by Leigh Witchel
There is no ballet that does not remind me of another ballet. This is not a bad thing; my pet distinction between art and entertainment is that art makes you think of a hundred other things. Entertainment invites you to think about nothing but what you’re seeing. There was a lot to be reminded of in New York City Ballet’s Wheeldon/Martins/Peck triple bill.
Polyphonia is Christopher Wheeldon’s 2001 masterpiece in the original sense, his creation for passing from journeyman choreographer to entry into the guild, taking his master’s master’s masterwork, Agon, and fashioning his own ballet in its image.
The cacophonous opening of Polyphonia looked as if each dancer in this cast was doing the steps on their own times and hoping they’d match up at the musical signposts. Luckily, they did.
In Wendy Whelan’s part, Unity Phelan’s body did whatever she wanted, easily making all the weird shapes, yet without effect. When Phelan curled round Chun Wai Chan (who made his debut earlier in the season) and arched back in a bridge, it was just a shape. It didn’t remind you of anything.
But towards the end of Phelan’s last duet with Chan as she extended, she did it with effort and tension; that was what had been missing. Emma Von Enck took the section before the final duet and made it really sharp. The danger with her precision is that it’s her response to every role. It’s starting to feel like a tic.
Like Stravinsky’s main duet in Agon, the music for the last pas, the second piece from György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata, has almost no rhythm, just chords in suspension that drift off at the end of a phrase. Again like Agon, the dancing in the pas is more pose-to-pose than in the other sections. And the final coda is based, like Balanchine’s, on exchanging places.
But Wheeldon quoted several of Balanchine’s modern masterpieces. There were lifts that riffed off of The Four Temperaments, and Episodes. The aesthetic was even echoed in the women’s uniform of a plain leotard and belt, which was wisely done not in black and white, but purple. Still, you saw Wheeldon’s classical base in the almost-ballroom waltz for three couples.
We don’t give Peter Martins enough credit as a craftsman; Wheeldon’s master, who gave him his apprenticeship, was skilled enough himself to be in the guild. But Barber Violin Concerto, as well as Hallelujah Junction, were odd choices to bring back. Both made sense logistically if something small in scale was needed, but neither are his best work (that’s probably Fearful Symmetries and Ash, which has the same casting – five couples – as Hallelujah Junction). Except for Alexa Maxwell, this was a new cast of Barber; the other three dancers made their debuts the prior week.
Miriam Miller had a more unaffected quality than Sara Mearns in the classical ballerina role, but who wouldn’t? Still, where Mearns could have pulled back, Miller could have pushed. It was fine that she didn’t play to us, but she can get pallid.
Preston Chamblee doing Taylor-ette vocabulary looked as if he were flying by the seat of his pants. Neither he nor Miller managed anything resembling a contraction. They hunched over rather than using their centers. He finally looked comfortable when he could concentrate on partnering her.
Miller’s unforced quality brought an innocence to the ballet but pairing her here with Chamblee was problematic. Barber was once upon a time a simplistic tale of “straight-laced ballerina gets loosened up by sensual and earthy modern dance man.” Dumb but relatively harmless, that took on unpleasant overtones when it was danced by a Black man crouching under a white woman. The associations were not there when David Parsons and Merrill Ashley originated the part, and they were ones we should not have had. That’s a casting choice that should have been thought about from the audience’s perspective.
Peter Walker has to fight for classical line, but he makes up for it with the intelligence of his performances. Give him a contemporary role he can sink his teeth into and we will be richly rewarded. He made his debut the prior week in Robbie Fairchild’s original part in The Times are Racing, and his body is so extended compared to Fairchild’s it gave the role a different, spidery effect.
The role felt linked to his urgent performances last season as the Dark Angel in Orpheus. This time, though, the Dark Angel was Orpheus, venturing into a fluorescent underworld. He looked buffeted, shocked in the static and noise, staring in wonderment at KJ Takahashi or Mary Thomas MacKinnon.
Charlie Klesa, Kristen Segin, MacKinnon, and Maxwell (in yet another debut for her) performed a vigorous quartet. Takahashi and Walker are very disparate heights yet meshed well in their duet. Walker’s part tends to go to someone with tap training. You really saw that in Walker, as well as his height. He hunched over casually as he moved, as tall tap dancers sometimes do.
Tiler Peck and Taylor Stanley (in for Roman Mejia) brought a sense of play to their duet, which you saw in how Stanley smiled as thay tapped the soles of Ms. Peck’s sneaker or the two collapsed to the floor.
The company gave its all to Times in a way they hadn’t in anything up to that point in the season, and its performances were emotional, moving events. But even if the ballet is now seven years old, it doesn’t yet feel like someone else’s clothing.
There was an Elysian calmness as Stanley and Ms. Peck walked round one another before the ballet mounted to its final summit. Is Times Justin Peck’s vision of both paradise and the underworld? If Polyphonia connects to Agon, does Times connect to both Orpheus and In the Upper Room?
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Polyphonia, Barber Violin Concerto, The Times Are Racing – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
January 31, 2024
Cover: Alexa Maxwell, Preston Chamblee, Miriam Miller and Alec Knight in Barber Violin Concerto. Photo © Erin Baiano.
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