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Theater & Dance

Rules of the Game Explodes With Collaborative Ideas in Dallas Premiere

Pharrell composed the music for the world premiere performance.
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If the goal of the Soluna Festival is to foster creative collaborations that cut across disciplines, then it succeeded wildly Tuesday at the Winspear Opera House with the premiere of “Rules of the Game,” a work folding audacious ideas about dance, art, and music into one stunning performance.

The collaborators behind “Rules of the Game” arrived in Dallas, where the work was developed, with accolades in tow. Choreographer Jonah Bokaer has a Guggenheim Fellowship. Artist Daniel Arsham has shown his work in museums and galleries around the country, and has 229,000 Instagram followers. Pharrell Williams, who composed the score, has a shelf full of Grammys and a No. 1 single to his name. Renowned conductor and arranger David Campbell, at the podium leading members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, has several No. 1 albums to his name.

That “Rules of the Game” is so remarkably enchanting is almost just a happy bonus. By commissioning such a high-profile work in the first place, Soluna, and by extension the Dallas Symphony, made a powerful statement.

And, as the presidents of the Symphony and the AT&T Performing Arts Center took care to note before the show, it doesn’t reflect badly on a city with big cultural ambitions — aspirations that may outstrip reality, but are at least apparent in the size of our Arts District, a sometimes all-too-empty expanse that will be relatively bustling with activity over the next few weeks of Soluna performances.

The dress rehearsal for
The dress rehearsal for “Rules of the Game,” the multidisciplinary work that premiered Tuesday at the Winspear. Photo by James Coreas.

The show opened with two past collaborations by Bokaer and Arsham, each setting the stage for “Rules of the Game” in their inspired use of unpredictable theatrical scenery: “Recess” with large pieces of paper, “Why Patterns” with thousands of ping-pong balls. (An unexpected downpour of the latter prop elicited the kind of audience gasp you usually only hear at really good horror movies.)

With “Rules of the Game,” it was Greek busts and basketballs, smashed and reassembled on screen via the temporal trickery of a high-speed digital camera, and playfully juggled by the dancers on stage. The piece was loosely inspired by the play Six Characters in Search of an Authorbut any kind of narrative or thematic through line is secondary to the sheer emotion of such graceful movement, in turns combative and gentle, reckless and hesitant. To paraphrase Williams, movement itself is the point.

Williams’ music (arranged by Campbell) splits the difference between the electro-funk futurism that’s been his hallmark and the more abstract, classical demands of scoring conceptual dance, possessed by a regal pop bounce that feels integral to the rest of the production.

“Rules of the Game” will go on to be performed in New York and elsewhere. Dallas could count itself lucky to host its premiere, if luck had anything to do with it. It takes conscious — and yes, collaborative — effort to bring in the international talent that makes shows like this possible, just as it takes real work to support the many gifted artists who call Dallas home. Soluna helps prove how important that effort is.

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