Review – Polyphonia, Sweet Violets, Carbon Life – Royal Ballet at Royal Opera House

I am a big fan of triple bills, and a big supporter of new ballets, so a chance to see not one, but two new works at the Royal Ballet was not to be turned down. The first piece was by Liam Scarlet, whose choreographic development I’ve been tracking with enthusiasm for the last few years; it had a real advance buzz as a “murder mystery ballet” (what fun!). The second was by Wayne McGregor, whom I admit I’ve been feeling rather cool toward since he blew me off in high diva fashion some years back; advance buzz on his was, er, abstract something, with bonus awesome costumes. And then, well, there was a work by Christopher Wheeldon, whom I’ve got mixed feeling about – I’ve seen many of his works of which there was one hit and many misses; his advance buzz was, however, most positive.

Wheeldon was up first with Polyphonia, set to the initially grating sounds of Ligeti driving couples doing angular, unconnected motions … but the music smoothed out and the partnering became more intimate. My favorite moment was when lovely Sarah Lamb was bent back over her partner’s body and slid underneath his bent knee – I briefly felt fat and inflexible but enjoyed the motion and shape nonetheless.

Next up was Sweet Violet. I’d been told the ballet was hard to get without reading the program notes, but to be honest, even with reading them, I had no idea what was going on. There’s a scene of a murder, a scene of a painter and his model (and some cops or something), a scene at a dance hall, maybe some other scenes, a man all dressed in black, one with a letter … I’m sorry, I lost track. I could not get the narrative to cohere together into anything like what was described in the program, although there were some great moments of spectacle (I loved the bit done with the backstage view of a stage, complete with people in a box watching us – what fun!). I’m not sure how the dance was … my brain was working to hard to try to get things to make sense to actually engage with the movement. And the various female characters were all a blur. It was fun to watch and I enjoyed the music but overall it was a bit too much of a mess to be good.

We ended with Carbon Life, which I wasn’t actually the least bit excited about given what a steaming pile of poo Live Fire Exercise was and McGregor’s general downward arc over the years. I thought about it during the show, about what had changed in my perception of his work. When I first saw Chroma, I thought, my God, a whole new language for ballet! But now I think, my God, the exact same moves I saw before. It’s a language, but one that seems dedicated to finding 64 ways of saying “snow.”

In the end, though, this was my favorite part of the evening. McGregor is big on collaborating and this time he had some amazing musicians doing great pop songs (did he pick them? because they were cool) live at the back of the stage while the dancers performed in some wild costumes in front. The preview I’d read in Time Out said the dancers basically put ON the costumes over the course of the evening, which was about right; they started practically naked (in black hip-hugger shorts, the women in flesh colored shirts, the men topless and yummy) then came on with the strange clothes, kind of fooling around in them, as it were – with spikey tutu skirts designed to inhibit partnering and stiff, pointy glove things that immobilized arms rather than emphasizing their movement – the costumes were a bit of show in themselves. Ultimately it all came off as a sort of fun dance party. Choreography? I don’t remember any of it. But a good time was had by all. I can only hope it gets remounted in the Floral Hall next time so we can all dance along.

(This review is for a performance that took lace on Thursday, April 12th, 2012. It continues through April 23rd.)

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Review – Alice in Wonderland – Royal Ballet

Alice in Wonderland is not just a favourite book for me, but a favourite theme; for puppet shows, for costume parties, for clothing. It’s like Christmas fairy dust for me: sprinkle some on to whatever you’re doing, and with luck the sparkle will stick. I can’t avoid the call of the Alice any more than some people can wrestle down the attraction of the Olympics or events involving royalty. And thus, in a world in which I love ballet but my hometown team keeps tossing overly-lengthy, spirit-deadening tragedies (Manon, Mayerling) or treacley kiddy fluff (Beatrix Potter, Cinderella) at me, it was with a supernova of excitement I read that the end of winter was going to feature a Royal Ballet, NEW production of Alice. Yippie ki-yi-yay! Top notch dancers, a fat budget, brand-spanking new choreography (always something to be happy about) … my hopes were high!

As usual, I avoided all media coverage before my designated night (including the Ballet Bag girls’ stint as guest Tweeters for the Royal Opera House, although I knew it was happening), so I had no idea that the music was by Joby Talbot, creator of the amazing music that accompanied Wayne MacGregor’s Chroma, or that Simon Russell Beale was apparently doing a Dame (not the red queen thank goodness), but I did know that Chris Wheeldon, founder of Morphoses, was handling the choreography (which Twitter scuttlebutt declared an “audition” of some sort). I didn’t recall being particularly impressed by his choreography on previous outings, but … hey, Alice!

I’m not going to pussyfoot around with a lot of “this is good” and “this is bad” but just get to the meat of it: the first 70 minutes is pants, but the second “half” (50 or so minutes) spanks it six ways to Sunday, so much that it almost seems like two entirely different shows welded together by an intermission. Had, perhaps, Wheeldon spent a year working on “Alice goes to the Queen’s garden” section and completely neglected the rest of the show? The first half managed a fair amount of faith to the text, but the growing/shrinking bit played horribly (too much reliance on projections), the pre-rabbit hold set-up was dull, and Ibi and I were unable to find much in the way of dance for the entire act. Yes, a story was told, yes, there were some great costumes, but, ahem, BALLET. Please to give us the dancing and not just at the very end for the flower dance (which was actually kind of dull).

However, teases of hope were sparked by the delightful handling of the Cheshire cat (proving to me that stage magic is much better created through cardboard and imagination rather than technology) and the brilliant Mad Hatter’s tea party. Fessing up, it was Steve McRae’s tap-dancing hatter that stole the entire first act through the clicking of his hypnotic, metallic toes; I didn’t see what it had to do with the story, but suddenly we had an electric moment on stage and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was truly novel and a moment of choreographic genius; and McRae may now be the ideal of the Hatter in my eyes (even though his costume stole a bit too much from Mr. Depps incarnation).

Act Two will forever in my mind be the Dance of the Red Queen (Zenaida Yanowsky), or possibly the Red Queen pas de cinq. The brilliance of this bit is that she is being partnered by four terrified playing cards who are expecting every minute that they are going to be executed. They are afraid not to hold her hand or lift her or turn her, but at the same time they are also clearly revolted by doing so. I’ve never seen such a broadly comic dance like this; it wasn’t coarse like the ugly stepsisters are in Cinderella, but again by upturning the expectations of sweetness (a la the Rose Adagio), it made for some genuine laughs. Whatever else happens to this ballet, this scene alone is a work of genius that I hope I’ll have the opportunity to see again.

As for the rest of the ballet, well, dancing flamingos cute, hedgehog croquet fun, all of the characters chasing each other around the queen’s court dull, Beale wasted, ending returning us to modern times bizarre, Alice’s romance (with the Knave of Hearts, Sergei Polunin) absolutely not in the original and too much of a change for me to accept. Maybe if her duets with the Knave had been more exciting I would have felt differently, but as it is it seems like the romance was introduced to allow for the dances, and they were, well, forgettable. As was almost all of Alice’s dancing. And this is a shame, because Lauren Cuthbertson is no clod-hopping pig herder (stage roles aside), but she, like the production, never had much opportunity to show off her brilliant moves. Still, the second act was SO very much better we about forgave the first. Trust me Mr. Wheeldon; you must let the story take care of itself, as the secret to successful adaptations is to make a work of art that is good in the medium in which it is presented, not to be utterly faithful to the original.. Go back to it, cut and redesign, put Alice in blue and let her dance brilliantly in a shorter first act, and suddenly this ballet will become something we’ll all be cheering for.

(This review is for a performance that took place on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011. The final performance of Alice will be Tuesday, Marcy 15th.)

Review – Royal Ballet Triple Bill (Asphodel Meadows, Carmen +1) – Royal Opera House

On Saturday I did something I’d never done at the ballet before: I deliberately skipped seeing a piece. In fact, I came late so that I could skip said piece. In fact, I changed my tickets from the matinee to the evening show so that I could completely and utterly miss a work I didn’t care for. The object of my disdain? Chris Wheeldon’s “Electric Counterpoint,” which I reviewed when it was new and thought would never be revived again. My dislike of video being used with dance has only increased since then, and there was no way I was going to sit through this torture again. An hour late arrival it was.

What did manage to drag me out of my torpor? The promise of a new ballet (not that I haven’t been burned before, but you gotta support it), but by Liam Scarlett, who’d really impressed me in last year’s outing for New Works at the Linbury. The Royal Ballet had decided to give him the big hall treatment? Excellent! In addition there was a ballet version of Carmen, which though not new was new to me, and as Carmen is my favorite opera and one I thought would hold up well dramatically as a ballet, I was excited about the possibilities.

Scooching into my amphitheater seats (row M, kind of far off to the side but 11 quid was about all I could manage), I wondered what “Asphodel Meadows” would hold. We were shown three main couples, dressed in grey, brown, and rust (or so it seemed), with some five to seven corps couples in a beige so pale they looked washed out. Hmm. The movement was good, to me lacking the complexity of Balanchine but showing an ease at considering how bodies should be balanced in space and time, with some unusual arm movements and a confident use of “the pause” – moments when there was no dancing, and sometimes even no music. I was very much feeling like Scarlett was ready for this move up, though I, unfortunately, as an audience member and writer was not entirely ready for him – I’d forgotten to bring paper to write on. I don’t think I would have had much to say, though – it was good but not amazing, though I’m glad I got to see it – and I think it was worth reviving, far more so than the Wheeldon.

I think it may also be true that my ability to recall this show well was hindered by the evening’s finale, Mats Ek’s Carmen. The whole thing was so over the top that it went into the realm of the hysterically awful I refer to as “the baddicle,” right there with de Fruto’s infamous spectacle at the Sadler’s Wells’ Diaghilev show last fall. I might have been able to make some love in my heart for dancers in metallic fake-flamenco ruffles, but put them in front of a giant, polka-dotted, open-crotched panty set (with some crotch spilling out of it thanks to the lighting design), then drop the dancers on their butts to writhe with their legs spread open … I could buy the Carmen, but I found the dancing comical. Laughter kept breaking out up in the gods, and when at one point one of the nauseating ward of snifflers and coughers keeping us company blew his nose in time to a roll of castanets, I, too, couldn’t help but laugh. And after that it was all just a sad comedy of histrionic dancing (though seriously, Tamara Rojo should learn how to flip a “bata de cola” – I saw five days of flamenco in which not a single person had to use their hands to turn their skirts, and it just looked amateurish). I heard from the Tyro Theatre Critic that this ballet is very popular among some people, and that’s why they keep reviving it: for me, I leapt over the other five people to run for the staircase and the fresh outdoor air before the curtain calls started, because while I couldn’t really blame it on the dancers, I did really, really want to get away from it. The Baddicle comes but once a year, but when you’ve had a visit you always want it to end as soon as possible.

(This review is for the final performance of this set of dances, which took place Saturday, May 15th, at 7 PM. I didn’t show up until 7:55 and yet I felt I got my money’s worth out of the evening. Thank you to the Royal Ballet for making your shows affordable to people at all income levels.)

Review – Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet, Forsythe Program – Sadler’s Wells

Last night was a wonderful opening to the Mariinsky’s visit to London. I was especially excited when I read about it (seemingly months ago!) and saw that they were doing an all-Forsythe program. I am a huge Forsythe fan. Forsythe makes ballet exciting and full of energy in a way I would have never though possible. His dances show off the physical prowess of the dancers and completely strips away the “preciousness” of ballet, re-casting it as an event in which athletes at their prime show us just what they can do with the bodies and skills they’ve spent years creating. Also, Forsythe’s work seems so challenging that it changes the mentality of the dancers performing it. When dancing Forsythe, mild mannered performers suddenly become tigers, excited about performing something that pushes their technique. In short, William Forsythe makes great dancers excellent, and I love to watch that happen on the stage – it makes me want to jump up and shout, a feeling I get from almost no other choreographer out there (Wayne Macgregor excluded).

The evening had four works, one of them (“Two Ballets in the Manner of the Late 20th Century”) presented as if it were one piece, but with works so thematically different I couldn’t really see it as a unit. The first ballet was “Steptext,” my favorite of the evening, a work for one woman (the brilliant Ekaterina Kondaurova, red haired and perfect for the role) and three men (Igor Kolb, Mikhail Lobukhin, and Alexander Sergeyev) done to the Bach Partita 2 in D minor. But the whole piece, including the music, messed with the audience’s expectations. First, the dance started without lowering the house lights – I think a dancer (Sergeyev?) just showed up on stage and started dancing without music (though perhaps the curtains were opened and he was just there). The audience kept talking, not noticing, while this main was moving his arms around in a hypnotic pattern – then there was a jolt of music – then silence again.

The audience kept quieting down, but the house lights stayed up for a long time, then went to half light, then went down, but came up to midway before it was over. And the music was just a brief screech of the Partita for probably the first five minutes, during which the first dancer just walked off stage and the other two men showed up. When the woman showed up – dressed in red in comparison to the men’s sleeveless black leotards (and dominating the stage because of this) – she did a series of movements with her arms that appeared to be defining a box. This seemed to set up a language that was repeated by the men later in the piece.

From this point forward the piece became more about the men dancing with the woman, although the men all had their own time in the spotlight and also danced with each other. The action was furious at times, with the woman lifted up, dropped into the splits, and then picked up again (a movement that made my husband’s and my jaws drop), rolled up a man’s body, and (I think) rotated, while leaning back and on her toes. She also ran backwards on the tops of her feet … it was crazy! Meanwhile, the men were like great gorgeous animals, their entrechat (is this the right word? – the crossing of the feet over each other) seemed to show that they were not just muscle but grace, also. I was entranced, and I loved the movement, and the fact I’d come to the show with only six hours of sleep just faded from my awareness. It was great.

The next piece, Approximate Sonata, was a series of pas de deux about which I took few notes. The tracksuit-like costumes the men wore were pretty heinous, and Ryu Yi Jeon was so thin it made my stomach feel a little off, but the movement was good. I saw a theme I’d seen in Forsythe’s pieces before – a female dancer refusing to partner with someone, being approached and then refusing to let herself be touched. I like that, actually – it makes the dancers feel much more human, and kind of focuses your mind on some of the expectations of what will happen on stage. The piece ended with Ksenia Dubrovina (I think – it was the heaviest of the dancers, a really busty woman with incredibly strong legs, basically the embodiment of the strength you get with maturity versus the flexibility and agility that comes with youth) working through what to do (in Russian!) with her partner, then finally her dancing on stage while he sat and watched while the curtain came down, so all that you saw at the last was her feet.

While I was watching this, my brain went on a bit of a tangent about the current state of choreography in ballet. First, in my mind, Forsythe seems the clear heir to Balanchine. He’s stuck with the story-free leotard ballet and continued to enhanced the skill levels of dancers. Second, why can’t most choreographers figure out how to make dance as exciting as this was? Christopher Wheeldon totally gets the “history” of ballet, but even though he wants to make it accessible to modern audiences, it seems like the second he gets the dancers on stage he goes all cerebral and forgets everything there is to know about modern culture. Wheeldon seems only to reference the ballet vocabulary, but Forsythe makes exciting movement that doesn’t need ten years of watching people dance in order to appreciate it. Or …. well, who knows, maybe I’ve been watching dance too long and I can’t tell anymore. But still, I find few people that seem to hit the sweet spot like Forsythe does. And he lets dancers be sexy. Yay for that.

The third piece, “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” is the one that’s getting all of the publicity shots. It was actually quite fun – three women in chartreuse tutus (Elena Androsova, Olesya Nobikova, and Evgenya Shklyarov) being terribly gamine and fairly classical as they danced with two men to Schubert’s Sympony #9 in C Major. However, the men were generally doing better in this piece than the women were – though I loved the happiness the girls were projecting (for once not looking like the sharks who’d fought their way up since kindergarten and just like young women doing what they loved), they seemed to be a bit … loose. They weren’t quite matching up with each other, they just didn’t seem to have the preciseness the dance required. I wondered if maybe they hadn’t rehearsed it for a few days or if maybe they were stiff from the plane ride over – at any rate, it didn’t seem to be as on as it should have been. (On the bus later, an elderly gentleman who really seemed to know his stuff opined that the entire female company was just trying too hard to be pretty instead of trying to do what the works required – a thought I feel had real merit.) Still, this piece really showed how pointe work isn’t some airy-fairy delicate thing for the ladies – it’s an activity that requires strength, dedication, and (I suspect) a high degree of pain tolerance. And even though this wasn’t done as well as it should have been, I still enjoyed myself. I mean, really, I was just having a great evening, and the joy of the dancers was infectious. And who was that charming woman with the black hair? (These were all corps girls so I can’t tell from the program.) She seemed terribly young but I feel like she’s got a great career ahead of her and I’d like to keep tabs on her progress.

Finally, the evening was coming to an end (running rather late due to the many bows the dancers were taking, and can someone please tell Russian people not to talk out loud when the show is going on if they’re not actually in Russia?), and we ready for “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” which I’ve seen done three times by Pacific Northwest Ballet. It’s a great piece – an incredibly match of movement and music only really equalled in its force by Macgregor’s “Chroma” – and I love to see it performed. However, there was, once again, a certain sharpness missing to the movements of the women. The lovely black haired girl of the previous act seemed too delicate to be as hard as she needed, while the other dancers were frequently not giving their moves the … how do I say it … “plosiveness” they needed. When the kicks to the top of the body happen, you should about feel like you’ve just taken a thumping by a mule, and while the women were able to handle the element of flexibility, the razor edge was not there. This was, however, not true at all of Ekaterina Kondaurova, who powered her way through the whole piece as if it was the Olympics all over again and she was going for a gold. She flexed, she bent, she was a power to reckon with on pointe, she was on it. And Ksenia Dubrovina (if it was indeed her) cranked out her oldster power skills, fairly well spanking the younger women of the company. (Meanwhile the men were all pretty good in general – I apologize for not having too much to say but my notes were thin.)

Overall, I think this was an excellent evening of dance, of the kind that rewards me for the many duds I have to put up with in my search for great ballet. Do check it out if you can, and, well, you might even want to see the Balanchine program, too – I know after last night I was thinking that twice in one week wasn’t nearly enough.

(This review is for a performance that took place Monday, October 13th, 2008. The Mariinsky will repeat this program on Tuesday, October 14th, then do a Balanchine program the 15th and the 16th.)

Royal Ballet Mixed Rep: Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun,” Balanchine’s “Zigane” and … something by Wheeldon

Last night I went to Covent Garden with Josela and Mabel_Morgan to see the mixed bill on offer. I hadn’t initially been too tempted, as I have yet to see a dance incorporating video that I’ve liked; but when I read that Carlos Acosta was going to be strutting his stuff AND there would be a Jerome Robbins piece, I was sold – especially when I realized I could get Ye Olde 5 quid day of show tickets. Color me shallow, not in the least because I decided I could leave without seeing the last performance (by Ashton, who’s still very “whatever” in my book) and then have some much needed time to pack. Oh well, I guess they wouldn’t have two intermissions if they didn’t want to let us leave without disturbing everyone else.

So, the Wheeldon – “Electric Counterpoint,” brand new and all, only on its fifth performance. Can I mention the night started extremely well, thanks to getting a free, bad-work-memory-erasing, second round of margaritas at Wahaca? Anyway, music credited to Bach and Reich – I was happy about that. But. Oh, the but. The dancers each came on stage for little solos, accompanied by some Bach and their own voices speaking about how they felt about dance and while dancing, while a video of him/her performed behind on a screen, sometimes mirroring them, sometimes illustrating what they were saying. It wasn’t bad, the dance and the video, but the movement was uninteresting (sadly on both parts) and the voiceovers were vapid. I mean, gosh, I’m sure the dancers are nice people, but all of it was a distraction from the dance, and the dance wasn’t good. Mabel said the whole thing reminded her of “Creature Comforts,” a TV show (I was told) in which normal people answer questions and their answers are then reproduced as claymation. Horribly, I think she was right.

The second half of the piece benefited from having nothing but the live Reich to listen to, and while I enjoyed it, it didn’t have a lot of energy or excitement – a quality sadly shared by the action on stage. I’ve seen Wheeldon do good couple work, and there were some moments when I got lost watching two people just dancing with each other, but mostly I just had no response to the performance at all. The videos weren’t always aggravating and I was mostly able to ignore them, but … it just seemed like a big failure to me, one of those pieces that will get revived one more time and then fall out of rep. So it goes.

Next up was Jerome Robbins “Afternoon of a Faun,” which, to my surprise, I realized I had seen before the one time we’d seen City Ballet in New York. It’s a clever play on the traditional story, with a sexy dancer lounging about in a studio, but to be honest what I really want to see is the original choreography. I aslo wanted it to be longer. And I wanted a pony.

Finally it was time for “Zigane,” a Balanchine piece I’d not seen before. It was kind of fun and certainly better than the Martins I’d seen the night before, but in no way mindblowing – fun, well-executed filler that he probably crapped out at a nickle for the dozen back in the day. We all left together; if I’m going to be convinced of the genius of Ashton, it’s far more likely to happen at Sylvia than during a short work.

(This review was for a performance that took place Wednesday, March 19th, 2007.)

Spring Dance at the Coliseum – City Ballet’s “Four Voices: Wheeldon, Martins, Bigonzetti, Ratmansky” Program – London Coliseum

Last night’s performance of City Ballet was a great chance to sample the work of several newer choreographers. The first piece was by Christopher Wheeldon, formerly in residence at City Ballet and now working with his own company and the Ballet Boyz to keep ballet relevant for modern audiences. His “Carousel” was a homage to the great musical of the same name, but, when stripped down to a few themes and clumsily illustrated with dancers carrying poles and moving in circles, it just seemed … watery. The girl was lonely, the man was arrogant, there were overtones of can-can girls and seediness in some of the group scenes … but it was hard to care. It made me briefly think that a danced “Lear” would be nice, then I remembered his “Elsinore” and I thought, nah, Wheeldon just doesn’t seem to get emotional connection and the kind of stuff that makes you invest in a story. Oh well. Maybe Matthew Bourne will give it a try.

Next up was a little frippery of a Russian piece, Peter Martin’s “Zakousi,” a duet complete with big boots and sparkly “Ballet Imperiale” glitz (for the woman). But that was the end of the glittery and wow. Instead of stylish pyrotechnics on stage and the showy, over the top style I’ve come to love from the Bolshoi, this was watered down and whingy. It was like some horrible fusion cuisine that eliminated all of the spices “to better suit the locale palate.” Fortunately it was short.

The highlight of the evening was next; a piece by Mauro Bigonzetti, an Italian choreographer who counts Balanchine and Forsythe among his influences. “In Vento,” it was called, which while it might mean “in the wind” (I think), to me also seemed appropriately misheard as “inventive”. I could see it, too, in the harsh poses of the women (with arms over their heads, like birds of prey, and their costumes, very Forsythe) and the very complex and yet smooth twining of a pas de quatre a la Balanchine. But his four were men, and he had them rolling onto each others’ arms, then being picked up and carried backwards with the combined strength of their numbers; and both sexes posed, angular and angrily, in a way I somehow found very Italian. It was a great showcase for the athletic skills of the troupe, and even found time to be tender and vulnerable. I’ll be looking for his work again.

The final bit was “Russian Seasons” by Alexie Ratmansky. The funny turban hats made this look more ethnically Russian, but what was very cool was the singing (by Irina Rindzuner) – the kind of strange, rising up at the end female vocals I associate with the Hungarian women’s choirs. This dancing was much more … I don’t know, unselfconsciously Russian than the Martins piece. It really seemed to tell different stories, with the people (five couples?) taking care of each other, ignoring each other, falling apart … it was enjoyable to watch but I think somewhere around the last fifteen minutes or so I just got worn out and gave up the ghost. It was fine, it just wasn’t … energetic enough. And it was too long.

So for a balletomane like me, this was a good night out, as I’m always hoping to find a good new choreographer and they are few and far between. Seeing this backed right up against the Jerome Robbins night like I did really reminded me of how there’s really a special something that makes a choreographer great – and while a lot of people might spend time with dancers, very few of these people will ever really achieve greatness.

(This review was for a performance the night of Tuesday, March 18th, 2008. Casting was as follows: TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 18, 7:30 P.M.
(Conductor: Karoui)
CAROUSEL (A DANCE): Peck, Woetzel
pause
ZAKOUSKI: Borree, Hübbe+
IN VENTO: *Reichlen, Millepied, Fowler
RUSSIAN SEASONS: Krohn, Whelan, Rutherford, Evans)

Review – Wheeldon’s “Morphoses” (2007) – Sadler’s Wells

Last night was the Wheeldon Company’s Metamorphoses program at Sadlers’ Wells, and a better night for ballet aficionados could hardly be imagined. Well, okay, it wasn’t all perfect, but the highs were the sort that have kept us going to see this stuff for years, rolling the dice and hoping to get lucky. (And with music by Part and Bryars and Prokofiev, even the down time was great.) The two best pieces in this program of mostly short bits were the first and the last, both by Wheeldon. “Morphoses” had four dancers doing a variety of athletic, innovative partnering to music of Ligeti. I felt like I could never anticipate what they would do next.

The last piece was practically two pasted together; first a pas de six, then a m/f duet. For this, the woman came back on stage with her feet bare and her hair down. To me, it felt like she was naked – utterly vulnerable. The man was barefoot and bare chested. Their dancing was so intimate I felt like I was intruding to watch them. Every lift was perfect and strong; I felt like the dancers were revealing their true selves to each other while they danced, and we were the fortunate eavesdroppers on a very private moment. It was a fantastic end to the program and left me thrilled about the entire evening and looking forward to seeing them again.

(This review is for a performance that took place September 21st, 2007.)