Performance Garage presents Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers 'Fall Home Season'

Choreographers are always teachers, passing on not just their immediate creations but also their way of looking at dance. What do they want to say with (or about) dance? What movement vocabulary do they embrace to say it? For certain ideas to stay alive, they must take root in the hearts and creative minds of new choreographers, who find resonance in them and carry them forward in their own work.

Warming up the audience on a rainy night

The evening opened with “Seed,” with choreography and costumes by Evalina Carbonell and experimental music by Hauschka. On a dark stage, one bright spot of light appeared, Nikolai McKenzie curled at its center. The light came and went, each time revealing a different dancer, until the company came together to roll and slap the floor and their own arms in a percussive explosion of movement.

The costumes, workout gear in a variety of prints and faded solids, were fitting. The dance often seemed like a warmup or a creative exercise in physicality — the seed of creativity.

I was looking forward to the second piece, “Miànjù,” with choreography and costumes by Mo Liu and music by Philip Glass. Liu has shown dynamic strength and lyrical fluidity in his dancing, and I wanted to see how he shared those sensibilities with other dancers.

I worried at the start. The lights rose on two women (Grace Stern and Barbara Craig) in black shorts and blazers with white tanks and two men (Francis Markocki and Kyan Namazi) in the same outfits but with black shirts, lying on the floor.

To the compelling strains of Glass’s “Island,” they arose and walked slowly to the end of the stage, where they leaned over and mouthed screams. It was an interesting counterpoint to the urgency of the music, but seemed more like theater than dance.

The second section of the piece showed what Liu and his dancers could do. The dance was well constructed and emotionally complex, with solos, trios, and particularly striking duets between Stern and Craig, and Markocki and Namazi. At the end, the dancers sat, removed their blazers and their “masks,” and chatted—the blazers were hot. Whose face smeared whose jacket?

It brought us back to earth with a reminder that art is ephemeral, and that you only have a 10-minute intermission until you are onstage again, living another choreographer’s dream.

A war of fans

“Fans,” with choreography and costumes by WeiWei Ma and music by Ito Kayo and Nawang Khechog was stunning. In darkness, we heard a sharp report, like a gunshot. I’d heard that sound before, though: the snap of war fans.

Suddenly, red light bathed a column of three women (Grace Stern, Keila Pérez-Vega, and Annielille Gavino) poised with their open red fans. The fan work was marvelous, creating the soundtrack with sharp snaps as fans flashed simultaneously or cascaded one after the other while the dancers moved in unison, or responded, attack and counterattack in small lifts over one another’s backs.

The second section, a duet with Mo Liu and Weiwei Ma, astonished me. Mo Liu, in white, appeared first, low and at the ready, prowling the stage with his open white fan. WeiWei Ma entered in black, her fan fluttering with fluid black cloth, the yin to his yang. The duet that followed was half dance, half martial arts, and completely mesmerizing.

In the third section, four male dancers worked with one huge white fan. Francis Markocki was a highlight here, both in the wavelike sweep he gave the great fan and in his effortless lifts.

The final piece, “Arrival,” was an excerpt from Lin’s Homes, with costumes by Lin and music and sound design by Cory Neale, with additional music by Bonobo, Ryoji Ikeda, and Goldmund.

“Arrival” expressed the joy and uncertainty of immigration and community. Mo Liu demonstrated his incomparable extension and, in a spoken-word section, Annielille Gavino announced that she had voted for the first time, making the United States home. To end the piece and the evening, Evalina Carbonell crossed the stage in a pale dress held together with ties, strewing the stage with Chinese blessing papers that she carried in a bundle of joss sticks.

Ultimately, however, the evening belonged to the new choreographers who carried forward the influences of their teacher, reinterpreted in their own unique styles.