It's hard to think of a more evocative and recognizable expanse of concrete than the Los Angeles River. Its dramatic meandering course from the west of the San Fernando Valley to the Pacific Ocean at Long Beach has backdropped some of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway smoldered on it in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown; Lee Marvin's assassin clicked his metal heels up it in Point Blank; and John Travolta roared his hot-rod along it in Grease. 

Today’s film finds the brutalist flood-control channel playing host to a more measured kind of performance, as choreographer and NOWNESS regular Benjamin Millepied directs the maverick LA Dance Project through “Hearts and Arrows: Movement 6.” Set to Philip Glass's String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), performed by the Kronos Quartet, the piece is the second installment in Millepied's Gems trilogy, and follows 2014’s Reflections. 

While the ballet wunderkind has utilized LA’s fecund landscapes for previous collaborations with the likes of Barbara Kruger, this time he chose to focus on the harshest, most dystopian aspects of the metropolis, symbolized by the stark river. That he and the collective bring to it a gentleness and warmth that are unmistakably human is testament to the palliative ability of dance.

Tom Horan is Culture-Editor-at-Large for NOWNESS.