Stormy Weather—NYCB's Balanchine Slate

Sara Mearns in Walpurgisnacht Ballet. Photo: Paul Kolnik

The storm Jonas dumped nearly a yard of snow in its wake, shutting down all of New York City, including cultural performances. But another tempest, Sara Mearns, channelled some of its vibrant fury in Balanchine's Walpurgisnacht Ballet (1980) at New York City Ballet on make-up night, January 26. Through her musicality and kinetic impulses, Mearns conveyed an astounding amount of inner life while remaining faithful to the choreography, which she has absorbed a priori. Adrian Danchig-Waring was a noble, strong partner to counter her contained passion.

The all-Balanchine program included Sonatine (1975), a duo with Tiler Peck and Joaquin de Luz to a Ravel score played live onstage by Cameron Grant. They shared a tender camaraderie, but she repeatedly left him and returned, as if testing the permanence of closure. Peck never stopped moving, giving life and evolution to seemingly static poses. De Luz crackled onstage; his roguish charm paired particularly well with Peck's joy and wonderment.

Tiler Peck & Joaquin de Luz in Sonatine. Photo: Paul Kolnik

The last time I saw Mozartiana (1981), Anthony Huxley danced the second male role; here, he was in the lead male part wearing white and violet, and the cocoa-clad Daniel Ulbricht danced the secondary Gigue. While Huxley continues to develop his partnering work, and on the softening of his placid facial expression, he was crisp technically and timing-wise, and bestowed his movement with more weight and plushness. Sterling Hyltin gave an elegiac, tender performance, her hand softly unfurling as if presenting a priceless gift; Ulbricht was light and appealing if somewhat flat—it's almost as if he reins in his personality and simply lets his flying leaps speak.

The sturdy Symphony in C (1947) featured Megan Fairchild in the first movement with a lackluster Gonzalo Garcia, who seemed rusty and uninspired. The cool pair of Teresa and Tyler Angle wafted elegantly through the second part, making its difficult chained lifts look seamless. A vivacious Antonio Carmena partnered Erica Pereira in the jaunty third, she emanated energy but her small stature tends to minimize the impact. And I wanted to see more of Brittany Pollack and Taylor Stanley, electric in the brief fourth movement.

Intensio—Daniil Simkin and Friends

Alexandre Hammoudi and Isabella Boylston in Islands of Memories. Photo: Paula Lobo

The most recent ballet vanity project, Intensio (produced by the Joyce Theater), is led by ABT principal Daniil Simkin, who is joined by some talented pals from ABT and Céline Cassone of Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal. While watching these fantastic art-letes provides many pleasures, the evening also raises questions. Are these already accomplished stars drawing resources—money, publicity, presenters—away from independent choreographers? If those indie artists are not able to attract donor and foundation support like the top ballet stars, how is their work produced—does it mean life or death? 

Socio-artistic issues aside, Simkin does have an unusual story, which is told cursorily in a humorous autobiographical piece with "balletography" by Ekman titled Simkin and the Stage (2015). Born in Siberia and raised in Germany, Simkin was taught ballet at home by his mother; his father designs sets including for Intensio's big finale, Islands of Memories. Throughout the program, we absorb Simkin's brilliance and rough edges, a diamond still in the process of being polished. 


At times his brio blankets his weaknesses; charm goes a long way. In front of a projected film of Simkin either repeatedly pirouetting, or training as an adorable child, the real Daniil performs a kind of highlight reel of his most eye-catching moves, such as leaps and tours in the air. His recorded voice tells us his story, and he humorously mimes nuggets like, "I wanted to be a dentist." Preceding this work is a hilarious film (that has been posted online for awhile) of Simkin going about his daily routine on the streets of New York, dressed in white tights and princely tunic and using only ballet vocabulary.

Daniil Simkin and Céline Cassone. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu

These are the most personal works on an otherwise broader slate. Simkin appears in Jorma Elo's Nocturne/Etude/Prelude, a trio with Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside, whose brown hair is now light blue (presumably to age him, but it just looks like cotton candy). Is he an older version of the identically dressed Simkin, his father, or just another man? The dance is a showcase for Boylston, chic in a one-shouldered white dress with a circle skirt (costumes coordinated by Maile Okamura). While the larger men seem huge in the modest-sized Joyce stage, the women—Boylston in particular—appear more vivid, limbs longer than at their normal venues, the Met and Koch. Elo adds dramatic touches, such as Whiteside dropping Boylston into a split and lifting her quickly, and Simkin flexing his hands, palm meat pressed together as he pirouettes.

Gregory Dolbashian's Welcome a Stranger (2015) is more edgy, announced immediately by ambient fog and looped percussion, which cedes to a guitar. Céline Cassone (who set the punk tone with her flame-red hair), Blaine Hoven, Alex Hammoudi, Calvin Royal, and Cassandra Trenary gather, lift one dancer up and over another ("gang chaos partnering," in my notes), disperse, and exit; the movement has an urgency and desperation. Royal shines in a brief solo. His long arms sweep like wings, his phrasing plushly muscular. Hoven and Cassone experiment with one another's weight, actions and reactions. 

Islands of Memories is choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa to a "recomposition" of Vivaldi's Four Seasons by Max Richter. Dmitrij Simkin designed the nifty set: canted mirror panels show us the stage from above, onto which projected patterns outline and react to the dancers' movements. Ochoa's movement is fluent, elegant, and the dancers look happy doing it. They pair off, springing on and offstage like gazelles. Trenary shows ferocity, and looks fantastic paired with Royal. A woman's pointed toe becomes a protractor pencil tracing a circle around her body, being spun by her partner. Boylston displays her high arches in deep plies. In the group finale, Simkin is one of the gang—the slender kid who can match his mates' spins and jumps—but also the guy who brought the game ball. 

2015

David Wright waving to us waaay up in the back balcony at BAM 

Sports
It was the Year of the Mets. After so many, many years of mediocrity and knockdowns, including the ripple effect from the Madoff debacle, the Mets finally got it together and wildly exceeded my expectations. Four incredibly good young pitchers assumed spots in the rotation—Jacob de Grom, Matt Harvey, and Steven Matz with Tommy John-fixed elbows—plus the larger-than-life Noah Syndergaard. 

Instead of turning out to be duds, many important moves proved providential: acquiring Yoenis Cespedes after a deal which would've exiled a teary Wilmer Flores fell through, endearing him to anyone with a heart, slotting the Cheshire cat-like Bartolo Colon as the fifth starter. Moving Jeurys Familia into the closer spot after Jenrry Mejia, incredibly, was suspended twice for PEDs. David Wright managing his spinal stenosis after several months off, and returning in time to captain the trophy push. Daniel Murphy summoning some supernatural spirit to hit like a demon in the playoffs. The emergence of youngsters like Michael Conforto and resurgence of vets like Curtis Granderson. It was a dream season that still feels unreal. Adding to the delirium—seeing Wright, De Grom, Harvey and Flores on BAM's stage on Oct 23, after winning the NLCS, during a week-long residency of the Jimmy Kimmel show. 

Gillian Murphy in The Sleeping Beauty. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Dance
• Bournonville re-ascendant, danced both by the Royal Danish Ballet and New York City Ballet

• NYCB's Justin Peck premiere of Rodeo stood out, plus new stuff by other choreographers including Kim Brandstrup and Troy Schumacher.

• ABT's new Sleeping Beauty by Alexei Ratmansky, who daringly looked forward while using an ancient idiom. 

• That company's promotions, including Stella Abrera and the ubiquitous Misty Copeland, plus fall season rep gems including a new sweet Mark Morris dance, After You, and a glimpse of Marcelo Gomes' post-dancer future.

• National Ballet of China's The Red Detachment of Women at the Koch, an implausibly likable Socialist ballet where the women dance on pointe, in military formations, with guns. 

National Ballet of China in The Red Detachment of Women. Photo: Stephanie Berger 

• The beginning of Stephen Petronio's Bloodlines project, which revives modern classics (this past season, Cunningham's RainForest.)

• His mentor Trisha Brown's task-based, intimately scaled task-based pieces in situ at the Donald Judd building in Soho. 

• Jose Limon's company finding the energy and resources to organize a festival featuring other companies dancing Limon's work. 

• Twyla Tharp getting a well-deserved, if mixed, evening at the Koch to present new work.

• Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Boris Charmatz in Partita 2—first just music, then music + dance, for a contemplative, elegant program.

• Christopher Wheeldon's An American in Paris on Broadway, a respite among the shrill, saccharine musical theater offerings, and also seeing real ballet dancers—Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope—dazzle the general public.

Trisha Brown Dance Company at the Judd Foundation.
Photo: Susan Yung

Art 
• The opening of the new Whitney downtown—providing much excitement and buzz—but also a bit of regret as it's now a tour stop in the overtrekked Meatpacking/Highline district. 

• But the Met's imminent move into the Breuer building offers solace for nostalgics. 

• Another Whitney—Stanley—was finally given his first museum show at the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Books
• Jonathan Franzen's Purity, the first fever-inducing read since Tartt's The Goldfinch. 

• Other fiction that stuck (okay, many I read later in the year): Mary Gaitskill's The Mare; Patrick deWitt's Under Majordomo; Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno; Joy Williams' The Visiting Privilege.

• Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire, for summoning a volatile time in a formally mixed structure. 

• Biographies on Elon Musk (by Ashlee Vance) and the Wright Brothers (by David McCullough), both of which are reminders of the potential of human intelligence and perseverance.

Ailey Turns to the New (and Taylor)

Matthew Rushing and Linda Celeste Sims in Open Door. Photo: Paul Kolnik

As the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company enters its fifth year under the leadership of Robert Battle, at least one program in its City Center season showed that the future is now—but with a twist. On Dec 17, a slate of premieres/new productions, the past was represented by a company premiere of Paul Taylor's Piazzolla Caldera (1997). It led a program fleshed out with new work by Ronald K. Brown, Kyle Abraham, and Battle. None of it felt like familiar fare by Ailey, which peppers most other evenings throughout the month-long run. And a subtle link between Battle and Taylor underscored an affinity for dark narrative, and a generational legacy.

Awakening, by Battle, began with a bang: John Mackey's brass instrumentals blasting at air horn-volume, quickly chasing some viewers out of their speaker-adjacent seats. The dancers, in uniform white tunics and pants which could be interpreted as asylum or spaceship gear, darted and pivoted in a V formation, seemingly in hasty desperation. The lights, by Al Crawford, at first lit only their shins; this horizontal motif echoes in a crosswise white slit that cleaves the black cyc in half. There's a general sense of revolution and apocalypse. The group coalesces, gazing in one direction, then splits and careens around the stage once more. Jamar Roberts emerges as the leader, coiling and unfurling amid the turmoil of the crowd. 

Interestingly, for me this work evokes the drama and tumultuous underlying narrative of Paul Taylor's The Word and Speaking in Tongues. This makes sense given Battle's place on the Taylor family tree, beginning as a prominent dancer and choreographer in ex-Taylor dancer David Parsons' company. In Awakening, the group feverishly follows its leader, whether for dogmatic or militaristic reasons. And the rhythmic, staccato phrases remind us of how different Battle's own work is than Ailey's fluid, classical jazz vocabulary.

Jacqueline Green in Untitled America: First Movement. Photo: Paul Kolnik

Piazzolla was set on Ailey by Taylor alum Richard Chen See. In theory, it should be an ideal work for Ailey—sultry, athletic, atmospheric. But from the important opening passage—here danced by Jamar Roberts; for Taylor by Michael Trusnovec—it was clear that Ailey's version would be softer and far less aggressive than the original. Trusnovec dances it with scalpel-like precision, imbuing social dance with a feral menace. Roberts looks terrific but passionless; his performance lacks the necessary darkness. Linda Celeste Sims, in the lead female role, dances with more attack, although as the despondent outcast, she seems more hungry than truly desperate.   

Kyle Abraham choreographed Untitled America (First Movement), a brief trio to a touching song by Laura Mvula. This premiere is about the long-term effects of incarceration, though its unspecific gestures suggest emotional turmoil between closely bonded loved ones. Jacqueline Green's lucid, long lines highlighted this installment of what should be an interesting final serial.

Capping off the evening was Ronald K. Brown's premiere, Open Door, a timely paean to Cuban culture with music by some of its best-known musical sons including Tito Puente and Arturo O'Farrill. Brown can make dances with narrative or historical subject matter, but this dance is simply a full-blown physical celebration. Making it even more joyous are Linda Celeste Sims and Matthew Rushing leading eight dancers in pulsating, rippling vamps that traverse and follow the stage's edges. It's a classic Brown combination of grounded African moves embellished with quirky arm gestures, like brushing something off the shoulder, or arms held at 90º around the face. But never mind the details, what's important is that the company looks absolutely elated during the piece. Rushing can't suppress a huge smile, and Sims beams right back at him. We in turn absorb and reflect all that love back at them, and on and on.

Meanwhile, Ailey's legacy is maintained in repertory, foremost by Revelations, by far his finest dance. But the growing prominence of the school of Paul Taylor, whether through his own work or in Battle's, cannot be overlooked, alongside premieres by some of the bright younger lights of contemporary dance. At the same time, Taylor is welcoming in other modern choreographers' work, both old and new. It's an interesting time for the giants and legatees of modern dance, indeed. 

Thomas Adès—Composing and Performing with Friends

Polaris. Photo: Andrew Lang

Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music featured four choreographers who set dances to pre-existing works by the British composer, produced by Sadler's Wells London and at City Center as part of the White Light Festival. The highlight—the composer played piano or conducted for all four works, with the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Calder Quartet. Two veteran dancemakers were included—the ubiquitous Wayne McGregor, and Karole Armitage. But the revelations were the dances by Crystal Pite, who created a giant 264-limbed organism, and Alexander Whitley, whose velvety, muscular style captivated. These four dances and their requisite personnel—prime among them the composer, hard at work—make this scale of presentation a rarity. 

Pite's Polaris was easily the most popular piece on the bill, deploying 66 black-clad NYU students in mesmerizing shapes and formations, through which energy rippled and parted, like "the wave" done by fans in a baseball stadium, or magnetic filings being drawn to and fro. It is set to the pseudonymic 2010 composition by Adès, which includes a wondrous, yearning piano line, shades of a Bach symphony, and fractured notes coalescing into harmonic, organized order in the finale as the crowd looked up in anticipation, as if greeting ET's ship. 

In one scene, the dancers look like praying mantises, crouching low to the floor, elbows up; the insect evocation recurred in roiling swarms and mind-hive behavior. Kudos to lighting designer Tom Visser, who created an atmosphere of eerie moonlight and darkness, and Jay Gower Taylor's plowed-field-textured backdrop augmenting the alienscape feel. Pite's fluid and incredibly well-drilled piece would not be out of place on So You Think You Can Dance, or in an Olympics opening show, and it was a welcome addition on a highbrow slate.

The Grit in the Oyster. Photo: Andrew Lang

Alexander Whitley is a British choreographer who has spent time with the Royal and the Birmingham Royal Ballets, but whose work is rarely seen in New York. For The Grit in the Oyster, he chose Adès' 2000 Piano Quintet, which the composer played onstage with the Calder Quartet. Dancing were Natalie Allen, Wayne Parsons, and in particular the pliant and warm Antonette Dayrit, who led off and finished with an absorbing solo passage. Whitley's style is informed by ballet, but it's performed barefoot. At no point does any movement appear to be catalyzed simply for its own sake; the impetus arises unbidden and is carried through the dancers' bodies and limbs organically. It comes across as unaffected, muscular, and feline in its elegance and innate physicality. He frequently integrates floor work, building upon it with deeply planted lunges and triangular braced limbs; lifts include diamond- or scissor-shaped leg formations. The music begins with a dark piano line, and grows as all five instruments join in—fractured violin lines, warm cellos, darting rhythms, plucked and sawed strings. 

It's in contrast to McGregor's phrasing in Outlier (2010), which feels abound with random starts and stops. His ballet looks effortful and self-conscious, decorated with mannerisms and oddities. Adès' Concentric Paths violin concerto (2005) shocks from time to time with a seismic "boom" chord, threaded with keening or tumbling melodic lines. The dancers of McGregor's company wring the most out of his inside-out, hyperextended vocabulary but apart from its impressive athleticism, it fails to move.

The fourth work stands apart for its literary derivation: Armitage's Life Story (1999) which uses the same-titled composition by Adès and poem by Tennessee Williams. Ruka Hatua-Saar and Emily Wagner take the stage in front of Adès on piano and soprano Anna Dennis. The narrative ponders the aftermath of a feverish romantic encounter, apparent in the dancers' brisk flirtations and forthright exchanged gazes. Armitage injects wit and sassiness into the duet, which mirrors the character of the aria—vaulting octaves with free abandon in dialogue with the piano part, and in turn, in dialogue with the dancers. 

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.

Au revoir, Sylvie

Sylvie Guillem in Bye. Photo: Bill Cooper

The mature, modern prima ballerina can express her artistry in so many ways apart from wishing to be cast in the repertory of her choice. These days, customized, or vanity, “projects” are not uncommon. In New York this week, Sylvie Guillem’s Life in Progress, at New York City Center, celebrated her farewell to American stages at the age of 50. Nowhere in sight were toe shoes or plucked feathers; rather, she chose repertory by leading modernists Akram Khan and Mats Ek, with a duet by William Forsythe danced by guest artists from his company.

Khan’s Technê, a US premiere, featured Guillem squat-walking in a circle like an animal around an oddly uncredited, sculptural mesh metal tree, touching it as if it were an interloper, to live music by Alies Sluiter. This study of odd slinky moves punctuated with an occasional whipped spin or leg gave Guillem chances to show off her extension and feet (but not her copper hair, covered by a brunette cropped wig).

DUO2015 by William Forsythe, with score by Thom Willems, was danced by two of his company members, Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts, both superb translators of his humorous, torqued style. Unfortunately, in this program designed around Guillem, it proved to be the most kinetically interesting. Careful poses, at times contortions, mixed with bursting phrases; they retreated upstage into the dark, and then darted forward in spins and quick tours. It was a reminder of how well-suited Guillem is for Forsythe’s contemporary style, which relies on a foundation of ballet around which to build anti-balletic shapes. Memories would have to do.

Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts in DUO2015. Photo: Bill Cooper

Guillem returned with Emanuela Montanari in Russell Maliphant’s Here & After (also a US premiere). To Andy Cowton’s mystical, pulsing strings, the orange-clad duo was bathed in similar shades of striated light. They swept their arms in ovals and around one another’s head, crafting swirls and curves in synchronicity, clockwork-style. An exercise in style and timing, it didn’t reveal much about the two dancers.

The finale was suitably titled Bye, a reprise from Guillem’s 2012 stint at the Koch. It’s understandable why she would want to include it—a symbolic farewell that shows her stepping into, or returning to, another life. Its dramatic emphasis allowed Guillem to strike some singular poses to show off her lines, but the frumpy costume (by set designer Katrin Brännström) did her no favors. The packed house applauded heartily as it bade farewell to Guillem the dancer. But given her curiosity and resourcefulness, who knows in what capacity we might next encounter her?