Photo: Melissa Sobel/Meems Images

Choreography: Anna Sokolow
Music: Anatol Vieru
6-10 dancers, 20 minutes

Ms. Sokolow’s shattering vision of people denied their humanity, trapped and isolated; still as relevant today as when it was first created.

[The] performers stare intently at us—calling to mind animals with a cage between them and their prey, or escaped prisoners trying to see into the darkness ahead. When they suddenly gaze toward the roof, you imagine that something deadly could rain down. Or a blessing. … it grips your heart.

Anna Sokolow‘s Dark Spirit
Deborah Jowitt
DanceBeat, March 13, 2016

 

“Steps of Silence carries…to a searing extreme with its distorted bodies. Yet the finish to this concentration-camp scene is theatrical and true. Newspapers blow in from the wings and cover the bodies on the floor, history’s human debris.”

Anna Kisselgoff
The New York Times, 1991