ABT Showcases Royalty

Herman Cornejo in A Gathering of Ghosts. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

Twyla Tharp has been one of ABT’s consistent choreographic contributors, ever more so during the company’s brief fall Koch season. A Gathering of Ghosts, created to Herman Cornejo, celebrating 20 years with ABT, was the key premiere in the run. Cornejo “hosts” a cavalcade of guests, purportedly historical figures or metaphors—Louis XIV, Greased Lighting, Proust—and possibly facets or reflections of his own being. They swan on, perform showy passages while interacting with Cornejo (or not), and swan off. Cornejo is repeatedly ignored or slighted, and in this vacuum of indifference, he takes the opportunity to let loose and show off. It could be an analogy for his whole career, in which his lack of ego moved him to the background, only for his raw talent and appeal to refocus the spotlight on him.

The “ghosts’” movements don’t seem particularly demonstrative of characteristics; perhaps the work demands a second viewing to discern them. But it gives Tharp a reason to play with Cornejo and other superb dancers, mixing in sections for the women in flat and pointe shoes, pairing up company members in interesting ways. Mostly, it is a gift to Cornejo, and thus to us. Tharp’s longtime collaborator Norma Kamali designed the variegated costumes, primarily black and silver—shorts, jackets, tulle skirts for both genders—plus two amazing flared-leg jumpsuits, and a parachute-like regal cape with a train for Cornejo, donned only for one ceremonial coronation in the closing scene. 

Rennie Harris' Lazarus Lifts the Ailey Company

Lazarus. Photo: Paul Kolnik

On Dec 11, City Center turned 75, and this season is Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s 60th. They celebrated together with a program featuring not only Ailey’s finest, Revelations, but also longtime City Center artists Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp. The evening showcased Ailey Company’s strengths and weaknesses underlying its artistic model.

The late Paul Taylor’s work might seem a fine fit for Ailey, but its “cover” of Piazzolla Caldera merely skims the surface of this rather dark dance. Its two most important characters are the first male solo and the spurned woman (done respectively and most memorably in recent years by Taylor’s Michael Trusnovec and Annmaria Mazzini). The man leads the group of men, moving first and slicing and attacking like a toreador. Jamar Roberts performed this role for Ailey, and lacked the necessary ferocity, thereby diffusing any dramatic tension. The female part was danced by Jacqueline Green, who also presented very little of the built-up angst and desperation of the character, who is cruelly rejected by every man on stage. Both Roberts and Green are tall, lithe, elegant dancers, but in this case lack the grit and aggression that roil beneath the surface of this deceptively shadowy piece.

The Taylor lexicon also might appear easy from a technical point of view. Stag leaps, low jetés, and chassées comprise its core. The Taylor company obviously renders these moves constantly in Taylor’s repertory, thus they are consistent among performers. The Ailey company doesn’t perform these daily, and each dancer does the moves slightly differently, resulting in a lack of visual cohesion. When you watch the Taylor company, there are passages when these synchronized sections whir and click like a Swiss clock’s movement, creating visual harmony. I missed this tuned, symphonic sense with Ailey’s interpretation.

Twyla Tharp’s Golden Section is a signature work by this uncategorizable, prodigious choreographer, and a very challenging one to perform. It’s not easy to appear as if you’re carefree and louche while doing super hard steps that require great coordination and precise timing between dancers. That said, Ailey has been performing this on and off for many years, and it looked better synced than I remember. David Byrne's jaunty score, which hasn't aged a bit, does a lot of heavy lifting by moving the action along.

Kairos. Photo: Paul Kolnik

The program on Dec 18 offered highly contrasting works. Wayne McGregor’s Kairos (2014), a company premiere, offers more of the British choreographer’s affinity for exaggerated positions and ballet shapes. While Ailey’s dancers are obviously accomplished in many styles, they aren’t strictly ballet dancers, and so many of the lines that might make sense on point, or on exaggeratedly balletic bodies, here feel blunted. Idris Khan’s set—scrims with graphics resembling musical staff lines—make the dancers appear like musical notes. But this somewhat promising metaphor is diluted with the use of Max Richter’s version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a by-now clichéd composition that elicits thoughts of background  car commercials. McGregor’s athletic, balletic style may be tempting to set on Ailey for many reasons, but for me there is an emotional void at its core.

How wonderful then to follow this soulless work with the world premiere of Rennie Harris’ Lazarus in two acts. A central character (Daniel Harder) falls and rises several times in the piece, a motif that could be seen through various lenses in civil/human rights—racial, economic, despotic—or even as a metaphor for an artist and his life and work. The beginning of the piece feels like a dream (or nightmare) scape, with a soundtrack mixing words and sounds (barking dogs) accompanying seemingly discrete scenes featuring a group working or praying. They support Harder as he coughs and collapses, and in a harrowing scene that elicited gasps, lynched bodies achieved through the simplest of gestures—a listing head and small twists of the body on the balls of the feet. 

Jamar Roberts supports the stricken Harder, who then does an arduous phrase, falling forward with the body folded, rear leg aloft. The pace quickens to Michael Kiwanuka’s “I’m a black man in a white world,” and the costumes shift from old fashioned cotton blouses, skirts and pants to more modern garb. The group claps, skipping and crossing their feet, but then appears to be sprayed with fire hoses. Jeroboam Bozeman, wearing only jeans, symbolizes modern man acting with individual intent. The corps, lying down, transforms from a sprouting field, to waving grass that subsumes Harder’s body, to cresting waves.

In the second act, the dancers sport LA Laker-inspired purple and gold tunics. The movement is less trance-like and more rhythmic, clicking and snapping crisply. Harris’ choreography is less reliant on the hip-hop in which he made his name, with more strands of upright fast footwork and joyous space-eating steps. (It feels very connected to Ron Brown’s style.) The pure joy of dancing is rapturous and contagious, and the dancers literally dust off their heels, shaking off the historical luggage and issues of mortality to simply live. Harder walks toward the light, and the audience departs on a cloud.

A couple of notes on dancers: Clifton Brown looks truly joyous and inspired in Revelations, after so many years performing it on and off; his power and stasis in "I Wanna Be Ready" are particularly moving. Vernard Gilmore has been with the company for 21 years, and has gradually (for me) developed into its emotional center with his unshowy, grounded approach in a company of spectacular dancers. 

Tharp, Pared Down

Eight Jelly Rolls. Photo: Ian Douglas

If Twyla Tharp had failed at choreography, which she obviously hasn’t, she could’ve become a professor. Half of Minimalism and Me, the Twyla Tharp Dance program at the Joyce Theater (Nov 14 to Dec 9), features Tharp at a downstage lectern recapping the ideas behind works between 1965 and 1971, accompanied by priceless video footage of original company members and live performance segments by current dancers. It’s an excellent primer on a less-known period in Tharp’s prodigious, multifarious career which is best known for Broadway smashes and symphonic ballets. 

She traced her path through minimalism, citing simple concepts: the body at a right angle, standing in releve in a star position for 2+ minutes (demonstrated by an implacable Kellie Drobnick), placing one foot in front of the other, and putting the performers behind a wall. Tharp placed an emphasis on learning, not presenting; and going for shock and not entertainment. These experiments were done mainly without a large audience, although for the purposes of the demonstration, a small group sat on folding chairs and conveyed puzzlement or comprehension. 

Twyla Tharp and Rose Marie Wright at the Met
Museum. Photo: James Kravitz

Then a group of rising choreographers—including Martha Graham and Paul Taylor, besides Tharp—were collectively featured in a program on Broadway, and public became an increasingly important component. This led to Medley, a flash mob in Central Park, and a piece at the Met Museum, and the realization that a dance was a commodity. (A group of volunteer performers helped to show the gist of these happenings at the Joyce.)

In the wake of that epiphany came The Fugue (1970), an excerpt of which Kara Chan, Drobnick, and Reed Tankersley performed. It’s full of experimentation and invention, blending numerous forms of dance genres such as tap, modern, jazz, gesture, and body percussion, and solos and intricate interplay among the trio.

The second act of the evening comprised the 1971 opus Eight Jelly Rolls, in which the previous dancers were joined by Matt Dibble, Ron Todorowski, and Mary Beth Hansohn. It’s looser, more playful, and presumably takes cues from the accompanying music, by Jelly Roll Morton and Charles Luke. Tharp expands the kinetic ingredients from The Fugue to include more ballet, vaudeville, quotidian and gestural movement, giving each individual dancer sections that correlate with each one’s character and strengths, as she has always done. Chan has a standout solo done as if tipsy; Jennifer Tipton’s lighting features Chan in white hues while the upstage dancers are bathed in blue to create a background. Drobnick—lanky, fluid, and magnetic—has a quieter passage of poses, small moves, and stasis, echoed by five others.

In a coda, Tharp pokes fun at her aging self, skipping and running after her young brood, and being lifted and spun rapidly, held by her heels (a repeat trick from a recent past Joyce run). While her company is technically stellar, when Tharp is onstage at the Joyce—whether teaching or moving—there’s no doubt who the star is.

The Meaning of Ailey

Shelter. Photo: Paul Kolnik

It’s already been six years since Robert Battle took over as artistic director of the Ailey company. Ailey’s masterpiece Revelations (1960) is still on just about every program over the month-long City Center run (through Dec 31), making the late choreographer’s presence feel disproportionately prominent in the season’s repertory. There are five Ailey works being danced this season—one more than by Battle, who, all the while, has been adding or showcasing commissions and older repertory by interesting dancemakers. Gone are the “best of Ailey” medleys that both awkwardly showcased highlights and underscored how thin some of his dances can be. And on the rise are dances by company members, such as a premiere by Jamar Roberts and a reprisal by Hope Boykin.

As the company’s repertory has, through time, necessarily experienced a decrease in percentage of Ailey works relative to those by others, to me the Ailey name has shifted to signify less a choreographic style and more the Ailey dancers. Many members have long tenures in the company, and have developed big fan bases, even as turnover continues regularly. It’s not quite a cult, but at this point it is more about the performers than the repertory, which exists mainly to showcase these remarkable artist-athletes.

Battle has been quietly remounting older works he has done for his own troupe, or as commissions for other entitities. Seeing some of his classics, like The Hunt (2001), I’m reminded once again of his own stylistic roots which emanate more from Paul Taylor than Ailey. Battle was a long-time member of and choreographer for David Parsons Dance, and Parsons was a Taylor dancer for many years. The Hunt, for six men, contains direct—albeit brief—movement quotations from Taylor’s Cloven Kingdom, such as inverted-curving arms and hunched shoulders rotating forward aggressively. In fact, The Hunt feels like a blood relative of Cloven; both feature men as barely tamed pack animals, alternating between hunting and societal rituals. It’s exciting, a crowd pleaser, and makes use of the dancers’ athleticism. Another Battle work that serves to spotlight physical prowess is In/Side, an emotionally expressive solo; I saw the amazing Yannick Lebrun perform it, funneling his energy toward a powerful finale. And Mass (2004) focuses ecclesiastical fervor into sheer kineticism, as the 16 robe-clad dancers move en masse and form geometric shapes and lines. Chalvar Monteiro distinguished himself with a charismatic presence.

Clifton Brown and Glenn Allen Sims in The Golden Section. Photo: Paul Kolnik

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter (1988) counterbalanced The Hunt in terms of gender (six women, although it is performed by a male cast at times) and theme (the prevalance of homelessness in a wealthy society). The spoken text, including poetry, felt slightly didactic at first, but the varying movement dynamics and invention quickly became the driving force. The dancers planted themselves in grounded stances and threw their legs up in high, hatchet-like kicks. The clustered nervously, a wary communal unit on the defensive.

In high contrast was Twyla Tharp’s Golden Section (1983), to David Byrne’s score. Few companies could handle the breakneck speed and technical demands, and Ailey essentially fares well; a little good humor offset any panic induced by the challenging choreography. The production was refreshed in 2006, but Santo Loquasto’s gold lamé or mustard velveteen pieces still encapsulate 80s glam. Belén Pereyra-Alem was notable for her precision and focused energy.

As for Revelations, it continues to bear up well after constant performance and viewing. There was a time when I didn’t relish seeing it yet again, but now, I look forward to it greatly. Its array of juicy roles are vehicles in which to discover new faces, or see tenured ones try something new. I was greatly heartened to watch Clifton Brown, who returned to the company after a break, in “I Wanna Be Ready,” displaying his amazing gift for delivering maximum emotion from minimal kineticism. And his heartfelt smile in “Rocka My Soul” was truly moving; a prodigal son was back home again—or had he brought a piece of home back to me?

The Many Sides of Tharp

Kaitlyn Gilliland and Matthew Dibble. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu

Even though Twyla Tharp, 76, has been creating dance for decades, seeing it performed recently by her company at the Joyce yet brings revelations. Her style varies for the occasion. Some of her classical ballets—such as In the Upper Room, in the repertory of ABT—are among the most technically challenging and rigorous that exist. Her Broadway shows, including the smash Movin’ Out, are stocked with crowd-pleasing, jazzy numbers, but always grounded in the ballet lexicon, even if it’s not obvious. And there is her early post-modern stuff—boneless noodling, contact improv, full of wit and quotidian delights.

The Joyce program (which runs to Oct 8) comprised two 1970s pieces and two premieres in a three-week run. The Raggedy Dances (1972), to ragtime music and Mozart, features Matthew Dibble, Kara Chan, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Kellie Drobnick, and Daniel Baker. A pair enters from the right, bobbing, darting, advancing and retreating, and exiting left. This repeats several times, which is kind of funny because they have to cross the stage by running around backstage, out of view. A bare-legged woman with a lace shawl does an alluring short solo, ending with a demi-hinge and a pelvis bump. Various patterns and pathways are trod in the multi-song work, marked by the loose virtuosity for which Tharp is known.

A far more strident and crisp approach is taken in The Fugue (1970). There is no accompaniment, simply percussion from the dancers’ stampings and footfalls. Chan, Gilliland and Tankersley, wearing all black shirts and trousers with red accessories, crack out beats with their hard-soled shoes, and punch the air like martial artists. You barely miss music in this play on rhythms and the potential for humans to make noise. A beautiful lighting scheme (by Jennifer Tipton, who lit the program) featured a house-shaped projection of light on the bare upstage bricks.

Entr’acte (2017) is fascinating as it involves Tharp herself onstage, first giving a lecture-demo of a rehearsal, then herself interacting with longtime muse John Selya, who at one point picks up Tharp upside-down on his back, and spins rapidly. I feared for the fearless choreographer, who obviously trusts her life to Selya (who starred in many of her shows over the years, and before that was in ABT). Her dancers flit around her like so many skilled birds and devotees, but Tharp retains an aura of tough love. And lest you think she lacks humor, she tosses in some lines: “If you think you have something to say, speak your mind... The language of dance has always eluded me.”

While Tharp is a remarkable formalist, it’s pop songs that seem to spark her creative heart. The final work and premiere, Dylan Love Songs, is in the jukebox mode of her Broadway shows (and connects with the short 2006 run of The Times They Are A-Changin’, to Dylan), with a string of seven numbers, each shifting in dynamic and emotion. John Selya lurks around the stage perimeter in a black coat and hat, a sort of shaman or dark spirit, dispensing hats other garments like pixie dust. Reed Tankersley picks up a strewn striped sweater, doing creative things with it—skipping over it, pulling it taut with his foot, wrapping it around his waist or head. A couple falls in and out of romance’s spell; another pair roughhouses, one flipping over the other’s back. Dynamics range from rat-a-tat phrases to lush and lyrical, most succinctly embodied in Kaitlyn Gilliland’s dancing. She has internalized Tharp’s mysterious essence, and combined with her NYCB chops, could be Twyla’s dream personified—a quite different, yet similarly skilled embodiment than another early Tharp ideal, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Twyla Tharp, Tinkerer

Kaitlyn Gililland and Eva Trapp

Twyla Tharp is a dance pioneer whose work, by its incredible diverse richness, eludes simple categorization. She emerged in the 60s as a singular voice, parallel to and sometimes convergent with the Judson movement, at least in the rejection of classical forms of ballet and modern. Her work has dipped into jazz, ballroom, and even sports, but she has fully embraced ballet as well, creating monumental pieces such as In the Upper Room. Broadway beckoned, and she created a smash hit with the Billy Joel jukebox musical, Movin' Out, and the Sinatra-themed Come Fly Away.

For the last decade, she has also choreographed concert dances for companies such as ABT, which has also performed earlier repertory work by her. She has also dedicated herself to her own company, which she gathers periodically for performances such as the one at the Joyce last week (and where she has a creative residency). The run's title is self-explanatory—Twyla Tharp and Three Dances, culled from different decades.

Country Dances (1976) was done in her slinky, slippery, jazzy style that often reminds me of a pile of puppies playing. Tharp uber-veteran John Selya, and Amy Ruggiero, Eva Trapp, and Kaitlyn Gililland dance to a song list of country and folk. Santo Loquasto provided the costumes, which were modern twists on Western garb. (Though Selya's royal blue placket shirt more closely resembled Coach Taylor's windbreaker on Friday Night Lights than a cool pearl-snap shirt, but Gililland wore a neat backless orange halter with an overskirt and Eva Trapp's green dress with quilt accents was striking.) All manner of a quartet and its divisors comprise the dance, which is also dotted with moments of forced joviality that don't always hit the mark. Gililland demonstrates a haunting intensity in her stage presence that compounds her impressive physical bearing as a very tall ballerina (she is a guest and former company member of NY City Ballet). 

Reed Tankersley

The NY premiere on the slate is Beethoven Opus 130, featuring Royal Ballet guest Matthew Dibble. The prevailing style is more balletic, but happily, the women wear soft shoes. This immediately gives Tharp more freedom to push the shapes, attack, and speed of the womens' movement, and doesn't force everything to be about pointe work and form. (I love the lines myself, but it is no small tyranny in ballet choreography these days.) Norma Kamali, another longtime Tharp collaborator, designed the mens' batwing tops and somewhat unflattering high-waisted tights, the womens' rompers and, for Gililland, a gorgeous, sheer, structured dress. Valiant ballet moves popped up with regularity, displaying the technical chops of the eight top-notch cast members, and velocity played an important role as dancers flew and hurtled across the stage. Dibble has a seamless plushness to his movement that suits Tharp's style perfectly, along the lines of Baryshnikov, one of her muses.

But the heroic performance of the evening no doubt belonged to Reed Tankersley, who led off the third work, Brahms Paganini (1980), with an extended and exhausting solo. The feel of the choreography here is also predominantly ballet-based, mixed with a grab bag of other styles by tinkerer Tharp. She regularly uses endurance and fatigue as active elements, both on the part of the performer—Tankersley's crisp linen outfit by Ralph Lauren is damp and wrinkled by the end of his solo—and audience, stunned at his fortitude and by the requisite unerring observation. He's joined by four dancers (and a cameo by Gililland), who perform complicated, athletic lifts and duo passages at a frenetic pace.   
   
It is a joy to see Tharp, one of our time's true and diverse choreographic talents, continue to create and have the chance to present her concert work in such a suitable setting as the Joyce.

The Two Sides of Twyla

Daniel Baker, Ramona Kelley, Nicholas Coppula, Eva Trapp-Coppula in Preludes and Fugues. Photo: Ruben Afanador

Twyla Tharp has always been slightly ahead of the curve and outside of the pack. She has forged an unconventional choreographic career, along the way treading post-modernism, jazz, ballet, Broadway, vaudeville, and myriad points in between. Her current run at the Koch Theater, presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation, draws from all of these genres to embody her fluid, pigeon-hole resistant, utterly distinct style.

The two premieres mark the complexity of her dances, and a reduced version of the duality of her creative output. Preludes and Fugues, to Bach, is the more balletic and classical of the two. The women are in soft slippers, already a radical idea given their pedigrees (two hail from New York City Ballet), because pointe work is an irresistible tool for so many choreographers, given the chance. But it gives the women a better chance at dealing with the speed and torque that Tharp builds into her restive passages that explode from a hovering stillness into sheer kineticism in a split second.

Tharp doesn’t shy from traditional gender roles that basically acknowledge physical size differences—men slowly pressing women overhead, showing the brute difficulty of the move, or a man swinging a planked woman to and fro between his legs. The NYCB women—Savannah Lowery and Kaitlyn Gilliland—are as tall most of the company’s men. But when her style veers toward the pugilistic, the men appear far more comfortable, as it is less of a stretch for them to spar and jog athletically than the women, trained to never be ungraceful.

Amy Ruggiero, John Selya, and Ron Todorowski in Yowzie. Photo: Ruven Afanador

The action morphs from pairs to groups to solos, driven by an irrepressible energy that rides atop the shifting dynamics of Bach’s short compositions, or sometimes beside it or underneath. Sometimes it’s literally, as when they pogo-hop to a bouncy line. To layered piano arpeggios, the company splits the stage in half in mirrored symmetry, pealing out of lines like petals blooming. Bravura moves end in suspended releves, and small gestures add a touch of humor to these skilled show offs, who wear Santo Loquasto’s gold and jewel-toned outfits. They can leap offstage in a split, or dissolve a similarly heroic passage in a relaxed walk, as if in rehearsal. Tharp’s sheer audacity is mind-boggling, not to mention the level of technique and precision, or sometimes casualness, demanded of her dancers.  

Yowzie is the flip side of Tharp, bringing into play drunkenness, mayhem, and clashing colors to a suite of American jazz tunes (recorded, as was the Bach). A fragile romance between Rika Okamoto and Matthew Dibble may have been the result of beer goggles, and we see them wobble woozily through the infatuation phase before parting ways. Okamoto, spurned and presumably regressing, adapts simian behavior, revealing a comic gift (her dejected full-body slump is hilarious). All the dancers in this piece get the chance to display their rubber-limbed best, bouncing off one another or dropping with dead weight into splits. Ron Todorowski, sporting glasses, slices precisely and thrillingly through Tharp's challenging steps. The exceptions are Gilliland and Lowery, wearing midi dresses and sun hats, who swan as elegantly as possible through the riff raff. Loquasto’s costumes here are riotously colored and tie-dyed, and topped off with headpieces. While he certainly knows how to fit and finish costumes for these dancer-athletes, I suffered from visual overload, in addition to a quasi-psychedelic backdrop.

But the program’s mix of high- and low-brow certainly showed off Tharp’s imaginative and sui generis choreography. Chances are if you liked one, you cared less for the other. But a full evening of premieres is a rare, choice chance to glimpse one of the best hard at work, doing her own thing. Twas ever thus for Tharp.

ABT's Rewarding 2015 Fall Season

Arron Scott, Stella Abrera, Calvin Royal in After You. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

ABT’s season opening program was a knockout—Mark Morris’ premiere of After You, Ashton’s Monotones I & II, and Twyla Tharp’s Brahms/Haydn Variations. After You is a lovely, coursing rollick in which the dancers hold hands, march downstage, and embrace us with their warmth from the outset. Led by Gillian Murphy and Stella Abrera, they sport hot pink or orange jumpsuits with flowing legs, and dash and dart about in pairs and trios, clicking into and out of lines broken up by piqué turns. Morris can make a simple walk engrossing, and here he uses basic ballet phrases—chassée, pas de bourrée—with varying direction shifts and arm combinations in a similar way, as a grounding device. Repeating motifs include arms arranged like clockhands at 5:20, or in a sharp-elbowed “U”; one particularly delightful phrase, initiated by Calvin Royal, linked together sautés and modified barrel leaps. In a second cast, Boylston and Cornejo shone, with notables Blaine Hoven, Stephanie Williams, and Roman Zhurbin.  

After You contrasted sharply with Tharp’s more complex take on ballet in her piece from 2000. More dancers populated the stage, at times to distraction, as five lead couples took turns drawing attention to their rigorous partnering routines. It’s a dense technique unique to Tharp, who trusts these skilled dancers to rise to the challenge. Some handle it better (or are cast well); Herman Cornejo and Maria Kochetkova, for example. He happens to be a superb partner, measuring his proximity to her precisely, his attention never wavering, and smoothing out any potential rough edges. Gillian Murphy as well, with her redoubtable technique and wellspring of confidence, is perfectly suited to Tharp. James Whiteside took on the snap and flair of a flamenco dancer, and Sterling Baca showed his magnetism and fortitude paired with a lucid Isabella Boylston. (He recently sparkled in Josh Beamish’s work at the Joyce.)

Of Monotones I & II, the dancers’ identitities are somewhat difficult to discern, hidden under Ashton’s headcaps. But it’s all about the shapes and triangulations created by each trio, one in green, another in white. Joseph Gorak, master of line, paired well with an incisive Abrera and Boylston, and in II, Veronika Part was eloquent and plush stewarded by Cory Stearns and an elegant Thomas Forster. The Satie Gymnopédies, played in full orchestration, sounded a bit like elevator music, but their general hypnotic mood set the foundation for the works.

Luciana Paris in Company B. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

On another program, Daniil Simkin embodied the Rose in Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose, with Cassandra Trenary as the Young Girl. It’s the best kind of role for Simkin, who sailed effortlessly alone around the salon set, apart from a slip and fall (which demonstrated his unfettered confidence), and a couple of overly self-conscious poses. In Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie, Gorak, an epitome of classicism, similarly was cast perfectly, dancing with Devon Teuscher, who circled the stage smoothly in split grand jetes.   

The company brought back Paul Taylor’s Company B. Casting is so important in this bittersweet wartime ballet, and it was a joy to see Craig Salstein as the nerdy crush, Johnny, and Luciana Paris warmly romantic in "I Can Dream." Gorak was given the long solo in "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"—a slight stretch for his controlled demeanor—letting loose a bit and enjoying it. Misty Copeland danced "Rum and Coca Cola," understandably wowing the guys with her sassy hip checks and skirt flounces. The dance is structured well to showcase the company’s varied and deep talent, and in an idiom translatable to ballet, yet more fun. The short season runs through this week at the Koch Theater.

ABT's Fall Season Wrap-Up

Marcelo Gomes, Cory Stearsn, and Herman Cornejo in Fancy Free. Photo: Marty Sohl

ABT's two-week fall rep season at the Koch included a production premiere of Raymonda Divertissements, choreographed by Petipa with staging by Irina Kolpakova and Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie. Hee Seo and James Whiteside danced the leads, interesting complements of cool and hot, both with crisp, taut lines. The duo of Misty Copeland and Sarah Lane were warmly energetic and well-matched. Corps member Skylar Brandt danced a solo with lucidity, and soloist Christine Shevchenko once again demonstrated her burnished technique that has garnered her more and more roles. 

One thing that struck me immediately was how big the larger group of four corps men looked on the Koch stage (as exemplified by Alex Hammoudi); this is New York City Ballet's house, and the men are generally smaller in stature. Although ABT's ensemble men looked as if they could use another week of rehearsal, all nine couples performed shoulder lifts smoothly. The ballet is a reliable, classical confection and repertory staple, if a tad dry, to hummable music by Glazounov, costumed in hues of vanilla cream frosting by Barbara Matera.

How is it possible to distinguish Fancy Free, that 1944 Jerome Robbins staple to Leonard Bernstein (here staged by NYCB's Jean-Pierre Frohlich), performed with clockwork regularity in New York? How about Cornejo's triple tours en l'air into splits, and Marcelo Gomes' unfettered goofiness? Add in an aw-shucks sweetness by Cory Stearns, and welcome appearances by Stella Abrera and Gillian Murphy, and you have a rejuvenated vehicle with sparkle and pyrotechnics.  

James Whiteside and Misty Copeland in With a Chance of Rain. Photo: Marty Sohl

Frederick Ashton's Jardin aux Lilas was staged for the company by Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner. In the ballet's few years' absence from the rep, I'd forgotten how succinct and probing Ashton's choreography can be. Simple head turns, body direction changes, and lifted hands speak volumes about the players' psychological states. Two couples in love with the others' partners arrange furtive trysts in the sylvan moonlight, wary of being caught. Its simplicity and humanity makes you yearn for more Ashton. Chris Wheeldon's Thirteen Diversions (2011), to Britten, is a handsome, elegant dance for 24. Bob Crowley's silver and black costumes, and Brad Field's at times retina-searing lighting, underscore the ambition of the dance. But it hints at a weakness for the ubiquitous Wheeldon, in that apart from narrative ballets and icons such as After the Rain, he creates lovely, flowing dances that can be indistinguishable. However, it did match Boylston with Stearns, another unexpected, satisfying pairing.

ABT in Repertory—Hitting the Sweet Spot

Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes in Bach Partita. Photo: Gene Schiavone

ABT's fall rep season is brief, about a week and half this year. The upside is that it leaves us wanting to see more of the company's shorter form repertory, though they've been including one or two such slates in their two-month Met Opera House runs. Would they consider more? Highlights from week two at the Koch Theater, a wonderful venue for the company:


Bach Partita (1983), by Twyla Tharp

• To Partita No. 2 in D Minor for solo violin, played vibrantly by Charles Yang
• Three main couples feature in five parts
• In the opening section, four dancers interweave quickly, setting a motif of roiling, ceaseless movement
• Whiteside pairs with Polina Semionova—these two leggy dancers are deservedly getting a lot of work these days in a company vastly different in personnel than even a few years ago
• Marcelo Gomes and Gillian Murphy—a magnetic and peerless duo; Murphy's usual unerring sense of center apparent in triple and quadruple pirouettes; when Gomes does the simplest gesture—placing his hand on her shoulder—it becomes a significant dramatic event
• Stella Abrera and Calvin Royal III—a fresh and appealing combo; Royal, a tall, warm presence, also seeing a number of high profile roles this season; good to see Abrera dancing with crisp confidence
• Santo Loquasto designed cute shorts for the guys, and white or flesh hued dresses of short and midi length for the gals
• Tharp plays with the ballet form, oscillating arms in high fifth during chainés, or making ronds de jambe en l'air a kind of lighthearted flourish rather than a demonstration of subtle control
• Tharp and Mark Morris are masters at moving on and offstage large groups of dancers and varying dynamic and atmosphere

Mark Morris' Gong. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Gong (2001), by Mark Morris

• To Tabuh-Tabuhan (1936) by Colin McPhee, with western and Balinese percussion instruments
• Dazzling rainbow palette costumes for the 15 dancers by Isaac Mizrahi, with gold anklets for the women
• Morris quotes Balinese traditions—gestures (prayer hands, deep second grand pliés), flexed feet, shadow silhouettes—without appropriating it
• Moments of stillness alternate with big split leaps in second
• Humor in a passage when the ensemble hops to beats of a gong to form a column
• James Whiteside (a new principal) held the eye with great authority
• Gillian Murphy and Sascha Radetsky danced as two parts forming one; she convincingly free falls, and he catches her at the last moment
• Nice to see Misty Copeland in good form, and Grant De Long performing capably in place of Gomes

Les Sylphides (1908), by Michel Fokine, to Chopin

• Such a treat to see Joseph Gorak, rising star in the corps, as the sole male dancing with Isabella Boylston (her grand jetés are breathtaking), the ever-charming Sarah Lane, and Hee Seo (whose arms float into place), plus 16 supporting women. As I've mentioned before, his physique reminds me of David Hallberg—not just his high-instep feet, but his regal épaulement.
• This chestnut epitomizes the romantic period, but sometimes drifts into a precious Degas still life.

Cory Stearns & Veronika Part in The Moor's Pavane. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Moor's Pavane (1949), by José Limón

• This proscenium theater is somewhat too large in scale for this quartet, which, while grand in diagram, still relies strongly on facial expressions
• Roman Zhurbin, as the Moor, is among the company's finest character dancers
• Seo, his wife, physically exemplifies the innocent purity required of her role
• Cory Stearns, the friend, puts his feline stealth to good use, preening and slinking about  
• Veronika Part, his wife, manages to project well as a sly conspirator

Next up for ABT: Ratmansky's The Nutcracker at BAM in December.

Notebook review—ABT's City Center Season

Polina Semionova & Marcelo Gomes in Symphony #9. Photo: Gene Schiavone

In the interest of brevity, trying something new: a notebook-style review of main points, but not all of the connecting words. 

The sublime Herman Cornejo. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Alexei Ratmansky's new Symphony #9 to Shostakovich

• It's terrific.
• Plotless, witty, contemporary
• Broken 4th wall directly engages audience
• Shostakovich music humorous, brazen, with charismatic solo instruments like trombone, clarinet
• Dream A cast: 1) Marcelo Gomes & Polina Semionova, 2) Craig Salstein & Simone Messmer, + Herman Cornejo
• Couple #1 romantic, searching out some unknown thing and finding it = happiness
• Couple #2 funny, playful, nobody plays w/the audience quite like Salstein
• Cornejo a loner, oracle, guiding light; his final whirling pirouettes and collapse are like seeing the center of whatever universe we're peering into. One of the finest performers in ballet today.
• B cast: Roberto Bolle & Veronika Part (waaaay more tragic), Sascha Radetsky & Stella Abrera (less in the moment), + Jared Mathews (would have thought Daniil Simkin was a shoe-in for this role, but Jared basically works)
• Costumes by Keso Dekker wonderfully modern: photographic jersey print tees and cross-back dresses lined with gold; black velvet tights

In sum—Ratmansky's best effort for ABT thus far, finally departing from the romantic notions inherent in the story ballets he's done for the company, as well as the quite dreamy, abstract Seven Sonatas. His work for NYCB has been stronger (Russian Seasons, Concerto DSCH, Namouna)—was there some allegiance to nostalgia with ABT that tethered him?  

Reminder—Symphony #9 returns alongside the other two parts of his trilogy in ABT's spring/summer season.

See you in the spring! Symphony #9. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Rodeo, choreographed by Agnes de Mille to Aaron Copland's score

• An intro film by Ken Burns puts in context the uniquely American style and subject
• Pacing and staging are spacious, very Western American in feel
• Copland score and painted sunset backdrops complete the American thing
• Xiomara Reyes in lead was born for this role
• Nice to see Radetsky get the girl; his tap ain't bad either

Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, choreographed by Mark Morris to Virgil Thompson

• Great to see this Mark Morris gem in the rotation
• Feeling of non-stop action, risk-taking hand grabs by partners 
• Fluidity, lyricism, satisfying musicality and rhythm
• Morris makes beautiful flowing phrases that read like really good writing 

In the Upper Room, choreographed by Twyla Tharp to Philip Glass

• Wow, this needed rehearsal; the usual rough edges were pretty ragged
• nice to see some less familiar faces in the womens' pointe roles, among the tougher technically speaking: Skylar Brandt and Nicole Graniero in particular
• Sometimes the sheer adrenaline gets the better of dancers, like Luciana Paris and Sascha Radetsky, but it works in the end with the controlled chaos
• Messmer excelled as a main stomper, and Isabella Boylston as well, on pointe 
• Norma Kamali's black, white & red costumes remain surprisingly fresh and slightly shocking

The Moor's Pavane, choreographed by José Limon to Henry Purcell

• Gomes is, predictably, perfect as the Moor. He commands the house with the back of his head, for cryin' out loud.
• Surprise: Cory Stearns is pretty nefarious as His Friend, his long fingers snaking around the Moor's shoulders 
• Julie Kent fragile, beautiful, vulnerable as the Moor's Wife.

Misc.

• Salstein always looks like he's having a ball in ABT's short rep seasons. Though not the most naturally gifted dancer (although the bar is ridiculously high at ABT), he continues to elevate his technique to match his enthusiasm, magnetism, and appeal. He also takes ownership of the stage and whatever roles he's given, which—not coincidentally—are increasingly higher-profile.
• Messmer also had an outstanding season; she and Salstein worked together well
• Amazingly, Santo Loquasto designed costumes for Rodeo and for Drink to Me

Come Fly Away, 3/30/10

-->

Twyla Tharp's Sinatra Paean, Come Fly Away, on Broadway

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/ballet/come-fly-away/819/

Come Fly Away is an enjoyable evening jam-packed with Twyla Tharp’s jazzy mix of ballroom, ballet, and modern dance. The cast of 15 dancers is accompanied by recordings of Frank Sinatra, plus strategic live renditions of songs by Hilary Gardner (including a duet with Sinatra), backed by a band led by Russ Kassoff. If you’re looking for profound moral tales or searing character depictions, you won’t find them here. But you will get no-holds-barred performances by some of the finest technically-trained dancers working on Broadway, many vets from prior Tharp shows. Like Sinatra’s song list, the show’s mood is heavily romantic, but occasionally veers to the resigned, bitter, and hopeful.

The club setting (by James Youmans) essentially doesn’t change for the duration, and yet time flies surprisingly quick. Four lead couples make their entrances down a compact staircase and sketch out their relationships. Karine Plantadit and Keith Roberts are on again/off again, with her voracious appetites and strong-headedness providing the drama, and her wattage ranging from brilliant to nuclear. Roberts is velvety and solid. Holley Farmer and John Selya are still in the fresh, beguiled stage of love. Farmer, late of the Merce Cunningham Company, possesses a brilliant smile and stage presence that continually draw the eye. Selya looks like a really talented everyman, but his heart and work ethic sell his appeal.