Movers and Shapers

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY, BRIAN SEIBERT and GIA KOURLAS Published: September 20, 2013

The energy that characterizes New York City finds artistic release in dance. Other cities around the world have important dance scenes, but for diversity and vitality this one has no match. Here ballet and modern mingle with tap and jazz. Here ethnic and experimental mixed media works find devoted audiences. Here its natural to find the formal colliding with the forward-looking. And during the main season, from September to June, its not unusual to find a dozen dance productions opening in a week. In that spirit, we present 10 professionals who, working offstage or on, embody this range from tap to ballet, flamenco to postmodern. Each, in a different way, makes New Yorks dance scene singular.

Soledad Barrio
Flamenco dancer

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Soledad Barrio in "Siguiriya" at the Cherry Lane Theater in 2010.

The inestimable power of Soledad Barrio is rooted in contradictions. Onstage, shes more animal than woman, but even so, her force-of-nature explosiveness neither unfurls in flashy bursts nor operates on the surface. In those moments when she twists her sinewy back and raises her arms high above her head to frame a face with veiled eyes just before her heels pound the floor, seemingly in an effort to rip through to the earth below Ms. Barrio lands in a place every dancer dreams of inhabiting. She lives in the moment. Born in Madrid, where she started her dance training at the late age of 18, Ms. Barrio is a founding member of the troupe Noche Flamenca, which is directed by her husband, Martn Santangelo. (They have two daughters, Gabriela and Stella.) From Dec. 3 through 15, Ms. Barrio showcases her extraordinary abilities at the Joyce Theater in a program that merges music, song and dance. For it, shell dance a new alegras duet, choreographed by Mr. Santangelo, opposite Juan Ogalla; her solo will be a siguiriya, one of flamencos oldest forms a slow, desolate dance in which Ms. Barrio, enveloped by the music, becomes majestically ravaged. Its like watching the ocean as one wave crashes into the next.

Yet alongside her profound athleticism, Ms. Barrio has an allure that is based in something eerily intangible. The word soledad translates to loneliness, and that heartache permeates all of her performances: what she seems to be saying, with both her feet and her eyes, is that you cant escape your destiny. - GIA KOURLAS