Alexei Ratmansky’s re-imagined rendition for A.B.T. is suffused with danger. As in life, the children are not always well behaved, and love does not always grant eternal happiness.
Tried and true, Balanchine’s 1954 production never fails to delight. The coziness of the party scene—filled with social dances for adults and children alike—is soon dispelled. As Marie and the Nutcracker Prince walk into the snowy forest, anything is possible. The second act is a visual feast, including tiny angels portrayed by students from the School of American Ballet, the soaring leaps and spins of Dewdrop, and the resplendent final pas de deux for Sugarplum and her Cavalier.
What distinguishes performances by this exemplary flamenco troupe isn’t novelty. This year’s program, titled “Sombras Sagradas” (“Sacred Dreams”), proposes a theme connecting group numbers, solos, and duets, and includes a première based on Chekhov’s “The Huntsman.” And a mixed-gender quartet of singers should offer a slightly new sound. But the draw, as ever, is the high musicianship, the lack of frills, and the searing soul-baring of the company’s star, Soledad Barrio.
The first week introduces the sole world première of the five-week season. Aszure Barton’s “Lift” is a thigh-slapping, pseudo-primitive affair, nudged toward quirkiness by wobbly knees, off rhythms, a pas de deux in which a woman’s nose is stuck to a man’s collapsed sternum, and jumps in a clump, as if on a trampoline. The stunt lifts come in the company première of “Chroma,” an ultra-modern stretching of ballet technique that Wayne McGregor made for the Royal Ballet in 2006. How the Ailey dancers handle this demanding work about the “freedom from white” is the season’s most intriguing question.
In “Fire Underground,” the veteran choreographer draws on her difficult experience with international adoption, using the typically unstable structure of her choreography to summon feelings of abandonment amid impersonal forces. The piece is a duet with the intense Rebecca Serrell Cyr, who joins Hristoula Harakas and Levi Gonzalez, a dream cast, for Uchizono’s “State of Heads,” from 1999, a brilliantly odd and unstable structure without such an explicit subject.
Wilson’s new work, based on his travels in the Middle East, wide-ranging readings, and research into subjects as disparate as fractal geometry, Harriet Tubman, and the mystical tradition known as Zar, is a vast mosaic of movement and sound, impenetrable but intriguing. At the center lies the question “Who was Moses?” Wilson’s abstract choreography and his lucid dancers may not provide answers, but the paths of discovery that Wilson suggests are their own reward.
Clarke—known for her interdisciplinary approach, which combines dance, music, text, and sumptuous tableaux inspired by the Old Masters—takes on Colette’s novel about love, sensuality, and the passing of time. Chéri, played by the ardent young Argentinean danseur Herman Cornejo, is a handsome, spoiled young man who loves an older woman, Léa. The aging cocotte is played by the recently retired Alessandra Ferri, a great dramatic ballerina. Amy Irving is Chéri’s mother. The story is told through movement and music, performed by the pianist Sarah Rothenberg, with a few spoken passages for Irving.
The dancer and choreographer, a fixture of the downtown dance scene since the eighties, presents a new evening-length work, “Someone Once Called Me a Sound Man.” Made for the Chocolate Factory’s vast, all-white space, the male trio—danced by Kinzel, Simon Courchel, and Stuart Shugg, of the Trisha Brown company—explores male movement and partnering in an unadorned environment of shifting light.
At the naughty end of the holiday spectrum, Austin McCormick reimagines the Kingdom of the Sweets as a hedonistic wonderland of erotic pleasures. Drawing upon the decadence of Baroque spectacle and the titillation of burlesque, the work is a gender-bending twist on the traditional coming-of-age story.
This Big Apple-centric version of the Christmas tale features an energetic cast of dance students from around the city. The beloved local teacher Francis Patrelle, who choreographed the show, appears as Teddy Roosevelt, one of the guests at Mayor William L. Strong’s Christmas party at Gracie Mansion, circa 1895. Jenifer Ringer and Jared Angle, both from New York City Ballet, step into the roles of Sugarplum and her Cavalier.
Lee Breuer, who, at seventy-six, is the grand old man of New York’s experimental-theatre scene, still works with the primary materials of mid-century theatrical modernism: mixed media, puppetry, irrationality, anachronism, miscellany, transgression, politics, and—very important in Breuer’s case—a carnivalesque spirit. Breuer unveils a new piece, “La Divina Caricatura.” It’s a takeoff on the Divine Comedy, but, were it not for the title, you might not guess its parentage. The story has to do with a dog, Rose, who is in love with her master, John, an East Village junkie who says he’s an independent filmmaker. (They are both puppets.) There’s a quartet of male soul singers and a trio of female backup singers, in sequinned gowns. The music incorporates rhythm and blues, soul, tango, reggae, rap, Gregorian chant, French folk songs, and Indian ragas. The show, like Dante’s Inferno, is only the first part of a trilogy.
This annual performance of Prokofiev’s tale has become a popular holiday outing. Isaac Mizrahi is the knowing and avuncular narrator, and choreography is by the witty young John Heginbotham.
