Gillian Murphy, Marcelo Gomes, and David Hallberg gave a stirring and dark reading of Tudor’s Pillar of Fire on Friday evening. In a drab dress, removed of excess makeup, and coiffed in a homely bun, Murphy was a dramatic dynamo as Hagar and danced at the edge of insanity the whole evening. When the one she loved showered her little sister with attention, Hagar in desperation engaged in a one-time tryst with The Young Man from the House Opposite, portrayed by Gomes. In the most overtly sexual interpretation of that role perhaps ever, Gomes stalked, toyed with and teased Hagar until the potential spinster succumbed to his heartless seduction. Hallberg as the one that she loved, was convincing as the clueless and wholesome focus of her affections. A powerful, powerful performance by all. The program opened with Kylian’s Overgrown Path and closed with Taylor’s Company B. In the final piece, New York got its first look at the newly imported and highly-touted soloist, Daniil Simkin. All Haglund can say is that McKenzie’s casting of Simkin in the Tico Tico solo was designed to be baptism by fire. As all who have downloaded Simkin’s performances from You Tube can attest, he is a phenomenal ballet dancer. However, the Taylor vocabulary is so far beyond the kid at this point that its only purpose was to demonstrate to the wunderkind himself that he has a lot of work to do to catch up with the other company members. He fumbled uncomfortably through most of it, pretending to have a good time. Then when he had the opportunity to execute a couple of traditional ballet moves, he overpowered them to ridiculous lengths as if to say - See, I really can dance. Simkin, who is smaller than most of the women in the company, wore the eyeliner and lipstick fashioned by traditional Russian male dancers of a past generation. The result was, plain and simply, that he looked like a little girl. Truly, a little girl. And so the great transformation to star dancer and heartthrob of screaming teenieboppers now begins. We went through this with Angel Corella with the end result being a decade of some of the most stellar and riveting performances the ballet world is likely to ever see. Haglund has his fingers crossed.
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