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Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.

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Folk Tales

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Paul Taylor Dance Company / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / March 5 – 24, 2013

Paul Taylor, having boxed in the stage of Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater so it won’t look outlandishly large for a modern-dance group—it was built, first and foremost, for the New York City Ballet—has added two new works to the repertory of his company, which is in residence through March 24.  As usual when Taylor comes on stage at the end of the program to take a slightly abashed bow—he has never forgotten the boy he once was—his gala clothes seem to fit his swimmer’s body with a slight awkwardness and absurdity.  In the era in which he was still dancing, he took his curtain calls in a ratty blue terrycloth bathrobe—a more Taylorish outfit, if you will.  The present set-up was bound to look “faux” to old-time fans.

Still, Taylor has reigned for over half a century as one of the supreme choreographic talents of our era—think Aureole (1962); think Last Look (1985); think all the astonishing wonders before, after, and in between that bear witness to both the joys and horrors of the examined life and its extension into the imagination.  I hesitate to be negative about a gift and an output that’s well-nigh unequaled in modern dance, even if this season’s newbies don’t figure among Taylor’s best achievements.

Perpetual Dawn 3r

Dancers:  Sean Mahoney and Amy Young                                                                             Photo:  Tom Caravaglia

The better by far of the two novelties is Perpetual Dawn, set to an easily forgettable score from Johann David Heinichen’s “Dresden Concerti.”  The dance is a pretty thing mired in the greyish-pink sweetness of Santo Loquasto’s set, but not even the celebrated Jennifer Tipton’s lighting can lend it the necessary contrasts that might infuse the dance with vitality.

Loquasto’s set, as the ballet’s title suggests, is firmly committed to a palette of pink that is, granted, carefully not intolerably cloying, and a mousey gray-brown that makes you think of real velvet and its seductive texture.  Trouble is, it’s just all too nice.  One doesn’t—or shouldn’t—go to the theater for “nice.”  “Nice” is for Hallmark cards.  With these tones, the set vaguely delineates a peaceable outdoor landscape early in what promises to be a lovely day.  Has Taylor conveniently forgotten that, more often than not, “pretty” is not a compliment in the art world?  Loquasto’s complementary costumes, in the decoratively-inclined country-folk vein, are just what you’d expect and a telling example of why girls now often prefer jeans.

Expressing their pleasure in their surroundings with much pairing off, the 11 dancers of the piece couple up a lot, loyal as pigeons, it would seem, but the choreography is a clear set-up for the odd-man-out situation.  In this case the character usually lacking a partner is played by a self-confident woman, Michelle Fleet, whose stardom has grown slowly and evenly during her years with the company, strewing much admiration along the way.  I may be hypersensitive in bringing this up, but I was distracted by the fact that the character who was shunned—and understandably acting displeased with her situation­­­­­—is the only black performer in the company.

The dancers display sheer joy in their dwelling place, but when the time of day slides into eventide, with its thoughtful or dreamy melancholy, the dance is finally given the contrast and variety it deserves (and needs).

Towards the end of the piece, Taylor’s lovers become especially playful with each other—a guy shepherds a gal through a slow cartwheel and the pair makes the move seem sexy, not circusy; it’s then that you finally feel you’ve had a meaningful peek at this choreographer’s multifaceted intelligence.

To Make Crops Growr

Dancers:  Francisco Graciano, Robert Kleinendorst, and Sean Mahoney           Photo:  Tom Caravaglia

The second new work, To Make Crops Grow, starts out with some gourds and suchlike in the form of harvest items, and moves on to a version of a familiar myth, perhaps best known from Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery, which I recall from a classroom reading assignment in Middle School (back then, Junior High).  Maybe Taylor read it there too, though I believe his formal education was sketchy.  (Just as well.)

The gist of the mythic tale it is that a human member of a small, tight-knit community is sacrificed to make the group’s harvest fruitful; the victim is chosen by lottery with the common consent of all involved.  Taylor’s version has some of the ominousness appropriate to such a venture, but, as far as I could see, no new take on a situation you’d assume was just up his alley.  At one point there’s a loving duet for a pair who, it seemed to me, were worth their weight in gourds, and then some.

Most of the characters (some of them presented as youngsters, others as elders—that is, as part of a family)—seem to be into farming, though there’s at least one pair wearing more citified clothes.  Customers at a roadside stand?  At any rate—my grip on the goings- on got more and more slippery as the dance progressed.  The farming folks are visited by some sort of cockamamie magician who, with doubtfully intentioned assistance (and, thanks to Loquasto, a complicated hat), indicates he’ll work wonders for the community’s harvest.  Each person choses a folded slip of paper that (as these ‘lottery” tales go) indicates, when opened, whether its recipient will be chosen to be sacrificed so that the gourds et al. may be plentiful, delicious, even, ironically, life-giving—or spared .

Onstage, the whole business seemed rather tame and unclear, though the the situation called for excitement, fear, and hysteria in both individuals and small crowd clusters, and, in the end, a climactic attack.  Perhaps a major choreographer should employ a knowledgeable dance watcher to whisper into his ear on the rare occasion it’s necessary, “No, dear, not this one.”

FactsandFancciesr

Meanwhile Taylor has published a new book of essays on dance, Facts and Fancies (Delphinium Books, $11.48 through Amazon). It’s nowhere near as important as his earlier memoir, Private Domain, and the degree of irony present in each of its pieces is exhaustingly varied.  It does reprint from Private Domain Taylor’s wonderful essay on the making of Aureole, his first hit, which the choreographer finds less wonderful than do most of his public.

© 2013 Tobi Tobias

Youth’s Sweet Dream

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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

Peck, Justin_colorrrJustin 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.

c35329-6_PazJollarrBeach 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.

c35328-11_PazJolla_HyltinRamarrSterling 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.”

c35335-3_PazJolla_HyltinRamaTPeckrrHyltin, 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.

c35329-12_PazJolla_TPeckrrPeck, 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

Five-Alarm “Firebird”

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American Ballet Theatre:  Alexei Ratmansky’s new Firebird / Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NYC / season runs through July 7, 2012

I can’t imagine what Alexei Ratmansky was thinking of in creating his New Look Firebird.  To begin with—and this is the first thing you notice–it‘s dressed for Las Vegas by Galina Solovyeva, with complementary décor (including a sci-fi forest with hints of porn) by Simon Pastukh.  It wrests the fairy-tale narrative that Michel Fokine created for his 1910 L’Oiseau de Feu (in which good, abetted by generosity, duly conquers evil and is rewarded with love) into a tale that is sardonic at best, sleazy at worst.

Marcelo Gomes as Ivan and Natalia Osipova as the Firebird in Alexei Ratmansky’s re-imagination of Firebird for American Ballet Theatre
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

Am I prejudiced by past experience?  I first saw the Fokine version back in the day with Margot Fonteyn and can still remember her entrance and her boldly plucking a golden apple from a painted tree.  The one civilized thing Ratmansky accomplished with his version was to use the full Stravinsky score instead of the customary suite.  Of course that only lengthened the discomfort of the naysayers.

Judging from all I’ve seen of his earlier work, I’m convinced that Ratmansky is a humanist at heart.  His ballets exude a wide and deep sympathy for the flawed human race; call it love, if you will, or, rather, love leavened with humor.  As an artist—and he’s a major one, the very best we have in ballet—he has every right to see the world as loathsome, but he’ll have to make his case better than he does here.

Osipova with part of the Firebird ensemble
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

Just so you know, the Firebird in this version comes as a multiple.  There’s a whole flock of this rara avis, available in both genders.  In real-life birdland—with the cardinal, for example—there’s a color distinction or other marking of the genders.  Not here.  Male and female alike, they’re poured into screaming-red unitards and sport headpieces ornamented with sheaves of feathers that reach into the air like flames, threatening to consume its oxygen.

Of course there’s a main Firebird, as well (her get-up includes a feathery bustle at the rump).  I saw her danced by Natalia Osipova.  Ratmansky has chosen to ignore this ballerina’s remarkable buoyancy and, with his enormous insight into who and what an individual dancer is, concentrated on another aspect of her dancing persona—a toughness that she seems eager to discard.  It’s shown off very well, though, in her battle with Ivan—a tsarevich type played by Marcelo Gomes, who’s the curiosity-driven hero of the ballet—when he tries to capture her.  He releases her finally and she rewards him with a red feather that he can use to summon her when he’s in need.  Just as everything in the ballet is “too big,” so is the feather.

David Hallberg as the monster Kaschei with the Maidens under his spell
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

The Maidens (lovely, gentle, and presumably virginal according to Fokine) whom the monster Kaschei holds in his thrall are, chez Ratmansky, plain and simple sex slaves.  The choreographer makes this clear by, for instance, having them assemble, packed body to body in a horizontal line, so that he can slide his lips onto each mouth with a single kiss.  There’s a main Maiden, intended in the end as Ivan’s reward, who not only shares a grotesqueness (and a turquoise wardrobe) with her sisters but is, as played by Simone Messmer, also wittier.

As Kaschei, David Hallberg (the incomparable classicist who, half an hour earlier, had been dancing the title role in Balanchine’s Apollo) was clearly having the time of his life being a campy Essence of Evil.  But Ivan, after wielding the Emergency Feather, discovers the egg that harbors K’s soul and smashes it, leading to an unearned, unconvincing, and dumbly inept Happy Ending.

The Maidens, free at last
Photo:  Gene Schiavone

I should add that there’s almost no distinctive dancing in the piece but this, given the circumstances Ratmansky set up or succumbed to, was inevitable.

© 2012 Tobi Tobias

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