New York City Ballet returns with Balanchine and Peck masterpieces

New York City Ballet in George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements (photo by Paul Kolnik)
The New York City Ballet is back in town, bringing an Easter feast of modern choreography to the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. The first of their two programs, seen on Tuesday night, brings together works of choreographers representing three eras: George Balanchine, Peter Martins, and Justin Peck.

Chase Finlay in George Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15 (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Two Balanchine jewels bookend the evening, beginning with Divertimento No. 15, from 1956. It is a banquet for the eyes, with costumes by Karinska evoking vaguely military-style dress uniforms for the men and graceful gestures that recall the social and courtly dance of Mozart's gorgeous music. Chase Finlay was a tall, chiseled presence among the three male soloists, gracefully partnering especially with Ashley Laracey in the exquisite "Andante" movement, with its extended cadenza for two violins. The strings of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra struggled, especially the violins in high passages and runs, giving the impression that conductor Daniel Capps had spent the lion's share of rehearsal time on the more complex Stravinsky scores later in the program.

At the end of the evening came Balanchine's striking Symphony in Three Movements, made in 1945 after Stravinsky suggested the title piece to Balanchine as suitable for a ballet. The last company to present it at the Kennedy Center was the Boston Ballet in 2013, and direct from the source, as it were, it was an even more bracing thing to see. The curtain rises to reveal a striking scene, the corps of women in white, belted leotards arranged in a diagonal row, one arm raised. Jagged movements that go with Stravinsky's accented, zig-zagging music were crisply defined, the dancers' hair in long ponytails fanning out at times. The solo pairing of Sterling Hyltin and Adrian Danchig-Waring, featured beautifully in the central slow movement, was a highlight.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet: After the fall (Washington Post, March 28, 2018) Alastair Macaulay, Kaleidoscopes of Patterns Against Backdrop of Mozart’s Chivalry (New York Times, February 16, 2011) ---, City Ballet’s Greatest-Hit Makers Get Help From Some Old Masters (New York Times, January 5, 2008) ---, The Unstuffy Gala: City Ballet Delivers Youth and Style (New York Times, September 29, 2017) ---, One Week’s Journey Through a Whole Century in Ballet (New York Times, May 6, 2012) ---, Taking Flight: A Season of Revival (New York Times, January 28, 2011)

At the heart of the program is a brand-new choreography by Justin Peck, Pulcinella Variations, premiered by the company just last fall. Peck, whose taste in music has sometimes seemed questionable, chose brilliantly here, with the suite from Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Stravinsky's delightful neoclassical reworking of music by Pergolesi, revived after a long absence by the National Symphony Orchestra a few years ago.

Kooky costumes by Japanese fashion designer Tsumori Chisato, half commedia dell'arte by way of Watteau and half manga fantasy, highlighted the inventive movements of the dancers. Red stripes glinted on one costume with each pirouette, and a flesh-colored strip and tutu of only partial circumference made another costume seem to cover only two-thirds of a dancer's body. Breaking from the otherwise bare stage favored in the Balanchine pieces, billowy gray curtains hung above and in the wings, giving the impression of a department store window or fashion show runway.

Sarah Mearns and Jared Angle were a sensual pairing in the "Serenata" movement, but the most beautiful moments of the ballet came from the extended pas de deux of the "Gavotta" with its two variations, featuring the outstanding Tiler Peck and Joseph Gordon. Anthony Huxley proved a dynamo of energy in the "Tarantella," costumed in bright yellow stripes with streamers, reminding Miss Ionarts of an overactive cartoon bee darting among the flowers incorporated into the other costumes.

Two shorter duet pieces filled in the gaps less memorably. Tiler Peck again stood out in Balanchine's Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, made in 1960 to music drawn from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Here partnered with Jared Angle, she showed remarkable poise and calm, frozen into extensions like a statuette, often accompanied by ardent violin solos from concertmaster Oleg Rylatko.

In this superior company, Zakouski, made by Peter Martins in 1992, felt a little like a drab cousin, not least for the uncomfortable overtones recently revealed about the Martins era at NYCB. (In January, Martins was forced to resign from his position leading the company, due to allegations of sexual harassment and physical abuse from former dancers; somewhat confusingly, the company announced in February that its two-month investigation did not corroborate any of the allegations.)

Indiana Woodward stepped in on short notice to replace Megan Fairchild and did so with warmth and energy, matched with the somewhat heavy-handed folk dance gestures of the excellent Joaquin de Luz. Violinist Arturo Delmoni and pianist Susan Walters performed the music, all short pieces by Rachmaninoff (including the famous Vocalise), Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, admirably from a corner of the pit.

This program will be repeated tonight and Thursday, with a second program, devoted to choreographer Jerome Robbins, performed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Various casts will dance in these performances in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

New York City Ballet: Balanchine, Ratmansky, Peck

Sterling Hyltin and Joaquin De Luz in Odessa, New York City Ballet (photo by Paul Kolnik)
New York City Ballet is back in town for a week-long run at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Its first program, seen on Tuesday night, represents the best the company has to offer, past and present. It is one of the most beautiful and diverting mixed programs seen in recent memory. With no sets, only glowing colors illuminating the side drops and back wall, this selection of choreography put all its attention, and ours, on the movement of bodies.

The evening began with two choreographies by George Balanchine, NYCB's founding ballet master. In Square Dance Balanchine made a brilliant connection between classical and folk dance styles. Selections of Baroque concertos by Vivaldi and Corelli (Concerto Grosso in B minor, Op. 3 no. 10, by the former, and Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, no. 12, by the latter), where American folk music traces some of its rhythmical, repetitive roots, offered striking contrasts of tempo and spirit. The musical performance, complete with actual harpsichord on the continuo part, was conducted sensitively by Andrews Sill.

In particular the alternation of refrain and solo episodes of different characters in ritornello movements worked beautifully for dancing. Six men and six women, costumed in white and gray dresses or T-shirts and shorts, made paired patterns that recalled the inward-facing format of square dancing. (Originally Balanchine had a caller on stage who yelled out the moves to the dancers, a more explicit reference to square dancing, wisely excised in later years.) Balanchine kept the movements mostly classical in style, with a few simplified steps as a nod toward the square dance. Two principal dancers, Megan Fairchild spirited and elegant paired with a slightly rough Chase Finlay, were an ardent duo in the pas de deux accompanied by lovely violin and other solos in the first plangent slow movement. Fairchild's series of slow pirouettes en pointe in the Vivaldi slow movement were exquisite.

Balanchine's Tarantella was the odd man out in this program, a cutesy but charming bagatelle included to feature two younger, non-principal dancers. Erica Pereira and Spartak Hoxha, in Neapolitan peasant costumes (designed by Karinska), burst onto the scene waving to the audience. The choreography is breathless, an almost constant movement of arms and legs, which the dancers pulled off with a smile. Hoxha was so enthusiastic with the tambourine he played at one point that he knocked two of the metal zills loose from it. The music, Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Grand Tarentelle for Piano and Orchestra, op. 67, is a semi-corny Romantic finger-buster, reconstructed and orchestrated by Broadway orchestrator Hershy Kay, Balanchine's favored arranger, which challenged guest pianist Susan Walters at times.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet’s knockout punch is delivered at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, June 7) Alastair Macaulay, For the Couples in This Alexei Ratmansky Ballet, Love Is Not Enough (New York Times, May 5) Apollinaire Scherr, Ratmansky premiere, Lincoln Center, New York — tremendous (Financial Times, May 5) Siobhan Burke, No More Gang Rape Scenes in Ballets, Please (New York Times, May 15)

The second half of the program featured new works by NYCB's most talented living choreographers. The company premiered Alexei Ratmansky's Odessa just last month, and it is one of the best new short ballets seen in recent years. Ratmanksy drew his score from the 1990 Soviet film Sunset, a set of tango- and klezmer-infused musical cues by Leonid Desyatnikov. The subject matter came from the same source, Isaac Babel's play about Jewish gangsters in Odessa after the Russian Revolution, in turn based on his collection of short stories The Odessa Tales. The ballet's story does not seem to line up with the play exactly, but the air of jealousy, abuse, and desperation does. Keso Dekker designed the colorful tango costumes, glowing like stained glass under Mark Stanley's lighting.

Ratmanksy follows three couples, who are first to enter the scene. One of them, danced here by Sterling Hyltin and Joaquin de Luz with tender grace, is not happy. Ratmanksy's choreography is generally busy and rife with ideas, and that profusion of ideas here obscures the story line, unclear even after going back on Wednesday night to see this program a second time. That impenetrability does not make the ballet any less powerful, and some of the tableaux are breath-taking in their originality and beauty. The male dancers at one point become like puppeteers, lifting Hyltin and de Luz into the air in their pas de deux (pictured above), which degenerates into a gang attack scene, accompanied to heart-sickening circus music. The score, dotted by charming solos for tuba, accordion, and the space-age sound of the flexatone, provides many delights.

Justin Peck showed a lot of chutzpah in taking on Aaron Copland's music for Rodeo, set originally to an evergreen choreography by Agnes de Mille, even if it was the symphonic version with the "Ranch House Party" movement excised. Rather than a single Cowgirl among a group of boisterous cowboys, Peck's mostly male dancers seem like a bunch of athletes, with costumes recalling gymnasts, racers, or soccer players. They line up at the start line on one side of the stage to open the ballet, running across the bare stage, and when not exercising together, they walk around casually, leaning on each other.

Into this all-male gymnasium setting comes the delightful Tiler Peck (no relation to the choreographer), a gymnast who seems to like physical activity as much as the men. One of them, danced by the choreographer himself, finally notices her, dancing with her to the "Saturday Night Waltz" music. Although touching, this duet somehow did not seem as tender or sincere as the dance for the five men of the blue-costumed "soccer team" in the "Corral Nocturne" that preceded it. Male and female worlds were reconciled in the concluding "Hoe-Down," a whirlwind of athletic activity given its start humorously by Justin Peck, who knelt down at the stage edge and pulled on a cord, like that of a lawnmower, which cued a drum roll.

This program repeats on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon at the Kennedy Center Opera House. We will review the second program offered by NYCB on Friday evening.

Ballet Across American opens at the Kennedy Center

Now More Than Ever (short film directed by Ezra Hurwitz)
It's time for Ballet Across America, the festival featuring American regional dance companies hosted by the Kennedy Center about every three years. The format is a little different this year, with two programs curated by leading American dancers, Misty Copeland and Justin Peck. The festivities kicked off on Monday evening, with a celebratory program hosted by New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns, in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Copeland and Peck both made appearances but did not perform.

Somewhat oddly, this opening night featured one of the major works programmed later in the the week and some that were only for this evening. The festivities opened with At This Stage, a film directed by Ezra Hurwitz, about a group of dance students at the American Ballet Theater Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. They spoke about how they became interested in dance and about the opportunity to work with ground-breaking choreographer Jeremy McQueen, who created a dance just for them.

The seven students then appeared on stage to perform the work, Garden of Dreams, for the first time. In white and pastel costumes (designed by Mondo Morales) the dancers brought the short piece to life, appropriately on the theme of blossoming. McQueen set his beautiful, classically oriented choreography to the last movement of Mendelssohn's second piano trio, performed by musicians from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, amplified from the back of the stage.

An exquisite rendition of the pas de deux from Anthony Tudor's The Leaves Are Fading, danced by ABT principal dancers Stella Abrera and Marcelo Gomes, was the highlight of the evening. The gorgeous eighth movement of Dvořák's Cypresses, played beautifully by the orchestra, provided the dreamy backdrop for this wistful piece, a sort of remembered romance. It was paired unforgettably with Dwight Rhoden's Imprint/Maya, a solo dance set to David Rozenblatt's slow ballad setting of Maya Angelou's poem My Guilt (performed by Melanie Nyema). In contrast to the gentle caress of the music, the spasmodic movements of the tall, powerful dancer Desmond Richardson communicated both anguish and strength, frantic reaching out for help and solace followed by shrinking back as if in pain.


Desmond Richardson in Imprint/Maya, choreographed by Dwight Rhoden (photo by Teresa Wood)
The works on the second half were less effective, beginning with Justin Peck's curious Chutes and Ladders from 2013, danced by Miami City Ballet principal dancers Jeanette Delgado and Renan Cerdeiro. Its quirky movements are matched ingeniously with the music, the first movement of Britten's first string quartet, especially the pizzicato notes. The music did not sound optimally through amplification, and the choreography was not otherwise memorable.

The major disappointment was saved for last, Concerto, the large work being presented by Nashville Ballet later this week. It may have seemed like a good idea to select Ben Folds's music for this choreography by the company's artistic director, Paul Vasterling, now featured at the company's Kennedy Center debut with Folds at the piano on stage. Folds seemed to channel musical styles from Gershwin and Tchaikovsky and even Cage-like string manipulations, which sort of went with Vasterling's Broadway-tinted movements, but the result was sterile. The Folds piece has made the rounds in the last couple years -- the National Symphony Orchestra played it in 2015 -- a popularity I could not square with the effect it produced.

Ballet Across America continues this evening, with two different programs concluding on Sunday.

NYCB's Nod to History, 'La Sylphide'

New York City Ballet in Peter Martins’s staging of August Bournonville’s La Sylphide (photo by Paul Kolnik)
Jennifer Homans, in her seminal book Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, traces the genesis of the Romantic ballet back to August Bournonville's La Sylphide. Premiered by the Royal Danish Ballet in 1836, it is one of the oldest ballets still being performed today. (It is not to be confused with Michel Fokine's later Les Sylphides, sometimes known as Chopiniana, which has been under review a couple times in recent years.) The original version of La Sylphide, with choreography by Filippo Taglioni and music by Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer, premiered in Paris four years before Bournonville's ballet, but the Paris version does not survive. Bournonville had wanted to present the Taglioni-Schneitzhoeffer ballet in Copenhagen but, because the cost was prohibitive, he made his own version on the same libretto instead, with music by Herman Severin Løvenskiold. Sadly, it was not one of the Bournonville ballets brought to Washington by the Royal Danish Ballet in 2011. It was, however, the focus of the second program of the New York City Ballet presented at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night.

The story came by way of Charles Nodier's Gothic story Trilby, ou le lutin d'Argail, heavily influenced by Nodier's visit to Scotland and reading of Walter Scott. In the story a young wife is seduced by a demonic spirit and takes her own life when a monk tries to perform an exorcism. The roles are reversed in the ballet, as a Scotsman named James leaves his bride-to-be, Effie, at the altar to chase after the eponymous woodland spirit, which has appeared to him and beguiled him. A spiteful witch, angered because James turned her away from his fireplace, tricks him into using a charm to capture the sylph, which kills her, and also engineers Effie's marriage to James's rival, Gurn. The work is often seen now as "a quaint relic of a misty romanticism," as Homans put it, and this is in some ways how Martins's staging of the ballet, the first that he ever saw in his native Denmark, comes off in performance. Homans traces how the Paris version of the ballet incarnated the political disenchantment of the generation that lived after the French Revolution, including Chateaubriand's obsession with the story.

Due to a cast change, La Sylphide reunited Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette as James and Effie, after their excellent pairing which was the best part of Justin Peck's new choreography The Most Incredible Thing, seen on Tuesday. Veyette, tall and proud in purple tartan, used his remarkable ability to lift from the stage and showily upstaged the humorous Gurn of Daniel Ulbricht in the reel scene, revealing the character's growing obsession in his movements. Ulbricht added needed comic levity with his fay imitation of Hyltin's sylph, who floated in a mesmerizing way throughout the ballet, especially in the scene where she appears to James in the window, seeming almost suspended on wires. Georgina Pazcoguin was a vengeful, bent-backed crone as Madge, the evil witch. The corps, in a light-as-air ballet blanc in the fluorescent wood scene of Act II, were accompanied beautifully by harp and solo violin. In general the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, under conductor Daniel Capps, had a better handle on this score, including the five horns, who were almost faultless.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet suits up for courage and soars in ‘La Sylphide’ (Washington Post, March 4) ---, Peter Martins, dipping into his past while bounding into the future (Washington Post, February 26) Gia Kourlas, ‘La Sylphide’ Is City Ballet’s Bittersweet Valentine (New York Times, February 14)

The evening opened with Bournonville Divertissements, the result of Balanchine's request that Stanley Williams create some excerpts of Bournonville's works for New York City Ballet. The current version includes excerpts from Napoli, Flower Festival in Genzano, and Abdallah, a lovely companion piece to Martins's staging of La Sylphide. Troy Schumacher had impressive energy and buoyancy as the fisherman Gennaro in the Napoli excerpts, and Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle stood out in the duet from Flower Festival, she for her elegantly curved extensions, he for his physical strength. The cost of this evening devoted to ballet history in La Sylphide was reportedly $1.4 million, which compared to Peck's less successful Most Incredible Thing at $1.3 million, sounds like a steal.

This production repeats today and tomorrow, at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Modern Program from NYCB

New York City Ballet, Company in Justin Peck’s The Most Incredible Thing (photo by Paul Kolnik)
Ballet has a long history of divertissements that have no dramatic coherence. The flimsiest of excuses can justify a series of pretty entrées, going all the way back to the foundation of the genre in French courtly dance. That is essentially what Justin Peck has created in his new choreography, The Most Incredible Thing, given its local premiere by the New York City Ballet on Tuesday evening at the Kennedy Center Opera House. It is an act-length ballet driven more by its quirky, colorful costumes than by dancing or story-telling.

Peck drew the story of The Most Incredible Thing from the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name (Det Utroligste). It concerns a contest for the hand of a princess, won by an inventor, whom Peck calls (somewhat ponderously) the Creator. His invention is a miraculous clock that produces twelve automated scenes, one for each of the hours, providing the excuse for the twelve colorful entrées that dominate the ballet. A menacing figure, the Destroyer, challenges the Creator's victory by laying waste to the clock and claiming the princess for himself. Not to worry, because the figures from the clock come back to life and save the day. Peck has softened some of the religious overtones of the clock figures, changing Moses at One o'Clock into a Cuckoo Bird, danced by the energetic Tiler Peck (no relation to the choreographer), with movements recalling the Firebird at times, and changing the Three Kings (Three o'Clock) from the Biblical Magi into sword-wielding warrior-kings.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet injects incredible zing into new Peck ballet and other works (Washington Post, March 2) Joan Acocella, Stepping Up: The precocious rise of Justin Peck (The New Yorker, February 29) Alastair Macaulay, At New York City Ballet, Works That Tell Stories and Don’t (New York Times, February 22) ---, ‘The Most Incredible Thing’ Brings Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale to Life (New York Times, February 3) Brian Seibert, Justin Peck Calmly Creates a Kingdom at City Ballet (New York Times, January 29)

Sadly, though, these entrées do not advance the story in any way, and they are effectively performed twice because the dancers all come back to life at the ballet's conclusion. In fact, one remembers neither the story nor the movements of the dancers, but the eclectic, brightly colored costumes (designed by Marcel Dzama, supervised by Marc Happel): the grey hoops of the Five Senses, the pointed hats of the Eight Monks, or the black-white spirals of the Nine Muses. Taylor Stanley was an earnest Creator, overshadowed by the skull-capped Destroyer of Andrew Veyette, who danced a tense pas de deux with the Princess of Sterling Hyltin. The pop-minimalist score by Bryce Dessner, guitarist of the indie rock band The National, is repetitive and, while it does not offend, it goes in one ear and out the other.

In the middle of the evening came Balanchine's classic choreography to Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto, rounding out the Balanchine-Tchaikovsky set from the company's 2013 visit. The cadenzas and solo moments played by soloist Susan Walters corresponded with beautiful solos and duets featuring the tall, lithe Teresa Reichlen. Her partner, Tyler Angle, had a charming scene in the slow movement with five women on either side, like fanned-out shadows, accompanied by a gorgeous duet of solo violin and cello.

The first act featured two short choreographies by Peter Martins, the company's Ballet Master-in-Chief. In The Infernal Machine, the movements of the dancers, Ashley Laracey and Amar Ramasar, on the darkened stage seemed to have little to do with the antic passage through countless sound worlds found in the score of the same name by Christopher Rouse. A snippet quoted from Beethoven's op. 130 string quartet flies by, half unnoticed near the piece's halfway point. Likewise in Ash, Michael Torke's often disjointed score inspired contrapuntal movements for the dancers, often separated only by a beat. It is a shame that we did not have the chance to hear the company's own orchestra, which conductor Andrew Litton now leads. His work here with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra left some details to be desired.

The highlight was an excerpt of Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain. The evening's best-matched couple, Tiler Peck and Jared Angle, took turns moving one another along, in a slow-moving, longing-drenched choreography that goes a long way to make Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, a piece I find hard to tolerate in concert performance, a more complete work. Violinist Arturo Delmoni and pianist Nancy McDill provided the steady pulse of the music, with the section-ending "ping" notes corresponding to flicks of arms or feet on the stage.

This program repeats Friday evening, with a second program centered on Bournonville's La Sylphide presented in the rest of the run.

New York City Ballet, New and Newer

Pictures at an Exhibition, choreography by Alexei Ratmansky, New York City Ballet
The New York City Ballet is back at the Kennedy Center Opera House, in alternating programs this week featuring the giant of its past, George Balanchine, and its current choreographers. When you are dealing with new works of any kind, some will hit and some will miss, which was exactly the feeling experienced at the end of the selection billed as "21st-Century Choreographers" on Wednesday evening. It was a bit of a marathon, with four works adding up to almost three hours, and some of the works tried one's patience to the extreme.

The program opened with Symphonic Dances, by the company's current ballet master-in-chief, Peter Martins. Actually premiered in 1994, the work is set to Rachmaninoff's superb score of that name, op. 45, the composer's final work and a notable exception to my general aversion to Rachmaninoff's instrumental music. The Martins choreography is visually pleasing, but little about it stood out as remarkable over the course of forty minutes: without a story, the elegant vocabulary wears thin too quickly. In the solo female role, Teresa Reichlen, who hails from Fairfax County, was a wispy and altogether lovely presence, all long legs and lightness. The general appeal of the choreography was not helped by the mediocrity of the orchestral performance, here given by the company's own orchestra under interim music director Andrews Sill. The orchestra has been through a bit of a rocky period in the last few years, which the new tenure of conductor Andrew Litton, a Washington favorite with the National Symphony Orchestra, will hopefully help to stabilize, starting next season.

The undisputed high point of the evening was the delightful new choreography to Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, created last year by Alexei Ratmansky. The setting of an art museum is suggested by projections (designed by Wendell K. Harrington), based on Wassily Kandinsky's Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles, dating from 1913, abstract shapes in bright colors that are reflected in movement by the dancers' costumes (designed by Adeline Andre). Although the music runs almost as long as the Rachmaninoff, played capably here in Musorgsky's original piano version by Cameron Grant, Ratmansky's choreography is so varied, brimming with originality, that it never tired. Sterling Hyltin was raised by the strong Tyler Angle in soaring leaps in "The Old Castle" movement, and in a striking reversal, women playfully incarnated the heavy-footed oxen in "Bydlo" and men the antic birds in the "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks." The "Catacomb" movement, for the entire cast, was bathed in shadows of red light.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, New York City Ballet’s life-affirming new works boost the spirit (Washington Post, April 10) ---, New York City Ballet sparkles and blurs in opening program (Washington Post, April 9) Alastair Macaulay, With Each Star Turn, a Feeling of a Collective Force Begins to Brew (New York Times, January 21) ---, The Art Gallery as Spinning Montage (New York Times, October 3, 2014) ---, Celebrating Old Times With New: A Premiere (New York Times, May 9, 2014) New York City Ballet on Ionarts: 2014 | 2013

Tiler Peck and Craig Hall made a beautiful pairing in Christopher Wheeldon's somewhat limited, repetitive This Bitter Earth, although it would have been just as visually pretty if it had been performed in silence, so little did it seem to have to do with the music, a recording from the soundtrack for Shutter Island. Both music and choreography felt endless in their over-repetition in Everywhere We Go, Justin Peck's abstract ballet to a suite of music by Sufjan Stevens (orchestrated by Michael P. Atkinson). Both choreographer and composer relied heavily on the copy-paste method, with some whole sections of the choreography simply repeated toward the end, not to mention a number of dancers who slipped and fell, for whatever reason.

The company's second program, seen on Thursday night but not for review, was worthwhile just to have a look at Balanchine's choreography for Agon, which was crucial in my making sense of Schoenberg's twelve-tone score for this work. Maria Kowroski was brilliant, almost superhuman, in the outrageous contortions of the Pas de Deux in the ballet's second part. Balanchine's vivacious choreography to Bizet's Symphony in C, last seen from American Ballet Theater in 2013, was also outstanding, especially the elegant extensions of Sara Mearns in the slow movement's pas de deux.

These programs are repeated through April 12, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.