What the critics say

  • Chris Elam's dances burst with distinctiveness ... he is a talent, no doubt about it... Mr. Elam is well on his way to establishing himself as an important voice in downtown dance.

    John Rockwell, New York Times
  • Christopher Elam's Misnomer Dance Theater hit town with a force I haven't seen since the early days of Mark Morris.

    Elizabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice
  • Bizarre and comical, Chris Elam's Misnomer Dance Theater blurs the line between humans behaving weirdly and animals at play.

    Emily Macel, Dance Magazine
  • Chris Elam has fashioned a distinctive, engagingly bizarre choreographic style…his skill and clarity of vision delight the soul.

    Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
  • A True original, Mr. Elam is one of the most individualistic of modern dance voices today.

    Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times
  • Absurd and poignant... wonderfully strange and unpredictable choreography.

    Brian Seibert, The New Yorker
  • Elam’s juicy, elastic tumbling looks simultaneously innocent and darkly symbolic. His mythic and playful dances suggest something that might have happened at the dawn of the world.

    Chris Dohse, Dance Magazine
  • If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, don’t expect Elam to walk it.[Elam's work] makes you chuckle and recoil at the same time.

    Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Dance Writer
  • Elam, who is more impossibly elongated than an El Greco Christ, frequently looks like a praying mantis or a goofy Hanuman.

    Chris Dohse, The Dance Insider
  • Only partially resolves into dancing humans.

    Marcia Siegel, The Boston Phoenix
  • Fusion doesn’t begin to describe what’s going on here; Elam is annealing his influences, creating a taut, intense movement language quite remote from the ‘released’ style so common downtown.

    Elizabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice
  • Chris Elam is as flexible as a pretzel.

    Gus Solomons, The Dance Insider
  • Perhaps throwing his viewers for a loop each time they think they can figure it all out is part of Chris Elam’s style.

    Marianne Camarda, Brooklyn Daily Eagle