By Rachel Straus<\/p>\n
At the most recent Guggenheim Museum Works & Process (September 23), I couldn\u2019t help but think of Monte Carlo in 1928. In that city and year, the 24-year-old George Balanchine created his bedrock neo-classical ballet to Stravinsky\u2019s Apollon musag\u00e8te<\/em>. For the next four decades, the partnership between the young Russian choreographer and older Russian composer flourished.<\/p>\n At Sunday\u2019s moderated talk and dance exhibition, the subject was a new ballet-music partnership\u2014that of the 25-year-old American choreographer Justin Peck and American indie rocker Sufjan Stevens. Peck is a current New York City Ballet corps member who has been making work since 2009. Stevens has several award winning albums under his belt. Moderator Ellen Bar mentioned that Stevens has a “cult following.” The hope is that his music will bring in a new, young audience to New York City Ballet. On October 3 the Peck-Stevens work, Year of the Rabbit,<\/em> will premiere\u00a0at the former New York State Theater.<\/p>\n What’s odd about this new collaboration is that Stevens\u2019s 2001 electronica album Enjoy Your Rabbit<\/em> is getting a complete classical music makeover. In fact,\u00a0Rabbit <\/em>has been through not one but two iterations since its inception. Classical music arranger Michael Atkinson turned it into a string quartet in 2007. For the City Ballet commission, Atkinson and Stevens expanded the quartet into a full orchestral score. Instead of electronic acoustics and club beats, Atkinson inserted clacking sounds for the violin and a fare amount of percussion. Stevens\u2019s original work, heard in excerpted form over the PA system, captures the cosmic sensibility of The Chinese Zodiac, which served as Stevens’s original inspiration. The orchestral version, also heard in excerpted form, sounds less celestial.<\/p>\n When Peck began reading up on Chinese astrology, he confessed to feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the subject. When asked about the challenges of making Year of the Rabbit<\/em>, Peck said that it has been easy sailing, partially because NYCB Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins gave his work priority and the pick of the company\u2019s dancers. Only Alexei Ratmansky might have gotten this treatment at City Ballet. But that is the very point. Ratmansky is gone; he took an Artist in Residence position at American Ballet Theatre in 2007. Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon left City Ballet in 2008 to start his own company. Martins is looking for a new wunderkind. Peck has fluency formulating movement based on academic ballet steps. He is the great new hope.<\/p>\n Four excerpts showcased Peck\u2019s choreographic talent, energy, and ambition. His work is fast, virtuosic and\u00a0not as angular as Balanchine\u2019s style. But the softer arm work often rides on top of Peck’s hyper-kinetic foot work (and sometimes lyricism gets lost). When City Ballet principal Tiler Peck (no relation) danced an excerpt from \u201cYear of the Ox,\u201d it was the most exciting moment of the evening. Having learned the part 48 hours prior, Peck was filling in for an injured Ashley Bouder. Becoming the Ox, she pawed the ground. Her legs and arms yoked in one direction, and then another. She pushed back with flying limbs that syncopated against the music and responded to the violins\u2019 high notes.<\/p>\n **<\/p>\n Another event that featured music as much as dance was the September 17 Alice Tully Hall performance of the Sim\u00f3n Bolivar National Youth Choir and the Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n Dance Company. The highlight of the one-night only occasion in celebration of Venezuala\u2019s El Sistema<\/a><\/span> was Missa Brevis<\/em>. With a score by Zoltan Kodaly, a choir of more than 65 young singers, and a cast of 18 dancers, the 1958 Lim\u00f3n work has never looked better.<\/p>\n In the age of irony, it\u2019s not easy to dance Missa <\/em>Brevis. <\/em>The work was\u00a0inspired by Lim\u00f3n\u2019s trip to Poland, where he witnessed the people’s poverty and dignity under Soviet Union rule. Despite this big subject, Missa Brevis<\/em> came across Monday night not as an ideological sermon, but as a prayer. In their Lincoln Center debut, the Lim\u00f3n dancers\u00a0performed Lim\u00f3n\u2019s landmark work without an ounce of sanctimony.<\/p>\n Like a religious icon above the heads of the worshippers, Missa <\/em>began with Kathyrn Alter raised out and aloft of a mass of men and women. Hovering above the organist, played by Vincent Heitzer, Alter\u2019s face shone like a Madonna. Francisco Ruvalcaba danced Missa<\/em>‘s Christ figure. Ruvalcaba is the outsider who dances alone and prostates himself on the floor in the sign of the cross. Angels also appear: three men men lift three women; they float through the air; their arms reach upwards; their limbs sing to the heavens.<\/p>\n The groupings of dancers in response to Kodaly\u2019s choric mass created sonic-visual achitecture. Its architectural correlative is the great cathedral, one that possesses a high golden altar and low simple benches. Lim\u00f3n learned from his mentor Doris Humphrey that contrast is key to choreography. Consequently, Missa <\/em>doesn\u2019t focus solely on darkness and sorrow. Of the 12 sections, almost half of them speak of hope.<\/p>\n Under the artistic direction of Carla Maxwell, the Lim\u00f3n\u00a0Company is now in its 65th<\/sup> year. The company’s executive director is the Venezuelan-born Gabriela Poler-Buzali. Since her appointment in 2009, Poler-Buzali has been forging alliances with Latin American arts organizations, presenters and choreographers. The company is increasingly touring Latin America. Today Lim\u00f3n\u00a0is being rediscovered as a Latino artist. The majority of the audience at Alice Tully were there to listen to the Sim\u00f3n Bolivar\u00a0National Youth Choir. Hopefully, they will seek out the Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n Dance Company after this first, magnificent introduction.<\/p>\n