![\"Clifton](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/AJ-Vez-slant-IMG_5412.jpg\")
<\/a>Clifton Brown and Nicole Corea in the pose that opens Lar Lubovitch’s Vez<\/em>. Photo: Phyllis McCabe<\/p><\/div>\n Permit me to be fanciful about why Lar Lubovitch chose to devote the first half of the first of two programs his company is presenting at the Joyce to three duets (not a decision I would have recommended). However, Lubovitch founded the group that bears his name 45 years ago, and ever since, he has been showing us how much\u2014often intemperately\u2014 he is amorous of lush, sensuous movement. Compressed into a duet, his choreography announces his love affair with dancing the minute two performers appear onstage.<\/p>\n The men who perform the profoundly expressive duet from Lubovitch\u2019s 1986 Concerto Six Twenty-Two <\/i>(in this case, Attila Joey Csiki and Tobin Del Cuore) enter from opposite sides of the stage, walking slowly toward each other to the adagio movement of Mozart\u2019s great clarinet concerto, K.622. What they feel for each other is muted, restrained, but hauntingly clear. The first image in the new Vez <\/i>is of a man (Clifton Brown) holding his partner (Nicole Corea) upside down at a knife-straight slant, against a glowing red opening in the black curtains behind them. Even if a singer and guitarist weren\u2019t stationed onstage, you\u2019d guess that this relationship is a hot one and that tango will flirt its way into the choreography. When The Time Before the Time After<\/i> (1971) begins, Katarzyna Skarpetowska and Reed Luplau are locked in an embrace. Her first move is to wilt within his grasp, slide down, let her head fall back, and reach up to him; his first move is to push her away. That\u2019s when Igor Stravinsky\u2019s Concertino for String Quartet gets rough too. Nearly every anguished complication the pair attempts cries out, \u201cI hate you, but I can\u2019t live without you.\u201d<\/p>\n Attila Joey Csiki (L) and Tobin Del Cuore in Lar Lubovitch’s Concerto Six Twenty-Two<\/em>. Photo: Phyllis McCabe<\/p><\/div>\n Within the confines of his chosen atmospheres, Lubovitch finds many eloquent ways of making movement reveal the charged relationships. Virtuosity serves to define both elation and struggle. Concerto Six Twenty-Two<\/i>, choreographed in the thick of the AIDs crisis, reveals a tender male friendship that is both reticent and deep. The men walk forward, sculpting a pretzel-shaped vow with their curving arms. The next thing you know, Csiki is sitting on Del Cuore\u2019s shoulder as if he\u2019d gotten there in a single exultant bound; when Csiki, kneeling, stretches out one leg like a slanted bed, Del Cuore reclines against it. Each man dances for the other\u2014Del Cuore devouring space with his long legs, Csiki more precise, more erect in his posture, both of them excellent.<\/p>\n Nicole Corea treads on Clifton Brown in Lar Lubovitch’s Vez<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Vez<\/i> is a remake of Lubovitch\u2019s 1989 Fandango. <\/i>Instead of being performed to Ravel\u2019s ultra-famous Bolero<\/i>, the reconfigured duet is accompanied by a commissioned score by Randall Woolf. Recorded elements subtly reinforce the live music, performed by singer Mellissa Hughes and guitarist Gyan Riley (for instance, more hands than theirs clap rhythms).\u00a0 Jack Mehler\u2019s lighting dramatizes the partnership of Brown and Corea, both of whom wear black velvet attire (her costume all but backless).<\/p>\n Even before Brown places his hand meaningfully on his partner\u2019s nearest breast, the two have shown us what unusual connections they can slide their bodies into. He picks her up and folds her into a bundle; he bends deeply backward on a slant and she holds him just before he hits the floor by grasping his neck. He lies down, and she walks on him. The two dancers give the choreography a quiet intensity that\u2019s more gripping than more overt expressions of passion would be; several times they nearly kiss, but decide to titillate each other and the audience by prolonging their foreplay.<\/p>\n Prolong is a key word in another sense. The love that Lubovitch has for rich movement occasionally verges on being out of control. He\u2019s an expert and disciplined dancemaker, especially when it comes to working within prescribed limits (say, those of a Broadway show). But when he\u2019s his only boss, he sometimes can\u2019t stop. He\u2019s like an attentive lover who becomes so extravagant with bouquets and boxes of chocolates that the choreography begins to feel surfeited.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>