Lyon Opera Ballet and Hubbard Street—The Rep's the Thing

Sarabande. Photo: Michel Cavalca

Lyon Opera Ballet can be counted on to bring interesting repertory to New York. Last year, at BAM, it performed Christian Rizzo's ni fleurs, ni ford-mustang, a somewhat impenetrable, glacial  performance work that exploded into ecstatic dance only in its final minutes. This year, it presented at the Joyce works by three buzzy choreographers: William Forsythe, Benjamin Millepied, and Emanuel Gat.

The dances by the first two put to ample use the company's ballet training. Steptext, by Forsythe, dates from a relatively early 1986. Women are on pointe, and the movement is frenetic and all-out, pushing our expectations of the athlete/dancers. There is still a casualness to the affair; moves sometimes ended abruptly and petered out in a walk, rather than a tightly closed fifth or fourth position. Millepied's Sarabande (2009) has a similar dance-and-dash quality. Four men in nifty, colorful shirts noodle and play with the ballet steps they're given, interacting at moments with the on-stage violinist or flautist (reminiscent of Jerome Robbins).  


Gat's Sunshine drew particularly on the idea of a group—reliance on one another, assembling and breaking apart, pushing through the fourth wall to draw in the audience. Gat's lucid lighting scheme seemed to add vast dimensionality to the stage. His movement, so distinctive when he began choreographing a decade ago or so, has expanded to encompass a vocabulary that feels similar to a number of Europeans working today. But his theatrical sense remains fascinating. 

Sunshine. Photo: Michel Cavalca

A couple of weeks later, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago arrived at the Joyce for a two-program run over two weeks. Years ago, under the artistic direction of Glenn Edgerton, this company shifted its focus from jazzy fare toward the European ballet-influenced modern style, more akin to (and including repertory by) Kylian and Forsythe. It is a more global approach, and the company's dancers do well in the elastic, sock-clad movement. 

However, in the matinee I caught on May 16, many of the five dances on the program blended together stylistically. Two works by resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo displayed his seamless, organic movement, lovely and harmonious, but after 20 minutes or so, ultimately monodynamic and in the case of Second to Last (Excerpt), the use of Arvo Part's very familiar music did nothing to distinguish it. 

Crystal Pite's new solo, A Picture of You Falling, with text by Pite spoken by Kate Strong, was danced powerfully by Jason Hortin. It follows in the dance-theater canon of movement plus words, in stark lighting. And Robyn Mineko Williams, a longtime Hubbard dancer turned choreographer, contributed Waxing Moon, a trio. While the movement was slightly more angular and spasmodic than Cerrudo's, the tasteful black costumes, stark lighting, and long string of duets unfortunately felt very similar to the previous dances.

I Am Mister B. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu

What did stand out, for puzzling reasons, was I Am Mister B, by Gustavo Ramirez Sansano. The choreographer danced in Balanchine's Theme and Variations, and in theory this premiere is a celebration of Tchaikovsky's ebullient music, and an elegy to Mr. B. The women and men both wore blue dinner jackets, white shirts with narrow black ties, and black pants, to evoke the subject. This faithfulness to wardrobe fell flat when it came to footwear, which was the Hubbard's current rep default—socks. Three sets of semi-transparent copen blue curtains that reeked of a fusty baroqueness fell and rose periodically, compartmentalizing or opening up the stage. The dancers sprang and thrust their pelvises forward, chopping at the air with bent arms. One man spoke some lines so rapidly that I couldn't understand him. Perhaps they held the key to the work.

Sansano's choreography is his own interpretation of the music that has nothing to do with Mr. B's classic. It felt as if Sansano loved the music so much, yet didn't want to do an end-run around Balanchine, that he worked in the conceit of the character of Balanchine, maybe breaking loose after a performance of Theme and Variations. What made it even more confusing was the fresh, sweet memory of seeing Herman Cornejo and Sarah Lane lead ABT in Tuesday's Met performance of Theme and Variations. Besides Balanchine's Symphony in C, there is perhaps no plotless classical ballet more musically adept and in concert with its score.

Hubbard Street's dancers continue to be outstanding performers, but I wonder if the repertory isn't too similar to draw on all of their talents. Maybe one piece without socks?

Pacific Northwest Ballet—A Prodigal Daughter Bids Farewell

Tide Harmonic. Carla Korbes & Joshua Grant. Photo: Angela Sterling 

This month, we bid at least temporary farewells to two outstanding ballerinas: the incomparable Wendy Whelan, at NYCB, and the luminous Carla Korbes at Pacific Northwest Ballet. Korbes' retirement is somewhat of a surprise as she's in her early 30s, about 15 years younger than Whelan. It still feels like just yesterday when she emerged within NYCB as a soloist and was given larger roles, only to cross the continent to join PNB under Peter Boal's direction, where she has flourished and certainly danced more leading roles than if she had remained in New York. 

A Justin Peck "preview performance" of Debonair, to George Antheil's score, in PNB's program at the Joyce this week featured Korbes in an extended duet with Jerome Tisserand. (The piece will "premiere" on Nov. 7 in Seattle, which presumably means it will get a fancy party.) With that in mind, I assume the rigorous vocabulary of double tours en l'air and pirouettes will only be honed by then, and Korbes' already formidable elasticity and plushness will deepen. In addition to the traditional couple, Peck has created two sections for one woman and three men in which the woman dances alone—a rarer sight than you might imagine in recent abstract ballets. 

Laser legs in Tide Harmonic. Rachel Foster and James Moore. Photo: Lindsay Thomas

Laser legs in Tide Harmonic. Rachel Foster and James Moore. Photo: Lindsay Thomas

The bill began with Chris Wheeldon's 2013 Tide Harmonic, with music by Jody Talbot, who also scored Alice's Adventures. Four women bolt onstage, circling one another, unleashing developpés whipping piqués; the men rush cross stage in deep pliés. Wheeldon excels at inventive partnering, here making ample use of the women's bare legs as weapons. (Remember laser cats? Like that, but with lasers emanating from toe shoes, not paws.) On one toe, with the other bent leg, ankle gripped by her partner, a woman is rocked menacingly, side to side. Another section features two men mirroring one another, alternating phrases, circling the stage with their arms clasped congenially around one another's back. The piece exudes daring and speed, with movement experiments fitted together like a puzzle. Talbot's music is filmic in feel, with suspenseful, rushing passages, but it can also be overly aggressive for the choreography, which itself seems amped up to match the bold dynamics. Lindsi Dec stood out for her bold lines and highly arched feet.

Alejandro Cerrudo's Memory Glow, set to a selection of moody music, showed his sinewy, organic vocabulary on these fine dancers. Ample drama came from the chiaroscuro lighting, as well as the on-stage light fixtures, two of which were dragged by their cords into place to form an arc around the dancers. Cerrudo is from the post-Forsythe sock school of choreography, which extends the softness from pliable feet into the whole body, allowing torsos and limbs to ripple and react to impulses. A fleeing woman would be caught by her ankle by a pursuing man, or even by her forehead. Once again, the women wore legless leotards while the men were completely covered in polo shirts and crinkled slate pants. Women seem to be the focus of these younger ballet choreographers, but the emphasis on their bareness pushes this tendency toward objectification, even if it's meant as a tribute.