by Leigh Witchel
Turn your watch, let’s move backwards in time. New York City Ballet’s triple bill of works by Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck and George Balanchine represented a snapshot of each choreographer at a different phase of their career. We’ll start from the end of the program and go in reverse.
Symphony in Three Movements, from 1972, is from a period after the departure of Suzanne Farrell, and Robbins’ upswing with works such as Dances at a Gathering. People thought Balanchine had little left in him; the Stravinsky Festival refuted that completely. The ballet got a performance with a familiar cast. KJ Takahashi sailed in with Emma Von Enck as the first of the solo couples. She had a high, tight jump that stayed under her; he soared, covering ground when he tucked his legs up. Julies Mabie did tight double cabrioles before dancing with Megan LeCrone.
Ashley Laracey and Taylor Stanley encored the central couple. She entered with cutting arms, then a tough walk towards us, though when the tempo sped up, she was a little fuzzy. This is one of Stanley’s best parts, not just for thair beautiful connected phrasing but the layers of reference and history beneath the clean polish.
Stanley’s most striking section was in the pas de deux; with Laracey, it was filled with elegant artifice. Moving into exaggerated poses, skittering or pitched back, they performed it like stereotypes of two exotic mechanical dolls. Laracey wandered away from Stanley as if sightless before they turned in and out, and in and out, like a pointlessly decorative cuckoo clock. They took their final poses like pangs, with a sudden decision to touch as if surprised.
Peck’s Pulcinella Variations was premiered in 2017. He’d been choreographing for five years, he had been the company’s Resident Choreographer for three, and he made one of his best works to date, The Times are Racing, earlier that year. You could say it was the beginning of his middle career, where he hopefully still is.
Rather than the contemporary breakthrough of Times, this was a work of more modest, if classical ambitions, made for the Fall Gala with costumes by fashion designer Tsumori Chisato. The piece is exactly what it says on the tin: a procession of variations, but without as much typing as, say, Divertimento No. 15. The variations here are in fact different, but they don’t stick in your mind as the jumping one or the turning one. Pulcinella isn’t one of Peck’s best works (very few of his classical glosses are) but it does give you a chance to see the dancers, and there were a few debuts.
The most exciting was Mary Thomas MacKinnon wearing yellow, and doing a variation that echoed Canari qui chante in The Sleeping Beauty. MacKinnon’s not one to shy away from risk. She burst out, went for a tight soutenu and almost skidded, but quickly recovered.
Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara braided round herself neatly in her debut in the Scherzino. Four men peered in from the side wing to become an unexpected audience; she noticed and genially bowed to them. Andres Zuniga’s debut was in another showoff technical part with turns and transitions. He got one after another during the season; whatever they didn’t throw at David Gabriel, they threw at him.
Anthony Huxley was among the vets in the cast, dancing the impressive presto solo that he originated, with constant turning and springing, and following it in the coda with multiple turns in second from a single preparation.
Miriam Miller danced the first duet with Preston Chamblee. It felt very traditional here, in the way the woman was being displayed. Miller has the line to fill out a part originated by Sara Mearns, but she didn’t have Mearns’ precipitous risk or weird perfume and that left a hole.
Unity Phelan and Harrison Coll did the second duet, made for Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia. Phelan was more than up to the challenges: tight supported turns that flipped into the next turn before a series of variations. The technical demands and changes of direction looked easy on her. Coll did his solo unlike the usual NYCB style. Instead of sharp poses, he went legato with long full arm movements, nailing his turns but with a soft attack, or doing an easy walk and then turning round to reach high with loose movements.
The company brought back Wheeldon’s Scènes de Ballet, his second, very ambitious work for NYCB from 1999. Daringly, he used the same Stravinsky score as Ashton’s masterwork, but that would not come to New York for a visit until Lincoln Center’s Ashton Festival five years later.
Wheeldon wisely did something totally different than Ashton: a piece using students from the School of American Ballet. It’s a classroom ballet but these weren’t classroom steps, rather simplified corps de ballet ones: arabesques, poses, and bows. But Wheeldon handled Stravinsky’s complex rhythms as easily as if they were Tchaikovsky.
The scenery by Ian Falconer was a cheeky take on an imaginary Russian academy with ancestral pictures on the walls and views of onion domes out the windows, though Russian training was nowhere on display. The space was unusual, implying a mirror by placing barres that asymmetrically bisected the stage, dividing the dancing area and influencing the choreography.
The work progressed chronologically through the ranks, beginning with with the youngest dancers at the Barre, energetic and long legged. Twenty four young women, on pointe in practice tutus, supplanted the children, then two more senior young men, Keenan Kiefer and Alexander Perone, danced a duet showing off their beautiful greyhound legs and split jetés. Wheeldon tested the students, giving the men tours in passé.
One of the tinies returned to the stage to lounge at the barre, dreaming, before the big duet – a shout out to my genial colleague Faye Arthurs, who originated it with Craig Hall. (You can read Faye here). The current pair, Corbin Holloway and Peyton Gin, also made the pas de deux all about extension. Both had it. Gin daringly pulled off her leg as she revolved in a fanned grand rond de jambe.
There was a hierarchy, certainly a sense of levels (it’s a school ballet, after all), but without a clear top of the heap. Holloway and Gin didn’t become rulers of the kingdom; they went back after their duet to dance in featured groups as well. After a section for the senior girls, the tots came back, then everyone made a procession to close the work.
Early career at NYCB is like busting out of the starting gate. You need to get out of the pack, and the way to do it is precocity. Wheeldon showed he had mastery of choreography, including concept and design, and could make a ballet for a large ensemble. In a way, just like the kids in the top levels who were hoping their performances could lead to a career, as a choreographer, this was Wheeldon’s graduation piece.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Scènes de Ballet, Pulcinella Variations, Symphony in Three Movements – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
May 17, 2024
Cover: Students of the School of American Ballet in Scènes de Ballet. Photo © Erin Baiano.
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.]
