Musical America Blogs

Justin Peck’s “Year of the Rabbit” begins with a whirligig virtuoso solo by Ashley Bouder. The principal New York City Ballet dancer performs her multiple turns into off-kilter leaps with playful abandon. The total effect is that of “Road Runner” cartoon: Here comes Bouder. Beep Beep! The company that George Balanchine developed is known for moving speedily. But Justin Peck, a 25-year-old corps dancer who has now made three works for NYCB (this is his second), gets his dancers to move even faster than the company’s founding choreographer. About half way through Peck’s 2012 piece—to Michael P. Atkinson’s orchestration of Sufjan Stevens’ electronica album “Enjoy Your Rabbit” (2001)—one had to wonder what all the hurry was about.

Indeed, Amelia was right. Today’s New York City Ballet’s principal dancers don’t come in one shape and size (they rarely did). This fact was driven home during the New York City Ballet triple-bill performance at the former New York State Theater on January 19. Sara Mearns, Ashley Bouder, and Teresa Reichlen graced the stage in an all-Balanchine evening, which is part of the company’s ambitious “Tchaikovsky Celebration.”

Consider this scene. Galván hammers an old upright piano apart with his sputtering footwork. In doing so, he destroys the harmonic integrity of the instrument. When he forces the piano apart, we hear its strings shrieking as they stretch. We see Galván in a deep lunge with his muscular arms working to push the battered object to its breaking point. But the piano doesn’t dissemble. Instead its strings, like Galván’s wiry body, produce a shrill, taut dissonance, one that is awe-inspiring in its intensity. At this moment, the image of the persecuted gypsy becomes real: Galván, stripped of his shirt, dances while caught in a barbed wire fence. His angular, contorted gestures and his sharp, hard footwork eviscerate him as they reveal the unique quality of his dancing, which bends the tradition of the Seville school of flamenco beyond recognition.

The world premiere of Kyle Abraham’s Pavement, seen at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse on November 3, evokes a vision of urban youth careening through a dark world. Abraham begins Pavement by marking a spot with his downcast arm. Then he lassoes his body, drawing a circle with his outstretched limbs. He moves loose, full force and in searching manner, as if looking for a clear compass. When a white dancer enters, he stops Abraham, lies him face down on the floor, and brings his hands to the base of his spine. Abraham’s arrest is done without emotion. This lack of drama makes the event feel doubly devastating.

Martha Graham’s Chronicle speaks against the rise of fascism, but it also reveals a universal message. Everyone should fight for causes. On September 30 at New York City Center, The Martha Graham Dance Company’s performance of Graham’s 1936 masterwork concluded the second program of the Fall for Dance Festival.

The seventh annual Fall For Dance Festival came to a meaty close on October 13. Program five at New York’s City Center trafficked in high testosterone, thanks to China’s LPD-Laboratory Dance Project’s No Comment (2002) and Yaron Lifschitz’s Circa (2009), which is also the name of the Australian acrobatic troupe. In both works the body was treated like a battering ram.

Hofesh Schechter is a slippery soul. In Political Mother, seen October 11 as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, the Israeli-born choreographer cloaks his earnestness in irony. The 80-minute, 2010 work is structured through a series of blackouts in which 12 dancers and seven musicians evoke the demagoguery in politics, and entertainment.

The Slovak National Theatre Ballet in Bratislava is not a destination point for international balletomanes, but it should be if one wants to see August Bournonville’s La Sylphide up close and personal. In the city’s neo-Renaissance theatre, the 92-year old ballet troupe performs regularly. Being there on October 6 felt like visiting the interior of a Faberge egg.

Another event that featured music as much as dance was the September 17 Alice Tully Hall performance of the Simón Bolivar National Youth Choir and the José Limón Dance Company. The highlight of the one-night only occasion, celebrating Venezuala’s El Sistema, was Missa Brevis.

Choreographer Jonah Bokaer and visual artist Anthony McCall’s world premiere of Eclipse inaugurated the BAM Richard B. Fisher Building with six sold out performances from September 5th through 9th. The hour-long work (seen on the 9th) in the new black box theater was configured so that the audience flanked four sides of the dark, carpeted stage space. The performance began when Bokaer approached one of the lowest hanging bulbs and knelt to Thomas Edison’s invention. Like the sun god Apollo, Bokaer’s penetrating gaze into the bulb’s opaque surface caused its illumination.