The best part of last night’s New Combinations: A Tribute to Nureyev was the initial film footage of Nureyev and Maria Tallchief in the Flower Festival PdD and Nureyev and Lupe Serrano in Le Corsaire, both clips from the Bell Telephone Hour. Look closely at Maria in these early clips and you will at once observe the absence of artifice and mannerisms, and the employment of lovely classical port de bras.
And so the evening began with the substitution of Kathryn Morgan and Allen Peiffer in the Flower Festival PdD and the transfer of Abi Stafford and Gonzalo Garcia to Theme and Variations. Morgan and Peiffer scored impressively with the feet in this fiendish exercise but didn’t look the least bit Bournonville in style.
La Stravaganza (Angelin Preljocaj) was the most interesting and enjoyable piece on the program. Invention, drama, and dynamics were high, and the cast – especially Benjamin Millepied, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Robert Fairchild, and Tiler Peck – was terrific. The concept of a contemporary society meeting a 17th century society and the resulting conflict was quite original and even stirring in its execution. Haglund will be going back just to see this piece one more time.
After the Rain PdD with Wendy Whelan and Sebastien Marcovici was filler last night. It seems to look less significant at each viewing.
It was followed by the without-any-significance-or-redeeming-value new LifeCasting by Douglas Lee. Mr. Lee must have been so truly overwhelmed by the availability of ingredients for his piece that he mixed the mayonnaise with the soup and then tried spreading it on the apple.
Dancers love to be involved in challenging physical pieces like this, but no matter how well it’s executed (which it was last night by Maria Kowroski, Robert Fairchild, Kaitlyn Gilliland and others), it’s no good. Pretzelmania from one end of the stage to the other. Look, we know that these women can split their legs phenomenally and that they can even do it upside down. We know they can pull their legs to their ears. Show us something else, please. And if Haglund has to look at moving stage lighting rigs as scenery one more time, he’s going to shoot his own lights out. Mr. Lee, it’s been done to death. Move on.
Theme and Variations with the substitution of Abi Stafford and Gonzalo Garcia did not fair well. It looked like they had perhaps learned it over lunch that day.
Haglund awards these mismatched flip-flops to last night's performance.
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