(Burke) Faye Driscoll (Friday through Sunday) Ms. Driscoll, whose often startling dance-theater productions expose the grittier aspects of human behavior, shares a new work in progress as part of the 92nd Street Y's Harkness Dance Festival.
But somehow each program contains a new truth or two, often startling, about dance, the visual arts or human behavior.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the woods, along comes this startling piece of dance theatre, created by the Glasgow-based company Barrowland Ballet, which compels its audience to look anew at the caped heroine and her lupine adversary.
The solo for Mr. Weinert is too long, but it's the evening's most startling and successfully expressive dance.
Likewise Unity Phelan, a City Ballet dancer of startling watch-me allure, danced on Friday the pas de deux from Balanchine's "Agon" with the coolly authoritative Calvin Royal III of Ballet Theater.
He introduced speed, energy, attack and startling compositional patterns that pushed dance into the space age.
Of course, nobody left -- not with the promise of one more startling costume, gimmick, pose or dance number just ahead.
Even if you've seen several dozen other Balanchine ballets and know something of his range, the construction of this ballet remains startling, and so does its dance vocabulary.
And Ms. Brown accents this shaded, nuanced dance landscape with startling moments of contact with the fabric, like small collisions, when performers poke through or duck under the billowing, gathering white swathes.
But while the first half of the evening — featuring Debo Band with the special guests Fendika — was characterized by startling and thrilling particulars, the dance and music in the second half — David Dorfman Dance with the Family Stone — was little more than exercises in mood.
