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Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.

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Glimpses #13: Sara Mearns Away from Home

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sara-2rSara Mearns, studio portrait

Sara Mearns, the object of fervid admiration as a principal with the New York City Ballet, is paying a visit to Fall for Dance.  This annual event, which showcases bits of every kind of dance imaginable (something for everyone, so to speak, and at a reasonable price), is sheltered at City Center and often sells out—to an audience of both newbies and old hands.

In this year’s opening program, the audience got to see a ballerina who doesn’t conform to any of the usual types we view nowadays:  the lyrical, frangible heroine; the sensational athlete; the earth mother, et al. She was stolidly partnered by Casey Herd, an American who’s a principal with the Dutch National Ballet.  Herd was chosen, I would guess, to match Mearns’ anti-ballerina physical type.  They danced a duet, The Bright Motion, by the City Ballet’s Justin Peck to music from Mark Dancigers.  Had the choreography been more inventive and focused, it might have conjured up the heroine of Willa Cather’s Song of the Lark.

Mearns did her job with a lovely clarity, yet never seemed to make her dancing look significant, never fully “owned” her role.  Was this reticence due to modesty or, perhaps, the feeling that the occasion didn’t seem sufficiently “important”?  I liked what Mearns did here, mostly because of my history of watching her:  I like what she’s done.

© 2013 Tobi Tobias

Untitled

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American Ballet Theatre / City Center, NYC / October 16-20, 2012

American Ballet Theatre, financially afflicted like many a dance company in these stringent days, gave a Fall “season” consisting of just one “week”—October 16-20.  Did the brevity of the run ensure the excellence of the repertory?   Presented at the City Center, it consisted of seven ballets or stand-alone excerpts, none of which was filler or “novelty.”   Most were safe (and worthy) favorites—Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, for instance; Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading; Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room.  The most thrilling item by far was the first of three new ballets that Alexei Ratmansky plans to set to Shostakovich scores.  To this choreographer—Russian-born and trained, once head of the Bolshoi Ballet—Shostakovich is the composer who holds the place that Tchaikovsky did with Petipa, Stravinsky with Balanchine. The new piece is called, austerely, Symphony #9.

ABT’s Polina Semionova and Marcelo Gomes in Alexei Ratmansky’s Symphony #9, named for its Shostakovich score
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

But what else might it have been called?  It portrays both the literal and the abstract without a second’s pause between modes.  Is that a platoon or a corps de ballet going through its maneuvers?  It’s both.  Simultaneously.  And yet the mingle coheres.  As Balanchine’s did (and continues to do), Ratmansky’s work trains his viewers’ eyes to see more swiftly and keenly.

The dance, in intimate communication with the music, evokes the inevitable death toll of war juxtaposed with the ecstasy of victory.  Ratmansky, well endowed with the ability to perceive myriad attitudes to a situation in close range, revels in such ironic possibilities even to the extent of showing a latent vein of humor in them.  Is s/he really dead? you wonder when a body collapses, or is s/he just playing dead?  Why are the bodies often stricken in stop-motion mode?   And what role do these strange views of the action play in the ballet’s overall treatment of events and emotions?  As usual, the moment you’ve seen a Ratmansky ballet for the first time, you want to see it a second time to have questions like these answered as well as having the opportunity to revel in the choreography’s command of structure and its sheer theatrical power.

Semionova and Gomes in Symphony #9
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

Unlike some of Ratmansky’s earlier works, even the most rewarding (Namouna, for instance), Symphony #9 was tight as a drum at its premiere on October 18.  The dancers’ vitality and precision were at a peak I haven’t seen at ABT in ages.

It’s no surprise that the challenging choreography does much for its leading dancers.  Marcelo Gomes looks more than ever like the Big Man on Campus, only one whose personality includes a devilish sense of humor.  Polina Semionova discards her usual type-casting as the girl who can do every damn step perfectly and becomes a real (and way sexy) woman. Simone Messmer, hair cropped short like that of the feisty heroines of yesteryear’s books for girls (think Jo March, after she sheds her tresses), proves herself, once again, to be an original.  Craig Salstein is the boy who dares—part Rookie of the Year, part class clown—with a serious under layer that should free him forever from roles that conceive of him as “the hero’s best friend.”  Ratmansky takes all these talents in hand and makes them more wonderful than they or we could ever have imagined on our own.

Herman Cornejo in Symphony #9
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

And I haven’t yet mentioned Herman Cornejo, who, so very rightly, is assigned no partner.  He emerges, gradually, as the pivot of Symphony #9 or, if you will, its soul.  The audience’s reaction to the solo with which he closed the ballet made me think of an ardor that, almost literally, wanted to devour him.  The ballet’s curtain line is his stream of tours à la seconde (the body whirling as if without end, one taut leg extended parallel with the floor) mapping out an earthly geometry.  To think that many a viewer once believed he wasn’t tall enough or conventionally handsome enough or whatever enough to be a danseur noble—in other words, fit to play a prince!  Cornejo is the model of a post-modern danseur noble—technically breathtaking yet never show-offy, and infinitely thoughtful.   I’ve never heard him speak a word.  I’ve never needed to.

Needless to say I went back to see the second cast—which proved to be nowhere near as effective as the first, though things may improve to a certain extent with further rehearsal and further performance.  In the Gomes role, Roberto Bolle, who can’t act, tried to, ineffectually, while in the Semionova role, Veronika Part, who can, did so, puzzlingly, with soap-operatic exaggeration.  Jared Matthews, assigned the Cornejo part, was as valiant as a good dancer can be when faced with a challenge to which he’s neither equal nor suited.

Symphony #9 ensemble
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

Symphony #9’s glamorous black and white costumes, by Keso Dekker, feature the slashing contrast of shades.  The menswear is hugged by a belt of giant rhinestones; the hems of the women’s striated skirts brush the ladies’ knees as if murmuring to the wearers about what’s going on. The graduated darks and lights of Jennifer Tipton’s illumination provide many an apt mood clue, though the feelings charted by the choreography would be evident even on Times Square in relentlessly dazzling sunlight or in dusk shading ominously toward a complete black-out.

© 2012 Tobi Tobias

Tracking Corella

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Barcelona Ballet / New York City Center / April 17-20, 2012

Ángel Corella, artistic director of the Barcelona Ballet and the company’s star dancer
Photo:  Erin Baiano

For a long and happy time, we thought of Ángel Corella, a much-adored star with American Ballet Theatre, simply as a king of dance.  Now we’re coming to know him as a “native son.”  The classical company he founded in Spain, his birthplace, now called the Barcelona Ballet, owes its existence in large measure to his decision that such a troupe was needed.  Spain, celebrated for bringing dances of the people—flamenco, for one—to high art, has often had a lackadaisical attitude toward classical ballet.

In the course of a decade’s work, Corella exercised his determination to change that situation, all the while maintaining his own celebrated performing career.  Now, with Barcelona Ballet appearing for the second time at City Center, he has made the inevitable decision to leave ABT in order to devote himself fully to his company in Spain.  It was time, or almost time.  He was the main drawing card for the City Center engagement of the troupe, appearing in the program’s full-company, wow-zowie closer in brief, sometimes softened doses of the bravura stuff his fans expect of him and a long solo heavy on melodramatic pantomime.  The ballet, Pálpito (Hunch), by Ángel Rojas and Carlos Rodríguez, was hardly distinguished, but Corella performed with dignity and purity of purpose, along with the innate sweetness for which he is beloved.  He retires officially from ABT on June 28, no doubt among laurel wreaths and tears, dancing Swan Lake with Paloma Herrera.

Corella has made a smart decision, I think, and, like Arthur Mitchell with Dance Theatre of Harlem and Edward Villella of Miami City Ballet (both ironically railroaded out of their tenure after they’d fulfilled their main mission), he has stamped his dancers with his own convictions:  devotion to the job of dancing, accuracy of execution, unity of style as a company.  At this point, Corella’s protégés are quick to define legato and staccato yet shy of revealing the emotions that might go with these modes.  They are neat as can be in their footwork, but without the sharp edge that can make neatness thrilling.  Their jumps and leaps are automatically buoyant—still more as if by fiat than by choice.  Their turns—turns in every form imaginable—are phenomenal and enviably confident; what they might signify is still obscure.  In sum, the Barcelona dancers have a long way to go, but they’re clearly on the right path.

At the moment, every single dancer in the company makes you conclude that Corella is a rigorous and charismatic taskmaster.   Still, his dancers will have to loosen up a bit; become more musical, which should help them be more expressive; assert some independence that will let them own their roles.  And even a pedestrian could tell them never to smile unless the smile were spontaneous.

Center:   Barcelona Ballet’s Aaron Robison partnering Ana Calderón
Photo:  Erin Baiano

Having groomed his dancers for competence, Corella will eventually need to take the next step—the difficult one of breeding (or attracting) a few stars.  Apart from himself, Corella doesn’t have any at this point.  I saw only two dancers of distinction.  The first is Carmen Corella, Angel’s sister and the company’s associate artistic director, a tall ravishing beauty but a strangely placid mover. The other is Aaron Robison—a big guy and obviously muscular (most of the men are small and slight), with an ability to—let’s call it—make his presence felt.  The program had three dances and he was in all of them.  During the first piece, I noticed him.  In the second, I looked for him.  In the last I was sold on him.  I’m told that Suzanne Farrell would say to her pupils, “Make me notice you.”

Barcelona Ballet’s Carmen Corella and Dayron Vera
Photo:  Erin Baiano

Despite the many achievements that still lie before them, Corella’s dancers already hint—through their well-marshaled energy and their intense focus in performance—at their desire to be something beyond correct.  Could that something be wonderful, transformative even?  I hope so, because no amount of purely anatomical or theatrical prowess can make a dancer who lacks that desire interesting to watch.

© 2012 Tobi Tobias

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