“Interplay,” “Call Me Ben,” “Scotch Symphony”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
June 5, 2010
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell
“Call Me Ben,” Melissa Barak’s new one-act ballet about Bugsy Siegel, is as luxe a production as the famously glamour–obsessed gangster could have wanted. Santiago Calatrava’s backdrops—tall, graceful palm trees soaked in glowing shades of purple and indigo and luminous desert mountains rippling against a bright blue sky—are both simple and simply stunning. Fashion designer Gilles Mendel’s 40’s–inflected chiffon dresses, chic tweed ensembles, and sharp chalk-stripe suits are beautifully cut, beyond gorgeous, and partly underwritten by Bergdorf’s. Jay Greenberg’s newly–commissioned score (“Neon Refracted”) has the handsome, professional sheen of a top-drawer Hollywood soundtrack. The big cast of 31 dancers has been chosen from among the company’s top talent. But for all its glamorous trappings, “Call Me Ben” is a disappointing—if valiant—misfire: Barak, still a young choreographer, doesn’t yet know how to tell a story through dance.
The life of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (whom Barak considers a visionary) is the stuff of blood–soaked parables about crime, betrayal, and dangerous obsession. Born into squalor, a questing anti–hero dreams big, goes wrong, finds romance in the sinister glamour of a smoky nightclub, and meets his end in a hail of bullets. With its myth–like arc and outsized characters, it should be the stuff of vivid dance theater, too. (Boris Eifman would have a field day with its neuroses; Paul Taylor with its ironies; Matthew Rushing with its potential for sure–fire vernacular vignettes.) But first it would have to be a story told in the way that dance—and only dance—can tell one: through movement–based and music-borne images that bypass language and logic to penetrate our hearts. Tangled up in her tale, Barak fails to give us those images and the raw power of her material eludes her.
Barak picks the story up in 40’s Los Angeles, where Siegel (Robert Fairchild) has been sent by Meyer Lansky (Daniel Ulbricht) to attend to the east coast mob’s west coast interests. Out on the town with actor George Raft (Tyler Angle in a cameo role) Siegel meets his soon–to–be mistress and accomplice, Virginia Hill (Jenifer Ringer). Travelling in Nevada on mob business, he has a vision of a glamorous desert gambling mecca—“Adventure! Romance! Air-Conditioning!” he shouts—and persuades a mob-led syndicate to invest in his dream. Wildly over budget on the syndicate’s dime, Siegel lets Hill slip off to Paris in apparent possession of other people’s money, and is finally taken out by a hit man. Hill returns to hand Lansky a briefcase full of cash (why?) and Siegel’s monument—The Flamingo Hotel and Casino—opens after his death in a triumphant grand finale that feels more like a protracted anti-climax.
Committed to the intricate particulars of her narrative and apparently unwilling to rely on a printed synopsis to get them in front of us, Barak elected to have her dancers advance the plot through spoken dialogue (co–credited to New York City Ballet soloist Ellen Bar) that’s three-quarters wisecracks and 100% devoid of noir poetry. It doesn’t work: the story is all but incomprehensible and the characters—given words to speak but precious little that’s individually telling to dance—remain as flat and opaque as cardboard cutouts. It’s an extended skit, not a drama.
Barak has spoken openly about her initial resistance to the music Peter Martins gave her to choreograph for the company’s “Architecture of Dance” festival. What she heard in Greenberg’s score didn’t seem suited to the kind of abstract ballet she’d made before and expected to make again. At Martins’ insistence, she persevered. Her instincts about the music were right. An able amalgam of Prokofiev and Shostakovich in their propulsive, Soviet cinema mode—with touches Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and Stravinsky’s “Firebird” thrown in for added color—it’s music more suited to a narrative than to pure abstraction. Her instincts about how to use it theatrically were less sure.
To convey Siegel’s fixation on luxury—the engine of both his vision and his undoing—Barak has Ringer and Fairchild stand around at the Flamingo construction site squabbling over whether to use cheap terrazzo or expensive marble. The next cue in the score all but shouts “put dark, anxious solo about character’s fatal vision here”—but instead of giving Fairchild that solo she uses the music to stage a static group huddle over some paperwork. Later, she turns a mob sit-down to decide Siegel’s fate into a synchronized dance routine for six thugs and their chairs. It puts one in mind of OK Go’s treadmill video and it isn’t the least bit sinister. (It also puts one in mind of Kurt Jooss’ “The Green Table.” Since the latter is wholly sinister and creepy, however, the resemblance is superficial.)
The dances Barak has crafted for the corps are fluent, easy to watch, and dispatched with flair—but they give us little clue as to who these people are. Mobsters and molls? Moguls and starlets? Models from Bergdorf’s and the House of Mendel?
There are times when Barak uses Greenberg’s score to good effect. Shortly after they meet, Siegel and Hill swirl around the stage in a silky imitation of Astaire and Rogers, wrapped in a Hollywood fantasy and a cloud of chiffon. (Ringer’s gown gets the best choreography.) They freeze in midstride when a woman and two small children appear upstage in silhouette, and Siegel watches them guardedly over his shoulder. (It’s not clear at first who they are; we later surmise that it’s Siegel’s family.) Hill and Siegel resume their dance, but the music has curdled and so does their dancing: the fantasy has evaporated.
Though it’s billed as a temple of abstract dance, New York City Ballet has a wealth of narrative and quasi-narrative ballets in its repertory that Barak, a former company member, might have drawn on for guidance. This season’s “Fancy Free” is only the most obvious example of how to tell a story about fully realized characters through dance alone. But even the putatively abstract ballets offer models: if Barak can’t see how Balanchine presents us with four entirely different women in “Symphony in C,” it’s no wonder she thinks she needs dialogue.
Two notable debuts rounded out the program: Joaquin De Luz’s in Robbins’ “Interplay” and Ashley Bouder’s in Balanchine’s “Scotch Symphony.”
Bouder is one of the company’s natural soubrettes, and it’s been fascinating to watch her lay justifiable claim to weightier roles through a deepening of her artistry (she’s always had technique to burn). The same dancer who possessed the stage with imperial majesty in “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No.2” last season now skimmed across it with a tender delicacy in “Scotch Symphony.” She was more winsome maiden than ethereal sylph, and it worked perfectly. Done as if with a shy blush, her quicksilver changes of direction in Benjamin Millepied’s arms brought out the part’s stylistic roots with unmannered grace.
The ballet didn’t give us enough opportunity to enjoy Andrew Scordato’s engaged, elegant brio and Devin Alberda’s intriguing mix of quicksilver and plush in the male demi-soloist roles. Both are young men to watch—let’s hope we see more of them soon.
The role De Luz assumed in “Interplay” seems as tailor–made to his gifts as the role of Frantz in “Coppélia.” Both make the most of his boyish handsomeness and considerable charm, show off his brilliant technique, and let him be top dog without having to also be a Prince. Tiler Peck and Ana Sophia Scheller—two of the company’s most exhilarating turners—nearly made our heads explode with the fierceness of their dueling fouettés in the work’s final section.
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell
Photos by Paul Kolnik
Top: New York City Ballet Company in “Call Me Ben”
Middle: Robert Fairchild and Jenifer Ringer in “Call Me Ben”
Bottom: Ashley Bouder and Benjamin Millepied in “Scotch Symphony”