by Leigh Witchel
Like a sojourn by the water, Miro Magloire’s “Sea” for his New Chamber Ballet gave you time to think.
The work is a revival from two years ago. It was the first piece the company put on after lockdown, and there were so many restrictions on capacity and performance that very few people got to see it.
The score’s composer, Richard Carrick, was in attendance. Most of the compositions were commissioned for NCB, inspired by buildings he had seen: “a travelogue of haunting places.”
Like “Munu Munu,” two years later, this is an ensemble work: a female quintet, and a long one, 55 minutes. The program notes it’s the first of that scale.
Here and in other works, Magloire conceived of the dancing space in the fifth floor studio at the Mark Morris Dance Center as a diamond: a square tipped to its point and marked off by tape and seats lining the perimeter.
A woman waited at each corner of the diamond, two women at the entry. Kayla Schmitt, a young dancer who filled in at the last minute for Rachele Perla, walked into center and lay down. Violinist Doori Na entered the space gingerly, playing sliding arpeggios as he walked the perimeter. The pianist, Melody Fader, joined in. Magloire’s associations with his dancers are long-lived, but with musicians even more so. Na has performed with NCB 11 seasons, Fader 17. Both are integral to the group.
Schmitt stirred and tossed on the ground as if waking from a restless sleep. Magloire has a look for his women (the company is all women), tall and leggy. The other four dancers, Anabel Alpert, Megan Foley, Nicole McGinnis and Amber Neff, slowly scooped and raised one arm ornamentally to walk to the center before lying down themselves. As they lay down, Schmitt got up, hugging herself, kneeling tightly.
The other four leaned in and out, taking hands. In loose draped outfits by Sarah Thea Craig, they looked like Botticelli’s graces. They briefly supported one another and changed places. Some motifs become prominent. Where in “Munu Munu” Magloire worked often with a duo set against a trio, here it was a single dancer at the center and a quartet at the points.
The tempo sped up and the steps moved from fast petit allegro to swirling turns. Fader reached inside the piano to pluck strings as Na again played sliding notes. Yet the work still had an expressionist quality; Carrick’s modern musings echoed Debussy’s.
Two women in the center torqued with one another, circling hands and wrists, before melting to the floor to let another pair take their place. The motion flowed around the room. Schmitt arced and fell on to each woman, sometimes giving all her weight, sometimes recovering on her own.
As they tumbled in one another’s embrace, there was as much of a feeling of being people as spirits, or even sea life slowly moved by the current.
The music sped up again; McGinnis and Foley used each other’s backs as support to do a walkover. After flipping to the ground, they fluttered their arms, coming to a pause, then raced, circling.
The music sawed and the dancers moved into a long section on the floor, arching and rolling, exchanging places or lying there expectantly. They all rolled into the center, curled, to end the movement.
Carrick’s compositions, “The Mill,” “Preludes” and “In Flow” were only separated by the briefest of pauses. The dancers’ movement blended into the next section as the music contrasted into isolated, forceful chords and arpeggios. But the dancing continued to swirl. After the women got up, they strode to exchange places, and suddenly went into a circuit of piqué and step over turns as the wide legs on their filmy pants billowed.
The partnering that Magloire has been exploring showed up here. The women swirled to assemble as Foley leapt on to Neff’s shoulders into a pose that if it weren’t so calm would have been a climax. Shortly after, Neff crouched, hanging off Alpert’s arm. Later, Alpert supported Schmitt on her thighs, at first crouched, then laid out.
The partnering wasn’t smooth, and wasn’t meant to be. One difference between what Magloire wants and what is taught in partnering class is the lack of concealment. Part of the illusion of ballet is the art of hiding effort. Partnering here had both effort and weight.
As Fader plucked low notes inside, as if on one of John Cage’s prepared pianos, Neff stood rubbing her arms up and down. The next section opened with expressionistic music, cascading like water in arpeggios that again made you think of Debussy. Foley, Neff and McGinnis reached and stretched in long fourth positions in the center; Alpert then did the same at the edge.
Then Schmitt also joined in as the ensemble posed in sustained attitudes with the torso pitched forward. Even when it varied, the palette of “Sea” felt deliberately restrained with movements – arching backs, balancés – recurring.
Carrick’s “In Flow” was a long solo for Na. McGinnis and Neff grappled in the center as the others swirled, paused to sit, and then made fussy arms positions as if stitching the two of them into place.
In a moment of cryptic intensity Neff pursued Schmitt across one of the diagonals. There were more hints of a situation. When Alpert came to the center, the others pulled her down. One arm escaped, and was reined in. Then the swirl continued.
As it came to its conclusion to the final section of “The Mill,” “Sea” recapitulated earlier turns, and flickers of evocative motion. The dancer’s hands made delicate incantations, the legs sometimes came together as the women rolled like the tail of a mermaid.
The music softened, and the cast came to a rest. Schmitt remained in the center, lying down as the others got up and walked out with the long, scooping motion to end as they began.
“Sea” had a pacific feeling to it. There was effort and struggle, but that felt tidal as much as human. You could also see the kinship to “Munu Munu” both in how Magloire built the work and what he built it from.
Like most works inspired by water, there was less contrast, but that’s rarely the point of something aqueous. Being a bunhead, I often wish Magloire’s work were more dance-y, but that also doesn’t feel like the point. The tenacity does.
Both Magloire and his dancers showed tenacity in many ways. For him, it’s bucking every trend by persisting in his commitments to both classicism and modernism, while serving us a nearly hour-long water ballet. It didn’t feel repetitious, because with tenacity, repetition becomes exploration becomes a voice. And like Merce Cunningham’s 90-minute-long “Ocean,” one point of “Sea” was to lose track of time.
For the dancers, the tenacity lay in their commitment. Dancers stick with him, but Magloire seems to be the least cult-like director you can imagine. Because of the chamber size, participating means a juicy role, so for a young dancer like Schimtt, that’s a big opportunity. For the rest, all interesting performers who feel distinct yet cohere as a group, it felt more as if they found the right laboratory for their own experiments.
In many ways, including subject matter (we’re coming up on the 30th anniversary of “Ocean.”) Magloire is as spiritually indebted to Cunningham as Balanchine. In “Sea,” no one’s acting or not acting. Everyone just is. It’s all laid out in front of you, and its matter of fact quality is what makes it cryptic. Like Cunningham, the mystery is that there’s actually no mystery.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Sea” – New Chamber Ballet
Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn, NY
July 1, 2023
Cover: Megan Foley and Amber Neff in “Sea.” Photo © Steven Pisano.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
