"The Four Temperaments," "Outlier," "Cortège Hongrois"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
May 15, 2010
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©Carol Pardo
“I usually start with a really heavy concept.” That quote, from Wayne McGregor, founder of Wayne McGregor Random Dance and resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet, is pretty far from the ethos of the New York City Ballet where music is the wellspring of movement. McGregor also favors media as décor; sometimes the most forceful partner in a Gesamtkunstwerk. He has a predilection for isolating the movements of body parts well beyond the accent of a flexed foot. Finally, his training firmly anchored in modern dance. Put it all together and we're pretty far from the familiar in the house that Balanchine built. That may be exactly why the New York City Ballet commissioned “Outlier” from him for the “Architecture of Dance New Choreography and Music Festival.”
Yet nothing in the ballet was as extreme, novel or revelatory, as McGregor’s reputation would lead one to expect. True, the music, Thomas Adès’ "Violin Concerto," did not drive the proceedings. Nor did it exist autonomously in the tradition of Merce Cunningham. Instead, it occupied the middle ground of a soundtrack. The set (by the choreographer and Lucy Carter, also responsible for the lighting) consisted of traditional backdrops. In the first, concentric circles in shades of red echoed the subtitle, "Concentric Circles," of the dance’s score. The second used repeating vertical rectangles in yellow and shades of gray. But for the shapes, we are not far from Josef Albers’ "Homage to the Square" and only a step away from the Bauhaus which McGregor cites as an influence on "Outlier." The costumes borrow from practice clothes in a palette of beige, gray, blue, black and lavender--nothing too surprising there either.
Happily, McGregor’s signature dislocation of body parts did not turn the dancers into marionettes. The prelude to "Outlier," set to an excerpt from Cliff Martinez’s "Will She Come Back," written for the film "Solaris," is an adagio for Tiler Peck and Amar Ramasar. At one point she is on his shoulder but is quickly shifted so that she’s held with her head looking toward him, but dangerously close to the floor. The strength and trust required of both dancers reads viscerally as tenderness. The next two movements of the piece rely on the usual currency of the day: lunging, lashing limbs, women manipulated by men, though everyone remains human, rather than manipulating or manipulated automatons. The finale, using nine dancers, explores the organizing principles of trios, but without being connected to anything that came before. The ballet reads as four autonomous exercises, a sketchbook in which each piece is obviously by the same hand but with no visible linking relationship. The surprise of "Outlier" is that it is so innocuous.
Balanchine’s "The Four Temperaments," which opened the program, can be viewed as both an antecedent and a rebuke of "Outlier." It is the grand-daddy of all leotard ballets, dance pared down to its essentials. It is also a beautiful example of the architecture of dance. Even in a performance where most of the principal roles were not fully realized, the cumulative power of the finale, using rows of dancers as a matrix--as did McGregor--was thrilling as it surged forth.
The evening ended with "Cortège Hongrois," a bit of tulle and gold to make the modernism go down. This is Balanchine’s least successful raid of the treasure chest that is Glazunov’s score for "Raymonda." In the ballerina role, Sara Mearns is properly imperious and connects the ballet to her roles in both "Swan Lake" and Diamonds from "Jewels" but her performance doesn’t yet sweep all before it and make "Cortège" seem better than it is. Rebecca Krohn and Sean Suozzi, leading the character dances almost pulled it off. They knew how to put over character dancing and did so with real, palpable pleasure.