http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/arts/dance/review-danish-dance-theater-pulse-checking-and-a-rave-for-the-undead.html 2016-10-14 18:37:05 Review: Danish Dance Theater, Pulse-Checking and a Rave for the Undead The troupe’s “Black Diamond,” an American premiere at the Joyce, lurches and stumbles — and not on purpose. === As the curtain rises on “Black Diamond” by Alas, “Black Diamond,” which had its United States premiere on Thursday at the Joyce Theater, turns out to be less of an enjoyably awful sci-fi fantasy than merely a dull dance. True, the unintentional comedy keeps coming: the fetish-object glowing orb that appears at the end of the first act; the two dancers in the second act, encased in head-to-toe body stockings, who play humanoids that can’t learn how to hug. But the choreography, by the Copenhagen troupe’s British-born artistic director, Tim Rushton, forgoes a comprehensible narrative in favor of a murky atmosphere without much formal interest. The man from the beginning (the taut, compact Luca Marazia) wanders through, occasionally threatened by the hordes, losing and regaining the light-of-humanity orb. But he keeps ceding the stage to some dumb tribal dance or an uninspired variation on the tired formula by which a woman is passed around and manipulated by a group of men. It’s not a good sign when the most striking section involves dancers checking their own pulses. Every so often, the lights brighten and the music swerves from minimalist strings by Alexander Balanescu or Philip Glass into club beats by the Danish electronic music producer