Written by Nina Evans for THE ARTISTS FORUM MAGAZINE
Edited by Amos White V for THE ARTISTS FORUM, INC
Photos: Becca Vision
REVIEWER RATINGS:
4.5 out of 5 stars
MATTHEW WESTERBY COMPANY 2025 PERFORMANCE SEASON AT HUDSON GUILD
NEW YORK, NY (May 16, 2025) Last month, the Matthew Westerby Company presented their 2025 Performance Season at the Murray Haber Theatre at Hudson Guild in Chelsea. On April 26, 2025, we got to chance to experience their collection of selected works in an intimate staging— the show was moving both in the artistic strength of the pieces and the moving, activist arguments they make.
The first movement in the program, entitled When At First, They Came for Me is striking right from the beginning; dancers in army-grey-green outfits align in a rigid formation. Their synchronized movements are deeply controlled to the point of restriction. In the arc of the dance, we can see individuals trying to break out of the stiff structure they have been assigned to. A very tender duet emerges from the larger group, contrasting softness with the hard lines of the others who are still part of the initial formation. When the two insurgents return to their place in line, they exchange longing looks, aching to return to one another. The choreography here emphasizes a sense of separation, distance that is only made colder and less comfortable by the brutalist conformity of the piece. When At First, They Came for Me is politically charged and emotionally stirring.
Conform / Rebel also plays with the idea of conformity, but in this iteration, there is a fluidity to the dancers’ movements even within the homogenous section, as if they are cells of one organism acting in tandem. In a diagonal formation, the performers echo each others’ motions from the front of the line to the back, from the back to the front, like a pulling and pushing tide. They move so convincingly as one that it was genuinely jarring when individual forces began to break out and rebel. The piece plays with the balance between group and solo performances in a meditative, contemplative way, but certainly maintains a beating sense of urgency throughout. It was a standout to me. Both the choreography and performances felt expert, intentional, and expressive.
Piers was another highlight of the showcase— a poignant and impassioned duet between two male dancers, fraught with emotional intensity. Inspired by post-Stonewall-era westside Manhattan piers, where the LGBTQ community found space for expression and freedom, the dance (as MWC eloquently puts it) “evokes the freedom, the exuberance, the anonymity and the dangers of the Piers scene.” The queerness, the history, the sense of excitement and fear were all clear even without formal explanation, expressed in the vivid quality of movement between the two dancers’ bodies.
An interesting departure toward the end of the showcase was a piece called Womanhood. Set to a spoken word poem read by actor L.A. Brown, this solo dance is interpretive, embodied, and powerful. It celebrates womanhood but does not shy away from the sacrifice and toll it takes to be a woman. It is a battle cry in the name of femininity: “My day is not your day / My body is not your body / My stories are mine to tell,” Brown reads. While I was watching, I was considering the performative aspect of womanhood, what a woman is expected to be, versus what it feels like in my own body to be a woman. The piece ends with a rousing statement, a reclamation of past, present, and future: “My power, my pain / And it all belongs to me.”
Many of the pieces (Womanhood, Piers, and When At First, They Came for Me in particular) consider how politics come back to the body; how it is policed or restricted, & how gender and sexuality are judged or permitted to be expressed. This program makes macro issues personal. “My work in general is reflective of my identity as an immigrant, LGBTQ+ New Yorker,” states company director Matthew Westerby. “I believe in building community through dance and making the arts accessible to everyone. With that in mind, this program of work speaks to the power of community, of collaboration, of struggle, resistance, of feminism, of LGBTQ+ history, and of one work about simply of where I am – middle aged but wanting to lose myself in all of the exuberance of what I love – the magic and the power of dance.”
Pieces like Salt Shore and Out Here, in the Middle round out the showcase. In Salt Shore, the dancers move like light rays reflected on water, forming the changing angles and shapes with their extended arms and legs. Out Here, in the Middle is a bright ending to the performance. It feels joyous and redemptive, like early Spring transforming the soil into something new.
Matthew Westerby Company is a non-profit organization based in Upper Manhattan whose practice puts emphasis on supporting diverse communities in New York and beyond. In addition to their professional performances, they partner with community organizations and public schools to make accessible dance programming.
For more about Matthew Westerby Company, visit https://www.matthewwesterbycompany.org/
