Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Dance Review

Young Ballet-Makers Elaborate on Technique

Young Choreographers Showcase, with Paunika Jones, left, and Leyland Simmons in a work by Ja’Malik at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center.Credit...Matthew Murphy

For a low-key, low-budget event featuring relatively unknown dance-makers, the Young Choreographers Showcase at the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center on Sunday night included an impressive number of stars and an enviable buzz. Ballet luminaries studded the audience, and a crowd waiting for ticket returns considerably delayed the start of the program.

When the showcase did begin, the evening’s organizer, Emery LeCrone, provided a charming apology and an accomplished introduction to the other four participating choreographers. Ms. LeCrone was the only woman, probably overrepresenting the general percentage of female ballet choreographers, but perhaps the most experienced of the group.

The others — Zalman Grinberg, Ja’Malik, Justin Peck and Avichai Scher — have slimmer résumés but equally good connections; all the works featured top-notch dancers from New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater and Ballet Noir, lending the evening an immediate glamour.

What this showcase demonstrated was that contemporary ballet now possesses a recognizable aesthetic and mood that is noticeably different from the long-dominant Balanchinian neo-classicism. The mood is starker, the movement both more pared down and further elaborated through the body, more closely related to modernist Balanchine works like “Agon” and William Forsythe’s subsequent extensions of classical technique.

Even Mr. Grinberg’s “Variations on Debussy” pas de deux, the most conventionally, prettily, balletic piece on the program, made dynamic use of the torso and showed intriguing musicality in a solo section for Vincent Paradiso that followed a nicely made, if unremarkable duo with Lauren King.

Watching corps de ballet dancers like Ms. King and Mr. Paradiso (both of City Ballet) suddenly exposed in solo roles was a sustained pleasure. In Ja’Malik’s “Hour Before ...,” Leyland Simmons and Paunika Jones (from Ballet Noir) and Devon Teuscher and Jose Sebastian (American Ballet Theater) provided dynamic, thrilling performances in taut solos and duos set to music by Joby Talbot and Miguel Frasconi.

The linkages between these sections often felt arbitrary, never building to a coherent onstage universe. But Ja’Malik’s unpredictable physical inventiveness and theatrical sense mark him as a choreographer to watch.

City Ballet dancers dominated the rest of the program, with Mr. Peck and Teresa Reichlen performing Mr. Peck’s charming duo “Enjoy Your Rabbit” to music by Sufjan Stevens. What’s notable about this work is how unforcedly contemporary it feels in ballet terms. There is a lot of intensive yet somehow unobtrusive partnering involved as the divine Ms. Reichlen arrows around Mr. Peck, who ducks and dives behind her, sometimes catching and arranging her long limbs, sometimes arresting her midflight as she jumps through his arms.

Mr. Scher’s “DreamScapes,” set to pieces by Max Richter, was altogether more somber. Marvelously danced by Ana Sophia Scheller and Tyler Angle (a last-minute replacement), it had evocative moments but felt inconclusive, perhaps a work in progress for a larger piece.

Last came Ms. LeCrone’s “Passacaglia,” danced by Georgina Pazcoguin and Daniel Applebaum and set to a solo cello composition by Ursula Kwong-Brown (played by Andrew Yee). Atmospheric and accomplished, “Passacaglia” was nonetheless so reminiscent of Mr. Forsythe’s “Artifact” in music and choreographic style that I kept expecting the curtain to crash down as it does frequently in that work.

But finding your own voice is possible only if you have the chance to speak. Ms. LeCrone deserves much praise for making that possible for herself and others.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Young Ballet-Makers Elaborate on Technique. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT