If you’re ready for the best show of the summer, get to the Signature Theater as quickly as possible and immerse yourself in the extraordinary and powerful dance experience that is “Ain’t Done Bad.” It is the definition of what one might call modern modern dance.
The show is the brainchild of dancer/choreographer Jakob Karr. The 34-year-old wunderkind has been dancing since he was 12. However, he said dance had been “foreign to me really until I moved to New York.” He started working with choreographers Andy Blankenbuehler (“Hamilton”) and Mia Michaels, saying, “I was thrown into their world, getting to see how committed they were committed to storytelling and seeing how athletic and raw Mia Michael’s work was, and it really inspired me. And I became obsessed with showing off and showing off dancers to their maximum capacity. We train so hard and so often the work we’re given is bare minimum at best. I want to be part of a world that’s showing how hard we can work and how extreme we can be in our movement because I think there’s beauty in the extremes sometimes.”
Karr came to national attention as the runner-up in season six of “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2009. Karr says, “I grew up as a competitive dancer in Orlando. I graduated from high school competing and being proud of it. I moved to New York for a year of college, but I missed dancing so badly. So, I auditioned for the show on my 19th birthday, and it was just like being back into my competitive life, and I loved it so much.”
After the show, he continued to work, including stints with Cirque du Soleil and an understudy and replacement for Mistoffelees in the 2016 Broadway revival of “Cats.” And then COVID hit.
Karr says the idea for the show came at “my personal lowest low. I had left the city after six months of staying cooped up in my tiny Harlem apartment. I actually went back to Florida where I’m from originally. I hadn’t been back home in years for more than a couple of weeks at a time. So, I was back in the swamps, and I was listening to the music of Orville Peck, and this whole story just kind of unfolded in front of me. And I wrote the whole show on a legal pad in like two hours.” At the time, Karr thought Broadway was never coming back and that perhaps he and his colleagues would never perform again. However, he entered the show in the Orlando Fringe where it did well, and it was picked up by the Renaissance Theatre Company and Blue Topaz Productions, who brought it to New York.
“Ain’t Done Bad” tells the story of a young, gay man finding himself, coming out, struggling with family, identity, and finally finding the path to living authentically — and joyfully. Though the story is all told through dance, the narrative is accessible, moving, and heartfelt. The precision of the movement and the athleticism of the seven-person company, including Karr as the lead character, is often gasp-inducing in its beauty.
Karr has developed and expressed an original choreographic style that draws on classic modern dance of Alvin Ailey or Martha Graham, but is also inspired by his mentors Blankenbeuhler and Michaels, as well as the gymnastics and hip hop styles of music videos. In talking about his style, Karr, who attended the Ailey School, adds, “I feel like I’m part of the end of the old school dance era. That era was ‘work as hard as you possibly can as long as you possibly can.’ And that’s where my head is at at all times.”
Those familiar with some modern dance classics may pick up on some of the quotes or sense the inspirations, but Karr and his corps take those to new levels of energy and excitement — as well as physical challenge — all in service of his story.
He continues, “My goal with the show is that bridge between dance and theater. I want people to cross that bridge. I want the theater audience to come see us because we’re telling a story. We’re not just dancing in units for an hour and a half. There’s a story to be told. There are characters to fall in love with and villains to hate, and we’re capable of all of it. We’ve spent our whole lives training for it, and I wanted to feature dancers in roles for an audience to receive.”
More than a century ago, the Russian dance impresario Serge Diaghilev is said to have ordered artist Jean Cocteau to, “astonish me.” While Cocteau was designing sets, the oft-quoted demand has nonetheless become an integral element of groundbreaking work. It is nothing less than thrilling to see Karr embrace that and in so doing gives us a vision of the future of dance theater.
“Ain’t Done Bad” | Pershing Square Signature Center | 480 West 42nd Street | Tues- Fri 7:30 p.m.; Sat 8 p.m.; Weds, Sat 2 p.m. through September 1 | $28-$84 at aintdonebad.com | 90 mins, 1 intermission
