Dwight Rhoden & Desmond Richardson on Complexions Contemporary Ballet at Performing Arts Houston. January 25, 2025

Dwight Rhoden & Complexions

November 14, 2024

Dwight Rhoden, Choreographer & Artistic Director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet. June 4, 2024

New York is experiencing a homecoming as the theaters of all sizes fill up with patrons eager to return to the incomparable shared experience of live performances. Broadway (and Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway) is back, touring is resuming, and companies are planning and performing new and repertory offerings.

Complexions hits the Joyce with two programs. The first week (November 22–27) comprises two works by co–artistic director Dwight Rhoden: Snatched Back from the Edges and Hissy Fits. The second (November 29–December 4) offers the world premieres of Rhoden's Endgame/Love One and Jae Man Joo’s duet Serenity, as well as the company premiere of William Forsythe's Slingerland Duet (Pas de Deux) and a reprise of Francesca Harper’s 2017 piece System.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet is a multicultural ballet company made up of classical ballet and contemporary dancers. The company is based in New Rochelle in Westchester, so it performs regularly in and around New York City.

Ballet was originally a European dance to classical music. It’s refreshing to see multicultural ballet danced to all kinds of music. This is American ballet. This is ballet now!

Fast approaching its 30th anniversary, Complexions Contemporary Ballet displayed works from 2006 to 2023 from its repertoire, and an excerpt from a larger piece to be premiered this November at The Joyce Theater in New Your City. The first act consisted of five works throughout that time period and all by principal choreographer Dwight Rhoden. The second act was dedicated to a single work, ‘Endgame/Love One’ (2022) choreographed by both Rhoden and Desmond Richardson.

COMPLEXIONS Contemporary Ballet returns to The Joyce celebrating its 28th Anniversary Season with two dynamic and inspiring programs, including the world premiere of Rhoden's newest work, Endgame.

As Complexions has been on the New York City dance scene for 28 years under the direction of Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, there is no doubt the small company has taken that time to prove numbers are never the sign of strength and the company includes some of the fiercest performers out there.

Here at Dandelion Chandelier, we’re passionate about dance. So whenever we get the chance, we catch a performance or conduct an interview with a luminary in the dance world. We recently pulled up a chair for an interview with brilliant dancer and choreographer, Dwight Rhoden and heard the story of the Complexions Contemporary Dance Company.

Certain dance companies are brands. Of course the company name identifies them and distinguishes them from others, but that’s not what I mean. Some dance companies reliably present their product – choreography and performance – in a manner that remains relatively consistent from performance to performance, and that audiences anticipate seeing. Complexions Contemporary Ballet is one of them. Without limiting the breadth of the dances they present, Complexions is known for furiously paced choreography that, while still ballet, expands the idea of what ballet looks like without butchering its language, and for its company of dancers of the highest artistic and physical caliber. Whether one likes the product or not, what a viewer gets from a Complexions program is primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) the ballet “brand” that the company reliably produces and performs so well.

To celebrate her fortieth anniversary as a choreographer, Silvers revives her first evening-length dance, “Pandora’s Cake Box,” from 1996. It has something to do with Berg’s opera “Lulu” and with Wedekind’s play “Pandora’s Box,” but more to do with Silvers’s intelligence and eccentric imagination.