Tag: Arvo Part

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PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET MAKES ITS JOYCE DEBUT (and Marco Goecke Steals the Show IMO)

 

Tuesday night, the Pacific Northwest Ballet opened its 5-day run at the Joyce. This was my first time seeing this company, and it has a reputation as one of the most prestigious in the U.S. Helmed by Peter Boal, a former dancer with New York City Ballet, the company is already familiar to many NYCB fans, but not yet to me.

I really wish they could have brought the whole company and danced at City Center, a more suitable stage for ballet. The Joyce is small and known for modern dance and so they could only bring a small portion of the company. And, the small stage limited their choice of choreography and prevented the dancers from dancing full-out. So I felt it lacked a certain balletic grandeur, although I still greatly enjoyed the evening.

For one thing, I was thrilled to finally be able to see Brazilian ballerina Carla Korbes dance, after being introduced to her on the Winger. She had a part in just about every ballet and she did not disappoint — she has great charisma and dances with great dramatic intention.

I was also happy to be able to see Seth Orza again 😀 (Everyone who’s read this blog for a while knows how downright devastated I was when he left NYCB…) He’s so sharp and precise, and so strong — I think he definitely needs to be promoted to principal (he’s now a soloist, as he was when he left NYCB).

So, there were four pieces on the program: Opus 111 by Twyla Tharp, Fur Alina by Edwaard Liang, Mopey by Marco Goecke (my favorite, and pictured above, James Moore dancing), and 3 Movements by Benjamin Millepied.

I’ll start with my favorite — Mopey, by Goecke, danced very intensely by Moore.

 

I’d always been curious about this young German choreographer ever since this little exchange (the “Evan M.” being Evan McKie, a principal with Stuttgart Ballet).

Anyway, Mopey is hard to describe — basically just a solo for a man who by turns twists and contorts his body into awkward shapes, bounces up and down, makes muscle-man poses, waves his arms about gracefully, appears to be possessed and struggling to control his limbs — his fingers bent and curved down somewhat grotesquely, almost monster-like. It was short but really engrossing.   Here’s a YouTube clip of a dancer from Stuttgart dancing an excerpt from the piece. Unlike in the clip, which is danced only to one piece of music, Moore danced first to silence, then to Bach, then to pop punk by The Cramps.

I also liked Millepied’s 3 Movements, pictured below (dancers are James Moore and Lucien Postlewaite).

 

All photos by Angela Sterling, by the way.

It was abstract but I thought I detected a bit of a men versus women showdown (I think this is a recurring theme of his — at least in his recent works). It was set to rather unsettling Steve Reich music and filled with original movement, the way the groups of men and women would go at each other at times, almost like they were from separate clans. But the costumes were contemporary: almost casual work attire for the men and little flirty dresses for the women. Costumes were designed by Millepied’s girlfriend, Isabella Boylston, corps dancer at ABT.

I also liked Fur Alina by Liang. It was a man woman pas de deux danced by Carla Korbes and Karel Cruz and it seemed to be the somber story of two lovers slowly deciding to part. It was set to Arvo Part (who it seems, understandably, is becoming the most used composer for contemporary ballet these days — at least for these despairing pas de deux).

Oddly, the Tharp was my least favorite (below: dancers in front are Korbes and Batkhurel Bold).

 

I’ve never seen Opus 111 before and this one (set to Brahms) didn’t seem to have any of Tharp’s signature comical character roles or her theme of ballet versus other kind of dance (fill in the blank: American social —  like in Deuce Coupe, Scottish folk, hip hoppy aerobics —  like in Upper Room) or her crazy, almost death-defying lifts. It was pretty and lyrical and the dancers lightly flew around the stage, at times coupling off. But sweet as it was, it just seemed to lack something. Might have been the small stage though and they just couldn’t dance it full-out?… Sir Alastair saw something more in it though.

I hope the company comes to NY again — to City Center.

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MORPHOSES OPENS ITS 2009 NEW YORK SEASON WITH ITS BEST PROGRAM THUS FAR

 

Performance photos coming soon; in the meantime please enjoy another BRILLIANT photo by Kyle Froman.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses opened its NY season last night at City Center and I felt it was the best program they’ve done in their three years of existence. (At least Program A was; tonight I’ll see Program B). It’s a varied program with work by four different choreographers: Wheeldon himself; Bolshoi A.D.-turned ABT resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, whom all the critics downright worship; Australian Tim Harbour; and the Dutch husband and wife team Lightfoot Leon.

I must talk first about the third piece on the program, that by Lightfoot Leon, Softly As I Leave You. This is one of the most riveting pas de deux I’ve ever seen and it’s performed by the absolutely mesmerizing Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk. Every single person who is not a professional critic was absolutely spellbound by it, could not stop talking about it. This happened at both the Fall For Dance Festival, where the work premiered (which I wrote about here), and last night. It’s simply about a couple, one partner’s decision to leave the other, and it’s a harrowing decision. After the lights went out on the final poignant image, the elderly woman on my left, whom I didn’t know, grabbed me and said, “Oh my God, that was so good!” And from my friend, who thinks the Arvo Part music used (Spiegel im Spiegel) is completely over-used and was expecting not to like it for that reason: “Oh my God, that music actually worked here!” she exclaimed, open-mouthed. She agreed it was one of the best duets she’d ever seen. And people were going on and on about it during intermission, both here and at FFD.

So why in the world do the critics hate it so much??? They ALL do. ALL OF THEM. It’s like in order to be a professional critic there are certain things you’re required to hate and this is one of them. And yet audiences are so overwhelmed by its power. Clement Crisp rants, “I can find not one iota of merit in its vulgar posturings.” Guardian critic Luke Jennings calls it “slick surfaced” and replete with “glib insincerity.” I can’t remember Alastair Macaulay’s exact words after its FFD premiere, but he hated it too. And a Ballet.co critic whom I spoke with at an ABT Guggenheim event (and who was the only non-Brit of the lot) complained how awful he thought it was as well.

This happened — I’m sorry, I’m getting off on a tangent — but this happened with practically every Fall For Dance piece, and with ABT’s recent season: EVERY SINGLE CRITIC hated every single one of the pieces the public adored (Barton, Millepied, Mark Dendy’s BRILLIANT Afternoon of the Fauns) and loved those they found least compelling (Ratmansky). I mean, more on this later, but what do you do if you’re an artistic director or choreographer? Do you cater to the critics — the “important people” or do you trust us, the commoners?

Anyway, mine and my friend’s second favorite piece of the night was Tim Harbour’s Leaving Songs. Guess what: all the critics hated it. I need to move to Europe… This dance had such emotional depth. It was about the cycle of life, death and rebirth — though I’m not sure you’d know that if the choreographer hadn’t said so in a little film clip shown before the program. But that doesn’t matter; you can come up with your own meaning anyway. The movement was kind of a combination of modern, classical and what looked to me to be African, and the music, by Australian composer Ross Edwards, is equally varied, at points sounding classical European, at points more percussive and African-sounding.

There were several striking moments, such as the point during a pas de deux where a man puts his hands around a woman’s neck and she falls before him. It kind of seems as if he’s strangling her out of anger, but then her arms flutter about beautifully, almost-bird like. It’s a combination of violence and grace. And there’s a moment where the group is dancing in ensemble and the movement is very wavy and undulating, very African, and everyone’s moving in unison and the music slows and the dancers slow, almost like they’re approaching death. Then the drums start pulsating and the dancers come to life and begin sidling cautiously but with intention toward the front of the stage. There are also several very sexually suggestive scenes with women’s legs splayed in the air. No tights are worn, and my friend and I couldn’t stop wondering how in the world they keep those leotards from shifting…

Anyway, I found the Harbour very compelling. And Rubinald Pronk really stood out here as well. He has so much fluidity and expansiveness in his body, and I don’t think anyone has more intense eyes.

 

(photo from Vail website)

Alexei Ratmansky’s Bolero was enjoyable too, largely because of the familiar Ravel music. For me, Ratmansky is one of those artists whose work doesn’t jump out at you and hit you over the head with its brilliance. Rather, I’ll need to see a dance of his several times before I get a sense of what it’s about, before I can fully appreciate it. Wheeldon’s work is the same. The critics seem to think this is the mark of a good choreographer — that it grows on you and you notice new things with each viewing, and I suppose it is. But for the average consumer, going to the ballet so often to see pieces over and over again to understand and appreciate them more fully can get prohibitively expensive. Dance art is not like a museum or art gallery where you can stand there for as long as you like.

Anyway, in Bolero, there are four pairs of women and men, each person wearing a number on his or her top. The women wear white tops and little skirts, almost like cheerleaders and the men wear black. If the women were cheerleaders, the men didn’t seem to be any kind of sports players though. They danced in groups divided between male and female, almost as if they were competing with each other, or as if their movement was some kind of back and forth dialog. And then toward the end, they began to partner each other more, the crescendo of the music complemented by various lifts that I found at points to be a little humorous, though it may have just been me. For example, when those trombones (I think that’s what they are anyway; maybe they’re tubas), are blaring kind of off-key at the end, the men lift the women over their heads, upside-down and the women do these upside-down developes, their legs splaying along with the warped trombones. I thought it was funny but I might be the only one.

 

And then the first piece on the program was Wheeldon’s Commedia (photo above by Erin Baiano), which was made in homage to Ballets Russes and was premiered last year. I wrote a bit about it here and here.

Here’s an excerpt from the company performing Commedia at the Vail International Dance Festival:

Also, this season marks the company’s collaboration with the young orchestra (most players are under 30, Wheeldon said), Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, founded and directed by the very entertaining, energetic Alondra de la Parra — yes, a female conductor OMG! The evening opened with Wheeldon giving a little address and then the orchestra playing on Overture to Estancia: Malambo by Alberto Ginastera. At the same time the orchestra played the Overture (this was their first time playing in a pit for dance, and not centerstage, by the way), a screen was dropped over the stage and a delightfully humorous film was shown of the dramatic conductor directing her crew, the violinists all swaying dramatically in unison at points. It was a lot of fun. Whole night was very good.

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TAKE DANCE PREMIERES FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW

 

 

 

 

TAKE Dance Company began its season at Dance Theater Workshop on Thursday night. There were four dances on the program — all choreographed by artistic director Takehiro Ueyama: two pieces from last year (the upbeat Linked, and Love Stories, a haunting duet about three stages in the life of a relationship that was inspired by a Magritte painting); the New York premiere of Shabon; and the world premiere of Footsteps in the Snow, both rather abstract pieces that I found a bit unsettling.

 

 

Shabon, set to Steve Reich music, is bookended by a solitary woman walking across the stage blowing bubbles. Bubbles are blown onstage throughout the dance, by bubble machines, which would seem to make the mood of the piece playful. But there’s a lot of intense partnering and the dancers seem to be characters who struggle somewhat with each other. During the climax of the piece, a small woman walks atop the shoulders of the other dancers, who together make a kind of human pyramid. She does this twice, then falls backward, hoping the others will catch her, which they do. But it still made me jump, because it doesn’t seem like she’s really trusting them so much as that she doesn’t care about her own well-being any more, like she’s given up. Then, in the end, when the solitary woman is walking across stage blowing her bubbles again, it’s like she’s in her own world. To me, it was about the solitariness of human existence or the fragility of connection.

The last piece, Footsteps, seemed to echo those themes as well as hint at the impermanence of human existence. Set to the rain-drop-like music of Arvo Part (the same used by Christopher Wheeldon in his famous After the Rain pas de deux), the stage was covered with fake snow (confetti) and there were some “snow-blowing” machines used from time to time to cover the dancers’ tracks, which made me think of the way it’s impossible to leave a lasting footprint in the snow. The dancers danced by turns in solo, in pairs, and in ensemble, the mood shifting between violent, tender and pensive. In one part, Francisco Gracinao (who regularly dances with Paul Taylor and was guesting with TAKE) throws himself violently to the floor, ending in a balance on the side of his neck, his legs in the air. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone throw himself down that way and then basically land on his neck. It made me jump. In other places, the men dangle the women upside down. In one moment — my favorite – -a man and woman, both crawling on the floor, find each other, and rub necks, entwining them and kind of locking them into place, fitting together perfectly like the pieces of a puzzle. It’s a beautiful image and at first I was hoping the piece would end there, but no, the pause in the music and the dimmed lights were only a pause; there was another, more disconcerting section that followed. I guess, thinking it over, I’m glad it didn’t end there — it would probably have been too pat, too happy, and I don’t think Take does happy endings!

I really like TAKE’s dancers. Ueyama has a good, diverse group — about half of them are kind of  “all American” in a Paul Taylorish way (Ueyema danced with Paul Taylor before forming his own group) — kind of carefree and sunny and spacious in their use of the floor, and then the other half are these really intense Asian women who captivate you with the depth of their gaze and the small details in their movement. They’re kind of opposites in a way but both are equally compelling and together I think make for a really unique company.

This is a good, varied program. It runs at DTW through this Sunday afternoon.Visit the DTW website for details and video excerpts, and see Philip’s blog for more pictures by his friend Kokyat.

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HEDWIG DANCES, AUDIENCE MEMBERS SIT BACK AND ENJOY

 

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Reviewed by Christopher Atamian

Jan Bartoszek’s Hedwig Dances arrived in New York this week via Chicago, where the company is based, and Havana, where four of the six dancers apparently hail from.  We’re happy they did.  Friday night at the Joyce Soho Hedwig presented three relatively short, lovely dances from three different choreographers: Bartoszek, Andrea Miller and Marianela Boan.  If you know nothing about contemporary dance, this trio-and the dancers performing them-provides a good sampler mixing styles and rhythms while demonstrating a deep seriousness of purpose, a hieratic, almost devotional aura and an evident passion for their work throughout.

In Bartoszek’s Night Blooming Jasmine, the six Hedwig dancers (Victor Alexander, Alitra Cartman, Justin Deschamps, Maray Gutierrez, Jessie Gutierrez and Michel Rodriguez) perform in summery cotton pants and shirts, moving around the stage with a lovely lightness of being reminiscent at times of Buddhist monks praying, at others of Christ-like crucifixions, as they recreate the movements and activities of the night (nb:the jasmine releases its scent after dusk…) One wouldn’t necessarily know that this is what the dance represents and it doesn’t matter: the movement vocabulary is original, varied and simply elegant.

Andrea Miller’s Dust, dedicated to her departed stepfather Jack, is ostensibly about mortality, loss and perhaps even trust.  Michel “Chino” Rodriguez and Deschamps run in a circle, push and pull off and onto each other, sometimes covering each others’ eyes as they bound forward, for the better part of eleven minutes. It’s an abstract piece, reminiscent of early modern improvisational work. Set to Arvo Pärt’s lovely and sad Fratres it hits just the right note. I have been watching Miller’s work since her student days at Juilliard and at her own company Gallim Dance, and this is perhaps my favorite piece of hers to date: simple, unpretentious, and level-in a word, mature.

Marianela Boan who choreographed the final piece, Stampede, with original score by Christian Cherry also works with improvisation, letting her dancers innovate as they go.  They negotiate space in and around yellow and black slashed crowd control ropes, moving them around the stage and changing their geometric configurations. The piece begins with Maray Gutierrez slipping in and out, under and over the ropes that are arranged in a boxing ring formation, until the robust and very macho Victor Alexander picks her up and literally sweeps her off her feet.  Some of the rope work is reminiscent of (rhythmic) gymnastics.  As the dancers negotiate each other, the ropes and imaginary crowd members, the dance becomes a metaphor for negotiating and overcoming life’s abstract obstacles as well. It’s a lovely piece and a lovely dance company.

Bartoszek held a Q & A after the Friday performance with her dancers. Both choreographer and performers displayed an infectious charm and good humor which counts for something, as well. We hope to see them at the Joyce again soon, next time in Chelsea…

Nota bene: Night Blooming Jasmine received its New York Premiere on Friday, Stampede and Dust their World Premieres. Victor Alexander technically hails from Pinar del Rio, not La Havana.  Marianela Boan is also Cubana!