Feb. 12, 2014
“And now for something completely different” could have been the sub-title for “Contemporary Choreographers,” Joffrey Ballet Chicago’s winter season, running from February 12-23 at the Auditorium Theater.
Brock Clawson’s Crossing Ashland (2012), Christopher Wheeldon’s Continuum (2002), and Alexander Eckman’s Episode 31 (2011) made for an especially stimulating evening of distinctive styles, intriguing structure, and original movement vocabulary, but common threads provided unifying elements.
In all three pieces, the ensemble is the hero, the star, the whole point, and yet in each, stand-out solos, duets, and small group segments underscore the depth and versatility, of the Joffrey ensemble, performing at the pinnacle of their artistic and technical achievement as a company.
And it wasn’t just that all three pieces broke the mold of classical form, albeit each in a different way. Each also utilized classical conventions to strike out in new and inventive directions, both inviting and refreshingly provocative. Bravo to artistic director Ashley Wheater and The Joffrey for giving its audiences the treat of exposure to such challenging new material.
Nicole Pearce’s lighting played a prominent role in defining and partnering the drama in each piece, creating a riveting newness to our sense of space, shape, and focus of movement, whether narrative, as in Crossing Ashland, abstract, as in Continuum, or a combination of both, as in Episode 31.
Clawson’s Crossing Ashland, mature and multi-layered, is replete with metaphor. House lights are still up when you almost don’t notice the nonchalant entrance in silence of a lone male figure in jeans and a sport coat far upstage. He crosses without ceremony to the opposite side, and disappears. Other pedestrians, dressed in street clothes representing a random cross-section of the urban population, variously amble, rush, or walk, check their i-phones, listen to their ipods, and pass each other in anonymity. The movement and the timing of entrances and exits are entirely realistic, “non-dancey.” There is a pause. Man number one returns looking at his i-phone and crosses back. House lights dim, and an eerie illumination radiates from the glowing shape of a lone male dancer far downstage dragging his body along the floor by his forearms, the contrast of his nearly-naked body and labored movement heightened by silence. He evolves to a crawl, then to standing, fully-present and facing the audience, the simplicity of his movement focusing attention on its sculptural essence. His torso arcs slowly off-center as his arms inscribe a circle to the side of his body, stretching, reaching, a sinewy study in effort, breath, and shape that develops and expands into a rich motif for the entire ensemble later on. Only after these two contrasting images of the dressed and the naked, the sensual, sensate individual and the anonymous blank slate, does music flood the space with a collage of contrasting idioms, each supporting the emotional core of Clawson’s movement invention. Interludes of upstage pedestrian crossings alternate with ensemble dancing that gradually dominates the stage with men and women in nude briefs and the barest of nude body suits. A group entrance mirrors the solo male’s, dragging their bodies across the downstage corridor in a mesmerizing progression, emerging as if from a primordial soup through stages of evolution to fully-evolved human beings. Clawson capitalizes on the ballet chops of his dancers with movement ideas that spring more from modern dance, with ample use of falls to the floor, mid-torso isolations, spiral turns, and rapid changes of level. There is a sense of freedom within form guiding the broad arcs and off-center gestures. The pull of arms stretching beyond to carve their recurring circles in space and around each other sends bodies bending to knock knees and flexed feet, then soaring in exquisite ballet extensions. A stunning male quintet explores the power and excitement of male partnering. Dramatic tension ignited Joanna Wozniak and Shane Urton in a breathtaking duet that spans the emotional gamut from ambivalence to frustration, longing to rejection, anger to capitulation. The palpable need for touch and the ache of its absence resonated throughout as the narrative theme penetrated pedestrian movement. The black cyclorama lifts, exposing a sun-drenched backdrop for the pedestrian street scene, where eye contact, an arresting gesture, a slight nod to vulnerability begin to infiltrate their bodies. In a lovely finishing touch that avoided sentimentality, male number one and his female counterpart appear downstage for the first time and begin moving toward each other, ending the piece on a note of hopeful expectation. In the contrasts and convergence of realism and stylization, Clawson gives us a rich composite of real people in an emotional landscape that speaks poignantly and with originality to today’s sensibilities. Truly coming of age as a choreographer in our own back yard, Chicago-based Clawson’s work here shows a unique artistic voice worth watching.
Pianists Mungunchimeg Buriad and Paul James Lewis, performing the duo-piano and harpsichord music of Gyorgy Ligeti, were keenly present and acutely interactive with the dancers onstage in Christopher Wheeldon’s Continuum. Wheeldon’s nod to Balanchine, in whose company he performed and served as resident choreographer, was evident in the flexed feet, forced-arch releves, plies en pointe, and the use of the dancers as human building blocks for spatial design. Linear, geometric, and abstract in design, straight arms, lunges to arabesque, sissones springing into the air and beats aplenty kept the dancers moving at non-stop pace to the measured count of Lygeti’s music. The partnership of music and choreography was so intimately integrated as to create the enthralling illusion that the dancers’ movements actually plucked sound out of thin air, as if the piano and harpsichord keyboards were invisible spatial instruments they played upon. In a series of solos, duets, quartets and ensemble sequences, four couples in sleek turquoise leotards and tights mirrored the controlled tension of the music. The two central duets, performed respectively by Christine Rojas and Temur Suashvili and April Daly and Fabrice Calmels anchored the piece with both lush partnering and superb technique.
The film prologue to Alexander Eckman’s playful Episode 31 was a delightful flash-mob docu-romp across Chicago’s iconic landmarks, giving us a rare glimpse of the boisterous, fun-loving kids still alive and kicking inside those elegant and marvelously-refined Joffrey bodies. Episode 31 provided a light-hearted contrast to the weightier choreographic substance of the two previous pieces. Dressed in black and white riffs on school uniforms, the ensemble stormed the stage with intermittent yelling, stomping and joyful fist-shaking, happily mocking the unseen hand of authority. The dancers appeared to be having a blast, which is always entertaining to watch, especially when they are The Joffrey.