by Leigh Witchel
The “21st Century Choreography” was a sandwich with more substantial bread than meat. It featured a premiere that didn’t seem to have much promise, surrounded by two works that both have gained power with subsequent viewings.
The premiere, Keerati Jinakunwiphat’s “Fortuitous Ash,” had little going on beyond movement to an atmospheric score.
It took place on a dark stage, backed by a gray-scale projection of what looked like a close-up of a sidewalk, both lighting and scenery by Dan Scully. Quinn Starner entered to a drifting arrhythmic score by Du Yun of bass flute, trumpets, flugelhorn and guitar. She danced with her back to us, then Ashley Hod, in green, also danced a solo with her back to us.
Dancers raced in and out, the movement became a brief duet for Hod and Harrison Coll, also in green, who ceded to Starner and Kennedy Targosz in blue and KJ Takahashi, in red. Chan Wai Chun, also in red, entered as Takahashi left, followed by Emilie Gerrity in yellow. But the movement, largely extensions and other classroom vocabulary, was unmemorable, like random molecules occasionally colliding but without permanent effect.
Mira Nadon and Sebastián Villarini-Vélez danced together, with minimal partnering except for lifts. The work kept going without going anywhere. There was a female trio where Hod partnered Nadon, and an allegro that coalesced into a trio. At that point “Fortuitous Ash” started to briefly look more like choreography. But neither of things represented a development of an idea. It soon went back to just more motion. Unison changed into a formation that melted into another formation. The work had little tenacity. Jinakunwiphat dances for Kyle Abraham’s company and Abraham isn’t big on structure either, but he is strong conceptually. Even without a structural arc, he knows how to hold a dance together segment by segment.
Most of the logic of “Fortuitous Ash” was conveyed by Karen Young’s costumes: duos or trios in green, red, blue or orange, but even that had little follow-through. Only Gerrity was in yellow, yet her singularity wasn’t used by Jinakunwiphat.
A final formation and the work was done. “Fortuitous Ash” quickly ran out of things to say, and it was a short work. It was hard to be more than indifferent to it.
Like so many ballets, and almost all of Ratmansky’s own works, “Voices” looked better after some time had passed. Whether the work has been tweaked by the choreographer or the dancers, or simply that we make better sense of it, is an open question. Most likely it’s All Of The Above.
In her debut in the part originated by Sara Mearns, Emily Kikta stood framed by the curtain parted slightly, then began moving, vibrating as she traveled on pointe with her legs spread wide. Behind her, an animated sound wave by Keso Dekker echoed both the piano and her. Even more than on first viewing, this seemed to be Ratmansky wrestling with music visualization, to see how movement, meter and music interlocked, just as composer Peter Ablinger was trying to use piano to parallel the recorded voices.
Kikta tore into her variation of turns and Russian pas de chats before the men, marching, entered and Roman Mejia broke off from them for a manège in silence of jetés en tournant.
Megan Fairchild arrived seeming so tiny next to the men on either side of her, her arms locked around them. Where Kikta’s solo was aggressive, Fairchild’s was more querulous. She paused on the ground, looking at her feet, or at us. After, she fell into the men’s arms and they shuffled her off as she lay supported by them. In another debut pinch-hitting for Preston Chamblee, Gilbert Bolden III did brisés.
Unity Phelan’s solo was a complex chain of turns, small cabrioles to the front and extensions. Like the quick speech by Forough Farrokhzad it was set to and the kitten-on-the-keyboard accompaniment, it was more dense. She ducked when the men traveled, sweeping the stage like a Zamboni, then walked behind them as if they were a protective wall. Punctuating the transition, Joseph Gordon did a diagonal of double saut de basques, which reminded us that if they’re done well enough, there can be something nakedly beautiful about virtuoso steps in isolation.
Georgina Pazcoguin’s solo, where she spun off and back on, raced through a monologue by Nina Simone. Both Ablinger and Ratmansky’s dogged congruence to it provoked a rumination on composition: of speech, of music, of movement. What is spontaneous, what is planned, and where do they intersect?Afterwards, Andrew Veyette turned in second position before spinning offstage.
Is Alexa Maxwell having her moment? She danced the part originated by Lauren Lovette, one that also felt uncertain. She spun to the floor and stayed there, where she ran into Veyette, who softly prevented her from passing to leave.
The final speech of Agnes Martin was for the full cast, one couple at a time making ingenious formations while the other four couples posed to isolated chords before all did a unison fish dive. Then four women held an arabesque for an unnaturally long period, a trick used in the finale of “Divertimento No. 15,” but Ratmansky changed the angle and upped the ante, removing partners and making it longer.
Each woman handled the task differently, probably differently every performance, depending on if they hit their balance. Fairchild came to fourth position on pointe, Phelan lowered to flat. Pazcoguin and Maxwell held the whole damn time.
An aesthetic echo of Ratmansky’s past: when the men locked arms together with clenched fists they felt like gymnasts or workers from a Socialist Realism poster. “Voices” ended with the cast coming front to a line in different poses, then slowly all coming to an “à la sebesque” as the curtain fell halfway, paused and closed.
OK, Justin. You win. By the third viewing, all reservations about “Everywhere We Go” being ingenious, but rambling and messy aren’t as potent as that it’s heartfelt and resonant.
The most arresting and engaging thing about this ballet, also the most daunting, is its scale. The epic quality makes it feel American, more authentically so than Peck’s most recent work to Copland’s Americana. Sufjan Stevens’ brassy, jazzy score echoed pop and Broadway. Chun Wai Chan and Woodward danced a pas de deux to a section by Stevens that could have been a lost number from “Company.”
A triple duet for men opened the work, which pared down to a duet for two of the male leads, Peter Walker and Taylor Stanley. The dance was punctuated with mass corps sections. The ballet rumbled on with broad virtuosity and constant spatial invention: the group rotated from a star where dancers came into and out of the center, to a near-unison of changing lines. The constant, changing environment felt like the panorama of a vast nation.
Tiler Peck and Stanley rotated and revolved round one another. Isabella LaFreniere interrupted them, but they joined her. What Mr. Peck, blessedly, wasn’t interested in was the lonely crowd. Everyone had a destination. There were other folks on the highway, other travelers on the beach. This was the rush of a journey.
Peck can be too ingenious, but there was an emotional overlay that kept it from grating. Walker and Miriam Miller danced a duet to harp-like music. She briefly left him for Bolden, but that departure seemed like it was spatial; moving her and the pattern laterally. She returned to him and the design, but the second time Walker grabbed her wrist to prevent her from leaving, and brought her back to him.
The trumpet sounded, and Walker collapsed against a stage leg, breathing heavily before coming back to Miller. No, it wasn’t just spatial. Someone left someone else and returned to them. They repeated their opening; the other women briefly leaned on him until she returned. Yet when it was done, he left alone.
The lights illuminated for a septet, then Stanley and Ms. Peck danced. At the end of their duet the music became hymn-like, then she did the same move Walker did earlier to exit: a small jump on two legs and accented downward, but that was the impulse for the lights flooding on and the next section began as if ignited into being.
Both Mr. Peck and Alexei Ratmansky have a thing for multiple finales. Finale #1 was led by Chun and Woodward, with the ensemble in a wedge marching into the center. Again LaFreniere interrupted as the corps seemed to dream. Walker and Miller met on the last note for a duet that used a similar lighting trick of blackouts and spotlights as David Parson’s “Caught.” We weren’t near the end; they concluded by disappearing into the ensemble.
Ms. Peck and Stanley danced again, then all three couples, and when Mr. Peck heard Steven’s brass orchestration he made a bow to his masters and echoed Balanchine’s stammering pointe work in “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo.” The stage refilled, then the dancers slowly collapse, each breaking someone else’s fall. Stanley and Walker ended, again one behind the other, again a hymn.
In the next section, a wedge slowly built, capped by LaFreniere who headed into a extroverted solo. By this point, the sheer mass of the work felt like a kind of honesty. All the leads returned, dancing in unison. Every clue of ballet choreography in the last century signals that’s the finale. And it was. The lines slowly dissolved, and the group repeated the collapse, Ms. Peck drifting among them but Stanley breaking her fall as the curtain descended.
Mr. Peck’s work varies in quality, when he does too much he bottoms out at predictable hack work, but his highs leave no question that he’s the real thing. “Everywhere We Go” uses many of the same elements that “Copland Dance Episodes” does, and perhaps both are aiming for the same goal, an abstract, yet emotional response to their scores. But “Everywhere We Go” has gelled finally, and “Copland Dance Episodes” hasn’t, yet. The difference is likely in the scores. With Stevens, Peck had a commissioned score that was working in the same way he was. The Copland ballet scores were made to do something else, and Peck kept trying to ignore that.
Do ballets actually change or improve, or do we just see them with eyes more accustomed to them? Probably both, and dancers and casting can make a scattered work slot into place. This leaves hope that “Fortuitous Ash” could look better as well.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Voices,” “Fortuitous Ash,” “Everywhere We Go” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 1, 2023
Cover: New York City Ballet in “Fortuitous Ash.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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