Liam Scarlett’s Acheron for NYCB
Teetering on the edge of brilliant – 1/31

Liam Scarlett’s first work for New York City Ballet, Acheron, which premiered last night, revealed a thinking choreographer, passionate about music and atmosphere, who has an interest in the hostilities and emotional conflicts that bubble up in romantic relationships.

Acheron, the river that led into Hades – or bordered around it, according to Dante – also crops up in Freudian writings about conflict and the resistance to higher powers. Scarlett used these themes as a port from which to launch a cruise through the territorial waters of the great choreographer, Kenneth MacMillan, while offering his own unique insight and commentary.

The music he chose for the ballet, Poulenc’s Concerto in G for Organ, Strings, and Timpani, is a desperately dramatic and mournful piece that we previously encountered in the ballet, Voluntaries, which Glen Tetley created for the Stuttgart Ballet in 1973 as a valedictory for John Cranko. The agony within the music demands agony on stage, and agony we got – some of it agonizingly beautiful.

Three principal couples, a soloist, and five corps couples comprised the cast. The central couple, Rebecca Krohn and Tyler Angle, delivered performances unlike any we have seen from them before. Angle was an aggressive and insistent pursuer of the resistant Krohn who seemed to want to engage him spiritually while he had only a physical interest in her. Their PdD included the expected gymnastic qualities, but in most instances those qualities either mirrored the passion of the music or conveyed the passion of their conflict – or when at best, both.

Each of the couples (the other two were Ashley Bouder & Amar Ramasar and Sara Mearns & Adrian Danchig-Waring) struggled with their decisions of whether or not to commit/submit to a partner while the soloist, the marvelous Anthony Huxley, made no decision at all. Was he happy being stuck on the banks of the Acheron River, so to speak, having been admitted to neither heaven nor hell? Huxley's final moments had him doubled over presumably in agony, so one guesses that he had regrets about not making a commitment. Indecision, it seems, is worse than making a bad decision.

Scarlett’s choreographic ideas were firmly based in the ballet vocabulary and included gorgeous phrases, intelligent transitions, a sensitivity to the weight of the music, and a fascinating ability to manipulate dramatic tension.

However, the PdDs for all three couples had the men heaving the women around too much. There were long spans when Haglund thought – just let go of one another and dance with each other. A PdD doesn’t demand constant physical attachment of the two dancers from beginning to end. If that were the case, we would never have seen Odette’s tears roll off her fingertips nor would we have seen Mary Vetsera fondling Rudolf’s gun or many other great moments. A PdD is about two people dancing together – not continually hanging on to one another. To be fair, which is Haglund’s custom, he will offer that – if adjusted for inflation from 1973 to 2014 – there wasn’t any more of that stuff in Acheron than there was in Voluntaries. But that doesn’t make it all okay. Inflated ballet isn’t necessarily better ballet.

Scarlett made an intriguing, possibly contrasting, use of the corps couples. Their relationships appeared to be calmer. They flowed across the stage as though flowing down a river. There were occasional ripples but nowhere near the resistance one observed with the principal couples.

The costumes, which were designed by Scarlett, made the dancers look absolutely gorgeous. The women wore blue-gray dresses that had darker brownish-violet tops. Happily, they also wore tights on their legs. The men wore blue-gray tights and appeared shirtless. The lighting contributed much to both the passion and angst playing out on stage. Acheron is a keeper.

The building of last night’s over-all program was brilliant as well. Angelin Preljocaj’s thrilling Spectral Evidence based on the witches of Salem and Mauro Bigonzetti’s less thrilling Vespro which was saved by the incredible soprano saxophone played last night by Ed Joffe, both address victimization and the consequences of one’s decisions. In Vespro, Andrew Veyette was terrific as the troubled, piano-banging odd man out; in Spectral Evidence, Robert Fairchild was thrilling and chilling as a tightly buttoned-up religious man who came apart at the seams after being forcibly kissed by Tiler Peck. Go figure.
 
This New Combinations Evening is a strong, strong program that will bear repeated viewings. And, lastly, welcome to New York, Liam Scarlett. Thanks for the wonderful new ballet and for making Rebecca Krohn's exquisite beauty and artistry shine through like never before. Here's hoping there are many more Pump Bumps to come: