Chanel & BAAND Together Put On A Very Fun, Very Unstuffy Dance Performance

There’s nothing more “you had to be there” than a zero-filming policy, which might have helped make the opening night of the fourth-annual BAAND Together dance festival on July 30 all the more sparkling. Not a cellphone in sight, just Chanel bouclé-clad people — including Havana Rose Liu, Tommy Dorfman, Anna Baryshnikov, and Misty Copeland — living in the moment.

The evening began with a cocktail party hosted by Chanel, a supporter of the festival since its debut in 2021, at Kwame Onwuachi’s Tatiana. The restaurant is still widely known as one of the toughest tables to score in town, so some more ambitious guests schemed to track down the general manager in the hopes of charming their way into an à la minute reservation. In the garden, a revolving door of bright young things lined up to have their photos taken as servers passed pigs in a blanket and what was advertised as the world’s tiniest scallion pancake topped with mushrooms. Liu sailed by in violet co-ords and a belly chain, while Casimere Jollette, in a white skirt suit, nursed a gin and tonic with elderflower (not quite a Hugo Spritz).

Barely after 7 p.m., the savory light bites transformed into ice cream molded into a doughnut, served with 1-inch-by-1-inch squares of decidedly not Little Debbie brand Cosmic Brownie, and kaleidoscopic Jell-O shots, the likes of which I haven’t seen since Coachella. Minutes later, ushers began gently herding guests away from the glasses of rosé lined up on the bar and toward the exit to Koch Theater, just more than 100 yards away.

Inside, the atmosphere was a bit like what must have gone down at the Academy of Music back in the day: media folks air-kissing and expressing mock shock that not all editors automatically know one another, and just-introduced seatmates summarizing their trips to Puglia while lamenting the fact that it’s almost September. But during the five performances put on by five of the city’s most celebrated dance companies — Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem — the energy became unexpectedly more raucous. As a former concert pianist who’s toured Europe, I’ve never heard so much whooping, which began during Ballet Hispánico’s Sombrerísimo and reached a fever pitch when the Dance Theatre of Harlem displayed such an impressive feat of artistry and athleticism that you almost forgot about that other sports event going on in Paris.

With the shouts of “Come on!” and “All right” still ringing in our ears, the audience trudged out onto the Lincoln Center plaza to stop at the gelato cart or stand under the massive disco ball. No one seemed to want to leave just yet — not after a night that made you think, “We should really do this more often.”