by Leigh Witchel
There are two words in “Joffrey Ballet Concert Group” that need further explanation: Joffrey and Ballet. Robert Joffrey founded The Joffrey Ballet School in lower Manhattan in 1953 and the concert group in 1981, but the dance troupe lay dormant for seven years.
Fast forward: the school is completely separate from the Joffrey Ballet and the Joffrey Academy of Dance in Chicago. The reboot of the concert group is headed by Bradley Shelver, who was born in South Africa and trained there, as well as the Ailey School, and danced in an eclectic mix of contemporary, modern and ballet companies. That background echoes the school’s curriculum, which allows for study in either ballet or contemporary dance and jazz. It showed in the program as well.
The four works ranged on the continuum from ballet to contemporary, but even the most balletic wasn’t all ballet. Eric Trope danced for Miami City Ballet, and his home base is more classical. For “Gazebo Dances,” which closed the evening, he used an early piece of John Corigliano’s that sounded a lot like Copland or Bernstein.
Rules #1 and #2 of school choreography: Get the students onstage, and make them look good.
Trope was given a large cast to use. He deployed them in big, energetic squadrons, and Erica Johnston dressed them in bright, relaxed-fit warmers and socks. Trope used the opportunity of working with a school to experiment. A woman supported her partner in a penché, but that needed more rehearsal for the dancers to make it less awkward.
A trio of women worked on high half-toe, doing bourrées, piqués and arabesques. The steps made it seem as if Trope wanted them on pointe, but he may also have been looking at similar questions about when and when not to use the shoe as the ones Twyla Tharp asked in “In the Upper Room.”
Because “Gazebo Dances” was ballet, it was more exposing, but also more airy. Still, he worked with the skills the dancers had. A solo in the third movement had plenty of floor work. The men were given moments to do tricks. For one guy a double tour in retiré was iffy, but the other man nailed it. Everyone formed a circle in pairs spinning each other round as if it were playground games before the two solo women exited last.
There wasn’t much academic technique in Lindsay Grymes’ “Falter Upward,” it was more neck rolling and back walkovers, but she kept Rule #2 to heart. The dancers moved well and looked good in what they were given. The piece began with a single woman, who started the work with her back to us, then she was joined by another, then the full cast of 14, who raced in and out for short, spasmodic duets to a loud and fuzzy recording of Dinah Washington. The work went on into a quartet, which invoked Rule #1. It seemed less to be there to echo or extend the duets, than to use more dancers.
The group coalesced into two lines, then another quartet, moving broadly before a slow, sad march to Liszt’s “Liebestraum.” The emotions were more diffuse, you did wonder who these people these people were and why they were so miserable. Everyone returned to shuffle and shake before leaving four women standing backwards as the scene went to black.
The work continued to a percussive piano percussive piano recording by Nils Frahm and one last big solo, but placing it as the end made the falling, to crawling and pulling, to jumping round, outstay its welcome. A blackout marked an abrupt end.
As with “Gazebo Dances,” you could tell “Falter Upward” was a school piece, largely because of how it was constructed. Some things seemed to happen largely to let as many people as possible dance.
The third work, Shelver’s “Random People with Beautiful Parts,” used pointe work. The soundtrack was the Hilliard Ensemble’s beautiful but dolorous “Morimur,” which took the famous Bach Chaconne that William Forsythe used in “Artifact” and mixed it with chorales.
The women in the cast did bourrées and long-legged steps. Shelver wasn’t phrasing classically, but in a more disjointed, fragmented way: turn, step, stalk.
A trio of men, each in his own world, kicked turned and rolled to the floor, which led to a kitchen sink for the full sextet as the lights went down to what felt like an an abrupt cutoff of the music. Perhaps the biggest achievement of “Random People” was that it wasn’t “Artifact,” and you didn’t spend all your time thinking that. But it didn’t fully make an argument for what it was instead. It’s possible to be aggressive to Bach (“Artifact” is Exhibit A) but “Random People” didn’t have the arresting phrasing, or more importantly, the duration.
The opening work by Shelver, “The 12th Room,” leaned towards tanztheater. This could have all gone so very wrong, but it didn’t. The students were mature enough to handle theater dance without looking out of place, and the thrift-shop production budget for Johnston’s costumes and Alexandra McNamara’s set designs managed some credible effects. The piece began with sound effects, then a white door on casters appeared.
A young woman, Laura Severo Mendes, came out in a green evening gown that looked as if it had been marked on final sale at TJ Maxx. The door frame slowly moved, following Mendes, then stopped across the stage, glowing red in the lights.
Party noises could be heard in the distance. Mendes finally got up the courage to knock, and everyone was revealed, waiting. The music segued to an overused composition – variations on “La Follia” – but Shelver mixed it up. Instead of using one of the more familiar variations, he went for a less-known Neapolitan Renaissance composer, Andrea Falconieri. Everyone stomped and rolled, using their weight effectively. Mendes stared through the door frame, watching until the section ended with the door slamming in her face.
She knocked again, but the party music changed; it was now Philip Glass. Breeanna Palmer, wearing the same dress, looked like a smaller, Dream Laurie, version of Mendes. She and Jean Da Silva danced and anguished duet, but she was fearless and he was strong. Neither wound up looking too young for the intense emotions they were asked to have. He carried her out to end the pas de deux.
Mendes rumbled around and finally walked across, before Joliana Canaan – in the same dress (it must have been on sale) – spun and contracted. The group watched and whispered in the shadows. Mendes returned to dance with Daniele Campi, in a frenzied and incessant duet, yet one that was almost romantic. The piece ended with the cast vibrating.
As familiar as the angst from “The 12th Room” was, the work wasn’t bad. In its Pina Bausch fashions, with its collage score, it seemed like a modest tanztheater work from a regional German opera house. Most importantly, like the other works on the program, it was doing what it was supposed to for these pre-professional dancers. It was teaching them something that could get them a job.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“The 12th Room,” “Falter Upward,” “Random People with Beautiful Parts,” “Gazebo Dances” – Joffrey Ballet Concert Group
Ailey Citigroup Theater, New York, NY
February 16, 2023
Cover: Laura Severo Mendes in “The 12th Room.” Photo © Michael Waldrop.
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