Wheeldon's Beguiling Winter's Tale

Photo: Karolina Kuras, courtesy of National Ballet of Canada

Christopher Wheeldon is becoming very skilled at total theater craft, as evidenced in his production of The Winter's Tale performed last week by the National Ballet of Canada. It was the sole dance fare in the 2016 Lincoln Center Festival, at the Koch Theater. Of course, the still relatively young Wheeldon (43) has been an ace choreographer for years by now, with many plotless and themed ballets in company repertories around the world, with a lion's share for New York City Ballet. 

He conquered Broadway with the charmer An American in Paris, for which he won a Tony. The tools used there—moving large set pieces, employing video projections successfully, quickly crafting deft characterizations—were put to use in Winter's Tale to create a quick-paced, unexpectedly entertaining rendition of Shakespeare's story. He is able to focus on all elements of the production and not simply the dancing, although that remains the keystone. 

The show's length, around 2:45, demands a lot of choreography, and much of it is lyrical and shapely with inventive touches and some contortions as well (in particular, a lift by the young lovers in which Rui Huang basically folds in half as Skylar Campbell cradles her and they kiss. Ouch.) He generally favors outstretched diagonal lines, such as in the photo below, and free flowing phrases.

Skylar Campbell and Rui Huang. Photo: Karolina Kuras, courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada

With the exception of the petulant, brutal Leontes (Guillaume Côté, fierce and magnetic), the characters are subtly delineated. The main female role turns out not to be Hermione (Sonia Rodgriquez) but Paulina, head of the queen's household, danced incisively and with pathos by former Bolshoi member Svetlana Lunkina.  

Two tall portals move about the stage frequently. In one scene, a seemingly endless staircase foreshadows the impending death of the boy prince Mamilius, who descends it. Four statues that appear to be life casts sit on pedestals; uncovered, they imply pomp, and covered, stasis or death. The show-stopper is Crowley's magnificent and life-like tree in the second act, bedecked with ornaments. A flutist plays beneath it as the townsfolk spread blankets and climb ladders to add jewels to the tree's branches. An ensemble dance includes folk motifs of the Slavic sort, such as folded arms and flexed feet.

Bob Crowley's elegant costumes flatter; the men wear pieced tunic coats or kilt-like skirts over tights, connoting a tribal feel. The women are given sleek, flaring dresses with chenille vests to denote the outdoors. Huang and Campbell as the princess and prince injected joy and lightness into their lengthy duets and solos. The score, by Jody Talbot, is lyrical and perfectly pleasant, with dramatic swells and Gershwinesque horns. Perhaps with further viewings, notable musical themes might emerge. But it's a solid ballet with good bones, and a notable entry into the full-length canon.
  

All-Star Break: Kings of the Dance and Tom Gold Dance

Flying Kings: Gomes, Hallberg, Côté, Matvienko, Vasiliev. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Just as Linsanity was peaking, along came the NBA all-star break, when the top players get to show off in a different way. The New York ballet world is undergoing a sort of all-star break itself in the wake of NYCB's winter season. Of course, it's not like NYCB or ABT's dancers are lounging around eating bon bons... they tour between NY seasons, or dance with other companies, so the break, or vacuum, is really for us.

Last weekend, the 2012 Kings of the Dance—Opus 3—performed at City Center. This year’s lineup included ABT’s Marcelo Gomes and David Hallberg (also, Bolshoi), Guillaume Côté (National Ballet of Canada), Denis Matvienko (Mariinsky Ballet), and Ivan Vasiliev (Mikhailovsky Ballet, and until recently, the Bolshoi). The point of this Ardani Artists project, like many in its portfolio, is to allow ballet to fiddle around and experiment with contemporary styles, and to explore other aspects of physical and emotional expressiveness.

The main drag on this program is that the curatorial taste leaned on a certain genre of European, neurotic gesture-heavy contemporary ballet. At the end of the evening, Mauro Bigonzetti (whose work Jazzy Five comprised the first half), Marco Goecke, Patrick de Bana, and Edward Clug’s vocabularies unfortunately blended together in the mind—a mixture of twitches, cause-and-reaction limb work, and dramatically lit musculature. Even these admittedly fantastic dancers found little in this material to make memorable, although both Hallberg and Gomes worked best in their Bigonzetti solos, taking the task to heart, and Vasiliev blasted off earth in his leaps.

A nice surprise—Gomes choreographed KO’d, the appealing finale, set to a symphony composed by Guillaume Côté. Gomes basically hewed to a classical vocabulary, which seemed to relax and liberate the men. Côté exited after a group section and emerged playing the piano for a brief time. (Too bad these guys have no skills.) An easy collegiality made for an uplifting ending on a bill that could have used some more aesthetic variety.

Tyler Angle and Simone Messmer. Photo: Eugene Gologursky

On Monday night, Tom Gold Dance presented a compact program on the ultra-compact stage at Florence Gould Hall. This ex-NYCB soloist put together a ridiculously gifted cast including current principals Sara Mearns, Tyler and Jared Angle, Robert Fairchild, and Abi Stafford (all from NYCB), and the rising star soloist Simone Messmer at ABT. They performed four of Gold's dances which varied in tone and musical genre. The opening group dance, filled with coy touches, was set to Asian-like music by Alexandre Desplat. Three lovely duets to Romantic piano music (played live), danced poetically by Messmer and Tyler Angle, showed Gold's knack with creating interesting finishes. Three couples performed the more classical Mozart Variations; Stafford, of smaller build and refined features, especially shone in this close context.

The ensemble crammed onstage for Tango Fantasie, in which Fairchild showed his magnetism and cool style, and partners Tyler Angle and Sara Mearns smoldered. Of course, we want to see this caliber of performer as much as possible, but it was hard to see the dance for the dancers. No doubt the performance was meant to entice further support for future programming on a larger stage, a chance Gold certainly merits. Especially if he can assemble all-stars like this.