by Leigh Witchel
Boston Ballet mounted its “Fall Experience,” an evening of contemporary works the oldest of which just passed its 40th birthday, and two of which were homegrown. Experience counted, but not the way the title suggested. Not all that surprisingly, the more experienced the choreographer was, the stronger the work.
“Form and Gesture” was a world premiere by company corps member My’Kal Stromile. Stromile was a Juilliard graduate. William Forsythe began his residency with Boston Ballet the year before Stromile got into Boston Ballet II, and you could see how influenced he was in good ways and bad. You knew what you were getting when a voiceover gave instructions on how to watch the piece, and the sections were labeled “Exhibits.”
To open, three men and two women moved in silhouette to chimes and percussion. In Exhibit A, the dancers conferred in darkness, as in “Approximate Sonata”. Exhibit B, to an endless arpeggio, used four men and four women doing dances reminiscent of “Playlist.” Here were the arms held decoratively and typically en couronne, there was the soubresaut.
Derek Dunn changed into street clothing and came to the front of the stage to gaze on the action, another self-conscious moment. He confronted another man, who gave Dunn a reverence, offered him the stage and left.
Dunn wandered around, did a solo, flailed in wild movement and impressive suspended jumps and turns. Dunn is an extraordinary mover; turning a jam-packed phrase into a fluent sentence is his brand. He’s phenomenal at it, but as when choreographers relied on Wendy Whelan to sell their work by having her do her Bendy Wendy act, relying on Dunn’s coordination is the path of least resistance. It’s making him do all the work, without discovering anything new.
The recorded music cut out and mirrors came down for Exhibit C, where the ladies came out in the disc tutus borrowed from “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude.” Dunn and the other men also changed into the sleeveless tights and shorty-shorts from “Vertiginous,” and Dunn danced a duet with Chisako Oga before a blackout.
On to “Exhibit D.” The dancers trundled about shaking their shoulders, then did the fussy tendus of Forsythe in his Future of Ballet mode. It turned into a complex, dense finale, with a pose in tendu to close.
If this had been a composition assignment, Stromile would have passed. He showed that he knew how to build a fluent combination, impressive enchaînements and a complex group dance. But boy, did it look like a House of Forsythe knockoff, with a touch of Cunningham and Cage thrown in. This is understandable. Forsythe did a multi-year residency in Boston – we’re going to get the House of Forsythe dances.
This is Stromile’s first mainstage work for the company, and “Form and Gesture” felt like a young effort. It had many of the sins of youth, particularly a tendency to be pretentious and derivative. Look, we all have to start somewhere, and Stromile does know how to use form. The verdict’s still out on gesture. Let’s check back a few ballets down the road.
“Bach Cello Suites,” from 2015, may be the calmest Jorma Elo ballet ever. There were only a few head wiggles. Unlike Mozart, Bach kept him in check.
The work opened with five couples. They danced in unison, to silence at first, then the cellist, Sergey Antonov, entered at the front of the stage and joined in. The women peered over the man’s arms, then rose on point. The men knocked the women, the women fell.
The work moved into individual duets in a clean European style, largely straight ballet with a few distortions, particularly a mobile torso. After a first, leggy duet, with neatly recurring motifs, the work headed into a male quartet behind Dunn leading at the front. Again, he started in front because of his gift for phrasing. But each man then got a moment.
Somewhere in these solos we finally got a funky chicken move. Happily, it was brief, and moved into a duet for Dunn and Ji Young Chae, with Chyrstyn Fentroy joining in. The solos and duets blended into one another; Dunn left and Fentroy soared into a leaps and turns.
The lights dimmed for Tigran Mkrtchyan and Viktorina Kapitonova to do an adagio of falls and reaches ending with an embrace. The men did more solos, Tyson Ali Clark, then Dunn. It was impressive, including Ángel García Molinero’s rubbery extension, but like a lot of Elo, it was also one damn step after another. Were we learning something about the Bach or was it just a mellow soundtrack for Elo to use expensive names to advertise his wares?
Though this was better than usual for Elo, it still headed into treacly territory as it went on. When Mkrtchyan returned for a turning solo, he put his hand on the cellist’s shoulder and indicated to the audience they should applaud the musician. Well. That was patronizing and awkward.
Another duet was completely note for step. Every note had a movement, and made the Bach feel mechanical. Dunn did so many turns – an incredible amount – and just stopped. It barely registered to the audience to applaud.
The piece moved into a quiet duet for Clark and Fentroy. Clark has a case of dancing bitch face; he almost always looks unhappy until he smiles at the bow. Dunn did another solo with a few head tics, but instead of Elo trying to make them the point, they were flavor in a largely classical solo
The five couples returned for a final unison adagio where the men lifted the women and dipped them slowly in silence into a fish dive to end.
Hans van Manen’s “Trois Gnossiennes,” from 1982, was a note of curdled glamour in the evening, like the Marquis de Sade reading us a bedtime story. Unlike Ashton in “Monotones,” van Manen used the Satie unorchestrated. The work consisted of a couple: Chae, this time with Patrick Yocum, a pianist Alex Foaksman, a piano on a platform and three men. The men leaned on the piano decoratively as if it were furniture.
Yocum partnered Chae beautifully but it was the rough stuff: he grabbed her arm and one handed, tipped her down and brought her up. Van Manen was asking for a decisive machismo; like a matador or the man in tango. Chae really looked like cargo. But she was also very strong and could handle being handled.
The men just leaned there, and while you wondered what they were going to do, they started to move the piano. It was ridiculous and fabulous, and even more fabulous that the pianist was in white tie and sat there, continuing to play.
Chae tucked her legs, and, as if she were seated but horizontally, Yocum hauled her overhead and brought her down. The two leaned on to the balls of their front feet, another Spanish echo. And the piano moved again.
Yocum spun Chae round as she stayed rigid with flexed feet and carried her out. The curtain went down as the men moved the piano once again across the stage like the remnants of a sunken cruise liner. The piano was a major effect that van Manen was content to leave as an effect. Why make something that took so much logistics no more than window dressing? Maybe the answer was the decadence of an extravagant gesture.
Akram Khan’s “Vertical Road (Reimagined) 2023” closed the evening. The piece was originally done for his own company in 2010, and what we we saw was clearly reworked from the dance Luke Jennings describes, including having more dancers.
The score rumbled as it began. Jeffrey Cirio was in the front, brushing gray ash or powder off a woman who was covered in it. He did a sinuous solo, coming back to woman who fell into him. Behind, in the shadows, the dancers, all barefoot, crept forward in a V formation.
A cracking noise: Cirio looked up and fell down. The group moved in one sharp sudden drop, releasing a cloud of powder that hung in the air apocalyptically. It was a phenomenal effect. But unlike van Manen’s one fabulous idea, it was integrated into the entire work.
The music got louder. Khan’s “Giselle,” his major crossover work for English National Ballet, shares several aspects with “Vertical Road,” including the pounding, industrial quality of the score. The group moved in tight unison, another quality shared with “Giselle”. Cirio dragged the woman and another man from the group disengaged briefly but you ended up watching the massive pounding organism of the group. You could barely tell the women apart, they were dressed alike, all now wearing small, high buns.
The group broke into three; in the back a woman posed, still with powder coming off her. Though Khan’s main choreographic vocabulary is contemporary dance, his early Kathak training often makes an appearance: a larger group also at the back came into a pose reminiscent of Shiva drawing his bow, and did the thumb mudra that in Indian dance represents a mountain. The group bourréed, contracting and traveling.
Cirio did a solo that thrashed like one that Khan gave Hilarion (a part Cirio also danced brilliantly), and a woman stood still, unmoving. Cirio spun to the center as the group clumped in the back corner. The original woman Cirio encountered became a spectral apparition he seemed to question, but she backed out before he had a hostile encounter with the group, who backed away slowly. He collapsed, crawling to us.
A new section began behind a scrim. The women, still impossible to make out individually, stood behind it in an acid yellow glow. Cirio got up, and walked back to touch one of the women. Several apparitions happened in a long segment. A woman shadowed him in front of the scrim, another one knocked him down even though she was behind the scrim. Men walked across the stage behind. Cirio held one woman and the struggled. In another moment also in “Giselle,” all the women behind put their hands up to the scrim; he fit his hand into theirs.
They women faded in and out from the lighting. Cirio came forward to center in the yellow light and smoke. The cracking noise happened again; he touched the scrim and as the stage plunged to black, the scrim plummeted.
In some ways, though the original version predated it, “Vertical Road” felt like a improved distillation of Khan’s “Giselle,” with all of the great theatrics and few of the narrative problems. Yes, the final section with the scrim went on too long, but like van Manen, Khan has the experience to hook a dance on a single great effect. And one great effect can justify an entire evening.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Bach Cello Suites,” “Trois Gnossiennes,” “Form and Gesture,” “Vertical Road (Reimagined) 2023” – Boston Ballet
Citizens Bank Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts
October 7, 2023
Cover: Boston Ballet in “Vertical Road (Reimagined) 2023.” Photo credit © Theik Smith.
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