Day for Night, for All

Day for Night. Photo: Liz Devine

The July 21 performance of Pam Tanowitz’s premiere, Day for Night, encapsulated the best of summer in the city, with the weather cooperating. A buzzy premiere by one of the busiest choreographers, a lovely new venue, the great outdoors set apart from the hot city, but not too far—what’s not to like? It was presented as part of Little Island’s summer slate, of impressive bounty and breadth, with nine commissions.

Little Island is reached by foot or bicycle by crossing the West Side Highway—an act of metamorphosis that shifts your mindset into one of leisure and breezes after being baked from above and below during the daytime. The Island is an architectural folly, and its design and fastidiousness make it feel a bit like an amusement park. (In a good way.) The pre-8:30 curtain sun was steadily sinking over New Jersey, and on this night, it emitted a palette of lavenders and pinks, with some low, dense clouds refracting the sun to electrify the Hoboken skyline.

As I approached the amphitheater, dancers in green romped on the grass patches, with Tanowitz quietly giving them direction in a prelude to the show. The theater’s upstage is the Hudson River, including a stand of piers and New Jersey. Boats cruised by surprisingly fast, some with no lights on. Seagulls perched on the piers and squawked. The occasional siren sounded from the city behind, plus a lot of helicopter buzzing.

While most of the dance action takes place on the center stage, Tanowitz expands the performance space up the numerous aisles, on and below the Juliet balcony catwalks on either side of the stage, and to the railing of the upstage fence overlooking the river where the dancers stop to gaze out or wave lazily at the birds. She regularly incorporates venues into her dances; just last week, at Jacob’s Pillow, in her Secret Things, a dancer walked into the house and acknowledged the musicians in the pit before going backstage. At Bard in 2021, in I Was Waiting for the Echo of a Better Day, her dancers roamed and danced around the vast grounds of Montgomery Place overlooking the Catskills; it was left to viewers to decide where to look, when.

Maile Okamura, Marc Crousillat, Lindsey Jones
in Day for Night. Photo: Liz Devine

Tanowitz continues her remarkable choreographic invention by isolating and combining different details of each part of the body in unlimited variants, continuously creating subtly new shapes. (It evokes the Surrealists’ game of Exquisite Corpse, but with the body’s sections making dimensional configurations from surprising recombinants.) There are many tender interactions between the dancers in Day for Night, if no traditional lifts or partnering tropes. Certain dancer pods perform long sections before others appear, solo or in small groups, only to exit for long spans. Recurring motifs include the pony step; falling onto a side-extended leg and raising the other leg, like a see-saw; deep pliés in second; and, in repose on the astroturfed benches, joining us in observing other dancers at work. 

Justin Ellington created the sound, a pastiche of found snippets over which ambient noises (birds, choppers) layered, and Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung designed the multi-hued mesh costumes. Davison Scandrett designed the mostly nuanced, sometimes bold lighting, no easy task when competing with a sunset. Melissa Toogood performed a coda in the Grove, a bookend to the danced preludes. We departed in the dark, crossing the West Side Highway back to the main beehive of Manhattan. It felt like waking from a dream of the best kind. 

Little Island is a fantastic small venue with ambitious, rewarding programming led by Zack Winokur, producing artistic director, and Laura Clement, executive director, with tickets at $25. Just check the weather forecast.

Plein Air Dance, Summer of 2024

Smashed2. Photo: Camille Greenwell

SMASHED2

Gandini Juggling | PS21, Chatham, NY | July 12, 2024

Oranges, watermelons, and juggling! Kati Ylä-Hokkala and Sean Gandini took inspiration for SMASHED2 from Pina Bausch, which is evident from the first moment of the show as performers clad in semi-formal black dresses and suits cross rhythmically downstage—while juggling oranges. There could be far worse templates for a cirque show, but this homage was not noted in the digital program, and so all I could think was how blatantly the UK's Gandini Juggling had ripped off Bausch. But on their website, they duly acknowledge their debt to Pina, and a bit of scrolling shows they’re working on a project that honors Merce Cunningham as well.

And actually, the Nelken line works beautifully for this parade of jugglers, each highly skilled in the vexing craft, yet able to sync their movements while pacing in rhythm. They also borrow the convention of a solo woman downstage, speaking directly to the audience, in this case, saying “Oranges. Watermelons.” Indeed, these are the two main props for this evening of whimsy, underpinned by darker themes of gender conflict and retribution.

Smashed2. Photo: Camille Greenwell

As the scenes progress, women juggle while the two men attempt to distract and flirt with them. A woman with a baton also tries to disrupt the main juggler’s routine, ultimately with success. Six of the women surround one, forming a kind of many-armed Kali that passes around oranges in an overly long sequence. The watermelons are held by the women, now lying down in a circle, using their feet to balance the fruit, or passing them around. As you might guess from the title, things get juicy at the end, when the women overpower the men and use them for target practice for the melons and the juice of oranges, taking revenge for previous harassment. Similar to Bausch, the performance is grounded by a varied songlist that ranges from Americana folk song to new age shimmer. And, as always at PS21, the onstage action in the open-air amphitheater fought for attention, this time from a hot-air balloon cruising in the sultry air nearby.

Chun Wai Chan, Grace Scheffel, and Gilbert Bolden III in Underneath, There Is Light. Photo: Erin Baiano

New York City Ballet

Saratoga Performing Arts Center | Saratoga Springs, NY | July 11, 2024

There were also distractions at SPAC in Saratoga Springs for its annual presentation of New York City Ballet, but primarily from the audience, for which the plein-air theater seems conducive to random chatting, and from one rowdy man directly behind me lacking impulse control, badly timed, bellowed F-words or OMGs, albeit in support of the dancers. I caught the contemporary program, which alternated with Jewels and some classic chestnuts including Swan Lake and Coppélia. I had seen Amy Hall Garner’s Underneath, There Is Light at the Koch Theater earlier this year, and at the spacious SPAC stage, it felt better situated, with its non-stop blasts of pyrotechnics. In the second part, the women in gold gowns and the men in pearl rompers seemed to float organically into the surrounding atmosphere.

Naomi Corti and Ruby Lister in Gustave le Gray No.1. Photo: Erin Baiano

Two very different red quartets followed. Red Angels by Ulysses Dove (1994), a chamber-scaled staple of the repertory, features electric movements to match the twangy music by Richard Einhorn. Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Gray No. 1 (2019) features four women responding to, and literally moving, Stephen Gosling and his piano. With a repeating motif of a simple sauté, it’s the choreographer’s most poetic and intimate commission for the company yet, and rewards re-viewing. (Tanowitz remains one of the busiest choreographers around. Earlier in the week, I saw the Royal Ballet perform an excerpt of Tanowitz's Secret Things (2023) at Jacob's Pillow, write-up forthcoming, and will soon see Day For Night, her commission for Little Island in New York City.)

The Times Are Racing (2017), by Justin Peck, holds particular interest after seeing his music-theater work Illinoise at Bard last year. So many of the movements and tropes that suffuse the Broadway-bound show (for which Peck won the Tony for best choreography) are nascent in Times, and they felt radical and fresh seven years ago. But he has made so much work in the interim that some of his inventions feel overly familiar. Clustering centerstage, pulsing and lifting up one dancer, bursting apart… the outwear to signify breaking of tradition or the “outside”… sneakers… these all are elements Peck has used time and again. Times is kind of a primer of many of Peck’s non-classical motifs packed into 25 minutes, and apparently reason enough to scream more ecstatic expletives at the stage.

New York Notebook, June 2024

Catherine Hurlin and Daniel Camargo in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works. Photo: Marty Sohl

 

ABT performed the company premiere of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works (2015) during its 2024 season at the Met Opera House. It was presented alongside weathered classics such as Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake, and newer works such as Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate (2023). With rare exception, it’s a formula they have followed for many years; kudos to them for adding a truly contemporary ballet—actually three differing, short ballets. If only it had more choreographic appeal.

I confess that McGregor’s choreography has not spoken to me over the years. He pushes already extreme artist-athletes’ bodies in superhuman ways, often distorting a split past 180º, kicking a foot out rather than simply extending it, and having the men energetically manipulate their female partners. Rather than creating fluid phrases that read like sentences and paragraphs, his choreography can come off as a series of one-word exclamations. And that’s tough when you’re faced with a long evening to fill.

Alessandra Ferri in Woolf Works. Photo: Kyle Froman

At least the sections of Woolf varied enough to feel like three separate works. The first, I now, I then, based on Mrs. Dalloway, received the most traditional treatment. It’s set among three large, revolving, abstract wooden frames that presumably mark the protagonist’s eras. Perhaps the most significant coup of Woolf Works, and the probable connecting tissue, were the performances of longtime (“retired”) ABT principal Alessandra Ferri, now 61 and the originator of two of the three lead roles in WW, partnered by the sublime Herman Cornejo. Her abilities are ideal—chiefly, a paradigmatic ballet line and captivating expressions of vulnerability and wonder. I also caught the cast led by Gillian Murphy (with Joo Won Ahn), who, while technically crisp, exudes too much efficient capability for such a sensitive character. Perhaps the narrative is meant as a general outline for stage action, but it's somewhat impenetrable given the scant program notes.

Becomings, the second act based on Orlando, discards any narrative. Instead, we see gender fluidity and same-sex pairings, and similar courtly costumes of gold lamé worn by both women and men, until toward the end, all are in flesh-hued leotards. The movement is largely hyper-expressionistic, suiting fearless dynamo Catherine Hurlin to a tee. But the main event is the laser show (lighting design by Lucy Carter), which is probably no big deal for Cirque du Soleil in Vegas, but at the Met, with ballet, breaks literal spatial barriers. Dancers’ bodies pierce a vertical plane of light bisecting the stage, creating an electric outline. Several horizontal planes beam into the house, above our heads, while clouds are projected onto them. It brought the stage into the entire auditorium, and garnered huge applause.

Spectacular, for sure, but these bold production strokes often made the dancers look shrunken and inconsequential. Several duets or small groupings were performed at the same time, making it difficult to focus. Some small ensemble passages—the women performing a simple port de bras phrase; the men lying on their sides—provided rare satisfying choreographic moments. It made me think on how, in the classics, a duet (like the pas de deux in Swan Lake) can command the entirety of the stage, fake lake or not, and why. Tuesday, the third act based on The Waves, contrasts the independent and childless lead (Ferri/Murphy) with her sister and her children, with their oddly literal frolicking. A magnificent slo-mo film of crashing waves (film design by Ravi Deepres) hovers overhead, once again belittling the small humans below (and grabbing attention), but conveying the recurring theme of water in Woolf’s work, and all the life-giving and -taking symbolism therein.

The score by Max Richter offers little in the way of a framework, with its cinematic feel—pulsating, crescendoing, repetitive. It provides an aural parallel to McGregor’s choreography, but nearly two hours of both turns out to be a stretch. You have to credit ABT for taking a flyer on Woolf Works, but its lack of legible substance in light of the evening’s inspiration disappoints. In the context of the rest of the Met season, it at least promised a lauded, contemporary varietal, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t return.

Eran Bugge and Alex Clayton in Runes. Photo by Steven Pisano

In contrast, I saw two programs at the Joyce—Extreme Taylor. The slates offered some less mainstream or smaller scale earlier repertory by Paul Taylor alongside some chestnuts. Big Bertha is one of Taylor’s most egregiously shocking creations; a carnival automaton (Christina Lynch Markham, a notably dramatic dancer in her final run with the company) waves her wand to unleash violence and incest on a family. It exemplifies a highly dramatic subset of Taylor’s work that, without words, expresses radical societal behavior that simmers just beneath the surface—American Gothic on steroids. 

Lee Duveneck, Christina Lynch Markham, Eran Bugge, Kristin Draucker
in Big Bertha. Photo by Ron Thiele

Post Meridian (1965) and Duet (1964) are among his more rigorously modern dances, performed in color block or patterned unitards. They emphasize plastic experimentation and rigorous partnering, both examples of early Taylor choreography where there are no extra steps—models of economy and necessity. Private Domain (1969) combined spare phrasing with the simple dramatic device of downstage partitions (Alex Katz) that obstructed a viewer’s total stage picture, akin to the daily urban theater of peering into residential windows. In Runes (1975), Taylor added a layer of ritual (and fur pelts, designed under his alias), plus the timepiece of an orbiting moon. The sheer physical requirements of being a Taylor dancer hoved into view when Devon Louis, calm and solid as a tree, crossed and spun upstage bearing a woman pressed overhead.

Lisa Borres, Jessica Ferretti, Jada Pearman, Devon Louis, Lee Duveneck
in Post Meridian. Photo by Steven Pisano

Handel and Bach’s ebullient music drives both Airs (1978) and Brandenburgs (1988), respectively. Of Taylor’s “pattern” dances, the movement hews closely to the score, sometimes doubling or halving the tempo. And as lighthearted and buoyant as the dances read, they mandate incredible strength, stamina, and rehearsal drill time to appear so effortless. In particular, the corps of five men in Brandenburgs were synced like the atomic clock. Taylor’s mastery of entrances, exits and a satisfying variation in section dynamics were on full display.

Wayne McGregor has accolades in spades, but I continually wonder what I’m missing. Clearly my expectations from an evening’s work don’t overlap with Woolf Works. As his motor was the oeuvre of Virginia Woolf, I craved more narrative clues to link to her novels; longer program notes might assist, but the action onstage should be able to stand alone. More charismatic music also might provide support, and choreography to draw the focus to one primary passage on the vast stage peppered with groups. Taylor’s more intimate repertory delivered these things in a smaller setting, and from seeing his larger work on big stages, it scales up.

When I thought, “why am I watching this?” I couldn’t provide an answer during Woolf Works, other than Ferri making a hero’s return, and filling a slot with contemporary ballet. Is filling two hours too much to ask these days? One wonders where the rep goes from here, riding alongside than the old classics. 

Note: McGregor's work receives more stage time this weekend at Jacob's Pillow, performed by the Royal Ballet of London.