Tarnished Silver

Romanza", "Continuo", "Fractals", "Schrumpf", "Stars and Stripes pas de deux", "Swan Lake pas de quatre", "A Taste of Sweet Velvet"
The Royal Ballet School/ABT II
Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, NY
March 5, 2011

The joint program included works danced by students from Britain's Royal Ballet and members of ABT II, formerly the ABT Studio Company.  Since the dancers in ABT II are already performers and the Royal Ballet contingent are still nominally students, it is probably not fair to compare their performances, but it is also hard to avoid, and unfortunately, the Americans gave by and large real performances while the Royal Ballet dancers haven't escaped from the class-room.  The evening opened with a pleasant-enough classical exercise called "Romanza"for the Royal Ballet set to music by Paderewski by Gary Norman.  It featured a central couple (Millis Faust and Tomas Mock) surrounded by a small corps.  The costumes (by Tessa Balls) were charming, white tutus for the girls and elegant black leotards for the boys, and helped give the piece a nice sheen.  The dancers, though, especially the girls, performed with a frozen "I'm selling toothpaste" grin, even in the adagio.  There was no feeling that the steps or the music might actually convey a range of emotions.

There wasn't a range of emotions in Parrish Maynard's "Fractals", there was only the contemporary sneer and the overly-familiar "I've swallowed a snake and am trying to regurgitate it" style of movement.  Legs were hurled upwards, and point shoes were deployed as weapons, as the poor dancers slunk around, wagging their rear-ends.  It may be that the Royal Ballet thought it was complimenting ABT by featuring a dance by one of its former dancers, but it was an unfortunate choice.

Alastair Marriott's "Schrumpf" used a similar movement, though thankfully without all of the aggression.  One girl (Gina Scott) and three boys (Brandon Lawrence, Calum Lowden, and Tomas Mock) in attractive bathing suit-like getups, seemed to be cavorting on a beach.  Scott seems to have a gymnastic background, and the choreography called for sway-backed, often grotesque poses, and she seemed all limbs and no center.

These dancers seemed to be engaged by these two new works, and one has to wonder what steps like this are doing to their classical training.  Judging by the performance of Ashton's miraculous, musical, exacting "Swan Lake pas de quatre", not much.  Like most of Ashton, its musicality makes it deceptively difficult, because the steps are so wedded to the music that it seems completely natural, and it is probably beyond most students.  But for the Royal Ballet to present a cast who seemed completely at sea, who could barely get through the steps, who gave the dances no nuance, no elegance, and no understanding of the rhythms in Ashton's take on the twist and the cha-cha, was like being asked to Buckingham Palace and being served cold hot dogs on paper plates.

ABT II had their share of second-rate stuff, too, in Jodie Gates' "A Taste of Sweet Velvet", which had the usual twitches and invisible graffiti (judging by the expressions, the dancers were writing swear words) to, of all things, the Molto Vicace movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  But fortunately their repertoire also had works by Antony Tudor and George Balanchine.

"Continuo", a late Tudor work which he choreographed for Julliard, is a fine work for a younger cast, though it has received smoother performances by ABT II casts in the past.  The women seemed a bit ill at ease, but the men, Sterling Baca, Colby Parsons, and Irlan Silva illuminated their brief pas de trois.  Baca has a charming, forthright presence, and Parsons shows that ABT has yet another prince in waiting.

The male contingent (Alberto Velazquez) also took the honors in Balanchine's "Stars and Stripes" pas de deux.  Velazquez has a fluid and effortless jump and captured the tongue-in-cheek cockiness as well as the innocence of the choreography.  Cara Marie Gary didn't make the mistake of trying to be funny, and she danced well, though the subtle phrasing some dancers give the solo (modulating the jumps to emphasize the final one) eluded her, and she seemed to be going for broke in every move.  But it was such a relief to see good dancers doing real choreography.

copyright © 2011 by Mary Cargill