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<\/a>Georgina Pazcoguin Georgina Pazcoguin and Meagan Mann in Justin Peck’s New Blood<\/em>. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n For the fourth year in a row, the New York City Ballet has devoted its fall gala to fashion, a custom started by the vice-chairman of the NYCB board, Sarah Jessica Parker. Pairing celebrated couturiers with choreographers is a scheme that lures audiences with money to spend, as well as gowns to wear to the gala that compete with the onstage costumes. This year’s gala raised close to 2.7 million dollars, which may not seem like a princely sum to today\u2019s billionaires, but it contributes considerably to keeping a dance company on its feet, so to speak.<\/p>\n Moving through the crowded Promenade before the performance was itself a ballet. Quite a few women wore slim-cut ball gowns with trains and swam through the mob like mermaids, sure that the currents they stirred up would keep the rest of us stepping carefully as we slipped through the knots of chatting people. One friend and colleague stepped on a passing wake of fabric, was thrown forward, yet managed to stay upright (although she spilled her champagne on another woman\u2019s shimmering dress). Witnesses applauded her grace, she reported.<\/p>\n As usual, a short film preceded the evening. Designers talking, dancers draped in fabric, choreographers scrutinizing the result, and through it all costume supervisor Marc Happel and his assistants trying to make everything work\u2014 that is, making sure the dancers could move. At one stage in the process, cast members of Troy Schumacher\u2019s new ballet kept their faces calm while trying on outfits designed by Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida of Marques\u2019Almeida; it was Happel who pointed out that long strings trailing off the costumes and along the floor really would not<\/em> work.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s gala featured premieres by four choreographers (all men, but I won\u2019t carry on about that here): Myles Thatcher, Robert Binet, Justin Peck, and Schumacher. A revival of Peter Martins\u2019s 2003 Thou Swell<\/em> got new costumes too. I found Thatcher\u2019s Polaris<\/em> and Peck\u2019s New Blood<\/em> to be the most compelling of the new ballets, but all four are polished, fairly adventurous, and show off their dancers in becoming ways. The choreographers worked with small, unevenly numbered casts, downplayed or avoided traditional gender pairing, and preferred asymmetrical patterns. All of which is refreshing.<\/p>\n Myles Thatcher’s Polaris<\/em>. (L to R): Ghaleb Kayali, Emilie Gerrity, Craig Hall, Ashly Isaacs, Andrew Scordato (hidden), Daniel Applebaum, and Taylor Stanley. Zuhair Murad designed the simple, becoming costumes for Polaris<\/em> (he also provided Sarah Jessica Parker\u2019s silvery party dress). Four of the ballet\u2019s five men wear tights and vests in shades of blue, while two of its three women (Emilie Gerrity and Ashley Isaacs) are clad in knee-length, sleeveless, pale blue dresses with subtle lacy patterns and tiny sparkles strewn here and there. Tiler Peck\u2019s dress is paler still, and Craig Hall, her sometime partner, wears white.<\/p>\n Thatcher, a dancer in the San Francisco Ballet’s corps, has choreographed for the SFB and the Joffrey Ballet. Last year, he was mentored by Alexei Ratmansky in the Rolex Mentor and Proteg\u00e9e Arts Initiative; it\u2019s clear that he learned a lot.<\/p>\n Polaris<\/em>, set to the Allegramente<\/em> from William Walton\u2019s Piano Quartet in D Minor, suggests in its patterns the North Star at the tip of the Little Dipper\u2019s handle, around which the other constellations appear to move. In human terms, Peck is both part of the group and separated from it. She often stands alone, staring into distant space, or watching her colleagues dance or run past her. Thatcher makes the space alive and keeps our eyes busy. In one wonderful passage, Hall, the two other women, Daniel Applebaum. Ghaleb Kayali, Andrew Scordato, and Taylor Stanley form a chain, each laying a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him or her. Within that chain they move, changing places, creating a flow, and as they do so, the last man reaches out a scoops Peck into the chain. When they swirl into another more complex formation, she\u2019s at its heart, but after a few seconds, she ducks out of it and, while they freeze, dances around them with a beautiful air of discovery, then resumes her place in the group, which instantly spurts apart into new patterns.<\/p>\n Preston Chamblee and Rebecca Krohn in Robert Binet’s The Blue of Distance<\/em> Robert Binet is a choreographic associate in the National Ballet Ballet of Canada and has created works for several other companies. If he had a mentor, it was John Neumeier (Binet choreographed a full-evening work for the second company of the Hamburg Ballet, where Neumeier is artistic director and chief choreographer). The Blue of Distance<\/em> is set to two lovely, impressionistic Ravel piano pieces (finely played by Elaine Chelton)\u2014 the first, Oiseaux Tristes<\/em>, with its deep, somber chords and high, fitful flutterings evoking the birds of its title, and Une Barque sur l\u2019Oc\u00e9an<\/em>, which ripples and rocks its way in and out of turbulence. In speaking of her costume designs, Hanako Maeda of ADEAM, related the men\u2019s royal blue unitards and the women\u2019s strange blue fish-scale bodices and foamy skirts to water.<\/p>\n The Blue of Distance <\/em>is performed by Sterling Hyltin, Rebecca Krohn, Sara Mearns, Tyler Angle, Harrison Ball, Preston Chamblee, and Gonzalo Garcia; six of them at times form pairs. A duet for Mearns and Angle to Oiseaux Tristes <\/em>is dreamy, and her marvelous arms flutter like wings. There are some fine moments and a pervading sense of yearning, of reaching (especially from Mearns and from Ball), but I can\u2019t find the ballet\u2019s center\u2014the force that holds it together.<\/p>\n New York City Ballet dancers in Troy Schumacher’s Common Ground<\/em> ((L to R): Anthony Huxley, Alexa Maxwell, Teresa Reichlen, Joseph Gordon, and Russell Janzen. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n Any center to Schumacher\u2019s Common Ground<\/em> is stated most strongly by Ellis Luwig-Leon\u2019s excellent commissioned score and playfully sabotaged by Marques and Almeida\u2019s vivid, distracting costumes. Is that bundle of flying red fabric Amar Ramasar? Wait till he slows down and I\u2019ll tell you. Will that floating blue panel on Teresa Reichlen\u2019s mostly green and blue whatsit wrap around her knees and hamper her? Streamers are attached to people\u2019s wrists, adding to the complications. The costumes are constructed of irregularly shaped, lightweight, bright-colored fabric, and each one may be a work of art. The dancers look like brightly colored birds. Sometimes they’re wild; sometimes they travel as a flock; sometimes they move in slow motion.<\/p>\n Schumacher is a member of NYCB\u2019s corps de ballet and a talented choreographer. I greatly admired his Clearing Dawn<\/em>, a highlight of the 2014 fall gala. And the fact that he knows these dancers well shows in his work. But I lost my way through Common Ground. <\/em>Odd, often intriguing things happen. Tall Reichlen dances with slightly shorter Huxley (such a fine dancer). Then Joseph Gordon carries Huxley away. All seven dancers circle and feel the floor. The last image is enigmatic. One by one, most of them lie down on their backs side by side, like sardines waiting to be packed closer together. The curtain descends. The other intrepid performers are Ashley Laracey, Alexa Maxwell, and Russell Janzen.<\/p>\n I should have mentioned before now that it\u2019s always a pleasure to see members of NYCB’s corps de ballet presented on equal footing with principal dancers and soloists. The title of Justin Peck\u2019s ballet, New Blood<\/em>, could indirectly allude to that. Its cast consists of three principal dancers, five soloists, and six members of the corps. But New Blood <\/em>also refers to the ballet\u2019s bold structure, and that structure is determined in part by the music that accompanies it: Steve Reich\u2019s Variations for Vibes, Piano<\/em> and Strings. <\/em>The music critic Alex Ross wrote in 2006 of it and two other works by the composer \u201cReich has consolidated four decades of invention. Neon-lit textures have given way to dense, dusky landscapes, with tender lyrical passages at the heart of each piece.\u201d But, of course, because Reich is Reich, there\u2019s a constant rapid pulse underneath the irregular bass syncopations of the pianos and the high outcries of the strings and vibes.<\/p>\n<\/a>
Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n<\/a>
Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n<\/a>