Boston Ballet
Boston Opera House
Boston, MA

May 16 and 19, 2019: Rhapsody Program
Yakobson Miniatures (Pas de Quatre, Rodin, Vestris); ELA, Rhapsody in Blue (Arais world premiere); Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2

Carla DeFord

First on the triple bill in Rhapsody was “Yakobson Miniatures,” consisting of Pas de Quatre, Rodin, and Vestris. In each of the four short pas de deux that comprise Rodin a sculpture came alive to the music of Debussy. The final pas de deux, “Minotaur and Nymph,” as performed by Roddy Doble and Anaïs Chalendard, was electrifying. At first Doble’s striding across the stage toward his partner put one in mind of a Neanderthal, but later he began to resemble a more brutal version of Gene Kelly in “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” (from the 1948 film Words and Music) or Mikhail Baryshnikov in “That’s Life” from Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite. It was all very much in the French Apache dance tradition.

Anaïs Chalendard and Roddy Doble
in Leonid Yakobson’s “Rodin”
Photo by Rachel Neville Photography

Completely fearless, Chalendard was willing to be thrown around like a rag doll or twirled, head near the stage floor, while resembling a human surfboard. At the end of the piece she wrapped herself around and descended Doble’s legs like the Siren in Prodigal Son. (Did Yacobson get the idea from Balanchine?) After Doble freed himself from the encumbrance of the nymph at his feet, he raised his arms in perverse triumph over his partner, who lay vanquished in front of him – what a commanding, if somewhat horrifying, example of dance theatrics.

Boston Ballet in Leonid Yakobson’s “Pas de Quatre”
Photo by Rachel Neville Photography

Pas de Quatre seemed to break down into two pairs of dancers, with the more mature pair being comfortable with Yakobson’s style and the younger one having not yet internalized his dance vocabulary. Kudos to Rachele Buriassi and Emily Entingh, who made their variations look fleet, light, and buoyant.

Derek Dunn in Leonid Yakobson’s “Vestris”
Photo by Rachel Neville Photography

Derek Dunn gave a highly convincing account of Vestris, a piece created for Baryshnikov, but it lacked some of the Russian dancer’s intensity. Last month as Frantz in Coppélia Dunn seemed more similar to Baryshnikov, especially in Act III when he launched a non-stop barrage of choreographic fireworks. Whether shooting like a rocket into the air, where he achieved exquisite positions, or executing mind-boggling spins and turns, Dunn was perfection itself. As Swanilda, Misa Kuranaga matched his every technical feat so that the whole pas de deux seemed like a super-refined game of “Can You Top This?” In such a contest of virtuosi, the audience always wins.

Kathleen Breen Combes and Boston Ballet
in Paulo Arrais’s “ELA Rhapsody in Blue”
Photo by Rachel Neville Photography

Next on the program was the world premiere of Boston Ballet principal dancer Paulo Arrais’s ELA, Rhapsody in Blue, which he has described as a celebration of powerful women, particularly those who helped raise him in his native Brazil. It featured a corps of 13 men dressed in black and three other characters: the heroine, her lover, and her child. At first the way the heroine related to the corps reminded me of Fred Astaire in “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails” (from Top Hat), especially when he uses his cane like a gun to shoot his fellow dancers, one by one. Later the scene began to recall Judy Garland in “Get Happy” (from Summer Stock) with a group of men dramatically dancing around her. Whatever its predecessors, the choreography for the men certainly showed the influence of Broadway and Hollywood.

Patric Palkens was the demon lover, a Stanley Kowalski-type who was certainly alluring in a fitted white undershirt and black pants, which set off his panther-like moves. Although technically assured, he didn’t seem to get much of a kick out of being the bad guy (as Cole Porter might have put it). A little more of Marlon Brando’s charisma would have been welcome.

The role of the child seemed to be one that Arrais created with himself in mind, and Dunn’s way of moving recalled the choreographer’s. When Dunn arched his back with his arms thrown behind him, a position reminiscent of Odette in Act II of Swan Lake, he reminded one of Arrais in Wayne McGregor’s Obsidian Tear. Eventually, the heroine’s child grew up, was lifted by the corps, and carried offstage. At that moment Dunn’s posture perhaps foretold the child’s future as a dancer, so it all made sense.

Kathleen Breen Combes and Derek Dunn
in Paulo Arrais’s “ELA Rhapsody in Blue”
Photo by Rachel Neville Photography

Kathleen Breen Combes’s take on the heroine was somewhat confusing. It was difficult to understand why she kept smiling when what was going on around her seemed to invite a more serious demeanor. At the end, however, the heroine’s victory over the forces arrayed against her seemed well earned. She was a survivor who had a beneficent influence on her child and was finally validated by whatever the corps represented.

In the second cast Rachelle Buriassi told the story a bit more clearly. Although she smiled at the beginning when she was able to control the men onstage with her, she became more somber as she endured not only the abusive behavior of her lover, who left her pregnant, but also a changed relationship with the corps, which became a rather threatening presence. Although at one point the men looked like Carabosse’s malevolent attendants in Sleeping Beauty, by the end they became more benign and lifted the heroine high above the stage, where she appeared to reign supreme.

The choreographer’s use of the music was interesting in that Rhapsody in Blue is usually thought of as a paean to the city where it had its premiere (as was poignantly and hilariously made evident in the opening of Woody Allen’s Manhattan). “Ela” means “she” in Portuguese, and this ballet transformed Gershwin’s urban hymn into the soundtrack of an individual life.  The finale paid homage not to the “rhapsody of laughter and tears” that is the Big Apple (as the song “Forty-Second Street” describes it) but to one woman who lives through and overcomes adversity

George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (originally titled Ballet Imperial) was the last offering, and on May 19 it starred Misa Kuranaga. I never thought I’d see anything to rival the Theme and Variations she did years ago with Jeffrey Cirio (now principal with the English National Ballet), but to paraphrase The Temptations, ain’t too proud to admit I was wrong. In this piece of repertoire, she outdid herself.

Boston Ballet in George Balanchine’s
“Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.2”
©The George Balanchine Trust
Photo by Rachel Neville Photography

Every move she made was so beautifully shaped and connected to what came before and after that by the time she finished, I was stunned by the majesty of it all. My favorite moments happened near the end when Balanchine used Russian folk-dance steps and references. She hit each position with such precision that it seemed as if she was giving a master class in character dance as seen through a neoclassical lens. Kuranaga has to be one of the greatest interpreters of Balanchine on the planet, and it was a privilege, once again, to see her embody the master’s vision.

Misa Kuranaga and Boston Ballet in George Balanchine’s “Coppélia” ©The George Balanchine Trust
Photo by Liza Voll

Her partner was Patric Palkens, who gave an excellent performance in terms of technique. His cabriole leaps and exactly placed landings, his falling to one knee with arms outstretched the better to show off his ballerina were all completed in textbook fashion. Had he looked at Kuranaga as if he were genuinely interested in her, it would have enhanced everything he did.

The music was, of course, top notch, with distinguished guest piano soloists Christopher O’ Riley in Rhapsody in Blue and Alex Poliykov in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. The Boston Ballet Orchestra performed music ranging from Bellini to Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and Gershwin (thank you, principal clarinetist Alexis Lanz for bringing such heat and longing to the opening glissando of Rhapsody in Blue) in a single program. With its flexibility and grasp of numerous styles, it seems that this ensemble is giving the Boston Symphony Orchestra a run for its money as the most accomplished group of musicians in the city.

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Parsons Dance
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

May 14, 2019
Round My World, Eight Women, Runes, Caught, Nascimento

Jerry Hochman

Parsons Dance returned to the Joyce Theater for a two week engagement. The opening night program, the same for all the evening programs, included company founder and choreographer David Parson’s Round My World, Caught, and Nascimento, Paul Taylor’s Runes, and the New York premiere of Trey McIntyre’s Eight Women. The company looks as good as it has previously, but this assortment of pieces didn’t work quite as well as other recent Joyce seasons.

Eight Women, though given a rave response from the opening night audience, was somewhat disappointing after last year’s superb rendering of McIntyre’s Ma Maison. The fault was not with the dancers, who performed to their limits, but with the conception of the piece.

(l-r) Deirdre Rogan, Katie Garcia,
and Henry Steele in Trey McIntyre’s Eight Women”
Photo by Roberto Ricci

Commissioned by the Joyce, Eight Women isn’t a bad ballet – the problem is that it isn’t a particularly good one, and it should be. Whether intended as a tribute to the late Aretha Franklin, or as an opportunistic effort to capitalize on her recent death, the piece is choreographed to six Franklin songs: her cover of Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector’s “Spanish Harlem”; “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”; her cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “I Say a Little Prayer”; “The House That Jack Built”; Carole King’s “Natural Woman”; and Ashford and Simpson’s “You’re All I Need To Get By.” But for the glaring absence of “Respect,” these songs are representative of Franklin’s popular work (although I strongly prefer the original versions of “Spanish Harlem,” so memorably rendered by Ben E. King, and of “I Say A Little Prayer,” a hit by Dionne Warwick).

The problem with the piece is that McIntyre’s dance reflects Franklin’s music, but doesn’t do anything more than that. As a consequence (and with one exception), each choreographed song sequence has the same impact as the one before, and the one that followed.

(l-r) Zoey Anderson and Katie Garcia
in Trey McIntyre’s “Eight Women”
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

This is not to say that the dance is not entertaining. It certainly is. But even though each segment is distinct and performed by different numbers and groups of dancers, there’s an overall sameness to it. The exception is the choreography for “Natural Woman,” which is assigned to two women: Zoey Anderson and Katie Garcia. But this casting, as carried out choreographically, is nothing more (or less) than two women thoroughly enjoying themselves and each other’s company – being “natural women”: it simply celebrates women being women. As such, it’s the dance’s best segment. Overall, however, there’s nothing at all insightful here. Franklin’s music deserves more respect.

The remainder of the cast included Deirdre Rogan, Sasha Alvarez, Justus Whitfield, Shawn Lesniak, Henry Steele, and Joan Rodriguez.

Deirdre Rogan and Joan Rodriguez
in Paul Taylor’s “Runes”
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

Parsons once danced with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, for a period of nine years. To honor Taylor, who died last August, Parsons chose to present Runes, one of the pieces that Parsons performed with that company.

I hadn’t seen Runes in many years, and I have no reason to believe that this staging, by former Taylor Company dancer Cathy McCann Buck, is in any way less than faithful to the original. But even though Parsons gushes about the piece, to me it’s not one of Taylor’s masterworks.

(l-r) Deirdre Rogan, Joan Rodriguez,
and-Zoey Anderson in Paul Taylor’s “Runes”
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

Runes is a difficult dance to enjoy, because there’s nothing about it that’s particularly enjoyable. And its cerebral quality, which is undeniable, is also relatively opaque. For a long time, one doesn’t know much more about what’s happening on stage than that there are references to seemingly primitive rituals – and we know they’re primitives in primitive times by the applied “sheepskin” patches in the costumes (by George Tacet), Jennifer Tipton’s bare “traveling” moonscape, and the score, by Gerald Busby, that “speaks” in sounds of prehistory. As the dance evolves, however, a construction of primitive rituals is really all that there is. [The dance’s title refers to letters in the prehistoric “runic” alphabet, which was the form of written communication among Germanic peoples in northern Europe (and Scandinavia and England) prior to the adoption of Latin letters. As an arrangement of stones, Runes also has a connection to divination.]

As much as I appreciate a cerebral piece of choreography, including one in which considerable thought must be invested by the audience to appreciate the choreographer’s thought process, it’s difficult to appreciate if you have to divine what’s being said – or written, since in large part the dancers are physical representations of runes. Some images are searing (the image of a woman running up the chest of a man after one or both die and are somehow reborn – either literally or as representative of a cycle of life from generation to generation; a “regeneration” of sorts); some are shocking – including the famous image of one female dancer running at top speed and throwing herself at and onto the body of a stationary male, which, if nothing else, is a great way to capture attention. But I doubt that attention-grabbing is Taylor’s reason for including such images. And not being able to figure what that, and other runic / prehistoric / tribal images mean, beyond being runic, prehistoric, and tribal images of something (a rite of spring before there was a rite, and maybe before there was a spring), makes the dance less than satisfying. However, the cast, the same as in Runes, clearly adapted to and adopted Taylor’s choreography as their own (not surprising since there’s a kinship between Parsons’s choreography and Taylor’s).

(top to bottom) Sasha Alvarez,
Katie Garcia, and Zoe Anderson
in Trey McIntyre’s “Eight Women”
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

There was nothing at all problematic about Parsons’s own dances, which populated the remainder of this Joyce program, but there was nothing particularly memorable about them either. Round My World, a 2012 dance to music by Zoe Keating that began the evening, is pleasantly energetic and has sufficient variety of staging, tempo, and movement quality to make it look interesting. It’s “circle” theme (arms arched in a circle in the air, or intersecting in a circle form) can be a little much after awhile, but the spirit of it, augmented by the crisply bright costumes in blue (breezy skirts for the women; pants for the men) designed by Emily DeAngelis, brightened the stage. In a prior review, I described Parsons dances as dances of joy. Round My World is an example. Each of the six dancer cast (Anderson, Whitfield, Rogan, Lesniak, Steele, and Garcia) had opportunities to shine either solo or in a duet, and did.

But for its Latin bent, the same can be said about Nascimento, which closed the program, but it had an eight dancer cast (the cast for Round My World, plus Alvarez and Rodriguez). The piece, which Parsons created in 1990, is a tribute to Brazilian singer, guitarist, and song writer Milton Nascimento, who created the score specifically for the Parsons Dance. I reviewed it following the company’s 2016 Joyce engagement, and concluded that the fun was infectious. It still is.

Zoey Anderson
in Trey McIntyre’s “Eight Woman”
Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

While “joy” characterizes Parsons’s choreography in general, for Caught, the penultimate dance on the program (as it was in 2016), the appropriate word is “awe.” While I don’t usually appreciate “concept” dances, this is one that works: it never fails to entertain, and never fails to bring its audience to a fever pitch. Essentially, after setting the basic theme of a dancer moving around the stage into progressively different spotlight locations, Caught evolves such that the “spotlight” becomes a strobe light, and the dancer moves in darkness, captured in sequential strobe-lit moments – while soaring through the air. For all its simplicity, it’s a remarkable piece of work. At this performance Caught was performed by Anderson, who I saw in the same piece at a Youth America Grand Prix Gala a few weeks earlier. She, and the piece, were scintillating then, and both still are.

Although this program was not quite up to the standards of earlier Parsons Programs I’ve seen at the Joyce, anything that this company does is well worth seeing, and demands respect. I look forward to next year’s visit.

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RIOULT Dance NY
Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, New York

May 17, 2019
The Violet Hour, Transgressions: Four Short Stories (world premiere), Nostalghia

Jerry Hochman

Fresh from opening its new, and apparently highly successful, home in Queens, Rioult Dance NY returned for its 2019 New York season last week with two performances at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. The program, based on inspiration from poetry, literature, and film, included The Violet Hour, Transgressions: Four Short Stories, and Nostalghia. All three are representative of Pascal Rioult at his best.

(l-r) Catherine Cooch, Charis Haines, and Sara Elizabeth Seger
in Pascal Rioult’s “Transgressions: Four Short Stories”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

Based on those pieces of his that I’ve seen over the past five years (the company is in its twenty-fifth year; an accomplishment by itself), Rioult’s choreography may at times appear retro (to the extent there’s a “style,” it’s contemporary and physical, befitting a former member of the Martha Graham Company, with, at times, a lyricism that’s rare in contemporary dance), and it’s always unpredictable. A common thread, however, aside from craftworthiness, is that even in an abstract piece nothing is done just to match movement to music, or to create movement for movement’s sake. There’s an intellectual (and creative) point to it all. Rioult doesn’t routinely illuminate music (which would be a laudable goal by itself); more often than not he illuminates emotions. He may recreate a time and a place, but he also creates a mood.

Transgressions, inspired by short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, is an example. The mood Rioult creates reflects what Oates created previously, but he distills it, effectively creating a mood of his own: these dances are not faithful recreations; they’re faithful reinterpretations. The music he selected for each of the dances is characteristically, maybe stridently, American. These are American stories.

(l-r) Chaney Briggs, Christopher Bursley,
and Jere Hunt in Pascal Rioult’s
“Transgressions: Four Short Stories”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

Oates herself was in the audience for this opening night performance, and although you can’t always tell by outward appearance, she seemed pleased – and she subsequently tweeted her high recommendation of the “four fascinating dances,” and her description of the “brilliantly idiosyncratic dancers – riveting to watch.” There’s nothing like a guest critic to bolster your critical credibility.

The stories of each of the Rioult short dances that comprise Transgressions – “The Stranger,” “The Storm,” “Disappeared,” and “Seduced” – each illustrate transgressions committed by one person against another, as Oates did in the source stories. In the first, based on perhaps Oates’s most famous story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” a 1966 short story (choreographed to “Old Folks Gatherin’” from Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 3, illustrates an encounter among three women and two men. The three women (Catherine Cooch, Charis Haines, and Sara Elizabeth Segar) are initially approached by one man (Alexander Druzbanski), who seems attracted to all of them. One of the three women, costumed more breezily than the others (she wears a print dress; the others’ dresses are mono-colored), is younger than the others; and more “breezy.” [In Oates’s story, the other women are the 15 year old girl’s mother and older sister.] Another man (Sabatino A. Verlezza) appears shortly thereafter. While the two more “conservative” women leave with the first man, Cooch’s free-spirited character seems attracted to the arrogant, swaggering, smooth-talking, older man (older is relative), even though everyone in the audience knows he’s dangerous. She leaves with him – although at this point it’s against her better judgment. After disposing of her (offstage), Verlezza’s character returns for more.

(l-r) Corinna Lee Nicholson, Sabatino A. Verlezza,
and Catherine Cooch in Pascal Rioult’s
“Transgressions: Four Short Stories”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

It’s tempting here to blame the victim for her lifestyle and poor choice, but that’s not what the dance (or Oates’s story) is about: deceptive appearances and the cruelty one commits against another for no apparent reason. Oates’s story reportedly was based on a Tucson serial murderer who killed three young women. Cooch’s performance is particularly noteworthy here – and in later pieces on the program as well, and it’s rewarding to see how much she’s grown as a dancer and actor since she joined the company – although my first sight of her was as the victim of a random shooting in Rioult’s Kansas City Orfeo. Plus ca change…..

“The Storm,” inspired by Oates’s “Upon the Sweeping Flood,” has three characters: a young woman (Chaney Briggs), a young man (Christopher Bursley), and an older man (Jere Hunt). [In Oates’s story, the first two are sister and younger brother.] To “Traditional Bluegrass Music,” Rioult presents a horror story of a man encountering the couple as he attempts to escape an approaching storm. They get him intoxicated, and things take a strange, horrifying turn.

Catherine Cooch and Sabatino A. Verlezza
in Pascal Rioult’s “Transgressions: Four Short Stories”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

The third story, “Disappeared,” is the most complex of the four, and displays the most violent act. Based on Oates’s “Faithless” and choreographed to Aaron Copland’s “Prelude for Chamber Orchestra,” the dance describes a relationship that appears to have become a sham. But when the “husband” (Verlezza) believes his “wife” (Corinna Lee Nicholson) is having an affair, which may not be true, he asserts his masculinity by beating her, and then killing her and hiding the body – until another woman (Cooch), the wife’s friend (or more than that), discovers the body. Like Oates’s story (which is somewhat different, but touches the same nerves), Rioult distills the relationship, and the male sense of ownership, into its component parts. Verlezza is as good at brainless seething as he is as an arrogant magnet, and Nicholson is very strong as the victim of Berlezza’s brutality. But the piece focuses as much on the other victim of Berlezza’s rage, and Cooch’s performance here is wrenching.

(l-r) Sara Elizabeth Seger
and Charis Haines
in Pascal Rioult’s
“Transgressions: Four Short Stories”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

“Seduced,” the last of the four stories, is inspired by Oates’s “The Bingo Master.” To music (not identified) by George Gershwin, the dance features Haines and Seger, with Haines, costumed as a swaggering “male” figure, leading Seger to her doom. Haines is mesmerizing as the female “bingo master,” all glitz, artificiality, and serpentine sensuality.

Each of these stories, as was true of Oates’s stories, has the common thread of violence and depravity seemingly emerging unpredictably, and from nowhere. But except in a general sense the violence is not from nowhere, and it’s not unpredictable – and that’s the point (or part of it): that inhuman acts occur is a part of human life, and the dark side of humanity is always there – like the dark side of the moon. You may not see it until it’s too late.

However, I found one tangential aspect of Transgressions to be particularly troubling. In a brief comment prior to the dance’s premiere, Rioult apologetically explained that the brutality illustrated in some of the Transgression stories is not meant to glorify or condone abusive behavior, but to represent the shock and horror when the laws of human interaction are violated — essentially reemphasizing what was already stated in a program note. This should be a “given,” and it’s unfortunate that this is something Rioult had to emphasize – perhaps as a sort of mea culpa, perhaps to avoid streams of critical social media posts – especially in Transgressions, where the behavior as depicted is neither gratuitous nor intentionally demeaning.

Be that as it may, in its entirety Transgressions is both spellbinding and haunting.

RIOULT Dance NY in Pascal Rioult’s “Nostalghia”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

Also haunting, but in a very different way, is The Violet Hour, Rioult’s 2012 dance inspired by the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Here Rioult has conjured an emotional and visual wasteland, but one not without hope.

To two compositions by Joan Tower (Tres Lent and Catching a Wave), Rioult has created two significantly different “landscapes.” The first is a fairly barren expanse, an environmental wasteland through which his ten-dancer cast runs or wanders seemingly aimlessly; the other is a wasteland of relationships, the sense of being in a group but being alone, the sense of isolation. The dance has wonderful imagery throughout, but particularly when the group appears to form some sense of community, and from which springs the hope of something more. It’s a dance of strange but undeniable beauty (with extraordinary lighting by Clifton Taylor) in which the whole is far greater than simply the sum of its parts.

RIOULT Dance NY in Pascal Rioult’s “The Violet Hour”
Photo by Eric Bandiero

The program concluded with a repeat performance of Nostalghia, Rioult’s sparkling piece from last year’s New York season, which I reviewed following its premiere. Nostalghia (the Russian word for nostalgia) is far more than … nostalgia, and Rioult here captures the creation, the persistence, and the essential emotional need for it in a series of interrelated abstract images that reflect its feeling. As I described last year, Nostalghia isn’t about nostalgia, it’s the sense of it. The mood. And seeing it a second time only reinforced my initial take. Nostalghia is a work of intelligence and sensitivity, and once again Cooch was triumphant as the piece’s initial focus.

I also must again highlight the score. Commissioned by Rioult, Polina Nazaykinskaya’s composition is a rarity: a contemporary piece of music that has a melody (multiple melodies), but also a pulsing rhythm that moves the action forward.  The music and the choreography are in sync, but there isn’t the sense that one is dependent on the other.  They enhance each other. Collaborations don’t always work, but this one does.

The only defect in the program was the space. The dances need more room to breathe. I’ll look forward to that in RIOULT Dance NY’s next annual New York season

The post RIOULT Dance NY: Human Inhumanity appeared first on CriticalDance.

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

May 28, 2019
May 31, 2019
June 1, 2019 (matinee)  

Carmel Morgan

I attended three performances and one panel discussion during the Kennedy Center’s week-long Ballet Across America celebration. Ballet Across America has changed greatly over the years. In 2008, it began as a way to present the richness and diversity of regional ballet companies throughout the United States. In these early years, ballet companies from all over the country would come to the Kennedy Center to share works in multiple joint programs. Now in its fifth iteration, this year’s Ballet Across America showcased just two companies, Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) and Miami City Ballet (MCB), both of which are led by female artistic and executive directors. In fact, the inspiration for this year’s Ballet Across America program was women leading the way in ballet.    

The artistic directors, DTH’s Virginia Johnson and MCB’s Lourdes Lopez, are both extremely successful and achieved their current positions after enjoying long careers as ballet dancers. They’re inarguably important role models. In a panel discussion hosted by former MCB dancers Michael Breeden and Rebecca King Ferraro as part of their popular podcast Conversations on Dance, Johnson and Lopez revealed that neither had aspired to become an artistic director of a ballet company. One wonders whether this is because there were almost no women in such roles for them to look up to in crafting their goals. Johnson and Lopez were joined in the discussion by Pam Tanowitz, who was commissioned by the Kennedy Center to create a work using dancers from each company. Tanowitz, too, said she didn’t originally aspire to be a choreographer. These women seemingly fell into these roles because they were pursuing what they love. They all acknowledged that it’s critical to support women as artistic directors and choreographers, and that more can be done to do so.

Dance Theatre of Harlem in Claudia Schreier’s Passage, photo by Brian Callan

How fitting that my favorite work during 2019’s Ballet Across America was Passage, a ballet choreographed for DTH by a young woman, Claudia Schreier. The rest of the excellent Passage artistic team are also women — costume designer Martha Chamberlain, lighting designer Nicole Pearce, composer Jessie Montgomery and conductor Tania León. But how frustrating that the printed program contained no information about the choreographers, especially, with the exception of Tanowitz. Promoting female choreographers ought to encompass proudly publishing their biographies. I’d have appreciated the inclusion of information about all of the artistic collaborators, actually, and I found it confounding that with a theme of celebrating women’s leadership in the arts today this was overlooked.    

Passage was commissioned to commemorate DTH’s 50th anniversary and the 400th anniversary of, among other things, the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans. It’s a stunning ballet infused with vivid imagery. In Passage’s opening moments, dancers emerge from a cloak of darkness and walk slowly forward from the back of the stage. Costumed in white, with a few inky swishes of dark roots or branches, women on the shoulders of men form ship masts and sails. Additionally, the white costumes lead to the dancers appearing like ghosts or skeletons.  

Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Yinet Fernandez and Derek Brockington in Claudia Schreier’s Passage, photo by Brian Callan

There are many memorable choreographic moments. Overall, Passage feels fresh, and it comes across, impressively, as both classical and yet abstract. Schreier is very cognizant of lines and shapes and space and possibilities. She skillfully utilizes stillness and swingingly fast footwork and tucks in surprises. The audience audibly gasped with wonder and spontaneously clapped when female dancers held aloft by males took huge arching dives as if swimming and coming up for air. An extended arm, fingers splayed, is a recurring gesture. It’s a heartrending reach for survival and a plea for hope. Maybe it signals not only a desire for release and growth, but also a helping hand offered to others so that they know they’re not alone. Or maybe it’s simply an outcropping stretching into the future.    

Montgomery’s music is lovely and haunting, and the dancing beautifully captures some of the composition’s tension. Ballerinas are dragged backward and spun, their legs pointed like sides of a triangle wide beneath them. Anthony Santos and Derek Brockington were riveting as they engaged with each other, pulling, supporting, leaning backward all the way to the floor.  I admire the work of each of the artists involved in Passage, I definitely look forward to seeing more of Schreier’s robust choreography.

Dance Theatre of Harlem in Geoffrey Holder’s Dougla, photo by Rachel Neville

In addition to Passage, DTH, in collaboration with members of Collage Dance Collective, performed Dougla, a fan favorite, to close the joint DTH and MCB performance. Dougla, which presents a marriage celebration between two Dougla people (people of mixed Indian and African descent, particularly in Trinidad and Tobago), premiered in 1974 and was later revived. It’s a colorful and hypnotic spectacle, full of charming head nods, hip swooshes, high energy jumps, and even cartwheels. The costumes are bold, the dancing is entertaining, and the music’s incessant drumming rhythms seep into everything, resulting in smiles all around.      

In its solo program, DTH began with George Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie to music by Mikhal Glinka followed by Diane McIntyre’s Change. Valse Fantaisie is new to DTH, and it shows. The dancers have the regal comportment down, but not yet the crisp lightness called for in this piece.

Dance Theatre of Harlem in George Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie., photo by Dave Andrews

Change is quite a distance away choreographically from Valse Fantaisie, and here the dancing fared better. Three female dancers (Lindsey Croop, Ingrid Silva and Stephanie Rae Williams) fiercely attacked the material, which is a tribute to female empowerment. The program notes say Change was “inspired by women — Black, Brown, and Beige — who have refashioned the neighborhood, the country, the world through their vision, courage, and endurance.” The costumes, designed by Oran Bumroongchart, feature a gorgeous patchwork of tights worn by former DTH dancers. As the program points out, the dancers, therefore, “perform clothed in the legacy of their predecessors.” The dancers look undeniably attractive but they’re primarily tough, and they don’t hesitate to grunt as they use their bodies to express women’s stories of tribulation and triumph.                   

MCB also chose to start both the joint program and its solo program with a George Balanchine work. In Walpurgisnacht Ballet, the star is youthful girliness, or Balanchine’s idea of it anyway. Women in a dizzying display of candied pastel shades of pink and lilac, with hair ribbons streaming from around long ponytails, in the end let their hair down, quite literally. In between, there’s a proliferation of intricate geometries and elegantly twisting bare arms. Katia Carranza and Rainer Krenstetter (in a role debut) seemed a little bit cautious, but Nathalia Arja danced with abandon throughout while nailing the demanding precision called for by the choreography.

Miami City Ballet in Brahms/Handel, choreography by Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, photo by Alexander Iziliaev

To close its independent program, MCB performed Brahms/Handel, choreographed by Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp. Arja again stood out and absolutely sparkled, bright as an emerald, as the ballerina lead in green. Brahms/Handel, although well crafted, doesn’t do particularly well as a closer, in my opinion, especially in a program dominated by other classical works. Its parade of dancers in sky blue and grass green, and the interweaving of the colors, is mildly interesting, but not so rousing that I’d place it at the end of an evening. The flinging, hands on hips, flex-footed quirkiness of Tharp and Robbins is fun, but for me the ballet doesn’t add up to much more than that.          

Another odd choice was the Carousel Pas de Deux choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan. MCB’s Jennifer Lauren and Chase Swatosh performed it superbly, with all the requisite emotion. I found the inclusion of this pas de deux strange, though, because it preceded Heatscape, a work choreographed by Justin Peck, and Peck recently choreographed a revival of Carousel on Broadway. To me, at least, it seemed peculiar to spotlight MacMillan’s fine pas de deux and then follow it with a work from Peck, who just tackled Carousel‘s choreography. I found the choice odd for another reason as well. In this era of #Me Too, the coaxing and wrist and ankle grabbing in MacMillan’s pas de deux raise questions about power and consent. As an excerpt from the musical, with no context, it certainly appears that the young woman is pressured and taken advantage of, and it made me cringe that she pines for the man when he leaves her.     

Miami City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Heatscape, photo by Gene Schiavone

Peck’s Heatscape falls into my category of “middle Peck.” I neither loved it nor hated it, but would rank it somewhere in the middle of the Peck pieces I’ve seen. The scenic design by street artist Shepard Fairey is striking, and it serves as an intriguing backdrop. Dancers rush in a line to the edge of the stage, jog about, and stand in a cluster and face one excluded dancer, all elements I’ve noticed in other Peck works. I’m generally not in favor of jogging on stage. Jogging and rushing in a line and staring in a clump at someone on the outside aside, there is some choreographic cleverness to Heatscape, but not enough to keep my attention the entire time. The exception to this was Shimon Ito, who was so authoritatively graceful and smooth that I was perpetually glued to him. Ito truly came alive in Heatscape and delivered a masterful performance.     

Last but not least, the two companies contributed two dancers each (DTH’s Anthony Santos and Stephanie Rae Williams, and MCB’s Renan Cerdeiro and Lauren Fadeley) to Tanowitz’s creation, Gustave Le Gray No. 1, to music titled Gustave Le Gray by Caroline Shaw, the youngest winner of a Pulitzer Prize for music. (Gustave Le Gray was a noted nineteenth century French photographer). Pianist Sylvia Jiang played the heck out of Shaw’s composition, sticking the landings of her fingers on the piano keys even as the dancers moved her instrument from one side of the stage to the other, with Jiang continuing to play as she walked.

(L to R) Stephanie Rae Williams, Renan Cerdeiro, Anthony Santos, and Lauren Fadeley in Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Gray No. 1 (World Premiere), photo by Teresa Wood

I felt about Tanowitz’s choreography as I did about the tomato red costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung. At times I smiled and liked what I saw, and at other times I sort of intensely disliked what was in front of me. The costumes looked like pajamas made for a flying squirrel — stretchy fabric hung from the neck and ending at the ankles, wider and cape-like toward the top, narrower and rubber band-ish at the bottom, with a unitard underneath. The costumes are ugly, comical, and then suddenly brilliant. The choreography, similarly, runs from tilting airplane arms that, like jogging, I could do without, to unexpected thigh slaps and shoulder hugs that are more eye-opening.

The dancers from both companies did a tremendous job leaving classical ballet largely behind but retaining ballet’s elegant lines. Legs flew out perpendicular to the body, dancers jumped straight up like jumping beans. When Gustave Le Gray No. 1 was over, I admit, I kind of wanted to see it again. It’s unclear whether anyone will have that chance. Tanowitz owns the rights and is able to license it out, but I don’t know if the companies will keep it within their repertory.

The post Dance Theatre of Harlem and Miami City Ballet: Ballet Across America appeared first on CriticalDance.

American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

May 20 and June 1 (afternoon), 2019
Gala Program: Serenade after Plato’s Symposium,The Seasons (New Ratmansky, world premiere)

Tharp Trilogy: The Brahms-Haydn Variations, Deuce Coupe, In the Upper Room

Jerry Hochman

American Ballet Theatre returned to the Metropolitan Opera House on May 13, the beginning of its 2019 Met Season. On the surface, the pieces selected for its opening three weeks didn’t appear particularly attention-grabbing, but these programs – at least the repertory evenings – proved noteworthy: effectively, they were tributes to two of the world’s most prominent, and influential, choreographers: Alexei Ratmansky and Twyla Tharp.

Luciana Paris, Aran Bell,
and American Ballet Theatre dancers
in Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Seasons”
Photo by Marty Sohl

Ratmansky this year is celebrating his 10^th Anniversary as ABT’s Artist in Residence, and the Company scheduled three programs of his dances (Harlequinade, a “Ratmansky Trilogy,” and Whipped Cream) to begin its 2019 Met season, and one (The Sleeping Beauty) to close it. The other program, a “Tharp Trilogy,” concluded these opening weeks. Since all but one of the Ratmansky pieces were previously reviewed, my initial focus here will be on Tharp.

To say that Twyla Tharp changed the face of ballet and contemporary dance is not debatable. To say that she accomplished this without destroying or diminishing the significance of either is also undeniable, and may be even more important.

Tharp traveled a circuitous route to get to the point in her career where her name is a household word in those households with the slightest knowledge of or interest in dance, and nearly as likely in households where dance isn’t in the vocabulary. Educated in multiple forms of dance, including ballet, she started choreographing minimalist modern (as her recent program, “Minimalism and Me,” at the Joyce Theater revealed), but quickly recognized that minimalist movement doesn’t bring enthusiastic paying audiences. So, whether for that reason or simply because she preferred dances with more visual meat on them, she began modifying her choreography, and eventually reached broader and enthusiastic audiences with highly regarded dances created for her own company.

Although her choreography at this point was known to dance cognoscenti, it wasn’t until her choreographic “collaboration’ with ballet that her reputation grew exponentially – first with three dances for The Joffrey Ballet (NY), the first, in 1973, being Deuce Coupe. That reputation subsequently skyrocketed with ABT. At the opening night of Push Comes to Shove in January, 1976, the usually stolid ABT audience appeared stupefied, and uncomfortable. I know; I was there. By its end, they were cheering. And ballet and Tharp never looked back.

American Ballet Theatre
in Twyla Tharp’s “Deuce Coupe”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

The return of Deuce Coupe, the second of three dances in ABT’s Tharp Trilogy Program (and a company premiere), requires some elaboration. At the time it was created, at least to many in the dance world, ballet and modern dance were two branches of the same dance tree that rarely if ever came in contact with each other – and advocates for either limb didn’t think much of the other. One was disciplined, the other wasn’t. One was rigid, the other wasn’t. Etc.

With Deuce Coupe, considered the first “cross-over” ballet, that distinction began to change. Literally. Deuce Coupe combines ballet and the contemporary dance language that Tharp had honed for her own company, but that’s not the only significance of it; it’s how she did it, and her clearly communicated observation that these forms of movement have more in common than differences.

It doesn’t start out that way. To an extensive sampling of songs by The Beach Boys (most of which were wisely utilized in incomplete form, which enables the ballet to move from one segment to another without losing either dance continuity or the essential sense of those transition times), the piece begins with one ballet dancer (Katherine Williams) in pure white full ballerina array, executing a series of combinations. [The gimmick is that she’s doing them in alphabetical order, from the first through the fourteenth segments (leaving two out, which because of the way it’s staged, does not come across as a gap)  of the nineteen segment dance.] Shortly thereafter (and before the music cuts in), two dancers (Stella Abrera and Calvin Royal III) join her, costumed in casual, at times muddy looking colors. Just as the costumes are radically different, the movement quality is as well, with Abrera and Royal moving in contemporary, Tharpian manner allegedly (according to the program note) “loosely based on contemporary social dances.” [I find her styles (it’s not possible to pin it down to one composite style), whether based on contemporary social dances or not, very difficult to describe – think concurrently slinky, quirky, angular, and disciplined, served with wit, intelligence, and creativity, all finished with a pinch of pizazz.] They occupy different parts of the stage, and don’t mingle. Two different worlds.

Calvin Royal III in Alexei Ratmansky’s
“Serenade after Plato’s Symposium”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

Slowly, almost imperceptively, the physical distance between the Williams camp and the camp of everyone else on stage (the number of dancers in each group, with or without Williams, varies from segment to segment) begins to overlap, although their very different styles are maintained. However, by the time the piece ends with the entire cast moving to “Cuddle Up,” the difference between Williams’s movement and those of everyone else isn’t so great: Williams seems to be doing what they’re doing, though she isn’t, and everyone else in in sync with what Williams is doing, sort of. They’re related.

Gabe Stone Shayer in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Serenade after Plato’s Symposium”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor.

It’s somewhat of a miraculous transition, particularly since I suppose to most viewers it’s simply an unusual way to choreograph a dance to music by The Beach Boys. To me, Tharp’s poorly camouflaged point is that ballet and contemporary dance movement have more in common than one might think, and although they may be different branches of the same tree, the tree binds them both together. Other choreographers have observed the differences between one era of dance and another, or between a generalized contemporary movement and ballet, but none to my knowledge, at least as of 1973, had emphasized their commonality.

Williams, clearly intended to be more visible than any other single dancer, pulled off being the focus of attention, executing with intentionally stoic perfection. She wasn’t isolated; she was commanding. The other twenty members of the cast (by my rough count), did stellar work as well.

Christine Shevchenko
and Joseph Gorak
in Twyla Tharp’s
“The Brahms-Haydn Variations”
Photo by Marty Sohl

The Beach Boys songs seem somewhat dated now, as, in a way, does the dance. But it’s still a wonderful piece of work. Not at all dated is Tharp’s The Brahms-Haydn Variations, which opened the program.

Created in 2000, The Brahms-Haydn Variations is a different type of work, but one that’s equally brilliant. To Variations on a Theme by Haydn for Orchestra, Op. 56a by Johannes Brahms,Tharp here has choreographed a classical-looking, purely abstract piece for five couples (who aren’t always paired together): Misty Copeland, Luciana Paris, Hee Seo, Christine Shevchenko, Sarah Lane, Joo Won Ahn, Gabe Stone Shayer, Blaine Hoven, Joseph Gorak, and Gary Pogossian; two featured couples: Rachel Richardson, Betsy McBride, Jose Sebastian, and Duncan Lyle), and an 8/8 corps, all of whom gave the piece the majesty, power, and yet sensitivity it deserves. In Santo Loquasto’s costumes, and with Jennifer Tipton’s lighting, the stage looked bathed in gold.

Not surprisingly given its title, the ballet is a series of variations on a theme – but it’s not as dry as that simplistic description implies, and once it gets moving it proceeds in brief visual explosions until its powerful conclusion. I thought that Paris and Shayer did the most consistently excellent work, although at one point Seo and Hoven melted into each other with spectacular sensitivity. And Bogossian, whom I don’t recall previously seeing, and Rachel Richardson, whom I definitely do, were other standouts.

The evening concluded with Tharp’s masterpiece (one of them), In the Upper Room. I’ve reviewed this dance several times previously, so there’s no need here to discuss it in detail.

American Ballet Theatre
in Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room”
Photo by Marty Sohl

I attended this performance to see what, in large part, was a brand new cast, led by Stephanie Williams, Wanyue Qiao, and Catherine Hurlin as the “pajama” girls (with Williams and Qiao as the lead pair), and Breanne Granlund and Zimmi Coker as the two “red toe-shoe girls.” They all danced with thrilling exuberance, as well as that appearance of wonder that sometimes comes with first efforts. And when Tharp appeared for the curtain calls, the cast, and the audience, erupted in unmistakable joy.

I’ve reviewed Ratmansky’s Harlequinade and Whipped Cream previously at length, and they require no further elaboration here. The world premiere this season, his The Seasons, premiered at the ABT Gala program on May 20, and then joined his Songs of Bukovina and On the Dnieper in a “Ratmansky Trilogy” program that followed the Gala. I loved Songs of Bukovina and On the Dnieper when they were first presented, and I hope ABT brings them back for its Fall, 2019 Season so I have another opportunity to see them.

ABT’s Gala Program was dedicated to Ratmansky. For the occasion, in addition to a film clip featuring Ratmansky in rehearsal, the evening included the only showing of his Serenade after Plato’s Symposium this Met season, and the world premiere.

American Ballet Theatre
in Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Seasons”
Photo by Marty Sohl

The Seasons isn’t the best of Ratmansky’s ballets. But it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is: as Ratmansky stated, it’s a celebration – of his 10^th Anniversary as the company’s Artist in Residence, and of ABT and its dancers. On that level, it’s both spot on and great fun. And if you add Ratmansky’s endlessly clever choreography, it’s often better than that.

The Seasons isn’t a rehash of Jerome Robbins’s The Four Seasons. For one, it’s not comic; for another, it’s not Vivaldi – it’s Glazunov. And it’s not linear. Well, it is, sort of, but the seasons overlap, and frequently return to steal time from the subsequent season – as happens in the real world. Also as happens in the real world, Spring and Fall are the shortest segments, and seem to appear and disappear much too quickly.

American Ballet Theatre
in Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Seasons”
Photo by Marty Sohl

The ballet’s highlights were spread throughout the piece. They included all of “Winter,” particularly Katherine Williams’s “Frost” (that’s the character’s name), and Hurlin’s sensational “Hail”; Cassandra Trenary and Calvin Royal III’s exuberant Autumn (as “Bacchante” and “Bacchus” respectively); and a delightful dance for Summer’s “Cornflowers,” “Water Men” (both consisting of members of the corps), and “Poppies” (talented students from ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School). The audience was thrilled with James Whiteside’s (Spring’s “Zephyr”) bicycle lift of Isabella Boylston (Summer’s “Spirit of the Corn”}. And most special was when Spring dancers Sarah Lane and Skylar Brandt returned in Summer, and Ratmansky inserted a cheeky little sequence for Lane and the Water Men in which they each took turns promenading Lane while she was en pointe in arabesque. Lane’s character was “The Rose.” It was, in a way, the blossoming of the Rose petal by petal. But it was also a wonderfully clever nod to The Rose Adagio.

Thomas Forster in Alexei Ratmansky’s
“Serenade after Plato’s Symposium”
Photo by Marty Sohl

Earlier, Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium was given a superb, powerhouse performances. In my first few observations, I took the piece’s connection with Plato’s Symposium literally, and thought that male solos lacked focus (they were great dances, but their meaning eluded me), and that the addition of a ballerina as the sine qua non of beauty and an ideal of love to which all the men in the piece reach out to at the dance’s conclusion was not compatible with Plato’s emphasis on platonic love. But if you forget Plato and focus on Ratmansky’s craft, the flawless execution by the seven male dancers (Devon Teuscher was the “ideal”), it’s one of his best pieces. Tyler Maloney, Thomas Forster, Joseph Gorak, Alexandre Hamoudi, and particularly Royal, Shayer, and Daniil Simkin, gave superb portrayals.

It would have been admirable if ABT had returned his Shostakovich Trilogy to its repertory this season to further honor Ratmansky – and perhaps to make a statement. But, like the return of Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove, which is long overdue and would have been an appropriate addition to the Tharp Celebration, that will have to wait for another season.

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Sadler’s Wells Theatre,
London

4 June 2019

Maggie Foyer

San Francisco Ballet has already made an impressive start to their London visit. In Programme C, the company delivers wall-to-wall dance, three works predominantly abstract where a look or touch signals a relationship that may – or may not – just go somewhere.

Mathilde Froustey and Carlo Di Lanno in Welch’s Bespoke
Photo: Erik Tomasson

Stanton Welch teams up with J.S. Bach in Bespoke, a work tailored to the company’s classical standards. Opening in silence, Carlo di Lanno shapes the air with formal ports de bras before launching into variations of technical bravura to match the speed and velocity of Bach’s violin concerti. Dressed in sporty gear that accentuates their clean lines, each of the dozen dancers has an opportunity to prove their skills. The whirlwind of fouettés and chaines executed at the speed of light, and tours en l’air of textbook perfection are only punctuated briefly with an occasional nonchalant balance to catch breath. In the closing moments, now in more sombre mood, a couple embrace in the fading golden light. It’s an accomplished work and a fine addition to the company repertoire.

Yuan Yuan Tan and Luke Ingham in Scarlett’s Hummingbird
Photo: Erik Tomasson

Hummingbird, one of Liam Scarlett’s best, captures the restless motion of the hummingbird in the constant flow of movement from the ensemble, in fluid arms and agitated feet. At its heart is a duet by Yuan Yuan Tan and Luke Ingham, intense and full of longing. Tan opens with a lingering solo that finds inner depth in every gesture and extension. Then together they draw out the unrequited essence of Philip Glass’s Tirol Concerto giving physical shape to the haunting melodies. Even their slow walk across the front of the stage is riveting: two dark silhouettes as the light come on the dancers behind.

Sasha De Sola and Angelo Greco share an equivocal and fragmented relationship that chimes well with the extraordinary set offering Greco a surprise entrance as he slips in under the backdrop. The sloped stage at the rear makes a treacherous surface the brings an edge of uncertainty to the entrances. There is longing and unease in their pairing and parting, Greco relaxed and sophisticated, De Sola longing for something else. It is left to Dores André and Joseph Walsh to brighten the mood in the jazzy final section: a beautifully matched pair in lighthearted mode. It’s a work that offer splendid dance opportunities and endless interpretations.

San Francisco Ballet in Peck’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Photo: Erik Tomasson

André and Walsh feature again in Justin Peck’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. André has the energy of an electric current and is also a linking theme as she whizzes through the ballet, tying up the disparate sections while enjoying the freedom that comes with dancing in sneakers. A contrast comes in the lyrical duet from Elizabeth Powell and Ingham given committed performances although the music offered little inspiration. The duet with Walsh and André added spice as the dancers personalise their virtuosity to ginger up the partnership.

San Francisco Ballet are making a memorable visit to London. The energy, the dedication and the artistry of the dancers just keeps flowing and there is still one more triple bill to go.

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Royal Albert Hall
London

6 & 8 June, 2019

Maggie Foyer

When Christopher Wheeldon branched into musical theatre with his award winning, An American in Paris, he obviously learnt a thing or two. His adaptation of Cinderella to the huge dimensions of the Royal Albert Hall has moments of breath-taking spectacle while keeping the entire company fully engaged and literally on their toes for the duration of a very busy evening.

Cinderella in the round
Photo: Ian Gavan

Cinderella, written for the Dutch National Ballet in 2012, is freely adapted from the traditional tale to develop a substantial back story, notable for the three principal roles: Cinderella, Prince Guillaume, and his friend Benjamin. We see the child Cinderella weeping at her mother’s grave, and then the two boisterous friends causing havoc in the palace corridors. Cinderella, treated as a servant in her own house, now ruled by her step-mother, has the guidance and protection of four Fates who enhance her role as they lift and carry her as she fulfils her household duties.

In Act 1, she is able to establish herself as a young woman of strength and character. Alina Cojocaru and Maria Kochetkova, both fragile in build but with huge inner strength, looked the part while each in their own way allowing the spark of fierce independence to shine through.

The King demands the reluctant Prince should marry and in defiance he readily joins in a subterfuge, wearing a beggar’s old clothes to accompany a royally dressed Benjamin to deliver engagement ball invitations. It’s a clever ploy that gains him Cinderella’s sympathy and a warm seat by the fire. While this takes some of the sheen off their encounter at the ball, it provides a lovely, private moment of togetherness dancing on the kitchen table.

The fairy-tale magic of Cinderella’s transformation for the ball was the visual high spot. The dozens of dancers from the Seasons came together in a kaleidoscope of colour and the stairs through the auditorium were alive with the strange forest creatures making their way to the stage. The excitement builds as Cinderella’s carriage, created by the Fates rearing in their horses’ heads or twirling giant wheels, carry her to the ball in a cloud of golden silk.

Cinderella in the round
Photo: Ian Gavan

Opening on a centrepiece of a giant chandelier, the ballroom becomes a swirl of purple and blue silk and waltzing couples. While the death of Cinderella’s mother was handled with great sensitivity as, like an angel, she flies up to heaven on huge white wings, . I wish there had been a moment of similar imagination to fly Cinderella into the ballroom to replace her rather understated entrance. Cinderella enchants the guests (and audience) with a quirky solo ending on a dramatic high-flying finish, thanks to the Fates who are still on hand to see she gets the Prince’s attention. Prince and Cinderella, of course get the grand pas and there is the traditional turmoil at midnight.

The comedy was left to the stepmother and the two sisters, one beastly, one sugar-sweet and definitely not ugly. For mother it was a no holds barred battle to ensnare the Prince into marriage with one of her daughters. The scheme shifts to high comedy as a surfeit of wine and ambition combine to floor her. In Wheeldon’s hands it becomes an attractive role demanding both technical and comedic skills. Tamara Rojo took to the role in the manner born, in fierce, broad comedy while Begoña Cao gained her laughs with a sharper, finer edge. Some of Wheeldon’s cleverest comic scenes come in the sisters’ duet of virtuosic one-upmanship. Just when bitchy Edwina seems to have triumphed, Cupid shoots his arrow and Benjamin is smitten by sweet bespectacled Clementine and a delightful alternative romance blossoms. In the two, very good pairings I saw, Shiori Kase shone with a totally endearing, huggable Clementine.

Katja Khaniukova and Jeffrey Cirio in Cinderella
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

The ballet gets a high energy boost from Benjamin who bags some of the best dance of the evening and Jeffrey Cirio, made a strong impression in the role as support to Isaac Hernández’s prince. Cirio’s later performance as the Prince, highlighted the dramatic advantages built into this supporting role. However, the vast space of the arena gave these wonderful technicians, Hernández, Cirio and Francesco Gabriele Frola, (as Benjamin) a playground for a magnificent display of jetés en manége and leaps of all descriptions. The layered storyline in Act 1, gives Cinderella the chance to develop a sympathetic and appealing character but the centre stage stardom needed in Act 2 is underplayed leaving even truly great dancers like Cojocaru and Kochetkova with an uphill battle to catch and hold attention,

The Fates, Junor Souza, James Forbat, James Streeter and Francisco Bosch, masked and unobtrusive underpin the ballet, providing both physical and dramatic support in some of the most interesting choreograph of the evening. The sheer amount of great talent on stage is displayed in the doubling up of the solo seasons: just seeing Aitor Arrieta and Daniel McCormick dancing side by side in the Summer variation shows the enormous and growing strength of the company.

Basil Twist’s magical tree from the stage show is sadly lost, but the brilliant projections to create house, palace and blue sky filled with chirruping birds and a clever ‘tree’ of silk panels fills the gap. Julian Crouch’s grotesquely appealing forest creatures are an inspired touch. The clever opening of Act 3, with dozens of hopefuls waiting their turn to try the shoe was another successful piece of staging. While Wheeldon’s choreography is at times uneven, the beauty of Prokofiev’s score and the visual setting carry the evening.

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Sadler’s Wells
London

7th June 2019

Stuart Sweeney

It’s been a great treat having San Francisco Ballet back in London with no less than twelve commissioned works, all from the past decade. Programme D kicked off with Christopher Wheeldon’s Bound To, an exploration of the impact of technology on our lives: creating isolation and a dissociation from the beauty of the world around us. The choreographer is previously on record celebrating the introduction of new movement but also the virtues of classical pointe work. Thus it was a surprise that throughout Bound To the women are all on demi-pointe, a first from Wheeldon. This switch seems to have freed him, resulting in innovative and compelling choreography.

Dores André and Benjamin Freemantle in Wheeldon’s Bound To
Photo: Erik Tomasson

Initially we see a group of individuals entranced by their phones, ignoring their companions and periodically displaying anxious movement. A series of vignettes follows, enlarging on the work’s themes. In the gently humorous but melancholy Open Your Eyes, Benjamin Freemantle constantly returns to his screen, largely ignoring the attempts of Dores André to focus on their relationship. There are memorable moments including André stretched over Freemantle’s kneeling figure, entranced by his screen. In Remember When we Used To Talk, Dores André and Sasha De Sola seem to look back to a happier period with tender holds and supportive movement.

At the opening of Take a Deep Breath, Yuan Yuan Tan walks across the stage eyes down on her tablet only to have it snatched away by a figure from the wings. The ensuing, loving duet to birdsong presents a convincing alternative to the isolation of technology. Finally, in Trying to Breathe, Lonnie Weeks is in animated despair, jaggedly rushing around the stage. Other characters come and try to comfort him, but when he eventually collapses, they move away. One woman looks back, wondering if she should help, but then turns away to focus on her phone – a downbeat end to this impressive addition to Wheeldon’s portfolio.

San Francisco Ballet in McIntyre’s Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem
Photo: Erik Tomasson

The programme notes tell us that Trey McIntyre’s Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Pleasure had a double genesis: a 1920’s photograph of his grandfather, Benjamin, and a solar eclipse in San Francisco; the idea being that the lunar, sun line up creates a portal through time to open and close the work. While I didn’t find the link up convincing, the eclipse images are gorgeous. McIntyre has much fun with scenes from Benjamin’s life – first with his friends and then the women competing for his attention. In the closing scene, Benjamin Freemantle gives vivid expression to his namesake character’s confusion and anguish as he grapples with dementia, including a riveting image of the old man swimming or drowning stretched out over a stool.

Wona Park in Dawson’s Anima Animus
Photo: Erik Tomasson

David Dawson’s Anima Animus is inspired by Carl Jung’s use of the terms to describe the male aspect of the female psyche and its inverse. The result is a kinetic work with costumes in black and white mirror imaged for the two genders. The women have a romp with animus, roaring onto the stage throughout with arms stretched upwards and dominating the virtuoso lifts and spins. The anima for the men was less clear, apart from a supporting role allowing the women to excel. While the work provides an exciting vehicle for San Francisco’s excellent dancers, I found the 30-minute work unrelenting in its high pace, driven by Ezio Bosso’s frenzied score.

Wei Wang in Ratmansky’s Symphony #9
Photo: Erik Tomasson

Looking back over the four programmes presented by San Francisco Ballet, some highlights emerge. From Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy, Symphony #9, depicts the regimented life in the Soviet Union and forceful commitment to party conformity, contrasted with a haunting duet, the characters looking over their shoulders for informers. Wei Wang is electrifying as a maverick figure, jumping and spinning. I suspect President Putin, keen to restore Stalin’s image, would not approve.

It was my second time seeing Liam Scarlett’s “Hummingbird” and it remains one of my favourites from his repertoire. Built around three varied relationships, the central one is the most remarkable, with a troubled Yuan Yuan Tan resisting the concerned approaches of Luke Ingham. At one point, they slowly back across the front of the stage, with a small turn of Tan’s head conveying the depth of her melancholy. Throughout the visit, Tan underlined her status as a technical and expressive marvel.

Helgi Tomasson has lead SFB for 34 years and has a deservedly high reputation for developing an outstanding company with an extraordinary record in new commissions. Two additional points I appreciated: Tomasson is a fine choreographer himself, but decided not to feature his own work on this visit – I wonder how many director/choreographers would do the same. For each performance we not only get the names of the designers, but also the organisations responsible for the construction of the sets and the costumes – a well deserved tribute. My only complaint is the seven year wait we had to endure before this visit. Come back soon, ya hear?

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

May 29 and 31, 2019
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Jerry Hochman

It seemed as if Spring would never get to the New York area this year: while Winter 2019 was neither particularly snowy nor extraordinarily frigid, the seemingly constant barrage of cold, wet air was debilitating. So the return of George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which closed New York City Ballet’s Spring, 2019 season and its 2018-2019 year, was particularly welcome.

Shakespeare’s story require no elaboration, and Balanchine’s adaptation of it only minimal comment. Balanchine essentially covers the story’s basics in Act I of his ballet, and creates an Act II, which includes much (though by no means all) of the dance’s choreography, out of thin air: transferring the “Wedding” to the beginning of Act II, and then creating a celebration of it. The highlights, aside from the comedy and how the four dancers playing the human lovers carry it off, are the portrayals (both characterization and execution) of Titania and Oberon, the Act I pas de deux for Titania and her Cavalier, the Act II divertissement pas de deux, Puck, the execution by the Amazon Queen, Hipollyta, Butterfly, the characterizations, and the young dancers from the School of American Ballet who play butterflies and fairies. That about covers everything in it, but, as is always the case, the devil is in the details.

Sara Mearns
and Preston Chamblee
in George Balanchine’s
”A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Erin Baiano

But Dream is far more than its component parts, and heretical as it may sound, Dream is also more than its component cast members: at this level, anyone in the Company will deliver superlative performances. Dream is guaranteed to send any viewer, whether familiar with ballet or not, home happy – and the collective “aahhh-that’s where it comes from” as the orchestra opens Act II with Mendelsohn’s Wedding March may alone be worth the price of admission. Dream is a … dream.

I saw two performances during Dream’s seven-performance run: Wednesday, May 20 and Friday, May 31. Neither cast disappointed, and with only a few exceptions, the highlights of one were essentially the same as the highlights for the other.

Although not part of the story per se, for me the most magical part of the ballet (aside from its concluding image) is the Act II pas de deux. For his first full length ballet choreographed in America (it’s difficult to believe, but it opened NYCB’s first season at Lincoln Center in 1964, and was created two years before that), Balanchine wisely decided to save the best for last. But to do that, as well as some other additions to the story, he had to augment Felix Mendelsohn’s score (Overture (Op. 21) and Incidental Music (Op. 61) for A Midsummer Night’s Dream) with additional Mendelsohn music. With respect to the Act II pas de deux, the musical augmentation fit within perfectly within the ballet’s parameters. The choreography does too.

Anthony Huxley
in George Balanchine’s
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

I can’t say that the Act II pas de deux is Balanchine’s most romantic pas de deux – there are so many of them. But I suspect it’s his most obvious paean to love, and in one dance it encompasses (aside from the comedy) what A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about. Every time I see it, I sense that I’ll never see another executed as meaningfully, and with such muted but obvious passion. And Balanchine summarizes it in one brilliant moment: the pas de deux’s final moving image of the danseur cradling the ballerina in his right arm, and then almost imperceptively nudging her into a momentarily unsupported “free fall,” only to be again cradled – this time within his welcoming left arm. In a ballet filled with magical moments, this is the most choreographically magical of them all.

On Wednesday, Sterling Hyltin and Amar Ramasar danced the pas de deux. Hyltin never fails to deliver an exceptional performance in any role, and this was no exception. But for this performance, Ramasar’s presence was more meaningful. I once wrote that Ramasar was the most underrated of NYCB principal dancers. That tide turned shortly thereafter, and he’s been recognized by audiences as one of NYCB’s best. His absence in the last few seasons was bewildering, but having him now back where he belongs is almost as much of a joy for audiences as it doubtlessly is for him. And here, the warmth between Hyltin and Ramasar, and between them and the audience, was palpable.

Two nights later, Lauren Lovette returned to this role (her only performance of it this season), partnered by Andrew Veyette. Lovette was as magical as she always is, delivering a superlative portrayal, maybe even more dreamy than I’ve previously seen. But the surprise, to me, was Veyette. Veyette frequently appears distant and a bit underachieving, but he always somehow manages to pull a finely executed performance seemingly out of his hat. This was no exception. My initial take was that he and Lovette did not appear to be the best of pairings, but by the pas de deux’s end, Veyette had convinced me, yet again, that he’s an excellent partner who may appear less exciting than others, but he gets the job done. And this was his role debut.

Sara Mearns and Anthony Huxley (replacing Gonzalo Garcia) were Wednesday’s Titania and Oberon, and Teresa Reichlen was Friday’s Titania, with Huxley repeating his role.

Teresa Reichlen
and New York City Ballet dancers
in George Balanchine’s
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

Mearns is a first rate Titania, as is Reichlen. Each executed with flawless precision, each executed Balanchine’s choreography (including her Act I solo) with unusual flair, and each brought an essential level of warmth to their portrayals to accompany the equally essential appearance of nobility. Perceived differences between their performances are subjective: to my eye, Reichlen’s Titania appeared to me more “fairy-tale” genuine, and her presence fit the role slightly better, but she was aided in that respect by a superlative performance by her Cavalier, Silas Farley, who brought a compelling presence to his role that Wednesday’s Cavalier, Russell Janzen, lacked. As a result, the Act I pas de deux which often looks perfunctory, looked regally (i.e., coolly) passionate.

Huxley’s Oberon is a remarkably accomplished portrayal, not just because he overcomes his slight appearance to appear legitimately and naturally regal. It almost goes without saying that his execution was both immaculate and exciting.

Roman Mejia in George Balanchine’s
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Puck is the engine that makes A Midsummer Night’s Dream move, and the hyper-energetic character that is most indelible. Harrison Ball and Roman Mejia assayed the role on Wednesday and Friday, respectively. Perhaps unintentionally, Ball added a touch of seriousness – maybe malevolence – to his portrayal, making the role look more complex and interesting, and certainly different from the norm. Mejia, who debuted in the role earlier in the week, was squarely in the more traditional lovable rascal camp, and his Puck was particularly endearing.

I’ve seen Georgina Pazcoguin’s Hippolyta previously, and she always delivers the requisite commanding portrayal befitting an Amazon Queen. Wednesday’s performance, however, seemed more bullish than royal. On the other hand, Friday’s Hippolyta, Emily Kikta, gave one of the finest portrayals of this role that I’ve seen. Aside from sterling execution, her Hippolyta was a compelling Warrior Princess, making the role compelling as well as exciting, as well as a believable bride to Aaron Sanz, her effusive Theseus.

Emily Kitka in George Balanchine’s
“€œA Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Erin Baiano

Wednesday night’s lovers were played by Erica Pereira, Lauren King, Lars Nelson, and Daniel Applebaum (respectively as Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius); on Friday these roles were assumed by Emily Gerrity, Unity Phelan, Andrew Scordato, and Alec Knight. Comic timing is critical for these roles, and although both casts were commendable in that respect, Friday’s was a bit cleaner. Both Pereira and Gerrity shined in their respective Act I, with Pereira appearing more appropriately frazzled, but that’s really a distinction without a difference. In roles that are far more demanding than they appear, Kristen Segin and Claire Von Enck were equally fine as Butterfly.

Lastly, the 24 young SAB ballerinas-in-the-making who portrayed Butterflies and Fairies in Oberon’s Kingdom add an undeniable and invaluable magical ingredient to Dream, and they’re an exceptionally capable group. As much as any of the other components of the ballet, they’re a breath of fresh air, and they make A Midsummer Night’s Dream the dream it always is.

Harrison Ball
and New York City Ballet dancers
in George Balanchine’s
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
Photo by Paul Kolnik

The conclusion of a season is a time to take stock, and to opine on NYCB’s accomplishments and its future. Overall, the company is performing at a very high level, and is rapidly and adequately filling holes created by recent departures and inevitable injuries. But, as I’ve observed previously, the company’s position as the most exciting ballet company in New York is a precarious one, and one that depends in large part not only on the quality of its dancers, but on the opportunities provided to its younger dancers to grow. Since Peter Martins’s departure, and for whatever reason, those opportunities appear to have significantly diminished. An example is this year’s Dream: of the seven performances, there were no debuts as Titania or for the ballerina in the Act II pas de deux, and those newest in the roles (Lovette in the pas de deux, and Miriam Miller as Titania) were given one performance each: the rest were divided among more senior dancers. The same was true of the past Winter season’s casting for The Sleeping Beauty.

Make no mistake: these “senior” dancers are by no means beyond their prime (on the contrary, in the overall scheme of things, most are relatively new principals, and few can be considered unworthy of the roles they’ve been given), and all are capable of delivering superlative performances. That’s not the issue. A balance is necessary to keep the company growing, to insure its future, and to avoid a sense of same-old same-old stodginess. As the company’s new leadership becomes more secure, I trust that NYCB’s excitement will return. And at the very least, returning next Spring will be another week of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

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Limón Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

June 1, 2019
The Weather in the Room, The Moor’s Pavane, Radical Beasts in the Forest of Possibilities (world premiere), Psalm (Excerpt)

Jerry Hochman

Limón Dance Company returned to the Joyce Theater for a week run with a mixed program that’s fairly typical for a company still tied to its legacy, but attempting to move beyond it: One classic Limón dance, an excerpt from another that I’d not previously seen, the New York premiere of a dance by its current Artistic Director, Colin Connor, and a world premiere by Francesca Harper. Frequently also typical, the pieces by company co-founder José Limón, Psalm and The Moor’s Pavane, outclassed the rest of the program.

I’ll first address the evening’s “new” dances, and will return to the Limón classics thereafter.

The evening opened with The Weather in the Room, a piece that Connor created in 2015 for the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theater, and which premiered in Toronto. This engagement was its New York premiere.

A dance that explores a deteriorated but comfortable relationship – a not uncommon feature of lengthy relationships – is not exactly cutting edge, but I’ll grant that Connor’s concept of its presentation – the couple in situ surrounded by other dancers who embody the atmosphere that reflects, or compels, the couples’ actions – is sufficiently unusual to make another examination of a mature relationship worth the effort. However, as presented, and notwithstanding some relatively clever staging, The Weather in the Room lacks the substance that make a dance more than something quickly forgettable.

Miki Orihara and Stephen Pier
in Colin Connor’s
“The Weather in the Room”
Photo by Christopher Jones

Much has been made of Connor’s effort here to create an “inter-generational” dance, but here inter-generational doesn’t mean that senior dancers dance roles usually reserved for more youthful dancers. Here, inter-generational just means that older dancers play older people – like character dancers in a ballet who still move with a certain style, but whose dance-like movement is at best limited. The couple is played by guest artists (and real-life couple) Miki Orihara and Stephen Pier, who decidedly provide a level of verisimilitude in their portrayal of a mature couple usually absent from younger dancers costumed and acting like seniors. And certainly Orihara, a former principal with the Martha Graham Company who still moves and emotes expressively and with a burning internal passion, and Pier, a former member of the Royal Danish Ballet, the Hamburg Ballet, and the Limón Company who has an imposing stage presence, are excellent choices as the couple. That’s not the issue – nor is the choreography for the six company dancers who collectively comprise “The Weather.” Rather, the concept, which sounds interesting in the abstract, does it in.

The dance has no program note beyond reference to the “powerful mature guest artists” and an interesting unattributed quote: “For every couple, the quotidian is hardly ordinary.” [The program note omits the close quote, which I assume is a typographical error rather than a meaningful comment.] In a nutshell, that is indeed what The Weather in the Room is about: that the ordinary and mundane day to day actions are not ordinary, and are particular to the couple portrayed. Well, sure, every couple is different, and the energies that surround one couple may be peculiar to that couple. But the nuts and bolts of a couple’s relationship lack any semblance of drama when what’s presented is their ordinary and mundane actions, however they may be impacted by the atmosphere around them: ignoring each other, taking each other for granted, picking fights over festering irritations, making up, and in the end, still maintaining what usually passes as a loving relationship.

The couple is initially featured in a set-off area downstage left (apparently some sort of parlor or corner of their bedroom, though that’s not clear), who appear to have just returned home after an evening “out.” Orihara, stunningly costumed in a red dress, and Pier, wearing a formal-looking dark suit, studiously ignore each other as they settle in. Their distance is, apparently, a product of familiarity: there’s still some semblance of mutual feeling, but it’s smothered by the mundane. To music by Sarah Sugarman (from a variety of unspecified compositions) that mirrors the atmosphere on stage, the couple and the personified “weather in the room” dancers act and dance and cook the ingredients for what in the end is still a cheesy omelet regardless of how it’s dressed up.

Frances Samson and Terrence Diable
in Colin Connor’s
“The Weather in the Room”
Photo by Christopher Jones

The collective Weather is somewhat of a Greek chorus, especially when they form a physical perimeter within which the couple exists. Their primary function, however, is to represent energy forces in the atmosphere that surrounds the couple. Befitting forces that don’t have a corporeal existence, these dancers are costumed in billowy, off-white outfits (all costumes designed by Krista Dowson) that accentuate the flow of Connor’s choreography. And I’ll admit that the dance intriguingly raises the question whether these forces reflect the couple’s actions, or compel them, but to the extent its raised, that issue isn’t really pursued.

Much of the dance is nicely staged. Rather than being confined to their initial corner of the stage, the mature couple and the carpet on which they stand move from point to point around the stage (moved as a fluid part of the choreography by the energy forces), so the dance hardly looks as static as the above description might sound. Similarly, although there always appears to be an emotional distance between them, the couples’ interactions are not limited to ignoring each other’s presence: they fume, they argue, they make up. And the choreography for the six Weather dancers (Terence D.M. Diable, Mariah Gravelin, Gregory Hamilton, Eric Parra, Frances Samson, and Lauren Twomley, with Twomley and Parra particular standouts) is as varied as the energy wind’s direction and speed – and in its movement character appears closest to Limón’s style (considering that Connor spent eight years as a soloist with the Limón Company, that’s not surprising). But in the end, The Weather in the Room is a depiction, unusual as that depiction may be, of the ordinary and mundane that doesn’t rise above that. And you don’t really need a chorus of weathermen and weatherwomen to know which way the wind blows – or that there’s a wind at all.

(l-r) Jacqueline Bulnes, Mark Willis,
and David Glista in Francesca Harper’s
“Radical Beasts in the Forest of Possibilities”
Photo by Christopher Jones

Radical Beasts in the Forest of Possibilities, choreographed by Francesca Harper to music composed (and performed live) by Nona Hendryx, is yet more of a puzzlement. The dance, absent program notes, appears to be a visualization of the impact of the digital age on humanity and human relationships. That sort of cosmic theme, however, is reduced to a jumble of movement expressive of digital stress and angst: shaking hands, quaking bodies, lunging movement. It’s not pretty, and it’s not intended to be: it’s a cruel world in which humans struggle to maintain some semblance of humanity. The eight Limón dancers do extraordinary work here, but the dance’s dark images speak of a struggle that they will ultimately lose, despite efforts to escape the digital carnage.

It remained to José Limón to make the evening meaningful.

The Limón Company was founded in 1946 by Limón and its first Artistic Director, Doris Humphrey, to provide an outlet for Limón’s choreographic style and genius, honed through his prior association with the legendary Humphrey-Weidman Company, and the sense of noble humanity that he imbued in his characters, all tempered by his being a Mexican emigrant in a what even then was a richly diverse national community. As I’ve previously observed, what strikes instantly in his dances is not only the sense of gravity and weight, the ‘fall and recovery’ technique that Humphrey pioneered, and a focus on expression through dance that supplants the superficialities and bravura displays found in other theater dance styles, but also in many of the pieces, a surprising airiness and upward, spiritual or dramatic force. With feet firmly planted on the ground, Limón choreography also reaches for the stars.

The Limon Company in Jose Limon’s “Psalm”
Photo by Douglas Cody

In 1967, Limón created Psalm. As he did in so many of his other dances, including The Unsung, a tribute to Native Americans which I saw during the company’s 2015 Joyce Theater season (and of course in The Moor’s Pavane), Limón’s focus in Psalm isn’t so much on the tradition, but on its meaning. The story is derived from the ancient Jewish Talmudic story that all the sorrows of the world are borne by 36 “Just Men.” The dance distills this to one man. While it sounds like a sort of Hebraic version of Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, this visualization isn’t heroic in the sense of physical strength – its heroism is spiritual. And this man is not specially anointed – he may be chosen, but the only aspect of the character that’s exceptional is the burden he carries.

As presented in this program, Psalm is not the complete Limón original. In 2002, then Artistic Director Carla Maxwell reconfigured it, reducing its length and commissioning a new score (by Jon Magnussen). My understanding is that this performance, to honor Maxwell, may not have been the complete Maxwell reduction (the program references it as an “excerpt”). Regardless, based on what was presented, Psalm remains an emotionally vivid depiction of silent suffering and heroism.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot about Psalm (at least this incarnation of it) that’s remindful of Jerome Robbins’s Dybbuk. Not of course in the story, or the style, but in the sense of community and ritual and responsibility that permeates it. Even in reduced form, its power is almost … biblical. David Glista is the “Just Man” who emerges from the line of worshippers to shoulder an unbearable burden without knowing that he’s one of the Just Men [Part of the story is that these Just Men are anonymous;  concealed within the Jewish population so they could not be identified and subjugated. Neither the Just Men nor their associates know they’re Just Men.] Glista’s portrayal of this man’s inexplicable torment and his endurance as a sort of gift to his people is almost too much to bear.

The Original Cast
(left, Jose Limon) in
“The Moor’s Pavane”
Photo by Barrat

As fine a work as Psalm is, however, it cannot eclipse Limón’s indisputable masterpiece. I was lucky enough to have seen The Moor’s Pavane on the first live program of dance I ever saw (in January, 1972, performed by American Ballet Theatre) and it remains every bit as powerful to me now as it did then.

That this dance is a brilliant distillation of Othello is not debatable – even though the characters from Othello are not identified by name, they’re Shakespeare’s characters, and the story is Shakespeare’s story. But the story is only part of what makes The Moor’s Pavane brilliant – the rest is Limón’s multi-faceted miracle of inspiration and composition. His choice of dance form and musical accompaniment fits the 16th-century story like a glove. It could not have been an accident that Limón selected a highly mannered Italian Renaissance dance with Spanish – and likely Moorish – influences as the piece’s structural framework, and Baroque music for its accompaniment (appropriately stately excerpts from compositions by English Baroque composer Henry Purcell).

(front) Jesse Obremski,
and (l-r) Savannah Spratt,
Mark Willis, and Jacqueline Bulnes
in Jose Limon’s “The Moor’s Pavane”
Photo by Hayim Heron

More remarkable still is how Limón presents the story. Dissected, it’s a creative fusion: Limón’s typical choreographic style seamlessly grafted onto a Renaissance frame – fierce and vigorous thrusts, uncomplicated movement that appears natural albeit within the courtly context, and a juxtaposition of circular and linear energy flows. The acting is a consequence of the choreography, and equally powerful. You can see the green-eyed monster as it transforms from an implanted idea to the perdition that catches Othello’s soul and the chaos that overwhelms him. It is both strikingly simple and extraordinarily complex, and as crystalline a merger of dance and drama as can be imagined.

While this program’s cast seemed less powerful than others I recall seeing, that’s relative – and perhaps a consequence of the persistence of memory. Mark Willis’s Moor had a rougher, less noble demeanor than I recall seeing in prior portrayals, but it was not inappropriate, and indeed made the Moor’s actions somewhat less out of character. As “His Friend” (Iago), Jesse Obremski was a calculating serpent, and Savannah Spratt, “The Moor’s Wife” (Desdemona), was appropriately innocent and bewildered by events that made no sense. But to me, Jacqueline Bulnes’s portrayal of “His Friend’s Wife” (Emilia) was particularly riveting: her sense of betrayal and horror unmistakably expressed.

A challenge faced by all dance companies that heavily rely on masterworks of their founding choreographer is sustainability: how to maintain the legacy without being imprisoned by it. But that’s an unfortunate way to view the issue. To me, whether the company is Limón, or Martha Graham, New York City Ballet, or, now, Paul Taylor, the legacy is a continuing bequest rather than a barrier to future growth. To my eye, the “new dances” on this Limón program missed the mark, making the legacy pieces look even better by comparison. Eventually, new choreography will come along to satisfactorily plug scheduling gaps. In the meantime, it’s nice to have the Limón canon to rely on.

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Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, WA

June 1, 2019
Theme & Variations Program: Signature, Tarantella pas de deux, The Moor’s Pavane, Theme and Variations

Dean Speer

My continuing search for greatness needed to go no further than PNB’s recent Theme and Variations program. Each piece was strong and made for quite a good mixed program, but to me, the masterpiece was Jose Limon’s The Moor’s Pavane. This is real choreography of great depth and pathos depicted through a relatively short dance based on Shakespeare’s Othello. Conducted by a personal friend, Alastair Willis — and great to have this passionate music person do it, the tragic Moor was superbly danced by Jonathan Porretta, “His Friend” (Iago) — and with friends like this, who needs enemies — danced with menacing gravitas by Lucien Postlewaite, Cecilia Iliesiu was His Friend’s Wife (an unwitting pawn), and finally Rachel Foster as The Moor’s Wife, whose character doesn’t live to see another day. All are sorry and shocked at the conclusion. This piece has been in PNB’s repertory since 1986, and it was a treat to see and enjoy this work yet again!

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in Price Suddarth’s “Signature”‘
Photo by Angela Sterling.

A showcase bon-bon, George Balanchine’s Tarantella Pas de deux, had been out of PNB’s repertoire for quite a number of years, and it was so wonderful to welcome it back to the McCaw Hall stage. Leta Biasucci and Price Suddarth were superb as they fed off of each other’s bright energy and fun.

Suddarth also made the opening ballet, Signature, in 2015, and it was good to see it again. It’s a solid ballet. My only fuss would be the lighting design — an “industrial” look with the lighting instruments going up and down. (This is a “gimmick” that’s been used around in others’ dances, and my fuss is that the dancers were hard to see sometimes. I appreciate and enjoy atmosphere but it’s too dark, in this case.)

Angelica Generosa
and Kyle Davis
in George Balanchine’s
“Theme and Variations”
© The George Balanchine Trust
Photo by Angela Sterling

Nicely featured were Elizabeth Murphy, Lindsi Dec, Steven Loch, and William Lin-Yee backed by a strong chorus of 11 soloist-level company dancers, including the now retired and missed Rachel Foster.

Balanchine’s Theme and Variations was first made for Alicia Alonso (still around on the planet!) and Igor Youskevitch in 1947 for American Ballet Theatre (then known as Ballet Theatre). This jaw dropping large ensemble cast ballet is not merely a showcase for its principal couple but for each and every cast member who frames and presents the action. I loved seeing Angelica Generosa and Kyle Davis in the lead roles. Their superb classical technique was on show the entire time. Both are powerhouses with no assignment beyond their considerable prowess.

Emil de Cou led the mighty PNB Orchestra.

The post Pacific Northwest Ballet: Varying the Theme appeared first on CriticalDance.

Various venues
Amsterdam

June 2019

Maggie Foyer

Since 1947 the Holland Festival has been shining the spotlight on innovative and exciting art in all its many guises. In venues from the alternative theatres on the Nes, to the Muziek Theater (the home of the National Opera & Ballet) and from the iconic Eye Film Museum to free opera in the park, the Festival saturates Amsterdam with art for a month or so in early summer. This year, working with associate artists William Kentridge and Faustin Linyekula, the Festival brought Africa to Amsterdam. Linyekula hails from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kentridge from Johannesburg, South Africa. This is also the home of Gregory Maqoma whose performance was a highlight.

Gregory Maqoma in Beautiful Me
Photo: Val Adamson

In Beautiful Me, a solo of riveting magnetism, Maqoma explores his identity in a world of diverse dance. He credits three other choreographers for their input: Vincent Mantsoe (a fellow artist at Vuyani Dance Theatre) Linyekula and British-Bangladeshi, Akram Khan. It is Khan’s Kathak influence that is most visible in the opening scenes where Maqoma finds harmony in the rhythms and footwork between their two heritage techniques. He adds the filigree of fluttering Asian hands, hands that move with the speed of a hummingbird to become a blur in the light.

Maqoma has a compelling persona. Even when rooted to the spot, as he is in the long opening section, his entire frame is alive to the moment. When he breaks into full flow, moving fluidly across the stage, the theatre comes alive with the electricity he generates. He proves his dance skills in a blend of contemporary dance with an African influence. It’s powerful and persuasive but this is not dance in isolation as through words and brief images he brings up political issues, weaving the past into the present and not without a touch of irony. However, in the after show discussion he noted: ‘Everything we do these days is politicised, I want to get back to humanity’. This he achieves in the warmth and sincerity of the presentation.

Maqoma, dressed in a brilliant red tabard over dark trousers, was a peacock in display when he raised his arms. He was accompanied by an ensemble of five musicians, blending West and African in strings and percussion matching the dance with verve and vigour. It was an hour that never seemed long and left much food for thought.

La Danse de la Rue 19
Photo: Oscar OEO Ryan

‘Africa is shaped like a gun, and Congo is the trigger,’ is a quote attributed to Franz Fanon. Dans de la Rue 19, by Jeannot Kumbonyeki, reflected the political tensions in this volatile country. The inspiration came from the day he and his dancers watched yet another demonstration calling for President Kabila to step down. Many were killed and injured that day, but the dancers realised that nothing was going to change.

This inner turmoil is visible as Kumbonyeki stands silently, eyes downcast and very slowly his body starts to quiver building to a violent trembling. He is joined by two other men, Franck M’Zele Amisi and Josué Mawanika Shita. When the dance starts it’s violent, even self-destructive as the men break into ferocious street dance. Like bodies taking the bullets, they hurl themselves at the walls and floor. Huguette Tolinga, sitting on stage with her bank of percussion instruments, accompanies the drama bringing it to a close on the strike of a metallic gong and into a long dark pause.

Ann Masina in Paper Music
Photo: Caroline Naphegyi

William Kentridge is a multimedia artist and Paper Music staged at the spectacular Muziek Gebouw, is a feast of variety and difference. The theatre piece was the culmination of a twenty-five year partnership between Kentridge and pianist Philip Miller who has written the music to accompany Kentridge’s video art. At this performance there were also two remarkable singers, Ann Masina and Joanna Dudley. Masina with an operatic voice of great warmth and beauty and Dudley with a repertoire that included whistling, song and a terrifyingly loud range of burglar alarms. It was an event where nothing was quite as it seems. Words and images follow in rapid succession, touching on great truths before cocking a snook and skipping off to play. Kentridge has the mind of a true polymath. In the film interludes, whether his Soho Eckstein series or his abstract drawings in ink that flow like choreography the onslaught of ideas leaves you breathless. It’s riveting stuff, that never quite joins up leaving a huge space for imagination. His philosophy is revealed in the name of his workspace: The Centre for the Less Good Idea. ‘Personally, he says, ‘I think misunderstandings and mistranslations are of vital importance for art. I am in praise of bastardy.’ And hallelujah to that.

William Kentridge Ten Drawings For Projection
Photo: William Kentridge

His art installation at the Eye Film Museum – a must visit when you are in Amsterdam – was a more sombre affair. Ten Drawings for Projection are short animation films each around 9 minutes long. His medium is charcoal, ideal for the harshness of the characters and the landscapes, and also for his parsimonious narrative and prolific irony. His character Soho Eckstein, a Johannesburg mining magnate is a devastating comment on colonisation and the social and psychological damage it inflicts on all involved.

The Holland Festival has highlighted important issues and done well to bring so many artists to Amsterdam, offering a platform both for the art and for talks with the artists. Each encounter left a great deal of afterthought and reflection.

The post The Holland Festival appeared first on CriticalDance.

Oregon Ballet Theatre
Newmark Theatre
Portland, OR

June 8, 2019
The Americans Program: Night Creatures, Robust American Love, Big Shoes

Dean Speer

Wow, what at great week for ballet and dance — I was fortunate to have seen some really good (and great) dancing and dances over the past week and Oregon Ballet Theatre’s bill entitled The Americans was a surprising and uplifting delight.

Kelsie Nobriga
in Alvin Ailey’s
“Night Creature”
Photo by Randell Milstein

The first ballet on the program was Alvin Ailey’s wonderfully sassy (and very dancy/technical) Night Creature, originally made for TV in 1974 — and narrated by Diana Ross with an intro by Ailey himself, a clip of which was shown during the pre-performance talk by Linda Besant. By a happy coincidence, the very very first ballet I ever saw was Ailey’s Feast of Ashes made for the Joffrey Ballet in 1962. Loved it — so dramatic and well done, and thus I more than loved this new-to-me work which is at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. I have to say right off the bat, that the OBT dancers got it right. Lots of ease with the hip action (my group in the foyer during intermission was joking around and moving and swinging our hips about with the chant, “Hip Replacement, Hip Replacement, cha-chaah-cha,, BOOM!” — repeat). This work not only has as its base Lester Horton style jazz but allegro ballet steps (beating quick jumps), long-held arabesques, and a fun short parody of Martha Graham’s technique (a woman in perpetual contraction and whose arms were in what’s poetically known as “the vomit position” — hand cupped and over mouth, the other cupped on hip), and chasing a man) which I found a riot, being a “Graham Cracker” myself as the saying goes.

Special shout-outs to Theodore Watler in the part originated by Mr. Ailey — Watler’s technique and charming smile were winning. He got the sass right for sure. – -and the goatee.  Also amazing was new-to-OBT apprentice Brian Bennett.

(l-r) Michael Linsmeier, Peter Franc,
and Xuan Cheng in Trey McIntyre’s
“Robust American Love”
Photo by Randell Milstein

It’s been several years since I’ve enjoyed the choreographic talents of Trey McIntyre and his Robust American Love set to music of a Seattle folk band is a solid work that has a hint of a pre-Civil War family migrating to the American West story. McIntyre is inventive and never dull. Kudos especially to Katherine Monogue (who made the pre-show donation pitch to benefit the dancers’ Career Transition Fund — she herself is leaving the company to pursue a long-held dream of trading pointe shoes for white shoes as a nurse) whose amplitude as a dancer has only gotten better and better and who will be missed. Perhaps she will find some way to continue moving as she pursues her new life and career.

Xuan Cheng
and Brian Simcoe
in Jamey Hampton
and Ashley Roland’s
“Big Shoes”
Photo by Randell Milstein

Well, the big NEW hit of the evening was co-choreographed by BodyVox founders, Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland — their Big Shoes ballet. Starting out with four adorable OBT School children dressed up in shoes and clothes WAY too big for them, and then getting chased off of the stage as the grownups assume wearing these outrageously colorful outfits and having some of the best dancing fun of their careers. A ramp becomes a slide, then the ramp is used as a visual non sequitur whereby the dancers appear to be either way off kilter or upright when they’re actually not. The choreographers really know how to put on a dance show and the Samba for the group cast at the end was a really great closer. For the bows, the cast got into the Samba again, as did Hampton and Roland — and the audience.

It’s total organized chaos, and Big Shoes is a big hit.

What a great and fun program. All too soon OBT’s 2018-19 season was over and I longed to go right back and see this program again and again!

The post Oregon Ballet Theatre: A Creature of Love appeared first on CriticalDance.

[This review is an expansion of a review initially published in CriticalDance’s “First Impressions” section shortly after the referenced June 6 performance.]

American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

June 6 and 8 (afternoon), 2019
Jane Eyre

Jerry Hochman

Sometimes it’s really nice to be wrong.

I didn’t expect much from Jane Eyre, based on my perception that of it being trumpeted as the work of a female choreography rather than on its merits. And I avoided reading any reviews from its prior performances, or from its American Ballet Theatre company premiere two nights earlier: I wanted to see it with that opening night cast, without being prejudiced beyond my initial low expectation.

Jane Eyre shattered those negative expectations. It’s one of the finest new evening length story ballets within my memory. Even though flawed, it’s so good it’s shocking. If and when it returns, beg, borrow or steal a ticket. It’s worth it.

Jane Eyre is a triumph for choreographer Cathy Marston, for Jenny Tattersall and Daniel De Andrade who staged it, for Devon Teuscher and the entire ABT cast, and, and for Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie for bringing it here. With minimal props, a shifting panorama of runners and a bit of smoke (ok, a lot of smoke) providing atmosphere, Marston – a former director of Bern Ballett, peripatetic choreographer with a sterling reputation creating ballets, primarily seen in Europe, over the past 20+ years but who somehow has escaped significant notice here – has created a ballet that lives, that’s dramatic, that’s exciting, that’s beautiful in an non-romanticized, somewhat gothic way, and that never allows the audience’s attention to lapse. Indeed, from my vantage point, the audience appeared transfixed from beginning to end. Most significant of all, it’s choreographed from a different point of view.

Devon Teuscher and James Whiteside
in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

In an “instant” review following the Thursday evening performance, I wrote that I wouldn’t call this production “feminist.” Having since seen it a second time, I can see why many would. And I must admit that on second exposure parts of it made me uncomfortable. But there’s nothing wrong with a piece that presents a story from a woman’s point of view, thereby making some in the audience uncomfortable. Be that as it may, Jane Eyre certainly provides a strong female lead character (maybe the strongest in any evening-length ballet) and gives the best of its roles to women. And it does so via a story that may be considered proto-feminist: Although the program doesn’t recognize the 1847 novel or its author, Charlotte Brontë (instead crediting the “scenario” to Marston and Patrick Kinmonth), the novel’s basic story remains, and is told well within the parameters of artistic license with little of dramatic consequence added or deleted. Since the story isn’t universally familiar, I’ll briefly summarize.

As modified, the story tells of the orphaned Young Jane (here she’s orphaned as a teen; in the novel she was orphaned as an infant), living a tortured life with her Aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her cousins, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. All mistreat her. The two girls and their mother rival Cinderella’s Step-Mother and Step-Sisters (without any semblance of comedy), and John bullies her, with the sense of more violent acts unseen. But Jane survives. When the strong-willed Jane complains, her aunt accuses her of lying, and has her shipped off to Reverend Brocklehurst’s Lowood School for orphaned girls, where she’s bullied and punished by the venomous Brocklehurst for daring to speak her mind, routinely kept cold and near starvation, and where her best friend Helen Burns dies of consumption in her arms. And still she survives.

When Jane is grown, she teaches young orphans at the school, but accepts a position to be a governess at Thornfield Hall, the home of Edward Rochester and his “ward,” Adele Varens – who, to put it mildly, is a handful. [How exactly Adele came to be Rochester’s ward is unclear – both here and in the novel, although it’s been hypothesized that Adele might be his daughter.] Jane is greeted on arrival by the chief housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (a relative of Rochester, but that fact is omitted from the ballet’s libretto). The imperious Rochester returns home from world travels shortly thereafter, meets Jane, and is impressed with her intellect. [How’s that for a different point of view.] Eventually, Jane and Rochester draw emotionally close, and the relationship becomes deeper when Jane is awakened by the smell of smoke, races into Rochester’s room, and saves him from a fire of unknown origin – at least to Jane.

(l-r) Cassandra Trenary, James Whiteside, and Devon Teuscher
in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

In Act II, Rochester hosts a party, and Jane feels uncomfortable among his wealthy guests, including the sophisticated, sensual, and conniving Blanche Ingram, who, Jane thinks, is Rochester’s fiancée. The festivities are interrupted by some unknown (again, at least to Jane) calamity, the cause to soon become apparent. When the ruckus clears, Jane confronts Rochester about his relationship with Ingram. To ease Jane’s concerns, Rochester proposes marriage, and Jane is bewildered but ecstatic. At the subsequent wedding, Bertha Mason, usually confined within the house’s bowels like a mad and violent reincarnation of Balanchine’s sleepwalker, interrupts the nuptials, and Rochester is forced to admit that he’s married to Bertha, but wants to live with Jane as husband and wife. Jane only sees Rochester’s perfidy, like all the other men she’s been exposed to. She rebels, escapes from Rochester, Bertha, and their calamitous environment, and as smoke begins to envelope the stage, runs off to the moors, where, after fighting her demons, real and relived, she’s rescued by St. John Rivers, who carries her to his home where she’s nurtured back to health by Rivers’s sisters. Once again, Jane survives. After she recovers, Rivers proposes to Jane, offering her the security of his home and his station (Rivers is supposed to be a clergyman, but the ballet makes no mention of that). But Jane realizes that she only wants Rochester. She flees Rivers and his comfortable home and returns to Thornhill, only to find it burnt down (by Bertha) and Rochester nearly blind. She nurses him, they declare their love for each other, and, presumably, they live happily ever after. And Jane, perhaps finally, survives.

One of the criticisms I’ve heard of the ballet is that it’s too bleak. To me, the dim light and dark tone of the ballet is perfectly appropriate to the subject of cruelties happening in the shadows or behind closed doors. I’ve also heard criticism that it’s too violent. On the contrary, the ballet camouflages the violence through choreography that does not require explicit acts to deliver its message. And unlike other ballets this season that some (not this reviewer) might say glorify the very acts they condemn, all that Jane Eyre glorifies is inner strength and the power to survive against all odds. It’s a breath of fresh air.

Isabella Boylston and Thomas Forster
in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

With one exception, Jane Eyre’s feminism, to the extent it can be so branded, doesn’t hit you over the head with an anvil. The trials that the title character endures are the story; to depict it as anything else would be wrong, especially since Marston does such a fine job making that suffering real to anyone of any gender. The exception – the ballet’s final image, when Jane is physically excised from the story, singled out as a survivor, and walks downstage to receive her recognition from the spotlight and the audience. That’s the anvil. That the story is “about” her is undeniable, but focusing on her in addition to the focus that the story itself provides diminishes the universality of the message, and makes her relationship with Rochester only a means to an end.

Aside from that, if there’s a weakness to Jane Eyre, it’s the male dancing and characterization, which is far less imaginatively complex than it is for the women. It’s reflected in the ballet’s only silly dance – when Rochester returns home from his world travels surrounded by sycophantic “horses,” like a conquering and self-important hero (or an English version of a wild-west cowboy). More critically, however is that the male characters lack .. character. They’re cardboard. But I suppose after centuries of women being the love interest, or waiting for Prince Charming or Mr. Goodbar, or being the damsel, we men deserve this.

Even here, however, the partnering Marston has choreographed is as superbly accomplished as the table-turning focus on women rather than men. The pas de deux for Edward Rochester and Jane (three of them, by my count) are stunning in their complexity and simplicity (both, together, are not easy to pull off). And the staging is extraordinary. For example (one of many), one minute that party at the Rochester residence takes place atop a raised area upstage, while Teuscher and a few others are downstage right watching; the next minute their locations are reversed with no loss of continuity and to profound dramatic effect.

Skylar Brandt and
American Ballet Theatre dancers
in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

A more serious criticism might be Marston’s visualizations of Jane’s demons. Marston here creates a pool of twelve male dancers who appear and reappear through the course of the ballet. More Furies or Fates or a visualization of Jane’s “destiny” than a Greek Chorus, these men, primarily through the choreography by which they interact with Jane, give visual meaning to the sufferings (at the hands of men) that Jane endures, and they propel the action – which, from the beginning, never stops. [Labelling this collective character as “D-Men” (which I initially thought was “D” as in “Destiny Men,” but which I now believe is intended to represent Jane’s inner “d/mons” or “demon men”) is unfortunate overkill.]

And “from the beginning” means even more than that here. Marston has given the ballet a Prologue that’s much more than a prologue. When the curtain first opens, Jane is seen running through the moors, being menaced, chased, and assaulted (via the D-Men), until Rivers rescues her and carries her to his home to be cared for by his sisters. From that point forward, the events that shaped Jane’s life are seen in flashback from inside the Rivers home, until the chase by the D-Men is repeated, this time in “real time,” which is identical movement by movement to the scene danced in the Prologue. It’s a neat concept that works brilliantly as the audience immediately recognizes the scene as identical to what they saw earlier.

Even niftier are the choreographic repetitions that are not as easy to see. For example, when Jane and Rochester first meet, Rochester, to my recollection, is seen using his finger to gently raise Jane’s head, as in “there, there, everything will be all right.” The image is repeated in the ballet’s final scene, except the image is reversed: it’s Jane who is now comforting Rochester. It’s the kind of choreographic quality that compels an audience member, or at least this audience member, to stifle a scream of recognition and artistic appreciation. And the transition from “Young Jane” to “Jane” is handled deftly and seamlessly; this ballet, originally created in 2016 for Northern Ballet,  has no rough edges. Even the score, which, according to the program, was “complied and composed” by Philip Feeney, is gorgeous. [The program note fails to recognize that Feeney’s score incorporates music by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Schubert, but it’s beautifully crafted regardless of how it got there.]

Devon Teuscher
in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre”
Photo by Gene Schiavone.

Teuscher’s Jane was the heart of the performance on Thursday, and to me it was her finest performance to date. I should have been prepared for the nuances of character she showed here by her brilliant performance several years ago in Antony Tudor’s Jardin Aux Lilas, but her Jane Eyre took her far beyond even that. Marston’s character is multi-dimensional, and has to change emotions in a heartbeat. Teuscher pulls it off magnificently; you feel every nuance of character, every hurt, every tragedy, and every triumph. On Saturday afternoon, Boylston’s Jane was danced well, but to me lacked the fire and the depth of character that permeated Teuscher’s performance. For instance, where Teuscher seethed beneath the surface, or smiled by degree, tempered by her demons, Boylston was either very solemn / plain or broadly smiling.

But neither Teuscher nor Boylston were alone. Every member of the cast excelled: Cate Hurlin’s towering portrayal of “Young Jane” (as memorable as Teuscher’s Jane), was nearly equaled by Skylar Brandt (replacing Breanne Granlund) on Saturday afternoon – the difference being Hurlin’s raw power. Every performance Hurlin gives, every character she inhabits, is unique and memorable, from comic to tragic and all points in between. What a gift this young ballerina has – and somehow one knew this since her initial appearance with ABT as Young Clara in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker. And although this role doesn’t display it as much, Brandt is the same, with an apparent and astonishing comfort level with whatever she’s been assigned to date (e.g., her Medora, which I expect to discuss during a season wrap-up, is as, and maybe more, accomplished than that of others with twice her performing experience. If Don Quixote returns to the repertory next year, it would not surprise me if Brandt assays Kitri). I used to frequently reference ABT’s soloist purgatory, with soloists stuck in the same roles year after year, a consequence of ABT’s misguided policy of importing guest artists at every conceivable opportunity. With that policy now, apparently, a creature of past poor judgment, being an ABT soloist no longer means artistic stagnation.

Catherine Hurlin
in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

I can’t thoroughly detail the contribution of every other featured member of the cast, but most were so good that they demand recognition. As Rochester, James Whiteside handled the arrogance well (in an extraordinarily simple but equally extraordinarily revealing choreographed coup de théâtre, Marston has Rochester “direct” the movement of his subjects – his employs – with one extended leg while he sits nonchalantly on his makeshift “throne,” and Whiteside delivered the meaning behind the gesture with understated but obvious royal regality), but to my eye Thomas Forster, on Saturday, was less dazed-looking, and more believable, as Jane’s love interest. Calvin Royal III’s vicious Headmaster came close to being too melodramatic, but never quite crossed the line. His characterization was as dominating as it needed to be. Similarly, Cassandra Trenary’s madwoman Bertha Mason seemed to fit her like a glove, with the fire in her eyes matching the flames she set in motion – figuratively as well as literally. Stephanie Williams’s Bertha on Saturday afternoon was equally memorable, albeit slightly less powerfully expressed.

Zimmi Coker’s hyperactive Adele Varens was daddy’s spoiled little girl who ravishes the attention from her guardian / father but becomes virtually uncontrollable when he leaves. Coker somehow made the role look credible rather than artificial. Stella Abrera’s snooty and pseudo-sophisticated Blanche Ingram in Thursday’s performance was well played, as was Hee Seo’s portrayal on Saturday, but Seo’s subtle nudging to push Adele out of the way drew audience laughs; Abrera’s was a bit too subtle. Katherine Williams and Luciana Paris were wasted as Rivers’s sisters, but even here, far upstage, in dim light, and elevated on a platform above the stage floor, Williams’s ability to visually register sorrow and concern is a step above, as it has been since I first saw her on stage.

And in one of her most unexpectedly brilliant portrayals, Sarah Lane as housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax, delivered a role against type, necessarily understated, and with so many emotional facets I lost count, each clearly expressed even in a matter of seconds. Her character was real and fully realized, as opposed to being artificially grafted. She was at once knowing, caring, and a physical and emotional flibbertigibbet – not as in “spacey” (on the contrary, her character is highly focused), but as in having so much on her mind and so much to do that has to be done right that, expressed through her constantly animated hands, she doesn’t know what to do next. More significantly, this Mrs. Fairfax had a deep and presumably secret romantic interest in Rochester that Lane clearly expressed, sotto voce, while at the same time yielding to her employer’s wishes and choices and always knowing her place. The role could have faded into relative obscurity, but when Lane was on stage, she stole the scenes. I’ve watched Lane grow as a dancer and artist over the past 15 years, but nothing I’ve seen from her previously prepared me for this. Her Mrs. Fairfax illustrates, yet again, that there are no small roles.

The male roles (including Rochester) aren’t as strong, but Aran Bell’s St. John Rivers, who’s supposed to be somewhat of an emotional cold fish, became quite a sympathetic character – a consequence, perhaps, of the sympathetic way in which he’s introduced to the audience in the Prologue. Indeed, in one of the ballet’s poorly explained scenes, Jane’s rejection of him comes across as being as harsh and unprincipled as … the visualization in many other ballets of men who reject woman for no apparent reason that makes sense. Duncan Lyle’s portrayal on Saturday was a bit more wooden and cold, making Boylston’s reaction to his proposal look somewhat justified – although that Prologue still presents Rivers in too sympathetic a light to be so casually and emphatically dismissed.

All things considered, however, when Jane Eyre returns (which may be as soon as this coming Fall, 2019 season, since it could fit within the Koch Theater’s less expansive stage space), see it. Even with the criticisms I’ve expressed, Jane Eyre is a landmark ballet that’s meaningful and intelligently crafted, and that boasts impressive performances all around. Being a member of the audience for Jane Eyre is a privilege.

The post American Ballet Theatre: A Breath of Fresh Eyre appeared first on CriticalDance.

Pacific Northwest Ballet
McGaw Hall
Seattle, WA

June 9, 2019
Encore Program

Dean Speer

I just came from an island beach walk where I was treated to two bald eagles flying overhead in perfect harmony — with a graceful ease and swooping formations.

This struck me as an apt comparison to Pacific Northwest Ballet’s end-of-the-season Encore one-off performance where they also feted some retirements from the PNB fold and especially highlighted the careers of two of its stellar dancers, Rachel Foster and Jonathan Porretta. These are the two eagles that I have in mind when thinking of graceful ease and harmony.

Before I get to them, I wanted to note two of the retirees who have been special to me, personally and professionally — “Rico” Chiarelli and Larae Hascall. Many years ago (1982) when the Chehalis Ballet Center started and had no ballet barres, I called PNB and Rico very generously and kindly told me how to build them, including the specs in detail, how and with what to sand them down and paint them (Brillo pads and Rustoleum), and what NOT to paint so we could take them apart as needed to take on tours for example, which we did. I’ve never forgotten this small kindness and the difference it made.

Rachel Foster and Jonathan Porretta,
with members of Pacific Northwest Ballet,
in their Farewell Performance curtain call
on June 9, 2019
Photo by Lindsay Thomas

Larae was so generous in passing along her extensive costume knowledge over the years too — such as how to dye ballet slippers and get the shade and tone of the color that you might actually want. She even agreed to sometimes dye items for us if they could batch them with their things. She also loaned out costumes and sold costumes no longer needed in the repertory (a trio of long skirts we made use of many times).

Thank you both so much. I knew too that the kindness that PNB has historically shown to colleagues and professional friends came from the top as Kent and Francia always took great care and thoughtfulness to welcome dance teachers and others. (I was thrilled one time, for example, when, at a pre-show talk, Francia gave a shout-out to my father whose birthday fell on that day.)

I now come to Foster and Porretta who also have poured out their hearts and careers on behalf of PNB. Each is imbued with outstanding technique and great souls as performers. No rote dancing ever.

The program began with the thrilling Polonaise (concluding section) from George Balanchine’s famous Theme and Variations, followed by Paul Gibson’s (a nod to his retiring as ballet master) The Piano Dance; then Foster with Jerome Tisserand in Nacho Duato’s Rassemblement; a welcome repeat of one of this season’s strongest premieres, Bacchus by Matthew Neenan; Foster with Seth Orza in After the Rain pas de deux with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon (I think there’s an unwritten rule that retiring ballerinas do this duet, as did Carla Körbes a few years ago); Foster concluded her PNB performing career with the complete rendition of the group work by Alejandro Cerrudo, Silent Ghost; a delightful pictorial tribute to Foster and Porretta, accompanied by the PNB Orchestra playing the Galop from Coppélia; and finally the iconic and moving Balanchine take on the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, with Porretta as the Prodigal, per his request.

Balanchine was brilliant in reversing how the end of the story plays out. The original has the father running to meet his son, whereas here the son traverses the stage on his knees (in meek penitence perhaps) and then crawls up his father to be embraced in his arms as he’s carried back to their home. This is SO moving that I’m getting all choked up just replaying it in my mind’s eye. Oh my. And how Porretta gave his all in each scene. Great drama, great dancing and a superb theatre experience. I’m so glad they did it. Peter Boal, to the cheers of the audience, announced from the stage that Mr. Porretta has joined the PNB School faculty, an opportunity to pass along all that he knows and loves.

I’m glad that Foster chose to dance in several things and apparently, as Boal told us, took on at least one dance that was new to her. I have always enjoyed her dancing — its clarity of thought and action.

Part of the fun of a gala/encore show is seeing how and who makes tributes and this one was no exception:  Founding Directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell; Mr. Boal; Porretta’s mother Jane Littledeer; Foster’s daughter and husband; plus many current and former dancers.

This Encore was a first-class honor to first-class dancers and a superb evening at the ballet.

The post Pacific Northwest Ballet: In Perfect Harmony appeared first on CriticalDance.

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

June 7, 2019
This Is Not The Little Prince

Dean Speer

What do an accordion, a typewriter, marionettes, and paper airplanes all have to do with each other? They are all elements of choreographer Oliver Wevers’ creative take on the classic French short story, The Little Prince.

Whim W’Him dancers
in Oliver Wevers’s
“This Is Not The Little Prince”
Photo by Stefano Altamura

It begins with company member dancer Karl Watson seated at a table writing but also folding and launching paper airplanes and with multi-talented Jim Kent (dancer and musician)  playing what sounds like a French folk tune on the accordion, and who is clearly the Little Prince character. If so, they meet, and pull and tug at each other, perhaps depicting the sometimes difficult creative process.

About midway through the hour-long dance, Wevers shows his sense of humor with a dance to Leroy Anderson’s famous concerto for typewriter and orchestra, with the dancers being fun and sassy and Cameron Birts showing off his amazing à la seconde turns that were both powerful and rapid — very exciting — to the cheers of the audience. (Who doesn’t love to see good technique deployed even in a story ballet?)

Whim W’Him dancers
in Oliver Wevers’s
“This Is Not The Little Prince”
Photo by Stefano Altamura

The very strong cast included Watson, Kent, and Birts, plus Liane Aung, Jane Cracovaner, Adrian Hoffman, and Mia Monteabaro.

I liked and enjoyed the scenic elements of suitcases and other traveling-related things hung on the back stage wall and, stage-left, a pile of white-covered furniture (like sheets over stuff) indicating the Little Prince’s perpetual and never-ending journey.

The marionettes were used as a shadow puppet show, with images of World War I planes and troops parachuting played on the back wall.

Whim W’Him dancers
in Oliver Wevers’s
“This Is Not The Little Prince”
Photo by Stefano Altamura

My only choreographic fuss would be that the end was too much of a downer — with Watson covering his face and mouth turning. You have to give people hope and this could have been achieved simply by Watson taking his hands and turning them over in supplication to the audience, thereby giving us this hope but also suggesting that the future is up to us.

This Is Not The Little Prince is one of Wevers’ best and strongest creations to date — ambitious, well thought out, with an arc that was easy to follow and very nicely collaborative with his co-creators of music (Brian Lawlor), lighting and set design (Michael Mazzola), and costumes by Mark Zappone.

The post Whim W’Him: This Is Not The Little Prince appeared first on CriticalDance.

Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
City Center
New York, New York

June 7, 2019
The Pygmalion Effect

Jerry Hochman

I’ve been mesmerized by Boris Eifman’s recent New York offerings, admiring his highly expressionistic style and the psychological stresses that he paints through movement. Everything is elongated and emphasized in an idiosyncratic panoply of intense action: as I once wrote, he’s the El Greco of choreographers. Described another way, where Sir Antony Tudor examined psychological motivations with a refined, English sensibility, Eifman does the same, but with unabashed Russian passion. His new ballet, The Pygmalion Effect, which premiered in St. Petersburg three months ago, is intellectually intriguing, undeniably clever, and at times visually stunning – and the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg dancers are as exemplary as ever. However, to me The Pygmalion Effect misses the mark established by two of the three Eifman ballets that have been recently performed in New York: Tchaikovsky.Pro et Contra, and Anna Karenina.

Lyubov Andreeva and Oleg Gabyshev
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

The Pygmalion Effect is a comedy, sort of, and to some extent perhaps not to be taken seriously. But I suspect it is intended to be taken seriously – to be more a tragi-comedy than a comedy. Part of the difficulty I have with it is that this tragedy / comedy duality reflects a dual intellectual approach that’s not easy to reconcile into a unified whole. The other part is that the story line is too mundane for its subject and that some of the comedy doesn’t work – though I’ll concede that this observation may be a culture-based prejudice.

Before I discuss details of the dance, a bit of background is essential.

(l-r) Lyubov Andreyeva, Oleg Gabyshev,
Anzhela Turko, and Dmitry Krylov
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

The ancient Greek myth of an artist falling in love with his creation, which has been captured many times in many different permutations over the subsequent millennia, is foundational in The Pygmalion Effect and in its viewers’ minds. The myth was most famously memorialized in Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses: in the story, a sculptor, Pygmalion, carves an ivory statue that is so beautiful and lifelike that he falls in love with it; and, following his entreaties to Venus (Aphrodite), the statue is brought to life.  It wasn’t until the 18^th Century that the statue’s name became memorialized as Galatea, which means, in Greek, “she who is milk white.” The story, most famously, was transformed into a play by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, which thereafter was reimagined into a legendary Broadway musical by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe.

Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

But the notion that a benevolent – or in some cases not so benevolent – creator can breathe life into his or her creation (actually or metaphorically), usually because he falls in love with it (actually or metaphorically), has deep roots, preceding even Greek mythology. Like the need to understand and visualize why things happen or to explain the genesis of human temperaments, the need to dream is as basic as breathing, and probably as old as human life itself. [Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, I have no first-hand knowledge.] The only point of dreaming impossible dreams (as opposed to fantasies, which are more detached) is that maybe, somehow, the impossible can become real – with the creator’s efforts to channel his or her energies into making the dream a reality, with or without divine help, being grist for artistic expression. And what better way to conjure someone or something to dream about than to create it yourself – although the end result can sometimes have a devastating impact. For every Galatea, there’s a Coppélia. For every Pretty Woman, there’s a Bride of Frankenstein. [One might conclude that even The Sleeping Beauty gets into the act. Pygmalion brings his statue to life with a kiss (actually, two of them); Aurora dreams of her Prince Désiré, and as a sleeping “statue” in her dream, is awakened by a kiss from her created prince. Or the other way around: the prince envisions a sleeping statue that he brings to life with a kiss. But that, like so many other intellectual meanderings, is a thesis for another day.]

Alina Petrovskaya and Oleg Gabyshev
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

Using ballet as an artistic vehicle to examine the forces that lead a creator to fall in love with his creation has considerable merit, and it would be surprising if it hadn’t been done before. And, in fact, it has been done before, by, among others, no less a majestic ballet presence than Marius Petipa, who created Pygmalion, ou La Statue de Chypre, which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1883, and was revived in 1895 featuring Pierina Legnani, one of the greatest ballerinas of her time, and the Mariinsky’s first Prima Ballerina Assoluta. [No, I wasn’t there for that either.] Why I found no record in my cursory research of it being performed thereafter is a bit baffling, given its high profile. Alexei Ratmansky might want to look into it.

But a dance based on the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea – usually expressed as the creation’s impact on its creator – isn’t exactly what Eifman is aiming at here. In fact, his focus, at least in part, is on the reverse – the impact of a Pygmalion on a Galatea. That this is clear only from the dance’s title (and from the program note) rather than from the action on stage is perhaps the reason that the piece comes across as having a split intellectual personality.

Lyobov Andreyeva
and Dmitry Fisher
in Boris Eifman’s
“The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

“The Pygmalion effect” is a psychological term of art concerning a phenomenon relating, generally, to high expectations yielding high accomplishment. The phrase has its origin in a much criticized psychological study early last century that found that teachers who expected great accomplishment from certain of their students, even if there was no factual basis for it (indeed, even if the “factual basis” was feigned)  produced better performances from these students. In a nutshell, it’s self-fulfilling prophecy: you expect it to be this way, and so it becomes – even though, in reality, nothing in the “expectee” has really changed. It was dubbed “the Pygmalion effect” to reflect the impact that the teacher / sculptor has on his student / creation. In a way, it’s the myth turned on its head.

Looked at this way, what Eifman is doing with The Pygmalion Effect is telling the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, or more accurately Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolitle, through the prism of “the Pygmalion effect.” And if all this sounds a bit confusing, well it is, because the dance evolves in one direction through most of its length, and then suddenly seems to switch intellectual gears. It’s My Fair Lady with an unhappy ending.

Lyubov Andreyeva and Dmitry Fisher
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

Eifman’s story tells of an impoverished young woman with boundless energy but no boundaries to her effervescent movement who ekes out a living providing carriage rides to tourists for a presumably inflated fee, and a world class ballroom dancer who trains her to become a ballroom dance champion – effectively, he teaches her to speak ballroom. Gala is the young woman, Leon is the champion ballroom dancer. [Gala = Galatea; Leon, I suspect, is a shortened form of Pygmalion.]

After the audience is initially introduced to Gala, her father, and their petty thief cohorts attempting to separate tourists from their money, cut to the next scene in Leon’s extravagant high-rise apartment, which he apparently shares with his dancing partner, Tea, some maids, and their supervisor. [Tea = maybe, Aphrodite] Leon loses a ballroom dance competition, which he blames on Tea. Concurrently (almost), Gala, who to my recollection arrived at Leon’s building (or the location of the competition – which may be the same place) while dropping off tourists, observes the contest, and soon thereafter rescues Leon from a gang of mobsters (my guess – they bet on Leon and Tea, and lost), and the appreciative Leon sees in Gala a way to get back at Tea, who he blames for the loss. Along the way, Gala’s father, a hard-drinking, hard-dancing, hard-headed type named Holmes [Holmes = I haven’t a clue; maybe an allusion to Gala’s “home”] follows Gala into Leon’s manse in the sky. Yada, yada, yada; Leon and Gala become romantically involved (albeit from an emotional distance) and win the next ballroom dance tournament, but instead of living happily ever after, he rejects her because of her checkered past. [Checker … cab … carriage. Forgive me.] Underneath it all, and despite everything she’s learned, she’s still beneath his station.

Lyubov Andreeva and Oleg Gabyshev
in Boris Eifman’s
“The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

So … for most of its performance time, the ballet parallels My Fair Lady. Then, without apparent warning (or with warnings too understated to recognize), reality in the form of the Pygmalion effect destroys the dream. Gala’s dream, not Leon’s.

I suppose that the dance’s focus on ballroom dancing is no less tiresome sounding than focusing on the trials and tribulations of a linguist and his pupil, and it allows for far more movement than would the environment of a presumably more cerebral professor. But why ballroom? Perhaps because ballroom dancing is considered more open to competitive events and becoming a “ballroom champion” – a goal to aspire to, like speaking the King’s English – than ballet or contemporary dance. Ok. And maybe, notwithstanding “Dancing With the Stars,” (“DWTS”) ballroom dancing has more of a cache in Russia than it does here. To me, however, it seems a strained effort to provide an environment where choreographed movement would be an essential component of the production.

Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

More importantly, what Eifman has created in the group dances that provide the ballroom background appear to me, except for brief periods when couples are seen dancing together, to be set pieces imposed on the ballroom scene (like the post-commercial ensemble dances in DWTS). The choreography is very lively and the dancing corps is energetic and effusive, but its main purpose is to pump action. Indeed, the sense of superimposed group dances appears similar to the superimposed dances in Eifman’s Red Giselle, a ballet that I admired but did not find compelling (and which, in a way, raised similar issues). There’s nothing wrong with that, but here it all looks like stuff I’ve seen before. And while some of the dancing in which Holmes is featured is more focused, all I kept seeing situationally (not necessarily choreographically) was “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me To The Church On Time.”

The ballet’s music is a mish-mosh of pieces composed almost exclusively by Johann Strauss the Son, a/k/a “The Waltz King.” [The exception is the music accompanying the final scene (the tragic outcome), which is by Mozart.] The choreography fits the music well, but in totality it comes across more as a jumble of relative insignificance than the finely honed curations in other Eifman ballets, and it contributes (maybe intentionally) to the sense that the dance occupies a lower intellectual / class level than other Eifman pieces, as Gala does in comparison to Leon — at least until reality in the form of introspection and Mozart kicks in.

The romantic awakening dances between Gala and Leon are lovely, and those for Gala alone are either high-octane exercises or heartbreaking. But I saw little of the complexity and intensity (physical and emotional) present in Eifman’s other pieces – this dance doesn’t call for it.

Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
in Boris Eifman’s “The P:ygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

There are certainly aspects of The Pygmalion Effect that are interesting, or just plain brilliant. When the set (a marvelous amalgam of 19^th Century urban slums clashing with an elite art deco-inspired environment, designed by Zinovy Margolin) morphs from the streets of the unnamed city to Leon’s apartment in the sky, one quickly observes upstage right a man, presumably Leon, being bathed and pampered by his “maids” – completely naked (only his back is exposed to the audience). At first, I found this disconcerting – not because it was a male and his “maids” were being exploited, but because it didn’t appear to make any contextual sense. And then I remembered the context – this is Eifman turning the tables. Leon’s body was being idolized like … a statue. And not any statue, the statue is like many of Aphrodite, albeit seen from the rear, and armless (the maids provide those). So early on, Eifman establishes that Leon is to be Gala’s object of desire.

Alina Petrovskaya, Oleg Gabyshev,
and Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

Fast forward to the ballroom competition, where the contest entrants are initially visualized as standing, posing, separated from each other by the decorative dividers of the ballroom wall. Another brilliant allusion – the effect is that these men and women are positioned between pillars, like in a museum display, and although clothed, they’re moving sculptures to admire, desire, and … fall in love with. And the name of the building where all this takes place: Galatea, a house of statues that come to life.

Dmitry Fisher and Daniel Rubin
in Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

But some of the comedy is either overblown or incomprehensible. At one point during Gala’s training, after she falls on top of Leon, there’s a sight gag that appears to visualize Leon, er, aroused – which at that point was superfluous as well as being gross. And a character materializes from out of nowhere, an Angel from Heaven (well, I did describe Leon’s apartment as being sky-high) to try to convince Holmes to walk the straight and narrow. I suspect I’m missing something beyond it’s being a comedic interlude for the sake of having a comedic interlude, but the scene to me had no purpose – notwithstanding the quality of the comedic interaction between this Angel (portrayed by Daniel Rubin) and Holmes. And the character of the Coach (Igor Subbotin) – the Colonel Pickering of the dance (Leon makes a bet with the Coach that he’ll be able to transform the hyperactive waif into a champion ballroom dancer) is far too stereotyped – as are many of the male dancers in the ballroom competition.

Alina Petrovskaya in Boris Eifman’s
“The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of Eifman Ballet

As Gala, Lyubov Andreyeva is a lanky, long-limbed bundle of ceaseless energy. Think an atomic particle with legs. And although I didn’t find her characterization particularly endearing, I don’t think I was supposed to until the unhappy ending. My only complaint with her performance has nothing at all to do with her – I was expecting, maybe, Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn. Oleg Gabyshev’s Leon was thoroughly credible as a somewhat self-important ballroom dance champion with a lofty perch. His portrayal lacked the intensity that I found so compelling in his roles in Tchaikovsky.Pro et Contra and Anna Karenina, but that’s not his fault – again, this piece doesn’t call for intense dramatic physical and emotional interaction. As Tea, the haughty, alluring, ballroom dance goddess with an attitude, Alina Petrovskaya not only looked the part; her portrayal was spot on. And Dmitry Fisher as Holmes was the dance’s high-intensity low-life spark-plug, even though his character’s only material quality was to limit the parameters of Gala’s pedigree.

Lyubov Andreeva
and Oleg Gabyshev
in Boris Eifman’s
“The Pygmalion Effect”
Photo Courtesy of
Eifman Ballet

The Pygmalion Effect is not by any means a bad ballet. Evaluations are relative, and to me its primary deficiency is that it doesn’t measure up to Eifman’s successes. But I must emphasize that my opinion was not shared, at least not by those in the opening night audience, who obviously gushed over the ballet, the dancers, and Eifman.

In the end, The Pygmalion Effect gives its audiences a lot to think about: Who was the teacher and who the student; who was the dreamer and who the dreamer’s object? Can one ever escape one’s class? Are impossible dreams doomed to fail? In light of human nature, can an unhappy ending to the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea be accepted as an unfortunate truth?

As to this last question, my understanding is that Petipa’s ballet had an unhappy, tragic ending as well. If audiences in the 21^st Century are more inclined to accept that Pygmalion-like impossible dreams don’t always end happily, maybe Eifman’s ballet will enjoy a longer artistic lifespan.

The post Eifman Ballet: Impossible Dreams appeared first on CriticalDance.

Grange House
Hampshire, UK

26 June, 2019

Maggie Foyer

The Grange is a venue that dance lovers need to add to their calendars. Buried in the Hampshire countryside, it is unusual among country house opera stages as it includes dance along with opera in its programming. Dance@TheGrange, directed by Wayne McGregor, brought together his company and Ballet Black to perform McGregor’s  Outlier, Cathy Marston’s The Suit and works by up-and-coming choreographers, Alice Topps and Mthuthuzeli November.

Company Wayne McGregor
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

In Outlier, to Thomas Adès’s violin concerto Concentric Paths, the movement and music are complex and intricately structured, underpinned by design and choreography that show the Bauhaus inspiration in shapes clean-cut, distinctive and authentic. Duets complement and contradict, there is harmony and discord but never predictability and always invention. The dancers live in the instant, working with incredible speed and fluidity. Tetchy duets bring innovative partnering and brief ensemble sections lead to interestingly fractured trios, the friction drawing and holding attention. Alessandra Ferri, making a guest appearance contrasted with her quiet elegance. Watching her still superfine ballet technique in modern guise takes the work to another level of beauty in a duet of understated and unsentimental depth.  Both dance and music deliver an emotional impact that overrides the technical intricacy making this a wholly satisfying work.

Company Wayne McGregor
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Alice Topps, a name well known in Australian ballet circles, was a welcome find by McGregor. Her body language has a clear and distinctive voice. Her two works, a duet, Clay and a trio, Little Atlas show a use of contact and partnering that avoids clichés to find surprisingly fresh pathways. Clay, danced by Rebecca Bassett-Graham and Izzac Carroll (see image to the right) expressed a loving relationship torn apart by suffering. The concept initiated a range of powerful emotion for Topps’ eloquent choreography while the dancers found the honesty to express them. It was a thrilling debut.

Company Wayne McGregor
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Little Atlas, part of a longer work played on memories and the scars, stories and fabrication left behind. The dancers, Camille Bracher, Jacob O’Connell and Jordan James Bridge formed the trinity of past, present and future (see image to the left) and while nothing was explicit there were moments that caught and held the imagination like a vice. The choreography at times athletic and virtuosic was never ostentatious, seeming as natural as flight and enhanced by Ludovico Einaudi’s haunting music.

Ballet Black in Mthuthuzeli November’s Washa

Washa, by Mthuthuzeli November, is the latest work from a very new choreographer. After proving his skill in the emotional punch of Ingoma, here he tackles abstraction. The work plays on the relationship between dance and music and sets shapes to rhythm. Ebony Thomas leads the opening, the frictive rubbing of his palms, duplicated in the score (by Peter Johnson) and seeming to light the fire. (Washa means ‘the burn from within’.) Strong rhythmic movement permeates the work and the beauty comes from the intricate play of arms and detail in the hands. Within this company, ballet is finding new roots as dancers move seamlessly from pointes to deep plie and from a classical jeté into an articulated roll in an exciting evolution of the form.

Ballet Black’s Cira Robinson and José Alves in The Suit by Cathy Marston.
Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Ballet Black closed the programme with Cathy Marston’s award winning The Suit. Set in old Sophiatown, home to hot jazz in the 50s, Marston skilfully captures the essence of this psychologically disturbing story by Can Themba. The dancers become the set as they mime the domestic furnishing of wash basins and mirrors while the alarm clock, November’s furiously trembling hand, is slapped into silence by a sleepy José Alves. The characters are interestingly ambiguous. The erring wife, a magnificent performance from Cira Robinson, moves from kittenish charm to genuine regret and finally total despair. Alves, the wronged husband is the sort of man who helps old ladies across the road but wreaks terrible revenge on his wife. Nobody’s perfect and all are interestingly flawed. The company have the right blend of commitment and theatrical skill to make it a gem of narrative dance.

The estate has its own dramatic narrative. It was bought in 1662 and has seen much change. In the early nineteenth century it underwent massive restoration to become the first Greek Revival house in Europe in the form of a classical temple. In 1823 an Orangery was added which was adapted into the 600-seater opera house in 1998. The building under the guardianship of Historic England, was restored as a ‘roofed ruin’ and it is this arrested decay that gives its unique charm.

The opera house is a gem with comfortable seating and excellent sightlines. Michael Chance, a countertenor of international renown, is the artistic director and his vision is exciting, refreshing and, importantly, includes dance. His future programming plans promise, ‘a thrilling and somewhat daring leap into the unknown but done as well as we can possibly do it.’ Watch this space!

The post Dance at The Grange: Company Wayne McGregor and Ballet Black appeared first on CriticalDance.

WOMEN / CREATE!: A Festival of Dance
New York Live Arts
New York, New York

June 14, 2019
Katarzyna Skarpetowska: Akwarium
Karole Armitage: You Took a Part of Me (excerpt)
Jacqulyn Buglisi: Moss Anthology: Variation #5
Helen Simoneau: Moonlight Parade

Jerry Hochman

A year ago I attended a program of dances created by women choreographers, part of an annual series inaugurated six years earlier intended to demonstrate the participating choreographers’ accomplishments, and to encourage the development of others.

Buglisi Dance Theatre
in Jacqulyn Buglisi’s
“Moss Anthology: Variation #5”
Photo by Steven Pisano

Within the past few years, artistic contributions by women choreographers have become less of a rarity. Indeed, a glimpse at recent, and upcoming, schedules by the city’s two major ballet companies illustrates that this is the case even in the overwhelmingly male-dominated area of ballet choreography. Nevertheless, recognition and encouragement remain a necessity.

This year’s edition of “WOMEN / CREATE!” at New York Live Arts featured dances created by seven women choreographers spread over seven performances, with a different program at each performance. On the evening I attended, the program featured dances choreographed by Katarzina Skarpetowska (performed by the Richmond Ballet), Karole Armitage, Jacqulyn Buglisi, and Helen Simoneau (each danced by members of the choreographer’s own company: respectively, Armitage Gone! Dance, Buglisi Dance Theatre, and Helen Simoneau Danse).

Richmond Ballet
in Katarzina Skarpetowska’s “Akwarium”
Photo by Steven Pisano

Skarpetowska, a Polish native who has been based in New York since she was 15, has a sterling dance background and reputation among those with knowledge, but is largely unknown by the average dancegoer. After graduating with a BFA in Dance from Juilliard, she joined Parsons Dance, where she danced for seven years, and since then, before focusing on free-lance choreography, performed with many different companies, including appearing as a guest artist with Buglisi Dance Theater. The many pieces she’s choreographed for companies world-wide include two that I’ve previously seen: Almah, which she created for Parsons Dance, and a solo, Zjawa, created for Buglisi Dance Theater. I thought the first was enjoyable but not fully successful, but that Zjawa was memorable: a Graham-like piece that was narrowly focused and intensely passionate.

For this program, Skarpetowska’s branches out into less familiar territory: ballet. While not unusual choreographically, Akwarium, which was commissioned by Richmond Ballet and which had its premiere in May, 2018, is a pleasant, promising effort by this still emerging choreographer – even more noteworthy because, as Skarpetowska later advised the audience during an interlude between dances, this was her first ballet.

Richmond Ballet
in Katarzina Skarpetowska’s “Akwarium”
Photo by Steven Pisano

As the title appears to indicate (there are no program notes), Akwarium is a play on an aquarium. That’s a sufficiently limiting premise within which to craft a focused, but not overly confining abstract dance, and Skarpetowska and her creative colleagues, as well as the Richmond Ballet dancers who performed the piece, delivered the essential ambiance. The twelve dancers are costumed in varying shades of blue, aqua, and green (designed by Fritz Masten), and the fluorescent light bars that are affixed to a scrim upstage right (designed by MK Stewart) appear strange – until one remembers that aquariums are usually illuminated by fluorescent lighting. And placing these light bars off-center provides the illusion of a larger underwater space than had they been centered. And the score – an amalgam of music by J.S. Bach and Robert Henke – sounded vaguely muted, and provided an appropriately varied tempo.

Although the dancers are supposed to bring to mind aquarium life, Skarpetowska keeps these images limited, focusing instead on the patterns that the underwater life naturally provide (“schools” of dancers), and the encounters between the diverse occupants of the space that may or may not be random. If you’ve ever been mesmerized by the movement of aquarium life, Akwarium rekindles memories without having the dancers simply imitate tropical (or salt-water) fish. And in this environment, there are no fighting fish –while there are occasional indications of disruption or unwelcome interaction, overall everyone gets along swimmingly. And the Richmond Ballet dancers (who are not identified with sufficient specificity in the program) performed nicely – Akwarium doesn’t push them beyond their limits, and they come across as an engaging group. I found the low-key ending somewhat disappointing: it doesn’t really end so much as slows down, but then, aquarium fish, real ones, go to sleep at night.

Megumi Eda
and Christian Laverde-Koenig
in Karole Armitage’s
“You Took a Part of Me”
Photo by Steven Pisano

You Took a Part of Me premiered this past April (whether in preview or not is not clear) at the Japan Society and will be presented in full at NYLA in October: what Armitage presented here was an excerpt. As I’ve indicated previously, I dislike excerpts, and hesitate to review something that’s a small part of a larger whole (unless it’s meant to be standalone), but I found this excerpt to be unusually absorbing.

According to the program note, the dance is inspired by a 15^th Century Noh play, Nonomiya, that “explores erotic entanglement, unresolved attachments, and the search for harmony that are hallmarks of traditional Japanese Ghost Noh Theater.” That play is itself inspired by a character from an 11^th Century Japanese novel.

(l-r) Sierra French and Megumi Eda
in Karole Armitage’s
“You Took a Part of Me”
Photo by Steven Pisano

Also known as “The Shrine in the Field,” the story of Nonomiya, as I’ve been able to decipher, is a complex, ritualized, and highly stylized portrait of the relationship between a woman, her “living ghost,” the woman’s former lover, and a monk that she, her daughter, and her ghost meet at the same shrine where she met her lover, which she revisits annually on the day of their first meeting.

Megumi Eda
and Christian Laverde-Koenig
in Karole Armitage’s
“You Took a Part of Me”
Photo by Steven Pisano

I can’t discern much from the excerpt presented, except the distinctive and relatively daring style. The four characters – The Ghost, portrayed by Megumi Eda;  Her Double, by Sierra French; Her Lover, by Christian Laverde-Koenig; and Koken (who may be the Monk), by Alonzo Guzman – interact erotically and with a considerable sense of ritual, control, and tension. I’ll comment further if I have an opportunity to see the complete piece.

Buglisi Dance Theatre
in Jacqulyn Buglisi’s
“Moss Anthology: Variation #5”
Photo by Steven Pisano

Buglisi’s Moss Anthology: Variation #5 is part of a series of pieces she has created over the past two years dedicated to preserving the environment. Inspired by the writings of a Potawatomi botanist, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, through her dance and a sequence of projected images Buglisi traces the evolution of a forest (and expands the visuals to include Earth as a whole) – and specifically the moss that grows within it, which she describes in a program note as being the coral reefs of the forest – from pristine and flourishing to degraded and dying and then to being reborn.

Buglisi Dance Theatre
in Jacqulyn Buglisi’s
“Moss Anthology: Variation #5”
Photo by Steven Pisano

The dance, which is divided into segments that parallel the projected images of the forest. Is well-crafted and superbly executed by the nine company dancers (including two apprentices), and, between the extraordinarily lovely costumes by A. Christina Giannini, the projections by Wendall K. Harrington and Yana Birykova, Jack Mehler’s lighting design, and Buglisi’s choreography, it’s a gorgeous piece of work. But I saw little distinctive about it beyond its physical beauty (which, admittedly, is no small accomplishment). That the Buglisi Dance Theatre dancers were celebrating or mourning the environmental situation in a Graham-like but lyrical style is clear, but who they’re supposed to be isn’t: Native Americans? Forest sylphs? Moss? All of the above? And what may have been distinctive was overwhelmed by the projected nature images. More significantly, I’ve seen dances like this before – maybe not about moss specifically, but certainly relating to the ruining of our environment by overuse, climate change, and an overall lack of concern, backed by projected images. But this presentation was labelled a “preview,” with no indication of a formal premiere, so I anticipate that modifications to it may be made, and accordingly I will not comment on it further.

Savannah Spratt and Frankie Peterson
in Helen Simoneau’s “Moonlight Parade”
Photo by Steven Pisano

The program closed with a 2014 Simoneau piece, Moonlight Parade, performed by her company, Helen Simoneau Danse. Although she’s been choreographing for many years and her pieces have been performed at venues in the U.S. and world-wide, this was my first exposure to her work and her ten year old Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based company.

Commissioned by the North Carolina School of the Arts for its Fall 2014 Dance Concert (Simoneau, who hails from Quebec, is a UNCSA graduate), Moonlight Parade is a showcase for Simoneau’s physically powerful and eclectic style of movement. Taking place in “moonlight” (translated – a relatively dimly lit atmosphere where dancers gather), the dance begins with percussive sounds and staccato movement that gradually, in segments that feature the five company dancers or subsets of the larger group, evolves to more expansive percussive sounds and accompanying movement. [The music, which was created for this piece, is by Michael Wall and Andy Hasenpflug.] There’s a Dionysian-revelry sense to the piece that I found intriguing, especially with one male dancer (Frankie Peterson) among four women (Teigha Bailey, Catie Leasca, Emily Lopez, and Savannah Spratt) and the powerful, frenzied but weighty movement that at times seems to pound into the ground together with the pounding musical beat that’s not uncommon in contemporary dance (as is the absence of any seeming purpose behind the hard-driving choreography beyond visualizing abstract power. While all the dancers were strong performers, Spratt, who I saw perform only a few weeks ago with The Limon Company, stood out for her relatively distinctive lyricism.

Helen Simoneau Danse
in Helen Simoneau’s “Moonlight Parade”
Photo by Steven Pisano

It may be that there are multiple incarnations of Moonlight Parade. I’ve seen photos that show scenes with more than five participating dancers, and other indications the piece was performed by only two dancers. And in the program, the dance is described as having been created in 2015 in NYC, rather than in 2014 in North Carolina. So I’m not sure whether what was presented here was the original, a substantial (and standalone) excerpt or adaptation from it, or something related but altogether different. Regardless, Moonlight Parade as presented here succeeds in creating and communicating the ambiance that Simoneau wanted in a competent and coherent way, and I’ll look forward to seeing more of her work in the future.

Regrettably, I was not able to see the dances by other women choreographers that comprised the full WOMEN / CREATE! program: The Theory of Color, a world premiere performed by Jennifer Muller/The Works; Snap Crackle Pop, by Carolyn Dorfman Dance; and an excerpt from Unapologetic Body, a work in progress, by the Francesca Harper Project. I suspect, however, that WOMEN / CREATE! will continue as an annual event at NYLA next year, and that pieces by these and other established or emerging women choreographers will on the program.

The post NYLA: WOMEN / CREATE!, 2019 Edition appeared first on CriticalDance.

American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

June 17, 18, 19 evening, and 21, 2019
Manon

— by Jerry Hochman

Name a ballet tragedy choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan that features thrilling romantic pas de deux by the lead dancers, street beggars, harlots, sword fights, a stabbing death, soon to be lovers who find each other across a crowded space, and a stomach-curdling scream – and which is an emotionally draining experience for anyone in the audience with a beating heart.

No, not that one. Manon.

After a lengthy absence, Manon returned to American Ballet Theatre’s Met schedule with a week of performances that began on June 17. It’s a ballet of extraordinary physical and emotional complexity, with a demanding female lead character that’s the equal of anything in the contemporary ballet canon, choreography that melts as well as excites, and consistently evocative and galvanizing music by Jules Massenet. It’s one of my favorite ballets. It’s been away too long.

For this engagement, I saw three of the four casts, led by Hee Seo and Roberto Bolle on Monday, Sarah Lane and Herman Cornejo on Tuesday, and Isabella Boylston and David Hallberg the following night. [Regrettably, I was unable to see the fourth cast, led by Misty Copeland and Cory Stearns.] Each of the Manons, according to ABT’s publicity releases, was a role debut. None of the portrayals disappointed, and any member of the audience seeing only one of them would believe that that one could not be equaled. But there were appreciable differences between them that I’ll discuss below.

Over the years, I’ve seen fewer performances of Manon than I have of other ballet masterpieces, primarily because Manon is not scheduled as frequently as others. Of those I’ve seen (all in New York), the Manons most indelibly etched in my mind are those by Diana Vishneva and Alessandra Ferri (including a series of “dueling” Manons in 2007, and Vishneva’s 10^th Anniversary ABT Celebration in 2014), and by Sylvie Guillem. That nothing I’ve seen to date can equal these portrayals is not surprising. That two of them are already close, and the third certainly credible, speaks to the extraordinary talents as dancer / actors of this week’s casts.

Hee Seo and Roberto Bolle
in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

Manon is not the greatest ballet in the world. Essentially, it’s somewhat of a rip-off of MacMillan by MacMillan, with Manon, which he created in 1974, resembling his 1965 Romeo and Juliet. Much of MacMillan’s choreography is filler (as it was in Romeo and Juliet), but it all works, and his romantic pas de deux (instead of balcony, bed and bier, in Manon we have bed, bordello and bayou) are equally exquisite, though told from a different point of view. And if you focus on the ballet’s arias – the pas de deux and Des Grieux’s solos – the dancing is gorgeous, and one can revel in MacMillan’s explorations of emotion’s complexities with movement that percolates rather than simply pulses, in which the characters’ passion ignites the stage as if gasoline had been poured on already flaming embers. Manon may be melodrama, but it’s high-class melodrama.

Ultimately, however, Manon is a classic morality tale, and what makes the piece, and the performance, is Manon’s journey. It’s also the ballet’s one significant failing. MacMillan reportedly intended to portray Manon’s love of luxury as arising from her desperate poverty, but the ballet never shows the poverty. We see what Manon’s motivations are; we see her seduced by extravagant and easily attainable wealth (the intensity of seduction is here displayed, effectively, as a common component to the lure of wealth and to sexual passion), but we don’t see the reason behind it. Instead, Manon is usually portrayed as somewhat of a courtesan-in-training from the outset, who, at the very least, doesn’t require much convincing to trade sexual favor for wealth. She may also be portrayed initially as somewhat of an innocent (as I’ll discuss further below), which at least provides the story with a legitimate sense of tragedy, but that’s not the same thing as cause and effect.

Sarah Lane
and Herman Cornejo
in the curtain call
following their performance
in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s
“Manon”
Photo by
Jerry Hochman

The story of Manon Lescaut has been around awhile – since the 1731 novel, Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, written by the Abbé Prévost (Antoine François Prévost d’Exiles) initially as part of a series of stories titled Mémoires et aventures d’un homme de qualité. Since then, the story has been memorialized in at least two operas (one by Puccini, one by Massenet), and was used as a reference point in La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils. The music used here, however, is not from Massenet’s opera – it’s an amalgam of assorted Massenet music, opera and otherwise (but not Manon), which fits the ballet like a glove, balletic arias and all.

As modified in MacMillan’s libretto, the story of Manon may not be familiar. In tongue–in-cheek summary, the ballet tells of young Manon Lescaut, who is on her way to a convent. Her carriage stops in a gathering place (the crowded courtyard of an inn; maybe the equivalent of an 18^th Century urban town square) where she meets her brother Lescaut (in Massenet’s opera, Lescaut is her cousin), who spends his time pondering ways to make money, and focusing on matching attractive women with older men for the equivalent of a finder’s fee and the promise of more riches to come. In other words, he’s a Belle Époque pimp. [In the ballet’s initial scene, Lescaut is seen isolated within the action that surrounds him: the scheming outsider.] Either willingly or under her brother’s influence, Manon becomes one of his lures – with the particular target being a rich bon vivant and foot fetishist, Monsieur G.M. While in the process of seducing the already seduced Monsieur G.M., Manon spies Des Grieux, a bookish young student, and immediately falls in love. [In the novel, Des Grieux is no innocent, and his relationship with Manon, which his family disapproves due to Manon’s questionable character, apparently is a given.] Upon seeing her he’s immediately besotted as well, and faster than you can say Romeo and Juliet they run off to Des Grieux’s apartment and its waiting bed.

Not willing to give up on his financial bonanza, Lescaut finds them, bringing Monsieur G.M. with him (conveniently, after Des Grieux dashed off — maybe a post-tryst need for a cigarette or two). Fully equipped with furs and jewels and abetted by Lescaut, Monsieur G.M. convinces Manon that a life of loveless luxury with a perfumed pompous pervert beats a life of poverty and puppy love. Finding Manon gone when he returns, Des Grieux gets just a little upset. Lescaut attempts to buy his acceptance with some of the money Monsieur G.M. paid in commission, but the morally upright Des Grieux repeatedly rejects the offer — until Lescaut convinces him with a stranglehold.

In Act II, Manon has become Monsieur G.M.’s trophy companion. While at a “party” given by her wealth provider at a “Peculiar Hotel,” which could pass as a high class 19th Century bordello complete with Madame, courtesans, and prospective customers, it’s quickly apparent that Manon enjoys being in the company of courtesan temptresses — and is good at being one herself. Des Grieux just happens to be there. Manon resists, but ultimately yields to her love for Des Grieux. They plan to escape Monsieur G.M. and still acquire a measure of his wealth via a card game fixed by Lescaut, but Monsieur G.M. figures out that he’s been had – not just by Lescaut but by Des Grieux and Manon as well, and begins fighting back. With a sword. Manon and Des Grieux escape — back to Des Grieux’s apartment, which consequently made it easy for Monsieur G.M. to find them, bringing with him the local constabulary. Monsieur G.M. kills Lescaut, and has the gendarmes arrest Manon for being a prostitute. Des Grieux follows her into custody, and in Act III, eventually to exile in an American penal colony in Louisiana run by a despicable Jailer, who promptly finds Manon to be the pick of the deported prostitute litter, and forces himself on her. Enraged, Des Grieux stabs and kills him. Manon and Des Grieux escape to a fetid, foggy bayou where Manon dies of starvation or illness or heat stroke or being handled like a sack of potatoes.

I’ve joked about the story, but to be clear, there’s nothing funny about Manon (except a wonderfully comic solo by a drunken Lescaut that morphs into an hilarious duet with his courtesan mistress). The ballet is a cornucopia of passion and action that rarely stops — except for too many curtain-closing between scene musical interludes that interrupt the flow.

In the usual Manon portrayals I’ve seen, she’s depicted as a novice but willing courtesan-to-be from the beginning, easily motivated to seduce older rich men by her brother, but probably inclined to do it all along. Maybe it’s a family trait – and maybe her family sent her to a convent to insulate her from her temptations rather than from any religious conviction. In any event, it’s Manon’s suffering that people most remember, rather than the fact (to an extent abetted by Lescaut) that she brought it on herself.

Hee Seo and Roberto Bolle
in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

This was the sense I got from Seo’s and Boylston’s Manon – totally consistent with other portrayals I’ve seen, and with what audiences have come to expect. But Seo added something extra, a convincing (perhaps a bit overly convincing) sensuality, that Boylston lacked. [Now if only Seo could exude that quality when she dances Odile.] I find it difficult to believe that this was Seo’s debut; she looked that comfortable in the role, and was that accomplished. [She’d previously danced the Act I bedroom pas de deux, with Stearns, at the most recent Youth America Grand Prix Gala, and looked equally accomplished then.] I’m not hedging here; Seo’s Manon was brilliant and moving — but it was the portrayal audiences expect. Bolle, who was to celebrate his “Farewell” ABT performance three nights later (and who was Ferri’s partner in those 2007 Manons), started off a bit rusty-looking but quickly delivered a first-rate Des Grieux, topped off by a ballet-ending scream that rivaled that of MacMillan’s Juliet. The other Des Grieux’s didn’t scream – Bolle’s portrayal was far more effective.

Seo’s Manon was also incalculably aided by James Whiteside’s Lescaut. No matter what Seo’s inclinations from the outset might have been, Whiteside made it look like he made her do it. It was an amazing performance by Whiteside – by far the best among the several performances of Lescaut I can recall (including the superb portrayal by Cornejo several years ago), and by far the best performance that I’ve seen from Whiteside to date. He was a force; he ripped up the stage; he was dominant in the scenes he was in. Stella Abrera also gave an extraordinary, outsized performance as Lescaut’s mistress.

On Wednesday night, Boylston and Hallberg delivered very fine performances as well. Had one not seen Seo’s Manon (and Lane’s on Tuesday), one might have found it as emotionally devastating as it needs to be. But it’s a question of degree and characterization preference. I sensed the “courtesan-in-training” character immediately, and found it difficult to build up sympathy for her notwithstanding the passion she displayed with Hallberg, the quality of her execution, and the built-in sympathy that Act III provides. Her portrayal also lacked the detail that both Seo and Lane added, too often looking aloof and flat rather than seductive. Hallberg did a very fine job with his introductory Act I solos, and his partnering throughout; his Act I was by far the best of the three. But in Act III, his classical purity was much too evident, which, while legitimately captivating to Manon in Act I, diminished the concluding scene’s impact by simply looking too classically perfect.

Sarah Lane and Herman Cornejo
in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

Lane’s Manon was a Manon of a different color, and to me it worked on a profound level. This Manon had a purity, and a vulnerability, about her from the beginning that fit both Lane’s stage persona and the story, and that made the whole ballet far more complex than one where Manon is a willing courtesan / seducer as soon as she leaves her carriage. In the end, this characterization made her performance even more heart-wrenching than Seo’s, and far more tragic. As finely wrought as Seo’s Act III was (and it definitely was), Lane’s took it to another dimension of suffering and anguish. I will never forget the way Guillem looked when she first appeared in Act III — it sent shivers up and down my spine, and I suspect the spines of others in that audience as well. Lane’s was the equal of that, with the added layer of vulnerability and not-her-fault tragedy. [I’m not an expert in classic literature, but to me, a monstrously sad event may not, by itself, be tragic in the classic sense based solely on suffering. It requires a fall from a high (or blameless) position, perhaps based on a personality trait beyond the character’s control.] She was not a broken woman who made bad choices and who’d reached bottom; she was all that, but she was also a broken spirit who didn’t know what hit her. I have only one relatively silly observation: when you’re dying in the bayou, straightening your skirt should be the last thing on your (or your distraught lover’s) mind.

Stella Abrera
and members of American Ballet Theatre
in a prior performance of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

The problem with the Lane / Cornejo Manon on Tuesday was in their Act I, where to my eye they both were deferring to Cornejo’s recent injury – this was his first ABT performance this 2019 Met Season (its 6^th week), and until the last minute no one I’d spoken with seemed certain that he’d be available for this one. Though the bravura stuff in the pas de deux was maintained and done well, and the passion during the pas de deux was off the charts, the energy flow when they danced together was less powerful than between Seo and Bolle: it appeared to me that they physically held back a bit. It may not have been noticeable to those who only saw Tuesday’s performance, but it appeared that way by comparison. Gradually, however, as the evening progressed Cornejo seemed to become more secure, and the rest of the ballet was superbly done by both of them. My observation appeared accurate – on Friday evening, Lane and Cornejo’s Act I, while emotionally the same, was far more physically powerful. However, Cornejo’s next appearance in Manon needs to be handled somewhat differently. When Bolle and Hallberg first entered in Act I, they stood out, and were immediately recognized by the audience. Cornejo blended in too well, and in both performances few in the audience acknowledged his entrance.

At Tuesday’s performance, Cassandra Trenary as Lescaut’s mistress was too tentative – especially compared to Abrera the previous night. I observed the same with Christine Shevchenko’s portrayal on Wednesday. But Trenary’s portrayal improved markedly in Friday’s performance, which was imbued with the depth of character missing from Tuesday’s portrayal, and I suspect an additional outing would have resulted in the same improvement in Shevchenko’s portrayal. And Blaine Hoven, who danced Lescaux at each of the performances I saw except Monday’s (filling in for the injured Daniil Simkin on Tuesday), lacked Whiteside’s venom. Like Trenary, his characterization improved through the week, but overall he was far too likeable. Roman Zhurbin’s Monsieur G.M. delivered the essential callous and sleazy pomposity; Keith Roberts’s portrayal was less strong. And as the Jailer, all three portrayals I saw (Alexandre Hammoudi, Zhurbin, and Thomas Forster) were top-flight vicious.

But it’s the execution and characterization of Manon that makes or breaks this ballet. Boylston’s was perfectly adequate, but the sensuality and the character nuances didn’t compare with those of Seo or Lane. And with Lane adding the dimension of vulnerability and betrayed innocence, together with the accepted wisdom that this role might have been too much of a stretch for her, her portrayal was the most memorable. Once again, Lane’s performance exceeded even the wildest expectations – in this case, to an extent that would have seemed incomprehensible. She provided the palpable passion in Act I (as did the other Manons), walked the character tightrope in Act II perfectly (as did Seo, but in a different, more complexly nuanced knowing way), and in Act III, delivered a performance for the ages. Again. It was as memorable in its way as was as her mad scene in Giselle last year: it was that good. And if there were yet any lingering doubts that Lane could handle the technical and emotional components of being a compelling Juliet, her Manon dispelled them.

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