“Rasta Thomas’ Rock the Ballet”
The Bad Boys of Dance
The Joyce Theater
New York
December 15, 2009
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
What does Rasta Thomas think he’s doing? He’s named his newish six-man troupe The Bad Boys of Dance, but they’re about as bad as your average boy band—and every bit as adorable. (Per the program notes, each Bad Boy has been “hand selected.” Like premium cigars or choice cuts of beef? One wonders.)
Thomas’ stated mission is to “push the boundaries of male dancing.” But “Rock the Ballet,” which began a three week run at the Joyce on Tuesday night, was mind-numbingly conventional in its take on what men can and should do when they dance. It even assumed that they couldn’t (or shouldn’t) do it on their own and added a woman—danced by the show’s principal choreographer Adrienne Canterna-Thomas—just to be safe.
The Bad Boys name-dropped virtuoso ballet vocabulary—gigatuple pirouettes, rocket-launched jetés, turbo-charged battements—into a babble of Broadway, club, and hip hop moves set to pop-rock chart-busters. “Rock the Ballet” turned out to be nothing more than another entry in the “Danseurs Are So-o-o Hot and Can Beat Your Ass” challenge. Sooner or later the Trocks are going to get wind of all this, and there will be hell to pay.
Not that there wasn’t the potential for something wickedly genre-busting. The show’s second act (“Rock You”) fast-forwarded through a string of Michael Jackson, Prince, and Queen hits. What delicious—and alas, unexploited—irony: if ever there were pop icons who pushed the boundaries of masculine performance style and made a gazillion bucks doing so, it was Michael Jackson, Prince, and Freddie Mercury. Beat your ass? Not likely. Prince wanted to be your girlfriend so you could go to the movies and cry together. And nothing shouted “Not really!” as loudly as Jackson’s “Bad.” Was Thomas winking at us? It didn’t look like it. The Bad Boys dutifully grabbed their crotches, pumped their hips, and shot smoldery stares at us as if they were still waiting for that callback from 1987.
The program’s labored first act (“Beautiful Day”) was set to a playlist of earnest pop ballads and rock anthems by the Black Eyed Peas, Jacques Brel, Coldplay, the Dave Matthews Band, Lenny Kravitz, Journey, and U2. A track of Maria Callas singing the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen was airlifted in for Thomas’ choreographic contribution: a swipe at the conventions of partnering via a bump and grind tango for five men and their blow up sex dolls. (Boundaries of male dancing, indeed!) The joke grew thin long before the number was over.
Thomas wants to be accessible, and there’s no shame in that. The list of choreographers who have wrung epiphanies out of a suite of hit tunes is long and distinguished. Adrienne Canterna–Thomas is not yet on that list. Her dances were vehicles for brute display rather than nuanced expressiveness; she used steps to wow us, not to build a legible emotional arc. When she launched the Bad Boys into the air or set them spinning like tops, it meant nothing except “clap here.” She relied on clichés to convey emotion—a soulful hand-on-heart gaze up into the flies or the vehement pump of a fist. Worst of all, she wasn’t interested in making us hear familiar music anew: she blithely plugged into its most superficial interpretation and relied on its very familiarity to do half of her work for her. (William Cusick’s video projections were often more alert to the songs’ overarching rhythms and shifts in tone than the choreography was—but not when they flashed the words to us karaoke-style.) There’s more going on in U2’s “With or Without You” than tormented boy loses elusive girl, but you wouldn’t know it from “Rock the Ballet.”
Canterna-Thomas doesn’t have enough grasp of pacing and stagecraft to support an hour of dancing. She was unwilling or unable to create defined roles—much less make anyone the star—but a republic of equals isn’t always an evening of good theater. The Bad Boys spent an inordinate amount of time dancing the same moves over and over again in blocky unison. Nobody was anybody in particular, although Canterna-Thomas, as the lone dancer in a tutu, stuck out like a sore thumb. She wasn’t one of the guys, nor was she a diva amidst a gaggle of chorus boys. In short, she threw the ensemble out of whack. She seemed to have put herself there for the sole purpose giving the men something to lift when the playlist hinted at romance. It wasn’t a show; it was an aggregation of music videos. Why come to the theater to see it?
Thomas, a gold medalist in major international ballet competitions, has danced with a number of prominent companies and starred in Twyla Tharp’s “Movin’ Out.” Canterna-Thomas, his wife, is herself a gold medalist and the founder of Pretty Girls of Dance. The Bad Boys of Dance debuted at Jacob’s Pillow in July of 2007 and have toured extensively since then; “Rock the Ballet” hits Germany for a two month tour in January 2010.
“Rock the Ballet” let its audience down—not because it gave them the flashy moves they wanted, but because it gave them those moves in exactly the same way that they could have gotten them on TV. It’s as likely to send the audience home all fired up to watch YouTube clips from the latest episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” as it is to hook them on live performance. And it doesn’t let them in on a big secret: the boundaries of male dancing have nothing to do with pyrotechnic display—but then Prince and Michael Jackson already showed them that.
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
Photo by Oliver Fantitisch
Bad Boys of Ballet in "Rock the Ballet"
