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PABallet premieres thrill

Pennsylvania Ballet

World Premieres

Nov. 7-10

Merriam Theater, Philadelphia

http://www.paballet.org

Pennsylvania Ballet’s recent World Premieres program at the Merriam Theater featured danceworks created for the company by three contemporary choreographers- Yin Yue, Garrett Smith and Juliano Nunes. The concerts proved a substantive modern ballet sampler bursting with choreographic muscle and thrilling artistry by the dancers.

Cast of Yin Yue’s ‘A Trace of Inevitability
~Photo: Alexander Iziliaev~

 The curtain came up on Chinese choreographer Yin Yue’s ‘A Trace of Inevitability’ scored to original music by Michel Banabila for the cast of nine dancers. Yue is director of her own internationally acclaimed company and was BalletX’s first choreographic fellow in 2015 and has created what could be a signature piece on PAB.

Yue’s ballet idioms fused with grounded modern movement and cultural classicism is vital choreographic ground. As danced in the November 9 evening performance, it flows with urgency and liberated technical precision.

Yue‘s  opening duets stating some of the intricate choreographic themes, and vividly danced by partners Aleksey Babayev-Kathryn Manger, and Alexandra Hughes-Albert Gordonas, and soon other partners  sweep onstage  in distinctly different movement scenarios, some more abstract that others, and not hinting at any gender character roles.

Banabila’s score ‘Dragonfly II’ progresses from lyrical themes to a more industrial rhythmic drive, as the full ensemble gathers in cryptic unison configurations that seems cut loose from what came before. Though the final partnering with one of the dancers slumped in another’s arm adds another layer of mystery.

The propulsive drive of ‘Inevitability’ is matched by the dramatic images of the next ballet, Connection by Brazilian choreographer Juliano Nunes. Scored to haunting orchestral music by Enzio Bosso, the curtain comes up on 10 dancers in fleshtone micro-corsets in sculptural ensemble circles with bodies seeming to bloom out in communal ritual.

Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet in Juliano Nunes’ Connection
~Photo: Alexander Iziliaev~

But at the end of one of those configurations Zecheng Liang is shoved away and it becomes a different narrative. 

Lyrical classicism is laced with explosive solos and duets. Liang is a consummate technical dancer and dancer-actor in both story ballets and abstract works. Also in top form, a dramatic duet by So Jung Shin and Russell Drucker who hypnotize with Nunes’ geometric interlocks.

There is a most riveting moment when Nayara Lopez flies in the air in an arc-back leap partnering Jack Thomas and an electrifying trio danced by Oksana Maslova, Jermel Johnson and Arian Molina Soca. 

American choreographer Garret Smith’s Reverberance is scored to Bach Cello suites ‘recomposed’ by virtuoso Peter Gregson who plays the live accompaniment with passages also supplemented with electronica. 

Even though the cellos are danced in and out against the cobalt blue light and visually has playful charm, enhanced by bluenoir atmospherics by lighting designer Michael Mazzola. Garrett’s uncluttered choreography has such a naturalness of ballet classicism, but the hook of the cello props, however playfully the partnering, runs out of steam.

But Reverberance has many entrancing pure dance elements and admirably Smith keeps Gregson’s musical variations of Bach the equal partner onstage.

Smith’s concept is the varying responses to the music, perhaps in moments, ala Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, where the dancers embodying the string lines, but also idiosyncratic reactions of the music, that are abstract and not meant to be symbolic and unforgettable moments like Yuka Iseda and Sophie Savas-Carstens darting through the air in a gravity defying straight line. Wonderful silky blue ensembles designed by Monica Guerra also give a dreamlike quality.

Peter Weil, Sophie Cavas-Carstens & Yuka Iseda in Garrett Smith’s Reverberance
~Photo: Alexander Iziliaev~

Since becoming artistic director Angel Corella has been upping Pennsylvania Ballet’s expansive artistic goals, with productions both on conventional tracks with revivals of story ballets, as well as a re-alignment of a neoclassical aesthetic of George Balanchine. This program definitely one of the most dynamic for PABallet dancers making the most of in ballet fusion styles and Corella continuing to strengthen a new generation of stars.

BalletMetros

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The Wilis command the ballet stage again

Pennsylvania Ballet

Giselle

Angel Corella, choreography (after Coralli & Perrot)

March 7-17

Academy of Music, Philadelphia

www.paballet.org

Pennsylvania Ballet artistic director Angel Corella has been polishing up story ballets over the past five years with revivals including Swan Lake, Le Corsaire, Don Quixote, Cinderella, et al. All ballets that Corella himself had starred in at American Ballet Theatre and guest starring in on stages around the world.  At Pennsylvania Ballet, he has had varying degrees of success re-staging and streamlining these classics for contemporary audiences. Corella also wants to showcase several emerging stars from the company’s full roster, And a pro-active approach of rotating dancers in different roles during the performance runs that highlights the company’s uniform technical artistry in the classical canon.

With Giselle, Corella leaves the 1841 original choreography by French classicists Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, for all intents, under glass, and at the same time, doesn’t allow it to become a museum piece. Aside from the fact that it looks gorgeous in the Academy of Music, Giselle may even have renewed appeal with millennial dance fans by virtue of its gothic atmospherics with the tragic Giselle initiated into the netherworld of the Wilis.

 The story unfolds as Prince Albrecht secretly tries to court the beautiful young Giselle by posing as a country lad. But Hilarion, Giselle’s local suitor catches on and confronts the Prince as the spring festival dancing commences and the royal hunting party decamps in the village square.  The drama plays out as the peasant dances commence and the highlighted extended pas de deux danced by Thays Golz and Jack Sprance. By design without a lot of ballet fireworks, but Golz and Sprance have precision and chemistry that completely charms.    

In the March 9 performance, Principals Lillian Di Piazza and Sterling Baca as Albrecht and Giselle, have immediate star power, but they are above all fine actor dancers that bring dimension to these mythical roles. 

Hilarion and Albrecht continue fighting and when swords are drawn it is too much for the frail Giselle and she goes mad and collapses of a broken heart. Until that fateful scene, the first act of Giselle can be heavy going with all of its archaic dance pageantry and pantomime choreography. Some of which for contemporary ballet dancers can be a more technically challenging than 36 fouettes.

Buffering that static feel, Corella creates more animated background characters who in countless productions just stand around as scenery watching the principals fly.  Corella makes sure the men’s corps depicting the villagers, for instance, looking particularly sharp and not just filler for the ensemble festival dances by the peasant women.  Actually, in this performance, the PAB corps de ballet women struggled with unison and looked a little atypically rote, which they make up for the big time in Act II. 

The ballet thunder of Giselle and the appearance of the full women’s corps de ballet as the mysterious Wilis, floating over the stage en pointe, in a voluptuous tulle and veils over their faces, that fly off simultaneously before they dance in cross streaming arabesque over the stage.  Whatever struggles the corps de ballet women had in ACT 1, they were electrifying every minute in Act II as the haunted Wilis.

Myrtle, queen of the Wilis, Alexandra Heier solo flawlessly executed in its steely precision as she summons the Wilis to initiate Giselle into the afterlife and commands them to cast Hilarion out when he visits Giselle’s grave.  Corps dancer Austin Eyler captured Hilarion’s machismo, without making him an over the top bully. He struggled with some transitional pantomime choreography but made the most of the pure dance elements. 

Albrecht appears in is royal velvet cape to bring flowers to Giselle grave and mourn.  Myrtle summons Giselle to him, he feels her presence, but cannot see her as she dances near him. DiPiazza enters from her grave ramp and starts her manic reverse arabesque spin and from there, she is completely luminous as the phantom Giselle. Baca conveying pathos expressing Albrecht’s grief during the ballet pyro-techniques of the role.

With its academic score by Adolphe Adam, admirably conducted with balance and flair by Peter Stafford Wilson. Among the outstanding soloists, harpist Mindy Cutcher and violinist Luigi Mazzocchi and not to forget PABallet orchestra’s blazing horn section.

Meanwhile what lusty applause erupted in the Academy when the curtain rose on the corps de ballet for their transcendent ensemble artistry as the Wilis.