The Brooklyn Rail

On a sunny Thursday morning in May, I wait in a line of tourists on the austere stone steps of the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. In the regal lobby, I pass by groups huddled over maps and head to the Visitor’s Center, where I’m handed silent-disco–style headphones. Unlike the hundreds of other visitors flocking to the library that day, I’m one of a select fifteen here to see Monica Bill Barnes & Company’s Lunch Dances.

Since 2013, MBB&CO—headed by the eponymous Monica Bill Barnes—has been committed to the mission of “bringing dance where it doesn’t belong.” So far, those settings have included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a simulated post-work happy hour, and the atrium of a luxury Manhattan mall. Lunch Dances, created by Barnes and collaborator Robbie Saenz de Viteri, ups the ante by introducing dance to an environment infamous for its strict rules of decorum: a library.

The premise of the show, which clocks in at one hour and runs at 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. May 5–17, is that Barnes—dressed in gray dress pants, a white button-down shirt, a tie, and sneakers—is a library page responsible for delivering materials to five library patrons before she can take her lunch break. Saenz de Viteri, dressed similarly in a blazer and slacks, follows Barnes, pushing a cart containing her deliveries and a laptop and microphone. Similar to the company’s last few shows, Saenz de Viteri narrates while Barnes dances. Here, Saenz de Viteri’s words, and an accompanying soundtrack ranging from classical piano to Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” play through headphones.

The audience follows the duo through the marble hallways and staircases of the library at a fast clip. In each location, Saenz de Viteri introduces the group to an actor dressed to blend in as just another visitor. He shares their stories: what brings them to the library, and the deeper layer of what it is that they’re really looking for. They’re joined by a group of five other “pages,” who, along with Barnes, act as energetic and compassionate back-up dancers, amplifying the emotion behind each story. The dancers, including standouts Andy Chapman and Hsiao-Jou Tang, move with ease through Barnes’s trademark moves: pedestrian gestures, tight turns, and soft-shoe–inspired footwork.

The characters’ stories are heartfelt and wistful, with moments of humor: Nell (Birgit Huppuch), suffered a virus that has impeded her ability to walk, so she visits the library to track on maps the paths that she used to traverse on foot. KK (Luis Moreno) is an aspiring writer and cigarette smoker who dreams of being chosen as one of the select scholars given unlimited access to the library each year—while pretending to smoke a pencil. And in a moving turn, Patsy (Kim Ima), searches endlessly for an image to get tattooed on her arm to properly honor her deceased wife.

This is Barnes and Saenz de Viteri’s gift as creative partners: through movement, narration, and music, they peel back the layers of humanity, revealing the longing and dreams at the heart of individuals who often seem ordinary at first. At the beginning of Lunch Dances, Saenz de Viteri introduces John, a tall man with a long white beard dressed in a black suit, who you’re led to believe is an NYPL security guard. In the show’s final stop, the audience is asked to remove their headphones, and John (actor and singer John Bennett) closes the show with a melancholy a cappella performance of Barbra Streisand’s “People.”

The ending—both the sneaky reveal of John as singer and the lyrics of the ballad (“People who need people / are the luckiest people in the world”)—perfectly encapsulate the message of Lunch Dances: pay attention. All of us, New Yorkers especially, rush past hundreds of people a day, often without as much as a passing glance. Barnes and Saenz de Viteri remind us that everyone we see has their own unique and valuable inner life.

At the end of the hour, Saenz de Viteri tells the audience that Barnes has now completed her tasks, and is ready to go retrieve her lunch (a yogurt that’s been sitting in her bag since early that morning). As I return my headphones and walk back down the library’s steps, bidding adieu to Patience and Fortitude, I find myself noticing the business people drinking coffee in Bryant Park, the teenage boy excitedly trying a food cart hotdog, and the group of women, dressed all in pink, posing for a photo. Then, I put in my AirPods and head for the subway. I’m hungry for lunch.