{"id":6093,"date":"2019-02-09T19:46:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T00:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6093"},"modified":"2019-02-10T22:18:27","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T03:18:27","slug":"new-york-city-ballet-presents-a-new-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/02\/new-york-city-ballet-presents-a-new-work\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Ballet Presents a New Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Taylor Stanley, foreground left, and Daniel Applebaum in Justin Peck’s Principia<\/em>, Photo: Erin Baiano<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

If Sir Isaac Newton had time-traveled from the late 17th<\/sup>\u2013century\nEngland to 21st<\/sup>-century New York and found himself watching the New\nYork City Ballet perform Justin Peck\u2019s new Principia<\/em>,\nwould he have understood the ballet\u2019s connection to his three-volume Philosophi\u00e6\nNaturalis Principia Mathematica<\/em>? You never know. But he might have understood bodies onstage being subject\nto gravitational pull and to attractions between them. He might have noticed\nthat a trio, repelling one of its members, has become a duet. Do dancers, when\nfocusing on their own paths and the natural attractions between them, not\nsuggest that they\u2019re participating in a somewhat askew exercise class for\nplanets?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, he would surely have been shocked by what would have seemed the unearthly power of Peck\u2019s dancers. In the 17th<\/sup> century, ones such as Claire Kretzschmar, Tiler Peck, Brittany Pollack, Daniel Applebaum, Taylor Stanley, and Harrison Coll, would have been considered an anomaly. No one would have shown an audience the shape of a body so unashamedly and stretched it to its limits or a person who leapt so high and tangled his\/her limbs with those of another.Forgive me for scrutinizing the title of what is a very heavily populated ballet: the six performers mentioned, plus Emily Kikta, Miriam Miller, Mira Nadon, a corps of nine women and six men. I of course, don\u2019t know what strategies Peck employed in choreographing Principia<\/em>; and, in the end, they don\u2019t matter in terms of the audience\u2019s perception. However, I do find unexpected relationships and structures not often seen on a ballet stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dancers\u2019 tights over leotards over longer-sleeved garments (by Reid Barthelme and Harriet Jung), Jennifer Tipton\u2019s severe and sensitive lighting, and music by Sofjan Stevens (with whom Peck has collaborated four times before) conspire to create a terrain of civil, like-minded individuals going about mysterious businesses. Stevens has spoken of the influence of Etienne-Louis Boull\u00e9e\u2019s rendering for a cenotaph honoring Newton that was never built; that drawing, like Tipton\u2019s lighting, sharply contrasts a shadowed area with a bright one. If the dancers move far upstage, they become silhouettes going about their enigmatic business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Taylor Stanley and members of New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Principia<\/em>. Photo: Erin Baiano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of the most memorable of images in Principia <\/em>involve structures made of dancers. Stanley stands at the center of a doughnut of kneeling women, their clasped hands raised behind them. Several women cluster around another one and put their hands together in a way that suggests the petals of a flower. Three inward-facing quartets of women press together, each with arms held high. You can imagine them as calyxes, since when another woman rushes around, lightly touching each group, they burst open to reveal a hidden dancer at the center (here I think more of flowers and bees than of stellar shenanigans).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Miriam Miller and NYCB women in Principia <\/em>by Justin Peck. Photo: Erin Baiano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t fathom some of the actions I\u2019m watching, even though\nI see that they have a logic. Why do people congregate to lift Stanley high and\nupright? What kind of relationship are Coll and Applebaum arguing over? What sets a few dancers popping up and\ndown from a low cluster of their peers? \nWhat cosmic currents roil them into dancing, or make them curl in\nprotectively? What makes anyone break into a solo?  When they rush about in trios, it\u2019s as if\nthey\u2019ve been somehow pulled into that association, rather than deciding to join\nup. You\u2019re surprised to see them end the dance by coming forward in a line and\nholding hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I regret not having attended the opening programs of the NYCB\u2019s winter season: Balanchine and Tchaikovsky, Balanchine and Stravinsky.  Just watching Apollo<\/em>, Orpheus<\/em>, and Agon<\/em> at a single performance could jolt your mind and heart into a heightened awareness of what movement can express.  But it\u2019s always interesting to see the NYCB dancers the way a younger generation of choreographers sees them, and the company members in turn appear excited by the new demands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forsythe likes messing with our heads; maybe he wanted to accustom us to late 20th<\/sup> century turmoil and disconnections. The first half of Herman Schmerman <\/em>ends with the five dancers disappearing into a pit at the back of the stage that we never suspected was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle in the duet from William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman <\/em> Photo: Erin Baiano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The music by Thom Willems\u2014abrasive and jangling\u2014suits the snafus that shape the pas de deux. Occasionally, Tyler Angle will support Tiler Peck in an echt-classical pose on one toe, but more often the two of them are matching their rapid footwork with motions such as sliding their hips out, tilting their heads, and showing themselves to the audience butts out\u2014all in a seamless, unstopping flow. When Angle isn\u2019t grasping Peck\u2019s hands to twist and untwist her in a complicated dialogue, their hands are often loose at the wrist. Their duet is a tour de force of oddities, yet it ends with him slowly revolving her as she stands on one leg, simple and erect. This is after, having finished their solos, they\u2019ve reappeared for their coda wearing little yellow skirts. Has the sun come out in their world? Have daffodils blossomed? Don\u2019t ask me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nread my original response to Kyle Abraham\u2019s engrossing The Runaway<\/em> last October, please click on this link: https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2018\/10\/the-new-york-city-ballet-enters-a-new-era\/<\/a>.\nMy view of Abraham\u2019s work comes toward the end of a review of the Fall Gala. It\nwas a pleasure to see the piece again and find new intrigues in it, this time\nwith a slightly altered cast (Ashley Bouder, Georgina Pazcoguin, Roman Mejia,\nPeter Walker, Mearns, and Stanley were dancing their original roles, with\nChristopher Grant and Spartak Hoxha replacing Sebastian Villarini-Velez and\nJonathan Fahoury). I was impressed all over again by the complex and\nfascinating solo that Abraham made for Stanley, as well as by Stanley himself, one\nintermission after his fine performing in Principia<\/em>,and during a season in which he made\nhis debut in Balanchine\u2019s Apollo. <\/em>Were\nyou watching from up there, Mr. B.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

If Sir Isaac Newton had time-traveled from the late 17th\u2013century England to 21st-century New York and found himself watching the New York City Ballet perform Justin Peck\u2019s new Principia, would he have understood the ballet\u2019s connection to his three-volume Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica? You never know. But he might have understood bodies onstage being subject […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[925,190],"class_list":{"0":"post-6093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-justin-peck","8":"tag-william-forsythe","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6093"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6124,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions\/6124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}