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Playing the Big Room

“Serenade,” “Heatscape,” “Viscera,” “Bourée Fantasque”

Miami City Ballet

David H. Koch Theater

New York, New York

April 13, 2016 (“Serenade”) and April 16, 2016 (matinee)

by Michael Popkin

copyright © 2016 by Michael Popkin

Artists want to play the “Big Room”; actors aspire to Broadway, classical musicians to Carnegie Hall and increasingly dance companies to the Koch Theater, home to New York City Ballet and literally the house that Balanchine built. How much more so when it’s a prodigal son qua company founded by Edward Villella and currently directed by Lourdes Lopez (a City Ballet prodigal daughter). So when Miami City Ballet, dancing here in the middle of April, wowed the local audience with freshness and musicality interpreting Balanchine, as well as with the depth of the new repertory commissioned from the usual suspects -- Justin Peck, Liam Scarlett, and Alexei Ratmansky -- no one missed the point. The child here not only rivaled its parent, but markedly surpassed it, at least for this week. There was more vitality to this dancing than anything seen here for years.

Photo © Daniel Azoulay of Simone Messmer and Rainer Krenstetter in “Serenade”

One Old, One Not -- Both Fine

"Shostakovich" "Sand"
Alonzo King Lines Ballet
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
April 21, 2016

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2016

It is rare in this country that a ballet company relies on the energy and talent of one creator. And having followed one of them for over twenty-five years, it’s tempting to suspect that there won’t be much new. Yet with the annual spring season's reprise of the 2014 "Shostakovich" and the premiere of "Sand", Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, on the eve of an upcoming eleven-city tour of Europe, presented a singularly satisfying program.

Lines Ballet in "Sands." Photo © Chris Hardy

Finish Line

Miami City Ballet
“Symphony in Three Movements,” “Sweet Fields,” “Symphonic Dances”
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
April 17, 2016

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2016 by Leigh Witchel

Everyone, including the entire staff of Miami City Ballet, knows that a New York tour is a mine-field. All the more heart-ening how strong the company looked at the end of a grueling engagement.

The company was on its game throughout a strong run, but by Sunday night, the dancers had done seven shows in five days. It showed in their exaggerated lines and attack: not sloppy, but the kind of tiredness you experience when you’re dancing on fumes and giving everything you’ve got just to make it to curtain fall.

Patricia Delgado and Renan Cerdeiro in “Symphony in Three Movements.” Photo © Sasha Iziliaev.

Titles, Temperaments & Tomorrow's Choreographers Today

“Introspection” – a choreographic collection

The Kirov Collaborative

Studio Theater E

Kirov Academy of Ballet

Washington, DC

April 24, 2016 at 1 PM

 

by George Jackson

© 2016 by George Jackson

 

Just about everything The Kirov Collaborative does is the work of trainees – students, young people. Not just all of the dancing and much of the choreography but mopping the stage floor, setting up the costume racks, applying the performers’ makeup and thinking up titles for the dances is the result of learning. Outcomes are recycled and become further lessons in the educational process. Five of the six pieces on this program were by new choreographers. All offered viewers worthwhile samples of skill plus intriguing introductions to distinct personalities. One ballet’s title referred to the human soul, another’s to plant life, and still another’s used the noun “eleutheromania” – evidence of an intense and irresistible desire for diversity and freedom among these collaborators. 

Lit Up

“Keep,” “The Accidental,” “Grace Action”
Pennsylvania Ballet
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
March 30, 2016

by Marianne Adams
copyright © 2016 by Marianne Adams

Change is the essence of creative being, and Pennsylvania Ballet showed that under the new leadership of Artistic Director Angel Corella the company is embracing its future with particularly remarkable vitality.  The works the troupe brought on its first tour to New York in over a decade were all New Year premieres, all recently created ballets, and all set specifically on the dancers of this company. Though PAB is clearly still transitioning into its new identity, both in overall look and performance style, as the evening progressed with very different ballets, the impact of their execution kept getting only better.

Photo of Amy Aldridge and Francis Veyette in "Keep."  Photo © by Yi-Chun Wu.

 

Territory

 

“Prague – New York Effects”

Petr Zuska and Jen Shyu

West Garden Court

National Gallery of Art

Washington, DC

April 23, 2016 at 2 PM

 

by George Jackson

© 2016 by George Jackson 

 

Although it is crammed with art, The National Gallery provides spaces in which visitors can rest their eyes. In one of these, the West Garden Court, there are huge columns, many green plants and a fountain structure but no exhibited objects. A hush seems to hang between the huge room’s skylight and its terraced marble floors. It is a lovely spot, yet difficult to use as a stage. Sight lines are obstructed and acoustics may sound muffled or acquire overtones. Petr Zuska (he is a dancer from Prague) and Jen Shyu (she is an Asian American musician based in New York) chose to perform their “dialogue” in this grand yet sheltering and also challenging location. Actually, the two entertainers’ artistic territories overlapped. She moved about and even danced a bit in addition to playing a variety of string instruments, vocalizing and producing sound with her high heels. He too, after dancing, sat down to handle musical instruments. Both contended not just with architectural facets of the place but with the motions of a rather restless audience. What sort of dancer is Zuska and what type of musician is Shyu?

 

Angst, Old and New

“Night Journey,” “AXE,”“Inner Resources,”“Cave of the Heart”
Martha Graham Dance Company
City Center
New York, NY
April 14, 2016

by Leigh Witchel
© 2016 by Leigh Witchel

Opening night of the Martha Graham Dance Company’s season was a sandwich of two of her outsized Greek tragedies as bread and two premieres as filling. This time, the bread was more nutritious.

PeiJu Chien-Pott in “Cave of the Heart.” Photos © Brigid Pierce.

Mountain of Venus

“Clap Hands”
Jen Rosenblit
Invisible Dog Center
Brooklyn, NY
April 20, 2016

by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2016 by Martha Sherman

Jen Rosenblit is a force of nature. Her work and her presence plumb something primordial. In "Clap Hands," she used a mix of athletic movement, compelling text, bold color and rhythm, and the insistent shock of her own nakedness to reach into our consciousness and nestle there, not comfortably but close and so personal.

Admanda Kobilka, Jen Rosenblit, Effie Brown inn"Clap Hands." Photo © Maria Baranova.

White Magic

“Another Spell”
Vicky Shick and Dancers
Danspace Project
New York, NY
April 15, 2016

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2016 by Leigh Witchel

Vicky Shick’s “Another Spell” was the kind of enchanting nonsense that might make up a post-modern “Alice in Wonderland” – if Alice grew up and wrote the story herself.

Shick, a member of Trisha Brown’s company in the ‘80s and a Bessie winner for her own work, came out herself before the performance began. With a shock of chestnut hair piled high atop her head, she made the standard announcement about cell phones and emergency exits and then: “The characters in this piece are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”

Heather Olson in “Another Spell.” Photo © by Ian Douglas.

Good Ideas -- Problematic Results

"Beautiful Dreamer" "Divining" "Stone of Hope"
Oakland Ballet Company
Malonga Casquelourd Theater
Oakland, CA
April 15, 2016

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2016

The Oakland Ballet Company, under the artistic directorship of Graham Lustig since 2010, is trying to find its footing after long lost glories and several years of turmoil. Lustig is an experienced choreographer and company director who, in addition to Oakland, runs his own lustigdancetheatre in New Brunswick, NJ. He is both ambitious and realistic about what for the time being he can achieve in the competitive Bay Area. His "A Cappella -- Our Bodies Sing" was an imaginatively conceived and welcome program even though it disappointed on several levels. With two world premieres by Val Caniparoli and Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton and a local one by himself, Lustig offered two rarities: live music set to choral works.

Coral Martin, Chloe Slade and Evelyn Turner in "Divining. Photo © John Hefti