by Leigh Witchel
Business as usual at New York City Ballet happened fast. The company went headlong into the seven-performances-a-week grind and slotted in another repertory program, this time of three works by Balanchine and a dance by Justin Peck that had barely got its premiere before the world went socially distant.
“Rotunda” is a ballet for an ensemble cast of six men and six women that covered an unclear but familiar landscape of nebulous optimism. All the dancers looked so radiantly blissful you wondered what soda it was a commercial for.
The work began with Gonzalo Garcia alone, lying down on the stage. The rest of the cast entered to pose, leap and regroup in a circle. From there, it divided into solos, groups and trios. Nico Muhly’s churning music sounded like a car commercial, but at least for an expensive car.
Jovani Furlan, Daniel Applebaum and Indiana Woodward (who has just been promoted to principal dancer) led off in a pas de trois built of mercurial leaps that retracted back on themselves. Peck often uses fake-out moves that start traveling one way but then go the opposite direction.
Applebaum and Woodward made their debuts; Furlan has as much experience with Peck’s work as any NYCB vet. He danced Peck’s ballets at Miami City Ballet, including “Heatscape,” and this work seems like its sequel. Furlan tapped Applebaum on the shoulder to get his attention; all three dancers interacted as if on a playground – another Peck hallmark.
Miriam Miller and Adrian Danchig-Waring danced a duet that was largely a double solo and seemed to extend the interest in gender neutral parts Peck showed in “The Times are Racing.” At another spot Peck had the women support the men as they leaned into them in arabesque penchée. Often Muhly would abruptly stop the musical phrase and Peck would follow. Peck sutured his sections together with regroupings in silence.
Sara Mearns danced a solo of jumps that stayed tight under her center as she constantly revolved. She exploded into extended positions before she spun off. We haven’t seen Daniel Ulbricht much onstage for a while, even pre-pandemic, so it was welcome to see him with Garcia tear through a packed and breathless quintet that ended with the two spinning through a double air turn to the knee. This led into a duet with Mearns and Gilbert Bolden III that echoed the mix of serenity and agitation in the music, as well as the pauses.
Watching Mearns let you see more clearly Peck’s partnering motifs: extensions that pass across the stage laterally or like his unpartnered jumps, pull back on themselves. Mearns and Bolden paused to stare up and out, but at what? For Peck, that’s not an emotional state, it’s a pose and a design on the stage, so he may never ask himself “Who are these people?” Yet, they ended by putting heads on each other’s shoulders. It’s not easy for an audience to accept that as just a pose, but what have the two resolved? We see an emotional endpoint but the steps don’t depict that journey. And if it was a resolution, Mearns and Bolden walked away from each other and left on opposite sides.
Muhly’s music became more spacious, but Peck’s response stayed compulsive; a solo for Garcia was very stop-and-go. Peck tended to insert a breath in only the most obvious spots. Garcia wound up in his opening pose on the ground, and everyone returned and dispersed for Garcia to race forward, so that at the blackout he’s . . . you guessed it. Looking up at nothing in particular. “Rotunda” painted an emotional landscape without an underlying logic, and Peck was using emotion too cheaply for it to be satisfying.
Lauren King broke in Harrison Ball for his debut in the secondary pas de deux in “Chaconne,” and they paired nicely. She was mellow in a part that’s often given to a soubrette, but he’s a bit spicy.
Still, the ballet didn’t have the majestic impact it can. Teresa Reichlen had no problem with the technical demands of the lead, but turns, extensions, even skipping – she gave them all the same value. Tyler Angle was more stylish, knowing when to give the movement color; but he was less reliable, blowing a double pirouette, and he looked less like he was thinking about the steps he was doing and more about his next steps in life.
The diptych “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo/Movements for Piano and Orchestra” needs a ballerina with a soft quality – and Mira Nadon has that. “Monumentum” is exquisite and brief: a pavane at twilight, a courtly line dance of whispers, a diagonal like the gates of a castle. Most of what happens needs to be telegraphed by the ballerina.
Nadon is pliable with a back so flexible she seemed unaware that she exaggerates the line when she bends. It looped back to Suzanne Farrell and the 1960’s when the women got more and more floppy.
Her pliability suited “Movements” even more; she actually tightened up slightly to get through it. Moving on pointe step for note to embody the score; she had that technological, machine-like quality also from that era. Her legs went skyward as if jointless.
Contrast the end of “Rotunda” with that of “Monumentum.” Both have its casts stare off into the unknown, hopefully to a radiant future. The difference is, that’s not where “Monumentum” started. Balanchine worked to that ending. He treated the emotion underneath the steps as something you had to earn.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
“Monumentum Pro Gesualdo,” “Movements for Piano and Orchestra,” “Rotunda,” “Chaconne” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 5, 2021
Cover: Sara Mearns and Gilbert Bolden III in “Rotunda.” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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