Episodes

Ulysses Dove’s Episodes, set to a sparse, percussive score by Robert Ruggieri, is a starkly passionate interpretation of the power struggles involved in human relationships. Dancers meet briefly for an erotic encounter that is brought to an abrupt and often violent end by a sharp slap, a devastating look, or a sexy gait of a passerby. The tension of each couple builds until it can no longer be contained and then erupts in explosive leaps and turns. John B. Reade lights the stage with narrow diagonals alternating with small pools of light which illustrate the fragile supports upon which male/female sexual relationships seem to rest, as though one might take a false step out of the light and into oblivion. Moments of tension, explosive confrontation, and unresolved longing are probed as each individual dances with complete abandon.

Following the Company premiere of Episodes in 1989, The New York Times wrote, “the work is a visceral turn-on, testimony to Mr. Dove’s incontrovertible gift for exciting the senses, for exploiting a physical and kinetic impact to its utmost.”

"I did this piece after a very dear friend of mine died from AIDS, and my feeling when he died was that I really wished that I had had more minutes with him—to say things like, 'I really appreciated the time we spent together, I really appreciated what his friendship meant.’ But I didn't have five minutes. And as I was thinking about it, I thought about what a positive way into a work would be... I thought what life would be like if everybody lived every single moment, so that at the end of life we didn't need five minutes with anybody, that life was so fully lived that each episode of life was complete and that the only thing we could hope for was that we would have more episodes."  
– Ulysses Dove 

“[Episodes is] the kind of choreography that propels young audiences to their feet and sets them screaming.” 
- Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times

“Episodes...is a fresh dispatch from the choreographic battle of the sexes. It has a savagery and semi-acrobatic brilliance, not to mention a heightened sexuality not often encountered in ballet.” 
- Clive Barnes, The New York Post

“Women come hurtling out of the wings to be caught an inch, an instant, shy of annihilation....Dove gives us performing at its most virtuosic and theater of the highest order.” 
- Charles Jurrist, Daily News