BalletX Fall Series Review
December 3, 2022 | The Wilma Theater – Philadelphia, PA, USA
When I experience an engaging show, my chin tends to lower so the crown of my head points to the stage, my pupils push upward to bore into the performance. Similar to how a sleeping patron bounces back up from a momentary slumber, I must auto correct my posture over and over from being too absorbed in the performance. At the BalletX Fall Series show, my chin was nearly pinned to my chest.
A pocket company at just ten main dancers, the size of the troupe is small but the powerhouse punch they pack is immense. With lusciously deep plies, floaty turns, and supple upper bodies every dancer is a gem in BalletX’s sparkling contemporary crown.
BalletX Fall Series Review
Caili Quan opened the program with her familial Love Letter, a personal ode to her native home of Guam. Set to a mix of music including Harry Kalahaki, Harry Belafonte, David Fanshawe, Kosrae Tribe, The Tahitian Choir, and Micah Manaitai, the tone ranges between celebratory and romantic with glimpses of longing.
Costumes by Christine Darch featured tropical outfits, reinforcing the island theme: tank tops, shorts, long skirts, necklaces, bracelets, and long earrings.
Originally created in 2020 for film at the height of the pandemic, dancers were unable to touch and that sense of “longing to be together”, as Quan says in a documentary by Elliot deBruyn, was central. In her revisiting of the piece for stage, those moments were fleeting, quenched by the satisfaction of connection.
I particularly enjoyed her organic transitions and the moments with pause.
At one time, the group faced a downstage corner and lifting their chins, they closed their eyes. One could almost see the rays of light, feel the warmth of the sun on the dancers’ faces. At another, they evoked a rolling ocean, pausing between waves only to crash over themselves again.
Quan also incorporated the dancer’s voices through loud breaths and a communal “huh!”. Rounded arms, swirling attitude turns, flexed feet, and sensual shapes echoed the call of the songs’ lyrics but the movement lost some vitality during group work when the dancers’ synchronicity was off.
Throughout, I kept waiting for a clear delineation of solo or trio or duet but each section seemed cut short by another group’s entrance, never solidifying. But perhaps this is more a comment on the “gripping feeling of community” as Quan put it; that even when you stray, home has a way of pulling you back.
Next up was Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Sacred Impermanence. In the documentary Moultrie says the piece is inspired by the idea of living in the now, that “we’re all here and then we’re not”. The piece serves as a beautiful reminder of mortality and the importance of the present.
Perhaps wanting to reflect the movement of water, Moultrie’s steps looked as though the dancers were pressing through liquid. He utilized dancer Shawn Cusseaux, a lovely mover with bounding leaps and feline-quiet landings, as a guide through the watery “now”. A highlight is Cusseaux’s solo where he sits downstage in a pool of light, carving air from his abdomen with his hands.
Repeated theme steps were minimal but Moultrie does revisit a downstage lineup of dancers and a unique, buffering movement where the dancers’ bodies or hands shudder rather than move smoothly.
Costumes by Mark Eric were oceanic too, a mix of leotards, shorts, and tops in swirly blues and whites. Costume changes from flat to pointe shoes and the addition of sheer skirts and shorts mid-piece seemed to lack reasoning – even though the additional material may have been the most beautiful fabric I’ve ever seen.
Moultrie’s music included selections from Sergei Prokofiev, Clara & Robert Schumann, Dirk Maassen, and Bill Evans. Three Romances for Violin and Piano by Prokofiev is an exceptional work which Moultrie smartly used for a delicate and inquisitive pas de deux between Cusseaux and Andrea Yorita.
The piece ends with a blackout on the six dancers’ supine bodies, maybe marking the end of the present or that they’ve leaned back to bask in waves of the now.
“A journey of sorts. And then a culmination. And a reflection,” says Jeanette Delgado of Justin Peck’s work.
Become a Mountain, the show’s closer, had a unique inception as a creation at Juilliard for the graduating senior class and you can feel a message in there, one of hope and adventure.
The catalyst is the epic score from Dan Deacon, an award-winning film and television composer. The music works in layers, first abrupt piano notes with breathy pauses; then a pattern starts to emerge, the notes squeeze together, until finally they arrive at a pulsing beat and the accompaniment of Deacon’s voice. Vibrating in a similar way to Philip Glass, the beat is contagious, bulldozing its way across the theater.
Clad in white sneakers, a Peck favorite, the dancers have an earthiness not achieved by pointe shoes or even the flat shoe since a sneaker allows for more traction.
And I just love the delightful extra orchestration that comes with the shoes as the dancers squeak across the stage.
Costumes by Benjamin Burton are a casual, flowy, and androgenous mix of different colored skirts, pants, and shirts. Stage design includes the naked back wall of the theater and the first two wings removed. Lighting by Nicole Pearce, recreated by Michael Korsch, had a life of its own. The back wall was dotted with bare bulbs, camouflaged until the music boomed and the lights flashed on a brilliant yellow, creating a silhouette for the manic dancers who matched the power of the score and lights with speed, dexterity, and heart.
Peck’s movement, if I had to simplify it to one explanation, is a reinterpretation of what Robbins and Balanchine started but brought to a whole new level marked with his own personal stamp.
Remember being a kid and dancing without order or reason as to what direction you went? His work has that whirlwind feel of a 13-year-old dancing alone in their bedroom mixed with the refinement of a seasoned classical dancer and the coolness of street dancing.
The dancers move in and out of group work and sculptural formations, and bounce between symmetry and asymmetry. At the musical crescendo, Peck relies on the dancers’ speed in a fast-paced choreography for the arms. Like the inner-working gears of a sophisticated machine, the dancers’ elbows and hands sharply cut and twist through the air.
But he experiments in stillness too, knowing precisely when to let the music cascade over everyone. The result of all the elements (music, design, steps) created a wellspring of buzzing inspiration, a bursting call for everyone to become their version of a mountain.
As Christine Cox, Artistic and Executive Director, said in her opening speech “art makes a city home” – everyone in Philadelphia should be proud to have a home with BalletX.
Featured Photo for this BalletX Fall Series review of Shawn Cusseaux and Andrea Yorita in Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Sacred Impermanence. Photo by Vikki Sloviter.
