{"id":3025,"date":"2015-02-08T12:29:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T17:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=3025"},"modified":"2015-02-11T09:23:20","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T14:23:20","slug":"tripartite-triumph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2015\/02\/tripartite-triumph\/","title":{"rendered":"Tripartite Triumph"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three choreographers shower their talents on New York City Ballet<\/em><\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>

New York City Ballet men in Justin Peck’s \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>. Front, L to R: Daniel Ulbricht, Gonzalo Garcia, and Justin Peck. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

The only perplexing thing about Justin Peck\u2019s new work for the New York City Ballet is its diacritically enriched title: \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d: Four Dance Episodes. <\/em>In every other way, his ballet for a company in which he is both a soloist and its resident choreographer is clear, brilliant, and brave. Brave because he has set his work to the splendid score that Aaron Copland wrote for Agnes de Mille\u2019s 1942 Rodeo<\/em> (subtitled The Courting at Burnt Ranch<\/em>)\u2014or rather, to the orchestral suite that Copland then made of it, eliminating one of its five sections. In the course of Peck\u2019s plotless ballet, those people familiar with the music may identify his \u201cBuckaroo Holiday,\u201d \u201cCorral Nocturne,\u201d \u201cSaturday Night Waltz,\u201d and \u201cHoe-Down,\u201d and visions of de Mille\u2019s cowgirl who wants to ride with the boys may flash periodically in some spectators\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n

But in the end, those intrusive memories don\u2019t matter, and they dissipate like horses let loose from that decades-ago corral. Copland wrote a dramatic score, with jolts and pauses to convey riding an unbroken horse and awkward moments between people. Peck approaches the music and its ambiance in his own way\u2014creating in formal terms the sense of racing through a big, open space; being corralled; falling and being caught; feeling despondent. When a piece of music gradually winds down, Daniel Ulbricht is ready to decelerate a multiple pirouette\u2014one straight leg held out to the side\u2014and end it handily.<\/p>\n

\"Peck's<\/a>

Peck’s \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>. L to R: Craig Hall, Daniel Applebaum, Allen Peiffer, and Andrew Scordato catch Russell Janzen. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Like de Mille, Peck focuses on the men. He cast three principal guys (Gonzalo Garcia, Andrew Veyette, and Ulbricht) plus one (Amar Ramasar) who gets the only girl on this virtual ranch (Sara Mearns). Then there\u2019s a bare-legged, five-man posse, and a another one of six fellows in trousers. So: fifteen men to deploy. Except there were sixteen at \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>\u2019s premiere. Veyette had injured himself in Balanchine\u2019s Donizetti Variations <\/em>the night before, and Peck made an engaging little speech before the curtain went up, explaining that he himself would do his best to dance Veyette\u2019s role for the first part of the ballet, and Sean Suozzi would take it on for the last part. We audience members were urged to hope all would go smoothly, and it did (although, of course, Veyette was missed).<\/p>\n

Conductor Andrews Sill and the NYCB orchestra gave the music a rousing performance. Brandon Stirling Baker lit the stage simply and effectively. Reid Bartelme, Harriet Jung, and Peck came up with costumes for the men that suggested outfits for a team playing some hitherto unknown sport. Mearns\u2019 attire is more enigmatic: a skimpy lavender leotard with a short, snug, deep red velvet top. When she makes her first entrance and starts dancing, the men are standing around in small clusters, chatting. Eventually they spot her spinning and joke among themselves (the moment acknowledges de Mille without making a big deal out of it). She leaves. Ramasar looks dejected. Then the men drop face-down and beat the floor, as if they had hooves; in short order, they haul one another up and start jumping some more.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s evident from the start is Peck\u2019s interest in what might, in earlier decades, be termed \u201cplastique.\u201d That is, among the rushings on and offstage and vigorous unison dancing, sculptural groups often form and reform. During a sweet musical passage early on, for instance, the fifteen men divide into three identical clusters of five, and twine and dip to evolve a bridge for one guy to duck low under. I worried at first that the choreography conveyed less of a sense of open space than the music did, but the rambunctiousness of Copland\u2019s score and the lusty energy of much of the dancing weighs against that.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em> quintet. (L to R): Daniel Applebaum (hidden), Allen Peiffer, Taylor Stanley, Craig Hall, and Andrew Scordato. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Peck\u2019s choreography for the five men in shorts is extremely interesting. In the 2nd Episode (Copland\u2019s \u201cCorral Nocturne\u201d) the music turns dreamy and the lighting soft. The dancers move together smoothly, supporting one another, shifting the nature of their formation. Twice, they hold hands, and Taylor Stanley (who earlier performs a bright, neat little solo) yanks them toward the front of the stage (it\u2019s as if a whip has been cracked); they pull him back, and both times, he briefly breaks away, bending over and clutching his belly.<\/p>\n

That feeling of comradeship pervades \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>, as does the occasional isolation of an individual. In one moment, Ulbricht, having burst into a solo, falls back and is caught by a pack of men (this maneuver becomes a motif). But they go off together, and he\u2019s left alone for a few seconds, looking rather forlorn, like de Mille\u2019s cowgirl. Despite the finely structured movement, whether boisterous or lyrical, the atmosphere is one of informality. Once four men sit on the edge of the stage, dangle their legs over, and check out the musicians in the pit. Once, Ramasar gazes out at us as if we\u2019re part of the landscape, then reaches down at the front of the stage and pulls a taut rope out of the floor. His move ignites the cymbal crash that ushers in the 4th<\/sup> Episode and Copland\u2019s jubilant \u201cHoedown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sara<\/a>

Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar in Justin Peck’s \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Peck sets his 3rd<\/sup> Episode duet to the \u201cSaturday Night Waltz.\u201d The composer based much of Rodeo<\/em> on well-known cowboy tunes; his waltz polishes, caresses, and loops around \u201cI Ride an Old Paint\u201d in heartbreakingly beautiful ways. The duet\u2014long at about three and a half minutes\u2014is remarkable in the way Peck structures the love between the partners. Yes, Ramasar lifts and supports Mearns at times, but she also assists him, and they dance together as equals, ravished by the music and what it brings out in them. Here too, I missed, briefly, that sense of open spaces that Copland conveys in his music. The only space this man and woman know is just large enough to contain both of them dancing together.<\/p>\n

The wonderful contrasting energies and rhythms of \u2018R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>\u2019s choreography, the skill with which Peck deploys his squads, and the clarity and fullness of the performing are remarkable. As is the ballet\u2019s relation to its score and all that clings to that great piece of music.<\/p>\n

On February 4, Peck\u2019s ballet was sandwiched between Alexei Ratmansky\u2019s 2014 Pictures at an Exhibition<\/em> and Christopher Wheeldon\u2019s 2000 Mercurial Maneuvers. <\/em>An all-star program that might well have charmed the late master of the house, George Balanchine. Like R\u014dd\u0113,\u014d<\/em>, Ratmansky\u2019s ballet (whose October premiere I unaccountably missed) tells no story, but, as in Peck\u2019s work, images of character and emotion, of comradeship and love, seethe up within and around the dances.<\/p>\n

\"Alexei<\/a>

Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition<\/em>. (L to R) Gretchen Smith, Lauren Lovette, Sterling Hyltin, Indiana Woodward, Sara Mearns and their invisible partners (Adrian Danchig-Waring, Gonzalo Garcia, Tyler Angle, Joseph Gordon, Amar Ramasar. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Ratmansky\u2019s choice of d\u00e9cor was an intriguing one, especially considering that Mussorgsky subtitled his 1874 piano suite \u201cA Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann.\u201d Hartmann\u2019s paintings and sketches ignited the titles and ambiances in Mussorgsky\u2019s music\u2014titles such as \u201cThe Old Castle\u201d and \u201cBallet of the Unhatched Chicks,\u201d and \u201cSamuel Goldenberg & Schmu\u00ffle.\u201d But the atmosphere of Ratmansky\u2019s ballet has nothing in common with the somewhat murky realism of Hartmann\u2019s work. Instead, Wendall K. Harrington\u2019s video projections dissect Wassily Kandinsky\u2019s luminous, candy-bright 1913 Color Study Squares with Concentric Circles<\/em>, and the costumes by Adeline Andre allude to the artist\u2019s shapes and palette (unfortunately, these outfits are, to my mind, both awkward and unbecoming). So a painter on whose work 20th<\/sup>-century Russian policy makers eventually frowned mates with a musical vision of Tsarist Russia.<\/p>\n

While Cameron Grant, at a piano situated at the side of the stage apron, brilliantly plays Mussorgsky\u2019s music (much lighter in spirit than the Hartman paintings that inspired it), five male dancers and five women create Ratmansky\u2019s images. Playfulness is an ingredient from the outset. Kandinsky\u2019s painting fills the backdrop with its twelve squares of vivid, loosely defined nested circles, and, in front of it, the dancers arrange themselves in three graded rows to watch one person toss off a brief solo before dislodging another to dance and taking his\/her place in the \u201cbleachers.\u201d This game proceeds (to Mussorsky\u2019s march-like \u201cPromenade\u201d), with the dancers watching each new soloist display some steps, until everyone has had a turn. The well-known tune and variants of it crop up between almost every named section, as if the listeners were walking from one painting to another or to another room in a museum.<\/p>\n

As for Kandinsky\u2019s painting, designer Harrington takes it apart with fluid ease and sets its components dancing. Now, free of the squares, one of the circles within circles becomes huge; now only a few show up; now some tiny ones drift up as if into a night sky. The background color changes, and Mark Stanley\u2019s skillful lighting keeps the onstage patterns bright. Like the dancers, Kandinsky\u2019s escaped shapes seem to take turns becoming prominent.<\/p>\n

\"Amar<\/a>

Amar Ramasar, Sterling Hyltin (seated), and Sara Mearns strike a pose in Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition<\/em>. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Do not look for Mussorgsky\u2019s \u201cunhatched chicks.\u201d You will only see the five men (Tyler Angle, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Joseph Gordon, Garcia, and Ramasar) playing contrapuntal two-against-three games with fine athletic fervor, at the end of which, one of them (Danchig-Waring) points out something on the ground and alludes to it again while he\u2019s dancing with Gretchen Smith; she rides him offstage. You will not envision Paris\u2019s \u201cTuilleries\u201d when Lauren Lovette dances to that racing piece of music, although she\u2019s a flower that could grace any garden. But you might well see something of \u201cThe Gnome\u201d in Mearns\u2019s solo; Ratmansky\u2019s choreography follows the dark turbulence in the music, and Mearns often covers ground slightly bent over as if seeing things on the floor and in the surrounding space.<\/p>\n

Ratmansky\u2019s bounty of dances shows off the performers wonderfully. Angle and Sterling Hyltin (in a role created for Wendy Whelan) are excellently paired. Hyltin is so light and fluent that when she jumps and turns, he seems to snatch her out of the air. In other duets, Garcia is paired with Lauren Lovette, and Gordon with Indiana Woodward. Ramasar plucks Mearns away from a conversational moment with Smith and Woodward for a dance to Mussorgsky\u2019s \u201cBaba Yaga.\u201d Watching, you never feel, \u201coh, another pas de deux.\u201d And there\u2019s more. Four women stay close together for a few moments that suggest a folk dance, then hold hands in a chain and exit with perky little sidesteps. In one full-cast section titled \u201cWith the Dead in a Dead Language,\u201d four couples dance simultaneously, each pair with different steps to do, and pretty soon, three male-female pairs and two same-sex pairs turn the stage into a artful version of village market square, in which one person may break away from a partnership and cut in on another one. Or maybe all the \u201cpictures\u201d in the exhibition have come off the walls and are dancing together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Christopher<\/a>

Christopher Wheeldon’s Mercurial Manoeuvres<\/em>. Foreground: Jared Angle and Tiler Peck. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Russian music opened the evening, and Russian music closes it. Dmitry Shostakovich finished writing his Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra in 1933, before his compositions yielded to soviet pressure and demands. Wheeldon\u2019s Mercurial Manoeuvres <\/em> abounds in spirited marching (as well as slow marching in red light), and the corps de ballet dancers\u2019 smart blue tunics with red and white trim (by Carole Divet)\u2014plus matching long pants for the men\u2014 make them resemble enthusiastic youth groups on parade. The red panels that slowly lift at the beginning suggest the dawning of a new era, and Anthony Huxley, dressed in red and wonderfully nimble, gives the impression of not only an enthusiastic young leader, but of a revolutionary Firebird. As opposed to the ensemble\u2019s bright, tautly organized drills (not always to music that decrees it), he sprints through space, attracting followers.<\/p>\n

The interplay among the summoning trumpet (played by Raymond Mase), the rippling piano (played by Alan Moverman) and the string orchestra led by Sill is stunning. And Wheeldon\u2019s maneuvering of his twelve ensemble women, four ensemble men, two bright-footed demi-soloists (Sara Adams and Kristen Segin), plus Huxley, Tiler Peck, and Jared Angle results in masterly patterns. Arresting images materialize. At one moment, Angle walks upright, while the floor-bound men creep along in a group, as if he were a hero and they his living chariot. Some of the women, lifted high, make paddling gestures with their hands. After all, there\u2019s no war in sight. These drills could even be part of a sports festival.<\/p>\n

\"Tiler<\/a>

Tiler Peck and Jared Angle in Christopher Wheeldon’s Mercurial Manoeuvres<\/em>. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

Peck and Angle dance beautifully together. What I find wonderful about her is not only her pure gold technique, but the illusion she creates of willing the movements she performs. If you didn\u2019t know that Wheeldon created them, you\u2019d think she made them up in collaboration with her partner. And in her dreams.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable that all three ballets on this program not only showcase marvelously interesting dancing on the part of every cast member; they all, in various ways, introduce elements and patterns that suggest small human dramas or moments of emotion, without resorting to telling stories. The result is that the dancers, despite their exceptional skills, reveal themselves as thinking, feeling human beings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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