ABT Incubator Review
January 13, 2023 | Pace University – New York, NY, USA
Launched in 2010 and named The Innovation Initiative, ABT Incubator’s workshop has grown by bounds since being rebranded in 2018. On Friday, January 13, 2023, the choreography lab had its first in-theatre showcase open to live audiences to display what the participants created over a limited time of two weeks.
American Ballet Theatre dancer Jose Sebastian took over the program from David Hallberg in 2020, and seeing the enthusiasm and community dedicated to supporting emerging artists on Friday night proves the need for more choreography initiatives such as ABT Incubator in the dance community.
ABT Incubator: From Halberg to Sebastian
Especially over the past ten years, I have noticed a glass ceiling in the New York dance community.
A select handful of renowned choreographers will snag residencies at top companies and as new talent emerges, the industry becomes backed up. There are few tunnels to encourage the success of amateur choreographers kickstarting their professional paths and young talent is left unpaid or unnoticed at the bottom of the ranks.
On Friday night, the entire New York dance community filled the theatre with dancers from ABT Company, the school, administration, and artistic staff – past and present – all rooting for the first live showcase to be a success. Such a large turnout with an audience engaged and teeming with enthusiasm proves the success of ABT Incubator and why the dance community needs lab initiations to vouch for emerging choreographers.
My review of the program ABT Incubator itself is glowing: Jose and the team at ABT are taking a strong stand on a relevant issue in the dance community. ABT Incubator is a wonderful leader for other dance companies on a global scale.
However, the review of the compositions themselves is twofold. It feels unfair to review the works as a professional piece as a whole, as that is not the goal of the program. The goal of is to experiment, grow, and learn as a novice choreographer, so it feels rather fair to critique the individual pieces from that perspective.
The evening as a whole did have an air of a college composition class – but as it should; ABT Incubator is not a professional performance but a choreographer’s lab. While on one hand the show lacked a natural flow because the pieces were unrelated to each other and there were clunky moments of choreographers running up to the stage to bow from their seats in the audience, on the other, it was refreshing to enjoy the liberation of an un-curated program on a professional scale.
As far as developing innovative choreography goes, Mark Caserta’s work "bad weather" appeared to create their own unique language through their movement.
They also lucked out by working with a cast of striking performers – Fangqi Li, Aleisha Walker, and Joseph Markey – who not only adopted Caserta’s movement well but also breathed together in unison despite the choreography often layered in starkly contrasting phrases.
The two-female and male trio operated as a single female body and then as a couple dancing in patterns around each other on the stage with interesting partnering and original floorwork. Occasionally, a moment would match up between the two worlds that appeared to tell different stories and the rare instances of unison would leave a chilling suspense in the air.
Despite being quite abstract and set against a fluid ambient soundscape, I was compelled to engage with the emotional cord the movement struck in me even though I could not place a fixed label on the feeling.
All of the short works were bare-bones on the stage and lit with two simple side lights, but I would be excited to see what Caserta could create further along in their career with the opportunity of a full-scale production.
Potentially, my opinion on Roderick George’s "When the Curtain’s Down" was slightly skewed due to it being so similar to Caserta’s "bad weather" and placed last on the program.
George’s work was similar because of the two-female, one-male trio structure wearing socks and developing a unique contemporary movement vocabulary against another mixed soundscape. I was not able to engage as emotionally with George’s as I was with Caserta’s, but I cannot tell if it’s due to the work itself or seeing something so close to each other back-to-back.
However, George’s dancers were also stunning and he thoughtfully choreographed to the performers’ strengths utilizing Kanon Kimura, Yoon Jung Seo, and Elwince Magbitang’s striking extensions.
The entire piece was very fluid and was hard to place an arc to a beginning and a middle – although the ending was particularly memorable since it was an absolute period and stood out from the rest of the flow. A dancer reached in a lift towards a fading stage light and then “collapsed” sharply on top of the other, the sudden movement surprising the audience and syncing up with a rapid blackout.
ABT dancer Tyler Maloney did an excellent job structuring a beginning, middle, and end to his abstract work "Embers in the Sky".
Using mostly contemporary ballet vocabulary, Maloney’s choreography stood out with his choice of a rarer tender male-male duo and extremely clever lifts. Despite ballet vocabulary being slightly more limiting than contemporary, Maloney excelled in keeping the audience engaged and anticipating what may come next without it feeling forced.
He successfully balanced simple movements (arms in a canon, the two dancers walking in a circular pattern one in front of the other moving forward) with complicated and mesmerizing lifts that resulted in a work that was pleasant to watch and left a warm feeling in the belly.
Another ABT dancer, Luciana Paris, created work inspired by the evolution of street tango from Buenos Aires.
I wish I knew more about traditional tango so I could critique Paris’ Then and Now from a more educated perspective, but overall, I appreciate that the tango element was not overdone. Paris’ tasteful choreography was proud and subtle rather than loud and flashy.
The female and two male dancers all wore blazers and flat shoes and gender did not seem to be as significant of an element as it is in traditional ballroom performances. However, the female’s costume was just different enough from the male’s that I found it slightly distracting.
Additionally, the blazers were taken on and off several times and placed on a plain chair at the center of the stage. The unadorned chair felt randomly placed on center for being rarely utilized and the frequent blazer changes distracted me from the movement. I was unsure if it was supposed to deduce a story being told, and if so, the message was a little lost to me. The piece potentially could have been more successful, I think, either really leaning into the use of the props or choosing a more minimal approach.
Lastly, Eva Alt made a cheerful contemporary ballet on three dancers: two female, one male, titled "Glass and Guitar".
The dancers wore colorful unitards and the piece was easy to watch, especially with the performers’ lovely technique. However, I had trouble understanding the motive behind many of the gestures which diverted from the classical ballet vocabulary.
At the start of the piece, one of the females pointed very directly to something off in the audience; at another point, the three dancers stood back-to-back and wiggled their fingers. The unique gestures were not repeated enough to make an abstract motif, and if they were designed to convey a meaning, the storytelling could have been more clearly conveyed.
Additionally, I feel as if Philip Glass has been overdone over the past two decades: with a budding young classical ballet female choreographer, it would have been nice to see her experiment with something different.
Overall, ABT Incubator appears to be successfully excelling along its mission. This was a fabulous opportunity for the choreographers and for their exposure. It’s fantastic that it appears to be growing in scale every year and I hope the partnership with ABT and the Pace University theater venue can continue. I am excited to see what direction Sebastian takes in the program in the coming years.
Featured Photo for this ABT Incubator review of Aleisha Walker, Joseph Markey, and Fangqi Li. Photo by João Mengussi.
