachnick

Premiere: March 22, 2005; Joyce Theater, New York City
Duration: 5 minutes

Performers: 2

"The two dancers are strong, slicing and eating up the space together, but they also hang to each other. The piece is plain, evocative, amazing and undeniably Petronio."

"Their tough yet sensitive partnering has them maneuvering with springy

resilience through tight clutches and surprising lifts.  bud  is one section of

a forthcoming longer work…With this tantalizing sample, Petronio certainly

whets our appetites."      

"These characters moved affectionately together in a harmonious sharing

of strengths and frailties." 

The Island of Misfit Toys

Music: Lou Reed

Set: Cindy Sherman
Costumes: Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ
Lighting: Ken Tabachnick

Premiere: October 18, 2003; Dance Umbrella, London, UK
Duration: 35 minutes

Performers: 9

"[Petronio] has added something new to the mix - melancholy. It courses through his new choreography.Something sad and terrible is happening from the moment we encounter the stage. Cindy Sherman's giant distorted dolls tell us that.This is the world premiere of The Island of Misfit Toys , gothic tales from Manhattan; it's going to be grim.Petronio's dancers are debauched youngsters inhabiting a city on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The choreography rides a wave of uppers and downers, schismatic, ragged and floppy, filled with empty vanity, confrontational undercurrents and insecure flailing. Petronio's company looks strong and polished, and there's no doubt he's varying his tone as a choreographer."

"All the elements in Stephen Petronio's The Island of Misfit Toys conspire to create a seductively creepy piece of American Gothic.This, it turns out, is a dance of traumatized decadence, a vision of Manhattan twentysomethings shipwrecked by a culture of infantilized excess. The eight dancers look like precociously sexualized kids in pajamas and jailbait gingham smocks, and their movements flip between wanton display, twitching confusion and clinging appeal. Petronio's triumph here is to evoke transgression within expertly polished dance. Individual movements glow with burnished glamour - which makes their modulation into dysfunction all the more chilling."

Broken Man

Music: Blixa Bargeld
Costume: Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ
Lighting: Ken Tabachnick
Premiere: October 15, 2002; Joyce Theater, New York City

Duration: 5 minutes

“…a stunning tour de force of performing for Mr. Petronio…What grabs the eye and heart, however, are his sudden shifts between near-total stillness and motion that are jabbing, elegantly taut and convulsive from moment to moment. Both decisive and dejected, Broken Man communicates a pervasive sadness and an uncertainty about life that cut to the heart of memories and fears generated by Sept. 11.”

"...his silky, noirish allure was subsumed by the really heartbreaking allusions he conjured.Petronio threw himself through a rich tumult of activity with his usual pantherine attack.As ever, he was demonically lyrical, or lyrically demonic, swift, muscular."

Prelude

Music: Placebo with vocals by David Bowie
Costumes: Tara Subkoff and Mathew Levi/Imitation of Christ
Lighting: Ken Tabachnick

Premiere: October 17, 2000; Joyce Theater, New York City
Duration: 4 Minutes

Performers: 8

"...eight dancers are lined up so close together that the slow

undulations and shifts of their linked bodies resemble the

segmented activity of a single entity…the dancers seem

decadently detached and beyond caring.  Or they might be

numb victims of a disaster, huddled close for comfort."

"Facing us in a line, eight dancers never travel from

Ken Tabachnick’s window of light, but clinging to one another,

rise and sink softly into individual poses suggesting despair

and succor-as if a frieze of a battle’s aftermath has roiled into life."

MiddleSexGorge

Music: Wire “Ambitious Plus,” Original music produced by Gareth Jones,

Remix by Paul Kendal and Wire

Costumes: H. Petal
Lighting: Ken Tabachnick

Premiere: 1990
Duration: 30 minutes

Performers: 9

"The evening ended with MiddleSexGorge, a kinesthetically riotous

and dazzling danced piece from 1990 to music by the British post-punk

band Wire, neatly suggesting gender equality underlined by dance brilliance." 

"…the volatile, sensual MiddleSexGorge…is full of intriguing confrontations

between leggy postmodern bathing beauties…and compact men…the heart

of the work lies in trios and quartets whose clustered dancers offer one

another support.  It’s never clear from one moment to the next, which body

will cede control, and be manipulated by the others."