DECONSTRUCTION OR RECONSTRUCTION?

The Rockettes, at 100, need a kick in the right direction

- GIA KOURLAS

Director and choreographer Linda Haberman at the Radio City Music Hall in 2014.

A Rockette won't fall in the middle of a kick line. That's a given, a Christmas miracle you can rely on. But mid-kick one went down last month — boom! — in the Christmas Spectacular Starring The Radio City Rockettes, before an audience of former Rockettes celebrating the group's 100th anniversary.

Falls don't bother me. I'd rather see a dancer move with abandon and topple onto the floor than play it safe and remain upright. But Rockettes, whose whole reason to be is precision dance, don't fall. They move as one. Their accuracy is startling, their unison enlightening, and any break from such commitment feels wrong.

The more than 500 Rockettes in the audience that night didn't react much to the slip. They were in celebration mode, even if many seemed distracted — the woman in front of me was livestreaming the show on a video call to what was quite likely a former Rockette watching from her kitchen.

What was more out of step was that a show called "Christmas Spectacular Starring The Radio City Rockettes" didn't showcase The Rockettes with conviction. The production started out strong — the first four dances in the show have long been the most satisfying — but as the night wore on, The Rockettes, an American institution, started to feel like Santa's arm candy instead of the accomplished dancers they are. And, why, on the occasion of a milestone anniversary, was there no new Rockette dance to usher it in?