Everything Is Backward? That’s on Purpose

NEW YORK — Contemporary dance is an underfunded field, so it was not just big news but good news when the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago announced a choreographer in residence program last year with $600,000 attached. Spread across three years, with half of the money going to the choreographer directly and half to the companies producing the choreographer’s new works, the sum was large enough that any choice of artist was bound to raise questions. Why that one? And would the investment prove artistically fruitful?

So: Why was Brian Brooks the first recipient? Surely it has something to do with his recent collaborations with Wendy Whelan, the beloved ballerina who retired from New York City Ballet in 2014. Her stardom attracted a level of attention that Brooks was not otherwise likely to get. Her choice of him set him apart.

So far, Whelan is not involved in the Harris Theater projects, but the first results have been performed. In January, his company, Brian Brooks Dance, presented a new work, “Prelude,” in Chicago. In February, Miami City Ballet debuted his “One Line Drawn.” And this week, “Prelude” has come to the Joyce Theater in New York.

Alas, “Prelude” is underwhelming. Brooks’ works tend to fixate on a single idea. In this case, it’s reversal. The dancers enter jogging backward in circles, tilting and turning in Brooks’ usual tai-chi-like swirls of motion. The flow slows and speeds up and even switches direction, but without much consequence. Essentially, the piece keeps spiraling down the same drain.

It does at least feature live music, a worthy use of extra money, with the incisive pianist David Friend playing a commissioned score by Jerome Begin. The strongest drive in the largely minimalist music comes, strangely, before the curtain rises. Throughout, the composer Begin processes the sound electronically, so that we sometimes seem to be hearing snatches from an old sci-fi flick, a ray-gun battle in the distance.

Later, low rumbles arrive and cacophony increases, yet that kind of drama has little effect on Brooks’ even-tempered choreography. Over and over, the dancers grapple lightly, manipulating one another’s limbs with careful grips at the wrist or elbow. The delicacy of this could be dreamy, but it’s too dry for that. And despite the resemblance to martial arts, it has no urgency or kick. It’s a fight without fight.

It also doesn’t feel like much of an advance from “Division,” the 2015 work also on the program. In that slight piece, the dancers sweep the stage with squares of wood, framing choreography that has little shape of its own. In “Prelude,” too, there’s a flat object — a metal table brought onstage in the second half. It’s heavier than in “Division,” yet the sliding off its surface is similarly amorphous and idea-thin.

Which isn’t to say that “Prelude” lacks promising moments — solos near the end, in which the reversal idea shows some life. To what sounds like a record played backward, the dancers (especially Matthew Albert, who resembles a young Brooks) bounce up from a fall, and the oddness of the momentum is novel, a discovery.

In the final solo, the music sounds a bit like a Chopin prelude, and the wraparound choreography for the unaffected Stephanie Terasaki even acquires some melancholy, some emotion. If only “Prelude” had started there. But Brooks’ residency isn’t over. This ending could be a beginning.

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