Sometimes it’s better to just shut up and dance. There was good stuff in Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s performance at the Joyce Tuesday night, but not when the dancers opened their mouths.
Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s “Orbo Novo” (Latin for “The New World”) was inspired by the book “My Stroke of Insight,” by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who suffered her own massive stroke. (Now recovered, Taylor’s since appeared on “Oprah.”)
Although often danced in monolithic unison, “Orbo Novo” had a rushing flow and poignancy in depicting the mental landscape of a stroke victim. In the opening scene, as a man and a woman reached through a large metal grid to each other, the woman pulled herself part of the way through but remained trapped and suspended.
Alexander Dodge’s set, composed of movable gridded panels, was ingenious and evocative. Szymón Brzoska’s beautiful score, played live by a piano quintet, was a classy touch.
Things got rough, though, when the dance went from being inspired by Dr. Taylor’s book to being about it. The dancers inexpertly narrated long passages from the book or fell down and twitched.
Cherkaoui is a better choreographer than he is a thinker — do you really want to get your dance ideas from “Oprah” and Dr. Oz? — and the company is better at dancing than talking.
That said, there’s an interesting dance within “Orbo Novo,” if you ignore the prattle and psychobabble.