by Leigh Witchel
It’s quite a risk to remake not one, but three seminal American ballets scores by Aaron Copland. Justin Peck’s new “Copland Dance Episodes” for New York City Ballet was as stripped-down a production as you could dare for a full-length ballet at Lincoln Center: painted front cloths as the only stage décor, costumes limited to leotards and tights in vibrant, saturated colors designed by former company member Ellen Warren. There was little else to look at except the choreography. The hour-and-a-half ballet without intermission was most likely ballet’s biggest effort at music visualization so far in this century.
The music Peck chose for the dancing was among Copland’s most popular: the suites from “Rodeo,” “Appalachian Spring,” and “Billy the Kid”: a bargain bin Best-of-Copland CD. Peck divided the ballet into 22 episodes, his divisions further subdividing some of Copland’s movements.
The orchestra played “Fanfare for the Common Man” as an overture in front of an arresting Pop Art geometric front cloth by painter Jeffrey Gibson. Marching down the sides, the adage adapted from Robert Frost, “The Only Way Out is Through,” also the title of Peck’s first segment. Calling them “episodes” hinted at one of the most disappointing aspects of the work: “Copland Dance Episodes” took three smaller ballets that added up individually, strung them together and and ended up with one big ballet that didn’t. The work was episodic in every way, the biggest being that there was little to no arc.
To solve the problem of how to go long, Peck seemed to look to the closest example in the company, and someone whose American mindset is an older cousin to Peck’s: Jerome Robbins. The curtain raised on the full cast in gauze overgarments, which, in a sign of the work’s lack of tenacity, were immediately taken off and didn’t reappear. The company posed in a tableau that looked for all the world lifted out of “Glass Pieces.”
Everyone exited except for one man (Daniel Applebaum in one cast, Alec Knight in the other) who walked forward as the others lunged down as if at a starting block and then raced across the stage, to begin “Start Your Engines.”
You could both see and hear the challenges Peck was setting up early on, all of them adding up to one challenge: flirting with meaning while avoiding narrative. Every one of the episodes had an evocative title that sometimes had something to do with what you saw, but more often didn’t. And like using Gibson’s drops, it may have been arresting on its own, but didn’t add up.
The next four sections, originally done by Peck in 2015 as “‘Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes,” cast all the men and a single woman, Mira Nadon or Miriam Miller. Along with their partners, Taylor Stanley or Russell Janzen, the couple became a bridge between and through the sections.
Two trios, one male and one female, were integral to the piece. The men, Roman Mejia, Anthony Huxley and Harrison Coll or KJ Takahashi, Cainan Weber and Sebastían Villarini-Vélez, were featured in the “Rodeo” sections.
The hardest thing about Peck’s musical choice was that the Copland scores have narrative effects baked right in: “Rodeo” has galloping horses, “Billy” has gunfire. You can’t ignore these unintentionally; it becomes a point. The men slapped their thighs; it was the closest they got to western-isms. Peck didn’t need to make a Western ballet, but so much of “Copland Dance Episodes” felt as if it was about what got removed. What got put in instead?
Not everything was abstract; Peck tried for humor and mood. After racing around, Takahashi ran into Samuel Melnikov’s chest, which was at his eye level. Stanley and three other men went to the apron and sat with their legs dangling into the pit. And of course, because this was a Justin Peck ballet, folks looked up and out at nothing in particular.
Each cast of the male trio had its own standout. Mejia led his through fireworks, chaining together turn after jump until he cannonballed into the ensemble’s arms. Villarini-Vélez made the decision to sell his performance hard, emoting as if he were in a deMille or Robbins ballet. It was the right choice.
It seemed that Villarini-Vélez sensed that “Copland Dance Episodes” needed something that Peck was avoiding: a story, or a sense of one. When he was in the center of his trio, he looked like one of the sailors in “Fancy Free” out of uniform.
Much of what interests Peck seems to reside less in meaning and more in the conventions and mechanics of ballet; questioning the accepted methods. If that recalls anyone, it’s Peter Martins, who would get lost in the thickets of composition and method as if it mattered to the audience. Here, the principals often did the same steps as the ensemble, vanishing temporarily. Peck doesn’t celebrate hierarchy, but he does use it. And some dancers were more equal than others.
In the slow movement that followed, four men lay down and raised Chan Wai Chun or Jovani Furlan above them. Or they linked hands to form a chain with Furlan or Chun rushing forward, reaching towards us. And once again they all scanned the horizon. The meaningful group is another Peck-ism. It felt as if the building blocks of the work were out of balance: no narrative, too many formations, plug-and-play emotions. The ballet was one arresting formation after another. After a while that started to lose its arrest. There was too much not there.
Peck called Copland’s “Saturday Night Waltz,” “Two Birds,” and with the arrival of either Nadon or Miller, the first woman in the piece, the energy changed. That was a distant echo, less of the Copland, than the Agnes DeMille original, which is about a cowgirl trying to penetrate the all-male world of cowboys, but again, Peck stripped that out.
It was a pretty duet, though, and one where you weren’t constantly thinking about the earlier works instead of looking at it for what it was. As usual, Stanley stood out for the beauty of his phrasing. Nadon and Stanley would not usually get to work together because of height considerations; Peck doesn’t choreograph in such a way where that is as much of an issue.
Nadon and Stanley approached one another as closer to equal. Even though the man lifted, the woman initiated much of her movement as she jumped into his arms, kicking her legs lightly, to do it again. They paused as the music paused to lean into one another, and finally left backing up then running off.
Miller was less certain at her entry; a complex inside piqué turn almost went awry. But it didn’t and her slight hesitance seemed to color her relationship with Janzen. It felt more like a traditional partnership with him as support for her. Miller leaned her head back in tentative abandon as Janzen lifted her round. Later, he slowly brought his arms round her in half a hug as she rested her face on his chest.
Peck called the “Hoedown,” “At the Rodeo.” He didn’t ignore the energy of the score, but again he didn’t know what to do with the narrative built into the music. The male trio started, and again it felt like a distant echo of “Fancy Free.” The rest of the cast posed as if changing teams. Two of the trio (Huxley and Coll or Villarini-Vélez and Weber) danced as the others watched. It might have been a pas d’action, but there wasn’t any action. When the whole group took a tendu or arabesque pose it just wasn’t enough. The music asked for more. But when Peck had them do something beyond steps, it was to point to the sky. How many times has Peck had people look up at imaginary things from the stage? Again, Villarini-Vélez was going at it as if he were in DeMille’s “Rodeo.” He was the only one, but also the one who made the best case for the work.
The men went into a huddle, Mejia broke it up to do turns in second that slowed down comically as the music faltered. The huddle reformed and broke up again for the lead couple to bust out. Nadon never seemed out of place, she was comfortable as One Of The Boys.
The orchestra, conducted by Andrew Litton, segued right into “Appalachian Spring.” The soloists included a woman who finds the man from “Rodeo” (Tiler Peck with Chun or Alexa Maxwell with Furlan) and another trio, this time of women (Megan Fairchild, Indiana Woodward, and Ashley Hod or Unity Phelan, Emma Von Enck, and Ashley Laracey). The Nadon/Stanley or Miller/Janzen couple ran and leapt through on diagonals to discreetly stitch the work together.
The section, “Phone Home,” began with the female trio slowly entering, then the whole cast wandering in for another “Glass Pieces” moment, which segued into “Dances at a Gathering,” as for the Umpty Gazillionth time Peck had the cast point up at nothing.
Find another motif. Any other motif. Please.
What throughline there was here seemed to be that “Rodeo” was masculine and “Appalachian Spring” was feminine. It worked, but on the most basic and obvious level.
Ms. Peck and Chun got some mileage out of the quiet moments amidst the complex partnering they were given. Maxwell, who has been in the corps for a decade and is getting a lot of lead opportunities this season, was hungrier and more vibrant. She crossed back and forth on the stage, shooting her leg behind in jumps, going for broke. Like Villarini-Vélez, she woke up a collection of steps. Also, like him, she made up her own narrative or situation, acting Younger than (Appalachian) Springtime as she looked up at Furlan longingly. Furlan partnered her beautifully with almost invisible single-handed grips.
The bridge couple introduced the female trio, each of whom got a variation. In the Saturday evening cast, Fairchild, who did the last variation, was the standout in a demanding solo of non-stop turns. Not bad at all for a mother of three. On Sunday, though she had less to do, Von Enck’s crisp accuracy in another never-ending chain of movement was the most memorable.
The bridge woman danced a quintet with four tall women who supported her in arabesque, and let her balance. That’s a step the woman might do with a man, and it questioned and reinforced the gender binary at the same time. But the section was also substantial enough that thoughts about Martha Graham’s original didn’t intrude.
Fairchild or Phelan headed off “Simple Gifts.” Peck’s musical response was familiar, same old same old bustling steps. During an earlier duet for the section’s main couple there was a pang in the music and Peck didn’t know what to do with it. The couple reacted, but mostly by going faster.
When “Simple Gifts” rumbled to its main theme, Peck set a Robbins-style hellzapoppin’ with everyone moving. The lead woman was doing fouettés in the center and there was too much going on to notice her. It’s not that Peck needed to literally interpret all of Copland’s cues, but he had to stop ignoring them.
After the big theme, the bridge couple crossed again, but this time separately, and the whole group moved to the ground in a communal circle. It was another of Peck’s Youthquakes. They bent inwards to close the section.
The orchestra went into “Billy the Kid’ and once again, everyone wandered in for a “Glass Pieces” tableau.
The music in “Billy” is even more atmospherically folk, programmatic and Western. By the third of Copland’s ballet suites it started to become clear how similar the three scores are, something you wouldn’t feel hearing them separately.
Peck brought his ingenuity and humor to a sextet for the combined male and female trios. They did a circle dance with a fakeout, moving just a hand before stopping right on musical cues. Peck also experimented with gender, without calling attention to it. Two supporting octets for an ensemble had seven dancers of one gender, one of the other, but mostly doing the same steps. He didn’t make it completely symmetrical, the lone man partnered a woman at one point. Perhaps it was less about gender itself than about ballet’s conventions; the kind of choreographic issue that engages him.
A rollicking duet followed for Fairchild and Mejia or Takahashi and Phelan. Again, most choreographers wouldn’t put Takahashi and Phelan together, but it’s another good thing that Peck doesn’t seem boxed in by received wisdom about height or even gender in partnering.
Duets followed for two of the men in the trio, then two of the women, and the “Appalachian” couple. Coll or Villarini-Vélez got a solo, and again it was Villarini-Vélez who sold the folksiness as Miller and Janzen watched. The stage darkened for “The Split” and the bridge couple did a more agitated duet. At first it was a tender nocturne; she leaned her forehead on him, they held hands.
But this was the music Copland called “Gun Battle.” You could hear the shots. Peck staged the cast racing around chaotically in silhouette. It felt like the last-ditch response to the issue haunting the whole piece.
Copland’s “Open Prairie” music reprised and the bridge woman, alone in sunlight, touched the ground: “Dances at a Gathering,” again. The cast entered to do another exalted Youthquake circle, then filled the stage recapitulating earlier partnering formations – hello “Goldberg Variations.” When Copland soared into a finale, Peck referred to the same situation in “The Four Temperaments” and inserted similar soaring lifts. The stage cleared, the lights went down briefly and came up to show the second of Gibson’s front cloths.
The central question of “Copland Dance Episodes” is the same as when Peck made the first part eight years ago: “Why?” Why make “Rodeo,” “Appalachian Spring” or “Billy the Kid” into “just a dance?” Was he feeling like the scores had been off-limits long enough? Was he trying to find a better, more current solution for the scores than narrative? Or did he simply think it was OK to make “just a dance?” Eliminating all visuals except the two striking front cloths that only appeared at the very beginning and end, and pretty but generic leotards and tights didn’t help.
Peck has tackled narrative ballet before, in 2016’s courageous but sadly not-well-loved “The Most Incredible Thing.” He didn’t have a feel for storytelling; what worked there were what are usually his best qualities: ingenuity and energy. He added there a willingness to take risks that is rare at NYCB.
Here, it felt as if his frame of reference was so small, cribbing from NYCB repertory. Programming three pieces of Copland’s Americana back to back didn’t flatter any of them; they’re memorable works on their own, but putting them together only pointed out that they’re quite similar. Which also pointed out how similar Peck’s responses to the music were.
If Peck had put together all these ingredients to Sufjan Stevens or other non-programmatic music, he could have pulled it off. He has pulled it off; he’s capable of making resonant but abstract work (“Heatscape” and stay tuned for the next review of “Everywhere We Go.”).
The Copland didn’t just elude Peck; it resisted him. When you strip the narrative from three scores inextricably wedded to their narratives, you had best be adding something else. Movement isn’t enough. The problem was that Peck stripped away more than he added.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Copland Dance Episodes” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
January 28 (evening), 29, 2023
Cover: New York City Ballet in “Copland Dance Episodes.” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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