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NEW YORK — There may not have been a more idyllic place in New York City on Saturday night than Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where the choreographer Kim Brandt gave people a reason to hang out for a while. As the sun lowered behind the graveyard, an audience gathered around the expansive Cedar Dell, the cemetery’s oldest section and the site of Brandt’s fleeting “Untitled (Green-Wood).” Some came prepared with picnic blankets; others reclined against gravestones and trees. The hot day was cooling off. A breeze stirred up a soundscore of rustling leaves.
The very act of congregating was as vital as the work itself. Presented with Pioneer Works, the performance was part of a series, Graveyard Shift, that recalls the 19th-century lives of American burial grounds. As a program note pointed out, cemeteries were once hubs of social activity outside of mourning, but their function has narrowed. One of Green-Wood’s many public programs, Graveyard Shift seeks to open up new (or dormant) ways of engaging with the space.
In a place that inspires reflection on time’s passage, and on the body’s transience, Brandt’s sensibility fits right in. “Untitled (Green-Wood)” is one of two short works she has shown in New York this month. The first, “Corners,” part of the Open Call series at the Shed — a universe away from the peacefulness of Green-Wood — offered another look at her patient, spare and stealthy approach to mobilizing ensembles of people.
Both works slip into existence almost imperceptibly. At Cedar Dell, a circular site with tombstones arranged in concentric rings, the first sign of a “performance” (from my vantage point) was a lone performer (Leslie Cuyjet) traversing a distant slope. She appeared among the trees like any other person wandering toward the show, but with a heightened sense of purpose. She knew where she was going, as did the other 11 dancers who filtered in along similar routes, completing a long spiral that delivered them inside the inner circle of tombstones.
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Brandt’s movement palette tends to be minimal, and here she limited it to one action, or two: walking and standing still. The simplicity counterbalanced the flood of associations that the setting, on its own, could bring up. And as it turned out, just walking, in this context, was enough to produce a melancholic effect. Breaking from orderly lines of four onto individual pathways, the dancers arrived in a tight-knit group at the circle’s center. They stood there for a while, then spiraled together back into the distance, dispersing and disappearing. They were here, then they were gone.
“Corners,” earlier this month (it also repeats on Saturday), explored similar ideas in much a different environment: a sleek gallery, among the artworks of a cluttered group show. But Brandt knows how to adapt to a space, and “Corners” smartly staked out its territory.
The 30-minute work, like “Untitled (Green-Wood),” rests on just a few actions and positions: chiefly, the torso folded over the legs, draping toward the floor. (“Is this yoga?” asked one confused viewer.) The nine dancers, materializing one by one — often as if out of nowhere — assume that pose, grazing the floor with their knuckles or palms. Incremental shifts of the feet carry them toward one another, isolation giving way to collectivity; the formation of a social movement came to mind. Then the constellation loosens, and one by one again, they stand and walk away.
This may sound like work in which not much happens, but Brandt deceptively packs a lot in. There is a fortitude in these new pieces, and a fragility, balancing as if to remind us: One is meaningless without its opposite.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.