by Leigh Witchel
With a bill of repertory standards anchored by a another go-round of Justin Peck’s 2015 hit, “Heatscape,” Miami City Ballet’s third repertory program wasn’t really buzzworthy. It was just really good. New casts made it fresh, as well.
“The Four Temperaments,” staged by Paul Boos, got a transparent performance. Boos danced with New York City Ballet in the ‘80s; the version he set is what’s been familiar to New York audiences for decades, only more pellucid.
Helen Ruiz and Eric Beckham performed the opening theme with delicacy, as did Ashley Knox and Damian Zamorano in the second. Both themes are like water, visible and pure rather than flavored. They are best performed that way, but third theme needs perfume. Emily Bromberg provided it, leaning back languorously on to Ariel Rose or slowly closing her points in a diamond as he lifted her. She found the paradox as he supported her on a diagonal as she curled and reached; she was both doll-like as he moved her yet waiting for him to manipulate her as if she knew something he didn’t.
Shimon Ito approached Melancholic as a dance rather than a mental state, falling to the floor as calculated physics rather than being unable to go on staying upright. It’s easy to go too far and chew scenery that isn’t there, but it still could have used more. His two furies, Julie Cinquemani and Ellen Grocki, found something dangerous in their swirling circuit round him, retracting back from extensions like switchblades into their hilts.
Sanguinic lived up to its name: not bloody, but confident. Christina Spigner was feminine and assured with sharp legs and tight turns; Aaron Hilton partnered her elegantly; shooting his leg under her; she walked over it as if this were a steeplechase.
Eric Trope found a balance in Phlegmatic between drama and dance; knowing his story but finely articulating the steps. As he entered he looked ahead to his arm; at NYCB the arm is often slightly upward, but Trope was pulled outward into the space as if he were uncertain whether to enter. His Phlegmatic was neither lazy nor indecisive, but paralyzed by uncertainty.
Adrienne Carter as Choleric led the women in a brilliant “Devil’s Dance,” where the devil was in the details: speedy, precise footwork laid out at top speed. It was a performance that showed rather than told; the final pealing chords of Hindemith’s score felt uplifting not as much from emotion as clarity.
“Duo Concertant,” staged by Ben Huys, got a lighter touch from the dancers than the musicians. The violinist, Mei Mei Luo, played the opening Cantilène more incisively than it’s usually done in New York; sawing through the opening notes. Alexander Peters and Katia Carranza didn’t follow suit; Peters didn’t punch the changes of direction or slam his legs into positions. Instead, his feet lightly curled into cou de pied. Carranza was fleet and light; the performance was quick and unsentimental. Even the embraces of the schmaltzy last movement weren’t milked.
The staging for Bournonville’s “Flower Festival in Genzano” was credited in-house. Even if it wasn’t home turf; Nina Fernandes and Damian Zamorano danced it with the same light touch. If the dancing was more leggy than in Copenhagen, it was recognizable. Fernandes was sweet and shy, but not saccharine. When she looked away from Zamorano she didn’t pretend he couldn’t see her. Zamorano’s solo was filled with brilliant beats, but both dancers were dancing full phrases, not individual steps. There were some bobbles – he had trouble with tours to the left, she got jello-legged on her last pirouette en dedans – but that didn’t take away from a lovely, musical performance that didn’t pound the choreography or the score.
“Heatscape” also rolled out some debuts: Jovani Furlan opened the ballet, dancing solo beautifully before heading into a quick duet with Knox, spinning her round into a foot neatly pointed front.
That dissolved into a twilit adagio for Chase Swatosh & Nathalia Arja, who are vets in the piece. On repeat viewings the ballet still holds up as one of Peck’s best: The ballet is so spatially ingenious, but the constantly changing formations that dissolve rapid-fire into the next idea seemed powered by curiosity rather than craft or worse, obligation.
The one querulous point is that Peck’s pushmi-pullyu vocabulary is not just physically contradictory, but also emotionally. When Arja was pulled this way then that, she seemed conflicted, even that she doesn’t want to be with Swatosh, but nothing else in their dancing implied that.
Alex Manning tore through his new part as the first of the troika that leads the third movement. Shooting out after him was Jennifer Lauren, who has worked her way through the ranks over a decade to the top. She exemplifies the best aspects of the company: phenomenal legwork, precision and speed.
“Heatscape” precedes “The Times Are Racing” in Peck’s canon, but share the same ontology: We Are Youth – that’s Justin’s jam. That and excess: he built a fugue out of a phrase with the arms circling overhead while the legs slashed round front into a grand rond de jambe. The dancers did it as cleanly as if it were basic tendus.
Whether it was new choreography or works we’ve seen scores of times, the Miami dancers kept them vital by meeting them where they lived, in a repertory program that refreshed your eyes and let you see a bit more clearly.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“The Four Temperaments,” “Duo Concertant,” “The Flower Festival in Genzano” pas de deux, “Heatscape” – Miami City Ballet
Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
March 10, 2019
Cover: Miami City Ballet in “Heatscape.” Photo © Alexander Iziliaev.
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