by Leigh Witchel
New York City Ballet’s triple bill contained two works by established choreographers, unfortunately neither of them at the top of their game. Tiler Peck is now one of the company’s senior ballerinas but a relatively young choreographer, and in her first commission for the company she brought herself fully to the task.
Justin Peck made Rotunda right before the pandemic, but was his heart in it? Sometimes, it’s almost as if Peck were Jerome Robbins reincarnated. When he’s on, he speaks for a generation. When he’s off, he descends into winsome clichés. And like Robbins, the demarcation line is often how balletic he’s trying to be. Here, he was relying on a set of tropes he continually has to rise above, the biggest he shares with Robbins: the dancers-are-just-big-kids dance.
The piece began with Daniel Ulbricht lying down alone to start then the twelve dancers, in bright practice clothing by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, formed a circle. He then cribbed from The Times are Racing and had them move in formation from spot to spot on the stage. Movement! Activity! Exaltation! Oh, Justin. You’ve done this.
The group moved into a trio for Indiana Woodward, flanked by Victor Abreu and Jules Mabie (both debuts; the night prior Mabie was subbed in for Jovani Furlan). The men passed Woodward between them with a motif of the two guys tapping each others’ shoulders, but not cutting in. The constant back-and-forth switching went for a pushmi-pullyu sense of play, but Peck has used similar devices often enough that it it just felt like activity. An abrupt ending in the Nico Muhly score faked the audience out and led to dead silence.
A duet followed with Miriam Miller turning around herself quickly, while Adrian Danchig-Waring shadowed her, but that looked as if it were trying to busy itself from lack of anything to say. Once again, it ended on silence, this time to half-hearted clapping. A group number in various permutations led into Peck making a bridge from dancers in arabesque.
Sara Mearns sat out of Polyphonia two days prior, and she looked off here, as if she were compensating in a solo that was built on her endless movement quality. Turns would finish in extension, but they were also the preparation for the next turn.
In another debut, Daniel Ulbricht gave the quintet that followed the most life, ripping through his jumps next to Sebastían Villarini-Vélez. Gilbert Bolden III and Mearns did the big pas de deux with slow passés to finicky tendus. Mearns brought back the men’s shoulder tap, doing it with Bolden. And many times each of them seemed to both on the verge of embracing and escaping.
In the midst of all the activity, Peck seemed to see motion as emotion; torsion and changes of direction were a display of indecision. Come here, get away from me. The two ended with their heads on each other’s shoulders but fled to opposite sides. As usual Bolden did yeoman partnering. Tall men are at a premium right now, and he’s in everything. If he can stay healthy, he’ll go far.
The best thing in the ballet was a solo for Ulbricht where he didn’t have to be a jester or cruise director, but got to be contemplative. He finished with clear, strong jumps into a chain of inside air turns to end lying down in his opening pose. Ulbricht has attack by default, so his introspection remained powerful, but he attacked it with breath and dimension. As is Peck’s wont, he often tries for circularity at the end of the ballet, but the question holds whenever a work repeats its opening: have we gone anywhere? Ulbricht rushed forward to close the piece.
The cast was top notch, even over-cast: did we really need Unity Phelan in the ensemble? Yet Rotunda felt too often as if it were trying to busy itself. Ingenious formations are a staple in neoclassical ballet, because they vary the texture of a piece. Plus, they give the dancers a needed moment to catch their breaths.
The problem is when there aren’t the destination moments as well as the transitions. When Peck isn’t inspired, like almost every other choreographer from NYCB, you can see how he retreats into craft and structure, neatly using repeated motifs without earning them. Why did we return to a circle so many times? It was used as the transition motif, yet never felt integrated or earned. I saw this ballet in 2021; by 2024 I had forgotten it completely. Unfortunately, I’m likely to do that again. If Rotunda felt like anything four years after its creation, it was perhaps a sketch for Copland Dance Episodes.
We haven’t seen Alexei Ratmansky’s Odesa since it had two Ss, and it had a few debuts the prior night: Danchig-Waring, Indiana Woodward and Anthony Huxley. If Rotunda felt generically sketched, Odesa felt as if it didn’t know what it wanted to be. It started off as a burlesque of unhappy relationships and finished as a strange homage to Konservatoriet.
Three couples here were a distinction without that much difference. They met to Leonid Desyatnikov’s opening threnody, and there was drama as each embraced – In the Night, now with extra angst!
Ulbricht played the milquetoast, cringing as he took Megan Fairchild’s hand, which she pulled away suddenly before leaving. Ratmansky tends to structure the emotional arcs of his works, as Balanchine did, right on the music. If it changes, so does the ballet’s mood. Desyatnikov’s intentions are also ironic, with the brass and strings parodying early 20th century café music. You could also hear echoes of Odessa’s Jewish culture – at its height, the city was more than a third Jewish.
The soloists did entries round the corps, with Ulbricht shooting out, and Woodward and Huxley doing an Apache dance to an echo of a bandoneon. Huxley threw Woodward down, but wouldn’t help her up. It felt like an unpleasant joke we weren’t in on.
Ulbricht lifted Fairchild up, supporting her under her feet so she reached above his head, after he returned to his beginning poses as the men sleepwalked. They also did The Ratmansky Jog – as if they were running a race in a slowed-down silent movie. Odesa was too odd and sour to be a rehash of other works, but we’ve seen The Ratmansky Jog.
Woodward nailed repeated en dedans fouettés before a duet for Phelan and Danchig-Waring that went from Slavic to tango at top speed. Ulbricht tore by in a split jeté but Ratmansky packed his part so full of steps it went by in a blur, until he stopped Fairchild from departing with the men.
The duet for Fairchild and Ulbricht, incorporating the men, was still problematic. At first Fairchild was carried by the men as if it were The Unanswered Question, but then the men pushed and tossed her around. Rather than defending her, Ulbricht raced around outside the circle. The danger vanished quickly; it was again meant to be a joke. Finally Fairchild decked Ulbricht for failing to keep her from harm. It felt like another sour attempt at humor.
The end may have been the most quizzical part. After a London Bridge formation by the corps, Danchig-Waring and Phelan went to the center for a final adagio while everyone surrounded them doing a grueling center exercise of tendus, promenades and slow, difficult turns. It looked for all the world as if it had been lifted from Bournonville’s classroom masterpiece, Konservatoriet. The dancers even did a grand plié, at the end when tired, no less.
The cast then folded over on the ground like Odette before making a final formation. What was that and why? Why did he do a comedy about relationships mixed with a potpourri homage to ballet? At least, as usual, the cast looked great in Ratmansky’s work, always dancing their best. Even during the awful end.
Tiler Peck has started choreographing relatively recently; since 2018, she’s done one or two works a year. This is the first one for her own company, and Concerto for Two Pianos is to the eponymous Poulenc concerto. It’s been used for a few works, though not recently in New York City, but it has a similar antic feel to the Shostakovich piano concertos that are already in NYCB’s repertory as Concerto DSCH by Ratmansky and Mercurial Manouevres by Christopher Wheeldon. Not just the feel but the structure, a fast-slow-fast concerto, recalls other jazz age piano concertos. There’s no surprise that the work would recall other works from the company’s repertory.
Zac Posen dressed the cast in pretty but simple costumes, the men in navy with gray sleeves, the women in different shades of blue. Seven couples started, then Roman Mejia came slamming in. With Emma Von Enck and India Bradley as his sidekicks, Peck was using Mejia as something he could be with his eyes closed: the pyrotechnician.
Peck has danced Mercurial, but not DSCH, but as with both, the atmosphere she created was one of high spirits and top speed: joviality with a hysterical edge. When Mejia ripped into a manège, the links to DSCH felt strongest. A difference is Peck is an insider more than an outsider. She wasn’t testing or exploring the limits of the company, but showing it off.
Mira Nadon bouréed onstage, almost surprised when she encountered Mejia. Like Ratmansky, Peck dropped emotional hints; Mejia almost took Nadon’s hand but she kept dancing and Chun Wai Chan entered to form a trio.
The corps strutted in, a march that recalled Mercurial. Peck gave Von Enck a speed demon solo-ette that morphed into a duet with Bradley. The music paused and the atmosphere darkened (shades of DSCH’s slow section) and the women drifted behind Mejia (shades of Opus 19/The Dreamer).
It’s not a knock on Peck to note where she seemed to be getting her influences, and Peck has acknowledged them. It’s something we should be interested in regarding every emerging choreographer. Imitation is the necessary first step to developing a voice. Synthesis comes after.
Mejia exited and the men formed a circle moving in the shadows to the adagio. That was a fresh moment. Nadon entered and the men lifted and turned her with Chan. Finally she came to Chan. He supported her, but they acted as a group Benno.
Nadon and Chan danced, he pressed her up and overhead while Mejia, Von Enck and Bradley were at the back, again in shadow as a contrast. One of the strong points of company members-turned-choreographers is they know what their colleagues do. Peck had a bead on Mejia’s specialties, but Nadon also got something right up her alley: big and cushy with a ton of bourrées. The corps rushed off to one side leaving Chan to suspend Nadon on the other to end the movement.
The opening of the final movement set Von Enck and Bradley in a breakneck opening that felt like DSCH with a sex change. But does anyone know female allegro technique better than Peck? Peck made sure everyone got their finale moment, Mejia had a hearty solo, Nadon got an entry, then Chan.
Poulenc’s finale was relatively long, and Peck filled it with blistering petit allegro and one entrée for the corps to the next for the principals to the point it started to overstay its welcome, but turnabout in fouettés was fair play, so Mejia did them and the ballet closed with a final group tableau.
Concerto for Two Pianos was well stitched, and Peck didn’t make any rookie mistakes, particularly not losing sight of structure in favor of steps – a classic dancer-turned-choreographer flub. Yes, the ballet often recalled other NYCB works, but it is not always lack of originality that makes a less-experienced choreographer refer or quote. Here, it was assimilation of repertory and craft.
Peck is investigating the right sources for her time, which is now not just post-Balanchine, but post-Martins and post-Wheeldon. But the next step after synthesis may impel her to look outside the boundaries of the company for fresh inspiration.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Rotunda, Concerto for Two Pianos, Odesa – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 2, 2024
Cover: Unity Phelan and Adrian Danchig-Waring in Odesa. Photo © Erin Baiano.
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