Two Luminous New York City Ballet Premieres

New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Mystic Familiar. Photo: Erin Baiano

It’s hard to comprehend that Mystic Familiar: A Ballet by Justin Peck is his 25th work for New York City Ballet, where he is resident choreographer. (The second part of the title reads as an imprimatur for how much clout he has artistically; it echoes “A Piece by Pina Bausch,” which followed each of her work’s titles.) It’s both a huge accomplishment to accrue so many commissions by his home company, which happens to be one of the world’s most significant troupes. On the other hand, it requires a lot of creativity and hard work to differentiate over two dozen dances on the same company.

Certain Peck dances stand out in my memory. The Times Are Racing (2017) tops that list, anchored by a hip-tappy duet originally done by Peck for himself and Robbie Fairchild (and later including women in the roles), and another duet of flashing feet and circular flip-lifts with Tiler Peck levitating up and down. Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon designed the playful street/athletic wear costumes worn with sneakers. And Dan Deacon’s score charged the piece with an urgency and daredevilry that Peck rode, full speed ahead. The same synergetic creative team has been gathered together to create Mystic.

Taylor Stanley with company in Mystic Familiar. Photo: Erin Baiano

Peck works in a variety of choreographic languages, but the one established in TTAR have distinguished many of his most striking dances. (Moments feel like tips of the hat to his sneaker-ballet predecessors such as Robbins, Childs, and Tharp.) The youthful, athletic vigor; the clustering, pulsing, and exploding of the corps, often singling out a central dancer; the inward, noodling phrases; the dashes of levity and community. The undeniable joie de vivre. 

Many of those elements occur in Mystic Familiar, but the heart of the piece is anomolous: a long solo for Taylor Stanley. His leonine grace and strength have made him a muse for a number of choreographers at NYCB, including Kyle Abraham and Peck. Stanley’s solo is quite expressionistic and emotionally resonant, featuring sculptural shapes that melt into soft looping phrases, or a thrusting sternum, comprising a poignant, poetic section.

Some passages evoke previous Peck dances, as you’d expect. Dancers line the stage’s apron, in silhouette; a column of bodies splits off right and left; a rapid phrase ends in an abruptly held position. Near the end, the performers trade their colorful, translucent streetwear for antiseptic white jumpsuits, adding a chill to the atmosphere. A paranoiac might read them as hazmat suits, a solemn reminder of the not-long-past pandemic. Deacon's music feels melodic and companionable, and less a soundtrack to a revolution.

Peck is now an established Broadway choreographer, with recent productions of Illinoise and Buena Vista Social Club to his credit. It feels as if Broadway has seeped into Mystic in its energetic pacing and the supporting synthesis of Eamon Ore-Giron’s dazzling geometric backdrop, and lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker, which spotlights different points of the mural, like a setting sun descending through the trees. The sum total feels like a solid work that wrings the most out of the resources given, on every production level.

Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward in When We Fell. Photo: Erin Baiano

Kyle Abraham also used the totality of the theater. As opposed to the maximalist approach in Mystic, his premiere of When We Fell leans toward elegant, pure, minimalism. Two pianos sat on opposite sides of the stage, which featured a stage-wide horizontal mirror perhaps a yard high, hovering just above the people on stage. The eight dancers wore Karen Young’s stunning unitards in metallic hues of copper, silver, and gold. The distantly-placed pianos (which play Morton Feldman, Jason Moran, and Nico Muhly’s music), the spacious dark void above the mirror, and the small cast in their shimmering suits compounded to create a feeling of infinity and absence, echoing the Covid era.

Abraham originally made this work as a film in the wake of the pandemic, when dances were made over Zoom with participants in far-away locations. or in collective isolation. He uses ballet steps for the most part, with expressionistic tweaks, like rippling torsos, or deeply swooping port de bras. Rapid piques, frenetic battus, and big leaps and sautés punch up the final section; Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward dance in a large pool of light but otherwise darkness, counterbalancing one another in an apt metaphor for codependency in a time of isolation. It's gratifying to see these two premieres by artists who are no longer brand-new choreographers at NYCB. Both dances are memorable and should crop up with regularity in seasons to come, with luck.

Some company notes... Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette retire from the company this season. And besides seeing the superlative Taylor Stanley in featured premiere roles, KJ Takahashi distinguished himself in crisp, bold solos in both dances, electrifying the stage.