Preview of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Cinderella

Dean Speer

What on earth would compel someone to travel 350 miles by train, cab, and one street car ride to Portland, Oregon? Certainly, the Rose City itself is more than a motive to enjoy this area’s bounty, but in this case, it was to respond to an invitation to attend an open studio rehearsal of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Cinderella. I was also curious to see OBT’s new headquarters, since their move a couple of years ago.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers
Xuan Cheng and Brian Simcoe
in Ben Stevenson’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert

I believe strongly that one of the best ways to support something is to show up, and, as I like to humorously say, “It’s important to be a seat in a seat!” There were more than a dozen of us filling the seats in Studio 1, with its light-filled space and windows opening up to the Willamette River just a stone’s throw away, for the first of two, single hours of rehearsal. The first was with Ballet Master Jeffrey Stanton, and the second with Ballet Mistress Lisa Kipp, each rehearsing, teaching, and coaching segments from the first part of the ballet. Their styles were effective, but they differed in their approach. Stanton is nurturing and quietly authoritative, while Kipp is no-nonsense, quick yet clearly supportive of the dancers. Each was prepared and ready to double-check and research (via an archive video). After observing, I commented that I’d want to work for them! (One of my own well-known dancer stories is of how, over 40 years ago, when I was in a repertory modern dance company, a choreographer — for whom I had and have enormous respect — verbally went on-and-on about her new work, and we dancers had not yet done one step. So, after about 30 minutes of this, I asked, “So, Phyllis, what are the steps!?” As a side lesson-learned, I’ve tried ever since not to waste the time of either my students or dancers.) I was so impressed by how both were kind to the dancers and how that kindness extended to their work and professionalism.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers
Xuan Cheng, Brian Simcoe,
Martina Chavez
and members of the company
in Ben Stevenson’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert

The Ben Stevenson choreography is filled with humor and pathos, and this is on display in these early scenes. Fairy godmother, stepsisters (wonderfully played by men), dad and step-mom, dancing master, wig and dress makers are all trying to outfit and prepare the (impossible) family for the Prince’s upcoming Ball. A shout out to Michael Linsmeier for being so shy (not!) and how funny and effective he makes “his” stepsister role. What I observed and enjoyed during these two all-too-brief hours made me even more anxious to enjoy the complete show when it opens soon. In this run, we saw Xuan Cheng give an amazing and thoughtful portrayal as the lead, Cinderella.

Following the rehearsal, I was given a tour of the building, which includes three studios shared by both the OBT Company and School, changing and lounge areas, and finally the Costume Shop where I got to see the talented and dedicated staff hard at work. One was working on Cinderella’s first ragged costume and another was replicating costumes from an earlier ballet that used an older material that only stretched in two ways and now that four-way stretch materials are available was remaking unitards.

(l-r) Oregon Ballet Theater dancers
Lisa Kipp, Xuan Cheng,
Brett Bauer, Michael Linsmeie,
and Jeffery Stanton
in Ben Stevenson’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Jingzi Zhao.

Each staff member welcomed me and all were great hosts. It was neat to have the Artistic Director, Kevin Irving, come out, say hello and sit in on one of the rehearsals. Brook Manning, Lecturer & Historian, talked to us about the production, of its history as a ballet and musical piece, and had culled and pulled out various costumes to share. Totally fun and interesting!

Of course, no trip to Portland would have been complete without a quick stop at Powell’s Books on the way back to the train station and north to Seattle. Did I gravitate to the book section? Is Cinderella a rags to riches story?

I loved my time at OBT HQ, seeing friends, and I can hardly wait to return to the Rose City for the show.

Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Cinderella opens at Keller Auditorium February 16th and plays for one week, accompanied by the mighty OBT Orchestra.

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Sadler’s Wells Theatre
London

1 February 2019

Maggie Foyer

The London International Mime Festival offers a platform to a range of physical theatre that might otherwise struggle to find a home. This is not because the shows are not worthy of a good home, but they simply don’t confirm: they are unique, odd, different and so often deliver a very special theatre experience.

Gandini Juggling and Alexander Whitley’s Spring
Photo: Simon Carter

Viewing Gandini and Alexander Whitley‘s mix of juggling and contemporary dance was a gentle, persuasive experience, as the highly skilled performers caught and held the attention. There was little of the razzmatazz one comes to expect of circus performance although the breath taking timing and co-ordination we associate with circus skills was there in spades. All the while, Whitley’s dancers cleverly insinuated the dance and choreography within and around the hoops, balls and batons that constantly fly through the air.

There were infinite variations on a theme as colours changed with a quick flip and like magic, pattern appeared in perfect sequence. In the monochrome of the simple practice style costumes and minimal set, the colours made an effective contrast while the lighting by Guy Hoare structured the space and instigated emotional shifts in light and colour.

The musicians playing behind a gauze were only highlighted occasionally but Gabriel Prokofiev’s score of often gritty sounds were grist to the mill, contrasting and supporting the constant flow of movement.

Gandini Juggling & Alexander Whitley’s Spring
Photo: Simon Carter

In a show that demanded split-second precision the cast of 12 looked incredibly laid back and relaxed as dozens of hoops flipped through the air to arrive in the right hands at the right moment. The dance, at times, seemed to take the back seat but Whitley had choreographed plenty of interesting material notable in creative floor work. At around one hour, the team timed it just right for a quality evening of unusual and intriguing performing art.

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Diablo Ballet
Del Valle Theater
Walnut Creek, CA

February 1, 2019
Balanchine and Beyond: Apollo, From Another Time, Paquita

Bryn Namavari

For its second show of Diablo Ballet’s 25^th Anniversary season, creative director Lauren Jonas combined pieces that embraced storytelling in three very different ways. Opening the evening was Apollo, one of George Balanchine’s most famous pieces. Set to Igor Stravinsky’s music, the ballet premiered in 1928 and its success propelled Balanchine to international recognition. Apollo has been performed a number of times by Diablo over the years (since the Diablo Premier in 1998) with permissions from the George Balanchine Trust and in accordance with its rigorous standards.

Diablo Ballet dancers
(l-r) Raymond Tilton, Jordan Tilton,
Rosselyn Ramirez and Amanda Farris
in George Balanchine’s “Apollo”
Photo by Bilha Sperling

Balanchine’s choreography explores not only classical storytelling, but the classical sense of harmony, balance, and symmetry. Apollo’s three muses (Terpsichore, Polyhymnia, and Calliope) were danced elegantly by Jackie McConnell (replacing injured Jordan Tilton), Rosselyn Ramirez and Amanda Farris. Balanchine employs the muses to create a series of memorable tableau around the young god in their neo-classical, monochromatic costumes (designed by Coco Chanel) like a series of figures on a Grecian frieze. The minimalism of their costumes and the stage, with only a single stool for Apollo to sit on, draws the audience’s focus instead to the sculptured beauty of their bodies as they create moments like the sunburst pose, their legs fanning out behind Apollo.

One of the most impressive, and arguably challenging, male roles Balanchine created, Apollo demands a performance of intensity, sensitivity, and purity that must be approach with vigor. While Diablo has cast the role to a tee in the past, Raymond Tilton, while proficiently executing the choreography, lacked some of the spirit and depth of past Apollos. From its historic prestige, to the number of renowned dancers who have taken on Apollo as their own, the role is a heavy weight to bear. Tilton’s boy-next-door looks lent themselves well to the audience’s understanding of the youthful and naive god as he begins his transformation. Perhaps with time, Tilton will be able to more effectively connect with, and embody the image of the mature man-god ready to take up his place at Zeus’s side on Olympus.

Diablo Ballet dancers
Jackie McConnell and Maxwell Simoes,
with composer Justin Levitt,
in Tina Kay Bohnstedt’s
“From Another Time”
Photo by Bilha Sperling

The second piece of the evening from Choreographer and Diablo Ballet alumna Tina Kay Bohnstedt transported the audience to a dream world. Bohnstedt’s choreography in From Another Time, a commissioned piece for Diablo, was in large part inspired by the original piano score by Justin Levitt (who played on stage with the dancers). The sometimes melancholic, sometimes hopeful melody made Bohnstedt think of a day dream, or being in another place or time.

With a simple set consisting only of two rectangular boxes and a piano, the five dancers dressed in plain grey cotton swept the audience away to the dream-like state expressed by Levitt’s notes. Rather than following a linear narrative, Bohnstadt is able to tell a light and refreshing story through expressed emotion. A truly beautiful and unassuming piece, Bohnstedt and Levitt are a well matched pair, their choreography and music harmonizing together like the perfect intermezzo.

Diablo Ballet dancers in the Finale
from Marius Petipa’s “Paquita”
Photo by Bilha Sperling

For the finale of the evening, Jonas chose the high spirited Paquita with a score by Ludwig Minkus. The selection was enjoyable for its exuberance alone, even without knowledge of the ballet’s actual plot: a Spanish gypsy girl saves the life of a French officer, and it turns out she is of noble birth and the two are able to be married. Marius Petipa’s choreography is filled with lively leaps, stage-devouring turns, ever-changing speed and accent which create a ballet full of thrilling movement and detail.

Pulling together selections including the Pax de Deux, solo variations, and featuring the entire company in the Finale, Jonas proved once again that she can artfully set the stage for the dancers to show the life of the choreography. Jillian Transon was elegant and charming, the image of a fairytale princess in a red and white tutu. McConnell, Ramirez and Transon shone in the variations, and Jocopo Jannelli stole the hearts of the audience. With Jonas continuing to bring on talented new faces like Jannelli, this reviewer is looking forward to watching them grow with the company. The evening was enjoyable as ever, a few minor glitches with the sound system cutting out and inconsistencies in volume luckily did not go so far as to hinder the overall experience. The dancers brought pleasure and delight to their target audience with this series of vignettes.

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

February 13, 2019

Carmel Morgan

Zhang Yimou’s acclaimed 1991 movie Raise the Red Lantern is in large part responsible for my love of Asian cinema. I can still recall scene after scene of the film’s stunning visual imagery. Beyond the film’s beauty, and beyond the emotional anguish so well portrayed, I sensed subversiveness and defiance. When I learned about a ballet of the same name adapted and directed a decade later by none other than Zhang himself, my first thought was why would China want to support such an endeavor? The film came across to me as pointing a critical finger at Chinese society and politics, and it must have struck Chinese censors the same way because it was banned in China for a period of time. I found it confusing that the National Ballet of China would embrace the controversial story, based on Su Tong’s novel Wives and Concubines, and even more confusing that the company would choose this ballet to tour internationally (Raise the Red Lantern was last at the Kennedy Center in 2005).

Having seen the ballet, however, I understand. The ballet’s plot is not nearly as complex as that of the film, and the story has been significantly tweaked. Not surprisingly, there’s little to condemn China in the ballet version of Raise the Red Lantern. One can easily chalk up the miserable lives of the sexually enslaved concubines to China’s past and see the ballet instead as offering, in contrast, praise of current Chinese leadership and the much more liberated position of women today. Also celebrated at the forefront of the ballet is Peking Opera, something that the Chinese can proudly claim as part of their cultural heritage. Opening night, following on the heels of the Lunar New Year, featured introductory remarks by the Kennedy Center’s President Deborah F. Rutter and the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Cui Tiankai.   

National Ballet of China in Raise the Red Lantern, photo courtesy of the Company

Although the content is watered down, the ballet isn’t exactly tame. As in the film, there’s a thoroughly tragic ending. Yet it’s a tragedy of the sort Western ballet audiences know well. Raise the Lantern focuses on love and betrayal, themes classical ballet has long addressed. The National Ballet of China’s Raise the Red Lantern is a ballet with a distinct Chinese flavor, but it’s also one audiences outside of China can easily relate to and enjoy.  

Predictably, given Zhang’s eye for detail, Raise the Red Lantern delivers incredible visual richness. The ballet pops with color and bold design. The stage design (by Zeng Li) and costumes (by Jérôme Kaplan) are especially captivating. Zhang designed the lighting, and it’s lovely. Of course red lanterns dominate the stage. Also wonderful was the performance by guest Peking Opera actress Jia Tingxin. Was the ballet an excuse to incorporate traditional Chinese opera into the mix? Probably so, and the ballet is better for it.

National Ballet of China in Raise the Red Lantern, photo courtesy of the Company

What Raise the Red Lantern lacks, unfortunately, is strong choreography by Xinpeng Wang (original) and Wang Yuanyuan. The choreography keeps the story flowing, but overall, save a few nice moments of partnering, it doesn’t thrill. The dancers are accomplished, to be sure, but other than executing great leg extensions, it’s difficult to discern the extent of their technical skills. As for their acting, the dancers were fine, but few showed a level of passion that that grabbed me. In fact, if I were to pinpoint what I felt I missed most in this production, it would be letting loose. The dancers remained extraordinarily composed, almost mechanical. Ballet seemed to be a mere tool for telling the story, rather than something absolutely alive within the dancers.

Raise the Lantern, nonetheless, did occasionally pierce my heart. It’s in its most tragic moments that the ballet succeeds. The end of Act II and Epilogue both leave the audience reeling. Just prior to intermission, there’s a rape scene, tough to watch and heartbreaking. When the young concubine, after a brave struggle, crawls from underneath a huge silky red piece of fabric and draws it around her shoulders, the audience shares her sense of shock. Likewise, the ballet’s final scene hits hard. As an ill-fated trio fatally collapses, a stream of male dancers strike a white scrim with huge sticks and cover it in red marks, symbolizing blood. They loudly smack the backdrop, effectively mimicking the actual violence that kills the three victims and leaves them in a pitiful heap onto which glittering snow falls.             

National Ballet of China in Raise the Red Lantern, photo courtesy of the Company

See the National Ballet of China’s Raise the Red Lantern for its glimpses into Chinese culture, but see the Zhang Yimou’s movie for its superior artistry and biting message.

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Dance Place
Washington, DC

February 17, 2019

Carmel Morgan

Urban Bush Women (UBW) has been around since 1984, and this innovative company dedicated to “weav[ing] contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora” is still going strong. UBW’s recent work, Hair & Other Stories, choreographed by Associate Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Samantha Speis in collaboration with company members, is purposefully provocative. Is it about hair? Yes, and no.

There’s certainly a lot to discuss when it comes to hair, and UBW introduces conversations about hair, in particular “nappy” hair (they take on this word directly) and efforts to tame it (or not). You can’t be duped into thinking the performance is solely about hair because a warning comes early that talking about hair provides a ticket to a journey elsewhere (the written program also states, “Don’t come here for no show: we’re goin’ on a Journey!”). It’s really the other stories and the elsewhere (the “beyond” as described by the dancers) that dominates this dance/theater piece. Hair simply serves to initially frame the discussion. As the work progresses, the strands of hair all but disappear in favor of attention to the broader issues of beauty, identity, and race.

UBW in Hair & Other Stories, photo by Christopher Roesing

UBW’s company members are multi-talented, and this is necessary due to the nature of the work they do. They dance, of course, but they also talk, they challenge and engage. In the case of Tendayi Kuumba, she really belts out notes (in addition to being a dancer, she’s a singer/songwriter). Just as the dancers are called upon to do more than dance, the audience is called upon to do more than sit. In Hair & Other Stories, the audience is invited to join the performers on stage, but even those who elect to remain seated are asked to think and actively witness. Eradicating racism appears to be the admirable goal of the performance (UBW acknowledges that Hair & Other Stories is informed by its ongoing partnership and work with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s Understanding and Undoing Racism workshop).

Undoing racism is no easy task. Hair & Other Stories should be applauded for its efforts in that direction, for creating a safe space for dialogue. Because I’m a dance critic, I’m going to present some criticism, not of the subject matter, but of the performance. My perspective is, of course, influenced by the experiences I’ve had, and my own personal lens, which are intertwined with the color of my skin (white).

I’m certain that Hair & Other Stories, like most works of art, strikes different people differently, and that’s a good thing. There’s a lot to mull over. Many times my personal stories intersected with or diverged from the conversations at the forefront of the piece. The performers made it clear that discomfort might occur, and that it should be welcomed as part of the journey.  

UBW in Hair & Other Stories, photo by Christopher Roesing

My criticism mainly centers on formal, structural elements of the composition itself. I wonder  how Hair & Other Stories would read with more editing and fewer theatrical devices. I appreciate combining dance with text, I’ve got no problem with singing or live film projections, or the use of a very adorable toddler on stage (the precious and precocious Aminata Mariama Balde Top, daughter of Speis). However, when extensive audience participation is thrown in, too, the narrative thread/message gets blurry. In addition, the work clocks in at well over two hours in length. There’s so much going on, I can’t adequately summarize what takes place. Via various tales, songs, screen projections, and physical movement, even some play with dolls, plus guided exercises on stage involving the audience, UBW’s performers reflect on race, history, hair, and more.

Another criticism — there’s simply not enough pure dancing for my dance critic soul. The dancers are magnetic. Hair and Other Stories has far too few moments of glorious dancing for my taste, but I realize that this is a choice. Nevertheless, I can’t help wishing for more dancing! Moreover, I wish the ending had completed the circle and somehow returned to the topic of hair, which didn’t happen. I left feeling generally hopeful and uplifted, but I’d have liked having the loose ends tied up.

Now that I’ve gotten those criticisms out of the way, I can zero in on what I liked most. Without a doubt, I was drawn to the vibrant performers. Judson, in particular, is beguiling. She’s both tender and tenacious. It’s hard not to want to watch her endlessly, whether she’s moving or standing still, sharing a story or staring ahead in silence. All of the dancers, though, have impressive stage presence, young Aminata included. (Although there’s “women” in UBW’s name, two men, Du’Bois A’Keen, and the fair-skinned redhead Ross Daniel were among the group for the Sunday afternoon DC performance co-presented by Dance Place and CityDance).

UBW in Hair & Other Stories, Chanon Judson in front, photo by Christopher Roesing

Furthermore, I really loved the costumes by DeeDee Gomes, a remarkable self-taught fashion and fiber artist based in New York. Her eclectic costumes for Hair & Other Stories could be an art exhibit. I longed to study them up close. Through patches of fabric and glitter, Gomes turned casual loungewear into striking artistic statements.      

Finally, I enjoyed the heart and humor of Hair & Other Stories. The funny and serious moments both left lasting impressions. A long silky black skirt, worn over the head, becomes idealized smooth hair that blows in the wind. A young girl being chased with a hot comb suffers searing burns that an errant wiggle might have caused. Thanks to this performance, I can imagine the weight of carrying a lifetime of social messages about what kind of hair is desirable. Those messages are not about hair as much as they are about colorism (discrimination based on skin color), and that makes them all the more damaging. That Hair & Other Stories focuses on the dubious value we attach to hair type and skin color at the expense of our greater humanity is proper and profound, and the resulting meandering journey is worthwhile.    

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Verb Ballets
The Breen Center for the Performing Arts
Cleveland, Ohio

February 9, 2019
Dance Legacy: Celebrating the Life of Ian Horvath

Steve Sucato

It’s been nearly three decades since former Cleveland Ballet (predecessor company to the current Cleveland Ballet) co-founder Ian “Ernie” Horvath (1943-1990) lost his battle with AIDS at age 46. The life and career of this Cleveland native who danced with Joffrey Ballet, was chairman of Dance/USA, and was a pioneering advocate for those with AIDS, was honored in Cleveland-based Verb Ballets’ program, Dance Legacy: Celebrating the Life of Ian Horvath. 

The performance featured three dance works, including arguably Horvath’s two best creations, along with excerpts from the upcoming Nel Shelby Productions documentary No Dominion: The Ian Horvath Story.

(f-r) Kelly Korfhage,
Christina Lindhout,
and Lieneke Matte
in Ian Horvath’s
“Laura’s Women”
Photo by Bill Naiman

The program began with a trailer for the documentary that introduced Horvath to those in the audience unfamiliar with him. It also briefly described the evening’s opening dance, Horvath’s “Laura’s Women” (1974).  His earliest and most celebrated work, “Laura’s Women” was inspired by, and set to three songs by, late American singer/songwriter Laura Nyro (1947-1997). The modern dance trio about three differing personalities contained in one woman with a self-destructive past was staged by Verb’s artistic director Dr. Margaret Carlson, a former Cleveland Ballet dancer under Horvath.

While dated with regard to its soundtrack and movement language, “Laura’s Women” was nonetheless a masterful creation from an era from which seemingly few works survive in the repertory of dance companies today.  Nyro, who was critically acclaimed for her own recordings, also wrote the commercial hits “Eli’s Coming” popularized by Three Dog Night, “Wedding Bell Blues” recorded by The 5th Dimension and Barbra Streisand’s rendition of “Stoney End.”  The three songs of hers used in “Laura’s Women” (“Emmie,” “Poverty Train” and “Lonely Women”) reflect her sensitivity as a songstress to the human condition, especially concerning woman. These songs and their lyrics were as integral to the work’s heartfelt narrative as they were to Horvath’s choreography.

Christina Lindhout
in Ian Horvath’s
“Laura’s Women”
Photo by Bill Naiman

Danced with feeling by Kelly Korfhage, Christina Lindhout and Lieneke Matte, “Laura’s Women” was awash in emotion from hopefulness to hopelessness. It began in silence with Matte appearing onstage and launching into Horvath’s José Limón-esque choreography laced with image-evoking hand and arm gestures that suggested division. She was then joined by Lindhout and Korfhage who slipped in single file behind her through a rear stage curtain. The trio then split apart moving off to opposite areas of the stage, indicating a split in Matte’s stage persona.

Korfhage then set out on a sweeping and somewhat hopeful solo danced to Nyro’s song “Emmie”.  With its “Oo la, la, la, oo la, la, la, la” lyrics, the song, and Korfhage’s dancing, were the soothing calm before the storm that was Lindhout’s unhinged solo to “Poverty Train,” whose lyrics suggested a woman cursed by the devil and driven to prostitution by poverty. With long teased hair flying about, Lindhout aggressively swooped and swayed about the stage — her performance like a mini-tornado on a path toward its own destruction.

Lieneke Matte
in Ian Horvath’s “Laura’s Women”
Photo by Bill Naiman

Beautifully-crafted and danced, “Laura’s Women” concluded with Matte performing a heart-wrenching solo to the song “Lonely Women” that ended with the three women lined up one behind the other again; Lindhout and Korfhage then slipping out the back curtain and leaving Matte in a final pose, head bowed, resigned to her desolation.

After more documentary excerpts, an all-male cast performed Horvath’s final work “No Dominion” (1988), staged by Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Margaret Mullin, who is also the director and producer of the Horvath documentary.

(f-r) Brandon Leffler
and DeMarcus Suggs
in Ian Horvath’s “No Dominion”
Photo by Bill Naiman

Originally created on The José Limón Dance Company, “No Dominion” was essentially Horvath’s farewell message and gift to the world. Created when he was dying of AIDS, the piece, set to music by Sir William Walton, was another touching statement on Horvath as a human being and dance maker. The work featured guest dancer Brandon Leffler portraying Horvath aware of his fate and surrounded by figures representing those he loved, some of whom were also lost to the disease.

Titled after the Dylan Thomas quote “…though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion,” the dance moved through vignettes in which Leffler was paired with several other dancers in partnering sequences that were as athletic as they were poignant.  Most piercing was a final duet with fellow guest dancer DeMarcus Suggs as a former lover of Horvath in which he lovingly cradled Leffler (as Horvath) in his arms as a chorus representing departed friends moved along the back of the stage toward a light indicating the hereafter and beckoning Leffler to follow.

Verb Ballets dancers in Kay Eichman’s
“Mendelssohn Italian Symphony”
Photo by Barb Cerrito

The enriching program concluded with Kay Eichman’s “Mendelssohn Italian Symphony” (2018), the first ballet that Eichman, another of Horvath’s Cleveland Ballet dancers, has created for a professional dance company. Currently a ballet mistress at Cuyahoga Community College’s Creative Arts Academy in Cleveland, Eichman initially choreographed the first movement of the ballet on her student dancers. For Verb’s rendition she expanded the neo-classical ballet to three sections for four couples set to, and in response to, the first, second and fourth movements of the Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90” (Italian Symphony).

Despite having the word ballet in its moniker, Verb Ballets is better known for its repertoire of contemporary and modern dance works. As such, Eichman’s ballet, while performed adequately by Verb’s dancers, exposed their technical weaknesses in the style. Led by the company’s de facto ballerina Korfhage, formerly with Kansas City Ballet’s second company, Verb’s dancers navigated Eichman’s choreography with vigor and only a few bobbles. Full of familiar steps, movement phrases and dancer couplings seen in other ballets, Eichman’s “Mendelssohn Italian Symphony” nonetheless bubbled with enthusiasm and proved a spirited counterpoint to Horvath’s mostly melancholy works.

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New Chamber Ballet
New York City Center, Studio 5
New York, New York

February 18, 2019
Morning Song, Sanctum (world premiere)

Jerry Hochman

So … I was notified of a performance by a group I’d not previously heard of called New Chamber Ballet. Since the description appeared promising and I was otherwise free one night of the two night engagement at City Center’s Studio 5 space, I decided to give it a look.

The opportunity provided yet another indication that I need to get out more often.

New Chamber Ballet dancers
in Miro Magloire’s “Sanctum”
Photo by Arnaud Falchier

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Miro Magloire, New Chamber Ballet has been around for a long time – 19 years. And although it may not be well-known to the bulk of New York area dance-goers, judging from the over-sold turnout on a holiday evening, it’s hardly under the radar to many, and has developed a significant following of devotees. I am now one of them – not so much because I loved every second of the program, but because this is a group that not only has a solid ballet choreographic foundation and highly capable dancers, but, based on this performance, is marked by a level of creative intelligence that is undeniable even if I can’t determine exactly what, if anything, Magloire and his company are trying to communicate.

I’ll discuss the two pieces on Monday’s program – Morning Song, and the world premiere of Magloire’s Sanctum, after a brief summary, for those as unfamiliar with it as I was, of New Chamber Ballet and its artistic director.

Born in Munich, Germany, Magloire was trained as a composer, and at 17 won a prestigious local award for young composers. Within four years, and after receiving further training at the Conservatory of Music in Cologne, Magloire’s musical compositions were greeted with considerable success in Europe. That’s when he decided to stop composing. He emigrated to New York to obtain training in dance (first contemporary, then ballet), supporting himself in part by becoming a ballet class accompanist and by creating, in 2000, at least one highly-regarded album of ballet class music, titled “Ballet Music for Class” (listed, but not presently available, on Amazon) consisting of his own work and his arrangements of pieces from the classical repertoire.

Soon thereafter, in 2004, he founded his own company, New Chamber Ballet, to which he applied his knowledge of both music and dance. Within four years, the company had achieved a considerable reputation – at least among those in a position to know – for originality, ingenuity, musicality, and the financial resourcefulness necessary to survive within the high-pressure New York dance world. Eschewing attention-grabbing high profile (and high cost) ventures, over the years New Chamber Ballet has regularly performed multiple focused programs per season in small venues at various locations in New York (primarily, it appears, City Center’s Studio 5).

New Chamber Ballet dancers
in Miro Magloire’s “Sanctum”
Photo by Arnaud Falchier

Whether borne of preference or necessity, New Chamber Ballet maintains a small roster of experienced female ballet dancers, supported by a relatively stable group of creative associates and driven by Magloire’s amalgamation (based on what I saw on Monday) of contemporary classical music, including vocalization, with ballet. Although his is not the only choreography that the group performs, Magloire has created some 80 ballets for his company.

Monday’s program was representative of those qualities that have made New Chamber Ballet so successful for so many years: in addition to those already mentioned, they include a Spartan but inventive performing environment (dance in–the– round, sort of), and a basic ballet vocabulary augmented by things that are “different” (as opposed to a “new language” of contemporary ballet) that make his choreography distinctive, all created and executed with almost mathematical precision.

Morning Song, a brief solo that Magoire created several years ago for company founding member Elizabeth Brown, which served as the evening’s aperitif, is choreographed to an obscure (to me) composition by John Cage: the 1st movement of Cheap Imitation. That choice of score reflects Magoire’s musical knowledge. The piece impressed me as being unlike any Cage composition I’d previously heard – which, I later discovered, is because it is unlike any other Cage composition.

The music was created in 1969 to accompany a Merce Cunningham dance, but my admittedly non-exhaustive research indicates that there’s a more interesting backstory. The score’s original iteration was as a 1947 piano transcription of the first movement of a piece by Erik Satie (Socrate), that Cunningham asked Cage to prepare to accompany a new dance to be based on Satie’s piece. Cunningham reportedly decided thereafter to expand the dance to include the other two movements from the Satie composition, and Cage composed an arrangement to those movements as well. Prior to the 1970 premiere of the dance comprised of all three movements, Satie’s publisher refused to grant permission to use Satie’s music, so Cage created his own “imitation” of Satie, ergo the title of the Cage’s composition and the new title of Cunningham’s piece: Second Hand. The music was described by Cage himself as not representative of his work, but he reportedly was fond of it – indeed, Cage subsequently produced an orchestral version, and in 1977 created an arrangement for solo violin, which is the form in which the composition was presented and used in Sanctum.

Magloire takes Cage’s Satie-based composition (the first movement) and weaves a simple but visually complex solo that is mesmerizing the way a well-honed honored ritual can be. Superficially resembling solos performed by modern dance icons, Morning Song is less expressive and self-involved than those because its passion is directed outward, toward some unseen force to which the dancer greets the day and with muted joy seeks the divine’s beneficence. [Its analogue might be the ritual practice in various cultures of a visual prayer over candles, although with considerably more movement.] It’s not a celebration of personality as much as a submission of personality – albeit with no diminution of individuality within the ceremony. In my mind, I was transported as much to the temples of India, where a temple dancer like Nikiya in La Bayadere might have greeted the day, as to Isadora Duncan.

The dance is introduced by violinist Doori Na, who has a distinguished performing background and is part of the nucleus of support that Magloire has assembled (Da has played for New Chamber Ballet for seven seasons), followed shortly thereafter by Brown who, en pointe, at once sways and swirls to the lightly dramatic strains of the violin (complemented by Sarah Thea’s simple but flowing costume), gradually expanding her presence and traversing the four corners of the stage as if concurrently greeting and imploring (and repeatedly returning to) the four compass points that surround her, at times like a supplicant, at times like a bird in flight. Appropriately enough, Morning Song ends with Brown raising her arms upward as if in silent prayer – or giving thanks for the blessings the new day will provide. It’s a lovely little piece, beautifully executed.

New Chamber Ballet dancers
in Miro Magloire’s “Sanctum”
Photo by Arnaud Falchier

Sanctum, a 70-minute work, is a far more complex dance. It also addresses inner passion, but the nature of that passion – beyond its existence – is more difficult to determine. And I acknowledge that my lack of familiarity with Magloire’s work impacts my understanding of it.

Structurally, Sanctum, is choreographed to an assortment of pieces by contemporary Finnish-born composer Kaija Saariaho and Swedish-born Karin Rehnqvist, neither of whom is familiar to me. Its form, as well as the content within, appears extraordinarily controlled and precise. The ballet is bracketed by vocal music (opening with two pieces by Saariaho and closing with one by Rehnqvist) in which the singers appear and dance together with the dancers, within which are a variety of seamlessly interwoven dances to music only, played by Na and, on piano, by Melody Faber, another highly respected musician who has performed with New Chamber Ballet for fourteen seasons. [The singers (Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie, Charlotte Mundy, and Elisa Sutherland), members of a group known as Ekmeles, have worked previously with New Chamber Ballet as well.] The result, notwithstanding its simplicity, with the vocalization and the singers intermixed with the pure music and the dancers, is a visually striking presentation remindful, overall, of a Greek tragedy, with the performers here being a sort of dancing Greek chorus: an anonymous grouping of witnesses to and commenters on an event worthy of Aeschylus – except here the “event” is an internal one.

While, again, there’s nothing particularly ground-breaking in Magloire’s movement quality, what he adds to this basic vocabulary and the way he puts it all together is quite extraordinary – even more so because of the confined, open space and the limited number of dancers. Because of its sheer variety of movement and seamless, almost kaleidoscopic transitions that materialize seemingly from thin air, Magloire and his dancers – Sarah Atkins, Kristine Butler, Amber Neff (the only one of the group I’d previously seen), Rachele Perla, and Madeleine Williams – captured my interest immediately and never let go.

The piece opens with the eight performers, five dancers and three singers, separated into pairs, each pair positioned equidistant from each other at the edges of the stage floor, surrounded by the audience on each of four sides of the “in the round” stage. If there’s a rhyme or reason to the pair divisions, beyond facilitating the flow of the subsequent dance segments, I didn’t see it. The women sit on the floor, legs spread beneath them but sitting upright and leaning their heads against one another. Soon after the music begins, the pairs of women begin to sway gently, and one hears a vocal sound emanating from the stage. At first I couldn’t determine its source, but soon noticed that one of the performers in one of the pairs (Mundy) was singing. Although her voice was remarkably strong, her body, besides continuing to sway in concert with her partner, didn’t change position in the least. The sound I heard was a series of plaintive cries, as if the singer was wrestling with inner demons, which, by narrative extension, all the performers were.

Soon thereafter the pairs rise sequentially, physically supporting each other as they do. Although the movement quality is simple (perhaps to accommodate the singers), it’s compelling, as within the small stage confines the performers subdivide, approach each other and depart, or circle the area and move linearly, while Mundy wails in apparent agony. The impression one receives from all this is a sense of tortured fluidity. After another introductory song segment, the singers eventually depart, and the stage is left to the dancers and the only sound comes from the musicians.

New Chamber Ballet dancers
in Miro Magloire’s “Sanctum”
Photo by Eduardo Patino

It’s not possible, or productive, to describe the ensuing dance segments in detail (a couple of which, it appears from my background review, may have been previously presented in earlier incarnations). While the vocabulary is still relatively limited, most striking are the additions to the basic vocabulary that Magloire adds. Being an all-female group, one would anticipate little beyond limited partnering. That’s hardly the case. One dancer might grab the foot, or the head, of another; fingers furl and unfurl as if they were the points of emotional release; they push and pull each other – not so much in an attempt to escape another’s force as an acknowledgement that they are inextricably bound together. While there are no soaring lifts, there are repeated examples of seemingly impossible weight shifting and balance (not at all like Pilobolus) either arising from a close-knit swarm of interlocking bodies or within an individual pairing, resulting in startling combinations that look remarkably unforced. Within a pair, for example, one dancer may lift another onto her back as she kneels on the floor, rolling her partner to the floor, and then the dancers reverse positions, all seamlessly. Or one dancer may position herself such that she can lift and turn the other dancer upside down and hold her there without apparent effort. After these sequences pass, the singers rejoin the group, and the performers, in form connected with each other (and to my recollection now barefoot), exit the stage in a line one behind another.

The difficulty I have with Sanctum, however, is that beyond the performers’ wrestling with … something … within their minds, there’s no clear indication of what that “something” is beyond its existence. It’s certainly possible, based on his concisely written but non-committal program note, that Magloire has no intention of spelling this out, or that there is even a “something” beyond the bare existence of inner conflict within some sacred and/or privately secluded place.

So what’s left are two factors: connections between the dancers that appear to indicate that they’re concurrently representative of a single woman, or all women; and undefined but debilitating struggle. I’m not sure if that’s sufficient to make the piece as a whole any more compelling than being a series of interconnected non-specific vignettes. The lack of definition can get tiresome, and when the singers perform, the mostly high-pitched screaming (not a negative comment on the singing quality at all) can be – perhaps intentionally – grating. And although I heard a few phrases of song that might have been English, only one – which I heard as “I am I” – was decipherable (at least to me), indicating that the specific words were not nearly as significant as the manner of their delivery. Again, however, my response in this respect might be a product of lack of familiarity with Magloire’s work.

I have no such concern with the dancers’ execution, and while singling any of them out for particular praise is, under the circumstances, inherently unfair, the two newest members of the group, Williams and Perla, added an emotional quality to their work that captured attention.

Although I found the ultimate significance and impact of Sanctum somewhat opaque, I have no such hesitation about the craftsmanship, meticulousness, inventiveness, or overall intelligence that Sanctum reflects. New Chamber Ballet has won another convert.

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Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland, Oregon

February 13, 2019
Chopiana, Patterns in Space, The Dying Swan, Go For Barocco, Paquita

Dean Speer

Every now and then happy circumstance find their way onto my path and seeing Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo completely by happenstance this week was one of them. I was in Portland, minding my own business, walking to a private showing of the new gallery exhibit at the Oregon Historical Society’s great museum, when I noticed on the marquee on the backside of Portland’s historic and opulent Portland Theatre (rechristened the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall) that the infamous Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo was being advertised. Not being from the area, boy was I surprised and delighted.

Scooting in with a few minutes to spare, the program began with their company’s take on Fokine’s Chopiniana, followed by a parody of Merce Cunningham’s oeuvre and style, Patterns in Space, a superb work by founder Peter Anastos, Go For Barocco (which they certainly do), and concluding with one of my favorites, Paquita.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
in Marius Petipa’s “Paquita”
Photo by Sascha Vaughan

It’s been a few years since I’ve enjoyed this company and, as the saying goes, if you want to see some really good dancing, go see The Trocks, comedy and all. Even with the spoofery, the dancing remained superb and was often spot-on, both in terms of technique and style. Perhaps without realizing it, they’ve created something quite extraordinary — not just well-trained male dancers doing both and male and female parts of ballets but when the males do the female parts, they inject such a level of strength and degree of attack and control that may well be out of the reach of the female set. I mean no female (and I’ve seen quite a few wonderful ones) has ever gotten the elevation and ballon to the jumps and beats as these do; sometimes entrechats such as entrechats quatre and six are done with exaggerated openings of the legs to a la seconde as to be virtuostic. And not just big jumps but big arabesques, a few going into a complete vertical split on arabesque penché. Then there are the fearless multiple revolutions to pirouettes, 32 fouettés, more turns, more jumps — sometimes finishing having done the original choreography straight but adding double tours en l’air. Wowza!

Nina Enimenimynimova was letter-perfect in “her” Paquita lead ballerina variation. I know how hard (and fun) Paquita can be, having helped out a colleague teacher friend more than 30 years ago with a reconstruction for her advanced students, dancing the sole male part myself. Superb technique, finish and line. And then for the coda’s requisite 32 fouettes, she began with 4 turns from fourth position and then, up to number 16, alternated with doubles and then singles through 32. The only hee-hee being that she “high-fived” one of the corps members as she ran off stage.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo,
here in “Swan Lake”
Photo by Marcello Orselli

Corps and soloists were also excellent, executing the Petipa choreography with energy and verve — and a sense of fun and play.

While the audience guffawed at the obvious music-making fun of the faux John Cage-like musicians on stage for Patterns in Space laughing at the high-jinx of making music and sounds out of everyday items such as popping bubbles of plastic packing wrap or of other percussion “instruments.” I’m not sure they got the references to Merce Cunningham’s work with the three dancers who very much captured the essence of Merce’s unique movement vocabulary — off-center tilts of the torso, open legged scoots, simple leaps landing and holding arabesque.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
in Michel Fokine’s “The Dying Swan”
Photo by Emma Kauldhar

Following this was the solo made by Michel Fokine for Anna Pavlova, who made it her signature. The Dying Swan in this rendition is made silly with histrionics, much bowing (I think the curtain calls lasted longer than the dance itself), falling over, and being pulled off the stage. This was uncredited in the program, but whoever did it, was droll and affected the right amount of over-the-top staginess associated with this iconic piece. I have to note that the design of the costume is brilliant, allowing this swan to molt throughout; how do they do this?

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
in Peter Anastos’s “Go For Barocco”
Photo by Zoran Jelenic

Go For Barocco is not so much a parody of Balanchine’s own Concerto Barocco, but is more a tribute inspired by it. Peter Anastos is a superior and excellent choreographer and, here, he’s a made a “real” piece. While light in tone, it is not just fluff. I love the corps work and the fun they have with the stage patterns and steps. One of my favorites was how they were all in a diagonal line and one at a time did a double pirouette and launched into a little side-step, hip, hands and foot en pointe, repeat left, and kept going as they all joined one at a time. Also delightful was how the two soloists “power-walked” to each other with hands in fists and elbows pumping.

Unexpectedly, following a well-deserved standing ovation following Paquita, the curtain came up on the full company, still in tutus and tights, with half wearing sombreros and half with serapes for a rousing encore piece of THE Mexican Hat Dance, done with equal amounts of joy and pleasure.

A great night of dancing and fun as a full house of Portlanders and I exited the opulent theatre

The post Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo: Flocking to the Trocks appeared first on CriticalDance.

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

February  14, 16 afternoon and evening, and 20, 2019
The Sleeping Beauty

Jerry Hochman

Performances of Peter Martins’s staging, after Petipa, of The Sleeping Beauty dominated two of the final three weeks of New York City Ballet’s Winter 2019 season, from just before Valentine’s Day to well beyond. I saw four of the five different casts that were spread over the fourteen-performance run.

Indiana Woodward
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Erin Baiano

At the outset, I must recognize the three major role debuts I saw: Joseph Gordon’s Prince Désiré (opposite Lauren Lovette’s Aurora) on Saturday afternoon, and the double debut of Indiana Woodward and Anthony Huxley this past Thursday. Each performed magnificently – all the more remarkable because they were debuts. Huxley was as impressive as he always is on his own, and was a highly capable and solicitous partner; Gordon was the most impassioned, authentically love-struck Prince I’ve seen in a very long time; and Woodward, as she is wont to do, hit her Aurora out of the park. Improvements can be made, but under the circumstances they’re relatively insignificant. I’ll discuss all the featured performances, including many debuts in other featured roles, in more detail below. First, however, I’ll address this NYCB production, and why, judging from near sold-out houses and rapturous applause at each performance, it is as popular as it appears to be.

Joseph Gordon
and members of New York City Ballet
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Two qualities in this production stand out: its classical balance, and its speed. The latter is not a surprise for any ballet in NYCB’s repertory, but the former may be.

Unlike what Martins did with his version of Swan Lake, his The Sleeping Beauty does not alter the story’s atmosphere: it is the fairy tale that audiences expect it to be. While liberties may have been taken with certain aspects of the production as Petipa choreographed it and as they appear in other Petipa-based versions of the ballet, they are done for a clear purpose – to keep the story from slowing to a crawl. And to me, these modifications have been made judiciously.

More significantly, and regardless of its pace, Martins has retained near perfect structural and visual symmetry. This may not be unusual for other companies, but for NYCB it’s noteworthy. Every action is focused stage center, and virtually every scene is impeccably balanced around that focal point. Even the number of characters appearing on one side or the other of the court scenes that dominate the production have, or appear to have, either the same number of characters or the same relative “stage weight’ where one character of greater position might visually offset a larger number of characters on the other side of the stage. It’s uncanny because it’s so consistent – the only time the sense of balance is lost is when it would not have been appropriate, as in the brief scene prior to the “Vision” scene, and the “journey” to the sleeping princess, which this production surprisingly interrupts with the ballet’s only intermission (and which, equally surprisingly, works – except for those obviously trained by an intermission following the “Spell”). For NYCB, The Sleeping Beauty may be its most classical, as well as its most sumptuous, ballet.

Baily Jones
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Even the relatively simple set (by David Mitchell), including the nifty advancing/receding projections that introduce the story’s obscure “hidden castle” venue and that later serve to visually record the passage of time, emphasize the overall ballet’s classical focus. My only complaint with the accoutrements of the production is the overly busy costuming for the king and queen, which make them look more “peasanty” than they should. [In other respects, the costumes, designed by Patricia Zipprodt, “authentic” or not, are lovely.]

The quality of balance serves a purpose beyond being classically consistent: it grounds the ballet in a viewer’s eyes. This version of The Sleeping Beauty has no rough edges, and very few potential distractions. A viewer always knows, or thinks he or she knows, where to look.

Marika Anderson
and members of New York City Ballet
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

But good old-fashioned NYCB speed, even beyond the sprightly pace of Tchaikovsky’s score as the sublime NYCB Orchestra plays it, is the engine that makes this production run and which renders the production, classical as it is, anything but “old-fashioned.” At first I rebelled against this streamlining of the more familiar Petipa-based productions, but the result is totally consistent with Balanchine: pare the story to its essence; eliminate “dead spots” and “authentic” but dull choreography that necessarily slows the pace; and condense everything else. This is particularly evident in the usually pseudo-aristocratic “hunting party” scene that introduces both the Prince and the Vision scene (the equivalent, in this ballet, of the “standard” Petipa dream scene). There’s no “tutor” here to act as a comic foil, and no time is wasted showing how boring these nobles and their genteel activities can be. Faster than you can say “George Balanchine” the Prince rejects the offer to participate in the “blind man’s bluff” game that weighs down other productions, and immediately thereafter rejects an offer from his disappointed match for the afternoon, the Contessa, to join in a dance, instead telling her and the entire entourage that he prefers to be alone. The scene, which sometimes seems interminable in other productions, ends in a flash – and to me, nothing beyond authenticity, which I’ve often written is overrated, is lost.

Miriam Miller
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

More importantly, these parings never detract from the action on stage. The result is a fairy tale spectacle that moves, and that is difficult, if not impossible, to fall asleep watching. And there’s no loss of essential detail. With the exception of the brief hunting party scene, the earlier scenes, including the Rose Adagio, appear essentially intact, and the various wedding divertissements are there (though maybe not as many as in some other productions), and all superfluous detail is jettisoned. For example, there’s no battle between Carabosse and her minions and the Prince prior to Aurora’s awakening. I would have eliminated the mime prior to ‘the kiss” that makes the Prince appear to be the intellectual antecedent of Franz in Coppelia (Prince Désiré: ‘What do I do now?” Lilac Fairy: “Use your brain, dummy; this is a fairy tale; think!”). I would also, had I the opportunity, move to the beginning of the Wedding scene the solo for the Lilac Fairy that introduces the climactic Grand Pas – it makes the scene’s energy briefly stop dead. But you can’t have everything. And although the post-Wedding abdication of the King and Queen and coronation of Aurora and the Prince fits the music and adds a final sense of symmetry to the ballet as a whole, I don’t recall seeing it in any versions of the story, and the situation seems strange at best. On the other hand, it fits with the overall concept: in this fairyland, why waste time waiting for the King and Queen to die?

Sterling Hyltin
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Where this production can be legitimately criticized is that, beyond classical balance and speed, there’s little here that might be described as ingenious, much less breathtaking. While I complained a great deal about some of the vaunted “authenticity” in American Ballet Theatre’s current production by Alexei Ratmansky, buried in the excess and the archaic were gems of choreography, nuance, and staging that this NYCB production lacks. That’s not to say that it’s void of invention (for example, Martins introduces some welcome off-beat movement into several dances during the Christening and Spell scenes; his Little Red Riding Hood divertissement, although in this day and age I question whether it should be there at all, is handled with genuine good humor; and Balanchine’s “Garland Dance,” with the addition of young dancers from the School of American Ballet, is both visually complex and delightful), but there’s not enough of it.

Be that as it may, all four of lead casts that I saw delivered magnificent performances that were virtually indistinguishable from each other, but very different from each other as well. By that I mean that they each, technically, did what he or she was supposed to do choreographically. To the extent any visible hiccups could be seen among the Auroras (as in the brief balances with each of the suitors prior to the Rose Adagio’s “main event”), it impacted them all to a greater or lesser degree, and was completely insignificant. Where the performances differed from one to another was in nuance and characterization. [The fifth cast featured Ashley Bouder’s Aurora, which when I last saw it was a precise, fully-rendered portrayal. I’ve not previously seen her Prince, Gonzalo Garcia, in this role.]

Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle
in Peter Martins’s
“The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Peck has danced Aurora many times previously, but I’d not seen it. I caught up with her last Thursday, the day after The Sleeping Beauty began its run. Technically impeccable as she always is, Peck dazzled the audience, which justifiably roared its approval. Hers was the most technically accomplished and impeccably executed of all the Auroras I saw.

But to me, Peck’s characterization was disappointing, particularly in view of the superb portrayals she brought to her Odette/Odile two years ago. Although her demeanor during the Wedding scene was perfectly appropriate for a regal queen, her initial characterization during the “Spell” scene was no different: I saw no attempt to act like a 16 year old. And the nuances I would expect were not there. For example, during the Rose Adagio, she somewhat perfunctorily dumped the roses she’d received on the floor in front of the King and Queen, both times. So, although it had no impact technically, it was one of those rare occasions when I found Peck’s overall performance to be less than memorable. It’s possible that Peck intended her portrayal to be this way, because it perfectly complemented the always regal and exceptionally capable Tyler Angle as her Prince, but to me something significant was lost.

On the other hand, Sterling Hyltin’s Aurora delivered both the technical and the character aspects in the role. From the outset, she acted a 16-year-old girl, and included responses to her suitors that displayed a youthful reticence (similar to Juliet’s first encounter with Paris) that was not only appropriate in context, but refreshing. And in the Wedding scene, she matured noticeably. But the overall impact was dimmed, to me, by Russell Janzen’s Prince. Usually reliable in every respect, Janzen’s Prince Désiré, at least at this performance, lacked the ardor, the passion, that makes the role come alive. His execution was elegant, and his partnering was top notch as usual, but a relatively low-key delivery didn’t work.

Lauren Lovette
and Joseph Gordon
in Peter Martins’s
“The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Lovette’s Aurora Saturday afternoon wasn’t perfect, whatever that is, and was a degree less impressive than her extraordinary role debut two years ago, but that was hardly noticeable. She remains, to me, a perfect Aurora: naturally youthful, and totally radiant. That radiance carries from the Spell through the Vision scene into the Wedding. I would have preferred a greater sense of nobility at that point, but portraying youthfulness as a bride of a well-preserved 116 years is less of a concern than is looking and acting more mature than a princess should at 16.

Gordon, in his role debut, ignited the stage (and from the immediate reactions I heard, the audience), flying around the stage like a princely puppy in love for the first time, while exhibiting no diminution in technical quality – including partnering. To me, theirs was the best overall performance I saw.

(l-r) Anthony Huxley, Megan LeCrone,
Indiana Woodward,
and members of New York City Ballet
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Erin Baiano

This past Thursday, Woodward and Huxley were effectively on the same level. Woodward, who I first noticed in early 2013, soon after she joined the company (and described as reminding me, in terms of attack and overall impression rather than physical appearance, of former NYCB principal Nichol Hlinka), was, not surprisingly, the youngest-looking of the Auroras. But after the same initial balance tentativity that the other Auroras exhibited, she quickly found her confidence and delivered a near flawless technical performance, seemingly gaining strength as the evening progressed and one that, at least in the Spell scene, included the characterization and nuance one would expect. I look forward to her imbuing her Wedding scene with a more mature characterization, but as noted earlier, that’s a relatively minor quibble – the characterization in the Spell scene is far more important.

Huxley doesn’t appear to have a particularly regal demeanor, and his short stature sometimes makes partnering appear more difficult than it should. But none of these anticipated flaws materialized in his thoroughly developed and delivered Prince Désiré. He looked less puppy-ish than Gordon did, and far more serious, but in other respects delivered an equally ardent young prince, thoroughly captivated by the vision, and presence, of his Aurora. Technically, his execution was impeccable in every respect, and the partnering, even with little if any height differential, was exemplary (on a couple of occasions he didn’t keep Woodward completely centered, but he corrected this immediately and effectively such that only one looking through binoculars might have noticed anything even minimally awry). Overall, this was a very special double debut.

Gretchen Smith
in Peter Martins’s
“The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

In other featured roles, in this production Carabosse has less to do than in others, which is unfortunate. Essentially, her role is limited to the Christening and Spell scenes. I’d not previously seen Gretchen Smith in the role, and her performance this past Thursday was a pleasant surprise. She started relatively weakly, and I thought she’d be too tame. Not so. At the appropriate time, she exploded with fierce eyes, biting gestures, and vivid silent screams and screeches – all the more effective because of the contrast with her demeanor at the outset. In the end, because of its novelty, it was the week’s best.

None of the other Carabosses was in the least deficient, but they were also less surprising. Maria Kowroski was every bit as vivid as Smith, and almost as exciting to watch. I admired Marika Anderson’s Carabosse previously, and her performance on Saturday afternoon was equally impressive. Sara Mearns handled the role as well as the others, but to me her demeanor was more deranged than evil – perhaps a distinction without a difference.

Ashley Laracey
and members of New York City Ballet
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The Lilac Fairy is as pivotal in this production as it is in others, requiring, in addition to delivering the requisite choreography and crystalline mime, the demeanor of a benevolent goddess. Three of the four of the Lilac Fairies I saw (Ashley Laracey last Thursday, Miriam Miller on Saturday afternoon, Teresa Reichlen in Saturday evening’s performance) filled these requirements admirably. This past Thursday, Megan LeCrone, in her role debut, also executed the choreography clearly and crisply, but her appearance varied significantly. Essentially, when she remembered to smile, she was a credible Lilac Fairy; when she didn’t (which occurred far too frequently), she wasn’t. While the others need not have smiled constantly, with LeCrone, in this role, it’s a necessity. I mean to be constructive here, not critical. It’s not her fault, but when she doesn’t smile she appears austere, physically angular, even maleficent (and I use that word advisedly) – the antitheses of what’s needed here. And the black/red lipstick that LeCrone has worn frequently of late is a poor choice for her in general, but it’s a particular detriment for this role, since it draws attention to itself far more than it should and makes her appearance, when she doesn’t smile, even more severe.

Mira Nadon
and members of New York City Ballet
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Erin Baiano

It’s not reasonable to comment on all the other featured performances I saw, even all the role debuts, so my focus is on those that I found most impressive. On the 14th, Sarah Villwock and Baily Jones (in her role debut) excelled as, respectively the Fairies of Eloquence and Courage, as did Unity Phelan’s elegant Diamond and Erica Pereira’s vivacious Ruby. On Saturday afternoon, Diamond was portrayed less elegantly, but with considerably more excitement, by Claire Kretzschmar, in her role debut. She also danced the Fairy of Generosity at that performance, and on both occasions appeared so energized that her feet seemed barely to touch the floor. At that same performance, Emma Von Enck, in her role debut, danced a vivacious and impressive Emerald, and Emilie Gerrity delivered a delicate Fairy of Tenderness without the overly serious demeanor of others. In the Saturday evening performance, Huxley excelled as Gold, as did Laracey as Ruby. And this past Thursday, both Claire Von Enck’s Fairy of Eloquence, and Miller’s luminous Fairy of Generosity shined brightly, as did Harrison Ball’s Gold. Lastly, there is one relatively new member of the corps who I first noticed last season, but was unable to identify. At this past Thursday’s performance, the company made it easy. Mira Nadon, who debuted in the role earlier in the run, handled her assignment as the Fairy of Courage well, displaying both the clarity of execution and the confidence and stage presence I’d observed previously. It’s far too soon to evaluate her capabilities in other respects, but based solely on what I’ve seen so far, she’s a dancer to watch.

In other roles, both Claire Von Enck and Kristen Segin were feisty White Cats (their slaps, for example, were decidedly audible); Lauren King and Troy Schumacher were an elegant pair as Saturday afternoon’s Princess Florine and Bluebird, while Pereira and Daniel Ulbricht this past Thursday danced those same roles with more palpable gusto. And on that same Thursday program, Gilbert Bolden III made a noteworthy role debut as Catalabutte, adding considerably more nuance to the role than I’d seen previously.

It is imperative also to credit the sixteen young dancers from SAB, too many to individually identify, who appeared in the Garland Waltz and delivered flawless as well as sparkling performances. And the performances of the two young dancers I saw as Little Red Riding Hood, Charlotte Nebres and Sydney Rose Gerstein, were exceptionally engaging as well as choreographically spot on, and little Ms. Gerstein, who I saw in the role three times, could easily have made her various Wolves regret their actions, and already has an outsized stage personality that is at the same time quirky and beyond adorable.

Finally, the always magnificent NYCB orchestra, led by three different conductors over the four performances I saw, was pitch-perfect in every respect. It, as much as the dancers, made all the performances exceptional experiences.

Teresa Reichlen
and members of New York City Ballet
in Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

As successful as these performances were, however, and aside from my comments about the production above, one aspect of this two-week series is worrisome. I’ve previously commented that, under the company’s current leadership, casting (as well as scheduling) has been conservative, failing to rake the risks necessary to push younger talent, as Martins did when he was Ballet Master in Chief, in favor of those with greater experience, particularly the ballerinas (with respect to the danseurs, recent actions have made pushing male dancers unavoidable). It’s certainly understandable for an artistic team in an interim role to conserve resources and make as few waves as possible, but in the long run this can prove damaging.

While not quite as critical as in the casting of Juliet, Aurora, in my opinion, needs to look credible as a young princess. This can certainly be accomplished by acting youthful, but there are limits to that. In two or three or more years, when the company would be expected to return The Sleeping Beauty to the repertoire, all other things remaining the same, there would only be five dancers with experience in the role, only two of whom (including this year’s only debut) might not need to “act” youthful the next time the ballet is presented. I have no quibble with casting as it was done during this year’s season, but there is no reason to me why the four Auroras who already have experience were given three of the performances each: twelve of the fourteen. One or two additional Auroras could have been given opportunities and the experience these opportunities provide, which not only would have been exciting by itself, but would have addressed the company’s future. To me, there are several candidates whose debuts in this role are long overdue, as well as several among the corps who appear capable of it now. Not only was this a missed opportunity for them; it was a missed opportunity for the company, and for audiences to watch them grow.

The post NYCB: Valentine Beauties appeared first on CriticalDance.

BalletNext
New York Live Arts
New York, New York

February 19, 2019
Birds of a Feather (world premiere); La Follia; Bachground; Hey, Wait

Jerry Hochman

I saw BalletNext, the company co-founded by former American Ballet Theatre principal Michele Wiles, for the first time a year ago. The group returned to New York Live Arts for a six-performance engagement last week. In the interim, much about BalletNext has changed, but much remains the same.

Although I found Wiles’s choreography in last year’s program to be generally pleasant, in my review I observed that there was limited risk-taking, an overall sameness to the program, and a dearth of choreographic novelty. This remains the case with respect to the two pieces that Wiles choreographed for this year’s program.

Of greater significance, however, is the change in the nature of the company. All the dancers who appeared with BalletNext last year (most of whom were then new or relatively new to the company) were professional dancers with considerable experience. Wiles now has changed the company’s focus to being a vehicle for introducing certain of her dance students at the University of Utah School of Dance to a New York performing experience. Except for Wiles and two guest artists, Amar Ramasar (who, in his return to the New York stage for the first time since leaving New York City Ballet, added a measure of class to the program) and Maria Kowroski (who, unfortunately, did not dance in the program I saw), all of BalletNext’s dancers are current undergraduate students in the University of Utah (“U / U”) dance program, apparently all pursuing degrees in other academic disciplines in addition their ballet studies.

This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a different thing. These students, at least judged by those who danced in this program, are quite good, obviously very well trained, and filled with youthful enthusiasm that is abundantly clear to anyone watching them dance. But saying that they’re on a similar level to other soon-graduating young dancers from major ballet schools doesn’t advance the company ball – it just becomes something else. More significantly, perhaps because of their relative inexperience, the complexity of the dances they performed in this engagement is limited. It’s great fun watching them, and the dances, again, are certainly pleasant enough, but the choreography is not at the level one might expect from a company that’s been in existence for seven years, and from a choreographer with Wiles’s experience. Whether that’s because Wiles’s choreography is essentially the same as it was last year, or because she has wisely adjusted her choreography to match the capabilities of her dancers, is something I cannot determine.

The seven student dancers in the company participated in three of the four dances on the program, two choreographed by Wiles bracketing two choreographed by Mauro Bigonzetti. Both are the type of dances Wiles created in the program I saw last year.

(l-r) Tia Sandman and Amy McMaster
in Michele Wiles’s “Birds of a Feather”
Photo by Eduardo Patino

Although Birds of a Feather, the evening’s opening dance, lacks complexity, there’s nothing wrong with it, and these engaging young dancers do a fine job, displaying more exuberant energy in their fingertips than most people ever have.

The dance is choreographed to what’s unidentified only as “Haydn’s last piano sonatas,” and was played live by Dr. Vedrana Subotic, an Associate Professor-Lecturer at U / U who teaches in its piano performance program, holds five performance degrees, and has her own website. Obviously her position enables her to rehearse at the school with Wiles and her students, who performed with significant capability and enthusiasm. They quite obviously wanted to excel, and they did.

The piece opens with one young dancer kneeling at the side of the piano upstage right, being inspired by the music. Soon the other three young dancers in the cast join her, and they divide and subdivide and reassemble seamlessly. The flowing, hunter green-based costumes with white trim (designed by Stephanie Jones) emphasize the fresh air and seeming spontaneity, the sense of birds in flight (or the “flocking together” that birds of a feather do), complete with occasional fluttering hands, that the dancers are supposed to represent. The ballet ends with all four of these young dancers (Danielle Dreis, Amy McMaster, Tia Sandman, and Lauren Wattenburg), one of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to how Wiles might have looked in her late teens or early 20s, repositioning themselves at the side of the piano, as if the rest of these birds had been won over by the music as the first dancer was when the piece opened. Nice circularity. Aside from being too similar to what Wiles has choreographed before, it’s a pleasant enough opening piece.

(l-r) Tia Sandman
and Amy McMaster
in Michele Wiles’s
“Birds of a Feather”
Photo by Eduardo Patino

But midway through the piece, Wiles joins the group (my recollection is that one of the young dancers “invites” Wiles to join her on stage). This may have been intended to be what it looks like – students inviting their teacher to join them, perhaps to celebrate their accomplishment. But this wasn’t a curtain call. In the context of the dance, her brief appearance, lacking the freshness of the students, looked, at best, strange. She certainly looked as jubilant as her students, but the attitude looked forced. When she exited the stage and the piece continued with the young dancers, the freshness reappeared.

This reemphasizes my observation last year: if this company is to prosper in whatever form it takes, Wiles should consider limiting her dance appearances to contexts in which she’s supposed to stand out rather than artificially blend in. She can still dance, and her stage knowledge is undeniable and valuable, but the physical and experience-level contrast between her and her student dancers, particularly in a dance such as Birds of a Feather, is an unfortunate consequence which should best be avoided.

(l-r) Juliana Godlewski
and Danielle Dreis
in Mauro Bigonzetti’s
“La Follia”
Photo by Eduardo Patino

The two dances choreographed by Bigonzetti that followed are both pas de deux. Neither appears to “say” anything beyond being movement to the accompanying music, but both are very fine examples of non-narrative choreography. La Follia, which means “folly” or “madness,” conveys neither in the choreography, but that’s not really significant. Created (and apparently commissioned) in 2011, BalletNext first presented it in its opening season in 2012 and again two years later, on both occasions danced by Wiles, but with different partners each year. I did not see those performances.

Here, the duet was performed by Dreis and Juliana Godlewski. Both are powerful dancers, but their youthful appearances and physical differences – in addition to the choreographic differences between the roles that make one (Dreis) appear more fluid and lyrical than the other – suggest that the dancers represent different, though complementary, forces. This provided the piece, which Bigonzetti choreographed to Vivaldi’s La Follia, with an “edge,” a sense of maturing growth and contradictory young adult impulses beyond the movement itself, which might not have been previously apparent. Perhaps as a result, La Follia was quite enjoyable, with a variety of movement within the brief duet that ranged from common ballet movement and partnering to more angular, intricate-looking combinations, and jagged hand motions that are more frequently seen in contemporary dance, ballet or otherwise. These hand motions appeared excessive at the piece’s outset, but I see them as being a component of the duality that Bigonzetti is presenting here, and that the two dancers communicated so well.

Danielle Dreis
in Mauro Bigonzetti’s “La Follia”
Photo by Eduardo Patino

Dreis, who appeared in each of the dances in which the student dancers participated – becoming a focus point and executing with exceptional command the difficult ballet combinations assigned to her (e.g., in La Follia, perfectly executing what appeared to be a double pirouette en pointe into attitude) – is already a distinctive dancer, not assignable to a particular type, and whose stage presence demands attention.

The four musicians who accompanied the dancers – Omar Abboud on piano, violinists Angela Kim and Stephanie Liu, and Eunhye Park on cello – added their considerable expertise as well as a valuable live musical atmosphere.

Bigonzetti’s second piece. Bachground, is also a pas de deux, but it’s of a far different character than La Follia. There appears to be no intent to assign a meaning in any broad sense to the piece, nor is it describable as a “relationship” dance, because there’s no “relationship” beyond the contemporaneous execution by the two dancers – here Wiles and Ramasar. It’s movement to music, nothing more or less, that displays the dancers’ extraordinary skill. And in that respect, Bachground is abundant with intricacy, with an edge of Balanchinian complexity, emotionless connection, and demanding technical requirements. In its Spartan and dramatic contemporary classicism, it reminded me of the central pas de deux in George Balanchine’s Agon. Ramasar’s presence, and the knowledge that Kowroski would join him in the piece for two performances later in the week, made the connection even more unavoidable. [I subsequently ascertained (there’s no reference to it in the program) that what was performed during this engagement was excerpted from a version of Bachground that BalletNext had previously performed. In context, the pas de deux might have made some thematic as well as choreographic sense beyond the pas de deux’s steps and combinations themselves.]

Ramasar’s return to the New York stage, however limited it was, serves to reemphasize how unfortunate his departure from NYCB is – for him, the company, and NYCB audiences. As demonstrated in Bachground, but which I’ve observed over the years with NYCB, he’s a supremely attentive, considerate, and capable partner who not only knows what he’s doing, he does it in a way that is somehow both invisible (in the sense of not being dominant) and ingratiating, with an enthusiasm that is palpable. He was popular at NYCB not because of his Bronx background, but because of his talent and personality. My understanding is that he is now a member (or perhaps guest artist) with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, which had the good sense to invite him into their company. Perhaps the same will happen in the near future with a company closer to home.

Wiles here did a fine job with the intricacies of the piece, showing that she can still more than adequately handle the technical requirements of this and similar ballets. Although I think the combination of Ramasar and Kowroski might have appeared less arduous if for no other reason that that the two of them have a long partnering history together, that is not meant to demean Wiles’s efforts.

The evening concluded with Wiles’s Hey, Wait. Here again, however, as with Birds of a Feather, it was déjà vu all over again.

It’s no crime for a choreographer to revisit a piece of music, to revise a previously-performed piece of choreography, or to “steal” from a dance that he or she previously created. Or all three. Balanchine did it frequently. But looking overall like a copy or an unacknowledged update is a different matter.

Just short of a year ago, BalletNext premiered Wiles’s Vibrer at NYLA, choreographed to the eponymous composition by jazz trumpeter Tom Harrell. In my subsequent review, I described Vibrer as a neatly crafted dance in which ballet steps morph into “jazzy,” “slinky” movement and counterpoint reflecting the character of Harrell’s trumpeting and the accompanying jazz piano. The same description holds true of Hey, Wait, which was also created last year but is premiering now. There are obvious differences between the two (including Luis Perdomo accompanying Harrell on piano), and my memory of Vibrer isn’t keen enough to say with certainty that the same parts of the composition that Wiles used before were used here, or that the choreography itself was repeated. But the overall “look” is similar.

That being said, there are two obvious differences between Vibrer and Hey, Wait, in addition to those I may not have noticed. First, the costuming is more streamlined (the costumes were “coordinated” by Victoria Bek – no designer is indicated, but I suspect, like last year, the costumes were designed by Wiles): instead of pale orange tunics over a light blue leotard for some, with the garments’ colors reversed for others for no apparent thematic significance; here the dancers wear black leotards with a band of apparently embedded color, a different color for each dancer, again for no apparent thematic reason. In both cases, the costumes added a sense of vibrant fluidity to the piece. Second and more significantly, Wiles is not involved in it, and accordingly does not dominate, the dance – which was my observation last year. Focusing solely on the young student dancers (those already mentioned, plus Emma Anjali, Sydney May, and Sarah Murphy) makes the visual appearance of the dance more uniform, and the fine work by these young dancers more apparent. Complexity and inventiveness, or the lack of it, aside, it’s a fun piece to watch made even more enjoyable by these dancers’ competence and enthusiasm.

BalletNext
(center, l-r) Dr. Vedrana Subotic and Michele Wiles,
and (l-r) Sarah Murphy, Sydney May, Emma Watson,
Tia Sandman, Lauren Wattenberg, Danielle Dreis,
and Amy McMaster
Photo by Eduardo Patino

However, aside from the opportunity the program provides for the young dancers to perform in New York and for New York audiences to see them, there’s an elephant in the room. Beyond having a stated focus on presenting contemporary ballet in a cooperative environment (nothing new there), BalletNext has been struggling with its identity for the seven years of its existence. It was last year, and it is now, albeit in a totally different way. While this is no doubt a wonderful opportunity for the U / U student dancers, and injects fresh and engaging dancing blood into the group, beyond that, how does it improve BalletNext, the company?

If the company is to be considered now a conduit for college ballet students who are “passing through” to something else, even if the “something else” is a career with a major ballet company, the composition of BalletNext will likely change from year to year. And according to a publicity release by the University, Wiles is a guest faculty member (the U / U dance program is directed by Luc Vanier). I reference this not to denigrate Wiles’s contribution – whether solely her doing or not, and whether her position continues (and I have no reason to believe it will not), the student dancers she has presented are very good, and doubtless owe much of that to Wiles’s pedagogy. The important thing is that BalletNext appears to be transitioning not into something more stable, but less. While this might be irrelevant for a group of outstanding college students provided with a New York performing showcase, it makes BalletNext something different from what it apparently was intended to be. Moreover, based on this program, thinking that it will allow Wiles to demonstrate greater choreographic creativity, while certainly possible down the road, may be overly optimistic.

If this is the way BalletNext will evolve, that’s fine. In effect, its New York programs, assuming they continue, are the equivalent of an annual school performance by a high quality ballet school, or by the dance department (including ballet) of a college.

More concerning to me is the suggestion in an extensive program note that this is somehow a revolutionary approach to training ballet dancers: that, essentially, this U / U program allows potential professional ballet dancers to develop their minds as well as their bodies. The unstated implication of this is that these U / U students, because of the concurrent education they receive, are more intellectually well-rounded than other young ballet dancers who follow a different route, including those attending other college-level schools. While I cannot comment on any particular school’s programs, I can note my observation that a plethora of young professional dancers, at an age when many would be beginning college, pursue an academic education concurrently with their training and/or performing obligations, attaining degrees, including post-graduate professional degrees, in a variety of academic disciplines. Insinuating, even unintentionally, that the program Wiles has apparently launched at U / U’s School of Dance (which, to my understanding, already had a tie-in with Ballet West for many years) is somehow better or revolutionary or special, ignores schools where such programs already exist, and ignores the extraordinarily intelligent and driven ballet dancers who create and manage their own concurrent academic programs.

Be that as it may, if it returns to New York next year, it will be interesting to see whether, and how, BalletNext continues to evolve.

The post BalletNext: Continuing Evolution appeared first on CriticalDance.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,
Eisenhower Theater
Washington, DC

February 28, 2019

Carmel Morgan

This year marks the first time that The Washington Ballet (TWB) has presented a full length production of The Sleeping Beauty. All of the company’s seven performances of this well-loved classical ballet sold out. TWB continues to transform under Artistic Director Julie Kent and her husband, Associate Artistic Director Victor Barbee. Since taking the helm in July 2016, Kent, of course, has made adjustments that suit her vision for TWB. She has overseen changes in both the dancers who compose the company and the type of performances the company chooses to give. Kent aspires to build nothing less than a world-class ballet company, the sort that can easily put on big, popular storybook ballets like The Sleeping Beauty and do so at the highest level of excellence in every detail. With TWB’s current dancers and budget, however, that poses great challenges. It’s good news for TWB that ticket sales were brisk, but I think the verdict is still out about whether Kent’s ambitions for TWB can be fully realized.

One thing Kent probably doesn’t have to worry about is having a star on board whose talent and charm will draw an audience. Kent definitely has that now with the recent addition of petite powerhouse Katherine Barkman, a 22-year-old native of Bucks County, Philadelphia, who is picture perfect in roles like Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. Due to her age, Barkman doesn’t need to act to seem young. Yet her acting is impeccable. As Princess Aurora, she displayed just the right combination of sweetness, fortitude, and joy.

The Washington Ballet’s Katherine Barkman and Rolando Sarabia, photo by xmb Photography

Beyond her appealing demeanor, there’s her dancing, and it’s astounding. Barkman sparkles not only in her expression, but in her beautiful, well-executed technique. What makes her special, besides being so accomplished at such a young age, is her spirit and stamina. Whenever I’m introduced to a new ballerina, I’m nervous — I wonder if her turns will be sharp and stable, her balances strong. Watching Barkman, my worries quickly evaporated. I’ve rarely seen a dancer so rock solid standing unassisted on pointe. One leg aloft, the other rooted to the stage, she calmly and repeatedly extended a delicate arm into the air in triumph. Even more amazing, on opening night Barkman beamed naturally as she slayed the most difficult moves, broadcasting not only ballet mastery but sheer bliss. She looked eager to show off her skills without coming across as overdoing it.

Another bright young talent is Masanori Takiguchi. I hope he’ll be promoted from the Studio Company. Takiguchi appropriately soared in his role as The Bluebird in Act III, and also impressed as a Fairy Cavalier in the Prologue. He’s not as polished as Barkman just yet, but he oozes potential, and the audience appreciatively roared for him. Other Studio Company standouts were Alexa Torres, whose Fairy of Felicity was effervescent and whose Red Riding Hood was witty and charismatic; plus adept performances by Aurora Mostacci as the Queen and Nicholas Cowden as Catalabutte, the King’s Minister. This crop of dancers, if they stick around, add up to a promising future for TWB.

The Washington Ballet’s Kateryna Derechyna and Katherine Barkman, photo by Victoria Pickering IGDC

Other than Barkman, among TWB’s main company members, Rolando Sarabia as Prince Désiré and Kateryna Derechyna stood out. Sarabia was a perfect prince for Barkman’s princess, a handsome and able partner with a glow all of his own. And Derechyna looked the best I’ve seen her, commanding and mature in her role as the Lilac Fairy. As well, in Act III’s Jewels Pas De Quatre, Tamako Miyazaki lit up the stage with extra vivacity. Sona Kharatian and Tamás Krizsa as the White Cat and Puss-in-Boots, though, failed to have enough fun. Their cats were tame and uninspiring.

Overall, this production of The Sleeping Beauty, for me, faltered for a number of reasons. Barkman was the high point. What struck me as disappointing were the music, the set and costumes, and the lack of depth and finesse in the dancing. I’ve seen some truly magnificent productions of this ballet, and TWB can’t yet claim a performance that rivals these. I’m glad Kent is committed to using live music, but TWB’s orchestra could use some fine tuning. The set and costumes, provided courtesy of Ballet West, surely helped cut down on expenses, but I could almost smell the mustiness of age emanating from them. Kent clearly wanted this to be a grand ballet, but with a much smaller budget and a smaller number of dancers than the world’s best ballet companies, including many relatively new to TWB, this production of The Sleeping Beauty was, well, somnolent in comparison, something like a high school version of a Broadway musical. I’m uncertain whether this kind of programming will keep audiences pouring into TWB performances, particularly where residents of the DC area regularly have opportunities to see the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, the Mariinsky Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, etc., do these sorts of ballets far better. 

The Washington Ballet’s Katherine Barkman and Rolando Sarabia, photo by xmb Photography

Selecting more exciting contemporary ballets and fresh choreography that speaks to a younger generation frankly makes more sense to me as a sustainable business model than trying to replicate the grandeur of old classics, but the fact that The Sleeping Beauty was a sell-out may mean I’m wrong about that. At any rate, that’s my hope for TWB, not the goal of its present leadership. Kent wants to reproduce the ballet world she knows and thrived in, and it’s in that mold that she’s now shaping TWB. Time will tell if Kent can assemble the caliber of company she’s dreaming about, and if DC audiences will support her enough to make this a successful endeavor. It will take tremendous patience and money to get there. At present, I question whether TWB has the financial and human resources to make real magic happen on a large scale.

The post The Washington Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty appeared first on CriticalDance.

George Mason University Center for the Arts
Fairfax, VA

March 1, 2019

Carmel Morgan

This year’s performance by the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) at George Mason University (GMU) coincided not with snow, which has happened in past years, but with miserable cold rain. Nevertheless, my excitement wasn’t dampened. I always look forward to MMDG’s GMU performances, despite the long trek from my home in DC into the Virginia suburbs. I’m rarely disappointed. Even if every piece isn’t a hit with me, I can always find something to love about Morris’s choreography and his dancers and musicians.

For this visit, MMDG performed three works, two from 2018 — Little Britten and The Trout, and one from 2017 — Numerator, and all were new to me. I was a little concerned that I might head back to DC this year not having experienced the exultation MMDG usually offers after Little Britten, the opening work. I didn’t dislike Little Britten, but neither did it capture my soul. Lesley Garrison, Aaron Loux, and Brandon Randolph danced to Benjamin Britten’s Five Waltzes and Twelve Variations for Piano, played by Colin Fowler. Fowler and his piano sat on one side at the front of the stage. His back remained to the audience as he played, and he wore a pale sweatshirt, some kind of long, and full pants or skirt, but no shoes. The costumes for the dancers by Isaac Mizrahi had a similar casual flair. Aaron Loux sported a gray and white jail-striped unitard with a single spaghetti strap. Garrison had on a little toga over a gray t-shirt, and Randolph wore gray track shorts with loose fabric on top that draped in a long strip over one shoulder and billowed down his back like a cape, plus creamy legwarmers over his calves that almost resembled boots. The Greek costume nods reminded me of mythic heroes.

MMDG in Little Britten, (L to R, Brandon Randolph, Lesley Garrison, and Aaron Loux), photo by Nan Melville

Some of the movement mimicked heroes, too. Dancers with their hands in fists, crossed at the wrists, deflected punches or asteroids hurtling toward them, and they bent their arms at a right angle, flexing their muscles. Garrison, legs spread wide apart, jostled back and forth like a football player doing warm-up drills. Was she preparing for a fight, a game, a deathmatch, or just going through the motions? Randolph kept holding his head and jaw, but this seemed less heroic and more like he was grappling with a memory.

As usual, Morris’s choreography made listening to the music pleasantly visceral. When Britten’s music showed its moods, so did the dancers, and the music jumped into my body. It’s this genius of Morris, his way of translating music into a visual and physical sensation, that’s unmatched by other choreographers today. Little Britten is one of Morris’s lighter pieces, I think. I appreciated its quirkiness, but it didn’t quite take off for me despite the fabulous performances by Fowler and the trio of dancers, particularly Randolph, whose long lines and musicality were especially satisfying.

Numerator, however, took me to that place of exultation I’d hoped to experience. A sextet of male dancers — Loux, Randolph, Sam Black, Domingo Estrada, Jr., Dallas McMurray, and Noah Vinson — electrified the stage. The musicians (Georgy Valtchev, violin; Sean Ritenauer, percussion, and Fowler, piano) also electrified in a brilliant performance of Lou Harrison’s Varied Trio for violin, piano, and percussion. Elizabeth Kurtzman’s simple costumes — black pants and colorful shirts (blue, wine, green), and Nick Kolin’s lighting, made the dancers positively pop.

MMDG in Numerator, (L to R: Noah Vinson, Sam Black, Brandon Randolph), photo by Christopher Duggan

In the beginning, dancers crawled as if emerging out of a primordial soup. First, flat on the ground with the face turned, nuzzling against the floor, stretching, crawling, then eventually walking, and later gently running. They lyrically swished, changing facings. All of the swirls and waves were luscious and hypnotic, and with a little midair jump they sometimes flipped where they were going. When the movement gathered speed, my heart sped as well. The dancers’ arms curiously flung, going against forces that would propel them in the opposite direction like wayward particles battling a centrifuge. I had to stop taking notes and just revel in the intriguing loveliness. When it was over, I wanted to immediately see it again, a sure sign this is among Morris’s most best works and already among my favorites.

The Trout also turned out to be stunning and beautiful, another work in which you want to simply sit back and breathe it in, then sigh with contentment when it’s done. Franz Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet (Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667) is masterful on its own. The dancing, as I’d hoped, didn’t spoil the music, but again heightened my experience of it. The addition of choreography complemented the music, each a unique language. Here, as in Numerator, the emphasis is on gorgeous, graceful movement. Silliness is at a minimum, but the dancing is still creative and lively.

Former MMDG company member Maile Okamura contributed the costumes — vivid blue shirts and neutral colored pants for the men, coupled with full-skirted dresses for the women in various distinct colors with a sheer gauzy layer on top. Eleven dancers breezed on and off the stage, some hand in hand, some arm over shoulder, some alone. They sometimes exchanged glances. Among the lifts, spins, and pulls that developed, a dancer would leap up suddenly in front of the couple on which I’d been focused. The script-like shapes formed as dancers weaved around flowed with the music expertly played by Ramón Carrero-Martinez (viola), Wolfram Koessel (cello), Kris Saebo (double bass), Valtchev (violin), and Fowler (piano).

MMDG in The Trout, photo by Mat Hayward

The unspooling seemed endless, dreamy. In fast sections, dancers rapidly crisscrossed, some rushing forward toward the front of the stage. The near-misses were glorious and carefully orchestrated. Playfully, a line of dancers involved a game of leapfrog. A series of dancers, each with hand on another’s back, hopped up and away. A recurring gesture featured a lifted chest with arms extended a bit out from the hips and thighs, palms facing front. It seemed to be a sign of surrender, but a happy one. The Trout did get a little weird when dancers began to collapse, bent over, suffering, as if felled by a shared stomach bug. But it was a surprise, and it effectively broke the lingering rhythms, making one question the meaning within the work. And the dancers again became drifting propeller seeds, blowing about.    

I want to close by giving a shout out to Karlie Budge, a new MMDG apprentice and an alumna of my hometown dance studio and former dance company, the Tennessee Children’s Dance Ensemble. Break a leg, Karlie! I hope to see you dancing as a full-fledged MMDG company member soon. Your passion for dance should take you far. It’s a passion I know we both had nurtured by Ms. Linn, one of our dear dance teachers. What a wonderful gift that is, whether dancing or seeing dance.

The post Mark Morris Dance Group: Little Britten; Numerator; The Trout appeared first on CriticalDance.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

February 22, 2019: Program A – Bach 25; Star Dust
February 26, 2019: Program B – From Then To Now; Woke (world premiere)

Jerry Hochman

Unlike other dance companies I’ve recently reviewed that seem to have emerged from nowhere and were previously unknown to me, I’ve been well aware of Complexions Contemporary Ballet, but for various reasons have been unable to see their programs. This season’s two-week, two-program engagement at the Joyce Theater in celebration of the company’s 25th Anniversary was a great way to get acquainted.

A few observations must be emphasized at the outset: First, the Complexions dancers are an extraordinarily talented group, as well as unusually eclectic-looking one, with ballet backgrounds being both extensive and significant. Their execution of co-Artistic Director Dwight Rhoden’s choreography provides, on its own, indelible memories. Second, Rhoden’s Star Dust is equally extraordinary. This celebration of, and tribute to, David Bowie, which is concurrently a celebration of the company and its dancers, is breathtaking in its appropriate irreverence and indisputably glorious entertainment value. For what it is rather than what it’s not (which I’ll explain below), it’s one of the finest of contemporary ballet. And third, Complexions provides one of the best examples I’ve seen –maybe the best I’ve seen – of seamlessly amalgamating contemporary dance with ballet, without resorting to the movement curiosities that plague other companies that attempt to do the same. Although the thrust of the steps and combinations is more weighted, more “into the ground” than stereotypical ballet, it’s still ballet.

Tatiana Melendez and Simon Plant
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Woke”
Photo by Steven Pisano

But to me, not everything I saw worked. The two new dances on these programs, though consistent with Rhoden’s other work and a showcase for his dancers, are more one-dimensional expressions of generalized feeling. They’re not unsuccessful: these pieces have style, the dancers’ energy, and at least one of them accomplishes its intended purpose. They’re just not on the same level as Star Dust – but few dances could be.

Program A opened with the NYC premiere of Bach 25. As may be gleaned from its title, the piece, which premiered nearly a year ago in California, is a celebration of Complexions’ 25 years. To music by J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, the full company delivers the non-stop visual excitement that epitomizes Rhoden’s style.

Complexions dancers
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Bach 25”
Photo by Sharen Bradford

To say that this style, in general, emphasizes physicality and speed is an understatement. If there was any doubt that dancers are superb athletes, the company’s dancers and Rhoden’s choreography end the discussion. And in the course of all this movement, Rhoden injects staging that, in most cases, is so variable that it visually compensates for any limitations in choreographic variety. Perhaps most significantly, Rhoden uses the individual characteristics of his eclectic group of dancers optimally. Jillian Davis, for example, appears on stage to be unusually tall and angular, but her always imposing presence coupled with her manifest technical ballet capability adds drama to anything she dances; while Tatiana Melendez appears on stage to be too compact, too tiny to be a significant presence, but when Rhoden’s choreography turns to her, she becomes the little ballerina that could. Something similar can be said about each of the Complexions dancers. It’s not that these ballet dancers couldn’t fit in with any company, but that, with the appropriate choreography, which Rhoden provides, their individual characteristics become both important and irrelevant – which is what Complexions has been demonstrating for its 25 years. Complexions may be the poster child for choreography that adapts to, even requires, multiple dimensions of diversity. The significance of this cannot be overstated.

Complexions dancers
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Woke”
Photo by Nina Wurtzel

And, strange as it may seem, as I grew more accustomed to Rhoden’s style, at certain points in time I saw flashes of Balanchine. Rhoden shuffles groups of dancers on and off stage and back on again, and each time the dancers appear to be racing to get in proper position for the next sequence. I found this awkward and almost laughable at first – and then it hit me that this is what groups of corps dancers frequently do in some Balanchine ballets. Similarly, at a certain point in the choreography in one of his pieces, Rhoden has one dancer (Melendez, as I recall) pull off a series of pique turns heading into the wings, and for another fleeting moment in my mind’s eye I saw the ballerina in red in Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements. The point is not that Rhoden is Balanchine, but that Rhoden’s choreography is both evolutionary and revolutionary, and well within a ballet context. The significance of this cannot be overstated either.

(l-r) Larissa Gerszke, Shanna Irwin,
and Tatiana Melendez
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Woke”
Photo by Nina Wurtzel

But the non-stop movement does have limits, one of them being an overall sense of sameness, notwithstanding individual moments and efforts by individual dancers, that amplifies choreographic idiosyncrasies. For instance, Rhoden relies too much on leg extensions. It’s not the execution, but the omnipresence. When in doubt, get that leg up, and then get it up higher. Similarly, the dance’s speed emphasizes the sheer physicality of that style: the impression being that every member of the company is working at full throttle all the time, which, although undeniably exciting to watch, can also be visually overwhelming. Rhoden skillfully attempts to camouflage this by dividing the stage into larger or smaller groups in a variety of ever changing combinations, but by doing so he’s also giving dancers a rest for a few minutes in the wings before returning to trade places with, and then provide a brief respite to, those then on stage (like a basketball team shuffling replacements in and out, except here it’s on a more regular basis). This effectively spreads the speed that’s constantly visible to the audience across the company, but to an audience unaccustomed to it, the constant speed can become a blur. [Which is a backhand way of explaining why I can’t describe more than a few individual moments from his pieces – they fly by too fast.] Lastly, aside from possibly getting dizzy watching the dancers percolate, one doesn’t get emotionally involved with Rhoden’s choreography – at least based on Bach 25 and the other pieces I saw. It’s more a dance concert that one goes to watch rather than dance theater that might be cathartic.

Complexions dancers
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Woke”
Photo by Nina Wurtzel

But then, Bach 25 is only doing what it sets out to do. The concise program note – “Reverence, Celebration, Moxie” – says it all. And in that sense, the piece is highly successful.

Woke, the world premiere dance that closed Program B, has greater movement variety, but, possibly because of its broader scope (the nearly as concise program note describes it as “A physical reaction to the daily news”), doesn’t carry any particular message beyond being just that. To me, Rhoden here missed an opportunity to make a statement.

Eriko Sugimura
and Craig Dionne
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Woke”
Photo by Joseph Franciosa

Woke is choreographed to a set of compositions composed and sung by a variety of artists, the effect of which takes the piece from song to song in a well-structured way (from the fact that the world is confused, to the fact that bad things happen, to the fact that what the world needs is peace and caring). In the process, Rhoden takes the audience, visually, from a sole dancer spinning his wheels (almost literally) and going nowhere, soon joined by the full company doing essentially the same (visualizing “Ball of Confusion”), to what appear to be non-judgmental and non-conclusory physical responses to “Killing Spree,” and “Mona Lisa” (Lil Wayne’s song; NOT the song popularized by Nat King Cole), to “Peace, Piece” and “Pray.” [The other songs included in the score are “Doomed,” “I’ll Take Care of You,” and “Rank & File.”] Woke isn’t so much an awakening from the nightmare of the daily news as it is a series of dance scenes (corresponding to the individual songs) choreographed to the rhythm of the accompanying the music, without adding anything beyond seeing the music.

Complexions dancers
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Woke”
Photo by Joanne Ziter

This is unlike, for example, Kyle Abraham’s recent ballet for New York City Ballet, The Runaway, in which accompanying music is also choreographed to (brilliantly), but the overall piece clearly – at least clearly to me – communicates something far more significant than the songs’ tempo and lyrics. Until Woke’s last moment, when the assembled dancers point toward the audience as if to say (though not very clearly) “what are you going to do about it?,” it’s all a visualization of the music. [Having said all this, I must note that I think Abraham was in the audience for this world premiere Woke performance. I may be mistaken, but if I’m right, he seemed thoroughly enthusiastic about what he saw on stage.]

Thomas Dilley and Simon Plant
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Choke,”
from “From Then To Now”
Photo by Nina Wurtzel

Perhaps, as with Abraham’s piece, the more I get to see it, the more I’ll see the sort of statement within Woke that, given the topic, one would expect Rhoden to make. However, as it is, Woke seems to simply offer choreography that captures the pulse of the accompanying music. This is what Rhoden does very well, and which the compilations of excerpts from larger pieces that opened Program B, under the overall rubrick From Then to Now, exemplifies.

I usually don’t respond well to excerpts, because they may or may not be representative of the larger piece, and in any event lack whatever ebb and flow that seeing the entire dance would provide. But in this case, there’s an obvious and meritorious purpose to these excerpts – to provide a summary of Complexions over its history to date: in essence, Complexions’ Greatest Hits.

Shanna Irwin
and Maxfield Haynes
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Spill,”
in “From Then To Now”
Photo by Steven Pisano

These excerpts (from Rise, Spill, Wonder – Full, Choke, Testament, and Star Dust), which cover a period from 1994 through 2016, are outrageously good, and. collaterally, demonstrate that Rhodens’s choreography may include more variety than the three complete dances presented lead me to believe. The excerpts have the unbridled energy that I saw in the engagement’s other pieces, but those that featured a solo or duet, while perhaps a blip in a longer piece, here were emphasized. And these individual performances – by Maxfield Haynes and Shanna Irwin (Spill), Brandon Gray (Wonder – Full), Thomas Dilley and Simon Plant (Choke), and Davis and Gray (Testament) – were outstanding. And Irwin in particular, without attempting to be a particular “character,” demonstrated a level of attack that I rarely see. Here, as well as in other program pieces, her every move cut like a knife.

Star Dust, which closed Program A, is billed as a “tribute to David Bowie.” It’s certainly that, but it’s far more.

Brandon Gray and Complexions dancers
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Star Dust”
Photo by Sharen Bradford

There are many dances choreographed to songs written and/or sung by a particular contemporary artist (and many more that feature one or two such songs in a larger context). But I know of none on a dance company scale (as opposed to Broadway) as effective as a work of entertainment as this one. It’s not a particularly cerebral piece – no attempt is made to look beyond the music and the performing nature of artist and go behind the scenes, or to use the songs to craft a dance that attempts to visualize the time and place in which the song flourished (Pascal Rioult’s Fire in the Sky and Paul Taylor’s Changes come immediately to mind). But what Star Dust does do, as with Rhoden’s other pieces, is to reflect the music in the dance, and more than that, to celebrate Bowie within his own context. It’s theatrical the way the best concerts are theatrical, but it’s also ballet.

Tim Stickney
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Star Dust”
Photo by Sharen Bradford

Star Dust doesn’t have the thematic continuity, besides the continuity of Bowie’s creations and persona, of, say, The Who’s Tommy. But that, as with not being cerebral, doesn’t matter – it just shows what Star Dust is not. What it clearly is is exactly what the program note indicates: A ballet that “takes an array of [Bowie’s] hits and lays a visual imprint, inspired by his unique personas and his restless invention – artistically to create a Rock Opera style production in his honor.”

Rhoden here curates nine Bowie songs from his extensive oeuvre (one of which, Warszawa, serves as a sort of introduction), and presents them as Bowie might have in concert, except it’s in the form of a ballet with one or more dancers, different for each song, mouthing Bowie’s lyrics and acting as Bowie stand-ins (or dance-ins). The music selected [Lazarus, Changes, Life on Mars, Space Oddity, 1984, Heroes (sung by Peter Gabriel), Modern Love, Rock and Roll Suicide, and Young Americans] perfectly illustrates the scope and variety of Bowie’s musical output (and it’s remarkable how many of these have become classics). Rhoden and the Complexions dancers take it from there, translating each song into a knockout series of full-blown distinctive productions that create the feel of a Bowie concert. Its outrageous gender-bending goes with the territory, and it had the audience in its pocket from the moment the theatrical-style starry lights (the fabulous lighting and sets were designed by Michael Korsch) penetrated the darkened theater when the piece began. And as it progressed, the knowing audience reacted as if they were at a live Bowie concert.

Complexions dancers
in Dwight Rhoden’s “Star Dust”
Photo by Sharen Bradford

I cannot overemphasize how extraordinary Rhoden’s choreography and the dancers’ performances were. Acting a character is one thing; recreating one that so successfully evokes and amplifies Bowie’s various stage personae, is quite another. Each one (or group of them), for each song, delivered mind-blowing surrogate Bowies, beginning with Gray, and continuing with Craig Dionne, Jared Brunson, Haynes (who, according to the program, once danced with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, and it shows), Tim Stickney, and Plant – and at one point even Davis took a brief turn representing Bowie. And the company as a whole, which accompanied the Bowie stand-ins through nearly all of the song skits (like background dancers in a music video or concert, though they can hardly be considered “background”) lent extraordinary character and energy of their own, distinctive for each song. Aside from those already mentioned, they include Larissa Gerszke, Daniela O’Neil, Miguel Solano, Eriko Sugimara, and Candy Tong.

Among the small group of contemporary ballets that I could never tire of seeing, I’ve now added Star Dust. And according to the program, Star Dust is intended to be the first installment of a full evening-length ballet tribute to Bowie. I suggest keeping abreast of the company’s schedule to ascertain if and when such an expanded evening-length work is completed, and the dates and times its performances are scheduled: tickets for will likely go faster than … for a Bowie concert.

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In Conversation with Boston Ballet Soloist Roddy Doble

Carla DeFord

Hailing from Southbury, Connecticut, Roddy Doble joined Boston Ballet in 2013 after six years as a member of American Ballet Theatre.  A true dancing actor who can make even the smallest roles memorable, Doble is currently preparing for Full on Forsythe, a production consisting of three works by choreographer William Forsythe: “Pas/Parts 2018,” “Playlist,” and “Blake Works I.”  In early February we met at the Boston Ballet studios during Doble’s lunch break and chatted about his recent roles, how he got started as a dancer, and how dancers communicate with audiences. 

Last September when you appeared in Fancy Free as “rhumba boy,” the role (which Robbins created for himself) seemed tailor-made for you.  Tell me about that experience.  

For me to fall into that kind of hammy American role is not too far from who I am.  The sailors in Fancy Free are familiar characters.  As a kid, the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a cowboy, so those kinds of American identities were pretty ingrained in me.

The challenge of Robbins’s choreography is that he insists that dancers be so loose and naturalistic, but …

Then he gives you all this hard stuff to do.  Priorities have changed throughout the years.  The emphasis on technical capabilities, while important and necessary to evolve with the times, has increased so dramatically that acting and partnering have not been prioritized in the same way.  Ballet facility has become almost fetishized.  I’ve seen a lot of dancers who get opportunities that they’re really not deserving of because people go crazy over their legs and feet, which is what nature gave them (usually backed by some good training).

What’s the antidote to that?

Ashley Ellis
and Roddy Doble
in Marius Petipa’s
“The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Liza Voll Photography

I think it’s easy for ballet dancers to fixate on all the ballet-specific things, but for me it’s always important to consider that most of the audience doesn’t have much of a relationship to ballet.  Sure, there are going to be some people in the audience who danced at some point in their lives, but most of them are not spending all day in the studio the way we are.   So if we only play to the people who are living the same kind of lives we are, we’re going to have a pretty small audience.  I still have to produce all the dancer-specific minutiae, but I don’t want to exclude anyone in the audience who doesn’t know a thing about ballet. I feel that the purpose of art is to reach as many people as possible.

Are you saying that dancers can be as athletic as they want, but if they can’t create a character, it’s not going to work?

It’s been proved that our attention spans are shortening, and I have no interest in sitting through a two-hour ballet danced by someone I don’t empathize with.  You can have all kinds of impressive technique, but why should I care about your character progression?  It’s on artists to give the audience a reason to care about them.  If it’s a tragedy, you gotta make ‘em cry.  If it’s a comedy, you gotta make ‘em laugh.

I don’t want to ask my audience to do that work for me.  I’m the one who’s onstage; I’m the one who’s trained to do that, who’s spent countless hours preparing material so that I can do that.  The responsibility of the audience is just to be hit by it, to let it affect them, whoever they are, whatever their background.  I want to give people something to take away.

I’m a huge fan of lots of turns, big jumps, and impressive partnering.  Those are great, but they can be fleeting.  I think what differentiates what we do from sports is that emotional component.  That’s what attracted me to dance in the first place: it had the athletic challenge and excitement, but it was also made gentle and emotional by art.

How did you first get into dancing?

My parents are both musicians.  They met at Berklee College of Music, and they played guitar and sang together for years.  My mom was performing with a 12-string Martin guitar pressed against her pregnant belly for my whole development.  Partly because of that, music was always a very physical experience for me, and coming from a musical family, music was always on.  I was a rowdy little boy, but very expressive also.  My parents saw it; they asked me plenty of times whether I wanted to take ballet, but I was still part of American culture, and I said, “No, ballet is for girls.”  I had no interest; I wanted to play sports.  I started tae kwan do at four and a half years old, inspired by The Karate Kid, and I played soccer at four years old.

(l-r) Roddy Doble, Patrick Yocum,
and Hannah Bettes
in William Forsythe’s “Pas/Parts 2018”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor,

When I was five I was in karate school, and we played the soldiers in The Nutcracker at the local ballet school.  Our instructor, who was a big, macho, six-foot-tall guy, was not a dancer, but he put on tights and participated in the production.  He encouraged the boys in the school to take ballet; he said it was something he always wished he had done, that it was great for your strength and flexibility.  So I think that helped remove some of the stigma, but I still wasn’t that interested.  It wasn’t until my best friend in first grade started taking ballet at the school where his older brother and sister were studying that things changed.  He had been doing it for about a month and told me it was a lot of fun.

My parents had all but given up on asking me, so I caught them off guard when I came home and said I wanted to try it.  They signed me up right away.  I remember my first class; my mom tells me the teacher approached her within the first week and said, “You had to have known.”  She [the teacher] saw I had the musicality and physicality for dance.

Where did you get your training and education?

I grew up in Southbury, and most of my training took place in New Milford. I started commuting into New York City to train by the time I was about 16 years old, and I finally moved there full-time during my third year with the ABT main company at 20.

I went to Pomperaug High School [in Southbury] for just half a year before starting homeschooling.  A public high school was not the right place for me. Aside from training intensely for dance, I was a pretty intense academic student too. It became harder and harder to balance [both interests], and I had to make a concession. Fortunately, it worked out in the end.

By the time I was 11 years old, I found the training I needed at the School of Performing Arts in New Milford, CT, which sadly no longer exists.  Arlene Begelman and Robert Maiorano whipped my ballet skills into shape, and I trained pretty extensively in jazz, modern, and tap too.  I attended the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive in 2005 and 2006 as well as Stiefel and Students on Martha’s Vineyard in 2006.  I joined the ABT studio company at 17 and their main company at 18.  I joined the Boston Ballet corps de ballet at 24, was promoted to second soloist at 25, and to soloist at 28.

Chyrstyn Fentroy and Roddy Doble
in William Forsythe’s “Pas/Parts 2018”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

I consider myself to be very lucky to have danced with American Ballet Theatre.  It had been my dream since I was a kid, and I got to tour all over the world alongside a roster of my dance idols.  After six seasons with the company, I decided it was time to mix things up. I was hungry for greater opportunity with a more diverse repertoire, and I found it at Boston Ballet.

As a child, who was your inspiration?

At some point I saw White Nights, and seeing what a man who had devoted himself to dance could do really spoke to me.  Baryshnikov’s power, his expression, and how lightly he landed was so impressive.  I’m still a Baryshnikov fan; he holds a place that nobody else he can for me.  Some of it’s nostalgia, knowing how much he meant to me, but still I go back and watch his videos, and some of the steps he does, like those cabrioles in Giselle, I have yet to see anyone do better.  Some people do them bigger, but I think it’s his landing that makes them so great.  He never does tricks; he’s always in character.  

I remember reading somewhere that Baryshnikov said you can’t make the audience wait while you set up a turn.

They will stop caring about you very quickly.  All it takes is a slight misstep.  If I’m uncomfortable, they stop believing in what I’m doing.  You have to keep them buying what you’re selling.  Those big moments are not going to register the way they should if you don’t keep them engaged in the small moments.

Tell me more about communicating with your audience.

What feels appropriate to you as a performer and what reads appropriately to an audience sitting hundreds of feet away are two different things.  So it’s not enough to react the way you would in real life; you have to filter that reaction through your calculation of how to express yourself to people watching from a distance.  When I was at ABT Cory Stearns helped open my eyes to that when he and I were in the corps together.  He was doing “The Lilac Garden,” and there’s a moment when he stands behind the girl; it’s an embrace, and they both have arched backs.  It was interesting to him because it ran counter to what his instinct was.  To feel close to someone, you want to close yourself around them, but from a distance, it’s a weaker position; it doesn’t look as loving as it feels.  That arch shows the warmth between the two characters, but it’s not necessarily instinctive.

Is there a tension between analyzing each moment and spontaneity?

I think you need to leave room for spontaneity; I try not to do everything exactly the same way every time.  I try to be affected by the moment, but you need to have taken some time to at least acknowledge your choices.  So it’s good to have a few different game plans depending on how you and your partner are feeling that day because those things affect you.  I still have some moments when I think I didn’t make the best choice [in a performance].  It’s important to have those moments; you need them in order to learn and grow.

Lia Cirio and Roddy Doble
in William Forsythe’s “Artifact”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

There are times when I felt I delivered a really precise performance in which I was very clear in my intentions.  I didn’t think I left any room for questions as to what I was going for, and people will come up to me and tell me what they think I did, and they’re not always right.  The knee-jerk reaction is to correct them until you realize that they took something from it – and it doesn’t belong to me.

It’s like kids who give a performance, and people tell them what a great job they did, and they say, “No, I messed that up.”  Their teachers will tell them, “Don’t say that. You’re insulting that person.  Just say, ‘Thank you.’”  When you execute something with precision, people can attach a meaning to it.  I have one idea, but I’m a product of my own experiences.  The people who are watching are different from me.  They’re projecting themselves onto the characters onstage.  If we [performers] are doing our job, they should see something that is recognizable, and that’s the great thing about art.

What does the Forsythe program mean to you?  How do contemporary and classical dance inform each other?

This program is hard.  I’m a little concerned about surviving it because I’m learning all three pieces.  We’re repeating Pas/Parts from last year when Lasha [Khozashvili] and I split the role.  We were both in every show, but we were doing half the role, which was still hard.  This year we were unable to split the role, so I’m in the second cast for that.  I’m in both first and second cast for Blake Works, and I believe I’m in both first and second cast for Playlist.  It’s going to be hard to avoid triple bills.

Hannah Bettes and Roddy Doble
in Marius Petipa’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by Brooke Trisolini

Forsythe’s pieces are always a lot of work, and they take some time to settle into your body.  One of the things I really love about Bill is that he is so understanding of the progression that has to take place in order to bring a piece to the stage.  There are stagers who, from day one, want to see something that’s performance ready.  I think that does a disservice to the dancers.  I understand that they [the stagers] are panicking; they want it to be ready; they want to show all the good work they’ve done, but I think you need to allow dancers some space to explore, to mess up.  It’s through that process that you’re able to pick a version and be less afraid of making a mistake.  Bill loves to see that happen.  Really the only thing you can do wrong with him is not try.

With this program, especially Blake Works and Playlist, he’s returned in many ways to classical ballet; it’s not quite as contemporary in some sections.  The music is super-contemporary: pop music and R&B, but I think that’s part of his effort to make it more accessible to more people. If the music is familiar to the audience, seeing ballet done to it could make more people feel as if ballet is for them.

What should we be looking for?

I have a pas de deux in Blake Works that I really love in which I’m in sneakers.  The story behind that is that the dancer from the Paris Opera Ballet on whom it was choreographed pulled a calf muscle and was unable to do all his dancing roles, but he could still do the pas de deux; they just had to let him wear sneakers.  So now you have the man in sneakers and the ballerina in pointe shoes.  He has this very grounded look, and she has a balletic look.  The song is The Color in Anything, and the last lyric is “I can’t always help you.”  She ends up pushing him away, so it’s meant to be loving yet contentious.  It’s a relationship that’s doomed to fail.

Bill really loves to celebrate feminine strength.  In most classical ballet, the man is taking care of the woman; it’s very chivalrous.  In his pas de deux Bill likes to have the woman be the real driving force.  Especially in the Blake Works pas de deux, which I dance with Chyrstyn [Fontroy], she’s on the move; she’s trying to figure things out.  I offer suggestions, but ultimately I’m not the right fit for her.  I think that’s a difference between his work and a lot of classical ballet – that the woman is more assertive.  From a partnering standpoint, in classical ballet, the man usually makes something happen; there’s not so much weight sharing and counterbalance.  In classical ballet, the man keeps the woman in perfect balance.

It sounds as if the emotional connection, or missed connection, in Forsythe works is different from that of most classical ballets. 

It’s what happens in real life everyday: good people are trying to sort through something that’s not going to work.  It’s not as black and white as a fairy tale.  People want to see different kinds of relationships onstage.

Why did you come to Boston?

Chyrstyn Fentroy and Roddy Doble
in Jerome Robbins’s “Glass Pieces”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

I’ve heard [Boston Ballet artistic director] Mikko [Nissinen] say that a busy dancer is a happy dancer, and in general I would have to agree.  For the better part of my career here, I’ve been pretty busy in a wide range of ballets.  I saw that potential when I auditioned and felt I could be a useful commodity. I came in with a lot of drive and trusted that it would be noticed and utilized.  I also think the change of scenery gave me an opportunity to step into the next phase of my career with more self-confidence and an open mind.  It’s a short career, so you’ve got to learn lessons and make moves quickly.

What are your current and future goals?

I’m nearing three and a half years post-op from my second ACL [anterior cruciate ligament, or knee] reconstruction, and I’m working hard to train out any remaining imbalances.  This Full on Forsythe program is particularly grueling for me.  I’m trying to ramp up as strategically as possible for these shows, so I can be at my best when we hit the stage.  In the future I’d love to step into more and more principal roles.  To that end, my goals are pretty straightforward: I want to find every way I can to be a better athlete and a better artist.  I’ve laid great groundwork; I am ceaselessly refining my craft, and I am more and more aware of how to showcase the extent of all my hard work in my dancing.  I believe that my best days are still ahead of me, so I’ve made a commitment to improving as best I can every single day.

At the end of his 45 minutes of free time, Doble ran off to his next rehearsal of Full on Forsythe, which will be presented at the Boston Opera house from March 7 through March 17.  For tickets and further information, visit www.bostonballet.org

The post In Conversation with Roddy Doble: Athleticism and Artistry appeared first on CriticalDance.

Ballet Academy East Student Company
New York Live Arts
New York, New York

March 1, 2019
Valse Fantaisie; Overlay (world premiere); La Danza Curativa (world premiere); Elégie; L’Arlésienne (world premiere); Elysium (world premiere)

Jerry Hochman

Pre-professional programs in area ballet schools, whether or not affiliated with a major ballet company, are so good at what they do – and have students who are so good at what they do – that attending a seasonal or annual program presented by these schools to showcase its students and their accomplishments to date (and to get an advance look at potential stars of tomorrow) is prohibitive. But every once in awhile I can fit one in, and last Friday I attended the opening night of the Winter 2019 Performance at New York Live Arts by one of these highly-regarded schools: Ballet Academy East.

Even being well aware of BAE’s reputation, I was unprepared for the level of accomplishment I saw.

Ballet Academy East student dancers
Jenny Ku and Santiago Jimenez Vargas
in George Balanchine’s “Valse Fantaisie”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

While a review of any such performance using the same level of scrutiny as a professional program, except perhaps a graduation performance, is unfair, given the caliber exhibited failing to do so would be unfair as well. Each of the program’s dances provided a clear indication that these young dancers exhibit extraordinary attention to placement and technical detail. More impressively, at mid-level and above, they add unexpected and sophisticated nuance, phrasing, and poise to their performances – including from those who do not function as the dance’s leads. Even if they only get to shine for a few moments, many of these young dancers already display evident individual character (a budding stage persona, if you will), that, beyond physical characteristics, distinguishes one from another. And although they obviously were well-prepared, they did not give the impression of being over-prepared dancing automatons, as sometimes happens if dancers (even professionals) are ceaselessly drilled. All these young dancers knew what they were doing, and did it with gusto.

The program featured six dances, spread across varying levels based on age and/or accomplishment, each one not just appropriate for their levels, but a stretch. That’s a good thing. When these student dancers rise to the occasion, as they almost always do, the sense of accomplishment and development of “stage sense” is all the greater. That was the case here.

Ballet Academy East student dancers
in George Balanchine’s “Valse Fantaisie”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

The program opened with a bang: George Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie, staged by BAE’s Artistic Director and former New York City Ballet dancer, Darla Hoover. The dancers appeared to be relatively young compared to others in the program, but not the youngest of the levels (unfortunately, the levels of the dancers in each piece are not identified), so one might not expect the same level of stage and technical maturity that might be found in the older dancers. One would be wrong.

Led by Jenny Ku (identified in the program as an Angel Shine Foundation Scholar) and Santiago Jimenez Vargas, these young dancers (including Julia Applebaum, Malena Bhonslay, Penelope Birnbaum, and Sophie Kim) gave a lively, and thoroughly credible, performance. One might consider the possibility that Ms. Ku must really be a 25 year old whose physical growth stopped prematurely: no one really so young could have that amount of stage presence and composure. One would be wrong there too.

Balanchine, of course, is one of the greatest choreographers of the twentieth century. Alma Reiss-Navarre isn’t. Yet. She’s a 16 year old student in BAE’s pre-professional program, and in that capacity performed later in the evening. She also, quite obviously, knows how to choreograph.

Overlay is choreographed to music (not identified) by Astor Piazzolla, and I expected takes on what Piazzolla is famous for – tangos. To the choreographer’s credit, the dance recognizes the pulse of the music, but doesn’t fall into the trap of being obvious. Instead, Reiss-Navarre picks up on the music’s Spanish (Argentine) flair, and produces a ballet “overlay” that uses the music rather than being subservient to it. In the process, she puts her nine dancers through their ballet paces, and these budding ballerinas executed very well – and with flair of their own.

I understand that this is the second piece that Reiss-Navarre has choreographed for BAE. It’s obvious that she has the creativity and skill to take this artistic path if she so chooses.

Ballet Academy East student dancers
in Christopher Charles McDaniel’s
“La Danza Curativa”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

La Danze Curativa is on another level. Christopher Charles McDaniel, a former BAE student who, after performing with multiple companies across the country, is now in his second year with Dance Theatre of Harlem and on the BAE faculty. His dance is a multi-faceted, complex work of sensitivity as well as skill.

Loosely translated, the title means “the healing (or curative) dance.” My understanding is that McDaniel recently lost his mother, and that this dance is inspired by that, and is intended as an indication of love and gratitude. I don’t know if that’s correct, but instead of the usual linear patterns created in certain ballets by large groups of dancers, here the dancers assemble in and out of the form of a heart. It sounds maudlin, but it isn’t, and being unaware of McDaniel’s motivation doesn’t make a difference.

Choreographed to unidentified music by Alberto Ginastera, another Argentine-born composer whose work was used by Justin Peck to create his wonderful Estancia for NYCB, La Danza Curativa is divided into segments, presumably corresponding to movements in Ginastera’s composition (or excerpts from a compendium derived from multiple sources). Except for the beginning and ending, each segment highlights a subgroup of the large cast (six featured dancers – Pedro Alves, Makhila Cooke, Pierson Hall, Lola Cantu, Alex Mousa and Kylie Williams – and a corps of fourteen), within which a larger group may come and go. The initial segment is slow-moving, appropriate for what, in hindsight, is an introduction to his tribute, the second is allegro, and so on, and McDaniel skillfully alternates between male and female solos and small groups. To my recollection the final segment echoes the first. La Danza Curativa’s complexity was far beyond what one might expect in a student production (even pre-professional), and the young dancers, who by observation only appear to be on a level higher than those in the first piece, but lower than those in the piece that followed it, executed beautifully. Very impressive work all around.

Ballet Academy East student dancers
in George Balanchine’s “Elégie,”
from “Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

The second half of the evening opened with an even bigger bang than the first. Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 is one of my favorite ballets; Elégie is the first segment of it. Staged by Deborah Wingert, also a former NYCB ballerina, the young dancers who performed Elégie, who appear to comprise the most experienced and/or accomplished pre-professional level, didn’t so much copy NYCB dancers as they made Balanchine’s choreography their own: it was the same, but it was different – and that’s not meant as a derogatory comment in any way. Led by Emily Fretz and Kurt Grimaldi (noted as a David Howard Foundation scholar), and including Bianca Carnavale, Julia Isaacman, Anatalya Piatigorski, Gwen Vandenhoeck, Maddie Yeon, and Ms. Reiss-Navarre, these dancers added youthful spirit to one of Balanchine’s most sensuous, and memorable, dances. And special praise goes to Fretz and Grimaldi. Fretz added more passion to her role than I’ve seen in any number of professional presentations, and Grimaldi, in addition to commendable technique, displayed partnering skills often lacking in professional male dancers whose primary focus is themselves. Kudos to all involved.

Following a photo presentation that captured class moments featuring students and members of the faculty in class or rehearsal – which was far more compelling than a simple address to the audience could be, the evening continued with L’Arlésienne. To Georges Bizet’s familiar composition, Jenna Lavin, the school’s Principal and a member of its faculty, created this piece for what appear to be the program’s youngest dancers. While less complex than the other pieces on the program, that’s appropriate for this level, and Lavin’s piece showed them off to maximum advantage. The higher level of the students in this program is already evident in these fourteen young dancers, led by Viktoria Papakalodouka, Isamu Russo, Kiran Yeh, and Enzo de Oliveira Castilho.

The icing on the cake was the evening’s final presentation.

Former NYCB principal dancer Peter Frame, who died last September, was also on the BAE faculty. Elysium is dedicated to him, and I cannot conceive of a tribute as apt as this. Choreographed by Ariel Rose, a former BAE student and currently a member of Miami City Ballet, to music by Archangelo Corelli, Elysium is a magnificent dance that might be fitting for a professional company, even though the presence of student dancers is essential for it to be as magnificent as it is.

Ballet Academy East student dancers
in Ariel Rose’s “Elysium”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

The fifteen dancers, who span age / experience levels (and all but one of whom performed in earlier program pieces), are costumed in white. One of them, a more experienced-looking young male dancer I had not previously seen in the program (not specifically identified, but by process of elimination I assume it’s Kyle Ikuma), is the dance’s central figure. The piece opens in relatively dim light, with Ikuma appearing somewhat dazed and troubled, facing the audience, staring into space. With Corelli’s late 17th – early 18th Century Baroque music, sounding like a heavenly sound symphony, serving as background ambiance, this central character is soon surrounded by many, if not all, of the other dancers. After several segments involving varying subgroups of the dancers, with Ikuma again highlighted in the center, the entire cast turns to face a bright central light emanating from a rear curtain that by descending degrees illuminates the entire stage.

Elysium can certainly be taken literally to represent the central figure’s pre-death confusion, or the arrival of a troubled individual into some post-death phase, wondering if his life was worth anything, and after being shown it was by the student / angels whose lives he touched, accepts his non corporeal destiny. Although this type of elegy has been done many times before, I don’t recall ever seeing it done with such complexity and crystalline purity. And it’s not at all saccharine; it’s celebratory.

But Elysium is more than that summary would indicate, and can be thoroughly appreciated even without knowing of any connection to Frame or any details of his life, simply as a work of dance art that is interestingly and coherently presented, compassionately and beautifully executed by Ikuma and the other BAE students, and that moves the soul. For reasons I can’t quantify, and not just because Frame died a day after he did, as Elysium progressed I thought of Paul Taylor. Rose has crafted a little gem.

BAE’s founder and director, Julia Dubno, its faculty and choreographers, and most of all its pre-professional students, deserve all the post-performance praise they undoubtedly received from relatives and friends, and at least one pleasantly surprised critic.

The post Ballet Academy East Student Company: Outstanding Accomplishments appeared first on CriticalDance.

The Place Theatre
London

6 March 2019

Maggie Foyer

James Cousins Company can be relied upon to offer a programme that gives food for thought. The meaning may not be immediately accessible, but the movements stir emotions that linger on. His dance language is distinctive, it has purpose and integrity and in this diverse evening of duets, speaks in many dialects.

James Cousins Company in Within Her Eyes, dancers Chihiro Kawasaki, Rhys Dennis
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

The opening duet, Within her Eyes, moves to another dimension as Chihiro Kawasaki suspended in a pocket of light reaches out to the darkness that surrounds her, her eyes filled with longing. The instant the lights come up she falls but her partner, Rhys Dennis is below to catch her in his arms and for the next seventeen minutes he carries her weight, supporting her body in a duet of great intimacy but little direct eye contact. Only towards the end when she kneels on his lap as they look directly at each other before he lays on the floor with her body stretched out over him.

Within the limits Cousins sets, never allowing Kawasaki a footfall on the stage, he finds a wealth of innovative moves allowing her to wheel and fly through the air but never losing touch until the final moment when she is again suspended mid-air in a spot of light and Dennis slips away to walk off into the darkness. It’s a short poignant work that leaves a powerful memory.

James Cousins Company, In Between Us Is Me, dancers Georges Hann and Rhys Dennis
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

 In Between Us is Me, is a male duet as Dennis teams up with Georges Hann. The sound score, by Matt Davies, rises to ear splitting levels then quietens as two casually dressed men face one another. Their gaze is intense yet inscrutable as they slowly move to meet before initiating a free flow of movement tumbling in slow motion, soundless and graceful. Their movement has a beauty of its own, even when the mood becomes more aggressive and Rhys fights his inner demons in a desperate solo. The final confrontation leads to an embrace and a sudden switch as the two men are replaced by two women and another change in mood for, The Secret of Having it All. Jemima Brown and George Frampton, dressed in pale tights and tops, working side by side, launch into a soft shoe shuffle, but there is none of the toothy grins or levity we associate with musical theatre, as their energy and attack is tinged with desperation.  Cousins’ choreography morphs into something more contemporary with an intriguing hard-nosed edge, powerful and rhythmic but with little emotion and no contact. Driven to exhaustion by the hypnotic pulse, they pause for breath as parcels of glitzy costumes drop from the flies.

James Cousins Company in The Secret Of Having It All, dancers Jemma Brown and George Frampton
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

The last section takes a strange narrative turn. The women, now in shiny suits, black wigs and hats launch into full-on musical mode spurred by a voice over, ‘we’ve got to get better’! The men are back, now bare-chested and their dance is more tactile. The scene changes, the women, stripped to underwear and dancing in close contact help each other to dress in many layers of clothing, the gestures as tender as a mother and child. As they leave, the lights come up one last time to reveal the men in a close embrace. Just when you thought the show was over, a post-applause reprise introduces Cab Calloway’s Jumpin’ Jive and tap shoes on, the women surprise us yet again.

The Cousins is a choreographer who knows how to engage and hold an audience and this programme of three duets gives a glimpse into many facets of human relationships and behaviour. You won’t find answers, but the pictures stay.

The post James Cousins Company: Epilogues appeared first on CriticalDance.

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

March 3, 2019: Interplay, In the Night, NY Export: Opus Jazz
NYCB New Leadership Announcement

Jerry Hochman

New York City Ballet ended its Winter 2018 Season with an evening devoted to Jerome Robbins’s ballets, and four days earlier ended its interim artistic leadership with the appointment of a permanent artistic director, Jonathan Stafford, and associate artistic director, Wendy Whelan. While the latter event is far more important than the former, I’ll address that following a relatively brief discussion of last Sunday’s performance.

None of the three Robbins pieces on the program – Interplay, In the Night, and NY Export Opus Jazz – is an unknown quantity. With one exception, they’re not in the same artistic league as Robbins’s greatest pieces, but they’re Robbins dances, so almost by definition they’re on a higher plane than others. Each, in its own way, captures moments in time, and all exhibit that quality of humanity that permeates nearly all of Robbins’s dances.

The one exception is In the Night.

Sara Mearns and Jared Angle
in Jerome Robbins’s “In The Night”
Photo by Erin Baiano

In the Night is a straightforward quiet masterpiece that nevertheless, because of Robbins’s sense of humanity, touches the heart. Following his success with Dances at a Gathering, Robbins revisited Chopin, but this time limited the “gathering” to three couples whose relationships are portrayed privately, hidden in the night. Composed to four of Chopin’s Nocturnes (respectively Opus 27, No. 1; Opus 55, Nos. 1 and 2; and Opus 9, No. 2), each with their own distinct characters, Robbins gives distinct “characters” to the three relationships portrayed, and the choreography examines and illuminates these three relationships. The first couple is representative of innocent, youthful love – a couple in love with the idea of love as much as in love with each other; the second is a more mature, settled form of love that has challenges that must be overcome, and the third exemplifies a passionate, tempestuous, and somewhat irrational love, a couple that fights and forgives in order to fight and forgive and love each other another day. In the end, the three couples cross paths, exchange pleasantries, and leave, not knowing the “real” nature of the relationships they think they see in the couples beside them, comfortable with the relationships they have, and not in the least tempted to change partners.

I’ve seen In the Night many times, danced by several different companies, and it never fails to take my breath away with its quality, its pitch-perfect focus and tinge of irony, and its … humanity. And although Robbins stuffs the many intricacies of a relationship into his choreography, he does so by using what appears to be a minimum of extraneous movement. Every step is there for a reason; every combination speaks.

Maria Kowroski and Russell Janzen
in Jerome Robbins’s “In The Night”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Each of the three couples delivered Robbins’s choreography flawlessly, and consistent with the different characteristics he attributes to the different couples. Youthful lyricism dominates the first couple’s choreography, and Lauren Lovette and Joseph Gordon, each of whom celebrated their New York debuts in the roles earlier this season, danced the first couple with gentle and compelling romantic intensity. Sara Mearns and Jared Angle played the third couple. I would have preferred a bit more internal intensity displayed in Angle’s character, but his execution was appropriate as it was. Mearns, on the other hand, delivered a dynamite performance, filling her portrayal with the explosive character (and accompanying choreography) that the role demands. I suspect that some by now will have commented negatively on what might be considered the “submission” component of the relationship, but although it may strike some as politically incorrect, it’s perfectly appropriate in context. I had more difficulty with the middle, “mature” relationship couple, not because of any deficiency in their execution (on the contrary, the execution by both was exemplary), but because they didn’t fit well together. Russell Janzen seemed a bit too young to be donning a pseudo-military-looking / off to work outfit, apparently intending to leave to focus on other aspects of his life, while Maria Kowroski’s portrayal of his wife / lover  didn’t work well either for me, because she appeared so much more mature-looking than he did. Regardless, the scenes that illustrate the three couples’ relationships are snapshots in time that, because of their emotional components, have universal and timeless relevance.

New York City Ballet dancers
in Jerome Robbins’s “Interplay”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Interplay and NY Export: Opus Jazz, as good as they are (and don’t get my seeming lack of enthusiasm wrong – they’re both wonderful dances), are snapshots in time in a different way. Each is intended to capture the youthful enthusiasm of the period. While youthful enthusiasm may be a common denominator for any period, these dances are relatively period-limited. But also, because of that same display of youthful enthusiasm (think Robbins’s choreography in West Side Story), they’re vehicles for some of the younger members of the company to shine. For that reason alone, besides their undeniable choreographic merits, they’re usually well worth seeing.

However, Interplay, which was the follow-up to Robbins’s initial blockbuster, Fancy Free, here was danced by company members who’ve been with the company for awhile: Sara Adams and Indiana Jones, both soloists; Kristen Segin, Sarah Villwock (her role debut), Devin Alberda, Spartak Hoxha, and Peter Walker, each a member of the corps; and Roman Mejia (who debuted in his role earlier in the season), also a member of the corps, but one who has been given significant opportunities and is not an unknown quantity. They all exhibited the requisite youthful enthusiasm that the piece requires, and displayed the dual-meaning of the dance’s title (interplay of classical and vernacular movement, and interplay among period “teenagers”) very well, but their casting here illustrates the relative stagnation that has taken place since Peter Martins’s departure. [More on that below.] Be that as it may, the execution was super overall, and Hoxha (in his “Horseplay” solo) and Villwock and Walker (in their “Byplay” duet), merit special praise.

New York City Ballet dancers
in Jerome Robbins’s
“NY Export: Opus Jazz”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Interplay has the appeal of one of Robbins’s (and, more currently, Justin Peck’s) “sneaker” ballets, but it’s not danced in sneakers – the men wear socks over whatever is worn beneath them, and the women, to my recollection, wear either ballet slippers or toe shoes. NY Export: Opus Jazz, however, is a bona fide sneaker ballet, and a thoroughly delightful and complex piece even though it, too, may be seen as dated to the late 1950s and the style that America then exported to the rest of the world.

The dance’s large (8 / 8) cast was led by Villwock, Walker, Laine Habony, and Jonathan Fahoury (replacing Harrison Coll). All debuted earlier in the season, except for Fahoury, for whom this performance was his role debut. Each did a splendid job – but I must admit that I missed the contributions in “recent past” performances by Georgina Pazcoguin, who so fully captured the jazzy movement quality that makes the piece more than just another sneaker ballet.

Laine Habony and Peter Walker
in Jerome Robbins’s
“NY Export: Opus Jazz”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Changes of leadership are often tinged with irony. So it is with the changes in artistic leadership announced by the company on February 28. Former Principal Dancer Jonathan Stafford, who led the four-person team that temporarily replaced Martins (who had retired in the wake of allegations against him as to which he was subsequently exonerated) was formally named as Artistic Director. [I’m aware that there are some who think that Martins’s exoneration should be dismissed as not definitive, as there are some who questioned the allegations from the beginning. So save your emails.]

However, there can be no denying – except by some after the fact and/or with an agenda – that Martins took an impossible situation (succeeding George Balanchine), and after a period of uncertainty, turned NYCB into the most exciting company in New York. He did this by taking risks (many of which were not successful), creating dances (many of which in hindsight are better than their original critical reception would indicate), pointing NYCB in the direction of contemporary choreography as well as preserving its Balanchine / Robbins heritage, and perhaps most of all, casting that capitalized on the company’s embarrassment of riches (the continuing excellence of graduates of the company’s affiliated School of American Ballet who were invited into the company) as opposed to maintaining the status quo. Regardless of whether the earlier criticism was valid, the apparent company turnaround since roughly 2009-2011 was almost universally recognized. While Martins may be, and certainly was by many, criticized for abandoning senior dancers (by longevity, not necessarily by rank) prematurely, his decisions to give opportunities to younger dancers paved the way for the company’s continuing growth. Going to a NYCB performance was never the same old same old, even with the casting of NYCB classics.

Almost immediately after his departure, the scheduling and casting adventurism appeared to come to an abrupt halt. There were exceptions, of course, and injuries to promising dancers certainly played a part, but overall it appeared that the company’s senior dancers were being assigned roles, and given more performances in which to dance them, than had been the case under Martins. While in some ways this may be considered a good thing (e.g., with Kowroski showing that rumors of her imminent retirement were grossly premature), limiting artistic growth and development of younger dancers can have serious negative consequences for NYCB’s (and any company’s) future.

With his appointment as Artistic Director, Stafford may no longer feel constrained not to rock the boat. One hopes that that will be the case, and that promising corps dancers, including those who have been with the company for years, will not stagnate in the equivalent of what I’ve previously described, up until a couple of years ago, as American Ballet Theatre’s “soloist purgatory,” and that programming variety will also increase (currently, too many dances from one season bleed into the next – presumably for financial considerations). But it’s ironic that Stafford, though always a stalwart principal dancer but never a “star,” is taking over from one who, whatever his personal qualities may have been, was a star dancer with the reputational authority and charisma eventually to take NYCB where it needed to go.

Even more ironic was Whelan’s appointment as Associate Artistic Director. Considered by many (including me) to be the soul of NYCB, Martins very obviously limited her exposure in her later years with the company, the consequence of which was to give opportunities to younger dancers. Now, at least potentially, the tables have turned.

At present, the current formal leadership transition is, in the context of NYCB’s history, another brief snapshot in time (as was the interim artistic leadership that preceded it). We’ll know with greater certainty whether, and how, this change of leadership will impact the company’s performing schedule and casting within two or three years – and maybe as soon as next year. Hopefully things will get interesting.

The post NYCB: Endings and Beginnings appeared first on CriticalDance.

Heather Desaulniers

• Berkeley Rep – Paradise Square
  Roda Theatre, Berkeley

• Diablo Ballet – Balanchine & Beyond
  Del Valle Theatre, Walnut Creek

• ka·nei·see | collective & Cat Call Choir – Nevertheless
  Z Space, San Francisco

January 10th – I think it’s fair to say that when it comes to new musicals these days, many are based on popular film, television or franchises. Not all, but certainly more than there used to be. And this trend just isn’t for me. So when a new musical comes along that has found its source material elsewhere – in history, in music, in the evolution of movement genres, in exploring the human condition – I’m all in.

Jason Oremus, Jacobi Hall and company in Paradise Square
Photo courtesy of Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre

If you have a chance to go and see Paradise Square, directed by Moisés Kaufman at Berkeley Rep, take it (the run, which officially opened Thursday night, was recently extended until the end of February). The penetrating story, by Marcus Gardley, Craig Lucas and Larry Kirwan, grabs you from the very beginning and doesn’t let go. The characters entertain in one scene and haunt in another. Combining adaptations of Stephen Foster’s music with original material, Jason Howland and Kirwan’s score, with Nathan Tysen’s lyrics, confronts while it stirs. And the movement! Bill T. Jones’ choreography strikes the perfect balance – innovative, hard-hitting and energetic while still propelling the narrative forward. Because there’s nothing worse in a musical than dance that feels like an unrelated break in action.

As the lights rise on Act I, the audience is immersed in the Five Points neighborhood in 1863 Manhattan, a primarily African American and Irish American community. More specifically, most scenes unfold in and around the Paradise Square saloon, run by Nelly Freeman (a potent performance by Christina Sajous). This gathering spot is a perfect metaphor for this special place. A place where race, culture, gender, money, personal circumstance (or personal demons) dissolve, to be replaced by togetherness, love and empathy. The message of the Paradise Square saloon is that it is for everyone – those seeking shelter, seeking safety, seeking reinvention and seeking a new life. But as the Civil War rages on and the draft is announced, this utopian ecosystem is challenged, and faces permanent upending due to fear.

There was much to love in Paradise Square – so many venerable performances, outstanding designs and of course, the throughline of Foster (portrayed by Jacob Fishel) and his controversial music. Though as one might guess, I had come to see the choreography and the dancing.

Front: Sidney Dupont and A.J. Shively
Back: Jacob Fishel, Daren A. Herbert and Madeline Trumble in Paradise Squa
Photo courtesy of Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre

African and Irish cultural dance forms are introduced into the space right from the start and would remain at the forefront until the final blackout. The two are of course striking from a visual perspective, especially danced by this stellar cast. One considers the distinct center of gravity in each, the groundedness, the ballon and marvels at the high-speed footwork and syncopated percussion. But as this dancing is set within a musical, I was more intrigued in how it informed the narrative. Jones did not disappoint. During “Camptown Races,” Sidney Dupont (as William Henry) and A.J. Shively (as Owen) engaged in a kind of dance conversation, the two traditions being showcased side-by-side. An atmosphere of simultaneous camaraderie and lively one-upmanship pervaded the stage. The steps and performances impressed, but as the scene continued, you realized that something deeper was underfoot. A fugue was materializing, or with it being two lines of inquiry, I suppose invention is more accurate – the two dance genres were remaining wholly independent and yet experimenting with their interdependence at the same time. There was a sense of sharing and an air of pedagogical exchange, each teaching the other about their dance’s history and syntax. What might emerge from this dialogue?

Sometimes the choreography was less about the steps and more about the stage architecture. Near Paradise Square’s beginning, Jones had the entire cast threading and lacing in intricate patterns during “The Five Points,” symbolizing how their lives and existences were similarly woven together. At other times, the movement fueled an emotional dynamic that was happening onstage, like when the rhythmic percussive dances were used in a more aggressive, confrontational manner to emphasize fighting or violence.

Online Paradise Square is listed as being two hours and fifteen minutes long. I’m not sure that was the case because we left the theater almost at eleven. Though perhaps with it being opening night, intermission may have gone over, and there was a significantly late start. In any event, even if the show clocks in at two and a half hours, that’s a very reasonable length for a two-act musical. Yet even still, the first act could use some editing, because, save the finale, it lagged quite a bit during its final third. And the dance competition that happens towards the end of Act II, when danger, panic and brutality are rising, felt out of place. I read in the program materials that the plot point of the dance contest was historically accurate and all the dancing in the scene was phenomenal. But in that moment, the theatrical container is so weighty and it felt like the story had been transported to a totally different tonal plane. Although maybe a modicum of escape was the whole point, something that the characters needed in order to face the reality of what was happening to each other and to their beloved Five Points.     

Jackie McConnell and Michael Wells in From Another Time
Photo Aris Bernales

February 1st – Diablo Ballet, under the Artistic Direction of Lauren Jonas, is currently marking a major milestone – their silver anniversary. Twenty-five epic years of stellar dance and community engagement, all while building programs that both inspire and challenge audiences. Friday night’s opening of the Balanchine & Beyond program certainly continued this trend. And what a shining, winning program it was! With a classical excerpt from the mid-1800s, an early neo-classical work and a contemporary quintet, the mixed repertory bill showed terrific choreographic range. I thoroughly enjoyed the two historic ballets, though the standout piece of the night for me was From Another Time, created in 2013 by Diablo Ballet alumna Tina Kay Bohnstedt and set to Justin Levitt’s original piano score, which he performed live.

An abstract work for two women and three men, From Another Time invited the viewer into a flowy, ethereal space of blues and grays. Levitt was poised at the piano and from the first notes and the first movements, it was clear that this piece was going to be special. Special in a number of ways. First was the marvelous performance by the entire company. And the marriage of movement and sound – pulsing chords were met with strong extensions, while lyrical melody lines were paired with flowy, partnered spins and breathy arms. But there was something deeper about how the score and the physicality meshed. Together, the two disciplines created an almost cinematic quality, even though the piece didn’t appear to tell a particular story. Sadness and joy emanated from the stage, as did uncertainty and assuredness. There was such a complex mosaic of tones and moods (like that in a good movie); it was just beautiful. From Another Time also used a favorite dance configuration of mine, the pas de cinq. It is so rich, format-wise, and Bohnstedt utilized all the possible iterations. Duets and solos abounded, as did trios and unison work, including a gorgeous unison promenade in arabesque.

From Another Time was sandwiched between two iconic ballets, George Balanchine’s Apollo and sections from Marius Petipa’s Paquita. I think the biggest surprise for me every time I see Apollo is its premiere date. Balanchine choreographed the work almost a hundred years ago (world premiere 1928), and yet, it feels like it could have easily have been crafted this century. Many of the movement phrases, poses and postures are so modern (though the gender roles/relationships are indeed not): bourées on the heels, parallel jumps, that memorable spin from standing into grand plié on pointe. Raymond Tilton impressed in the titular role, as did Jackie McConnell, Rosselyn Ramirez and Amanda Farris as the three muses who visit him. Tilton had total command over the space, every step and position radiating power, strength and precision; even his walking double frappés felt formidable. In their solos, McConnell as Calliope, muse of mime, had such loft and forward motion counterpointing emotive contractions that were sharp, yet pliable. The muse of mime, Polyhymnia’s variation features a series of fast turns and directional changes all while holding the index finger in front of the mouth. Ramirez handily navigated through this difficult phrase with enviable skill and confidence. And Farris as Terpsichore, muse of dance and song, brought intricate pointe work and swiveling hips to the table, as well as whisper soft landings. The jumps themselves were sensational, but the landings, wow, by far the quietest of the entire night. And kudos to Tilton and Farris for handling a tricky moment when the music cut out; true professionalism at its best.

Diablo Ballet’s Balanchine & Beyond program closed with the oldest work on the bill, Paquita. From the first solo entrances to the ensemble finale, musicality and elegance reigned supreme. Jillian Transon and Jacopo Jannelli’s grand pas de deux had such calm and assured partnering, particularly in the supported turns. The variations that followed were imbued with ample batterie, multiple pirouettes and grand allegro, all of which were approached with that same refinement and finesse. Paquita provided a graceful cadence to the night, though I do wonder if it might have been better suited to a different spot on the program. While it does conclude with a full cast finale, it really reads more as an opener than a final act.   

March 8th – I couldn’t think of a more ideal occasion than International Women’s Day to attend Nevertheless, a collaboration between ka·nei·see | collective and Cat Call Choir, that casts a wide, unflinching lens on gender-based harassment and abuse. Conceived by dancemaker Tanya Chianese and vocal director Heather Arnett, the work opened to much acclaim last year at CounterPulse and has just returned for an encore run at Z Space. Though I missed Nevertheless’ world premiere, I did see an in-process iteration a couple years back at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. At that moment, I recall being moved not only by its candid honesty, but by its breadth. Yes, there was an abundance of shocking(ly accurate) imagery but there was also a deep sense of kinship and sisterhood. A feeling of shared reality, shared experience and shared power. These potent themes abounded in the full, sixty-five minute piece, as did Chianese and Arnett’s impressive Dance Theater acumen.

Madeline Matsuka in Nevertheless
Photo Robbie Sweeny

In vignette after vignette, Chianese, Arnett and the twenty-three member-cast unpacked Nevertheless’ narrative threads. Full throttle choreographic sequences saw the cast being pulled/dragged across the space against their will and being shoved downward toward the ground. Multiple scenes found the ensemble dealing with touch and attention that was both uninvited and without consent. Performers backed away from dangerous altercations in one moment and over-apologized in others when they clearly had nothing to apologize for. But as mentioned above, there were also ample reflections of strength and mutual support. Grounded, low positions – deep pliés in second and broad lunges – felt powerful and mighty; while unison phrases spoke to a collective understanding. And the music. Not only was the Cat Call Choir vocally impressive, but the use of familiar children’s, camp and holiday songs in the score was absolutely brilliant (the melodies remained the same but the lyrics had been changed to include harassing language and body shaming commentary). So often we hear things like, “it was an innocent comment,” or “he didn’t mean anything by it.” To intersect that kind of ugly language with music that has an air of innocence felt particularly poetic.  

Not to downplay or detract from Nevertheless’ urgently topical message, but its structural achievements also must be part of the discussion. Because as a work of Dance Theater, Nevertheless is not just good, it’s stunning. The work has just the right level of abstraction – go too far abstracting a concept and the impact gets lost. One could point to many examples throughout, though one that particularly stuck with me was a duet where facial muscles were slowly and deliberately manipulated into large, forced smiles. There was also plenty of purposeful absurdity and humor, which is a huge Dance Theater trope. Like the stylized self-defense class that felt plucked from an 80s aerobic VHS tape. Nevertheless had repetition, which can both emphasize and anesthetize in the same moment. And with song, movement, text and scenework, it utilized multiple theatrical disciplines. But most important, Nevertheless doesn’t wrap things up in a tidy bow, which for me, is the primary tenet of Dance Theater. The work ends with a soloist alone on the stage, having just experienced a barrage of unwanted and unwelcome touch from the rest of the cast. She stares blankly ahead and doesn’t move a muscle. With this final image, Chianese and Arnett are candidly exposing the dark side of humanity and challenging the audience to sit with it, without resolution. I think it’s safe to say that many Dance Theater ancestors were looking down on Z Space last night, inspired by where the form is headed and who is taking it there.  

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Pennsylvania Ballet

Academy of Music

Philadelphia, PA

March 9, 2019 at 2pm

Lori Ibay

Pennsylvania Ballet’s Saturday matinee performance of Giselle began with the customary pre-performance announcements – no photography or videotaping, please turn off cellphones and electronic devices, etc – but a few chuckles could be heard in the crowd when the sponsor was announced. This performance of Giselle and all performances during the company’s two-week run are presented by West Laurel Hill Cemetery. Moments later, Anthony Haller, Vice President of the Board of Trustees, took the stage for a few brief remarks and shared a tidbit of ballet history with the audience: Mary Ann Lee, who was born in Philadelphia in 1823, danced the title role in the first American performance of Giselle in Boston in 1846. She retired in 1847 at the young age of 24 (for health reasons according to Wikipedia), and died in 1899 – and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Pennsylvania Ballet
Yuka Iseda as Giselle
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

Giselle is the latest full-length classical ballet to be re-staged by Artistic Director Angel Corella for Pennsylvania Ballet, after choreography by Jean Coralli (with whom Lee studied in Paris) and Jules Perrot. There are six different Giselle/Albrecht pairings, however this afternoon was the only performance for soloists Yuka Iseda and Aleksey Babayev in the lead roles (at other performances, Babayev dances the role of Hilarion and in the Peasant Pas de Deux, and Iseda dances the role of Moyna and in the Peasant Pas de Deux [not with Babayev]). While both demonstrated excellent acting and technical skills, Iseda in particular was spectacular in this afternoon’s performance.

Pennsylvania Ballet
Yuka Iseda as Giselle
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

In Act I, Iseda’s Giselle was at first shy and hesitant, innocent but full of life and energy despite her weak heart. Sweet and affectionate with her mother Berthe (Jessica Kilpatrick), she gazed at Albrecht adoringly as she executed her steps precisely – and seemingly effortlessly. Iseda held her balances so steadily that she seemed to be frozen in time – and danced with such control that she sometimes appeared to be moving in slow motion. But her “madness scene” was astounding, staggering, and heartbreaking all at once. From her wild manic movements to the nearly imperceptible tremble of her hands to her evolving facial expressions, Iseda’s performance clutched at the heart of every audience member.

Opposite her, Babyev’s Albrecht was a steady and capable partner, and showed off his own athleticism in his series of leaps, crisp entrechats, and controlled pirouettes. His mime and acting was effective – initially confident, somewhat cocky, and confrontational in his interactions with Hilarion; then later dejected and despondent.

Pennsylvania Ballet
(L-R) Yuka Iseda as Giselle, Ian Hussey as Hilarion, Aleksey Babayev as Albrecht
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

Ian Hussey as Hilarion was reliable, strong, and steady as usual – his presence on Pennsylvania Ballet’s stage will be missed after he retires at the end of this spring season after a 15-year professional career. Kathryn Manger and Peter Weil in the Peasant Pas de Deux were energetic and lively, and seemed to gain confidence and composure with every sequence. The corps was colorful and vibrant, though the men were somewhat rough and tumble – there was a near miss as one dancer hurtled over the back of another, leap-frog style – but everyone remained on their feet and bursting with enthusiasm. But let’s face it – at the end of Act I, Iseda’s performance was all anyone could think about.

Pennsylvania Ballet
Ian Hussey as Hilarion
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

In Act II, Hussey’s faithful Hilarion encounters the Wilis, led by Myrtha, danced gracefully by Alexandra Hughes, whose bourrées were so quick and light she seemed to float on air. Hussey once again displayed his passion and agility as Hilarion is forced by the Wilis to dance to his death. The women’s corps of 24 with Moyna (danced by So Jung Shin) and Zulma (danced by Misa Kasamatsu) created stunningly beautiful visual patterns, simultaneously serene yet ruthless in their haunting of the men in the forest.

Pennsylvania Ballet
Aleksey Babayev, Yuka Iseda, Alexandra Hughes, Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

Pennsylvania Ballet’s women’s corps continues to exhibit their proficiency in performing in precise unison, the audience bursting into applause as the women crossed the stage in seemingly identical arabesque positions regardless of the varying shapes and sizes of the dancers themselves. They have mastered transitioning seamlessly as if they are one living, breathing, morphing organism. While the audience may have grown accustomed to expecting this level of artistry from the women’s corps, they still clearly appreciate their prowess as evidenced by the frequent applause not just for the featured dancers, but repeatedly for the movements of the corps.

Pennsylvania Ballet
Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet; Alexandra Hughes as Myrtha
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

The greatest applause – and whispered exclamations, and incredulous gasps – were reserved for Giselle, now a Wili herself. Iseda, no longer manic, no longer full of youthful innocence, was as controlled as ever, every movement of her body gracefully deliberate – she was simply ethereal. Babayev shows more emotion as he mourns Giselle’s death, his posture and movements expressing his loyalty and sadness. Together the pair danced tenderly, poignantly, pulling at the heartstrings of the audience as they created heartbreaking images of doomed true love.

Pennsylvania Ballet
Yuka Iseda, Aleksey Babayev, Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

Pennsylvania Ballet continues to tackle more iconic classic ballets, recently announcing their 2019-2020 season will include Corella’s version of La Bayadere, and will revisit Don Quixote, the first of Corella’s re-stagings when he became Artistic Director in 2016. Judging from the packed theater at this weekend’s matinee, and from its vocal and enthusiastic applause during the program, audiences will continue to flock to the theater to be enthralled by the depth of the company’s talent.

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Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

March 6, 2019: Program A (All Naharin) – Decadance / Chicago
March 12, 2019: Program B (All Pite) – A Picture of You Falling, The Other You, Grace Engine

Jerry Hochman

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, one of the country’s premier centers for contemporary dance, returned to the Joyce Theater last week for a two-program, two-week engagement. Program A was devoted to choreography by Ohad Naharin, Artistic Director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company from 1990 to 2018 and now its House Choreographer, and Program B to choreography by Crystal Pite. Although neither included any New York premieres, the programs as assemblages of their component parts, like choreographed combinations of steps, were not previously seen here. As it became quickly apparent, the programs as a unity were at least as significant, if not more, than their individual components. Also quickly apparent was the reason both these choreographers are prior winners of the Dance Magazine Award.

I was prepared to dislike Program A from the outset. Having seen several of Naharin’s dances previously, and as much as I admired their quality, with one exception (Tabula Rasa, presented just two months ago at the Joyce by Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company), I rebelled at the seeming constant negativity. Moreover, the program consisted of excerpts from larger pieces, apparently gathered together to create a Naharin evening. Under the umbrella title Decadance / Chicago the program promised bits and pieces from nine Naharin dances, separated by a single intermission. I generally find excerpts, unless they’re meant also to be performed as standalone dances, to be inadequate on their own merits or as representative of the larger whole.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
in Ohad Naharin’s “Decadance / Chicago”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

As has been the case of late with increasing frequency, I was wrong. The program is not just a compilation of excerpts. Decadance / Chicago is a collection of excerpts – segments, as they’re called in the program, is a better descriptive term – that, without regard to the disparate nature of the pieces represented, creates an entirety that makes unified visual, if not thematic, sense. Far more than that, and whether the credit goes to Naharin or Hubbard Street or both, the program was high quality entertainment, and a great deal of fun – and not just because, as I’ll explain in more detail later, I briefly became a part of it.

Decadance / Chicago may be new, but its concept isn’t. Naharin has presented evening-length compilations of pieces from his creations, many of which come under the umbrella “Deca Dance,” since roughly 2000. [One Deca program was presented in New York in 2007.] The components of Deca Dance programs have been modified over the years, so one Deca series performance (seen live, or as captured on YouTube) will likely not be identical in content to the Deca performed at another point in time. The compilation known as Decadance / Chicago premiered in Chicago last year.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
in Ohad Naharin’s “Decadance / Chicago”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

And there’s another wrinkle – or two or ten. Figuring out the “title” of a particular piece from which the segment is excerpted is difficult, since some segments at different points in time formed parts of differently named dances. If that doesn’t sufficiently complicate things, the nine dances from which the segments in this Deca were drawn (Anaphase, Zachacha, Naharin’s Virus, Three, Telophaza, George & Zalman, Max, Seder, and Sadeh 21) are listed in creation date order, from 1993 to 2011, which is not necessarily in program order. For these reasons, the most accurate way to identify a segment, at least to me, is by referencing the accompanying music. But even the ability to identify a segment doesn’t help, because unless one is familiar with the particular Naharin dances from which the segments were drawn, or with the segment itself, one wouldn’t always know where the excerpt began and ended or if it had been modified for the Deca presentation, and whether the various “transition” scenes that made the presentation appear as seamless as it did were part of an excerpt or a standalone intermezzo.

But the seeming difficulty identifying Deca’s component parts is the point – or part of it. This isn’t Naharin’s Greatest Hits: It’s a sampling – significant though it may be – of Naharin’s choreography. If you try to figure out what’s what and where it came from and whether you’ve seen it before and what it all means – that is, if you try to dissect it either choreographically or thematically, you lose it – or at least the “Deca” aspect of it. It’s not so much what it, or any part of it, makes you think, but how the Deca makes you react to it, or feel. If the choreographic language that Naharin created, Gaga, is in generalized terms an attempt to free the dancer and his/her body from restrictions, these collective programs can be seen as efforts to free the audience in similar fashion.

Alicia Delgadillo and Andrew Murdock
in Ohad Naharin’s “Decadance / Chicago”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

Based on Decadance / Chicago, which has been staged brilliantly by Ian Robinson and Rachael Osborne, if there’s a universal thread to Naharin’s choreography, and I’m not sure there is, it’s that his movement appears driven by a flailing upper torso propelled by arms that seem to be everywhere at once, and a “pop” exclamation that punctuates movement at the apex of a phrase – not overly exaggerated, as similar choreographic punctuations are, and certainly not exaggerated muscle pops, but a point that makes … a point. Of at least equal significance is that what comes across initially as anger is really emphasis (sometimes with anger as an ingredient), and what I initially thought was stylistic orthodoxy is anything but – whatever orthodoxy there may be is delivered as a sort of anti-orthodoxy.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
in Ohad Naharin’s “Decadance / Chicago”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

Even these generalized observations, however, cannot synthesize every one of the segments, each of which has an ebb and flow independent of the seamless flow of the entire presentation. My favorites: the “chair” dance (how many dances can be instantly recognizable just by one descriptive word?), to Echad Mi Yodeah, is a model of ritual and passion and anger and loss. If anything can be said to be a signature Naharin piece, it’s the “chair” dance – although it’s hardly representative of his body of work. Whether it’s directed at Israeli society, life as an Israeli soldier (or civilian), a condemnation of orthodoxy (religious or otherwise) in Israel and beyond, or an exercise (one of many in the program) that examines the visual and aural impact of increasing incremental phrasing in a choreographic context … it’s unforgettable. I’ve seen Echod Mi Yodeah before – as, apparently, has much of the world – but I’ve never seen it performed better than it was on this program by the remarkable Hubbard Street dancers.

And speaking of incremental, Naharin’s take on Bolero, while choreographically consistent with everything else, adds the qualities of sultriness and sensuality that are imbued in Ravel’s score but rarely emphasized (most productions focus on the repetition and create variations on Ravel’s “theme”), making the two-woman duet as mesmerizing in its way as was the repetitive movement in the “chair” dance. It instantly became one of my favorite Bolero incarnations. In another segment, this quality of sultry sensuality is converted into a stunning and passionate pas de deux to David Darling’s Stones Start Spinning, while the incremental additive phrasing is the guiding force for the choreography for five women to an incrementalized version of Charles Bukowski’s poem Making It, read by former Batsheva dancer Bobbi Jene Smith, which is grafted onto Arvo Part’s Fur Alina. And for sheer internal variety amid internal consistency, as well as a little Decadance decadence, there’s the low-decibel but powerhouse conclusion that begins with Na Tum Jano Na hum (by Kaho Pyaar Hai) and ends with You’re Welcome (by The Beach Boys).

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
in Ohad Naharin’s “Decadance / Chicago”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

And, of course, there’s the “audience participation” section that I subsequently discovered has been a component of many Deca presentations (and doubtless was awaited by many members of the audience with enthusiastic apprehension). To the strains of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, members of the cast pass through the audience to select a partner to invite on stage, and once there, the assembled pairs dance to the accompanying music (Hooray for Hollywood, then Dean Martin’s Sway) before being escorted off stage. And it’s an interesting psychological observation that the last woman (from the audience) standing – and dancing – with a partner exhibited the same movement quality, even facial expression, at this performance as can be seen in every YouTube video of this segment that I’ve since seen. It’s that way not because it’s rehearsed, but because, given its structure and choreography, there’s no other way that the segment’s final image could end. Naharin’s father was a psychologist. It’s in the genes. He knew it would always be that way.

But from the outset, one became aware that Decadance / Chicago has a character beyond what can be observed and absorbed from the assemblage of choreographic segments themselves, and which may be different from other Decas. An additional quality of humor, and of human nature, added to what would subsequently also be apparent in Naharin’s choreography. Instead of the usual disembodied announcement to turn off cell phones, etc., a tall thin man in a black suit, white shirt, no tie, and a hat pulled down to nearly cover his eyes (a “typical” Naharin ultra-orthodox – Haredi – costume), emerged from the wings to deliver the same message – in a deadpan voice and with impeccable comic timing.

Florian Lochner and Andrew Murdock,
and Michael Gross (background)
in Ohad Naharin’s “Decadance / Chicago”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

The same dancer returned later, as part of what I assumed was a between-segment pause to allow dancers to rest and change costumes. He’d ask certain members of the audience to rise or sit based on their responses to certain pseudo private questions. When everyone was finally seated, instead of segueing directly into the next dance segment, he asked anyone with a birthday that day to stand. No one did. Then he asked a person with a birthday the previous day to stand. I did. I expected a round of “Happy Birthday” to end this seventh inning stretch, but instead was invited to the stage.

I won’t go into blow by blow detail, but I soon realized (it took awhile – I’m a little slow) that I was expected to follow what those wearing the black-suit costumes seated on chairs on either side of me would do. [For one fleeting moment, I had horrifying visions of being recruited into a mini “chair” dance. More Decadance decadence.] When it dawned on me (another year … a little slower), I did, or tried to. But I realized afterward that I could have done the opposite of what those seated next to me – and other cast members – would do, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It was what you (I) felt at that moment, and whatever it was would have been right. Which is a neat little way to understand Decadance / Chicago. It’s constantly fascinating, a little unnerving, undeniably entertaining, technically demanding (especially getting that leg to cross in “my” scene), not quite as cerebral as it might appear, awesome fun, and free spirited. If Deca in any of its incarnations, or in a new one, returns to New York, it’s a must … experience.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
in Crystal Pite’s “Grace Engine”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

Program B, the all Pite evening, was initially presented in Chicago in 2017. Though no less choreographically accomplished and executed than Decadance / Chicago, it proved somewhat less powerful and entertaining because instead of being a part of the stage action (by feeling it, as well as, in some cases, by being part of it), one could only observe and admire from a physical, and emotional, distance.

The three Pite dances were connected very obviously by a similarity of style which,  based only on these pieces, seemed more programmed than the Naharin “style,” with limbs, upper or lower or both, propelling (almost literally) movement forward, and with sudden periods of stop action incremental movement (like a strobe light effect without the strobe light). That’s not the case – the Naharin pieces are coordinated down to the last twitch or tremor or snap also, but they don’t look that way, and these Pite pieces aren’t as rigid-looking as I may be making them appear. Regardless, based on these three pieces and the segments in Decadance / Chicago, there’s also a subtle similarity of style that connects the two programs – as if they were created by distant choreographic cousins two or three times removed. I suspect that it’s no accident that Hubbard Street and its Artistic Director since 2009, Glenn Edgerton, elected to present these programs in the same engagement.

Elliot Hammans and Jacqueline Burnett
in Crystal Pite’s “A Picture of You Falling”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

The first two dances had another common denominator beyond Pite’s apparent choreographic style: in A Picture of You Falling and The Other You, both duets, the focus is on “You.”  The former, created in 2008, was originally a solo danced by Pite, but was modified into an alternative format, a duet, that Pite’s company, Kidd Pivot, premiered in 2010 as part of a program called “The You Show.” The latter piece premiered in 2010 on that same program.

In A Picture of You Falling, Pite examines a relationship that begins, happens, and ends, with scenes, as well as much of the movement quality, portrayed incrementally – to accompanying music (more like the ebb and flow of sounds) by Owen Belton, and incrementally additive phrases and sentences written by Pite and spoken by Kate Strong. [“This is a picture of you…This is your voice…This is you falling…This is how you collapse….”] Although the subject – meeting, ‘falling’ in love, ‘falling’ over each other, ‘falling’ out of love’ – is well-worn, here it’s given remarkable expression through the dancers’ (Jacqueline Burnett and Elliot Hammans) impeccable execution of Pite’s choreographic style, which in addition to what I’ve already described, looks at times like the dancers are being buffeted by forces from within and/or without that make the incremental and staccato movement twist, with the dancers becoming moving stop-action corkscrews. And having seen it as a duet, I can’t conceive of it as a solo – even though I saw and reviewed a solo version, performed by Hubbard Street at the Joyce in 2015. As a duet, it’s as much a dual psychological / choreographic portrait as it is a structural form of events and time condensed and shattered and then reassembled in bits and pieces of its original form.

Andrew Murdock and Michael Gross
in Crystal Pite’s “The Other You”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

A dual psychological / choreographic portrait is also evident in the program’s second piece. In The Other You, to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2, Michael Gross and Andrew Murdock portray two sides of the same person – or maybe two distinct persons who seem to be almost, but not quite, mirror images, but with – almost but not quite – distinctive personalities. Although the movement quality is similar to A Picture of You Falling, here the overall impact is more cerebral – less what happened when, then who this person is (or these people are). As with the first program piece, the synchronization, and the variations from it, is astonishing.

Grace Engine, created the following year, is a larger piece in terms of the number of dancers (the full company), but it has the same movement characteristics – only more of them and in larger form. The common denominator is fragmentation. A story is being told, but it’s more cosmic than the two duets and filled with startlingly crafted group images that appear to illustrate stages of … something. And that’s my problem with it. Other than being some sort of life engine, and having fantastic and gripping images (groups and the solos / duets that spring from them), I don’t know what, if anything, Pite is trying to say here. But the piece is galvanizing, and what I perceive as an absence of thematic clarity, if there is indeed a theme, is not critical to appreciating its richness.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
in Crystal Pite’s “Grace Engine”
Photo by Todd Rosenberg

As described, these three Pite pieces illustrate a relative unity of style. But where the Naharin style as distilled from Decadance / Chicago is something that one becomes aware of after absorbing a seeming endless movement variety that spanned Naharin’s oeuvre, the Pite “unity” is relatively force-fed through these three pieces. On exiting, I overheard one man addressing his companion with respect to the dances’ common movement qualities: “Well, that must be her style.” To an extent it is. But wouldn’t it have been far more valuable if that Pite style, assuming there’s a common thread to it, had been gleaned from a greater variety of Pite’s work? Where, for example, do pieces like Solo Echo (a 2012 piece presented by Ballet BC at the Joyce in 2016), The Statement (presented by Nederlands Dans Theater at City Center in 2016) or Emergence (created in 2009 and presented by Pacific Northwest Ballet at City Center in … 2016) fit in? I think the opportunity to present something more definitive here, as was the case in Decadance / Chicago, was lost.

My focus here has been on the choreographers, partly because the individual dancers in the Program A segments were not identified, and partly because the programs are set up that way. But each of the dancers deserves individual recognition: they’re a fabulously accomplished group. In addition to those already mentioned, they include Craig D. Black Jr., Rena Butler, Alicia Delgadillo, Kellie Epperheimer, Alysia Johnson, Myles Lavallee, Adrienne Lipson, Florian Lochner, Ana Lopez, David Schultz, Kevin J. Shannon, and Connie Shiau.

The next time Hubbard Street, or a piece by Naharin, or one by Pite, comes to town, which doubtless will be soon, go.

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