“Square Dance,” “Afternoon of a Faun,” “Requiem for a Rose,” “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated”
Pennsylvania Ballet
Merriam Theater
Philadelphia, PA
May 9, 2010
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
Pennsylvania Ballet offered a solid, well-programmed mixed bill with some pleasant surprises.
“Square Dance” was the only long-term repertory item. The company’s been doing it since 1982; this version was staged by Sandra Jennings. The Merriam is the company’s secondary stage (the larger Academy of Music, a mid 19th century architectural gem next door to the Merriam, is the main theater). “Square Dance” looked cramped on the Merriam stage. Curved sections seemed flattened and linear as if moved from three to two-dimensional perspective.
Led by Martha Chamberlain and Alexander Izilaev, the performance was clean but sedate. Chamberlain and Izilaev, both senior principals, looked as if they were play acting at being youthful. Still, Chamberlain had crisp beats and Izilaev’s solo, where he could drop the pretense of innocence, was invested with a weighty pensive quality: almost a weary Russian fatalism.
The oldest ballet was a company premiere. Robbins’ version of “Afternoon of a Faun” was staged by Bart Cook and the casting was pivotal. Abigail Mentzer has pale white skin, like Balanchine’s proverbial peeled apple. Jermel Johnson is African-American; the color of café au lait.
Johnson was always a particularly talented jumper, but he’s matured in the past few years and gained stillness. Mentzer has an oblique disposition that works for “Faun” and flaming red hair that seems to have a life of its own.
I hadn’t considered what the ballet would look like interracially. There are certainly some resonances, but mostly it prompted me to look at the ballet with fresh eyes. It was more noticeable when Johnson looked at Mentzer directly instead of the imaginary mirror, and when she relented and did the same. The two didn’t try to invest the duet with more than it can hold, but I had to sharpen my gaze and could sense anew the tension between art and desire.
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Requiem for a Rose,” a repeat showing of a new ballet from 2009, also requires great hair. Holly Lynn Fusco has a mane to rival Mentzer’s.
To the sound of an amplified heartbeat Fusco opened the piece, tossing her hair like Leto giving birth to Apollo, only with a rose blooming out of her mouth. Everyone else – men and women – were clad in voluminous red skirts and dancing to a recorded (and slightly doctored) version of Schubert’s adagio from the Quintet in C. What follows were a series of entrances, exits and lush, fluid combinations swirling about the stage like the skirts they wore. There are several duets framed by the rest of the cast standing at the edge of the stage as silent witnesses or pillars.
There was also a set – a simple foil panel that got slowly lowered, falling flat to the floor at the end. There was nothing strikingly original about the ballet; if you’ve gone to Netherlands Dance Theater, you’ve probably seen something similar. Yet “Requiem” is an astute addition to Pennsylvania Ballet’s repertory. Its vocabulary isn’t contemporary, but purely classical, and looks good on the dancers. Yet it’s contemporary in décor and structure.
It’s also deftly and honestly crafted. The constant motion, the combining and recombining, the intimate vocabulary, even when it becomes pushmi-pullyu, has something to say about intimacy and love. Because of the Schubert (which doesn’t feel abused) the duets, particularly the penultimate one danced by Megan Dickinson and Tyler Galster feel tender and even, heaven help us, romantic.
The other company premiere was “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated.” Jodie Gates, who danced both with Pennsylvania and with Forsythe, set the work. It opened with Amy Aldridge (in Sylvie Guillem’s role) and Julie Diana (in Isabel Guerin’s) pawing the ground, idly pointing their feet as usual. But then they start to play with their earrings as they seemingly wait for the action to begin, something I haven’t noticed before.
Aldridge is one of the best allegro technicians in the company but rarely seems to snag first cast. She puts more of herself into this part than anyone I’ve seen and it’s thrillingly committed. In her solo she seemed to divide her body into its composite parts and max every one of them out. The riveting effect was of a coil fully wound and then unsprung. Partnering her, Ian Hussey kept up. If a joint could move, he moved it. Diana’s impenetrable calm was belied only by a leg flicking skywards or feet flashing to an impossibly wide second position. Edward Barnes (along with Fusco, a friend) danced another solo like a long, drifting waterbird.
“In the Middle” is becoming “Agon” for the next generation of dancers; a milestone ballet they want and need to tackle. Gates’ setting is very different in feel from the original. Forsythe flavored “In the Middle” with the lethal rapacity of the eighties and the decorous rivalries of the Paris Opera Ballet. It’s more than two decades later and these dancers do it as if it were in fact “Agon” – with equanimity. There’s even a sweetness to it. It’s a strange transformation, but when danced with attitude plopped on top of the dancing, rather than coming from it, “In the Middle” looks divorced from reality. Perhaps when stripped of historical context, the athleticism is what remains.
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
Top: Photo by Candice DeTore. Ian Hussey and Amy Aldridge in “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated”
Bottom: Photo: Alexander Iziliaev. Riolama Lorenzo and Francis Veyette in “Requiem for a Rose”