BalletX presents its 2025 Summer Series, featuring choreographers Amy Hall Garner, Noelle Kayser, and Matthew Neenan

A peek at Petrushka

The promise is a peek at Petrushka, choreographer Amy Hall Garner’s new take on the 1910 ballet with the artistic collaboration of theatrical director Nancy Meckler. The full piece will appear with Ensemble 132 at the Perelman next year. In this substantial excerpt, Garner has kept the magic and the traveling show, and Igor Stravinsky’s delicious music, but she has set her ballet in the America of the Great Depression. Petrushka, danced by Peter Weil, has become a local who runs away with the troupe, beguiled by the performers and even more by their pay envelopes.

Costumer designer Giulia Gallon artfully sweeps us from the workaday in simple grey dresses and pants to the stage with colorful apron pieces for the women and bright, multicolored tops for the men. The dancing is quirky and evocative; Eli Alford demonstrates both strength and skill in a walking handstand, and an intricate set of footwork by Itzkan Barbosa, Minori Sakita, Ashley Simpson is a delight. Lanie Jackson’s Belle has the hesitant, abrupt movement of a puppet brought to life, but Weil’s Petrushka is the emotional core of the piece, bringing us right into his world as he dons the costume of a clown and fights Mathis Joubert, the strong man, for the love of the beautiful Belle. The set, an elaborate false proscenium designed by Marissa Frosst, makes full use of the space.

New work on wings

In the film that preceded the performance, choreographic fellow Noelle Kayser said that she was inspired by microscopic photography, and her Scales on the Wings of a Butterfly is a tour de force of intricate movement. It begins with four spotlights bathing a tower of brightly costumed dancers in a pool of light (by lighting designer Drew Billiau). The dancers fall away to reveal Luca De-Poli standing at the center, like a butterfly released from its chrysalis. The lights die and when they return five pairs of dancers are on the stage, the men bent over a bit, their partners draped over their backs, like the overlapping scales of the title.

Jeff Kolar’s original music gives the piece a steady heartbeat, with tones that weave over and under the beat. Amanda Gladu’s tight costumes, in colors that seemed to drift across the body, enhance the dancing, particularly the arms, which seem to float in wide curves, with the hands bent at the wrist. The movement almost seems fractal, expanding out from the movement of color to movement of the body. It is a fascinating piece.

The Last Glass, again

BalletX cofounder Matthew Neenan’s Last Glass is one my favorites of his pieces. The music, songs by the band Beirut, bring to mind a weary but still hopeful morning-after. Dancers sort of reel across the stage in Martha Chamberlain’s mismatched costumes, frilly skirts and everyday shorts as lovers play out their flirtations or anger or loss. Minori Sakita’s hot pink pointe shoes are a warning: her duet with Weil is all sensuality in their flirtation at the side of the stage, while Francesca Forcella and Jonathan Montepara rage in a relationship gone awry. At the center of the piece is grief, and Skyler Lubin beautifully portrays the widow who dances with the spirit of her husband. De-Poli is a commanding presence, and he matches the melting emotion of Lubin’s widow as he surrounds her in an embrace that can never quite connect. But the company, with little swaggery hops, gave the whole a sense of life going on. The piece is so wistful and full of quiet hope that it would be hard not to love it.

It takes something special to be a BalletX dancer. The company focuses on new works by wide-ranging and diverse choreographers, which means a new dance vocabulary with almost every piece they do. The dancers must have the skills, of course, and the flexibility and intelligence to process all those inputs. But those are just tools. It’s the daring that makes it work, and the emotional commitment to each part, each gesture. They really are special dancers.