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Ballet X at the Wilma
Artistry, conviction and technique
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Ballet X marked its territory onstage at the Wilma Theater, its new home, with three premieres and, most important, its new permanent roster of eight dancers. The troupe now includes not only Pennsylvania Ballet veterans but also dancers from diverse companies like Philadanco, the Dutch National Ballet, BalletNY and Complexions. Its co-artistic directors, Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox, didn’t miss this opportunity to display their company’s expansive artistic and technical mettle.
They also continued their mission to introduce emerging choreographers who hone in on the company’s artistic templates. Last year they chose Boston Ballet’s Jorma Elo, whose work showed technical variety; this time guest choreographer Adam Hougland was able to make an artistic statement with his new dance ballet, Risk of Flight, using the entire company (including Cox and Neenan). The work is compelling from its opening picture of the dancers in avian ‘V’ formation, with the dancers tilted forward and then advancing in slow motion under Zoe Keating’s dense cello overlays. The effect is rhythmic striations that Hougland can choreographically exploit. The dancers freeze mid-phrase; he moves from allegro to tempo; he beautifies a line of dancers, then unspools them.
Tight configurations lead to a central duet danced by Meredith Rainey and Heidi Cruz-Austin, who express a passionate couple in crisis. Hougland wants to strip away any dance artifice and Rainey and Cruz get a little “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" rough, but they achieve searing intimacy beyond just sex and dysfunction. The partnering is so powerful that one can almost miss the intricacy of Hougland’s choreography.
Matt Neenan’s work Once Again provided natural flowing phrases to the very dancey baroque music of Giuseppe Torrelli and Frederic Fasch. Compared to Neenan’s recent large works for Pennsylvania Ballet, Once Again might seem like a trifle. But even in adapting several of his signature body torques and limb filigrees, Neenan winds them up and down differently. The audience let out a collective “Ahh” as Emily Wagner, prone on the floor, lifted her torso off the ground without effort, with her arms out and looking like the bowed masthead of a sailing ship.
Baroque treatments of Beatles songs— For No One and Julia— are interspersed and become intimate scenarios, with more somber movement. Neenan, who seems to get choreographically bored easily, continues to change up his content, style and structures. A work like this leaves little doubt that he’ll move his own troupe in unexpected directions.
Christine Cox should choreograph more. Her work M.O.M. My Own Memory— a dance memoir concerning themes of illness, loss and survival— contains moments that look derivative of other work and set up taut transitional phrasing. But other moments essay rich passages. Cox’s lyrical voice comes through most clearly in her trios, and especially in the dramatic solo danced by Tara Keating. The eerie chiming of a clock, growing denser and denser, underscores the undulating group of six dancers. The staccato rhythms and scarred vocals by Bjork ignite Cox to more deeply etched choreographic inventions.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Ballet X marked its territory onstage at the Wilma Theater, its new home, with three premieres and, most important, its new permanent roster of eight dancers. The troupe now includes not only Pennsylvania Ballet veterans but also dancers from diverse companies like Philadanco, the Dutch National Ballet, BalletNY and Complexions. Its co-artistic directors, Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox, didn’t miss this opportunity to display their company’s expansive artistic and technical mettle.
They also continued their mission to introduce emerging choreographers who hone in on the company’s artistic templates. Last year they chose Boston Ballet’s Jorma Elo, whose work showed technical variety; this time guest choreographer Adam Hougland was able to make an artistic statement with his new dance ballet, Risk of Flight, using the entire company (including Cox and Neenan). The work is compelling from its opening picture of the dancers in avian ‘V’ formation, with the dancers tilted forward and then advancing in slow motion under Zoe Keating’s dense cello overlays. The effect is rhythmic striations that Hougland can choreographically exploit. The dancers freeze mid-phrase; he moves from allegro to tempo; he beautifies a line of dancers, then unspools them.
Tight configurations lead to a central duet danced by Meredith Rainey and Heidi Cruz-Austin, who express a passionate couple in crisis. Hougland wants to strip away any dance artifice and Rainey and Cruz get a little “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" rough, but they achieve searing intimacy beyond just sex and dysfunction. The partnering is so powerful that one can almost miss the intricacy of Hougland’s choreography.
Matt Neenan’s work Once Again provided natural flowing phrases to the very dancey baroque music of Giuseppe Torrelli and Frederic Fasch. Compared to Neenan’s recent large works for Pennsylvania Ballet, Once Again might seem like a trifle. But even in adapting several of his signature body torques and limb filigrees, Neenan winds them up and down differently. The audience let out a collective “Ahh” as Emily Wagner, prone on the floor, lifted her torso off the ground without effort, with her arms out and looking like the bowed masthead of a sailing ship.
Baroque treatments of Beatles songs— For No One and Julia— are interspersed and become intimate scenarios, with more somber movement. Neenan, who seems to get choreographically bored easily, continues to change up his content, style and structures. A work like this leaves little doubt that he’ll move his own troupe in unexpected directions.
Christine Cox should choreograph more. Her work M.O.M. My Own Memory— a dance memoir concerning themes of illness, loss and survival— contains moments that look derivative of other work and set up taut transitional phrasing. But other moments essay rich passages. Cox’s lyrical voice comes through most clearly in her trios, and especially in the dramatic solo danced by Tara Keating. The eerie chiming of a clock, growing denser and denser, underscores the undulating group of six dancers. The staccato rhythms and scarred vocals by Bjork ignite Cox to more deeply etched choreographic inventions.
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