Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

It was a particularly bad weekend to be colorblind at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which welcomed Ballet du Grand Théatre de Genève for three performances under the auspices of Dance at the Music Center. General Director Tobias Richter and Ballet Director Philippe Cohen toured a program of works dear to the company’s heart – three collaborations with Benjamin Millepied, arguably one of the world’s best known living choreographers and one who’s had a strong working relationship with the Swiss company. Millepied has a long and very successful career as both a dancer and choreographer particularly during his time with the New York City Ballet, even though his marriage to Natalie Portman, and his work with her on the Darren Aronofsky film Black Swan, may be the thing that most Americans associate him with. But none of that was a concern on Friday when love, or at least the choreographed version of it, was in the air. All three works on the program featured scenic and costume design from frequent Millepied collaborator Paul Cox who repeatedly contrasted minimal geometric patterned sets with eye-scalding bright primary colors on his dancers. And all three works dealt more or less with young love of the whimsical beautiful variety at the expense of the tortured and dark kind.

Most of the evening was also a nod to staples and classics of ballet history. But first the company offered perhaps the most completely modern work on the program with Amoveo which premiered in Paris in 2009. The overriding influence here was the music of Philip Glass. Several prerecorded snippets from Einstein on the Beach were paired with a geometric and slowly modulating video backdrop to set the mood. But as late 20th century as this felt, the movement Millepied contributed to the performance was definitely half a century earlier in the New York of Jerome Robbins. A young couple meets and falls and love and then proceeds to find their place again in the larger community of their peers. All the while they fly and burst open arms spread or zip across the ground like latter day Jets and Sharks.

This not unpleasant opening was followed by two works where Millepied’s choreography provided reworkings of legendary ballet works. Le Spectre de la Rose, a short piece best known as a staple of the Ballets Russes. In it a young woman falls asleep and dreams that the spirit of the rose she was given earlier in the evening has transformed into a man that enters her bedroom window and dances with her. Millepied alters this purely romantic version of the tale into a more jocular one with the young woman, performed by Sarawanee Tanatanit, pursued by three suited and Zorro-masked Don Juans. The men arrive all pelvic thrusts and comic poses until they animate the sleeping woman with assisted movement until she awakes and continues the dance.

The genteel humor of the Rose was a harbinger of the other modern update that followed, a reworking of the Paris Opera Ballet’s 1832 Les Sylphides. Ten women, each in a different radioactively hued dressed chase and are chased by an ensemble of suited, sometimes befuddled young men. There are a number of small subtle narratives here including a sequence where a set of movements is repeated again and again with several more dances being added with each repetition in a Rube Goldberg-inspired bit of zaniness that answers the question of how many dancers it takes to screw in a light bulb. Again the feeling overall was light and romantic, which more likely made for memorable dates than it did for memorable dance or theater. And while the sampling may not have been Millepied at his best, it did offer a number of virtuoso showcases for the members of the traveling Geneva troupe. The show repeats both Saturday and Sunday in downtown L.A.

Labels: Dance

Quietly but unquestionably, REDCAT has become Los Angeles’ premiere destination for the best in contemporary dance from around the world over its first few years. The list of exciting new dance works that have graced this space grows longer and longer, and a new entry can be made on that record this weekend. Choreographer Kyle Abraham and his troupe Abraham.In.Motion have brought their 2010 performance The Radio Show to town, and it is packed with ideas and ambitions that thrill and seduce over the course of the evening-length performance. Abraham goes deep for a variety of personal references that may not always be explicit, but are closely intertwined with the story of a community, his own childhood home of Pittsburgh, and its relationship with two influential, principally black radio stations AM 860 and 106.7 FM. The two sets in The Radio Show are named for these stations and the music for the program is a pastiche of pop songs from the last 50 years mixed with pops and static from the airwaves. There is also a good bit of recorded dialog reflecting the type of talk that filled these airwaves on topics related to sexual and cultural politics.

But the show is not about celebrities, fame, or the power of pop music necessarily. Set against this soundtrack are references to personal matters including what Abraham describes on his own site as “an abstract narrative around the loss of communication, [in which] he investigates the effects of the abrupt discontinuation of a radio station on a community and the lingering effects of Alzheimer’s and aphasia on a family.” How this translates onto the stage are movements that can be fluid but are repeatedly stopped suddenly in staccato moments of paralysis for all of the seven dancers including Abraham himself. Abraham vocalizes at times with cries suggestive of someone who has lost their ability to speak. But all of this is lodged right alongside sounds for Beyoncé, Slick Rick, and Antony and the Johnsons. There’s a great visual sense to the program in the earth tone costumes by Sarah Cubbage and highly theatrical lighting by Dan Scully. But the show never takes itself too seriously and its points are made obliquely, often with bits of humor as with the faux radio call-in “make it or break it” program like some high-art Showtime at the Apollo. What’s best about Abraham’s work here is the way in which personal and public history are intertwined in a subtle way that mimics many people’s lived experiences. Mass produced popular music feels like a personal soundtrack here and the distinctions between high and low art fuse unselfconsciously. It’s exactly the kind of show that should excite dance fans and it is no surprise that the performances, which continue Saturday, are exactly where you would expect to find them in Los Angeles, courtesy of CalArts in the basement of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Labels: Dance, REDCAT 11/12

With the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic season and the two well-received productions going on at Los Angeles Opera, you might overlook a significant dance event taking place in Orange County this week. In a luxurious weeklong visit, the San Francisco Ballet has moved into the Segerstrom Center for the Arts with two different programs. This weekend will feature performances of the evening length Romeo and Juliet set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev with choreography by San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson. The week started on Tuesday with the first of two mixed programs that may not have shared the scope of Romeo and Juliet, but certainly provided an excellent primer about what this company is all about. It was an enjoyable combination that featured some remarkable soloists and best of all, was accompanied by live music. Don’t kid yourself. Ballet with a live orchestra like the Pacific Symphony whose members were conducted here by Martin West always makes a big qualitative difference.

The first of the evening three works, ironically enough, was TRIO another original piece from Tomasson that premiered in San Francisco earlier this year. It’s Tomasson’s take on Tchaikovsky’s string sextet Souvenir de Florence. The work itself was composed both in Italy and Tchaikovsky’s native Russia despite its title, and Tomasson played to the differences in tone between the sextet’s four movements by combining the more Slavic sounding later movements into one thus creating the three sections of he dance referred to in the title. All of the action took place in front of a backdrop suggesting architecture of Florence as seen through the impressionistic light of different times of day. The two outer movements both involved larger groups, the first several sets of couples rapidly flourishing about one another. The middle piece, a somewhat ominous tale of a love triangle was paired with the work’s adagio movement while the finale served up a much greater combination of groups and pairs. All three sections highlighted Tomasson’s flair for movement that is classical in many respects, but with enough modern touches thrown in to give it a recognizable fluidity. The vibrant colored costumes added to the beauty of the piece overall despite some ragged moments in the group sequences.

The second act was another work from one of San Francisco Ballet’s inside artists, Choreographer in Residence Yuri Possokhov. RAkU (capitalization his) references the 1950 burning of Kyoto’s Golden Pavilion. Interestingly, though, Possokhov went out of his way to avoid just about anything in the piece either choreographically or in terms of the original score by Shinji Eshima that was specifically Japanese. There are no traditional Japanese instruments in the orchestration. There are no classically Japanese movements incorporated into the dance per its creator. The story of the fire itself is also largely made up in a piece that only suggests a narrative about two lovers who are separated by war, a lustful priest, and a band of soldiers in costumes that are clearly Japanese-influenced. What the piece does have is an elaborate theatrical sense with several movable set elements and video projected onto the set right down to the fire at the show’s conclusion. The other strength of the piece was the work of the two lovers. Yuan Yuan Tan plays the young woman who appears dressed in a vibrant white kimono with an intensely colorful lining that literally flies off her shoulders revealing a giant tail as it rises into the rafters. Her paramour is a very good Damian Smith and the two provided some of the most compelling couples dancing of the whole evening. Although the narrative in RAkU was more implied than explained, as the work continued with Tan’s young woman slowly coming to grips with her apparent loss, I was completely drawn into the whole project.

The show ended with the beloved and familiar Symphony in C taken from choreography by George Balanchine for New York City Opera with the music of Georges Bizet. It was the only choreography older than this year in the program and was first seen with the San Francisco Ballet in 1961. It still looks beautifully sharp with its black and white contrasting costumes (men in black, women in white) in front of a simple blue background. Again some of the movement here was ragged with a few fumbles at times, but the overall aesthetic was good and the principal dancers showed great finesse and balance. Symphony in C provided a nice coda for the evening looking back at San Francisco Ballet’s history and relationship to the national dance scene in an evening that primarily showcased where the company is going. Tickets are still available for this weekend’s shows, and given the quality of these opening performances, Romeo and Juliet looks very promising, starting on Thursday with matinees on both Saturday and Sunday.

Labels: Dance, Orange County Events

Paloma Herrera and Marcelo Gomes Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

The downside to American Ballet Theater’s visit to Los Angeles this weekend is that it comes amid the biggest traffic jam scare campaign this city has seen in three decades. And if all the fear about traffic congestion on the west side of the city this weekend keeps audiences away from downtown, it’s an utter shame considering they will miss out on what is likely the best dance program L.A. will see all year. ABT is a company that can be mighty stodgy as evidenced by last year’s visit with a moribund Sleeping Beauty. But that was not the company here this weekend, when ABT presented the newest addition to their repertory, The Bright Stream with choreography from Alexei Ratmansky and music by Dimitri Shostakovich. The ballet has been seen in Southern California before when the Bolshoi Ballet, whom Ratmansky choreographed the piece for, brought the show on tour to Orange County in 2005. But this is the first time that ABT has staged the work and it was a hit in its premiere outings earlier this year on the East Coast.

Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

As well it should be. It’s an outright funny, attractive, and exciting production that honors the company’s classical traditions without a note of cynicism. It is neither pandering nor syrupy sweet, although it is decidedly light-hearted in its approach to material that’s a bit unusual for U.S. audiences. Premiered in Leningrad in 1935, the work didn’t amuse Stalin, and Shostakovich and his librettists paid the price. The work wasn’t seen again until 2003 when Ratmansky picked up the score and sensing the zeitgeist, which favored a warm nostalgia for Soviet Russia, replaced the lost original choreography with movement of his own design. He chose wisely and a hit was born. The story is set on a collective farm where workers are preparing to celebrate the harvest festival. A troupe of artists including a ballerina (Gillian Murphy on Thursday night) and her partner (Cory Stearns) arrive to join the festivities creating tension between the ballerina’s old school friend Zina (Paloma Herrera) and her flirtatious husband Pyotr (Marcelo Gomes). It's a riff on a comic theme popular throughout the cold war—think, or better yet see, Heisser Sommer.

Yet, despite its genteel nature and nostalgic setting, The Bright Stream feels very contemporary, especially when the entire second act revolves around the two dancer characters appearing in drag as they play off the misplaced amorous overtures of a pair of retirees. There are beautiful lyrical moments as well between the old school friends and Pyotr who is tricked into making a pass at his own wife in disguise à la Le Nozze di Figaro. Thursday’s cast was superb throughout and in addition to ABT's biggest stars mentioned above, Victor Barbee and Martine Van Hamel managed the comic roles of the retirees with masterful timing. Gomes’ Pyotr was dashing and full of bravado while Stearns’ turn as a ballerina looked effortless despite some very challenging sequences that took direct aim at the gender lines in this sort of classically-influenced performance. Or as my friend Robert noted, it was like Matthew Bourne, except with competent choreography. Herrera and Murphy made a superb pair floating about the stage in everything you could wish from a ballet performance.

Victor Barbee and Martine Van Hamel Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

Shostakovich’s score for The Bright Stream is closer to his film and popular scores than his more “serious” orchestral and chamber works. But it both clearly fits into the tradition of Russian ballet music and it is unmistakably from Shostakovitch’s 20th Century with it’s maniacal marches and moments of sober reflection. There are folk touches here and there as well. Best of all, this is dance presented with an honest-to-god live orchestra conducted by Ormsby Wilkins that added to the vital energy of the evening. Granted, there aren’t many shows at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion using a curtain framed with the hammer and sickle insignia. But it is certainly less charged now than it would have been at the time of L.A.’s last traffic crisis during the Soviet-boycotted 1984 Olympic Games. And while this city may still thrive on periodic threats of congestion catastrophe, some things do change. ABTs new production of The Bright Stream and Ratmansky’s choreography reclaim a forgotten piece of Soviet-era art in the most graceful and beautiful of ways. Leave now to get downtown for this show if you must, but I wouldn’t miss it in one of the several other performances this weekend including both a Saturday and Sunday matinee.

Labels: ABT, Dance

From Lucinda Childs' Dance Photo:Sally Cohn Photography 2009

The other half of this weekend’s retrospective of late 20th-century dance landmarks here in Los Angeles took place over at the UCLA campus. One of the few highlights of the decimated UCLA Live performing arts season, Lucinda Childs appeared on a revival tour of her work Dance from 1979. And while it’s creation was less than ten years off from Mark Morris’ L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato (which was being performed downtown in a vibrant, exciting revival), Childs’ work couldn’t be more different. Dance is a collaboration between Childs, minimalist composer Philip Glass, and minimalist artist Sol DeWitt. And in keeping with that spirit, Childs’ choreography is stripped down to the most basic of elements. The work, which is divided into three sections, each lasting 20 minutes, features eight dancers in the first and last section and a solo performance in the middle. All three are marked by straightforward, almost pedestrian movement that is divided into short, often-repeated segments. The dancers are all clad in white and enter the stage with a stiffness, as well as arms and legs that are more often fully extended than not. They traverse the stage as if performing jumping jacks or basic spins that vary only minimally from passage to passage. It’s the dance equivalent of the minimalism on display in Glass’ score. LeWitt’s film of the original 1979 performance was projected at times onto a scrim in front of the live performers, creating an eerie double of the action on stage. Most interesting is that Childs herself performs the solo dance in the video giving the work a whole other layer of connection between performers, choreographer, and audience.

It was an exhilarating if intense performance. Glass’ prerecorded music has a more urgent edge here than later works and can seem almost machine like despite its beauty. Both the music and dance had the hallmark hypnotic quality that takes over the viewers sense of time during the show. The repetitive nature of it all was not for some in the dance audience, however, and on Saturday a few people quickly bailed after getting a sense where this already brief program was headed for the next 60 minutes. Dance stood in stark contrast to Morris’ piece from earlier in the weekend whose whimsy and inventiveness could be seen trickling out into so much choreography that followed his. Childs’ Dance seems much more defiantly alone - a statement unconcerned with winning over the masses in its effort to follow through on its vision and purpose. But that is exciting in and of itself. Childs boldness never lags and, even all these years after the original, it seemed defiant, yet engaging. Something about the video images of the past and the contrast with the real moving bodies of the present added another compelling layer to the performance. And while these stripped down dances may not have changed to course of everything that was to follow, they did set a course of inquiry and planted seeds in the minds of other choreographers about where the beauty in movement is located and how audiences access it. Childs’ Dance couldn’t have come back to remind us of some of that at a better time.

Labels: Dance

Mark Morris Group in Handel's L'Allegro.... Photo: Robert Millard 2011

It’s an 80s dance flashback weekend in Los Angeles where two different institutions are presenting seminal works of the later 20th Century for reconsideration. UCLA Live will present the touring revival of Lucinda Child’s 1979 Dance, a collaboration with Phillip Glass and artist Sol LeWitt, starting on Saturday. (Yes, I know this is technically one year before the 80s, but it's close enough in spirit to count, so get over it.) But before that gets underway, Dance at the Music Center and Los Angeles Opera hosted the opening of another touring work from 1988 on Thursday, Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato set to the music of Handel’s well known oratorio. The evening long work has been seen all over the world, and in Southern California on a few prior occasions, so its appearance here is not unique. However, the show is remarkable both for how well it still works visually, and for how apparent its influence has become. Watching L’Allegro over two decades after its premiere, it seems overly familiar until you realize that everything in it that was so radically different at the time has now become commonplace for any number of contemporary choreographers and dance companies. The movement has a clarity and geometry that makes it approachable while not representing a literal interpretation of the text.

The various sections of the work, divided into two acts, reflect the wide variety of human emotional experience Handel attempted to capture in this expanded setting of poems from John Milton. There is whimsy and heartbreak and the dancers leap and fly about in mirror image groups at times evoking any number of characters and situations from hieroglyphics to a couple out for a walk with their dogs in the park. The work is immense with a large cast of dancers and one fascinating set of images after the next. The men and women of the ensemble appear in pastel garb amidst a minimal but colorful empty box of a set that is supposed to recall paintings by William Blake, but just as easily brings to mind Mark Rothko. It can be deliriously silly and deadly serious at turns. Best of all, Morris’ preference for live music has led this performance to be joined by the Los Angeles Opera orchestra under Grant Gershon. They sounded strong in a contemporary fashion for Baroque music and were joined by four excellent soloists: Barry Banks, Sarah Coburn, Hei-Kyung Hong, and John Relyea. All were spot on, but I must admit being particularly taken with Hong’s bright and easy soprano. She may not be at the top of the big international opera star heap, but she certainly has the voice for it. Banks and Relyea both had ample energy and easily projected from the pit without clashing with any of the action on stage. There is no projection of the text, however, which is a good thing for the visual aesthetic overall, but may leave the viewer wanting a little bit if you're not familiar with some of the content in advance.

It is fair to say that Morris’ L’Allegro does have edges that make it seem like it’s from another time. The pastel costumes when seen alongside Sarah Coburn’s single-shouldered white draped dress distinctly recalled Xanadu. And though it can be decidedly cheeky with its sly gay subtexts, it can feel surprisingly genteel in its approach at other times. But there is ample beauty here, and the performance is a keen reminder of Morris' legacy on the dance world. It's a welcome return from Morris' company, and he was met with a very enthusiastic reception at the final curtain. The show repeats through Sunday, May 9, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Labels: Dance, LA Opera 10/11

Gillian Murphy in Sleeping Beauty
Photo: Rosalie O'Connor

American Ballet Theater returned to Los Angeles over the past weekend with their mummified production of Sleeping Beauty. Considering how much I disliked this production the last time it was out this way in 2007, I’m not sure what I was thinking about when I ponied up for a second viewing. Actually, I take that back. I know exactly what it was – principal dance Marcelo Gomes. Like men throughout history, though, I sat through the opening performance on Thursday again being taught the difference between the thought process above the waist versus its alternative. Not to say that Gomes was a disappointment. He wasn’t at all making a supremely graceful Prince Désiré. His hawtness goes without saying, of course, and as my companion for the evening said, I could watch him dance all day long.

And he wasn’t the only one worth seeing. Michele Wiles, who portrayed the Lilac Fairy was quite good. Gillian Murphy played the Princess Aurora and she brings a decided athleticism to the show. But for all her bracing stage presence, she often looked to be working a little harder than one might like. She was fun to watch, but definitely not lighter than air at several points. Of course, the dilapidated fairy tale production just looks sad. The pyrotechnics around the entrance and exit of Carabosse elicited some oohs and aahs, but that was about as heated as things got. There was a live orchestra conducted by Charles Barker, and it is undoubtedly true that live is always superior to prerecorded music. Still this was about as limp sounding as a Tchaikovsky score gets, which did nothing for the dreary antiquated staging. ABT certainly has the resources and talent to put on a big and thrilling spectacle. Why they continue to trot this out, however, remains a mystery to me.

Labels: ABT, Dance