The Scottish Ballet brought a chamber-sized touring group of mostly principal dancers to the Joyce Theater this week in a program that both distinguished the company from the typical fare served up by Joyce visitors and also showed that they could not resist faddish content.
Artistic Director Christopher Hampson’s Sinfonietta Giocosa to music by Bohuslav Martinu opened the program with its straightforward neoclassical vocabulary of pleasing geometries. Martinu’s music is less symphonic than piano concerto, particularly the first movement which recalls Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto in its pace and energy. Still, there is an unmistakable neoclassical direction in the music that Hampson followed skillfully.
Beginning with two parallel lines of dancers stretching the depth of the stage, the ballet went on to present tidy examples of perpendiculars, interesting skews and slopes, and an agonic-type PdD. Such choreography can celebrate the technical strengths or expose the weaknesses of dancers. But in this case, the unfortunate choice of costuming for the women – black tights, black leotards, and black pointe shoes to dance on a black, under-lit stage floor – made it difficult to see and appreciate the intricate footwork.
Bryan Arias’ Motion of Displacement exemplified The Angst and Yank of Contemporary Ballet trend. It was a banal, repetitive, unimaginative effort to out-Forsythe Forsythe and all of his many imitators. The dancers wore socks which came in handy for endless sliding across the floor following their joint snapping maneuvers. As disturbing as this trend is to balletomanes, it’s candy for the local Joyce Theater regulars who enjoy more off-the-ballet-road type of performances.
Christopher Bruce’s Ten Poems had its share of angst & yank choreography, but it explored Dylan Thomas’ poetry creatively. The last time we observed dance set to text at the Joyce Theater, it was John Cage’s Empty Words choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj in a dance called Empty Moves. Bruce’s Ten Poems was a comparative breeze to sit through. Bruce selected ten of Thomas’ well-known poems as read by Richard Burton including In my Craft or Sullen Art that has these gem lines:
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
and laid atop joint-snapping, gymno-choreography that sometimes alluded to Thomas’ words and sometimes had nothing to do with them. Thomas’ use of alliteration – “Drunk as a new dropped calf”, "And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed Whoever I would with my wicked eyes” – tickled Haglund pink as did the possibility of alliterative dance.
Ten Poems was the most successful dance of the evening, certainly the most innovative. It’s full of Rambert DNA. Both Christopher Bruce and Antony Tudor are in Rambert’s choreographic ancestry tree. However, setting the typically harsh and very narrow contemporary dance vocabulary to Thomas’ thoughtful poetry didn’t always work or enlighten us about either although it was interesting to watch. So was Preljocaj’s Empty Moves.
The HH Pump Bump Award, with its contemporary mesh of alliterative straps, is bestowed upon Ten Poems. Originality counts for a lot.