American Repertory Ballet Premiere3 Review
June 10, 2023 | New Brunswick Performing Arts Center – Brunswick, NJ, USA
Imagine an EDM festival but instead of electronic dance music, it’s all Brahms. That was the vibe American Repertory Ballet gave off during the boisterous premiere of Ethan Stiefel’s VARIANTS which capped off a triple bill. Aptly titled premiere3, the show featured three works, one new for the company and two of them never before seen.
American Repertory Ballet Premiere3 Review
Opening the show was the late Arthur Mitchell’s refined Holberg Suite with music by Edvard Grieg. Originally created in 1970, the Balanchine-esqe piece featured fourteen dancers in sweet pale blue skirts, crystal-embellished leotards, and billowing shirts designed by Janessa Cornell Urwin. Stage design included a misty fog and shadowy trees along the backdrop, nicely lit by Jason Flamos.
“Balanchine-esque” would be an oversimplified description of the work; the dance is not a knock off or an echo. Mitchell is not without his own ideas, and many of them made for beautifully tender moments.
In a pas de trois section, one partner pushed a dancer in promenade and the third placed their hands atop the pusher’s, to help in the gentle walking step.
In another partnering moment, the female dancer takes a turned in passé and falls forward into her partner’s arms only to be flipped into a luscious bend back across his forearm.
The number features a series of entrances and exits, flanked by group sections at the start and end of the piece (not dissimilar to the Balanchine formula) and relies heavily on partnering, which is the piece’s strong suit. The work is bright and fast – at times the dancers seemed a little stunned at the speed – but all in all a refreshing piece for the company.
Next up was the premiere of Amy Seiwert’s Sight Line, where the company showed off their skills at the other end of the spectrum, sans pointe shoes and plumblines off kilter.
The dancers looked a bit more at home in Siewert’s grounded movements: spines undulated, feet flexed, bodies connected like lock and key. Interestingly, a particular step harked back to the first piece.
In Seiwert’s, the dancers repeated a spinning move in which the outer leg swung side to front with a flexed foot, allowing for momentum as the body folded inward. Mitchell’s was a more classical version: the dancer also rounded the leg from side to front but with pointed feet and turned out legs, bodies upright and erect whereas Seiwert’s move was wonderfully chaotic and loose.
The blueprint of the step was the same but their outcomes could not have been more different, providing lovely juxtaposition to the program.
Set to plucky strings and haunting voices from Maria T by the Balanescu Quartet, Seiwert finds pockets of suppleness and kinetic energy in the notes and echoes it in the movement.
Amoeba-like, a swarm of five dancers moves between asymmetrical formations and synchronized patterns. At times, a dancer breaks from the pack but for the most part, the piece involves sections for solos or partnering work.
Company members Annie Johnson and Andrea Marini could be construed as the leads but in terms of stage time, theirs appeared to be equally shared with other vignettes. Johnson and Marini however, are magnetic dancers, bringing tension and incandescence to Seiwert’s steps.
Sight Line finds its power about a quarter of the way through and while the ending is more ambiguous than it is a statement, the work is a fine example of dynamism and drama.
Celebratory, punchy, comical – the last piece was pure party (marked not only by the fun choreography but the literal cannon of confetti that scattered the stage to Brahms’ final notes). And the dancers deserved to celebrate; this program marked the end of their season at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center.
Costumes designs by Urwin and Keto Dancewear provided chic whimsy in traditional dance garb elevated by slim-striped ombre color sets (teal and burgundy, pink and violet) and Flamos’ lighting designs varied between bright stage lights and neon shapes swirling on the floor.
Set design made for a dramatic beginning to the piece: a slow curtain rose on a grand piano, as the lights rose the instrument began to crack in half, fragments flew out and up, and shards of keys lowered from the ceiling.
Walking handstands, dinosaur arms, rocking out to air guitars, the worm: these all found a place on stage amidst more classic ballet steps, but it worked.
Brahms’ Händel Variations, Op. 24 is organized in miniature variations, some only as long as thirty seconds. The format allowed for each dancer to be featured in solos, duets, or trios, flowing in naturally one after another.
Amongst all the beautiful discord, what was maybe most pleasurable was seeing the dancers having fun. In one particularly gnarly air guitar riff, Anthony Pototski stuck his tongue out like any decent guitarist would.
Lily Krisko, a zippy young dancer, staggers off stage in a series of turbulent spins and from my angle, I was able to see a colleague waiting in the wings to catch her.
At one point the dancers laid on their stomachs, heads toward the audience, and reaching their arms forward, they dragged their bodies across the floor. The crowd couldn’t resist chuckling while they inched toward us like hungry caterpillars, all with the most mischievous grins.
The work isn’t all silliness though; Stiefel infuses it with challenging bravura steps, which Pototski and Tomoya Suzuki complete with gusto, and delicate shapes reminiscent of the regality of stylized character dances.
Taking a wider look at the performance, each piece strayed from typical dance structure, instead working through small vignettes with evenly distributed roles among dancers. Stylistically, however, each was so different that the program had a satisfying balance to it.
Refined, earthy, bubbly – ARB is showing off their versatility and they are having fun doing it.
Featured Photo for this American Repertory Ballet premiere3 review of Annie Johnson and Andrea Marini in Amy Seiwert’s Sight Line. Photo by Kyle Froman.
