by Leigh Witchel
American Ballet Theatre’s Choreographers of the 20th and 21st Centuries program was a triple bill of powerhouse players: George Balanchine, Alexei Ratmansky and Twyla Tharp. Perhaps the most interesting read of the company was to see what they did the best.
Balanchine has never been ABT’s specialty; its credo of not having a company style close to guarantees generic performances. That’s what we got with Ballet Imperial. The production designs had some lovely notes. Jean-Marc Puissant created chandeliers that were a reference to the ones at the company’s home theater across the plaza, the Metropolitan Opera House. It was a glitzy touch that worked. His costumes had the women in tutus and men in vests, all in silver brocade with blue accents for the corps.
Emily Wong played the opening solo of Tchaikovsky’s second piano concerto at a more spacious tempo than you might have heard at NYCB for Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. But that fit the idea of ABT’s version, which stands on ceremony more than NYCB’s.
Things felt different on Christine Shevchenko’s first entrance – the famous one. Shevchenko has the chops for the lead ballerina part, but she cheated. When she did the treacherous series of swivel turns, the tip of her working foot should have lightly brushed the floor as if it were tracing a circle. Shevchenko kept her toe lifted and then planted it down to brake herself. The turn should actually coast to a stop. Changing one step for another can be a distinction without a difference, but here, that was the point of the entry, and it was omitted.
When Calvin Royal III gestured to invite her to dance, they again stood on ceremony, doing a spacious duet that hit all the touchstones that you’d expect in dancers whose bread and butter was Swan Lake. The opening movement is a riff on a court scene, and Shevchenko differentiated it from the “lakeside” second movement. One mime moment in the opening movement, which at NYCB is done closer to Odette avoiding Siegfried, Shevchenko did as Odile flirting with him.
Shevchenko bent far to the side when doing balances in raccourci, and Royal did not miss a tour to the knee, but they got a little stuck on turns. The tempo stayed leisurely; in her final entrée of the first movement, Shevchenko didn’t speed up in her fast pas de bourrées round herself.
In a pretty and apt nod to the moment right before curtain-rise at the Met, Puissant’s chandeliers moved up or down, and the lighting went blue for adagio. Shevchenko did the central adagio very much standing on ceremony. She served ballerina moments and gave ballerina arms.
In the solo ballerina role, Chloe Misseldine had a strong performance, with attack from her first extensions to ecarté. In the first movement, she took the circle threading through the corps slow, but sped up by the chaînés and stuck her exit balance.
Still, you wouldn’t have been looking at technique or motion with her. It was all about her lines. She has easy facility; her leg just flicked up and is so straight that the foot completed the line without winging. When her arabesque went to exactly 90°, it was gorgeous.
As always at ABT, the bows were a ceremonious ritual, with both blooms given by Shevchenko and Misseldine to their consorts. Misseldine gave her bouquet to Wong in thanks, but Wong then got her own bouquet and had to hand the extra to conductor David LaMarche.
Alexei Ratmansky made Neo for Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside in the spring of 2021 for a digital performance, but also as a way of helping them back into the condition they needed for live performance.
Whiteside and Boylston reprised their roles, now in new costumes. Both were attired by Moritz Junge in simple, fire engine red. Boylston wore a short dress made of strips, Whiteside was in a sleeveless leotard and tights. The stage was smoky and sidelit. This may have been a practical nod to the programming; In the Upper Room requires stage haze. It may have made sense to start the mechanics of it for Neo.
Sumie Kameko was placed on the side apron, and played Dai Fujikara’s composition for shamisen. It started with one of Ratmansky’s goofy moments; Whiteside and Boylston waved to Kameko and she waved back.
The piece tested the dancers’ energy and aggression, almost on the level of a high-intensity workout. Whiteside did happy feet, freaking out round the stage as Boylston sat and watched. She put her hand on his head and used the support to whack her leg to the front. She flipped through turns with her arms overhead as her ponytail flew, then did repeated balances in relevé, possibly a sly quote from Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux.
Whiteside left her to whip through turns but Boylston remained on balance, shades of apocryphal stories of virtuoso pas de deux where the ballerina upstaged her partner. After more tricks, the two did an entropic adagio. He lifted her to his shoulder where she collapsed over, then she flopped into penché and he dragged her. She put her hand on his head again, he happy-footed round her in a promenade. Then they both did fouettés. The point seemed to be the messy exhaustion and exertion.
The whole thing had the feel of a show-off work, but what are most stand-alone pas de deux anyway? You could tell Ratmansky made it for them. It had their energy and cheeky style. They ended with their fists up in the air to celebrate getting through it.
Even after that, there still was the awkward flower ritual. Boylston gave her flowers to Kameko, but then someone came out to give Kameko more flowers, which had already happened. It was a lovely thought, but in bows as well as dancing, standing on ceremony gets to be a little much.
Tharp’s aerobic marathon, In the Upper Room, closed the evening on a high note. Gillian Murphy paired with Devon Teuscher as the two women in sneakers who open the ballet. They ceded to Aran Bell, Cory Stearns and Joseph Markey in his debut run. Markey did what most dancers seem to do on their first shots in this; just throw themselves into it, flailing. It wasn’t the worst idea.
The ballet’s structure contains endless permutations, some women on pointe mixed with dancers in sneakers doing duos, quartets, and trios. Tharp neatly divides the work but then fuzzily deploys who’s in what. Catherine Hurlin joined into the sneaker brigade, and Boylston was the main ballerina on pointe, partnered by Thomas Forster.
Everyone was pushing to where they might lose it, particularly the women in sneakers, as there’s room for even more risk than with the more precarious pointe shoe.
Three men doffed their striped shirts down to red tank tops, a costuming link to Neo. In a crazy way, this section was a breather for the men. It didn’t stop, but it was slower. After, the men rolled down their tank tops and were bare chested.
From here it was a climb to Tharp’s apotheosis of exhaustion. When Bell first did the ballet, he was spent by the end. He still was; Tharp killed him, Stearns and Markey at the end, making them lift the women in partnered rivoltades. It was like watching longshoremen unload vegetable sacks at the last half hour of the day.
Still, of the season’s repertory that I saw, In the Upper Room looked the best. Well-staged by Blaine Hoven and Shelley Washington, the dancers looked alive. The loose movement style Tharp is looking for came through a process of beatific endurance. Murphy, who looked as if she were putting on airs in Études, wiggled happily. She loosened up and she used her power and force without stiffening into positions. The company has done In the Upper Room for over 35 years, and unlike the Balanchine, it looks as if the dancers feel like it’s theirs, and don’t have to stand on ceremony.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Ballet Imperial, Neo, In the Upper Room – American Ballet Theatre
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 19, 2024
Cover: Chloe Misseldine and American Ballet Theatre in Ballet Imperial. Photo © Kyle Froman.
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