by Leigh Witchel
[Author’s note – I saw “Well” as part of an invited audience at the final dress rehearsal. There were some differences, as there might be between performances but the main one was the venue: the dress rehearsal happened in a studio at City Center in Manhattan, rather than in the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn. The dimensions of the dancing space were the same, but the room has less additional space, perhaps making the atmosphere a bit more compressed.]
Miro Magloire seems less to be trying to redefine ballet than to create an oasis within it. His latest piece, “Well,” for his New Chamber Ballet had a dreaming, contemplative feel. The mood was most often meditative. It was less of a performance, more of an occurrence as his pieces often are, as if everything would happen whether we were there or not.
The costumes, by longtime collaborator Sara Thea Craig, struck a similar note as they have: simple and fluid. This time, there were some ancient echoes that combined draperies on top with wide-legged pants streaked elegantly with white at the bottom.
Anthony Cheung’s compositions were also flowing and atmospheric, but cellular rather than melodic. Fifty minutes long, “Well” featured a different pianist than usual, Nacho Ojeda, in his first performance with the group. Magloire is also a trained pianist and composer; the importance of live music and musical composition and commissioning to his work can’t be overstated.
The quintet of women turned and swirled to open, in tight knots of three and two. The trio leaned heads on one another’s shoulders, the duo extended their legs. The slow, waving feeling evoked plant or pond life. As the women leaned and bent, the violin and piano trilled notes in their highest registers.
Amber Neff and Nicole McGinnis clutched each other and quietly rotated on the ground in the center. Outside them, the three others slowly moved. Anabel Alpert tumbled to replace McGinnis in the center, then Alpert lifted her leg into a yoga-like shoulder stand. In an example of the unexpected partnering work the women do, Neff lifted her up by her feet and took her off.
Magloire’s dances often feel like sculptures or tableaux in motion; their length and logistics may lead him there as much as his own aesthetic. He doesn’t often try to serve us flowing phrasing or presentational dancing, so when he does it feels like catnip. Here, in starts and stops the dancers circled in three and two, and the quick, fluid circling was the most “in the round” the piece felt.
All together, the dancers crouched to the floor. The music was five discrete works, but performed attacca. It was an endurance test for everyone. With a small cast and 50 minutes long, “Well” couldn’t be a sustained allegro. No matter the vision, it had to be achievable. Neff and McGinnis cradled one another, rocking into sculptural positions.
Ojeda plucked strings inside the piano as violinist Doori Na played long, sour notes. The dancers laid down as if asleep, then rolled to a shoulder stand. Repeating a motif several times, two women dipped another, that woman supported both, then tumbled forwards into the others’ arms.
To atmospheric music, all the women did shoulder stands, collapsed to the ground, and repositioned to continue. Ojeda played watery arpeggios as the women drifted into formations. Then they raced, circling as the piano sped up and tightened. The feeling, as it often is with Magloire’s work, was of passing outside clock time into an aqueous realm where the whole procession did not rely on the clarity of individual moments.
The dancers shifted, reassembled and shifted again, turning en dedans and circling to coalesce before Rachele Perla carried Neff upside down while the others logrolled slowly. Then Alpert positioned Perla similarly and the lift continued through the cast. Neff took Megan Foley to the shoulder; for the first time, the partnering nearly didn’t work and required adjustment.
The women circled in silence, then four of them lay on their backs to become a garden of legs for Perla to grab. She held two of the women’s shoes and dipped down, then Alpert did the same. Again, it felt as if we were underwater. Another step traveled through the cast; one woman balanced in attitude or arabesque front or back as two women took hands and rotated her. The passing and sharing of steps emphasized the sense of community; “Well” had no solos. Now the women in the garden of legs had both legs up. Foley dipped into it and holding shoes, extended pitched into ecarté
The violin joined in for a short epilogue. The women, one hand behind their backs, the other waving in front, slowly walked off, one breaking apart to roll or look back, and the worked ended simply, with the cast leaving the space as the music trailed off.
One of ballet’s many paradoxes – like religious orders – is that it’s a space for women, often . . . well, usually, run at the top by men. You can sense Magloire’s aesthetic in control, not just in the pieces themselves and the chamber style of performance, but his choice of women. His look, and he has one, is tall and long-legged with elegant lines including arched, articulate feet. Yet in his choices, he also created a space where the dancers could be themselves.
With ballet’s power structure shaped like a pyramid, it doesn’t just echo monarchy, but capitalism, including a low value for the labor at the bottom. However, Magloire’s company is likely not a mill; his dancers work with him year after year. If you find someone you do well with, you don’t usually care what their plumbing is. Perhaps New Chamber Ballet is a gentle argument that even if we’d rather not have a male power structure be the unbreakable rule, the biggest danger with any power is the way it’s wielded. Like a religious vocation, who’s running it can be beside the point. The aesthetic may be chosen by someone else, but the journey can still be yours.
copyright ©2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Well” – New Chamber Ballet
City Center Studios, New York, NY
November 2, 2023
Cover: Rachele Perla with Megan Foley, Anabel Alpert and Amber Neff in “Well.” Photo © Steven Pisano.
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