With the Dutch choreographer couple Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana the sky may not be the limit, but virtuosity definitely is. As was noted in Carnet: ‘Leine & Roebana keep pushing their dancers to the limits, to the point where control and perfection could easily turn into chaos and failure.’ Dutch dance critic Isabella Lanz remarked in the yearbook The Low Countries (and also in Contemporary Dance in the Low Countries) that music is both their basis and their guide in their search for an ideal language for dance.

Until May 10 Leine & Roebana are continuing this quest in the US, with Tracks (Sporen). Based on elements of their earlier work, Tracks showcases the use of music as a guiding principle in their choreographic oeuvre: contemporary compositions and early music join together with dance sections full of contrasts. Boulez meets Purcell and so much more: ‘capricious, highly formal, rich in texture, emotional and idiosyncratic’, as Leine & Roebana indicate themselves. Or with the words of a critic of the The New York Times who saw Leine & Roebana’s dancers move in their universe with its own internal logic at Danspace Project, where Tracks had its New York premiere: ‘Their blank, attractive faces remained diligently at odds with the lines of energy that seemed to be pulling their limbs in opposite directions, and “Sporen” began to resemble a beautifully slick science-fiction movie that wants to mean more than it does.’ Sounds indeed like some kind of Matrix trilogy for dance buffs, as she penned.

Tracks: May 2 & 3: Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (Boston, MA) / May 10: Ohio Theater, Playhouse Square Center (Cleveland, OH)

VIDEO: Tracks on youtube