by Leigh Witchel
New York City Ballet fielded several debuts in a quadruple bill by an eclectic group of contemporary choreographers, with works that were over forty years old and some that were less than two. It was a mixed bag, but one thing you could be certain of, in Alexei Ratmansky’s work, the dancers would look their best.
It took more for the dancers to show off in Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces. The Philip Glass selections Robbins used in the 1983 work were more mechanical and less emotional than some of Glass’ better-known later works, though Facades (the main duet) had hints of what might come with its big, sonorous saxophone line. But Glass Pieces isn’t a work where you think about individual dancers, even that central pas de deux is undercut by the hypnotic procession of women Robbins places behind it.
When it was made, Robbins was using recent compositions. Rubric and Facades are from the Glassworks album, recorded in 1982 to reach new audiences. Robbins had been asked to direct the opera Akhnaten. He made a ballet as a sketch, but had to withdraw from the opera because of schedule conflicts. Still, he kept the ballet. You could see Robbins try to find choreographic analogues for minimalism; deploying sextets striding across the stage identically as others wait for their turn in the back.
Unity Phelan was impeccable with Adrian Danchig-Waring in Facades, with clean shapes and control, but the duet had a different look. When Robbins cast, he used the tallest, leggiest dancers. Phelan has gorgeous legs, but also a long torso, so the proportions felt different. The duet wound down with the two in a parallel pose like an Egyptian frieze, an intimation of Akhnaten.
To Glass’ pounding, percussive ostinato Robbins created a slow boil of a finale that always whips up a frenzy. Akhnaten makes no racial references, but like the Talking Heads’ I Zimbra from 1979’s Fear of Music album, there is something off about that now. Robbins reacted to the pounding rhythm with a limited frame of reference. Give that time, and it seems more patronizing with age.
Red Angels is thirty years old, made for 1994’s Diamond Project, and Ulysses Dove’s penultimate composition before his death in 1996. It had an all-star cast, Peter Boal, Darci Kistler, Albert Evans and Wendy Whelan. It’s one of the few works by Dove for a ballet company we have besides Serious Pleasures, and it had a fully new cast, except Danchig-Waring, who was making his New York debut.
The score by Richard Einhorn, Maxwell’s Demon, for electric violin, was originally written for Mary Rowell, who played in the pit at this performance three decades later. Einhorn pushed the instrument to take several jobs; Rowell tapped the violin as well as played it with a bow.
The work seemed built to be a showcase. Danchig-Waring, clapping in silence, was spotlit first. He posed, and Mira Nadon posed behind, waiting. As he left on a thumping beat, she came forward, spinning round in speedy step-over turns.
The violin sawed into a repeat, for Joseph Gordon and Dominika Afansenkov. With the red lighting and costumes, the piece had such period ‘tude. Both dancers were emoting, but Gordon was living his fierce ’90s dream. If you’ve got a few generations of NYCB dancers under your belt, Afanasenkov has a beauty and sweetness reminiscent of Carla Körbes.
Red Angels is episodic, built of short musical episodes; pithy statements with abrupt endings. The next section used all four dancers spot lit in a line, coming forward into a fifth follow spot for a showoff moment for each. Nadon whirled through fouettés. Whatever issues she had with them before seem to have been surmounted; when she’s on, she’s really on.
The back travelers and the lights created a Paris is Burning runway. Danchig-Waring did the first walk, turning, then hinging to the floor, rolling over his toes. He hit an arabesque; each dancer could showcase an individual moment of mystique.
Inheriting Boal’s part, Gordon went from a high arabesque to a higher extension tilted to the side. After popping her arches, Afanasenkov spun with clenched fists through chaîné turns. Nadon dropped into a deep plié in second position, then rocketed her leg to the side.
The dancers headed to the back, as at the end of Agon, but back to the ’90s instead of the ’50s with a sultry look back at us over their shoulders before the blackout. The preservation of Dove’s work is important, and Boal, with Pacific Northwest Ballet, has made an effort to keep Dove’s work in repertory. But though Red Angels is a popular work, it’s a small-scale piece that puts fierceness and attitude at its center, implying that it’s substance rather than style.
Play Time, NYCB’s third commission from Gianna Reisen, felt overwhelmed by the overbearing music and costumes that Reisen, who was still in her early twenties, may have gotten saddled with. Solange Knowles’ score, often danceable, could also be sour, but the work more feels as if it was 70% costume, and worse, the wrong costumes.
Super-sparkly fashion outfits by Alejandro Gómez Palomo have always seemed to wear the dancers rather than the other way round. Everything felt at odds. The cast walked with contrived, decorative port de bras, which did recall modeling and fashion, but Palomo’s designs were angular and Reisen’s moves were curved.
David Gabriel’s part, one of his first featured roles, started with a duet with Emma Von Enck, then Samuel Melnikov met India Bradley, doing moves and poses that were too cool for school. Naomi Corti, taking a new part, did an allegro variation that turned round herself. In a coincidental link to Red Angels, the lighting closed the movement in a red silhouette.
Maybe something had changed, or perhaps it was the angle, but one of the most effective light cues, a sidelight that made all the costumes seem to be sprayed with dew, didn’t have that magical effect this time. After repeated viewings since its premiere at the 2022 Fall Fashion Gala, the piece felt as if it was slowly sinking into tar.
One of Alexei Ratmansky’s gifts is that dancers often look their best in his work. With several debuts in the cast, you could see The Ratmansky Effect in play during Pictures at an Exhibition. To Stephen Gosling’s piano, five men and an equal number of women, all in drapey costumes, stood in a formation of three levels reminiscent of Prodigal Son, with solos traveling out from the group and returning.
Emma Von Enck was one of those making their debut, and she showed more than her default sharp accuracy. She was vibrant, racing about, skidding and leaping. Both here and in a duet with Anthony Huxley, Ratmansky colored her precision with eccentricity.
Nadon went in for Sara Mearns, spinning in attitude and slapping the floor in a ferocious solo. Nadon has the stage presence to fill Mearns’ shoes if she’s called to – and now she often is. Because of her youth, even her studied effects felt less mannered, as she tossed on pointe as if in a shivering wind, or flew through turns before jumping off.
Tyler Angle and Alexa Maxwell danced a crepuscular duet. Without seeming unnatural, Maxwell is the opposite of Nadon, a very studied and considered dancer. She knows how she wants something to look, and had Angle behind her, making all his assistance invisible. Also, Maxwell is dramatic, but not a drama queen, more often she makes her point by understating it. She jumped suspended into Angle’s arm. It registered, but rather than hammering on the moment, she went on, and left carried out by him standing on his chest. Angle was in a sweet spot this season both in partnering and dancing, popping Maxwell skywards and landing his tours beautifully, and he could make a potentially awkward exit such as this seamless.
In group sections, four women stomped in, using their weight and and galumphing about to sketch drama drama drama before stomping out sideways on pointe. A quintet of men replaced them in pas de chats and speedy jumps for the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. Like Balanchine, Ratmansky tends to take a very direct approach. Mussorgsky’s compositions were an interpretation of pictures; Ratmansky took the same reactive approach to creating steps from the music.
Ashley Laracey pushed Aarón Sanz to the ground, then the two wandered as if blind. At her best, Laracey is a ballerina; she glowed under The Ratmansky Effect. In his debut, KJ Takahashi did a skipping duet with Olivia MacKinnon. Takahashi is a technical virtuoso and this season showed MacKinnon to look more herself in allegro than adagio.
Angle entered, Maxwell came to him, Chan and Nadon. The stage filled with fractured motion that coalesced to a line, then permutations forming into a quiet group. Nadon left Chan, then he grabbed her, almost violently, but Ratmansky tends to use emotion as punctuation and emphasis, not as words. Nadon flailed but returned to Chan.
Ratmansky built slowly to The Great Gate of Kiev, at first a slow procession for four couples pairing off, then Nadon and Chan returned to complete the cast. Both Mussorgsky and Ratmansky scaled towards their finales. The piano pealed triumphantly like a carillon, more and more of the dancers rushed forward and back until it was the full cast. The men lifted the women overhead with their legs forward like a rifle barrel. Wendell K. Harrington’s projections and animations of Wassily Kandinsky’s artwork got an addition: the Ukrainian flag projected before a final lift.
As he joins NYCB to become Artist in Residence, and has a work next February to selections from Minkus’ Paquita. What will The Ratmansky Effect look like then?
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Pictures at an Exhibition, Red Angels, Play Time, Glass Pieces – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
May 18, 2024
Cover: Emma Von Enck and Anthony Huxley in Pictures at an Exhibition. Photo © Erin Baiano.
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