by Leigh Witchel
If you’re lucky enough to get a commission to make a work for New York City Ballet, there’s a big question looming like a swamp creature. And even though it was a big deal that both commissions to the Fall Fashion Gala were to women, the issues are the same no matter who you are: Do you do what you usually do best and risk the dancers looking as if they’re at sea, or do you try what they do best and risk being assimilated into the NYCB Neoclassical Abstraction Borg? Is there the time and resources to try and synthesize both?
Andrea Miller’s background is Juilliard and the Batsheva Ensemble; her most arresting works have elements of the dance theater she knows well and the company doesn’t. It would have required a lot more time to acquaint the dancers with her style of work. Instead she tried to meet them more than halfway and made something closer to what they did. Unfortunately, that left us with a tepid result.
“sky to hold” had a score by Lido Pimienta, a Colombian-born, Toronto-based musician. This was another big deal; both the choreography and the commissioned score were by women. Pimienta also vocalized at the side, wearing a majestic lemon yellow gown. Apart from that striking dress, though, the designs by Esteban Cortázar were unisex unitards with filmy bits draping off. The dancers changed during the work from one shmatte to another. It may have been a fashion commission, but unitards could as easily have been produced in-house.
The dancing began to plangent brass, with the ensemble running through fog, then moving into viscous contemporary vocabulary; swirling, amoeba-like phrases that released and rebounded. Taylor Stanley, lying on the stage, spasmed to the center. Sara Mearns came in and whipped her hair (we’re getting used to that; she did it in “Serenade” as well) and began a solo of fundamental pointe work: step-over turns, bourrées, chaînés.
A slow section with the women coming forward, their arms moving slowly, felt atmospheric, but like everything else, cautious. Miller was looking at the vocabulary of ballet; she also gave Devin Alberda bourrées, but on half-toe. Still, her ideas weren’t developed.
The tempo picked up and Pimienta increased her volume. Miller put in one image after another, but none of them stuck. Perhaps to help create a throughline, Cortázar dressed Sebastian Villarini-Velez in brighter colors. He raced in while the others were raised aloft and carried away.
Pimienta, who was working from several Latino and indigenous influences, let out an extraordinary, piercing howl. Stanley leaped and crumpled in a solo, then met Mearns, as each crawled to the other. He lifted her supine and two men carried him away. Mearns went to Chun Wai Chan. If there was a reason for her abandoning Stanley, it wasn’t clear. The ghosts of a million teachers of choreography workshops were muttering, “Who are these people?” Mearns and Stanley rejoined one another with effort in a frieze-like pose; a move that recalled the Prodigal Son and the Siren, but that didn’t seem like a clue.
The dancers entered, embraced and ran away, which typified the ideas that were on the stage without being filled in. Miller knows what an NYCB unison finale looks like, and she delivered her version. She nailed the structure, but not the kinetic content; the vocabulary she used posed more than it flowed. Mearns and Stanley embraced one last time, and blackout. A lot happened, yet not much. Miller didn’t do what she does best, but she also didn’t manage to do what the company does best. We ended up with neither.
Sidra Bell took more chances and had more success. “SUSPENDED ANIMATION” used an ensemble cast of six women and six men. Its four movements of spacious music, written by three different composers, that sounded like Arvo Pärt.
“SUSPENDED ANIMATION” opened with a Megan LeCrone doing finicky slow steps in front. She wore a green, puffy dress with a hat that looked like an enormous upholstery button. Christopher John Rogers’ neon and acid costumes walked the line successfully between provocative and practical. He used tulle and ruffles, gathered or draped to fashion extravagant, courtly coats and wraps that got discarded to reveal sparer leotards and unitards as the work progressed. It’s frustrating when a designer offers something that blocks the choreographer’s ideas, but if they are only going to make a unitard, why bother?
The work looked different than the usual spare NYCB guest commission in more than costuming. Even if there wasn’t a scenery budget, translucent panels were dropped into the space to segment it. The slow vignettes, sometimes in clear view and sometimes obscured, felt like a peek at a mansion with many rooms: crowds gathering in the parlor, couples withdrawing to whisper in the halls.
The academic ballet vocabulary Bell used was congenial to the company, and exploring the lexicon didn’t seem to be her point. She had command of both group and solo work and knew both should cover the stage.
Harrison Ball posed glamorously, then Bell showed off Anthony Huxley’s instinctive facility to create a movement phrase. Still, his solo morphed into another in a minute or so, and we were on to Teresa Reichlen. Nothing dug in. Bell choreographed a fluent pas for Reichlen and Peter Walker, who sported a goatee and manbun, but again it was over before it got developed and gave way to a duet for Fairchild and Huxley. If nothing else, it was good to see Huxley with a partner, and he looked good with Fairchild.
“SUSPENDED ANIMATION” finished diminuendo; it seemed to end mainly because the curtain went down. It produced more sparks than “sky to hold,” but was still diffuse in intent. Bell seemed to want everyone to have their moment, but you never got to see anyone in depth or got a sense of what Bell was after. The stage was a neutral ground, but that meant that rather than everybody owning it, no one did.
Both Miller’s and Bell’s works were important markers for the company in terms of representation of women and people of color. But making a durable work for NYCB is always an outside shot, and like most guests, neither produced something compelling or useful enough to have a strong chance of persisting in repertory.
“Western Symphony” may be second tier Balanchine (some ballets have to be), and it suffered from a hammy, disappointing performance. But especially opposite the newer works it still gave you a clear idea of what NYCB’s brand is – something that goes well beyond pointe shoes and skinny girls to explain why a work sticks around rather than disappears.
What Balanchine did so well, especially in the symphonic works from the 50’s, was the enchaînement – a chain of steps – and not just how he fitted them together but how he moved them through space. The steps shape the body and limbs and at the same time move them from point A to B. Beats don’t just beat, they unexpectedly travel the opposite way to where the foot seems headed with astonishing fluidity; legs bend and cut under to help switch direction. Every dance generation in the 20th century complains the next one packs too much into the phrase. Balanchine got handed that complaint plenty. Yet now that he is two generations back (going on three) his densest phrases look pellucid.
This ability to show shapes while covering space – and the clarity of the shapes – is an unspoken building block of NYCB’s brand. Just using jumps and turns for the men, or rising on pointe for the women doesn’t make it ballet. NYCB is above all, a company built by a choreographer. It’s a high bar to clear, but a new work either needs to have beautifully kinetic choreography that uses the dancers’ training, or something else so good that it makes that requirement unimportant.
Here, the principals were not making the case for the ballet or the brand. Amar Ramasar mugged his way through the second movement with a grin like a cruise director and an attitude like a used car salesman. Lauren Lovette played along in her debut, then at the climax of her solo, blew the Italian fouettés. Andrew Veyette came out in the finale and did the air turns at an exhilarating speed, but how many smirks and pistol fingers does “Western” need? None actually. It would be nice to see these senior dancers, even as they leave, trust Balanchine’s ballets.
There were some very bright spots. Emily Kikta made a lush, elegant debut in the finale, doing the steps rather than selling them. In the opening, Lauren King showed why she has had a consistent career with the company. Every season – every single season – she’s developed and grown. By now, her elegant upper body, clean leg lines and sharp, arrowy beats are those of a first movement ballerina; the one Balanchine would deploy early as a welcome, and to show you what classicism is supposed to look like. It’s been reported she’s retiring this year. Many higher-ranked dancers are getting farewells; she actually merits one.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
“sky to hold,” “SUSPENDED ANIMATION,” “Western Symphony” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 1, 2021
Cover: (L to R) Kennard Henson, Megan LeCrone, Peter Walker, Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley in “SUSPENDED ANIMATION.” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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