It is a rare choreographer who makes you feel you are not waiting for anything to happen, because it already is happening - every moment "a visible action of life", as Merce Cunningham once put it. In Balletto Teatro di Torino's New York debut on Tuesday night before a small but enthusiastic audience, 31-year-old Matteo Levaggi proved to possess that elusive talent.

For Primo Toccare (First Touch) - the first of two programmes of his work at the Joyce this week - he hedges his bets, allowing himself and his collaborators to stuff the dance with accessory meanings. Art-fashion team Corpicrudi lays the vanitas on thick with a coffin-shaped vitrine that displays first a skull and lilies, then two motionless models standing while staring blankly out at us. The sound score denatures the heavy breathing of lovemaking so it turns into white noise; on the other hand, it blasts churchy organ at such high decibels, you pray for earplugs.