It was one of those nights when you wished you could be in two places at once. While NYCB was presenting its Spring Gala at Lincoln Center, the newest production of On Your Toes starring Irina Dvorovenko and Joaquin De Luz was premiering a few blocks away at New York City Center. Toes is on the blog calendar for Thursday night.
Maybe now that Haglund has been reunited with his identical twin brother from whom he was separated at birth, he will be able – with the help of his newly-found brother, Curly Toaz – to do blog justice to all the great dance that is happening around town. It's true that Curly dances around more in the modern/experimental circles and eschews ballet, but all that could change once he becomes acquainted with Haglund's favorite ballerinas. We'll just have to wait and see.
It was an interesting evening at NYCB: two pieces of Wheeldon, two pieces of Robbins, two pieces of Balanchine, a guest clarinetist, and Queen Latifah. It was far from the worst gala ever, but not close to the best, either.
The two Wheeldon pieces opened the program. First, Soiree Musicale to music by Samuel Barber which Wheeldon made for the School of American Ballet workshop 15 years ago, had some lovely and interesting sections, but the various parts didn't add up to a significant whole. The Tango movement for Brittany Pollack and a dozen men held most everyone's attention. Brittany is another one of those dancers who grabs the light the moment she enters the stage. Polished, confident, and beautiful from head to toe. The Scottische movement with Kristen Segin and Indiana Woodward, who were joined by Ralph Ippolito and Peter Walker, had the imagination, invention, and beauty that now and then springs up in Wheeldon's work and causes our hopes for him as a choreographer to spring up, too. The costumes for the ladies, designed by Holly Hynes, were gorgeous Romantic length tulle skirts in shades of plum-red, violet, and blue.
Wheeldon's second offering, a PdD for Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild called A Place for Us, was a bore. The music by Andre Previn and Leonard Bernstein was performed on stage expertly by guest clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and pianist Nancy McDill, but the music was a poor choice to use for a ballet. It had no energy. It had no emotion. It had no distinctive elements that caused one to listen intently. The choreography was Wheeldon's same-old, same-old PdD routine that didn't go anywhere and just had the two dancers manipulating around within lighted squares on the stage floor while trying to be dramatic by using minimal gestures. It ended with the gimmicky trick of a supported pirouette in which Fairchild walked away from the spinning Peck into the darkness and left her rotating to the blackout. Mostly, the piece was a lot of lovey-dovey manipulation and simplistic gestures that were supposed to mean – what? Yes, the dancers were beautiful. Yes, the dancers did everything exceptionally well. Yes, the dancers exhibited great emotion. But at the end, the viewer didn't care. The costumes by Joseph Altuzarra were basic ballet lingerie-inspired costumes. She was in a blue shorty. He was in white tights and an Apollo shirt that had both shoulders.
Taking us to the intermission was the "Cool" excerpt from Robbins' West Side Story Suite which was energetically led by Andrew Veyette's Riff and the Jets.
The second half of the evening was the stronger half. The Akhnaten section from Robbins' Glass Pieces, which premiered 30 years ago this Sunday, showed that this little section could almost stand on its own as a dance. Philip Glass' music drives its way into the nervous system and makes you feel whatever the dancers are doing on stage. It's the viewer physically sensing the rhythms and pathways in the music combined with seeing choreography that illuminates those rhythms and pathways that sets off that viewer's organic response. Haglund still loves the final backdrop that looks like graph paper. How many people even remember what graph paper was? It's still cool, though.
Finally, we got to the Balanchine pieces. Queen Latifah walked thoughtfully to the downstage corner to sing Gershwin's "The Man I Love" while Sterling Hyltin and Amar Ramasar danced the corresponding section from Who Cares? with youthful and carefree joy. Haglund enjoyed their interpretation very much and finds the match-up of these two artists intriguing. Queen Latifah handled the amplification well, much better than our singers in Thou Swell last week, and delivered a standard interpretation of the classic song.
It was the Fourth and Fifth Campaigns from the good old Stars and Stripes that finally delivered the hungry gala guests to their dinner tables. Ashley Bouder's Liberty Bell strutted her piccolo pointes from one end of the stage to the other. She had to dispatch an errant feather that drooped down the back of her head, but did so with musical precision. Andrew Veyette's El Capitan took an El Slipperooni onto his face on an exit but recovered without slipping out of character. Veyette is looking mighty fine this season. Lines are cleaner; center is truer; elevation is fabulous; go-for-broke energy and confidence are high.
Capsule summary: Balanchine and Robbins still reign; Wheeldon would be helped if he were more careful about his choice of music.
The feathery Pump Bump Award is bestowed upon Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette for their sensational Fourth Regiment Campaign which Haglund saw tonight for the fourth time in the past nine days.