‘Ingenuity’ is contagious
The Houston Ballet looked dazzlingly good Thursday evening in its season-opening program, “American Ingenuity,” performing three works by American choreographers that reference ballet’s colorful history.
Artistic director Stanton Welch has a knack for programming, and “American Ingenuity” starts the season on exciting ground.
William Forsythe’s hypnotic masterpiece “Artifact Suite,” which the company was dancing for the first time, is the jawdropper. And curtain dropper, you might say: A heavy black curtain closes with a thud to emphasize every caesura, or break, of the score, which is drawn from Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Chaconne in D-Minor.”
Each time the curtain reopens, there’s also a visual reboot: The 35 bodies have been rearranged and re-lit, ready to start again.
Dim house lights come on during the longer pause between Acts I and II, facilitating a costume change, a mood change and a shift in the music from recorded strings to a live pianist. Forysthe’s longtime collaborator, pianist Margot Kazimirska, kept it driving forward with poetic dynamics.
The dancers wear yellow leotards in Act I, when exposed banks of lights create a futuristic vision: The stage as a self-contained galaxy. I’m probably overdramatizing Forsythe’s intention — but, hey, the man gets your mind going.
His razor-sharp, vividly geometric choreography organizes and reorganizes bodies obsessively: V shapes, columns, rows, grids. The dancers’ arms are as busy as their legs, often shifting through angular motions, in unison, directed by a woman (called “Other Person”) who could represent a ballet master or an aircraft ground handler. Corps dancer Bridget Kuhns was strong and authoritative in the role.
The ensemble frames two couples who spring around the center of the stage in contorted pas de deux that seem designed to test the limits of the women’s limbs. Jessica Collado and Chun Wai Chan and Karina Gonzalez and Ian Casady danced those parts with explosive energy.
Act II takes you to heaven, if heaven is a classical ballet studio.
Everyone is now wearing blue, and the light comes from overhead, whiter. Slightly gentler physics propel the action, and the movement becomes awesomely repetitive — a kind of ecstatic meditation, infinitely more complex than Sufi-style trance dance but rendering a similar effect on the psyche.
Soloists and small ensembles sometimes interject, giving the eyes a break, but the unison lines of the army keep you mesmerized. At one point, I felt as if I were watching a monochromatic kaleidoscope, the way everything kept shifting, just by a few degrees or angles or dips or rises.
“Artifact Suite” contains the dance highlights of Forsythe’s longer, four-act “Artifact,” a rarely-performed piece involving two actors, inspired by the point in history when ballet broke free from opera.
It takes a full company of virtuosos to pull off, and Houston Ballet’s dancers own it in every way. The piece should become a company signature. It already is primed for touring; they’re taking it to Los Angeles in October for a multicompany Forsythe celebration.
Forsythe idolizes George Balanchine’s much smaller-scaled “Theme and Variations,” the tribute to Imperial Russian traditions that opened Thursday’s program on a high note.
Lead couple Yuriko Kajiya and Connor Walsh danced with a fine mix of fluidity and classical precision, setting the bright, spirited tone for a cast that exuded the sparkle of the crystal chandeliers overhead. They were dancing from the heart — and neck and head — and it showed.
Gonzalez and Charles-Louis Yoshiyama brought an equally engaging, folksy charm to the company premiere of Jerome Robbins’ “Other Dances.” Pianist Katherine Ciscon, onstage with them, captured the lightness of the Frederic Chopin score.
Robbins’ choreography, created in 1976, riffs on peasant dance themes. It could feel like a quaint summer day without strong performers, but it becomes something more when Gonzalez and Yoshiyama — who take multiple solo turns — begin to acknowledge that they’re playing around.
Gonzalez filled every note with lush, cheerful musicality, a joy to watch from head to toe. Yoshiyama kept up the energy with good-humored intensity.
The program’s title may refer to the choreographers, but keen performances all around suggest that the ingenuity is contagious.