by Leigh Witchel
We’ve seen a lot of the compositional shticks in New York City Ballet’s second 21st Century Choreography program before. Many times. Sometimes, that doesn’t matter.
“From You Within Me” is former resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s 22nd work for NYCB. He used a familiar piece of music, Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht.” It’s Tudor’s score for “Pillar of Fire.”
Though the music was composed in 1899 and it’s German Expressionism, “From You Within Me” felt more like British modernism, much as Wheeldon’s work did in his early career.
Wheeldon usually has excellent taste in designers; he did here as well. Even before the ballet began, we saw a striking front cloth by Alaska-born artist Kylie Manning of green, white and blue. It looked like a rough sea. Later on, there was there was also a backcloth of a moody landscape. A scrim in front of it was lit to make it sometimes look cloud-covered. The costumes, unitards shaded from red going darker down the body, were also by Manning along with NYCB’s Director of Costumes Mark Happel.
Behind the scrim, dancers pulsed in a circle. Sara Mearns stood up to appear over the huddled mass. We’ve seen those two gambits enough that they deserve names. How about the Concerned Clump into the Reveal? Mearns circled out of the Concerned Clump to do a solo, pitching herself off-kilter into piqué turns.
The corps crossed and took off Mearns and her partner Aarón Sanz in an unusual way, by leaving a couple in their places who exited later. Wheeldon has never been less than an ingenious craftsman; the problem has been when he hasn’t been anything more.
After a section of women striding and doing piqués, the scrim finally rose well into the work. There were three groups of four dancers each, then an agonized duo for Roman Mejia and Indiana Woodward that climaxed with her braced on his back.
Mejia popped Woodward into the air, and did tough punctuated jumps. It looked so much like the works Wheeldon did when he was Resident Choreographer that it felt like the noughties all over again. Mejia had the technique to do the tricks and the taste to make them disappear into the work. The dance became more tortured and knotty; Megan Fairchild entered, and she and Mejia posed on the ground, agonized. Mejia disappeared into the men’s ensemble and left with them.
Mearns spun in, posing angularly as if sowing the ground with her angst. Fairchild and Peter Walker did a slow duet that seemed to fall in the holes in the music before she curled him off. He reentered, bringing Sanz, and they danced a male duet, but one that didn’t scream MALE DUET. Things began to cohere, and acquire a sense of direction.
The music sped up a bit with various permutations of couples heading back to a circle then another clump with the women raised. Dancing with Mearns, Sanz slotted into her for a moment, forming a completion to the pose she made with her arm raised in her earlier solo, but he left her.
The stage darkened and the texture thickened, with the principal women entering to lead sections and exit, including a tableau where Woodward was lifted by the group that was on the knife edge of cliché. After another duet, Mearns re-entered, now wearing blue. That costume change as plot point didn’t yet feel earned.
In shadow, the scrim rose on a sunrise. Everyone entered to stare at it, their backs to us. If Robbins had reversed Balanchine’s “La Sonnambula” when everyone stared upwards in “Dances at a Gathering,” here was Wheeldon, flipping that again to the back. All the same, it felt meaningful. Everyone bent and reached before returning to a final Concerned Clump, that Mearns walked away from to close the work.
If there was a lot of drama without much of a sense of its causes, it’s worth remembering that Wheeldon’s ballets tend to be no more than skeletons on their first outings. What was missing was the heart in the work. That is usually up to the dancers to find, and it takes them time. There’s always so much blocking; they have to know that to get beyond it.
Canadian choreographer Alysa Pires’ “Standard Deviation” began its life at the 2019 New York Choreographic Institute, and was scheduled originally to be premiered in 2021, but was postponed. The score by young, Juilliard-trained Jack Frerer felt jazzy because of its solo saxophone part, played by guest Chris Hemingway. As it went on it became less rhythmic and its coloration more that of a tone poem than a dance.
As the score crashed to begin, the work opened on a square of light, with the dancers, attired by Dana Osborne in shades of gray, turning to the front and the back. They rotated inside the square then moved out of it to do the Reveal – this time of Emma von Enck as the others exited. As the women stayed behind her, she did sharp, angular motions with her hands behind her back, agonized.
The costumes for the men and the women in the corps were similar, long dark gray tights completed by other shades of gray that gave an anonymous, unisex look. Gilbert Bolden III and Mira Nadon entered, but attired in blue. Together, the two were a fiesta of line, and Pires kept their choreography simple and uncluttered to show that off.
Pires gave a lot of dancing to the ensemble of six women and six men, including soloist KJ Takahashi hurtling into jetés en tournant paired with Cainan Weber. Von Enck did solo tricks, fouetté turns changing spot. It was nice to see that Pires had command of ballet vocabulary, including virtuoso material, but the steps didn’t yet feel integrated.
In a moment used as comedy in “The Concert,” von Enck got lifted by the Concerned Clump, but them swapped out with Nadon, who did a slow adagio behind Bolden. At times, Pires’ composition felt influenced by camera work. Bolden and Nadon brought in the full group from the side almost like a wipe.
The stage darkened, and von Enck was lifted by corps before exiting at the back. Those that remained twitched, then came forward as couples, lifted. They ran to the side, and now brought Bolden and Nadon in another side wipe. To close, everyone moved together as they did at the opening. Von Enck threw herself into a repeated manic phrase as the curtain slowly lowered.
Pires knows the medium and can handle vocabulary, but “Standard Deviation” had a short attention span. Nothing felt as if it lasted more than a minute before there was another idea. There were moments out of the crowd for David Gabriel or Weber, but by the time you noticed them, it was on to the next thing. The work might make more sense and impression on repeated viewing.
You can draw a line from Justin Peck’s 2014 “Everywhere We Go” to last year’s “Partita,” with 2017’s “The Times Are Racing” as a midpoint, that shows him being Millennial, American and at his best. In “Times,” Dan Deacon’s recorded score, from his album “America,” reflects Peck’s taste in contemporary music. The strong pop overtones of Deacon or Sufjan Stevens provide him with inspiration. After a hymn-like opening, the light changed and the piece dove into pounding rock.
Where is “Times” set? What is this place of fluorescent light, stripped of décor, industrial and loud? It’s certainly not paradise, and though it’s filled with young people, it’s not a discotheque. The answer is never fully clear, except that it’s Somewhere in America.
The commercialized rebellion of the costumes, activewear and outerwear designed by Humberto Leon has always looked as if it was designed to look like part of Athleta’s new Che Guevara line. But Peck was born into that hypercommercialized world, and made something of it when trios of consisting two people and a coat raced forward and back, before the coat was put on another dancer, becoming almost a ceremonial robing.
Brittany Pollack hasn’t been seen much this season, neither has Daniel Applebaum. Both of them are great in this. Pollack gets to be a type we rarely see in ballet: the tomboy – or whatever that would be called now. It is less about being masculine or boyish, but the liberty to not have to be girlish. Pollack smiled before she plunged into another long section with a competitive excitement that was athletic, very American, and uncommon in this milieu. Peck has cast the main roles with interchangeable gender, approaching that as being beside that point here. Pollack wasn’t everywoman. She was everyperson.
Pollack and Takahashi met, she in white, he in black, and both exploded into percussive motion. She seemed to have a never-ending supply of energy, while Takahashi played it cool. Like Anthony Huxley, his refusal to be cheap is one of his best qualities. After they danced, they briefly watched Victor Abreu and Applebaum embrace before Pollack and Takahashi disappeared.
Abreu and Applebaum’s duet, starting from that embrace was all drama and no drama, had a racing, yearning energy that made you think of a thousand hopeful things. Peck’s tendency to use the dancers as big kids often works against him, but not here. “Times” needs a youthquake of energy and hope.
As the music hammered, Pollack smiled with the thrill of tackling the mountain. The cast went nuts in a unison flail, first a smaller group, then enlarged. She raced in front as Deacon’s music slowly rose in an American hymn. To end, Pollack hurled herself at the final Clump, practically diving into it like a mosh pit before collapsing with them. At the curtain call, Bolden raised his hands as if he had run a relay.
As a refutation of everything I’ve groused about here, “Times” used all the clichés lampooned above. The whole opening is built on Concerned Clumps with a single figure standing beatific in the middle. It just did it better and earned it. Peck can be oh-so-sincere and it can take several viewings to buy what he’s selling. And he doesn’t seem to be a choreographer of Americana; his Copland series seemed out of sync with the composer. But give him music of his era, and what is now a triptych of contemporary American dances has a sprawling, and yes, racing, drive, that does mirror the times.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“From You Within Me,” “Standard Deviation,” “The Times Are Racing” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
May 13, 2023
Cover: Victor Abreu in “The Times Are Racing.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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