Dance View Times
"Passing Through", "As Above, So Below", "Carmen"
The Washington Ballet, Youth Orchestra of the Americas Quartet
Harman Hall
Washington, DC
May 19, 2011
by George Jackson
copyright 2011 by George Jackson
Live music for dance is like letting in sunlight, fresh air, and a sprinkling of dew. Movement becomes intensely colored, the phrasing breathes richly, and formal measures seem heartfelt. For the first work of the Washington Ballet's final program of the season, David Palmer's "Passing Through", a string quartet played the music and sat semivisibly to the left of the stage. The score was the fourth string quartet of Michael Nyman - a dense, astringent composition to which Palmer paid close attention. Afterwards, instead of breaking for an intermission, the members of the quartet performed Antonio Vivaldi's "Concerto in G - Alla Rustica" and Javier Alvarez's "Metro Chabacano". Both the musicianship and the appearance of the players - violinists EmmaLee Homes-Hicks and Rafael Galvan-Herrera, violist Simon Gangotena and cellist Diana Flores - gave this program distinction. So did the contributions of some of the designers. Among the bill's three choreographers - Palmer, Edwaard Liang and Septime Webre - Palmer was the most diligent.
The movement for "Passing Through" is vigorously contempoclassical and, like the music, dense. Palmer has no shortage of steps, stances, shapes and holds. He ladles them out busily and links them tightly even for the Nyman score's slightly thinner, slower passages. The live sound helps to individualize roles that otherwise might seem somewhat interchangeable. Four of the cast are listed as couples: Maki Onuki and Brooklyn Mack, Amber Lewis and Dylan Ward. We are told that the fifth, Jonathan Jordan, is a single. Palmer, however, subdivides the dancers diversely. A constant is the assurance, the confidence, the chiseled contours of the female figure Lewis creates. The woman Onuki embodies seems somewhat elusive, more fleeting. Mack remains staunch, Ward becomes eager for action. Jordan suggests someone who thinks while in motion, a character concerned with differences in the quality of deeds being done and the process of interacting. This gives the ballet's fifth figure gravitas.
Palmer's craftsmanship is commendable, but I wish he had dared to relax on occasion and ignore his composer's relentless drive. Also, Palmer's use of emotional tokens - a glance or a gesture - as the concluding punctuation for every action set became predictable. Handsomely apt were the stage design of juxtaposed oblongs in primary colors and the close-fitting, dark costumes with colored edgelines.
Partition is hard to avoid when different composers are used for one dance work. Even though all the music in Edwaard Liang's "As Above, So Below" had something of an organ sound, the dancing comes in three parts that aren't inevitably related. Likely, each part of the triptych corresponds to a different score. The composers, all from baroque times but individual, were Tomaso Albioni, J.S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi. Liang's cast consisted of a dozen dancers, half and half as to gender. At first there's much group choreography. The stage looks busy with calisthenics and not particulalry distinguished. Part 2 has substance due to a pas de deux. It is in fragmented classical style with off-center holds, oblique shifts, leveraging, low lifts and lowerings to the floor. Sometimes a body sits poised on the ground or stretches out. The duet's tensions and little agonies build intriguingly before being stilled. Two rather tall dancers, Sona Kharatian and Luis R. Torres, rendered this pas de deux with dignity and a sense of devotion. There followed, in the ballet's third part, another pairing that strove to be a calmer, more Apollonian counterpart. It didn't quite succeed despite seeming tailor made for Onuki and Jared Nelson, dancers of more modest proportions. The costuming for "Above, Below", also by Liang, didn't help his ballet. The women wore a variant of the tunic, and the men were topless with black pants that bagged. The first duet, despite its reminders of Balanchine, is worth saving.
Best in the revived "Carmen" by Washington Ballet's director, Septime Webre, are Holly Highfill's several sets that remind so of Pablo Picasso's paintings, and the tavern scene. The dancers perch on bar stools, then use the seats to tap out a percussive pulse, and go on to practically partner the furniture and each other flamenco style. Webre doesn't tell the Carmen story well or make the title role a grateful one for Kharatian. This Carmen is nothing more than a mechanical seducer. There's no sign of the free spirited but superstitious child that leaps from the pages of Merimee's novel, stands pouting amidst the pulsings of Bizet's opera and seems so playful in the French ballet by Roland Petit. Actually, Webre pays more attention to the plot's Everyman character, Don Jose - whom Jared Nelson turned into a hero of tragic romantic proportions. The Rodion Schedrin arrangement of Bizet's music was used and Vandal had designed costumes dark as storm clouds but with flares of red.
The program concluded with a farewell to Elizabeth Gaither, longtime dancer with The Washington Ballet (from Giselle to Great Gatsby's Daisy) and previously with American Ballet Theatre. She is retiring from the stage due to a persistant injury. The current company plus alumni Brianne Bland and Laura Urgelles gave Gaither, looking glamorous, a flowery on-stage send off.