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.

The Look of Love's Warm Embrace

The Look of Love. Photo: Christopher Duggan

There are many reasons to embrace The Look of Love by Mark Morris, a suite to songs by Burt Bacharach with lyrics by Hal David, which I saw at Jacob’s Pillow on June 29. Premiering in the wake of the pandemic in 2022, it’s anchored by human interaction on a mostly generous and affectionate level, in sync with Bacharach’s molten, gauzy harmonics. It employs just 10 of the Mark Morris Dance Group; the set is simply five colored chairs with cushions which the dancers move about. Isaac Mizrahi designed the production and the pop-hued tunics and separates. 

Ethan Iverson imaginatively arranged 14 of Bacharach’s songs, nearly all of which were huge hits. (He wrote one song, “The Blob,” to lyrics by Mack David, Hal’s brother; it seemed to be inserted as a kind of hilarious anchor to keep the bubbly work grounded.) The piece begins with a piano rendition of “Alfie,” intimate and searching, in keeping with the existential lyrics. To “What the World Needs Now,” the dancers pair off, a couple to a chair, the set now arrayed like a flower. Morris leans on shapes with right-angle geometry and simple steps like triplets, with arms flung wide. There’s a crispness to the whole work, from the rhythmic clarity underscored by the choreography, to the brilliant hot colors. 

The Look of Love. Photo: Christopher Duggan

Of course Morris injects humor now and then in nods to the lyrics. In “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” the dancers mime catching pneumonia, or shoving their partner. Iverson inserted a musical interlude, which briefly releases the movement from the narrative. In “Raindrops,” the dancers playfully hop, test for, and flick the rain, and in “Don’t Make Me Over,” the performers did a weird version of the Floss. “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” featured some of the most athletic and large-scale movement, with barrel leaps and right-angled arms pointing the way. Dallas McMurray and Billy Smith captured the eye with their clean, unmannered technique that nonetheless felt suffused with meaning. From time to time a dancer lifted another, but a repeating, clever kinetic exclamation took the form of cartwheeling onto another seated dancer’s knees, or the like. Less hoisting of meat and bones is good for all!

“Walk on By” included quick paces and pivots, and faces dropped into spread palms to convey melancholy and introspection. Grapevines in single and double time done by pairs holding hands, one facing upstage at times, couched “Always Something There to Remind Me,” while slow hand pushes, as if through mud, in lunges marked the drowsy pace of “Look of Love” (while McMurray lip synced upstage) and tiny arm flaps were the recurring motif in “Say a Little Prayer.” Morris often creates oddball moves that become signatures for dances or sections, but here, they’re less affected and are rather simple gestures, and are thus highly relatable. 

Singer Marcy Harriel has past singers' (mainly Dionne Warwick) big shoes to fill and handles the task wonderfully, accompanied by a small band led by MMDG Music Director Colin Fowler. The close proximity of the dancers to the audience in the Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theatre provided a greater intimacy and connection than the company often has in opera houses; it will soon perform repertory at the Joyce Theater (impossibly, for the first time) which will be even cozier. The songs’ nostalgia, crackerjack performers, and vivid production made me want to see it again. Here's wishin' and hopin'.

Miami City Ballet Flourishes

Hannah Fischer, Cameron Catazaro, and Adrienne Carter in
Diversion of Angels. Photo: Christopher Duggan

Miami City Ballet closed out Jacob’s Pillow’s 2022 summer festival with a flourish. The selection of repertory performed—by Martha Graham, Margarita Armas, Jerome Robbins, and George Balanchine—showed artistic and technical versatility under the direction of Lourdes Lopez, an alum of New York City Ballet. It was also proof that MCB has established itself as one of the most accomplished ballet companies now working.

The company danced Graham’s vivacious Diversion of Angels, with its trio of couples in white, red, and yellow, plus a chorus of five. The style demands some solid technique shared by ballet, most notably the ability to balance at length, canted on one leg with the other extended high to the side, and explosive leaps and jumps that expand in the air as if turbo-boosted. MCB handled these feats with ease, raising their legs ever higher, and leaping ferociously high. The Graham company’s bodies are drilled in her vocabulary continuously, sometimes to the point of exaggeration—contractions can read as gut punches, and breaths visibly chuff in and out. MCB’s rendition is softer and more fluid, befitting a more lyrical work like Diversion.

Renan Cerdeiro in Geta. Photo: Danica Paulos

Renan Cerdeiro danced Geta, a world premiere by Armas and an ode to the late Geta Constaninescu, a teacher at the MCB School. Dressed in a long white tunic, and set to “Ne Me Quitte Pas” sung by Nina Simone, the solo clicked through dramatic poses, bursts of energy, diagonal oppositions of the limbs, heart clasps, and ended with an arm sweeping to the side, a staple of end-of-class “reverences,” often a thank-you to the teacher and pianist. The devotion and passion elicited by Geta were palpable.

Interestingly, whether by chance or purpose, a similar sweeping arm move opened Robbins’ Antique Epigraphs (1984), a dance for eight toe-shoe clad women to Debussy. Each wore a different pale-hued chiffon sheath, lending a columnar, caryatid feel to dance at moments. Formal experiments, canons, and the occasional stasis dotted this work, on the more classical and lyrical side of the Robbins spectrum, even if it lacked his essential wit and snazz.

Miami City Ballet in Serenade. Photo: Danica Paulos.

Seeing it just before the milestone of Balanchine’s Serenade, to Tchaikovsky, raised some questions about the programming. There are similarities, even if Mr. B’s icon of ballet was created a half-century earlier. The ankle-grazing chiffon skirts, the formations of (mostly female) bodies shifting through geometries, and pleasing, gentle scores that accompany both, underscored the shared DNA. And of course, it’s tough for a dance to lead in to Serenade, one of the most beloved and seminal plotless classical ballets, a rich enough source to spawn a recently published fascinating book, Serenade: A Balanchine Story, by Toni Bentley. It’s part memoir, part analysis of the ballet, which remains among the most influential in modern ballet. And no doubt it must have influenced Robbins, whether overtly or subconsciously, when he created Antique Epigraphs, as it has countless other dances. It need not have preceded Serenade directly on the bill, unless the intention was to underscore the similarities.

One other nit to pick—the Ted Shawn Theater stage at the Pillow is slightly too small to accommodate the atmosphere and space required by Serenade. I usually see it performed by New York City Ballet at NYC’S Koch Theater, where it appears as if immersed in water, or in the clouds—just far enough away to remain dreamlike. At the Pillow, the dancers are much closer, so they read as human, rather than ethereal or archetypal. In the iconic opening scene, when the corps stands evenly spaced across the stage, there is not enough space between them and the proscenium, making it feel cramped. 

But who could argue with seeing a world-class company perform one of modern ballet’s greatest works, to close out a robust summer festival at the Pillow? A late summer treat, indeed.