"Americana x Five"
"Ash, "Sonatas and Interludes,, "Tarantella," “Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes,” "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 3, 2015 matinee
by Carol Pardo
copyright ©2015 by Carol Pardo
No weighty themes, no twelve tone score. "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" is Broadway Balanchine; you're humming as you leave the theater. But the piece has its challenges. It’s a show within a show; in one, the gun shoot blanks; in the other the ammo is "live". There are characters and spoken dialog. The fourth wall is breached. And the ballet is as meticulously constructed as a Swiss watch. Thanks to a debut, a welcome return, and some polishing of character vignettes, this performance ticked along in style.
Her Hoofer was Robert Fairchild, taking an afternoon off from "An American in Paris". His time on Broadway has taught him how to project further while also drawing the audience in so his performance is simultaneously intimate and large in scale. Fairchild has always been a likeable presence on stage. Now he’s warmer and more relaxed, and he can tap—clearly, resonantly and rhythmically on the money. Like the first volley of gunfire, his taps were a declaration of war, an immediate wound to the amour propre of the pompous premier danseur on the ballet side of the dance divide--all this despite a tap that went flying in mid-solo.
The bartenders at this subterranean strip club should do everything together: a little soft shoe, lighting each other’s cigarettes, disposing of a corpse. Wit in unison is not easy, but Cameron Dieck and Andrew Scordato carried it off like an old married couple who finish each other’s sentences. And the three cops (theme music: "Three Blind Mice") got it all—rightly—wrong. Air turns were crisp, clean and landed 180 degrees apart as they should, no more, no less.
"Slaughter" starts in front of the curtain with a conversation between the ballet dancer and the hit man whom he’s hired to ice the hoofer. As the former, David Prottas treated every pointed toe as a miracle of nature. As the latter, Aaron Sanz kept stroking his hair, in love with himself and Brylcreem. This exchange not only sets the plot in motion but its rhythm as well. Sanz, new to his role, and Prottas haven’t quite found the sweet spot between everyday speech and the jazz inflected rhythms of Richard Rodgers’ score that would launch us into the world of "Slaughter" before a note has been heard.
Justin Peck takes several risks in his “Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes". They pay off, every time. First is the score itself, already so well known as the music for Agnes DeMille’s narrative ballet. Second is the presence of two adagios, back to back; third that the first of those is for five men. Since its premiere, it has been difficult to see Peck’s intended original cast, so this was my first look at Sara Mearns in the part made for her. The scale of her dancing fits in with that of all those men. It’s daring needs the wide open spaces to be fully alive. Anthony Huxley stepped in for Gonzalo Garcia. His dancing was beautiful, crisp, clean, if a little like a city kid on his first day at a dude ranch. But once he relaxes and adds learns to add little swagger to his steps, he’ll be right at home.
Ashley Bouder has been dancing "Tarantella" for years, always tastefully (sliding into vulgarity is easy here but wrong) and certainly has the technique for the piece, an eight-minute long whirlwind. When Antonio Carmena creates a character, it blossoms from the inside out. There are no seams between the dancer and the role. This time out, both dancers seemed subdued, neither riding the music nor challenging the it, an unexpectedly cautious performance.
In "Sonatas and Interludes", John Cage’s eponymous score for prepared piano and Mark Stanley’s lighting, darkness limned with gold, transformed the stage of the Koch Theater into somewhere otherworldly--the crossing of a towering cathedral but weightless, all air and light. Amar Ramasar and Sara Mearns responded with a performance of intense concentration and unbroken fluidity. Even the signature moment of the ballet with the woman on point with her rear jutting out did not break the mood. Rather than a pose held, it was simply an accent in space and time.
The performance opened with "Ash" by Peter Martins, with music by Michael Torke. Back in the day (1991), if you had to sit through a Torke/Martins collaboration, this was the one to pick. At sixteen minutes it was—and is —short. Relations between man and women are courteous. The war of the sexes is not played out in convoluted partnering. The cast of ten fills the stage as if inevitably; that’s all the stage can or should hold at that moment—a sign that a choreographer is the master of his space. Martins’ grasp of the ballet vocabulary is clear and fluent. Each member of the corps is given a moment to shine, while the lead couple has more than a moment. Yet the whole is as dry as transcribing multiplication tables in a copybook.
This was definitely a program that improved as it progressed.