Review: Reclaiming the Past in a Dance of Simmering Power

In this charged and challenging world, Reggie Wilson, a choreographer one can depend on for dance artistry no matter the political climate, can get to the essence of feeling — the good, the bad and everything in between.

His new “The Reclamation,” performed at NYU Skirball over the weekend, is a powerfully solemn dance that, in part, repurposes material from his early works. That gestural vocabulary, over the course of an hour, becomes a rich blueprint illuminating how the past can meet the present on unaffected terms.

Much of the dancing in Wilson’s “Reclamation” has a gravity to it. While it does unspool into speedy passages in moments, the effect is more fleeting and frantic — not the kind that transports you to that happy dance place. The work, featuring seven authoritative performers from Wilson’s Fist and Heel Performance Group, including the magnetic Paul Hamilton, is intricately formal and something of a slow, methodical burn because of that.

At the start, the performers, one by one, take turns standing still at the front of the stage. Eventually, they all make their way to the back where they peel off layers of clothing and fold them with care before placing them in neat piles on the floor. It’s ritualistic — as if by shedding a shawl, they are reclaiming their skin.

Soon, they are dressed for the stage in Naoko Nagata and Enver Chakartash’s body-skimming separates, some adorned with pops of color. There’s an early postmodern vibe to both the dance-wear and to Wilson’s movement palette, which arranges and rearranges angular arms, backs that hinge over legs and jumps that send dancers spinning and landing on two feet. Even when the dancers shoot off into different directions, letting go of their precise spacing to vault themselves more loosely into space, they find their way back to lines, crossing the stage as a pack or splintering off in pairs. Dancers often mirror one another, but rarely do they touch.