![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/AJ-Morris-ayscene5ro.jpg\")
<\/a>Mark Morris’s After You<\/em>. (L to R): Joo Won Ahn, Craig Salstein, Arron Scott and Jeffrey Cirio. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor<\/p><\/div>\n Ask a choreographer bred in modern dance to create a ballet for an esteemed classical company, and what ensues? If the choreographer in question is Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp, the resultant work often both honors tradition and knocks it around a little. This seemed true at American Ballet Theatre\u2019s first-night gala, which opened the company\u2019s two-week Lincoln Center season with the New York premiere of Morris\u2019s After You<\/em> and ended with a revival of Tharp\u2019s The Brahms-Haydn Variations<\/em> (2000). Even Frederick Ashton, whose peerless1966 Monotones I and II<\/em> was sandwiched between those two ballets, had moments of pushing the classical vocabulary out of its 19th-century confines.<\/p>\n Morris\u2019s charming ballet is set to Johan Nepomuk Hummel\u2019s Septet in C Major, No. 2, Opus 114. The music is as egalitarian as the dancing. The trumpet that must have given the septet its sobriquet of \u201cmilitary\u201d conducts a little affair with the piano as the opening Allegro con Brio begins; flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and double bass have periodic rises into conversational prominence. The twelve dancers are listed in alphabetical order; Isaac Mizrahi\u2019s masterfully cut sleeveless jumpsuits make no distinctions in color or cut among principals, soloists, and members corps de ballet, or between men and women. And Morris, as is his wont, subverts both hierarchy and gender behavior. Men and women dance as partners, but men also dance with each other, and occasionally a woman lifts a man.<\/p>\n The title After You<\/em> could be stretched a bit to include the composer\u2019s history. When he was born in a tiny yellow house (now a museum) in 1778, the surrounding city was Pressburg, Hungary (part of the Austrian Hapsburg Monarchy); it subsequently became Bratislava, Slovakia. As an eight-year-old, he was studying with Mozart in Vienna; when he was 13 and in London, Haydn composed a sonata for him. In 1792, back in Vienna, he studied with Haydn, as did a talented 20-year-old composer, Beethoven. Hummel later made arrangements of works by all three of them. After you Wolfgang, Josef, Ludwig.<\/p>\n The title of Morris\u2019s ballet becomes evident in terms of dancerly behavior. Very near the beginning, Stella Abrera is dancing with Calvin Royal III and Arron Scott (\u201cnow you take her; no, it\u2019s your turn\u201d); the men go off together, and Abrera makes a gracious gesture toward the wings that ushers in a line of six dancers, three of whom immediately escort her away, leaving the stage clear for Craig Salstein, Devon Teuscher, and Catherine Hurlin. Others are equally hospitable\u2014even Gillian Murphy, who seems, for a few seconds, surprised to find herself alone.<\/p>\n After You<\/em> is a sunny-afternoon ballet; a slight breeze blows through it. The dancers perform easily and buoyantly\u2014accurately, of course (and the women are on pointe), but not making a big deal of it. If I could run up and join them, I\u2019d like that. The phrases are not crammed with steps, and that contributes to the work\u2019s free-flowing air. An absence of effortful preparation makes the variety of leaps and hops resemble flying. This is not to say the movement isn\u2019t difficult; Murphy masters a solo in the Adagio section that has her moving slowly and fluidly from one feat of balance act to another, perhaps testing the air.<\/p>\n The comings-and-goings that Morris has devised (some of them fleeting) wittily suggest the collegiality and separations that happen at parties. Royal makes a solo foray into big turning leaps in a circle and finishes by rolling on the floor. Four men hurry in to spell him in the same activity (perhaps because of something Morris heard in the music, but conveying a \u201clet\u2019s do that too\u201d sportiveness). At the end of the first section, there\u2019s a quiet moment; then the trumpet sounds, and Jeffrey Cirio, who\u2019s closest to the wings, lifts every other person lined up onstage and deposits him\/her closer to the exit; he\u2019s a living turnstile.<\/p>\n Since the choreography presents the dancers as equals, here are the names of those I haven\u2019t mentioned: Sterling Baca, Skylar Brandt, and Lily Wisdom (replacing Gemma Bond). In Morris\u2019s own company, his performers often appear as individuals; that\u2019s how (assisted by Tina Fehlandt) he has presented the dozen ABT dancers who inhabit After You.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Morris doesn\u2019t use Hummel\u2019s fourth movement. The ballet ends with Septet\u2019s Menuetto. But, strangely, it doesn\u2019t really END. Nor are the dancers clearly going to keep dancing until the lights go out. Perhaps a cue in Michael Chybowski\u2019s excellent lighting went wrong at the gala, but a few dancers were scrimmaging around at the left side of the stage as the lights quickly dimmed to black. Too busy saying \u201cafter you\u201d to say goodnight?<\/p>\n James Whiteside and Gillian Murphy in Twyla Tharp’s The Brahms-Haydn Variations<\/em>. Photo: Marty Sohl<\/p><\/div>\n In 1976, Twyla Tharp\u2019s remarkable Push Comes to Shove<\/em>, her first work for ABT, she showed off the dauntless Mikhail Baryshnikov. This was just two years after he defected from Russia and the then-named Kirov Ballet. The solo she created for him early in Push<\/em> is a masterpiece of loving subversion of all that he could accomplish; carefully preparing himself for a pirouette, for instance, he might then spin in the opposite direction of the one predicted. I\u2019m thinking especially, however, of the second movement\u2019s big ensemble section, in which, from time to time, various women in the symmetrically spaced and divided corps de ballet kept leaving the ranks and defecting to the opposite group.<\/p>\n The Brahms-Haydn Variations <\/em>(set to Johannes Brahms\u2019s \u201cVariations on a Theme by Haydn for Orchestra, Op. 56a\u201d) is less irreverent. Choreographed almost 25 years after Push Comes to Shove<\/em>, this ballet shows Tharp more at home with the classical tradition and a bit less scampy. (Susan Jones, the former ABT dancer who assisted Tharp on Push Comes to Shove<\/em>, has staged it excellently, but with perhaps a shade too much starch.)<\/p>\n I confess to loving The Brahms-Haydn Variations <\/em>less than I do Tharp\u2019s magnificent In the Upper Room<\/em>, created for her own company in 1986 to a commissioned score by Philip Glass and set on ABT dancers in 1988. She attacked all the permutations of Brahms\u2019 triumphant theme with her usual zest for countering tradition with innovation, but the ballet moves along like a grande dame who, despite losing an earring or stepping on her own train occasionally, will maintain her decorum somehow.<\/p>\n Take the corps de ballet: eight men and eight women dressed in white (costumes by Santo Loquasto). A bunch of them may dance in unison; every man may lift his woman. But they don\u2019t stay put. Mannerly and gracious, they may form ranks asymmetrically, split in two, or disappear soon after arriving, as if they\u2019re needed elsewhere. Sometime the women ditch the men. If a wedding-cake formation is required to climax a variation, they\u2019re ready to come be part of it.<\/p>\n On the other hand, these folks are fickle. When Gillian Murphy and James Whiteside walk in and start dancing in the spot just vacated by Danil Simpkin and Sarah Lane, the others onstage (that includes new arrivals Christine Shevchenko and Joseph Gorak) can\u2019t decide whether they want to stay and participate, or take a break and return. Murphy and Whiteside are still dancing imperturbably and very beautifully, when some and\/or others reappear. It\u2019s a challenge to keep track of the five principal pairs (these include Isabella Boyleston and Sterling Baca) amid the free-spirited corps dancers. Also prominent are Maria Kochetkova and Herman Cornejo (he\u2019s the only one of the original cast members still on hand, and maybe he\u2019s in a different role). To this couple\u2019s gentle variation, he brings a touch of sweet jazziness and a bit of a caper, before scooping her up in a cuddlesome lift and carrying her away.<\/p>\n The five pairs mentioned wear brown costumes (quite casual for the men), while the two pairs of demi-soloists (Cassandra Trenary and Blaine Hoven, Luciana Paris and Roman Zhurbin) are dressed in a shade between cream and beige. As an example of the compositional mischief, Hoven, out of nowhere, embarks on a bold solo, but very soon he\u2019s hidden behind various entering guests at this lavish party. What was on his mind? We\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n Certainly the ballet is a grand one, rich in demanding, great-looking dancing. In that richness, it matches Brahms\u2019s music (conducted by Charles Barker). If you\u2019ll forgive another analogy, the ballet makes me think of a fancy fruitcake. Did more dried cherries end up in one slice than in another? Oh look, I got two pieces of pecan. Except that, of course, we\u2019re not talking about delicious tidbits but about superb dancers, mixed by a master. I hope they\u2019ll have a little more fun with The Brahms-Haydn Variations <\/em>as they warm to it.<\/p>\n<\/a>