Pasa Reviews
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Lensic Performing Arts Center, April 1
Attending an Aspen Santa Fe Ballet performance is a great way to see what is going on in European contemporary ballet without having to travel across the ocean. On Friday, April 1, there were two dances choreographed by Spanish artists, Alejandro Cerrudo and Cayetano Soto, and a piece by Fernando Melo, who is originally from Brazil, but trained in Vienna and has worked in Europe since age sixteen. All three pieces were commissioned by AFSB, two of them Santa Fe premieres.
Silent Ghost by Cerrudo, which premiered in Santa Fe last July, shows how well the company can grow into a piece after living in it for a while. Several all-male sections gave Anthony Tiedeman, Pete Leo Walker, Joseph Watson, and new company member Łukasz Zieba — a Polish dancer who first moved to New York to study on scholarship at the Alvin Ailey school — an opportunity to launch themselves into feats of grace and power on the floor, upside down, and in the air. What was also clear was their sensitivity to one another in finely tuned unison passages.
Two duets at the core of the piece suggested romantic currents, but in subtle ways — through touch and gesture, but also through partnering that communicated trust — the kind found in relationships. Emily Proctor and Craig Black echoed themes first developed by Seia Rassenti and Tiedeman, but then took them further. The piece has a youthful, indie rock and ambient sound score, strong dancing, and emotional truth.
Melo’s Re:play was a departure for the company. The moody, innovative lighting design by Seah Johnson (not to mention the person calling the cues for what seemed like a million blackouts) was vital to the cinematic texture of the piece. Proctor walked across stage in a white summer dress (blackout), walked across the stage again (blackout), and then again (blackout), seeming never to cover any ground. Audience members tittered, as if this were some joke.
With a musical score that began annoyingly, with one note on a piano being hit over and over again, the piece developed around crossovers, pedestrian movement, repetition, and of course, blackouts. An enigmatic narrative appeared in the absence of dancing. What caused the girl in the white dress to fall? Why did one man grab another man’s arm as they passed in the street? These were small moments repeated, like ordinary moments in any crowded city — but with a suggestion of something ominous. In Europe these days — in Paris, in Belgium — a walk in the street is no longer just a walk. A stranger is no longer just a stranger.
Huma Rojo, Soto’s new piece, is like a cross between a Zumba class and a Broadway review on a cruise liner. With dancers in red outfits doing matching, jokey choreography without the benefit of interesting spatial patterns or partnering, what remained was a ho-hum piece trying way too hard to be entertaining. The lounge-music score was a huge cliché, and attempts at humor consistently fell flat. Twyla Tharp demonstrated in her company’s presentation at the Lensic a few months ago that comedy requires characterization. Soto chose, on the other hand, to make his dance mainly one anonymous red chorus line. Even the best efforts of the hard-working dancers could not raise this piece above the level of “cute.” — Michael Wade Simpson