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<\/a>Steven Melendez (L) and Michael Wells woo Amanda Treiber in Frederick Ashton’s Capriol Suite<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n A year ago, New York Theatre Ballet was forced out of its longtime home in the Murray Hill neighborhood, and founder-director Diana Byer was distraught (do I need to discuss the insane prices in Manhattan real estate?). The outcome was a happy one; the company has relocated its studio to the second floor space in St. Mark\u2019s Church in the East Village, and in the company\u2019s June season, pointe shoes are having their day in the church proper where mostly bare feet reign (although not on Sundays).<\/p>\n It\u2019s a new experience to see this fine little company with its distinctive repertory in a non-proscenium space, and to be close to the dancers. There are, naturally, both disadvantages and advantages. For instance, there can be no backdrops for Antony Tudor\u2019s great Dark Elegies<\/em> (not that New York Theatre Ballet ever possessed those), but in the company\u2019s recent program, \u201cLegends and Visionaries,\u201d the dancers we\u2019re meant to see as the nobility in Frederick Ashton\u2019s charming 1930 Capriol Suite<\/em>, could sit on chairs placed on the altar platform and graciously descend the steps when they wished to spell the bouncy peasants in their dances. A nice touch.<\/p>\n New York Theatre Ballet in Capriol Suite<\/em>. Visible (L to R): Steven Campanella, Rie Ogura, Nayomi Van Brunt, Michael Wells, Elena Zahlmann, and Steven Melendez. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Peter Warlock\u2019s score for Capriol Suite <\/em>invokes the dances described in Thoinot Arbeau\u2019s 1589 dance manual, Orch\u00e9sographie<\/em>, in which an eager student, Capriol, quizzes the master as to steps and decorum. This clever early ballet by Ashton challenges the NYTB dancers\u2014not just because the steps are intricate, but because the choreographer wanted us to see the aristocrats as cool and slightly pompous (which is hard to manage without overdoing it). The peasants kick up their heels in orderly glee, giving us occasional arch glances, as if we\u2019re in on a secret. The costumes (William Chappell\u2019s original design) downplay the class difference, even as they make it clear. All the outfits appear to have been cut from the same bolts of pink and beige fabric, but differences in the lengths of the women\u2019s skirts and the men\u2019s bloomers alert us to what we need to know.<\/p>\n Alison Brangwen, Rie Ogura, Stephen Campanella, and Mitchell Kilby romp to a basse danse tune amid flying skirts and lusty steps. Stephen Melendez and Michael Wells woo Amanda Treiber in a stately pavane\u2014Melendez with a scroll (a poet for sure), Wells with a rose. Later Carmella Lauer, another lady with a long, wide-at-the-hips skirt joins these three in a \u201cPieds en l\u2019air.\u201d Elena Zahlmann cavorts with Campanella in a vigorous tordion, and all four men cross class boundaries to sport about in a \u201cmattachins\u201d and show how high they can jump before re-joining their partners.<\/p>\n Elena Zahlmann and Jeffrey Kazin in David Parker’s Two Timing<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Two smart new works grace this program: David Parker\u2019s Two Timing<\/em> and Gemma Bond\u2019s Cat\u2019s Cradle. <\/em>Parker had the happy idea of having guest artist Jeffrey Kazin of the Bang Group perform Steve Reich\u2019s Clapping Music<\/em>, while Zahlmann creates the audible rhythms with her pointe shoes and heels. In the score, a single twelve-count phrase of claps and pauses is methodically altered (the first note keeps becoming the last one). The two performers move close together, always in counterpoint, and eventually the sound-making includes smacks on the floor and other forms of body percussion. It\u2019s a virtuosic number, executed at a good clip, and Kazin and Zahlmann eye each other with the single-mindedness of mating birds.<\/p>\n Gemma Bond’s Cat’s Cradle<\/em>. Entangled (L to R): Rie Ogura, Alexis Branagan, Mayu Oguri (above Branagan), Stephen Campanella, Nayomi Van Brunt, and Amanda Treiber (hidden). Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Cat\u2019s Cradle<\/em> is Bond\u2019s second work for NYTB. An American Ballet Theatre dancer and a talented choreographer, she has choreographed a ballet that unequivocally illustrates its title. The eight dancers are divided into two trios and a duo and the members of these groups are bound together by a long piece of white fabric with built-in circlets that belt each individual dancer. To music by Karen LeFrak, Bond investigates the tricky games that can be played by two or three partners who must collaborate in creating spreading-out or curling-in images, and in twisting, ducking under, or vaulting over the link that connects them. You can see what they do as a series of games or a demanding job in a weaving workshop. Or as a romance with fetters that involve constant attention to one\u2019s partner(s), as in the sequence for Lauer and Choong Hoon Lee. When all eight join in ingenious, smoothly executed patterns, you hold your breath for fear of tangles.<\/p>\n When I say that this NYTB program abounds in cleverness, I don\u2019t mean to imply that it is without feeling. The remaining two ballets delve into deep emotions, however restrained the expression of these may be. One is Richard Alston\u2019s lovely Such Longing<\/em>, set to five Chopin mazurkas, two \u00e9tudes, and one nocturne (all fluently played in the church by Michael Scales). Martin Lawrence, who danced in the work at its 2005 London premiere, taught the movement to the dancers, and Alston arrived from England to coach it, modify it, and add new material for the NYTB dancers.<\/p>\n Amanda Treiber and Steven Melendez in Richard Alston’s Such Longing<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n In part because of the music, Such Longing<\/em> brings to mind Jerome Robbins\u2019s Dances at a Gathering<\/em>, also set to Chopin\u2019s piano pieces. As in that great Robbins ballet, Alston\u2019s piece begins with a meditative solo for a male dancer. Melendez performs it magnificently, wandering introspectively, glancing about as if waiting for someone, suddenly dropping down to touch the floor. The choreography plays large sweeping, wheeling movements against small, sharper ones and explosions into big jumps (Melendez has impressive elevation and is very responsive to slight shifts in the emotional climate).<\/p>\n Such Longing<\/em> shows four people Melendez, Treiber, Lee, and Ogura meeting in friendship, competition, and love, as if on an outing in the country together. When Treiber dances with Melendez, he bends her backward \u2014over his thigh and in many other ways. Perhaps she\u2019s swooning, or he anticipates her doing so. When he lifts her, he pushes her slowly upward (no preparatory jump on her part), and she seems to get lighter as she goes; it\u2019s a beautifully tender moment. After he leaves, Ogura enters with sweet solicitude for her friend; she touches Treiber\u2019s cheek, no questions asked, and they walk off together,<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a slightly quieter duet for Ogura and Lee and a wonderfully complicated one for the two men. Alston has devised some remarkable competitive (yet musical) encounters for the latter; they\u2019re in close contact with each other almost the whole time, and the duet ends with a handshake.<\/p>\n I\u2019m greatly impressed by these dancers\u2014their skill, their attention to style, detail, and nuance. But I find myself at times craving a little more from Lee and Treiber in Alston’s ballet. In her duet with Melendez, the excellent Treiber seems less aware of her partner at every possible moment than he is of her; her thoughts don\u2019t register as clearly as his. Lee is a startlingly clear dancer; he slices through the air like a knife. That is wonderful to watch. But his face remains masklike; we know he can see (he has to), yet on another level, he doesn\u2019t see <\/em>the people he\u2019s with and the space that surrounds him.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>