by Leigh Witchel
New York City Ballet’s triple bill was new and buzzworthy: a premiere by resident choreographer Justin Peck, an encore season of a work by Kyle Abraham and a major revival by William Forsythe. Abraham’s “The Runaway” worked even better paired with the Forsythe from nearly 27 years prior. As for Justin Peck’s new “Principia,” there’s no greater danger Peck faces than tradition – NYCB’s tradition of grinding out new work.
The dance opened with a crowd in a huddle. Dancers bubbled up one by one to flute music in Sufjan Steven’s commissioned score. The action dissolved into small group dances and a quickly changing stage picture. “Principia” seemed breathless, unable to remain with an idea. Stevens’ score, which felt like a compilation of songs rather than a single concept, didn’t assist.
Peck is an able craftsman, which meant the ballet was deftly constructed, but too clever by half. The dancers formed bell towers that released a concealed dancer as someone tapped the tower on a ringing note. A female duet began with the two women facing one another and clapping in a distant echo of “Agon.” Stevens also seemed to echo “Agon”: a section for women was orchestrated in brass much like Stravinsky’s male duet.
Like any choreographer at NYCB, Peck has a surfeit of talent to show off. Tiler Peck came on and ripped through a cascade of turns. As the stage darkened, she performed a lovely solo, whirling stitchery in the gray. She ruffled her torso in a literal echo of a piano arpeggio and left placidly after finishing a turn. That led into a series of quiet sections. Taylor Stanley and she did a wisp of a duet, walking off arm-in-arm.
The finale began in unison with an arcing contraction that was nearly impossible to do in unison. Stevens had composed a slow movement with little rhythm and Peck just kept trying to fill it. Little groups reappeared, then the bell tower, finally the cast coalesced into a line at the front, chins up and eyes closed as the curtain fell. Stevens’ drawn-out ending recalled the long cooldown at the end of John Adams’ “Fearful Symmetries” and Peter Martins’ similar efforts to run out the clock.
Like most other choreographers at NYCB, Peck is good at pointing out rising dancers: Daniel Applebaum, Harrison Coll, or Claire Kretzschmar. Unlike Martins, whose work was emotionally clotted, Peck loves emotion, but as a choreographic motif. He used an embrace or handholding the same way as a turn or a gargouillade.
“Principia” felt motivated not by something to say, but the driving requirement at NYCB for new work that forces a choreographer to substitute ingenuity for expression, and concentrate on the rivets and girders of dancemaking. There was more focus on how the ballet was built than what it was about. In that way, though it doesn’t look anything like a Martins ballet, “Principia” looked everything like a Martins ballet.
Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman” has a piecemeal history. Made by in ’92 for NYCB’s first Diamond Project the ballet arrived on stage as a quintet. A few months later Forsythe made a duet at Ballett Frankfurt for his wife Tracy-Kai Maier and Marc Spradling. That got appended to NYCB’s quintet in ‘93. The final switch came the next year: the original quintet was dropped and only the duet remained.
This revival was staged by Noah Gelber and rehearsed by him and Forsythe. Thom Willems’ music for the quintet sounded like pounding chord exercises on a synthesized toy piano. Unity Phelan and a young apprentice, Naomi Corti, again quoted “Agon,” by facing one another and springing back into attitude.
Corti was put in to replace Sterling Hyltin, who had a minor injury. This was a huge break, but also a huge task. Corti had the yearling energy, but not the control, and she tried to make up for it by throwing herself around. You don’t achieve the distortion of classical line in Forsythe by throwing yourself around any more than in Balanchine or Ashton for that matter. It happens by having the control to push the line, but then retrieve placement just as quickly.
Not having to contend with pointe work, the men, Joseph Gordon and Harrison Ball, had an easier time of it. Gordon hit the balance between technique and distortion, going from a pelvis pushed forward off his axis to a clean, placed retiré in a flash.
Sara Mearns glared at us as she danced and didn’t stop until her part sped up and she couldn’t spend the time serving attitude. When she stops commenting on the choreography and just does it, this will be right in her wheelhouse: pushing her ability to move, turn and balance.
At the end of the quintet, the cast ran back to a low flat, looked to both sides and disappeared behind it. The music shifted from toy piano to a synthesized hymn from the Church of Casiotone. Tyler Angle and Tiler Peck arrived onstage, both dressed in simple blue.
Though she wasn’t the originator of the duet, Wendy Whelan owned it at NYCB. Peck, with her shorter lines, was very different in effect, but she had the technical chops. She was also more extroverted, playing with Angle as she moved towards him or posed, waiting for him.
The two shook hands, and Peck went off and came back with a skirt. Angle did a solo waiting for her, then left as she danced alone, and then he returned in just the skirt. It seemed like a joke and got a laugh from the audience, but there was more to it. The duet switched from partnering to parity. The two dancers moved into a double duet with occasional step differences: he did a big male jump, she rolled over on pointe. More often they were a match.
She beckoned him over with a finger and they partnered again. At the end, she also seemed to look to either side to make sure nobody was watching. They ended the duet in finger turns that seemed eternal, continuing as the lights dimmed.
The quintet can be seen as a sequel to Forsythe’s first work for the company, “Behind the China Dogs.” “Dogs” was the splash of the ’87 American Music Festival and it showed Forsythe anatomizing and fusing the aesthetic of NYCB with an up-to-the-minute sensibility. Like many sequels “Herman” wasn’t as interesting. It was an abstract dance-a-thon notable at the time for the dancers Forsythe cast: Kyra Nichols (Forsythe had used mainly younger dancers in “Dogs”), Margaret Tracey, Whelan, Ethan Stiefel and the one veteran from “Dogs,” Jeffrey Edwards. The women’s costumes for the quintet, designed by Gianni Versace, have a strange connection to Balanchine: they were recycled from Ballett Frankfurt’s staging of “Agon.”
Because of its soundtrack and outré costumes, Kyle Abraham’s “The Runaway” looked more like a topical novelty at its debut last fall. On second glance, especially next to the Forsythe, it connected more with other repertory.
The score was a patchwork that moved slowly from Nico Muhly to Kanye West to James Blake. We first saw Taylor Stanley, in a black and white blotched costume, almost an adult version of a romper. To slow contemplative music, he kept rolling but returning to a baseline ballet position: his foot pointed on the floor in tendu front.
Mearns and Georgina Pazcoguin entered in wigs sprouting unruly ponytails at the sides like black raffia. Gender roles were examined lightly: Mearns did an arabesque penchée; Pazcoguin supported her. They strode on pointe towards one another – was every choreographer on the bill quoting “Agon” or are those steps simply basic building blocks of almost any female ballet duet?
Ashley Bouder arrived to angry piano scales. Wearing tiers of black ruffles, it was clear Abraham knew her brand; she jumped and leaped, racing in tight bourrées to a final walkover into the wings. Later on, Roman Mejia stopped the show with a bravura solo of small, slicing steps to West’s “I Love Kanye.” Abraham has less connection to ballet – he wasn’t trained in it and credited the dancers with a portion of the choreography. But he knew the subtext of ballet vocabulary and how to use virtuosity as wit.
Abraham’s black and gay sensibility is a voice that rarely speaks up at NYCB; you notice its absence more when it finally does. Abraham threw it in almost casually when he had Stanley do a runway walk upstage, hand waving and hips swaying. The mood was more Drag Race when the three women returned and stared at one another. Pazcoguin sauntered off, ripped off her skirt at the edge of the stage and rejoined the others in her own sweet time.
Dancers layer attitude on in Forsythe as well, but that’s dangerous. The original dancers in Paris who did “In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated” included Sylvie Guillem, Isabelle Guérin, Laurent Hilaire, and Manuel Legris. These were some of the most exquisitely trained show ponies to ever grace a ballet stage. They didn’t throw shade; they didn’t need to. They were shade. But here, Abraham used attitude as a time-honored theatrical tool.
The collage score slowed down again. Doing slow poses, Stanley was supported in arabesque by Bouder; everyone gradually left but him. Abraham didn’t give us a neat ending; Stanley was alone, reaching, standing and finally hunching over as the curtain fell.
Stanley’s performances so far this season, including a debut in “Apollo” have shown him moving to the center of the roster. He has the talent, and he had no choice; the company’s male ranks have been decimated by last year’s scandals. But like Jeffrey Edwards decades before him, Stanley has the potential to be a Rosetta Stone for new audiences who know they like dance, but don’t know if they like ballet. Both Abraham and Forsythe took moves they saw in clubs and incorporated them into concert dance. Every generation has to do this – take their vernacular and add it to the canon. For a new audience, Stanley’s ability to go from petit allegro to a sashay is the bridge. Because it’s not just what’s new in a ballet that’s important. It’s how it connects to what came before it.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Herman Schmerman,” “Principia,” “The Runaway” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 3, 2019
Cover: Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle in “Herman Schmerman.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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