Round My World
Hand Dance
Eight Women
Runes
Caught
Whirlaway

George Mason University Center for the Arts
Fairfax, VA

April 20, 2019

Carmel Morgan

The audience assembled to see Parsons Dance at George Mason University on the night before Easter Sunday was on the smaller side, not close to a full house, but the enthusiasm for the dancing was robust. Well-deserved spontaneous shouts and claps burst forth, and I overheard a few gasps of amazement, too. The dancers, particularly the indefatigable Zoey Anderson, recent winner of the 9th Annual Clive Barnes Dance Artist Award, gave a rousing performance worthy of the warm reception.

The night opened with Round My World, choreographed by Parsons in 2012 to music by Zoe Keating. The dancers wear light blue costumes by Emily DeAngelis — pants with a darker blue belt for the three men (and no shirts), dresses with knee-length flowy skirts for the three women. The demeanor of the dancers leans toward icy coldness like the pale blue of the costumes, but there are moments of surprising affection, too. Parsons strictly adheres to his roundness theme. The arms of the dancers frequently form rings, ovals above their heads or larger circles when grasping the hands of another. All of the arms opening and closing becomes tiresome. The music tends to repetitively pulse as well. I might have appreciated Round My World more if the work had been shorter, rather than being comprised of so many permutations of the same circular theme. Round My World is nonetheless detailed and pretty. It succeeds most when it strays further from its theme. When a couple with conjoined hands jointly tug and pull, their circle violently rippling, I was enrapt.   

I had not previously seen Artistic Director and Co-Founder David Parsons’s signature work Caught performed by a woman. There’s no reason why this challenging solo can’t be ably done by a female, and Anderson proved this to be true. In this must-see work, the dancer, via clever strobe lighting by Co-Founder and Resident Lighting Designer Howell Binkley (who recently won a Tony Award and Sir Laurence Olivier Award for the lighting design of Hamilton), seemingly floats in the air for extended periods of time. Caught could come across as gimmicky, but it never does, thanks to its strong choreography and mesmerizing lighting effects. Caught perfectly captures the magic and joy of dance, and Anderson exuded these qualities while also showing off her enviable musculature and technical prowess. As Anderson soared and glided like a winged creature or hovered above the stage like a mystic figure, people in the audience whispered with awe and reverence, “Wow!” and “How’d she do that?”      

With no more time than to quickly change costumes, and with no hint of diminished energy, after Caught Anderson roared back to the stage in the evening’s closing work, Whirlaway, choreographed by Parsons in 2014. She impressed with her grooving to iconic New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint’s funky rhythms. Her sly shoulder rolls and flirty smiles accentuated the coltish choreography. Yet this tribute to beloved music of a bygone era echoed too closely another work on the program, Trey McIntyre’s Eight Women, from 2019.

In Eight Women, eight dancers (but only half of them women — the title, I assume, comes from the songs of Aretha Franklin that accompany the work), reside inside the music but don’t transcend it. The costumes by Sylvie Rood resemble wide-legged jumpsuits, but the bottoms have billowy sheer layers, whose fullness makes them look like skirts. In this way, the men embody women. In general, Eight Women is a spirited, crowd pleasing work. McIntyre isn’t his sometimes silly self here. The choreography reaches for depth and meaning. In solos and groups, on their knees or upright kicking, the dancers, in haze that enveloped the first three works on the program, were engaging. However, although at times the dancing was moving, more often it seemed to merely scratch the surface of the music’s emotional content. Because the work is brand new, maybe it’ll take more time to become rooted in the dancers before it really gels.   

I’m not sure which choreographer, McIntyre or Parsons, prevailed in the battle to highlight heartfelt music through dancing. Honestly, I think the music may have won. The powerful music in both Whirlaway and Eight Women at times overwhelmed the dancers.             

Like Caught, Hand Dance is another popular and relatively brief work by Parsons featuring clever lighting design by Binkley. Undeniably entertaining, Hand Dance is light and humorous, more of a dance appetizer than a meal of a dance. Five dancers (who aren’t named in the program) stand in a line. Their hands, and only their hands, are brightly lit, the rest of the stage is shrouded in black. Hands flutter, join and break free, and fluidly form shapes between synchronous rises and falls. Also like Caught, Hand Dance relies heavily on perfect timing and avoids being a mere gimmick. The length of Hand Dance is just right, allowing the hands to explore multiple amusing configurations without overstaying their welcome. The unidentified five dancers pulled off the work without a hitch.  

After intermission came the company premiere of Runes, which was first performed in 1975 by the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Parsons once danced in this Paul Taylor piece, and I imagine he wanted to see it performed by his company because he has fond memories performing it. The subtitle of Runes is “secret writings for casting a spell,” and there’s definitely something spooky about it. Gerald Busby’s clanging musical composition includes some static in the recording. The lighting by Jennifer Tipton makes conspicuous a large round blue moon, which slowly ascends as the work unfolds. George Tacet’s costumes, tight-fitting nude outfits with dark fur along the back of the shoulders, lend the dancers an otherworldly, but still human air. The dancers, using repeated hand gestures, surround a body lying face-up, flat on the floor. Subsequently, the prostrate dancer stands and someone else takes his or her place on the ground. These odd rituals are performed with utmost seriousness. The dark, rather abstract drama is interesting at first, but I started to shift in my seat after a while. I enjoyed seeing this vintage Paul Taylor work, especially witnessing some spectacular lifts (a man crosses the stage holding two women aloft — one on a hip, another on his shoulder), but Runes is not among my favorite Taylor pieces.

Parsons Dance will be at the Joyce Theater in New York City from May 14-26, 2019.  Despite some minor reservations, I do recommend attending. The current company is quite strong, and Anderson, in particular, is a brilliant standout performer.

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Youth America Grand Prix, 2019
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

April 17, 2019
The Competition: The Final Round 

Jerry Hochman

Celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year, Youth America Grand Prix commemorated the occasion with four evenings of ballet competition and exhibition at Lincoln Center’s David H.Koch Theater. On Wednesday, the finalists in the Junior (12-14) and Senior (15-19) Men’s and Women’s categories performed their final solo ballet performances. YAGP then presented its annual gala “Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow,” increased this year (and perhaps in future years) to two evenings. I saw the first of the two. Finally, new this year, on Saturday afternoon, the competition presented an “International Dance School Festival” featuring dances performed school students or by a company’s pre-professional ensembles. Both Galas will be the subject of a separate review.

For those unfamiliar with it, YAGP is a nominally a competition, but it’s less that than an international audition that enables young dancers around the world without the resources to audition outside their residential areas to be seen by, and be awarded scholarships to, some of the most prestigious dance schools and pre-professional organizations in the world. This cannot be understated. Sure there are medals awarded and there’s a certain amount of prestige that goes with that, and not medaling can be disheartening, but the benefits of exposure, competition (more with oneself than with other dancers), and make-or-break experience (one-shot opportunities, unfortunately, are frequent in professional companies) far outweigh any negatives.

Darrion Sellman, USA
Winner, Junior Youth America Grand Prix
Photo by VAM Productions

YAGP’s most significant benefit is the camaraderie that develops among these young dancers. For them, YAGP is an invaluable rite of passage as well as a proving ground.  Aside from what is readily observable in offstage encounters, all one needs to do is listen to the shrieks of approval (usually coming from the less expensive seats) of other dancers’ performances to recognize this. They’re cheerleaders as much as competitors. The roughly 12,000 young dancers who participated around the world (culminating in “semi-finals” spread across six continents, including 20 U.S. cities), including the top 500 or so gaining entry to the six-day Finals competition in New York this past week, make friends and connections that will last lifetimes. Just standing in one part of the DHK Theater during intermissions will make the depth of these relationships evident. And they come back – I saw two medal winners from prior years reunite, and I’m sure there were others. I doubt that anyone, except perhaps Founder and Artistic Director Larissa Sevaliev, could have envisioned the force that YAGP has become, not so much by funneling dancers into major ballet companies, but by paving the way for capable dancers from a variety of backgrounds to get there.

Rebecca Alexandria Hadibroto, Indonesia
YAGP Junior Womens Division, First Place
Photo by VAM Productions

It’s not all rosy, however. Moving the bulk of the competition to Westchester last year, which now appears to be permanent, has resulted in a major neutralizing of a collateral aspect of the force that YAGP, and the participating young dancers, represent. When I first started reporting on YAGP, the springtime sight of swarms of bunheads parading through the streets of Manhattan from one venue to another would convince any casual observer that something particularly extraordinary was happening, or, alternatively, that the city had been invaded by youthfully energetic and photogenic creatures from outer space with incredible posture. Now, it’s invisible except to those who know it’s there, and just another Lincoln Center Event. I suppose that economic considerations (for both the organization and contestants’ parents) made this move unavoidable, but as a result something very special has been lost. To compensate, perhaps consider expanding the “Final Round” presentation to include other YAGP competing divisions (e.g., Ensembles, Pas de Deux, Pre-Competition), which might prove more exciting to an audience than four sets of classical solos, many of which (inevitably) are identical.

Junsu Lee, South Korea
YAGP Senior Division, First Place
Photo by VAM Productions

Additionally, I’ve frequently commented on how difficult it must be to judge competitions such as YAGP, since the young dancers – at least those in the New York Finals – have already attained such a high level of achievement. On the other hand, as I observed last year, with rare exception it’s not that difficult for an experienced eye to distinguish the top dancers among those in any particular program category. But I still think that having competition performances judged by administrators who run the dance schools from which dancers enrolled in those schools participate creates the appearance of impropriety, regardless of the likelihood that any possible prejudicial vote (and I’m not saying there is or would be) being effectively nullified by the votes of other judges. It just looks bad.

Misha Broderick, USA
YAGP Junior Mens Division, First Place
Photo by VAM Productions

A partial list of the New York Finals finalists and medalists will be provided below. What follows is a brief summary of those performances that I observed during Wednesday’s “Final Round.” All the young dancers performed well, giving credit to themselves and their schools, but I’ll only mention those I found particularly impressive based on my highly unofficial and non-scientific ranking system, but in no particular order.

Suzie Pevel, France
Photo by VAM Productions

Thirty young dancers competed in the Junior Women’s category, each of whom was a finalist from earlier semi-finals from around the world. Ayako Tsukada, a 12 year old from Japan, gave a high quality performance of a variation from Don Quixote; Rebecca Alexandria Hadibroto, also 12, from Indonesia (the winner of last year’s Hope Award, the equivalent of the Grand Prix among the pre-competition age group), hit her solo from Harlequinade for a home run and left me agape in disbelief. Maya Schonbrun, 14, from the USA, executed the same variation very well also, as did Japan’s very sweet-looking Nana Oda (age13) and the USA’s Madison Brown, age 13.  And Elise Cho, another 12 year old from the USA, danced a commendable Aurora variation (Act I) from The Sleeping Beauty, executing super turns and balances in the process.

Grace Carroll, Australia
YAGP Senior Womens Division, First Place
Photo by VAM Productions

France’s Suzie Pevel (13), delivered a polished Dryad Queen variation from Don Quixote. Paloma Sol Livellara Vidart, a 13 year old from Argentina, danced a superb Medora variation from Le Corsaire, and Natalia Chersia (14), from the USA, impressively performed a variation from La Esmeralda (different from the one usually seen in this competition). Ava Arbuckle and Brianna Guagliardo, both age 14 and from the USA, delivered very fine variations from Raymonda, although Arbuckle’s looked somewhat more sophisticated. And Sophia Zonni from the USA and Moyu Yoshimura from Japan, both 14, danced variations from Raymonda, with Zonni’s being a bit more polished.

Twelve Junior Men participated in the Final Round. Carson Willey, age 12 from the USA, danced an exuberant and highly credible variation from Harlequinade. Brazil’s Andre Jesus performed an excellent variation from La Esmeralda, as did Misha Broderick with his Diana and Acteon variation. Seungmin Lee, from South Korea danced a clean-as-a-whistle variation from Le Corsaire, and Darrion Sellman, from the USA, did memorable work with a variation from Act III of Swan Lake that required pristine command. Finally, Kanata Ijima (Japan), and Jacob Alvarado (USA), both 14, danced excellent variations from Coppelia and Paquita respectively.

Yazmin Verhage, Switzerland
YAGP Senior Womens Division, Second Place
Photo by VAM Productions

There were 23 finalists in the Senior Women’s division. Basia Rhoden, 16, from the USA, danced a knock-out variation from La Esmeralda, and Australia’s Grace Carroll (15) and Canada’s Bridget Lee (18) did the same with their classy and beautifully executed variations from Paquita. Tall and angelic-looking Anastasia Plotnikova, 17, from Russia’s Bolshoi Academy performed a very strong, finely executed variation from Coppelia, as did tiny Arianna Crosato Neumann (16), from Peru, dancing a different variation from the same ballet. Switzerland’s Yazmin Verhage, 16, delivered an excellent Gamzatti variation from La Bayadere, as did the USA’s Brooke Noska with her variation from Walpurgis Nacht (including memorable fouettes). Aoi Sawano, age 15, danced an impressive Swan Lake variation, while South Korea’s Min Young Kim, 18, delivered a very solid variation from Grand Pas Classique. And little Emma Spillane (15) from the USA gave a lovely, albeit careful, performance of a variation from Raymonda.

Emma Spillane, USA
Photo by VAM Productions

Among the 20 Senior Men Final Round dancers, Germany’s Gabriel Figueredo, a tall 18 year old who’s a danseur noble in-the-making, executed a very classy variation from Raymonda. Harold Mendez, age 17 from Cuba, and South Korea’s Junsu Lee, 16, delivered superb renditions of variations from Diana and Acteon and Grand Pas Classique respectively. And Francisco Gomes danced a very strong and smoothly executed variation from La Esmeralda.

Harold Mendes, Cuba
YAGP Mens Senior Division, Third Place (tie)
Photo by VAM Productions

The judges rank the dancers based on a number of factors that far exceed the criteria in my personal evaluation, including earlier performances in the competition of both classical and contemporary dances.

Joaquin Gaubeca, Argentina
YAGP Senior Division, Third Place (tie)
Photo by VAM Productions

The award-winning young dancers are listed below:

JUNIOR DIVISION

Junior Youth America Grand Prix: Darrion Sellman (14), Los Angeles Ballet Academy, USA

Ava Arbuckle, USA
YAGP Junior Womens Division, First Place
Photo by VAM Productions

Junior Women:

1st Place: Rebecca Alexandria Hadibroto (12), Malrupi Dance Academy, Indonesia

2nd Place: Ava Arbuckle (14), Elite Classical Coaching, USA

3rd Place: Madison Brown (13), Lents Dance Company, USA

Summer Duyvestyn, Australia
YAGP Shelley King Award
Photo by VAM Productions

Other Top 12 Junior Women:

Summer Duyvestyn (15), Australia

Ayako Tsukada (12), Japan

Bianca Badea (12), Romania

Allison Whitley (13), USA

Paloma Vidart  (13), Argentina

Nana Oda (13), Japan

Taeryeong Kim (13), South Korea

Abra Geiger (14), USA

Ellie Iannotti (14), USA

Madison Brown, USA
YAGP Junior Womens Division, Third Place
Photo by VAM Productions

Junior Men:

1st Place: Misha Broderick (13), Master Ballet Academy, USA

2nd Place: Andrey Jesus (13), Bale Jovem de Sao Vicente, Brazil

3rd Place: Seungmin Lee (14), Sunhwa Arts Middle School, South Korea

Andrey Jesus, Brazil
YAGP Junior Division, Second Place
Photo by VAM Productions

Other Top 6 Junior Men:

Carson Willey (12), USA

Joao Petro Freitas (13), Brazil

SENIOR DIVISION

Youth America Grand Prix: Gabriel Figueredo (18), John Cranko School, Germany

Gabriel Figueredo, Germany
Youth America Grand Prix Winner
YAGP Dance Europe Award
Photo by VAM Productions

Senior Women:

1st Place: Grace Carroll (15), Tanya Pearson Academy, Australia

2nd Place: Yazmin Verhage (16), Ballettschule Theater Basel, Switzerland

3rd Place: Arianna Crosato Neumann (16), Danzaira Escuela Profesional de Ballet, Peru

Arianna Crosato Neumann, Peru
YAGP Senior Womens Division, Third Place
Photo by VAM Productions

Other Top 12 Senior Women:

Ruth Schultz (15), USA

Julia Shugart (16), USA

Basia Rhoden (16), USA

Wang Yuan (16), China

Anastasia Plotnikova (17), Russia

Min Young Kim (18), South Korea

Bridget Lee (18), Canada

Katherine Ochoa Lipiz (19), Cuba

Nao Harada (19), Portugal

Bridget Lee, Canada
Photo by VAM Productions

Senior Men:

1st Place: Junsu Lee (16), Korea National University of Art, South Korea

2nd Place: Francisco Gomes (15), Academia Annarella, Portugal

3rd Place: Joaquin Gaubeca (16), Cary Ballet Conservatory, Argentina

3rd Place: Harold Mendez (17), The Sarasota Cuban Ballet School, Cuba

Francisco Gomes, Portugal
YAGP Mens Senior Division, Second Place
Photo by VAM Productions

Other Top 6 Senior Men:

Joao Vitor da Silva (15), Brazil

Katherine Ochoa Lipiz, Cuba,
Photo by VAM Productions

PRE-COMPETITIVE AGE DIVISION

Hope Award: Corbin Holloway (11), CityDance School and Observatory, MD., USA

Pre-Competitive Women:

1st Place: Martha Savin (11), Dance Planet, ROMANIA

2nd Place: Kseniya  Kosava (11), Ballet School of Vezhnoves, BELARUS

3rd Place: Natasha Furman (10), Not Your Ordinary Dancers, USA

Paloma Sol Liveliara Vidart, Argentina
Photo by VAM Productions

Pre-Competitive Men:

1st Place: Matthis Laevens (10), Balletschool Raymonda, BELGIUM

2nd Place: Kai Sato (11), Y Ballet Academy, JAPAN

3rd Place: Aiden Johns (11), Indiana Ballet Conservatory, USA

Taeryeong Kim, South Korea
Photo by VAM Productions

ENSEMBLE CATEGORY

1st Place: Decadance (excerpts),Unison Dance Academy, ISRAEL

2nd Place: Rhythm of the Mountains, Academia Annarella, PORTUGAL

3rd Place: Blah, Blah, Blah, Kurumi Dance Factory, JAPAN

Anastasia Plotnikova, Russia
YAGP Natalia Makarova Award
Photo by VAM Productions

SPECIAL AWARDS:

Natalia Makarova Award for Artistry: Anastasia Poltnikova (17), Bolshoi Ballet Academy, Russia

Mary Day Award for Artistry: Joao Vitor da Silva (15), Ballet Vortice, Brazil

Dance Europe Award: Gabriel Figueredo (18), John Cranko School, Germany

Shelley King Award for Excellence: Summer Duvyestyn (12), Classical Coaching Australia, Australia

Grishko Model Search Award: Ava Arbuckle (14), Elite Classical Coaching, USA

Outstanding Choreographer Award: Maiko Miyauchi and Christina Bucci, Yarita Yu Ballet Studio, Japan

Outstanding Teacher Award: Mariaelena Ruiz, Cary Ballet Conservatory, USA

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Oregon Ballet Theatre
Newmark Theatre
Portland, OR

April 13, 2019
Director’s Choice Program: Presto, BringingOutsideIn, Jardi Tancat, Giants Before Us

Dean Speer

I have been on the prowl for great art for a long time and when I find it, it’s certainly something to be celebrated and cherished. What do I mean by great art? While it can be large or small, on the global stage or in our own backyard, it nevertheless has to be notable and of a nature that has the potential to move us profoundly and to really make a difference.

Chauncey Parsons and Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers
in Nicolo Fonte’s “Giants Before Us”
Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert

Dance-wise, it helps to begin with great music, and Nicolo Fonte has done just that with his work, Giants Before Us, set to piano music of Liszt and Schubert — and how nice that the audience was treated to live piano accompaniment by an equally superb pianist, Portlander Hunter Noack. Noack (and piano) appeared on the top of an 8-foot platform, theatre magic courtesy of a hydraulic lift. It’s a great visual, but I think it’s also a nod to Noack’s pioneering efforts hauling his own Steinway around on a flatbed truck and playing it in unexpected places such as on a plateau above the Columbia River.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers (l-r) Colby Parsons,
Theodore Watler, and Peter Franc
in Nicolo Fonte’s “Giants Before Us”
Photo by Jame McGrew

Fonte book-ended the bill and his Presto was a lively and vivacious opener — it said what it had to say, was about the right length, and the temperament was light and fun. Zipping onto stage were Kelsie Nobriga; Brian Simcoe; Eva Burton, and Matthew Pawlicki-Sinclair.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers Jessica Lind and Brian Simcoe
in Gioconda Barbuto’s “BringingOutsideIn”
Photo by James McGrew

BringingOutsideIn is an experimental piece, first created by Gioconda Barbuto (“in collaboration with the dancers”) in the Summer of 2017 for Choreography XX — a celebration of dance created by women and held in Portland’s Washington Park Rose Garden Amphitheater. It begins with walking patterns that morph into small, mostly individual movement motifs but includes moments for the large group cast that infuses this dance with their 100 percent commitment. My only fuss would be a choreographic one, as I found the work a bit too diffuse and to have needed a stronger and more memorable concluding section/ending.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers
Emily Parker and Michael Linsmeier
in Nacho Duato’s “Jardí Tancat”
Photo by Yi Yin

Nacho Duato hit both choreographic and career pay dirt with his 1983 first work, Jardi Tancat, set to a recording of Catalan songs sung by the amazingly expressive Maria del Mar Bonet. It’s a work that I first saw at Pacific Northwest Ballet many years ago and have enjoyed it multiple times since. Duato allows the piece to be just the right length, using and developing motifs (such as an upturned palm to catch rain or digging, sowing, and reaping) in six short sections. Staged by OBT’s Artistic Director Kevin Irving, it was strongly danced by Katherine Monogue and Colby Parsons; Emily Parker and Michael Linsmeier; and Kelsie Nobriga and Brian Simcoe. You felt the hot Spanish sun right there on stage.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers
Chauncey Parsons and Katherine Monogue
in Gioconda Barbuto’s “BringingOutsideIn”
Photo by Yi Yin

Next was a video interview with retiring principal dancer Chauncey Parsons (HERE), followed by his exquisite rendition of what’s essentially an extended solo, with an all-too-brief appearance by Makino Hayashi about two-thirds of the way through. With choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie, the solo (Love from Vital Sensations) moves from one heartfelt shape to another, concluding with a strong reaching to the audience with Parsons on his right side, legs bent back. The audience gave Parsons a very well-deserved ovation and he was roundly applauded too by his supportive colleagues (following the last work; see below).

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers with pianist Hunter Noack
in Nicolo Fonte’s Giants Before Us”
Photo by JIngzi Zhao

Finally, we’re at Giants Before Us and some of the best, most expressive and greatest keyboard works of Liszt and Schubert. 10 men and one woman — what a combo! While mostly a work for the 10 men, once the woman enters (the wonderful Xuan Cheng) and she “chooses” Peter Franc, theirs is a pas de deux central to the dance. I enjoyed how playful the interactions between the men were and the times when one or the other were lifted and carried about. Kudos to Franc and Cheng, Michael Linsmeier, Chauncey Parsons, Matthew Pawlicki-Sinclair, Thomas Baker, Adam Hartley, Christopher Kaiser, Marc LaPierre, Colby Parsons, and Theodore Watler.

Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers Xuan Cheng and Brian Simcoe
in Nicolo Fonte’s “Giants Before Us”
Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert

Overall, this was a very good program of shorter works, finishing with one that could and should be seen and experienced again and again.

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Youth America Grand Prix, 2019
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

April 18, 2019: Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow
April 20, 2019: International Dance School Festival

Jerry Hochman

After the 2019 Youth America Grand Prix competition ended (the subject of a prior review), the celebrations began. This year, to commemorate YAGP’s 20th Anniversary, a second performance of its annual Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow gala (“SOTMSOT”) was added to the event schedule, as was and an International Dance School Festival (“IDSF”), a new gala program this year.

Although both galas had their pluses and minuses, the disappointments were minimal. They were among the finest such programs that YAGP has presented since I began attending them, featuring interesting new choreography and an abundance of superlative performances. And hopefully the IDSF will become an annual fixture. It’s a fine idea.

Kimin Kim in the Don Quixote Pas de Deux
Photo by VAM Productions

I’ll address the programs in rough performance order (and make brief observations where appropriate), but the highlights among highlights merit special praise. In the SOTMSOT, I was particularly impressed (for different reasons) by Melanie Hamrick’s Porte Rouge, Julio Nunes’s Nothing Left, Catherine Hurlin dancing a paso doble, and Olga Smirnova and Calvin Royal III in Dying Swan (yes, you read that right); and in the IDSF by the performances of YAGP alumni Mackenzie Brown and Jun Masuda of Monaco’s Princess Grace Academy, Lilly Maskery of the Australian Ballet School, and Yuki Wakabayashi from Germany’s John Cranko School.

Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow

I saw the first of the two SOTMSOT galas, which proceeded without intermission. One could sense, if not smell, the preparations for the Gala Dinner on the DHK Promenade that immediately followed the program.

Christine Shevchenko in YAGP’s Don Quixote Suite
Photo by VAM Productions

Interspersed with the performances were video clips of several individual YAGP competitors discussing their feelings about being a part of the YAGP competition, the challenges they faced, and what they liked about dance. It was a very effective presentation. The snippets did not identify the individual speakers, which is unfortunate but understandable to protect their privacy and to make them appear as generalizations of an “everyYAGPdancer.”  Also, mid-way through the Stars of Today program, actress Cicely Tyson, escorted by American Ballet Theatre’s Calvin Royal III and YAGP Board Member B Michael, addressed the recent passing, and the significance, of New York City Ballet Principal and Dance Theatre of Harlem Founder Arthur Mitchell, including acknowledging with gratitude and graciousness the encouragement and blessing he received from George Balanchine. Royal subsequently announced that his performances that evening were dedicated to Mitchell.

YAGP New York Finals dancers in The Grand Defile
Photo by VAM P:roductions

The program opened with the annual Grand Defilé, choreographed again by Carlos Dos Santos, Jr. (assisted by Alexei Moskalenko and Mikhail Tchoupakov), which this year was moved to the beginning of the program. To me it’s a grand celebratory tribute to the young dancers and the YAGP organization, and belongs where it was last year, as the evening’s conclusion. Regardless, somehow the piecemeal process comes together when it has to, and the sight of a stage overflowing with young dance talent is always eye-opening and exciting to watch. It was performed magnificently by all the New York Finals participants.

Martha Savin in “Casta Diva”
Photo by VAM Productions

The young dancers selected to perform in SOTMSOT usually, though not always, are drawn from those known to have won awards or placed highly in final rankings. As formally announced the following day, Thursday’s “Stars of Tomorrow” portion of the program exclusively included those who had won awards, beginning with the youngest dancers. Precocious Martha Savin, 11, from Romania, who placed first in the “Pre-Competition Womens Division,” performed her Casta Diva solo with the attitude, and much of the finesse, of a seasoned dancer. Corbin Holloway, also 11, followed with his solo from Le Corsaire. The Hope Award winner (the pre-competition equivalent of the Grand Prix) from the USA left the audience cheering with his already manifest technique and stage presence. Thirteen year old Madison Brown, also from the USA, then danced a beautifully executed contemporary solo: Revolt. She won third place in the Junior Womens Division.

Corbin Holloway in “Le Corsaire”
Photo by VAM Productions

Rebecca Alexandria Hadibroto, a 12 year old from Indonesia and first place winner in the Junior Womens Division, followed with a repeat performance of the solo from Harlequinade that blew the audience away the previous night. Gabriel Figueredo, 18, from Germany (who actually is Brazilian) then concluded the “Stars of Tomorrow” performances with a contemporary solo from Wayne MacGregor’s Chroma. Figueredo won the most prestigious award in the competition, the Youth America Grand Prix, as well as the Dance Europe Award. It’s been a monumental year for Figueredo, who also was one of the winners of the Prix de Lausanne a few months earlier.

Madison Brown in “Revolt”
Photo by VAM Productions

Without interruption, the program then segued into the Stars of Today portion of the program.

Christine Shevchenko and Thomas Forster
in Melanie Hamrick’s “Porte Rouge”
Photo by VAM Productions

Melanie Hamrick may have choreographed previously, but if she did, I’m not aware of it. Be that as it may, the long-time member of American Ballet Theatre’s corps choreographed a highly enjoyable piece, Porte Rouge (“Red Door”), which began the Stars of Today program auspiciously. The choreography isn’t the most complex, but that’s not the dance’s point. Exuberance that’s as contagious as the music is. This was the piece’s North American premiere, following its world premiere (with a slightly different cast) on a Creative Workshop of Young Choreographers program at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg last month.

Skylar Brandt and dancers in Melanie Hamrick’s “Porte Rouge”
Photo by VAM Productions

To three songs by the Rolling Stones orchestrated by Mick Jagger, Hamrick (with Assistant Choreographer Joanna DeFelice and with input from Jagger, who reportedly was backstage during this performance) has created a dance that celebrates Jagger’s music, but does so with an appropriate abundance of energy rather than reverence. The first song, Sympathy for the Devil, was a multi-faceted dance in which ABT soloist Skylar Brandt was partnered by a changing male retinue (ABT Principal Herman Cornejo, New York City Ballet Principal Daniel Ulbricht, ABT soloists Thomas Forster and Royal, and corps member Sung Woo Han). As able as these dancers were, this segment was overshadowed by the next two. Christine Shevchenko, another ABT Principal, and Forster followed with a superb duet choreographed to She’s a Rainbow, amplified by the color-splashed costumes and lights that bathed the upstage scrim in a rainbow of colors (costumes and lighting were not credited). This segued seamlessly to the final dance of the three, to Paint it Black, inhabited by Cornejo, Ulbricht, Forster and Royal. My only criticism: it ended too abruptly (though that’s the song), and too soon. There’s a more comprehensive, but still coherent, ballet of Stones music out there. If Hamrick is looking to create more than a pièce d’occasion, she should catch her dreams before they slip away.

Indiana Woodward and Taylor Stanley
in George Balanchine’s “Tarantella”
Photo by VAM Productions

Following a lively performance of George Balanchine’s Tarantella by New York City Ballet’’s Indiana Woodward and Taylor Stanley, the evening’s biggest surprise was the world premiere of a duet choreographed by Juliano Nunes (who dances with the Royal Ballet of Flanders). Nothing Left is a male relationship piece, performed by Nunes and Boston Ballet’s Derek Dunn (to music by Karen LeFrak), which relates the passion, and the hopelessness, of a male relationship. I’m not a fan of male duets per se, but I am of fine choreography and execution, and Nothing Left is definitely that. There are moments when the dance almost, but not quite, takes the sexual component too far, but mostly I found it exhilarating, touching and tragic. I was not previously aware of Nunes’s choreography, but if Nothing Left is a representative example, his ability to merge finely wrought choreography with equally expressive (but not intrusive) emotion is revelatory.

Juliano Nunes and Derek Dunn in “Nothing Left”
Photo by VAM Productions

Olga Smirnova is a Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina, and an international star. She was the centerpiece of this Gala. Her rendition of the Black Swan Pas de Deux, however, was disappointing. I saw Smirnova at the 2014 YAGP SOTMSOT Gala, and found her performance in Balanchine’s “Diamonds” (from Jewels) to be overly stoic, and a subsequent performance as Nikiya as an ABT guest artist the same. Although this performance began with a bit of character, it devolved again into an exhibition of undeniable technique, while her demeanor became more and more stone-faced. That she replaced the anticipated fouettes in the coda with a series of pique turns, although brilliantly executed, didn’t help the impression. I may be in the minority (and based on audience response, I am), but I expect quality animation as well as execution in a Black Swan.

Olga Smirnova and Kimin Kim in the Black Swan Pas de Deux
Photo by VAM Productions

Her Prince, Kimin Kim, was another matter. Character isn’t an issue here (she’s the seducer), and Kim’s technique never ceases to amaze. The Bolshoi principal (and occasional ABT guest artist) gets more air in a jump or leap than any danseur I’ve ever seen. He’s truly a force of nature.

The next three pieces on the program more than compensated for the perceived Black Swan Pas de Deux deficiency.

Catherine Hurlin and Denys Drozdyuk in “Paso Doble”
Photo by VAM Productions

Catherine Hurlin, a recently-promoted ABT soloist, is a multi-faceted dancer who can be a comedian one minute and a siren the next. Her growth as a dancer, even though predictable following her pre-professional debut as Young Clara in ABT’s world premiere of Alexei Ratmanksy’s Nutcracker, continues to astound. Outfitted here in a flaming red dress that complemented her red hair and fiery execution, she and Denys Drozdyuk, described as a World Ballroom Champion, danced a vibrant Paso Doble (choreographed by Donnie Burns and Gaynor Fairweather, with additional choreography by Drozdyuk and Antonina Skobina and with music by Pascual Marquino Narro) that was more incendiary than steamy, but which was great fun to watch.

Lucia Lacarra and Fabrice Calmels
in Gerald Arpino’s “Light Rain”
Photo by VAM Productions

Gerald Arpino’s Light Rain may be an example of early 80s kitsch, but its intricate and breathtakingly sensual partnering makes it an enduring audience favorite, and it was superbly danced by the still rubber-bodied Lucia Lacarra (Victor Ullate Ballet) and commanding Fabrice Calmels (Joffrey Ballet). I’ve seen both dancers in these roles previously, but this performance was particularly thrilling to watch, even with a lighting glitch that marred the ending.

Hee Seo and Cory Stearns
in the Act I Pas de Deux from “Manon”
Photo by VAM Productions

ABT Principal Hee Seo is a stunning dramatic dancer (as she displayed many times in John Cranko’s Onegin), but her passionate sensuality in the Act I pas de deux from Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon revealed another dimension to her acting ability. She and her partner, ABT Principal Cory Stearns, melted into each other in a sneak preview of one of the anticipated highlight ballets of the upcoming ABT Met Season.

Ekaterina Kondaureva and Konstantin Zverev
in William Forsythe’s “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated”
Photo by VAM Productions

More often than not I’ve found William Forsythe’s choreography to be icy and mechanical, but In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated is one of the better (and most well-known) examples of his work, and it was given an fine performance by the Mariinsky Ballet’s Ekaterina Kondaurova and Konstantin Zverev. Kondaurova is one of ballet’s most dominating (and regal) ballerinas, which was evident when she first appeared with the Mariinsky in New York many years ago. In The Middle… doesn’t call for that, but, like another dominating and regal ballerina, Sylvie Guillem, she brought a measure of heat to that ice.

Olga Smirnova and Calvin Royal III in “Dying Swan”
Photo by VAM Productions

Perhaps the most intriguing performance of the night was in Michel Fokine’s Dying Swan. Choreographed in 1905 as a solo for Anna Pavlova, I’ve not known Dying Swan as anything other than a ballerina (including Trockadero ballerina) solo, although I suppose that, like most anything else, permutations of the original have been done. Regardless, I’ve never before seen Dying Swan danced by both a ballerina and a danseur, as Smirnova and Royal did. I’ve always admired the artistry in fine performances of Dying Swan, but I never really loved it. This performance I loved, primarily because of Royal’s presence in it.

Olga Smirnova and Calvin Royal III in “Dying Swan”
Photo by VAM Productions

The additional choreography for Royal is not credited in the program, but my understanding is that it is by Nunes. It provides Dying Swan with another dimension – the visualization of some force, some spirit, that appears to direct the Swan’s gradual demise like a benevolent angel of death. Whatever, or whomever, the character is supposed to be, he converts the dance into something spectacular to watch, and the additional choreography is thoroughly consistent with Fokine’s original. [Indeed, with the added male dancer, the piece was remindful of another Fokine ballet, one with a completely contrary temperament, in which a female character responds to a “spirit” that only she can see: Spectre de la Rose.] Smirnova’s one-dimensional characterization was appropriate here and her execution top-flight, but her physical responses to Royal, and Royal’s compassionate portrayal are what brought a swan’s death to life. Pianist Micah McLaurin perfectly delivered the Camille Saint-Saens music.

I’ve seen David Parsons’s Caught many times, but always performed by a male dancer. Zoe Anderson demonstrated that it doesn’t have to be this way. It appeared that most of the audience had not previously seen this Parsons classic, evidenced by their awe-struck audible responses as Anderson’s image became frozen mid-motion by flashes of strobe lighting.

Skylar Brandt as Amour in YAGP’s Don Quixote Suite
Photo by VAM Productions

The Don Quixote Suite that concluded SOTMSOT was mildly disappointing – not because of Shevchenko, who lit up the stage with Kitri’s solo from Act I, or by Brandt’s Amour and the brief appearances of ABT soloist Katherine Williams and Finnish National Ballet’s Rebecca King, and certainly not with Kim’s soaring exuberance, but with Isabella Boylston’s portrayal of Kitri in the pas de deux. Unlike the Black Swan Pas de Deux, the absence of characterization isn’t fatal here since even in context this dance is celebratory more than plot-driven, and Boylston’s power-packed technical prowess was abundantly clear. But at this stage in her career, and after having danced this role many times around the world, I expected at least a flash of character (demonstrated two days later, as I’ll mention below). I acknowledge again, however, that I’m probably in a minority – and certainly was on Thursday, as the audience roared its approval at the pas de deux’s conclusion.

Isabella Boylston and Kimin Kim in YAGP’s Don Quixote Suite
Photo by VAM Productions

International Dance School Festival

If you enjoy being educated about the future of ballet, being introduced to young dancers you’ve never seen, and being entertained in the process, nothing tops the panoply of performances in YAGP’s first IDSF. I didn’t appreciate all the dances, but these young dancers all delivered noteworthy performances. With one exception, my focus will be on the dancers rather than the choreography.

YAGP International Dance School Festival
Concluding Curtain Call
Photo by VAM Productions

Some of the large ensemble dances, though fun to watch, left a blur of an impression. Since identifying individual dancers who participated in these pieces is not possible (except by bulk listing), I’ll mention these dances in passing.

Princess Grace Academy dancers
Mackenzie Brown and Jan Masuda
in Jean Christophe Maillol’s “Dove la Luna”

The most prominent of the noteworthy IDSF performances was by Mackenzie Brown. The Virginia native won a scholarship to Monaco’s Princess Grace Academy following the 2016 YAGP Finals, and then won this year’s Prix de Lausanne, finishing first among eight award-winners. Her performances here lived up to the hype that winning a competition can bring.

Following an opening piece, Dance(s)pace, performed with considerable polish by ten student dancers from the University of North Carolina School of Dance, Brown, together with her Princess Grace Academy partner Jun Masuda, also a YAGP alumnus, appeared in the first of their two dances. Choreographed by Jean Christophe Maillol, the Artistic Director of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo (with which the Princess Grace Academy is affiliated), Dove la Luna exemplifies Maillol’s contemporary ballet style as well as his realistically natural manner of visualizing youthful love. In a way, Dove la Luna (choreographed to music by Alexander Scriabin) looks like an outtake from his Romeo and Juliet, but without any plot beyond youthful infatuation and exploration. Brown and Masuda handled their assignments flawlessly, with the soon-to-be seventeen year old Brown looking both innocent and excitedly compliant in the process.

Princess Grace Academy dancers
Mackenzie Brown and Jan Masuda
in Marco Goecke’s “Black Swan Pas de Deux”
Photo by VAM Productions

Later in the evening, both dancers reappeared in the Black Swan Pas de Deux. I sat back in my chair waiting to see Brown in a classical performance, which will teach me to read beyond the title of the piece being presented. This Black Swan was choreographed by Marco Goecke, and is in no way a classical ballet, Petipa or otherwise.

Goecke’s choreography is instantly recognizable, and although I understand his movement quality and occasionally appreciate his work, I find his rapid-fire and emotionless angular body movement, emphasizing thrusting and jerking arms, particularly annoying. To me, the movement comes across as insect-like (definitely not a snug-in-a-rug bug), with the dancers’ arms being the equivalent of antennae and / or insect legs. This may be Goecke’s intent, though I can’t understand any reason for it beyond being distinctive.

Curiously, my first exposure to Goecke’s work was in a 2014 YAGP gala solo piece, On Velvet, performed by Evan McKie, in which McKie moved his arms at warp speed while standing still or sprawled on the stage floor. I found it to be of little interest or significance.

I still find Goecke’s choreography of little interest beyond execution dynamics, but it’s certainly proven significant, at least in Europe, where he apparently enjoys a sterling reputation. But I can at times accept that there’s considerable intelligence behind it (evidence by the recent performance of Wir sagen uns Dunkles by NDT2 at the Joyce earlier this year). Goecke’s Black Swan Pas de Deux displays a similar intelligence. That’s not enough to make it enjoyable, but, together with Brown and Masuda’s execution, it’s enough to make it interesting.

There is nothing in Goecke’s Black Swan Pas de Deux that’s in any way balletic, nor is it a credible reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s score. On the contrary, it comes across as an ugly, anti-Black Swan, in which arms move angularly at lightning speed, accented by twitches that appear senseless and delivered by stone-faced dancers.

But … every once in awhile I discerned a method to this madness, and a non-emotive relationship to the depicted relationship, and to the original. It takes awhile to get there, but there’s an attraction and response here (albeit all expressed by arm movement and a little body posture). When it’s discernable, it cuts like a knife. Most significantly, there’s a touch of comedy when the female character (an arthropod “Odile”) responds to the male dancer (her probing “Prince”) with a stoic slap that stops his hands from taking things too far, presumably before he swears his love to her. In context, it was a remarkable moment, which Brown delivered with steely but stoic resolve, and it sent shivers up and down my spine the way Dolores’s slapping of an annoying fly did at the conclusion of the initial episode of HBO’s Westworld. Somewhere in there, Brown’s character is alive and human.

So if you enjoy seeing a fabulous portrayal of mutual wasp seduction or the mating ritual of beetles, see Goecke’s Black Swan Pas de Deux – and if possible, with Brown and Masuda, who performed his choreography as well, if not better, than I’ve seen by experienced professionals.

Boston Ballet II dancers
Tyson Clark and My’kal Stromile I
in August Bournonville’s “Jockey Dance”
Photo by VAM Productions

Following what appeared to be an excerpt from Stanton Welch’s Clear by four dancers from ABT’s Studio Company (Melvin Lawovi, Duncan Mcilwaine, Andrew Robere, and Grace Anne Pierce), who executed well but understandably lacked the polish of the senior company dancers when ABT last performed it in 2013, Boston Ballet II’s Tyson Clark and My’kal Stromile danced August Bournonville’s rarely seen Jockey Dance as well as I’ve seen it previously.

Australian Ballet School dancers
Lilly Maskery and Jett Ramsay
in Stephen K. Baynes’s “The Suitor”
Photo by VAM Productions

The Suitor, a pas de deux choreographed by The Australia Ballet’s Resident Choreographer Stephen Baynes to an unidentified Mozart composition, is a lovely ballet pas de deux, delivered masterfully by Australian Ballet School’s Lilly Maskery and Jett Ramsay. There’s nothing choreographically unusual here – what makes the piece is the compelling sincerity of the two dancers. Maskery has a particularly special stage presence, a combination of strength and vulnerability rarely evident in a ballerina this young.

Palucca University Dresden dancers
Alderya Avci and Niklas Jendrics
in David Dawson’s “A Sweet Spell of Oblivion”
Photo by VAM Productions

Following the English National Ballet School’s exuberant 14-dancer performance of an excerpt from Carlos Valcarcel’s Overture from Die Zauberharfe (to the Schubert composition), Alderya Avci and Niklas Jendriks, representing Germany’s Palucca University in Dresden, danced a contemporary pas de deux from David Dawson’s, A Sweet Spell of Oblivion. Both dancers executed Dawson’s choreography, to music from J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, with flawless intensity, and Avci’s liquid movement quality was noteworthy. But out of context the pas de deux of a pair of dancers searching for, or responding to, … something appeared meaningless.

Bolshoi Ballet Academy dancer
Anastasiya Plotnikova in an Act III variation
from Yuri Grigorovich’s “Sleeping Beauty”
Photo by VAM Productions

The first half of the program ended with an ensemble dance, and the second half began with one. Eleven highly capable young dancers from Berlin State Ballet School executed Goecke’s All Long Dem Day to music sung by Nina Simone, and, after intermission, twenty engaging students (some whose names I recognized from the competition) from the Rock School for Dance Education opened the second half of the program with what appeared to be an excerpt from Justin Allen’s Influx (it ended quite abruptly). After Goecke’s Black Swan Pas de Deux, the Bolshoi Ballet Academy’s Anastasiya Plotnikova danced a crisply delivered variation from Yuri Grigorovich’s choreography for Act III of Sleeping Beauty. Both here and during the YAGP Final Round, Plotnikova impressed as a tall, sweet-looking, and highly capable budding ballerina, albeit a bit regimented in her execution.

Houston Ballet Academy dancers
in Stanton Welch’s “Fingerprints”
Photo by VAM Productions

The evening included two more ensemble pieces: excerpts from Welch’s Fingerprints, performed by eight dancers from the Houston Ballet Academy, and quicksilver, choreographed by AXIS Dance Company Artistic Director Marc Brew and performed by six dancers from the San Francisco Ballet School. Although Fingerprints has more complex and exciting choreography (and in context the flowing floor-length skirts worn by the men as well as the women will have more evident purpose), perhaps because it was not an excerpt quicksilver appeared more coherent. Both sets of dancers did excellent work.

San Francisco Ballet School dancers
in Marc Brew’s “quicksilver”
Photo by VAM Productions

Three students from Germany’s John Cranko School next performed excerpts from Uwe Scholz’s Die Schopfung (“Creation”). Figueredo, already a commanding danseur, first performed a solo, and Yuki Wakabayashi and Alexander Smith followed with a duet. It’s unfortunate that the program did not indicate the represented characters in each excerpt. Be that as it may, all three dancers executed magnificently, with Wakabayashi and Smith, in what may have been Scholz’s visualization of Adam and Eve, particularly breathtaking.

John Cranko School dancers
Yuki Wakabayashi and Alexander Smith
in Uwe Scholz’s “Die Schopfung”
Photo by VAM Productions

The evening concluded with ABT Studio Company dancers and YAGP alumni Chloe Misseldine and Joseph Markey dancing the concluding Pas de Deux from Don Quixote. Both dancers did fine work, with Misseldine, a tall, imposing stage presence, adding a measure of character and vivacity to the role (the “character” appeared more Odile than Kitri, but any character was better than none, and it worked). But for an apparent loss of concentration when Misseldine’s fully-completed fouettes concluded, it was a noteworthy performance from both.

ABT II Studio Company dancers
Chloe Misseldine and Joseph Markey
in the Don Quixote Pas de Deux
Photo by VAM Productions

Highly capable young dancers populate dance schools all over the world, and will soon make their way into professional companies beyond those few with international name recognition, and regardless of what one thinks of particular contemporary choreographic trends, the entire art form reaps the benefits. YAGP’s International Dance School Festival provided ample evidence of this, and similar programs in the future would be a rewarding development for all involved. I’ll look forward to it.

The post YAGP 2019: The 20th Anniversary Galas appeared first on CriticalDance.

Heather Desaulniers

• San Francisco Ballet – Program 6 – Space Between
  War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
• Cal Performances presents
  Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – Program A
  Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
• Alonzo King LINES Ballet – Spring Season
  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
• Post:Ballet – Lavender Country
  Z Space, San Francisco

April 6th – In danceland, many musical scores end up being inexorably linked to particular choreography. When I hear the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C, I anticipate the corps de ballet dressed in light blue for George Balanchine’s Serenade. The whistles and unexpected intervals at the beginning of West Side Story make me crave Jerome Robbins’ signature relevé in second. But I also love it when dancemakers break with convention and posit new, different, unexpected language with such scores. That’s what Justin Peck did with Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes, the opener on San Francisco Ballet’s sixth program, Space Between. The 2015 work takes Aaron Copland’s stirring music, originally composed for Agnes de Mille’s 1942 Rodeo ballet, and asks what it has to say some eight decades later.

San Francisco Ballet in Justin Peck’s Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes
Photo © Erik Tomasson

And the answer is, a lot. While Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes certainly pays homage to the past with nostalgic western tropes and old-school musical theater motifs, its choreographic syntax is undeniably twenty-first century. Pedestrian motions are seamlessly combined with highly technical phrases, making the work approachable and fresh. In one instant, the ensemble runs full speed across the stage; in another, they execute perfectly timed unison pirouettes. Peck isn’t afraid of stillness and uses it well throughout the ballet. Impactful, frozen postures of waiting and searching abound: palms splayed, long lunges and expectant upward glances. And the sense of camaraderie amongst the cast of fifteen men and one woman is palpable – they looked like they were having so much fun. But it is the sole female role, danced by Sofiane Sylve, that is most intriguing. From the moment Sylve appears through her pas de deux with Carlo Di Lanno to the final blackout, one is struck by incredible self-assurance. She enters partway through Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes, and so, is indeed joining an ongoing, in process conversation that the men have been having. But with every step, every glance, it is clear that she feels no need to adjust her reality or fit into some perceived mold. Not only is this embodied in her solo work, but also in the primary duet. Peck imbued this pas de deux with abundant counterbalances – shapes and positions requiring equal force from both dancers – and at several points, it was Sylve who was providing the base of support for the partnering. And no discussion of Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes is complete without some bravura highlights. Hansuke Yamamoto wowed with his series of brisés cabrioles, and Esteban Hernandez’ purposely slowing fouettés were met with uproarious applause.

As the lights slowly warmed on Liam Scarlett’s new work for SFB, Die Toteninsel, it was clear that Program 6 was nowhere near done exploring the relationship between movement and music. Die Toteninsel impresses on many levels. Narratively, it has a real Rite of Spring vibe to it, minus the sacrifice part. There’s a community; there’s a feeling of ritualistic purpose; and there’s a definite ominous undercurrent. But the ballet’s shining glory is in its mirroring of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music. Both have an air of unpredictability and morph from one space to another in a deliciously porous wave. Rachmaninoff’s compositions are known for having a wonderful quality of surprise and change, really transcending genre. In a single piece, you might hear the virtuosity and rubato of the Romantic era, the tonal ambiguity of the Impressionists, Baroque counterpoint and 20th Century chromaticism. And the genius is that it all works together. The same is true of what Scarlett created with Die Toteninsel. Defying a particular sense of time, the piece looked futuristic, biblical and mythological all at the same time. Its tone was concurrently determined, worshipful, passionate and foreboding. Partnerships were constantly in flux as the cast navigated their relationship to David Finn’s large circular light sculpture (which itself also shifted and pivoted throughout the work). Choreographically, Scarlett mined a range of styles and dynamics – pedestrian walking, classical arabesques, contemporary inverted lifts and serpentine twisting. And while there were plenty of large poses and vast extensions, Scarlett spent ample time with low positions. Low arabesques, low passés and turns in ¼ relevé felt a metaphor for being on a journey. A journey that, like those positions, hadn’t reached its final leg yet. A journey through a tunnel of moods, tones and atmospheres, that, even if you weren’t quite sure what was happening, you wanted to watch.

Space Between closed with one more chapter celebrating the choreography/sound connection: the return of Arthur Pita’s Björk Ballet, which debuted last year as part of SFB’s Unbound Festival. A tribute to the musical artist, Björk Ballet takes a very typical compositional form – the dance suite, a larger work comprised of multiple consecutive choreographic chapters, each one usually accompanied by a different musical selection. Pita followed the formula, with nine episodes set to nine songs. But other than that framework, there was nothing typical about Björk Ballet. There were characters, costumes and masks aplenty. We met fire soldiers, a sparkling butterfly, an army of chess pieces, a warrior Queen and a masked fisherman. Visual spectacle was everywhere: mirrored Marley floor, ardent make out sessions, fiber-optic palm trees falling from the ceiling, dancers standing atop a bright red platform, a giant fishing pole. Pita pulled from many movement genres including jazz, figure skating, yoga and acrobatics; I half expected aerial artists to make an appearance at some point. The piece was definitely entertaining. It moved quickly, was visually engaging and thoroughly inventive. Having said that, there were a number of sections that looked bizarre simply for the sake of being bizarre, which doesn’t speak to this particular viewer. And there was a missed opportunity near the end. One of Björk Ballet’s later chapters sees the large cast funneling on and off the stage in a jumping, pulsing staccato flurry. It felt like the conclusion, and because it did, the scenes that followed were a bit of let down.

April 9th – For four days a man had been presumed dead. A miraculous healer arrived to tell his friends and family that this was not the end. It was hard for them to imagine. Yet, his tombstone was removed and there he stood alive.

So many threads run through the Lazarus parable. Themes of faith and hope. Themes of believing in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances. Themes of rising from quietus. And themes of porousness – the porousness between life and death, and the porousness of time.

All of these strands come together in Lazarus, choreographed in 2018 by Rennie Harris for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The two-act work, which Artistic Director Robert Battle shared in his opening remarks was a first for the company, takes its audience on a journey. A journey through the African American experience, a journey through history and a journey through space and time. Within these larger narratives, Harris also weaves tributes and remembrances to both to Alvin Ailey and to AAADT on the occasion of their sixtieth anniversary. This gripping work saw its Bay Area premiere Tuesday night as the troupe opened its annual weeklong residency at Cal Performances (Lazarus was also co-commissioned by Cal Performances).

Lazarus doesn’t seek to be a literal rendering of the biblical story. Instead, it applies the broader themes to three different eras, and unpacks them through movement and scenework. First Harris takes the viewer back in time, to the horrors of slavery. Potent, disturbing images of forced labor, human cruelty, even lynching, pervade the stage: dancers trudged through the space, heads down, arms drilling toward the ground. Mouths contorted in silent screams; hands shook, desperately praying for justice; torsos wailed in grief. Several phrases saw the cast running full speed away from something terrifying. Yet, amidst all that terror, Harris also injected glimpses of hope. A deep sense of community underscored this entire first scene, as did a recurring physical motif. Dancers would traverse the stage with suspended, slow motion strides coupled with expectant, lifted gazes and longing expressions. These vast lunges weren’t running out of extreme fear, they were all about moving forward, toward something or someone. I couldn’t specifically say what that thing or person was, though the tone undeniably spoke of resilience, of rising like Lazarus.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Rennie Harris’ Lazarus
Photo Paul Kolnik

The connection to the source material was far from over as Lazarus shifted into its next chapter – the mid-twentieth century. As the first act came to its close, what struck was the porousness of time. Lazarus had indeed morphed to a different era, no question. Plain, rural clothing had been replaced with costume designer Mark Eric’s take on 1960s stylings. And Harris added a more sinewy expression of the upper body to the traditional African percussive footwork. Though much (good and bad) was the same, despite the time lapse. The feeling of community was still unmistakable. But so was the violence and bloodshed. Bodies flung and crumbled all over the space, as if hit by gunfire. After intermission, Act II of Lazarus once again took us to a new place and time. Jeweled-toned tunics, trimmed with gold had a definite 1980s vibe and the high-throttle, pulsing, free choreography added a note of celebration. This felt like heaven, maybe even the heaven that welcomed Mr. Ailey after he passed from this world in 1989. But at the same time, you couldn’t be sure it was heaven. As the lights fell on Lazarus, that line between life and afterlife had been left purposely uncertain.

Lazarus is a powerful work that fires on all cylinders – design, music, movement and narrative. And it was brilliantly interpreted by the entire Ailey company. Though the piece’s formal structure did spark a question. The dance clearly has three parts to it, but is divided into two acts. The middle section (tacked onto the end of Act I) felt a little rushed and less developed than the other two segments. I wonder what Lazarus would look like as a three-part ballet, with an expanded middle section and one act dedicated to each separate scene.

And of course, the evening closed with Ailey’s 1960 masterwork Revelations. As with so many, I never tire of seeing this transcendent dance suite. Highlights at this viewing included the unison port de bras and port de corps during I Been ‘Buked and the urgent yearning that Jacqueline Green and Jamar Roberts brought to the spellbinding Fix Me, Jesus pas de deux.

April 12th – A gift of any Alonzo King LINES Ballet performance is the opportunity to see the company’s stunning dance artists. Even if the individual choreographic works don’t necessarily speak to you, their technical bravura, exceptional eloquence and authentic grace are indisputable. And the dancers were absolutely on fire Friday night as LINES opened its spring season at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I can’t stress enough the gift and privilege it was to witness them in motion.

The program itself, a double bill featuring the return of 2016’s Art Songs and the world premiere of Pole Star, also impressed. Both pieces mine the dialogue and exchange between movement and music – a rich line of inquiry that was central to the troupe’s fall offering, which included a nod to Baroque musicality and a collaboration with Kronos Quartet. Six months later, LINES continued that foray into the sound/body connection.

In music, counterpoint is a compositional tool, where motifs, lines or voices are experienced as simultaneously independent and interdependent – independent, in that they certainly can stand on their own, and interdependent, in that they also work together to create a sumptuous aural palette. In Art Songs, Artistic Director/Founder/Choreographer Alonzo King looks to that concurrency, and places movement as a counterpoint to Baroque, Romantic and contemporary composers. Costumed by Robert Rosenwasser in whites, silvers and black velvet, the company contributed an additional artistic line to the recorded instrumental and vocal selections, and in doing so, added a riveting tone of desperation and passion. While there were a few ensemble sequences, the majority of the work was expressed through six chapters of pas de deux (and one trio). And the drama was intense. Relevés were informed by frenetic urgency, as were surprising contractions in the head and upper back. Dancers rapidly slid across the floor and then stamped their feet to the ground, as if trying to extinguish a fire. LINES’ sky-high extensions, super flexion and attitudes in second were abundant, though keeping with Art Songs’ intensity, dancers quickly crumbled after hitting one of those extreme postures. Recorded music can sometimes be tough in dance performance, but here, because the choreography was having an active contrapuntal conversation with J.S. Bach, Robert Schumann, George F. Handel, Henry Purcell and Lisa Lee, the atmosphere felt very alive.     

Madeline DeVries and Shuaib Elhassan in Pole Star
Photo Manny Crisostomo

But if you were craving live music as a frame for dance, Pole Star, King’s collaboration with famed Vietnamese musician/composer Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, fit the bill – a forty-minute work of intersecting textures, layers and moods. From the orchestra pit, Võ’s hauntingly beautiful zither rose, occasionally interspersed with text and ambient sounds. Billowy smoke poured into the space. Projected on the back cyclorama was a film (by Jamie Lyons) of bright green rolling hills, their color matched by Rosenwasser’s wispy, flowy costumes. Adding to that lush environment was King’s evocative choreography. Pole Star didn’t read as narrative, but it wasn’t abstract either – charged emotions were unmistakable and potent imagery, ever present. As in Art Songs, LINES’ signature choreographic positions were aplenty, though, here they were also infused with unexpected movement practices and traditions. Some sections were clearly inspired by military drills, others by martial arts. Twisted, serpentine torsos abounded, as did vignettes of falling and catching oneself. Grounded, percussive footwork unison spoke of a shared experience while aggressive phrases conjured confrontation. Such a broad collage of tones and qualities! But for me, what was most impactful in Pole Star was the juxtaposition of the body and the projection. Seeing the company against the mountains (and later blades of grass) brought an interesting question of corporeality to the table. The sense of place had become transitory and fluid. At moments, it felt as though the dancers had actually been transported to those natural settings and were dancing amidst them.

LINES spring program definitely tackled movement and music from two distinct vantage points – Art Songs and Pole Star were very different from each other. No question. But having said that, within the body of each piece, there was a strong sense of sameness. From the first light cue to the final blackout of both dances, their energy, quality and dynamics were very similar. Too similar for this viewer. And a side effect of remaining at one energetic level is that the work ends up seeming long. Neither Art Songs nor Pole Star actually were too long, but unfortunately, they felt that way.    

April 27th – One of the (many) things to love about Z Space, an industrial, warehouse performance venue in San Francisco, is its chameleon nature. With a huge stage, mobile seating, high ceilings and cavernous grandeur, it can transform into any number of theatrical containers. In fact, every time I’m there to see a dance show, I have no idea what may await as I enter the house and turn the corner.

This past Saturday, what I saw when I walked in was a captivating cabaret setting. Bar tables and chairs were scattered about and a piano was situated up right. Sparkling bulbs adorned the surfaces, disco balls hung from the light grid and a black curtain hid an internal stage. Six cast members unassumingly sauntered into the space, greeting one another with knowing nods and fond embraces. The back curtain began to part revealing a six-piece band in full country western finery, led by Patrick Haggerty. Bright footlights spelled out “Lavender Country,” the title of Haggerty’s 1973 release, known as the first gay country music recording. The scene was clear – a show, a concert was imminent.

Post:Ballet in Lavender Country
Photo Natalia Perez

And what a show it was – the remounting of Post:Ballet and Haggerty’s 2017 collaboration, Lavender Country, a full-length ballet named for its musical inspiration. With direction by Robert Dekkers, choreography by Vanessa Thiessen, music by Haggerty, costume design by Christian Squires and lighting/set by David Robertson, Lavender Country checked all the boxes. Over eighty minutes, Haggerty and the ensemble journeyed through the album’s original tracks, music and movement meeting in a rich dialogue. The piece’s return to the stage was such a marvelous addition to Post:Ballet’s current milestone season, which toasts a decade of artistic innovation and choreographic mastery.  

Haggerty’s powerful messages of LGBTQ history and experience were captured through catchy country melodies, toe-tapping rhythms and evocative storytelling. Themes of intimacy, familial relationships, LGBTQ lineage and community sang and sailed through the air, ranging in tenor from horrific to humorous, tender to triumphant, political to poignant. Thiessen, Post:Ballet’s resident choreographer, skillfully expressed these narrative threads through a series of movement episodes set in front of the recessed stage. Full throttle fervor was ample. Falls and dives blasted at high speed; contractions were attacked with frenetic force; partnering was desperate and urgent, sometimes conveying obvious frustration, sometimes deep, enduring connection. But neither the score nor the dance remained solely in that charged quality, which would have given a sense of sameness to the work. Instead, tones of hope and promise were equally present: the torso had a freedom and lightness, long lines of reaching arms and extended legs spoke of possibility. And in keeping with the musical style and genre, social/contradance motifs were plentiful, as were square dance inspirations and a hearty helping of stomping footwork.

Lavender Country was a terrific event, filled with contagious energy, caring humanity and great country music. One could speak to many standout elements, though for this viewer, there were two of particular note – one structural, one choreographic. Movement-wise, the embodiment of the musical selections impressed. The six dance artists were not simply executing steps to the various tunes or “acting out” the lyrics, but instead conversing with Haggerty’s compositions and responding to their spirit. And from a formal perspective, Lavender Country blurred the line between performer and viewer with an unexpected layer. Every audience member was a guest at the cabaret, taking in the heady mix of visuals and sound. In addition, every cast member was a patron too. All six had several instances throughout the ballet where they watched their colleagues dance, listened to Haggerty’s penetrating words and could spend time contemplating their own experience. It was a show within a show, where the cast was afforded time and space to behold as well as respond. In a final nod to egalitarian participation, the show closed with the album’s title track, and the audience was invited to join the company onstage. In those few minutes, the space between viewer and performer was completed demolished and Z Space morphed from cabaret into a full-blown dance party – the ebullient scene vibrated with pure joy.     

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

May 2, 2019

Carmel Morgan

I was aware in advance of its Kennedy Center debut that Chicago-based dance theater company Lucky Plush Productions, recipient of a 2016 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, is known for “thinky” works. Rooming House, co-created and co-directed by founder and Artistic Director Julia Rhoads and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, with choreography by Rhoads, and collaborative input from the charismatic six member ensemble (Kara Brody, Michel Rodriguez Cintra, Elizabeth Luse, Rodolfo Sánchez Sarracino, A. Rahiem White and Meghann Rose Wilkinson), falls into this category. Rooming House takes place as a lengthy conversation (about 75 minutes). The casually attired company members (costumes by Patrick Burns) talk a lot, dance a little less than I’d hoped, and act as guides through a series of intellectual exercises that become physical exercises depicted on stage.

Lucky Plush’s Rooming House, A. Raheim White, Kara Brody, and Meghann Wilkinson, photo by Alan Epstein.

Rooming House is unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it’s hard to describe. It leans more toward theater than dance. However, I wouldn’t call it a play, even though there’s a ton of dialogue. Rooming House comes across more like eavesdropping at a diverse party on a college campus. You’re exposed to multiple people talking about deep, weighty ideas. Sometimes you can follow what’s said, and sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you’re curious about the content of the conversation, and sometimes you’re lost and/or bored.   

The question around which Rooming House revolves is “What makes a person do something that could have life-changing consequences?” Many possibilities are shared via many meandering tales. Lucky Plush’s ensemble swaps stories with each other, and they also swap moves. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and the classic detective board game Clue feature prominently. And there’s humor and heartbreak included. Company members, inspired by wondering why Orpheus looked back at Eurydice despite being warned not to do so, pair off in duets during which they comically try not to look at each other. Later, Cuban-born Cintra enacts a seizure by impressively tossing himself up from the ground like a flopping fish gasping for air. Fellow Cuban-born artist Sarracino tells of his painful decision to come to the United States, leaving his mother behind, not knowing if he would ever see her again.      

Lucky Plush’s Rooming House, A. Raheim White with ensemble, photo by Benjamin Wardell

There’s a restlessness to the work. The storytelling lurches forward and backward between a jumble of big ideas. Themes of sacrifice, love, regret, and shared humanity emerge. Dancing, of course, is but one of the storytelling languages used in Rooming House. Spoken word, including more than a smattering of untranslated Spanish, and the original music by Michael Caskey are additional languages. Even the various “rooms” on the stage, explained by the dancers and demarcated by Alexander Ridgers’s lighting design, add layers of meaning to the performance. (My favorite room is the “backstory” room).  

I applaud the creativity of Rooming House and the ability of the company to keep the storytelling going. I also applaud the desire of its creators to challenge the audience. Yet I, at least, was over-challenged. For me, there was too much to absorb. While I enjoyed contemplating the issues raised and the problems posed, the constant barrage of questions and the incessant twists and turns in direction exhausted me. Had the choreography stood out, I might have stayed reliably engaged, but for the most part the dancing is fairly pedestrian and unremarkable. This is probably by design, so that no one aspect of the performance overshadows another. Understandably, the conversation as a whole takes precedence.   

Lucky Plush’s Rooming House, Kara Brody and Michel Rodriguez Cintra with ensemble, photo by Benjamin Wardell

I naively expected Rooming House, which is organized as a kind of puzzle, to neatly wrap up everything in the end, but the responsibility for figuring out the answers is left up to the viewer. I was weary from the journey, and I walked away confused, a little disappointed, and full of further questions. It’s ok not to completely “get” Rooming House, I just wish I had.                  

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

April 24 and May 2, 2019:
Hallelujah Junction, Herman Schmerman, The Exchange, Concerto DSCH
Bright (new Peck), Bartok Ballet (new Tanowitz), Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3

Jerry Hochman

New York City Ballet began its Spring 2019 season with programs representative of what it labels “21st Century Choreographers,” and gradually segued into pieces representative of its legacy choreography by George Balanchine. Programs that merge the old and the new is certainly a laudable, and essential, goal, one that NYCB has encouraged for many decades. Indeed, in their welcoming address prior to Thursday’s Spring Gala, newly-appointed Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford and Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan emphasized that the company will continue to preserve and perform its choreographic heritage while also encouraging new work.

But “old” is a relative term (as I keep reminding myself), so, to me, the “old” designation should include a dance that is older than choreography created in the last decade, or last year, or last week, but is considered 21st Century for programming purposes simply because the choreographer is still living. Regardless, sometimes the contrast between the new and the old, however the term is defined, just highlights how good the old choreography is compared to the new.

Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle
in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Concerto DSCH”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

During the first week of the season, I saw a program designated 21st Century Choreographers that included Hallelujah Junction, Herman Schmerman, The Exchange, and Concerto DSCH. The only real evidence of “new” choreography, in terms of time of creation, was The Exchange. The battle of the choreographic gods then came to a head Thursday night, with two world premiere pieces: Justin Peck’s Bright and Bartok Ballet by Pam Tanowitz, facing off against George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3.

It was no contest. Sometimes the contrast between the new and the old just highlights how good the old choreography is compared to the new. I’ll discuss the two premieres first, followed by the piece that was new last year. Since the remaining ballets are familiar work, I’ll comment about them less extensively thereafter.

Bright is a lovely little ballet that reinforces Peck’s choreographic range. Despite word of some mouths to the contrary, while his dances may fit into generalized categories, they do not look alike. The only thing predictable about Peck’s body of work to date is its unpredictability – and, in most cases, its craftsmanship. But Bright flared briefly and then ended, like a light bulb that died prematurely.

Although it’s a dance for four couples, Bright is really an embellished pas de deux for Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen.

New York City Ballet
in Justin Peck’s “Bright”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Peck has utilized the piece’s score, The Bright Motion by Mark Dancigers, previously. He created a pas de deux for Sara Mearns and Casey Herd (Het Nationale Ballet) for City Center’s Fall for Dance 2013. I missed that program, but it would not be surprising if this was an elaboration on that earlier piece, since even though it’s integrated seamlessly, much of the pas de deux could have been separated from the piece as a whole – and at times during the ballet it physically was. Whether the dance is an elaboration on the earlier pas de deux doesn’t really matter, however, and the fact that the multi-faceted pas de deux here can be easily distinguished didn’t diminish the impact of the dance, since there wasn’t much time for Bright to create that kind of impact.

When the curtain opens, the four couples are gently gliding across a bare stage, moving liltingly, at first in silence, with soft-colored costumes by the ubiquitous Reid Barthelme and Harriet Jung that emphasize the dance’s aura of young love. I thought instantly of Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading, without the leafy cast to the stage or the sense of remembrances of things past. Nothing thereafter disabused me of that: although the choreography and music, when it kicks in, are very different, the ambiance and the sense of a central couple among others is similar.

After gently seguing into parallel male / female lines, Mearns and Janzen separate from the others, and begin one of several dances together during the course of the piece. The music is … well, bright, but softly so, and the choreography matches it. At first, Mearns repeatedly falls into Janzen’s arms, but later, as the relationship apparently matures, the choreography becomes more complex, but to me it illustrated an even stronger bond. On those occasions when the pair reunites with the other couples in the group (Sara Adams, Andrew Scordato, Emilie Gerrity, and Gilbert Bolden III), at times there’s a bit of partner change or a brief dance involving one or the other couple, but Mearns and Janzen return to each other repeatedly. Mearns work is particularly remarkable – Peck’s choreography, at least in the pas de deux segments, looks wickedly complex, and I find Mearns’s performance combining strength and vulnerability, not to mention technical facility even more compelling here than in many of her classical roles.

Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen (center),
with Andrew Scordato (left) and
Emilie Gerrity and Sara Adams (right)
in Justin Peck’s “Bright”
Photo by Erin Baiano

And then, in a flash, it’s over. Mearns and Janzen face each other downstage center, then turn and walk away – separately. They pause to turn back, stretch an arm outward, and the curtain comes down, and we don’t know whether the last expression was “thanks for the memory,” or “till we meet again.”

In its fluid and passionate lyricism, the dance is most remindful, to me, of another Peck piece that I enjoyed a great deal, Belles-Lettres, which premiered at NYCB’s 2014 Gala. But Bright is contemporary rather than evocative of another era, and the sensitivity is more direct and choreographically dramatic. I just wish there’d been more to it – and maybe eventually Peck will expand this to include more of the gently melodic, but sparkling Dancigers music (Bright is choreographed to the composition’s second movement).

Bright and Bartok Ballet could not be more different. As bright as Bright is, Bartok Ballet is dark. As clever as the choreography for Bright is, Bartok Ballet looks dull, even with (or maybe because of) its extensive stylistic diversity. And as unified as Bright is, even with a distinctly featured couple, Bartok Ballet appears incoherent.

I confess I have no idea what Pam Tanowitz was trying to do here beyond choreographing to an impossible score for a dance (Bartok’s String Quartet No. 5 played live by the FLUX Quartet) in a way that amplifies rather than simply reflects the music. That would be a sufficient and admirable pursuit by itself, but here, while trying to bring the diverse components of the composition together, the result makes everything (including the score) appear even more of a stylistic muddle than it sounds.

(l-r) Daniel Applebaum,
Indiana Woodward,
Devon Alberda, Gretchen Smith,
and Jonathan Fahoury
in Pam Tanowitz’s “Bartók Ballet”
Photo by Erin Baiano

The appearance of incoherence in Bartok’s piece is not atypical. The piece was composed in 1934, a late period in Bartok’s career (he died in New York in 1945, having emigrated from his native Hungary in response to the Nazis). I don’t pretend to be a music scholar, but my understanding is that at this point Bartok was synthesizing different musical influences, from romantic and classical to folk music (which drove most of his life), to then contemporary atonality. For me, the dominant factor in his Fifth String Quartet is dissonance and a degree of “screechiness” that I heard in some of the string playing. Also present, however, are brief interludes of folk music that are mixed with the contemporary sound, and to which he returns at various points in the composition (and that “screechiness” can also be seen as a characteristic of Hungarian / Romani music to accompany folk dance).

If nothing else is clear from Bartok Ballet, it’s that Tanowitz also interwove a sense of folk idiom with “other stuff,” including ballet. [And maybe the accent on “folk” explains the mostly drab, poor village costuming, again by Barthelme and Jung.] This other stuff included soldier-like strutting and something resembling contemporary modern dance movement that seemed to make no visual sense all lumped together. But I also cannot deny that Bartok Ballet is a work of intelligence – just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean that there’s no intelligence behind it. Maybe Tanowitz was trying to do what Bartok did: to reflect the different musical styles in a medley of different dance styles, and in the process create a visualized clash between the folk and the urban, the simple virtues and the complexities of then modern life, the old and the new, with the folk idiom (with which, as I recall, the piece ends) being that which endures.

(l-r) Gretchen Smith
and Indiana Woodward
in Pam Tanowitz’s “Bartók Ballet”
Photo by Erin Baiano

I still think that the palette here is confusing and undecipherable, and quite limited despite the variety of steps and styles. Even the folk dance references display limited choreographic development (as I recall, mostly the dancers periodically gather in a circle with hands on hips). However, as much a visual hodgepodge as it appears to be, this may have been Tanowitz’s intent – to reflect both the Bartok composition and the conflicts and culture clashes in Bartok’s world at that time. And there are images here, most apparently pointless, that are visually enduring. Indeed, one scene, apparently minor, was almost a visual throwaway, but it was beautifully done. I didn’t see its genesis (I was looking directly at the stage), but I suddenly noticed Miriam Miller approaching the FLUX quartet in front of the curtain wing downstage left, I suppose drawing inspiration from the music. That’s certainly a cliché at this point, but here it seemed particularly indicative of … again, something significant that I could not get. There’s also no denying that Bartok Ballet was choreographed with a great deal of attention to detail and that what’s there is what Tanowitz intended to be there, even if the result appears inscrutable. So at this point I’ll not be judgmental: I’ll give Bartok Ballet a pass until I see it again. Maybe it’s more coherent than it initially appears, and maybe I’ll eventually understand how its various components interact and why they’re there.

A second look, however, did not improve Matthew Neenan’s The Exchange. Bathed in red, the ballet is stunning to look at (though not at all extravagant) and choreographically consistent, but its apparent theme – the “exchange” of something between one group and another is poorly devised and described. And if it’s a matter of one group of dance advocates “introducing” the pseudo-sophisticated but boring other group to the wonders of movement, which is what The Exchange appears to be about, it’s a long and opaque way to get to a simplistic point.

New York City Ballet in
Matthew Neenan’s “The Exchange”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The ballet opens to what appears to be a group of attendees at some function (cocktail party?, dull Christmas party?, at the bar getting drinks at intermission?), the men in red and black; the women in red dresses, all with their faces covered by red gauze-like masks (think fencing masks to protect the face from being gouged by a wayward thrust, only lighter) to make them appear without any individual personality; red visages that cautiously interact with each other. They generally move in slow motion, and what movement there is is mostly posing in place, with others following. There is a texture here, but it’s created by the staging, which includes interesting-looking silhouette images.

These entities are soon joined – maybe invaded would be a better word – by a group of dancers in red, but without masks. Although all the music is by Antonin Dvorak (Waltzes, Op. 54, Nos. 1 and 4; and the first movement of String Quartet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 2), the invading group dances to a more rapid, and more colorful beat. To make a long story a little less long, eventually the sophisticates remove their masks and accept that the way the rebels move is more fun.

Sara Mearns in William Forsythe’s
”Herman Schmerman”
Photo by Erin Baiano

The cast is divided into two groups (one initially with, the other without masks), each with a lead couple (masked Maria Kowroski and Janzen, and mask-less Erica Pereira and Joseph Gordon, and each with a six (3/3) dancer supporting set of identically-costumed cohorts.

I’ve admired Neenan’s work in the past (for his own company, Philadelphia’s Ballet X, as well as others), but this one, though vibrant looking and interestingly staged, is itself a mask covering a dearth of novel ideas. I’ll grant, though, that it’s nice to look at.

The remaining dances on the April 24 program have been discussed many times previously. Hallelujah Junction, which premiered seventeen years ago, is an example of Martins’s work being better than he’s been given credit for. And with outstanding performances by the three leads (Sterling Hyltin, Taylor Stanley, and Daniel Ulbricht), the piece was a fine way to open the program.

Harrison Ball
in William Forsythe’s
”Herman Schmerman”
Photo by Erin Baiano

I’ve observed previously that the “Schmerman” portion of Herman Schmerman, with its unexpected sense of humor, is the better of the dance’s independent component parts. But Harrison Ball converted his role in “Herman” into a tour de force, and together with fine work by Brittany Pollack, Unity Phelan, Mearns, and Devin Alberda, made it more interesting than it usually appears. Megan LeCrone and Aaron Sanz were the strange but vibrant fun couple in “Schmerman.”

The evening’s closing piece, Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH, was the evening’s highlight. This example of the finest of old/new choreography (it premiered over a decade ago) still looks as fresh, original, and fabulous as it did when I first saw it. To Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Ratmansky amplifies the music, and allows a viewer to see the humor, folksiness, and exuberance in the score. I never tire of seeing it – as, it appeared, the audience felt as well. Mearns (who had quite a night) was particularly outstanding in her role, but the rest of the cast (lead by Ashley Bouder, Tyler Angle, Gonzalo Garcia, and Anthony Huxley) did memorable work as well.

Megan Fairchild
in George Balanchine’s
“Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The Spring Gala’s final piece, the oldest on both programs (created for NYCB in 1970, preceded by the final segment, which was commissioned by American Ballet Theatre in 1947), outshone everything else. One of many Balanchine masterpieces, Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 pushes any balletomane’s buttons. From the lush romanticism of its opening allusion to love found and lost (and found and lost and found and lost), through the somewhat mysterious and gothic second segment, to the firecracker penultimate section, and ending with remarkably vibrant classicism, the disparate segments complement each other, creating a ballet that leaves a viewer warm and feisty, and not a little giddy. To me it’s the most noteworthy example of Balanchine’s cultural and intellectual – and emotional – collaboration with Tchaikovsky.

Even more significant for this performance, each of the ballet’s four segments was executed brilliantly, led by a silken Teresa Reichlen and a dramatic Adrian Danchig-Waring in “Elegie”; Ashley Laracey’s superb “Valse Melancolique,” partnered by an ardent Jared Angle; Pereira and Ulbricht leading a scintillating “Scherzo”; and Megan Fairchild and Garcia anchoring “Tema con Variazioni.” It’s hard to believe that Fairchild had given birth just a few short months ago.

So, in NYCB’s early-Spring season battle of the old choreographic gods and the new, the old gods without question won the Koch Theater’s velvet throne. And that’s the last time I make a strained GOT allusion. At least this week.

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Sadler’s Wells Theatre,
London

7 May 2019

Maggie Foyer

Compared with the dozens of ballet competitions on offer internationally, the small and perfectly formed, ENB Emerging Dancer Award, is a gem. It has only three grand pas, six diverse contemporary solos and an extra pas, to see how last year’s winner has progressed. Standards were exceptional, evidenced in the skilfully edited videos, courtesy of Laurent Liotardo and Graham Tilley, as well as the on-stage performances. The personal introductions that the videos offered set a friendly, personal tone and, backed up by the knowledge that these young dancers, most in their first few years of professional life, were nominated by fellow artists, it made for a feel-good evening in a theatre packed with friends and colleagues.

Julia Conway and Rentaro Nakaaki in Flames of Paris
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

The grand pas de deux from the classical repertoire still set the benchmark for technical standards and make huge demands on young dancers. Julia Conway was this year’s Emerging Dancer; a spirited performer with true charisma. She made a good choice with Flames of Paris, danced with Rentaro Nakaaki, where her natural exuberance and crisp fast turns were seen to full advantage. Nakaaki, who I suspect was also a close contender for the top award, gave this full-blooded show piece the attack it craves with spectacular height and spin. Conway scored high on her contemporary solo, written by Miguel Altunaga and probably the best choreography of the six solos on display. It showed her skill in off-centre, released movement while offering a subtext to reveal a performer of intelligence and depth.

Shale Wagman in Grand Pas Classique
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

Grand Pas Classique was a good choice for Shale Wagman, also a possible contender for the top prize. His technique, while not short on virtuosity, has a classical purity that is eye-watering. He has a plié of softest perfection and jumps that bound effortlessly heavenward. His partner, Alice Bellini, showed a fine classical finish and proved her strength on the relevé diagonal but had a nervous start and wasn’t encouraged by a tutu of sad and droopy frills that too often got in the way. However, I did enjoy her quirky, Clan B, an alternative Sylph in tartan shorts, choreographed by Sebastian Kloborg.

Rhys Antoni Yeomans performing In The Middle Somewhat Elevated
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

The wedding pas from Coppélia was the choice of Emilia Cadorin and Rhys Antoni Yeomans well cast as a happy young couple full of smiles. It was given an enjoyable performance although I wish it could be accepted for its character and charm rather than trying to make it just another virtuosic grand pas. Yeomans virtuosity also stood him in good stead in his solo from Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated and his warm personality bagged him the People’s Choice Award, chosen by audiences over the season.

The Corps de Ballet Award went to Eireen Evrard. It was supported by cheers across the audience and left her stunned and delighted in equal measure.

The final pas, Don Quixote was a triumph for last year’s winner Daniel McCormick dancing with Francesca Velicu. He has consolidated his emerging status with a season of fine performances, notably in the Pas de Trois in Swan Lake and seems set for greater glories. Velicu, an artist of great passion, is also no mean contender in the virtuoso stakes completing a series of dazzling fouettés.

Emerging Dancer celebrated its 10^th anniversary this year and Tamara Rojo Director of ENB together with host, Adam Cooper, and the judging panel of Sarah Wildor, Mavin Khoo, Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, Gerald Dowler and Michael Coleman made it another memorable one.

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Pennsylvania Ballet
Academy of Music
Philadelphia, PA

May 11, 2019 at 2pm
DGV, Trigger Touch Fade, Glass Pieces

Sigrid Payne DaVeiga

Pennsylvania Ballet closed its 2018-2019 season with a selection of three eclectic and iconic pieces highlighting motion and movement. The first selection in today’s series, DGV, was the highlight of the day. The curtain opened on an impressive set that was a trick-of-the-eye. A group of dancers was visible through a screen-like peephole at the bottom of the curtain. The dancers appeared tiny in perspective, as if at-a-distance, and they rhythmically pitched side-to-side in small synchronous movements making the audience perceive we were looking through a window at passengers on a train. This consistent rhythmic motion was a persistent thematic note as the backdrop at various times in today’s performance, a commentary on the inevitable and constant motion of life all around us.

The first full dance motion the audience saw was that of Alexandra Hughes and Jack Thomas as the first featured pas de deux in DGV. Separate curtains opened so that the original group of dancers visible through the peephole window appeared in pulsing synchrony set starkly in contrast against the smooth and passionate movements of Hughes and Thomas who were front and center stage. The costumes, by Jean-Marie Puissant, played nicely on this duo, architectural and nuanced in color to set apart the soloists from the background dancers. The female dancers’ legs were exposed completely such that their musculature was laid bare, highlighting the strength and detail of raw energy required to carry out the elaborate momentum in this piece. Hughes was incredibly passionate and compelling in this role and one only hoped to see more of her.

The subtle lighting by Jennifer Tipton and set design by Puissant, with large metal hardware set to the back of the stage like the top of a train against a shimmering moonlight was truly an awesome way to take the audience through the movements of this piece. As yet another curtain rose to reveal what appeared to be moonlight, a shining bright white light above the still yet dynamic train, the audience was plunged eagerly into three more amazing pas de deux. Alexandra Heier danced a strong pas de deux with Russell Ducker against throngs of motion of the larger group of dancers who entered and departed the stage in expansive movements in perfect unison. Yuka Iseda danced the longest and most powerful pas de deux with Aleksey Babayev. Their romantic and strong interludes almost felt like the audience was watching two lovers in the moonlight alongside the train. Their lifts were perfectly beautiful and haunting in a moment when the mood turned bright blue against them and the music struck suddenly silent for a brief pause as Iseda hung suspended in the air with her legs high, only to move just as quickly back to a movement of breathless longing. Nayara Lopes and Albert Gordon danced the final of the four pas de deux in a rapid motion, bringing the audience spinning along as Lopes twirled and twirled in a fast-paced series of chaine and pique turns interposed with languid extensions and lifts.

DGV was truly an onslaught of movement where the audience was caught surprisingly breathless, as if a high-speed train had just unexpectedly roared past a transfixed passerby standing on a train platform. This was one of the most fearless and impeccable deliveries of choreography yet from the entire group of dancers of Pennsylvania Ballet. This piece was so rich on so many levels in terms of movement, music, lighting and design that the dissection of its various parts almost seems too great. There was truly a secret recipe of magic here, though, because the audience knew they were witness to something great today, even if somewhat indescribable. The extraordinarily impactful presentation of DGV today demonstrated the absolute forte of a group of artists, highlighting individual strengths and coming together as a larger force of nature, greater than the sum of its parts. This is power and this is love. The piece was dynamic and inspiring. The closing moment when the music stopped suddenly and the four featured pairs continued to spin the female dancers in suspension in varied perfect shapes with legs and arms strewn high in the air, like objects blown forcefully and perfectly by the wind in the drift of that train, was exulting and vitally relevant.

Zecheng Liang and Oksana Maslova in Trigger Touch Fade
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

The second selection in today’s performance was Trigger Touch Fade. This piece, a World Premiere choreographed by Jorma Elo, was truly an ode to classical ballet. The dance gracefully transitioned various dancers through varied movements of technically challenging choreography. The dancers wore simple costumes in bright colors matching their partners and groups. Lillian DiPiazza danced a lovely pas de deux with Sterling Baca. Oksana Maslova danced with her usual beautiful acrobatic prowess with partner Zecheng Liang, who was truly the highlight of this piece. His stage presence and jubilation filled the stage and matched his technical and strong technique. Luigi Mazzocchi played the violin solo against which many of the dancers found their musicality. He was exceptional in his performance.

The final selection today was the Company Premiere of Glass Pieces, choreographed by Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet in 1983. As germane today as it was then, the piece opens with a thronging crowd of various individuals that appears in bright light to be walking with determination through an urban and sprawling landscape of persistent movement. The set is simple, only a full height backdrop reminiscent of a grid of large-scale graph paper. In the first section of this piece, “Rubric,” three separate duets would break out, each time adding an additional couple. The featured dancers were Lopes, Babayev, Hughes, Thomas, Therese Davis and Pau Pujol. The movements were cool and crisp; an interesting departure amid the inundating pacing crowd on stage.

The second portion of Glass Pieces is “Facades,” where upstage there is another pacing persistent movement, a line of women of dancers, slightly bouncing and walking slowly along the rear of the stage like a rhythmic march to a drumming rhythm. The dancers appear to look at their watches and persist in their unwavering pathway along the back of the stage. Against this monotonous and chilling insistent motion, DiPiazza danced a beautiful and lonesome pas de deux with Ian Hussey. This was one of Hussey’s final featured pas de deux selections in this weekend’s retirement performances. Watching Hussey and DiPiazza dance in beautiful and familiar synchrony against this monotonous marching was comforting and disquieting all at once. Hussey and DiPiazza’s calm partnering in smooth extension and partnership departed just once to break the marching line of dancers as they broke through the line in a singular instance and then simply returned to their own seemingly entirely separate and beautiful dance.

Ian Hussey and Lillian DiPiazza in Glass Pieces
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

This weekend marks the end of a 24-year relationship with Pennsylvania Ballet, 15 years as a professional for Hussey. His stage presence has been a remarkable and reliable feature for audiences for years. In this final pas de deux, the audience’s gratitude to him was palpable for the brief moment when he broke through the lines of our monotonous lives to witness his grace and gift to the stage in Philadelphia.

In the final section of Glass Pieces, “Akhnaten,” the corps de ballet danced in simultaneously ravenous and pristinely controlled waves of movement. This was a uniquely designed structure where the women and men were divided on sides of the stage in terms of gender but their movements were set in terms of equality and neither was necessarily the stronger or more featured. In closing this season, the power and the potential of what this company can do was splayed open in a sharp silence of a bright white light as the dancers froze in complete unison leaving the audience yearning for a moment more and in anxious anticipation of the 2019-2020 season.

Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet in Glass Pieces
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

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Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, WA

April 20, 2018 (evening)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Dean Speer

The full moon was out the night I attended Pacific Northwest Ballet’s glorious production of George Balanchine’s 1962 ballet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream — with PNB’s new production of sets/costumes dating from 1997 — refreshing it.

Probably few in the area know where Milton is — but I do, coming within inches every time I pick up a subscription buddy who lives in Fife. And, there was the moon over the large MILTON sign that you can (if you know where to look) see from the I-5 freeway. It all seemed somehow marvelously appropriate and wonderful for a story ballet that takes place in moonlight.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Angela Sterling

While related by the story, MSND is really two ballets — each act distinctly different from the other. The first condenses the Shakespeare story neatly and clearly and the second is all about celebratoion and exuberance — lush, rich, and abundantly full of superb dancing and equally superb choreography.

Our cast included principal Lesley Rausch as Titania with her Oberon Kyle Davis and Ezra Thomson as the puckish Puck. There is a story of besotted young lovers and mix-ups and fix-ups. Puck is a great role, combining dancing, acting, and miming into one part, and it requires a fearless dancer whose technique is solid but in service to the delightful arc of the narrative. Thomson was all that and more, providing the glue that pulls the story together and then sweetly wraps it up at the end of Act II, when he and the butterflies pose, and he’s lifted up above the stage, using a spider’s web. Real theatre magic!

Speaking of fearless dancing, I wanted to give a shout-out to end-of-the-season retiring dancer Rachel Foster whose fierce technique always combines with an intelligence to her interpretations, as here diving into the role of Hermia with good comedic timing. It’s always been and continues to be a pleasure watching and enjoying this artist.

Benjamin Griffiths and William Lin-Yee were paired off as the dueling competitors for the hand(s) of their betrothed. I also have to mention the “girl fight” scene between Foster and Lindsi Dec — all in total, a riot. Then I must mention as well how right it was that after Oberon (Davis) orders Puck to clean up and restore the right pairings, how order is nicely returned to the world.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancer Kyle Davis
in George Balanchine’s
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Angela Sterling

Everyone loves the scene where Titania, through flower magic, falls in love with Bottom (Guillaume Basso) — the visual gags and how she gets him to follow her by offering him feed treats. Some of Titania’s best dancing happens early on with her Cavalier, Dylan Ward. (Titania and Oberon, while Queen and King of their respective courts and their single realm, never actually dance together.) Cute as a bug was the page that Oberon and Titania have their power struggle over, Pei Tung Tsai.

I always look forward to seeing the entrance of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and her hounds, a role I believe originated by powerhouse Gloria Govrin and here replicated by another powerhouse, Cecilia Illiesiu, whose fouetté and attitude turns were spot on and her saut de chat leaps huge and impressive as Hippolyta releases her powers. So exciting and fun!

Skipping to Act II, it begins and ends big but before it concludes the audience is treated to one of the most glorious duets on the choreographic planet, the so-called “Divertissement” Pas de deux. The audience was given the gift of two of PNB’s fan-club favorites, Noelani Pantastico and Seth Orza. This pas has it all — a visually rich and interesting opening, a slow controlled adage — that finishes in a divine fall-into-his arms pose (sigh), solos for each and and lively integration into the whole, large-scale cast. Both dancers are, as the saying goes, at the height of their powers, and what a treat to enjoy their dancing. Pantastico looks great and appeared to be thoroughly enjoying herself, and Orza’s strong male dancing is a factor you can always count on.

As I said, it ends big. This is a ballet that requires the numbers and the rigorous training and experience that only an established company like PNB can provide. I was sorry that it was over and would have liked to have indulged in an immediate repeat of Act II especially (who cares if it did exhaust the dancers!). A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a ballet that truly can be enjoyed again and again (hint-hint).

The mighty PNB Orchestra was conducted by Emil de Cou with, for Act II, singers Maria Mannisto, Sarah Mattox and Margaret Obenza, Sarra Sharif, and Lyndee White in Mendelssohn’s vivacious and sparkling score.

Now back to Milton…

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Diablo Ballet
Del Valle Theater
Walnut Creek, CA

May 4, 2019
Celebrated Masters

Bryn Namavari

As Diablo Ballet’s 25^th Anniversary season drew to a close, a trio of pieces from three distinctive choreographers graced the stage at Del Valle Theater in Walnut Creek. A conversation on movement vocabulary over time, each of these choreographers has had a dialogue with hundreds of years of movement tradition: from the classical works of Petipa, to the increasingly progressive and experimental works of Val Caniparoli and KT Nelson. Since its early origins in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15^th and 16^th centuries, choreographers have added their own unique voices to ballet’s cannon to capture the spirit of their time. Diablo’s Celebrated Masters program took on three distinct points of view. And, like a wine tasting, by watching them one after another, gave us a subtle yet clear sense of the ever-evolving medium of ballet.

Originally created for Diablo Ballet and premiered in 1998, KT Nelson’s opening piece Walk before Talk captured the changing moods of Michael Nyman’s score. Progressing from a solo piano to the rhythmic plodding of a saxophone and increasing in energy to evoke images of the frenetic hustle and bustle of a city street, Nelson’s choreography played on the ebb and flow, rise and fall of Nyman’s pieces. Nelson has explained that “[Today] the ballet world is reimagining what the body can say.” The audience was brought along with the current of the music and the movement, experiencing the cycles of life and relationships suggested therein. While Michael Wells’ performance was unfortunately not his strongest – his hands a slightly limp and noticeable afterthought – in contrast, Raymond Tilton’s performance was a stand-out, his movements crisp, precise and on their mark making the abstract musicality of Nelson’s choreography feel insightful and well-considered.

Jackie McConnell and Donghoon Lee in Val Caniparoli’s Tryst
Photo Bilha Sperling

The second piece of the evening was Val Caniparoli’s Tryst. Premiered originally in 1991 for the San Francisco Ballet, Caniparoli’s choreography meshes traditional ballet vocabulary with a fresh, contemporary twist. This romantic pas de deux set to Mozart’s Concerto No. 7 in B flat Major was performed by Jackie McConnell and new company member Donghoon Lee. Lee’s performance was measured, consistent, and delicately emotive with a perceived effortlessness that made the dancing seamless. It can pain an audience to see dancers straining to complete lifts and jumps, but none of that was present with Lee and McConnell. Like the piece’s name implies, the choreography is an expression of two lovers meeting and even the vanilla macaron colored costumes (courtesy San Francisco Ballet) lent to the piece’s dreamy ambiance. Lee and McConnell’s synergistic pairing was a pleasure to observe and Lee solidified his new position in the company.

Amanda Farris and Raymond Tilton in Swan Lake Suite
Photo Bilha Sperling

To round out the night, the dancers took the stage for the Swan Lake Suite as choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1895 with music by Tchaikovsky. The embodiment of the Classical style, Petipa’s choreography brought the audience back to ballet’s ‘roots’. Wells and Jillian Transon were an aesthetically well matched pair for the White Swan Pas de Deux, and Transon elicited enthusiastic applause for her performance. Viewed as one of classical ballet’s most iconic moments, Amanda Ferris and Tilton performed an excellent interpretation of the challenging Black Swan Pas de Deux. Tilton was markedly at top of his game for this season. With adapted staging from the company’s regisseur (Joanna Berman), the evening concluded with the impressive, and rousing coda.

When attending one of Diablo’s performances, the audience is generally provided with a minimalist, stripped-down version of pieces: there are no opulent sets or back drops, no scores of supporting corps members miming in the background—just the key dancers, the music, and the choreography. This ‘purist’ platform creates laser-focus on the dancing and allows the audience to engage in a unique relationship with both the dancers and the choreography. The company has proven consistently that they have a winning combination of company members, supporters, choreography, and vision from creative director Lauren Jonas. Over the past 25 years, this has allowed them to grow a strong foothold in the community and in doing so, has also given them the opportunity to announce the opening of their new school in Pleasanton (expected August 2019).

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Milton Keynes Theatre
England

4 May 2019

Maggie Foyer

Cathy Marston is riding high with her very successful adaptations of nineteenth century literature. This time she turns to the diaries of Queen Victoria, who lived through so much of the century. Victoria dutifully wrote up her diary through her long life and it became a lifetime’s work for her youngest daughter to edit them after her mother’s death. With so intimate a relationship the tantalising question remains of how much has been removed or altered.

Catching up on two alternative casts showed the strength of David Nixon’s Northern Ballet. The ballet has a full cast of characters and the company has plenty of dramatic artists to fill the roles with each performance adding a different mix to the blend. The narrative does not run chronologically. Marston choses to draw focus on specific episodes as Beatrice rediscovers her young mother’s world. The costumes are effectively employed to show the younger or older characters and the story is remarkably coherent.

Northern Ballet dancers in Victoria
Photo: Emma Kauldhar

While Victoria has the lion’s share of dance, it is the unobtrusive, omnipresent Beatrice who cements the work. The most emotional moment comes at the end of the first act in a pas de trois where the older Beatrice, eavesdrops – in a physical manner of speaking – on her young self as she meets, marries and loses, all in quick succession, Prince Henry of Battenberg, the love of her life. Nina Queiroz da Silva captured Beatrice’s quiet strength perfectly, complemented by Ayami Miyata as her younger self. The evening cast saw Mariana Rodrigues and Rachael Gillespie in the roles with Jonathan Hanks giving a dashing interpretation as the Prince. I loved his gleeful cabrioles! The trio is choreographed with delicacy and passion, every nuance of their short-lived love finding expression.

The clever set with an upper level and staircase accommodates the variety of scene changes. The ballet opens on Victoria’s deathbed, Beatrice by her side, the stacks of diaries already in evidence. The ensemble, identified as archivists, are effectively and busily used amongst the shelves. The score by Philip Feeney, a long time collaborator, reimagines the romantic music of the period but also extends into electronic realms to capture the scratch of a metal nib on paper.

Northern Ballet dancers in Victoria
Photo: Emma Kauldhar

The ballet moves up a gear with Victoria’s well documented relationship with ghillie, John Brown, identified by his tartan kilt, but rather more boorish than recent filmic interpretations. Gavin McCaig gave a convincing performance and his passionate duet with Victoria has Beatrice removing pages from the diaries. Marston departs from romantic notions of ballet pas de deux and Victoria and Albert’s wedding night dispenses with Victorian demureness in a duet of touch, exploration and indecorously splayed limbs. Beatrice again responds by tearing pages from the diary.

It is in the second act that we meet the passionate young Queen as she travels back in time, emerging from her black mourning dress in radiant white to reveal a strong-willed spirited young woman only temporarily unsettled as she steps into her position of authority surrounded by black suited ministers of state. Minju Kang, in the matinee cast, gave a remarkable performance in the title role. Without losing the energy and affectionate nature of the character she added depth and gravitas to the character, evidence of an inherent sense of duty which brought the British Royal family back to public acceptance. However, I felt the factory-line delivery of her nine children, introduced a risible tone that was at odds with the rest of the ballet. Antoinette Brooks-Daw was a more outwardly emotional Victoria, wearing her heart on the sleeve, and giving free rein to her passions in the pas de deux. Prince Albert, played by Sean Bates with Brooks-Daw and Mlindi Kulashe with Kang, is a strangely undefined character, and again it is through Beatrice’s reading as she rediscovers her father through her mother’s diaries, that he most vibrantly comes to life. The long list of royals and ministers of state give ballast to the prolific story of Britain’s longest serving monarch. We can only surmise the emotional truth from the lives of these historical characters, but it does make a lovely story.

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MorDance
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York, New York

May 9, 2019
R&J Reimagined

Jerry Hochman

In March, 2017, in the course of attending a performance by Tom Gold Dance, I noticed one dancer I’d not previously seen. Something about her prompted me to check a bit before I mentioned her in the ensuing review. I found that Morgan McEwan, the dancer I noticed, had formed her own company, called MorDance, and I referenced that in the review. I filed both McEwan and MorDance in my memory.

Slow forward a couple of years, and it came to my attention that MorDance would soon be performing at Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC). I could not not attend. I went to the opening night of McEwan’s R&J Reimagined expecting little more than a bare bones version of the story and maybe the opportunity to see McEwan dance.

I was wrong on both counts: R&J Reimagined isn’t bare bones, and McEwan didn’t perform in it; she conceived and choreographed it. But the dance far exceeded reasonable expectations.

Amy Saunder and Joshua Beaver
in Morgan McEwan’s “R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

McEwan has created not only a rarity – an adult evening-length story ballet staged in a relatively small, black-box theater by a relatively small, non-established company with the financial issues that all such companies have, but a decidedly feminist Romeo and Juliet that tells the full story to much of the original Prokofiev score with significant twists that make it not just different, but outrageous – though within the parameters of acceptable commentary on the Shakespeare original. Not all of it works, but what does is not easily forgettable. It’s bloody good. Literally.

Everything is here, and more. Lots more. The feminist slant (I prefer to consider it original thinking) becomes evident early. In the opening scenes, it’s established that Rosaline isn’t a demure sophisticate chased after by a goofy testosterone driven Romeo, she’s as aggressively flirty as he is; the village young women are just as adept with swords as their male counterparts, and can be as aggressive (they give as good as they get), but they have a sensitivity to violence that the young men don’t have; and Juliet is not a strong-willed 16-year-old, but an independent-thinking 16-year-old who requires no Nurse (there’s a Best Friend, “Angelica,” instead). She’s a thoroughly modern Renaissance teenager. And Lady Capulet is the real head of the household. She’s the one who pulls Tybalt away from a confrontation with Romeo at the Capulet Ball, who supports her daughter’s refusal to marry Paris, and who sees the harm that her husband’s arrogance has caused – and does something about it. Of course, in this ballet, a romantic relationship between Lady Capulet and Tybalt doesn’t exist – she’s got too much good sense for that.

Elizabeth Rodbell (foreground)
and members of MorDance
in Morgan McEwan’s “R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

Most ballet versions of the play take liberties with it in one way or another; McEwan’s liberties are less by omission and condensation than by a contemporary sense of accountability. By the ballet’s end, Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo and Juliet are dead, as in Shakespeare, but in R&J Revisited, [Spoiler Alert!!!] the only major character who survives the carnage is Lady Capulet, who gets the ballet’s final Scream.

Before the ballet begins, the stage is set interestingly – and portentously. You just know that the strips of billowy fabric that hang from the rafters to the floor along the sides and rear of the stage area are not just there for decoration, low-budget interesting as that would have been anyway. Sure enough, just as many of the company dancers are assigned multiple roles, these gauzy, deliberately placed draperies find many uses during the course of the ballet.

McEwan’s choreography here takes a back seat to her ingenuity, originality, and vision. But it shouldn’t. If you don’t expect a lot of choreographic complexity (though there’s much more complexity here than one might expect) or a performance level consistent with those Big Ballet companies that present Romeo and Juliet in New York, you won’t be disappointed. The important thing is that McEwan’s choreography is thoroughly balletic, mostly lyrical, and, intelligently in keeping with her conception. Indeed, after adjusting to McEwan’s modifications (including a Prologue that introduces the lovers), which admittedly takes awhile, one can observe considerable choreographic variety here. Although some of the movement quality may at times lack polish, one’s attention, once things get rolling, never wanes.

Amy Saunder, Courtney Catalana,
and Mary Kate Reynolds
in Morgan McEwan’s “R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

For example, the ballroom scene may not be at the level of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s, but for its size and scope, it’s striking. McEwan here provides the audience with a visual experience of multi-colored capes that are combined costumes and props. And whether born of concept or financial necessity, the capes (and similar coverings) are a continuing visual theme. At one point a cape is converted by one of the women into a muleta with which she, the matador in this game, taunts the charging boys. Later, a cape provides black body covering for Friar Laurence – a play on the color of a priest’s clothing, as well as a symbol of character.

In this version, personalities and motivations are explored more than in many others, and McEwan develops characters in newly conceived ways. For example, instead of being a one-dimensional inebriated violent lout, which might provide an explanation for his behavior, Tybalt here is a man enraged – enough to pull down some of those curtains –  and McEwan allows us to see his rage at the thought of Juliet and Romeo together evolve in a (mostly) solo into an explosion of real and metaphoric violence (some of which occurs behind one of those curtains stretched horizontally across the stage). Seeing a man’s rage so skillfully communicated by a female choreographer is eye-opening. And although he doesn’t see much action, Paris is invested with far more character here than in other versions – he’s not just peeved that Juliet won’t give him the time of day; he’s angry about it.

Jonatan Lujan
in Morgan McEwan’s
“R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

Aside from Lady Capulet, the most significant (and obvious) change is to the character of Friar Laurence. In his version of the story (Romeo et Juliet), Jean Christophe Maillot modified the character of Friar Laurence into some sort of prescient but powerless religious force. I found the elevation of his role, and the conception of it, disappointing in what otherwise was a laudable production. Here, McEwan does the same thing – elevating Friar Laurence into a major character – but what a character! He first appears, as is standard, when Juliet and Romeo ask him to marry them. But this isn’t a kindly parish priest. He appears in that head-to-toe black cape which he wraps around his face like a hoodie, and his demeanor is sinister. When Juliet, Angelica, and Romeo approach, he’s surrounded by other company dancers wearing costumes that, compared with those in the rest of the ballet, look rather dull and non-descript. I thought maybe Juliet and Romeo had stumbled into some ongoing service, and these other dancers then became makeshift wedding guests.

Not exactly. When Juliet returns later for advice, Friar Laurence’s demeanor becomes demonic – and he’s still surrounded by worshippers as well as well as, literally, by that black cape – which now encases him, and occasionally others, within a shroud of evil augmented by dark and ominous lighting (lighting designed by Becky Heisler). He gives Juliet the potion … and then it clicked. Friar Laurence here is a cult leader (perhaps one who the independent-thinking Juliet might find more emotionally attractive than the religious figures with whom her father may have associated), the other dancers who surround him wearing garments stripped of individuality and who appear to be supplicants are his followers, and he has a ready supply of poisons and potions on hand (one of which he gives to Juliet) in case it’s necessary for them to drink the kool-aid. And after he provides Juliet with the “sleeping” potion, Friar Laurence is given a solo that shows either his torment, his viciousness, and his prescience (or his expectation) that the story will evolve as it does.

Members of MorDance
in Morgan McEwan’s “R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

McEwan’s production is faithful to the original and consistent with other ballet versions, even in its scene-by-scene progression (except for that Prologue), but some of the scenes necessarily look quite different from those one might be used to seeing. There’s no “balcony” to the balcony scene (although the pas de deux is preserved, and beautifully choreographed and executed), but in the dances leading up to it, it’s Romeo who occasionally sits as the object of desire on a pedestal. And it’s particularly remarkable that while McEwan injects much new action (and new violence) into many of the scenes, none of it looks gratuitous, and it all flows coherently. Even the sight of swords occasionally flying through the air doesn’t break the rhythm.

The piece is not above criticism, however. The opening scenes were not as strong as those from the Capulet Ball onward (which is true in many other versions also). The Prologue is a nice idea, but it didn’t really carry the point (as expressed in the program) forward. And without the sense of maturing (and occasional comedy) in the first scene that features Juliet, that scene becomes much less interesting. In Act II, when Juliet is faced with the prospect of having to marry Paris, after others retreat from the room there’s a period of time allowed for Juliet to think about what she should do (e.g., MacMillan’s famous “edge of the bed” scene within a scene). Here, however, Juliet returns to the bed to think – but jumps up almost as quickly as she sits down and runs off to see Friar Laurence. Some semblance of deliberation is needed. As long as McEwan is changing things, why did she leave Mercutio’s overly milked “Shakespearean death” essentially as is? And in the bedroom scene after Romeo kills Tybalt (the various violent murders here make the oft-criticized violence in Peter Martins’s version for New York City Ballet look relatively tame), that Romeo appearing stripped to his undershorts is logical – but why is Juliet not similarly attired? Here the feminism (if that’s what it is) doesn’t make sense. And although most of the Prokofiev score is faithfully preserved (though rearranged by Musical Director and Composer Benjamin Gallina), parts of it were played with a jazzy edge, and original material created by Gallina also sounded like jazz and to me was out of place (although I note that the audience responded enthusiastically to it).

Amy Saunder
in Morgan McEwan’s “R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

The members of the MorDance company, most of whom have extensive ballet experience, did a fine job executing McEwan’s choreography, which I expected, and when appropriate, gave clear and convincing personalities to their characters, which I didn’t. Amy Saunder’s Juliet was not only feisty, but impassioned. This Juliet appeared far more mature (in her thinking – I’m not talking “age”) than others, and far more emotionally decisive (a trait, I suppose, which she got from her mother in this production). Her murder of Friar Laurence was an unforgettable moment not just because it happened, but because of the look of intensity, anger, and desperation on her face. Her “scream” at seeing Romeo dead was here a much more difficult to credibly execute series of uncontrolled body shakes, and Saunders made them believable. And stabbing yourself three times and emerging coated in blood isn’t easy to pull off credibly – she did. Her Romeo, Joshua Beaver, was as ardent as he was supposed to be, and his partnering skills, particularly in the lifts, were commendable. And he was not at any point a milquetoast Romeo – he had an emotional core to match Juliet.

Lady Capulet is a force in this production, and Courtney Catalana delivered both the apparent intelligence and power to carry it off. On observing her (apparently) dead daughter, and her clueless husband’s lame (how could this have happened?) response, she promptly throttled him (while he was bound within one of those fallen curtains, as I recall). The idea behind creating the character of Angelica (the Nurse in Friend’s clothing) is an interesting one, and although she initially looked too young for the role, Mary Kate Reynolds carried off all aspects of it convincingly.

Amy Saunder and Joshua Beaver
in Morgan McEwan’s “R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

By far the most complex characters in this production, besides Juliet, are Friar Laurence and Tybalt, and Hector Cerna and Jonatan Lujan did superb work conveying their characters’ minds as well as bodies. Cerna (who doubled as Mercutio) and Lujan delivered the forceful characterizations that made their characters, and McEwan’s take on them, credible as well as memorable.

Courtney Catalana
and Leo McGrath
in Morgan McEwan’s
“R&J Reimagined”
Photo courtesy of MorDance

Each of the other dancers in the production did commendable work as well: Elizabeth Rodbell as Rosaline; Josep Maria Monreal as Paris; Jon Drake as Lord Capulet; Leo McGrath as Benvolio; and Kennedy Roese and Julia Lipari. And the talented musicians who provided live accompaniment, and who delivered a very solid distillation of the Prokofiev score in a chamber context, included, in addition to Gallina (bass), Insia Malik (violin), Megan Natoli (flute), Eugenia Choe (piano), Philip Mayer (percussion), and Jon De Lucia (saxophone/clarinet).

I’m open to reinterpretations of classic ballets as long as they’re not designed to sabotage the original’s essential idea, and if they can stand on their own. McEwan’s R&J Revisited doesn’t have the bells and whistles of more extravagant productions, but it’s intelligent and original, and it works. When it returns (the run ended last Saturday evening), it’s well worth seeing.

The post MorDance’s Romeo and Juliet: When Swords Fly appeared first on CriticalDance.

Boston Ballet
Boston Opera House
Boston, MA

May 10, 2019
Cinderella

Carla DeFord

On opening night the most memorable performances of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella were given by the two stepsisters, Roddy Doble and John Lam; Spring Fairy, Ji Young Chae; and jester, Lawrence Rines.  Doble, who infuses life into every role he undertakes, was in his glory as the aggressive stepsister, mugging for the audience and reveling in a self-love so ardent that it seemed almost (but not quite) innocent in its purity.  Pouring scorn on his timid sister, whom he continually smacked, pushed, and eventually throttled in a fit of jealousy, Doble’s stepsister was like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra in the “infinite variety” of her meanness, pugnaciousness, and vanity.  It was a joy to watch.

John Lam as the smaller stepsister, the role originally played by Ashton himself, was the perfect foil.  The moments at the ball when she asked her sister (twice) what to do next in her variation emphasized her dependence on her more self-assured sibling and gave depth to their relationship.  Like Doble, Lam was more than willing to ham it up, and one might almost wish that he could bring a bit of the looseness and animation one saw in his stepsister to some of his other roles. That Lam was not as poignant as Ashton in the part was to be expected.  No one could possibly match the choreographer on that point.

(l-r) Seo Hye Han, John Lam, Graham Johns, and Roddy Doble
in Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Liza Voll
Courtesy of Boston Ballet

Delivering another in a series of stand-out performances during the last two seasons was Ji Young Chae.  She embodied Ashton’s choreographic language with as much ease as she did that of Nissinen in The Nutcracker (Sugar Plum Fairy), Petipa in The Sleeping Beauty (Songbird and Woodland Glade fairies), Bournonville in “Flower Festival in Genzano,” and Balanchine and Danilova in Coppélia (Swanilda).  Her Spring Fairy recalled the Songbird Fairy she created for Sleeping Beauty in 2107, adding to the energy and sprightliness of the latter a sense of the bourgeoning of the earth and the beneficence of nature, which is clearly what Ashton had in mind.  In addition, she displayed her hallmark ability to link steps and positions so that they accrue meaning, like sentences in paragraphs.

Ji Young Chae in Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Liza Voll
Courtesy of Boston Ballet

One is grateful not only for the kind of physical and mental intelligence such dancing involves but also for her obvious desire to communicate with the audience and the joy that being onstage inspires in her.  In Act III, when she danced with her sister fairies, what impressed me most was her ability to hit a position and freeze it, which she did often.  The virtue of this technical feat is that it gives the audience a chance to appreciate the shapes she creates while exhibiting her complete control of every aspect of her art.

This tendency to stop the action reminded me of her performance as Swanilda in Coppélia when, in Act II, she imitated an automaton.  As Dr. Coppelius’s creation, Chae was so preternaturally still that one almost believed she was made out something other than flesh and blood.  That absolute stillness showed how seriously she took the challenge of demonstrating the difference between vitality and its opposite, that is, between life and death.  In coming as close as possible to divesting herself of her humanity, she became an argument for the preciousness of life (as Swanilda did in the butterfly sequence of Act I) — what a tour de force.

Lawrence Rines in Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Liza Voll
Courtesy of Boston Ballet

In a similar category was Lawrence Rines’s performance as the jester, a role so taxing I wonder how anyone gets through it.  Rines’s precision, his stamina, the height of his jumps, his elegance in wielding his sceptre and bowing to his social superiors was all so spot-on that, to paraphrase Ira Gershwin, one could hardly ask for anything more.  Rines has been with Boston Ballet since 2009, including two years with BB II (the apprentice company), and he has steadily grown into an artist who brings not only technical prowess, though there’s plenty of that, but also real insight to all his roles.

John Lam in Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Liza Voll
Courtesy of Boston Ballet

The three leads of this performance gave less satisfying performances even though they are all accomplished dancers.  The Ashton style did not seem to come naturally to the fairy godmother.  She conveyed the good will of her character, but her positions seemed to exist in isolation, like beads on a string.  One couldn’t discern relationships among them.

Boston Ballet dancers in Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Liza Voll
Courtesy of Boston Ballet

Cinderella herself did better in showing some logic in the choreography (although I thought the compass-like movements in the grand pas de deux lacked flow), but she was not a particularly convincing actress.  There seemed to be no nuance in her interaction her father, the portrait of her mother, or the prince.  She was able to express surprise, distress, and delight, but it all seemed superficial.

The prince is an excellent dancing athlete who is full of confidence and can do all kinds of jumps, spins, and lifts while looking great in the process.   Although there were a few moments when he used his head expressively, for the most part he did not seem to be interested in creating a character.  If he ever looked at Cinderella with love in his eyes, I didn’t see it.

Seo Hye Han and Boston Ballet dancers
in Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella”
Photo by Liza Voll
Courtesy of Boston Ballet

The Boston Ballet Orchestra seems to go from one triumph to another under the baton of new music director, Mischa Santora.  Last month during the overture to Coppélia, I was so grateful that the orchestra was back, after the cacophony of the recorded score to Forsythe’s “Pas/Parts,” that I was nearly in tears.  At least some of the credit must go to Delibes, but the ability of the orchestra to express the tenderness, romanticism, and exhilaration of his music was surely cause for celebration.  The Prokofiev score for Cinderella has a completely different, decidedly twentieth-century, feel, and it too was beautifully realized.  I was especially moved when the clock struck midnight at the ball and the spell was broken to the accompaniment of blaring low brass and ominous dissonance, as well as when, during the grand pas de deux, the music swelled into majestic intensity.  Congratulations to Santora and the orchestra for making the music such a distinguished partner in these performances.

The post Cinderella: A Story for All Seasons appeared first on CriticalDance.

American Repertory Ballet
The State Theater
New Brunswick, New Jersey

May 10, 2019
Beauty and the Beast (world premiere)

Jerry Hochman

American Repertory Ballet has a new hit. Kirk Peterson’s Beauty and the Beast is not without significant flaws and it takes awhile to get moving, but once it does it’s wonderful, with interesting, complex, and exciting choreography for the engaging company (including dancers in ARB2, apprentices, and trainees). And most important for a fantasy story ballet, Beauty and the Beast makes you care. It deserved the standing ovation it received.

A former Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, Peterson has choreographed Beauty and the Beast to a curated assortment of sections from various compositions by Tchaikovsky. With some exceptions, most of this works very well, as I’ll discuss further below. But what made the music sing was the live accompaniment by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Nell Flanders.

American Repertory Ballet dancers
in Kirk Peterson’s “Beauty and the Beast”
Photo by Leighton Chen

I rarely discuss an orchestra’s performance front and center, but this one warrants it. From the opening overture – an excerpt from Swan Lake – the music selected set a tone, and provided a mood for each scene. That’s what it’s supposed to do. Being brilliantly played is a bonus. The sound quality was astonishingly rich; the tempo, to my ear, was exactly as it should have been (I’ve complained innumerable times about orchestral musical accompaniment being too slow); and the volume appropriately varied in intensity depending on the emphasis needed. I sat utterly mesmerized. If I’d only heard that “overture,” it would have made the evening, but the PSO’s performance level continued throughout. All orchestras – all ballet orchestras – should sound this good.

I’ve seen several pieces choreographed by Peterson before – by no means his complete choreographic output, and although they have not been bad, they were not memorable. With exceptions, the choreography for Beauty and the Beast is. The extensive pas de deux with Belle and the Beast that concludes Act I (to the “Elegie” from Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3) is a marvel of simplicity and effectiveness and is alone worth the price of admission, and the concluding dances in Act II are not far behind.

The story of Beauty and the Beast is familiar, so I won’t recount it here. Its first writing preceded Disney by over 200 years, but, like many other fairy tales, it has roots that go back some 4000 years. It really is a tale as old as time.

Journy Wilkes-Davis and Nanako Yamamoto
in Kirk Peterson’s “Beauty and the Beast”
Photo by Leighton Chen

There are many cognates to the Beauty and the Beast story, some almost as old as Beauty and the Beast itself (Frog Prince, anyone?), and variations on variations. The theme of a beautiful young girl falling in love with an ugly creature who morphs into a handsome prince when she kisses him is ingrained in popular culture, and theorists have postulated that it originated as an effort to ease the pain of arranged marriages, or of marriages to older men, or to a combination of the two. Be that as it may, the story is a morality tale about seeing beyond a person’s corporeal shell to love him for the person he is, which is a common thread no matter how the story is told. Beastliness is only skin deep. [That this morality tale seems to go in only one direction – the girl being convinced that the ugly old goat she’s in bed with is really a handsome prince – might be a product of the need to procreate with whomever is available, or just misogyny, but that’s a thesis for another day. In any event, it might be worth remembering that the first written record of this fairy tale was penned by a woman: the author of the original (La Belle et la Bête), first published in 1740, was French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. An abridged version, published in 1756, was also by a woman: Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.]

I’m not familiar with any other ballet versions of the story, but I know they exist. Lew Christensen created a well-known version for San Francisco Ballet in 1958 (also to musical selections by Tchaikovsky), David Bintley choreographed a celebrated iteration for the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2011, and various versions for adults or children dot the ballet landscape across the country, including a one-act version geared for children from New Jersey Ballet. The version by Peterson, who is ARB’s Resident Choreographer, doesn’t cater to children (though children would be no less appreciative than their parents), if for no other reason than that once one escapes the opening scenes, there’s nothing simplistic about the choreography.

Those initial scenes are disappointing – but in large part that might be a product of the story’s nature. In the opening scene, Belle (Nanako Yamamoto), her two sisters, and their father (Stephen Campanella; newly returned to the company), a widower, live in a shack in the forest, his business having failed. For reasons unclear, the Father decides to leave on an unspecified trip, and Belle decides to accompany him. The problem with the scene is that it’s static, and too much like Cinderella. The sisters, who are supposed to be vain and self-centered, are Cinderella’s vain and self-centered step-sisters. The father is clueless, and Belle is … well she doesn’t clear the table and clean the floor, but she’s as sweet and guileless as Cinderella. And there’s far too much mime. I don’t think Peterson had a choice here, but that doesn’t make the scene any less tedious.

The next scene shows the two of them, having made a wrong turn, lost in an “enchanted forest.” But there’s nothing enchanted about this forest, or the “animals” that populate it (except for a few squirrels). The choreography for the animals (three stags, four wolves, a lone doe) and some sort of cross between fireflies and butterflies (they’re supposed to be Dryads). The choreography here was unimaginative – the stags moved like stags, the wolves like wolves, and the Dryads like lovely insects. There was too much unison, and too much of the same movement. Even the doe (Shaye Firer), who dances rings around the stags and everyone else on it, seemed trapped in a deer-like partial face mask and in movement that, while unique to her in the scene, was mostly repetition of the same choreography. Granted that animals have characteristic movement qualities and move in herds (or swarms), but those qualities don’t make for interesting choreography. While the tempo was fast (like thundering herds), the effect was wearisome.

And then, after Father cuts a rose from the Beast’s rose garden for Belle and the Beast emerges from his mansion, the entire tenor of the ballet changes. It becomes interesting, and fun. The mansion is the “real” enchanted forest in this production. Inside the mansion, the same critters don’t move like animals or insects, they move as if, when indoors, they’re released from some spell themselves. The choreography, which is far more varied and interesting, makes them come alive – particularly the now enchanting Dryads (company members Erikka Reeinstierna-Cates and Emily Parker leading the group of eight ARB2 dancers). Belle’s fear is appropriate at the scene’s beginning, but she obviously is pleasantly surprised to find civility and care. It is at this point that the audience begins to care too.

Nanako Yamamoto and Journy Wilkes-Davis
in Kirk Peterson’s “Beauty and the Beast”
Photo by Leighton Chen

The most significant change, however, is provided by the presence of The Beast. Somehow, Journy Wilkes-Davis gave his character a soul and a heart. Even though his movement quality was restricted, and any facial expressions buried within the Beast costume, something about the way he carried himself as the Beast was as convincing to the audience as it gradually became to Belle. Perhaps the portrayal was as successful as it was because Wilkes-Davis has been there before – in 2015, he danced the Beast in a different production with Charleston City Ballet. Regardless, with a very human Beast and now captivating choreography for the Dryads, the ballet found its voice – which soared in the pas de deux that followed.

If you’ve seen George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Suite No.3 for New York City Ballet (which, on many occasions, I labelled a masterpiece), you know that his choreography for the “Elegie” from that composition is beautiful, romantic, and mysterious. It would seem that he had pre-empted the field. But Petersen’s take on it, though equally romantic, is very different, and absolutely spellbinding. With the audience having by then warmed to the atmosphere in the mansion and to the Beast not being as beastly as he looks, Peterson now tugs at the audience’s heart. In one lengthy pas de deux (which, to my ear, utilizes the full Elegie), and with a minimum of superfluous movement, Peterson displays the evolving relationship between Belle and the Beast. They dance, he begs her to marry him, she refuses … over and over. But each time, Belle yields a little, and then a little more; and melts a little, and then a little more. And gradually, between Peterson’s increasingly passionate choreography (matching the score), and the dancers’ execution and acting, you see Belle falling in love with the Beast … and, gradually, the audience falls in love with the ballet.

Peterson converts Act II into a combination Sleeping Beast and Wedding Celebration. Belle returns to find the Beast dead (or near death), becomes distraught, and kisses him. Gradually, the Beast awakens (did anyone say Jon Snow?), and, this being a low budget production in which stagecraft magic is in short supply, the Beast removes his outer shell as if he were removing a suit of armor. When he finally removes his head/face covering, the audience applauds – vigorously. The ensuing pas de deux between the Beast, now Prince, and Belle is as delightful as it should be, but it’s just the beginning.

Nanako Yamamoto and Journy Wilkes-Davis (center)
and American Repertory Ballet dancers
in Kirk Peterson’s “Beauty and the Beast”
Photo by Leighton Chen

At this point, either the ballet version of the story ends in a sweet pas de deux and a lot of soggy tissues, or a celebratory fairy tale wedding follows with a final pas de deux preceded by an assortment of divertissements only tangentially related to the story. Peterson takes the latter path, and other than those for Belle and the Prince, are large-scale, are all related to the story, and everyone in the cast gets to show off – from Daughters of the Court (promising-looking trainees) and Ladies of the Court, Cadets and Countesses, Knights and Marquises, and a Duchess. None of these dances looked the same, and those that included the Knights, Marquises, and the Duchess (Firer) were particular good. And the concluding pas de deux was (actually, were – there’s more than one) no less exciting to watch than those created by Balanchine or Petipa. And here Yamamoto was particularly impressive – no dancer should be assigned the feverish choreographic complexity and physicality that she faced at the end of a full length ballet, but she not only pulled through it, she excelled.

As indicated, however, the ballet is not without flaws, and although the positives outweigh them, I expect that this production will evolve over time and eliminate some of the problem areas. Among them, and aside from what I’ve already mentioned with respect to the ballet’s initial scenes, Act II’s beginning is very confusing. I (and others I spoke with) initially thought that Belle’s Father was the one being carried around the stage on his deathbed. This could be cured by having Belle return to the Beast’s mansion with her Father (and having that character just disappear, even if not inconsistent with the original story, leaves a visual and sensitivity gap unless the audience is somehow made aware of his condition). And although all the dances in Act II (after the Kiss) are better than good, there’s too much of them, with too many crescendos heralding what turn out to be false endings. The dances are all different, all complex, and, particularly for Belle and the Prince, all wickedly difficult-looking (one might call them beastly), but some condensation would be worth considering.

But my most serious criticism: Friday was both Beauty and the Beast’s world premiere, and it’s only scheduled performance. I expect, however, that it will return, maybe with a little tinkering, and hopefully with the majestic Princeton Symphony Orchestra providing live accompaniment.

The post American Repertory Ballet: A New Beauty appeared first on CriticalDance.

Preview

San Francisco Arts Festival
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
San Francisco, CA

May 23  – June 2, 2019

Compagnie Virginie Brunelle: Complex des Genres
Zoltan Vakulya and Chen-Wei Lee: Together Alone

Grier Cooper

Two dances in this year’s San Francisco Arts Festival, which will run from May 23 to June 2, explore the nature of relationships: in one, their complexity; in the other, their simplicity.

Compagnie Virginie Brunelle

Today more than ever, men and women face the difficult task of defining themselves in the complex world of traditional gender concepts. The ongoing tug-of-war between the sexes for power and dominance drives men and women to collide with one another as they seek to validate their own existence. The battle rages on while fear, doubt, and an obsessive quest for perfection add fuel to the fire. The desire to feel something –to feel alive – leads them to commit desperate acts.

These are the themes of Complex des Genres, an award-winning piece from Compagnie Virginie Brunelle, which will make its U.S. debut at this year’s Festival. Because men and women are thinking, conscious beings, Brunelle would have us believe there is hope. Men and women can move beyond the bounds of traditional gender constraints to experience growth, acceptance, and love, with the end result being a surprising outcome. Some have said that Brunelle is a hardcore romantic (her musical choices include Chopin and Schubert) who wants to bring both sides of the complexity together.

Compagnie Virginie Brunelle in
“Complex des Genres”
Photo courtesy of
Compagnie Virginie Brunelle

This piece from is one of Brunelle’s earlier signature works, known for its physical, acrobatic choreography and cinematic-style visual poetry. The opening scene, for instance, is a visually stunning tableau, a melée of the sexes, rich and wildly abandoned. Her work is emotional and real, a study of the human condition, often imbued with keen psychological insights balanced by an earthy sense of humor which has made her a rising star in her own country of Canada and in Europe, where she has received commissions to create new work in major houses.

Brunelle founded Compagnie Virginie Brunelle in Montréal in 2009, after she graduated from the Université de Québec à Montreal in 2007. She has since created five full-length works that have toured four continents. Her work is known for sensitive, raw performances, with a cinematic quality of her compositions, her vocabulary of staccato rhythms and coarse movements seeks to deconstruct traditional codes. Although many of the steps have a recognizable foundation of classical ballet, she refers to her choreography as ‘ballet cassé’ or broken-down ballet, characterized by movements that constantly alternate between tension and release. The steps are loose and give way easily to force and gravity, while her gestures share an affinity with daily life. It’s a powerful alchemy, simple in its eloquence, powered by an emotional punch. She often explores the interplay of human emotions and the poetry of real-life everyday existence, and her ongoing quest for humanity and authenticity influences both her subject matter and her choice of collaborators. She seeks an intimate connection with her audience by constructing unique shows that strike a powerful emotional chord.

The engagement of Compagnie Virginie Brunelle is made possible in part by the Canada Council for the Arts and Global Affairs, Canada.

Zoltan Vakulya and Chen-Wei Lee

Can the power of being together counter individual loneliness? Are there boundaries between us when we come together? In the U.S. debut of Together Alone– a solo danced as a duet, with two bodies living in a perfect symbiosis – real-life husband and wife team Zoltan Vakulya from Hungary and Chen-Wei Lee from Taiwan explore the answers to these questions. The dancers encounter each other as their most naked selves, without external concealment or decorations as they search for the difference between being alone next to someone and being together with someone. Their bodies are like magnetic objects which fold and unfold in each other, merging and separating, giving and receiving, testing the invisible border between their seemingly connected bodies. Ultimately, they learn, through compromise and cooperation, to face their respective loneliness, together.

Chen-Wei Lee and Zoltan Vakulya
in “Together Alone”
Photo by Tilo Stengel

This signature work, choreographed and performed by Vakulya and Lee, might be described as an artful adventure in bodily shapes and forms. Throughout the piece you see a lot of muscle tension, how they use force to counterbalance and work together. They chose to forgo any sort of costume because they found that even if they covered themselves with just thin fabric the finer details of their muscular lines were no longer visible and the dance lost its strength.

Lee has described the dance simply as connection, purity, and aesthetics. But it is also a personal story, as it mirrors the real-world lives of these two dancers. As freelance international performers with different companies, Lee and Vakulya (who reside in Belgium when they are not touring) find themselves sharing precious few moments together. They chose to devote some of these moments to choreographing a piece about this aspect of their lives. The two dancers have been trained quite differently, so coming together to find common ground in their collaborative choreography has been a challenging and enriching process. This is the first dance they have made together, and, unlike real-life, they gave themselves a task: to never let go of each other from the start to the end.

Lee began her career as a dancer with Batsheva Dance Company, where she worked closely with Ohad Naharin, Sharon Eyal, and Yasmeen Godder. She has also appeared as a guest artist with Gothenborgs Operas Danskompani, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, and VOETVOLK/ Lisbeth Gruwez. She is a freelance dancer, choreographer, and Gaga teacher, and works all over Europe with Jerome Bel, Marina Mascarell, and Marcos Morau, among others.

Vakulya graduated as a dancer in SEAD (Austria) after studying dance and choreography in BKTF (Budapest). As a dancer/ performer/ collaborator, he has worked with choreographers, composers, and visual artists including Kendell Geers, David Zambrano, Hód Adrienn, Octavi Rumbaou, Benjam Vandewalle, Radouan Mrziga and Georgia Vardarou. Since 2011 he has been creating on and off-stage performances (PAUSE (2012), OneTwoThreeOneTwo (2015), Together Alone (2016), It’s time (2017), Etudes on machines (2018)/ which he presented across Europe, USA, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan. Most recently, he has collaborated with the Shih Chien University in Taipei, working with new media design students as a guest professor. He is currently working for Hodworks (Budapest) and Mal Pelo (Barcelona), and creating a new solo work with Lee called kNown face.

The 2019 Festival will run from May 23 – June 2 and feature over 50 artists and ensembles from the Bay Area and 12 other countries performing in multiple venues at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. Zoltan Vakulya and Chen-Wei Lee will perform Together Alone on May 24, 25 and 26, and Compagnie Virginie Brunelle will present Complex des Genres on May 30.

The post SFAS Preview: Compagnie Virginie Brunelle and Zoltan Vakulya and Chen-Wei Lee appeared first on CriticalDance.

Australian Dance Festival
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

May 3, 2019 – Australian Dance Theatre: The Beginning of Nature
May 11, 2019, afternoon – The Australian Ballet: Chairman Dances, Unspoken Dialogues, Aurum

Jerry Hochman

During the first and second weeks in May, The Joyce Theater presented a sampling of dance companies from Australia under the umbrella title Australian Dance Festival. Three Australian dance companies were represented, with each company’s program given a limited run. I was unable to see the first of the three companies, Dancenorth, but I did see both Australian Dance Theater and The Australian Ballet.

I’ll consider the programs, and the pieces within them, in reverse performance order, beginning with the last piece on The Australian Ballet program.

Aurum, which closed that program, was to me the best of the bunch. Choreographed by one of the company’s Resident Choreographers, Alice Topp, the concept is original, the presentation was interesting, and the execution was first rate. But before I go further, a nod to Aurum’s program note.

I like program notes. Regardless of whether I see what the note states is the dance’s inspiration, or what the particular piece is supposed to be ”about,” if anything, I appreciate the effort – even when, as in many cases, it’s an ego-trip opportunity. But the program note for Aurum is in a different league. It is literature.

Robyn Hendricks and Kevin Jackson in Alice Topp’s “Aurum”
Photo by Justin Ridler

Written by the choreographer, the program note for Aurum is a brilliant little essay that examines the inspiration for the ballet: kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold or metallic lacquer, which melds the broken pieces back together. It is simply and beautifully composed, and by far the best written such program note that I’ve ever read. More importantly, it succeeds in conveying not just what the dance is “about,” but the emotional core behind the art, and the truth of it – as well as piquing one’s interest in the dance to come. And any program note that quotes both Ernest Hemingway (“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”), and Leonard Cohen (“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”) has a leg up. If there was a Pulitzer Prize for program notes, I’d nominate this. Kudos to Topp for this gem.

And also kudos to Topp for Aurum, the dance.

Leanne Stojmenov and Kevin Jackson in Alice Topp’s “Aurum”
Photo by Jeff Busby

Topp, whose previous work I am not familiar with, has here created a dance that’s a perfect balance between the abstract and the literal. The dance stands, or moves, on its own even without knowing its impetus. But seeing the stage floor covered by a dark background (black or dark blue) through which veins of jagged lines in gold (“aurum” is “gold” in Latin) seemingly unpredictably applied reminds the viewer that there’s far more to Aurum than abstract movement through space. The connection is cemented, so to speak, when the flooring is elevated mid-dance into an upstage scrim which serves as a background for the dancers.

The Australian Ballet in Alice Topp’s “Aurum”
Photo by Justin Ridler

Although it’s not initially clear, as the dance progresses it’s evident that the twelve dancers represent both the ceramic fragments as they’re reunited with a stronger bond after having been broken apart, as well as, metaphorically, humans torn apart and repaired after having been emotionally broken, and being stronger for the experience. It’s a gentle dance, with a feminine sensibility (not at all strident or dogmatic; just insightful), but also powerful in the sense of inner strength. And there’s a  bonus – Aurum perfectly represents the importance of increasing the number of women choreographers.

Unspoken Dialogues, choreographed by Stephen Baynes (another of The Australian Ballet’s Resident Choreographers), is also powerful, but not at all insightful – and in temperament it couldn’t be more different from Aurum. It’s a well-crafted pas de deux that, were it not for some of the choreographic intricacies and the execution by Kevin Jackson and Jill Ogai, would be just another unpleasant (and maybe worse) dance about stormy relationships that go from romantic ecstasy to mental and physical cruelty and back again, with neither party interested in leaving the roller coaster. Stable instability created with style but without heart.

Coco Mathieson and Callum Linnane in Alice Topp’s “Aurum”
Photo by Jeff Busby

In the brief program note, Baynes states that the dance “is about all the things that people can’t say to each other, or say in the wrong way, or hear in the wrong way…about two people who struggle to live together, but can’t live apart.”  That may be true with respect to certain real relationships, but its visualization here says nothing about what the couple can’t say to each other and a lot about domestic violence and submission to it, supposedly in the name of love. The dance is not easy to take. It’s not just the violence (though there’s not as much as there could have been, it’s still violence); it’s because Baynes seems to take it for what it is, with implicit approval.

To give Baynes credit, this piece was choreographed in 2004 (created for Steven Heathcote and Justine Summers), won the 2005 Helpmann Award for Best Choreography, and was performed in London as part of The Royal Ballet’s 75^th Anniversary season. So although its theme may seem hackneyed and its approach non-judgmental where judgment would be expected, when it was created it apparently was considered inventive, and perhaps unusually perceptive. Now, however, it looks neither inventive nor perceptive; more like an expanded version of parts of Jerome Robbins’s In The Night, which premiered in 1970, without Robbins’s sense of humanity and respect for his human characters.

In a nutshell, initial connections between the two in which they seem to be emotional mirror images and during which their physical connection is both deep and apparent devolve into his pulling and dragging her around, or rolling her pained (or submitted) body on the stage floor…with his feet, either in an attempt to rid himself of her or just to demean her. This cycle repeats and repeats again, in slightly different form, as the dance progresses.  Each time, after being victimized, the woman keeps coming back to him, apparently content to have him treat her this way because in other respects the emotional and physical bond is so strong (there’s no hint here that this is behavior she enjoys or in any way encourages).

Australian Dance Theatre in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
Photo by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

Jackson’s performance, aside from demonstrating technical prowess, was relatively flat throughout – which I think was Baynes’s intent. His character can’t explain what he does, even visually. The passion is there, but so is the stone. Ogai, a company soloist, imbues her character with a sense of near perpetual sadness, as well as palatable suffering in silence. For Unspoken Dialogues, there are no words.

The program’s opening piece, Chairman Dances, is a fine abstract creation that, while not being particularly memorable, isn’t a bad way to begin an evening. A world premiere choreographed by Tim Harbour (still another Resident Choreographer) to a portion of John Adams’s composition The Chairman Dances (“Foxtrot for Orchestra”), the dance, for eleven, is energetic and exuberant, and colorful in all senses of the word –from the brightly colored costumes, designed by Harbour, to the colorful movement variety and the colorfully dynamic staging.

This was The Australian Ballet’s first New York appearance since 2012. When the company next returns, a program that displays the company’s ballet repertory, for which it is well-respected, would be most welcome.

Australian Dance Theatre
in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
Photo by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

Australian Dance Theater’s program, which I saw on May 3, was more problematic. Devoting a program to one evening-length piece is, from my point of view, a commendable idea – when the piece is good. Through no fault of the company’s talented dancers, I found The Beginning of Nature to be perplexing at best.

Based on the program note from the company’s Artistic Director, Garry Stewart, who also conceived, directed, and choreographed it (with assistance from company dancers), The Beginning of Nature is based on nothing less than the “rhythms in nature [that] permeate all aspects of the material universe, including day and night, the seasons, the tides, as well as flocking and patterns of various species, the rhythmic patterns within the body, and the patterns that constitute bodily morphologies.” And if that wasn’t challenging enough, the piece “also situates humans as creatures.”  So, in a nutshell, it’s supposed to be about everything under the sun that preceded civilization.

And this is to be accomplished in a dance that runs, to my recollection, maybe 90 minutes.

Australian Dance Theatre
in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
P:hoto by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

I suppose if the piece were good enough, something resembling Genesis with a tribal atmosphere might work, but The Beginning of Nature is far more limited than its cosmic intent. To me, it’s a dance rendering of primitive life (and maybe “life” is too strong a word) in a primeval rain forest (or, I suppose equally valid, some arid expanse of nothingness), already populated with creatures living together in relative disharmony. That could have been fine too, and some of the images created are interesting, even searing, but overall it’s needlessly confusing.

Australian Dance Theatre
in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
Photo by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

For example, following the standard operating sound of thunder at the dawn of creation (or at a Rainforest Café), a large halo of light appears over the stage. Symbolic of the separation of the air from the land? God’s blessing? The way lightning appears through the trees in an Australian rainforest or desert? A meaningless but neat way to light the stage? When the dancers appear (the first is hunched over, as if he’d just evolved from whatever it was that preceded him, or hadn’t quite evolved yet, they all (as much as I could see) have one green-gloved hand. If there was an explanation for that in the piece, I missed it. If there wasn’t, for something so apparently significant, there should have been. I suppose it might be representative of some connection with the earth (especially since vegetation plays a large part in the dance), but that’s a stretch. And the repeated (and as I recall concluding) image of a lone tree is representative of something (survival of the fittest tree?), and interesting, but, at best, strange – like something out of René Magritte. Indeed, a lot of the imagery in The Beginning of Nature is surreal.

Australian Dance Theatre
in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
Photo by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

After the obligatory primitive sense of arms moving ceremoniously, as if saluting the heavens (or looking for something there), strange things happen. Frequently, the dancers assume the appearance and/or demeanor of animals. I saw birds; land creatures (leaping antelopes, or leaping lizards; herds of bison-like animals – no kangaroos or koalas, though). Some of this imagery works choreographically – five or six dancers create an extraordinary “snake” image by their sequential arm and body movement; one dancer with spine-like protrusions looks fearsome (though not dangerous), particularly when these “spines” eventually are held up and spread apart by others, converting it into a sort of royal robe) –  some don’t. But to the extent they work, they work as isolated visual moving images, not parts of a whole. And at times the dancers are represented as vegetative growth (or the need for it), like tree trunks that appear to grow (with the assistance of skillfully placed props), mini-trees carried reverentially (a reference to fertility?),  or just flora swaying in the breeze. The movement is unpredictable, which might be appropriate under these circumstances, but that doesn’t mean it looks interesting – on the contrary, it just looks incoherent. But then, I suppose a dense rainforest (or even an arid desert) might be considered, in a sense, incoherent. Sometimes the movement looks frenzied; sometimes wary; sometimes like primitive wrestling; sometimes buffeted by apparent changes in wind velocity; sometimes as if propelled by some earthquake.

Australian Dance Theatre
in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
Photo by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

The human rainforest denizens are the least interesting in terms of movement and interaction. They live; they die, they have pseudo sex, they give birth; they follow each other through difficult terrain; they survive. Or they don’t. One early image appears to be of a dead man, with others seeming not to know quite what to do with it (would it make good fertilizer?); another image has a male and female standing and staring into each other’s eyes, coming as close as they physically can, their lips close to touching, but with no expression on their faces and appearing not to have a clue what to do next. I suppose the notion of love or attraction had to have started somewhere.

Nearly all of it is danced to an original score for strings (and thunder) by Brandon Woithe (KLANG), recorded by The Zephyr Quartet, which gets loud and quiet and has an overly “this is the way the world began” feel to it. And through much of that score, words of the rescued language (called Kaurna) of the indigenous people of the Adelaide Plains area (the company’s home is in Adelaide, in southern Australia) are sung or spoken or both. They’re not decipherable, but that’s not as important as the sound and the symbolism.

Jana Castillo in Garry Stewart’s “The Beginning of Nature”
Photo by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions

The company’s dancers (Jana Castillo, Zoe Dunwoodie, Harrison Elliott, Thomas Fonua, Christopher Mills, Gabrielle Nankivell, Matte Roffe, Rowan Rossi, and Kimball Wong), danced with purposeful intensity and commitment.

There’s a lot of power to this piece, and some nifty images. Ultimately, however, The Beginning of Nature is too primitive-looking to make a good dance – although still image recreations might make for fine panoramic exhibits at the Museum of Natural History. All the non-direction seems initially exciting, then grows increasingly tiresome, perhaps like being in a dense rainforest at the dawn of time.

The post An Australian Dance Festival: Dance Down Under appeared first on CriticalDance.

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

May 8, 2019: Scotch Symphony, Valse-Fantaisie, Sonatine, Stravinsky Violin Concerto 
May 11, 2019, evening: Judah, Dances at a Gathering, Stars and Stripes      
May 16, 2019: Principia, Symphony in Three Movements, The Times Are Racing

Jerry Hochman

Following its Gala program during the second week of this Spring 2019 season, which featured premieres by Justin Peck and Pam Tanowitz, New York City Ballet’s programming in the ensuing three weeks of its six week season featured significant role debuts, equally significant performances, and many significant ballets. Since nearly all of the three sets of ballets that I saw during this period are either well known or recently reviewed, I’ll focus primarily, but not exclusively, on performances.

The closing piece on the May 16 program was Justin Peck’s The Times Are Racing. Following its January, 2017 premiere, I gushed that it was an anthem for a new generation. Friday’s performance reinforced that. One of Peck’s “sneaker” ballets, The Times Are Racing is virtually non-stop movement followed by more non-stop movement: in a sense, it’s a contemporary, politically aware update of Jerome Robbins’s New York Export: Opus Jazz, with a little of Interplay. It would be dizzying, were it not for the fact that the sequences are variable and ceaselessly interesting to watch, and the entirety has a consistency absent from many ballets that include such an abundance of rapid-fire action.

Brittany Pollack and members of New York City Ballet
in Justin Peck’s “The Times Are Racing”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Several performances were particularly noteworthy. Tops was from Brittany Pollack, who moved like lightning through Peck’s most challenging choreography, looking at all times like she was having a blast. Most of her stage time was spent dancing up a storm opposite Peck himself (one forgets how good a dancer he is), but the role provided her with significant solo time as well. She danced electrified, but in a casual, this-is-the-way-it-is-now way. It was by far Pollack’s finest, and most entertaining, performance that I’ve seen to date.

In her role debut, Lauren Lovette had a blast as well, but her role required more finesse than speed. A member of the larger group when the choreography called for it, Lovette, partnered by Adrian Danchig-Waring, provided the dance’s central, and most significant pas de deux – a romantic encounter without the usual accoutrements of a romantic encounter – perhaps best describable as “21st Century street romantic” rather than sappy, into which she injected that quality of joy that, where appropriate, marks each of her performances. And as I’ve observed previously, when Lovette is having a great time, the audience knows it – and her enthusiasm is reflected after the performance as well: she has the most engaging curtain calls, particularly where she abandons NYCB form. Here, her exuberance was delightful, and contagious.

Ashley Laracey in George Balanchine’s
“Symphony in Three Movements”
Photo by Erin Baiano

The most significant role debut on that same program was by Ashley Laracey, assaying the lead in Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements.

It’s difficult to believe that this ballet was created almost fifty years ago, during the company’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival. It’s as contemporary-looking now as it must have looked then, and is one of only a few abstract dances with no emotional gloss that I never tire of seeing. Even today, it looks stunningly revolutionary – and at the same time stunningly evolutionary.

New, significant role debuts for Laracey have been difficult to come by in recent seasons, partly a result of a lengthy injury-recover. But suddenly, at least to NYCB audiences, as this season winds to a close she’s been assigned three significant role debuts (one a New York debut) within two weeks. This was the first. She executed well, but carefully, and the deliberation and concentration clearly showed, as did the apprehension – none of which, under the circumstances, should have been surprising. The technique is there, and this is a good role for her – and at this performance being partnered by Taylor Stanley in the ballet’s central pas de deux helped. Additional opportunities will be beneficial.

Evidence that performances improve over time was evident in another performance in this piece. This was not Erica Pereira’s role debut, but the confidence that she’s gained since her role opportunities increased following NYCB’s leadership change has been apparent. Here, especially with her partner Daniel Ulbricht, she lit up the stage. She and Ulbricht are frequently paired, and they play off each very well.

Less significant or stunning were the performances of the third lead couple, Emilie Garrity and Devin Alberda, but that’s not meant as a negative comment. They, as well as the ever-vital NYCB corps, made this piece look as impressive as it always does.

Megan Fairchild
in Jerome Robbins’s “Dances at a Gathering”
P:hoto by Paul Kolnik

Apparently, at least for NYCB ballerinas, there’s nothing like giving birth to add new vigor and depth to their performances. Certainly Ashley Bouder, and even more obviously Maria Kowroski, two whose pregnancies and subsequent return to performing I’m aware of, have delivered performances as memorable, if not more so, than before. Add Megan Fairchild to the list. Since her return to performing, Fairchild has had a remarkable season, dancing better than she ever did (which is not a backhanded compliment – her execution, overall, seems at an even higher level than it did previously). Sonatine, which she danced on the May 8 program (to pianist Elaine Chelton’s flawless rendition of Ravel’s score), and also partnered by Stanley (who has become an indispensable and unique component of the company’s stable of extraordinary dancers), is an example. Sonatine doesn’t quite have the pull of Balanchine’s Duo Concertant, but that’s relative. It’s a beautiful ballet to watch, especially when the pair of dancers execute as brilliantly as Fairchild and Stanley did. I’ve seen the piece previously, but I can’t recall seeing it with the emotional component presented as compellingly as it was here.

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

Earlier that evening, there was another magnificent role debut, as Sterling Hyltin delivered a spell-binding sylph in Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony. Last fall, in connection with a performance of an excerpt from this ballet presented by San Francisco Ballet (and led by Mathilde Froustey) during City Center’s Balanchine Celebration, I mentioned that it had been a long time since NYCB had presented this rarely-performed ballet – Balanchine’s distillation of La Sylphide. So … here it was again, back where it belongs.

Scotch Symphony doesn’t work quite as well as the original of the story – there’s no Madge, no Effie, no betraying friend, no sense of tragedy (or moral cautionary tale), and no wings – but this version still takes flight when the performances make it soar. Hyltin’s did. I’ve never seen her deliver anything less than a fully-realized, technically secure, and somehow original interpretation of a role, and this performance was no exception. She was both captivating and magnetic.

But in this performance, hers was not the only significant role debut. Anthony Huxley looked thoroughly at home in his role debut as the “James” substitute, making Balanchine’s Bournonville-infused choreography look dynamic and effortless. Although Huxley’s commitment to the Sylph was somewhat muted, that’s in keeping with Balanchine’s distillation, which reflects a similarly “muted” reference to the story.

Alston Macgill (center)
and members of New York City Ballet
in George Balanchine’s ”Scotch Symphony”
Photo by Erin Baiano

On the other hand, Alston MacGill’s debut leading the opening “Scotch-folkloric” section of the piece was simply sensational. Without a connection to the story beyond its Scottish roots and the Mendelsohn music (movements from his Scotch Symphony), Macgill was a Scottish lassie prima: one could see the Highlands in her sparkling demeanor, and her equally sparkling delivery.

Farichild’s performance in Sonatine was not the only occasion in which her restored radiance showed. At the May 11 performance, she reprised her role as the Girl in Apricot in Robbins’s masterwork, Dances at a Gathering, delivering the sense of youthful joy that that role envisions. Although some criticize Dances at a Gathering for its length, that’s in the same critical league as similar complaints about another Robbins masterpiece, The Goldberg Variations. Both ballets use their scores to profound effect, and Dances incorporates stylistic differences inherent in the various Chopin pieces, as well as stylistically different mini-stories to enhance the differences among the Chopin pieces, to build the overall ballet into an arc of accomplishment. It is always a breath of spring – and especially welcome for this NYC winter that would not die.

Lauren Lovette and Tyler Angle
in Jerome Robbins’s €Dances at a Gathering”
Photo by Erin Baiano

At this same performance, Lovette debuted as the Girl in Pink. She executed well, as she always does, but the role of Apricot Girl in which she’s previously appeared suits her naturally effusive stage personality better. Also at this performance, Aaron Sanz, Roman Mejia, and Peter Walker debuted as, respectively, the Boys in Green, Brick, and Blue. Sanz and Mejia excelled, with Mejia, still a relatively new member of the company, dancing as if born to the role. Walker also did fine work, but his role is more limited than the others. Completing this stellar cast were Sara Mearns as the Girl in Mauve (brilliant in this relatively restrained role; I appreciate her in these roles far more than I do when she imbues certain classical roles with overbearing pathos), Kowroski’s Green Girl, Lauren King’s Girl in Blue, Tyler Angle’s Purple Boy, and an ebullient Gonzalo Garcia as the Boy in Brown.

Stravinsky Violin Concerto premiered in 1972 on the same program as Symphony in Three Movements, but, aside from its superb choreography and common composer, and the fact that both are masterpieces, the ballets have very different sensibilities. Where the latter is somewhat more irreverently original-looking, Stravinsky Violin Concerto is almost black-and-white casual-looking – although that “look” camouflages its strictly classically-ordered core. On the May 8 program, role veterans Lovette and Mearns were partnered by, respectively, Joseph Gordon and Aaron Sanz, in their role debuts (Sanz’s was his New York role debut). Both couples (and individuals in their solos with an opposing-gendered corps) provided scintillating performances, but Sanz’s partnering of Mearns merits special praise.

Indiana Woodward, foreground,
and members of New York City Ballet
in George Balanchine’s “€Valse-Fantaisie”
Photo by Erin Baiano

On that same May 8 program, Indiana Woodward and Harrison Ball, each in a role debut, led Balanchine’s Valse-Fantaisie. One of many ballets that Balanchine created to and then pared from Glinka’s composition, this incarnation, with its relatively limited stylistic breadth, is not one of my favorite Balanchine pieces. Featuring incomparable NYCB-style speed and attack is commendable, but to me Valse-Fantaisie is too one-note. That being said, almost anything that Balanchine created is superior to whatever else is out there, and Woodward and Ball delivered the performances that the ballet requires: short on dazzle and bereft of emotional gloss, their roles were performed with a rare sense of immediacy.

Taylor Stanley and Daniel Applebaum (foreground, l-r)
in Justin Peck’s “Principia”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Principia premiered this past winter, and I reviewed it in detail thereafter. On second view in the May 16 program, I appreciated Principia more, and the repeated appearances of what I described as looking like “smokestacks” (“haystacks” may be a more appropriate descriptive word), though still inscrutable as anything more than a stylistic gimmick, does provide a semblance of unification. And despite its drab-colored costumes and lack of focus, Principia is a gorgeous ballet to watch unfold. Thoughts that it might have some essential meaning should be avoided. Aside from one change in cast (Woodward debuted in the piece the previous week), the Principia cast, led by Claire Kretszchmar, Woodward, Pollack, Daniel Applebaum, Stanley, and Mejia, with featured performances from Emily Kikta, Miriam Miller, and Mira Nadon, was as effective as it was before – maybe more so, since at this point they’ve grown more comfortable with it.

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

Finally, the dances that bracketed Dances at a Gathering on the May 11 program were less impressive. I enjoyed Giana Reisen’s initial ballet for NYCB (or anywhere else), Composer’s Holliday, for its originality and relative irreverence. It was different, and fun, and short. Judah, which I reviewed in depth following its premiere in October, 2018, is certainly original and relatively irreverent (without any sense of nihilism), but it’s not nearly as much fun to watch – and unlike her earlier piece, it seems to cry out for some meaning, but I found none. A second view has not changed my opinion. Much about Judah (to music by John Adams, one of which is titled “Judah to Ocean”) is interesting, and certainly original-looking. But where the jumble of seemingly contrary images was cute in Composer’s Holliday, here this similar jumble comes across as disconnected and opaque. On first view, I sensed some kinship in Judah to Ashton’s Sylvia in a contemporary, irreverent, and distilled way, but I doubt that this was Reisen’s intent. Not being able to discern what that intent is is annoying. As it is, the ballet isn’t bad; it’s just not in the same league as any of the dances already mentioned.

This same May 11 program concluded with Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. It’s one of my least favorite Balanchine ballets – not for its subject, but because it panders and contains little that pretends to be original or interesting (though, to be fair, it preceded its close analogue and far superior piece, Union Jack, by some 18 years – in its day, Stars and Stripes may well have been considered original).

Harrison Ball in George Balanchine’s ”Stars and Stripes”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Choreographed to music by John Philip Sousa (arranged by Hershy Kay), the dance opens with three uninteresting “campaigns” – martial parades on stage representative of different military regiments (though the distinctions aren’t clear), each with a slightly (very slightly) different styles, continues through an interlude disguised as a pas de deux (or vice versa), and ending with a Grand Finale in which all the regiments return to salute the flag. Pereira, Kikta, and Ulbricht led the respective campaigns, with Ulbricht executing with the panache acquired from years of experience in the role, and Bouder (as Liberty Belle) and Harrison Ball (as El Capitan). Bouder’s cheeky role looks strained at this point, but Ball, who’s had a marvelous season, was impressive in his role debut. There’s no denying that there’s a celebratory feel to Stars and Stripes, and that when the orchestra turns to Star Spangled Banner, the presentation becomes akin to a Fourth of July parade, but as anything more than that (and as a salute to his adoptive country), it’s minor Balanchine. There’s no doubt, however, that Stars and Stripes sends its audience home happy.

The season concludes next week with performances of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which also sends its audiences home happy – and enthralled.

The post NYCB: A Gathering of Dances appeared first on CriticalDance.

Heather Desaulniers

• San Francisco Ballet – Shostakovich Trilogy
  War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
• San Francisco Ballet School – Spring Festival
  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

May 11th (matinee) – Like most major ballet companies, San Francisco Ballet’s annual season combines several full-length narrative ballets alongside mixed repertory evenings. And I’m someone who is pulled to both types of offerings. While I tend to favor the triple bills because of their variety and breadth, I’m wholeheartedly a fan of the multi-act story ballets too, though admittedly some more than others. But every once in while a program comes along that seems to straddle both formats, weaving a strong narrative thread throughout, while presenting three distinct and unique choreographic frames. Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy, which had its SFB premiere in 2014, is one of these rare birds. The final program of 2019’s repertory season, Ratmansky’s Trilogy narratively mines the life and work of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, while its three contrasting parts, each set to a different Shostakovich masterwork, offer deep choreographic scope.

Trilogy makes no attempt to tell a linear story, but its narrative threads and tones are undeniable. Spiritedness lightness imbues the beginning of Part I Symphony #9. While the plucky, staccato, almost musical theater-inspired score soared from the orchestra pit, under the brilliant direction of Ming Luke, Ratmansky played with polka steps, technically demanding hops en pointe and moments of pure camaraderie that found the principals weaving through and dancing with the corps. And then the mood takes an abrupt turn. As Mathilde Froustey and Luke Ingham entered the space, a wave of uncertainty and wariness flooded the visual and aural palette. Together, they peered over their shoulders in anticipation of something ominous. Their duet was filled with movements on low demi-pointe rather than full toe, which felt an apt metaphor for a journey that that was just beyond their reach. Catapulting through these divergent scenes was Lonnie Weeks, whose jumps and turns were some of the best of the entire day.

San Francisco Ballet in Ratmansky’s Chamber Symphony
Photo © Erik Tomasson

Part II Chamber Symphony, is the most storied of the group, though again I wouldn’t necessarily call it sequential. Costumed in a black suit with an open jacket, Joseph Walsh takes on the Shostakovich role, with a trio of principal women (Jahna Frantziskonis, Elizabeth Powell and Sasha De Sola) portraying three of his loves. Moments of affection and joy are peppered throughout, though for the most part, the ballet swirls from melancholic to urgent to tortured. Peace, calm and rest seem to elude Walsh’s character, a state that is mirrored on George Tsypin’s backdrop by a fractured collage of faces and profiles. Legs fly in every direction; arms search in a whirling stream for something unattainable. As one would expect, there are several pas de deux between the main players, but it was Walsh and Powell’s incredible connection that made the audience gasp. Every suspended hold, abrupt fall and swimming spin radiated a poignant longing and yearning.  

Piano Concerto #1, Part III has a boldness to it. Red, geometric shapes hang from the rafters; Keso Dekker’s costumes have the corps in two-toned unitards (grey on the front and red on the reverse) and the principal women in striking, shimmering scarlet leotards. Much of Ratmansky’s movement vocabulary in this chapter explored off-center steps and postures combined with malleable and strong positions alike. One of the two featured couples, Isabella Devivo and Wei Wang commanded the stage with their precise footwork and whimsical additions, like the flexed frappés that traveled upward from Wang’s ankle to above the knee.

One special element of Trilogy is the abundant corps work in each movement, though one could argue more so in the first and third. The lush, rich vocabulary seems designed for the senior corps dancers – those with seven, eight, maybe even nine plus years experience in the corps de ballet. While SFB definitely has these exceptional artists in its roster, there’s only a handful, and sadly, seems like less and less every season. The few senior corps who danced on Saturday afternoon were absolutely fantastic. A ballet like Ratmansky’s Trilogy certainly requires advanced technical skill, which they have to spare. Though, its need for movement maturity, attention to transitional space and general spatial awareness is perhaps even more important. And I do think, when it comes to these qualities, time makes a huge difference. If you were in the audience this past weekend, that marked difference was indeed noticeable.    

San Francisco Ballet School Students in Brew’s quicksilver
Photo © Lindsay Thomas

May 24th – Each year when the curtain comes down on San Francisco Ballet’s final repertory program, a note of bittersweetness pervades the air. On the one hand, season’s end is a moment to reflect on the range of classical and contemporary work that has graced the stage in the previous months. On the other hand, it means that it will be quite some time before the company returns to the War Memorial Opera House. But SFB enthusiasts can take comfort in the fact that several other Bay Area engagements are part of the company’s annual calendar, like this summer’s Stern Grove Festival appearance and of course, San Francisco Ballet School’s year-end celebration, which ran last week at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. This year’s school showcase not only included three new works born out of the Choreographic Fellowship Program, but also distinct programs on each night, transforming the production into a three-day festival. I caught the final performance.   

As is customary, Act I began with the phenomenal School Demonstration, choreographed and envisioned by faculty member Karen Gabay. As students in levels 2 through 8 shared their talent with the audience, such joy and charm leapt from the stage. From unassuming chaissé tendu and changement to more complex pas de deux and bravura jumps, precision, clarity, elegance and confidence was unmistakable from this inspiring cohort of dancers. The program then moved on to the first of six repertory works, beautifully interpreted by the senior classes and the school’s Trainees. A contemporary ballet for six, Marc Brew’s quicksilver brought many lovely moments, though I think what this dance did best was mine different choreographic configurations. Cycling through serpentine positions and twisty shapes, both cannoned and in unison, we saw a captivating array of duets, trios, solo work and picturesque clusters.

San Francisco Ballet School Students in Edwards’ Constant Search
Photo © Lindsay Thomas

A pair of Jiří Kylián compositions ushered in the program’s second act: Falling Angels for the women and Sarabande for the men. While I can’t say for sure if this was the intention or not, Angels had a fascinating intersection where grounded, percussive vocabulary met an old-school Fosse jazz aesthetic, while Sarabande added emotive dramatics to the stage’s palette with high throttle phrases and extreme positions. Next up was Constant Search by choreographic fellow MJ Edwards, set to a Max Richter score (indeed a favorite composer amongst 21st century dancemakers). An ensemble work for nine, Search’s blue-green costumes, swirly vocabulary and skating/sliding motifs imbued the work, framing it with a distinctly aquatic tone. Closing Act II was Helgi Tomasson’s celebration of Baroque music, Concerto Grosso. A quintet for five men, Grosso takes a deep dive into the Baroque tenet of simultaneous independence and interdependence. Each dancer’s choreographic material can certainly stand on its own, yet can also be woven with others to create a more layered physical tapestry. And I particularly enjoyed Grosso’s intricate details, like the batterie mirroring the many mordents and trills in the score.

Tomasson’s Ballet d’Isoline took the final place of the evening – a large cast classical offering, complete with corps work, a grand pas de deux and a lengthy variation sequence, also for five men (with the Kylián piece and both Tomasson works, the senior and trainee men were unquestionably the featured group on this program). As had been the theme of the entire night, the dancing was incredibly clean and assured throughout the extensive vignettes and the principal duet by Sunmin Lee and Anicet Marandel-Broutin. I thoroughly enjoyed all the aspects of this excerpt, and with an enviable maturity in their movement, the lead couple were impressive. Though I thought d’Isoline was a bit of an odd choice as a finale. Again, it was danced beautifully, but the work itself just doesn’t exude a finale ta-da quality.

I was excited again to see that women’s voices were heard during the festivities, as they were last year. Gabay’s School Demonstration opened each of the three programs, and Choreographic Fellows Maya Wheeler and Pemberley Olson premiered their respective works on Thursday evening. At the same time, I was equally challenged to see only three female dancemakers in the mix. Friday’s program, in particular, had seven works, of which only one, the school demo, was choreographed by a woman. More work can be done (and should be done) towards gender parity in ballet programming and choreographic commissions. What a wonderful example that would set for the next generation of professional dancers.

The post SF/Bay Area Round-up May 2019 End of season at San Francisco Ballet appeared first on CriticalDance.

Wortham Centre

Cullen Theatre
Houston

April 18-20 2019

Dance Salad Festival 2019 offered a tantalising taste of the multifarious world of dance and this year scored with excerpts from Alexander Ekman’s COW and Marcos Morau’s Carmen, two of the most inventive and inspired choreographers around. The dance companies hailed from Italy, Germany, Finland, Denmark and the USA and the nationalities of the dancers covered an even wider spectrum. There was drama, mystery, passion and a healthy dose of comedy delivered by dancers who cover an amazing range of talent.

Mopey, choreographed by Marco Goecke, and danced by Sokvannara Sar, was an electric opener on each evening. A study in neurosis, tinged with madness and laced with humour, it is a tour de force for Sar who has lived with this work for many years and understands its nuances and twists like the foibles of a long-loved partner.

Sebastian Kloborg and Maria Kochetkova
Photo: Amitava Sarkar

The four duets featured interesting partnerships. Maria Kochetkova and Sebastian Kloborg danced a finely tuned Bach duet from William Forsythe’s New Suite, but it was in Benjamin Millepied’s Closer that emotion flowered. Philip Glass’s insistent tingling music of irregular phrasing provoked unexpected pauses in the choreography followed by surging passion. Kochetkova is a remarkable talent becoming something so perfect and fragile in the lyrical moments where her qualities are sensitively balanced by Kloborg’s strength.

Victor Ullate’s De Triana a Sevilla brought the essence of Spain in fine performances from Ashley Bouder and Joaquin De Luz. It had the fiery passions and intensity of true Flamenco and all the more impressive for being danced in soft shoes in a contemporary style. De Luz, who will be the new Artistic Director of Compañía Nacional de Danza in Madrid from September 2019, has a presence that dominates utterly, complemented by Bouder’s sinuous fluidity.

Stephanie Chen Gundorph, Tobias Praetorius in Unravel
Photo: Amitava Sarkar

Kristian Lever was the new kid on the block. In his Unravel, a complex duet of uncertain relationships, he showed an inherent skill in linking emotion to movement. Danish dancers, Stephanie Chen Gundorph and Tobias Praetorius, articulated each nuance where a touch or glance could draw them closer or lead to rejection. Ravel’s Pavane, sensitively played by Niklas Walentin, violin, and Alexander McKenzie, piano, contrasted in mood and added basenotes to this complex, layered duet.

Spellbound Contemporary Ballet from Rome are frequent visitors to DSF, and this year were joined by founder/ choreographer Mauro Astolfi. Full Moon is a mysterious and magical work brought to life by his nine dancers whose technical ability is matched by their dramatic skills. The multi-faceted moon with the power to shift oceans is present in so much folklore. The full moon is said to bring out latent animal instincts and Astolfi uses the potent image and cry of the wolf to good effect. No image is explicit, rather a naked body is caught in a shaft of moonlight or two figures are entwined but impossible to identify. Sometimes the women seem the more predatory, communities seem tight knit, but all are not welcomed. It is as insubstantial as the moon herself. The company are outstanding in their ability to define and detail Astolfi’s layered movements that place huge technical demands on the dancers. There is so much richness in this work that it takes repeated viewings to get into the heart of the matter.

Courtney Richardson in COW
Photo: Amitava Sarkar

Alexander Ekman’s COW is a full evening spectacular and the curation for DSF is reduced to the essence in a film of bovine rumination and an athletic solo danced by Courtney Richardson. There is a heavy dose of irony in the philosophical enquiry by Christian Bausch, the creator of the eponymous role, as he gets into character. He is filmed crawling across the rehearsal room in Dresden perfecting the loose swayback gait of a cow or out on the field eyeballing the real thing, in a moment of bovine bonding. Later, Bausch grazing on the banks of the Elbe, meets Richardson as a bathing elk. It’s back to reality as she jetés across the stage to mark her territory. A goddess form, complete with antlers, she has every muscle honed and every sense alert befitting a creature of the wild. Well earthed, and boosted with a healthy dose of Ekman humour, it’s a winning combination.

Marcos Morau’s Carmen is more complex than Mérimée’s novella ever imagined. The curated vignettes capture the character in vivid technicolour and the costumes are themselves a theatrical event. It opens on a film set, as Ida Praetorius, sporting a magnificent hat, eyes the paparazzi through a fringe of beads. The camera men prove to be a natty dance duo before they are interrupted by Kizzy Matiakis, a second Carmen in prissy blouse and lavish skirt whose body is manipulated in an extraordinarily doll-like manner. A third visitation sees Praetorius, now in pink frills serenaded by toreador, Sebastian Kloborg, in blue satin frills and two-toned shoes. This spicy snippet of potent images and smart choreography is a moreish appetiser and I long to see the whole ballet which proved both highly controversial and a sold-out success in Copenhagen.

Susanne Leinonen’s Shame/less
Photo: Amitava Sarkar

Susanne Leinonen’s Shame/less injected a powerful Nordic ethos. It seemed in order that Finland, a leader in gender equality, should produce the strongest statement on the subject. As the costumes, all variations on bra and knickers, dispense with scraps of tulle and organza, shift from pink to black and end with a sturdy uniform two piece plus knee pads adding the urban appeal. Leinonen is a choreographer who perfectly understands her craft. Her piece, boosted by startling theatrical effects in lights, sound and inventive graphics, is presented by a committed team of five women and held attention throughout. The striking image of a woman her hair a cascade of long black hair streaming over her face added a startling weirdness. Finding equality through anger and aggression is not one that has personal appeal, but It is an interesting theme.

Jemima Rose Dean in Strokes through the Tail
Photo: Amitava Sarkar

Donlon Dance Collective, from Berlin presented Marguerite Donlon’s Strokes through the Tail that closed each evening with a ripple of laughter. One tulle-clad ballerina and five suited men engage in a witty parody of ballet in a celebration of cross dressing constructed on a base of brilliant dance. There is something about the unpretentious flow of Donlon’s dance language, spiced with humour and seasoned with deep wisdom that makes it both unique and appealing. In a world packed with almost good ideas, this work of laser focused comedy and fresh minted moves, hits the spot. I can’t think of a better work to send an audience home happy.

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