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<\/a>Matthew Albert (L) and Brian Brooks in Brooks’ Motor<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n If I were asked to put choreographer Brian Brooks into a category, I\u2019d have to coin a term: maximinimalist. His works are economical in terms of material and\/or structure, but enriched into expressiveness by the ways in which he builds them.<\/p>\n Take his 2010 Motor<\/em>, which made an unexpected appearance on Brian Brooks Moving Company\u2019s early June season at the Joyce in place of the scheduled Counterpoint. <\/em>In this duet, Brooks and Matthew Albert hop for the duration of the dance. While Jonathan Pratt\u2019s score\u2014now eerie, now big and celebratory\u2014 alters their terrain, the two men remain almost always side by side and quite close together, leaning slightly forward as if in a race. The hops are small, barely off the floor, and it\u2019s amazing to see the variations that Brooks squeezes out of them. Now the men lift one leg in back, now in front; now they travel only slightly, now they cover more ground. Now they edge forward, now they back up. The distance between them increases, then decreases. They voyage along diagonal paths and curving ones. Every now and then, a low leap lands them on the other foot. If you chalked the bottoms of their feet, you\u2019d end up with a striking pattern on the stage floor.<\/p>\n Brian Brooks’ Division<\/em>. (L to R): Matthew Albert, Haylee Nichele, Carlye Eckert, and Ingrid Kapteyn. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n The structuring device of the entrancing Division<\/em> (2014, a New York premiere) is a prop\u2014or rather, props. Each of the six dancers who begin lined up on one side of the stage carries a balsa wood panel that measures about 3 x 4 feet. Carlye Eckert, Marielis Garcia, Ingrid Kapteyn, Haylee Nichele, Jeff Sykes, and Albert (especially wonderful in everything) are dressed like a team in baggy white shorts and shirts (costumes by Karen Young). Moving swiftly to a score by Jerome Begin, they form innumerable patterns and intersections that build in complexity\u2014all based on the nature of the panels. These become obstructions, fences, roofs, arches, bridges to dance past or be deflected by, but never any one of these for long. Exiting and re-entering, the dancers may exchange panels and collaborate with others in handling them. They\u2019re not building anything, just engaged in a project that demands skill, timing, and cooperation. In other words, a dance.<\/p>\n Brian Brooks’ Torrent<\/em>. Foreground: Haylee Nichele and Jeff Sykes. At back: Daniel Ching (L) and Dean Biosca. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n When Brooks choreographed Torrent<\/em> in 2013 for Juilliard Dance, he had to wrangle twenty-four second-year students. His title and structure derive, I imagine, from that slew of young dancers.<\/p>\n For the Joyce stage, he pared the cast down to eight (adding Dean Biosca and Daniel Ching to the six already mentioned), but you still sense streams and pools of performers, who peel, one by one, away from a cluster, or drop out of a line that moves like a wave across the stage in order to dance alone or to form pairs or trios. When all walk to the front of the stage, and Garcia goes into her private world for a few sections, none of the others notices her; before long, she is reabsorbed into the general flow. Often one or two people will simply walk or run across the stage and disappear. The rest of the time, they dance expansively\u2014their arms scooping up air, their legs slicing and whipping through it. They spin often, creating pockets of turbulence. The music, a Vivaldi concerto from The Four Seasons<\/em> \u201crecomposed\u201d by Max Richter, subjects springtime freshness to electronic slipcovering.<\/p>\n Brian Brooks in his Retrograde<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n I didn\u2019t absorb the title of Brooks\u2019 brand new solo, Retrograde<\/em>, before I watched it. So I wasn\u2019t paying the kind of attention you pay when you think a performer is running a dance sequence backward. The atmosphere is initially dark. Lighting designer Philip Trevi\u00f1o has focused a strong light from one far corner; the diagonal path it lays on the floor gradually widens as it reaches almost to the opposite corner, where Brooks stands at its edge. Darkness and smoke surround the lit area. Along this path he travels, making very little progress in relation to the amount of activity he\u2019s churning out. To music by John Luther Adams, he moves his arms in sinuous ways, turning often to face new directions. He doesn\u2019t show us force or space-devouring movement; often he\u2019ll bring one foot down beside the other into something close to a ballet dancer\u2019s fifth position. He might be treating movement the way you\u2019d patiently untangle a snarled series of cords. In the end, he\u2019s close to the source of the light, but there\u2019s a dark space of floor he won\u2019t cross. Was that where he began, way back before the dance he decided to show us?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>