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Company Character

“Allegro Brillante”, “Seven Sonatas”, “Nine Sinatra Songs”
The Washington Ballet
Warner Theater
Washington, DC
April 27, 2017

by George Jackson
copyright © 2017 by George Jackson

Questions kept nagging while watching the three ballets. Under new leadership since the start of the 2016/17 season, has The Washington Ballet’s character changed? Isn’t it playing it too safe to have a whole program of pieces already known? How does the current performance of these works stack up against those from the past? Answers to these questions provided intermission chatter on the “official” opening night of this set of 7 performances (April 26 -30). The opening’s highlight was “Seven Sonatas” by Alexei Ratmansky to the music of Domenico Scarlatti.

Photo: Gian Carlo Perez, Sona Kharatian, Corey Landolt, Maki Onuki, Jonathan Jordan and Venus Villa in Ratmansky's "Seven Sonatas." Photo by Theo Kossenas.

Dance Is a Latina

“Línea Recta,” “Con Brazos Abiertos,” “3.Catorce Dieciséis”
Ballet Hispánico
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
April 20, 2017

by Marianne Adams
copyright © 2017 by Marianne Adams

The sole woman in a red dress stood in the middle of the stage with her back to the audience. She flicked her wrists, resonating the motion in her elbows and then all through her arms, curved her spine and twisted her body, with these spiraling movements echoing the flamenco beats of the music. Her body bended to the side, with fingers moving as though on a Spanish guitar, she grabbed the long trail of her red ruffled dress and faced the viewers with a piercing gaze that was both daring and inviting. That was how Ballet Hispánico’s program of three works by female Latina choreographers at the Joyce Theater began: with femininity, resolve and emboldened beauty. 

Photo of Ballet Hispánico in “Línea Recta.” Photo © by Paula Lobo

There is a Season

"Russian Seasons", "Namouna, a Grand Divertissement"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
April 26, 2017

by Mary Cargill 
copyright © 2017 by Mary Cargill

The Ratmansky evening of New York City Ballet's heartily advertised "Here/Now Festival" (ballets created for the company in the last thirty years) had two works, both featuring a generous supply of fine and striking dancing. "Russian Seasons" from 2006 with its color-coded costumes and folk-inflected weighty choreograph looks a bit as if the peasants of Nijinska's "Les Noces" decided to produce "Dances at a Gathering" but it is in no way copy or a reduction of those two great works. It is powerful, haunting, and timeless, an unsentimental sculpture of the eternal peasant.

 Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar in "Russian Seasons photo © Paul Kolnik.

It's a Love Affair

"Live Archiveography"
David Gordon Pick Up Performance Co(s)
ODC Theater, San Francisco
April 21, 2017

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2017

The first performance of “Live Archiveography” embodies the remarkable David Gordon decades' old love affair with shaping and reshaping kinetic and visual material, literal and imagined space and time, story telling and abstraction, the past and the present, as well as the communal and the personal. Is there anyone around with such an inclusive perspective on what it means to be an artist? Gordon has been a rare -- about once in a decade -- guest in the Bay Area. He showed the evening-long “United States” in 1988 and “Dancing Henry Five in 2007. So this new piece —drawing on a lifetime of making and looking at art and its remnants -- was a special and well-received occasion. While drawing on the current exhibition of his archival material at the New York Public Library Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Gordon has worked on the concept and shown version of this project for the last few years. The full-evening “Live Archiveography” will be shown in New York at The Kitchen June 1-3, 2017.

Scott Cunningham and Karen Graham in "Live Archiveography." Photo: Paula Court

Portrait of a Lady

"Cholkettu and Ganesha Sthuti", "Sankara Sri Giri", "Anandavalli", "Amrapali"
Neena Prasad
The World Music Institute's "Dancing the Gods"
Symphony Space
New York, New York
April 22, 2017

by Mary Cargill 
copyright © 2017 by Mary Cargill

The World Music Institute's Dancing the Gods sixth annual festival was a two-day presentation of classic Indian dance at Symphony Space; as its curator, Rajika Puri noted, this was the only evening-length program of Indian dance with live music present in New York this year.  Neena Prasad, with three musicians (the singer C. Madhavan Nampoothiri, S. P. Ananthapadmanabha on the violin and K. P. Ramesh Babu on the mridangam, a double-headed drum) gave a concert of Mohiniyattam dance. This is a traditional South Indian style for a solo female dancer, a soft, somewhat static form which is part stylized miming to the words of the accompanying song and part slow, graceful poses.

Neena Prasad from neenaprasad.com

The State of Things

Justin Peck’s Program
Ballet Across America 2017
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
April 22, 2017 matinee

by George Jackson
copyright ©2017 by George Jackson

The mood was grim in three of the four dances Justin Peck chose to show. Nothing really ends, there is no resolution, Benjamin Millepied’s choreography seemed to say. Fools will entangle themselves in Gordian knots was Christopher Wheeldon’s message. That black folk and white folk stay separated despite the end of apartheid and segregation is Kyle Abraham’s plaint. Only in a duet Peck himself made was there the sense of tranquility. Two of the dances, Millepied’s and Abraham’s, were not what I would call ballet but contemporary mixtures. While they had ballet steps here and there and the dancers undoubtedly had taken classical training judging by their delivery of certain moves, their basic posture hadn’t stretch, turn-out or clear articulation at the body’s joints.

A Taste of Things to Come

"Fancy Free," "Moves," The Concert"
New York City Ballet
David Koch Theater
New York, New York
April 19, 2017

by Carol Pardo
copyright ©2017 by Carol Pardo

A year from now, New York City Ballet will celebrate Jerome Robbins' hundredth birthday with six programs of his works. This performance, including "Fancy Free" the ballet that put Robbins on the map back in 1944, "The Concert" one of the funniest ballets ever made, and "Moves" created by Robbins' own company, Ballets USA in 1959, was a taste of things to come. 

Don't Blame the Dancers

Misty Copeland’s Program
Ballet Across America 2017
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
April 19, 2017

by George Jackson
© 2017 by George Jackson

The blueprint for the program Misty Copeland curated must have looked as bright as a sunny spring sky. There would be a technical piece based on ballet traditions, a dramatic work relevant to African and world history, plus some pop fun poked at what may be coming tomorrow. In addition, film would provide a danced overture to the three pieces of live fare on stage. The actual outcome disappointed. It wasn’t the dancers’ fault.

Photo: The second section trio (Owen Thorne, Kayla Rowser, Jon Upleger) from Paul Vasterling’s “Concerto”. Photo by Teresa Wood.

Ladies' Night

"Allegro Brillante", "The Four Temperaments", "Symphony in C"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
April 18, 2017

by Mary Cargill 
copyright © 2017 by Mary Cargill

The New York City Ballet's spring season opened with three popular (judging from the packed house and prolonged ovations) Balanchine ballets. Not surprisingly the women were front and center with some tremendous performances and Alston MacGill's impressive debut in the third movement in "Symphony in C".  "Allegro Brillante", one of Balanchine's most concise and exhilarating salutes to feminine virtuosity, is a perfect opening ballet, surprising the audience with the corps in mid-jump.

New York City Ballet in "The Four Temperaments" Photo © Paul Kolnik.

Poetry in Motion

"Sinfonietta Giocosa", "Motion of Displacement", "Ten Poems"
Scottish Ballet
Joyce Theater
New York, New York
April 16, 2017, matinee

by Mary Cargill 
copyright © 2017 by Mary Cargill

The Scottish Ballet brought fourteen of its dancers and three works for its New York debut, a week-long season at the Joyce Theater. The dancers and the repertoire were not especially Scottish -- this was no tourist-eye view of the country.  Christopher Hampson, the British born Royal Ballet trained choreographer who has directed the company since 2012, selected one Puerto Rican and two British choreographers to show off the clear and unmannered technique of his vigorous and attractive company.

 

Scottish Ballet in "Ten Poems" Photo © Andy Ross.