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The Arts Intel Report

Oona Doherty: Navy Blue

June 26, 2024
P.za di Santa Maria Novella, 18, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy

Oona Doherty is fascinated by survival as well as extinction. In her first work, a 2015 solo through which she burst upon the scene, the Belfast-born choreographer channeled that endangered species, the working-class tough. For her latest, the ensemble piece Navy Blue, humanity itself is at risk. Facing front in a self-protective huddle, the 12-person cast is identically dressed in navy-blue work uniforms, but heterogenous in age, build, and response to the incongruously sentimental Rachmaninoff concerto that overlays the dance’s first half hour. For its second half, Jamie xx’s hypnotic remixes take over and the dance begins to wonder about itself. What does this dance, or any dance, amount to, given how little even we matter, dots of blue on the blue globe? The answer Doherty offers is sly and liberating. —Apollinaire Scherr