Much of the New York City Ballet’s worldwide fame depends on its matchless repertory by its two founding choreographers, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Surprisingly, though, NYCB also commissions more new works than any other ballet company in the world. Wednesday night’s SPAC Premieres program at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center featured four twenty-first century ballets made for the company, each by a different choreographer. Three of them appeared on the SPAC stage for the first time, while one, Justin Peck’s Scherzo Fantastique, had its world premiere there in 2016.
Dancing the work of so many different choreographers can resemble trying to speak in a variety of foreign languages. NYCB’s training in Balanchine’s technique, however, helps keep its dancing style coherent. The dancers’ speed and daring, and the company’s tradition of tweaking classicism enough to keep ballet vocabulary fresh and exciting, can inspire choreographers’ imaginations to produce innovative work.
That proved the case with Kyle Abraham’s new ballet for the company, Love Letter (on shuffle), for sixteen dancers. Abraham, who has roots in hip-hop and directs his own acclaimed modern dance troupe, has extended his expressive range with NYCB. That happens most clearly in Love Letter’s unison sections, where classical elegance suddenly melts down with squeaks and pops, and in the solos for Taylor Stanley, which match fluidly rotating arm movements with a hip-hop reinvention of classical style for the lower body. Stanley moves like a nervous ghost through Love Letter, a solitary figure among several couples, notably Sebastian Villarini-Velez partnering Shelby Mann and Peter Walker supporting Emily Kikta. Whirling his forearms in the air and around his head, Stanley dances in hip-hop and ballet simultaneously. His stylistic search becomes a romantic quest as well, resolved at the end, when he finds a home in another man’s arms.
Love Letter uses recorded music by James Blake, unusual for this company that prides itself on its fine orchestra. But Blake’s plaintive songs have real rhythm and work handsomely as the floor for a continually absorbing, continually surprising ballet.
Justin Peck’s Scherzo Fantastique, to an exuberant Stravinsky score, opened the evening, led superbly by Harrison Coll and Brittany Pollack, with brilliant solo dances by Miriam Miller and Anthony Huxley, and some dynamic leaping by Victor Abreu. Coll partners Pollack in elegant lifts and supported stretches that threaten to separate them, while Huxley keeps stealing the spotlight with fleet footwork that recalls Oberon’s in Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Miller, in one solo, shifts from playful high kicking into off-balance turns and gracefully galumphing steps. One of the work’s great pleasures arrives when she and Huxley finally team up, performing turning leaps side-by-side. Scherzo Fantastique’s chief flaw is its costumes, whose multicolored stripes, and yellow fringe across the chests of men and women alike, suggest an Annette Funicello beach movie gone mad.
They were nothing, though, compared to the outfits for Gianna Reisen’s 2022 Play Time, with a smart brassy and percussive score by Solange Knowles. In eye-popping colors, spangled with crystals, and burdening both men and women with panniers out of some baroque fever dream, they clashed with Reisen’s sleek, intelligent choreography. Simple classic leotards might harmonize better with her unison dances for the cast of ten, her elegantly clownish solo for Andres Zuniga, and her kinetic, high-stepping finale.
The earliest of the evening’s works, Christopher Wheeldon’s 2003 Liturgy, to Arvo Pärt, cast Sara Adams and Jovani Furlan in an intimate yet distant relationship. Its knotty partnering bordered on eccentricity, but the cramped entwinings blossomed into supported extensions and high vertical lifts, allowing beauty to shine through. It looked unnecessarily gloomy, though; dancers as brilliant as Adams and Furlan deserve brighter lighting.
The New York City Ballet’s SPAC residency runs through Saturday, July 22. For ticket information, visit spac.org.
Jay Rogoff is a poet and dance writer who lives in Saratoga Springs. His latest poetry collection is Loving in Truth: New and Selected Poems, and his book of critical essays, Becoming Poetry, will be published by LSU Press this fall.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.