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American Ballet Theatre dancers\u00a0 in Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium<\/em> (Alexandre Hammoudi and Thomas Forster\u00a0 center, Hee Seo at back)\u00a0 Photo: Marty Sohl<\/p><\/div>\n Serenade after Plato\u2019s Symposium <\/em>is the twelfth ballet that Alexei Ratmansky has choreographed for American Ballet Theatre in the past seven years; clearly he takes his position as the company\u2019s artist in residence seriously. This beautiful new chamber ballet is subtly different from anything of his that I\u2019ve seen before, even though it shares characteristics with all of them.<\/p>\n The music that inspired him is Leonard Bernstein\u2019s eponymous 1954 concerto for solo violin (finely played by Benjamin Bowman), strings, and percussion. The seven sections provide musical analogues to the speeches, delivered by the principal guests at the symposium that Plato wrote of late in the fourth century B.C.E. Seven men meet at the celebratory banquet, hosted by the poet and playwright Agathon, who has just won a prize for his first tragedy. Lounging on two-man couches, they eat, drink, and discourse on love\u2014or Eros, as they dignify it. Aristophanes, the playwright of comedies, is there; so is the military man Alcibiades (who arrives late and drunk); so, importantly, is Socrates.<\/p>\n Bernstein drew on the celebrants\u2019 speeches for the tenor of his variations, noting on the day after he had completed the score that \u201ceach movement evolves out of elements in the preceding one.\u201d That idea reflects the nature of Plato\u2019s symposium, in which each speaker agrees, disagrees, or takes off from what he has heard. Ratmansky has approached the music both sensitively and flexibly, not, I think, wanting us to see one dancer as representing Phaedrus and another Eryxymathus. Instead, he captures the quality of discourse written into the music and the nature of the long-ago event itself.<\/p>\n The seven men in Ratmansky\u2019s ballet establish themselves as companions. They stand around or lounge on the floor as if on couches and watch whoever is \u201cspeaking\u201d at present. They come and go, engage in movement dialogues, and assist anyone about to keel over or swoon from the thought of exalted love. They cement another\u2019s points by dancing in unison or copying his moves. Because these are dancers with a common bond, Ratmansky defines them as intelligent conversationalists by creating solos that are as complex as thought and as virtuosic with these men\u2019s bodies as Agathon\u2019s guests are with their tongues. Their groupings suggest those of paintings depicting Plato\u2019s scene or the sculptures of his era.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t see the cast that performed the piece at its premiere on the May 17 gala. The following night, all but Herman Cornejo were dancing it for the first time, and all performed superbly: Thomas Forster, Joseph Gorak, Alexandre Hammoudi, Tyler Maloney, Aaron Scott, and Jose Sebastian. They dance beneath a very large white screen by Jerome Kaplan that initially bears the word \u201cSymposium\u201d in Greek letters; it lifts, lowers, and tilts unobtrusively. Kaplan also designed the distinctive costumes. A few have the geometrical look of a modern painting; others have partial drapes that allude to Grecian attire; the one worn by Forster\u2014white pants and a loose, open white jacket\u2014wouldn\u2019t be out of place in Athens today. Imagine a party whose host invited everyone to come in an outfit he\u2019d never dare wear anywhere else.<\/p>\n The companions in Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium<\/em>. Photo: Marty Sohl<\/p><\/div>\n You can see yet again how brilliantly Ratmansky directs the dancers\u2019 very specific focus. Their gaze shifts with the movement, enlivening the space around them and their own presence within it. Cornejo dances both the opening meditation and, later, the most rapid and intricate of the solos. His feet are as busy as a hummingbird\u2019s wings, whether he\u2019s springing into the air or marking the ground. Forster\u2019s solo is remarkable for its variety\u2014flamboyant but also drooping at moments; he flicks his fingers, balances while others skip around him. Scott exits from his solo with a speed-of-light chain of turns. For Maloney\u2019s softer, airier dancing, Brad Fields dims his lighting. This is picking out details, but all the solos\u2014for Gorak, for Sebastian as well\u2014 are rich and distinctively designed, although at times seeds of movement from one appear in another, in the same way thoughts do in Plato\u2019s work. Forster and Sebastan bow to each other at the end of a \u201cdialogue\u201d (watched and interrupted by others) as if they\u2019d come to an agreement.<\/p>\n The dancing is not really \u201cabout\u201d love in the sense that the banqueters\u2019 speeches are, but it can convey the effects of love on an individual\u2014confusing him, delighting him, making him sad. No women attended Agathon\u2019s party, but Socrates related his conversation with the (fictional) wise woman Diotima, who links Eros with ideas of beauty goodness, and immortality. \u201cDiotima,\u201d however, does arrive at Ratmansky\u2019s gathering, suddenly, mystically appearing at the back of the space, when a narrow black panel rises to reveal Hee Seo against a vertical slit of blue sky, wearing a long tunic that\u2019s almost as blue.<\/p>\n The duet between her and Hammoudi has some of the earmarks of a classical pas de deux in that she is lifted high; however the two do kneel and seem to converse with their hands. Perhaps because Diotima is, in a sense, Socrates\u2019 alter ego, Ratmansky wished to convey both her partner\u2019s veneration of her and the fact that they share equally in the ideas they\u2019re \u201cdiscussing.\u201d In any case, the beautiful woman is soon gone, and the men return to their feast of shared virtuosity. In the end, side by side, they advance toward the audience, and pop into jumps, one by one down the line, before subsiding into a sculptural cluster. Curious, but this is Ratmansky\u2019s terrific party, and if he wants to end it with a few fireworks, so be it.<\/p>\n Stella Abrera and Christine Shevchenko in Alexei Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas<\/em>. Photo: Marty Sohl<\/p><\/div>\n Serenade after Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em> began a program that continued with Ratmansky\u2019s Seven Sonatas<\/em> (2009) and his Firebird <\/em>(2012), both staged by Nancy Raffa. The sonatas are some of Domenico Scarlatti\u2019s ravishing ones, excellently played by Barbara Bilach. Three couples come together as if at a gathering at which love, friendship, and good manners swim freely in the rippling music. ABT\u2019s splendid dancers are grouped into couples: Stella Abrera and Calvin Royal III, Luciana Paris and Scott, Christine Shevchenko, and Forster. But the pairing doesn\u2019t mean simply a string of pas de deux. Two men may dance with one woman. One person may dance alone. And again, Ratmansky finds ways to show us that these people are companionable. They share friendship the way they share the music, experiencing new discoveries, momentary elation, even sudden vertigo.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/AJ-clump-sapsscene2ms.jpg\")
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