‘Push’ Fails To Deliver On Its Hype

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Sylvie Guillem is a strange bird. She was a child gymnast who switched to ballet at age 11 when she was admitted to the Paris Opera Ballet school. She was accepted into the company only five years later, and thus never completed the full academic curriculum. Three years after she joined POB, it was the rash decision of the late Rudolf Nureyev, then the company’s artistic director, to award Ms. Guillem the title of “etoile,” the highest rank in that rank-obsessed company.

As might be expected, this hysterically rapid promotion proved detrimental to Ms. Guillem’s artistic development, leading to cheating and short-cuts, and she never totally acclimated to the classical ballet idiom. She had all the orthodox virtues — technical aptitude, beautiful feet, a jump, a long arabesque line — but she never took the trouble to truly penetrate the expressive demands of ballet vocabulary.

Now 41, Ms. Guillem has apparently bid pointe shoes adieu for good, and “Push,” the program of choreography by Russell Maliphant she brought to City Center on Wednesday night from its run in London, is a logical evolution for her. As New York audiences saw two years ago when she danced Ashton’s “Marguerite and Armand” with London’s Royal Ballet, she’s always always been better in dance-acting or modern choreography than strictly classical works.

But, though Ms. Guillem is striking and attentively focused, Mr. Maliphant’s choreography hardly gave her much with which to work. It would take a more profoundly expressive kineticism than Ms. Guillem possesses to make choreography this bare look significant.

In her first piece, redundantly titled “Solo,” she wore transparent hostess pajamas and struck Spanish poses mixed with balletic poses. At times she displayed her signature trick, an outrageously hiked extension that she has inserted into every piece of choreography, sometimes at the cost of a turned-in hip and distorted alignment, and doggedly held at the expense of musical and physical continuity.

“Here we go,” I thought, when that leg went skyward, but I couldn’t help but admire her spectacular hip rotation in forward pitches, in arabesque penchés, and in grand ronds de jambe. If Mr. Guillem had had more physical and artistic discipline in her youth, she could have modulated those extensions to be just as startling but much more than a stunt. There is wit to Ms. Guillem’s performing, and on Wednesday night there was almost a bit of self-mockery to her tricks.

The music for “Push,” was Spanish flavored for Ms. Guillem’s “Solo,” and generically metaphysical/biorhythmic for the remainder of the program; we heard chimes and clinks and heartbeats and soprano warblings.

“Two,” the second number that Ms. Guillem performed, was worse than “Solo.” Ms. Guillem stood in a cone of light on the dark stage, wearing a tank top and fringed slacks. She undulated in place, and then she undulated some more around the stage.

There was something dilettantish about both of these solos. In each of them, Ms. Guillem seemed part professional dancer, part stunningly flexible and long-limbed society doyenne, demonstrating on her Mediterranean terrazzo the schooling of her personal trainer or dance instructor.

Her two solos were separated by “Shift,” a solo choreographed by Mr. Maliphant for himself. Whereas the two solos he gave Ms. Guillem contained a note of facetiousness, “Shift,” was entirely earnest. Mr. Maliphant started rooted to one spot, then expanded somewhat around the stage. Here and there he turned a handstand or a performed a rippling dive into the floor.

Rather painfully sober as well was the duet, “Push,” the two performed together after intermission. They made one tour of the stage after another, interrupting their ambling for partnering passages in which Ms. Guillem made a dead fall into his arms. There was some flavor of contact improvisation to what they did, with much work on the floor and on the knees. Indeed, the intrepid Ms. Guillem wore kneepads for this duet, along with the maillot over bare legs that she sported. She curled and nestled around him; one moment she was perched on his shoulder, the next slung over his back. He did his handstands over her supine body. It went on forever. The duet repeated and repeated and repeated, and its repetitions were circular rather than linear, and so it never achieved the cumulative power of pure minimalism.

Ms. Guillem has never lacked for audacity, and it took audacity to charge $85 for orchestra or grand tier admission to a show that lasts under two hours including intermission, has minimal production values and is performed to taped music. Ms. Guillem and Mr. Maliphant may truly believe they are practicing the highest of high art for which they deserve the highest remuneration, but nevertheless, and despite the show’s success in Europe, I had the feeling that two Henry Jamesian oldworld sharpers were preying on the perceived gullibility of new world rubes. If I had paid for my ticket, I would have been irate by curtain fall.

Until October 15 (West 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-581-1212).


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