Review: Daniil Simkin’s Sons of Echo – the Female Gaze, the Male Body
Marta Mele sees Daniil Simkin’s Sons of Echo, a journey through male bodies in motion, where six outstanding dancers explore strength, vulnerability and connection under the gaze of four contemporary female choreographers.
| Title | Sons of Echo |
| Company | Studio Simkin | Joyce Theater Productions |
| Venue | Teatro Romano, Spoleto |
| Date | 8 July 2026 |
| Reviewer | Marta Mele |
What does it mean to be a man in ballet today? Behind the image of the elegant, virtuosic dancer, seemingly devoted to enhancing his female partner, lie models of masculinity that have taken different forms throughout history.
At ballet’s origins, men dominated the stage – think of Louis XIV himself as Apollo. During the Romantic era, their role was progressively reduced to supporting the ballerina, only to regain centrality in the twentieth century thanks to the Ballets Russes and figures such as Vaslav Nijinsky. Today, in the age of social media, that regained centrality risks turning into narcissism: the display of a perfect body rather than an authentic act of communication. It is from this question that Sons of Echo, the project conceived by Daniil Simkin, one of the most distinguished figures on the international dance scene, draws its inspiration.
Trained initially by his mother and later performing at some of the world’s leading companies, from the Vienna State Opera to American Ballet Theatre and Staatsballett Berlin, Simkin founded Studio Simkin in 2021, a research platform where classical technique enters into dialogue with contemporary languages. Created for New York’s Joyce Theater in January 2026 and presented in its European premiere at the 69th Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto at the invitation of artistic director Daniele Cipriani, Sons of Echo emerges from this very tension: to investigate male identity through dance, questioning stereotypes, vulnerabilities and contemporary distortions.
Alongside Simkin appear five performers of remarkable individuality, each bringing a very different artistic background. Cuban dancer Osiel Gouneo, étoile of Bayerisches Staatsballett and the first Black dancer to perform Romeo in Nureyev’s version of Romeo and Juliet at the Paris Opéra, brings a stage presence of extraordinary power. Danish dancer Alban Lendorf, formerly with American Ballet Theatre, has also pursued a career as an actor alongside dance. South African Siphesihle November, whose journey began in street dance and who is now a principal dancer with The National Ballet of Canada, embodies the encounter between different cultures and movement languages. Completing the group are the Spanish artist and choreographer Daniel Domenech, after experiences with Royal Ballet of Flanders and Ballett Theater Basel; and Canadian dancer Johnny McMillan, whose Rainbow Body Project explores the body as a space of transformation. Rather than a mere showcase of virtuosity, these six dancers become the living material through which Sons of Echo constructs its reflection on male presence in dance.
Unlike a traditional gala, the performance opens with a ballet class presented to the audience. As the performance begins, the dancers are engaged in centre work led by Swedish maître de ballet Tomas Karlborg, former dancer with Deutsche Oper Berlin and now maître de ballet at Staatsballett Berlin. The class unfolds with lightness and self-irony. Karlborg encourages the dancers to exaggerate the theatrical side of movement, humorously points out their small deviations from the demonstrated exercises, suggests poses and exchanges of glances worthy of social media, and culminates in a challenge of pirouettes set to the exhilarating finale of the overture to Rossini’s William Tell.
The dancers embrace the provocation, displaying impeccable virtuosity; yet beyond the desire to stand out, it is above all a sense of complicity that dominates the stage. More than rivals, they appear as companions on a shared journey, united by a common language and experience.
In the central section of the gala, it is a female gaze that shapes the dancers’ bodies. The programme begins with Notes by Lucinda Childs, an excerpt from the project created for Introdans in 2025 to celebrate the choreographer’s eighty-fifth birthday. Set to the rarefied piano sounds of Matteo Myderwyk’s Notes of Longing, Childs returns to the minimalist vocabulary that established her as one of the key figures of American postmodern dance. Osiel Gouneo, Alban Lendorf, Daniel Domenech and Siphesihle November appear bare-chested, wearing wide white trousers that suspend them between classical statues and ethereal presences. Their legs trace a continuous, elastic flow, while their arms carve the space with clear and rigorous lines. If at first the quartet evokes a masculine counterpart to Balanchine’s muses, Childs’ language gradually opens towards a more intimate dimension – in the duets, virtuosity gives way to mutual listening, and the body accepts the loss of its axis in order to trust the support of another.
The programme continues with Jack by Drew Jacoby, an American performer and choreographer whose work also extends into visual art, fashion and popular culture. The quartet formed by Osiel Gouneo, Alban Lendorf, Daniil Simkin and Johnny McMillan moves through a score that juxtaposes Antonio Russolo’s futuristic sounds with George Gershwin’s Preludes. Dressed in flamboyant fluorescent lime-green and orange lycra costumes, the four dancers first display caricatured poses of masculinity, which are immediately dismantled by a cascade of jumps, sharp accents, and lightning-fast movements. Jacoby plays with stereotypes of male identity: heroic postures are distorted, athletic gestures become grotesque, and power is transformed into an almost cartoon-like language. The transition from classical vocabulary to an exaggerated, pop-inflected physicality reveals how even the image of manhood can be a theatrical construction, constantly performed and constantly questioned.
With Will You Catch My Fall?, Canadian choreographer Anne Plamondon entrusts Johnny McMillan and Siphesihle November with an intense dialogue set to Ouri’s evocative score. It feels as if another universe opens up, one in which classical technique is not rejected but explored through its most fragile and human dimensions. Every gesture seems on the verge of collapse, every balance ready to become a fall; yet it is precisely this precariousness that gives the duet its strength. The movement emerges from a constant listening to the other, from the ability to perceive even the smallest shifts in weight and intention, in a physical dialogue that, in its sensitivity, recalls certain dynamics of contact improvisation.
The finale brings one last surprise. Tiler Peck, principal dancer of New York City Ballet, here in the role of choreographer, entrusts Real Truth by Gregory Porter with the task of drawing the threads of the entire journey together. The singer’s warm voice accompanies the entrance of Osiel Gouneo, Alban Lendorf and Daniil Simkin, while the theme of ego and the tension between truth and illusion – until then expressed through the body – finds an explicit formulation in the song’s lyrics. The choreography unfolds with naturalness: the three performers seek each other, intertwine, and support one another in a continuous dialogue that dissolves any impulse towards competition. No one claims the centre of the stage, because relationship itself, rather than individual virtuosity, becomes the true focus of the dance. After moving through irony, display and vulnerability, Sons of Echo concludes by restoring to the male body the possibility of being at once strong and fragile, spectacular and authentic.
