by Leigh Witchel
One of the best tests of a dance is also one of the simplest: does it bear repeated viewing? On New York City Ballet’s triple bill of works made last year, encored in the first 21st Century Choreography program of the season, one ballet definitely does. The jury’s still out on the other two.
Gianna Reisen’s “Play Time” was almost dwarfed by two splashy elements: a commissioned score, “Villanelle for Times” by Solange Knowles, and highly constructed, bedazzled costumes by Alejandro Gómez Palomo for Palomo Spain.
Reisen’s choreography was more by the book, with plenty of codified steps and jumps. She deployed the five men and five women in mostly smaller groups, such as a fleet, shimmying duet for Emma von Enck and David Gabriel, and another for KJ Takahashi and Indiana Woodward.
Andres Zuniga wore a big blue suit, sparkling, and making a magical wipe of his arm before spinning round. Samuel Melnikov wore his red suit in a size extra-long. After a cacophony the dancers stopped and the lights went red, then Olivia Bell, newly promoted from apprentice into the company, danced a slouchy duet with Davide Riccardo. Melnikov’s long legs gave his loose solo distinction. Reisen staged a big finale, with the men kicking and spinning before the group assembled into a final pose. She wasn’t demanding a lot from ballet, but she made an amiable dance.
Reisen easily handled the Knowles’ score, which largely cooperated with her instinct to make something dansante. Palomo’s glitzy, stunning costumes never could take a back seat to anything. They still get a gasp, and there was one light cue by Mark Stanley that seemed to be there only to make them all sparkle. Still, the costumes’ lines could be overwhelming, distorting the shape of the body and playing with gender roles, both of which weren’t incorporated into the choreography. The outfits aren’t, and likely can’t be, form fitting. Some dancers looked as if they were performing in very sparkly raincoats.
Kyle Abraham’s “Love Letter (on shuffle)” featured a strong debut. Quinn Starner first danced Tiler Peck’s original part the day prior, and it’s a role that combines killer technique and diva attitude, starting with a complex terre à terre solo and moving through high-velocity turns. Starner came from competition dance, and she and Peck have one role in their pasts outside of NYCB in common: Clara in the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.” That showbiz training may be what gave Starner the steely sangfroid that worked here. She made a big impression as she snapped through steps and stared at us before a series of turns to exit. The way Abraham showed off NYCB dancers felt like William Forsythe putting the Paris Opera dancers through their paces three decades prior.
Since Abraham also used James Blake, there were more similarities to Forsythe. Those waters are muddy; Forsythe stole, as great artists do, from Black club dancing, but besides Abraham possessing all that material on his own, it also felt as if he were looking to Forsythe as a model for how to make a ballet.
“Love Letter (on shuffle)” begins with Blake’s hymn-like opening. Taylor Stanley stood in a Watteau-like costume, doing as much a monologue as a solo. He shivered, almost begging or arguing with an imaginary antagonist, then walked and posed, isolating then drifting into a turn.
Jules Mabie joined him, as they slowly isolated again, hunched or spasming. They danced together, a long, slow section in the half light, as the rest of the dancers left one at a time. Stanley wound up at the back just as Starner came out to look at him and the lights went out.
Starner danced a solo, and after her turns she raced out as Sebastían Villarini-Velez raced in, throwing off multiple air turns. They came together for a duet, while three women at the back pranced and observed like three little swans. Christopher Grant entered wearing a feather mohawk and danced with Cainan Weber, who wore a different feather headgear. Their duet was very showy, moving in and out at top speed but their pairing was also tender. To end, they dabbed.
The music began to thump and five women danced in spotlights, a moment that felt like one of Forsythe’s Playlists. Starner cut through turns and footwork in another solo, then bowed to Villarini and walked off. His solo didn’t have the same impact as when it was new, but it remained a breakthrough for him, letting him create a full persona. Where Stanley’s was based on pain as he shook, Villarini’s, as he dusted himself off and crossed his arms, was based on rage and pent-up frustration.
The final duet for Mabie and Stanley didn’t make as much of an impression as when it was danced by two dancers who both recently departed, Harrison Ball and Jonathan Fahoury. At least, not yet. There was some desperation, as Mabie and Stanley slowly leaned on one another. But that felt more like the lighting than the emotion, which more neutral than it once did. The two men held hands and bowed their heads, everyone reassembled in the darkness, and began a final unison with a grand plié that echoed Bournonville’s “Konservatoriet.” Yet the group ending after the duet still seemed extraneous, repeating without recapitulating earlier material.
Many of Balanchine’s ballets seem to take place in the courtroom of a phantom palace. Alexei Ratmansky’s seem to happen in an imaginary village. Where does Justin Peck’s “Partita” happen? Who are these people? His answer is what makes him an heir to Jerome Robbins: They’re us.
The path to portray us, today, onstage is riddled with traps, the biggest of which is that “us today” vanishes so quickly. Like Robbins, Peck isn’t a classicist at heart. Time is barely an element in Balanchine’s classical vision: his works are of their time, but also deliberately outside of time, and could be done by dancers in 1946 or 2046 and look largely the same. Peck’s work, like Robbins, depends on context.
Some of Peck’s conventions, especially portraying dancers in an eternal state of wonder like middle-aged ingenues, made it harder to buy what he sold. But his development, as well as repeated viewings, can round out that picture. His world onstage becomes less a series of Broadway conventions and a more subtle cosmology.
“Partita,” from last year, is the current point on the road Peck’s traveled on, which began around “Everywhere We Go” in 2014, and had a major milestone in 2017 with “The Times are Racing.” Long ago, he assimilated his heritage from Robbins: it was natural for him. What we may be seeing in “Partita,” is him also taking on an aspect of Balanchine: less the idea of dancers as princes and princesses, but one Lincoln Kirstein wrote of so movingly: dancers as angelic beings, not as forces of good and evil, but forces beyond them.
“Partita” takes place on a stage hung and draped with Eva LeWitt’s fiber sculptures, all in the brilliant, saturated colors of stained glass. The eight dancers – four men and four women – wear as simple a costume as possible: plain workout clothing, but as with “The Times Are Racing” Peck opted for sneakers. Again, he’s literally put the men and women on equal footing.
The music, an a capella recording by the group Roomful of Teeth, incorporates both the qualities of American hymns and Native American throat singing. The group’s recording worked better than the group singing live not just because of the increased dynamics, but because of the angelic effect of disembodied voices prescribing sensible nonsense: “To the side, to the side, and around.”
When given his druthers, Peck tends to lean more towards an ensemble than a corps: a group of equals with soloists emerging from it, but less from rank than to zoom in on a representative life. The dancers ran from one configuration to another in loose, almost Tharpian movement: first a group, then four couples, back to a group, then leaping to the side and reforming themselves. The simple phrases, chopping or spinning their arms, repeated.
The others exited, leaving India Bradley and Maxwell (who made her debut, along with Kennedy Targosz and Zuniga the day prior) to dance a long duet to breathy women’s voices. When Claire Kretzschmar and Bradley originated this duet, they felt more like opposites. Maxwell and Bradley are more like reflections, similar in height and long, pulled-out physique. When they do a long, low penchée together, it’s a thing.
It’s interesting that as the two women danced together, you didn’t ask “what’s their relationship?” The world of “Partita” is more abstracted, more outside of time and place, than “Everywhere We Go” and “The Times are Racing.” The ambiguous situation seemed sufficient. The two came center and framed one another’s faces as the light faded.
Many of the same dancers were cast throughout the program, not just Woodward, but also Takahashi and Abreu. Even though the two men are different in height, their dance also had a similar sense of mirroring. Occasionally they created a shape or torsion together, but more often they moved in tandem. The athletic, neutral partnering for Bradley and Maxwell, as well as Abreu and Takahasi felt less like a duet and more like a pairing.
As the two men left, Woodward wandered in at the back to a high-voiced hymn. Peck used sneakers here and in “The Times Are Racing” for a more leisurely rebound, but he still made Woodward rip through chaîné turns at top speed in them. A trio joined her to finish her solo as a quartet.
Abreu and Takahashi came together again to move to a different pose on every note or breath of the score but quickly came into unison. Everyone returned, and things sped before the group left to the side as the lights dimmed.
“Partita,” like “The Times Are Racing” is a continued study in the subversion of the pas de deux. The earlier work has flexible casting that shades differently depending on which part is danced by a man or a woman. “Partita” has two same-sex duets, and every time you thought Gilbert Bolden III and Woodward were going to start the Big Hetero Pas de Deux, it ended under a minute later. Like the others, they worked in tandem. Takahasi, Targosz, then Abreu joined shortly after. “Partita” is very millennial, the group is the point and the ideal.
All the dancers formed a line that slowly pinwheeled, except Woodward who walked outside it as the words returned in the singing. The dancers did arm movements faster and faster, until stopping in a pause, to slowly recede back towards the darkness. But they rushed forward again to whirl their arms like propellers. Bolden and Woodward almost had a duet again, but only for a moment. The full cast walked back on the diagonal slowly as the curtain fell.
There’s enough of a corpus to see who Peck is and what he does. “Partita” showed him moving past a world of Broadway conventions, to a more complex, neutral, yet idealized abstraction.
With repeated viewings, “Everywhere You Go,” can win you over. “The Times Are Racing” and “Partita.” arrived in more compact packages so you didn’t need to overlook the sprawl. Who knows, maybe “Play Time” and “Love Letter (on shuffle)” will do something similar. The point of seeing something more than once is that it can change, or develop. Or you can.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Partita,” “Play Time,” “Love Letter (on shuffle)” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
May 18, 2023
Cover: India Bradley and Alexa Maxwell in “Partita.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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