By Leigh Witchel
An evening of dance assembled by a star ballerina is like a zen riddle: would it even exist without her? Natalia Osipova’s “Pure Dance” certainly wouldn’t. A chamber performance put together last year for Sadler’s Wells and imported to City Center, it contained six dances and Osipova was in five.
The show followed the model for most star vehicles. Like Diana Vishneva in “Beauty in Motion” a decade ago, Osipova gamely attacked anything that gave her meaty stage time, and attacked it with the same star power.
Three men joined her, one of whom was David Hallberg. That gave the show the potential of being more than just a pick-up performance. Their #Hallsipova pairings have been the stuff of ballet legend and hashtags, partly because injury and circumstances has made them so infrequent. Put the two of them together and there’s a magical sum greater than the parts.
The evening contained one major masterwork. Antony Tudor’s pas de deux from “The Leaves are Fading,” from 1975, but alas, it doesn’t excerpt well (it didn’t help that the recorded music was tinny and loud), and it didn’t really suit either dancer.
Hallberg partners no one better than Osipova. He pushed himself, and Osipova’s not big (the originator of the role, Gelsey Kirkland, was tiny) but he isn’t built to tote and carry, and this is a role for a human crane. Osipova’s performance was full of detail and filigree. She showed every pose, every change of direction and every finish. That’s what a ballerina does, but that’s not Tudor. There’s a short clip online of Kirkland, with Ivan Nagy. She moved like a stream that flowed through every position and angle without ever stopping. Every step was there, but you only saw the whole phrases.
Osipova’s strength as a ballerina is that she’s larger than life, but Tudor’s choreography is watercolors on eggshells. My friend’s sassy observation nailed it: “You’re supposed to discover the details of the dance, not be bitchslapped by them.”
Roy Assaf’s “Six Years Later” was made in 2011 and not for Osipova. It’s still got all the classic “make me a modern dancer” elements that ballerinas gravitate to when they produce their own shows, especially a channel-surfing playlist that included “Moonlight Sonata” and a Handel aria along with pop music. Osipova’s partner was Jason Kittelberger, who works with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, among others in his varied career.
Osipova and Kittelberger walked onstage to a soft oscillating hum. The music got louder; they squatted, and she braced and yanked him. This went slouching towards Beethoven, but the only thing Assaf managed to this musical cliché was the dullest choreographic cliché in the duet canon: the angst-ridden couple. Each piano note was another pose as if they were windup dolls.
Each dancer chose a different way to sell the choreography. Kittelberger pushed the movement to exaggeration, and made it as singular and eccentric as he could. Osipova connected her dots with an imaginary dialogue in between the steps. To the resignation in the sonata, they stood sad and tired; she hit him with her elbows, he stood there and took it. They reconciled to a slow jitterbug.
The two slow-danced to Marmalade’s “Reflections of My Life,” talking and laughing as if they were in their living room with the stereo on. This bit of silent dialogue, where each dancer got to act naturally in a conversation we could see, but not hear, was the least affected part of the dance and the most interesting. No worries though, the music veered off to Handel and the two went back to fighting. At least when Osipova walked away from Kittelberger at the end, she was smiling.
Yuka Oishi’s “Ave Maria” was the weakest work of the evening, but one that fulfilled an essential function: it dutifully ran through the laundry list of steps that convince balletomanes they got their money’s worth from the ticket price.
Conceptually it made a tyro’s mistake using Schubert’s hymn: Oishi’s observation in the program, “Despite the music, this is not a religious piece,” can only happen if you wear earplugs. Liturgical music is liturgical music no matter what you set to it, and your steps had best be good because it doesn’t need them. It’s “Ave Maria,” for Christ’s sake. Hopefully Oishi won’t do her next solo to “Dies Irae.”
That aside, the piece did what it was supposed to. It opened in haze and shafts of light (but not religious ones) with Osipova in a thin white shift (but not a religious one) and pointe shoes, which are religious as no one can deny they are the footwear of the devil.
This wasn’t “Don Quixote,” so Osipova couldn’t pull out all the stops, but she pulled out enough: pirouettes, huge jétés en tournant, and speedy staccato bourrées. Towards the end, the music hit a crescendo and if only she had busted into fouettés. Instead of “Ave Maria” being tastefully vulgar it would have been joyously so.
Does Iván Pérez’s “Flutter,” need Osipova? Does she need it? That’s open to discussion, but the work was less stereotypical than the others. A commission for this production, Osipova wore soft slippers and was partnered by Rambert veteran Jonathan Goddard.
Everything was kept simple. The stage was bare, Goddard and Osipova were in simple, filmy white outfits. Nico Muhly’s “Mothertongue” featured high-pitched female voices singing the street numbers of Muhly’s old residences. The dancers bounced toward us and away in a strange ecstasy.
The duo huddled at the front of the stage; the music changed and they danced with their arms – reaching, touching and opposing before the work ended suddenly.
The choreography was free movement and tumbling, using Osipova in it was in one sense like sending a Maserati to compete in a foot race. Pérez seemed to recognize his need to contribute to doing the laundry as well, and gave Osipova a burst of quick spins.
At the same time, the two weren’t grappling, they were frolicking. “Flutter” was interesting for avoiding the miserable relationship tar pit that so many other contemporary duets seem to fall into.
Kim Brandstrup is probably the most deft conceptually of the choreographers at work; he has training in both film and dance. In his commissioned solo for Hallberg, “In Absentia,” Hallberg was at first half-visible in the darkness, sitting in a chair, playing with a channel selector for a television we could barely see. He turned on a channel, we saw nothing, but heard muffled noise. On again, and this time it was the Bach Chaconne, the same one that William Forsythe used for “Artifact.” That was setting the bar awfully high before taking a step.
At first Hallberg barely swayed in reaction to the music, finally he started to move in improvisation, leading with his elbows and hands. He ran back and jogged forward, vibrating to the persistent ground of the chaconne as if possessed by it. The piece ended as Hallberg knelt at the front, unfortunately what looked like a missed cue for a blackout confused the audience and robbed Hallberg of a finish.
Brandstrup didn’t bother much with the laundry list, though he did insert some circuits of racing, jumps and turns. In his notes, Brandstrup mentioned how both he was inspired and struck by the withdrawn absorption of a dancer after he’s processed the steps – but that isn’t an idea that can easily make it across the footlights. “In Absentia” suffered from not having enough dance to be a dance and not enough concept to be conceptual.
Alexei Ratmansky’s “Valse Triste” is the first piece to be made on Hallberg and Osipova. That’s a big deal for one of the best partnerships in the last decade, but the work was a big dose of #Ratmanskyness with less sense of #Hallsipova.
To Sibelius’ bittersweet waltz the pair reached for one another. Osipova came at Hallberg in quick steps before sliding precipitously into a split. They seemed downcast, almost as if they were atoning for sins they committed, but without background, you had to take their emotions on faith. Ratmansky uses mood for ornamentation like other choreographers would use port de bras. You could also see Ratmansky’s signature within the dense phrasing, often even more than note-for-step.
Ratmansky’s natural tendency to pack in steps made keeping a laundry list unnecessary. #Hallsipova ripped through soutenu turns together, did manic happy feet on fast notes and swung through butterfly lifts. Osipova dived at Hallberg like a crazy girl and on the last notes he picked her up, cradled her and swept her overhead.
As much as we saw of Osipova, and even of Hallberg, the magic wasn’t in full force. #Hallsipova is their phenomenal chemistry that lives inside the dances, but is kindled outside of them. It’s the moment in “Giselle” when the two of them ignored the steps and just looked at each other. It’s a balcony pas de deux in “Romeo and Juliet” so committed that the ABT audience wouldn’t let the first act end until the pair took a curtain call.
None of the dances gave them a chance to get that chemical reaction. But that wasn’t going to happen from dancing a pas de deux, they needed to act a pas d’action. It’s understandable that Osipova didn’t feel like doing Giselle or Juliet again, but then perhaps Manon or the Sylph?
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance with David Hallberg
New York City Center, New York, NY
April 3, 2019
Cover: Natalia Osipova in “The Leaves are Fading.” Photo © Johan Persson.
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