Dance: Spanish Soul

For his latest work, Spanish Wells, choreographer Nicholas Leichter not only makes a connection between Claude Debussy and Amy Winehouse but also locates a “1960s vibe” that confirms his unusual musical juxtaposition. As the seven dancers cluster and clamber, twist and shudder, with visceral force and sinewy tension during a rehearsal in his Chelsea studio, the alternation between the lush deluge of Debussy’s La Mer and raw, bluesy selections from Winehouse’s Back to Black album do manage to complement—and contrast with—one another intriguingly.

Leichter’s earlier musical choices included Bjork, Mary K. Blige and Stevie Wonder. But the past few years he’s been tackling some of the behemoths of the orchestral repertory. In 2006 and 2007, he was commissioned by the Brooklyn Philharmonic to choreograph Carmina Burana and then The Rite of Spring. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” he recalled about plunging into Carmina, speaking by phone a few days after the rehearsal. “It was like boot camp, in some ways. Everything I knew went out the window, and I started from scratch all over again. I was just throwing things into the pot, and it just worked, it just clicked.”

When the orchestra proposed Sacre, Leichter’s first reaction was not so positive. “That was the last thing I was interested in doing, just because so many people had done it before,” he explains. “But that was also the inspiration. It’s turned into a choreographer’s rite of passage. The incentive was to try to both take all that information—the history of it—but also throw it out the window.” His rather severe version—with the dancers in sober gray coveralls—defies the score’s association with pagan ritual, presenting the dancers in unpredictable, often rough-and-tumble movement—a loping backwards run, a leg thrust forward and caught by a partner—that has a clarity and earthy robustness. His seven-member company (with which he performs) has been touring with Sacre, and it shares this week’s DTW program with the premiere.

Spanish Wells is the name of a settlement on a tiny island in the Bahamas, which in colonial times was a last stop for Spanish ships to refill their water supply before returning to Europe, and the piece had its inception as a collaboration with an art curator. When that project, which focused on a painting of the Atlantic Ocean, didn’t pan out, Leichter opted to take it in his own personal direction, not working with any presenter. “I wanted to take the information that I’ve learned, take all the things that have happened to me in the past year. It felt like it was something I just had to do for myself,” he says.

As he began choreographing to the three sections of the Debussy score, Leichter sensed, “it would be great if something busted out from these very emotional and erratic pieces. It would be great if we had a singer, or something that shakes this up in some way. I think the thing I was searching for was the ‘soul’ within the music.” Winehouse fit the bill. “What I really appreciated about her is that she’s just putting it right out there. She’s saying the most inappropriate thing—it’s so wrong it’s right.”

Reading up on Debussy’s turbulent personal life, he found “he was this really erratic figure. The composers were really like the controversial pop stars of their day. I also appreciated how he took all these different influences, drawing from different sources and cultures—because it’s kind of what I do.”   June 25-29, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19 St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.). 212-924-0077; Wed.-Fri. 7:30, Sat. 2 & 7:30, Sun. 2. $15-$25.