by Leigh Witchel
As well as a new couple in Rubies, the first Classic NYCB program featured two new ballets. One was a short, concise vehicle for its dancers. The other wasn’t sure what it wanted to be.
Amy Hall Garner has been getting a lot of commissions. Trained at Juilliard, she is now resident choreographer of Carolina Ballet as well as a prolific freelancer. Her premiere for New York City Ballet, Underneath, There Is Light, did not make a strong case for itself.
Utilizing the resources of the company, Garner made a large cast work of more or less equal numbers of men and women. The cast was uncertain. Andrew Veyette and Taylor Stanley were both slated, but neither were in it; a curtain announcement informed us that David Gabriel was.
Design was done in-house by the company’s resident staff, Marc Happel designed the costumes and Mark Stanley contributed lighting and movable arcs of translucent fabric at the back that looked like a Calder mobile someone had taken a Bedazzler to.
A bad sign before it began: the music was a jukebox. Five unrelated works, largely contemporary; the oldest was Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of the Janiculum to close the work.
The piece opened to energetic music (Run to the Edge, by Jonathan Dove) in elegant costuming; the women in black dresses; the men in tops of dark velvet attacked with the same Bedazzler.
Chun Wai Chan danced a solo, but Underneath, There Is Light had little form. Everyone was racing around, and with all that activity, there was still no stage picture until a quintet of two men and three women began moving through one another. But Garner was short-winded and there was no follow-through.
A section for six couples followed, then a brief solo for Andres Zuniga. The music and the solo ended abruptly and everyone ran off. That felt like a controlling metaphor for the piece.
The next selection on the jukebox was Cumbia y Congo by William Grant Still, which featured vocals. This was set as a trio for Gilbert Bolden III, Chan and Grace Scheffel, who stepped in for the injured Isabella LaFreniere. The next section was a fugue. Why not? This was set as a solo for Miriam Miller that had her crouch over awkwardly on pointe. Bolden and Zuniga entered in the back. Then they left.
In the endless procession of solos into trios into duets, the ballet had no attention span, and every dancer was out for themselves. It’s hard to fathom why this was programmed as a closing ballet.
There were still opportunities for good performances. Naomi Corti looked compelling racing in her first solo, and both she and Mary Thomas MacKinnon made the piece work for them.
The next section’s music began with a weird piano glissando. All of the scenic elements had been removed except for a single glowing triangle that looked for all the world like a giant, glowing sparkly thong.
The dancers also changed costumes, the women to long, flamenco-inspired yellow dresses.
The men, inexplicably, came out in gray sparkly unitards cut right below the crotch.
Still, this was the best movement of the four. There were more elegant solos for Corti and MacKinnon, and the section would have made a lovely opening in some other ballet. The Pines of the Janiculum ends with bird calls, but instead of tying things together, it was another disparate element. Underneath There Is Light needed Ritalin. Or we did.
Cobbling together a score from five unrelated pieces of music is dangerous. It can be done; you had better know what you’re doing. As it was, it doomed the piece to be a mildly interesting procession of stuff that made little sense as a whole. You don’t need a plot, or even a throughline, but if not, your work had better be a lot more interesting.
Which leads to a more precipitous observation. On a single viewing, Underneath There Is Light felt perfunctory, as if Garner hadn’t brought her A-Game. There are a lot of reasons someone might not do their best work on a commission at NYCB. In fact, almost no one does. Hopefully, we’ll see something else where she brings her best to the table.
The evening began with Joseph Gordon and Emma Von Enck making their debuts in an over-enunciated Rubies. The performance was very punchy, everything forcefully pronounced as if they were trying to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language.
Rubies is an easy piece to be mannered in, and Gordon already tends to hurl himself into everything. He did the poses like exclamations: “Look, Ma! I’m jumping rope! Look, Ma! I’m turning in!”
The pas de deux was more of the same, with every hip pop going POP! Both Gordon and Von Enck looked better apart than together. They were trying too hard and felt as if they weren’t dancing together even when they were. The pull-off at the end of their adagio that should have really pulled off didn’t go very far. When they were trying to be “modern,” it felt awkward.
The exception was Emily Kikta, who flung herself into the extensions riskily, but not harshly. She had an interesting, direct reading of her adagio manipulated by four men, going for looking them in the eye, but at the same time, being languorous as she raised her leg to prodigious heights. She risked, but made all her unsupported penchées, and in the opening of the finale, she was able to be abandoned without being a hot mess.
Von Enck was much better in her solos and in the finale there wasn’t the smallest question that she would nail all her turns spotting front. This is also a part that could easily be Gordon’s when he calms down. He has the raw material and was freer in his solos. But on his first outing he looked as if he were commenting on the choreography as he was dancing it.
Justin Peck’s first works for the company, from 2012, were revived this season, Year of the Rabbit on another bill, and In Creases here. The energy and ingenuity of both launched him into his choreographic career.
In Creases is a group work, but not massive; four men and four women in basic gray dance wear with two pianos at the back, playing two of Philip Glass’ Four Movements for Two Pianos.
In Creases was youthful piece both in actuality and in how it was performed. Malorie Lundgren began with a solo while the others clumped; Ruby Lister pushed Jules Mabie into the center for another solo. Peck’s early work was distinctive for its striking spatial use, visible early on in a segment that diminished from three couples down to two, then to one, while the dancers who left moved to the corners.
The Glass score had the usual perpetuum mobile effect he used and the same damn beautiful tonic progression as in almost all of his later works. Peck followed along doggedly. It always works, and it’s made Glass a fortune, but doesn’t he have another one?
The stage cleared for an adagio solo, again for Mabie. On a quiet note he curled into himself, and the lights came up on Mary Thomas MacKinnon and Lister rocking on pointe in fourth position in the darkness.
Peck’s frame of reference has always been very American. With wide legs and high strides, the men jumped up the line of other dancers who were laying down as if navigating tires in an obstacle course.
A duet for Preston Chamblee and Dominika Afanasenkov melted into the group, who stood sentinel in formation staring at Mabie in yet another solo. That part was a test of a dancers’ mettle, and Mabie hurtled through rivoltades. The group assembled to pose on the last note.
Except for Chamblee, the ballet was cast with corps members and the mood of the ballet felt like a distant cousin of Le Tombeau de Couperin. When he made In Creases, Peck was still in the corps. He was promoted to soloist the following year but retained his allegiance and sympathy to the ensemble. Even early on, Peck was questioning hierarchy, but still, some cast members were more equal than others.
His newest work, Dig the Say, was a short duet to eponymous music by Vijay Iyer and showcased Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia. In an interesting setting by Brandon Stirling Baker featuring painted legs numbered 1, 2, 3 . . . the duo begin by literally playing ball. Mejia threw a red inflatable ball at the cyclorama. Ms. Peck did the same before her solo, and that gimmick was continued.
Dig the Say was developed cagily to show off the company’s current It Couple. Humberto Leon’s costumes were flattering. Mejia wore a sleeveless shirt and a headband; Ms. Peck was in a short skirt. The choreography was shrewdly tailored as well. In her slow variation, she played with the music; he showed off in a look-at-my-biceps solo.
Mr. Peck’s ingenuity can be precious, but this was a vehicle that made use of the fireworks. Ms. Peck handed Mejia the ball. He threw it offstage and it came back with her attached, leaping into his arms. They repeated; on the third time, she jumped into his arms without the ball to do a duet that was custom-fit. They looked great together.
After, Mejia did a solo that featured his energy, technique and cleanliness, with multiple pirouettes that started and finished elegantly. Ending with a flourish of beats to tours, he walked off nonchalantly as Ms. Peck walked on for a thumping variation of eccentric turns to percussive playing by the PUBLIQuartet.
Mr. Peck gave the couple room to be stars; they played around on each others’ entries. It was The Tiler and Roman Show. She milked a pose as she left. He flew round in a manège. She did her rubato thing and he flung out a crazy kick. She did double fouettés; he did turns in second position and popped her into a one armed press before a final pose. It was meant to be a crowd-pleaser, and it was.
Still, it was a woozy night. Garner’s work did not seem worth keeping; Rubies felt diminished by paint-by-numbers modernism. But Peck’s ballets stayed solid, giving a snapshot of the beginning of his career, and where it is now.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Rubies, Dig the Say, In Creases, Underneath, There Is Light – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
May 4, 2024
Cover: Chun Wai Chan, Mary Thomas MacKinnon and Gilbert Bolden III in Underneath, There Is Light. Photo © Erin Baiano.
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