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LADP

7/27/2016

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Harbor Me, photo by Laurence Phillipe
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Helix
I caught the opening night of the L.A. Dance Project’s latest residency at the Joyce. I am always impressed with the troupe and their rep, and last night was no different. They are one of my favorite visiting companies—and this was true even before the announcement that my close friends Carla Körbes and Janie Taylor would join the group next year!

Harbor Me, choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, opened the program. Jason Kittelberger and Nemo Oeghoede are listed as assistant choreographers for the piece, which intrigued me. It is something one rarely sees in a dance program, but I’ve always felt that it is a position that could be very important and useful—like a dramaturge. I’ll have to inquire as to the extent of the assistance for Harbor Me, but no author publishes without an editor’s careful eye. (Who is Raymond Carver without Gordon Lish?) Why are there no real “editor” positions in dance?

I’ve often been in rehearsals for new ballets and thought to myself, this section is almost great—if only this or that could be cut or reworked. I’m not at all saying I think I should be a ballet editor! Certainly, most dancers have strong opinions about the pieces they are in and discuss them at length in the dressing rooms. The poor choreographers—this is why paint is an easier (or at least a judgment-free) medium! But I bet that if many choreographers could find trusted consultants with whom they had a deep aesthetic connection it would make for better dances all around. 

Choreographers, at least at City Ballet, tend to be paired arbitrarily with a ballet master who acts as a rehearsal assistant, whom they occasionally, casually, ask for input during the choreographic process.  Ideally though, assistance should derive from a different person than the one assigned to write down the steps and counts, who may or may not be a kindred artistic spirit. I would think it involves a different skill set too. As usual, I digress, but maybe Cherkaoui is on to something. 

Aaron Carr, Morgan Lugo, and Robbie Moore comprised the cast of Harbor Me, and they were excellent. The droopy, sighing score by Park Woojae Geomungo set the lackadaisical tone for the piece, and the men’s controlled ease belied how challenging their steps were. It was a work that quietly simmered, and the three men maintained a fluid intensity throughout. The work opened with a meditative, gyroscopic solo for Carr. He began by scooting across the floor on his rear in a shaft of light, his back arched and lifted off the ground. His whole solo was based upon this lower back extension, and he performed frequent difficult, revolving layouts in slow motion.

He was eventually joined by the other men, and the three draped themselves together with heads touching and floated their arms like seaweed. In this way the the ballet’s title resonated, as well as in the drab castaway apparel by Fabiana Piccioli. The lighting and set design (by Piccioli and Sander Loonen) was darkly side-lit. Stale, criss-crossing light filtering in from above set the scene for Moore’s solo, which looked like it took place in an airless cell. It was a beautiful effect and made the men resemble refugees too.

In the last section the men mimed as if they were holding invisible boxes. Between the score, which could pass for spa music, the intense air box-making, and the men’s casual, Chico’s-looking separates, the dancers could have been club kids trying to hold a mellow rave at Canyon Ranch. I mean that in the most complimentary way—it was my favorite ballet of the night! It was not a rousing piece, per se, but it had a lazy loveliness to it.

A well-paired diptych followed the first intermission: Martha Graham Duets and Helix by Justin Peck. The two works shared Janie Taylor as costume designer as well as three heterosexual couples in their casting. In fact, the casts were nearly identical, with Aaron Carr replacing Anthony Bryant in the second grouping. The Graham piece, to music by Cameron McCosh, consisted of three brief pas de deux. They were short, geometric, and simple. They reminded me of the opening themes of Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments. I particularly liked the frozen, low arabesque motif in the first pas. I also loved Janie’s black shorts (for the women) and unitards (for the men) with short peach tops draped over them. A subtle yellow accent line at the waist was a nice touch.

Janie clothed the Helix cast in soft gray unitards (men) and pants and a crop top (women) with blue socks that went up to the mid-calf line. It looked like streamlined loungewear. In all four ballets on the program the dancers’ costuming looked incredibly comfortable, everything appeared cozy and cottony and could pass for jammies. I was jealous. Helix, to a score by Esa-Pekka Salonen, was a solid offering from Peck. It began with the couples tightly paired, and then had the dancers break off into energetic canons. It sort of picked up where Martha Graham Duets left off, which made for good programming.

On the Other Side, by LADP’s founding director Benjamin Millepied, closed the program.  A stunning, Crayola-bright backdrop by Mark Bradford played off of the large cast’s technicolor costumes—all pantsuits and two dresses—by Alessandro Sartori. Lucy Carter’s lighting morphed with every section of the work to match or contrast the dancers’ bold costumes. The music, which consisted of assorted Philip Glass excerpts—some from Einstein on the Beach—was almost too hypnotic at times. But a section in which Laura Bachman soloed in and out of a group of three women was a highlight of the night. Ben’s choreography tends to be aerobically exhausting, and I often find that it looks better and better as the dancers get increasingly winded—almost as if it takes fatigue to make a performer let down his or her guard and fully inhabit Ben's movement. This proved true of Ms. Bachman, and by the end of her marathon number she seemed incredibly stylish and free. I look forward to the company’s next visit.
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Stephanie Amurao in On the Other Side, photo by Tristram Kenton
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Sneak Peek: American Rhapsody

5/4/2016

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Unity Phelan practices backstage, photo by Janie Taylor
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Tiler Peck in rehearsal for American Rhapsody, photo by Janie Taylor
I am not able to attend the NYCB Spring Gala this evening, but this afternoon I did make it to the dress rehearsal of Christopher Wheeldon’s American Rhapsody—to George Gershwin’s familiar Rhapsody in Blue—which premieres tonight. I don’t have much time to write about it, and I don’t exactly think rehearsals should be reviewed—since I know from experience that live performance alters and adds to any ballet—but I thought I’d jot down a few fleeting impressions here to promote the hard work of my colleagues before their big debut. I was also eager to see the costume designs of my good friend Janie Taylor. This piece is her second ballet as a costumer for the company, after Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go.

First of all, I thought Janie’s costumes were gorgeous! She has a gift for taking staid ballet silhouettes and tweaking them so that they seem radically new, and her designs for this ballet are no different. In this case she took a typical skirted bodice and gave it a bump at the hip—not exactly a peplum—but a little exaggerated shelf. Thus the dancers’ waists appeared flatteringly nipped. The pale pink skirts were bias-cut with a darker tomato red underneath which was also cool. The men had a refreshing, asymmetrical twist on a vest and tie. Her colors were strikingly unconventional, with deep blue playing off pink, tomato, and teal. Unity Phelan and Amar Ramasar were stunning in the solid tomato color.  And the ballet’s leads, Robbie Fairchild and Tiler Peck, stood out in a deep mallard. The backdrop by Cuban painter Leslie Sardinias was also stunning. It had a lot of energy and it seemed to almost move with Mark Stanley's different lighting changes. I liked the twilit effect it produced during the central pas de deux.

This ballet marks a post-Broadway reunion for Chris and Robbie (and Gershwin!) after
An American in Paris, and I thought it served as a nice transition back to the realm of ballet. It is plotless but it evokes an atmosphere of playful jazziness. Tiler Peck has to be one of the silkiest movers ever, and from her first entrance of smooth chaîné turns straight down the center line, to her sultry wallowing on the floor, she nailed the Gershwin vibe. Robbie seemed equally at ease in the vocabulary, and their fluid partnering was a pleasure.

Amar and Unity jetted in and out of the proceedings with happy poise. I liked when Amar was temporarily distracted by a twirling Kristin Segin while he rested against the wing in the front corner. Chris made the sea of blue corps dancers into many sculptural tableaux—something I feel he hasn’t done as frequently before. It was a lovely effect. I also liked a superman lift motif—in which the men lay on their backs and floated the women horizontally over them like in a child’s game. A lot of the vocabulary was more pedestrian than I’m used to with Chris—in a good way. He had the dancers slouch over, sit on the ground, and strut around.

The ballet climaxed with a rousing group marching step to the score’s bass-heavy musical peak, which always reminds me a bit of Prokofiev’s ball music in
Romeo and Juliet. It was fun and rousing before the ensemble settled into one final chained tableau to Gershwin’s dying strains. I will be curious to see the piece in performance, and to see how it is formally reviewed. But from my early glimpse I thought it succeeded at what it aimed to be: a pleasant romp through a famous score.
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The American Rhapsody production teamat the Gala, photo by Marguerite Mehler
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JARED'S GUEST POST: Liebeslieder Part II

1/28/2016

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Jared and Wendy Whelan, photo by Paul Kolnik
​Liebeslieder: Public/Private
 
As the curtain closes on the first section of Liebeslieder and the ballerinas rush away backstage, the ballet shifts from a public experience to a private one.  It reminds me of that point in the television show Downton Abbey when, after dinner, the women disappear to another room and the men are left to drink and smoke cigars at the table.  But instead of cigars and brandy, the men in Liebeslieder only take off their gloves, possibly grab an Altoid from the ready supply kept at the stage manager's desk, and use a tissue to dab the sweat off of our brows.  We then reconvene onstage to talk, and to wait for our ballerinas.  
 
The ballerinas, meanwhile, are working much harder.  They rush to their dressing rooms, take off their gloves and shoes, change dresses, and hastily put on pointe shoes.  Careful preparation of the pointe shoed-foot is a ritual repeated many times daily in a ballerina's life, but during this pause they have to wrap the paper towel around their toes, shove their foot in, and tie the ribbons as fast as they can because we're all waiting for them.  It’s always a contest with the stage manager as the judge: "who will come back to the stage ready to dance first?"
 
After the last ballerina rushes to place, the curtain rises but the mood is changed.  We see the couples in their same starting positions as in the opening of the first section, but the lights are dimmer, and the women are now wearing romantic-length chiffon tutus whose layers of tulle reach to mid-calf, and the aforesaid pointe shoes.  Again we start dancing in a circle and lifting the women, but almost immediately Balanchine has the ballerinas weaving away from their partners and back again.  You get a sense that this is a more tempestuous world, where the couples relate to one another and themselves in a more unguarded manner.  Finally each ballerina starts to run offstage, her original partner catches up with her and escorts her off, and one couple is left onstage to dance a pas de deux.
 
While the pas de deux in the first half are danced in front of the rest of the cast, in the second half each couple’s pas de deux is danced alone onstage.  This, in addition to the pointe shoes and exposed legs of the ballerinas, conveys a sense that the couples are finally able to express their true feelings—which were perhaps only alluded to in the first section.  So instead of polite embraces and distanced waltz positions (one of the favorite corrections in the first section that we always receive is to hold the girl as far away from us as we can), the couples give each other full 

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JARED'S GUEST POST: Liebeslieder Part I

9/30/2015

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I am thrilled to present Jared Angle’s first post on Thoughts from the Paint. I have been begging Jared to write about ballet since before the site even launched. I cannot say publicly what I had to threaten to get him to finally do it! I have known Jared for 20 years; he is one of my very best friends as well as my most annoying next door neighbor.  In addition to being an amazing artist, he is incredibly insightful about music and dance and hopefully I’ll have enough blackmail material to keep him writing for some time to come!  I would like to wish him a happy ballroom birthday! 

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Liebeslieder Walzer, photo by Paul Kolnik
October 1st is apparently World Ballet Day, when various ballet companies will give behind-the-scenes access to their inner workings on YouTube.  Coincidentally it happens to be my birthday, when I will have the privilege of dancing George Balanchine’s Liebeslieder Walzer as part of New York City Ballet’s Fall Season at Lincoln Center.  I can think of no better birthday gift than appearing in this wonder of a ballet.  Since YouTube cameras will not be transmitting my morning ballet class with the customary “Happy Birthday” tribute played by the accompanying pianist (usually after a tip-off from a colleague), or the inevitable final dress rehearsal of Liebeslieder, I thought I could offer an insider’s perspective of dancing in this ballet which continues to reveal itself in more depth every time I encounter it. 

Liebeslieder, choreographed to Johannes Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52 and Neue Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 65 for four voices and four hands at the piano, is an outlier in Balanchine’s canon.  Most of his ballets are set to fuller orchestral scores. And except for some short vocal sections in Mendelsohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the children’s chorus in the snow section of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, there are no others in which we get to dance Balanchine’s steps to the sound of the human voice.  The mis-en-scène is also atypical for Balanchine, who often preferred 


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On the Beamish Bandwagon

8/5/2015

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Joshua Beamish, photo by David Cooper
I went to a performance of Joshua Beamish/Move: The Company at the Joyce last night first and foremost to support my friend Janie Taylor’s budding costume designing career, but I was also curious about Beamish’s choreography. Prior to yesterday I had only seen online snippets of his work with Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature project, but at the Joyce he presented three full pieces of his choreography (one a world premiere, and one a US premiere) plus one excerpt.  It was a Beamish crash course and I very much enjoyed it. It seems to me that his ethos borrows from jazz, modern, and ballet. He seems really interested in turned out vs turned in positions, and he incorporates floorwork often. Gaze appeared to be an important factor, as did undulating spinal articulation.

Most distinct to me was his use of funny little gestures. Many choreographers—like Christopher Wheeldon and Jorma Elo—play with flexed hands and fidgety, non-balletic port de bras. But Beamish used these tics as linguistics, not just aesthetics. His dancers seemed to be conversing with each other, like they had some odd sign language that only they understood. But the more I watched, the more I realized that it was actually easy to understand what they meant. The gestures were unconventional but legible. These were not the abstract semiotics of Bournonville, these were universally human gesticulations.  A fist to the mouth, an elbow stabbing into a 


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    Faye Arthurs
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