by Leigh Witchel
Pam Tanowitz is the least likely It Girl in dance. Her cool cerebral works aren’t designed as crowdpleasers; they’re examinations of the components of dance. But she just did a work for Martha Graham, the Royal Ballet just announced she will creating a work for this fall, and along with Justin Peck, she provided one of the two new works for New York City Ballet’s spring season. From the looks of that, she hasn’t yet settled in to being Flavor of the Month. Both her ballet and Peck’s fell short of the mark; the best news on the program came from an early debut where a young dancer pinch hit for a veteran.
In her first commission for NYCB, Tanowitz punted on the title: “Bartók Ballet.” At least Balanchine would have named it “Bartók Quartet No. 5,” but he would have also choreographed it to the music. The piece, played live by the FLUX Quartet, is fine music, but choosing this for a ballet meant the battle was lost for Tanowitz before it even began. The music wasn’t dansante, but it’s also wasn’t wallpaper you can ignore. The dancers moved faster when the music was faster, but still not on the music. It overemphasized Tanowitz’s own twitchiness.
Two women began with their feet pumped, a distant echo – not of Balanchine, but the opening of William Forsythe’s “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated.” The Bartók quickly cascaded into a hail of notes. It looked as if the dancers were working to counts and visual cues while the music was playing independently. That was fine when Merce Cunningham did that to a David Tudor soundscape. It was painful to Bartók; disregarding that score looked and felt grueling.
The men entered doing pas de chats, and the hive of movement that followed looked like “Konservatoriet” taken apart and reassembled in random order. Tanowitz then used a tactic of having a dancer come up to another and displace them; something that also happens in the opening of “Agon.” Here, it looked like Duck, Duck, Goose. By the end of the first movement the dancers looked as confused as us.
The music slowed and Tanowitz fashioned a non-adagio that looked less as if she was confronting the idea of the pas de deux than ignoring it. Devin Alberda and Indiana Woodward moved mechanically in chopped, random movement like dolls with broken regulators. At the sides, others echoed their phrases. There could have been a poignancy to the non-relationships, but instead it was sterile and airless.
At least she cast beautiful dancers and it was interesting how she made them move. Alberda took off in a pristine turn and Woodward came to him, grabbing his elbow for support. That almost looked like something. Later everyone did tendus with a jerky, bird-like head that was an interesting import of something closer to Cunningham on ballet-trained bodies.
There were other things to look at: she divided the cast into trios that did neat extensions, and the groupings turned into a design. A final allegro for Woodward was an obsessive catalog of female virtuosity – and she negotiated it without a bump or scratch. Tanowitz put the show ponies through their paces, and they kept up.
Still, the most indicative moment was when Tanowitz quoted a famous pose from the third theme of “The Four Temperaments” – and moved on after doing nothing with it. It was just dropped in; it could have been a monologue from Hamlet, an aria from La Traviata or a moon rock. If NYCB commissioned a work from Tanowitz or any other deconstructor, it made sense to expect a commentary on NYCB. Tanowitz wasn’t commenting, she was just quoting.
It was obvious that she wasn’t trying for utter chance operation, but it was hard to fathom where she was trying to head. It wasn’t random, but it didn’t feel purposeful, rather an awkward in-between. Tanowitz has done plenty of interesting work before, but the large scale and the inherent neoclassical style of the company flummoxed her. Her mix of lyrical and clinical that was fascinating elsewhere stayed too clinical. Being a guest choreographer, particularly not in your own idiom, is a skill of its own. With all the work coming Tanowitz’s way, she’s going to have to learn it.
Justin Peck’s new “Bright” was so brief that it looked as if it may have been a section of a larger work. Peck revisited music by Marc Dancigers that he used in 2013 for Fall for Dance. He amplified it, this time having Dancigers orchestrate the solo piano “The Bright Motion” and adding two more couples to the original pair, Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen.
The piece began in a gray dawn glow, with the cast dressed in pale costumes (Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung designed both premieres). The orchestration inflated the piano to peeling chords, and Peck offered a similar youthquake romp to ones he’s done before: move back, move forth, look upwards inspired – but by what exactly? The score was so brief there was no time to evoke more than canned emotions. Janzen and Mearns also inflated Peck’s Pushmi-Pullyu partnering.
About six minutes later, the two crossed and looked back at one another . . . and blackout. “Bright” was over before it began. It was certainly more amiable than “Bartók Ballet,” but not more memorable. Interestingly, from different directions, they both had the same problem: lack of a stage picture. “Bright” worked better as a duet because you could see what Peck was doing. The more-is-more version looked best in unison; but sooner or later the couples popcorned into canon. Bigger isn’t always better.
The rest of the bill was Balanchine and Robbins, and featured several debuts, including a new couple in “Valse-Fantaisie.” The little dance is a more modestly technical work than Daniel Ulbricht is known for, but it still presented interesting legato challenges for him. He had to jump high and sail around the stage, but then move slowly and grow into a position: his variation is a distant cousin of the Fokine’s male variation in “Les Sylphides.” There were also actual physical challenges. Finger turns are a bear for shorter men; Ulbricht had to scooch out of the way as Erica Pereira revolved to avoid getting kneed. Pereira was also playing musically with attitude balances, then pushing through the steeplechase of jumps round the stage.
The ballet looked coached – some details that had changed have been reverted: a hand tap when the couple meets that over the years became a push, is back. The small corps, only four women, looked like a tryout to bigger things. The ladies were like stracciatella: long, wispy but almost slippery in their speed, with the occasional sharp accent.
Following right after Gonzalo Garcia made his New York debut in Robbins’ “A Suite of Dances.” Like Jenifer Ringer, he’s the dance equivalent of an alto; pushing his edges isn’t as rewarding as exploring the variety of shadings and intervals he offers in his middle range.
The solo, made for Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project in ‘94, opened with suggestive improvisatory moves that looked as if the dancer was making the steps up as he did them. Actually, it didn’t open with that – the curtain rose on the dancer and the cellist standing at center stage, but immediately moving to take their position for the actual start of the dance. It takes a theatrical and extroverted dancer, a Baryshnikov or a Woetzel, to make that kind of artifice work. The actual dance, when it begins, is more watercolor and delicate; with light movements. Garcia raced about before stopping at the back, pulsing to the cello’s ostinato.
If you could imagine Balanchine’s work being analogous to Fred Astaire; Robbins’ is like Gene Kelly. To a hornpipe, Garcia pulled himself up at the end of the phrase by tugging on the back of his shirt. Robbins asked for a literal somersault and stamping on the music, and he liked the idea so much he repeated it three times.
The mood turned pensive, where Garcia looked better. He gestured with his hands, reaching higher and higher on the note; the same interpretive idea as in the last section but it worked better on him. The finale moved back and forth on the stage in exuberant informality, skipping, spinning, kicking and ending in a cartwheel. Garcia looks his best in stylish roles rather than extroverted ones. Will that work here?
The first movement of “Western Symphony” was played hard for laughs, but it’s still a symphonic ballet, and the opening is where Balanchine lays out the ground rules. The corps had a lot of new men, and they punched everything hard. Balanchine doesn’t need that much selling, even in “Western.” Lauren King and Taylor Stanley were an elegant couple but they were also tilting towards parody. The opening is a classical ballet in western costumes, not the other way around: business with a cowboy hat is less important than double tours and the gargouillades.
The second movement works as both a classical adagio and a parody of one. On film, Melissa Hayden did the section as a straight classical pas de deux, and her insistence on that in saloon girl drag was hilarious. Alexandra Ansanelli did the same part as a weird voodoo doll of a ballerina, only with perfect comic timing. On stage, Megan Fairchild and Jared Angle let the laughs play themselves. Fairchild took it lightly, winding up stuck in poses or wrong way round, but didn’t milk the joke.
If “Western Symphony” was emphatic it also showed yet again Roman Mejia’s ability to sell a bravura role. He subbed in for Andrew Veyette, making an early debut in the final movement with Teresa Reichlen. He’s several inches shorter than she is, making for a comic impression, but his energy and rocket-powered jump built a good dynamic: the leggy showgirl and the cocky bantam. The boy can jump – with splits soaring across the stage and air turns tours corkscrewing skywards. Facing new competition, Reichlen held her own, taking her big solo diagonal with the leg soaring up and then diving low in penchée. Mejia countered by bounding upwards, slapping his heels at the height.
Don’t be surprised if his trajectory in the company isn’t similarly jet-propelled.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Valse-Fantasie,” “A Suite of Dances,” “Bartók Ballet,” “Bright,” “Western Symphony” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
May 4, 2019
Cover: Roman Mejia in “Western Symphony.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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