If you ever find yourself in the Städtische Galerie in Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany at 6pm closing time, you may want to get out of there fast before the security guards turn out the art gallery's lights and lock you inside. You don’t want to be hanging around when Wassily Kandinsky’s famous, and apparently very party-prone, Color Study Squares with Concentric Circle comes alive and breaks out into a Ratmansky crazy-dance. Or maybe you do want to be there. Or maybe you should just drop by New York City Ballet this fall season to catch a glimpse of what happens to CSSw/CC when the lights go down.
Last night during the second intermission which preceded the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition to Modest Mussorgsky's piano concerto, Haglund’s friend asked, “What are you expecting this next piece to be?” Haglund replied, “Oh, this is a pretty important piece of music; I don’t think Ratmansky will stray too far off into the wilderness” emphasizing "too" with about six counts of “o”. Haglund continued, “Maybe we’ll see some chicks hatching out of their shells or some old Jewish men” – a reference to the famous Viktor Hartmann paintings from which Modest Mussorgsky drew inspiration for his concerto. Haglund repeated, “Ratmansky won’t stray too far this time.”
As NYCB Orchestra's rockstar pianist, Cameron Grant, began the ambitious task of performing the famous and incredibly stirring concerto, the backdrop on the stage filled with the image of Kandinsky’s Color Study Squares with Concentric Circle. Suddenly, the individual squares within the square separated and some disappeared as others came forward with more prominence. Dancers filled the stage wearing costumes with painted panels similar to Kandinsky’s colors and took on the personalities of the individual squares. When the dancers exited the stage following a solo, duet, or ensemble section of the dance, and new dancers arrived, the Kandinsky painting reassembled its squares in some fashion to correspond with the dancers’ costumes. Via the dancers, the squares in Kandinsky’s famous painting broke into grand life and danced like they thought no one was watching.
While Mussorgsky used Hartmann’s paintings as inspiration for his own music, Ratmansky took Mussorgsky’s concerto and then used the Father of Abstract Art’s most famous painting for his own choreorgraphic inspiration. The idea was utterly brilliant, and the dancers committed to the concept with their customary quasar energy. The choreography was frequently reminiscent of other Ratmansky dances that we’ve seen and sometimes became predictable. But audience members not familiar with Ratmansky's other works likely found it revelatory as a form of ballet.
Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Gretchen Smith, Abi Stafford, Wendy Whelan, Tyler Angle, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Gonzalo Garcia, Joseph Gordon, and Amar Ramasar comprised the entire cast. It was a joy to watch them tear through this new dance which will bear repeated viewings particularly if one is a fan of either great abstract art or great piano concertos.
The projection designs by Wendall K. Harrington were stunning. She previously worked on Ratmansky's On the Dnieper and Firebird for ABT where the production values were superb also. The costumes by Adeline Andre included unfussy shorty dresses for the ladies that had color panels and circles in reference to Kandinsky's art. At bows, Andre's own black and white striped dress seemed to have been inspired by one of Kandinsky's designs, The Singer 1903.
The rest of the evening’s program was the same as the opening night gala program except that Wendy Whelan and Tyler Angle switched from the beautiful Valentino designed costumes to the more mundane, dull-colored costumes by Reid Bartelme for their performance of This Bitter Earth. Both Liam Scarlett's Funerailles and Justin Peck's Belles-Lettres grew even more impressive with a second viewing. Both are major works although the success of Scarlett's ballet might forever be dependent on the power casting of Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild. It should be interesting to see if a certain newspaper critic begins to back-pedal away from his initial nose-up-in-the-air snorting after the two premieres.
The H.H. Pump Bump Award, an abstract art-ish stiletto with concentric circles gone awry, is bestowed upon the cast of Pictures at an Exhibition for bringing their unparalleled energy to this unique collaborative work.