LA Dance Project, Evolving

Hearts & Arrows. Photo: Laurent Phillippe

The LA Dance Project, under Benjamin Millepied's artistic direction, continues to evolve and move forward, while giving annual performances in New York so we can see what they're up to. With Millepied's full attention, the company recently announced that it will renovate a space in LA's arts district to house headquarters and a small theater. Additionally, New York City Ballet alum Carla Körbes and Janie Taylor joined the company, at least for a brief period (Körbes has accepted a teaching position at Indiana University). The troupe performs at the Joyce Theater through this weekend with two programs.

The June 17th performance I caught included two works by Millepied, plus Yag by Ohad Naharin. (Unfortunately, In Silence We Speak, a duet for Körbes and Janie Taylor by Millepied, was repaced with his Orpheus Highway.) In both of Millepied's works, the movement is a contemporary version of ballet that takes a more relaxed, muscular approach to its basic vocabulary; the dancers wear either jazz shoes or sneakers. At times, the casual formality is reminiscent of Jerome Robbins, as well as some work by Justin Peck.

Hearts & Arrows has striking b&w costumes by Taylor, who has clearly hit her stride as a designer after retiring from NYCB. PUBLIQuartet, a string ensemble, plays live Philip Glass' Mishima. The movement flows easily, elastically, with a hand diminishing the energy of a phrase. The five sections build in dynamic, crescendoing in big movements that feel fun and liberating. Formations include spiraling flowers and chains, framed by four lighting towers; Roderick Murray designed the lighting.

Hearts & Arrows. Photo: Laurent Phillippe

Janie Taylor was featured in Orpheus Highway, a premiere to Steve Reich music played live. Taylor has always danced with a coolness and distance, but there's an shy intensity to her that remains intriguing. Millepied utilizes just enough gesture to imply key plot points from the myth. Live dancers are backgrounded by filmed elements; the moves sometimes coincide, and a different lead dancers in the film gives it a certain removed feel. Millepied contributed not only choreography, but co-lighting design (with Jim French), video direction, and costume design (street-like clothes). While it doesn't break new ground genre-wise, you get a sense of the American West and his company's place in it.

It's interesting to see Naharin's work on a company other than Batsheva (Now defunct Cedar Lake is one other example). Not surprisingly, it feels different than on his native dancers—less innate and unconscious. In Yag, the same basic story revolving around a family is told—verbally and movement-wise—from different points of view. A luminous orange panel occupies a prime spot center stage; at first, it's difficult to tell whether it's a portal or door; positive or negative space. A man wearing all brown (turtle neck, jacket, pants) and eye glasses transfers his costume to a woman, piece by piece, disrobing behind the panel. The dance is Naharin's slippery, alien gaga style, which is handled well by LADP.

The company is composed of some of the super-skilled, ballet-trained generalists that abound today and could likely handle most anything thrown their way. Sandwiched by the two Millepied dances, Yag was a nice bumper and completely antithetical to a classically-based style. 

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?

NYCB's Gala—Hearts and Birds Aflutter

Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle in Two Hearts. Photo: Paul Kolnick

There's a general sense of boundaries blurring between cultural genres in the city these days.  All that dance in museums. Film and new classical music in festivals like Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. And fashion everywhere, from Schiap/Prada at the Met, to Prada for Pina Bausch, to Rodarte and Gilles Mendel at New York City Ballet's spring gala last Tuesday. Combining things in different ways, after all, can result in alchemy, or merely frosting.

Kate & Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte's black and white geometric costumes for Benjamin Millepied's NYCB premiere of Two Hearts felt fresh and crisp. Millepied recently retired from the stage to heed his busy choreographic slate. While he's already suffering from a bit of  overexposure, he does have a way with ballet's vocabulary; he speaks it fluently and can write paragraphs with it. He can craft ambitious, devilish phrases, or make soft, flowing combinations that show off the essential expressiveness and beauty of ballet, which is the general tone of Two Hearts.

Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle, the leads, suit one another particularly well. Angle's growing strength and partnering ability often land him too-tall female counterparts, but Peck is a good fit. He is a poet—a plush mover, with an innate sense of epaulement. She is one of the company's best musical dancers, and has the absolute control needed to express that ear. She can dance sharply and wittily, or dial the steps to the right emotion.

Millepied shifts mood and dynamic with each part, returning repeatedly to the central pair, augmented by 12 corps members. In one section, several men caught Peck frozen in various positions in midair. She and Angle shed, respectively, skirt and shell prior to their long final duet to a plangent folk ballad sung by Dawn Landes. Nico Muhly wrote the commissioned  score, which in an early section sounded like an instrumental conversation—the flute bleating words between pauses, and at other times, coursing like rapids in a river. Near the end of their romantic duet, Angle floats Peck parallel to his supine body, making this feat look easy. The curtain closes on the two lounging casually, as if posing for Manet.

Peter Martins continues to feel impelled to create new work for his company, which already has reams of the stuff in its rep. The inspiration for Mes Oiseaux, his premiere to music by Marc-André Dalbavie, was presumably the cast, all fleet of foot, "oiseaux," you might say, in Apollo's ratio: Taylor Stanley, Lauren Lovette, Ashly Isaacs, and Claire Kretzschmar. Stanley's movement is elfin, flitting, otherworldly, bold, and all three women vividly attack movement. Predictably, he partners each woman in the same or similar phrases, cradling their legs, dragging them into attenuated poses in turn. (In one near situation, Kretzschmar's back-leaning weight almost toppled her and Stanley, who had to grab her pelvis rather brusquely to correct things.)

Martins favors an extruding style (and its antithesis) that Balanchine used liberally—splayed hands crossing the body, pushing into space, legs collapsing in parallel. These signatures that once marked a ballet as modern now look faded and coy in new choreography. Gilles Mendel provided the costumes; the womens' unremarkable, if flattering, variants on skating dresses with curlicue cutouts.

The costumes for Balanchine's Symphony in C (1947) are newly redone by Marc Happel. I can't say they changed this brilliant repertory standard much, which is passive praise. The piece is a showcase for company standouts. Megan Fairchild presents the choreography in a textbook way, giving it a clear reading but not much character. Sara Mearns, on the other hand, shapes the choreography with emotion and danger. At times she is in complete control of it, and sometimes she seems in its thrall, like a scene from The Red Shoes. I'd want Fairchild to teach it to me, but I'd buy a ticket to see Mearns. Their two partners, Jared Angle and Jonathan Stafford, are strong, reliable partners, both perhaps a bit bound by a traditional stoicism. Though I have seen Angle smile, an unexpected bit of sunshine peeking through clouds.

Joaquin de Luz, in contrast, lands on the bravura end of things. He exudes joy and reflects his partners emotions as well. In the exuberant third movement he partnered Ashley Bouder, ever confident and strident and on top of the music, to her detriment. In the finale, when all four women dance in unison downstage, backed by the entire corps, she seemed a full beat ahead of Mearns, her musical opposite. And finally, Tiler Peck, luminous and playful, danced the brief fourth movement with Adrian Danchig-Waring, a rewarding bit of casting for this talented dancer. Let's see if he can transform the effort he invests in each movement into confidence to unleash even more expressiveness.

Despite featuring two premieres and an iconic ballet, this gala program felt somewhat apologetic. Martins didn't do the standard speech/toast. The season on the whole is rather quiet and pro forma. But if every season can't feature a leviathan Ocean Kingdom, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

ABT: Between Classics, Three Solid Works, 5/26/11

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ABT: Between Classics, Three Solid Works by Ratmansky, Millepied, Wheeldon, at the Met

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/ballet/abt-between-classics-three-solid-new-works/1323/

Isabella Boylston and Marcelo Gomes in Thirteen Diversions. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor.

Wedged between Don Quixote and Giselle at the Met, American Ballet Theater unveiled three new works this week, each buoyantly successful in different ways. Alexei Ratmansky, Benjamin Millepied and Christopher Wheeldon have, for better or worse, become the “rat pack” of ballet choreographers, with numerous commissions and residencies by the city’s two big ballet companies (not to mention the rest of the world’s). None of these choreographers do anything particularly radical with ballet, and yet each is working on putting forward his own interesting motifs to evolve the form. Also on the program was Antony Tudor’sShadowplay, a somewhat strange allegorical tale in part inspired by Kipling, focused on the coming-of-age of a boy (the stellar Daniil Simkin, alongside the brave, serene Sarah Lane, hoisted aloft most of the time).

Wheeldon’s Thirteen Diversions, by virtue of being the most formal and ambitious, had the most to lose or win. And win us over he did, aided by Britten’s spacious, lively music, Bob Crowley’s elegant pewter and black satin jackets and fitted chiffon dresses, and the simple, ingenious lighting by Brad Fields (an intense ray of color for each movement). Wheeldon has a knack for bringing gemlike details into grand focus by surrounding them with stillness; gently curving hands and simple posés are reminders of why we love ballet to begin with. Four lead couples provide ample opportunity to relish a number of this company’s garishly talented ranks. Marcelo Gomes, as always, quietly but unerringly commands the stage, and Isabella Boylston displays heightened delicacy and nuance alongside confidence in her primary solo and duets with Gomes.