"Commedia" "Leaving Songs" "Softly As I Leave You" "Boléro"
Morphoses
City Center
New York NY
October 29, 2009
by Carol Pardo
copyright ©2009 by Carol Pardo
The spirit of Diaghilev is being honored most everywhere in this, the centenary year of the founding of the Ballets Russes. In his welcoming speech, Christopher Wheeldon, founder of Morphoses, added his voice to the chorus, citing the impresario's devotion to the spirit of the new and to collaboration among the visual and performing arts. To those ends, the company offered one newly commissioned work "Leaving Songs" by Tim Harbour, a former dancer with the Australian Ballet, and a potpourri of dance, film, and live music, with a dab of fashion, courtesy of Ruben and Isabel Toledo, thrown in. The power of collaboration was made visible even before the dancers stepped on stage.
The performance began with an overture, independent of the content of the program, presumably to celebrate the newly forged relationship between Morphoses and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. As founder/conductor Alondra de la Parra stepped up to the podium, a screen was lowered on stage so the audience had a "pit's-eye view" of the musicians. The use of film and music or film and dance is nothing new. But here the combination of intimacy of point of view and larger than life scale propelled the orchestra beyond its physical confines and onto an equal footing with the dance both visually and viscerally. It didn't hurt that the conductor is young (under thirty) and photogenic. It didn't hurt that the chosen piece, the "Malambo" from Alberto Ginastera's "Estancia" is full of contagious dance rhyths, befitting a ballet score commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein. (The spirit of more than one impressario was in the house.)
New last year, "Commedia" presents the dancers as members of a 21st century commedia dell'arte troupe. They perform not only for us, but for an audience of Pulchinellos on the drop, all big hooked noses and large leering eyes. (The set, somewhat distracting, is by Ruben Toledo.) The ballet is a useful opener, introducing the company and providing the lion's share of the color for the evening courtesy of Isabel Toledo (costumes) and and of the lighting, in all the colors of the rainbow, by Penny Jacobus. The score, Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite" has its roots in the Ballets Russes. Like the "Malambo" from "Estancia" it is packed with infectious dance rhythms. Unfortunately, the choreography treats only the surface of the music rather than digging down and mining it for all it can give. Consequently, the ballet is a disappointment in spite of its utility.
Courtesy of a film clip, we learn that "Leaving Songs" is about ending things, beginning something new, life and death. With balloons (not a good sign.) Regret, resignation, restraint and -- most surprisingly -- tenderness suffuse the initial group adagio. Movements which in other hands or circumstances might seem gimmicky or manipulative, partnering building from the woman's head nestled in the crook of the man's arm, rather conveyed the desire to not let go, to hold on and hold off death for as long as possible. The adagio ends with the dancers, viewed from the side, undulating like seaweed in rough waters, forcefully enough to induce motion sickness. The lights come up, the dancers face front and straighten up, reborn. We've gotten the point, and kinetically too. But that moment of transformation is extended and diluted in drawn out allegro movement, heavy on the ballet/modern hybrid vocabulary. Death appears yet again as the dancers process past a prone women, balloons in hand.
"Softly As I Leave You" by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, resident choreographers at the Nederlands Dans Theater, is intended to be the program's palate cleanser. Sorbet is a palate cleanser. This is a slog through murk and muck. Drew Jacoby, bathed in golden light on an otherwise dark stage, occupies a tall narrow box. She's not happy about it, slamming repeatedly against all sides. It sounds as though it hurts. The impulse to say "Just move forward!" must be held in check. When, hanging from the top of the box, she kicks outward and breaks its boundaries, the desire to yell instructions has to be consciously repressed. Enter Rubinald Pronk, making his way across the stage like a particularly limber long-legged crab. She steps out of the box, no exhortations needed. They indulge in yet another example of the pas de deux as fraught relationship, adjourning to the box at its end. Therein, something between an extended embrace and wary circling takes place until she walks out, leaving him alone. We've seen it all before.
The problem with setting a ballet to Ravel's "Boléro" is that we've heard it all before, and too often. But rather than being overwhelmed by its cumulative sound, or undermined by its predictability, Alexei Ratmansky bends the music to his purpose. Rhythm, melody and dynamics are never allowed to overpower the timber of each instrument. With only a cast of three couples, spectacle is out of the question. In its place are masterful use of the stage space and a cogent vocabulary. After an evening which veered further and further from the rigor and clarity of ballet, "Boléro" was like discovering a cool spring at the end of a long hike.
Photographs: Morphoses Company in, from top to bottom, "Commedia," "Leaving Songs," and "Boléro." Photographs by Erin Baiano.
