Ezralow Dance kicks off NextMove 2016 with a wide-open 'Open'

Hollywood was made for Daniel Ezralow. Talents like his don't come along often. Like Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse, he is one of those great American choreographers who worked in film and stage. Over the years, he has choreographed the Oscars, the Sochi Olympics, and Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark - but he's never really settled down into his own company until now. His new Los Angeles-based company, Ezralow Dance, made its Philadelphia debut Wednesday night, with Open at NextMove at the Prince's spring opener.

Ezralow's expertise in multimedia showmanship (conceived and designed with his wife, Arabella Ezralow, and with Luca Parmigiani) and playful optical illusions present a singularly American art form paralleled only by MOMIX (of which he was a founding member) and Pilobolus.

Episodic in structure, Open featured 15 sections performed by Ezralow's nine dancers. Set to a classical music score ranging from Chopin to Bach, the sections changed in mood from romantic to seriocomic.

Several sliding screens served as backdrops for clever video projections or as blank walls to conceal or reveal dancers virtually shapeshifting behind them. The choreography sometimes got folded into all that chicanery. But then it re-emerged, as in a duet with a watery atmosphere in which Patrick Cook spun Chelsey Arce overhead in three revolutions as if she were a fish swirling in the sea.

In a section themed to Bizet's Carmen, Anthea Young's dropped head and outstretched arms showed her stunning musculature limned in warm lighting. As she lifted up her head and hands, though, we saw that instead of castanets, she held little dolls, Carmen and Don José, like handpuppets. The hilarity of seeing the puppet stab Carmen to death is muted, and the horror of the murder amplified, when Young rises to her full height and dramatically pulls at her skirt as if it were a matador's cape, that of Escamillo, Carmen's true object of desire.

This ability to summon the comic and the tragic in a moment makes Ezralow's dances spellbinding.

But in "Dance of the Knights," a section themed to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, the dancers shimmered as gods and goddesses in gold lamé, and I longed to see Ezralow go deeper into the idea.

Ezralow Dance makes a fitting front bookend to this 2016 NextMove series, which closes with MOMIX in May - and Hollywood is made better for artists like Ezralow.

Through Sunday, Feb. 7. Prince Theater, 1412 Chestnut St. Tickets: $37-$57. Information: 215-422-4580, princetheater.org/next-move