Pennsylvania Ballet's Chopin Celebration

A Chopin Celebration was hosted by the Academy of Music last weekend, but the only musicians on hand were those accompanying the Pennsylvania Ballet. Its canny artistic director, Roy Kaiser, put together this all-Chopin program, featuring an experimental work from his resident choreographer Matthew Neenan plus two ballets created by the late Jerome Robbins, who was as experimental in his own era.

Both of these gentlemen both heard something in the Romantic era composer's work that suggested movements very far removed from gentle early 19th-Century dances. Neenan, Robbins and Chopin made an exciting program combination.

Neenan is a risk taker and movement experimenter in the 21st Century manner, with zany moves and a "Let's try anything" attitude toward choreography. Robbins, similarly, left a legacy of experimental work that includes ballet, Broadway musicals and Hollywood films.

If Neenan pushes at boundaries with his combination of ballet, athleticism and pure whimsy, Robbins choreographed dancers street-fighting in West Side Story and folk dancing in Fiddler on the Roof, as well as performing to Stravinsky and Cage. Pennsylvania Ballet gave us Robbins in two moods, examining the varieties of romance with In The Night and having a laugh at The Concert.

Six couples exploring boundaries

The Crossed Line, originally created by Neenan in 2004, looked as fresh and surprising today as it did six years ago. Dancers behind the line of a scrim on a dark blue stage move over this line as the scrim slowly rises over the dancers. They link arms to form a circle. The circle disintegrates and separates into six couples exploring boundaries and the shifting nature of relationships.

The dance moves so quickly that it's hard to distinguish the varieties of relationships, but we know romance is the subject. Martha Chamberlain and Alexander Iziliaev looked very sharp, especially when Chamberlain was being swung around like a rag doll. Hawley Rowe, James Ihde and Jermel Johnson made an intriguing trio with the combination of Rowe's dignity, Ihde's height and Johnson's pyrotechnical skills.

Amy Aldridge, in solo as well as partnering with Tyler Galster, gave a highly polished and commanding performance. Ian Hussey looked confident and buoyant while partnering radiant Arantxa Ochoa. Little Abigail Mentzer was passed cheerfully among four male dancers, while Gabriella Yudenich and Francis Veyette performed as though the night belonged to them.

The music was transcribed by Neenan himself from Chopin works for piano and violin, and for piano and cello.

Perilous moves

In the Night, which Robbins premiered in 1970, calls for three pairs of dancers to emerge from dense blue backdrop with tiny lights like stars flickering overhead. The couples float and drift in a series of pas de deux, connected by Robbins's gracious, stretched-out movement as they explore the many modes of romance.

Robbins's wistful, lyric and romantic dance, like Neenan's, included many unexpected and perilous moves, with ladies held upside down or caught and held in air mid-leap. Arantxa Ochoa was excellent with courtly Maximilien Baud, a corps dancer who looks ready to move up.

Riolama Lorenzo was particularly fluid and near-boneless in complicated balances and leaps with her excellent partner James Ihde, especially in a sequence where she stood en pointe on one leg while the other was extended upright over her head. Lorenzo's upright foot fluttered tremulously, like a small terrified animal, and Ihde gently lowered it to the ground— a beautiful small moment emphasizing fragility and support.

The group was filled out by tiny Julie Diana, dancing with Francis Veyette. With Diana's buoyancy and Veyette's strength and speed, this duo contributed verve aplenty.

Spoofing the audience

All this glamor ends with a laugh. Robbins's comic The Concert was choreographed in 1956, with the artist Saul Steinberg creating a comic backdrop for a spoof of audiences as seen from the performers' viewpoint.

A concert pianist is on stage, in this case Martha Koeneman, the troupe's marvelous in-house pianist (who performed for all three ballets). As the pianist adjusts her piano seat and dusts off the keyboard, a motley crew of audience members arrive, each carrying his or her own chair. One music aficionado has no chair, but is so transfixed by the music that she simply curls up against the piano. Others squabble and push chairs around, trying to get the best view.

A cigar-smoking patron tries unsuccessfully to sit close to a pretty girl. Chairs are whacked around. There's plenty of mugging and facial gymnastics among a cast that included Riolama Lorenzo, Jonathan Stiles and Hawley Rowe.

In the end, the cast has the last laugh: The Saul Steinberg backdrop comes down on stage and the dancers come out with chairs in hand, to sit down to stare at the audience. Fair trade-off: if we laughed at them, why shouldn't they laugh at us?