A Huddle of Humanity
American Ballet Theatre presented two world premieres over the weekend: "C. to C. (Close to Chuck)" by Jorma Elo and "From Here On Out," by Benjamin Millepied.
Mr. Elo's work is set to "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" by Philip Glass, which was performed onstage by pianist Bruce Levingston. Mr. Glass's dedication to the painter here evoked from Mr. Elo an homage to Mr. Glass's frequent collaborator Robert Wilson. On the other hand, in his "From Here On Out," Mr. Millepied took as his subject matter a commissioned score by Nico Muhly. While neither ballet was exactly epochal, the dancers performed both handsomely designed works so impressively that interest never flagged.
Mr. Elo's first piece for ABT last year acquainted its audience with his propensity for high-speed aerodynamics of jabbing, flailing limbs. But in "C. to C.," Mr. Elo started out slowly — stationary in fact. The beginning of "C. to C." presents an unexpected Elo microcosm, a world of tableaux, "vivant" and not so vivant. The curtain rose on six dancers, men and women, standing like window mannequins in Ralph Rucci ball gowns, couture carapaces reminiscent of the 1950s. They started to engage in obscure pantomime à la Mr. Wilson. Soon, however, Mr. Elo's stage landscape began to read more like his own, as the stage rippled with small- and large-bore shudders and shakes: tremors of the hands, flying elbows, hands blindly grasping the air, "disturbed" swishes and flutters.
"C. to C." was danced by Kristi Boone, Misty Copeland, Julie Kent, Herman Cornejo, Marcelo Gomes, and Jared Matthews. After their initial appearance as living couture sculptures, they returned in more functional trousers or maillots, but also reappeared in ball gowns. Mr. Elo set the dancers into dented and truncated shapes, and he shares with William Forsythe a certain delight in seeing the body's joints puckered into contractions or hinged as if by dowels. But it's not always easy on the eye to see the dancers' bodies so continuously crumpled into stressed positions.
Of the women, Ms. Kent seemed the most spellbound by the ceremonial waxworks into which she was initially planted, and her role continued to represent Wilsonian sleepwalking even after the rest of the cast shifted into Elo-ian gear. There was some development of her relationship with Mr. Gomes established by partnering exchanges, with Ms. Kent threading herself through handles formed by Mr. Gomes's arms curved behind his back. Later, she began walking off backwards and he pursued her, and then she took his hand and led him offstage on some visionary quest.
Ms. Copeland and Ms. Boone each were assigned their own movement motifs: Ms. Copeland tottered on pointe indecisively, while Ms. Boone stabbed the air with her leg. And Mr. Cornejo engaged in the pyrotechnical things that he does best. The role of Mr. Matthews, however, was the least well developed of the three men's. The work ended on a highly balletic note with all three women supported in arabesques promenades by their partners. Tessellated backdrops designed by Mr. Close rooted the ballet in the appropriate homage.
Mr. Millepied's day job is as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, of which he has been a member since 1995. His ballet was polished and workmanlike, and had something of a signature although it was certainly influenced by the aerobicized neoclassicism of Peter Martins's works at NYCB. Mr. Millepied also has a background in modern dance, and the curtain rose on a swaying, tilting huddle of humanity that recalled the work of Paul Taylor. Soon the lead couple, danced at the opening by Paloma Herrera and Marcelo Gomes, are skating downstage together, but most of the first movement contains brief forays by couples drawn from the 10-member ensemble of men and women. Their paid-out lines and their movement become increasingly unstrung and less formal. Throughout the ballet, limbs thrash and jostle, pummeling like jacks thrown into the air. The dancers hit the ground rolling, the phrases ricocheting in hip-hop fashion rather than in classical full stops.
Mr. Muhly's score contains short riffs of melody, bulked out but also picked dry by extended chord progressions, sheathed in resplendent instrumentation. During the central duet, there are elements of Charles Ives — brass soundings that express disaffection. Mr. Millepied makes a duet of spooling and unspooling, in which balletic lifts are enmeshed but always pulled back tightly, as if suspended on a short leash. At the premiere on Friday night, this duet was a triumph for Ms. Herrera and Mr. Gomes, who expertly deployed their sleek lines, their limberness, and their long experience dancing together. On Saturday night, Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg were almost as good, with their interaction somehow more sportive and playful than that of the opening-night cast. Carillons in the pit opened the third movement, which welcomed the entire cast caroming onstage. Like Mr. Elo's ballet, Mr. Millepied's work ends not at a peak of summation — it could conceivably keep spinning out unending variations on its themes — but because the score has wound down, and it is time to call it quits.
