This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on October 30, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Review: Charlotte Ballet’s ‘Fall Works’ showcases standout performances and bold choreography — especially Mthuthuzeli November’s ‘As I Am,’ which cements his rising influence on the company
by Lawrence Toppman
The biggest local arts news this fall has been the appointment of Mthuthuzeli November as resident choreographer at Charlotte Ballet. Artistic director Alejandro Cerrudo, a respected choreographer himself, has forged a relationship with the 32-year-old South African that pays off this weekend with the presumably autobiographical and decidedly mystical “As I Am.”
Over the past three years here, October has belonged to November: He premiered “From Africa With Love” in fall 2023 and followed it with “Vibes and Variations” in 2024. His new world premiere caps a program titled “Fall Works: Whispers, Echoes, Voices” at Knight Theater, following Jiří Kylián’s familiar “Petite Mort” and Crystal Pite’s locally unfamiliar “Solo Echo.”
It runs only three days — today through Saturday, without the usual Sunday show — so I attended a dress rehearsal Wednesday night to get a jump on it.
I’d seen “Petite Mort” here before, and I can’t fault the company for running it again to maximize the value of the rental fee. The title means “little death,” a euphemism for an orgasm, and the couples playing with fencing foils made me smile once more.
Kylián set it to slow movements from two Mozart piano concertos, but the action’s never sad. In the second half, the women seem to achieve a state of rapture, head thrown back and legs scissoring, while men both support and restrain them. Kylián conceived one especially clever visual: Women come out “wearing” long, bulky dresses in the Scarlett O’Hara mold, which turn out to be self-standing props on wheels. The dancers step away from those to assert individuality, letting the now-empty garments roll onstage at last.
Pite’s moving “Solo Echo” is matched in the program with its inspiration: the Mark Strand poem “Lines for Winter.” (Kudos to whoever did that.) Like Kylián, she frames her piece in two sections set to famous classical music — in this case, movements from Brahms’ cello sonatas. The first takes place before a narrow horizontal projection of falling snow, as dancers struggle to connect; they slip away from each other, caught at the last moment by a hand or a foot, either seeking solitude or resigned to it.
In the second and more compelling half, the projection becomes a full-blown snowstorm. Groups of dancers intertwine, pulling away and coming together like strands of DNA that break and recombine. The main soloist, unable or unwilling to remain in that community, finally lives out his poetic destiny as a solitary soul. Maurice Mouzon Jr.’s coiled-spring angst made his lonely character come alive.
In fact, the night was a triumph for Mouzon, who came up through Charlotte Ballet’s second company to become someone I always like to see. “As I Am” has one demanding solo part (not that the group dances aren’t demanding), and November has cast it with a different person across all four performances: two men and two women. Mouzon played November’s presumptive alter ego with fearless exuberance, whether meditating or exulting.
The choreographer calls this “a work about love, loss … and making peace with the life you’ve lived.” That has the tone of an old man looking back, and the dance seems like part ritual, part celebration, part entry into a new and daunting world.
It begins in a towering cave, imposingly designed by Celia Castaldo and spookily lit by Aaron Muhl. November himself came up with the soundscape of water dripping, low-level chanting, ululating cries of women and thumping percussion. Shades of brown are everywhere, from the earth-toned skirted costumes to the shadowed walls to the principal dancer’s skin.
He begins alone and near-naked, as if in a womb, but is soon surrounded by clothed men — perhaps ancestors empowering and demanding something of him. Left alone again, he draws power into himself with dramatic gestures, in a kind of vision quest. The only woman in the work, an Earth spirit, welcomes him into the adult world and gives him his own skirt to wear.
Some of the gestures were familiar, especially the extended arms above the head and fluttering hands I interpreted as birdlike gestures in “From Africa With Love.” (The skirted male dancers on Wednesday reminded me of the aggressive swans in Matthew Bourne’s all-male “Swan Lake.”) Yet the main character’s solemn walk at the end isn’t the step of a dancemaker but a warrior. If that’s how November sees himself, I wonder what he’ll give us next.
If You’re Going
“Fall Works: Whispers, Echoes, Voices” runs today at 7:30, Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 2 and 7:30 at Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St.
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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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