Dance review - Fall for Dance

I’ve been in ballet withdrawal since ABT closed their summer season at the Met.  I’m so looking forward to going with a pal to see them in a couple of weeks, but I was fortunate that a former co-worker offered me a ticket to last night’s Fall for Dance Festival performance at City Center.  I’ve never done the Fall for Dance Festival before, though I guess I should.  There are a lot of dance companies represented that I wouldn’t ordinarily follow.  The tickets are all discounted, so they sell out really quickly.  I’ll have to make sure to put them on my radar a little earlier next year.  Oh, and I didn't get any photos of dancers/curtain calls, so the photos are of the redesigned interior of City Center.  I thought they looked nice...

Funnily enough, one of the companies performing last night was Ballet West.  I watched the cheesy reality show, Breaking Pointe, over the summer and Ballet West was the company featured on the show.  So to see one of the pieces they were rehearsing (Paquita), featuring some of the dancers they thrust in the spotlight, was a tad surreal.  Since they didn’t show a lot of performance footage during the reality show, deciding to feature more interpersonal drama (sigh), it was interesting to actually see how these people dance.  Three of last night’s dancers were featured on Breaking Pointe. 

I didn’t really love the grand pas from Paquita.  The choreography, modeled after Petipa, seemed small and not grand or sweeping enough for the music.  (oh, and the recorded music at City Center is never really enjoyable.)  The dancers in the corps also seemed a bit tentative, though they were nicely in unison.  The lone gent, Rex Tilton, was quite good though, with nice ease and amplitude.  He seemed very natural and unforced, whereas the female soloists seemed tight.  There was one gal who was frighteningly thin.  I mean, all ballerinas are thin, but this gal was extra-thin.  It made me a little nervous to watch her, I will admit.  The lead ballerina, Christiania Bennett, seemed very nervous to me, at least in her first variation.  And she had a habit of looking down during her dancing, instead of out into the audience, so it was like she was dancing for herself and not for us.  But her last variation of pirouettes was much freer and exciting.  Maybe she just needed to get warmed up.  Breaking Pointe got renewed for a second season, so I’ll probably watch it again, though it’s not a great show.  I’ll be interested to see if they include this trip to New York on the program.  J

 

The second piece, High Heel Blues, was from Tu Dance, a company I’d never heard of before.  It was a cute and playful piece about a gal’s craving for uncomfortable shoes.  The dialogue in song was pretty funny and the dance itself was attractively done.  The dancers, Yusha Marie Sorzano and Uri Sands, had lovely extension and personality, especially Mr. Sands.  I would’ve liked to see them do another piece, actually, since this one was so short.  Maybe next year.

After intermission, we saw Tarian Malam (Night Dances), by the Indonesian company Nan Jombang.  I will admit that this piece was not quite my cup of tea, though I thought the beginning and the end were very exciting.  It opened with a woman in red, doing a plaintive cry in long sort-of chants.  Her voice was lovely and very evocative.  A shirtless gentleman joined her on stage and they did a very interesting duet that featured their reaching, reaching for something.  I liked that part, but then the rest of the dancers came on stage and I slowly got less interested in what they were doing.  In the program, the piece is described as being a narrative about the earthquake in West Sumatra in 2009, but it was a little too abstract for my tastes, I guess.  There was actually a lot of stillness and silence in the piece, which was intellectually interesting to me, but if the dancers were filling the silences with something, I wasn’t getting it.  The drumming and live chanting sounded interesting, but got repetitive after a while.  But the ending, with all the dancers drumming and gyrating into frenzy, was exciting.  So I’m glad I saw it, but I have to admit it didn’t really make itself fully known to me.

The last piece was by the Moiseyev Dance Company, called Moiseyev’s Classics.  Again, I wasn’t familiar with this company, but I loved them.  LOVED.  They danced with verve and joy.  The pieces were traditional dances from the former Soviet Union.  The opening was the Kalmyk Dance, representing the Kalmyk nomads.  The three dancers in this piece were incredible!  Their body control and precision were breathtaking, plus they performed with such joie de vivre!  These guys had “IT”!  Their ability to isolate was incredible.  LOVED.  The second and third pieces were great, but not as exciting as the first, but the last, the Suite of Moldavian Dances, was AWESOME!  Just the perfect thing to send everyone out on a happy, exhilarated note.  Seriously, it was thrilling.  The speed with which the dancers moved across the floor, with the precision and exuberance of so many wonderful souls, was amazing.  LOVED.  I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this company – they apparently used to make many trips to the US, but haven’t performed in New York since 2000.  I hope they come back soon!