Barcelona Ballet at NY City Center

Barcelona Ballet, the company formerly known as Corella Ballet, made their return to City Center this weekend, with the ever-charming Angel Corella at the helm.

The program opened on Tuesday night with “Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1,” originally choreographed for ABT by Clark Tippet (“Variety and Virtuosity” DVD anyone?). With a corps of sixteen men and women and four principal couples, the generally classical choreography was marred only by the frequently awkward lifts.

In general, the women seemed stronger and more comfortable than their partners. In the blue pas de deux, Carmen Corella (Angel’s sister and the company’s associate artistic director) was all grandeur and elegance. Momoko Hirata stood out in the fourth “pink” pas de deux, where the speed and precision in her sprightly solo accentuated the tones of the violins. The corps de ballet had numerous opportunities to show off their lovely lines and assured technique, although they seemed cramped on the City Center stage: this is a ballet that needs more space.

“For 4” was choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon for a “Kings of Dance” program featuring Corella, an origin which did not give me great expectations. It was interesting however to see what Wheeldon, who is so frequently critiqued for his over-reliance on manipulative partnering, did with a cast of all men. The piece was primarily a chance to see four of the company’s men show off their tricks, and a bit of their personalities. The dancers tackled the choreography’s challenges admirably—Aaron Robison was particularly arresting with his space-eating jumps and long lines—but the difficulty showed from time to time in their strained port de bras and épaulement.

The final piece of the evening, “Pálpito,” was by Ángel Rojas and Carlos Rodríguez, and featured the entire company behind Mr. Corella in an attempt to blend classical ballet with Spanish flair. Unfortunately, the Spanish character of this piece was about as subtle as that of the divertissement sections of 19^th century story ballets: fans! sexiness! flamenco arms! While the piece had its entertaining moments (red-soled pointe shoes!), there was never a true melding of styles, as fouettés and à la seconde turns continually popped up without any relation to the more stylized aspects of the choreography.

When Ms. Corella entered in a long, voluminous skirt of pink petals, back to the audience, we were treated for a moment to sinuous isolations of her arms and back. All too soon however, this was abandoned as she cast off her skirt in favor of a duet with her shirtless toreador partner, Dayron Vera. The choreography never allowed us to enjoy subtle moments for long, always launching directly back into pyrotechnics.

Mr. Corella was captivating as always, his infectious exuberance galvanizing the company, but it was slightly embarrassing to see him used to such silly effect. While Corella is one of those dancers I would be willing to watch do just about anything, I hope that during the company’s next visit we get to see him and his company in more substantial choreography.

zoe | juniper brings “A Crack in Everything” to NY Live Arts

zoe | juniper performs "A Crack in Everything"
photo credit: Christopher Duggan

The company zoe | juniper, directed by choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey, brought “A Crack in Everything” to New York Live Arts last Wednesday night. The company strives to place the visual art and choreographic components of its pieces on equal footing, an aim evident from the moment the audience entered, when we were greeted by an almost-disorienting projection of fluttering leaves.

The piece’s title, “A Crack in Everything,” was evoked by a number of jarring breaks, including strobe-like flashes of light, blackouts, and/or abrupt stops in the music. These “cracks” however, most often did not invite connections, instead serving to cut off and isolate sections from each other.

The first two dancers to enter were strikingly clad in flesh-colored body stockings accented with gold designs, and dramatic mask-like eye makeup completed by gold wings at their temples. The dancers were soon joined by video images of themselves doing the same movements at a slight delay. These video projections recurred throughout the performance, at times in ways that made the audience question whether it was indeed a projection or was dancers behind a scrim. At other times, the projections were clearly of dancers other than those onstage, or were multiplied in impossible ways.

Beyond the video projections, there were a number of other devices multiplying the levels of remove through which we saw the dancers. The scrim–from the floor halfway up to the ceiling–was later revealed to be a clear plastic sheet behind a layer of fabric. The white floor, when lit in certain ways, doubled the dancers’ images like a reflecting pool.

In one rather bewildering scene, two of the dancers, one male and one female, were stripped of their outer layers by other dancers, and then removed their body stocking themselves. Sitting naked facing each other on two chairs, the dancers began barking at each other in an increasingly aggressive manner while another dancer continued, un-phased, with the alternately balletic and Gaga-like movements that characterized most of the piece’s movement.

In the program note, the directors describe their interest in “creating tangible artifacts from the performance within the installation and calcified memories within the photography.” Attempts to do so were evident throughout the piece, most obviously in the video projections, but also in a repeated motif when one or more dancers appeared with a red string between her teeth, held taut from an invisible point in the wings. In another scene, one of the dancers drew on the clear screen, moving across the stage with Gaga-like movements, while simultaneously drawing multiple, overlapping dancing figures in red. The outlines seemed to simply emerge in her wake, so gracefully was her drawing intertwined with her movement. These two images of red lines provided points of resonance across sections of the piece: both evoking the residue of the dancer’s physical presence in space. The drawing scene was to me one of the most touching moments. “A Crack in Everything” had a number of such engaging moments and arresting visual images, but lost coherence toward the end, as its cracks proved too numerous.

Glorious Angst: Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce

Despite taking Graham technique five days a week while I was studying at Ailey, I had never seen the Martha Graham Dance Company perform. My opportunity finally came with the company’s season at the Joyce this week, and let’s just say it had me wishing I had stuck it out through those 8:30 am contractions…

On Thursday night, the first live piece on the program (which opened with a video montage by Peter Sparling), was “Allegro Misterioso” by Anna Sokolow. Performed by Mariya Dashina Maddux, in a long light blue dress, hair down long, the solo began with her bent over at the waist, facing away from the audience in the upstage right corner. Her first movement, a fluttering of the fingers, signaled the frenzy that would characterize the piece. In the final moments, she slowed down in defiance of the music’s pace, and contracted as she descended to the floor, clearly highlighting for us Sokolow’s connection with Graham.

“Deaths and Entrances” purports to be loosely about the Brontë sisters: a set-up that makes this literature PhD student nervous to say the least. With no books or pens in sight and sisterly tension the dominant mode, imagining the Brontës dancing was only one of the piece’s absurdities, others including the puzzling presence of the “three remembered children” and the potential suitors who flit in and out. Yet, the contractions, the sharp angles, and the sustained mood of high drama were all so earnest and un-ironic that I must to admit to having found the excess rather delicious.

I get the impression that “Lamentation Variations”—in which contemporary choreographers are invited to create a short piece drawing on inspiration from Graham’s iconic solo “Lamentation” —has received a divided response. My fellow usher Thursday evening, for example, saw it as nothing less than sacrilege and was convinced it was making people leave the theatre. I, on the other hand, thought it achieved fairly well what it set out to do—pay homage while bringing the work into conversation with contemporary contexts. We first saw video of Graham performing the original work, its power somewhat diminished by jumpy cuts and the absence of the score. In the first variation, by Bulareyaung Pargarlava, three men and one woman, in nude shorts and a leotard respectively, used each other to evoke the tense points of contact and resistance that Graham’s fabric tube created.

The second was a premiere by Yvonne Rainer, who, as one might expect, took things in a distinctly postmodern direction. Director Eilber appeared in nondescript gray clothing, looking bored in a corner of the stage. Dancer Katherine Crockett entered in tights and a long white t-shirt, out of which trailed a long strand of purple tulle. She took her place, squatting in a wide second position, atop a plywood box and proceeded to take poses reminiscent of the iconic work. Eilber would periodically interrupt her mood of modern dance seriousness, now by shining a stage light on her face, now by shredding paper in a paper shredder—mixing veneration with irreverence.

In the final variation, choreographed by Larry Keigwin, we saw the entire company onstage, dressed in evening wear. They began by slowly and subtly feeling their faces and then their bodies, transposing the feel of Graham’s piece onto a multitude of bodies through small movements.

The highlight of the evening was easily the final piece, “Chronicle,” which aims, the program tells us, to depict the prelude, aftermath, and call to action evoked by war. I was struck by how radical it must have been in 1936 to create a dance on the theme of war using only women. The curtain rose on Blakeley White-McGuire, seated on uneven stools, with a long black skirt spread out like a tent over the uneven surfaces. She began with isolated movements of her arms, progressing to stand upon the pedestals, and finally descending to the stage floor, where she propelled herself and the dramatic lengths of her skirt with ferocious intensity.

The phrase “strong women” has become a cliché, but the dancers in the second and third sections of “Chronicle” embodied such a description in its purest form. The incredible force of their collective movement alternately conveyed pathos, anger, and devastation. In one memorable scene, the women alternately raised one fist and then the other, both arms “making a muscle” in front of their faces, a motion mimicked by their powerful, weighted legs as they traveled in a circle of resolute strength.

White-McGuire returned in the third section, now clad in a white dress edged with black, signally a shift from the menacing red of her first costume. Alternating between her pedestal and the space with the other dancers, she was at once a triumphant leader summoning the group and an active part of a larger movement. The performance of this piece was, for me, a strong argument for the continued power and relevance both of the company and of Graham’s work.

Bonus: Check out this great video of Denise Vale rehearsing the Graham company.

Green Screen Laboratory: Batsheva Performs “Hora” at BAM

Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin's "Hora." Photograph by Gadi Dagon

This week, it seemed like everyone in the dance world was talking about Batsheva Dance Company, who brought director Ohad Naharin’s “Hora” to BAM from Wednesday through Saturday. I had the pleasure of seeing the company on Thursday night from the orchestra level instead of my usual perch up in the balcony (thanks Free Ticket Thursdays!). As the lights went up, this proximity revealed the faces of eleven seated dancers staring out at us from a long bench at the back of the stage. Dressed in various black practice clothes, these bodies were the only deviations from the monochromatic green background that enclosed the dancers in a three-sided box. The color of this almost-room suggested the “green screens” against which action is recorded before being placed in some digitally enhanced context. This lent a laboratory-like atmosphere to the scene, an effect which was heightened by the score—a strange and seemingly random grouping of electronically altered pieces.

As the dancers rose, they advanced toward us in a horizontal line, walking into the shadows with carefully turned out steps and finishing in fifth position, one arm raised to the side, hand angled down at the wrist. This balletic pose would recur as a resting place, a moment of centered-ness amidst the obsessively asymmetrical choreography.

The dancers, who never left the stage for the entirety of the piece, were captivating in their ability make dramatic and seemingly instantaneous changes in level (i.e. from standing to the ground) and in movement quality. I was particularly drawn to Iyar Elezra by her sensuous movement quality and expressive face.

Familiar musical selections, including the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and “Ride of the Valkryies,” drew laughs from the audience but also elicited some of the piece’s most effective sections. These momentary allowances that things might not be quite as serious as they seemed allowed the audience to find a way into the piece, a crack in that green box through which we might sneak in. These sections also often featured the ensemble dancing together or in pairs, groupings which effectively magnified the shapes of Naharin’s choreography.

By contrast, during an earlier section performed in silence, the dancers one by one began to explore movement in individual spaces. It was here that the piece was least effective, as there was no connecting thread, and the eye bounced around from dancer to dancer without finding something to focus on. One of the refreshing aspects of “Hora” was its lack of reliance on partnering. While dancers often danced together, other than in the final section, there were no lifts or manipulation, only bodies moving in space, sometimes affecting the orbit of other bodies, sometimes indifferent to them.

Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM

March 1, 2012

I’ve been reading a good deal of Gertrude Stein for classes lately, and was thus particularly excited to see Mark Morris’s rendering of “Four Saints in Three Acts,” the opera composed by Virgil Thomson to which Stein contributed the fantastic libretto. Her lyrics are foregrounded from the outset: a large canvas-like curtain emblazoned with the beginning of the libretto, as well as a few symbols here and there, greeted the audience as we waited for the performance to begin. It took a bit of contemplation to determine which direction the text moved in (across the center or vertically in two columns?), and the split in the center caused the words positioned there to repeat or extend themselves (i.e. “chaanged”), both very Stein-ian effects.

Michelle Yard and Samuel Black, dressed all in white, portrayed St. Teresa and St. Ignatius, respectively, dancing both with the other “saints” and in a series of duets. From time to time the text-filled drop would open (sometimes impelled by dancers) to reveal bright, storybook  The “assorted saints” were dressed in folky costumes: calf-length twirling skirts and shawl-like peasant tops over bra tops for the women, and tanks, knee-length pants, and neckerchiefs for the men, all in earthy tones with bright accents. The movement was continually understated and low to the ground, here and there becoming more explicitly folk-influenced.

The greatest pleasures of this piece came from the interplay between the movement on stage and the lyrics being sung by the soloists and the Trinity Choir. Stein continually confounds our sense of where we are in the course of the piece by having the singers repetitively announce or reference scenes or acts in ways that make a linear sense of time impossible. At times the lyrics became simply music, the repetitive mutations slipping away from signification and into pure aurality. At other times, our attention would be drawn back to the often absurd wordplay, as the choreography accentuated the silliness of phrases like “Pigeons on the grass alas.”

The second piece on the bill, “A Choral Fantasy,” was a world premiere, set to music by Beethoven. The costumes, by Issac Mizrahi, were dark colored unitards with asymmetrical gold x’s on the front and back, and reflective squiggles down the side, which nicely accentuated the dancers’ lines and movements.

Morris’s talent for organizing space in engaging ways was on full display. The first few minutes of the piece occurred entirely stage right, with dancers retreating and advancing but never making it to or across the center of the stage. Near the middle of the piece, there were four unique tableaux in motion in each corner of the stage while Amber Star Merkens, with whom the piece had begun, held court in the center. More “dance-y” than “Four Saints,” “A Choral Fantasy” maintained a level of contrast throughout that ensured the big leaps maintained their impact. As the piece drew to a close, the dancers shifted in and out of triangular formations, teasing us with a false climax, until we finally did reach the end, satisfying in its simple, yet exhilarating clarity.

An Embarrassment of Riches: All Wheeldon Program at NYCB

New York City Ballet presented its first-ever All Wheeldon program on Saturday night, opening with the highly anticipated premiere of “Les Carillons.” Wheeldon has described this piece as more classical than his usual work, and this was very much in evidence, primarily due to the Bizet score, which had all the hallmarks of grand 19^th ballet music. Due to the at times strange juxtapositions present in the score—from dramatic adagio to echoes of Carmen and back again—the ballet did seem at times disjointed. In their long, strapless dresses in rich jewel tones, the women most often evoked references to classical choreography: seated on the floor in a diagonal line like the corps of a “white tutu” ballet or linking arms in beautifully simple low arabesques. There were of course, continual reminders that this was not the 19^th century, beginning with the flex-footed turn that began the men’s section, and the one-armed costumes they wore. The backdrop as well, evoking abstract expressionism with blurry black shapes and lines on a white background, keeping the ballet from sliding too far into classicism.

The patterns and shifting groupings in this ballet are perhaps the most sophisticated Wheeldon has yet constructed—shifts seem to happen invisibly, without drawing attention. The fluidity of groupings helped avoid an overly structured feeling, shifting mid-pas de deux or corps section. I also enjoyed the extra attention to smaller movements: a recurring theme in which dancers circled their hands on the way down from high 5^th reflected the overall feeling of circularity, and rather than seeming affected or busy.

In the first pas de deux with partner Amar Ramasar, Sara Mearns evoked the glamour of mystery of old Hollywood, later to transform into a flamboyant Kitri-type character, who would have been flicking a fan if she had one. Tiler Peck was particularly notable in a solo section, where she danced with a lovely lightness and subtlety. In repeated motif in which she stood en pointe in 4^th position and rotated her legs and feet in and then out, she proved exquisite at drawing our attention to the beauty of this tiny detail. In her duet with Ana Sophia Scheller, the two were models of thrilling precision and confidence.

As the curtain rose to the discordant piano music of Ligeti and the dancers’ shadows grew large across the backdrop, I realized that “Polyphonia” was a ballet which would yield surprising pleasures from the Fourth Ring. It is a ballet about shapes, and not patterns, but looking directly down on dancers in their intimate molded pas de deux gave an entirely different impression: it was at times (fascinatingly) difficult to tell what we were looking at when two dancers were intertwined.

During her pas de deux with Gonzalo Garcia, Jennie Somogyi tore her achilles and had to limp offstage, but was later replaced by Tiler Peck. This left Mearns and Sterling Hyltin to dance the next section’s trio as a pair, which proved a fascinating contrast: Hyltin all lines and architecture and Mearns more expansive and blurry. Hyltin’s attack and crisp, clear lines in her pas de deux with Adrian Danchig-Waring made her a natural fit for the ballet’s style (I was surprised to see that this was her debut in the role). Mearns, on the other hand, found space and breath within the ballet’s architecture, particularly in the slow solo section of the sixth movement, where I found myself practically holding my breath as she quietly commanded the stage.

Wendy Whelan’s two pas de deux with Jared Angle were keen reminders of why she is such a treasured artist. Full of extreme positions, Whelan nonetheless moved through them with an understated elegance, offering up the movement to the audience, unadorned.

I had seen “DGV” danced by the Corella Ballet a few years back at City Center, but here, on a bigger stage and the speed and attack of the NYCB dancers, it took on a whole new life. The music, by Michael Nyman, brings to mind Philip Glass with its propulsive repetitions and soaring climaxes. The ballet opens on darkness, gradually revealing a pulsing corps de ballet, then the first principal couple, Theresa Reichlen and Craig Hall, and finally the striking scenery, in which seven vertical panels of marley seem bent up into tarnished sheets of metal, like urban ruins at the back of the stage.

Reichlen and Hall were excellent in the sensuous opening pas de deux, as they found their way into the music and into more extreme movement, perceptibly reacting to each other’s bodies. Ashley Bouder and Joaquin de Luz, while tackling the second movement’s complex choreography admirably, were not as arresting as I normally find them. In Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle’s pas de deux, the choreography veered closest to the over-the-top-ness that the drama of the music tempts toward, the lifts and extreme extensions conveying only flash. In the fourth section, Peck once again stood out for her unbelievable attack, performing chaînées at an incredible pace and matching (if not exceeding) her partner Andrew Veyette in the height and speed of her jumps.

The finale is dramatic: the lighting changes so that we see only the dancers’ shapes, and a bold drum section introduces a section of percussive, synchronized movement for the entire cast. This section seems to me to presage how Wheeldon will handle one of his many new commissions: the closing ceremony of the London Olympics this summer.

Viewing three of Wheeldon’s works in succession, it struck me that he is a choreographer who agrees with Balanchine’s famous phrase, “Ballet is woman.” While “Les Carillons” began with ten men onstage, and featured a very effective male corps de ballet and one or two sequences of men dancing together (and perhaps this is progress we will see more of), it is primarily the women who are given the dancing in his ballets. Reflecting that none of the men really stood out to me tonight, I realized it was because (as others have noted) they served primarily as partners (pedestals?); there to manipulate and assist, but rarely to be present as dancers in their own right. In a sense, this works for City Ballet, where of late it has been the women who shine, but surely Wheeldon can find better ways to use striking dancers like Ramasar and Robert Fairchild.

When Wheeldon came out from the curtain to take a final bow by himself, you could feel a genuine surge of admiration from the audience. I can only hope that we will have the opportunity again soon to enjoy an entire evening of such well-crafted, satisfying ballets.

Review: TOOL IS LOOT, Wally Cardona & Jennifer Lacey with Jonathan Bepler

I’m a bit late to the party on “TOOL IS LOOT,” which had its premiere back in September, but finally managed to see it Sunday afternoon at Abrons Art Center as part of the American Realness festival. The piece alternated between solo sections for the choreographers Jennifer Lacey and Willy Cardona, accompanied alternately by silence, recitations of poems, descriptions of their actions, and various noises and bursts of music. Each began dressed in normal, yet danceable clothes (although at one point, while talking to a chair, Lacey reminds us “this is a costume”), but by the final sections, when they at times share the stage, have changed into childlike outfits recalling a sailor suit and lederhosen, respectively.

Particularly in the first section, I was struck by the incredible expressivity and articulateness of Lacey’s feet. Her toes were constantly in motion, echoing or initiating the movement in the rest of her body. I was so drawn to these tiny movements that it felt like being at a performance when you can’t figure out which section of the stage to look at—except that here it was just one body, making small and controlled movements, that was creating this sensation of overabundance.

When she did move into a passage of more expansive dancing, it was against a recorded text that sought to define, in the most objective of terms, the body as “object” and its tendencies and capabilities. A trope that would be repeated while Cardona danced, it implicitly invited the viewer to make connections between the recorded words (“this is an object with two stands”) and what was being performed. Just when the correlation began to seem clear (ok, this is talking about the dancer, and not the chair), that understanding would be subverted: Lacey or Cardona’s performance would contradict the dictates of the words or the words would veer off into philosophical abstraction. These subversions kept these sections of the piece from slipping into cliché and prevented one component of the performance (words or dance) from obscuring the other.

In a later section, Lacey holds a conversation with one of the two folding chairs that constitute the piece’s only props. Her naturalness as an actress is winning (and a marked change from the earlier section in which she epitomizes modern dance detachment); as cheesy as this may be as a conceit, she draws you in and makes you laugh. She also quickly squelches any inclination to read this as something more metaphorical: the chair does not represent an absent person, or her relationship to the audience, it is quite simply a chair (one that is offended by a reference to the Eames nonetheless).

Cardona was similarly captivating in his movements and expressions. His dance sections tended to be more theatrical and use bigger and quicker movements. He shifted seamlessly from ironic confrontation to exaggerated dancerly-ness to moments of sincerity that you could read in his eyes from rows away.

For a piece by such fascinating movers, it was a bit disappointing when the piece’s final section didn’t feature them at all, consisting instead of music accompanying colors and planetary images (echoes of Melancholia for me) projected on the large background screen until the lights gradually came up and the piece was over. After being so captivated by the specific movements of particular bodies, this absence seemed all the more striking and vast. It did however give me a chance to reflect on their performances, something I continued to do as I left the theatre wanting more.

A Spy in the House of Dance

I’ve been wanting to write about dance for a long time now, and other than a few scattered reviews in my college newspaper, haven’t had the chance. So, I’ve finally bit the bullet and started this blog to chronicle my musings on the subject. A serious ballet student throughout high school, I started college as a BFA student in dance, but realized it wasn’t going to happen, and switched to English and French. Nonetheless, I’ve never stopped being dance obsessed: seeing as many performances as I can, continuing to take classes, reading dance-related books and blogs, and teaching ballet. While originally a bunhead, my interests have expanded to include modern and contemporary dance, as well as performance art.

On my Twitter profile, I describe myself as a feminist, a grad student, and a dance nerd. This blog will primarily draw on the third of those three identities, but I’d expect the other two to find their way in here as well.

So, here goes…

(Bonus points if you get the title reference.)