by Leigh Witchel
This season’s guest choreographers at New York City Ballet were repeat commissions. Gianna Reisen and Kyle Abraham both had successful debut works with the company; each got another shot to make a work. The pieces formed the backbone of the Classic NYCB II program that bowed at the annual Fall Fashion Gala earlier in the week. Not to be the Vocabulary Patrol, but something isn’t a classic if it has never been seen.
The main buzz for Reisen’s third work for the company, “Play Time” was the score, by Solange Knowles, Beyoncé’s sister. The music was danceable: rhythmic and atmospheric. However, the real show-stoppers were the costumes by Alejandro Gómez Palomo for Palomo Spain with Swarovski crystals bejizzled all over them. The curtain went up to fanfares from Knowles but all you saw were bright colors and SPARKLES.
Palomo was aiming for éclat. Davide Riccardo was outfitted in pink with pointed shoulder pads and a small skirt with crinolines. Harrison Coll wore an electric blue suit with wide panniers at the hips. David Garcia also was in panniers, but in steel gray. The silhouette almost looked like the cut-off top of a handbag. Chun Wai Chan’s cherry red suit made him look like Elvis. He even adjusted his lapels on his way onstage.
The costumes changed the body’s shape glamorously and attempted to steal the show, but that’s what’s supposed to happen at a fashion gala. Still, it felt as if Reisen and the designer didn’t consult. In a way, it seemed almost like a Cunningham commission: completely discrete creations that met for the first time on the stage.
There were glitzy effects in the lighting by Mark Stanley as well. Towards the end, BAM! The whole stage was blood red and everyone was in silhouette. There was more congruence between lighting and costumes; one gorgeous sidelighting effect hit the costumes’ crystals perfectly.
Reisen’s choreography was less provocative. Similar to her debut work from 2017 “Composer’s Holiday,” and befitting its name, “Play Time” was upbeat and allegro. But with all the other stuff going on, it took time to notice the dance itself.
Wearing purple and in an outfit with a close-fitting hood (several women sported them) Von Enck danced a fast and playful allegro to a cello pizzicato. Unity Phelan, in silver, danced an agitato allegro. Later on, everyone slumped, then divided into couples. Another quick section for KJ Takahashi and Indiana Woodward led to a group finale that assembled into a final pose.
Of course Reisen knew the music. Nor did she seem seem stumped by it; it gave her plenty of cues. But Palomo’s costumes did so many things with shape and gender that Reisen didn’t. It was most clear in the finale when Reisen divided the group into two lines, men and women, and following convention, gave all the men one step and the women another. The costumes, with skirts for some men and unisex panniers, were telling you a completely different story.
Justin Peck’s “Solo,” getting its live stage premiere this season, was originally a dance film made in 2020 with Anthony Huxley, directed by Sofia Coppola. It’s now been transposed to the stage and recostumed by Raf Simons. It didn’t make the leap well.
Rushing in where angels fear to tread, Peck used the Barber “Adagio for Strings.” Anything goes, evidently, during a pandemic. More frustrating, Peck had Huxley in constant motion in step after step. What Huxley has needed as one of the company’s short virtuosos is his “Square Dance” moment; a solo that would help him claim gravity and stillness.
That would most likely have taken much more work to look good on film, but onstage, “Solo” felt like a missed opportunity. It might as well have been the Allegro for Strings. Even when Huxley lay down his leg immediately shot up. Let the poor man lie there for a few bars.
After the famous crescendo in the music, Huxley finally stopped briefly bang on the pause, which miscued the audience to think the dance was over. For the actual finish, he walked back to kneel in darkness, finally barely coming to a stop.
Simons’ costume was relatively restrained for a fashion gala, but with spotted leggings and drapey top layers still too much. “Solo” just didn’t translate well from its original brief.
After his 2018 success “The Runaway,” Kyle Abraham did two short films for the company during the pandemic. But his sophomore effort for the stage, “Love Letter (on shuffle),” recalled William Forsythe’s followup to his debut commission for NYCB, “Behind the China Dogs,” “Herman Schmerman.” The first had the shock of the new, and the ideas seemed fresher, but the second certainly had its moments. For his second time at bat, Abraham worked with the same design team, Giles Deacon designed the costumes, and again did screen printed outfits of similar cuts and occasional shock headdresses. The main difference was the palette. Dan Scully again did the lighting.
Another way that Abraham recalled Forsythe was the use of James Blake, and the advertisement of the songs being “on shuffle.” Forsythe’s companion hit to his “Blake Works” was “Playlist,” which had the same gimmick. But why do choreographers use Blake for ballet? His songs have atmosphere but little structure and can’t support a choreographic arc. Then again, they’re on shuffle.
Jonathan Fahoury began the ballet with a solo. Deacon’s rompers for “The Runaway” had echoes of childhood, these also had ruffs, recalling Watteau’s Pierrot. Fahoury danced a note-for-step solo of isolated non-ballet movement, walking and locking to the Blake.
The difference between what Abraham set on Fahoury and what he set on Taylor Stanley in his first ballet was that this was not-ballet. Stanley built a bridge between Abraham’s vocabulary and ballet; that was what made their collaboration so exciting. This opening felt either/or rather than both.
Four men joined in, but if you looked more closely at the back one of the men was Naomi Corti, partnering Ruby Lister. Abraham really was playing with gender; Corti was dressed like the other women but doing the men’s partnering. Fahoury walked over to Harrison Ball and embraced him. After a lugubrious adagio, Corti and Lister briefly took the stage for a duet. This has been done before but it doesn’t happen often enough to snip about it not being the first time.
Tiler Peck did the kind of funky diva solo you would expect a guest choreographer to give her: blistering turns with the occasional cheeky shoulder roll. She got to groove for a few moments in a later solo that ended with a whiplash chaîné exit. It was fun, but not revelatory.
Sebastián Villarini-Velez got to show off with double saut de basques. At this point, “Love Letter” looked like guest choreography with obvious outsider commentary on ballet, to the point of a trio of women parodying the four little swans. Emily Kikta came out in an enormous mohawk headdress made of feathers, a moment where Deacon was referring back to his ideas in “The Runaway.” Peter Walker, who wore a completely obscuring headress there, joined Kikta with another feather headdress, but here he was still visible.
Later on, Cainan Weber played a lovesick Pierrot to Quinn Starner in another duet, and doing showy double sauts de basques as well. When he wasn’t working with his own movement palette, Abraham seemed to be relying on tricks the dancers brought with them. “Love Letter” was feeling like a follow-up.
But then, Abraham gave Villarini-Velez a solo that was was that hoped-for bridge between genres. Villarini-Velez was part classical dancer doing virtuoso steps and part vulnerable street kid as he paused in the gloom trying to look tough. He imbued it with atmosphere, character and a hint of anger. We’ve never seen him look like that and in a season of huge opportunities for him because of Roman Mejia’s injury, this was his best moment.
After Walker and Kikta changed into simpler costumes for another duet, Abraham landed his bullseye with a pas de deux for Fahoury and Ball that was something we rarely see in ballet: an out and out, zero-apologies homoerotic duet that was not a plea for understanding – it just was. The two walked hand in hand, swinging their legs high and wide in the darkness and holding hands in silhouette. Here, Deacon’s costume designs felt against the mood. Everyone returned for a slow unison finale, but since Fahoury and Ball came together to embrace once again, that felt superfluous.
To open, the company presented the only legitimately classic work on the Classic NYCB II program, “Symphony in C.” NYCB has slotted Joseph Gordon, along with Anthony Huxley, as the principal male virtuosos, but Gordon can partner more of the women. He pushed through his turns with a quick, sharp rotation. Megan Fairchild gave the port de bras some bloom, but what you noticed were her legs heading into a tight fifth position on pointe.
Ashley Hod and Emilie Gerrity made debuts leading the third and fourth movements earlier in the week, but the ballet began at the fourth movement for the gala, so Gerrity and Chun Wai Chan got to debut in their entire parts, but Hod only got to perform the finale.
Her first outing in the full role still felt unready. She jumped on the downbeat during her first entry, fixed it on the second, but fell behind again right before her small solo. In a jumping movement, jumping syncopated with your partner is a problem.
Emilie Gerrity had no trouble with the fourth variation in “Divertimento No. 15” earlier in the season, but the tricky turns as Polyhymnia in “Apollo” and the motif turn here both gave her trouble. Her leg went limply to the side here and there was no sparkle in the landing.
The finale threatened to unravel. Each spin Gordon did got crazier, but at least it happened in some sort of logical procession of more crazy and less controlled. Sara Mearns was wonky in her unsupported turns during the second movement’s reentry, and behind the music. Villarini-Velez was leaning so far forward in the third movement reprise, as if the distortion weren’t an accent, but the point. But Tyler Angle was back on form. We saw not just his style, but his line as he sprung into a sissonne.
Mearns could be forgiven for the finale being at sixes and sevens. Her performance in the main segment with Angle was all that, serving major fantasy full-force, and it worked. Second movement ballerina is most likely one of the roles Sara Mearns dreamed of when she imagined herself @nycbstar2b once upon a time. Maybe that can be changed to @nycbstar1am.
Her arms moved in Mearns time, but that’s defensible in the big ballerina corner of Balanchine. She stood at center stage on pointe, raised her arms up, extended her leg high to the side, and didn’t merely hit a balance. Mearns hovered on her toes and paused before swooning back into Angle’s arms, then gasped upwards before she dove into penché. Time stopped. At the end she picked her toes towards and then away from Angle with her eyes down, as if she were a sibyl envisioning an unimaginable future. She created her own world.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Symphony in C,” “Play Time,” “Solo,” “Love Letter (on shuffle)” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 1, 2022
Cover: Jonathan Fahoury and Harrison Ball in “Love Letter (on shuffle).” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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