Youth’s Sweet Dream

New York City Ballet:  Justin Peck’s new work, Paz de la Jolla / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / January  31, February 2, 6, and 8, 2013

Justin Peck, choreographer of Paz de la Jolla for New York City Ballet

Photo:  Paul Kolnik

Justin Peck, a 25-year-old member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet, seems to have lots of useful ideas and moods in his unstoppably busy brain.  His latest work for the company is Paz de la Jolla (the peacefulness of La Jolla) and set to a similarly evocative score along the same lines by Bohuslav Martinů.

The choreography is typical of Peck’s prescience about the useful “rules” of choreography—and those that are not.  He is so informed that you feel he’s equipped to make a reasonably commendable ballet in his sleep and that if the results didn’t satisfy him, he could tweak his material until they did.

Beach Boys in Peck’s Paz de la Jolla

Photo:  Paul Kolnik

For Paz de la Jolla Peck wisely follows the trite but still instructive admonition to writers at the starting gate of their careers:  “Write what you know.”  In a good many ways, Paz de la Jolla epitomizes the sensuous pleasure native to southern California culture, in which he grew up.  From his description, it was a wonder he ever left—but he wanted to dance and he believed that that would happen most effectively in New York, which, for him, it did.

Sterling Hyltin and Amar Ramasar, as the lovers in  Paz de la Jolla

Photo:  Paul Kolnik

The warmth of the Californian climate (Peck often lets you see it in the way the dancers move) matched by Martinů’s evocative music arouse the happily susceptible body and soul.  Peck sets off the benign effect by slight additions from the underside of joy, and the effect was accidentally enlarged by the first several performances’ taking place in New York during a period of freezing snow, icy streets to navigate, and bouts of high winds that are all too prevalent in our local winter weather.  Getting to the theater without incident was an adventure in itself.

Perhaps Peck’s development as a choreographer will one day follow the writer Grace Paley’s instruction:  “Write about what you don’t know about what you know.”

The ballet opens with lots of swift brilliant movement, laced with authentic-looking split-second choices about what happens next.

Hyperactive arms and legs, like the long, thin limbs of gangly teenagers, shoot this way and that.  It’s clear from the get-go that Tiler Peck (no relation to the choreographer) is the tomboy in the bunch; Sterling Hyltin, the sweetheart; Amar Ramasar, the eternal boyfriend.  The ground is the sandy beach; the 15-member corps de ballet, costumed in blue, is the ocean—as dangerous as it is beautiful. The subsequent goings on are melodramatic in a predictable seaside vein, as if Peck were saying “Well, it’s always like this, isn’t it?”.

There’s a lovely—and refreshingly original—moment during the obligatory lovers’ pas de deux when Ramasar moves away from Hyltin for a moment, as if captivated by his own dream, but then returns—as most reliable tales, other than Hans Christian Andersen’s, would insist—to focus on her.

Now and then the water figures have an ominous air.  They dally with Hyltin while her boyfriend dozes, then lure her into their midst; when they vanish, she lies on the shore alone, as if dead.  The problem here, as well as with the ballet as a whole, is that, with everything happening at top speed, you’re not always sure what’s going on.  The choreographer insists upon a happy ending, though; you can’t blame him, he’s still young and Martinů has given him no “death music.”

Hyltin, Ramasar, and Tiler Peck, as the principals in  Paz de la Jolla

Photo:  Paul Kolnik

The casting for La Jolla is happily conventional:  Hyltin is the young woman whose evident, indeed sole, job in life is to be beloved.  She calmly accepts her duties without conflict or protest; they are her fate.  Tiler Peck is surefooted and delightful as an emissary of exuberance and delight, while Amar Ramasar is, as almost always, the guy immediately recognizable as “the prince.”  At first glance you might think the three were sent over from Central Casting, but they’re far better—the very models of their respective roles.

Peck, as the woman who needs no support, in  Paz de la Jolla

Photo:  Paul Kolnik

All 18 in the cast look terrific in the beach clothes designed for them by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, as well they might, since their training makes them so eye-worthy.

As its its right, the ballet is confined to the halcyon side of life in La Jolla, indirectly to its climate and to its lovely long meandering shoreline.  For such reasons the place has, in real life, become a paradise for the greatly privileged.  (Wikipedia tells us that Mitt Romney has a vacation house there.)  Let that pass, but not this:  anti-Semitism had a long reign in La Jolla.  Still the ballet itself is strong and consistent enough to ignore the darker aspects of the location’s history—from the truly offensive to just plain human failings.  Nevertheless, what Peck might most usefully direct his attention to next, is to find ways in which to make his dancers look like real (though imaginary) people.  For examples of this he might pay acute attention to Alexei Ratmansky, who delights in the human race.

© 2013 Tobi Tobias