They called it orchestral soul or Philly Soul or simply the Sound of Philadelphia: An irresistible groove on a bed of lush strings. A sweet spot between Motown and disco.
“To Philly, Love, Rennie,” a new work by Rennie Harris, one of Philadelphia’s finest choreographers, seems intended as a celebration of that sound. But it’s oddly muffled.
For this dance, which Philadanco! debuted at the Joyce Theater in New York on Wednesday, Harris’s usual collaborator, Darrin Ross, has sampled lesser-known tracks by the O’Jays, yet only in pieces. Bits of “Message in Our Music,” “Put Your Hands Together” and “A Prayer” float over and under distortion and drum patterns that edge closer to house music.
Harris’s choreography is similarly muddy. It draws on his familiar device of slow-motion stage crossings that periodically erupt into intricate footwork, signs of an unstoppable spirit in oppressive conditions.
Those eruptions are thrilling, as are solo breakouts into West African steps or funk-style locking. Yet the Philadanco! dancers, a little sloppy or stiff in spots, haven’t fully settled into the style, and the piece — part of a larger project set to premiere in Philadelphia in December — feels provisional.
Curiously, another work on the program, “Promise Me You Won’t Call” (2025), choreographed by Tommie-Waheed Evans, also uses songs of Philadelphia International Records without letting us hear them clearly. The voice of Patti LaBelle is unmistakable in snatches of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and her ballad of unrequited love “If Only You Knew,” but it’s isolated in a void.
Amid gratuitously fancy lighting (by Nick Kolin), the ever-agile dancers show off their ballet technique and some applause-earning tricks, virtues diminished by the choreography’s shapelessness. That’s less of a problem in Thang Dao’s “Without Witness,” with its standard mixtape score, yet what the stronger scaffolding supports is generic, a contemporary ballet indistinguishable from dozens of others.
The committed and capable Philadanco! dancers are best served by the oldest work on the program, Christopher Huggins’s “Enemy Behind the Gates,” a company staple from 2002. It’s much more coherent than the other dances, and it’s no coincidence that it honors and maintains the structure of its music: parts of Steve Reich’s “The Four Sections.”
Making the most of that music’s drive and urgency, Huggins stages a martial display of accelerating energy that builds to a stage-filling finale. It was a crowd-pleaser nearly 25 years ago, and it remains one.
Philadanco!
Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater; joyce.org
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