ABT – From Classic to Premieres – 5/24 & 5/25

Sometimes dancing just for the sake of dancing is like talking just for the sake of talking. 

Last evening ABT opened the first of a sequence of four performances of mixed repertory entitled From Classic to Premieres.  On each program are three new pieces consisting of premieres by Alexei Ratmansky, Benjamin Millepied, and Christopher Wheeldon, and the revival of Antony Tudor's Shadowplay.  Haglund attended the first night and today's matinee performance with the alternate cast.

Dumbarton by Alexei Ratmansky to Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks might have been intended to illuminate the sophisticated music's counterpoint.  Like the music, the groups of dancers frequently moved in dissonant manners until arriving at a harmonious conclusion.  Haglund was perfectly happy with this interpretation until his acquaintance said, "They're all little birds."  What?!  Suddenly Haglund felt a grumbling in his intestines with this thought:  Oh no, please, these are not the little Stravinsky birds migrating toward the big Stravinsky Firebird scheduled for next spring.  We're not going to think about that any more.

The treasure of this piece was in seeing so many dancers who are usually in the background of other ballets and rarely have an opportunity to shine.  Haglund is always on the lookout for Joseph Gorak, Eric Tamm, and Gemma Bond.  In today's matinee, Gemma was the highlight and inhabited the flute notes with her grace and classical perfection.  Every dancer should aspire to extract such beauty from the classical vocabulary by executing it with the purity that Gemma manages.  Last night Gorak and Tamm, two exciting and personable dancers who immediately grab the attention, were featured along with Isabella Boylston, Misty Copeland, Luis Ribagordo, Yuriko Kajiya, Veronika Part, Roddy Doble, Michele Wiles, and Thomas Forster.  There was a lot of smiling on stage as the dancers flocked together, circled, broke off into smaller duos and trios and then gathered back together to focus on a single member.  The dancers beside Gemma this afternoon were Julio Bragado-Young, Luciana Paris, Joseph Phillips, Meaghan Hinkis, Arron Scott, Devon Teuscher, Isaac Stappas, Leann Underwood, and Daniel Mantei.

Costumes by Richard Hudson included casual pants, shirt and tie or suspenders for the men and pedestrian-type casual dresses for the women – kind of along the lines of some of the costumes in Paul Taylor's Company B.  Each lady had her hair down or in a ponytail.

The choreography was very steppy and peppy, which seems to be Ratmansky's preference.  It had a Great Galloping Gottschalk feel to it without the dynamics that Lynne Taylor-Corbett designed in her piece.

The problem with steppy and peppy is that no matter how crafted the dance is, the viewer becomes weary from trying to keep up with all the steps – as happened in On the Dneiper.  As the dancers flew through the steps in Dumbarton, the choreography took on a so-what feel to it.  It was really nice to see all of these terrific dancers out from under the shadows of the less-than-the-best guest artists that ABT is peddling around these days.  But unfortunately, the choreography, while being filled with steps, was short on substance. 

The orchestra sounded great playing Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks.  It's so easy for it to be played badly where the dissonance is so out of whack that it becomes – well, a-hem, – dissonant.

Stravinsky intentionally composed the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto in the tradition of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.  The next ballet, Troika, by Benjamin Millepied, was set to selections from two of Bach's suites for solo cello. 

Choreographed for three men while the cellist played seated in a downstage corner, Troika was Millepied's typical nonsense where dancers pulled and tugged on one another and casually threw off random tricks.  The first night's cast – Alexandre Hammoudi, Daniil Simkin, and Sascha Radetsky – danced superbly.  The rapport was such that Haglund thought maybe these guys would pull sailor hats out of their back pockets and launch into Robbins' Fancy Free.  Yes, the choreography included that kind of mimicry. 

The cast this afternoon fared a little better.   Thomas Forster, Jared Matthews, and Blaine Hoven could have been guys just fooling around on a basketball court.  Matthews and Hoven are outstanding together.  They have strong Tharp-type instincts, are confident dancers, and know how to accent phrases to maximize the value of the choreography.  Matthews had an outstanding afternoon in this piece and in the final ballet by Christopher Wheeldon.  He's got this James Dean attitude working for him along with spectacular legs and feet and a sense of dynamics.  ABT should throw him a great big bone: an Albrecht or Desiree or Siegfried - he's dynamic enough to carry any of them and within reach technically.

Tudor's Shadowplay received two completely different readings by Craig Salstein (filling in for the injured Herman Cornejo) and Daniil Simkin.  It probably will always be hard following in the footsteps of Anthony Dowell on which Tudor created this ballet about a boy's loss of innocence.  That's probably what Baryshnikov was thinking when Tudor arranged a revival of the piece with him in it in the 1970s.  Dowell's wide-eyed innocence, naivety, and pure classical leanings contributed much to the final artistic product.  Baryshnikov had lost all innocence by the time he got to Shadowplay and he didn't possess Dowell's classical purity.  But Tudor let Baryshnikov search out his own interpretation.   So who would the new interpreters this week aim for?  It's hard for Haglund to tell since he never saw a live performance of Shadowplay by either Dowell or Baryshnikov, but on the surface, it seemed that Salstein strived for the purity of Dowell while Simkin channelled his inner-Baryshnikov as well as his recent character in Prodigal Son.  But Simkin, as the Boy with Matted Hair, had no matted hair.  He had high-end salon hair. 

While Simkin's performance may have had more polish, Salstein's was far more than a last minute put-together to cover for an injured colleague.  It was one of his biggest opportunities to date, and he experienced some nerves.  Xiomara Reyes was the lady celestial in Salstein's performance and Sarah Lane was that character in Simkin's performance.  Both shined, but Sarah's performance was more secure because of the skill of the two male celestials who carried her around and maneuvered her through the air.  Grant DeLong and Isaac Stappas did a great job in that department. 

The final ballet on the bill was Christopher Wheeldon's Thirteen Diversions, set to Benjamin Britten's Diversions for Piano and Orchestra, for four principal couples and eight corps couples.  In this afternoon's performance, several of the couples from the night before were substituted for those scheduled to dance today.  Partially because of the offerings that preceded it, Haglund felt happily relieved and contented to see this new ballet.  Wheeldon seems to have recovered some of the ballet vocabulary he misplaced in recent years and while parts of the ballet appear to have been put together under pressure – most notably the ending – there are some striking passages and curiously, there are some passages that look like Millepied's work – such as the PdD for Isabella Boylston and Marcelo Gomes who conducted similar maneuverings in Everything Doesn't Happen At Once.  Lots of wrap around work with extensions marked the PdD and there was one weird section where Isabella bent over and picked up her legs at the ankles one at a time and moved them forward like plodding steps.  The point of this was – what?  Overall, the PdD was very pretty and the dancers looked stunning in it. 

Isabella's ensemble work had some deficiencies, especially this afternoon.  When she was dancing in unison with three extraordinarily experienced soloists (Stella Abrera, Maria Riccetto, and Simone Messmer), Isabella could not keep up with the speed of the chaines turns which the ladies were doing in a line.  And in a sequence of repeated soutenu turns that required the rounded arms to go all the way down to "fifth low" before raising to fifth position overhead, Isabella continually just went from first position to fifth while the other ladies were in tight unison.  Perhaps she was saving energy for her higher profile PdD with the preeminent principal dancer, I don't know, but it's apparent that some of Isabella's priorities need a course correction.

Today Stella Abrera and Eric Tamm, dancing the roles that Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg danced the night before, were outstanding in every way.  Stella's musicality and her ability to create flowing images with her upper body while slicing through movement with her legs is the best in the company.  She is so beautifully unique and has such technical integrity that in any other ballet company in the world that values talent and skill, she would be on the principal roster and artistic directors would be investing in her for major classical roles - not secondary roles to a first year soloist who the AD has anointed  as the next Marianna.

The corps de ballet in Thirteen Diversions danced handsomely in both performances.  All were costumed in black – long sleeved jacket shaped tops with wide shiny lapels that had deep openings in the front.  The women's black skirts came just below the knees and the inside of the hems were bright yellow.  The principals were similarly costumed but in a lighter gray.  The inside hems of their skirts were pink.  It all made for a nice effect.  In the first performance on Tuesday, the corpsmen were sometimes arranged so that Joseph Gorak and Sean Stewart were dancing next to each other.  That was pretty much pure classical Heaven.  Two guys who never execute an ugly line or step.  Can't imagine a more perfect corps arrangement except if you threw in Gemme Bond with them. 

The stage lighting - a back scrim that changed color and had a band of horizontal light that moved up and down - was really interesting.  Don't know why it was there, though. 

It was kind of a rough two performances to sit through on consecutive days.  As a nearby lady complained, "We can see this kind of stuff at City Ballet for a lot less money."  True.  This programing may be fun and interesting and inspiring for the performers to dance, but it will not bring in any new audiences and will drive away some people.  Why in such economically stressful times, ABT spends money on this kind of programing instead of pulling treasures out of its chest is a question that deserves an answer.  We haven't seen Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto for quite a while. Ballet Imperial.  Billy the Kid.  Concerto.  Gaite Parisienne.  Graduation Ball.  The Green Table.  Othello.  And on and on and on.  Expensive new works including one that only gives three dancers opportunities?  Expensive less-than-the-best guest stars? 

Haglund really wants to bestow the Pump Bump Award to Stella Abrera, because, well, he always does.  But it wouldn't be fair because all the dancers in both casts of Thirteen Diversions were superb and deserve more than applause.  So everyone in 13-Ds will have to share this amazing Pierre Hardys Pump Bump Award:

 

Comments

[Rachelmarch]

They should definitely have Jared learn Desiree in case Max and/or Herman are still out by SB week....should be almost enough time after Coppelia to put that together. And I'm sure he's learned most of it already by paying attention; he's that kind of dancer.

[Haglund]

Totally agree. What's more, these dancers who came through ABT II learned many of the principal PdDs of the classics and professionally performed them on the road. Matthews is ready. Radetsky performed Basilio and Albrecht in Amsterdam. He's ready. I read that Sarah Lane just did the Black Swan PdD in South Carolina with Joe Phillips. They are oh-so ready. I truly hope there is a big change in artistic management very soon. It hurts so much to see such talent wasted. And don't get me started on Stella...

[dc]

I've been thing of the Bruch, too. Although, 4 sets of guest artist pairs would be too much, even though the talent is already in house. Also, the violin. From the way the strings have been performing, a recording might be better.

[Haglund]

Hi dc. Very devilish comment about using a recording for the Bruch.