NYCB’s five new ballets shine
SARATOGA SPRINGS >> Saturday night’s Ballet Gala celebrated the New York City Ballet’s 50 years at SPAC with five new ballets, including “Scherzo Fantastique,” a world premiere by gifted young choreographer and NYCB soloist Justin Peck.
This intriguing 12-minute dance to a festive early Stravinsky score extends Peck’s explorations of individual-group tensions. Brittany Pollack and Taylor Stanley race out, stop, and stare at us. Eight dancers huddle in the center like a beehive. Anthony Huxley escapes the hive with brilliant leaps and spins. He, Pollack, and Stanley have pompoms punctuating their peculiar costumes, by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, unlike the others’ bizarre leotards, horizontally striped in garish colors.
Daniel Applebaum leaps out and starts shadowing Huxley. Is he encouraging or mocking? Perhaps the latter, since by the ballet’s end, Huxley has swapped his pompoms for colorful stripes. Isabella LaFreniere dances brief excellent solos, but Applebaum and Sebastian Villarini-Velez bully her back into the group. Can we excel individually while keeping our group identity?
Pollack and Stanley, meanwhile, develop cooperation, if not love. He lifts her in a split and whirls her gracefully overhead. He slides her along the floor on her pointes. Ultimately, as the others collapse back into the hive, they stand isolated, the last humans.
Of the four other SPAC premieres, Christopher Wheeldon’s “American Rhapsody,” to Gershwin, got thunderous applause. This big, entertaining dance deploys a corps of 16 in lots of flashy formations, but its episodic boy-seeks-girl structure lacks excitement, even with Robert Fairchild’s slinky nonchalance and Tiler Peck’s brilliant articulation.
Their climactic pas de deux feels tepid and clichéd, despite clever spinning exits and entrances on Gershwin’s piano runs. Amar Ramasar steals the show in jazzy duets with Unity Phelan and a dazzling solo with leaping turns that send his limbs in surprising directions.
Corps dancer Troy Schumacher, excellent as Puck Friday night, has set “Common Ground,” his second ballet for NYCB, to an atmospheric Charles Iveslike score by Ellis LudwigLeone. Early on, a folksy circle dance lets the seven performers solo briefly, limbs flailing exuberantly. Tempos slow and accelerate through an absorbing set of continually changing duos and trios, men and women dancing as equals.
Despite some dull stretches, moments like a set of three jetés in canon sparkle under Mark Stanley’s sunny lighting. Ashley Laracey, Alexa Maxwell, Teresa Reichlen, Joseph Gordon, Anthony Huxley, Russell Janzen, and Amar Ramasar all excel, although Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida’s motley costumes hurt the eyes.
Myles Thatcher’s “Polaris,” to William Walton, continually separates Tiler Peck from seven other dancers. Craig Hall attempts some outreach,
but to little avail. In the best passages, Peck studies the others dancing, or the group watches Peck strut her stuff for them.
Robert Binet crams “The Blue of Distance” full of awkward steps, mannered gestures, and general confusion. One man, unidentifiable under Stanley’s dim lighting, twice strains to lift a woman horizontally by the waist but can’t quite figure it out. Pianist Elaine Chelton plays two brief Ravel works beautifully.
“Ash,” the one repertory ballet, sets ten dancers in perpetual motion, Peter Martins’ engrossing 1991 choreography matching the mutating reiterations of Michael Torke’s minimalist score. Thrillingly wild Zachary Catazaro partners Ashly Isaacs, who leads expertly with confidence, precision, and verve.
“Ash,” “The Blue of Distance,” “Polaris,” and “Common Ground” return Friday at 8 p.m. “American Rhapsody” and “Scherzo Fantastique” return Saturday at 2 p.m.