NYCB – Gala 9/30

First some atmosphere from last night. It seems that there was a little bit of a South Pacific theme in play:

 

Over the past few seasons we have learned to manage our expectations for the new choreography presented at NYCB gala evenings. We stave off disappointment with astonishment over the apparel worn on and off the stage at these events. Did everyone see pictures of Sarah Jessica Parker’s dress from last night? Holy moly. It was so powerfully beautiful that it must have further empowered the already most-powerful SJP. That would explain why when she returned from intermission and had to squeeze past the standing David and Julia Koch in Row A of the 1st Ring, she paused to chat a few words and then gave old Dave a nice firm pat on his chest. Haglund strained hard to read what was written in the speech bubble over SJP's head, but the thick clouds of forced courtesy throughout the 1st Ring obscured it.

The evening began with another wonderful video starring the NYCB Costume Shop and moderated by director Marc Happel. At some point in time, this whole crew needs to take a stage bow so that the audience can express its appreciation for the miracles performed season after season. The video offered a glimpse of the star designers – Peter Copping of Oscar de la Renta designing for Peter Martins’ Thou Swell; Humberto Leo of Opening Ceremony and Kenzo designing for Justin Peck’s New Blood; Hanako Maeda of ADEAM designing for Robert Binet’s The Blue of Distance; Marta Marques & Paulo Almeida of Marques Almeida designing for Troy Schumacher’s Common Ground; and Zuhair Murad designing for Myles Thatcher’s Polaris. Murad also draped SJP in her sparkling gown.

All of the costumes were gorgeous, particularly those created by Hanako Maeda which made Sterling Hyltin, Rebecca Krohn, and Sara Mearns look like a million dollars in Robert Binet's The Blue of Distance. We previously showed you a picture of one of the tutus in progress . The bodice of each ballerina’s costume had custom cutouts in the front and sides. They were so beautiful that nobody really cared what the women were doing on stage.

Binet’s choreography to music by Maurice Ravel got off to a good start with the couples (Rebecca with Preston Chamblee, Sterling with Gonzalo Garcia, and Sara with Tyler Angle) performing some interesting lifts. The extra man, Harrison Ball, perhaps represented that blue light in the spectrum that gets lost because it fails to travel all the way from the sun to us. Instead, it scatters and forms a hue that will never reach any destination – also a metaphor for emotional detachment sometimes. It was great to see this young man featured and to see him burning up the Marley, sometimes with more force than he could control, but nevertheless a very impressive role debut. All in all, however, the choreography lacked vocabulary and relied on the current trend of excessive manipulation in PdD with a lot of running around between poses.

Myles Thatcher’s Polaris to William Walton’s Piano Quartet in D Minor was full of youthful intensity but also lacked vocabulary and was heavy on running around between poses. Tiler Peck and Craig Hall led the group for whom Tiler was obviously the North Star, i.e., the polaris.  Much of the action revolved around her – much of it arbitrary that had little to do with the music. One thing that Haglund is beginning to notice is that when young new-ish choreographers use Tiler Peck (or Ashley Bouder or Sara Mearns) they may allow too much input from the dancer to do what feels good to do. The result is a sameness in the musicality and facial responses from dance to dance that is almost predictable. While it’s true that a dancer’s every experience informs what he does next, we may be seeing a bit too much of it.

Common Ground by Troy Schumacher to music by Ellis Ludwig-Leone showed further seasoning of the choreographer but suffered from a score that struggled for a direction while being imitative of composers often heard in this theater. Schumacher's style of choreography has developed consistently from his early works seen at the Baryshnikov Arts Center several years ago, and he still favors using many of the same dancers. One might call his style highly conversational because his dancers are constantly bouncing off one another theatrically, musically, and with their momentum. It’s a loose style with a fun feel to it – a little like Robbins, Feld, and Tharp. Anthony Huxley made the viewer sit up and take notice whenever he arrived on stage. Actually all of the dancers served the choreography well, but Huxley showed that he is quickly learning how to insert dynamics and surprise into his dancing like Daniel Ulbricht and Joaquin De Luz have done for so many years.

New Blood by Justin Peck kind of picked up where other of his work left off. With the exception of the wonderful Belles-Lettres and the second movement of Paz de la Jolla, all of the work that he has done for NYCB so far seems like it could be interchangeable. While the patterns of the dancers were recognizable and the concentrated doses of power impressive, it was hard to feel anything but fatigue when watching it and listening to the Steve Reich music. When Adrian Danchig-Waring bolted out onto the stage, all of a sudden things got a lot more interesting. He had an urgent sense of life on stage that was bigger than everyone else’s. That’s not to suggest that we didn’t enjoy watching Ashley Bouder, Taylor Stanley, Peter Walker, Georgina Pazcoguin, Andrew Veyette and several others power through their phrases. But Adrian had something unique going on.

Thou Swell by Peter Martins has never been one of Haglund’s favorites. It must have been on the program in order to get everyone in the mood to dine & dance after the show. The three piece band on stage played the great old Richard Rodgers music handsomely. Pianist Alan “Jazzbough” Moverman had the ivories dancing a lot more interestingly than Martins' choreography moved the dancers. Norm Lewis, the baritone was sensational and made sitting through the whole thing totally worthwhile. What a voice! Early on, soprano Rebecca Luker’s voice was not always where it should have been but her last few songs were quite lovely.

Overall, the programming was wise for several reasons. First, we were introduced to and reacquainted with some extremely young and developing talents almost like they were the Class of 2015. Second, the pieces were brief assignments for the choreographers that were supported by excellent dancers and fabulous fashion. This was certainly smarter than handing over a third of an evening to a fledgling choreographer and expecting him to carry it by himself. Small steps are smart steps.

So, it was a packed evening with a lot of talented people. We’re going to bestow the HH Pump Bump Award upon Harrison Ball because he had a little bit of a breakout moment that he seized with a fierce passion. We look forward to seeing more of that sort of thing – hopefully sooner rather than later.