American Ballet Theatre Woolf Works Review
April 11, 2024 | Segerstrom Center for the Arts – Costa Mesa, CA, USA
It’s difficult to quantify the difference between a dance work you’ve only enjoyed and one you rush to tell your friends about. Yet you know it all the same. Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works falls squarely into the latter.
On Thursday, April 11, American Ballet Theater (ABT) returned to Southern California’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts to present the North American premiere of McGregor’s award-winning Woolf Works, a three-act ballet based on three landmark novels by the widely celebrated Virginia Woolf.
But it’s not your grandmother’s story ballet.
Eschewing the traditional narrative structure of book-based ballets, McGregor fashions an evocative triptych of abstractions drawn from a distillation of each novel’s plot, how Woolf was feeling while she wrote them, and the moods they evoke.
While each act is unique in its textual anchor, visual design, and choreography, Woolf Works is bound together by themes of transience and existentialism.
American Ballet Theatre Woolf Works Review
Woolf Works opens with “I now, I then,” which is inspired by Woolf’s 1925 stream-of-consciousness novel Mrs. Dalloway.
The piece begins unexpectedly (and might I add rather McGregor-ly) with an excerpt from Woolf’s existential essay “On Craftsmanship” spoken by the author herself. This happens to be the only surviving recording of the writer.
As Woolf’s musings on language as an anecdote to life’s impermanence stream across a scrim, the stage lights lift to reveal Devon Teuscher. Teuscher, who is cast simultaneously as Older Clarissa and Virginia Woolf incarnate, stands alone amid three large, mobile frames that comprise the minimalist set (designed by Ciguë, We Not I).
At first, Teuscher – or should I say her character – dances alone. Her performance is delectable, technically assured, and skillfully stricken by melancholy.
As the act unfolds, more characters appear. She shares the stage first with her husband Richard (Roman Zhurbin) for a brief, compassionate pas de deux, second with her younger self (Léa Fleytoux) and old flame Sally (Cassandra Trenary), and finally with her forgone love Peter (James Whiteside).
Meeting the dramaturgical demand of this piece, each dancer showed a remarkable commitment to their character.
Cued by the score (composed by Max Richter and performed live by the Pacific Symphony), “I now, I then” shifts its focus to the second subplot – that of shell-shocked war veteran Septimus (Daniel Camargo) who is burdened by incessant visions of his deceased comrade Evans (Jake Roxander).
Though Clarissa and Septimus never meet in Woolf’s version of Mrs. Dalloway, McGregor takes artistic liberty to fashion a gut-wrenching pas de deux between the two united in their being haunted by the past.
The second act, “Becomings,” brings about a radical shift in tone. This piece is inspired by Woolf’s 1928 fantasy novel Orlando: A Biography whose protagonist mysteriously changes sex and stagnates in age while journeying through 300 years. Contrasting “I now, I then’s” meditative feel, “Becomings” fizzes with energy.
Instead of burrowing into the thick of the story, McGregor mines its more salient elements, including the act of time-travel and the theme of relativity. The result is a visually compelling, hyperkinetic composition full of McGregor’s extreme, hybridized movement vocabulary.
This act is the highlight of the performance.
The 12 dancers featured in “Becomings” demonstrated much skill and brilliance.
Each surmounted the oddities of McGregor’s choreography with dynamic intensity, showing absolute control of their bodies in space.
Yet none stirred the audience quite like Catherine Hurlin and Camargo whose showstopping pas de deux elicited audible gasps and a comically loud “Oh shit” from someone behind me. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in their roles.
Woolf Works concludes on a doleful note with “Tuesday,” an elegiac recasting of Woolf’s most experimental novel The Waves which focuses on the intertwined lives of six friends as they grow from young children into adults.
It begins with a recording of Woolf’s suicide note, read limpidly by Gillian Anderson. To this recording, Teuscher – once again portraying Woolf – and the ever-impressive Whiteside – who seems to represent Woolf’s husband Leonard – perform a tender, rather somber pas de deux.
Behind them is a stage-wide, monochromatic projection of slow churning waves (by Ravi Deepres).
The piece culminates in a gripping ensemble section whose clever staging suggests Woolf’s suicide by drowning.
As the corps of dancers rush into and break apart from each other like crashing waves, Teuscher as Woolf is gradually subsumed by the tumult and delivered from her torment.
While familiarity with Woolf’s works may have made for an even richer experience, McGregor’s innovative approach to deriving a balletic rendering of Woolf’s writings yields a deeply fascinating experience for even the unpracticed reader.
Featured Photo for this American Ballet Theatre Woolf Works review of Devon Teuscher and James Whiteside in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works. Photo by Ravi Deepres.
