by Leigh Witchel
You can’t fault American Ballet Theatre’s Innovation Past and Present triple bill for lack of variety. The program offered two very different premieres, one by Gemma Bond, the other by Kyle Abraham, along with a long-time company showpiece, Harald Lander’s Études. ABT prides itself for its versatility, and two new short works were the kind of risk the company can’t afford to take at the Metropolitan Opera House. All three pieces were asking for different styles. Still, what ended up making this show worth going to was an auspicious debut in Études.
Gemma Bond’s La Boutique was an ambitious work that spoke to a genre ABT always needs more of: a large-scale classical ballet. Bond reached into ABT’s history for this: she used the score that Respighi arranged from Rossini for La Boutique Fantasque. Originally choreographed by Léonide Massine for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1919, he staged it during wartime in 1943 for ABT as The Fantastic Toyshop. With Irina Baronova, Massine reprised his original role as a Can-Can dancer. Rather than recreating a one-act narrative ballet, ironically once the essential Theatre in American Ballet Theatre, Bond chose to do an abstract treatment of the Rossini score.
The work opened with three couples in Jean-Marc Puissant’s modern tweaking of classical costumes: the women wearing tutus and tiaras, but not bedazzled; the men in gray tights and sleeveless black T-shirts. The choreography responded to the high spirits of the Rossini as the couples partnered in unison, traveling neat patterns and diagonals. Bond used a bow as a motif, but ambivalently: the dancers bowed with one arm out to the side in an invitation, but also with the head bowed as if avoiding our gaze.
To a tarantella, Skylar Brandt and Carlos Gonzalez did an allegro duet. Brandt is a natural soubrette. Bond marshaled an octet of men, with Gonzalez coming out with beats down the diagonal and Brandt joining among them, doing what she does best: turns and balances. The men lifted her up to end, then two female demisoloists, Fangqi Li and Ingrid Thoms, led the female corps.
Devon Teuscher danced a solo, including beats that pulled into retiré, first to a capacious waltz, then a then a brighter allegro into a manège. She ceded the stage to SunMi Park, backed by Andrew Robare and Joseph Markey before Cory Stearns entered to partner her. Bond was ambigenderous about making steps; she brought on all the men for a huge jumping section, and she understood male grand allegro. When Park was carried round by Robare and Markey, traveling down the line of men, you could sense the lineage: Bond paying homage to Ashton, who was paying homage to Petipa. Park returned to Stearns and the male demisoloists placed her on Stearns’ back to close. One thing Bond wasn’t interested in puncturing was the idea of the ballerina.
Stearns and Park drifted out, Teuscher and Aran Bell drifted in for the big Evening Blue number. An adagio, but at a brisk tempo, Bell partnered Teuscher as they ran round the stage. Even so, their duet still had a dreamy quality before the final promenades, turns and a shoulder lift.
Stearns led off the coda with a short solo, and all the leads did tricks, including an impressive manège for Bell before the cast moved into diagonals for a well-patterned finale to the final Ashton-ish tableau, with two of the ballerinas lifted to different heights to conclude. Bond can shrewdly make a ballet, but at first viewing, La Boutique didn’t give you a sense of what was behind it. Was this Bond giving us what she thinks an ABT-model abstract ballet should look like?
Down to the title, Kyle Abraham’s Mercurial Son was more opaque in its intentions than La Boutique. The music, by Grischa Lichtenberger, sounded like bubble wrap being popped, only with the bass amplified. To begin, Andrew Robare whirled on, wearing a purple leotard and tights designed by Karen Young, with a filmy swath of matching fabric over, which looked great when it spun.
Cassandra Trenary and Gonzales did a duet of tendus, then isolations. Trenary strolled off on pointe, Markey, in gold, strolled on. Abraham’s style when he choreographs ballet has exhibited a kinship with William Forsythe before, but the way the dancers walked to place before bursting into steps, the way Abraham used academic vocabulary to contrast with something funkier looked here like Forsythe Lite. The externals of style, with neither intention nor structure apparent, felt like a showy gift box without a gift inside. Abraham’s home base isn’t ballet, so he tends to quote ballet almost like giving a secret knock as a password. Markey briefly riffed on the Dying Swan, as Abraham quoted Four Little Swans in New York City Ballet’s Love Letter (on shuffle).
Catherine Hurlin entered wearing beige to float her way round an arabesque turn, and show her facility to move from a tendu to an arm ripple. After another duet for Gonzales and Trenary, Lichtenberger’s music picked up a beat as duets and groups did more blow-you-away stuff. Thoms and Sierra Armstrong did a high five while in retiré, but Abraham’s attempt at integrating two styles didn’t succeed because the women almost bobbled out of it.
Robare reentered, starting out in coupé jetés to whir off in chaînés. Abraham had one of the women stalk across the front doing tendus, making her stare out fiercely into the darkness. It was a cliché, but at least it was a concept. Meanwhile, the others grooved round. Cassandra Trenary cut through a solo to distorted vocorder and bass thumps with her usual virtuosity, which went into a procession of more solos where the dancers showed how off-balance they can do classical steps.
Hurlin and Markey danced a duet. Hurlin jogged out and Markey did a solo, reaching, squatting, vibrating. He walked out on the diagonal as the music faded, ending the piece feeling like a warmed-over version of NYCB’s The Runaway.
As much as the dancers tried to connect to the piece with full-out dancing, Mercurial Son felt like a low-ambition work on Abraham’s part. The piece looked derivative, not only of Forsythe’s work, but of Abraham’s better and more engaged ballets for NYCB. Markey’s solo was similar in mood to Taylor Stanley’s solo in The Runaway, and even the idea of using classical vocabulary as almost an interior monologue to indicate isolation seemed tepid and recycled. “When I’m alone I do port de bras.”
Unlike The Runaway or Love Letter, it felt as if Abraham didn’t take the rehearsal time to give this cast anything but steps. Abraham is not a structuralist, so without a concept, there was just fierce dancing. The cast couldn’t find a deeper connection, so its performance looked like surface attitude the dancers slapped on, and without more context, they seemed like the cliché of a bunch of white ballet dancers being funky. Mercurial Son did contrast nicely on the program with La Boutique, but again on first look, both felt thin and stereotypical of their genres.
ABT uses Études to show us who is on the rise in the company. The company’s senior ballerina, Gillian Murphy, was squired this time by two men from the corps, Jarod Curley and making his debut, Takumi Miyake.
There was a small but odd switch at opening, where a few academic poses and grand pliés are usually done by little girls. This time, it was just one shorter woman from the corps (who almost missed her grand plié).
After the corps did all the barre work, Murphy showed up with her consorts. Escorting her and kissing her hand at the end of the number, the men looked like chorus boys from Follies. The lead ballerina is an arduous role, and Murphy got through everything, but it was portentous. She did her long adagio as if she were the last in a line of Queens of the Ballet, with arms ready to knight anyone unfortunate enough to come in her path. Still, Curley partnered her well, and pressed her easily.
Curley went on to dance with four women, each having to turn from the most exposed position alone. In the other leading male role, where Jake Roxander took the offensive when he first essayed the part, as if he were scaling Mount Everest. Miyake figured out a way to not overpower the choreography.
The first time we saw him solo, Miyake did one turn after another and they were textbook. He is a very schooled turner, with a high, clean retiré, and can turn slowly as well as quickly with control. Then he went on to fouetté turns. It looked grueling, but again he did them with control, even schooling, as well as force. Then everyone did fouettés in a sort of competition. I have no idea who won.
ABT usually casts Études with a tall porteur and a short pyrotechnician. The ballet screws the tall guy, who does more, and often steps easier for a compact build. The pyrotechnical part is hard and showy, but there is some time in between bouts, and it’s built on what pyrotechnicians do well.
Curley had a few hairy moments, but moved past them quickly. His plan of attack when he did beats into tours seemed to be to worry less about phrasing and more about the finish, which made sense. It’s what we remember, and Études feels like the kind of exam where you’d have to stick the finishes. It would be a lot as it stood to ask him for phrasing as well.
The ballet just kept getting harder, as the dancers did a diagonal of brisé volés like the Bataan Death March. Miyake entered and nailed another solo, and it looked as if the ballet would end. But there’s yet another hill to climb.
The dancers streaked through more diagonals, from jetés, which escalated into bigger steps, up to barrel turns. The whole cast went one after another like ducks in a shooting gallery. By close to the end, the strategy for most dancers was not to fall over and to stay somewhere in the vicinity of being together. And yet Miyake managed nine double tours in a row, landing properly to the knee.
The ballet is as exhausting to watch as it must be to dance, and if it’s just a test of technique and endurance, ABT actually has something in repertory better suited to the company as it is today: In the Upper Room. And yet, there are hints that Études could be a display of style as well as technique. This version is the one made in Paris in 1951. In refashioning the ballet from a more introspective work made for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1948, was Lander making a companion to Paris Opera Ballet’s display in 1943 by Serge Lifar of company prowess, Suite en Blanc?
All three works on the program were asking for specific styles, all very different. And the dancers got through all of them, but there’s a distance between execution and illumination. One of the dangers of ABT’s versatility-above-all ethos is that if the company deliberately has no style, you have to somehow give it one.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
La Boutique, Mercurial Son, Études – American Ballet Theatre
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 18, 2024
Cover: Aran Bell and Devon Teuscher in La Boutique. Photo © Emma Zordan.
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