Sneakers, tank tops, jeans punctuate Joffrey Ballet’s fast-paced mixed-repertory
With a pulsing, electro-percussive soundtrack, often colliding patterns and lightning shifts from fast action to stop motion to slow motion, Justin Peck’s “The Times Are Racing” more than lives up to its title.
The hip, high-voltage work featuring an eye-popping 20 dancers in sneakers and street clothes is the perfect culmination to an electric Joffrey Ballet program of five works that opened Wednesday and runs through Feb. 23 at the Auditorium Theatre.
Put simply, it is a long way from swans and tutus, and that’s the point. Sure, evening-length story ballets have much to offer, but these shorter creations take the focus off showy sets and big narratives and put it squarely on Joffrey’s first-rate dancers and their virtuosic moves.
Peck, 32, was named resident choreographer of the New York Ballet in 2014, and he has to be considered among ballet’s top dancemakers today.
He smartly fuses elements of ballet, modern dance and even soft shoe, not to mention the obvious influences of hip-hop even if there are not necessarily any explicit moves from that style.
While the explosive ensemble sections are the biggest attention grabbers, the Joffrey’s first performance of the ballet also includes kinetic solos by Edson Barbosa (a recurring star of the evening) and an extended, intricate duet featuring Jeraldine Mendoza and Dylan Guttierez.
It all adds up to near sensory overload for the audience and what must be a stamina-challenging test for the dancers. Who could be surprised, then, that the ballet culminates with all of them dramatically collapsing on the floor?
Mixed-repertory programs need variety to succeed, and Joffrey’s artistic director, Ashley Wheater provides just that, balancing high-flying ensemble works with two ballet miniatures and making sure there are a few laughs along the way.
Indeed, it just might be the smaller works by Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili that steal the show, starting with “Mono Lisa” (2003), a sleek duet featuring Victoria Jaiani, one of the company’s veteran stars,
and Stefan Goncalvez, who proves to be a worthy counterpart.
It opens with a striking sight — rows of white stage lights hovering several feet above the stage. They begin to rise as the two dancers make their entrance, finally taking their place overheard with a hint of fog ensuring that their beams were all faintly outlined.
The highly athletic partnering includes a lift in which Jaiani has her legs spreadeagled upward in a V shape and another cantilevered lift in which Goncalvez seems to defy physics when he uses just one of her legs as a kind of lever.
Galili’s other offering, “The Sofa” (1995), which also lasts around five minutes, provides a different and very welcome comedic touch. As the growly recorded voice of Tom Waits croons, a couple on a bright yellow sofa are engaged in a tussle that begins innocently with an arm around her shoulders being pushed away and turns into a fullfledged brawl. But the slapstick violence is all in good fun.