Leigh Donlan reviewed the Saturday matinee, 19th Oct 2024, at Lincoln Center
American Ballet Theatre opened their fall season with a bang: a program titled Innovation Past and Present comprising two world premieres and one quintessential classic, at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. Kyle Abraham’s Mercurial Son was an atomic sensation, and each piece was heroic in its own right.
Some of the choreography was still drying on the corps de ballet in Gemma Bond’s world premiere, La Boutique, but this impressive new piece of repertoire was successfully anchored in its sharp composition, music and striking costume and light design (designer Jean-Marc Puissant.) This is Bond’s fourth work for the company which was her home as a dancer for 11 years. A nod to Leonide Massine’s 1919 ballet La Boutique Fantasque, the abstract work is infused with deeply classical dancing, set to the playfully rich Gioachino Rossini score, nimbly conducted by Charles Barker.
The dynamic Cassandra Trenary handled the intricate footwork, switchbacks, and directional changes with ease while a few corps dancers struggled to stay on the music. Fanqgi Li and Jarod Curley delivered a beautiful pas de deux with gentleness and precision, finishing with Curley on bended knee and Li fully stretched on his back. Only the finale lost a bit of crispness: the corps dancers in the last section felt under-rehearsed, their formation untidy.
Choreographer Kyle Abraham premiered his first work for ABT, the phenomenal Mercurial Son, a fusion of modern movement set to an electronic sound score by Grischa Lichtenberger. In this brilliant conceptual piece, the dancers moved about like charged particles, expanding and contracting in loose iridescent fabrics of golds and violet, others in minimal black leather pieces (designer Karen Young.) The enigmatic Melvin Lawovi shot across the stage like a flickering violet spark in his turn sequences. And a supercharged pas from Calvin Royal III and Breanne Granlund, both in gold, spun her so fast that the torque seemed to generate its own energetic force field.
Royal III always radiates graciousness and genuine empathy for his partners, which is maybe why I found his solo the most moving. Under a golden spotlight, his long arms rippled like soft rays of light, as the industrial score gave way to angelic orchestral voices. He appeared to break free of an invisible force that had him trembling and tethered to the ground. Liberated, he began running in a retrograde orbit. A long shaft of light illuminated a narrow passageway to a mysterious destination as the stage went dark and the curtain fell in hope-filled silence.
The program wrapped with Harald Lander’s archetypal Etudes, an illustrated development of ballet, from first position to the barre to the stage, accompanied by the intricate and grand music of Carl Czerny, superbly conducted by Ormsby Wilkins. Czerny’s Etudes were created to develop pianistic technique in students just as Lander’s dancers appear to practice the repetitive and increasingly difficult skills needed to become a ballet artist. This practice ritual becomes a work of art in itself.
Among the many beautifully conceived sections was the cornerwork in which the corps demonstrated beginner to intermediate chaîné turns, followed by maverick Devon Teuscher who collapsed all time and space in an instant with her crystalized summary of steps, punctuated by a perfect arabesque. Teuscher, Isaac Hernandez and Jake Roxander embodied the quintessential principal dancer in a montage of iconic roles from ballet history. But it was Jake Roxander’s irresistible energy that captured the spirit of this work.
A formidable start to ABT’s fall season, which promises epic Russian drama in the form of Crime and Punishment and more.
