In Miniature

Sensedance
Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, NY
November 11, 2008

dance on a shoestring
New York Theatre Ballet
City Center
New York, NY
November 15, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

Small ballet companies in New York City are an uncommon lot, laboring in the shadow of the major institutions.  Two of them, Sensedance and New York Theatre Ballet, performed last week.  New York Theatre Ballet’s “Dance on a Shoestring” series are in-studio performances that are a cross between a full-dress affair and an informal studio showing (ask the little kids wandering up and down the risers) and they’re a great value at ten bucks.  This one contained a little treasure, the beginning of a reconstruction of Antony Tudor’s “Trio Con Brio.”

Choreographed in 1952 at Jacob’s Pillow, and brought back from obscurity by Artistic Director Diana Byer’s work with silent 16mm films and the Glinka score, the work immediately strikes one as atypical.  This is Tudor, the 20th Century’s great narrative and psychological choreographer making . . . a classical divertissement. Tudor, like Ashton, is an upper body choreographer; the woman’s solo begins with a series of charming hand flips.  There’s the braced épaulement one might have anticipated, but also a freedom one might not have.  It’s fascinating to get a glimpse of how Tudor envisioned classical choreography.

Elena Zahlmann, who danced the lead, is now the company’s ballerina. She has shapely feet, but doesn’t have fashionable greyhound lines.  Over several years she has developed a strong, reliable technique and authoritative presence, and gave a fine performance with Derek Lauer and Mitchell Kilby as her slightly beleaguered consorts. She was also Laurie in an excerpt from Agnes de Mille’s ballet from “Oklahoma” and was even more charming as a bespectacled and amorous librarian in “He Loves/She Loves: A Radio Reverie.”  That work, choreographed by Martha Connerton to Gershwin songs, featured Byer as a housewife in curlers with a wistful Carol Burnett-like demeanor.  It also contained one of the most strangely cheerful numbers about S&M ever, a bizarrely happy, squeaky clean affair featuring a whip and dog leash to “Treat Me Rough.”

At the Ailey Center, Sensedance, founded by Hunning Rübsam in 1992, billed itself as a contemporary dance company, but the accent of these performances was straightforward ballet with a few contemporary pieces as interludes.  Rübsam presented a series of short works, some of which seemed to end just as they got going.  Rübsam used good dancers (Rachel Hamrick and Maria Phegan were particularly nice) and has a clear, uncomplicated style as a choreographer.  His artistic compass points to Arcadia; “Cloudforest,” the finale of the evening, put ten dancers seemingly mid-air in a similar tranquil limbo to Balanchine’s in “Chaconne.” He’s obviously smitten with ballet from the references; the icon-like pileup from “Les Noces” made an appearance in “Merciless Beauty,” the opening work.

Rübsam’s love and familiarity with the New York ballet scene is what he’ll have to grapple with.  Even when the big institutions don’t perform masterpieces, they can overwhelm an audience solely with the prowess of their dancers.  How is a little ballet company to offer up a heightened theatrical experience that isn’t just a shadow of what the big institutions do?  Just clearing the bar in New York City is harder than most anywhere else. New York Theatre Ballet has solved the problem at least partially by their choice of overlooked repertory; their association with Tudor and his legacy is invaluable.  The company has flaws; from the performances of their students it seems that its school can teach how to jump, but not how to dance turned out. Sensedance’s dancers had less problems with line, but also looked as if they could have used a rehearsal director watching to let them know when they needed to straighten their knees.  Even with good dancers, there’s still an understandable gap between these companies and the big guns.  NYTB did the invaluable service of staging the bedroom pas de deux from Tudor’s “Rome and Juliet” six months before American Ballet Theatre this Tudor centennial year, but comparing the two performances wouldn’t be fair.  NYTB and Sensedance, along with Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet, should be on balletomanes’ radars if they are interested in what is happening beyond the institutions.  The trick is to offer not only what the big companies don’t, but what they can’t.

copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel