New York Notebook

Romeo & Juliet. Photo: Cheryl Mann

How much fiddling can a stalwart ballet like Romeo & Juliet take? Turns out, quite a bit. In Krzysztof Pastor’s 2008 production, presented by the Joyce Foundation at the Koch Theater recently, the action takes place in three eras over the last century to underscore how history repeats itself. It’s an intriguing premise that mostly succeeds, supported by the designs by Tatyana Van Walsum and the sturdy Prokofiev score.

Pastor’s style of ballet tends toward expressionistic, with clean lines, twisting torsos, and limbs pulling in opposition. It’s most effective in the meaty group scenes featuring warring factions or ballroom dances. The character of Romeo (Alberto Velazquez) felt slightly undersketched; he came across as callow, rather than a soul-sick poet. Juliet (Amanda Assucena) was portrayed as bold and stronger than the traditional character of a child-woman. The role of Paris is greatly diminished in this version; at one point several men have a sort of speed dating meet-up with Juliet, who winds up with one, but it's more a metaphor of the dominance of the authoritarian ruling party than individual choice. For the balcony duet, Juliet is cleverly suspended above the stage in a small elevator, which lowers her to the ground to dance with Romeo. The level of technique is honed, with dynamic performances given by Derrick Agnoletti (Mercutio) and Edson Barbosa (Tybalt). 

Christine Rocas & Rory Hohenstein in Romeo & Juliet. Photo: Cheryl Mann

The overall metaphor of the effects of war is at times depicted as taking place between authoritarian figures—the ruling family and attendant police—and the people, as in the 1930s setting. In the first act, the differing dark vs. light costumes clearly distinguish the factions until the ball, where everyone wears black and white except the lead couple. They wear pale blue in every act; Juliet a camisole dress with a short skirt; Romeo a jacket over shirt and pants, reminiscent of terrible prom tuxes. In the final act, Juliet wears lingerie—an ill-fitting camisole and shorts, and Romeo cheap-looking shirtsleeves. The costumes undermined the stage power of the romantic couple, to a distracting extent.

In the act set in the 1950s, the palette becomes red and black, the background imagery full of Vespas. A window colonnade separates the inside from outside; people pass by the windows as fleeting shadows. The scene in the 1990s is set in Juliet’s room, now a sleek apartment building. Clever sculptural panels descend and rise to give texture to the austere basic set. Unfortunately, by lying in front of her, Romeo obscured Juliet from view in the death scene, which could be prevented. And after the first action-filled scenes, the finale dragged in pace. But overall, it was heartening to see that the Joffrey has flourished after departing New York for Chicago decades ago.

Anna Chirescu and Gianni Joseph in Place. Photo by Charlotte Audreau.

Cunningham via France

It seems almost cruel that the primary home for the choreography of Merce Cunningham is in Angers, France with the Compagnie CNDC under the guidance of longtime Cunningham dancer and steward Robert Swinston. After all, we in New York enjoyed the regular performances of Merce Cunningham Dance Company in its hometown over the course of his lifetime. But yearly visits by CNDC will help to assuage some of the emptiness from the disbanding of MCDC. (And Lyon Opera Ballet just performed Cunningham's Summerspace with Paul Taylor American Modern Dance.) 

The company recently brought to the Joyce three works of great variety. Inlets 2 (1983) is time-stamped by its pastel leotards of milliskin, very shiny lycra, designed by Mark Lancaster, who also lit it. The John Cage composition Inlets was played on sea shells, some giant conches, with water, making trickling and burbling sounds. The movement is one of Merce’s nature studies, mostly unhurried, or with quickened paces ebbing and flowing. Small groups move together and break apart amid the ice-hued lighting schemes. Legs cross and bend, like birds, but these organic postures are mixed in with the geometry of ballet.

Alexandre Tondolo and Adrien Mornet in How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run. Photo: Charlotte Audreau

Alexandre Tondolo and Adrien Mornet in How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run. Photo: Charlotte Audreau

Place (1966) is far more dramatic. Gianni Joseph slowly, muscularly, strides centerstage into a pool of yellow light (Beverly Emmons, who also designed costumes and the wooden palette decor) and drops to a pinwheel. Several women wearing tinted plastic tunics join him, spinning rapidly and rocking in second position relévé, and then a few men wearing plain brown. Later, dancers enter one by one, fabricating a modulating tableau. Joseph slides two multi-sided lit orbs upstage, perhaps a kind of time tracker. A man carries a woman wound, front side out, around his torso like an expressive sculpture; she then lies face down, suspended on his thighs. There’s more lifting than in your average Cunningham dance—cruciforms, splits, and more. Joseph digs out a translucent plastic sack and, legs inside it, struggles across the stage.

For How to Kick, Pass, Fall and Run, two readers sit at a table, stage left, reciting short anecdotes about random topics. The dancers wear black tights, white stirrups, and bright tops. In this athletic dance, they bound, jump in x-shapes, twist, and leap full-out. Standing legs bent, they crisply développé the other leg to the side and front. The viewer’s attention is torn between understanding the speakers’ stories, and giving full regard to the movement. No doubt John Cage (who provided the text, Stories from Indeterminacy) was smiling as one of the spotlights in an upstage string of them blew, sparks showering onto the stage before those fixtures were turned off. Truly, anything can happen in live performance.

ABT's Abrera—Real-life Cinderella

Joseph Gorak and Stella Abrera in Cinderella. Photo: MIRA.

ABT's annual two-month Met season, was, as usual, largely about classic stories dramatized through ballet. But more so than in recent years, the season itself took on dramatic twists and turns that unfolded as the weeks passed. Injuries deprived audiences of David Hallberg (his absence months foreseen), but during the season, Polina Semionova and Natalia Osipova, among others. Strategic one-shot guest casting made viewing scheduling unusually difficult. Misty Copeland's promotion to principal marked the season's crescendo in the penultimate week, whipping into a frenzy not only ballet fans, but the popular media—sure to continue with the announcement that she will replace Megan Fairchild in On the Town on Broadway.

At last Saturday's Cinderella matinee, the other newly-minted principal, Stella Abrera, danced the lead role. Not to be overly ham-handed, but the fairy tale felt analogous to the real-life situation. Abrera has been with the company for nearly 20 years, and after working diligently in major supporting roles such as Myrtha and Lilac Fairy, emerged as the princess. The confidence that came with her promotion no doubt bolstered her strong performance, in which she seemed especially luminous. She has (as have most dancers) been through some injuries, which sap self-assurance and can imbue performances with tentativeness; hopefully healthy, she will continue to expand her confidence. She danced opposite Joseph Gorak, who is living proof of the emotional potential of technique done well, as he did a triple pirouette at a relatively slow tempo, and unfolded his raised leg in a développé that wafted in the air, weightless. In the finale, with sparkling mylar confetti raining down on the pair as they looked toward a bright future together, it felt like a version of the rags-to-riches story come true. 

It also underscored why we fans love ballet. It's not just the pretty tutus and sets, the technique, the romance and time-honored stories. It's the dancers we've followed for years, watching them grow, develop, mature, undergo hardships and injuries, and at savory moments such as these, triumph. Newly appointed soloists also proved Kevin McKenzie's wisdom in promoting, including Arron Scott, Skylar Brandt, Cassandra Trenary, and it-girl Misty Copeland dancing a fairy role, the kind of role that she'll most likely dance less and less. Soloist Devon Teuscher danced the lead fairy with a tender strength.     

Evgenia Obraztsova as Juliet. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

Ballet fans get excited about new productions of the classics because they are the vehicles in which our favorite dancers get to shine, and (with any luck) they must withstand repeated viewings. Recently, Alex Ratmansky's The Sleeping Beauty, for ABT, became the latest major production to take flight, and it is successful enough to anticipate its return for many seasons to come, and not simply to amortize the steep production cost.

Gillian Murphy as Odile. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

In Kenneth MacMillan's weathered but reliable version of Romeo & Juliet, one of the male stars of ABT, Herman Cornejo, danced recently with Evgenia Obraztsova, guesting from the Bolshoi. Given a ballerina with such an illustrious pedigree, but not having seen her previously, the few expectations I had were high, and she exceeded them. Of course her technique is impeccable, and she easily ranges between ingenue and wizened lover, which can be a stretch. She is a combination of delicacy and strength, and size-wise matched well with Cornejo, the most naturalistic and suave of ABT's men. I can imagine rehearsal time was minimal, which is one big drawback with the guest artist system, but they fared well no matter.

ABT's Swan Lake is another well-trod production (by Petipa/Ivanov/McKenzie), which many find moth eaten. But I have affection for it, even for the silly stuffed swan prologue stand-in for Odette. It's a compact two acts, and no scene lasts too long, not the opening birthday celebration with a pas de trois and townsfolk dance, or the later scene containing international dances. The two pas de deux between Odette/Odile and the Prince remain the tentpoles of the ballet, plus a saucy solo for the human Von Rothbart, usually parceled out to a principal male. Many of the acts are fleshed out by the mesmerizing swan corps. And as always, Tchaikovsky's sublime score supports the ballet.

At June 22's Swan Lake, starring Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes, everything whirred and clicked into place. Murphy has long been perhaps the company's strongest woman technically speaking, but her persona has, oddly, contained so much confidence that expressing vulnerability can be a stretch for her. But here, she conveyed emotional fragility as Gomes enfolded her into his arms, while paying great attention to the dual role's array of delicate details. And naturally, as Odile, she was able to flash that terrific confidence, dazzling us and her prince in her fouette pirouettes, which alternated between triples and doubles with her arms in a V. Just when you thought you'd seen it all!

Marcelo Gomes in Swan Lake. Photo: Gene Schiavone

At the end of the Act 3 pas, as she and Gomes snapped into place at the precise ending beat, so did the outstanding corps of swans. It was a rare moment of complete synchrony, and you felt that the collective years of all of the dancers onstage were coming to fruition. Gomes, of course, showed again why he's so beloved. Every moment onstage he IS Siegfried, so we read even the smallest thoughts as they flicker through his mind. He elicits the most from himself, his partner, and everyone around him, including us. At this point in his career, such roles as these are in his blood, so he is ever more free to interpret their nuances, pushing ever farther the parameters of the role.

Dance Notebook—Evidence and Romeo & Juliet

Annique Roberts in The Subtle One. Photo: Ayodele Casel

Evidence at the Joyce, Feb 24, 2015

A great distinction about Ronald Brown's 2014 dance, The Subtle One, is its jazz score by Jason Moran, played live by his trio in Tuesday's performance at the Joyce Theater. It had been awhile since I'd heard jazz played live for dance; so much of what is played live falls under the Bang on a Can style of new music, often without a melody or flowing pulse. So it was a pleasure to hear music by Moran, who scored the film Selma, plus a song by Tarus Mateen, who played bass.

The dance is, like its title, a subtle one. The smoldering star Annique Roberts begins moving at an even, moderate pace, marked by unfurling arms and a oft-repeated balance in which the she reaches forward yearningly with one arm. She is joined by the rest of the company, which breaks from briskly rhythmic ensemble sections into twos and threes, arms pumping like locomotive wheels. The work, while unspecific in story, refers to a stanza by Alan Harris about the strength of spirituality. The overall elegiac quality of the piece is enhanced by the white and peach-ombréd tunics, by Keiko Voltaire.

Dance, Huuuge

Ocean. Photo: Charles Atlas

Within the span of a day, I saw the Royal Ballet's Romeo & Juliet and Charles Atlas' film of Cunningham's Ocean, both in HD, projected huge at BAM Rose Cinemas and the Whitney Museum, respectively. It's increasingly the way of experiencing dance that I'd either not be able to see for geographical reasons, or to record performances never to be replicated because the company has disbanded, in the case of Ocean. So there's great value in both, at relatively low ticket prices.

Ocean (1994), to John Cage's score, was filmed by Atlas in 2008 at an breathtaking venue, a quarry in Minnesota transformed into a theater in the round for 4,500 viewers and a huge orchestra. You don't get much of that scale during the dance performance itself, but Atlas includes several minutes of production set-up footage in the opening minutes. The first imagery of the dance itself is of Daniel Squire's body in an extreme close-up, and you can feel the power and explosive tension in his muscles in a way you never could in real life, even if you were dancing right next to him. These close-ups zooms transform the dancers into the superheroes I perceive them to be; their physical genius now more clear to see than ever, in companion with their fierce intelligence. Atlas splits the screen at fortuitous moments so we sometimes see the same duet from two points, or a meta-view of one of his cameras filming what we see on the other screen.

Ocean. Photo by Charles Atlas

The in-the-round aspect of Ocean gives it a unique spot in the repertory. In Nancy Dalva's transcript of an interview with Merce, he says, "Front was wherever you face," and that Merce said he was imagining 12 different access points. She writes that Merce was present during the filming, just offstage. Also notable is that it was inspired by James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, also the wellspring for Roaratorio (1983), performed at BAM last December. These two works are two of my favorite by the choreographer; they're different enough so that it's probably incidental, but whatever bright notes of imagination it sparked in Merce resonated. (In a space-time coincidence, Julie Cunningham and her pure lines happily featured prominently in Ocean, within a week of performing live in the same gallery with Michael Clark.) Ocean screens at the Whitney Biennial through April 15.

The Romeo & Juliet screening presented problems that recur when filming dance, and ballet in particular. The ebullient Federico Bonelli and technically superb Lauren Cuthbertson, in the lead roles of this version by Kenneth MacMillan, were featured frequently in close-ups at the expense of the context of the scene at hand, or the overall stage picture. But both did an excellent job at modulating their projection to accomodate both the balcony patron, who sees them as the size of ants, and the HD cinema viewer, looking up their foot-high nostrils. Perhaps as such filming becomes more commonplace, producers will adapt to these genre-specific filming problems—certainly no barrier to experiencing some of the world's finest dance.