Platforms

Platforms was especially commissioned by the New York Musical Theatre Festival with the goal of getting more dance-driven pieces into its lineup. The show involves five choreographers — Ron De Jesus, Linda Goodrich, Nick Kenkel, Jeff Shade, and Matt Williams. The creative team also includes book writer Delaney Britt Brewer, composer Brent Lord, and director Holly-Anne Ruggiero. The result? Platforms is an hour or so of the most intense and exciting dance you're likely to see on any New York stage this season and a smartly executed piece of theatre as well. Lord's recorded score beautifully evokes the show's shifting moods as onstage drummer Eric Rubbe bangs out rhythms on assorted bowls, pails, and utensils. Brewer's story, told in dance by a sensational cast of 12, covers a night in Manhattan, starting on a subway platform at 5 p.m. and ending on a subway platform at morning rush hour — sort of an On the Town for the 21st century. The focus is on two couples and how they mix it up with various Big Apple denizens as the night progresses. One couple begins as uptight, upscale business types, but then the woman, danced by Laurie Kanyok, moves into her night job as a stripper, while the man, played by Matthew Steffens, gets exuberantly involved with a sexy transvestite. In perhaps the show's most breathtaking number, the fetchingly blond Kanyok does a pole dance to end all pole dances. The other pair, squeaky clean tourists played with infectious zest by Deborah Yates and Matt Anctil, becomes enmeshed with muggers, drug dealers and dueling tap dancers. Ted Levy serves as a sort of tap-dancing Greek chorus, repeating the show's key and just about only line of dialogue: "How funny are you today New York?" It serves as a framework for the story, but the show's raison d'être is great dance, moving with verve and freshness from tap to ballet, break, and techno. NYMF got what it wanted.