Press

FACE EATERS is as aesthetically ambitious and specific as a Broadway show, but with the sensibilities leaning away from the clean and polished and towards 1970s B-Horror movie chaos and viscerality. Between Romania, Smith, and the band of collaborators, the ensemble rocks at least a couple dozen elaborate costumes. Romania’s include a mattress exoskeleton which he both wears and is inside of like a soft, unwieldy turtle shell and a budget Michelin Man look made of foam and duct tape. Smith’s include a head-to-toe rope ensemble which gives her the appearance of a human wet mop and a truly beautiful jacket with dense, colorful yarn draping from the shoulder blades like wings.

In Ursula Eagly’s “Dream Body Body Building” at the Chocolate Factory, the dancers seem to be transmitting a dream state to the audience.

In her funny and fidgety way, the choreographer Michelle Ellsworth presents new works that probe the uses and limits of language and movement.

Spare and simple, “Aging Prelude” at the Chocolate Factory is a new beginning for the choreographic duo Chameckilerner.

Wanjiru Kamuyu’s solo performance at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens isn’t a straightforward immigration story.

In Family Happiness, Juliana F. May combines formal perversity and Odyssean melodies.

Juliana May’s “Family Happiness” at Abrons Arts Center at times feels like a punishing exercise.

Kathy Westwater’s dances at the Chocolate Factory, “Revolver” and “Choreomaniacs,” build on her focused movement investigations of the last 20 years.

Ivy Baldwin’s defiant and poignant work for four dancers at the Chocolate Factory Theater is the outcome of deeply considered collaboration.

Two writers wade into the hazy environment of David Thomson’s new work to grapple with opacity and transparency, the magical and mundane. Where one sees an M, the other sees a W, yet both come away with a sense of intimacy in the unknown.