by Leigh Witchel
American Ballet Theatre’s triple bill commemorated the living and the dead. The performance was prefaced by a brief, affectionate speech by Kevin McKenzie remembering Alicia Alonso, who had died that day at age 98. What a fitting coincidence that “Theme and Variations,” a role she had originated 72 years before, had been scheduled.
ABT dances the version Alonso did, one with fewer embellishments than at New York City Ballet. Joseph Gorak and Sarah Lane opened the ballet cleanly: both have the chops for it. They each have great leg lines, clean footwork, and a strong, arched pointe. Lane went through her first variation with strength; her legs didn’t go rubbery when she had to turn after jumping. Gorak’s feet are so arched his toes touched in entrechats, and his toe to knee position in retiré was textbook.
Gorak only did double pirouettes in his solo. He wasn’t looking for quantity, but oh, there was quality; he hit face front on each revolution. And in the next variation, he did ronds de jambes en l’air, but done accent inwards and showing a perfect retiré position. There was a cost to this precision: what was missing was the explosion outward.
His air turns that followed should have worked, but they didn’t. He lost his axis and ended early from what looked like a failure of nerve. In “Theme,” beautiful technique is exquisite, but you need swagger.
Lane had more steel than Gorak. You could see her driving down, evenly and calmly, into her turns. In the group adagio where the women lined up to support Lane, she made the connection to the Vision scene in “The Sleeping Beauty,” neatly extending to each angle.
The pas de deux went cleanly, particularly when they were dancing in tandem, but not together. Watching the two of them do beats side by side was a thing of beauty. But when Gorak had to support Lane in a turn (which for her, amounts to having your hands on her waist lightly and staying out of her way) you could see his deer-in-the-headlights look, as if he didn’t know how to handle her.
The corps was energized moving at Charles Barker’s neat clip while conducting. Among the demi-soloists, Tyler Maloney did his beats with the energy that made them sparkle – an accent sharply out before cutting into the finishing pose.
Lane sustained her neat legwork to the end of the ballet; but Gorak did the almost unforgivable and blew the final shoulder sit, forcing Lane to slowly slide down his torso, smiling through gritted teeth, as the curtain went down. Yes, that lift is harder when the woman is wearing a tutu, but it’s one of the first lifts you learn in class. It’s the final pose, and it’s Partnering 101. And that may be why he’s still a soloist and not a principal dancer.
Ratmansky’s “The Seasons” closed the evening. It was packed full of action, but seemed a little clearer on second viewing. Personifying Winter, Aran Bell entered with four women in white (Frost, Ice, Hail and Snow). An example of how difficult it was to settle your gaze, Bell ripped through virtuoso steps at the back of the stage, killing himself while someone was dancing in the front.
Each woman got a variation: Katherine Williams jumped onto Bell’s thigh to end hers. Devon Teuscher did beautifully controlled turns: the Teuscher/Bell partnership looks as if it’s becoming A Thing. Catherine Hurlin negotiated a fluttery, fiendish allegro that recalled Spring from Ashton’s “Cinderella,” and Luciana Paris ended with a freer waltz.
Ratmansky’s Spring involved a Zephyr, a Rose and her garden of Roses, and a Swallow in cacophonous colors, with tough ready-aim-fire turns for James Whiteside. Summer was led by Isabella Boylston as The Spirit of the Corn, but there were also Cornflowers, Water Men, Poppies, and a Satyr and two Fauns who couldn’t wait until fall to get the bacchanal rolling.
Each season has enough activity for a full year and there was plenty of awkwardness that still needed smoothing out. Zimmi Coker managed to stay balanced as the Rose while the Water Men mauled her overhead arm. In Autumn, Cassandra Trenary made sense of Ratmansky’s jam-packed phrases, but a dancer’s ability to make a choreographer’s ungainly ideas look palatable is not necessarily a good thing.
Boylston and Whiteside danced a big pas de deux, Ratmansky flooded the stage with a reprise of all the fruits, vegetables and weather conditions for a huge, skipping finale, and everyone went heave-ho for torch lifts to end. Hopefully “The Seasons” will settle into itself, or hopefully we just get used to the craziness.
Don’t bother with Tharp’s premise either for her new “A Gathering of Ghosts,” set to Brahms’ Quartet in G Major, Op. 111. Her characterizations of “Ghosts” and “Consorts” tell you nothing beyond giving some explanation for Norma Kamali’s genderfuck costumes. Watch it, like “Push Comes to Shove” as a celebration of its star dancer, this time Herman Cornejo.
Kamali’s costumes were largely in silver, black and spangles, and questioned stereotypes, putting Blaine Hoven in a glittery skirt and Catherine Hurlin in a silvery jacket. The outfits were an eyeful, and controversial, but they were what Zac Posen’s for Lauren Lovette’s “The Shaded Line” should have been – a glamorous provocation, crazy and overdone but with a point of view.
Cornejo came out in a black pantsuit with extravagant silver braiding: a tinfoil matador. Tharp does her best work on short pyrotechnicians. As for Baryshnikov or Ethan Stiefel, the steps seemed like a seamless transfer from Tharp’s body to Cornejo’s. He traveled like a comet, streaking across the action, yet at his leisure, savoring his hesitations and balances. Those hesitations segued into barrel turns, then he bowed to let two of the eight Ghosts, Christine Shevchenko and Wanyue Qiao, both in bell bottoms, enter.
After an adagio for Hoven and Stephanie Williams, Cornejo sailed back in, whirling through a
double assemblée. He came front to acknowledge applause that wasn’t forthcoming: not because he hadn’t earned it, but there was no pause. The pose for applause became a transition step. The chain of packed steps Tharp gave him was a tour de force: jump to turn to air turn back to turn. The Ghosts left and Cornejo posed in a lunge to end the movement.
But there was no rest for him; he moved into chains of turns, and four women, Consorts, arrived in short white dresses with stripes. He danced duets with them recalling ballroom dancers. The Consorts posed for him and left. He rushed off, followed by brief coupled entrées for the Ghosts. In a moment of corny humor, the men carried the women off just as Cornejo tried to approach each.
Tharp likes her jokes broad. In an antic scherzo, Cornejo cakewalked and danced with the Consorts, Coker acted as if she were lifting him. Hoven and Bell came over to congratulate him; Cornejo watched them dance, and motioned to the audience to watch them as well. Thankfully the dance won out over the stale humor, and Cornejo went into another combination ending in a series of hopping turns that ended perfectly controlled.
Like royalty or a championship fighter, the men brought Cornejo an enormous silver coat ruched like a stage curtain. He put it on and paraded at the front, bowing to us. The stage darkened and the rest of the cast danced with handheld lights, as if they were fireflies, to close. Appropriate to celebrate Cornejo’s 20 years with the company, “A Gathering of Ghosts” was a love note where Tharp took everything Cornejo is and showed him at his best.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Theme and Variations,” “A Gathering of Ghosts,” “The Seasons” – American Ballet Theatre
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 17, 2019
Cover: Herman Cornejo in “A Gathering of Ghosts.” Photo © Rosalie O’Connor.
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