NEW YORK, NY.- Douglas Dunn isn’t afraid of color, or even of dizzying patterns placed on color. Costumes that slip into the outlandish? Bring them on.

This is a choreographer and dancer who merges formalism with the fantastical. He met his match, years ago, in visual artist and designer Mimi Gross. They first worked together in 1979, when she designed the body-conscious, colorful costumes for “Foot Rules.”

In “Garden Party,” Gross has taken their collaboration to a new level by transforming Dunn’s studio into a springtime oasis, within which 10 dancers, including Dunn, immerse themselves in a lush and somewhat leafy setting: a quirky and whimsical dance garden.

They also wear Gross’ costumes, gorgeously cut leotards, each different but each embellished with a pop of fluorescent yellow. From time to time, there are additions, like wispy skirts and translucent capes, but they operate as more than clothing. The ever-evolving costumes help to turn this landscape into a living mural. That Dunn’s studio is the real deal — a dancer’s loft in SoHo where art is still not only made but also shown — makes the enchanted view all the better.

In the work, enhanced with golden-hour lighting and projections by Lauren Parrish that wash the stage in warm oranges and pinks, the choreography is full of images from nature — arms swirl like branches or rounded backs bring to mind wilted tulips. Dunn’s dancers are always highly technical; they need to be to perform choreography that calls for exacting line. But they’re also people, neither showing strain nor putting on airs.

Within the movement — Dunn credits himself with “steps” — poetry and music provide a sort of libretto, including text from poets Anne Waldman and Rainer Maria Rilke and songs by John Lennon and Yoko Ono (“Oh My Love”) and Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris (“If This Is Goodbye”). Throughout much of the first half, Dunn sits behind a colorful pulpit camouflaged like a plant; he wears a green top and bottoms dotted with tiny leaves.

At one point, he moves a large stuffed blue bird from side to side, making it airborne. It’s a little goofy, but that’s part of Dunn’s appeal, too. Beneath the whimsy are deeper ideas, in which poetry — read in voice-over by Dunn; Grazia Della-Terza, Dunn’s partner and a dancer in the work; and others — touches on themes of loss, love and death. One line, by Rilke, illuminates something that seems to mirror the dance itself: “For however mysterious death is, life is all the more so.”




At 80, Dunn is still spry. He may not jump, but his long body covers space like it always has; he turns with flair. In an extended balance, he steadied his gaze and stood on one foot with the other knee pulled in and bent in parallel. There were moments when he loosened up, too, swaying from side to side while peppering the floor with darting footwork. In a split second, he raised his shoulders twice to the beat of the music. What a ham! Underneath his green outfit was a brown top and pants, and this costume change seemed apt: Dunn as a tree, weathered yet still standing.

The most intricate choreography was given to an ensemble of eight, including Jin Ju Song-Begin, a dancer of serene beauty. Duets and trios morphed into group numbers that gave the stage a pliable softness as the dancers waded through patterns that brought them closer to the audience or had them receding behind plants, real and imagined. With quick turns in relevé, they drifted across the floor like pieces of slender grass caught in bursts of wind.

As dancers, they breathed together — calmly holding balances or promenading in attitude or arabesque — and like Dunn, they sometimes embodied the natural world, too. In one scene, Emily Pope turned fierce as the owl from “The Owl and the Nightingale,” and while crouching, she clenched her hands in fists as a voice-over said: “Look at my features, and you’ll find ferocity personified.”

But woven throughout this party of a dance is emotion and with it a sense of surrender. When Lennon sings, “I see the wind, oh, I see the trees; everything is clear in my heart,” followed later by a bit of Bach’s “St. John Passion,” which ends the work, “Garden Party” seems to be Dunn’s way of looking at the time before death with a degree of wonder. But it’s also a mischievous, eccentric Day-Glo adventure, or a dance you’d find in the middle of a Wes Anderson movie. It’s a secret garden three floors from the city sidewalk.

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Douglas Dunn + Dancers

Through Sunday at Douglas Dunn Studio; douglasdunndance.com

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.