by Leigh Witchel
Maria Kochetkova is a free agent. Tiny but seemingly indestructible, she danced with English National Ballet, then became a pillar of San Francisco Ballet, adding guest principal at American Ballet Theatre to her resume before opting for a freelance career.
She led a small group in a fast-paced evening at The Joyce Theater. The production she assembled was filled with talent and reflected her quirky, aggressively contemporary taste, but unfortunately most of the choreography didn’t match the level of the dancing.
The first half of the program came at us rapid fire. Partnered by Sebastian Kloborg, Kochetkova led off in William Forsythe’s “Bach Duet” (from “New Suite”). The problem here wasn’t the choreography. Kloborg and Kochetkova were focused on the external trappings of dancing Forsythe. He took a finicky retiré and she bent her wrists; both pushed their pelvises forwards, as if that was what signified dancing Forsythe. Instead, they looked as if they were dancing Forsythette. Without context and the actual core of Forsythe’s choreography – his full phrasing – the duet looked like a drugstore copy of “Artifact.”
Myles Thatcher contributed a solo for Carlo di Lanno, “Painting Greys,” to a pop song of the same title. Slow, loosely-danced and just as loosely-composed, it felt as if Di Lanno was improvising. With a checklist of funky moves, showy jumps and beats, including Albrecht’s tour to the ground from “Giselle,” it looked too much like a competition solo for YAGP.
Marco Goecke’s “Tué” was set to nervous French vocals while Drew Jacoby sternly twitched and gesticulated. “Tué” was an arm dance, with fluttering hands, twitching, flailing and very little going on below the waist. At the end Jacoby puffed her cheeks, blew and the lights went out.
Kochetkova danced “Degunino,” a short solo by Marcos Morau. Her hair was clipped into a Björk topknot and she was wearing a see-through leotard that had tactful Monty Pythonesque modesty blotches at the naughty bits. The dance was again twitchy, but the song was in German and she was on pointe. She did more with the solo, moving about the stage. You could see her feet of steel, and a tendu that looked like something special merely by pointing her foot in front of her. She did hops on pointe suddenly – more echoes of Giselle – and flicked into a pirouette, stopping enigmatically as the lights dimmed.
If Kochetkova gave us more to look at, all these solos shared a lack of architecture. It’s the easiest trap in a solo; to make chains of steps without a purpose, so that instead of a dance, it seems like aimless noodling.
Sofiane Sylve and Di Lanno performed David Dawson’s update of the Act 2 pas de deux from “Swan Lake.” It refashioned the duet as an ever-revolving curlicue on the stage, but at least in excerpt, it was more of a showpiece than a conversation with the original.
But then, Jacoby’s new duet “Rachel, Nevada” was so potentially awful it was kinda fabulous. Kochetkova and Jacoby appeared dressed in pink and purple unitards posing to someone talking in Russian and a soprano wailing. The lights flashed and they reappeared in different poses.
Austin Powers psychedelia was projected on the cyclorama, and Jacoby was again doing her Rosa Klebb face. Kochetkova and Jacoby danced off-pointe in a mixture of choreography and noodling. The projections diminished, they touched one another and the piece was done. “Rachel, Nevada,” was incomprehensible, but with more personality than anything else up to that point, as if the Teletubbies guest-starred on “Sprockets.” And that goofball weirdness is very much a part of Kochetkova’s brand.
Another Dawson duet, “At the End of the Day,” opened the second half. In two sections, the music to the first part (Szymon Brzòska’s “Migrations”) was piano adagio, then whirling strings. Kloborg brought Kochetkova in pressed overhead and set her down. Then she was up and overhead again. The pair used the same exaggerated placement as in Forsythe, only quieter. Kloborg is tall and strong, and Kochetkova is easy to partner, so it looked good. He pressed her skywards one last time before she moved away quietly. He circled the stage and left as she arched back. As the lights faded she went off to follow him.
Jérôme Bel has made a career of extended theater pieces where dancers voice their aspirations and disappointments about their careers. But his piece for Kochetkova, “Masha Machine” was either unfinished, stymied in its collaboration or a complete con job.
In writing, Bel asked Kochetkova about injury and with pride, she mentioned how rarely she was hurt, only missing three shows in 11 years. Later on, she recounted getting hit in a performance, and even though she was bleeding, she still finished it. You could imagine Bel, like Darren Aronofsky, picking at scabs and probing for wounded disappointment, but getting nothing.
So Bel threw up his hands and gave us essentially the least he could deliver – a projection of his Facebook messages with Kochetkova that led up to the commission.
Really. That’s all he did. Parts of it were funny or dishy – both Kochetkova and Bel trashed Benjamin Millepied, and the passing nature of the slight made it more cutting.
But Bel got almost no hints of resentment or disappointment from Kochetkova, and if he tried to, we barely saw an effort. The texts went on for about 20 minutes, but stopped before there was any breakthrough, or even anything beyond getting-to-know-you.
Finally for the last few minutes Kochetkova came in wearing sweats and booties to briefly explain how she dances Giselle: she does not use her eyes in the second act. Bel tried to ask the kind of questions that would have provoked his other subjects (“Are you afraid of death?”) but Kochetkova balked, thinking he was being mean trying to make her admit she was scared to die. So he pulled back and asked her what it was like to play someone who was dead. Instead of an entry into a deeper conversation, that was the end.
Bel’s deepest collaborations with dancers (Pichet Klunchun, Véronique Doisneau, or Cédric Andrieux) have shone a light not only on the dancer, but on the institution they danced with or the form they danced. This one was a massive cop-out – but no matter Kochetkova’s avant-garde taste, she and Bel were a bad match. Bel’s canon about dancers is a survey in dissatisfaction or frustration – an airing of grievances by dancers who didn’t make it as far as they thought they should have.
Yet by every estimation, including her own, Kochetkova’s career was a success. If she had to fight to be recognized at the Bolshoi school, she won. Her career at SFB placed her right at the center of the repertory, she performed most every role, was sought after by choreographers and valued by the company. If there were any scabs to pick at, they were well-covered, and the one thing you saw was that Kochetkova couldn’t find a way to be ungrateful for her career. And there were so many other aspects to Kochetkova, including her kewpie-doll meets Chuckie fashion aesthetic, worth exploring that were left untouched.
The choreography may not have lived up to the dancing, but even if Bel was no help, the evening was still an honest, accurate portrait of Kochetkova and her taste.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Bach Duet” (from New Suite), “Painting Greys,” “Tué,” “Degunino,” “White Swan Pas de Deux,” “Rachel, Nevada,” “At the End of the Day,” “Masha Machine” – Maria Kochetkova Catch Her if You Can
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
July 16, 2019
Cover: Drew Jacoby and Maria Kochetkova in “Rachel, Nevada.” Photo © Rachel Neville Photography.
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