“Frontier”, “Jardin aux Lilas”, “The Dream”
The Washington Ballet
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
May 27, 2017
by George Jackson
© 2017 by George Jackson
What the eye beheld in “Lilac Garden” was dancers doing steps to Ernest Chausson’s lush music, and launching a gesture here or withholding a movement there. When the action stopped, a body remained to fill out the phrase but no personality seemed to be present. This ballet is about characters caught in an awkward circumstance – a wedding that must take place because of and despite certain feelings. The people can be victims or willfull individuals but whichever, they must be so distinctly. They ought to remain themselves moving and standing still. In this staging, ascribed to Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner, personalities evaporated when someone had to be stationary.
“Frontier” is a ballet about the adventure of space flight, It starts with the motion training given to male and female space cadets in preparation for weightlessness. The focus then shifts to show the physical and emotional isolation of the individual astronaut, in this instance a woman. Mostly she is resolute, although there are also moments of fear in the face of danger and awe at the wonders of the universe. Steifel’s choreography overuses understatement to convey these things. The movement isn’t as interesting as it should be. There is nothing comparable to the magnetized space stride and the floating extensions free of gravity in an earlier space ballet, Dwight Rhoden’s “Star Dust”, which was danced on this same stage in April. Perhaps the “Frontier” music by Adam Crystal with its engineered ambience wasn’t sufficiently inspiring for Stiefel. The space suits designed by Ted Southern and Flora Gill were much as expected. The poduction’s most entertaining component was Dmitrij Simkin’s scenery enhanced by video and Robert L. Fabrizio’s lighting. Simkin gave us space capsules, launching pads and galaxies. Sarah Steele did well with the heroine’s mood swings and mix of awkward mobility and self mastery.Gian Carlos Perez was her patient husband.
Another issue was racially neutral casting. Ashley Murphy, one of the company’s black dancers, was the bride-to-be Caroline. Jonathan Jordan, one of the company’s white dancers, was the lover she can not marry. That this became a mixed race pair added a dimension to the story that Tudor hadn’t intended in his careful depiction of English society during Edwardian times – a distracting dimension.
“The Dream” was the most complicated of the program’s three ballets. It has several sorts of dancing, uses singers as well as instrumental musicians for its Mendelssohn/Lanchberry score, and requires a large cast of dancers wearing varied costumes. Yet everything clicked in this staging by Anthony Dowell and Susan Jones. The corps of fairies was quick, airy and exact. The rustic characters (led by Javier Morera as Bottom) had snap and just the right weight load to make them earthy. The urban lovers (Nicole Graniero, Sona Kharatian, Corey Landolt, Tamas Krizsa) flaunted their pretensions and affections with touches of humor as they found themselves lost in the woodlands, whereas Titania (Maki Onuki) and Oberon (Brooklyn Mack) distilled a sense of grandeur not only into their ultimate reconciliation but even into their initial bickering. That eager and wily messenger, Puck, was danced by a young man (Alexandros Pappajohn) from The Washington Ballet’s Studio Company who hadn’t just the agility for so mercurial a role but also the wit. The evening’s conductor, Martin West, brought the music and dancing for “The Dream” together persuasively, as he hadn’t always in “Lilac Garden”. For next season, more like this please!
A farewell curtain call marked the final appearance of Morgann Rose, who has danced with The Washington Ballet for 16 seasons. Also retiring is Samuel Wilson, who came to the company a couple of seasons ago.