Pennsylvania Ballet's two premieres

Matthew Neenan phones it in

JIM RUTTER

Pennsylvania Ballet titled its current program after Christopher Wheeldon’s Carnival of the Animals and hyped the appearance of that work’s librettist John Lithgow, but the company attracted balletomanes with two world premieres: Peter Quanz’s Jupiter Symphony and Neenan’s Penumbra and Pampeana No. 2.

Set to Mozart’s similarly titled 41st Symphony, the four matching movements of Quanz’s Jupiter Symphony took place against a bare grey backdrop on a fully open stage that, without side or back curtains, exposed the Academy of Music’s pipes, ventilation and duct work. The costumes match this subdued quality by lacking any eye-catching vibrancy, and rightly so: Here, the dance commands the viewer’s focus.

In each of the four movements, the neo-classical dancing exudes a lush and subdued yet highly stylized quality, displaying an intricacy in the ensemble sections that appeared as beautiful and calculated as Mozart’s music. Yet this effect was so studied that the rhythmic gestures and crispness of the corps movements across the stage seemed contrived, making the entire Jupiter Symphony feel like the ballet equivalent of choreographic showboating. Rather than the choreographer being the hidden force behind the movements, his calculating presence appeared throughout.

The dancers compensated for the choreography

Thankfully, the paired dancing lacked this quality; and as these segments required little technical virtuosity, the dancers could fill in the choreography with their own characterizations, skill and expressions. Here they performed marvelously in this regard, especially in the sumptuous andante section, where Sergio Torrado and Riolama Lorenzo’s long languorous glances and passionate dancing made it feel like the entire second movement sighed to the music.

Despite the style of the piece, I initially felt puzzled as to why Quanz often formed a uniform row of dancers standing at the side or at the back of the stage, facing away from the audience while the pas de deux or four-part dances took place. The lack of detailed setting conspires against this interpretation, which began to remind me of the salons that dominated cultural life in 18th-Century France. The corps’ uninterested, over-the-shoulder salute to the main action (dance) in the center of the stage echoed the mere polite (courtesy) homage paid to honored court guests in an age when spectators were preoccupied with etiquette and sophistication. Which I suppose is appropriate: Mozart himself played this game in the Parisian salons held by Madame Geoffrin, while intellectual giants like Hume, Diderot and D’Alembert stood by and bantered.

I’m not saying I liked the effect or watching all these idle dancers stand to the side in a kind of salute to what occurred center stage, but I didn’t mind what Quanz’s piece reminded me of either.

Neenan’s scorecard: One hit, one miss

If Philadelphia’s dance scene has the equivalent of a hometown hero, it's Matthew Neenan, the Pennsylvania Ballet’s resident choreographer (and long time company member, now retired). His new work presents two pieces set to music by Alberto Ginastera, and though they’re linked by a musical interlude, the relative success of each could hardly be more different.

The vignettes of Neenan’s Penumbra showed five dancers—spectacularly costumed by Oana Botez-Ban in gorgeous evening dresses and sharp suits— exploring themes of desire and longing, and the accompanying suffering that always follows. Ginastera’s piece for cello and piano— played brilliantly onstage in both works by Jennie Lorenzo and Martha Koeneman, respectively—reflects this choice. But Neenan’s work failed to match Ginastera’s structure even as it captured the soul of the music.

For all its alleged inflammatory properties, desire too often possesses all the emotional subtlety of a stubbed toe. Neenan did breathe life into it here, showing dancers tearing away violently from one another, only to reconnect or fall to the floor as they slip from one embrace to the next. His incredibly expressive and hyper, lightning-quick, multi-layered movements created some stunning visual imagery, assisted by absolutely stellar lighting by John Hoey that enhanced the enchanting feel of this piece.

However, Neenan’s very gimmicky choreography too often appears quirky and playful for its own sake. While some of this quirkiness fits (like having Lorenzo throw her dress up in the exhibitionist first movement), most of it occurs simply because Neenan failed to produce a structure for this ballet, thereby diluting even its emotional consistency.

Fortunately, his dancers redeem him— if only occasionally. Just as an actor can give a script more than it deserves, Joaquin Crespo Lopes’s emotionally rich performance adds moments of longing that transcend what Neenan offers, giving desire a greater depth than this choreography possessed.

Call it ‘ballet kitsch’

Penumbra at least approaches the feel of Ginastera’s music. Pampeana No. 2, on the other hand, destroys any sense of harmony with bizarre and fast-paced choreography that shares little in common with the music. In one moment, Neenan’s dancers present kabuki theater-like movements; in the next they’re sashaying their hips like Argentinean tango dancers, and here his choreography takes on the Baroque style’s ornate quality without the integrated structure and sense of beauty that Baroque art and musical works convey. Call it “ballet kitsch” if you will. (Hey, everyone needs a characteristic style.)

Fortunately for Neenan, his work (occasionally) rises above what the Germans affectionately refer to as “perfumed shit” (their translation of “kitsch”), particularly through Jermel Johnson’s sheer athletic leaps and turns across the stage.

I’m tempted to ask if Neenan was attempting to create dissonance between the music and the movement. (By his own admission, he argued, “I know what the music’s saying and how I want the dancers to move.”) But Ginastera’s piece— though itself a multi-layered rhapsody— manages to integrate its varying themes in a way that Neenan’s dancing fails to match or capture.

Like an MTV video

As a result, while Penumbra at least emanated clear themes—however inconsistently—the result in Pampeana No. 2 approaches utter chaos. Too often, more than one clearly delineated dance segment occurs on stage simultaneously, as if we’re watching quick-cut MTV videos. But at least on MTV, no matter how many flash-cuts occur, the singular viewpoint of a TV screen can only show one image at once. By contrast, Neenan’s jumbled collages of dance all take place on stage at once, his structural failure forcing the viewer to choose what to watch. It’s like trying to listen to two conversations simultaneously: You’re sure to miss something.

In the past, Neenan’s choreography has overwhelmed me, even if I’ve been shocked to hear his fans cheering all his pieces with the ardor of Eagles boosters at the Super Bowl. But the surprising thing on opening night was how little applause his pieces received. The discriminating, it seems, came to see John Lithgow.