What is it like to play dance music without dancers? Apparently lonely. Johnny Gandelsman, the acclaimed violinist and a 2024 MacArthur fellow, has spent a chunk of time performing Bach’s complete cello suites, but something was missing: movement. And not only for dancers, but for himself too.
In “Johnny Loves Johann,” at the Joyce Theater through Sunday, Gandelsman is joined by four dance artists. John Heginbotham, the production’s artistic adviser, shares the stage with Gandelsman, as do Caili Quan, Jamar Roberts and Melissa Toogood. Each choreographed and danced a suite, with the third and sixth created in collaboration.
Despite this chance to hear and see Gandelsman’s lively and supple approach to Bach — his flowing strings produce a lovely, danceable folk swing — the evening-length work deteriorates fairly quickly, veering into too-cute territory. (The whimsy of the title was worrying.) “Johnny Loves Johann” — a two-hour production with one dad joke too many — is like a buddy movie without any tension.
The artist Arlene Shechet contributes scenic design and sculpture fabrication including chairs and a yellow jacket adorned with ruffled blossoms, which are eventually scattered on the floor like popcorn at a theater. Earlier, one was used like a handkerchief and tossed between dancers in the air. The audience laughed. I rooted for it to hit the floor.
Maile Okamura’s costumes offer a refreshing palette of canary yellow, lime green, midnight blue and a deep wine. But many of the choreographic choices seem like throwaways. Repeated movement has the dancers continually curving in space: arms lifted exuberantly, feet pattering in a loose circle or two only to return to a stationary spot. Noodling is the dance phrase of the day. Instead of fully living inside the music, the performance relies too frequently on comedy bits.
Toogood, known more as a dancer than a choreographer — an exacting member of Merce Cunningham’s company, she became a freelance star and now directs the dance division at the Juilliard School — performs with Gandelsman in the first suite, exuding a nimble naiveté.
She runs around him in circles with her arms pulled back like wings and hops closer and closer, invading his space with wide-eyed innocence. It’s like watching an overly permissive parent let a child get away with murder.
There are crossovers between the suites: When Roberts first enters with his back to the audience, Toogood flips over into a handstand, propped up against him. Heginbotham places a single white sneaker at the front of the stage and then another. A chair is planted on the stage, and Toogood takes a seat. For a moment, they pause and pose for a picture.
During Roberts’s suite, two chairs are brought in; Quan hands Roberts a marker and sits opposite him. His seat also turns out to be an easel, and soon he starts sketching her, but this dance break is a head scratcher — neither charming nor absurd enough to warrant its interruption. It’s like Mr. Bean wandered into a dance.
Roberts, a former Alvin Ailey powerhouse, does dance, his eloquent feet gliding along a diagonal with Gandelsman playing at its end. When he speeds up, his brisk and buttery transitions are alluring — Roberts is a one-of-a-kind dancer who can linger and curl in delicacy before shifting into strength. More than the others he loses himself in the music; but just like the others, his choreography is too casual to capture the breadth of the music.
After intermission, Heginbotham, a Mark Morris dancer turned choreographer, shares the stage with Gandelsman, and here, the joke is how he continually tries to leave it. Each time Heginbotham tries to slink into the wings, the other dancers force him back out. After he puts on a yellow jacket, he comes into his own — delighted with the music, with his slippery soft shoe footwork, with plucking the ruffles from his coat. Heginbotham is genuinely jovial, but by the time Quan appears for the fifth suite, the dance has lost its steam. This also has to do with the music; hearing the cello suites played on violin gave them a fiddle-folksy vitality, but also lessened their depth, their soulful resonance.
Quan, a former member of Philadelphia’s BalletX, is more subdued than the others in her exchange with Gandelsman, who continues playing while she presses her body against his. He takes a break, holding his violin at his side as they sway to a recording, and what had become sentimental gets sleepy. When the group returns for the sixth suite — first using brooms to sweep the yellow blossoms off the stage — they all end up with a pair of white sneakers, which they don’t wear on their feet. Instead they insert their hands inside them, twisting the shoes into ballet positions and steps.
For the final section, the dancers joined a foot-tapping Gandelsman to stomp their feet to the beat. Eventually, all five inched closer to one side of the stage before tipping forward and cascading — all for one and one for all — into the wings.
“Johnny Loves Johann”
Through April 19 at the Joyce Theater, Manhattan; joyce.org
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic for The Times. She writes reviews, essays and feature articles and works on a range of stories.
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