by Leigh Witchel
The harbinger of autumn at New York City Ballet isn’t pumpkin spice. For several years, come the end of September, the company has rolled out a gala with new ballets featuring design collaborations with Seventh Avenue.
This year’s gala offered two new works and “Symphony in C.” The program was repeated the next night, with the addition to start of Robbins’ “Opus 19/The Dreamer” with Gonzalo Garcia and Sterling Hyltin in the leads.
Garcia danced his part as extroverted and emotional: mouth open, head thrown back, biting the air. He seemed to use rubato as the one interpretive device: stop and go motion, feints, sudden poses and changes of direction. Even though Hyltin used a similar attack, throwing herself into angular poses, it was different from her usual and interesting because of that. After a brief duet, she left and the male corps entered to do its best “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” imitation. Garcia and Hyltin’s approach made the ballet feel different than it has: A dance generation back, when Wendy Whelan danced the ballet, she seemed to be trying to draw Peter Boal out. Here, with two demonstrative performances, the end head-to-cheek pose seemed to be about twinship.
The vagaries of casting in “Symphony in C” produced a strange combination, three short women and one tall poppy. Teresa Reichlen’s performance in the second movement was inconsistent; parts of the adagio felt rushed and wobbly but the fugue felt slow. Her mark in the role was her high arabesque with those endless legs. Russell Janzen’s support left her free to plunge into swoons.
Of the shorties, Megan Fairchild looked good in the first movement. The fast footwork and turns were natural for her, yet this is a role with enough slow arabesques that length comes in handy. Fairchild made up for that with good proportions and intelligence about how to extend her movement by slowing down the end of it.
Baily Jones had her New York debut the night before in the third movement; it seemed as if she got the role to be a foil for Anthony Huxley. He was unfortunately out, so it went to another strong turner, Sebastian Villarini-Velez. Like Fairchild, Jones excelled in quick, tight pointe work, but the signature of the movement is the circuit of soaring jumps round the stage, and Jones’ jump didn’t soar.
Fairchild’s adult musicality – she didn’t use rubato as a crutch – showed her off in the finale. Her partner, Joseph Gordon, pushed himself round in his turns, but that was better than Jared Angle, who had a hard time with doubles – hopefully that was just an off night. Leading the last movement and partnering Erica Pereira, Andrew Scordato looked clean and stylish. He’s been senior corps a while, now doing largely principal roles and doing them well. Is it time to reward the hard work with a promotion?
The new ballets came from two choreographers associated with the company. Lauren Lovette has pushed herself in her work, taking on gender and sexuality, and not being afraid to risk failure. Unfortunately, the results fell short of her courage.
“The Shaded Line” was set to “Fire Ritual” by Tan Dun, a score that opened with a strident blare. Georgina Pazcoguin, in a black bob, a white shirt and black pants and pointe shoes, was at the center of a corps of men and women in tunics and tutus. Dun’s music, a cacophony of whispers, shouts, ululations and percussion, was influenced by Chinese ritual music. It premiered last year dedicated to victims of war.
If the music felt like a poor fit for dancing, the costumes by Zac Posen were more awkward. If the simple black and white outfit for Pazcoguin didn’t make any waves; at least it was clear in intent. But Posen’s tutu designs and distracting silhouettes for the other women were about three bridges too far.
Pazcoguin first had a strange fight with Mary Thomas MacKinnon, who was wearing an enormous tutu. Unity Phelan then entered in what looked like a parody of a swan tutu. Integrating plot with form, Pazcoguin grew disgusted and took off her point shoes, but that also allowed her to partner Phelan.
The men arrived and separated them more than once, but as much as the dance seemed to be shouting messages about sex and gender the action felt compressed and without development of character. A lesbian protagonist in ballet is a sort of unicorn, so that could have been something (if that’s what it was).
Taylor Stanley arrived wearing a bodice. In a final group section he got lifted by Gilbert Bolden III. Mercifully Lovette didn’t try for a too-neatly-mirrored gender reversal of having Pazcoguin partner Stanley. Stanley handed her back her pointe shoes; she put them on and posed in front of the corps on pointe to end the dance. With her arms en haut, it was almost an echo of the man in “Les Sylphides.”
The message of “The Shaded Line” was anything but subtle. It had links to “Opus 19/The Dreamer” and also Mauro Bigonzetti’s “In Vento”: pitting the individual against a group with ballet as a matrix. It’s a well-traveled theme, and beyond the sex change, Lovette didn’t offer any new insights. Lovette’s thoughts on gender are once again well-intentioned and naïve. As with 2017’s “Not Our Fate” she tried to scale the issue by having the women do the men’s parts and vice-versa. But that still assumes that some roles are female and others male. Offering the late 19th century concept of inversion as a cutting edge idea made the company look painfully sheltered – in a way that it most likely is. “The Shaded Line” felt coy rather than meaningful; awkward and often mawkish.
If Lovette’s work stressed concept over craft, Edwaard Liang’s “Lineage” was its opposite. The music, by Liang’s frequent choice Oliver Davis, was a more tuneful violin work and the costumes by Anna Sui – black with long filmy gold skirts for the women and maroon tights for the men – ruffled fewer feathers. Liang posited the work as an homage to Balanchine and his Georgian roots; that’s a distant hint that could be seen largely in Sui’s costumes.
In the first ensemble movement, Liang used the fluid but watered-down contemporary ballet style he and Christopher Wheeldon mined a decade ago. He moved groups around deftly, though towards the end of the movement the dancers inexplicably did The Swim. After, he set a pleasant pas de deux for Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle that they sold beautifully because it was so familiar. Kowroski knew her job and Angle knew his: Pick her up, put her down, dip her, spin her around, use the momentum to bring her to a shoulder sit or a lift. The two were also separated by the ensemble, and returned to one another.
Roman Mejia and Indiana Woodward had a subsidiary couple role. Mejia was prodigious, doing an unrecognizable, perhaps freshly invented, variation of a rivoltade jump. Still, Liang didn’t give enough to Woodward – who is no technical slouch – to counterweight that. Russell Janzen and Sara Mearns trotted out the wistful duet that is part of her brand, but was made up of largely the same ingredients as the duet for Kowroski and Angle. A confusingly structured finale introduced Ashley Bouder and Peter Walker, but mixed the leads into the corps so you couldn’t tell who anyone was.
Lovette and Liang are two sides of the same conundrum: “The Shaded Line” had so much Lovette wanted to say but needed clarity, refinement and a lot less naiveté. Liang phrased beautifully, though he was weak on structure and form, but had low ambitions for content.
Being a conceptualist at NYCB could be an open field for Lovette, but it’s crowded and competitive one in the wider world of dance. She has a lot of catching up to do. If ballet and gender is your thing, do a real study of gender before choreographing, or instead of making ballets about gender, make a ballet without gender. But start with ballet, if that’s what you actually know.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Opus 19/The Dreamer,” “The Shaded Line,” “Lineage,” “Symphony in C” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
September 27, 2019
Cover: Georgina Pazcoguin with the cast of “The Shaded Line.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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