Heather Desaulniers

• Cal Performances presents
  Pavel Zuštiak and Palissimo Company in Custodians of Beauty
  Zellerbach Playhouse, Berkeley

• Smuin Contemporary Ballet – The Christmas Ballet
  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, San Francisco

• Oakland Ballet Company – Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker
  Paramount Theatre, Oakland

December 7th – In any Cal Performances’ dance season, there is much to luxuriate in. New chapters in decades old artistic collaborations; a wide swath of choreographic genres and styles; and a curiosity for newness. One of the ways the longtime arts presenter embodies this final quality is in its programming design. Most years, Cal Performances includes one or two (sometimes more) companies that have never performed in the Bay Area, exposing regional audiences to a fresh creative voice and perspective. This past weekend brought one of these debuts – Pavel Zuštiak and Palissimo Company in 2015’s Custodians of Beauty. An eighty-five minute conceptual collage directed and choreographed by Zuštiak and performed by the incomparable trio of Viktor De La Fuente, Emma Judkins and Justin Morrison, Custodians was both cool and thoughtful.

Emma Judkins in Custodians of Beauty
Photo Liz Lynch

Zuštiak included some commentary in the program, which concluded with a two-part question, “where do we find beauty today and does it need our defense?” While I’m not sure that I saw the latter line of inquiry, I was struck by how the former sentiment rang clearly throughout the work. Whether an extended movement vignette or a short creative snapshot, scene after scene oozed simplicity and purity. Physicality was unhurried and smooth; arm gestures, uncomplicated and natural; directional shifts, clear and precise. Small motions were celebrated and mined, like the movement of the head or the gaze of the eye. A giant smoke cloud was cast into the audience and simply allowed to dissipate; a vocal offering (which incidentally was performed with incredible musical prowess) hung hauntingly in the air. Every artistic idea in Custodians was distilled to its very essence; no pretense, no extraneous stuff. I found this particularly impressive seeing as how the piece employed so many different disciplines – sound, text, visual art, effects, choreography, video, song. But in Custodians, movement was movement; song was song, text was text. Not a hint of spectacle or ostentatious-ness cluttered Zuštiak’s varied artistic explorations.

While a paragon of clarity and distillation, Custodians did have some challenges. For those of us who suffer from any kind of motion sickness, the first moments of the work, with its bouncy, shaky videography, certainly triggered it. For the most part, I found the score to be compelling, though it occasionally ventured into uncomfortable territory – high-pitched soundscapes and atmospheric tremolo that left the ears ringing. While that kind of discomfort can certainly be purposeful, in this case, it distracted from what was happening on stage.

And at close to an hour and a half, Custodians was far too long, especially because some of the chapters felt like they could have been edited. For example, one lengthy section found De La Fuente, Judkins and Morrison moving methodically through a series of cluster sculptures. The transitions were slow and small, close to Butoh in their tempi. I was into it; the shapes and living figures they were creating were really something to behold. But as it continued and continued and continued, the idea lost its early potency. For me, the pull and magnetism of the first few postures had disappeared. The same was true for a later sequence of patterned aerobic running, bouncing and hopping. Again, interesting and dynamic, but just too long. Finally, there was a moment when the lights went up and the three performers ventured into the house. Each invited an audience member up on stage for a brief standing pause, after which they returned to their seats. I’m all for exposing the porous boundary between the performer and the viewer, but this didn’t feel like it served the piece at all. In fact, it brought unnecessary clutter to an otherwise uncluttered theatrical container.    

December 21st (matinee) – Celebrating the past and looking towards the future has been a theme at Smuin this year, with the contemporary ballet company marking its twenty-fifth anniversary season. That sentiment certainly rang true in 2018’s edition of The Christmas Ballet, which is just about to finish its annual San Francisco run at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Featuring thirty distinct, festive dance vignettes, the two-part wintry revue paired choreographic favorites from years past with more recent additions as well as two world premieres. As always, the performance moved along at a brisk pace – if a particular dance or piece of music wasn’t your speed, something new would be along in short order.

Ian Buchana and Mattia Pallozzi in
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Photo Chris Hardy

If you’re a fan of traditional ballet vocabulary and sweeping scores, Act I’s”‘Classical Christmas” is a great fit. The cast is costumed in sparkling, bright white; the staged is adorned with large billowy fabric swaths; and the subtle lighting sets a demure mood. Several works stood out amongst this first group of fifteen. Terez Dean Orr and Robert Kretz in company founder Michael Smuin’s Hodie Christus Natus Est were the epitome of elegance and grandeur. One cannot ignore the abundance of lovely lines and steps, but what sets this pas de deux apart are its unexpected moments. Supported jumps had surprising landings, finishing en pointe but with the leg in plié; lifts would spin backwards with the shoulders being the only point of connection between the two. Longtime Smuin Choreographer-in-Residence and now the Artistic Director of Sacramento Ballet, Amy Seiwert’s Caroling, Caroling, Bright, Bright tackled the complex pas de cinq configuration, and in doing so, revealed its compositional potential and promise. Premiering this year was former company artist Rex Wheeler’s God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, a duet danced by Mengjun Chen and Ben Needham-Wood at this matinee. While the choreography itself was a bit busy for my taste, the pairing of Chen and Needham-Wood must be acknowledged. They can do it all – turns, jumps, batterie, balances – and in such precise unison.

Delightful Celtic influences also found their way into The Christmas Ballet’s classical offerings. An ensemble dance choreographed by current company dancer Nicole Haskins, Fantasia included a hearty dose of delicate petit allegro – cabrioles abounded as did Italian changements. Fueled by a waltz clog rhythmic base, Smuin’s The Gloucestershire Wassail contributed its own Celtic flair, coupling fast footwork with a quiet upper body. I loved the choreography in each, but in addition, both dances brought a tone of community, playfulness and fun to an act that tends to be more reflective and earnest in quality and atmosphere.  

Valerie Harmon and Peter Kurta in
Meet Me in the City on Christmas
Photo Chris Hardy

Speaking of fun, Act II’s “Cool Christmas” was filled with it – musical theater style vignettes, vivacious characters, an impish Christmas tree, even surfers avoiding a shark. The packed house (on a Friday afternoon no less) was enthralled and entertained by the festive mosaic, as was I, though I was more pulled to the dancier episodes and less to the novelty ones. Another work by Haskins, J-I-N-G-L-E Bells had some impressive rhythmic depth. I can’t be sure if this particular rendition of the famed Christmas song was actually composed in different meters, though the choreography certainly reflected a change in pulse, making it both riveting and buoyant. With a winning collection of stomp time steps and cramp rolls turns, Shannon Hurlburt’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer introduced yet another rhythmical element to the program. It’s a super tap duet (danced by Maggie Carey and Valerie Harmon), though there was a tendency to try and fit too many steps into a single phrase. But it was the sophisticated, chic, lyrical pas de deux that were the stars of the second half. Lauren Pschirrer and Needham-Wood, in the world premiere of company dancer Erica Felsch’s Meet Me in the City on Christmas, were the tops. With starry lights and a park bench framing the glorious, grand movements, the scene could have easily been part of an old Hollywood movie musical, and Pschirrer and Needham-Wood looked absolutely stunning together. Harmon and Peter Kurta were equally sublime in Seiwert’s River. Every time I see this dance, that amazing straight-legged fifth position spinning lift takes my breath away.     

December 22nd (matinee) – Live orchestral accompaniment makes such a difference when it comes to dance performance! The last time I was at the Paramount Theatre for an Oakland Ballet Company program, I commented that at times, the recorded mix was so clippy and loud that it distracted from what was happening on stage. Not so yesterday for the opening of Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker. As has been the tradition in past years, the Oakland Symphony, under the direction of Michael Morgan, and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir joined the troupe for their annual pre-Christmas run of the story ballet. Live music combined with a festive narrative and splendid dancing made for a simply magical afternoon at the theater.

Ramona Kelley and Seyong Kim in Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker
Photo Dan Dion

Artistic Director Lustig’s version of The Nutcracker is a classic one, told through the eyes of Marie, the ever-riveting Ramona Kelley, and her Nutcracker Prince, the confident, poised Seyong Kim. But classic should not be confused with standard or stale. To the contrary, this Nutcracker has innovation and creativity to spare. This Christmas Eve party is filled to the brim with energy. Many different characters arrive to celebrate the season, including Marie’s Cousin Vera (Jackie McConnell) and her suitor (Thom Panto). Marie seems completely taken with them both, so what a perfect plotpoint that is they who later transform into the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier. In this adaptation, Uncle Drosselmeyer is a much dancier role, handily portrayed by Vincent Chavez. He is wonderful addition to the fête, which is awash with intricate and interesting choreographic episodes. And with dancers! So, so many dancers! The cast’s spatial awareness was absolutely second to none – I didn’t notice a single collision during the party’s many dances. It’s only too bad that a lot of the choreography was hidden. With the presents arranged in a large pile, front and center, much of the footwork and pointe phrases were obscured from view.

Lustig keeps the battle scene moving along (which suits this viewer just fine), with winning choreography for the Nutcracker. Until he removes his mask, the steps are appropriately stiff and mechanical, framed by flexed feet and angular arms. Then he transforms into a real being and the choreography similarly shifts. Gone are the mechanized steps, having been replaced by swirling lifts, dipping turns and jeté entrelaces. The Nutcracker’s first pas de deux with Marie had such joy and levity, flowing effortlessly into the wintry snow scene swirling with snowmaidens and snowballs.

Jackie McConnell and Thomas Panto in Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker
Photo Stephen Texeira

The charm continued as Act II’s divertissements took over the stage – Spanish, Arabian, Chinese Nightingale, Russian and German (often French in other renditions). With its changements en pointe and Russian pas de chats, Nina Pearlman’s nightingale variation was a stand out amongst the group. And though it might have been a little finicky from time to time, I also quite enjoyed the choreography for the German pas de quartre. But the internal bows from all these soloists and small groups – to the audience and then to Marie and the Prince – definitely needed to be sped up. The breaks created a rather halted stop and start feel. That is until the waltz of the flowers got underway and the action picked up again with pulsing, billowy choreography lead by Marie and the Prince. And McConnell and Panto were probably the best Sugar Plum Fairy/Cavalier duo that I’ve ever seen at the Oakland Ballet. He with sky-high extensions and impressive fouettés; she with enviable pointework, serpentine rond versés and impenetrable balances. They were truly a regal pair, ideal monarchs to reign over the land of the sweets.  

The post SF/Bay Area Round-up December 2018 appeared first on CriticalDance.

London Coliseum

4 January 2019

Maggie Foyer

Derek Deane’s Swan Lake is a truly magical experience. It ticks all the right boxes and gets to the heart of the matter: love and death in a setting of great beauty. The dancers are world class and Tchaikovsky’s music is played with passion – it’s no wonder the season is a sell-out.

English National Ballet in Swan Lake
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

Alina Cojocaru is the jewel in the crown; a powerhouse of emotion in a tiny, fragile body. Her arms fold and melt with the softness of downy wings, a complement to the steel of her legs as she sails effortlessly through this marathon role. She can, with a look or turn of her head, bring to life the whole thrust of the narrative; emphasised in the purity of her Odette or the hauteur of Odile. Her Siegfried was the comely Jeffrey Cirio, as charming a Prince as you’re ever likely to meet and with a dance technique to complement. He was totally besotted by Cojocaru at the lakeside and bedazzled at the ball.

English National Ballet in Swan Lake
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

One of the chief delights of Deane’s choreography is the clear definition of characters. In Act One, the Prince’s courtly friends dance with formal precision while the peasant Polonaise is a gutsy affair. In the Pas de Trois Emma Hawes danced with artless joy while Precious Adams’ variation was a more sophisticated solo, her long arms effectively employed in graceful ports de bras. Aitor Arrieta danced the male role with breath taking precision displaying the cleanest of classical lines.

Although very traditional, the ballroom scene was unexpectedly engaging. The Czardas and Mazurka were danced with flair and six beautiful Princesses were graciously rejected. Frederick Ashton’s Neapolitan, a delicious bit of fiddly footwork, was given a sparky performance by Anjuli Hudson and Noam Durand and the very sexy Spanish went beyond expectations.

One role which suffers in the transfer from the Royal Albert Hall arena to the Coliseum stage is that of Rothbart. James Streeter’s dynamic runs and the powerful swirl of his magnificent cloak that thrilled in the round looked squeezed and repetitive in the more restricted space. However, his flock of swans behaved impeccably, framing the action in faultless lines and in harmony with both mood and music.

English National Ballet in Swan Lake
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

Peter Farmer’s designs are the perfect complement. The colours and design of the costumes delight without straying too far from convention and the transitions, particularly the opening scene into the first act and the dramatic end to the ball are quite magical. All in all, an evening of totally satisfying dance.

The post English National Ballet: Swan Lake appeared first on CriticalDance.

American Dance Platform
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

January 3, 2019
Program I

Stephen Petronio Dance: Excerpt From Goldberg Variations; Hardness 10

Martha Graham Dance Company: Woodland, Chronicle (excerpts)

Jerry Hochman

American Dance Platform is an annual series of programs at the Joyce devoted to demonstrating the vitality and variety of contemporary dance, and to providing companies with exposure to visiting producing organizations who have gathered in New York to see what they might not otherwise be able to see. This year the series presented three programs, each of which focused on two companies. I was able to attend the first of them, which featured Stephen Petronio Dance and Martha Graham Dance Company, neither of which are strangers to New York audiences. Each company presented two pieces (or excerpts therefrom), and two of the four were new to me.

By far the most interesting piece on the program was Hardness 10, a dance created by Petronio to music by Nico Muhly that premiered last March during the company’s Joyce season. While there are too many of its disparate ingredients that don’t gel – or which create confusion where there should be none, overall it’s a very interesting piece of work.

Presumably the dance’s title is a reference to the Moh’s scale of hardness, which ranks a diamond as the hardest of minerals, a “10” on a 1-10 scale, unable to be “scratched” by other minerals of lesser degrees of hardness.

Stephen Petronio Company dancers
(l-r) Nicholas Sciscione,
Ernesto Breton, Elijah Laurant,
and Megan Wright
in “Hardness 10”
Photo by Sarah Silver

Hardness 10 represents the third collaboration between Petronio and Muhly, but that fact isn’t particularly informative. The music was created but unreleased prior to the choreography, with the name “Long Phrases for the Wilton Diptych,” but perhaps the title was changed since I saw no reference to it in the program. Be that as it may, the electronic sound is characterless, somewhere between a refrigerator hum and a car engine in need of an oil change – maybe closer to the sound of a drone at a higher than normal pitch. It adds nothing to the dance – it has no melody or exclamations (which, granted, allows Petronio to create his own framework, or to ignore a framework altogether) – but it also doesn’t call attention to itself or detract from the choreography. It’s just there, constantly, like background noise. [Save your emails – it’s probably a fine example of the genre that I’m not competent to recognize.]

But there’s another ingredient to the dance that is intrusive. The costumes for the seven dancers, designed by Patricia Field ARTFASHION and hand-painted by Iris Bonner/Those Pink Lips (as the credits are indicated in the program), from my viewing position initially appeared as intricate designs emblazoned on two sets of differently colored unitards (one set black; the other off-white or light tan). But as the dance progressed, I realized that the thick lines and angles were letters that had been painted onto the base-color of the unitards to form words, and the words to form phrases that are repeated over the entire costume. The phrases varied from dancer to dancer (there’s no gender-specificity to the phrases, or even to the unitard base colors), and were difficult to see in full, but what I could decipher ranged from: “Look Don’t Touch,” to “He Says She Says,” “Working Woman,” “Her Story (or Herstory),” and “The Boss (or He’s The Boss or She’s The Boss).”

Stephen Petronio Company dancers
(l-r) Elijah Laurant,
Megan Wright, and Bria Bacon
in “Hardness 10”
Photo by Sarah Silver

So … this is a topical dance with a message. Except the message of Hardness 10, if there is one, fails to match the intensity of the phrases. There’s no confrontation here, at least none that I was able to discern as confrontation. There’s no avoidance, no alienation, no community divisiveness, no attempt at the dance equivalent of chit-chat or anything deeper. So maybe the dance (which, given the title and the phrases, must have some intended meaning) is simply about “hard”-edged human entities calloused by the polarizing political/sociological orthodoxies of the time, willing to risk limited contact but never really getting involved because of the pervasive toxicity inherent in relationships.

But there’s more to this dance than what might or might not have been its intended meaning. Despite (or maybe because of) the drone-like ambiance and the confusing costumes, the movement that Petronio has crafted, though limited in variety, is in a strange way dominant and engrossing.

The piece begins somewhat postmodern mechanically, with five dancers aligned in what might be an overall diamond-like shape (though from my viewpoint it looked relatively non-specific), moving in lock step forward and back and side to side and, dramatically, diagonally. Gradually the steps begin to vary, and eventually one “facet” of this “diamond” breaks free, does his own movement thing, and then returns, and then another does the same. But soon the communal entity is fractured entirely, with each “facet” entity dancing solos, in pairs, or in small groups. Despite that description, the effect of the movement variety within this overall form is mesmerizing.

Stephen Petronio Company dancers
in “Hardness 10”
Photo by Sarah Silver

While primarily angular, Hardness 10 is never didactic, and simple steps and street-movement (walking, running) yield to mirror-like replication to the unique and inscrutable qualities that make facets of a gemstone in some way unique, including movement of great complexity and inherent meaning, even if that meaning is difficult to discern.  These facets of the whole (if that’s what they were – it’s not clear since two dancers seem to join the original five as if the original shape had a gravitational force) have individual characters, if not personalities, with hard edges. They can’t do anything lasting with each other, but they can’t live without each other. So my conclusion is that if one ignores the costumes (the struggle to read the phrases and to find their meaning in the choreography is far too distracting) and the annoyingly soporific background sound, Hardness 10 is well worth seeing for the intriguing movement and the impeccable execution by the company’s dancers: Bria Bacon, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Megan Wright, Ernesto Breton, Nicholas Sciscione, and Mac Twining.

The other piece new to me was the program’s third piece, Woodland, choreographed by Pontus Lidberg and co-commissioned by the Graham Company. Perhaps because of its genesis, the piece looks like it might have been created by a Graham acolyte. The music (Irving Fine’s Notturno for Strings and Harp) sounds a little Copland-ish, with the feel of a prairie or woodland clearing. Even the costumes (by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung) have a “prairie” feel – with all but one of the women wearing flared skirts that had they been denim might have been “prairie skirts” (as the style was recreated in the 70s) and the other woman wearing pseudo denim overalls.

Martha Graham Dance Company
in Pontus Lidberg’s “Woodland”
Photo by Brigid Pierce

The dance itself, which premiered in 2016 at the Library of Congress, appears to be “about” one woman’s encounter with other denizens of the ‘hood. A woman initially appears to scout the area, then others join, including the one who is different, who either wants to figure out who these people are or wants to join them. Sort of Appalachian Spring meets Dances at a Gathering meets every dance about an outsider trying to fit in.

Martha Graham Company dancer
Lloyd Knight (here with Xin Ying)
in Pontus Lidberg’s “Woodland”
Photo by Hibbard Nash Photography

But aside from being pleasant but not particularly inventive, the piece is done in by a weird diversion. Long after the dance begins, one dancer (Lloyd Knight) emerges from the wings wearing an animal mask. As he begins to dance with the central woman in overalls (Marzia Memoli), all I could think of was Little Red Riding Hood. But soon other dancers, who had appeared like perfectly normal humans earlier, emerged from the wings wearing animal face masks (the men wore wolf masks; the women cat masks). And then, not long after they appeared, the masks are removed (out of sight) and the “human” faces reappear. Why?

These masks can’t be irrelevant, but their meaning is either uncommunicated or simply a trite brief commentary on the way these strange people appear to the central character. In the end, it’s simply a “big” statement” that, as presented, is relatively pointless, and it has a negative impact on the dance.

Martha Graham Dance Company
in Pontus Lidberg’s “Woodland”
Photo by Brigid Pierce

The balance of the program consisted of pieces I’d previously seen. The evening opened with Sciscione repeating his star turn in excerpts from Steve Paxton’s Goldberg Variations. [The piece’s title may now incorporate the excerpts culled from the original into a separately-named dance. It’s identified in the program as Excerpt From Goldberg Variations, rather than Goldberg Variations (excerpts), so maybe these excerpts have now assumed a life, and an existence, of their own.]

Paxton’s choreography here is dated, but less so than other postmodern components of Petronio’s “Bloodlines” series that celebrates lasting contributions of postmodern choreographers. I saw Sciscione dance this piece at a 2017 Fall for Dance program, and although the opening section is not one I recall, the rest of it, whether identical to the FFD program or not, arouses the same sense of wonder at the choreography and Sciscione’s execution of it. His body appear rubberized, with movement controlled by outside forces that twist and pull his limbs out of balance and then whiplashes them in an opposite direction (still seemingly off balance), with the torso following where the limbs direct. I wouldn’t want a steady diet of this choreography, but, as he previously demonstrated, Sciscione is a master of it.

Xin Ying (left) and members of Martha Graham Dance Company
in “Prelude to Action” from “Chronicle”
Photo by Melissa Sherwood

The Graham Company’s excerpts from Graham’s Chronicle closed the program. As much of a masterwork as Chronicle is, this iteration of excerpts from it didn’t work nearly as well as did the piece when I previously saw it – and is further evidence of why I find the presentation of “excerpts” from a larger piece, unless they can pass as standalone dances, to be almost inevitably disappointing.

Graham created Chronicle in 1936, and as Artistic Director Janet Eilber explained during a break between the two Graham Company pieces on this program, followed Graham’s rejection of Hitler’s invitation to perform at the Olympic Games that year, and was a response to Nazism’s growing menace.

Martha Graham Dance Company dancers
Xin Ying and Anne Souder
in “Prelude to Action” from “Chronicle”
Photo by Melissa Sherwood-

I saw Chronicle for the first time in 2012, as the final piece in a Gala celebration at City Center in honor of the company’s resurgence, and found it to be a shattering anti-war ballet.

The piece’s opening section in that 2012 performance, titled “Spectre-1914,” was a solo during which one woman, following the war to end all wars, senses the calamity to come in nascent fascism. Clad in a black garment infused with red (designed by Graham), the woman moves as if tortured, and eventually the red in the garment overtakes the black, foreshadowing the bloody war still to come. The section bears a superficial similarity to Graham’s Lamentation, but is far more galvanizing, and it led clearly to the second section of the piece, “Steps in the Street,” which appeared to metastasize the suffering by the solo dancer in the “Spectre-1914” segment to the entire cast (the ballet is danced entirely by women).

To my eye, the only defect in Chronicle as I initially saw it was the overly martial third segment of the piece, “Prelude to Action,” despite the excellence of the performances. I thought Aristophanes (Lysistrata) had a better idea. But without the opening segment to influence “Steps in the Street,” “Prelude to Action” loses any connection to suffering. Instead, the martial aspect is intensified. Indeed, while I described Fang-Yi Sheu’s performance in this section in 2012 as akin to Spartacus leading a charge against warrior /slave-owning oppressors, here Xin Ying, equally strident and powerful, appeared as a revered, inspirational, and megalomaniacal leader inspiring the troops to a triumph of the will – as totalitarian an image as the totalitarianism that the dance was supposed to condemn. While the performances of Ying and the ten other women in the piece were all very good (except for more “stiffness” among the supporting dancers than I recalled from the 2012 program), it left me feeling uncomfortable, and wondering whether this was the sense that Martha intended to convey.

ADP’s two other programs that I was unable to see featured Raphael Xavier and BalletX, and, on one program, companies led by two of this year’s Dance Magazine Award winners: Ephrat Asherie Dance and Ronald K. Brown / Evidence (with Arturo O’Farrill and Resist).

The post American Dance Platform at the Joyce: Petronio and Graham appeared first on CriticalDance.

The Chase Brock Experience
Theatre Row; Harold Clurman Theatre
New York, New York

January 4, 2018

The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes

Jerry Hochman

My introduction to the Chase Brock Experience was in November, 2017, during its 10^th Anniversary season. I can be a little slow keeping track of what’s happening in New York, but eventually I catch up, and I regretted not having seen CBE sooner. I found that 2017 program of five dances that summarized Brock’s choreographic oeuvre to date to be, primarily, dances of joy, filled with contagious exhilaration.

CBE has now returned with an evening-length program, reportedly his first (not counting a highly-regarded off-Broadway show that he choreographed, Be More Chill, which is scheduled to begin Broadway previews next month). This piece, however, is definitely not a dance of joy, and its plot is a little strange. Ok, a lot strange. But in a curious, engaging, and operatic sort of way, The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes is still worth seeing.

Chase Brock Experience dancers Jane Abbott,
Spencer Ramirez, Yukiko Kashiki,
Amber Barbee Pickens, and Travante S. Baker
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

Reviewing The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes is like walking in the woods trying not to step on a twig. It’s described as a “dance narrative,” but also as a “futuristic A.I. thriller.” Being a “thriller” implies something unexpected – which in this case is accurate. The upshot of all this is that I don’t feel free to discuss what in this case needs to be discussed most – the plot. So I’ll dance around it – which to some extent is what the choreography in The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes does too.

The story, or what I feel comfortable telling about it, is of a futuristic entrepreneur, Troy (Travante S. Baker), and his employee / coder named Oliver (Spencer Ramirez) who is working on a top-secret project to create an entity, identified as “Co,”  that has human mannerisms and responses but is purely an example of Artificial Intelligence.

Chase Brock Experience dancer Spencer Ramirez
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

As the piece begins, a number (to the best of my recollection, “98”) is projected onto the upstage wall, and we see Oliver manically entering information into what’s supposed to be a computer screen (open space to the audience) to equally manic introductory segments of the full score by Eric Dietz (who is also credited with the “Scenario”). Scientific methodology is supposed to be careful and deliberate, so Oliver’s ceaseless percolating seemed needlessly exaggerated. In hindsight, that should have been a tip-off.

Soon thereafter Troy appears, trying to convince an Investor (Jane Abbott) that this project is the next Westworld. All this occurs within the confines of what first appears like some underground Victorian scientist-cave, but which converts, when the lights dim, into a futuristic space with perimeters that reflect the action on stage (or what’s projected onto it) and that also create their own visual ambiance by moving like vertical blinds to the flow of interstellar wind.

Chase Brock Experience dancers James Koroni,
Spencer Ramirez, Jane Abbott, and Travante S. Baker
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

Eventually Oliver walks toward the upstage perimeter, walks through the blind barrier, and pulls out a doll he created with a cut-and-pasted plasticky human form (Amber Barbee Pickens), then pulls out a second creation (James Koroni). Oliver can make them move via his Virtual Reality mask and gloves, but only mechanically, like mannequins with limbs that can be moved on demand. Sometimes. But faster than you can say Dr. Frankenstein meets Dr. Coppelius meets Dr. Ford and Bernard, Oliver goes back to the perimeter and pulls out his crowning achievement, Co (Yakiko Kanishi). Co is clearly an advanced creation: she looks human, moves like Swanilda (forgive the ballet allusions), and helps Troy to convince the Investor to part with her money.

Chase Brock Experience dancers
Spencer Ramirez and Yukiko Kashiki
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

But then the plot thickens, as Co becomes more human-like, becomes “alive” (whatever that means), dances with Oliver, but ultimately falls (much too quickly) for Troy – and Oliver doesn’t seem to mind. That also should have been a tip-off. Anyway, one thing leads to another: there’s a depiction (obvious, but appropriately understated) sex with a robot that may or may not be a robot, an Evangelist who rants about A.I. taking over the world, and a reprise of prior iterations of Oliver’s A.I. creations until Co, the 98^th attempt, appears. And in the end, the entrepreneur gets an unexpected return on his investment. I particularly enjoyed the way the piece segues from Oliver controlling Co’s movement through his A.I. controlling gloves, and then realizing that he wasn’t controlling Co at all. [The work “Co” must have a particular meaning with respect to A.I., or maybe it relates to Co being a “co-conspirator,” but the piece provides no definitive explanation.]

Chase Brock Experience dancers Jane Abbott,
Amber Barbee Pickens, and James Koroni
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

Brock’s direction and choreography makes the most of stage environment within which the plot progresses, but it’s mostly background recitative to relatively few operatic arias, except for a dance for three “clubgoers” that seems to come out of nowhere and lead to nothing, but is very entertaining, with all three faux gold lamé-clad clubgoers (Abbott, Pickens and Koroni) deliberately hamming it up and providing a few minutes of comic relief to the pseudo-serious 70 minute piece. [All costumes were designed by Loren Shaw.] If there’s anything in The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes that brought to mind the Chase Brock from the program I saw last year, it’s this brief intermezzo.

Chase Brock Experience dancers
Yukiko Kashiki and Travante S. Baker
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

Beyond that, such dancing as there is, besides moving bodies around the stage, consists of interactions between Co and either Oliver or Troy. Some moments of the duets are languid, liquid, and quite lovely (including a particularly inventive one with an umbrella prop), but they don’t last very long. This isn’t a criticism (on the contrary, it provides a glimpse of Brock choreographic potential that I’d not previously seen): had there been more dancing, the piece, in terms of it being a story, would have seemed unnecessarily padded. What was there seemed slight, but it was all that was necessary to keep things moving.

Most of the dancers in The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes appeared with CBE during its 10^th anniversary program, and executed as well here as they did then. Ramirez was just right as the somewhat artificially mad computer scientist, while Baker, at first relatively bland as the entrepreneur Troy, became appropriately nonplussed and smitten, and then vice versa, as the narrative progressed. His partnering, essential to pull off the duets with Co, was deceptively deft – more than sufficient to get the job done, but was also downplayed to maintain Co’s status as the piece’s dominant character. Kashiki, the A.I. centerpiece, was both endearing and somewhat frightening as Co (which is how the character is supposed to come across), and her execution of Brock’s choreography made it sing. My only regret was being unable to see CBE’s Courtney Ortiz, who was so impressive during the company’s 10^th Anniversary program, but here was a standby for all the female roles.

Through it all, much of Dietz’s score was illuminated by the live (out of view) performance by Rob Berman, Arthur Moeller, and Amy Kang (on keyboard, violin, and cello respectively).

Chase Brock Experience dancers Travante S. Baker,
James Koroni, and Spencer Ramirez
in “The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes”
Photo by Michael Kushner Photography

But the star of The Girl with Alkaline Eyes was the staging, which was non-stop (as it needed to be to avoid appearing like a television skit,) and the effects created by the set, projection, and lighting. [The dynamite set, within low-budget realities, is by Jason Sherwood; abetted by projection design by Alex Basco Koch and lighting by Brian Tovar.] And when the lights illuminate Co’s eyes at a certain angle, the effect of the sudden revelation of her “real” alkaline (battery-energized) eyes is striking. As Dr. Ford said (in Westworld): “You can’t play God without being acquainted with the devil.”

The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes may not be the greatest dance theater, but it’s uncomplicated escapist fun, which is always welcome regardless of the bells and whistles it might lack. Its run at the Clurman Theatre continues through January 13.

The post The Chase Brock Experience: Oh Those Alkaline Eyes appeared first on CriticalDance.

[pending receipt of performance photographs]

Malpaso Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

January  9, 2019
Fielding Sixes (Event Arrangement), Carrying Floor, Being (Ser), Tabula Rasa

Jerry Hochman

The best contemporary dance program to be performed in New York in 2019 may have just happened.

Malpaso Dance Company (“MDC”) returned to the Joyce Theater on Wednesday for a limited run of seven performances of a repertory program consisting of four pieces: one by Merce Cunningham (in honor of the centennial of his birth); one by Ohad Nararin; and two by MDC dancers who have not previously choreographed. As it turns out, the weakest piece on the program was the Cunningham – not because of any performance deficiency by the dancers, who executed superbly, but because of the limited breadth of the choreography (although Fielding Sixes – the “Event Arrangement” – is one of the better Cunningham pieces that I’ve seen).  Of the two new pieces, Abel Rojo’s Carrying Floor is one of the most original, imaginative, and gripping solos I can remember. If / when I compile a list of 2019’s best, Carrying Floor will be on it. Beatriz Garcia’s Being (Ser) is a very fine piece of work for a choreographer of any level of experience, but for a first effort it is particularly exceptional. And Tabula Rasa, a piece that Naharin originally choreographed in 1986, is one of the finest of the admittedly few pieces of his that I’ve seen, and the MDC dancers’ execution appeared both moving and flawless.

Malpaso Dance Company,
here in Aszure Barton’s “Indomitable Waltz”
from its 2018 program
Photo by Judy Ondrey

I find it difficult to believe that Carrying Floor is Abel Rojo’s first choreographic effort. He joined MDC in 2016, after dancing with other contemporary Cuban companies following his graduation from the National School of Modern Dance in 2010. He’s a solidly built lumberjack-sized man who towers over the other company dancers, and his thick dark hair and beard make him appear somewhat like a bear (a brown bear; not a teddy bear). In Carrying Floor, Rojo’s size amplifies what he’s doing on stage to the point where, even though it’s a solo, it’s a solo of epic proportions.

Describing Carrying Floor in general terms is relatively easy. The characters are Rojo and four pieces of a “floor” – roughly 3 x 3 foot squares that look like industrial pallets crossed with microphoned flooring often used to amplify the sound of tap dancing. These blocks represent the stage floor upon which Rojo, and all dancers, perform – and in Carrying Floor Rojo moves exclusively on these four squares.

As the dance begins, Rojo is standing on one of the squares, staring at the floor of squares beneath him. One at a time (usually), to Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, Rojo slowly pick up a block and moves it adjacent to another, and then continues with another square, and then another. The pattern isn’t solid: there may at one point be a large rectangular block consisting of all the squares, or 3 x 1 design, or an uneven 2 x 2, or with one square separated from the others until Rojo straddles the space and lifts and carries that piece of floor adjacent to the others. Then the progress, now downstage right, moves slightly upstage, then back across to mid stage center. During all this, Rojo is engaged in multiple permutations of standing, bending, twisting, or kneeling.

But this description says nothing. Most of the dance’s movement is some form of contemplation, which prompts the movement in order to achieve some anticipated result, which is always unfulfilled. What Carrying Floor is really about is much more difficult to describe. It’s the relationship between a dancer and the floor that the dancer works on to be sure, as the program note indicates, but it’s far more than that. It deals with creation and limitation and the interrelationship of both, the power of obsession and the obsessiveness of power – or the lack of it, and the gradual recognition that what you think you control may really be controlling you.

All this is conveyed through Rojo’s increasingly frantic, though excruciatingly measured and inner-directed, movement, as this big man can’t seem to figure out what the floor is compelling him to do, or how to make it do what he wants it to do when he figures out what that is. The stage floor is his Sisyphus, and we see Rojo appear to gradually lose his strength and his will before our eyes. For a piece that’s deliberately paced and relatively slow moving, it is relentlessly intense. At any moment I expected Rojo to toss one of the squares against a wall, or to lose his sanity and cut himself off from the unyielding floor upon which he moves; the burden that carries him, and that he carries. What an exceptional, unforgettable piece of work Carrying Floor is!

Being (Ser) [“ser” is the Spanish verb “to be”] is not in the same intensity league, but it’s another beautifully crafted dance. I’m not sure what point Garcia is attempting to make here, if any, but the point is far less significant than the movement.

The subject of Being (Ser), to the extent there is one, is of broad emotional forces – building blocks of “being.” To three pieces of music by Ezio Bosso, a young, highly regarded Italian composer whose work I had not previously heard, Garcia has crafted three visually and choreographically distinct but interconnected movements descriptive of broad emotional forces  – independence, conflict, and resolution – that are reflected in the interactions among the three dancers. They may also be seen as components of growth or fear to be overcome (the first two of the three songs that Garcia uses are to dances in Bosso’s score for the film Io non ho paura, which means “I am not afraid”).

The first movement, I initially feared, was too much influenced by the company’s exposure to Cunningham.  The three dancers move across the stage very much in tandem but also very independent of each other. Eventually, the three (Dunia Acosta, Fernando Benet, and Garcia) break free of their invisible tethers. There’s no hint of any emotional force here beyond satisfied exhilaration and perhaps self-discovery.

Danza 4 from the film’s score is titled “Della paura” – “of fear” – and the second movement of the dance, which follows a brief blackout pause, is exactly that. Suddenly, on the verge of possibly succumbing to a relationship (which makes a lot more sense than simply visualizing conflict for the sake of conflict), the three dancers grapple with each other’s bodies, and effectively play with each other’s heads. It isn’t a three-person scrum with the dancers crawling all over each other, but it’s visually brutal as the three seem to fight each other and their instincts concurrently.

The final segment is the best. If nothing else (and there’s a lot else), I am indebted to Garcia for introducing me to Bosso’s instrumental song, ”Smiles for Y…” (not from the film) which is elegantly simple, lilting, understatedly joyful and hopeful and wistful all at the same time: a secular hymn to that which makes us really human. [Off the top of my head, the closest I can get to something that generates a similar emotional response might be Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” or Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” but “Smiles for Y…” is even gentler than those.]

After another brief blackout, the three dancers return having overcome their fear and accepted their need for companionship and/or relationship. While using the same parameters as she did with the previous movement (the dancers grouped together, never seeming to lose touch with one another) Garcia has crafted movement to match the music: perceptive; mutually dependent; agonizingly imperative – in other words, as simple and as intricate as relationships, demonstrating what “being” is, might, or should be.

I would like to describe the movement quality of Being (Ser) with greater specificity and detail, but I was paying too close attention to dissect it, and doing so wouldn’t be constructive anyway. The dance’s success is how all of the movement fits together. My only quibble with it is with Garcia’s choice of three dancers rather than two or four. Using three raises issues that I didn’t really see in the piece (a manage a trois, or two women competing for one man, or one man who can’t make a choice), and that didn’t add anything – although visually the use of three dancers works very well. Perhaps there’s a simple explanation that escapes me. Regardless, Being (Ser) is a simple, powerful statement.

Tabula Rasa is much more complicated, but in the end is another simple, powerful statement. Created for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and choreographed to Arvo Part’s eponymous composition, the piece arguably visualizes individualized human conflict in the form of multiple pairings of the ten dancer cast. The genesis of the conflict is uncertain, and the violence inherent in the movement is intense. But the violent action is not excessive, as singles and pairs separate from the overall group, and then fail to communicate. The conflict does not appear to be “about” anything specific – just an inability to interact and/or to sustain a relationship, which is a community-wide problem.

Suddenly, the tempo of the music changes to something far more repetitive and rhythmically metronomic. Rojo, who had exited stage right as the first movement ended, emerges from the upstage left wings, facing forward and legs spread maybe two feet apart, swaying his body robotically from left to right and back again, while gradually inching his way almost imperceptivity across toward stage right. After traveling about six feet, another dancer emerges from the upstage left wings, moving as Rojo did and following his path. She’s followed by another, and then another, and then another, until all ten eventually appear. This assemblage is in no way related to the angled arabesque processional in Act II of La Bayadere – the dancers here move as if they’d been wiped clean of the “history” of the first movement, and are now emotionless blank slates. But toward the end of the procession, the third or fourth dancer from the end moves laterally about ten feet, then stops, angled mid phrase, while the others keep moving. Eventually the next zombie in line hits the woman who had stopped, and is himself stopped. Eventually, and quite robotically (although it’s not so much “robotically” as having been cleansed of the memory of how to interact), the two begin to dance together as the one next in line joins. This pas de trois of sorts continues, with the odd man out eventually, and unhappily, separating himself from the other two. At this point one of the woman from the group of others who had moved on (and who are still moving like collective robots mid-stage right) separates from that group and begins to dance with him. And so, inevitably, after societal relationships fall apart, human relationships begin to be rebuilt. It may take awhile to appreciate, but Tabula Rasa, although it sees emotional forces from a distance, is a masterful work.

Naharin’s use of movement here is as dramatic as it is, and as mesmerizing as it is, not because it’s repetitious, but because its repetition is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Tabula Rasa premiered with MDC last May in Havana, and the dancers have made it their own. As with everything else on this program, their execution was flawless.  In addition to Rojo, Acosta, Garcia, and Benet, they included Maria Karla Araujo, Lisbeth Saad, Esteban Aguilar, Armando Gomez, and company co-founders Daileidys Carrazana and Osnel Delgado.

For those who may think that Cunningham’s dances display nothing more than tandem and emotionless movement for movement’s sake, the program’s opening piece, Fielding Sixes, is unlikely to change that. [As the program note explains, the piece premiered in 1980, and at that time consisted of thirteen dancers and lasted 28 minutes. But as performed at the Merce Cunningham Dance Center, sections of the piece, which differed from performance to performance, were cut. In the late 1990s, these edited programs were solidified into a single, eleven minute “Event” version, which is what MDC presented.]

But this version does not appear as rigid and orthodox to me as other Cunningham dances – the movement is almost entirely in tandem with arms rigidly arched downward, but within that framework there’s a wide variety of steps, and although there’s still no emotional component, the dancers are smiling, there’s an occasional moment of levity, and there’s a measure of contact among the dancers, including partnering (albeit minimal). And John Cage’s score, though repetitious, is surprisingly (to me) fluid and audience-friendly. So although the dance is what some might consider “pure movement,” it’s not uninteresting.

And in this program, aside from celebrating Cunningham’s centennial, Fielding Sixes serves a dual purpose: It shows, again, how remarkably accomplished these MDC dancers are, and to some extent is a point of departure for the other three program pieces, each of which might be seen to show some Cunningham influence. However, I must also note that of all the dances on this program, Fielding Sixes was the most tepidly received by the opening night audience.

To this point, I’ve avoided mentioning that Malpaso Dance Company is Cuban, and I’ve done so for a reason: I didn’t want the fact that company is based in Havana to factor into an evaluation of the company. The program is a superb reflection on the six-year old company because it’s a superb program superbly executed, not because the company is Cuban. It’s also an outstanding introduction to the Joyce’s Cuban Festival (the other two companies, appearing consecutively next week, are Los Hijos del Director and Compañía Irene Rodríguez), and it’s a highlight of this or any other dance year. Without hesitation, it’s a program worth going out of one’s way to see.

The post Malpaso Dance Company at the Joyce: A Remarkable Program appeared first on CriticalDance.

The Roundhouse
London

11 January 2019

Maggie Foyer

Akram Khan has an artistic reach that spans the centuries. In Until the Lions he sources an ancient traditional text and links it seamlessly to critical contemporary issues: women power, gender fluidity and the environment. Amba’s story, a fragment of the Mahabarata the great stream of Indian consciousness, is itself a complex tale here told in conflict fuelled segments. If the narrative nuances are elusive, the emotional dynamics between the three protagonists, Khan, Ching-Ying Chien and Joy Alpuerto Ritter, are riveting.

Akram Khan in Until the Lions
Photo: Jean Louis Fernandez

The drama plays out on a circular set resembling a cross cut tree segment that fractures as Amba (Chien) rips at the fissure with her bare hands angry at her rejection and trying to unbalance the universe. The four musicians circle the dance space and play an active role as passions soar. The rhythmic drive of Vincenzo Lamagna’s score remains central in the wealth of sounds and voices: guitar with padhant dynamics, ululation and song, percussion with instruments or simply clenched hands punching the stage to drive the action. The relationship between dance and music is faultless, particularly effective when the dancers join in pounding the stage with their staves to accent the rhythm.

Ching-Ying Chien, Akram Khan and Joy Alpuerto Ritter in Until the Lions
Photo: Jean Louis Fernandez

The dance is superb. Khan strikes a powerful central figure working in a fusion of contemporary Khatak and proving he can still mesmerise an audience with his technical skill. His choreography for the two women defies categorisation employing a range of such extraordinary movements that at times they appear as mythical as the characters they represent. The women are equal in strength but strikingly different in personality. Chien’s body of mercurial fluidity expresses both vulnerable naivety and mystic fervour of terrifying intensity. Ritter’s character is less volatile but equally interesting. She morphs from woman to warrior and explores depth of movement that excite with their animal empathy. Together they create a trio of unique dance skills and qualities.

Ching-Ying Chien and Akram Khan in Until the Lions
Photo: Jean Louis Fernandez

As Bheeshma, (Khan) dies at the hands of the two women – the one in spirit of the other incarnate – a chapter of the great saga closes and likewise, a chapter of dance history as Khan closes his dance career.

The post Akram Khan Company: Until the Lions appeared first on CriticalDance.

Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT 2)
City Center
New York, New York

January 16, 2019
mutual comfort, Sad Case, Wir sagen uns Dunkles, SH-BOOM!

Jerry Hochman

While there is no denying the extraordinary capabilities of the dancers I’ve seen with Nederlands Dans Theater, those few NDT programs that I’ve attended in recent years have frequently been overly expressive, alienating, self-absorbed, and audience unfriendly, with movement that generally appears prompted by repetitive electrocution. NDT (NDT 2) returned to City Center Wednesday night with a program of four dances, all, based on my prior exposure to the choreographers, practically guaranteed to produce another uncomfortable evening.

They didn’t.

NDT 2 dancers
in Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s
“SH-BOOM!”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

This NDT 2 program, consisting of American premieres by Edward Clug and Marco Goecke, and two pieces by NDT house choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, was a marvelous presentation of style and technique. While one of the four did indeed leave me feeling uncomfortable – that was its intent. Of the others, two are highly enjoyable zany adventures, and the best, Clug’s diminutive contemporary dance gem.

NDT 2 is a component of Nederlands Dans Theater, the company that, under the leadership of Jiri Kylian, swept into New York like a breath of fresh air in the late 1970s. The memory of that initial program, performed at City Center, is still fresh, and still feels exciting. In 1978, NDT formed NDT 2. Like most “second companies,” NDT 2’s function was to provide professional and performance training, the purpose of which is to funnel dancers into the main company. Whatever its origins might have been, however, NDT 2  is now considered a standalone company (the “original” NDT is now known as NDT 1), with its own repertoire. I last saw the company, now under the artistic direction of Fernando Hernando Magadan, at an engagement at the Joyce Theater in 2015 (NDT 1 in 2016 at City Center), and they’ve been represented in various Fall for Dance programs as well. Nothing I’d seen before, however, prepared me for the tour de force that this company and these dancers present now.

By far the most absorbing piece on the program, if not the most unusual (all the pieces, by New York standards, may be considered unusual), was Clug’s mutual comfort, the evening’s opening piece.

NDT 2 dancers
in Edward Clug’s
“mutual comfort”
Photo by Joris Jan Bos

My only prior exposure to Clug’s work was the recent Sleeping Beauty Dreams, which had its New York premiere last month. I didn’t think much of the choreography in that piece, and didn’t even mention Clug in the review because although he got the choreographic “credit,” I thought his abilities may have been overly and artificially restricted by the program’s overall concept.

mutual comfort is nothing like that, and, hopefully it provides more of an indication of Clug’s choreography (and perhaps a sense of the way Sleeping Beauty Dreams may eventually evolve). There’s never a dull moment, and it visualizes its theme in a very strange but fully accessible way. More significantly, Clug here utilizes an idiosyncratic movement language that’s internally consistent and, once you figure it out, both translatable and dazzling.

Clug uses a score by Milco Lazar, PErpeTuumOVIA, as the dance’s framework. Lazar is a contemporary Slovenian composer, musician and conductor, with over 40 LPs to his credit and a background in classical as well as “Big Band” music. This places PErpeTuumOVIA in a context of sorts. While it’s repetitious and rhythmic, it’s also gentle and decidedly non-electronic (it was danced to a recording by a ballet orchestra, with two pianos and two cellos). If anything, it’s a background purr as opposed to a noisy engine.

NDT 2 dances
in Edward Clug’s
“mutual comfort”
Photo by Joris Jan Bos

The piece, which premiered with NDT in 2015, opens with two male dancers standing midstage left, in identical poses, roughly six feet apart and moving their heads in a circular motion while the rest of each man’s body remains still. One of the two women in the piece appears, but the men do nothing more than continue to move their heads in a circle. One thing leads to another, the other woman appears, and the quartet interacts. And that interaction is dizzying. Every limb is used in unusual ways, but not to make individual statements (which is how I’ve observed similar movement previously – slight highlights in an otherwise not unusual piece of choreography) – this is the language. A foot will grab a head. An arm will move a leg. And the whole thing will lead to a woman somehow straddling a man’s neck. The motion is constant – although at times one or more of the dancers will watch the others. And like the best choreographers, Clug repeats particularly meaningful and surprising image combinations to add emphasis and a sense of creative control.

When it suddenly dawns that Clug’s movement is not just unusual, but extraordinary, one realizes that there’s a point to all this. It’s minimal to be sure, but what Clug is choreographing are relationships and the ‘mutual comfort’ relationships provide, using a new and thrilling way to visualize the same type of thing we’ve seen in other “relationship” dances. The dancers may not “act,” but they’re not automatons either. They smile. What they’re doing is enjoyable, not torture. Dances at some 21st century gathering. And when the piece comes full circle at its conclusion, the realization that the men’s head rotation (which expands to include the women, and is repeated in different contexts during the dance) is just a new way to see guys standing on a corner watching all the girls go by, is a lightning bolt. Sharply defined it is, as the program note indicates – all thirteen minutes of it. Twitchy it isn’t. [For “twitchy,” see below.] It’s stunning. Thalia Crymble, Tess Voelker, Kyle Clarke, and Adam Russell-Jones were the extraordinary dancers.

NDT 2 dancers in Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s “Sad Case”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

León and Lightfoot’s Sad Case is anything but. Created in 1998, the program note emphasizes that León was seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child, and her ‘raging hormones’ contributed to the zaniness of the dance. That’s unfortunate – not that the hormones effected the choreography (I suspect that this is the case with most creative artists – male or female), but that it somehow explains the strangeness. While Sad Case certainly has a quality of strangeness, it’s also marvelously inventive.

One of the most inventive aspects of it is that it’s not what you might think. The piece is choreographed to a suite of Mexican mambo music by Perez Prado (if you were around in the sixties, you might recall “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”) and others, including a non-sanitized version of “El Watusi” by Ray Barretto. Limp American mambo covers (e.g., Perry Como’s “Papa Loves Mambo” or Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano”) are not included.

NDT 2 dancers
in Sol León
and Paul Lightfoot’s
“Sad Case”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

To this mambo suite, León and Lightfoot create a suite of dances, none of which remotely resembles a mambo – except for the overall sense of freedom, energy, and a little craziness that the mambo music instills and that the dramatic lighting by Tom Bevoort emphasizes (e.g., the opening image of an overhead spot illuminating one dancer). The movement generally is in broad strokes, but it matches the background sound – not just the rhythm, but the melodies and musical punctuations, making for a sparkling and surprising presentation. True, there’s a lot of shaking, but it’s consistent with a lot of gibberish sound (amplified by some gibberish speech from the dancers). And for all its zaniness, it comes full circle at its conclusion, with a sole overhead spot illuminating a sole dancer, but a different one. Combined with the program’s concluding dance, Sad Case displays a side of León and Lightfoot’s choreography that I’d not previously seen, and is most welcome. Fay van Baar, Amanda Mortimore, Toon Lobach, Surimu Fukushi, and Boston Gallagher delivered brilliant performances.

I’ve found Marco Goecke’s choreography hugely problematic in the past, and still do. Movement reflecting manic anger and/or chaos and/or alienation is not inappropriate in the right context – it’s that kind of world. But movement that seemingly makes no sense just to be different and ugly, no matter how depressing the subject, is overkill. That being said, I recognize that many consider his twitchy (truly), jarring, ultra-angular, ultra-fast, seemingly pointless movement for movement’s sake interesting, and it’s indisputable that this type of expressionist movement is typical of much contemporary European choreography.

NDT 2 dancers
Kyle Clarke
and Jesse Callaert
in Marco Goecke’s
“Wir sagen uns Dunkles”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

In any event, and with that prejudice in mind, Wir sagen uns Dunkles (roughly, “we exchange dark words”) is thoroughly in keeping with Goecke’s oeuvre, at least what I’ve seen of it. The movement quality is dark, twitch, shaky, sexually obvious as well as ambiguous – but what takes getting used to (if one can ever get used to it) is an insect-like quality that, at best, is unpleasant to watch. Often I don’t see dancers, or humans, I see mosquitoes or fleas or the aptly named ticks on steroids, angularly and rapidly moving their legs or antennae as they prepare to suck blood.

In this piece, however, as uncomfortable as it is to watch (at least to me), I saw – at least I think I saw – what Goecke was trying to say. It’s nihilistic to be sure – but it’s also, in its own way, a dystopian epic, and by far the best of the Goecke pieces I’ve seen.

The dark ambiance of the piece is evident immediately, from Udo Haberland’s barely existent lighting to Schubert’s dark Piano Trio: Notturno in E flat, Opus 148. This music is more than sad, it’s gloomy, but gloomy with some built-in sharp edges – rapidfire dramatic punctuations that cut through the gloom like sawtooth blades, suggesting danger, which Goecke emphasizes with choreographed spasms of dancers’ bodies, limbs, or just hands, as if they’re diseased – or insects.

NDT 2 dancers
Fay van Baar
and Adam Russell-Jones
in Marco Goecke’s
“Wir sagen uns Dunkles”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

This setting thereafter is further reinforced by three songs that Goecke uses for the bulk of his dance, sung by the English alternate rock band, Placebo.  Sometimes classified also as “post punk rock” or “pop punk,” among other descriptive terms, the band has been well-known in the U.K. and Europe – somewhat less so here – for over 20 years. The songs chosen – “Song to Say Goodbye,” “Slave to the Wage,” and “Loud Like Love” – exemplify the sense of alienation, angst, and hopelessness that permeates Goecke’s piece, and the lead singer’s loud, monotonic, and somewhat nasal delivery adds to the annoyance factor, like chalk on a blackboard. These three songs describe different societal problem areas: the first is believed to address heroin addiction; the second’s title is self-explanatory; and the third is a paean to love – but in context, with its repeated emphasis on imagining “a love that is so proud” among other similar references, its subject clearly is intended to extend beyond “conventional” heterosexual love.

Goecke’s ‘dark words’ encompass each of these issues. Some of the scenes, and the androgynous appearance of many of the NDT 2 male dancers (a comment made about the Placebo band members as well), reflect what used to be described as a heroin-chic appearance on top of the anger and anomie. And here Goecke adds to his insect-like movement rep various animal-like movements and sounds, most notably dancers emerging onto the stage from behind a black upstage curtain in rapid steps, making tiny “clicking” sounds as they move – like a horde of mice. Or rats. [One of the lyrics in “Slave to the Wage” is “It’s a race, a race for rats / A race for rats to die.”] And if the connection weren’t already sufficiently clear, Goecke clads the dancers in costumes (which he designed) edged with simulated fur. Lastly, the final image of the dance (by this time the Placebo songs have yielded to an excerpt from Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet, Part 2 in tempo di valse) – is a slow, ebbing, disappearance behind the upstage curtain of one of the company’s male dancers as the one male dancer remaining on stage longingly watches him depart.

NDT 2 dancers (foreground, Surimu Fukushi)
in Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s “SH-BOOM!”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

Dealing with all these issues is fine for three individual songs that have little relationship to each other beyond the band singing them and a certain style. Homogenized into one dance, however, the multi-pronged attack on society as it is loses focus – as well as potentially an audience that may be unable to discern how it all ties together. Regardless of the movement quality, this lack of cohesion makes Wir sagen uns Dunkles, which premiered in 2017, less than it might have been. But it’s undeniable that there’s intelligence at work here, and a style that much of the opening night audience clearly appreciated – although, judged by the muted laughter I heard within earshot, some audience members thought Goecke’s movement was quite funny to watch, which clearly was not Goecke’s intent.

NDT 2 dancers in Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s “SH-BOOM!”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

But humor clearly is part of León and Lightfoot’s intent in SH-BOOM!, an emotional antidote to the dance that preceded it. The choreography is over the top, exaggerated, cartoonish, sexual (there’s unannounced male nudity), and more fun than orchestra seats padded with whoopee cushions. Don’t ask me to describe the choreography – I couldn’t begin. But the gist of SH-BOOM! is captured in a quotation from Francisco Goya that begins the program note: “The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.” I’ve seen some key words translated from the Spanish somewhat differently, but the essential meaning of two seemingly contradictory terms, reason and imagination, being essential for the creation of art is the same.

This contradiction, as the program note indicates, is the essence of SH-BOOM! But perhaps that intellectualizes the piece too much. It’s crazy, but crazy fun.  The first dance that León and Lightfoot created, it had its formal premiere in 2000 (this performance was its New York premiere), and it’s a fitting fin de siècle commentary.

NDT 2 dancers
in Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s
“SH-BOOM!”
Photo by Rahi Rezvani

The piece is a series of seemingly disparate scenes choreographed to eight seemingly disparate songs and a cast of seeming thousands (ten dancers), united primarily by the men wearing white underwear and the women robed (or otherwise costumed – maybe pajamas) in black. It’s more insane than funny, but it’s very funny. Pseudo glitter / confetti reigning down on the orchestra seats as the piece concluded was icing on the banana cream pie. In addition to most of those dancers already mentioned, the cast included Nicole Ishimaru (who danced a superb solo), Donnie Duncan, Jr., and Jesse Callaert.

I have only one complaint with the NDT 2 presentation. Nowhere does the program indicate who is performing what, or even the names of the members of the company. [The only reason I’ve inserted the names here is that a cast list was made available to the press.] I understand that to some extent dancers in these pieces are interchangeable, and generally that all that’s required of them is to execute the choreography perfectly (considering the athleticism and timing involved, no easy task). I also accept that the company may not be certain in advance which dancers will be appearing in which piece. Even so, those difficulties can be addressed by program inserts available to all. To me not identifying the dancers on stage is demeaning to the dancers and the audience. I hope that when NDT 2 (and NDT 1) return, this oversight, which I consider a serious one, will not be repeated.

The post NDT 2: Contemporary Dance Art, From Zany to Angst appeared first on CriticalDance.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Opera House
Washington, DC

January 17, 2019

Carmel Morgan

To inaugurate the new year, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures Company returned to the Kennedy Center with a new production of his popular retelling of Cinderella. Walking into the theater, patrons are greeted with signs that warn of air raid sirens. In the midst of a government shutdown, it wasn’t hard for me (a furloughed federal employee) or anyone else in DC to imagine worry and impending doom. Set during the London Blitz in 1940, the ballet has dark overtones that fit well with the Cinderella story.

The set and costumes by frequent collaborator Lez Brotherston, who won an Olivier Award for his original design in 1997, lend critical atmosphere to this tale. The darkness is quite literal. Brotherston’s set and costumes feature an extensive palette of depressing grays, like the ashes in Cinderella’s fireplace and the ashes of war, and are complemented by Neil Austin’s dusky lighting design. When the ballet’s heroine appears in a silver and white glittery gown and long white gloves, she stands out from the crowd of drab colors that surround her, bright and glowing where the others fade easily into the background. “The Angel,” a replacement for the more familiar fairy godmother, also wears silvery white that shines like the moon. His suit is reminiscent of a Las Vegas entertainer — suave and showy.

Bourne’s love of cinema is evident from the beginning. (In 2018, his company brought The Red Shoes, inspired by the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name, to the Kennedy Center). Black and white film footage (projection design by Duncan McLean) urges people not to stare at the sky in the event of an air raid, and yet the impulse to look skyward is apparently difficult to resist.

Ashley Shaw and Andrew Monaghan in Matthew Bourne ‘s Cinderella, photo by Johan Persson

Cinderella (Cordelia Braithewaite) is a dreamer, of course. Somehow she ends up in the sky in one sequence, cavorting beside a giant crescent moon with The Angel (Paris Fitzpatrick). Having seen Fitzpatrick as The Angel, I’m convinced he’s perfect for the part. His long limbs and pert demeanor make him one worth watching. The other artist who captured my attention was Anjali Mehra as Sybil, the Stepmother. Mehra’s role is juicy, and she took full advantage of it. Her consummate acting brought much needed comic joy. Mehta’s drunken stumbles and resentful glances were top notch. Her varied expressions and emotional manipulations often moved me to smile.

I had no gripe with Braithewaite’s performance as Cinderella; however, I longed to witness more technically challenging choreography. Of the works of Bourne that I’ve seen, the choreography is in slavish service to the story, which contributes to fairly effective storytelling, but not always interesting dancing. In Bourne’s Cinderella, the movement tends to be simple, often bordering on pedestrian. The gestures are big and recognizable. For example, Cinderella and her crush Harry, the Pilot (Edwin Ray), both take a silver sequined high heeled shoe (not glass in this version) and hold it against the heart. Their hands grip the head in anguish. In another example, men mechanically tilt, arms extended straight out like airplane wings. Later these “wings” become the hands of a clock, but the form is practically identical. I’d prefer more creativity and subtlety in the characters’ expression, and more demanding choreography. Prokofiev’s impactful score exhibits a level of complexity that unfortunately overwhelms the rather lackluster dancing at times.

The most clever piece of choreography, and the most satisfying, is Cinderella’s duet with, initially, a sewing mannequin. She takes the dangling arms of a bare torso donning a jacket, and wraps them around her, coaxing the empty sleeves to lead her in a waltz. While she dreams of being in the embrace of her beloved, we see the mannequin come to life, albeit halfway. Here, Ray excelled. His doll-like jerks and overall stiffness were riotous and well executed. The duet between Cinderella and her father, Robert (Alan Vincent) didn’t live up its potential, though. Wheelchair bound, he barely squeaked along. If you’ve ever seen AXIS Dance Company, you know that that dancers in wheelchairs have a rich range of motion available to them, and this capacity wasn’t explored.

Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella, photo by Johan Persson

My primary gripe might be Cinderella’s transformation. She’s charming, if a bit mousy, in her eyeglasses. When she appears in a blonde wig sans glasses, she’s definitely been transformed, but the message is bothersome. Why can’t Cinderella be desirable in spectacles and without a blonde mane?

I did enjoy the addition of several family members to the traditional story. In Bourne’s Cinderella, there are three stepbrothers as well as two stepsisters. These stepbrothers are amusing, flitting around with toy airplanes and guns or worshipping Cinderella’s sparkly shoes. Their boyish buoyancy is cute. Another addition is a gay romance. Two men fall in love and reunite after the war, walking off hand in hand accompanied by a bouquet of roses. Absolutely, a fairytale romance should belong to everyone, and Bourne makes this point quite naturally and sweetly without banging it over anyone’s head. And there’s a refreshing twist about what ultimately happens to the stepmother, but I won’t give it away.

I recommend Bourne’s Cinderella as an absorbing piece of theater, bursting with poignancy and hilarity, less so as a work of dance. I’m drawn to the costumes and characters, just not the choreography, as it doesn’t deliver the kind of ballet virtuosity I so deeply appreciate.   

The post Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella appeared first on CriticalDance.

The Music Center at Strathmore 
North Bethesda, Maryland

January 20, 2019

Carmel Morgan

The 25th anniversary performance of Step Africa! certainly warmed up a frigid East Coast Sunday afternoon. The celebration began with a spirited opening by special guest Dem Raider Boyz (DRB) Step Squad from Greenbelt, Maryland’s Eleanor Roosevelt High School. This all-male group won the High School Step Team National Championship in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (a record number of wins), and they recently appeared on the TV show World of Dance. Their abundant pride, precision, creativity and high energy shows why they’ve achieved such success. The young men of DRB delivered a performance full of sharp wit and lightning fast moves.

According to the program notes, “Community participation has been a part of the step tradition since its inception in the early 1900s — members of the audience are invited to clap, stomp, cheer, and participate in call and response with the Artists throughout the performance.” Indeed, audience members shouted out enthusiastically as soon as the performance began. And DRB acted not unlike a cheer squad — encouraging the yells via their peppy dancing. DRB’s routine was framed around the theme of “Stepflix,” a clever take on “Netflix.” The team exhibited different movement styles as if they were assorted movies and TV shows being browsed. Their arms jutted up and out with power, their feet slammed the floor, and they smiled broadly, all while keeping their timing admirably tight.

Dem Raider Boyz on WORLD OF DANCE — Season: 2, photo by: Andrew Eccles/NBC

Founder and Executive Director of Step Africa!, C. Brian Williams, then took the stage, explaining that he created Step Africa! in 1994 while living in South Africa, and that he sought to spread joy and unity by presenting stepping as an art form. Step Africa!, through its national and international tours, continues to do just this — invigorate and educate diverse audiences and bring people together via stepping.

Step Africa!’s 25th anniversary performance highlighted the company’s choreographic range. In some pieces, the dancers’ stepping technique took clear precedence, while in others, the dancers incorporated contemporary dance, African dance and hip-hop to various types of music. In each of the works, however, the dancers gave it their all.

Idemo!, choreographed by Christopher Brient, was inspired by Step Africa!’s 2015 tour of southeastern Europe (“Idemo” means “Let’s go,” in Croatian). A chorus of rhythmic feet and voices leads to a fun series of call and response exercises designed to engage the audience.  

Step Afrika!, photo by Jim Saah

In The Wade Suite, somewhat reminiscent of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, dancers (the women in church hats) performed to live vocals by Matthew Evans, Vincent Montgomery, Sherise Payne and Krislynn Perry. Here, as the written program detailed, the movement blends South African gumboot dance, collegiate stepping and tap dance with the African American spiritual. The soft wide circles of praise on view in Deacon’s Dance (Movement One), choreographed by Bongkosi with Ronnique Murray, pair nicely with the lively moods of Wade (Movement Two), choreographed by Paul Woodruff, LeeAnet Noble, and Kirsten Ledford, which include a baptism scene. The effect is definitely heartfelt.

In nxt/step:hip hop, at first men in hoodies sit on crates, and women later join, seated on higher stools behind them. To choreography by Jakari Sherman, and an original score by Sherman and Jonathan Matis, their feet bounce and slide. Passing 25, choreographed by Ryan Johnson with Christopher Brient, Brian McCollum, and Jason Nious, conveys complexity, moving from classic stepping to cacophonous delirium. Both of these works speak to contemporary times and conjure hope.   

It’s in the two works directly honoring Zulu culture that Step Africa! shines the brightest. In Umngane, choreographed by Makeda Abraham, Mfoniso Akpan, and Aseelah Shareef, company members move organically to the sounds of master drummer Kofi Agyei. From languorous stretches to high kicks and rocking hips, the dancing builds and grows faster and more fierce. Long past the point when most dancers and musicians would have tired, Step Africa! showed off their stamina. The dancers kept sweating as they leapt, and Agyei’s percussive beats kept mesmerizingly piercing and rattling the theater.   

The closing work, Indlamu, brought DRB back to the stage, where they stood in support of the amazing feats before them. Originally choreographed by Mbuyiselwa “Jackie” Semela, the dancers appear in traditional Zulu attire. Warriors, to the music of live drumming, practically walk on air, they bound so high. High pitched whistles blare and rear ends shake as dancers take turns outdoing each other in exhausting, impressive solos. This was the perfect way to conclude Step Africa!’s 25th anniversary celebration, and the crowd wasted no time jumping up for a well-deserved standing ovation.   

The post Step Africa! Celebrating 25 Years appeared first on CriticalDance.

Top 15 in 2018 New York Dance

Jerry Hochman

It’s that time of year. Again.

Last year, against my better judgment, I decided to join many other reviewers and offered my list of 2017’s top dance performances in New York. In response to a steadily diminishing number of requests, I’ll do the same with 2018. I’m aware that we’re already nearly a full month into 2019. So sue me.

My Top 15 (as last year, 10 ballet; 5 “not ballet” – although the distinction is somewhat fluid), includes both individual and group performances, and also choreographic efforts. As was the case last year, it is decidedly not a listing of the “best” performances of the year in New York, although many – if not most – of them merit that distinction, because I can’t claim to have seen more than a subset of the offerings in the New York area (and a bit less than last year), and I don’t doubt that there are many more performances that are worthy of accolades.

Again, my criteria includes not only my evaluation of the individual performance or dance, but also any extraordinary circumstances that increased the personal or situational “adrenaline factor.” Being an unexpected and pleasant surprise is also determinative, and that I remember each performance or dance as if I’d seen it yesterday means something significant to me as well, compared to others I might have enjoyed but can no longer remember why. And I recognize that comparing a performance in a leading role in a full length, full dress ballet with one in a 20 minute contemporary dance is like comparing bananas and peanuts, much less apples and oranges, but excellence is excellence. And if I tend to lump a danseur’s outstanding efforts in the context of recognizing a ballerina, my apologies.

I have modified the criteria somewhat from last year. Even though I may think that particular performances by the same dancer or choreographic efforts by the same choreographer merit separate attention, I’ll combine them here. And this year I’m including a performance that I saw, but did not review. Last, where it seemed appropriate, I bundle two dancers’ performances together. [Yes, that really makes it way more than 15 … so sue me.]

Skylar Brandt in
“Don Quixote”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

The list still does not include the following, which I arbitrarily decided were beyond the scope (a list almost as long as the Top 15): a company’s overall excellence; a dancer’s body of work for the year (e.g., Skylar Brandt, 2018’s international “it” girl, who nailed every featured role she was given but who hasn’t even assayed a career-making leading roles in NYC … yet; New York City Ballet’s Maria Kowroski, whose 2018 performances proved that retirement expectations were way premature; and Sterling Hyltin in anything); noteworthy events (such as Natalia Osipova and David Hallberg’s one-shot return to ABT with Giselle; Marcelo Gomes’s glowing return to New York in the final pas de deux in Ashton’s The Two Pigeons, with Sarasota Ballet; the extraordinarily entertaining compilation of the wit and wisdom (and performing exuberance, still) in Twyla Tharp’s Minimalism and Me program at the Joyce; and Sara Mearns’s briefly shedding her NYCB persona and delivering a remarkable portrayal of Isadora Duncan in Dances of Isadora during the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance season, later repeated on a Fall for Dance program); individual performances in a competition (e.g., in Youth America Grand Prix’s 2018 NY Finals); a dancer’s commendably fulfilling expectations (e.g., Hee Seo’s now first-rate Giselle); the presentation of an excerpt from a larger piece (e.g., Cie Hervé Koubi’s possibly epic The Barbarian Nights, or the First Dawns of the World, excerpts from which were presented on an October 1 Fall for Dance program); or a reprise of a piece that suddenly made sense after years of thinking that it wasn’t particularly successful (e.g., New York City Ballet’s performances this past year of Alexei Ratmansky’s Namouna, A Grand Divertissement). Two new categories of “not included”: performances I see exclusively via social media or a “live” transmission, although in one case I’ll mention some to buttress my point, and stellar performances of dances that have been around for a very long time (e.g., El cruce sobre el Niágara, performed by Carlos Luis Blanco and Alejandro Silva (Acosta Danza), choreography by Marianela Boán, on Fall for Dance’s fifth program, and Threshold, performed by Virginie Mécène and Kevin Predmore (Buglisi Dance Theater), choreographed by Jacqulyn Buglisi, on a “Women / Create!” program at New York Live Arts). And I’ve tried not to include contemporary dance companies I included last year, notwithstanding outstanding programs, in order to provide some measure of “equal time” to other equally meritorious groups (so the 2018 Joyce Theater programs by Ballet Hispanico and Rioult Dance NY are not included, although both programs included dances and performances of distinction). Finally, and maybe most memorably, I’ve not included the collective NYCB Robbins Centennial celebration because … there was just too much that was exceptional.

Cie Hervé Koubi
in “The Barbarian Nights,
or the First Dawns of the World” (excerpt)
Photo by Stephanie Berger

And yes, I realize I just effectively doubled the “top 15.” So …  sue me.

This year I’ve also added two additional categories: the best compilation (I don’t envision this category being repeated), and “best worst” of 2018 (which, unfortunately, I do).

So with those caveats, here are my Top 15 (links to the pertinent reviews are provided as well):

1) Sarah Lane, American Ballet Theatre, Giselle (May 16, mat.); Other Dances (October 26)

In 2017, Sarah Lane debuted in Giselle with American Ballet Theatre. That was a remarkable performance, one I described as “a Giselle for our time,” and sufficiently exceptional to be included on my “tops” list last year.

Sarah Lane
and members of American Ballet Theatre
in “Giselle”
Photo by Erin Baiano

This past spring, Lane outdid herself, with a “mad scene,” and a Giselle, for the ages. I don’t know how she did it, or whether the synergies could happen again (top-flight ballerinas – and danseurs – never give exactly the same performances in the same piece twice), but this performance was particularly extraordinary. It helped immeasurably that the rest of the cast was “on” as well, but the mad scene was an individual effort. And as much as I’ll never forget the accomplishment, I’ll also never forget the response from the young woman sitting a few rows behind me, who remained frozen in her seat after Act I ended, transfixed, eventually whispering to her companion: “Oh. My. God.”

http://criticaldance.org/american-ballet-theatre-four-giselles-one-ages/

But this Giselle was not her only extraordinary outing this past season. Her Other Dances, performed during ABT’s Fall 2018 season and complemented by Herman Cornejo’s dynamic performance, added qualities to Jerome Robbins’s piece that I’d not previously seen, that worked, and that added a new dimension to what already is a wonderful example of his work.

http://criticaldance.org/american-ballet-theatre-performances-dances/

Sarah Lane, Herman Cornejo,
and members of the company
in American Ballet Theatre’s “Don Quixote”
Photo by Jerry Hochman

Combined with helping to make Alexei Ratmansky’s Harlequinade palatable after what I considered to be an annoyingly self-absorbed opening performance, and her debuts (albeit one-shot) in La Bayadere and Don Quixote (both reviews are included below), both partnered by Cornejo, it was quite a year – even with ABT’s artistically indefensible decision not to recast her in Swan Lake, and its continuing and inexplicable failure to cast her as Juliet.

http://criticaldance.org/abt-met-2018-makarovas-magnificent-la-bayadere/

http://criticaldance.org/don-quixote-whipped-cream-abt-met-2018-us-ballet-soars/

2) Michael Trusnovec and the Paul Taylor Dance Company: Promethean Fire; Concertiana (Koch Theater, March 22; Fall for Dance October 4)

What a way to go: parts 1 and 2.

The company must have known that Paul Taylor, who passed away in September, was near death during their Spring, 2018 Lincoln Center season – their performances during that entire engagement seemed even more driven than usual. The crowning achievement was their performance of Promethean Fire, which made an already superb program even more memorable.

Promethean Fire is a Paul Taylor masterpiece – perhaps Taylor’s greatest work (although with so many to choose from, including of course Esplanade, it’s a close call). Generally accepted (although not formally acknowledged) as Taylor’s response to 9/11, the piece is never less than superbly executed and incredibly moving. PTDC’s performances of it in 2018, however, took it to another level, and the performances by Michael Trusnovec, who is retiring this year after a 20 year PTDC career (and who later received a 2018 Dance Magazine award), helped take it there.

Michael Trusnovec
and Parisa Khobdeh appearing at
the Dance Magazine Awards
in Paul Taylor’s
“Promethean Fire”
Photo by Christopher Duggan

In my review of that March 22 performance, I described Trusnovec as one of the most powerful dance presences anywhere, and together with his partner through most of that piece (and in many other dances during that season), Parisa Khobdeh, who herself had a remarkable 15th season with PTDC, and an electric audience that started cheering even before the dancers began to move, this performance of a work of art that recognizes horror and tragedy and also celebrates the ultimate triumph of the human spirit brought tears to my eyes.

But that was nothing compared to the gusher prompted by the company’s performance of Promethean Fire at City Center’s Fall for Dance program on October 4, a couple of weeks after his death. It was a celebration of a monumental dance, and a monumental life in dance. And it was recognition that technique and style are one thing (well, two), but heart and soul are another.

On that same March 22 program, I was treated to Taylor’s final dance, Concertiana, which had premiered earlier in the season. Taylor was criticized by some shortsighted critics in recent years because the quality of his choreographic output in his ‘80s did not appear to them as strong as it was earlier in his career. Concertiana proved that he had it to the end. It’s an Esplanade for the 21st Century, and it was Taylor’s parting gift.

http://criticaldance.org/paul-taylor-classic-choreography-classy-company/

3) Taylor Stanley and The Runaway, NYCB, choreography by Kyle Abraham (October 6)

I did not see Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway at its NYCB premiere, but the buzz I heard was not positive. Coupled with my less than enthusiastic response to other pieces of his that I’d recently seen, my expectations for Abraham’s first piece for NYCB were not high. And for most of my initial exposure to it, I disliked it intensely.

Taylor Stanley
in Kyle Abraham’s “The Runaway”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

And then it clicked (it’s glorious when that happens). I thought I understood what Abraham was trying to communicaate, and although I’m not sure I’m right, I’ll take it. Even though I suspect many will embrace The Runaway for all the wrong reasons [Abraham’s outrageous song choices (which, as I noted, I would have been perfectly happy never having heard); the equally outrageous racially oriented costumes; or the fact that it might be perceived as an “African-American” ballet performed by what some erroneously consider a white-bread company], what I think Abraham is trying to say is far more significant, far more introspective, and in a strange way, far more universal than it first appears. It’s a landmark ballet, and one not to be missed.

Regardless of its meaning (or whether it has one), The Runaway must be seen for the company’s outstanding execution overall – you probably will never see Sara Mearns, Ashley Bouder, and Georgina Pazcoguin dance like this in any other piece, but mostly for Taylor Stanley’s tour de force performance. Stanley had a huge artistic growth spurt in 2018: seemingly everything he danced was brilliantly conceived and executed, but his jaw-dropping performance in The Runaway was from an entirely different dance galaxy.

http://criticaldance.org/new-york-city-ballet-runaway-hit/

4) Joaquin De Luz (and Tiler Peck), NYCB, Theme and Variations, A Suite of Dances (October 14); Other Dances (October 12), Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (September 21)

What a way to go: Part 3

Joaquin De Luz
and members of New York City Ballet
during his Farewell Celebration
Photo by Jerry Hochman

It’s never too late. For years, as competent a danseur as he was, I felt that Joaquin De Luz was too into himself on stage, and while he danced superbly on his own, he seemed deficient as a partner. But in recent years, in my eyes that distinction either became less apparent, or he overcame it. And in his last NYCB year, his performances seemed particularly memorable. Ultimately, at his October 14 “Farewell,” he left not with an echo of what he used to be able to do, but with performances that reached new artistic heights.

Since announcing his retirement, every performance was, to one extent or another, his last in that role. Two days before his Farewell, he danced his final Other Dances, appearing with his frequent stage partner, Tiler Peck. It was a marvelous performance. [Discussed in detail in the context of my review of Lane and Cornejo’s performance of Other Dances above.] Earlier in the Fall, 2018 season, he and Peck danced their final Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux together, which he danced admirably, and which Peck, seemingly buoyed by the occasion, blasted into the stratosphere.

Joaquin De Luz
in George Balanchine’s
“Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

But his Farewell performance two days later, and most significantly his performance in Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, was a year highlight. One would not logically choose this piece on the eve of retirement: Farewell performances are not usually the time to take risks, and the piece is tough enough for a danseur in his prime, much less one whose hair is beginning to grey and whose technique, fine as it still is, couldn’t possibly be as sharp as it once was. However, and with Peck perhaps as inspiration, he nailed it. Even he seemed amazed, and grateful – and his performance was saluted with onstage applause by the entire cast. He followed this with a demanding Robbins masterwork, A Suite of Dances, which he executed as well on this occasion as he did when he debuted in the role during the company’s Robbins Celebration the previous spring.

http://criticaldance.org/new-york-city-ballet-celebrate-celebrate-dance-music/

http://criticaldance.org/new-york-city-ballet-sensational-still/

5) Erica Pereira, NYCB, Romeo + Juliet (February 16)

    Indiana Woodward, NYCB, Romeo + Juliet (February 21; Les Noces (May 12)

Perhaps I’ve been unusually fortunate, but I’ve never seen a poor performance of Juliet (going back as far as ABT’s one-act Romeo and Juliet with Hilda Morales, choreographed by Antony Tudor). [Speaking of which, the return of Tudor dances to ABT’s repertory is long overdue.] So to make it on my list, there has to be something particularly special about it. The portrayals by Erica Pereira and Indiana Woodward in Peter Martins’s Romeo + Juliet were that, and more.

Erica Pereira and Peter Walker
in Peter Martins’s “Romeo + Juliet”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

For whatever reason, following her exceptional debut as Juliet during its premiere 2007 season (selected by Martins to dance the role while still an apprentice), and although she was promoted to soloist fairly quickly, Pereira was rarely assigned demanding full-length roles thereafter. But under the new NYCB tripartite leadership Pereira has finally been given a shot at a wider variety of roles.

Even though she’s danced it before, I consider her return as Juliet last winter to be, effectively, a second debut (similar in impact and significance to Lane’s “second debut” as Aurora with ABT several years ago). Together with her Romeo, Peter Walker (in an outstanding role debut), Pereira made the most of the opportunity: it was a courageous, triumphant performance. She should be given more such opportunities. [Unfortunately, rumor has it that this coming season’s The Sleeping Beauty will not be one of them.]

Indiana Woodward
in Peter Martins’s “Romeo + Juliet”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

It seems that Indiana Woodward hits most everything she touches out of the park. Her Juliet debut the following week was no exception. And her Romeo, Stanley, improved exponentially since his role debut many years ago.  His may now be the seminal Martins milquetoast to murderous-avenger Romeo.

http://criticaldance.org/nycbs-romeo-juliet-new-performances-indelible-memories/

Indiana Woodward, Ashley Hod, Unity Phelan,
Russell Janzen (center, front to back),
and members of New York City Ballet
in Jerome Robbins’s “Les Noces”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Although she impressed me immediately with a ballerina-next-door quality, Woodward’s stage persona has acquired many facets. An example is her compelling, dominating performance in the resurrection of Robbins’s Les Noces. Even though she had less dancing to do than other featured characters, every move she made, every breath she took, was riveting. One could not take one’s eyes off her.

http://criticaldance.org/new-york-city-ballet-robbins-centennial-programs/

6) Daria Reznik, Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, Anna Karenina (April 7 mat.)

When your only criticism is that the lead ballerina in Eifman Ballet’s Anna Karenina may have been too young to portray the character, that says something about every other aspect of the performance. Reznik, a relatively new member of the company (she graduated from Vaganova in 2016, and was only 20 at this performance), is riveting in a demanding role.

Daria Reznik and Sergey Volobuev
in Boris Eifman’s “Anna Karenina”
Photo by Evgeny Matveev

For Eifman, ballet movement is about expressing and visualizing emotion, including the subconscious psychological forces that create and respond to emotional stimuli. It is relentlessly intense – all melodrama all the time – but it’s also electric to watch.

Superbly abetted by Sergey Volobuev in a masterful performance as Karenin, Reznik dominated the emotionally tormented role, and dominated the stage in the process. And it wasn’t just her overall choreographic execution or the body that looks like a stretched rubber band. She does with her eyes what she does so magnificently with her legs – she somehow wraps them around everything in their path.

http://criticaldance.org/eifman-ballets-anna-karenina-rapturous-daria-reznik/

7) Christine Shevchenko, ABT, Swan Lake (June 23 mat.)

I’ve often written that swans aren’t hatched fully grown. But Christine Shevchenko’s debut came reasonably close.

Christine Shevchenko in “Swan Lake”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

Shevchenko is one of the company’s strongest dancers, but she avoids appearing to dominate the stage and every dancer in eyeshot, turning the strength somehow inward so the focus is on her character rather than her undeniable command (except where command is an obvious requirement – as in her gasp-inducing fouettes). And in her Odette / Odile debut she demonstrated both strength and an unexpected quality of lyricism. The result was a rare balanced performance, with both a high excitement factor and an almost as high vulnerability factor. That there’s room for improvement, albeit limited, in an already marvelous portrayal(s) is almost scary.

http://criticaldance.org/abts-swan-lake-stunning-shevchenko-debut-seo-shines/

8) Dada Masilo / The Dance Factory, Dada Masilo’s ‘Giselle’ (April 3)

It was a good year for Giselle – even an anti-Giselle.

Dada Masilo (center)
and members of The Dance Factory
in “Dada Masilo’s ‘Giselle'”
Photo by John Hogg

I was angry when I read what I considered to be a one-sided and inaccurate description of Giselle in the program note for Dada Masilo’s interpretation of the classic Romantic ballet – it isn’t necessary to knock something else down in order to build your interpretation up. That aside, and notwithstanding a couple of serious missteps, Masilo’s revisionist / African-based one-act Dada Masilo’s ‘Giselle’ is a marvel of cross-cultural invention, intelligence, and audacity, with a contemporary spin and an emphasis on revenge. I found Masilo and her company’s appearance at the Joyce in 2017 promising; this performance took her and her company to another level.

http://criticaldance.org/dada-masilos-giselle-shes-human/

9) Katherine Williams, ABT, Giselle (Myrta); David Hallberg, ABT, Harlequinade (Pierrot)

Non-lead performances don’t often get recognized, but two last year could not be ignored.

ABT has a new queen of mean.

ABT has many strong Myrtas. From Gillian Murphy to Stella Abrera to Shevchenko to Devon Teuscher, there’s not a weak link in the bunch. Now there’s another – and although I’ve recognized Katherine Williams’s technique and, even more significantly, her characterizations, from the day I first saw her dance with ABT, I was not prepared for the strength and depth of her debut performance as Myrta, one that proved promotion-worthy.

[Williams’s Myrta debut is discussed in the review of Sarah Lane’s Giselle, above.]

The character of Pierrot in Alexei Ratmansky’s bloated but ultimately enjoyable Harlequinade, depending on the cast, is relatively non-descript. Intentionally.

But David Hallberg’s Pierrot was from another dimension: the most moving depiction of the character that I’ve seen in Harlequinade or in any other ballet where the sad and somewhat clueless clown is seen on stage. His was an astonishingly gripping, heartfelt, and unforgettable portrayal – a pierrot noble – even more stunning because in costume he was unrecognizable, and the audience failed to acknowledge him (normally audiences applaud when he first appears) until the ballet’s end.

http://criticaldance.org/les-millions-de-petipa-hes-jolly-good-fellow/

10) Maria Khoreva, Daria Ionova, Anastasia Nuikina and Xander Parrish, Apollo, The Mariinksy Ballet; Mathilde Froustey, Scotch Symphony, San Francisco Ballet; Balanchine: The City Center Years (November 1, 2 and 3)

A year ago, I recognized the astonishing performance of the Bolshoi’s Alina Kovaleva in “Diamonds” at the Lincoln Center Festival’s Celebration of Balanchine’s Jewels, and stated that “sometimes you just know…”

Sometimes you just know, redux.

Maria Khoreva and Xander Parish
in George Balanchine’s “Apollo”
Photo by Daniele Cipriani
Courtesy of The Mariinsky Ballet

I had been watching Vaganova student Maria Khoreva since I quite inadvertently stumbled upon one of her social media posts, and I knew immediately – as, apparently, did the powers that be at the Mariinsky, who assigned this not yet graduated student the role of Terpsichore in Balanchine’s Apollo, and then had the audacity, and perspicacity, to send her and two other newly minted Vaganova graduates to New York a few short months after they joined the company. Khoreva has already been promoted to First Soloist, has already been cast in lead roles in full length ballets (and, hot off social media, will be dancing “Diamonds” very soon), and already brings a rare quality of joy as well as technical brilliance to her performances. And she’s only 18. To be present at (or close to) the beginning, and to watch her grow, is a thrilling opportunity – as was the opportunity to interview her the night before her New York debut.

Maria Khoreva (foreground) with
(l-r) Daria Ionova and Anastasia Nuikina
in George Balanchine’s “Apollo”
Photo by Daniele Cipriani
Courtesy of The Mariinsky Ballet

Khoreva is not alone. Her Vaganova-graduate colleagues, Daria Ionova (who I’d already noticed on social media) and Anastasia Nuikina (who until this performance I’d known only because she was the other recent Vaganova graduate cast in Apollo), also excelled, with Nuikina being a huge surprise. She has a particularly engaging, endearing quality that steals the heart, and that I hope will not be lost with increasing experience. And both appear at a technical level far beyond their years. Although I was not enamored of Xander Parish’s Apollo on first view, I grew to appreciate it as a credible and, for him, an essential interpretation, to like it a lot, and to recognize that different is not necessarily deficient.

This recounting of Balanchine’s choreography might not have been acceptable to purists, and it’s undoubtedly true that any NYCB performance of it will be more stylistically sound and just as accomplished. But for NYCB dancers Balanchine is part of their genetic material; dancing the roles as well as these Mariinsky dancers did, as young as they are, is something else entirely. And the glimpse it provided into the Mariinsky’s future is priceless.

http://criticaldance.org/balanchine-city-center-years-choreographic-performance-excellence/

http://criticaldance.org/conversation-maria-khoreva-mariinskys-precocious-young-ballerina/

At another Balanchine City Center celebration performance, I had the opportunity to see San Francisco Ballet’s Mathilde Froustey for the first time. Scotch Symphony, which I’d not seen in ages, is Balanchine’s abstract take on La Sylphide. I’m grateful to SFB for delivering such a glowing presentation of it, but even more grateful for introducing me to this young principal. Strong, fast, endearing and effervescent – but also as delicate as a sylph, Froustey’s return to New York (ideally, in Giselle) would be most welcome.

11) Tatiana Melnik and The Hungarian National Ballet, Don Quixote (November 9)

It was a particularly busy and, as it turned out, significant time of the year, so with a full plate I doubted that I’d have an opportunity to see The Hungarian National Ballet Company’s brief three-performance visit to Lincoln Center, consisting of one Swan Lake, one Don Quixote, and one repertory program. But I made a last minute decision to see Don Q, and although I didn’t review it, I’m very glad I did.

Based solely on this performance, this company deserves more performance opportunities in New York. Every dancer in the company delivered superb performances, including (but not limited to) the evening’s Amour, Mercedes, Gypsy dancer, and Basil (Igor Tsvirko, who had recently joined the company after roughly ten years with the Bolshoi). [Sadly – and unforgivably — aside from the two leads, the other featured dancers were not identified.]

But the performance highlight was Tatiana Melnik’s Kitri. Melnik clearly is the company’s prima (she also danced the lead in the company’s Swan Lake performance earlier in the week), and the role is nothing new to her. Nevertheless, her execution was fresh and exceptionally accomplished – perhaps not with all the nuance we’ve seen in some other Kitri portrayals, but with all the essential pizazz and extraordinary facile technique, culminating in an unforgettable final pas de deux that left the audience, and me, in disbelief.

Back in the Stone Age, New York ballet enthusiasts could look forward to visits by visiting non-US companies like Hungarian National Ballet on a regular basis thanks to the foresight and risk-taking of producer / impresario Sol Hurok. As good as performance snippets on social media and YouTube may be, there’s no substitute for a live performance; and as broad a brush as the Joyce Theater’s offerings in recent seasons commendably represent, there’s no substitute for a venue that can enable a company to perform what it does best. So take notice, would-be Huroks. There’s considerable performing excellence out there, regardless of its location – the Hungarian National Ballet is only one example – and there’s an audience out there eager for an opportunity to see what these companies and their dancers can do.

12) Reclamation Map (Tayeh Dance with Heather Christian), Fall for Dance, (October 5)

So … I sit in the City Center audience waiting patiently for Program 3 of Fall for Dance to begin, hoping that the first dance, by a group I’d never heard of (I’d forgotten that I’d seen the dance company component previously) would pass quickly so I could focus on what I thought would be the evening’s main events. It doesn’t happen often, but seconds after Reclamation Map began, I was hooked. Somehow the concept, the powerful but highly controlled dance choreographed by Sonya Tayeh, and the astonishing performance by composer/vocalist Heather Christian and her two vocalist colleagues (Jo Lampert and Onyie Nwachukwu) created a haunting, multi-faceted ambiance to get lost in. I don’t know if this piece is typical of Christian’s work, but here her voice, delivery, and performing presence matched delicacy with power, crystalline clarity with earthy expressiveness, and emotional depth with soul.

Members of Tayeh Dance,
with Heather Christian and vocalists,
in Sonya Tayeh’s “Reclamation Map”
Photo by Paula Lobo

Surely the concept of overcoming darkness and despair through inner strength is nothing new, but this piece presented it in a unique and sensational way – so much so that I reviewed the same performance twice. Reclamation Map was a benevolent shock; it blew me away.

http://criticaldance.org/fall-dance-2018-first-two-half-programs/

http://criticaldance.org/fall-dance-2018-second-week/

13) Parsons Dance (May 24)

Parsons Dance in Trey McIntyre’s “Ma Maison”
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

Six dances, and not a clinker in the bunch. Featuring five pieces by Artistic Director and Co-Founder David Parsons – one jointly with company dancer/rehearsal director Abby Silva Gavezzoli, who retired following this Joyce Theater engagement (what a way to go – Part 4) and one by Trey McIntyre (the knock-out Ma Maison), for sheer entertainment value, this was the finest overall contemporary dance program that I saw last year.

http://criticaldance.org/parsons-dance-joyce-dance-doesnt-get-better/

14) Lauren Lovette and Kennard Henson, NYCB, Afternoon of a Faun (October 12)

Lauren Lovette’s success in roles she seemingly was born to dance, is, by now, nothing to be surprised about (although her successful choreographic efforts, happily, still are). And the role of the self-absorbed ballerina in Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun is one of them. She should have been assigned this role years ago, even while she was still in the corps, but NYCB has many outstanding interpreters of that role (Sterling Hyltin being one), and there’s a long and growing waiting list.

Lauren Lovette
and members of New York City Ballet
here in Jerome Robbins’s
“The Goldberg Variations”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

But when she was finally cast, the stage partner who I thought would be ideal in this piece was no longer with the company, and other candidates were injured or otherwise unavailable. The casting of Kennard Henson, a relatively new member of NYCB’s corps who I’d not seen outside of non-featured corps roles, seemed disastrous.

As has been happening with increasing frequency, I was wrong. Her technique and attitude and his seeming awe-struck freshness resulted in a silent dance theater thunderbolt. It was double-debut that was as sensational as it was a shocking surprise.

Purists might contend that Lovette and Henson added more visible emotion to their portrayals than is appropriate. I disagree that they did, and that it was inappropriate even if they did. While the narcissism of the dancers is an essential component, the characters here are self-absorbed, not unfeeling automatons. If there was a degree more reactiveness here than in other portrayals, the difference was worth it.

[The review of Lovette and Henson’s performance in Afternoon of a Faun is included in the review of the Joaquin De Luz “Farewell” performance, above.]

15) Shibuya Blues (Tulsa Ballet, March 9) and Balamouk (Dance Theatre of Harlem at Fall for Dance, October 5): choreography by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Tulsa Ballet dancers
Joshua Stayton and Jaimi Cullen
in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Shibuya Blues”
Photo by Francsico Estevez

Shibuya Blues is not a new piece of choreography, nor is Tulsa Ballet a new company, but both were new to me when Tulsa Ballet appeared last year at the Joyce. The dance, “about” an outsider trying to find her way in a bustling metropolis (Tokyo), is told in an inventive and entertaining way, is multi-textured, and is a ballet that doesn’t have the appearance of a ballet. It is by far the best of the Lopez Ochoa ballets that I’ve seen. And although each of the Tulsa Ballet dancers in it excelled, the ballet belonged to the “Outsider,” Maine Kawashima, whose performance combined a waif-like characterization with steely determination.

http://criticaldance.org/tulsa-ballet-tornado-hits-new-york/

Shibuya Blues was not Lopez Ochoa’s only 2018 success. Though not at the same level, her Balamouk, which was created for Dance Theatre of Harlem and premiered on a City Center Fall for Dance program, is highly entertaining and the best “new” piece that I’ve seen performed by DTH in many years. It’s a sparkling, joyous ballet that melds its disparate musical cultural sounds into a coherent whole, and that showcases the individual and group talents of the company’s ten participating dancers. It was a fitting tribute to the late Arthur Mitchell, DTH’s co-founder, to whom the program was dedicated.

[The review of Balamouk is included in the reviews of Reclamation Map, above.]

Best Worst Ballet: AFTERITE, ABT, choreography by Wayne McGregor (May 22)

I don’t often hate any particular dance, but I hated AFTERITE, Wayne McGregor’s take on Rite of Spring which premiered during ABT’s Met 2018 season and was repeated during its Fall season at the Koch Theater. And it wasn’t just because, to me and many others, by its inescapable and obvious connection to Sophie’s Choice it trivialized the Holocaust, or because, at the very least, it’s controversial (and intended to be), but also because its concept, calculated to be a different take on the “Chosen One” and thereby lock in audience attention that might otherwise have considered this Rite to be just another sacrifice, lacked not only compassion, but cohesion and clarity. It was, and remains, very difficult to follow above the broad strokes of a mother’s decision to choose one of her children to die in order to make crops grow. Little of it, as presented, makes any sense beyond its melodrama and nausea-inducing horror.

Members of American Ballet Theatre
in Wayne McGregor’s “AFTERITE”
Photo by Marty Sohl

But I cannot deny that although I have not seen most of McGregor’s pieces, of those I’ve seen (including his Autobiography at the Joyce earlier in the year), AFTERITE is by far the best choreographically, with a plethora of movement variety and complexity and not dancer twisted into a pretzel or pointless angular twitch in sight. And although to some extent I was unable to see the trees for the forest on first view, on second I could appreciate the extraordinary efforts by ABT’s dancers – all of them, but particularly Cornejo, Alessandra Ferri, Isabella Boylston, Cassandra Trenary, and Blaine Hoven.

Nevertheless, if I never see AFTERITE again, it will be too soon.

http://criticaldance.org/mcgregors-afterite-make-crops-grow/

[the second performance of AFTERITE is reviewed in the context of the review of the program that included Lane and Cornejo’s Other Dances, above.]

Best Compilation: Something to Dance About, NYCB, choreography by Jerome Robbins, direction and musical staging by Warren Carlyle (May 3)

The Jerome Robbins Centennial was celebrated by ballet companies around the world (with the exception of ABT, where such recognition as there was seemed both belated and tepid at best), but to my knowledge none more comprehensive than NYCB’s commemoration during its Spring, 2018 season.

Members of New York City Ballet
in “Something to Dance About”
Guest Vocalist Jessica Vosk (center)
Direction and Musical Staging by Warren Carlyle
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The capstone of the celebration and the final piece on its Spring, 2018 gala program, Warren Carlyle’s compilation of Robbins’s Broadway choreography was so comprehensive, so lovingly and tastefully assembled (including extraordinary costumes and equally extraordinary lightning-fast costume changes), so brilliantly executed by the company, and ultimately so moving (despite, or maybe because of, so skillfully and shamelessly pushing audience buttons) that I cannot conceive of a more fitting tribute. And even though I knew immediately exactly where Carlyle was going when Jessica Vosk (in a performance as accomplished as that of the dancers) began singing “Something Wonderful” (from The King and I) as the dance concluded, that didn’t stop me and others in eyeshot from attempting, unsuccessfully, to choke back tears. One hopes that the powers don’t wait until Robbins’s 125th or 150th birthday anniversary to bring it back.

Ask la Cour and Students
of the School of American Ballet
in Jerome Robbins’s “Circus Polka”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

What a way to go, Part 5.

http://criticaldance.org/jerome-robbins-something-wonderful/

2018 was, overall, another noteworthy dance year in New York. On to 2019, which, as of this writing, has already produced one or two candidates for next year’s tops in dance in New York.

The post Tops in 2018 New York Dance: Drama, Distinction, and ‘What a Way to Go’ appeared first on CriticalDance.

London Coliseum

19 January 2019

Maggie Foyer

Manon Lescaut is a cruel tale of vice and venality salvaged by a love that grows stronger through adversity. In Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet the drama and choreography, accompanied by Jules Massenet’s haunting melodies, rise above the dross to realms of beauty.

Jurgita Dronina’s Manon arrives in Paris, a breath of fresh country air, utterly enchanting but smart enough to know that the eighteenth century offers no safety net to a girl of her means. Her bright eyes sparkle as she dupes her doddery, wealthy suitor. Manon’s beauty attracts more powerful players and even her quick-witted brother finds himself out of his league. If she seems too easily tempted by money, one has only to look at the patriarchal society that shapes her, a culture where women are just another commodity with a price for each market.

English National Ballet in Manon
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

As Des Grieux, Isaac Hernández gave a performance of great passion and brilliant technique but the lyrical poetic edge that should set him apart was not always in evidence. However, at their first meeting, he matched her sweetness and their gentle pas de deux struck the right note of blossoming love.

The bedroom pas de deux was, as ever, a highlight as Dronina and Hernández ride on waves of passion and Dronina’s dramatic dive onto the bed, in a final ecstatic gesture, says it all. Then with lightning speed, she managed to convince in her surprising change of affection, looking longingly, albeit briefly, at the rumpled sheets before making her exit without a backward glance.

Dronina transforms with elegant ease into the queen of the ballroom. Now more aloof, she shows her technical perfection as she is lifted and paraded by a cohort of men. Des Grieux’s intrusion unsettles her and she has another emotional U-turn to make before throwing caution to the wind as they escape together. In this scene, packed with important detail, particularly in the card playing deception, the precision was lacking resulting in a messy climax.

Katja Khaniukova and Jeffrey Cirio in Manon
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

Daniel McCormick as Lescaut, displayed a technique of razor-sharp brilliance and a strong dramatic flair that stood him in good stead in the show piece drunken pas de deux with Mistress, Katja Khaniukova. She was, fortunately, steady as a rock, a very cool customer.

Fabian Reimair, as Monsieur GM, had the right stomach-turning touch as he runs his hands over Manon’s body. But I felt he would have fared better without the heavy, almost grotesque, make-up that distracted from the exterior normality of this base character. James Streeter, as the Gaoler, has the other strong character role, a man you pray you’ll never meet. His lewd abuse of Manon and subsequent murder create the tipping point for the lovers’ descent into destitution and death. Their last duet, two ragged creatures, trying to find meaning in their last moments together, was heart-wrenching.

Alina Cojocaru and Fabian Reimair in Manon
Phot: Laurent Liotardo

The stripped-down set, from the Royal Danish Ballet production, throws the drama into sharp relief and has the benefit of enabling the production to tour widely but the costumes, particularly in the 3^rd Act, an extravagance of gaudy tulle, seem too light hearted and circus like for a situation that needs only a fragile crust of glamour. I missed the gravitas that Geordiadis’ costumes add.

For the English National Ballet, it’s the end of a very long season of three major productions where they have shown their strength in quality performances with an astounding number of cast changes. The orchestra under Gavin Sutherland have been with them every inch of the way in a marathon achievement of which they can be justly proud.

The post English National Ballet: Manon appeared first on CriticalDance.

New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

January 22 and 26 evening, 2019: Apollo, Orpheus, Agon
January 26 afternoon, 2019: Serenade, Mozartiana, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2

Jerry Hochman

Opening any New York City Ballet season with either Serenade or Apollo is, to me, ideal. Opening a season with both of them is a gift.

NYCB gifted its audiences with both these Balanchine masterpieces to open its Winter 2019 season, with Apollo leading the first program, and Serenade the second. Each of the programs was dedicated to Balanchine’s collaboration, actual and / or spiritual, with, respectively, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. Orpheus and Agon completed the first program, and Mozartiana and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 the second.

But it wasn’t “just” the ballets that headlined these programs: each of the three I saw featured a plethora of role debuts, none of which were disappointing, and several of which were illuminating. Since all six of these ballets are well-known, with one exception I’ll focus here on the performances.

Taylor Stanley in George Balanchine’s “Apollo”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Hot off his remarkable 2018 performing year, Taylor Stanley debuted as Apollo on the season’s opening night, and Gonzalo Garcia, who spent much of 2018 recovering from an injury, debuted in the role Saturday afternoon. The portrayals are quite different – although well within acknowledged parameters, and perhaps the differences I saw say more about what I expect to see in the role than what must be there.

To me, the critical components of Apollo, the character, is his recognition that there are qualities he lacks that the muses provide, and his evolution from an immature, youthful god to a mature god fully prepared to assume his place in the pantheon.

Taylor Stanley and (clockwise from left)
Brittany Pollack, Indiana Woodward
and Tiler Peck in George Balanchine’s “Apollo”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Noteworthy for a first effort, Taylor delivered an excellent portrayal. After an initial series of phrases that seemed to add a measure of wildness in his arms to the choreography that I’d not previously seen, his portrayal quickly moderated, and appeared immaculate thereafter. And, just prior to the concluding procession with the muses to the top of Mt. Olympus (more clearly evident in the ballet’s original form), the image he presented of a god who finally gets it together, knows what his function and future would be, and sees his immortal destiny, was among the most powerful that I’ve seen: the light radiated from his eyes. It’s supposed to be that way with every Apollo, but it rarely works quite so well.

My only general criticism is one that Taylor has no control over. Soon after he joined the company and was assigned feature roles, I observed that he frequently seemed to have a sour demeanor, and to lead with his chin. Both those perceived attributes have long passed. But for a still young dancer, his visage is almost that of an ‘old soul’, which to me isn’t compatible with a young god. As one friend suggested, maybe it’s his hairline. But there’s nothing he can do about it, and in other respects it was a superlative debut.

Sterylin Hyltin and Gonzola Garcia
in George Balanchine’s “Apollo”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Garcia’s role debut Saturday evening was equally flawless, and I thought he handled the choreographic arm movements that Taylor had made appear so frenzied much better – although it’s also possible that a different vantage point affected my view of both performances.

But while it started out emotionally appropriate, Garcia’s Apollo became something else, evolving  – until the concluding moments – into a somewhat Dionysian Apollo who thoroughly enjoyed his time with the muses, the education he was receiving, and the fact that he could harness and control them. This Apollo was not so much being educated as having fun during recess.

I don’t think this interpretation, if that’s what it was (again, perhaps my viewing angle may have produced skewed impressions), is necessarily invalid, but it contradicts every other interpretation I can recall. In the end, it didn’t matter – Garcia certainly concluded the piece powerfully as he matured. But though it may not be wrong, it didn’t feel quite right.

Apollo’s muses were danced on Tuesday by Tiler Peck, Brittany Pollack, and Indiana Woodward as Terpsichore, Polyhymnia, and Calliope respectively; and by Sterling Hyltin, Abi Stafford, and Lauren Lovette on Saturday evening. Pollack’s and Stafford’s performances were role debuts, and each executed admirably in all respects. The other muses excelled as well, with Hyltin’s Terpsichore in particular delivering every facet of the choreography brilliantly, including floating atop Garcia’s shoulder like a weightless, benevolent spirit.

Garcia also debuted in Orpheus on opening night, and here I thought delivered a very strong portrayal, appropriately tormented throughout.

Sterling Hyltin and Gonzalo Garcia
in George Balanchine’s “Orpheus”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Orpheus is not an easy piece to like – its pacing is similar to Apollo, but it’s longer. The presence of additional characters helps, but not quite enough, especially since the events surrounding Orpheus’s death omit critical details without which his being torn to pieces by the Maenads (Bacchantes) comes across as pointless. Created in 1948, Orpheus also comes across as something of a throwback: a narrative form remindful of Prodigal Son and Apollo, both of which preceded it by some twenty years, without either the narrative pulse of the former or the choreographic purity of the latter. But comparisons are deceptive – Orpheus is sui generis, and no less a landmark than its predecessors.

The ballet is a retelling of the myth of the musician/poet/singer who could charm anything and anyone, does exactly that when he travels to Hades to retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice, but is undone by inevitable fate. As is the case with most myths and legends, the Orpheus myth can be found with slight variations from one telling to another – for example, whether Orpheus turns to look at Eurydice on his own, or at her insistence. The version in this piece displays the latter, which can be seen as somewhat misogynistic, since Eurydice’s tantalizing passion for Orpheus is clearly visualized as the cause of his undoing, rather than any tragic flaw he may have had (like his passion for, and loyalty to the memory of, Eurydice).

Regardless, one of the piece’s qualities that makes Orpheus as compelling as it is is its distillation of the lead characters. In most versions of the ballet that I’ve seen over the years, Orpheus barely reacts – he just is. This was the interpretation delivered by Ask la Cour on Saturday evening. Though influenced by outside forces, Orpheus’s movement quality seems completely internalized, repressed. Eurydice’s reaction to outside forces, on the contrary, is externalized – everything seems to flow from within; everything is expressed. Seen this way, “Orpheus” is a study in contrasting characterization through choreography – a passionate character who shows no passion, contrasted with a passionate character whose passion is overwhelmingly present and inescapable.

Garcia’s portrayal, however, was the most animated Orpheus I can recall, and perhaps for that reason it’s one of his finest roles. His interpretation may not have been Balanchine’s preference, but this Orpheus was able to connect and clearly communicate his tortured agony, his hope, and his despair beyond the proscenium. More significantly, his character’s passion, expressed even though internalized, more suitably matched Sterling Hyltin’s stunningly executed Eurydice. As much as he resisted her, he clearly wanted to yield to her, and had to force himself not to, succumbing equally to his own passion as to hers.

Ask la Cour and Teresa Reichlen
in George Balanchine’s “Orpheus”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

On Saturday evening, la Cour’s more standard characterization necessarily created more of a distance between himself and the audience. This internalization can come across as bland, and the passion muted, which is unfortunate, but given that – and recognizing that this may be what Balanchine wanted – it was a highly accomplished portrayal. And in her role debut, Teresa Reichlen delivered a siren of a Eurydice, one who the physically and emotionally blindfolded Orpheus eventually could not resist.

Each performance also featured Dark Angel role debuts. Although both dancers handled the role well, I thought Peter Walker’s performance on Tuesday was more compelling than Andrew Scordato’s on Saturday evening, possibly because Walker towered over Garcia, creating a sense of dominion and doom, while Scordato had to stretch to reach la Cour’s shoulders.

Agon, created nearly ten years after Orpheus, is a landmark ballet, emblematic of Balanchine’s elimination of anything that might be considered a detraction from the dancing itself – represented both by the black and white non-costumes and the crystalline plotless choreography. Try as one might to find a message, even emotional gloss, in any of the dances that together comprise this multi-part suite that completed the Greek-themed program, one can’t – not even in the celebrated central pas de deux.

Prior to the season opening performance, principal dancers Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle welcomed the audience, and announced that NYCB had dedicated this entire Winter 2019 season’s performances of Agon to former NYCB principal Arthur Mitchell, who passed away on September 19, 2018. Among a litany of accomplishments, Mitchell originated the lead male role in Agon, and was one of its finest interpreters.

Peter Walker in George Balanchine’s “Agon”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

There were no significant differences between the two Agon performances I saw last week and others I’ve seen over the years (unfortunately, I never saw Mitchell perform this or any other role live). On Wednesday, Kowroski and Angle handled the lead roles with their usual brilliance, accompanied by fine performances from Megan LeCrone, Unity Phelan, Lydia Wellington (in her role debut), Devin Alberda, Daniel Applebaum, and an extraordinary Anthony Huxley. As fine a performance as Angle delivered, however, I missed the electric performances in the role, and the seamless partnering of Kowroski, that Amar Ramasar so skillfully executed in recent years. On Saturday evening, Miriam Miller and Russell Janzen, in a role debut, executed finely-wrought and youthfully energized performances as the lead couple, successfully abetted by Walker (whose portrayal was far different from Huxley’s, but equally successful), and outstanding efforts by Sara Adams and Emilie Gerrity (both in role debuts), and Wellington, Harrison Coll and Scordato.

New York City Ballet
in George Balanchine’s “Serenade”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

There is no single ballet that can be labelled ‘Balanchine’s Best’. There simply are too many ‘bests’ to highlight just one. But Serenade may well be Balanchine’s most beloved ballet, and at least as iconic as Apollo among audiences, year after year after year. Having seen it dozens of times, I could see it dozens more and never tire of it. For a ballet with no apparent plot, it has a theme (or series of them) that is elusive and mysterious and undefinable, and images from beginning to end that remain permanently etched in a viewer’s mind. And like every great ballet, it reveals new secrets every time one sees it.

The most anticipated aspect of this performance of it was Lauren Lovette’s debut as the “waltz girl.”

Lauren Lovette and Ask la Cour
in George Balanchine’s “Serenade”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

It’s a personal quirk, admittedly, but my favorite performances in that role have been delivered by ballerinas who appear sylph-like (e.g., Hyltin; Janie Taylor). Lovette can be a superb sylph-like ballerina (per her performance in La Sylphide, among others), but to me that quality was lacking on Saturday afternoon, particularly impacting the final “apotheosis” image, where to me the essential image wasn’t there – although, as with other observations, this might have been a product of my position in the audience (from the right side), which limited my perception of the imagery as she’s carried aloft from downstage left to upstage right into … wherever. That aside (and, being super nit-picky, overlooking an errant pinky that appeared to have been held too high during the closing sequence following her entrance), it was another super debut, yet another example of Lovette’s ability to enchant.

Also celebrating a super debut, but far more of a pleasant surprise, was Gerrity’s “dark angel.” I don’t recall seeing this role danced in any way sympathetically, but Gerrity delivered the missing link that made the role a joy to watch, as strange as describing a “dark angel” as ‘sympathetic’ or ‘a joy to watch’ may sound. While I’ve sensed an appropriate quality of weight and solemnity previously, to those qualities Gerrity added a sense of ethereality that is no less appropriate for an angel who is (or may be) a messenger of death. Gerrity’s performance in that segment of the piece was significantly abetted by Aaron Sanz’s fine delivery of suffering as the one the dark angel summons. The featured cast was completed by Ashley Bouder and la Cour (in a role debut), but any discussion of “featured” members of the cast that omits NYCB’s corps is deficient – they, collectively, provided a flawless iconic framework for this iconic ballet.

Sterling Hyltin
in George Balanchine’s “Mozartiana”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

When Hyltin debuted in Mozartiana several years ago, I raved that her portrayal finally enabled me to enjoy the ballet, which I’d previously found too elegiac in its first movement, which colored my perception of the rest of it. Unfortunately, either Hyltin has now modified her portrayal in this opening “Preghiera,” or was persuaded to change it: it’s now just as somber as other portrayals I’ve seen. In other respects, however, including a fabulously executed “Theme et Variations” segment with Huxley (the accompanying score is Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 4), and a joyous “Gigue” by Troy Schumacher, it was a sensational performance.

The Balanchine / Tchaikovsky program concluded with Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. The piece dates to 1941, when it premiered with Ballet Caravan, and was revived for NYCB in 1964. At the time, the ballet was titled Ballet Imperial (some companies still perform it with that title), and featured sets by Rouben Ter-Arutunian that connected the ballet to its Petipa / Russian Imperial inspiration. As with Apollo, to me the ballet looked better with the sets and a sense of context than it does now on a bare stage (even with new costumes by Marc Happel that feature thousands of Swarovski crystals). That being said, it’s still a superb piece, given exceptional performances by Reichlen and Angle in the leading roles, LeCrone (in a role debut), and Kristen Segin, Sarah Villwock, Jonathan Fahoury, and Spartak Hoxha in featured roles.

Many years ago, NYCB dedicated an entire year to segmenting and exploring three components of its repertory: its entire Fall 2012 program focused on Balanchine / Stravinsky (including one program identical to the Stravinsky program that opened this season), its entire Winter 2013 program on Balanchine / Tchaikovsky, and its entire Spring 2013 program to an American Music Festival. Allowing such in-depth explorations provided a glorious way to compare and contrast, and enjoy. These opening Winter 2019 programs provide a more limited sampling (to be diluted in other programs later in the season), but the ballets are no less illuminating. One can have individual favorites, but these ballets continue to show how remarkably adventurous, exhilarating, and enjoyable Balanchine’s body of work is.

The season continues through March 3.

The post NYCB: New Season; New Roles appeared first on CriticalDance.

Barbican Theatre
London

25 January 2019

Maggie Foyer

It’s not often the Queen and physical theatre are singing from the same hymn sheet, but Her Majesty’s recent pleas for a stronger community spirit in Britain echoes a theme that runs through The Wedding presented by Gecko, one of the UK’s most innovative companies. The finale was a huge love fest of singing and clapping that stirred hearts and set feet tapping. The ‘feel good’ factor is certainly something we need more of right now.

Despite the title, the work refers more broadly to other contractual agreements, though wedding gowns: long, gorgeous and all white feature strongly. Director Amit Lahav has both male and female wearing the gowns at various times, neatly sidestepping a whole raft of gender issues.

Gecko’s The Wedding
Photo: Richard Haighton

The idea that we are all bound by contracts of one sort or another, and that we all seek belonging and community has a flip side in borders and exclusion. These ideas are imagined in many imaginative ways by this hugely talented company.

Most players arrive on stage through a chute to land in what looks like a kiddie’s play pen replete with teddy bear and all very touchy-feely. But when one tries to take this route to exit, her way is barred.

The modern world of city bureaucrats, armed with clip boards and briefcases, intrude at intervals creating an alienating world of conflict and tension where one-upmanship pervades.

Gecko’s The Wedding
Photo: Richard Haighton

Immigrants are an issue difficult to avoid, an issue that raises a difficult question, is there no fundamental contract for a human being to care for another forced to flee in dire distress? Lahav manages to present the case with zero schmaltz and plenty of humour. From the moment a talking head emerges from the zippered opening of a battered wheelie case, we’re hooked.

Khalid emerges to entertain us with deft dance steps and Arabic phrases. Wife and Dad climb out of the small aperture (migrants are skilled at close containerisation) and working on the apron of the stage they engage directly with the audience. In a grand finale Khalid graduates to wearing his own white wedding dress and dance along with the crowd.

Wedding dance, in a variety of different cultural guises, adds further entertainment value in a lively upbeat show that still managed to touch on current concerns.

The post Gecko: The Wedding appeared first on CriticalDance.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Opera House
Washington, DC

January 29, 2019

Carmel Morgan

If you’re obsessed with dance history, as American Ballet Theatre’s Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky is, then you may already know that Harlequinade premiered in 1900 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Ratmansky carefully reconstructed Marius Petipa’s steps by studying Stepanov notations from the Harvard Theatre Collection, resulting in the staging of Harlequinade that premiered in June 2018 at the Metropolitan Opera House. If you’re not interested in dance history, then Harlequinade may disappoint you. On the other hand, you might easily overlook the insipid plot if you’re used to enjoying older classical ballets with similar storylines — a father refuses to let his daughter marry the penniless man she loves and tries to arrange her marriage to a pompous wealthy man instead, but a good fairy intervenes, true love prevails, and the wedding festivities include a lot of distinct dances by various groups of well-wishers. The plot is not terribly important, except that this is a comic ballet, so you can feel confident about laughing. I figure that there’s political commentary embedded in Harlequinade particular to its original time that goes over my head. It was nice to leave politics behind and simply appreciate the humor and the spectacle.    

Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside in Harlequinade, photo by Marty Sohl

Like the Christmas classic, The Nutcracker, ABT’s Harlequinade features sweetness, silliness, striking costumes, and a ton of talented children. In fact, the children, in this case students of The Washington School of Ballet, have quite large part in the production. The rapturous applause for the thirty-four young dancers on opening night almost exceeded that for the adults. While the students surely had parents, grandparents, and siblings in the audience who would have been cheering for them regardless of the quality of the performance, there’s no dispute that the young dancers deserved the enthusiastic recognition they received. The students adeptly tackled the challenging choreography, managing to stay in sync while executing the steps crisply and daintily. They also looked extraordinarily cute, especially when their small heads purposefully bobbed back and forth.

The costumes by Robert Perdziola, inspired by the original designs, however, are the real stars of the show. The costumes are so colorful, so detailed, so unique. One’s eyes during Act II’s wedding celebration barely know where to look, the richness, vibrancy, and diversity of the patterns is so strong. The wigs, the hats, the shoes, everything is eye-catching. Watching Act II was like witnessing an entire costume shop explode on stage along with a stained glass factory. Pictures won’t give you the same effect as seeing this visual miracle in person.

ABT’s Harlequinade, photo by Erin Baiano

The choreography, in my view, offers few thrills, but it does deliver abundant charm. ABT’s dancers danced superbly, but I couldn’t help but feel that seeing them do Harlequinade was a bit of a waste. The strength of this cast of ABT dancers tends to be sharp technique rather than acting. Harlequinade’s demanding mime and comedic characterizations stretched the company, and I don’t think the cast I saw always adequately captured the ballet’s innate levity.

James Whiteside as Harlequin did all right, but his high-flying jumps got more emphasis than his clowning. On the other hand, wearing a mask as his character does means having to emote even more than usual, and the twisting tassels on the ends of his bicorn hat were distracting, both of which may have impacted the audience’s perception. Thomas Forster as Pierrot fared a little better. I found him to be funnier, but that was due at least in part to the exaggeratedly long sleeves of his outfit, which extend well beyond the hands. When Forster moved his arms excitedly, his sleeves amusingly flopped. Duncan Lyle as Léandre, the wealthy suitor, performed his comic role with aplomb.

Of the female leads, I found Stella Abrera as Pierrette to be the most enchanting. Sparks flew when she danced. Both Isabella Boylston as Columbine and Tatiana Ratmansky as the Good Fairy, did a fine job in roles that are admittedly more “straight,” but Abrera surpassed them in her ability to keep me on the edge of my seat while she danced. Boylston flew as a Lark, Whiteside repeatedly chased and caught her, but despite their elegance and merriment, Abrera is the one who kept my gaze because she danced with the most abandon.

Stella Abrera and Thomas Forster in Harlequinade. photo by Doug Gifford

Go to see Harlequinade if you like costumes and kids and clowns and pleasant diversions, skip it if you’re seeking serious amazing dancing. Unless you’re a dance history scholar, it’s the production elements and the wit of Harlequinade, not the plot and specific steps, that will entertain you.  

The post American Ballet Theatre: Harlequinade appeared first on CriticalDance.

mutual comfort
Sad Case
Wir sagen uns Dunkles
SH-BOOM!

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
Kay Theatre
College Park, Maryland

January 30, 2019

Carmel Morgan

I’d given some thought before to what dances I’d like to do in heaven, assuming that place exists, and what dances I’d like to see again, but I hadn’t previously thought about what dancers I might want to be, if given a chance. Now I know. If I were reincarnated, I’d like to be an NDT 2 dancer. Nederlands Dans Theater’s second company, NDT 2, auditions dancers from ages 17-21, who have completed a classical ballet training course. The dancers selected for the company come from around the globe and are exquisite in every way. They impressively bend, balance, soar, stare, laugh, and explode like determined little firecrackers. Their extensions are wondrous, their acting is phenomenal. They’re the future of contemporary ballet, and they’re as close to perfect as it gets.

One reason the young dancers look so good is the excellent choreography they’re given, and I’m sure this is what draws many to the auditions. But I’m also sure there’s something else afoot. However they train and rehearse, it must be a relentlessly exacting process, because these dancers are beyond compare. If aliens from outer space who know nothing about dance watched them and a few other young companies, the aliens would have no problem recognizing the matchless skill of NDT 2’s dancers. They’re jaw-droppingly good and look like no other junior company I’ve seen.

Even the old curmudgeons in the audience seemed entranced with NDT 2’s recent University of Maryland performance. I dare anyone to watch NDT 2 and not feel moved by the sheer talent on stage. And like the dancers themselves, the works presented were provocative and charismatic.

The gem of the evening was the opener, mutual comfort, by Edward Clug. The audience in the lobby after the first intermission was abuzz. People muttered, dumbstruck, “That first piece!”  My only complaint about mutual comfort is that it’s too short. I emphatically wanted more!  

NDT 2 in mutual comfort by Edward Clug, photo by Joris-Jan Bos

In mutual comfort, dancers seem to speak via an entirely new movement vocabulary, although the choreography incorporates many pedestrian gestures. The relationship between the dancers and the space between them holds mystery and tension. A hypnotic head nod that begins and ends the dance is both subtle and peculiarly resounding. A mixture of repetition, minimalist movement, and restrained turbulence captivates throughout. I sensed a casual flirtiness, even competition between the male and female dancers, in partnership and alone. A male dancer is aggressively slapped away by a female dancer, two women walk hand in hand. Dancers grab, dart, ripple. Sometimes almost robotic but also often silky smooth, the dancers appear human, but maybe not fully so. The agency between the dancers shifts, some taking firm initiative, then receiving a push. Unfolding, pulling, strolling, slyly snaking on the floor, at no point did my attention wane. I felt an underlying vague creepiness. The music, Milko Lazar’s PErpetTuumOVIA, is more than background noise but doesn’t overwhelm the picture being painted. The piano strikes and cello hums are a lovely accompaniment.                       

Sol León and Pau Lightfoot’s 1998 work Sad Case, which followed, doesn’t disappoint. Contrary to its title, Sad Case is happy, funny, and perhaps disguises something profound about humanity beneath its playful surface. The dancers wear pale costumes with charcoal smudges over them and their bodies. The music, old fashioned Mexican mambo, contrasts with madcap movement. The dancers are at times sharp and mechanical, and at times they actually convulse, but there’s an ever-present elegance nonetheless. I was reminded of children told not to jump on the bed, and catching the kids having a ball doing it anyway, despite the warning. But it’s not all absurdity and chaos. In a quiet moment, dancers tilt their heads up as if waiting for rainfall.      

German-born choreographer Marco Goecke’s Wir sagen uns Dunkles (We Exchange Dark Words) is, as its title suggests, dark, but with some hope thrown in at the end. The music alternates between pop punk songs by Placebo (Song to Say Goodbye, Slave to the Wage, Loud Like Love) to classical music by Franz Schubert (Nocturne in E flat) and Alfred Schnittke (Piano quintet, part 2: ‘in tempo di Valse’). The costumes, by Goecke, have a line of long glittery fringe on the back of each pant leg, which shimmies as the dancers shake, resembling rustling scales or feathers. Udo Haberland’s lighting leaves the floor generally bright, but the dancers’ faces are mostly obscured by shadows.

The work felt like the younger generation depicting suffering that they haven’t yet encountered. There are pugilistic martial arts type moves, and miniscule jerks, also lots of elbows sticking out. The dancers don’t hide heavy breaths or counting. A laugh track may signal a descent into depression — something spooky or sinister. Dancers gather while childhood rhymes are recited. Someone later teeters as if on a tightrope. Sad Case might be a more accurate title for this one!        

NDT 2 dancers (foreground, Surimu Fukushi) in Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s “SH-BOOM!”, photo by Rahi Rezvani

Closing the program was another fun piece by León and Lightfoot, SH-BOOM!, which premiered in 2000 at The Hague. Once again, this choreographic duo chose foot tapping music that’s frequently at odds with the movement. (The title is taken from SH-BOOM!, an early doo-wop song by The Chords). SH-BOOM! comes across sort of like fiddling around on the TV or radio, letting one song or show play, then switching to one with a different mood and different content. A single dancer acts out a soap opera, playing two parts. A male dancer, with no clothes on, dances under flashlight beams and sometimes hides his private parts with a copper pot (but sometimes he doesn’t). Men wear white knee socks and underwear, women high necked, long-sleeved back dresses.   

Here, Surimu Fukushi, a Japanese native, was extraordinary. He exuded comic charm, but he also lit up the stage when he wasn’t being a clown. The other dancers, too, infused SH-BOOM! with joy. I look forward to following the careers of these 16 incredible dancers, because it’s clear the sky is the limit for them, whether they join the main NDT company or venture off elsewhere.

The post Nederlands Dans Theater 2 (NDT 2) appeared first on CriticalDance.

BalletBoyz
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

February 1, 2019
Young Men (Acts I and II)

Jerry Hochman

BalletBoyz returned to the Joyce Theater this week with a multi-media presentation titled Young Men. The company’s appearance is cause for celebration – they’re an excellent group of dancers, and Young Men is a heartfelt piece that appears to do what it sets out to do, and generally does it well. But for all its sincerity and credible atmosphere, it lacks two components that to me are essential to a dance theater performance: a coherent narrative (assuming a narrative of some sort is a component, as it is here), and compelling choreography.

BalletBoyz was co-founded in 2000 by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt (each receiving an OBE designation in 2017) as a vehicle for the two of them following twelve performing years with The Royal Ballet. In 2010, they retired from performing, opened BalletBoyz to new talent, and the resulting all-male (generally) company has since performed to international accolades.

Members of BalletBoyz
in “Young Men” (film)
Photo by Sophie Harris Taylor

It sometimes seems like ancient history, particularly since “history” now crams more information into less time than it used to (think about it) and events seem to recede in memory faster than they used to, but World War I took place only a century ago, from 1914-1918. Also known as The Great War, or The War to End All Wars, the conflict claimed an estimated 16 million deaths (7 million civilians), directly or indirectly led to millions more, and its consequences are still being felt. Young Men, which premiered at Sadler’s Wells in 2015, obviously was conceived as a centennial remembrance / memorial to those British soldiers who fought and died in World War I, and those who survived it. This engagement was its New York premiere.

Most of the ingredients that together comprise Young Men – specifically the accompanying “background” film, the overall staging, and the lighting – work brilliantly.

Members of BalletBoyz
in “Young Men” (film)

There is nothing about the film component of Young Men that is less than top drawer. The cinematography (Trevitt is credited as Director of Photography), direction (credited to Nunn), editing (Jimmy Piper), and coloring (George Morrison) create a landscape that is both harrowing and crystalline; the costumes by Katherine Watt appear not only period accurate, but moderated so they quietly enhance rather than dominate the presentation; and the acting by the ensemble (including but not limited to many of those who appeared) was extraordinarily compelling. Expanded, this film accompaniment could have been a stunning standalone film – which apparently was the case. It’s not clear to me whether the film released under the name Young Men in 2016 is identical to the background film for the performance or is a “fleshed out” version, but according to the program notes the independently-released film won several awards. Whether the film that provided the background for, and is integrated with, the live performance at the Joyce is the same as the original or a subsequent version, or the award-winning film, it’s certainly the finest ‘film accompanying a dance theater performance’ that I can recall. In parts, the film reminded me of battle scenes I vaguely recall from Peter Weir’s memorable 1981 film Gallipoli, except instead of Australian recruits sent to Gallipoli, here British troops are sent to France or Flanders (the film was shot in Normandy).

Members of BalletBoyz in “Young Men”
Photo by Jessie Coleman

Similarly, the staging, overall, is very well conceived. I suspect that the production has been modified since its Sadler’s Wells premiere to fit the Joyce space, but even with any such modification, the presentation on stage leaps seamlessly from the background film onto and off an almost stage-spanning platform that extends from upstage to mid-stage, and spans almost the entire stage width. Accordingly, in addition to the usual (but here very well done) live extension and/or mirroring of what’s presented on film, the sense of the soldiers leaping in and out of trenches and being blasted by bombs, from film to stage and back, is vibrant and terrifying. Combined with the spectacular lighting (designed by Andrew Ellis), the film comes to life on stage, and, more significantly, the film’s atmosphere comes to life as well. And although the “fog of war” is by now a cliché, here Ellis creates a living, breathing “fog” that exceeds in quality anything I can recall in a stage presentation. But it’s not just battle. In one of the rare “calm” scenes, the sun-dappled presentation of a bucolic field is translated, again seamlessly, to sun-dappled light that bathes the live individual characters.

So why am I not jumping for joy at a marvelous commemorative presentation?

Members of BalletBoyz in “Young Men”
Photo by Panaylotis Sinnos

While the production can be seen as an anti-war piece, to me it’s more about the suffering that the combatants, and to some extent civilians, endured during World War I. Young Men doesn’t condemn war per se – there’s no connection to war in general or war as it arguably has evolved into a battle of technologies where, at least theoretically, combat may no longer be at arm’s length. More significantly, there’s no villain to this piece. War – this particular war – is an event that combatants and those who love them lived through and endured. It just is. There’s no blame, no sense of the senselessness of it all. This is not The Green Table.

Well, fine. I can’t criticize Young Men for not doing what it apparently never intended to do. But to be effective as dance theater, what’s left, the horrors of this war, must do more than show the horrors of war. Too much of it is stuff we’ve seen before, however well put-together it may from time to time be here. Too much of whatever narrative there is is unexplained, comes from nowhere, and leads to nowhere – or the audience is forced to guess. Too many loose ends. [Admittedly, part of my confusion may arise from not being able to follow specific characters because I’m not familiar with the dancer / actors who portray them, but that’s a problem that I think most in the audience would face as well.]

Members of BalletBoyz in “Young Men”
Photo by George Piper

For example, the “drill sergeant” who is abusive during the recruits’ training early in the presentation (very well presented, on film and on stage) and seemingly hates himself for the brutality he shows – is he the same soldier who seems to lose his mind as the piece progresses, and drowns in a muddy puddle / lake? And there’s a recurrent theme of sorts – early on, a soldier receives what may be a “Dear John” letter, which causes him to jump out of the trenches and attempt suicide-by-combat, only to be rescued by another soldier who risks life and limb to save him. Later, a young woman, dressed like a nurse, somehow meets a soldier in a clearing near the battle zone, partially disrobes apparently intending to change into a soldier’s outfit, but is found by one wandering soldier and they immediately begin to act like this was a planned rendezvous. But why the costume and the partial costume change?  What was really happening? Then, while the woman and the soldier are joyously writhing, other soldiers – led by one particularly virulent man – pull them apart and eventually one drags the woman off-stage (presumably to be assaulted). Are the virulent man and the man in the romantic scene with the young woman the same as, respectively, the one who gets the Dear John letter and the one who saves him? And is the one who gets the Dear John letter the same as the drill sergeant? And in the film’s most harrowing scene, with one soldier effectively drowning the other, are those two the same two soldiers? And what was this “fight” about, since it happened so much later than the confrontation with the young woman and her maybe or maybe not boyfriend soldier? And was the “drowning” “real” or imagined. And who’s the woman who brings the soldiers eggs? Where does she come from, and where does she go? And what is it about her being considerate to the soldiers that prompts the “crazed” soldier (maybe drill sergeant, maybe virulent recipient of that Dear John letter) to go off the deep end, again. And why are the costumes worn by the soldiers in “Act II” different from those in “Act I”? Is Act II no longer about World War I, but World War II also? If the costume change was intended somehow to universalize the suffering of war combatants, however, more would have been needed than a simple costume change.

Members of BalletBoyz
in “Young Men”
Photo by Jessie Coleman

These are just some examples. It’s possible that there’s a connection between these characters that I couldn’t follow, and it’s also possible that there’s no connection, and the characters and events are emblematic of “things that happen” during war regardless of who the specific character is. But some clarity would have been helpful.

A greater problem, overall, is that these soldiers’ are depicted as fighting two fronts: certainly the invisible “other side” that sets off bombs and uses poison gas, but also, much more directly and vividly, their fellow soldiers crazed by war. Even in the filmed “drowning-murder” scene, the two soldiers seem at once to be fighting each other and loving and trying to save each other – so much so that you don’t really know whether the drowning was real or imagined, or an unintended consequence of a soldier’s losing his mind (maybe, or maybe not, parallel to the “attempted suicide by combat and rescue” scene earlier in the piece).

Members of BalletBoyz in “Young Men”
Photo by Jessie Coleman

Even if all the above made coherent sense and I just missed it, there’s the choreography (by Iván Pérez). With some wonderful exceptions – the duet between the young woman and the soldier and the depiction of the soldiers battling to tear them apart; the compassionate “rescue” of a shell-shocked young soldier (including a stunning scene of the rescuing soldier providing his own body upon which the emotionally destroyed soldier could rest); the ultimate pas de trois / pietà at the end, with a (presumably) mother and girl-friend comforting a returning soldier suffering from PTSD – it’s all jumping and running and pushing and pulling and leaping onto and down from and onto and down from the platform again, and hitting the ground and getting up and hitting the ground again and getting up again, sometimes in synchronized groupings sometimes not, and through it all seemingly to fight each other … all the time. It gets tedious to watch. And the score (by Keaton Henson), except for those few periods of calm, is all tension all the time. Everything’s at the same decibel level, and it feels endlessly repetitious. This is understandable as a reflection of seemingly near-constant battle and stress, but the theater isn’t a battleground. The brief periods of calm are welcome, but they’re too rare, and too often only lead to more acts of violence.

Members of BalletBoyz in “Young Men”
Photo by Panaylotis Sinnos

The nine dancers who appear live – Joey Barton, Benjamin Knapper, Elizabeth McGorian (a Principal Character Artist with The Royal Ballet who played the “older woman” / mother of one of the soldiers), Harry Price, Matthew Rees, Liam Riddick, Matthew Sandiford, Bradley Waller, and Jennifer White (the “young woman”) – and the thirteen who appeared in the film (including six of those who appeared live) executed sensationally.

Ultimately, however, although Young Men is undeniably a work of performance art worthy of admiration and respect, its value is limited by its scope and concept. It’s a well-deserved memorial to those almost forgotten soldiers who fought and suffered in World War I, but it pains me to believe that it might have been better than it is.

The post BalletBoyz at the Joyce: Men of War appeared first on CriticalDance.

Whim W’Him
Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center
Seattle, WA

January 25, 2019
“3X3” Program: The Most Elusive Hold, This mountain, Trail of Soles

Dean Speer

Two incidents in my ancestral past were brought to mind by Whim W’him’s latest bill, 3 x 3, where two of the three works depicted immigrant journeys, at least it appeared so to me. The first was how my maternal great grandfather had the courage to bring his family and emigrate from a border town in what is now Poland (sometimes it was in Germany, sometimes in France, depending on who won the latest skirmish) to, of all places with a great name in the US, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in 1847, the city itself having only been established in 1846.

Whim W’him dancers in the program “3X3”
Photo courtesy of Whim W’him

The other was my maternal great grandmother who had the wonderful name of California Van Hagen Bogue (whose own mother left Holland with her husband as they were not allowed to marry there due to class differences) who survived an 1867 shipwreck off the coast of Central America. In each case, I’ve asked, Why did they move initially? How did they overcome what difficulties they must have encountered and how did they make do? What was their community and how was it re-built?

Olivier Wevers’ Trail of Soles (which features many pairs of shoes on stage, used in various ways) is a very strong piece that shows the isolation and bias toward one person, danced by Cameron Birts, and how his relationship with the other cast members changes and evolves as they, individually and as a group, face the unknown. Set to the hauntingly beautiful score of Polish composer Henryk Górecki (I think his Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs), Trail of Soles is a mature choreographic work that bears repeating and seeing again.

Whim W’him dancers
in the program “3X3”
Photo courtesy of Whim W’him

Likewise, Zoe Scofield’s This mountain is also a mature work by an experienced choreographer who understands and effectively deploys classic compositional tools that build into a moving dance. It begins with the cast upstage in a narrow curtain opening, moving toward the audience in a walking pattern where they take turns in front of and replacing each other, passing one front to back. The work states its theme well, develops it, and then returns to its opening motif. The dance also spoke to me of a body or community of individuals migrating and changing due to circumstances.

Yin Yue made the first work on the program, The Most Elusive Hold which I found to be a mercurial dance that challenged its cast of five dancers, Liane Aung, Jane Cracovaner, Adrian Hoffman, Jim Kent, and Karl Watson, with a dense amount of complex material in a relatively quick pace throughout.

Whim W’him dancers
in the program “3X3”
Photo courtesy of Whim W’him

Bravo to the Whim W’him dancers for their bravery in venturing out with three new works, each a good challenge and “main-stage worthy.” Aung, Birts, Hoffman, Kent, Mia Monteabaro, Cracovaner, and Watson make a great team and it’s a joy to see them in the programs and how they adapt to the varying demands each choreographer places on them.

Next up is Wevers’ collaboration with Early Music Seattle in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, February 23 and 24th.

The post Whim W’Him: A Trail of Souls appeared first on CriticalDance.

New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

February 3, 2019
Herman Schmerman, Principia (new Peck), The Runaway

Jerry Hochman

After an initial focus in its Fall 2018 Season on Balanchine and his collaborations with Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, New York City Ballet switched gears and presented a program of contemporary ballet. Called “New Combinations,” the program opened with William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman, and closed with Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway, last season’s runaway hit. In between was a new ballet by Justin Peck.

Taylor Stanley
and members of New York City Ballet
in Justin Peck’s “Principia”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Titled Principia, and using a commissioned score by Peck’s frequent collaborator Sufjan Stevens, the piece started out as a winner, choreographed to one of Peck’s undeniable strengths – his ability to display and manipulate a stage full of dancers in constantly interesting ways. In recent years, Peck has focused more on smaller casts and/or large groups of dancers in a piece with a more unifying focus (e.g., Belles-Lettres, Rodeo – Four Dance Episodes, Pulcinella Variations, The Times Are Racing). There have been exceptions (like Everywhere We Go), but a return to the Peck who exploded onto the ballet choreographic scene with his Year of the Rabbit in 2012 (also to a Stevens composition) has been long awaited.

Peck truly works magic with his stagecraft. There are twenty-four dancers in Principia: six featured dancers (3 male/3 female), three demi-soloists (all female), and a corps of fifteen (6 male, 9 female) – and all seemed to be onstage in a jumble as the curtain rose. Faster than you can say George Balanchine, the “jumble” reassembled into a recognizable form, subdivided, and dancers exited the stage and reentered in unconventional ways. Already feeling giddy, I sat back in my seat and relaxed.

Taylor Stanley, Daniel Applebaum,
and members of New York City Ballet
in Justin Peck’s “Principia”
Photo by Erin Baiano

As the piece progressed, the connection between the Peck of Year of the Rabbit and the Peck of Principia became increasingly apparent. Peck’s clever manipulation of dancers who appear seemingly out of nowhere and just as suddenly disappear, his clever choreography for pairs and groups and mostly for the entire cast as a living corporeal whole, and his clever response to Stevens’s music, were all there. I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason to it, but it was difficult to discern that in Year of the Rabbit too, and not having a particular meaning isn’t necessary. It just was very fine choreography and execution to an equally fine score.

And then something happened: I began getting tired of the visual themes that repeatedly recur in slightly different forms, including the over-use of what I describe as “smokestacks” of dancers scattered about the stage from which one or another featured dancer eventually emerges. [Think of the scattered “groups” of swans in the second White Act of Swan Lake (the “standard” Petipa-based version), where Siegfried touches each group of swans before finding the one within which Odette hid.] It’s clever at the beginning, but it happens too often, and in the dance’s context goes on too long. And, notwithstanding very fine choreography that’s distinguishable from solo to solo and pair to pair and group to group, I tired of trying to see any relationship at all among the featured dancers, who seemed to repeatedly change partners. And eventually I tired of Principia.

Miriam Miller (foreground)
and members of New York City Ballet
in Justin Peck’s “Principia”
Photo by Erin Baiano

The costumes, by the estimable Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, are two shades of grey (one for the tops, another on the bottoms), and they’re both nondescript and dull. I’m reasonably certain that this is what Peck wanted – something that wouldn’t detract from the purity of the choreography. And it goes without saying that there’s nothing resembling a set. So maybe this is simply a Peck “black and white” ballet where grey is the new black, memorable for its cleverness, speed and abstract patterns, but not much else.

I’ll withhold final judgment until I see Principia a few more times, and maybe find connections and coherence I missed on first view that might make it appear less overly long than it now does. And perhaps I’ll also find a meaning to the dance (and the score’s) title. There doesn’t have to be one, but with a word that specific, and given Peck’s admirable propensity for selecting titles for a reason, difficult as that reason may be to discern, maybe it’s there. “Principia,” in Latin, means (loosely) “fundamental  principles.” Maybe there are choreographic principles here that I missed. Or perhaps some connection to Isaac Newton’s three volume study on the laws of motion and universal gravitation – Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica – which I tried to find in the piece, but it all seemed too diffuse.

Be that as it may, although the piece may ultimately have been disappointing on first view, the execution by the featured dancers [Peck (Tiler), Claire Kretzschmar, Brittany Pollack, Daniel Applebaum, Taylor Stanley, and Harrison Coll] as well as by the rest of the effervescent cast, was exemplary.

Joseph Gordon and (l-r) Naomi Corti,
Unity Phelan and Sara Mearns
in William Forsythe’s
“Herman Schmerman”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Herman Schmerman premiered with NYCB in 1992 (I suppose the “New” in “New Combinations” is relative) as part of that year’s Diamond Project. This was the first time that the piece has been presented in its complete form in over two decades.

To a commissioned score by Thom Willems, Forsythe’s frequent collaborator, Herman Schmerman contains two distinct parts: the first, danced by three women and two men; the second, a pas de deux for one man and one woman. There’s no connection between the two beyond the relatively annoying electronic score (less so in the second part); even the choreography looks different beyond the given difference between a group and a pair. Maybe that’s how the ballet (and score) got its name – two words that, when put together, make no sense but sound like they fit each other. I’ll call the first part “Herman,” and the second part “Schmerman.”

Naomi Corti
in William Forsythe’s
“Herman Schmerman”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Forsythe is on record as saying that the dance means nothing, and the title means nothing, being derived from a Steve Martin film, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. He’s certainly right with respect to Herman.

When Herman premiered, the movement quality might have looked new and distinctive, but now it not only doesn’t look particularly “new,” after a brief period of time the movement quality for both the men and the women looks much too similar: too much of arms held horizontally as the body moves; too many jumps; too bound to the score’s electronic percussive points; too derivative (at times I saw flashes of Balanchine’s Agon), and too much of the dancers simply walking off stage after completing a series of phrases. Parts of it work well on a moment to moment basis, but overall the movement frequently looks forced, and the viewing appearance is flat. Perhaps that’s why the Herman component of Herman Schmerman has not been performed since 1994. The dancers – Sara Mearns, Unity Phelan, Harrison Ball, Joseph Gordon – executed superbly, and the fifth dancer, Naomi Corti, merits special accolades for assuming the assignment apparently on late notice and not only delivering the choreography, but looking like she “fit” together with her much more experienced colleagues. Each debuted in their roles earlier in the week.

Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle
in William Forsythe’s
“Herman Schmerman”
Photo by Erin Baiano

I disagree with Forsythe’s characterization as it applies to the piece’s second component, which, according to the program note, was added to the first in 1993. Schmerman may not have a narrative, but it definitely has a loose theme of sorts – a low-decibel and good-natured “battle of the sexes,” and an at times subtle and at other times broadly-painted sense of humor, both of which are absent in Herman. And while Schmerman may also be seen as poking fun at ballet “relationship” dances that have no real point, its approach is so likeable that that component is virtually invisible. Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle (a casting that has a sense of humor of its own), who also debuted in their roles earlier in the week, added a sense of refinement amid the humor that took Schmerman to an even higher level.

Taylor Stanley (front)
and members of New York City Ballet
in Kyle Abraham’s “The Runaway”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The evening ended with Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway, which premiered last Fall. In my subsequent review, after initially disliking it intensely, I ended up raving about it and selecting it as one of the Tops in NY dance in 2018. If anything, a third view solidifies that opinion. Except for the accompanying music (which I see as being selected for a distinct thematic purpose rather than to break barriers), it’s an extraordinary and powerful piece of work on multiple levels, including Abraham’s magnificently conceived choreography, which fits and enhances what I see as the dance’s theme (the piece isn’t titled The Runaway for nothing), and which includes pyrotechnics of a type and at a level not evident in any other ballet. It’s definitely a ballet of a different color.

(l-r) Georgina Pazcoguin and Sara Mearns
in Kyle Abraham’s “The Runaway”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The cast, identical to the original, included Mearns, Ashley Bouder, Georgina Pazcoguin, Peter Walker, Christopher Grant, Roman Mejia, Spartak Hoxha, and, as the ballet’s central figure and its heart, Stanley, who is rapidly evolving into NYCB’s multi-faceted soul.

I feared that audiences would swarm to see The Runaway for all the wrong reasons, and this appears to be the case (for example, I overheard many people laughing their way through much of it, whenever an outrageous costume or song made an appearance, while I see none of it as in any way humorous). But, from my vantage point, the Sunday afternoon house was full, and I don’t doubt that this was a consequence of The Runaway being on the program. And following its conclusion, instead of what I’ve previously described as the usual NYCB audience “sitting ovation,” the house erupted into a standing ovation the like of which is usually reserved, if it’s seen at the DHK Theater at all, for full-length ballets.

It may be for all the wrong reasons, but it’s most welcome. Whatever it takes.

The post New York City Ballet: Grey is the New Black appeared first on CriticalDance.

Pacific Northwest Ballet
McGaw Hall Opera House
Seattle, WA

February 2, 2019
The Sleeping Beauty

Dean Speer

Classicism versus Romanticism has long been a back-and-forth tug of war in literature and in the arts. Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty to me represents the apex of classicism in dance, with its symmetry and order and how the return to this order concludes the work. This order is interrupted early by the intrusion of Carabosse who was very miffed at not being invited to Aurora’s Christening.

In four parts (Prologue; Act 1 “The Curse;” Act II “The Vision and Awakening” also known as the Panorama; and Act III “The Wedding”), each one is strong both in terms of moving the story forward and also in pure dance. Interesting, fun, beautiful, elegant.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in Ronald Hynd’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Angela Sterling

I’ve long admired Leta Biasucci from the time she was with Oregon Ballet Theatre to her subsequent career at PNB. The part of Princess Aurora is huge — she appears in three of the four parts, which include three pas de deux, group dancing, solos, and having to carry the show. Biasucci was more than up to the challenge with her sparkling and dazzling technique and radiant smile. This was a 16-year-old character going places. Her very first balance in attitude (first of four suitors) was short but by the time she got to the long promenades and balances at the end of the Rose Adagio, they were rock solid. Her joyous entrance to her birthday party in Act 1 portended a great time and relaxed audience members. She was confident and sharply attacked the Petipa steps.

Leta Biasucci (center)
and Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in Ronald Hynd’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Angela Sterling

Lucien Postlewaite enters as Prince Florimund in the Hunting Scene of Act II and was well-matched with Biasucci. Postlewaite also has great technique and now, some years after first joining PNB, a superb maturity and authority (he also leaves the audience feeling assured), imbuing every gesture and moment with clarity. He’s additionally a great partner, and if I were Biasucci, would feel like I was in good hands and able to relax 100 percent into my character, as she clearly did.

The depth of the PNB ranks shows itself at every level. Lindsi Dec had the fun of playing the snooty Countess in Act II and then transformed herself into the radiant ballerina of the Gold and Silver Pas de trois of Act III. Glorious. In this, her leggy line was matched by two of PNB’s tallest long-legged men, Joshua Grant (gold), and Miles Pertl (silver). I adore this dance. It is very “steppy” (read technical) but also fun and a great joy. Pertl missed sticking one landing from a double tour en l’air (to the knee) but recovered quite quickly and was unruffled.

Part of the fun of Act III are the appearances of Perrault fairy tale characters. This version includes three: Puss ‘n’ Boots and the White Cat (always a fun humorous riot — with Margaret Mullin and Ezra Thomson); The Bluebird and Princess Florine with Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan and Kyle Davis; and finally, Angeli Mamon and Dammiel Cruz as Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. The so-called Bluebird Pas de deux is often done as a stand-alone and is a good challenge for repertory students as well as professionals. Ryan nailed the hops en pointe, piqué turns, and echappés. Davis was light on his feet and, in the coda easily sailed through the 24 brisé volé and entrechat six. (It’s interesting to note that the first Bluebird was Enrico Cechetti himself.)

Jonathan Porretta (center)
and Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in Ronald Hynd’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Angela Sterling

The Grand Pas de deux requires command of the steps, but the hardest part is the style which must show purity of line and simplicity. You also have to be fearless and show the joy of not one but three “fish dives,” and perfect the timing of each (the third is held longer). Biasucci and Postlewaite made this the showcase that it is. Exciting and thrilling all at once.

Jonathan Porretta has long been one of PNB’s most effective dancers. and his natural effusiveness was perfectly melded and deployed as the wicked Carabosse, cackling and enjoying this part. His retirement from the stage has been announced, and he will certainly be missed. Porretta brought 100 percent to each role, many of which are strongly etched into memory — Symphony in C; the prince in Swan Lake; Square Dance; and in contemporary works such as the complete Rite of Spring (a 30-minute solo), and others.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in Ronald Hynd’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Angela Sterling

This is a glorious production — with sets, costumes purchased from the English National Ballet, and choreography and staging courtesy of Roland Hynd and Annette Page (based on the original Petipa). It was fun bringing along the daughter of a dance colleague who had never seen PNB nor The Sleeping Beauty. Her reaction and how impressed and thrilled she was, was more than worth it. It was great to show off my hometown major ballet company.

I have to admit being slightly distressed that PNB has announced that it is retiring this particular production but promises a new one at some future date. In my mind, how can you improve on perfection?

The mighty PNB Orchestra was led by maestro Emil de Cou.

The post Pacific Northwest Ballet: The Pinnacle appeared first on CriticalDance.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Opera House
Washington, DC

February 5, 2019

Carmel Morgan

If it’s the beginning of February in Washington, DC, then you can count on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater coming to the Kennedy Center. At least that’s the way it’s been for the decade or so I’ve lived in the nation’s capital. I believe the tradition stretches back even further. At any rate, it’s an event many Washingtonians eagerly await on a yearly basis. Just as you can count on the annual Ailey visit, you can also count on the company presenting Ailey’s timeless masterwork Revelations. For me, watching Revelations is always a joy, a sort of cleansing of the soul. So beautiful and heartfelt is the movement, it’s easy to sit back and let your spirit soar. I don’t feel the need to say anything more about the performance of Revelations that I saw, except to note that I appreciated seeing old favorites like Clifton Brown still dancing divinely.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. photo by Nan Melville

The new work on the opening program, Lazarus, which premiered in 2018, surprised me with its impact. Artist-in-residence Rennie Harris, known for his hip hop choreography, created the company’s first two-act ballet to honor Ailey and celebrate the company’s 60th anniversary season. It would be hard to match the belovedness of Revelations, or to incorporate all of the complexities of Ailey’s life and the dance company he founded. Harris, I’m guessing, didn’t set forth to do so. Instead, it seems he took a very genius approach. Rather than trying to relate Ailey’s entire life history or to mirror Ailey’s choreographic style, Harris, using his own unique language, paints a broad picture inspired by Ailey but reaching beyond him. Lazarus is such a success because in addressing Ailey’s life and legacy, Harris touches upon the larger African American experience.  

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Jeroboan Bozeman in Rennie Harris’s Lazarus, photo by Paul Kolnik

At the start of Act I, a dancer collapses into another’s arms, and this happens repeatedly, a series of resurrections like the title of the work suggests. The dancers at the beginning of the work wear simple clothing that suggests the conditions of slavery (costumes by Mark Eric), as does the manner in which they move — hunched over from their forced labor. The lighting by James Clotfelter is initially quite dark, the music and sound by Darrin Ross includes dogs howling. Dancers with heads hanging to one side, rocking on their toes, conjure images of bodies swinging as a result of being lynched. A limp body is dragged across the floor; dancers toppled by grief crawl on their hands and knees; on their backs, arms reaching skyward with hands bent to the side wave as if struck by a breeze. From this dark place, African-Americans, Ailey among them, emerged.

The dancers also journey beyond this darkness. Their steps, often slow, speed up. You sense the connection between past and present, between African roots and American struggle, in the way the dancing unfolds. The revelation here is this shared ancestry. A living history book opens up. You see in the bodies of the dancers, and their tall shadows, movement that develops into today’s hip hop and contemporary dance, which electrifies in Act II.  

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Rennie Harris’s Lazarus, photo by Paul Kolnik

At the beginning of Act II, the group on their backs with undulating arms simulating swaying plants has moved from one side of the stage to the other. Dancers still rise and fall. As Act II goes on, the dancers’ footwork grows ever faster. Legs crisscross rapidly like lightning quick scissors. The rhythms are catchy. The dancers take flight, and it’s all sweat and energy, the kind of choreography for which Harris is best known. A celebration erupts. Arms fling from the chest triumphantly. There’s clapping. The faces of the dancers become animated and their dancing builds into something bold and lively and fun. Toward the end, Ailey’s recorded voice speaks of “blood memories.” Despite the rejoicing, there’s a serious need to respect one another in this country, and Ailey strived for this kind of coming together. Lazarus is a wonderful tribute to him that reflects and extends his dedication to “enriching the American modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of the African American cultural experience.” Bravo Rennie Harris and congratulations to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on 60 years of Ailey ascending.     

The post Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Lazarus and Revelations appeared first on CriticalDance.